Quick comfort food

I was busy flipping through Martha's cookie magazine looking for something to make today and came across a recipe for Cream Cheese Swirl Blondies. I've made more brownies than blondies in my life so it is a nice change a pace for something different.

Since I only have one mixing bowl for the Kitchen Aid, I did clean the bowl/paddle as suggested to keep the mixtures separate. Because you swirl them - I'm not sure it *has* to be done but I could see why. After layering several times, the final cream cheese dollops are swirled into the layers making for a nice design on top. I suggest checking these early as mine were just almost done when I did a toothpick test - a small amount of crumb attached. I tend to always check early as I am not confident with my oven cooking evenly. This is a rich and dense blondie with flavors of brown sugar and creamy pockets of a cheesecake like mixture throughout.

I was not too hopeful about dinner tonight. I was cutting strips of tortillas and was asked if I was making tortilla chips. Nope, I replied, then looked over at the pot of simmering chicken stock. I then said "I'm not really sure how this is going to turn out, so we may have dig out some leftovers."

I thought Quick Chicken and Dumplings was going to be a liquidy soup, but surprisingly it turned into a warm, comforting, thick stew or almost savory pie filling. Very quick to make, the stock is simmered with some veggies and the tortillas are thrown in to soften up and absorb a lot of the flavorful liquid. They were sorta like dumplings but not quite. The tortillas ended up soft, but not mushy. I used a chipotle chili flavored tortilla and that added a bit of heat to the dish.

Recipes

Cream Cheese Swirl Blondies
Quick Chicken and Dumplings