Chocolate Wontons

It's time for me to come clean.
I'm addicted to Thai food.
I could eat Thai food all day every day and never tire of it. I just love it.
Unfortunately I'm a girl on a very tight budget and I just can't afford to order Thai delivery every day, no matter how much I crave panang curry.
So, being a frugal and adventurous person, I thought I'd look up a few recipes, buy a few ingredients, and learn to make panang curry and wonton soup myself.
Let's just say it's a work in progress and I haven't succeeded yet. Not even close.
Meanwhile, I bought a lot of wonton wrappers that won't live forever. And I don't have the courage to try making Thai-style wontons again for a while.
So I looked up some fun recipes that would use my wonton wrappers. And these recipes passed my idiot-test (aka- I successfully made them). And since they were so cheap and affordable, I thought I'd share them here.

Chocolate Wontons
10 wonton wrappers (I found mine in the vegetarian refrigerated section of Whole Foods)
1 small bag of Ghiradelli chocolates (individually wrapped) (I picked Dark Chocolate with Sea Salt Caramels, but you can pick whichever one floats your boat)
1 tablespoon butter


Instructions:
Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
Unwrap your chocolates.
Try not to eat them.
Spread a dab of butter inside a flat wonton wrapper.
Place one chocolate in the middle of a fresh wonton wrapper.
Fold and pinch shut the wonton wrapper around the chocolate.
Spread a little dab of butter on the outside of the wonton wrapper.
Bake on a non-stick pan for 5-8 minutes. Just long enough for the chocolate to melt on the inside.


OR
Instead of baking it, you can fry the wontons (I prefer to fry it in butter). Also delicious.

Check out this Better Homes and Gardens fancier version called Chocolate Pillows. Just call my version the idiot-proof wontons!


(Sorry no picture. I ate them all too fast!)



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Talking Turkey Tips!

Want to know the trick to making the best turkey EVER?
First, take a closer look at this lovely picture taken on my cell phone. Do you see how the legs are just falling off? How the meat is literally falling off the bone? I went to pull the turkey out of roasting pan, and all the meat started falling off the bone. In fact, it all fell off the bone by the time we were ready to carve it.
There is no roasting bag here.
There was no basting.
I didn't put anything in the pan. Just the turkey.
The trick?
Brine.
You can pay $20 for a fancy brine at the store. You can read a thousand recipes online right now for different brines.
I fed this AMAZING turkey to 18 adults and it was a HUGE hit. Everyone loved it!
It was by far the easiest turkey I have ever made.
And here's how you do it-
take 1 cup of salt, and dissolve it in 1 gallon of boiling water.
Do this for as many gallons of water as it takes to completely cover and submerge your thawed turkey (giblets and inside thingies removed).
There are a dozen different ways you can come up with to submerge your turkey. I have 2 standby methods for this. The easiest one is take the roasting pan (as seen in the picture above), and put a plastic garbage bag in it. Put the thawed turkey in it. Pour the cooled saltwater in the bag over the turkey. It is handy to have a third or fourth hand when trying to figure out how to hold the bag up while pouring water in it. All that really matters is that you completely cover the turkey. (For this 21 lbs turkey in the rather compact pan, it took 4 gallons of water.)
The second method I like is to take the bottom crisper drawer out of the refrigerator. Wash it out thoroughly, and put the turkey (nekkid) into the drawer. Pour the (cooled) water into the drawer. (Make sure the drawer isn't cracked first.) Warning: when pulling the turkey out of the drawer later, it can get rather slippery, and humorous as you attempt to wrestle it.
Soak the turkey in the saltwater brine at least 24 hours.
Take it out of the brine plop it in the pan. Rub the skin with a stick of butter if you are so inclined. Cover, cook.
Cook it the appropriate amount of time. Don't be surprised if you have to cook it as much as an hour longer. Sometimes they are just so dang juicy that they take a little longer to cook thoroughly.

note- I didn't put any extra anythings in the pan. No roasting bag. No basting. No veggies. Nothing. Just a bird in a pan.

Now look back at that picture a little closer. Do you see how the turkey is practically swimming in juices? Seriously, when was the last time you saw a turkey in a roasting bag swimming in juices? Ever?

Now for your money saving tip-
My cousin provided me with this turkey, for me to roast and take over to her house for Christmas dinner. We had 18 adults devour this turkey! I didn't have any leftovers or even the drippings or giblets to make stock, stew, or snacks with. So I went to the grocery store the day after Christmas and bought my own 9 lbs turkey for $5! Yep! Turkeys are on sale for about 48 cents a pound! As soon as I get this sucker thawed out, I plan to brine it and roast it. I'll get my turkey leftovers fix, and be able to make some stew and stock from it. (Not to mention, it will justify my craving to make more homemade stuffing!)

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Best Homemade Stuffing (and it is cheap!)

Best homemade stuffing ever!

I've always been a Stovetop stuffing kind of girl. It was all I knew. It is cheap, easy, and really, I kind of like the way it tastes. But I had heard rumors that there are far better stuffings out there and that I hadn't lived until I had expanded my stuffing and dressing horizons.
Armed with nothing more than this information, I went to Pinterest and then Google to find a good homemade stuffing recipe. I could link you to the one I attempted to go with. But really by the time I had perfected it the way I liked it, it was only a distant cousin to the original.
Speaking of distant cousins, I made this stuffing to go along with the turkey I also made, and shared at a dinner with 17 of my own distant and not-so-distant cousins. It was a huge hit, and 2 days later I'm still getting comments on it!
Without further ado, my all-new, personalized, delicious, homemade, inexpensive, and super easy to make, Christmas stuffing.

1 loaf wheat bread (I bought mine for $0.49 in the "day old" section of my grocery store.)
1 loaf white bread (see above, same thing)
1 bag fresh cranberries
3 red delicious apples
3-5 celery stalks (depending on how much you like crunch in your stuffing. Much to my own surprise, I loved it.)
a few green onions (depending on how much you like onion. I don't care for it, and only put in 3.)
4 cups of apple juice
2-4 cups of turkey drippings (I really didn't measure how much I put in, I just kept ladling it in throughout the day, and stirring it up. This is again completely to taste, depending on how moist you like your stuffing. Again, I had only had Stovetop prior to this, and like my stuffing VERY moist, practically soupy.)
1-2 tbsp of butter or margarine
1-2 cloves of garlic (depending on how much you like garlic. I'm a little to medium garlic fan, and only put in 1 clove. It was barely discernible in the final product. If you like garlic, you'll want more than one clove.)
2-3 tbsp Fresh parsley
1-2 sprigs Fresh thyme
1 sprig Fresh rosemary (optional)


Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
Dice/cube your apples. (I didn't peel mine.)
Chop up celery and onions.
Toast all bread till it is nice and crunchy. (I toasted mine the night before. I live in a humid climate where it is hard to get bread dry enough. So I toasted it and let it sit out exposed overnight to dry it out enough.)
Put apples and cranberries in a bowl and pour all the apple juice over it. Let it sit while you are doing the rest of the steps.  Make sure this is a big bowl that you can combine all the ingredients into later.
Cube and cut up the bread. (I did this by hand and didn't bother trying to cut it. Worked fine for me.)
Saute the butter, onion, celery, garlic, parsley, thyme, and rosemary just 2-3 minutes. Just enough to break out the flavors.
Mix sauteed ingredients into the bread.
Combine the bread with the apples, cranberries, and juice.
Stir together well.
If you have hot turkey drippings you can add, do it as you stir and combine all of the ingredients.  But don't use up all of the drippings yet.
I put all of my ingredients together into a heavy saucepan that I could stick into the oven. You could also use a casserole dish for this.
Don't worry about making it as moist as you would like it to be quite yet. You can keep adding in hot turkey drippings later.
Put in the oven and bake at 350 degrees for 15-20 minutes.
I still had several hours before we would be eating after I made it (and then had to take it to someone else's house). It held up perfectly. Keeping it in the saucepan I baked it in, and putting a lid over it, I put it on the stove at their home, over low heat, and stirred it periodically, and kept adding drippings.
I should also add that I had a saltwater brined turkey (really the only way to brine a turkey! It is delicious!), so my drippings added a great deal of flavor to the recipe.
It was absolutely beautiful in the pan! And tasted delicious! The bread was nice and moist, and the celery and cranberries added a nice crunch and tang to it.

This served 18 adults and we didn't have one crumb of leftovers. But we did have more than a few servings each!
I liked it so much that I'm going to make some more just for me later this week tonight!



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How to Make a Giant Cupcake

A favorite treat just got bigger—try the Better Homes and Gardens Giant Cupcake Pan . This cupcake pan will create a 3-D cupcake for an entire party! Fun to bake, the top and bottom of the cake are baked in one 10 cup capacity pan at one time. Made from non-stick heavyweight cast aluminum which conducts heat evenly for a perfect cake. The premium non-stick surface means foods release perfectly and cleanup is a breeze.

Better Homes and Garden Recipe for Buttercake with Sour Cream Frosting 

• cup (2 sticks) butter, softened
• 1 1/3 cups sugar
• 3 eggs
• 2 teaspoons vanilla
• 2 cups all-purpose flour
• 2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 2/3cup buttermilk
• Sour Cream frosting, (see recipe below)

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. 

2. In large mixing bowl beat butter with electric mixer on medium-high for about 1 minute. Add sugar. Beat until light and fluffy. Add eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition. Beat in vanilla. Whisk together flour, baking powder, soda, and salt. Add flour mixture in two additions, alternating with buttermilk, and beating on low after each addition until combined.

3. Fill giant cupcake pan. Bake until a toothpick inserted in center comes out clean. (See instructions on pan packaging for how long to bake.) Cool in pan on wire rack for 5 minutes. Remove cupcake from pan; cool completely on wire rack.

Sour Cream Frosting

Ingredients

• 1/2 cup (1 stick) butter, softened
• 1 8 ounce carton sour cream
• 1 2 pound bag powdered sugar
• 1 teaspoon vanilla
• 1 tablespoon milk

Directions

In large mixing bowl beat butter with mixer 30 seconds; beat in sour cream. Gradually beat in powdered sugar. Beat in vanilla and milk. Use at once or refrigerate up to 3 days. Remove from refrigerator 30 minutes before using. Frost cupcakes with a knife, or spoon frosting into large resealable plastic bag. Snip one corner of bag and squeeze to pipe onto cupcakes.

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