Simple and Yummy Crustless Quiche

4 eggs

1 c half n half

½ c. chopped onion

8 oz. mushrooms, chopped

2 c. broccoli, chopped

½ t. salt

¼ t. pepper

8 oz. mozzarella

8 oz. parmesan

Olive oil

Pre-heat oven to 375. Saute onions in olive oil until translucent, add mushrooms and broccoli and cook until tender. Meanwhile, mix the eggs, half n half, mozzarella and half the parm in a mixing bowl. When the vegetables are ready add to the eggs. Spray a nine inch pie pan with Pam. Pour the eggs and veg into the pie pan, sprinkle with remaining parm, bake for 40-50 minutes.

You can pretty much toss out all the veg and put in what you like, including ham, bacon, etc. This is so good. I make it on Sunday and graze on it until Tuesday when it's usually gone. Reheat each slice in the microwave for 30 seconds.

Polish Reuben Casserole

2 10.75 oz cans cream of mushroom soup
1 1/3 c. milk
1/2 c. chopped onion
1 T. prepared mustard
2 16 oz. cans saur kraut (optional), rinsed and squeezed dry
1 8 oz. package of egg noodles (I used 1 c. penne)
1 13 oz. package of Polish sausage
2 c. shredded swiss cheese

Preheat oven to 350 degrees

In a medium bowl, combine soup, milk, onions, mustard.

Chop sausage into bite-sized pieces, add to soup.

If using egg noodles add to soup uncooked. If using penne, cook to al-dente, then add to soup/sausage.

Pour into 9x13 lightly sprayed baking dish.

Top with cheese, bake for 1 hour.

I found this recipe on the Dinner Spinner in my Allrecipes.com Droid app. It's my first experience with the app and I must say, I'm impressed. The meal was such a hit that my hubs has requested that we make it at least once a month!

Goat Cheese & Pesto Dip

1 container of Chavrie soft goat cheese
1/4-1/2 c. pesto (I like Classico)
1/2 tomato, chopped
4-5 kalamata olives, sliced

1. Spread goat cheese onto a platter with a knife or spatula
2. Use a spoon to spread the pesto onto the goat cheese
3. Sprinkle the tomato on top of the pesto
4. Sprinkle the olives on top of the tomatoes

You can use anything to dip with, tortilla chips, Tricuits, bagel chips, whatever. The chip is just a vehicle to eat more of the dip.

EAT.

Source

Pumpkin and Spice Sour Cream Coffee Cake

• 2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 cup margarine, softened
• 1 cup granulated sugar
• 2 eggs
• 1 teaspoon butter flavoring
• 1 teaspoon orange extract
• 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1 cup cooked and mashed pumpkin or 1 cup cooked and mashed canned pumpkin
• 1/2 cup sour cream
• 1 cup finely chopped pecans
• 2/3 cup firmly packed brown sugar
• 1 1/2 teaspoons pumpkin pie spice

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
2. Grease a 10-inch tube pan and set aside.
3. Combine flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt; set aside.
4. Cream margarine and granulated sugar until light and fluffy.
5. Add eggs, 1 at a time, and beat well after each.
6. Add flavorings and blend.
7. Add pumpkin and sour cream and blend well.
8. Batter will have a curdled appearance.
9. Stir in dry ingredients just until mixed.
10. Combine pecans, brown sugar and pumpkin pie spice.
11. Spread half the batter in prepared pan.
12. Sprinkle with half the pecan mixture.
13. Spread remaining batter over, then sprinkle with remaining pecan mixture.
14. Bake in 350-degree oven for 40 to 45 minutes, or until cake tester inserted near center comes out clean.
15. Cool in pan 10 minutes, then remove from pan to cool completely on wire rack.

Notes:
-I didn't have any other flavorings in the house so I just used 1 t. of vanilla
-I also didn't have any pecans but it didn't really change anything
-I used reduced fat sour cream and it made no difference
-I didn't have a 10-in tube pan so I used an 8-in square and baked it for 50 minutes in a 350 degree oven. Worked beautifully.

This coffee cake is so moist I wanted to keep eating it. Two big thumbs up.

Source

Bite Sized French Silk Pie

I posted the recipe for French Silk Pie earlier (see sidebar for the link).  In order to make them bite sized I use a biscut cutter to cut out the pie crust, then place the crust in a mini cupcake pan.  I cut out squares of parchment paper and fill them with pie beans after docking the crust.  Two crusts will make 24 bite sized pies.  I bake the crust the for 10 minutes with the beans, then 5 minutes without the beans before removing them from the pan and allowing them to cool on a wire rack.  You will only need to make one batch of filling and whipped cream.  I use a small offset spatula to fill the crusts with chocolate, then I place a small layer of whipped cream on top to seal it (otherwise you get pudding skin on the chocolate).  After all this is done I use a pastry bag with a #18 star tip to pipe the whipped cream on top.  One recipe uses 1 1/2 bars of chocolate, so I use a cheese slicer on the remaining half to make chocolate shavings that I sprinkle on top.  There is a small picture of the bite sized pies in the bake sale post. Enjoy!!

Pumpkin Ribbon Bread

I made this without the filling and it was the most moist pumpkin bread I've tried in a long time.

Oven Temp: 325°F

1 c cooked pumpkin

½ c vegetable oil

2 eggs

1 ½ c sugar

½ tsp salt

½ tsp cloves

½ tsp cinnamon

1 2/3 c flour

1 tsp baking soda

1 c pecans, chopped (optional)

FILLING

2 (3 oz each) pkgs cream cheese, softened

1/3 c sugar

1 TBS flour

1 egg

2 tsp grated orange peel

For bread: Preheat oven to 325°F.  Grease and flour 2 loaf pans.  Combine pumpkin, oil, and eggs in a large bowl.  Add sugar, salt, cloves, flour, cinnamon, baking soda and pecans; mix to blend.  Pour ¼ of batter into each of the prepared pans and set aside. 

For filling:  In a medium bowl, combine cream cheese, sugar, flour, egg and orange peel; mix well. 

Carefully spread half the filling over batter in each pan.  Spread remaining batter, evenly divided, over filling, in each pan.  Bake for 60-90 minutes or until a toothpick tests clean. 

Cool in pans for 10 minutes.  Remove from pans and finish cooling on wire racks.  Store in refrigerator until ready to serve.

I can't remember where I got this recipe, it's been in my stack of "to try" recipes for awhile and I think that it will be included next time I update my cookbook.

Bake Sale

Last weekend I took a day off of work to bake for 12 hours.  The Middle River Friends Church was having a Craft and Bake Sale that my Mother-in-law, Cathie, was working at.  After talking to her I wanted to help, so I started by putting together my menu.  This is usually the easiest part for most bakers; decide what you want to make.  I pulled out my giant cookbook (400+ pages) and I flipped to my favorite recipe, French Silk Pie.  Cathie also asked me to make a Cherry Pie so I pulled that recipe out too.  Then I just started turning pages and pulling out anything that looked good.  In the end I decided on Gingersnap Cookies, Buttermilk Cupcakes, Chocolate Cupcakes, French Silk Pie, Cherry Pie, Buttermilk Pie, Coffee Cake Muffins, Banana Bread and Pumpkin Bread.

The next step of baking this much food is to put together a list of all the ingredients.  I start with the first recipe and a blank sheet of notebook paper, then basically rewrite the ingredient list.  The second recipe ingredients get added to the first and so on until you've gone through all your recipes, in the end you will have a list similar to this:

Shortening: 3/4 c
Brown Sugar: 1c, 1c, 1/3c
Eggs: 1, 3, 3, 3, 2
Egg yolks: 4,  4
Flour; 1c, 2c, 2c, 1 3/4c, 3T, 1/3c, 1 3/4c, 2c
Ginger: 1t

Next is simplifying the food list by adding together everything you listed:

Shortening: 3/4c
Brown Sugar: 2 1/3c
Eggs and yolks: 20
Flour: 10 1/2 c, 1/3c, 3T
Ginger: 1t

Then I pull everything on my list out of my cabinets.  If I don't have to buy more it goes on one side and if I need to add it to my grocery list it goes on the other.   I typically try to have this much done 2 days before I'm going to bake so that I don't forget anything.

While I'm making all these lists I also write down the name of the recipe, how long it needs to be in the oven, and what temperature the oven needs to be at:

Gingersnaps: 8-10, 375°F
Buttermilk Pie: 55, 450 reduce 350°F
Buttermilk Cupcakes: 22, 350°F
Chocolate Cupcakes: 27, 350°F
Banana Bread: 60, 325°F
Pumpkin Bread: 70, 325°F
French Silk Pie: 25, 450°F
Cherry Pie: 40, 425°F
Coffee Cake Muffins: 25, 375°F

Then decide what order to cook things in to manage the time I will be in the kitchen.  In the end this is the order I went with:

Turn on oven to 350°F
Gingersnaps: make the dough and place in fridge to chill
Buttermilk Cupcakes: make batter, place in oven to bake.
Chocolate Cupcakes: while yellow cupcakes are in the oven, make batter and have it ready to go in the oven when the other cupcakes come out.
Turn the oven up to 450°F
French Silk Pie: While the oven is rising in temp, roll out dough for crust, dock it, and fill it with pie beans (or pie weights).  (I ended up making 2 of these pies because the one I promised to start with was sold before the bake sale began.)
Cherry Pie: While the French Silk Pie crust is in the oven I rolled out the dough for this pie, heated the filling, and got the second crust cut for the lattice top. 
Buttermilk Pie: This pie is one crust, and a very simple filling it was ready to go in as soon as the Cherry Pie came out.  This is also a pie that reduces temperature so I was able to get my oven back down to the temp to bake everything else.
Coffee Cake Muffins: make batter and streusel, place in the oven when the pie comes out.
Gingersnap Cookies: I make all my rounds for these while the Coffee Cake Muffins are in the oven, then I work on other things while they are baking.
Banana Bread: The recipe I have only makes one loaf, I made 2 batches of batter and made 1 normal loaf, and 6 mini loaves.
French Silk Pie: While the Banana Bread is in the oven I worked on the chocolate mousse for both pies.
Pumpkin Bread: When the Banana Bread is close to being done I make the batter then put it in the oven.
French Silk Pie: Now that the last thing is in the oven I can work on the whipped cream to finish this pie.

The last thing to do is frosting and packaging.  Some of them I finished while other things were in the oven, once the Cherry Pie was cool I was able to put it in the box then into the frige, same with the Buttermilk Pie.  The cupcakes all were placed in cake pans for storage, then set on the dining room table until I was ready to frost, and the Gingersnaps were bagged up when they were cool.

To add to my work, and to see the smile on Cathie's face when I dopped everything off I also made bite sized versions of everything to go in small boxes for all the ladies working at the sale:

Starting from the upper left hand corner: Bite sized Cherry Pies, Mini Coffee Cake Muffins, Mini Buttermilk Cupcakes, Mini Chocolate Cupcakes, Bite sized French Silk Pie, Mini loaf Banana Bread, slices of Pumpkin Bread.

By the time I was done my feet hurt and my hands were slightly wrinkly from washing so many dishes, but I was very happy to see all my hard work.

I will be posting all the recipes later this weekend, along with how to make a mini versions.