Garlic-Ginger Turkey Tenderloins

We had this on Sunday, for lunch after church. Now that I'm not working Sundays, I can cook things that take longer than 7 minutes to prepare.  This recipe came from Simple & Delicious Oct/Nov 2015.  They served it with what looks like maybe kale, I'm not sure, but it's definitely green.  We had ours with brown rice and mixed veggies.  I always buy mixed veggies without lima beans, because when I was little I hated picking the lima beans out of my mixed vegetables.  Mom always let me pick them out, though, which is weird, since she  made me eat so many other things.  Maybe she doesn't like them either....

Garlic-Ginger Turkey Tenderloins
3 tbsp brown sugar, divided
2 tbsp plus 2 tsp soy sauce, divided
2 tbsp minced fresh ginger
6 cloves garlic, minced
1/2 tsp pepper
1 pkg (20 oz) turkey breast tenderloins
1 tbsp cornstarch
1 cup chicken broth

Preheat oven to 375.  In a saucepan, mix 2 tbsp brown sugar, 2 tbsp soy sauce, ginger, garlic, and pepper.

Place turkey tenderloins in 9x13 dish sprayed with cooking spray; drizzle with half of the soy sauce mixture.  Bake, uncovered, 25-30 minutes or until 165.

Meanwhile, add cornstarch and the remaining brown sugar and soy sauce to the remaining mixture in saucepan; stir until smooth.  Stir in chicken broth.  Bring to a boil; cook and stir 1-2 minutes or until thickened.  Slice turkey; serve with sauce.  4 servings

So, turkey tenderloins are expensive, it turns out.  Mine was like $9.something for two of them. You could easily do this with chicken breasts if you like the sound of the sauce.  I cut each tenderloin in half, and it still took closer to 40 minutes for them to get to 165. 

For the ginger, I don't buy gingerroot (I did that once and it sat in the fridge for like 5 months before I just threw it away...it's pretty cheap to buy that way though).  I either buy it in the fresh vegetable aisle, near the fresh herbs and spices, and they sell it in a thing like a toothpaste tube and it's all minced up.  Or, I buy it near the frozen vegetables, in a little tray that has cubes of it all minced up (you can get cilantro either of these ways, too).  I do have powdered ginger in my spice rack that I use if the recipe says ground ginger, but if it says fresh, that's how I do it.  Also, if your soy sauce is gluten free, this is too.  I am really appreciating recipes I don't have to alter and wonder about to make them GF.

So this was pretty good.  The sauce was good over the rice.  I cut it like I did in the picture because we had a (somewhat) unexpected guest for lunch, and this way I could cut all the turkey like that, and then divided it among 6 plates, and nobody even knows I only had 4 halves to start with.  Pretty sneaky, and all part of being a Sneaky Peeky Spy in the kitchen.

Luau Ribs

This is what we had for supper tonight.  It came out of the Church Potluck cookbook my mom gave me that I've been working through.  We don't have ribs too often, because they are pretty fatty.  And a tad expensive.  But once in a while.  And, now that it's fall, it's okay to have the oven on for two hours without smoking anyone out.  We had this with mashed potatoes and green beans from a can (one of my guilty pleasures).  This picture isn't great.  But listen, I'm a nurse, not a photographer.  I think it looks pretty yummy...but I don't think any cooking magazines will be calling me for my photography skills any time soon.

Luau Ribs
2 jars (4.5 oz each) peach baby food
1/3 cup ketchup
2 tbsp soy sauce
1/3 cup vinegar (didn't say what kind but I assumed white)
2 cloves garlic, minced
½ cup brown sugar
1 tsp salt (I used sea salt because I love it now)
2 tsp ginger
dash pepper
4 lbs meaty spare ribs

For sauce, combine all ingredients except ribs.

Sprinkle ribs with salt and pepper.  Place ribs in a shallow foil-lined pan.  Bake for 15 minutes at 450.  Spoon off fat.  Pour sauce over ribs.  Continue baking at 350 for 1 1/2 hours or until done.

See how easy?  And, this is GF as long as you use GF soy sauce, which is a stupid ingredient to have wheat in anyway.  We had some of the sauce spooned over the potatoes and sprinkled with some extra sea salt and mmmmmmmmm.  Everyone liked this.  Nathan got to have his own sharp knife for the first time, which he enjoyed very much (perhaps more than the meat itself).  Easy and everyone liked it.  I'm sure we'll have this again.

Soft Dinner Rolls (GF)

Probably if you aren't gluten free you won't make these.  Actually even if you are, you might not bother.  I've been GF for 13 months.  Some people think it's a fad.  For me, it's definitely not.  But I am glad that it's a fad because you can get so much gluten free stuff now!  About half of it isn't worth trying, but the other half has made eating GF so much easier.  I've tried several GF biscuit and dinner roll recipes.  The biscuits come out good, but you have to roll dough, which is one of my least favorite things to do.  So I wanted to try these because you don't have to roll anything out.  This recipe came from a magazine/cookbook my sister gave me called Simply Gluten Free Fall Baking, put out by some people named Topix Media Specials.  When you look at this ingredient list, you might be like whaaaaa??? I'm not buying 42 things to make one batch of dinner rolls.  And I used to think that too.  But over the last several months I've bought a little here and a little there, so I only had to buy one thing to make these, which was the sweet rice flour.  Here's the recipe:

Soft Dinner Rolls
2 tbsp active dry yeast
2 tsp sugar
2 cups warm milk (about 110*)
1 ½ cups superfine white rice flour
½ cup superfine sweet rice flour
¾ cup potato starch
½ cup tapioca starch
3 tsp xanthan gum
1 ½ tsp kosher or fine sea salt

1 tbsp baking powder
3 eggs, divided
¼ cup melted butter
¼ cup honey
1 tsp apple cider vinegar

Combine the yeast, sugar, and warm milk and whisk to dissolve the sugar.  Let sit for 6-8 minutes, or until the mixture is foamy and has increased in volume.

In the bowl of electric mixer fitted with whisk attachment, combine the flours, starches, xanthan gum, salt, and baking powder.  Mix for 30 seconds on low to combine and break up any lumps in the potato starch.

Add the yeast mixture, 2 eggs, melted butter, honey and vinegar.  Mix on medium low til combined.  Scrape down sides of bowl, turn the mixer on high and mix for 3 minutes.  You should have a very thick smooth batter.

Brush 2 muffin tins with melted butter or spray with cooking spray.  Preheat oven to 375.

Spoon batter into prepared muffin pans, filling about 3/4 full.  Cover with clean kitchen towels and let rise in a warm place for 35 minutes or until dough has almost doubled in size.

Beat remaining egg with 1 tsp water very well with a fork.  Gently brush the tops of each roll with the beaten egg.

Bake for 17-18 minutes or until golden brown.  Let cool in pans 15 minutes.

The finished product looked more muffin-ish than I wish it did.  The kids kept calling them muffins, and I was like "dinner rolls."  They tasted good, and the texture was light.  Maybe a bit too egg-y, but overall very good.  We had these with Farmhouse Ham Chowder, and the rolls tasted very good dipped in the chowder and eaten that way.  I put butter on mine but Steve didn't and said they were still good.

The main thing with GF baking that makes it a pain in the butt is that instead of 2 cups (or whatever) of one type of flour, you need 4 or 5 different things to get to that same point.  It takes a few extra minutes, and it can definitely be overwhelming when you are first starting out.  I feel like I have a pretty good handle on it now, and for when times that I don't have time to be a chemist and mix things properly, I have GF Bisquick on hand, which comes together very quickly.  But it has taken many months to get to this point.  Worth it though for the health benefits for me :)  

Candy Corn Bundt Cake

Most of my friends know that I love candy corn.  I'm wearing candy corn earrings right now.  I love it.  I love the smell of it and the taste of it.  I don't like the variations, like Easter candy corn in pastel colors, or Christmas candy corn in red & green, but regular classic white orange yellow candy corn....lip smacking good.  A friend who knows this about me sent me this recipe.  It's actually a yellow cake made to look like candy corn, and is only garnished with the real stuff.  I thought it would be fun to try for home fellowship last Friday.  My faithful assistant Barbie was here to make it fun.  Things did not exactly turn out as we had hoped, though....

Here is a link to the original picture, and as always with my blog, I don't make up any of my own recipes, I find things (or they are sent to me, as in this case), I make things, I (try really hard to remember to) take pictures of how things ACTUALLY turned out, and then I tell you.  http://blommi.com/wp-content/uploads/Candy-Corn-Bundt-Cake.jpg  The actual recipe is from a blog called MomFoodie.com .  I think this mom must have more time and perhaps professional experience than I have.

Candy Corn Bundt Cake

• ½ Cup unsalted butter, room temp
• 2 egg whites
• 2 eggs
• 2 Cups all-purpose flour
• 1 tsp baking powder
• ½ tsp salt
• ¼ tsp baking soda
• ¾ Cup buttermilk
• 1½ Cup sugar
• 1 tsp vanilla
• Orange, and yellow gel food coloring

Frosting:

• 1 Cup soft unsalted butter
• 4 + Cups confectionery sugar
• 4 Tbsp heavy whipping cream
• Orange and yellow gel food coloring

Bundt Cake

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Prep bundt cake pan.
2. Sift flour, baking powder, salt, and baking soda together in a bowl.
3. Beat butter on high for 30 seconds.
4. Add sugar and vanilla extract to the butter until well combined.
5. Add egg whites, one at a time, mixing after each.
6. Add eggs, one at a time, mixing after each.
7. Add ⅓ C flour mixture to the wet mixture followed by adding ⅓ C of the buttermilk; add ⅓ C flour mixture again then add ⅓ C buttermilk mix on low speed, add ⅓ C of flour and add the rest of ⅓ C of buttermilk mix in low speed until thoroughly blended.
8. Divide the batter into three bowls.... add orange gel food coloring to one.... add yellow gel food coloring to the second and Leave the batter white in the third bowl.
9. Spray the bundt pan with Pam spray.
10. Begin by spooning in the white batter then the orange next then last the yellow batter on top.
11. Bake the cake at 350 degrees for 30-35 minutes or until an inserted toothpick comes out clean.
12. Allow the cake to cool in the pan for about 20 minutes then remove the cake from the Bundt pan and place on a wire rack until completely cooled.

Frosting:

1. -Cream the butter and powder sugar until it looks light and creamy.
2. -If it doesn't cream add several drops of the heavy whipping cream until it creams. Once the frosting has the right consistency then divide it into 3 bowls.
3. -In two of the three bowls add several drops of gel food coloring. 1 st bowl add orange, 2nd bowl add yellow, 3rd bowl stays white. After each color addition stir well to mix the colors.
4. -When the colors are right, starting with the orange frosting using a spoon drizzle the frosting on the cake. Allow the orange frosting to dry. Next again using a spoon drizzle the yellow frosting on the cake. Allow it to dry. Lastly, drizzle the white frosting on the cake and allow it to dry completely.

That is the whole recipe, copied right from this lady's blog.  Here are my observations and what I did differently:  #1 I don't use unsalted butter.  Because then I would have to buy unsalted butter, and I don't want to buy two kinds of butter.  Maybe I'm crazy but that seems like a lot to keep up with.  It's just butter.  Plus my mom told me that it doesn't make that big of a difference.  Mother knows best.  #2 I know that gel food coloring is supposed to make more vibrant colors than drop food coloring.  I bought gel food coloring but no matter how much I added, the colors got no more vibrant than what you see pictured (my mom also told me that if you add too much food coloring, the taste of whatever you're coloring can turn a bit bitter.  Barbie said with this type of food coloring you don't have to be AS careful about that...so we kept adding and adding...to no avail).  Consequently, this looked more like an Easter cake than a fall cake.

#3 The texture of this frosting was definitely not drizzling consistency.  It would not fall off a spoon, except in clumps.  We did exactly what it said, and it tasted AMAZING, but there was no drizzling...we had to spoon the 3 colors of frosting into ziploc bags and squeeze them over the cake...which is why our cake looks like this:

because we were like...well, it doesn't look like the picture.  Go big or go home. 

Okay so how was it received, and how did it taste?  The kids at home fellowship were super excited to see this cake.  They ooh'ed and aah'ed.  So that was very satisfying.  All but one kid ate their whole piece (I always scope out their plates because I am like a cooking spy).  One of the dads said he liked how the frosting wasn't too sweet (that was nice since we dumped so much on there).  I couldn't taste the cake (because of gluten) but I did taste the frosting and it was so perfect.  And people all said the cake was good. 

In summary.  I'd make this cake recipe again, and the frosting too.  But I totally wouldn't bother with the food coloring.  Unless it's Easter, I guess.....

    

Succulent Seasoned Chicken

A few years ago my mom got me a cookbook called The Church Potluck Supper Cookbook.  Since I was raised in church, and in Baptist churches, I am extremely familiar with the concept of a church potluck.  I must have been to 972 of them over the years.  I have very fond memories of standing in lines and going past all these dishes on the table, and taking some of this and some of that and NONE of that and does that have mayonaisse and oh yeah I had that last time and it was good and OH MAN the meatballs are gone??  To this day if I go to any church function and there is no food, I feel like something is missing, and I'm all "should we have snacks next time?"  It's become a bit more challenging recently since I had to give up gluten, but I can still go through the lines with my kids and get that lovin' feeling.  I just started going through this cookbook and I have a bunch of recipes marked to try.  Here we go....

Succulent Seasoned Chicken
3 tbsp butter
4 chicken breast halves (it doesn't say boneless but that's what I had so that's what I used)
1/2 tsp dried sage
1/2 tsp dried thyme
1/2 tsp pepper
1/2 tsp dried ginger
1/2 lemon, cut in wedges
1/2 cup marsala (to a church potluck??  These people certainly weren't Baptist...I used chicken broth)

Butter chicken breasts and sprinkle with seasonings.  Squeeze lemon juice on top of seasoned chicken.  Put wine (or BROTH) in bottom of baking pan and top with chicken.  Bake at 350 for 45 minutes.

I can't believe I forgot to take any pictures!  I meant to before it went into the oven, and then I meant to again once it was on the plates :( sorry.  Anyway what I ended up doing is combining the softened butter with the sage, thyme, pepper, and ginger, and then smearing that butter over the chicken breasts before cooking.  Since I cooked it in broth, once the chicken was on the plates, I sliced them all fancy and then drizzled some of the pan juices over the top to keep it moist...we had it with mixed veggies and GF biscuits (that I made with GF Bisquick...I have made them from scratch but it's like 10 times more work so in a hurry I use the GF Bisquick).  A good dinner overall.

Applesauce-Glazed Pork Chops

Woah.  Two in one day, after nothing for 13 months.  I am on a roll.  This is what we just had for supper tonight.  It's from the Oct/Nov 2015 Simple & Delicious and a simple fall recipe.  In the picture in the magazine, they served it with brussel sprouts, but who does that without facing a rebellion??  I did get close to the line by serving this with "Green Potatoes," which are mashed potatoes with broccoli florets mashed in (the recipe is on the blog too).  We also had corn, which everybody likes, to balance out the potatoes.

Applesauce-Glazed Pork Chops
4 bone-in pork loin chops (1/2" thick and 7 oz each)(is anybody really in the meat department with a ruler and a scale?  I just bought a package with 4 good-sized chops in it)
1 cup unsweetened applesauce
¼ cup brown sugar
1 tbsp barbecue sauce
1 tbsp worcestershire sauce
1 clove garlic, minced
½ tsp salt
½ tsp pepper

Preheat oven to 350.  Place pork chops in 13x9 baking dish coated w/ cooking spray.  Mix remaining ingredients and spoon over chops.

Bake, uncovered, 20-25 minutes or until thermometer reads 145*.  Let stand 5 minutes before serving.

See how easy?  And everybody liked it.  I thought it was a teeny bit spicy, which I was not expecting, maybe because of the pepper.  It was a bit challenging to determine meat vs bone since it was all smothered in the applesauce sauce.  But we just had to scrape it away and then scoop it back on your bite.  If you made it with boneless chops the eating would be easier (although I have found boneless chops to be a bit drier...so it's a toss-up).  Overall yummy and naturally GF, which I like...as long as you double check your barbecue sauce and worcestershire sauce :)

Caramel Apple Crisp

Well.....it has been 13 months since I posted anything!  That is crazy.  But I have been busy...a brief summary of changes which have made me not want to post/not able to post would be
A: I'm gluten free now (for over a year, but it's taken me awhile to get my mojo back)
B: My son just had major surgery and I've spent the last several months cooking as a fundraiser for his medical expenses, making me not able to try anything new.

Excuses, excuses, I know ;)  I'm not sure if today's post signifies that I'm back in the saddle or not, but we'll see...This recipe came from Simple & Delicious Aug/Sept 2015.  I wanted to make it for home fellowship next week, but decided to make it today instead, because a friend sent me a recipe for a Candy Corn Bundt Cake that I'm going to make for next week.  Also the kids went apple picking with my mother-in-law last week while we were in Boston for the surgery, so we had a bunch of apples just sitting around begging to be put in something.  So here is the recipe in it's original form, and I'll let you know my modifications for gluten at the end...

Caramel Apple Crisp
3 cups old-fashioned oats
2 cups flour
1 ½ cups brown sugar
1 tsp cinnamon
1 cup cold butter, cubed
8 cups thinly sliced peeled apples
1 pkg (14 oz) caramels, divided
1 cup apple cider, divided

Preheat oven to 350.  In a large bowl mix flour, oats, brown sugar, and cinnamon; cut in butter until crumbly.  Press half the mixture into greased 9x13 baking dish. 

Layer half of each of the following: apples, caramels, and remaining oat mixture.  Repeat layers.  Drizzle 1/2 cup cider over top.

Bake, uncovered, for 30 minutes.  Drizzle with remaining cider; bake 15-20 minutes longer or until apples are tender.

To make this gluten free, I used gluten free oats and substituted the flour with a gluten free blend.  Pretty easy, and in a recipe like this, you can't really tell.

Okay so I had visions of the caramels kind of melting down through the apples, but that's not what really happened.  They stayed right where I dropped them, and you can kind of see that in the picture:

Because of that, I found myself avoiding the clumps of caramel.  The kids, however, lapped it up.  I think if I made this again, I would use a bottled caramel to drizzle over the apples, instead of chunks like this. Also not to be too much "first world problems" but it did take some time to unwrap all those caramels!  That could be something the kids could help with to cut down on time, but mine were all busy mining for gold or whatever it is they do on Minecraft.

Overall, a good recipe for a fall day :) let me know what you think if you try it.