Thursday, September 29, 2011

Cinnamon Tomb Rolls

My husband’s family makes these rolls called “Tomb Rolls.” They make them around Easter and they are symbolic for the empty tomb after Christ’s resurrection because after baking, the rolls become empty inside.  Because I got a good deal on Crescent Roll dough at the store the other day, see Cheesy Chicken and Bacon Pillows, I decided to make some tomb rolls! I kicked it up a notch, though, by adding some cinnamon-sugar into the sticky sweet madness.

Cinnamon Tomb Rolls
These rolls only require 4 ingredients!
1 tube Crescent Roll Dough
8 Big Marshmallows
½ Stick of Butter, melted
Cinnamon-Sugar
Ok, 5 ingredients if you count cinnamon and sugar separately.

 
Preheat your oven to 375°. Unwrap your dough and separate the triangles onto your parchment/foil lined cookie sheet. Trust me on this one, you want something under these rolls. Don’t just spray with Pam and call it a day. Really.
 
Set up your assembly station, Marshmallows, melted butter, and cinnamon sugar.
 
First, dip a marshmallow into the butter.
 
Second, dip it into the cinnamon sugar.
 
Third, place the marshmallow on a Crescent dough triangle and wrap it up all nice and cozy-like.
 
After you’ve wrapped up all the marshmallows, stick them in the oven for 12 minutes. While you’re waiting, eat a marshmallow or two.
 
Once you pull them out of the oven, you might notice that a few of them have exploded. (I told you that you’d want something under those rolls!)
 
Serve while they are still warm and oozing.



I wasn’t a huge fan of tomb rolls to begin with, they were always a little too sweet for me, but the cinnamon really did it for me in these rolls. My daughter ate one, my husband ate two, and I shamelessly ate five. Oh yeah!

Wednesday, September 28, 2011

Cheesy Chicken and Bacon Pillows

There are SO many versions of "chicken pillows" floating around out there that it was refreshing to find something a little different. My husband's sister makes chicken pillows, which my husband loves, but I thought the addition of not only cheddar cheese, but also BACON, really adds extra oomph to these guys. 


Cheesy Chicken and Bacon Pillows
Adapted from Eat Cake for Dinner
Printable Recipe

Preheat the oven to 375°
Gather your ingredients:
1 tube Crescent Roll Dough (Someday i'll try this with homemade crescent dough)
1 Chicken Breast, cooked and shredded*
4-6 Slices Bacon, cooked and crumbled (If you're awesome like me, you'll cook up the chicken in the leftover bacon grease. Mm!)
2 oz. Softened Cream Cheese
1 1/2 tsp. Italian Seasoning
1 1/2 Tbp. Fresh Lemon Juice
1/4 tsp. minced Garlic
1/2 tsp. Lemon Pepper Seasoning (I might leave this out next time)
1/2 C Shredded Cheddar Cheese
Salt and Pepper

*Shredded Chicken
 Dump cream cheese, lemon juice, and all the other seasonings into a small-medium size bowl and combine.
 Then, dump in the chicken, bacon and cheese.
 Stir it all up. Now, hold the bowl up to your face and take a moment to smell it. Smells gooood, doesn't it?
 Unroll your crescent dough onto a foil lined cookie sheet. Because there is just two and a half of us eating these, I make them big and use two Crescent triangles to make a rectangle. Pinch the seams together. If you want to make more, you can just use the triangles individually to make 8.
 Scoop a HEAPING 1/4 cup full of the mixture onto the center of each square. Fold up all the edges to make this cute little guy.
 Flip them over and pinch closed any open seams. Pop them in the oven for 10-12 minutes.
 In the meantime we're going to put together a nice fatty gravy. The original recipe calls for 1 can Cream of Chicken Soup, Sour Cream and Milk, but I didn't have ay sour cream so I went with the soup and a can of Evaporated Milk.
 Add Cream of Chicken and Evaporated milk to a cute little pink saucepan and mix it together with a cute pink whisk (or whatever is in YOUR kitchen). Heat it all up on low-medium heat.
 Once you pull the pillows out of the oven, they will be golden and beautiful and soft with a little bit of crispiness. Yum!
 Cover them with gravy and eat to your heart's content!


Extra Notes: Next time, I will add more bacon. The flavor was good, but just didn't come through quite enough for me. To make this a little healthier, you can use fat-free cream cheese, don't cook the chicken in bacon grease, use turkey bacon, or whip up some healthier gravy somehow. If you are making smaller pillows with just one triangle of dough each, the cooking time is still the same. :)

Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip Cookies

I knew I had to start with these cookies. In my second semester of college, I ate a LOT of peanut butter. As in, sitting on the couch at 2 in the morning with a spoon in one hand and a jar in the other. Actually, my 5 roommates were the same way. We were the peanut butter eaters. One day, I knew that I needed to bake something with our favorite 2 a.m. snack. After searching several recipes online for peanut butter cookies, I decided to just make my own! These quickly became a favorite among the roomies and myself. And guess what? I NEVER liked peanut butter cookies before these. Seriously.

Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip Cookies
Printable Recipe
Preheat your oven to 350° and gather your ingredients.
1 Cup Sugar
1 Cup Crunchy Peanut Butter (I prefer Skippy, but Planters is what I had on hand)
1 Egg
1 Cup Semi-Sweet Chocolate Chips

Dump everything into a medium mixing bowl. So easy, right?!

Mix until well combined. I used a wooden spoon here, but anything works. Even the pink plastic forks I had originally used to make these cookies.
Roll into balls. I like a good sized cookie, but any size you want is fine. Just adjust cooking time to be shorter or longer for your size cookie. (Blurry picture!)

Evenly space them on a cookie sheet lined with: parchment paper, wax paper, foil, Pam, nothing, anything, whatever.

Using a fork, flatten the cookies by making a criss-cross pattern.

Ready to go! Bake them in the oven for 10-12 minutes.

Let them cool on the cookie sheet for 3 or 4 minutes and then transfer them to wire cooling racks.

These are best when they are warm out of the oven, but just a warning- These are VERY crumbly! Be sure to have a napkin or plate ready!


They will keep for a few days in a Tupperware container on the counter. After a few hours, they can become a little dry, but it doesn’t really detract from their yumminess, so no worries! Depending on the size of your cookies, this recipe yields 12-24 cookies. I usually end up with about 16 for some reason.
(Don’t forget to turn off the oven!)

Extra notes: I have tried these with reduced-fat peanut butter and with natural peanut butter, and the cookies just don’t set up right. Go for the full-fat processed stuff! Mm! You can also use creamy peanut butter, but it just doesn’t have the same great taste or texture. You can also omit the chocolate chips, but who would want that?! These cookies are not at all healthy (an entire cup of sugar?!?!?!), but if you want to consider that entire cup of peanut butter to be healthy, then sure, eat 3 or 4. Since I first made these, i've seen several similar recipes across the world wide web. I probably got the inspiration from somewhere, but I don't really remember, so i'll give credit where credit is due- Thank you for the inspiration, internet!

Welcome!

I know, I know. ANOTHER cooking blog out there in the blog world.
I don't care!
I LOVE to try and make new recipes, but I have a tendency to forget about them and I wanted my own space to record these yummy concoctions. Somewhere to take notes, have pictures, and just to share with my family and friends.
My photo-taking abilities are awful, I tend to burn things and I am not the healthiest cook, but please bear with me as I share this personal part of my life with you!

Eat on!
Kimi
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