Danielle's Chocolate Lava Muffins

I don't have a picture because I actually made these a long time ago, way before we decided to use Good Eats as our new book for delish.

I saw this episode and really wanted to try the lava muffins. They looked so easy, and they were. They were a piece of cake to throw together, and they cook VERY quickly. And they were delicious.

But there was no lava flowing from our muffins... I made a half batch (six muffins), but I should've filled only four muffin cups. Each muffin was really small and cooked faster than I anticipated. If you do divide them as the recipe says, you might want to cook them for a little less time -- or just watch them closely.

Danielle's The Once and Future Beans

These were really good! Max said he doesn't like beans and he really liked these.

I replaced the bacon with smoked ham, and instead of tomato paste (cause I forgot to buy some) I threw in a can of fire roasted tomatoes. We cooked ours in the oven for about five hours, but they were done to our liking after four or four and a half hours. This was really easy to throw together and made a ton. It's a good thing to make at the beginning of the week and have for lunch for the next few days.

I would definitely make these again.

Danielle's "The Chewy"

I never much liked the Tollhouse cookie recipe growing up, although we often made it for lack of a better recipe. I always thought they were too cakey. But when Alton Brown said it's the only recipe he uses for chocolate chip cookies, I thought it was worth another shot -- especially with his adjustments.

I followed "The Chewy" recipe, with the exception that I used two whole eggs instead of replacing one of the whites with milk. All I had was skim milk and I didn't know how that would turn out. I also don't really like cookies that spread a lot, so I thought I might prefer it with the whole eggs.

I have to say that after making these, I remembered why I didn't like them growing up. Although these were a little less cakey and puffy than what we made growing up, I just don't like the texture of these cookies. I like my cookies to be more dense. I have another recipe that I got from my grandma called "Mrs. Fields Cookies" -- I have no idea if it's really the Mrs. Fields recipe -- but I like it a lot more than these. They are dense and chewy and just a little crunchy on the outside. I haven't found a recipe to beat it yet.

I made one pan of these, and I've just been eating the rest as cookie dough. Cookie dough is always delicious!

Danielle's not-really-salmon turnovers

Well, I fully intended to make the salmon turnovers in the puff pastry episode. I bought the puff pastry and a can of salmon. However, I made the mistake of buying the can of "wild caught Alaskan salmon". I keep hearing that wild caught salmon is so much better, so I thought I should go with that.

It turns out the wild caught Alaskan salmon was neither boneless nor skinless. What am I supposed to do with a can of fish with a whole fish spine in it?? Bleh. So then I had a defrosted sheet of puff pastry and no salmon. So we made turnovers but threw in what we had on hand -- red pepper hummus and cilantro. I topped mine with sharp cheddar cheese.

I was disappointed that we weren't able to try the salmon turnovers, but our hummus turnovers tasted really good. I imagine just about anything would taste good in crunchy, puffy, buttery pastry! We're going to try some dessert turnovers at some point, and I still want to try salmon turnovers eventually.

Danielle's Mac N Cheese

We wanted to make baked macaroni and cheese, but based on the reviews of Alton's baked mac & cheese (here and online), we decided to switch things up a bit. So we made a hybrid of AB's stove top and baked mac & cheese. We basically followed the stove top recipe, added ham, stuck it in a pan, and topped it with the panko crumbs.

Our hybrid version turned out great! It was delicious, and tasted just about as good the next day as leftovers (reheated in the oven) -- although the leftovers were a bit dry. Oh, one other change we made was that we used a mix of smoked cheddar and sharp cheddar. I loved the smokey flavor, especially with the ham.

Growing up, I never had baked macaroni and cheese. In fact, it's possible that the first time I ever had it was in the last year or so. So I'd never had mac & cheese with bread crumbs on top, but I love the crunchiness added to it! I'm a big fan of baked mac & cheese now. I think we will definitely make this again (the hybrid version) -- although not often for the sake of our arteries. :)

Danielle's Waldorf Hysteria

This salad was really delicious. I've only had Waldorf salad maybe a couple other times, so I don't have much to compare to. But Max and I both really enjoyed this.

I didn't follow the recipe exactly, but I was able to make this with stuff I already had. And I was excited to be able to use some of the things that are growing in my front "yard" (lettuce and mint).

Here are the changes I made:

• I used craisins instead of raisins
• I left out the celery (I'm not a fan)
• I used only Fuji apples
• I decreased the amount of onion and sliced them really thin
• I used pecans instead of walnuts (cause that's what I had)

We put this on lettuce, but I thought the lettuce was unnecessary. I would've rather left it out. Max liked it with the lettuce though, so it's a toss up. I really loved the combination of the curry with the mint and apples. It's a great flavor combination. This was really easy to put together, and it tasted great. Since I keep these ingredients on hand, I can see myself throwing this together often when I don't feel like cooking.

Apple Family Values

I'm sure a lot of you, like me, are not in the mood for anything really heavy this week. I wanted to pick something light and easy. I almost got sidetracked into picking Crust Never Sleeps (that galette sounds really really good), but I didn't want to make or buy a pound cake. And I think it's for the better that I settled on this episode instead.

I'm going to make The Waldorf Hysteria sometime this week, so I'll post about it later after I've made it. You can find this episode on pages 86 through 89 in the book. You can find the recipes for this episode on the Food Network's website here.

Enjoy!

Danielle's Southern Biscuits

These were delicious! I tried some with poached eggs (my new favorite way to eat eggs) and some with butter and maple syrup. With eggs was good, but with butter and maple syrup was fantastic. I think I liked them better than pancakes with syrup. These might be a new go-to breakfast food for me.

I halved the recipe since it was just the two of us eating. I just used a glass to punch out my biscuits, and the diameter may have been more than 3" (not by much, though, I don't think), but I only got 3.5 biscuits! I wished I'd made the whole recipe. Maybe I didn't roll them out thin enough... Although it ended up being plenty for both of us. We were pretty full.

Does anyone have an opinion on how well these keep? I only wanted to make as much as we would eat that night because I've never had a leftover biscuit that I thought still tasted good. Cami, you said Calder had these for breakfast and lunch the next day. Did you try any of the biscuits the next day? How were they?

Danielle's Baked Meatballs

These were delicious! I didn't end up making a sauce to go with them as I planned to last night, but they were even good plain. They'd be great in spaghetti sauce, though, so I'm going to try that with my leftovers that are in the freezer.

I also couldn't get ground lamb at the local Vons, so I used half pork and half beef. Maybe I'll pick up some ground lamb at Costco for next time. In the book, Alton says his wife makes them with ground turkey to make them healthier -- and he says they definitely taste like it. If I hadn't read that, I would've gone for the ground turkey also probably. That's my default. I'm sure they would've been a lot drier with turkey instead of beef and pork, but I might still try them with turkey next time because hey, it's healthier.

And as Jen did, I also used the whole 10 oz. of spinach. I don't think it detracted from the meatballs at all. In fact, you couldn't really taste it so certainly no harm done.

Max and I both really liked these meatballs, and they were really easy to make. I can definitely see us making these again.

Danielle's Squash Dumplings

This was kind of a weird recipe for me. In the end, the dumplings tasted pretty good. But the process was off.

Alton says at the beginning of the recipe (in the book) that this was not a favorite with viewers, but I decided to give it a shot anyway. The biggest complaint in the online reviews seemed to be that the dough was really wet and required way more flour than called for. In the book, Alton added weights to the amount of squash and potato you need, presumably to address the wetness issue. I weighed my ingredients, but I made a mistake and used double the potato I was supposed to (I was making a half batch and forgot to halve the potato). I don't know if that's why my dough ended up so loose, but like many of the online reviewers, I had to add TONS of extra flour... and I still had a wet dough that was difficult to work with.

After adding lots and lots of extra flour, I decided I better stop adding more because I was sure I had already overworked the dough. There was no way I was going to be able to roll out the dough so I just grabbed clumps of dough, rolled it in my hands, and plopped it in the boiling water.

My dumplings were kind of tough, but they tasted pretty good. I loved the sage flavor, but it was overpowering when I got an actual piece of sage in my bite. I think when I make these again (I have lots of dough still in the fridge), I'll add the sage to the butter while it browns but then skim it out before adding the dumplings.

One of the online reviewers said she squeezed her squash with paper towels before mashing it to get rid of excess water. She said she was able to get a good texture just with the amount of flour called for in the recipe. I wonder why Alton doesn't say to do this in his recipe...

Danielle's Pot Roast

Our dinner conversation the other night --

Danielle: "This roast is pretty good, but I can't say it's the best I've ever had."

Max: "Can you say any roast is the best you've ever had? Isn't every roast practically the same as every other roast you've had?"

Danielle: "No.. well... Ok maybe you've got a point."

As I thought about it, I couldn't distinguish between roasts I've had based on taste. Really, the only thing that has determined a good roast for me is how it's cooked (i.e. has it cooked long enough to be falling apart). In that respect, I only did an ok job with this roast. I cooked it for about 4 hours at 275 degrees, and I thought it needed more time.

I was going to use my crock pot like Cami did, but my crock pot wasn't big enough. My Vons didn't have a good selection of chuck roast, and the only thing I could get was a 3.5 lb boneless roast. So that plus all the veggies was too much for my slow cooker. So I put it in a large stainless steel pot and roasted it in the oven.

I would've liked to try the foil pouch method that Alton Brown uses, but I didn't have heavy duty foil and I had my hands pretty full as it was that day. I suppose my roast may have cooked more effectively with the foil pouch, but I don't know that I'll ever get around to trying it out.

The things we really liked about this roast recipe (and that set it apart from other roasts) were the pearl onions and the fresh thyme. I think the fresh thyme is what makes this recipe.

Danielle's Baked Sugar Cookies

I would've make these cookies when the recipe came up originally but I had just made sugar cookies with a different recipe. I haven't made sugar cookies again until yesterday. Actually, Max made them, but I can review them.

I thought the cookies tassted pretty good, but I thought they were a little too soft. They tended to fall apart. Max and I also agreed that they needed more sugar. I know a lot of people don't like their cut-out cookies to be too sweet because you're just going to put frosting on them, but we say bring on the sweetness. I mean, they are sugar cookies. I think a sugar cookie should be sweet enough to eat on its own without the frosting.

The dough was a little difficult to work with the first time we tried. We chilled ours for somewhere between three and four hours, and it got too soft by the time we had the dough rolled out and cut. We had a hard time getting them on the cookie sheet. However, Max made another batch today after the dough had chilled overnight and he said they were a lot easier to work with.

As you can see in the picture, we didn't made the lemon glaze frosting. We like traditional, butter and powdered sugar frosting. To us, sugar cookies just aren't real sugar cookies without a big thick layer of thick sugary frosting.

This was a decent sugar cookie recipe, but I think I'll stick with my other recipe that is my current favorite.

Danielle's Poached Eggs

Inspired by Alton Brown's suggestion of eating poached eggs on BBQ pulled pork, we decided to eat ours on shredded BBQ chicken. It was delicious!

I was excited to see this episode in the rotation because I've been wanting to try poached eggs ever since I saw the Good Eats episode about eggs benedict. I wanted to try eggs benedict this week, but I haven't been to the store yet to get the ingredients. That will show up on my menu very soon though. Anyway, I thought poached eggs were supposed to be difficult to make, but these were very easy. Ours didn't all turn out very pretty, but they tasted good.

We made several eggs at a time, so we followed the wide saute pan method. I want to try the sauce pan/whirlpool method sometime. I'm interested to see how the eggs come out differently. Also, I'm not going to cook mine as long next time. I like my yolks a little more runny -- ours came out more like soft boiled eggs.

The Egg Files III: Let Them Eat Foam

This week's episode only has one recipe -- angel food cake. We had a bunch of extra egg whites left over from something else we made, so this was the perfect choice. It's pg. 224 in the book, and you can find the recipe online here.

This recipe gets excellent reviews on the Food Network. A bunch of people said it was fool proof, and I'm inclined to agree. I did a few things differently than the recipe called for and mine turned out great.

Here are the things I did differently --

• I didn't have cake flour, so I used all purpose flour and substituted 2 Tbsp of it with corn starch (got the idea from one of the comments on the recipe).
• My eggs were straight from the fridge. Someone told me recently that she's never been able to tell the difference between whipping cold eggs vs. room temperature eggs. But to be safe, I put my egg whites in my mixing bowl and put it over a bowl of hot water to warm them a bit.
• I used my stand mixer instead of a hand mixer, and it worked out fine.

I used vanilla extract in my cake. I ended up baking mine for a few minutes extra to make sure it was done in the middle. Also, I like it a little extra browned on top (that's the best part!). This cake was delicious. I love the texture and the flavor. And it was easy to make. I can't say it was super quick, but I wasn't very organized when I was making it. It wasn't too bad though. It didn't take me as long as most Baked recipes!

Anyway, if you like angel food cake, this is a good one. Yum!

Danielle's Big Squeeze Grilled Cheese

No picture. I forgot.

I decided to give the clarified butter a shot so that someone could give an opinion on it. I figured that since I didn't have to stand there and watch it the whole time, I didn't mind how long it took to make. I'm not sure if I did it right because mine didn't come out totally clear (it was pretty muddy looking). I would've had to strain it through cheese cloth or something to get all the burnt butter particles out of it.

But that aside, it worked. Our bread browned nicely and didn't burn. I don't know that I can say it was worth it. I guess if I made grilled cheese often, I would keep some clarified butter in the fridge (but I don't).

One problem we had is that we only have one cast iron pan. For the other pan, we used a heavy bottom stainless steel pan. The pans didn't heat the same, so the top pan was hotter than the bottom pan and we had to turn the heat back on to get our cheese to melt all the way.

We used smoked gruyere and medium yellow cheddar on challah bread. I really liked the sweetness of the challah bread with the cheese. And I loved the addition of the mustard. It was a good sandwich. But like Maren said, I didn't feel so good a little while after eating it. I think that kind of cheese intake will be a pretty rare occurrence for us in the future.

Danielle's Flandango

I LOVE flan. I was excited when Cami picked this episode. I've made and had flan a number of times before and this was as good as any I've had. The texture was perfect. And besides the caramel, it was super easy to make. The only deviation I made from the recipe was that instead of half & half, I used half whole milk and half heavy cream. Half & half is just milk and cream anyway right? I figured I didn't need to buy cream AND half & half.

I did all of mine with caramel. I'm interested in how it would turn out with chocolate in the bottom, but I didn't want to make chocolate sauce in addition to caramel. For the caramel, I used the brown sugar caramel sauce recipe in the Baked book. I messed up the consistency (I still haven't perfected my caramel making methods), but it worked out just fine for the flan. And it tasted great. This recipe is a keeper.

Danielle's Onion Dip

Cami, I love your onion dip picture! I wasn't feeling like taking a picture of my dip, but you inspired me to.

When I saw that the other recipe for this episode was homemade onion dip, I had to make it. I was hoping it would be just like some amazing homemade sour cream and caramelized onion dip we had at a restaurant a couple of years ago. This dip came pretty close.

I used low fat sour cream because that's what I had on hand. I'm sure the full fat stuff would taste even better, and the texture would've been better, but the low fat kind worked out pretty well.

I accidentally over cooked my onions (trying to do too many things at once -- gotta make the most of nap times!), but after picking out the burnt ones I actually thought it worked out fine. Besides the fact that I lost a small amount of onion because of the burning mishap, I agree with Cami that the dip could use more onion. I'll definitely use more next time. It seems like a lot when you're cutting it up, but they cook down a lot.

Like Cami said, this dip is super easy and fast to make. And I'm likely to always have the ingredients on hand, except for potato chips... I suppose having it with vegetables would be a much healthier option, but it's just oh so tasty on kettle chips! Anyway, this is a winner of a recipe, and I will happily make it again.

Danielle's Moo-less Chocolate Pie

I really enjoyed this pie. In fact, I enjoyed it a little too much the first night and my tummy wasn't so happy the rest of the night...

When I tasted the pie filling before refrigerating it, I was skeptical. There was something off-putting about it. But after it set, something magical happened. It turned into a deep rich smooth delicious chocolate pie. Max and I both loved it.

I used Oreos for my crust instead of chocolate wafers. I've used chocolate wafers for Baked recipes before, but I hate spending $5 on a little package of those wafer cookies. Seriously, why do they cost so much?? They are just dry little plain cookies! I only wanted to make a half batch, and at least with Oreos we'd enjoy eating what I didn't use for the pie. I thought the Oreos worked fine.

I also used cream instead of the liqueur. If I were a coffee drinker, I might've used straight coffee instead of the cream. I think coffee would've given the pie an added flavor dimension that would've made the pie even better. Alternatively, I think mint extract would work great with this pie. I'm going to try that next time.

This recipe was quite a success. It was so easy to make, and it tasted great. I would definitely make this again. In fact, I still have half of a package of tofu in the fridge so I might be making this again very soon!

Catch Up -- Danielle's Cheesy Squash Pasta

I'm trying to stock up on meals I can save in the freezer for after the baby comes. I thought this one would work nicely. I stretched the recipe so that I'd have enough to eat tonight and eat for lunch tomorrow, plus enough for a dinner later. It worked out perfectly.

So here's what I did --

I added a lot more than 1 c. of squash puree (possibly more than doubled it), and I used a lot more than the 1/2 c. of milk called for -- that's mainly how I stretched the sauce. I would've actually added more milk because I thought the sauce was too thick, but I didn't want to dilute the flavors any more.

I also added onion and spinach, and I cooked the onions and red pepper before adding them to the sauce. Then I used pepper jack cheese instead of cheddar. I liked the flavor and spicy kick the pepper jack added. Oh, and as you can see from the picture, I used rotini (whole wheat) instead of bow tie pasta because I couldn't find whole wheat bow tie pasta.

I agree with Elise that the butternut squash flavor in this dish is very good. It went really well with the other flavors. I also really liked the flavor of the cream cheese in it, especially combined with the pepper jack.

I don't make pasta very frequently, but I can see myself making this again.

Danielle's Hummus

No picture, but you can look at Cami's and Maren's because mine pretty much looked the same. :)

This hummus recipe is very similar to a roasted red pepper hummus recipe that I make often, so I knew I would like it before I made it. I decided to follow the recipe and taste it before I made any changes to it (I feel a little bad that I rarely just follow recipes as written before evaluating them).

However, I did make two changes up front -- I cut the garlic to one clove because I've had bad experiences with raw garlic in hummus (the day after it turns into a garlic bomb), and I used cilantro instead of parsley because that's what I had. But other than that, I followed the recipe, I promise!

I used a fresh red pepper and roasted it myself. I just noticed that the original recipe says to use 2 - 3 fresh peppers if you're roasting them yourself, so I guess I didn't follow that part since I only had one pepper. Oops. Ok, so I didn't totally follow the recipe, but I tried!

Anyway, it tasted pretty good, and I could've happily eaten it that way. But I thought it could use more cumin, and we also added some chipotle puree because we just love chipotle. I liked it better that way, but that's just my preference.

Since this recipe is so similar to the one I use regularly, I'll probably stick with the one I've been using. But this recipe is certainly a winner. Hummus is such a great snack to keep around. It's easy to make, healthy, and filling. Love it!