Cheesy Cauliflower

Good Evening Ladies!

Tonight I am gonna share with you what I made for dinner the other day.
While looking at various recipes for Thanksgiving, I spotted one for cauliflower Au-Gratin.
Given the fact that on all days, except Saturday which is my carb-up day, I cant eat any carbs really, any recipe that gives me a substitue for Potatoes makes me a very happy girl!

Knowing that we were kinda in a hurry to fix dinner at my Father-in-Laws and get hone to lift, I decided to scrap the whole baking idea, and instead just winged the whole recipe.  Here is what I came up with:

It was DEVINE!!!

So let's get started shall we?

Oh, and this is a Low-Carb recipe, it is most definitly NOT Low-fat!  :)

Here's what you'll need:

 

 Parmesan, Half and Half, Butter, Heavy Cream, Salt and Pepper

2 16oz Bags of Frozen Cauliflower

Colby Jack Cheese, cute up into small cubes

Start by putting 2 Tablespoons of butter in a skillet. 

Add the half Pint of Heavy Cream, 1/2 Cup Half and Half and season with salt and pepper. 

Let this reduce over Medium heat until it reduces by almost half. It should be nice and thick, like alfredo, once it's done. 

 

While this is reducing, Microwave the Cauliflower.

Make sure to cook them until they are warmed through, but not mushy.

Cut a tiny hole in the corner of the bag, and gentle squeeze to get the water out.

I kinda forgot this step, and wound up with my sauce way to watery!  So please don't be like me!

By now it should be nicely reduced!  So dump in your cheese!

Stir this around to get the cheese down in the sauce, then just let it sit for a few minutes!

After a few minutes the cheese should be nice and melty.  Stir it around and get it incorporated.

Dump in the cauliflower and stir until it's all coated and yummy!

I served it along side grilled strip steak topped with sauted onions!

See, the watery cauliflower ruined that nice thick sauce!  Don't forget to squeeze!

Now Rob isn't a big Parm fan, but I LOVE it.  So rather than stir the Parm into the sauce, I left it out and just topped mine with it.

The dark brown you see is yet another boo-boo I made.  I left the pan too high and ran outside to get the steaks off the grill.  Well the cheese in the sauce got WAY brown against the bottom of the pan.  But luckily it wound up being a delicious mistake.  Browned cheese is fantastic!

I hope you all enjoy it!

Ingredients:

2 TB Butter

1/2 Pint Heavy Cream

1/2 C Half and Half

Salt and Pepper to taste

8 ounces Colby Jack cheese or your cheese of choice.

2 16oz bags Frozen Cauliflower, microwaved and drained

Parmesan Cheese, Optional

Add the first 4 ingredients to a skillet and reduce by half.

Once reduced, add Cheese and stir to combine.

Add Cauliflower and toss to coat.

Top with Parm and Enjoy!

{{{Hugs}}}

Christy

I NEED THIS IN MY LIFE

That my friends is a nail polish cookie cutter and I really need this in my life, don't you??

SUGAR COOKIES - BAKING THE COOKIES

First I want to share with you all the cookie cutters I got. I found these at Michael's craft store for around $9. The box contains 20 Christmas cookie cutters, not bad, making them around .45 cents each. Plus they have some really cute ones, I am excited about the little present and the peppermint candy ones! They are all really cute and not just the normal ones you always see either.

Now on to the baking. I used a recipe from All Recipes and made some minor changes to it. You can find the original recipe HERE. Below is the recipe with the changes I made last night.

Ingredients

• 1 1/2 cups butter, softened
• 2 cups white sugar
• 1 cup powdered sugar
• 4 eggs
• 2 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 5 cups all-purpose flour
• 2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1 teaspoon salt

Directions

1. In a large bowl, cream together butter and sugar until smooth. Beat in eggs and vanilla. Stir in the flour, baking powder, and salt. Cover, and chill dough for at least one hour (or overnight).
2. Preheat oven to 400 degrees F (200 degrees C). Roll out dough on floured surface 1/4 to 1/2 inch thick. Cut into shapes with any cookie cutter. Place cookies 1 inch apart on ungreased cookie sheets.
3. Bake 6 to 8 minutes in preheated oven. Cool completely.

Here is the butter and sugar I creamed. You need to let your butter reach room temperature before starting this to make the mixing much easier.



Next add the eggs and vanilla. For the vanilla I used something a little different. My mom had a bottle of infused vanilla that she made. You basically pour vodka in the bottle with the vanilla beans and let it infuse over several months.



This is the bottle of infused vanilla I used.



This is what it should look like after adding the eggs and vanilla.



Next, you need to add the dry ingredients. I started out by doing it a cup of flour at a time.



Now you are ready to cover your dough with plastic wrap and chill for at least an hour.



I have one of those silicone cooking mats that I used in place of parchment paper. I sugared the surface and rolled the dough directly on this mat. Then I used the cookies cutters and cut out my cookies and removed the scraps.





After about 7 minutes, my cookies were done. You really need to watch your first batch to see how quickly your oven will cook them. You don't want brown cookies, you want them to be white, these make for softer cookies.


I only did two pans of cookies last night, and the reason why is my silicone mat. I thought it would be great to use in place of parchment paper, but it was not. I had to wash the mat in between pans of cookies and that was going to be too time consuming. So tonight I will continue baking the rest of my cookies after getting parchment paper.

As far as the taste of the cookies, I was pleased. They were soft and sweet. I thought it was a good level of sweetness without being overly sweet, I will let the icing handle that. I thought the cookies also held up really well and didn't crumble or break when I moved them to a plastic bag after cooling.

Tonight - let the icing begin!!!!!

SUGAR COOKIE TRICKS OF THE TRADE

SO far in my quest for easy, perfect AND professional looking sugar cookies I have come across several really handy tips that I wanted to share with you all.


TIPS FOR WORKING WITH THE DOUGH:

TIP 1
Work with really chilled dough! Only take out enough to work with at a time and leave the rest of the dough in the fridge.

TIP 2
Use powdered sugar instead of flour when rolling out your dough - it makes for sweater cookies.

TIP 3
Roll dough out on parchment paper, then use your cookie cutters, making sure to leave plenty of space between each cookie. Tear away the scraps and slide parchment paper directly onto your cookie sheet. Doing it this way eliminates the need to move your cut cookies which can damage their shape.


TIPS FOR ICING THE COOKIES:

TIP 1
Using thick Royal Icing pipe the outlines of your cookie. Then using a thinner Royal Icing, "flood" the cookie. Below is a video I found on YouTube that demonstrates this tip:




TIP 2
Use a squeeze bottle with your thinner Royal Icing that you will flood the cookies with.

TIP 3
Icing prep - figuring out what colors of icing you will need, how much and where it will be used on your cookie. I found all this in really great detail at Bake at 350 ( Thanks Colette for introducing me to this site!) . You can read all about her tips HERE, and find out a ton more info on the small details that make really nice looking cookies by searching through all her posts labeled "the details".



There are, I'm sure, a ton more tricks and tips that I didn't even touch on, but these six tips were the ones that I think I will find most useful when I get ready to start my sugar cookie adventure.

IN SEARCH OF: THE PERFECT SUGAR COOKIE

I am about to embark on a sugar cookie journey. I will be soon trying out a couple of different recipes for sugar cookie doughs and icings. I have always wanted to make really pretty sugar cookies for the holidays (all holidays, not just Christmas). And as easy as that sounds it never seems to work out for me. The dough is never right, or by the time I get to icing the cookies I am just done with the whole process.


So this year I am taking a new approach. First I purchased several items at Michael's craft store, searched the Internet for recipes and watched hours of YouTube videos of people making cookies, icing them, making icing - you get the picture! I am also planning on taking a little more time for the whole process than I have in the past, which I think has been my biggest failure in achieving the perfect sugar cookie.


So I hope you all look forward to this little series of posts I will be doing in the coming weeks, I know I am.


HAVE A TIP??
If anyone has any tips, recipes or idea's for sugar cookies, icing or decorating techniques, please be sure to share them with me in the comments section!

OVEN ROASTED CHICKEN

Wowser!! Did this turn out pretty or what? This weekend was the first time I used this recipe and it really turned out great. I found this recipe where I find a lot of the recipes I use, on All Recipes.

There are a couple of reasons why I love All Recipe's website the most. The first being that the recipes are actually rated by people like me and you who have tried the recipe out. I find that really helpful in cutting down on "bad" recipes, and believe there are several of them out there. I also find it an easy site to navigate and search. One handy tool is the ingredient search. I love to search by whatever specific cut of meat I have. The other day I had chicken thighs, I searched by the words "chicken thighs" and got a whole list of recipes that call for chicken thighs. I ended up making teriyaki chicken that turned out wonderful! One last positive point for All Recipes is that you can read peoples reviews of the recipes, which usually contain handy tips on small changes they made to the recipes that made them work.

For this particular recipe I pretty much followed the recipe with a few small changes. If you would like to see the original recipe, please CLICK HERE.

INGREDIENTS:

• 1 (3 pound) whole chicken, giblets removed
• salt and black pepper to taste
• 1 tablespoon onion powder, or to taste
• 1/2 cup butter, divided
• 1 stalk celery, leaves removed
• 5-7 whole garlic cloves
  

DIRECTIONS:

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C).
   
2. Place chicken in a roasting pan, and season generously inside and out with salt and pepper. Sprinkle inside and out with onion powder. Place 3 tablespoons butter in the chicken cavity. Arrange dollops of the remaining butter around the chicken's exterior. Cut the celery into 3 or 4 pieces, and place in the chicken cavity. Place the whole garlic cloves in the cavity of the chicken as well.
   
3. Bake uncovered 1 hour and 15 minutes in the preheated oven, to a minimum internal temperature of 180 degrees F (82 degrees C). Remove from heat, and baste with melted butter and drippings. Cover with aluminum foil, and allow to rest about 30 minutes before serving.

My rinsed chicken, free of the giblets. Dinky always loves when I cook a chicken, cause she knows the little pan boiling on the stove of giblets will soon be cut up and added to her little dish!

The chicken fully seasoned with the salt, pepper and onion powder. I didn't measure the onion powder, I just sprinkled until the chicken looked like it had enough. Don't forget to season the inside too.

Next I added my butter, garlic and cut up celery to the inside of the bird. No special order, I just shoved them all in there! :)

Next, I used the extra butter and stuck it all over the chicken. This chicken had butter in places that even I'm a little ashamed to say, lol!

After cooking for an hour, I took it out and basted it with all the yummy juices. I then stuck it back in the oven to cook another 15 minutes. I then pulled it out and did a second basting of the bird.

You then cover with foil and wait 30 minutes before eating...........wait!! Did that really say wait 30 minutes, ohhhhh this is going to be hard. This is a good time to make any little sides though to keep your mind off tearing into the chicken. Since the oven was already warm I made a box of scalloped potatoes, which take 20 minutes to bake. Take a look at this beauty:

Can't you just taste that crispy, buttery skin and juicy chicken melting in you mouth?? Very easy prep recipe and I highly recommend this as a great way to cook a whole chicken, even for those new or inexperienced cooks in the kitchen. The chicken was super juicy and perfectly cooked. The leftovers also made excellent chicken salad sandwiches!

Hello from Helen, Christy & Brooke

Well, hello!

Oooh the first post on a new blog - always going to be tricky (especially when you are used to Wordpress and haven't used Blogger before!)

You readers will probably recognise Brooke, Christy and I from our respective nail blogs. However, something we have realised we all have in common, aside from a living, breathing need for all things glitter, is that we love to cook.

So here you have a blog for all the foody things that we create in our spare time. Worry not as the nail blogs are going to continue as usual, but we thought it might be nice to have a place where we can share our creations, recipes and ideas - like a one stop shop for any of you looking for some foodie inspiration.

One small warning. It might not be advisable to read this blog if you're feeling a little bit peckish!


<3
Helen, Christy & Brooke