Lemon and Rosemary Chicken Bake

Chicken. Chicken. Chicken. It is like the easy go-to ingredient for dinner at my crib. Pull out a couple of chicken breasts and there is a million and one ways to put a spin on it for a quick meal during the work week. But man, do I get tired of chicken breasts. My mom is a master of frying chicken and for me; nothing beats a fried chicken leg. Now that is a treat I reserve for visits to her house. I don’t think it would be in the best interest of my waist line to master the art of frying chicken. However, I still dig on some chicken legs and that is why I was super excited when I stumbled onto this Lemon and Rosemary Chicken recipe from Sparkling Ink. I’m pretty sure it was a pretty image on Pinterest that led me to the site.

It is a great dish to prepare and take to someone or to feed a large crowd. I doubled the recipe recently to feed my family over the holidays. The smells that this dish provides will set any mouth to watering.

Lemon and Rosemary Chicken Bake from Sparkling Ink

Ingredients (serves 4):

8 chicken legs 

1 lemon
1 pound potatoes 

10 cloves garlic
4 tablespoons olive oil
fresh rosemary
coarse salt & pepper
glass of dry white wine

Directions:
Put chicken legs into a roasting dish. Cut potatoes and lemon into wedges. Add in the wedges and peeled garlic cloves. You can half some of the largest cloves. Add in olive oil, coarsely chopped rosemary, salt and pepper and toss until all the ingredients are evenly coated. Pour in a glass of dry white wine. Bake at 400 F for 40-50 minutes until tender, fragrant and beautifully browned.

Christmas Cookies - Four of Four - Sugar-Topped Molasses Spice Cookies

When I went about selecting what cookies I wanted to bake for the great 2011 Christmas bake-off I considered the desires of some of the people I love the most. For my mom I included my icing sugar cookies, for my love I hooked him up with the lemon ricotta cookies, for me (come on, is it bad to love yourself - if I don't love me who will) I experimented and won with the double chocolate almond cookies. Finally for the first man-love of my life I decided to play into my dad's love of ginger snaps.

For him I tried a Bon Appetit recipe for Sugar-Topped Molasses Spice Cookies. At first bite they zing your taste buds. Delish!

Sugar-Topped Molasses Spice Cookies from Bon Appetit

Ingredients:
2 1/3 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons ground ginger
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/4 teaspoons ground allspice
A pinch (small or not small) of cracked or coarsely ground black pepper - the more you add, the more kick in the cookie
1 1/2 sticks unsalted butter at room temperature
1 cup packed light brown sugar
1/2 cup molasses
1 egg
Sugar for rolling

Directions:
Whisk together the flour, baking soda, salt, ginger, cinnamon, allspice and cracker pepper, set aside. Beat butter till smooth and creamy, add the brown sugar and molasses and beat for two minutes to blend. Add the egg and beat for another minute. Reduce the mixer speed to low and add the dry ingredients gradually, ovoid over beating. Divide the dough in half, wrap each in plastic wrap and chill for at least one hour.

Heat over to 350 degrees. Line baking sheets with parchment or silicone mat. Put the sugar in a small bowl. Roll the dough into balls and then roll around in sugar. Place them on a cookie sheet. Dip the bottom of a glass into the sugar and use it to press down the cookies until they are between 1/4 or 1/2 inch thick.

Bake for 12 to 14 minutes or until the tops of the cookies feel set to the touch. Cool cookies on rack.

Christmas Cookies - Three of Four - Double Chocolate Almond Cookies

I love me some Barefoot Contessa despite how awkward she often appears in front of the camera. I was fortunate to catch an episode in which she had Kathleen King on to make her Double Chocolate Almond Cookies. If you’ve been following my Christmas cookie blog series this will be familiar: “Mmm almond.” I do love the taste of almond, adding chocolate to the mix just led to a no brainer for the great 2011 Christmas bake-off. These puppies will not disappoint. They are packed with almond deliciousness, semisweet and white chocolate chips. My one take away from the experience is that I need to add one of those cookie scoopers to my kitchen arsenal so that my cookies are as beautiful as the Barefoot Contessa’s and Kathleen King’s.

Double Chocolate Almond Cookies from Kathleen King

Ingredients:

2 1/3 cups all-purpose flour
3/4 cup Dutch-processed cocoa powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
3/4 teaspoon salt
1 1/4 cups (2 1/2 sticks) salted butter, softened to room temperature
1 cup sugar
1 cup firmly packed dark or light brown sugar
1 large egg
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 cup white chocolate chips
1 1/2 cups semisweet chocolate chips
1 cup almonds, chopped

Directions:
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F.
In a medium bowl, combine the flour, cocoa powder, baking soda, and salt.

In the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the paddle attachment cream the butter and sugars. Add the egg and vanilla and mix together. Add the flour mixture and continue mixing until just combined.

Add the chocolates and almonds and mix until combined. Using two tablespoons or a small ice cream scoop, drop the dough two inches apart on sheet pans lined with parchment. Bake for 15 minutes.

Cool the cookies on the cookie sheets. The cookies should be very soft when they are removed from the oven. They will firm up as they cool.

Christmas Cookies - Two of Four - Lemon Ricotta Cookies with Lemon Glaze

I’ve said it before. I love lemons. They just make me smile. Bright and sunny – they just remind me of summer and the flavor is light, clean and yummy. So when I saw Giada De Laurentiis make these on the Food Network I quickly downloaded the recipe. I made them for the first time last year for my man-love while he was deployed. Out of all the cookies I sent he talked about these the most, so when we were going through my recipes for Christmas 2011 bake-off he was sure that these made it to production. 

These bake to be super soft and the first bite gets you with a zing of lemon. Enjoy.

Lemon Ricotta Cookies with Lemon Glaze from Giada De Laurentiis

Ingredients:

2 ½ cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
1 stick unsalted butter, softened
2 cups sugar
2 eggs
1 (15-ounce) container whole milk ricotta cheese
3 tablespoons lemon juice
1 lemon, zested

Glaze:

1 1/2 cups powdered sugar
3 tablespoons lemon juice
1 lemon, zested

Directions:

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees F.
In a medium bowl combine the flour, baking powder, and salt. Set aside.

In the large bowl combine the butter and the sugar. Using an electric mixer beat the butter and sugar until light and fluffy, about 3 minutes. Add the eggs, 1 at a time, beating until incorporated. Add the ricotta cheese, lemon juice, and lemon zest. Beat to combine. Stir in the dry ingredients.

Line 2 baking sheets with parchment paper. Spoon the dough (about 2 tablespoons for each cookie) onto the baking sheets. Bake for 15 minutes, until slightly golden at the edges. Remove from the oven and let the cookies rest on the baking sheet for 20 minutes.

Glaze:

Combine the powdered sugar, lemon juice, and lemon zest in a small bowl and stir until smooth. Spoon about 1/2-teaspoon onto each cookie and use the back of the spoon to gently spread. Let the glaze harden for about 2 hours. Pack the cookies into a decorative container.

Christmas Cookies - One of Four - Icing Sugar Cookies

Tis the season to get your bake on. At least that is the way that I look at it. Heck, I’m probably going to put on a few extra pounds anyway, what is an additional one or two? I love to bake but with a new j.o.b. my extracurricular time is limited and some things just don’t make the priority list on a normal basis. So for Christmas this year my gift to friends was to put baking back on the priority list. I pulled a few already “can’t miss” recipes and a few other “let’s give ‘em a whirl.”

There is one cookie recipe that I’ve done every year for as far back as I can remember - Christmas, Easter or the occasional just because I am awesome and someone is begging for them. They are my famous (or soon-to-be-famous) icing sugar cookies. These babies are light, sweet and the almond flavor makes them addicting (Mmm almond). My mom loves these. I took a few to her house only to have my super cute niece and nephew eat almost all of them.

He actually helped too.

Icing Sugar Cookies

Ingredients:

¾ cup butter flavor Crisco

2 eggs
1 cup sugar
2 ½ cup of all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon baking powder
2 teaspoons almond extract

Directions:
Cream first three ingredients, sift all dry ingredients and mix well. Refrigerate for one hour. Heat oven to 400 degrees. Roll out dough and cut into shapes of your choosing. Bake for about eight minutes, till the edges are lightly golden. Cool completely.

Icing Ingredients:
1 cup powdered sugar
½ teaspoon vanilla extract
¼ teaspoon salt
About 1 tablespoon water (you want consistency to flow minimally)
Food coloring, if desired

Mix powdered sugar, vanilla and salt. Stir in water until smooth and of spreading consistency. Tint with food coloring.

I use a sealable plastic bag to pipe and decorate my cookies. This girl isn’t that fancy.

I'm casual. Not too sure about "gourmet."

(Got to love it when you write a blog post and forget to publish it, better late than never.)

Who doesn’t love pasta? No one that I know. So when a group of girlfriends decided to try a Casual Gourmet class from the Culinary Institute of Virginia my eyes locked on the Pasta 101 class. I was curious to see how easy or complicated it would be to make and I wanted to see if the chef would be able to identify local restaurants that make their own opposed.

The class was led by Chef Dave Miller who did a great job of showing us how easy it is to make pasta dough.

Egg Pasta from Culinary Institute of Virginia

Ingredients:

4 oz. bread flour

4 oz. semolina

2 eggs

1 tbsp. water

1 tsp. extra-virgin olive oil

¼ tsp. salt

Mix flours with salt and make a well in the center. Mix eggs with water and olive oil and pour into well. Stir from center till it all comes together. Cut into four pieces and wrap tightly in plastic wrap. Chill at least one hour.

Then the fun starts. If you hadn’t used your hands to mix the dough (like we did in class because we were too impatient to wait for spoons), you now get to work the dough by kneading. I was surprised how easy it was and I sampled the dough raw to learn how good it really was.

In class with had hand crank pasta makers so it was a snap. I took my dough home to make pasta (to carb load for my Saturday morning mud run) and found the dough much harder to roll with my rolling pin. If this is going to become a common occurrence I will be looking into some sort of pasta maker. The dough has to be rolled out several times, folding in the same direction to increase glutens (or something scientific like that). The pasta contraption also makes it really easy to cut into beautiful, perfect shapes like linguine. Again, at home I had problems and had to hand-cut my pasta thus creating what I like to call “stumps.” Long, square strands of past about an eighth of an inch. Pretty sturdy huh?

 

We made five different pasta dishes and sampled each of them. My favorite was the Fettuccini Bolognese. It was even better the second day.

 

My only complaint would be that the class size was just too large; too many people per team without enough tools and work space. Plus the room was too warm (so two complaints). A girl even passed out, which of course made for an exciting distraction.

 

They mentioned the opportunity for private classes for five or more people and I think this would be the route I go for a more social, enjoyable and laid back experience.

 

Oh! The biggest take away for our group was to REALLY salt your water when boiling pasta. Chef Dave said it should taste like sea water.

There are lots of other classes available for the casual gourmet. Check out the website to find something you may be interested in.