Fruity Chicken Salad II

Ingredients

3 b/s chicken breasts

rice vinegar

cranberry juice

veggie stock

large handful of red grapes

1/4 c craisins

1 large granny smith apple

1 tbsp mustard

3 tbsp mayonnaise

1 tsp ginger powder

1 tsp mustard powder

1 tsp turmeric powder

Directions

Clean the chicken breasts and place them in the bottom of a pot.  Sprinkle with rice vinegar.  Add enough water to come about halfway up the sides of the chicken.  Add veggie stock until just below covering the chicken.  Add cranberry juice until well covered.  Cook on the stove on medium heat until it begins to boil.  Cover and simmer for 10 minutes.  Remove from heat and let sit, covered, for 20 minutes.  Remove the chicken from the pot and shred with a fork.  Mix with the ginger, mustard, and turmeric.

Chop the grapes and apple, then add them to the seasoned chicken.  Mix in the craisins.  Mix together the mustard and mayo, then stir the mixture into the chicken/fruit.  

Cran-Apple Chicken

Behold: the Deliciousness

Mash 2 tbsp butter with garlic powder, sage, thyme, and cinnamon.  Rub the flavored butter all over some chicken legs, then place them in a baking dish.

Peel & chop a Fuji Apple.  Rinse 1 c of frozen cranberries.  Scatter the apple pieces and cranberries over the chicken.  Pour some apple cider over the chicken until the dish is about half-way full of cider. 

Bake at 425 for 50 minutes.  Cover with foil for the last 20 min or so, when the apples start to dry out.  

Eat the deliciousness.

yum!

 leftovers for the weekend

Fruity Chicken Salad

oh-so-delicious

two chicken breasts, cooked and shredded

one golden delicious apple, chopped

big handful of cherries, pitted and chopped

3 large stalks celery, chopped

small spoonful of sour cream

large spoonful of mayonnaise

Cinnamon Rolls Take 2

I've been craving cinnamon rolls all week, but quick as this delicious recipe is, it's still not quick enough for school mornings, so I've had to content myself with chocolate chip pancakes every morning.  Finally, Saturday morning has arrived, giving me time to sleep in, make cinnamon rolls, and eat a late breakfast.  Or maybe it's brunch. 

I mostly followed the recipe I used last time, but since I'm incapable of actually following a recipe to the letter, even if it's my own, I made some changes.  For example, I didn't make a sugar/cinnamon filling...I just poured cinnamon on top of the dough.  And instead of mixing the apples into the dough, I spread them on top of the flattened dough and wrapped the dough around them.  MUCH easier to roll up this time!

Yes, yes I did put mini chocolate chips on top of half of the rolls.  Everything tastes better with chocolate.

Quick Cinnamon Rolls

This morning, I decided that I really wanted cinnamon rolls for breakfast.  I have been wanting to try this recipe for awhile, but when I read through it this morning I knew there was no way it was going to happen today.  I don't want to eat cinnamon rolls in the middle of the afternoon...so I needed a recipe that wouldn't take half a day.  (Someday, I will get around to making the dough the night before so I can enjoy the pull-apart cinnamon bread for breakfast.)  To google I went, and typing in "quick cinnamon rolls" got me a bunch of recipes using "yellow cake mix" or "1 can of rolls" or other such cheater methods involving not-from-scratch ingredients that I don't have and am not going to buy.  Then I tried "quick cinnamon rolls from scratch" and found this website which led me to this website and recipe.  I'm not a huge fan of biscuits, so I probably wouldn't have even looked at Ezra Pound Cake's recipe if I hadn't been led to it by someone else.  Actually, I was so busy scanning the recipe I didn't even notice that "biscuit" was in the title until after I'd already made them. 

Here's my recipe...modified from the original, of course

Dough
2 tbsp packed brown sugar
2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
2 heaping tsp cinnamon
1 1/2 c heavy cream
1 c wheat flour
1 1/2 c white flour
1 red delicious apple, chopped

Filling
1/4 c brown sugar
4 heaping tsp cinnamon (can you tell I like cinnamon?)

Glaze
2 tbsp cream cheese
2 tbsp pumpkin butter
dash of heavy cream
6-8 tbsp confectioner's sugar (they were heaping tbsp and I lost count...)
3 (or so...) tbsp milk


Procedure
I mixed all the dry ingredients together, then added the heavy cream, and then the apples.  Very Sticky!  I put a sheet of wax paper on the counter, lightly floured it, set down the sticky dough, pressed it down into something relatively flat and less than an inch thick, then put another sheet of wax paper on top and rolled it out. I think I ended up rolling it out to less than 1/2 inch, because I didn't actually read the part of the directions where it said how thick to make it.  This turned out to be a problem. 

I removed the top sheet of wax paper and poured a little bit of cream on top of the flattened dough, then spread it over the top using the back of a spoon.  Then, I sprinkled the cinnamon filling on top and attempted to roll it up.  It proved rather difficult, due to the dough wanting to stick to the wax paper, and the holes that appeared, especially around the apples since the dough had been rolled to thin to hold them well.  But somehow I got it rolled.  Then I sliced it into 1 or 1 1/2 inch slices and laid the slices down in a baking pan.  Into the 400 degree oven for 25-30 minutes.

When they came out of the oven, I poured the glaze over some of them.  I didn't want to pour it over all of them in case it didn't turn out that well. 

Procedure by Picture

Oh, in case you're wondering...the cinnamon rolls were delicious.  And so was the pumpkin glaze.  I will still have to make real cinnamon rolls someday, but this recipe will do for the days when I wake up wanting cinnamon rolls and don't already have dough ready in the fridge.