Bren's Birthday Dinner

Dinner for Saturday night/ Brenna's birthday dinner type thing.
Roasted Veggies
Bacon Explosion
Peanut Butter Icebox Pie (sky high variety)
Colcannon

(Original recipes are located at the links)

I forgot photos again.  Like normal, just use your imagination.  Obviously, this was not a "healthy" night.  I got everyone to eat their veggies, there was meat for those who wanted it and more than enough veggies for those who didn't.  Final count: 1 lb of butter, 2 pints heavy cream, 5 lbs of potatoes (not all of them got turned into Colcannon, only about half).  I'm not even guessing about calorie count as I am very certain I DO NOT wish to know.


Roasted veggies are kinda a obvious one: parsnips, carrots, asparagus, red pepper, cherry tomatoes, butternut squash.  Maybe some other things too, I feel like I'm forgetting something.
Preheat oven to 350-375.
Peel, chop, etc everything into bite sized pieces.
Arrange on sheet pans in single layer, douse with olive oil, sprinkle with salt and roast until done, about 30 minutes.  May want to separate out smaller/faster cooking things (asparagus and tomatoes) and roast them on separate pans as they'll take less time.

They're roasted veggies, of course they're tasty!

Bacon Explosion.
Not going to lie.  This was my brother's contribution, I merely provided kitchen space and clean hands occasionally.
1 lbs bacon, thick sliced, uncooked.
1/2 lb bacon, cooked until crispy and chopped into pieces
1 lb sausage of some variety (we used italian)
bbq seasoning
bbq sauce (KC Masterpiece works well)

Pre-Heat oven to 300.
Take 1 lb of bacon and weave it together into a mat, like you would do for a lattice topped pie.  Except closer together.  Season with BBQ seasoning.
Spread sausage on top of mat.  Douse with seasoning and bbq sauce.  Along 1 end (narrow end), spread the cooked bacon.  Roll the sausage and cooked bacon into a roll and then roll that into the bacon mat.  So you have a jelly roll type thing with layers of cooked bacon, sausage, and bacon mat.
Coat liberally with BBQ sauce.  Place in tin foil lined roasting pan (or a disposable) and cook until done, about 45 minutes per inch of thickness, or until internal temperature reaches 160 degrees.
Allow to rest before slicing.

Make this for large groups with healthy cholesterol counts.  It's tasty, but that's a lot of bacon.  The seasoning on these made it really spicy, and the italian sausage just multiplied that problem, so watch out for the level of spice.

Colcannon.
2-2.5 lbs russet potatoes
6 tbsp unsalted butter (plus more for serving)
3 cups loosely chopped Kale
1 cup milk or cream.

Peel, chop, boil potatoes until fork tender.  Set aside.
Melt butter into a pan and add Kale.  Cook 3-4 minutes until wilted down.  Add into potatoes, along with milk/cream  Mash together.
Per the recipe, serve with a knob of butter melted into the center.

Fail.  Apparently, you need to cut the stalks from kale?  Didn't know that.  It never really cooked down a whole lot, and just... failed.  I might try again, with the info I've gained from this, but... yeah.  Fail.

Peanut Butter IceBox Pie
Adapted to be Gluten Free

crust
1 box/3 cups Gluten Free 'Nilla Wafers or Not-Graham Crackers, pulverized into bits.
2 sticks butter, melted
Up to 2 cups buckwheat flour

Filling
Caramel Sauce (made according to this recipe.  I'm sure you could use store bought, but I forgot it)
2 cups heavy cream
3 blocks cream cheese
1.5 cups creamy peanut butter
1/2 cup powdered sugar
1 tbsp + 1 tsp vanilla extract (or 3 capfuls, which ever)

Topping
2 Cups Peanut Butter Cups, chopped into pieces

For Crust
Preheat oven to 350 degrees.  Combine crumbs and butter in large bowl, adding buckwheat until stiff enough to hold to side of pie pan.  Form crust in pie pan and bake until stiff and not jiggly (All told, I think it took 10-15 minutes).  Cool to room temperature

Caramel sauce.  Made according to recipe above.  I hate sugar work.

For Filling:
Beat heavy cream using whisk or mixer until stiff peaks form.  Cover, place in fridge

In separate bowl, beat cream cheese on medium high until smooth and creamy.  Add Peanut Butter, sugar and vanilla, beat until incorporated.
Fold in whipped cream, gently, until fully combined.

Assembly
Drizzle about 3 tablespoons of Caramel sauce in bottom of cooled pie crust.  Carefully fill crust with peanut butter filling, spreading out to the edges and smoothing out.  Sprinkle peanut butter cup pieces artfully on top. Cover, refrigerate at least 5 hours before serving.

Eventually, I will live in an area where obtaining GF not-graham cracker crusts will be fairly easily done and I will just buy them.  They will be prettier and folks won't look at me like I'm stupid when I'm staring blankly at the gf cookies.  This is really really tasty and really really rich.  Even people who normally go for double slices of pie went for half slices on this one.

vaguely tex-mex chicken soup.

Theoretically, this was supposed to be Taco Soup.  But as I was prepping it this morning I realized that if I wanted J to eat it... that wasn't going to happen.  I threw in other foods instead.

This is really simple.  I managed to get it together and going before work this morning and still have time to check my email (not eat breakfast though... probably should have reversed those).  It took... 15 minutes?  Ish?  I should have, and meant to, get everything ready last night so all I had to do was put the crock in the base and flip it on, but other things happened.  Like knitting.

Right.  Vaguely Tex-Mex Chicken Soup

Ingredients
4 chicken thighs, skin off, bone in.  This is where most of the fat comes from, so you can use breast etc to make it lower fat
1 large can diced tomatoes
1 small can diced green chilies
"enough" baby carrots.  I think I used about 1/2 lb? 
1 1/2 sweet yellow onions, diced.
1 quart box of low sodium chicken stock
1 tsp curry powder
2 tsp chili powder
pinch of cayenne pepper
salt, pepper

Method:
Chuck every thing into a crockpot.  Set on low, let do it's thing for 6-8 hours, stirring occasionally.  When chicken is falling off the bones, remove bones, shred slightly, and stir back in.  Serve.

Baking! Gluten Free Chocolate Gooey Cookies!

I cheat, a lot, when I'm baking gluten free.  Every time I try to not cheat and just sub in gf flour mix (which should just sub in 1:1 with normal flour even!), I end up pie crust as hard as rocks, inedible cobbler or other, similar, atrocities.  So I cheat.

This time around, cheating took the form of GF Chocolate cake mix.  And, I suppose, doesn't even really qualify as cheating as the original recipe asks for box cake mix.  I made this pretty much according to directions, but with subsitutions.

Gluten Free Chocolate Gooey Butter Cookies.

Having failed at actually taking pictures of the cookies in question, have Paula Deen's

Ingredients

• 1 8oz block of 1/3 fat cream cheese, room temperature.  (This might also be called Neufchâtel cheese, but should still be located with the cream cheese)
• 1 stick butter, room temperature.  I'm sure you can use stick margarine to make these lower fat still, but I've not tested it
• 1 (large) egg
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1 18oz box GF Chocolate Cake Mix.  I used Betty Crocker's GF devil's food cake mix, but any should work fine.
• powdered sugar for rolling

In a mixing bowl, combine the butter and cream cheese thoroughly.  Scrape down the sides of the bowl and mix in the egg and vanilla.  I stop midway and scrape down the bowl again.  Everything needs to be well incorporated.  Gradually mix in the cake mix, in batches, fully mixing in the previous batch before adding more. 

Cover mixing bowl and chill for at least 1 hour, 2-3 hours would be best.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.  Roll the dough into walnut sized balls and cover in powdered sugar.  Place 2 inches apart on an ungreased cookie sheet.  Bake for 10-12 minutes.  Do not over bake.  Cookies should still be gooey when removed from oven.  Allow to cool for 1-2 minutes on sheet before evacuating to cooling rack.  Makes about 20 cookies. 

I have no idea how long these will keep for because, well, I'm lucky if they're allowed to cool fully before they're all gone.