Doughnut & Butter Pudding

Another recipe to continue my tradition of trying new things in the kitchen.

The following recipe is slightly altered from the one found here.  A new friend of mine, Sam, suggested that I use it for the doughnuts I had left over after game night.

Prep Time: 15 minutes 

Cook Time: 30 minutes

Total Time: 45 minutes

Ingredients:

• 2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 1/2 cup sugar
• Butter or margarine
• 8-10 doughnuts
• 4 cups milk
• 4 eggs

Preparation: Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Add cinnamon to sugar in cup and mix well. Set aside.

Slice each doughnut in half and scrape off frosting (glaze is fine to leave) or remove filling.  Generously spread one side of each piece of doughnut with butter or margarine. Arrange doughnut slices in pan, slightly overlapping, with butter-side up. As you add the doughnuts, sprinkle with sugar,  and cinnamon.

Put milk in small bowl, add eggs, and using whisk or fork, mix to blend well. Pour milk mixture over doughnuts in baking pan. Set aside for about 15 minutes for doughnuts to absorb liquid.

Bake in oven for about 30 minutes, or until top is golden brown.

Serve the pudding while still warm in individual dessert bowls. It is eaten plain or with cream poured over it.

Yield: 8 to 12 servings

I must say that it is delicious!  Thanks Sam!

Dinning room table... or gaming platform?

This is what happens when I am home alone and have cookies to bake...



The recipe I used for this one was fine until I added the food dye.  Then it took on a consistency more like frosting.  I left it in the fridge for a few days and that helped (although it meant I didn't get to make them for my party - but my friend Nathaniel made me a yummy cake and my friend Nora made me peanut butter brownies, so there were plenty of sweets to be had).  The cookie cutters were a gift from my Sis-in-law, Bethaney, for my birthday (you can acquire a set from the wonderful thinkgeek.com store).

GAME OVER!

Play Again?

Next time I will try to get Pinky a little pinker.  I will give them eyes.  And I will remember to make the ghosts they turn into when he eats the power button.

Recent Food Endeavors

Fun with food creations.

My recent food endeavors have included:

Using my Star Wars pancake molds for the first time. Probably shouldn't show them to my younger siblings... they might want to play with their food too...

Baking my first Pavlova - a very delicious Aussie/NZ dish (thanks to Mum for the family recipe - I can't share it, so please don't ask for it). There are several Pavlova recipes on the web if you'd like to try it. It's a yummy meringue cake topped in fresh made whip cream (not the stuff you buy in the store) and berries. So delicious!

Baking my first carrot cake (it was from a box). I made a double layer cake. One layer was carrot cake, the other layer was chocolate cake. This is the D20 cake in the pictures. The pans I used were a bit on the small side so I made cupcakes with the extra batter. I then used the cupcakes to shape the D20 for the top of the cake. It was frosted in cream cheese frosting and then I used sprinkles to do the decorating (cutting out printed letters/numbers and placing them on the cake before adding the sprinkles and then peeling them off for sprinkle free words and numbers. This was made for Joe's birthday as he said carrot cake with chocolate cream cheese frosting was his favorite. I couldn't find chocolate cream cheese frosting (and didn't think that all I really needed to do was mix in cocoa) so I layered the cake with the chocolate instead.

And the Discworld birthday cake for Nora which I detail here: Discworld Dessert

As I am typing, I currently have my second Pavlova baking. This time I do not plan on opening the oven door until tomorrow morning. Hopefully it will not fall this time (though last time was still yummy). My Mom is looking forward to the Pavlova as my Mum (Mother-In-Law) got her hooked on it during my parent's last visit to Colorado.

I've decided recently that I'd like to try a new dish each week (doesn't have to just be desserts). My friend even loaned me a Celtic cookbook to look through. But don't worry, this won't turn into a food blog - though I will probably share about my new endeavors.

Into The Mix

My In-Laws were able to visit over the weekend. We enjoyed some wonderful time with them. While they were here, we went bowling, shopping, watched Thor, took a walking tour of Riverfront park, and played, Rummikub (I think we had equal wins on this one over the last few days), Hand & Foot (Mum & Bevan stomped Dad & I in the first game, but the second two games were ours: overall scores for all 3 games M&B - 31105 D&I - 33750 making it a 2645 point spread, rather close point spread for Hand and Foot), and Jenga (I lost 2 games before we all decided to play something that didn't end so loudly). We also enjoyed some good food while they were here:

• Winger's Grill & Bar - First time we'd eaten here. I had the blackened chicken alfredo - delicious with a bit of a kick. That atmosphere was nice (once you tuned out the screaming toddler at the next table). The waitress was on top of things (despite her co-worker sticking a bar code tag on her shirt). Doesn't make the top list of places I've eaten, but it's no where near the bottom.
• P.F. Chang's (my favorite Chinese restaurant) - I love the chicken lettuce wraps (I've found a recipe I plan on trying at home sometime soon). All their food is always delicious. Even tried Wok-Seared Lamb, a dish I hadn't had before. It was delicious. We ordered several dishes to share: Chang's Chicken Lettuce Wraps, Crispy Honey Shrimp, Beef With Broccoli, Wok-Seared Lamb, and P.F. Chang's Pork Fried Rice. This dinner was to celebrate both Mother's Day (belated) and Father's Day (early) with my In-Laws. We had a blast.
• David's Pizza - After walking around Riverfront Park - we stopped in for lunch. David's Pizza was delicious as always.
• Raclette - This one took place at our home and involves a Raclette plate in the middle of our coffee table, roast potatoes, various dipping sauces, cubed steak, diced brats, shrimp, onion, green/yellow/red pepper, and a Raclette cheese substitute (I still haven't found a local place that sells Raclette cheese). The potatoes are cooked before hand while everything else is cooked/melted on the Raclette plate. It's a fun social dinner and basically works like a main course fondue.

It was a great visit, too short, but lots of fun. I enjoyed the time I was able to spend with them. My Father-In-Law even brought my mixer (a Christmas gift from a few years back) as his carry-on on the plane. I received the mixer as a gift from my Mum & Dad (Mum & Dad = In-Laws, Mom & Dad = my parents) the Christmas before we left Madison. As where and when to move was up in the air at that point, we decided it would be better to leave the mixer at their house and they would get it to us once we settled in. Since I didn't have my own kitchen until about 2 months ago, I hadn't needed the mixer until now. It was like Christmas all over again. I was so excited that I would finally get to use my beautiful red mixer! And I had just the recipe to break it in.

You see, I've had bananas ripening on the counter for a while, and I'm sure my husband will be very happy to see that they have now been used. So I glanced over my cookbooks and decided that the simplest banana bread recipe would probably be in the cookbook that was my absolute favorite to cook from as a child, Alpha-Bakery. Sure enough, there was the easy recipe I remember for Banana Bread.




This cookbook is geared towards kids, but I still love the monkey picture.


All the ingredients minus the eggs that I forgot to pull out for the picture.


I took a picture of each ingredient as I added it (but decided that I didn't really need to overload you by posting all 100ish pictures). Side note: It's amazing how many pictures I can take in a short time when not limited by the 24 picture film that we used to use.

I also realized that I needed to pay better attention to which measuring cup I used, as I realized after adding in the vegetable oil that I had put in 3 1/2 cups instead of 3 1/4 cups. Luckily, I hadn't mixed the ingredients together yet and was able to pull out the 3/4 cup extra I had added.


The batter looks much better in this picture then it did when it was just sugar, eggs, oil, and banana.


Time to start baking.


Now I remember why Mom makes mini-muffins instead of loaves. They cook in half the time. But it was worth it.



Yummy banana bread!