Wednesday, August 26, 2009

Cheese Burst Biscuits




Hubby and I decided to grill out on Sunday night to enjoy the gorgeous weather that I think the entire south was blessed with this past weekend. Jason was in charge of grilling our red fish which was absolutely delicious! He marinated it in Dale's marinade and sprinkled some blackened spices on top. Whew wee! It was good. Anyway, I digress. So I was in charge of the sides. Well, of course I jumped at the chance to try out a Momou recipe. So I decided on a recipe for Cheese Burst Biscuits to accompany the Butterscotch Pepper Glazed Carrots from a Paula Deen cookbook. Well my honey LOVES him some biscuits which is why I choose this recipe. And you must know that I think this recipe is one of the oldest looking out of the entire collection. The newspaper is very very yellowed with little tears in it. I wonder how old it is... The recipe is below and then I will fill you in on the rest after:

Cheese Burst Biscuits
Ingredients:
10 oz. can flaky layers biscuits
10 (1/2 inch cubes/slices)American or Cheddar Cheese
Milk
Sesame, caraway or poppy seed

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Separate biscuit dough into 10 biscuits. Insert a cheese cube in each biscuit between layers; seal edges well. Cut a "X" on the top of each biscuit.Brush with milk. Sprinkle with sesame seed. Bake on cookie sheet 10 to 12 minutes until golden brown. Serve warm. Refrigerate leftovers.

Now for some reason I could not find the bags of cheese cubes for sale at my grocery story so I just bought a block of mild cheddar cheese (found right under the shredded cheeses in the grocery store) and made little slices from that. It worked out perfect. These little biscuits were quite the tasty treat! I think kids to adults will love them. I know Jason went wild over them! They are yummy served right out of the oven because the cheese will be hot and bubbly! I used sesame seeds which made a perfect topping. This recipe is WAY too easy to skip out on trying! Serve them morning, noon and night.

P.S. Tonight I am making a chicken tettrezini for my girlfriends. Does anyone know what makes a tettrezini a "tettrezini"? Just wondering! But with that tettrezini I am making another Momou recipe....Onion Shortcake. Stay tuned!


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Monday, August 24, 2009

Waldorf Astoria Cake


So it's time for my first official recipe blog! Jason and I had long overdue dinner plans with our good friends last Saturday night and we were asked to bring a dessert. Well...desserts are my absolute favorite part of cooking AND the largest section of Momou's clipped recipes so I couldn't have been happier. So I turned on a good movie fully expecting to pour over Momou's dessert recipes for a good hour or so until I found THE perfect dessert but it turned out that I found the perfect recipe only five minutes in! The name alone sounded great so I called off the search! I decided on a recipe for a Waldorf Astoria Cake. I scanned the recipe quickly and discovered that the cake would be nothing but homemade chocolatey goodness! Who could go wrong with that??? The recipe is below with my cooking experience following:

Waldorf Astoria Cake

Cake Ingredients:
1 stick butter
2 cups sugar
2 eggs
1 cup milk
2 cups self-rising flour
1 cup nuts
1/2 package chocolate chips
2 teaspoons vanilla

Cream butter and sugar. Add melted chocolate and eggs. Add sifted dry ingredients and milk alternately. Stir in vanilla and nuts. Bake about 1 hour at 350 degrees in tube pan.

Frosting Ingredients:
1 stick butter
1/2 package chocolate chips
1 1/2 cups powdered sugar
1 teaspoon lemon juice
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 egg white

Melt butter and chocolate. Add sugar and cream. Add egg white and beat until well mixed. Add lemon juice and rest of ingredients. Spread on cooled cake.

Okay, so here is how the story goes. First of all, from here on out I am going to read and re-read these old recipes. The gals from back in the day sure knew how to cook and they are the ones who refer to cooking instructions as "a little of this and a dash of that". Take a look at the ingredients for the frosting. Does it say anything about cream??? No! But it sure talks about cream in the frosting directions. So moral of the story is to read and re-read the recipe because there could be some surprise ingredients in store for you in the directions! Thankfully, I know a thing or two about cooking and I realized that I probably wouldn't need any cream because I have never used cream when making icing before. If I did need it then I would just use milk. So done, done and done! Next thing, make sure to put the top back on your BRAND new bottle of vanilla extract right after you finish using it. Otherwise you will knock the bottle right over and spill the extract in the middle of your cooking madness just as I did:( I used my new angel food cake pan for this recipe. That is as good as any tube pan! And frankly, a Bundt pan would work just as nice. My honey had bought me a fancy smancy angel food cake pan for my birthday in March in hopes that I would start making him angel food cake (he loves that stuff). Well, bless his little heart because it is now August and this experience was my first time to use my new angel food cake pan. Now before you judge me you must know that my honey does not lack for desserts around this house. I may not have made him angel food cake yet but I can promise that he has indulged in other good treats! I have just been looking for a delicious sounding angel food cake recipe to start out with which is why I have been waiting. If any of you have one then please feel free to send it over. Jason and I would both thank you! Speaking of hubby, if yours (or your significant other) decides to take a little nap while you are cooking this cake and you find yourself needing help rest assured you can manage on your own! I realized that I had cake batter all over the outside of the pan and inside the tube hole and that I should probably clean it off so it wouldn't burn it while in the oven. Well, this is kind of hard when you have to lift the filled pan over your head to wipe off messy batter on the outside of the pan. This is difficult because the filled pan is heavy and you need one of your hands to do the holding and the other to do the wiping. So...I just kind of balanced this pan on the edge of my head and I was perfectly able to see inside the tube hole and wipe it clean! Last but not least, I would suggest baking this cake for 50 minutes instead of an hour. I set the timer for one exactly hour because Momou had underlined AND rewritten "1 hour" so I figured I better listen to her. Well, maybe it is just our oven but I think the cake could have used less time in the oven. All in all, the cake was DELISH and well received by all! Just the sight of it was beautiful! Oh and the smell of the homemade chocolate frosting makes you just want to slap your mamma! This cake is perfect to serve to a crowd not only because it looks pretty but because it feeds many...I would say about 12. And do not be intimidated that this entire cake is made from scratch. It is so worth it and really not hard at all. Promise! Good luck and let me know if you have any thoughts or new ideas about this cake.
P.S. I used chopped walnuts and they were very yummy in this cake. But use whatever nuts you like or none at all!


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Thursday, August 20, 2009

So The Story Goes...

I recently saw the new movie Julie and Julia and oh wow...I was inspired. That movie was so cute, so interesting and it kept me on the edge of my seat like a thriller would have done. If you haven't see the movie I say you go right this minute! You will fall in love with both Julie and Julia as well as a love for cooking even if you don't love to cook! So again I say I was inspired. I walked out of that theatre bound and determined that not only was I going to blog about cooking but I was going to find the perfect set of recipes to blog about! So I go to thinking and racking my little brain and I finally realized that I have in my possession a certain collection of recipes that would be PERFECT to blog. Why I hadn't thought about this sooner I will never know. I could have beaten Julie to the punch and wrote a blog, book and created a major motion picture all about cooking. But I didn't think of it sooner so I will just say thank you to Julie for passing along her bright idea. Now what will make my blog different is that I personally know the person who is responsible for the recipes behind my blogging. She is my grandmother that we call Momou. Her name is Narcille Katherine Roy Mayeux and that darling lady is known for her cooking. So the story goes like this: The last time that she and I had a slumber party (about 3 years ago) I asked her if we could go through some of her favorite recipes and I could write them down in my recipe binder. So she takes out an accordion type file folder with TONS of clipped newspaper recipes and hand written recipes stuffed right in that folder. I knew then and there that it was going to be the best slumber party yet! She and I stayed up all night taking turns pulling out random recipes and reading them to each other. We would "ooh and ahh" over every recipe that we read aloud and then tuck it back in the folder while reaching for the next. Momou told me that the recipe collection had been started the year she married my grandfather in 1939. To many people that little file folder would look like nothing special...it wasn't even a real cookbook. But to her and I it contained recipes that were like little tiny dreams collected over a lifetime. Anyone that clips recipes or flags a page in a cookbook knows that you are saying to yourself that one day you will make that recipe and you will find the perfect time in life to do so. Well that night came to an sleepy end. As hugs and kisses were exchanged Momou told me very nonchalantly that I could have the recipe collection. Again, to others it would look like I had just inherited a folder that had more dust than anything but to me I had just inherited a priceless gift. In my 24 year old, newlywed eyes it felt like she was entrusting me to carry on with all of those tiny dreams in that folder. So here I am...3 years later and I am ready to take on the challenge she gave me that night. All of the recipes that she clipped with the hopes of making one day will be made. I will never forget her pulling out a recipe that night for some type of yummy sounding pie and she told me that she never had the chance to make it. Well Momou...I will make it for you. I am going to lovingly prepare, cook and taste each recipe that you had at one point clipped with the intention of making. Momou is loved by many and my hope is that this blog will serve as a way for all of us to have a copy of that dusty old file folder with the precious recipes inside. I invite you to write in about your favorite memory, recipe or story about Momou or your own grandmother. And between my husband and I, we have 4 wonderful grandmothers that share a love for cooking: Momou, Momee, Maw Maw and Deal. So while this is a tribute to cooking for Momou I want to take the time to share beloved recipes by all four of these women at some point. I don't know how often I will get to post to this blog. The blogs will consist of the actual recipe itself and then my little story about my experience with that recipe. Get ready because there are lots of recipes for me to try. Whew...there is lots to do so let's get cooking!

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