Bacon wrapped water chestnuts

This was a most delicious dish that a co-worker brought to one of our potlucks.  Delicious but so simple.

3 ingredients.

Bacon.

Water chestnuts

Soy sauce

Place the chestnuts in a zip top bag.  Drizzle in some soy sauce and let stand 30 minutes to a couple of hours.

Remove the chestnuts and wrap each in a half piece of bacon.  Dunk back into the soy sauce mixture again, then lay on a parchment lined baking sheet and bake at 350' until the bacon is cooked and crisp.

Owl Cupcakes

This is one of the cutest and easiest desserts out there. You need nothing more than cupcakes, chocolate icing, Smarties or M&M's, and Oreo-style cookies.

The toughest part is separating the cookies cleanly so the white IS white for the eyes, and not covered in chocolate "dust".

Happy Halloween!

Bread Baking Babes - Julia's Rose

This month's bread was chosen by Tanna from My Kitchen in Half Cups. She chose an absolutely stunning but amazingly simple bread for us. Julia's Rose. I must admit I was scratching my head a bit when I read the directions, but Tanna provided a video for us to watch which shows just how crazy easy it is to make the bread. Video here. (Note that the Chef makes small loaves and we made one big bread.)

I filled mine with butter, parmesan, oregano and garlic. Next time I will make a sweet version.

I accidentally overworked my dough so I didn't get a ton of rise, but it was delicious and beautiful. Please visit Tanna for instructions, and check out the participating Babes over on the right. Cheers!

Pumpkin Tarts

I adore the website Bakerella, but nearly all of her amazing creations are far, far beyond my puny culinary skills. But these pumpkin tarts are so easy even I made them look good! A fantastic treat for Thanksgiving, or just Fall in general. 

Recipe: Pumpkin Pie Bites

Breakfast from the Pioneer Woman

I cooked a couple of recipes from The Pioneer Woman for a project I ended up abandoning, but I thought I would share 2 of them with you anyway. This first one is a breakfast dish that you can prep ahead of time - Make Ahead Muffin Melts. Eggs and bacon are mixed with cheese, mayo and seasonings. Then when you are ready to eat you just smear the mixture on your bread or english muffin and broil. Easy.

I have never been good at peeling hard boiled eggs.

 

Here is the end result, which was good. I halved the recipe and also cut back on the amount of cheese and mayo because her quantities frightened me. I was sure Scott would love this, but some of the egg went to waste before we could get through it all. Still this would be a great breakfast for a group. I will definitely think of this next time the family comes to town.

                                                      Recipe:Make Ahead Muffin Melts

Shrimp Toast

This is a dish that I thought I would never in my life make. It wasn't until a few years ago I even knew what Shrimp Toast actually was. But at the beginning of the year when we were planning our Chinese New Year dinner I kept coming back to this recipe. Intrigued by it, drawn to it. I have never been let down by a Kylie Kwong recipe, so I added it to our dinner and it was the absolute hit of the meal. 

This is not an everyday dish - these babies are fried - but I have made it a couple more times this year. I did try broiling instead of frying once, and that was fine, but let's face it - many times fried is better. 

Oooh - I might have to consider this next time I have to bring an appie to my work potluck....... 

Recipe: King Prawn Toasts

Wordless Recipe - Breakfast wrap

Waffle benedict

I made a bit of a decadent breakfast - we had some leftover hollandaise sauce, and there was bacon in the freezer. So I went for it.

Warm crispy waffle, warm crispy bacon - check.

Scrambled egg - check.

Perfectly delicious re-heated hollandaise - check check check.

Awesomeness.