Friday, November 18, 2005

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

4 comments:

  1. Joe, those blonides look awesome! I have put them in my must try list.

    So the Martha magazine is worth getting I take it? :-)

    By the way, I made your old fashioned cinnamon rolls- and they are perfect! Thnaks for sharing them.

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  2. I don't usually get too excited about blondies, but those look great! I love the cream cheese filling. You obviously cooked yours perfectly.

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  3. mhm, been a while since I made blondies. The stew sounds awesome.

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  4. Erika - Thanks! Yes, I would definetly get it if you can still find it! I'm very glad to hear they came out well for you!

    Anna - They were pretty tasty - Jeff brought the rest to work on Saturday for his testing team and they were gone quickly!

    Pearl - We liked it, it was pretty different and good!

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