Monkey Bread

Anyone that has ever been to my parents house on a weekend morning has probably had Monkey Bread.  My mom has been making it since before I was born and it's one of my all time favorite foods.  It's not something you want to eat every day but when you get the chance you can't help but stuff yourself.  It doesn't help that it's served in bite size pieces so there's always room for one more piece.The combination of the warm bread with the gooey, sugary,  buttery sauce that's on it is simply sinful. 

It's pretty easy to make too.  The most difficult part is remembering to take the frozen bread dough out of the freezer the night before.  My mom has seen many a disappointed face because of that - and it's usually mine.

Ingredients
-1 loaf of frozen bread thawed (overnight)
-1/4 cup of butter
-1 cup brown sugar, divided (you can use light or dark, but dark is better)
-1/2 cup milk divided (you can't use skim b/c it will curdle but canned milk works)
-1/4 cup light karo syrup
- cinnamon
- extra butter and brown sugar

Combine butter, 1/2 cup of brown sugar, 1/4 cup of milk and syrup in small sauce pan.  Bring to a boil and remove from heat.

Pour the mixture into a greased pan.  We always use my mom's 30 year old orange bunt pan.  I understand not everyone is lucky enough to have one of these so you can use a pie pan, a bread loaf pan, a square cake pan - anything that will hold a loaf of bread.

Tear the bread dough into little chunks.  In a small dish combine some brown sugar and cinnamon - about a 1/2 cup of brown sugar to a teaspoon of cinnamon. You might need more than this. In another dish melt about 1/4 cup of butter. Take the chunks of bread dough and dunk them in the butter, then in the brown sugar & cinnamon and plop them into the pan.  If there is any brown sugar/cinnamon or butter left you can sprinkle it over the top.

                               

Drizzle 1/4 cup of milk over the top and bake at 350 degrees for about 30 minutes, until golden brown.  The bread will pop up over the pan so you might want to put a piece of foil under the pan.

Place on table until it looks like this.........

Chicken Empanadas

In these hard economic times, it's common for companies to scale back.  Perks get cut, the budget gets tighter, your favorite mechanical pencils are no longer "in policy" -  things just change.  One of the first things to go at my current company was free beverages.  When I started the fridge was stocked with pop, water and juice (the company name was also Lehman Brothers but that's a whole different story) but at the first sign of hard times the drinks got the boot.

My first holiday party was at a fancy restaurant that the company had rented out.  There were waiters walking around with cocktails and appetizers, a car service to take us to the event and then home at the end of the night, a lovely dinner, dancing.  It was top notch.  The next year - mid bankruptcy - they still managed to put together a little something.  We had a 3 hour all you can drink package at cactus, a bar down the street. Maybe not the classiest party in the companies history but not terrible.  Just when we thought we hit rock bottom we get the email for the 2009 "holiday party".  This year we were going to have an international potluck!  wait. we have to bring our own food to our holiday party?  Needless to say people weren't chomping at the bit to whip up their favorite ethnic side dish.  HR thought they'd try to up the ante so they sent a 2nd email telling us that not only will we have an international potluck but people will get to vote for their favorite in each course.  Awesome.  What's that?  do the winners get prizes - nope, just kudos to you if you get voted best dish. 

I decided to join in the fun because it was expected of me i'm a good corporate citizen.  I don't really have any sort of exciting ethnic background...my parent's aren't even sure of our nationality.  Whenever I would ask my dad what we were he would always say "heinz 57 - a little bit of everything".  Great. Thanks dad.  That helps. 

After searching for hours for something that seemed fail proof and delicious I decided on Chicken Empanadas.  Who doesn's love an empanada?  hot chicken and cheese in a wonderful crust - my mouth waters just thinking about it. 

I found a fairly simple recipe on Cooksrecipes.com.  I doubled the recipe and it made about 35 empanadas.

Ingredients
Baked Pastry:
2 frozen pie shells, thawed
3 large egg yolks
2 tablespoons coarse (kosher) salt
1 tablespoon dark chili powder

Filling:
1/2 cup monterey jack cheese, grated
1/2 cup cheddar cheese, grated
1 cup cooked shredded chicken
1 jalapeno pepper, diced
1/2 tablespoon minced garlic
1 tablespoon minced red onion
1/2 teaspoon cumin, ground
1 teaspoon salt

In a bowl mix together all ingredeints for filling and refrigerate until ready to assemble.

On a floured surface, roll out pie shells and cut into 4-inch circles (i used the top of a glass to cut the dough).  Use all of the pie dough by re-rolling the scraps.

Place approzimately 2 tablespoons (I could only fit 1 - but my circles were a little smaller than 4") of empanada filling in center of dough circles.  Fold each circle in half and crimp edges with a fork.

Place on a baking pan or cooking sheet and brush top of each empanada with egg yolk.  I didn't have a brush so I used the back of a spoon, it worked fine. Sprinkle top with salt and chili powder.

Bake 12 to 13 minutes at 400 degrees.  Serve warm or at room temperature.  I had them both and warm is definitely better!

Chocolate Caramel Crackers

One of my favorite food combinations is Caramel & Chocolate.  However, my love for this is nothing compared to that of my friend Nora.  This is a girl who takes her caramel seriously - she will go out of her way to find any sort of caramely goodness. 

One of my favorite stories about Nora's hunt for caramel is when she was in Seattle on business.  She left a business meeting a little early to run to a store to get what she considers the best caramel sauce ever, only to find out they were out and the machine that makes it was broken. 

I used her love of caramel as my inspiriation when my friends and I got together a few weeks ago for a cookie exchange.  I stumbled upon this recipe for Chocolate Caramel Crackers.  I'm really glad I did.  They are so very good, and so very easy.  There are a couple tricks that I figured out to help you along the way.

Chocolate Caramel Crackers By David Lebovitz
Ingredients
-40 Saltine Crackers
-1 cup unsalted butter
-1 cup packed light brown sugar
-A big pinch of sea salt
-1/2 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
-1 1/2 cups semi or bittersweet chocolate

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.  Spray an 11x17 inch baking sheet with pam, line the pan with wax or parchment paper then spray the paper.  I found that this helps the crackers not slide when you pour the caramel over them.  One of my friends tried covering the pan with foil - as the original recipe says to do.  Her crackers slid all over the place. 

Line the crackers on the baking sheet.

In a medium saucepan melt the butter and brown sugar together and stir over medium heat until it begins to boil.  Let boil for 3 minutes stirring well.

Removed from heat and add the salt and vanilla, then quickly pour it over the crackers.  It will begin to harden as soon as you take it off the heat so this part needs to be fast.

Bake the crackers for 15 minutes. As soon as you remove them from the oven sprinkle the chocolate chips over the top and let stand for 5 minutes.  Once they are mostly melted spread them evenly across the

crackers.

Once they are cool, break into pieces.  When mine were cool i gently pulled up on the wax paper and it popped the crackers off one row at a time, then i gently broke them off cracker by cracker.