Americanized no-raw-fish sushi

This is another of those posts that’s based on the fact that I was already typing it up anyway. Because it’s really hard to try to explain how to make sushi over the phone! So here we go.

But first a disclaimer…. this is a totally americanized version and should under no circumstances be considered authentic. LOL So I don’t wanna hear about how off it is.

First off…

Rice

You will need to find sushi rice. This is smaller than the usual run of the mill rice grains, and sticks together right.

At least around here, this isn’t usually by the other types of rice, it will be over by the chow mein noodles and soy sauce. It usually says sushi rice on the bag somewhere, but it may be like this brand and have it over in a corner and not as the main writing. Usually there are 2 or 3 options.

Measure one cup of dry rice. (This will seem like way way too little… but trust me… it’s enough)

Rinse it very well… until the water runs clear and stops looking murky when you stir the rice around. This will take longer than you think it will to happen.

Let the rice soak covered in water for half an hour.

After soaking, drain the water, and move the wet rice to a small saucepan. Add 1 cup of water.

Place the pan over medium heat until it starts to boil, stirring as little as possible so you don’t stir up more of the murky stuff.

When it starts boiling, put a lid on the pan and drop the heat to low for 15 minutes.

After 15 minutes, without removing the lid, move pan off of heat to sit for another 15 minutes.

While the rice is doing its thing, you can prepare the vinegar mixture.

For this, you need rice vinegar. Depending on which store, some will keep it right next to the soy sauce, but most of them around here will have it over near the salad dressings.

There’s a ton of different measurements people use for this… but I go with 1/4 cup rice vinegar with 2 tablespoons of sugar added. (Some add salt, I don’t… doesn’t really need it)

You want to dissolve the sugar entirely in the vinegar. This is a lot easier if you heat it a little, 15 seconds in the microwave works ok, but you want to be sure to give it time to cool back to room temp before the rice is done. (And if you heat it, it may make your kitchen smell like vinegar.. which always reminds me of coloring easter eggs.. lol)

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When the time is up on the rice, dump it out of the pan (it won’t need drained) into a fairly large container so that the rice won’t be very deep across the bottom when spread out. I’m just using a random square plastic container from the cupboard here, but a cake pan works well.

It should already be sticky… as you can see by the pan shape it’s staying in here.

Tap the rice a bit gently with a rice paddle or spatula just enough to get it to spread out a bit, then drizzle it with the vinegar mixture.

This will make it stop being as sticky and feel sort of wet.

You don’t want to stir the rice to mix it in… because it will make them break up and be mushy and messy. Instead, you want to take sections with the paddle or spatula and flip them over onto other areas.. and/or repeatedly draw slow and gentle lines through the rice in one direction then the other.

See my pretty lines? LOL

Once it’s well mixed, you want to let it sit and cool to room temp, and until it feels dry again. But don’t put it in the fridge, just let it sit out to cool. Some recipes say to fan the rice.. more power to you if you feel like going to that effort! LOL

If you need to take a break in the process to break it up into different sections, this is the place to take it.

Meanwhile….

Filling

As I said, this is an americanized version.

I have no problems with raw fish being used in restaurant sushi I eat, but I’m just not about to try that one at home.

In this case, I’m using imitation crab, which is fully cooked fish. Philly rolls usually tend to use smoked salmon. If you like tuna, tuna from a can works better than the stuff from a packet because it tends to be in larger chunks.

The packets of different flavored filets of salmon and other fish (near the canned tuna) usually work pretty well too, but some of the flavors can be a bit different.

And.. well… we’ve actually even used leftover cooked chicken at times. (Yes, I really meant that disclaimer lol) Whatever works!

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Veggies can be pretty much whatever, but you want to keep it pretty small and either compact or able to be pressed compact (like sprouts). So I’d probably eliminate things like cauliflower. Pictured above is cucumber, green onion, and avocado.

For most things, you can do a lot of the slicing while the rice is cooking, then put back into the fridge until ready to roll.

For slicing various things for filling, you generally want to make strips smaller than 1/2 an inch wide…. the smaller the better.

Cutting these strips into smaller pieces about 2 or 3 inches long tends to make the rolling process a bit easier, as it lets them move around a bit more.

For cucumbers, they seem to work best if you cut them in half lengthwise, then each of the halves into 4 slices.

Then run a knife carefully along the edge of the peel to remove it from your finished strip.

Philly rolls usually use cream cheese… but we tend to use it with anything that has imitation crab too, as it works well together.

When slicing cream cheese, first cut through the entire block to make two thinner halves, then proceed with the slicing on each half. It also helps a lot to slice it straight out of the fridge, and put it right back into the fridge until it’s ready to be used.

 

Rolling

Before I start rolling, I usually go ahead and split my piles of each filling type into half, so that then it’s easier to use half of each pile on each roll (This will be making 4 rolls)

You will need a package of nori… which is sometimes labeled nori and sometimes labeled roasted seaweed. It’s usually by the chow mein noodles and soy sauce.

It’s basically dark green sheets that feel almost like a stiff tissue paper. (It doesn’t really have too much taste in the sushi, but if you try and eat it alone it’s not the greatest… so I don’t recommend sampling it before you use it)

You will need 4 pieces, but will want to make sure they are in good condition, as sometimes some will have rips and tear that will make the process harder. Packages usually have about 12 or so in them.

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Recommended but maybe not required is a bamboo rolling mat. This supports the nori while you roll so that it doesn’t rip. The one I’m using here came in a set with the rice paddle used above for about $7 at bed bath and beyond. (If you are looking for them there though, they were with the chopsticks, over by the woks in the pan section, not in the small kitchen gadget section where you would expect them).

Other kitchen stuff like silicone mats or even parchment paper or wax paper might work ok too if you don’t want to go for the mat.

Lay one of the sheets of nori on the mat, with the shiny side facing up.

Put the edge of the nori closest to you against the edge of the mat.

Add 1/4 of the rice, and tap the rice with the edge of the paddle to spread around.

You want to keep it about an inch away from the far edge, and about 1/2 an inch or a little less away from the other edges. If you get it too close to the near edge it will be harder to start rolling, too close to the sides and it may spill out when you roll.

Yes, I know… it still looks like I’m crazy and this is way too little… it’ll work out.

When you are done spreading, it will look like this… and still look like there’s a lot of gaps and too little rice. Here is where we fix that.

Wet either your hands or the back of the paddle, and press/tap down on the rice gently to level it and pack it down.

So that now it looks like this. And suddenly looks like maybe it’s enough rice after all!

(If you happen to want a roll that’s more rice heavy, add less filling instead of more rice. More rice makes things harder to work with)

If you want a california style roll that has the rice on the outside, you will spread the rice close to the edges, then before patting down you can sprinkle with sesame seeds or poppy seeds. Then place a piece of plastic wrap over the nori, and flip it upside down. The rest of the instructions happen the same, just on the opposite side.

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And now we are ready to start adding the filling.

You want to line the filling up along the edge closest to you, largest pieces on the bottom, smaller pieces on top of those.

If you are going for more traditional sushi, you generally want to keep this filling section really small, maybe two inches wide, so that it gets to roll more.

For americanized rolls…. well… as long as you’ve got less than about half of the rice covered, you’ll be ok. The rice just needs to come somewhat close to meeting itself on the other side.

And so now we start rolling.

Lift the edge of the mat nearest you, while holding the filling down against it a bit.

Essentially what you want to do at this point is flip the filling area over while squeezing the filling gently to compress it.

Once you’ve flipped it over, squeeze the roll together a bit more firmly as you continue to roll.

When you get to where the roll is starting to overlap, roll the mat back upwards away from the  nori so that you can continue.

When it’s completely rolled up, give it a firm but gentle squeeze.

Then, unroll it just a bit to expose the area of nori that was left without rice at the end.

Get your finger wet, and run it along this nori to get it a bit wet, then press it back against the roll so that it will seal to the back of the other part of the nori.

You can now unwrap your roll from the mat (and plastic wrap if you went for rice on the outside).

The ends of the fillings will be somewhat uneven and closer to the edge, or even out of the edge if you got too close when placing or squeezed too hard.

Repeat the process for the other 3 rolls. If you aren’t going to use some of them immediately, you can wrap them in plastic wrap and keep them unsliced in the fridge if you want at this point.

We usually just slice them all anyway and cover the pieces. The nori does sometimes get a bit of an odd stretchy texture if stored though, so it’s usually better to make them right before eating them.

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To slice, you will want the sharpest knife you have around so that it won’t smoosh things and make them fall apart. You will also want to get the knife wet between every slice or two because the rice that gets on it will make it stick a bit.

Place the roll with the seam where the nori ended on the bottom.

If you look at your rolls, it’s usually pretty clear to see where the roll is firmly packed and the nori is smooth, and where the edges start and the nori doesn’t look as stretched. Move just a bit in from this line, and slice off each edge. The edges still taste fine, they just are uneven and not packed as firmly, so they fall apart a lot easier and don’t look as pretty. (Around here, the edges get eaten as a sort of appetizer… lol)

From there, slice the roll into half.

Each half can then be sliced into 2 or 3 pieces. 6 pieces per roll is more of a standard size like you’d likely be used to, but the larger pieces made by 4 stay together easier.

For supporting the nori, you want to keep your fingers as close to the cut as you safely can, or even over the top of the cut once the top of the knife is low enough.

Try to keep the pressure on the knife firm but gentle… and if it hits a rougher patch, use back and forth motion, not just forcing it down harder.

If you are going to stack the sliced pieces on top of each other, try to make sure the entire piece is well supported by the rolls under it. Trying to make a pyramid with spaces under each slice is probably going to make them fall apart.

And there you have americanized sushi rolls.

(If you aren’t used to sushi, this may not look like a lot… but with the rice and the size of these, these are filling… it doesn’t take much.)

Peeps

Ok, so this is a bit late for a post Easter entry, but I just got the pics moved over.

What do you do with random packages of peeps that the kiddo would complain if they didn’t get, but don’t actually like to eat?

You pretend they don’t have sugar on them and are just a normal marshmallow.

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Peep smores!

2 squares of graham cracker
2 of the pre-marked rectangles of chocolate bar
1 bunny

(the before picture)

15 seconds in the microwave and you get..

(the yummy gooey after picture)

They puff up a lot, then contract back down a bit… so don’t think one little bunny looks too little and add more… lol

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Not pictured… Chopped peep trail mix

Slaughter the peep into chunks about half an inch big.
Toss in with peanuts, raisins, and the tiny jelly beans or chocolate chips or whatever other really small candy your kid isn’t eating from their basket.
And any other random mix of nuts and/or dried fruit you happen to have around or want to use.

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Can’t say either one ranks real high on being healthy…. but at least it gets rid of the peeps!

Ranch potato salad

I’m not much of a fan of potato salad, especially the traditional style involving mustard.

But this stuff is awesome!

And it always makes me laugh, because as much as it seems like the ingredients ought to be easily identifiable, it still frequently gets recipe requests.

So since I’m typing it anyway, here ya go..

I tried to take a pic, but my main camera is still out of commission… and I discovered exactly how gross potato salad looks in a pic!
It’s a bit less yellow than most potato salad, but the egg yolks do still make it a pale yellow if you mix it well and chopped them small. The rest of the ingredients get coated and covered to where they mostly don’t show… like basically most other potato salads.

RANCH POTATO SALAD:

5 lb bag red potatoes or baby potatoes
1 lb bacon, cooked crispy and crumbled (or 2 packages of the pre-cooked kind, warmed to crispy)
8 eggs, hard boiled and diced
2 cans sliced black olives (I use the larger size of cans)
1 bundle of green onions or scallions, chopped small (roughly 1 cup chopped)
1 small bottle of “ranch with bacon” salad dressing (by kraft, other ranch styles work ok, just a touch different)

Chop potatoes, leaving skin on. Boil potatoes for about 10 minutes, until they are just barely soft.

Drain immediately, rinse potatoes with cold water, and let sit in the fridge for at least an hour. (This is sort of optional, but the more you skip here, the mushier your end product will be and the less distinct the pieces of potato.)

Mix all other ingredients together well in a separate bowl. Pour mixture over the potatoes, then stir gently to coat.

Makes a rather large bowl… generally I do one batch per 8-10 people (or split for two meals for 4-5), but then, our family really likes it, so these tend to be really generous sized servings.

(non) Fried (sometimes) Rice

Back here I’d mentioned the fried rice seasoning getting recalled… so here’s how I use it.

I’d intended to make this a post with pictures, because this is one of those recipes thats more eyeballed than measured. But then, my camera had other ideas and decided to start having issues, and my cell pics turned out way too dark in the kitchen.

And.. this sounds a lot harder typed out than it really is. lol

Part 1: Rice. Or quinoa. Or couscous. Or whole grain macaroni if you get creative.

When I’m using brown rice for this, I usually make an entire box of rice (about 8 cups before it’s cooked), then use what I need for a meal, then use the rest for this… so most of the time it’s probably around 6-8 cups of cooked rice. You can just use the whole box too if you want it more rice-heavy.

With couscous, I usually use 2 or 3 boxes, and with quinoa usually just 2. Looking at the boxes, they say they make about a cup each. So you’ve got a lot of leeway on how much you are using here. With the lesser amounts, it often seems more like a veggie mix than a fried rice variation.

You need to make your rice (or other complex carb) ahead of time and keep it refrigerated for several hours beforehand, overnight seems to be best. You want it to have that sort of dried out feel, otherwise it will get really mushy in the process. You might been able to skip this with some of the other carb options, but it really is critical on the rice. Trust me, I’ve tried to skip it. Its a mess.

The rice stays out of the way until near the end.

Step 2: meat (optional)

I usually use either a porkchop, a skinless chicken breast, or 3 or 4 chicken tenderloins. Most of the time, this is also leftover from a previous meal.

You want to chop it up into really small pieces. I’m guessing this ends up to be somewhere between 1/2 cup to a cup once its cooked and chopped.

Put the chopped meat into a really large pan (or wok) over fairly high heat, with about a tablespoon of low salt soy sauce. If your meat is precooked, you basically just need to warm it… if starting with raw, stir it around until cooked, adding a bit of water if the soy sauce starts getting too thick on the bottom of the pan.

Remove the meat from the pan, and set aside. (I usually just dump it on top of the bowl of rice on the counter.)

Part 3: Eggs

Using the same pan, scramble eggs or egg whites, stirring nearly constantly to keep in smaller pieces.

If I’m using this for dinner, I usually use about 6 eggs. Most of the time, it gets used more for breakfasts or a combination breakfast/lunch meal to get some morning carb energy that tastes better than oatmeal… in which case, a lot of times I’ll use up to a dozen eggs to make it more breakfast-y.

Scrape bottom and sides of pan really well to remove as much of the eggs from the pan as you can, and set them aside. (Again, mine usually go on top the rice and meat bowl)

Part 4: Veggies

Into the pan, dump any number of the following (still frozen if frozen, drained if canned):

• 1-2 bags or cans of mixed veggies (the ones with corn, peas, carrot, etc)
• 1-2 bags asian veggie mix (broccoli, snap peas, mushrooms, i forget what else is in this..), or broccoli cauliflower carrot mix, or plain chopped broccoli pieces
• 1 bag snap peas. (if you use the asian mix, this will just add more of them)
• 2 cans sliced water chestnuts (you may want to chop these smaller)
• 2 cans bamboo shoots
• 1 package sprouts
• any random veggie you have sitting around leftover in the fridge or fresh needing used up that seems like it oughta be tossed in. green beans work well… extra corn doesn’t hurt.. celery and green onions work well if you don’t have kids eating it. the only veggie i’ve had not work well (that seemed like it might) was squash… too watery i think.

I usually always have the first two on the list in it, the rest are entirely subject to whats around and what I feel like adding… usually 2 or 3 others per round.

Put all the veggies into the pan, keeping heat at around medium, and stir them around with lid off until they are warm and the liquid created from cooking the frozen ones has dissolved to just a couple of tablespoons.

Last part

Keep veggies in the pan. Add about 2 more tablespoons of the lite soy sauce and the contents of the fried rice seasoning packet, and mix really well.

Add meat and eggs back in (ok if a bit of rice comes along), and mix really well again.

If you are using just a couple of cups of quinoa or such, you can then add it into the pan, and stir until both well mixed and everything is warm.

If you are using a bunch of rice, unless you have one really big pan, it gets really bulky. Its usually easier to me to microwave the bowl of rice to warm it mostly but not till its totally hot.
Then, add about half of the warm veggie/meat/egg mix into the bowl, mix well, then add about half of that rice mixture back into the pan again to be mixed well with the remaining veggie mix, then dump one of the two mixes over the other without having to stir the whole batch at once.

This usually makes a ton… even if you use less of your main carb. After it’s cooled down and the first meal is over, I usually fill sandwich sized ziplocks about 3/4 of the way full and toss them in the fridge for the week to be dumped into a cereal bowl and microwaved. Sometimes it needs a bit of pepper or extra soy sauce added when reheated.

And its still a cookie.

Take 3 fresh (aka soft) fig newtons, in one of the non-fig flavors like strawberry.

Lay them down flat, then push all 3 together like a single bar.

The resemblance both in appearance and taste to a nutrigrain bar is striking.

But the cookies? Those are like 45 for a buck generic… making about 15 bars worth.

The bars? 6 for two or three bucks.

I’m a bit surprised they haven’t started out and out selling the cookies as nutrigrain bites at 4 times the price.

But then, I haven’t seen anything really pushing the cookies in years. Maybe they are just waiting for us to forget about them first.

The least healthy soup ever

AKA Baked Potato Chowder

Ok… so maybe it’s not the least healthy ever… but its definately the least healthy one I’ve made.

Take 1 1/2 to 2 pounds of potatoes, wash them, chop or slice them, and put them into a pot. I usually use red potatoes if I’m buying them specifically to make either this or roast, otherwise, whatever potato happens to be sitting around works fine.

Cover in 2-3 cans of chicken broth, depending on how runny you want the end product, and boil.

Keep boiling until they fall apart a bit when treated roughly with the spoon… then turn off the heat but leave the pan on the burner.

Add in one packet of country style gravy mix by sprinkling it lightly on the top while stirring in so it doesn’t clump.

Add 1/2 stick of butter… just ignore it, it will melt during the rest of this and take care of itself.

Add in 1/2 bar of cream cheese. Stir and smoosh it against the side and such until its all either mixed in or in tiny floating pieces. (Yes, your potatoes are taking a beating in the process).

Add 8 oz container of sour cream, and stir until the small pieces of the cream cheese from the last step are mostly gone.

Add in a handful or two each of crumbled bacon and small ham cubes.

Add in a packet of instant mashed potatoes, any flavor… or if you just have the plain ones, about 3/4 of a cup, stir in well, and let sit for a minute or two until soup is cool enough to eat, then stir one last time before serving.

Scoop (or sometimes dump if its really thick) into bowls, and sprinkle shredded cheddar cheese on the top.

I do not even want to know the calorie count and fat content, even using the lightest version of your options!

but.. on a cold day… its very yummy.

How to make stew in a newer, small-ish sized crockpot

Or, if you live in our house, roast soup. (Kiddo is a bit of a drama queen… tell her she’s having stew and she’s likely to be unhappy and refuse to eat it… but she likes roast… so the same thing phrased as roast soup is somehow entirely different… gotta love kids..)

Let me begin by saying I hate my crockpot. Not crockpots in general… just mine.

The old crockpots were pretty much failproof. You dump something in, it cooks, come back whenever and its done.

Mine isn’t like that. It’s picky. Somewhere along the line, something changed in production somehow I assume.

Mine is a medium sized, 2 quart crockpot… which will completely torch anything you put in it. Literally, even roast in water will burn to the side of it anywhere it touches and take brillo to remove. Even on low. It burns even using those bags/liners… its just easier to remove.

UNLESS it’s almost entirely full. Only then will it work normal.

This does not work well at all for a lot of the chicken recipes that just involve dumping a small amount of something over the chicken… unless you multiply the recipe by 3 or 4 and have a ton of chicken to fill it up.

But it works even less with stew. Because, well, if it’s completely full at the start, you have no room for veggies. And if you put veggies in at the start, it will make them soggy and awful.

My mother’s old one from about the 80′s that was the same size wasn’t that way. You could dump something in with like a cup of water and it would be fine… and a lot of the recipes for crockpots online go along these lines. They wouldn’t come close to filling it entirely.

And it doesn’t seem to be as bad with the giant ones. But, um.. there’s only two of us… including a picky eater kiddo. We don’t need a 6 quart or bigger crockpot. We have three times as much as we eat at once even in a 2 quart.

But, well, it is what it is. So here’s how I work around this to actually make it work well and not turn things black and crunchy.

Add random lump of beef, whatever type (well, maybe except hamburger), frozen or not. Add in packet of beef stew seasoning… if you use onions, add them too if you like.. cover with water to about an inch or two from the top, turn it on low, and ignore it for the day.

Chop your veggies. Divide each type in half.

A few hours before dinner, remove your meat. Let it cool a bit to make it easier to chop as needed.

Find a large bowl. Remove water from the crockpot to make the water level about halfway, or a little less. I usually just use the ladle I will serve it with later… and since your water wasn’t all the way to the top anyway the “half” you remove will be smaller than the remaining half usually.

If you add any seasonings like brown gravy mix, you can either do it before separating the water, or do to each half separately.

Add half of carrots (and any other small but fresh veggies) to your crockpot, and the other half to the bowl.

Add potatoes… until your top layer of potatoes starts sticking out of the water (a bit above 3/4 of the way full) or until you’ve added the half.

Add anything canned on top of the potatoes, corn, green beans… anything like that. Then close and turn up on high to apologize for the fact that you’ve opened the lid, let out the heat, and replaced warm stuff with non-warm stuff.

Chop meat… add half to the bowl, and open lid briefly to add half to the very top of the pile of stuff in the crockpot. (It may or may not be out of the water until things break down a bit).

Ignore the whole thing for a while longer. Put potatoes into bowl if you have enough space in the bowl, then set bowl (and any remaining un-bowl-ed potato) in the fridge.. unless you’ve rather just freeze it in a bag to toss in by itself another day. I usually cook it before freezing it to make it easier to reheat and let the flavors mix a bit better, but either way works.

Go ahead and eat.. then move leftovers to a bowl if you have too much to just add the second half to it. If you need both halves at the same time, then dump the contents of the crockpot into a large bowl or pot, then add back in whatever you have space for, cook for an hour or so again, and then mix the warm and cold to serve.

However you’ve gotten the crockpot clear enough to have space, dump in the contents of your other bowl, followed by the potatoes even if they go above water level (even if you have more than half left, more may fit due to the water being less), then your canned stuff… cook for a while longer remembering that the veggie got a bit of a head start sitting in the hot water you removed.. and serve as second helpings, or freeze as leftovers, or whatever.

And that’s how you get around having a slowcooker that thinks its a deep fryer. lol

followed by realizing that you now have 4 quarts of beef stew… roughly enough to last you a full year, probably more.

Followed by wondering if the big 6 quart that works right isn’t that bad of an idea after all.

Followed by realizing that a 6 quart crockpot for a family of 2 is insane and unneeded, and its purchase only supports rival for making a crummy-working product even more than your original purchase of this less than wonderful version already did.

Followed by a venting blog about how much of a pain it is to use a crockpot that burns everything unless its entirely full… and a reminder to self to look for old fashioned crock pots in decent condition next summer at garage sales.

The accidental rough snowman theme

I had no intention of working with a snowman theme this year.

Not only did I get an accidental snowman theme…. I got a theme of snowmen that really didn’t go very well.

First up: snowmen ornaments

Ok… so these looked really cool.. so I decided to try it.

First off, I couldn’t find just a plain blue ornament with no weird textures or anything. So we ended up with silver.

Then… for whatever odd reason, nobody seemed to have the plain white washable poster paint. Every other color… just no white. I’m not nuts enough to give kiddo acrylic yet.

But while I was wandering around in the craft section looking for googly eyes, and I saw some very snow-ish glitter. So I grabbed a bottle of elmers… and we went for glitter instead of paint. (by the way, googly eyes are awesome! they up the cute factor in kids crafts greatly)

It was the 4th ornament or so before we finally got one looking decent. You would not think getting a kid to both spread fingers and curl upwards would be that difficult… but we had a time of it.

The glitter actually did turn out pretty. However, markers wouldn’t work to make the faces. So we had to turn to the eyes and beads… which meant we had to do two snowmen, let them completely dry so the beads wouldn’t slide when bumped around doing the others, then turn and do 2 more, and wait again, and then turn and do the last one. Very much a pain.

Then the arms looked too skinny done by the small sharpie. So kiddo wanted to use pipe cleaner. Which didn’t work well with so many arms in such a small area. And so we ended up with multiple lines of a larger marker put together to make it wider.

So we started with 10, lost 4 in the glue stages, lost another to glitter dripping issues making it look weird, and another in the arm process. So 4 survived the ordeal.

They do look cute. It just ended up being a rougher process than I’d expected.

Second round: Cake pops

This post a while back reminded me of these cake pops I’d seen around but never tried. So I decided to use Christmas as a reason to make some.

I was originally just going to make them with sprinkles, and had bought some strawberry cake to be reddish inside. But then I decided to just leave them white and make them snowballs… so I bought a white cake mix next trip to the store.

Somewhere in this process, I got the idea to turn them into snowmen by putting 3 per stick, and adding some chocolate chips for eyes and pretzel sticks for arms.

And this might have worked… had I been using real sticks instead of the coffee stirrer things I usually use for things needing sticks.

Actually, crumbling up the cake into crumbs was kinda fun… cool texture to smoosh your hands in… and a bit messy when frosting was added, but still fun to play with.

After they froze to firm up a bit, they really seemed pretty bland. The white cake mix might not have been the best choice.

However, about then is when Patti told me my issue with extract making bark turn weird was probably because I was using too much extract. So.. since I actually had a spare package left over from something else in case it went wrong, I decided to add a bit of peppermint to their coating to add some flavor. I think I actually went too far on the other side and added too little, as you could barely taste it, but it gave it a small hint of flavoring anyway. (and without the weird texture)

But it was downhill from there. This was a mess. The sticks started folding over… the balls all started falling apart.. the bark wouldn’t spread very even and kept wanting to just fill in between the 3 making them look like one lumpy shape.

I eventually just left them all on the wax paper and dumped spoonfuls of bark on them to call them snowballs. But then when they thawed a bit more it became pretty clear they were only going to hold together if they were covered on the bottom side as well, so I had to flip them and remelt and cover the bottom… which made a really goofy shape.

I was very tempted to put eyes on them and call them decapitated snowman heads by this point.. but I behaved.. lol

The texture turned out pretty nice, but after all the mess, I wasn’t actually a big fan of them. Very rich and overly sweet. Maybe using cool whip or something (since it gets frozen anyway) instead of the frosting would make it less overwhelmingly so, but really, about half of one of these was enough.

Third round: NOT spiders

I had a bag of mini marshmallows that were being used for something else, that were sitting next to some pretzel sticks that were meant for the cake pop arms.

Kiddo noticed them, and asked to make spiders. You see, several halloweens ago, we made spiders using full sized marshmallows and pretzels for legs.

So after some convincing, we compromised to making snowmen… so I got a bag of the big marshmallows, and some frosting to stick them together.

And we still ended up with some spiders… and some kinda wonky looking snowmen.

Ah well. Sometimes things go that way. Most of the other stuff turned out well… my snowmen just didn’t want to cooperate this year.

Random flavor hot “cocoa” mix

Random recipe mood brings you hot cocoa mix.

Except.. it doesn’t always have cocoa in it at all, but for some reason it still gets called cocoa. Hot any-random-flavor-you-can-mix-using-creamers-and-milk-mixes doesnt have quite the same effect I guess.

Anyway…

Mix together:

1 medium box of powdered milk (about 10-14 oz depending on brand)

1 small bag of powdered sugar (1 pound, or half of a normal 2 pound bag if your store doesn’t carry the smaller ones)

3 medium sized bottles of creamer (around a pound each), at least 1 of which is flavored (use french vanilla to make plain.) Low fat, fat free, and sugar free all work fine. Most flavors you can use the cheaper plain creamer for the other two, but if you want a stronger flavor or to mix different combinations, 2 or even all 3 can be the flavored type. 1 jar can be substituted with same size of any powdered milk mixes (generic nestle quik works best for chocolate flavors) or instant cappuccino mix, or small jar of instant coffee.

Mix all together… pour into container that seals tightly (we like to use one of the pitcher shaped things meant for sugar so it can be poured out directly with less mess). Mix about 1/4 cup per 8 oz warm water, a bit more if you only used 1 flavored jar of a weaker flavor, a bit less if you used something stronger like peppermint. Can also scoop into snack sized baggies to make into individual servings.

This can make some really awesome flavors… especially with mixing. Right now we have vanilla caramel at one house, and chocolate caramel at the other. I think my favorite was either the round using the banana milk flavoring, or the blueberry creamer they had out for a while. Most of the seasonal flavors work really well. Adding chocolate to almost any random creamer flavor tends to work well too.

Even the plain vanilla one is good though…. resembles the french vanilla stuff from the round silver jars at target.

Yummy stuff, warm and creamy for winter, stores really well, and isn’t as overpoweringly sweet as some of the normal hot cocoa mixes.

Secretly taco chili

Ok… so someone I read linked a week or so back to a southern cooking blog. Who? Not a clue… I’ve long since forgotten how I got there! lol!

But as with most cooking blogs I end up subscribing to, I spent some hours going through the older posts on google reader and using my star button to mark some (use the list view to scroll later if you do this through! lol). And so, with the weather turning colder, when I made my grocery lists this week, I included the stuff for this taco soup.

Kiddo quickly declared she wouldn’t eat it, so this evening I made a batch of it to take for my lunches this week.

As I’m scooping it into the bowls, she comes over and declares…. “that’s not taco soup, that’s chili”.

I argued, telling her what was in it…. for about 10 seconds. And…. suddenly…. it hit me. Um…. yup! Looks like chili that needs a bit more liquid.

The only difference between taco soup and the way I make chili is a few less tomatoes, and replacing chili seasoning with taco and ranch. And we don’t serve chili with sour cream… although the corn chips we do use work with both.

I had to crack up laughing…. not just because it’s mostly chili, but because I completely failed to notice this at all until she pointed it out. You would think that somewhere in the process it would have seemed a bit familiar! And yet, here I had it entirely made and halfway scooped out… tonight I do not win any prizes for being observant!

Its good either way. And will make a good lunch this week either way. But I may end up grinning like a dork every time I warm up my taco chili.