Don’t forget about our giveaway with Keeley Behling Studios! Like the Keeley Behling Studios Facebook page and leave a comment there about something in her Etsy shop to enter. It wouldn’t hurt if you liked the So Very Domestic Facebook page too. 😉

When we bought our house last summer, imagine my overwhelming glee, yes, glee when I discovered we moved next door to a professional chef. I mean, what are the odds that a food blogger is going to move in next door to a pro chef? It’s a major bummer for me to report that he ended up moving a couple of months ago BUT we’re still friends so it’s all good in the hood. In the months that we lived next door to each other, though? So fun! He’d eat (and generally approve of) everything kitchen creation I brought over! His kids loved to tear it up in the kitchen with us (we have 3 kid each) and they were all really good sports about eating whatever I made. So sweet!

Anyhooooo, that little story brings us to these decadently fried chicken strips how, exactly? Well, as a professional chef, he has a heap ton of cook books from culinary school. Picture me standing there hearing about this for the first time. Cook books, yes, but cook books that are essentially text books for the kitchen?!?! OMG This book, The Cook’s Book, is huge. It has chapters on everything from sauces to Latin American cooking, from pasta & dumplings to Middle Eastern cooking and each chapter is written by a different well versed pro chef. This recipe is from the poultry & game birds chapter, written by Shaun Hill.

Fried Chicken with Bacon via Cooks Book

2 skinless, boneless chicken breast halves
2 skinless, boneless chicken thighs
1 tablespoon Dijon mustard
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
pinch cayenne pepper
2/3 cup buttermilk
4 thick-cut slices lean bacon
3 cups fresh white bread crumbs
sunflower oil for frying

First, slice your chicken into strips and then pound out between pieces of plastic wrap. Then mix the mustard with the salt, pepper and cayenne.
Brush the spicy mustard on each strip and place them in a bowl. Pour the buttermilk over them. Take care that all the pieces are coated.
Pour about 1/2″ of oil into a heavy frying pan and fry the bacon in it till crispy. Dry off the bacon with paper towels.
Crumble the bacon and toss it with the bread crumbs.
Coat each piece of buttermilk-soaked chicken in the bacon and bread crumb mixture and fry in more sunflower oil. If you need to, keep adding oil to have about 1/2″ in the pan all the time. They should take about 10 minutes per batch and depending on the size of your pan you’ll need a few batches.
It looks so amazing with the bits of bacon poking out from the breading! Serve as a main to a meal or with a dip and a salad as lunch!

Don’t forget about our giveaway with Keeley Behling Studios! Like the Keeley Behling Studios Facebook page and leave a comment there about something in her Etsy shop to enter. It wouldn’t hurt if you liked the So Very Domestic Facebook page too. 😉

These muffins are a lunch box staple around here, (they are also a middle of the night snack and a running out the door breakfast). So I make these a lot. So much that it seems like the fam should be sick of them by now, but somehow they’re not. Somehow, I still hear requests for them almost daily. Truthfully, I can make them without looking at the recipe and even Wee One #2 gets in on the action now, being able to make these mostly herself!

They clock in at about 230 calories, so I encourage my children to have at them because they are built like supermodels. No lie. I, however, try not to eat quite as many as they do…

Chocolate Chip Muffins via The All New Good Housekeeping Cook Book

2 1/2 cups flour
1/2 cup sugar
1 tablespoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 cup milk
1/2 cup butter, melted
1 large egg
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 cup chocolate chips

Whisk the flour, baking powder and salt in a bowl. In a smaller bowl, with a fork, beat the milk, melted butter, egg and vanilla until totally blended.

I was inspired recently by (what else) Pinterest to make Snickers Stuffed Chocolate Chip Cookies. I tried a version with Snickers bits mixed in with the cookie batter, but they turned out all leaky and weird when I baked them. The children happily ate my mistake, naturally. Stuffing the cookies with a hunk of Snickers was the only way to do it right. The only reason I put them in the batter along with the chocolate chips in the first place was because the Snickers and Peanut Butter Muffins I make from my Nigella Lawson Domestic Goddess cookbook are uber good. Note to self (and to you, obvy): That shit does not translate to cookies.

Moving along.

I picked my Granny’s standard chocolate chip cookie recipe. It’ll be two years this July since she passed and some days it’s still hard to believe she’s gone. She is very, very much alive in my kitchen though. I try to bake as much of her staples as possible and these cookies are defo one of her staples. I do ‘bastardize’ her recipes (as my mother would say) on the regular, but my Granny was always cool with that. They are very simple chocolate chip cookies, I’ve been making them since I was about 5 or 6 and could push my stool over to the counter to reach the bowls!

Snickers Cookies
1 1/4 cups flour
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup butter
1/2 cup brown sugar, packed
1/4 cup granulated sugar
1 large egg
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 cup chocolate chips

You know the drill, sift the flour, baking soda and salt in a bowl and set aside. Then in the mixer bowl, cream the butter and both sugars together.
Add the egg and vanilla, then slowly add the flour mixture.
Stir in the chocolate chips with a wooden spoon. Voila!
Chop up your Snickers bars and pop one in the middle of a ball of dough. Probably about 2 tablespoons worth. Make sure you mold the dough all the way around the Snickers piece.
Then bake at 375F for about 15 minutes.
These are especially fun if you don’t tell anyone there’s a surprise inside!

Don’t forget about our giveaway with Keeley Behling Studios! Like the Keeley Behling Studios Facebook page and leave a comment there about something in her Etsy shop to enter. It wouldn’t hurt if you liked the So Very Domestic Facebook page too. 😉

Aside from the obvious deliciousness I’ve been posting on the blog, I have also added a few treats to the site without a blog post. Yummy things I really wanted to add to the site, but didn’t warrant a post.

	The whole house smells like ginger and cinnamon! (read).
	When I am feeling irritated about living in the woods, you know like when I want a Starbucks or feel like grabbing sushi with my girlfriends or maybe even just want to be able to WALK ANYWHERE, I can quickly remind myself how much I love living out here when I have to make something for the kids’ school. Wee One #2 requested I make treats for her class on her birthday. In their old school in Toronto, that would have meant baking and decorating at least 30 cupcakes. I did make treats for the school in Toronto, but they were not as detailed because there were just too many to make. This year she has 11 kids in her class. Yup, 11. Making a dozen cupcakes means there’s one left for the baker. (read).
	I was inspired by a recipe found on Oh She Glows, but I just HAD TO add peanut butter and switch it up a bit. Instead of making coconut butter, I used peanut butter and rolled the freshly coated banana pieces in coconut. So so so good on the back deck in the summer!!(read).

Nutella Marsacapone Cups

9-12 sheets phyllo
1 cup Homemade Nutella
1/4 cup homemade marsacapone cheese (1 liter cream, 1 1/2 teaspoons lemon juice)

The only slightly complicated thing about this treat is making your own marsacapone cheese and if you can’t be bothered, just pick up a tun from the grocery store and you’re already ahead of the game! It is pretty easy though. Heat the cream over a double boiler to 190F, add lemon juice. It’ll curdle, that’s ok. Stir till it starts to thicken (till it coats the back of a spoon like the pictures below) then let it cool down a bit on the counter.
Now transfer it to a bowl lined with cheesecloth and wrap it up. Leave it alone, in the fridge, till it stops dripping. It took almost two days here. What you’re left with is a very smooth, marsacapone-like cheese. Mix about 1/4 cup of it with 1 cup of softened homemade nutella.
Lay out 3 sheets of phyllo and cut it into 12 squares. Squish these little squares into a muffin tin or mini cupcake tin and bake at 350F for about 5 minutes (till golden). Then scoop in about a tablespoon or so of the creamy nutella and add a smaller dollop of marsacapone on top of that! I don’t think it’s physically possible to eat just one. They look super fancy but they’re way simple and while people will be impressed you made your own marsacapone, it’s totally not a big deal – you can do it!

I am still crazy distracted by this adventure we’re plotting. We are planning to be away for six months and I don’t want to drone on about it too much before we go because I have no doubt that it’ll be all I’ll be able to blog about the whole time we’re away. During the road trip, it’ll be what we are eating and where and hopefully some car and hotel knitting, but once we are settled in our temporary home away from home, it’ll be back to cooking and baking and crafting – just somewhere else! And yes, I do have plans to finally get the new oven and dining room set when we get home! Is it crazy to bring Christmas cross stitching with us? These stockings are not going to sew themselves! Ha! It’s especially funny because I’m not kidding at all.

In the meantime, it’s like Ontario doesn’t want us to leave, giving us some seriously southern weather this week. I’m typing this outside and contemplating firing up the BBQ tonight!

Mango Marinated Peach BBQ Chicken with Hassleback Potatoes via The Naptime Chef

2 medium mangos, peeled and cubed
2 medium peaches, peeled and cubed <- this was my addition 4 garlic cloves, peeled and chopped 1 teaspoon chili powder 1/2 cup spicy ketchup (add a pinch crushed red pepper flakes you don't have any spicy ketchup) 1 teaspoon kosher salt

Pour all of the ingredients in a bowl to mix it up and then pour into a large zippy bag. Add the raw chicken breasts to the bag, let all the air out and seal it. Then rub the marinade into the chicken through the bag. I left it in the fridge overnight, and just sort of massaged it through the bag whenever I went in there for something. That sounds so wrong! The next day, when I fired up the grill, I made sure the chicken breasts were covered in the marinade and I used the BBQ brush to smooth it out. They cooked up great! The back deck smelled sooooo good! The potatoes are not really much of a recipe. You just make several thin slices in a washed, unpeeled, uncooked poatato and stuff it with herbs of your choice. I just used very thinly sliced garlic. I wrapped each potato in tin foil and set them on the top rack of the barbecue while I was grilling the chicken and the corn. Corn in the husk cooks so so fast and simple on the grill. My girlfriends called these Hasslehoff Potatoes all afternoon! This is a great little menu for when you have friends over and you’d rather spend your visit hanging out with them than prepping food. All of this can be done ahead, so you can be outside with your guests and manning the barbecue!

Today, I’m linking up with KD Buggie Boutique, Mom Blog Monday and Tough Cookie Mommy for Mingle Monday.

Yet another notarecipe recipe. Just four ingredients, very little actual mixing, no stress but deeeelish!!

I made these to go with the Pixie Purses for my mother’s Pixie-themed 60th birthday party. So silly and so fun.

These little treats bring together crunchy and flaky with a hit of cheesy, but not pizza style stringy melty cheesy, just hint of cheesy flavor.

Wing it!

I used roughly…

1/3 cup pine nuts
1/4 cup grated parmesan cheese
3 tablespoons rosemary
phyllo pastry
melted butter

Mix the pine nuts, parm and rosemary in a small bowl. Preheat oven to 375F.

Brush 3 sheets of phyllo with melted butter and sprinkle mixture on top.

Roll up the phyllo tight enough to keep the filling in but loose enough to not rip it.

Cut the phyllo roll into finger food size slices and bake for about 15 minutes. That’s that!!

Eastside Food Bites, The Curvy Carrot, What’s Gaby Cooking, Smells Like Home, Mel’s Kitchen Cafe, all of these blogs are conspiring against me to fill me with salty carbs. The easy to follow and execute recipes and the beautiful photography totally worked on me. I made these first for a few of my girlfriends who came up to the woods for an afternoon of acting like kids and swimming in the lake by our house. They were amazing, and we polished them off on one sitting. Then I made them a few months later when one of our aunts and uncles came to visit, and then again when more dear friends came out. Ugh. I can’t help but spread them around!! I must be stopped!!!

THESE, these Ham and Cheese Pretzel Bites are the next level of this little baking adventure and I can’t wait to try them!

1 1/2 cups warm water
2 tablespoons brown sugar
1 1/4 teaspoons active dry yeast
6 tablespoons melted butter
2 1/2 salt
4 1/2 cups flour
vegetable oil
3 quarts water
3/4 cup baking soda
1 whole egg, beaten with 1 tablespoon cold water

I did this a little backwards. I mixed the flour, salt, sugar and yeast and then added the water and the butter. Mix it with the dough hook on your mixer until it forms a ball of dough. Oil up the bowl and let it sit by the oven to rise, preheat your oven to 425F and watch your dough rise. Well, I’m sure you have better things to do than sit there and watch it, but when you come back, it’ll be bigger!
Divide the dough into a few smaller balls and roll into long strips.
Slice the rolls of dough into bit size pieces. Boil the water and add the baking soda. Plunk a few dough pieces in the boiling water at a time, then move them to a parchment paper lined cookie sheet. Brush each one with the egg and water mixture, sprinkle with salt and bake for about 15 minutes.
Caution: Only make these for a group – or when you have starving children around. DO NOT make these and assume you’ll have ‘just a few‘. Famous last words, my friends. They are way too addicting.

I made these as part of a cookie platter for our aunt and uncle who came for a visit to the woods. I love when people drive all the way out here to hang out for lazy afternoons on the back porch. Though I don’t know how lazy it really is when all three kids want to do stuff with everyone who comes over and then Wee One #2 convinces us to play hide and seek for at least a little while. Seriously. She’s gotten grandparents and jaded aunties in their 20s and everyone in between to play hide and seek with her. She’s very convincing!

So back to the cookies. I love the idea of the combo of oatmeal and jam but it’s never really worked out for me until this recipe. Yet another hit from my Great Cookies book! Maybe it’s the choice of jam? This recipe called for blueberry when usually recipes with oats call for strawberry or raspberry? I dunno, but it’s a winning combination and unlike a lot of ‘just ok’ recipes I’ve made, I will be making these again and again for sure!

Oatmeal Almond Jammies via Great Cookies: Secrets to Sensational Sweets

1 1/2 cups flour
3/4 cup old fashioned oats
1 1/4 teaspoons baking powder
3/4 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon salt
3/4 cup butter, softened
3 ounces shredded almond paste
1 1/4 cups sugar
1 large egg
2 large egg yolks
1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1/2 teaspoon almond extract
1 1/2 cups sliced almonds
2 large egg whites, lightly beaten with 2 teaspoons water
1/2 cup blueberry preserves

First, process the flour, oatmeal, baking powder, cinnamon, and salt for about 15 seconds. Do this four times until the mixture is ‘cakey’. Then, in a separate bowl, cream the butter and add the almond paste, it’ll take a few minutes until it’s smooth. Add the sugar slowly, then the egg, egg yolks, and extracts and mix, mix, mix! With the mixer on low add the dry ingredients until just blended. Chill it for about 45 minutes. These three bowls are the dough, the almonds and the egg whites with water. Preheat the oven to 350F, line cookie sheets with parchment paper. Roll the dough into 1″ balls, dip in the egg whites and then roll in the almonds.
Then I used the back of a spoon to make ‘thumbprints’ in the dough. Are thumbprint cookies EVER made with actual thumbs? I think not! What a farce! I dropped less than a tablespoon into each ‘thumb’ print and baked for 12 minutes. I think it’s the blueberry that has me smitten, I loved these – and so did everyone I served them to!

This is one of those recipes that’s hardly even a recipe really. You can make as much or as little as you want, depending on what you already have on hand. Don’t mistake though, even if you don’t have any of the ingredients on hand this little treat is worthy of a trip to the store. I have read Lasagna Wraps described as a quick fix to a lasagna craving. No. No, it’s not a quick fix. You still have to make your sauce, which is arguably the bulk of the work in making lasagna anyway, you still have to shred cheese and you still have to boil the noodles. Even if you use ‘quick’ noddles, you have to boil them when with lasagna of course you don’t have the boil the quick ones. So long story short, they’re good and smaller and cuter, but they’re pretty much the same amount of work – unless you have a pot of lasagna sauce kicking around. In which case, they will be pretty close to effortless.

Anyhoo, I pretty much gave you the recipe in the intro. Ha. You’re welcome!

*Measurements are non existent because it can be tailored to what you have / want without much thought

–your favorite lasagna sauce (hehe)
-lasagna noodles
-shredded cheese

I linked to my own lasagna sauce recipe because it’s tried and amazing. Next boil as many lasagna noodles as you want servings. Scoop about 2 tablespoons or so of the sauce onto the edge of a noodled laying flat on a cutting board (or whatever), top with cheese and roll.
I secured each one with a toothpick because really? You have to ask why? What a mess without them. I have 8 in this cute little brownie pan, I made these as part of a buffet for overnight guests and they were all gone.
On top I added a thin layer of sauce and a small handful of shredded cheese. You could really cover these little guys in both more sauce and more cheese, but then it’s almost like a lasagna and if you went to the trouble to make wee wraps, you may as well let them look like wraps. I cooked them at 350F for about 30 minutes. Everything is already cooked so you can get away with just popping them in to melt the cheese if you used quick noodles!

Sometimes, I get up stuuuuuuupid early and make a fancy breakfast for the wee ones (and my husband if he wants but he almost never has breakfast). There is never any guarantee the children will actually eat whatever I felt like cooking at the crack of dawn. We have learned that while waffles, muffins, and other various sweet breakfast treats get all three of them going, hollandaise doesn’t cut it. I tried this on them last year and they weren’t into it, so I also made some chocolate chip muffins muffins for the littlest ones and some bacon and cheddar biscuits for the oldest, juuust in case and sure enough, they weren’t having it.

Dude. I can’t eat 1 cup of butter and 4 egg yolks. Can I? No, I’m pretty sure my heart would like, stop right there in protest. It’s so good though it’s hard to have around. Either make it for a group or take it to your neighbor’s house ASAP.

As per instructions in the book, I clarified the butter before I started and it was the first time I had done it. I was so pleased with myself! It’s one of those magic things in the kitchen that you don’t see the magic in until you actually do it. So, as you probably know, butter is butterfat, milk solids and water. When you clarify butter, you’re removing the milk solids and the water, leaving just the butterfat. It sounds, well, amazing but not something my doctor would approve of! Generally clarified butter is great for sautéing with because it burns at a much higher temperature than actual butter, but because it’s also crazy rich and flavorful, it’s very good for dishes where the butter flavor takes center stage.

Hollandaise Sauce – via Cooks Book

2 tablespoons white wine vinegar
2 tablespoons water
1 teaspoon lightly crushed white peppers
4 egg yolks
1 cup unsalted butter
juice of 1/2 lemon
pinch of cayenne pepper

Start melting the butter over medium-low heat. The white goo at the top is the milk solids separating. As the milk solids bubble up, skim them off with a spoon until you’re left with the pure butterfat.
First (not pictured) mix vinegar, water and peppercorns in a small pot and bring to a bowl. Lower heat and simmer for 1 minute (should be reduced to 2 1/2 tablespoons). Remove it from heat and set aside. Now bring a small pot of water to almost a boil and set a heat proof bowl over it, slip your yolks into it and whisk, whisk, whisk. Whisk your little heart out.
Now, with the egg yolks whisked into submission, remove from heat and whisk in the butter. Theeeen whisk in the cooled vinegar mixture and then the lemon and cayenne.
Now sneak a taste with a crust of bread. The French always say ‘a crust a bread’, like a soft piece of bread isn’t worthy or something. If your sauce starts to separate, it’s totally a visual thing it will still be amazing, but if you need to fix it (or as The Cook’s Book says ‘returned to respectability’) by slowly whisking in a fresh egg yolk. Pour over a gently fried egg on an English muffin or biscuit.
Yummy grown up breakfast food on a weekday! No way!
These were for Wee One #1 and the kids next door. I made a bunch of biscuits the night before and just topped them with bacon and shredded cheddar. Then I popped them back in the oven for about 15 minutes to melt the cheese. They totally cleaned the platter!