Iron Chef Bake-Off

As you know Ott, A from A latte with Ott, A has kept me on my toes this year in the kitchen with her monthly secret ingredient Iron Chef Challenges.  It has been a lot of fun to work with some familiar and some new ingredients in the kitchen with these challenges.

Much to my surprise, I was named the winner of not only one, but two of her monthly Iron Chef Challenges.  I actually won the artichoke Iron Chef Challenge in October and the turkey Iron Chef Challenge in November which led me to this month's Iron Chef Bake Off.

Instead of a secret ingredient, the monthly winners are competing in a Bake-Off sponsored by Taste of Home.  Each of us were asked to make the exact same recipe of Cinnamon Raisin Bread and then take that bread to the next level by incorporating it into another recipe.

Believe it or not as soon as I saw the Cinnamon Raisin Bread recipe, I knew what I was going to make.  My mother-in-law makes a bread pudding that puts most others to shame so I thought it would be the perfect thing to make for this bake-off challenge.

Aunt Nettie's Famous Bread Pudding 
Ingredients
French bread to cover the bottom of 9x13 pan or 1 loaf of Taste of Home Cinnamon Raisin Bread
1/2 cup melted butter
8 eggs
2 cups sugar
1 t. vanilla
1 t. salt
5 1/2 cups milk

Directions
Tear up bread and cover the bottom of a 9x13 pan.

Pour 1/2 cup melted butter over the bread.

Beat 8 eggs well.

Add sugar, vanilla, and salt and beat well.

Add 5 1/2 cups milk and mix well.

Pour over the bread and let rest 15 minutes or until bread is soaked.

Bake at 350 degrees for 1 hour or until center is set.

Serve warm with the whiskey sauce.

Whiskey Sauce
Ingredients
1 cup melted butter
2 cups powdered sugar
2 eggs
2 T. whiskey
1/4 cup toasted chopped pecans (toast pecans at 350 degrees for 7-8 minutes)

Directions
Melt butter on the stove top.

After butter is melted, remove from heat and whip in powdered sugar and eggs.

Add whiskey and pecans.

Drizzle over the bread pudding.

Enjoy!!!

I hope you not only enjoy the bread pudding, but also the cinnamon raisin bread as by following the recipe for it, you will end up with 2 loaves... one for the bread pudding and one to enjoy for breakfast or a snack.

Thanks again to Ott, A for all of her awesome Iron Chef challenges in 2011!

Whole lot of cookin' and bakin' going on at this pig pen

Thanks to an amazing mother-in-law and aunts on my husband's side of the family, all I had to make for Easter weekend was 2 desserts and 2 appetizers.  Truthfully, 2 of my most favorite things to make.  Although I have a few good standbys, like my cheese ball, I usually try to do something new and different for family gatherings.

Since my new Gooseberry Patch cookbook, Sunday Dinner at Grandma's, hasn't arrived yet, I was quite thankful that my mother-in-law had just helped work behind the scenes at a Taste of Home Cooking Show and brought us each home a goodie bag from the show.  Lucky for me, the goodie bag contained 2 of Taste of Home's magazines:  Cooking Schools and Simple & Delicious.  I was able to find all 4 of my needed recipes and many more that I would like to try.

3 of the 4 recipes were super easy as one utilized the crock pot, another only required 10 minutes of baking and only dirtied one dish and a cutting board, and the other didn't require any baking, but all 4 appeared to be a hit.

For my appetizers, I made the Olive Pepperoni Spread and the Reuben Spread.  Now I must admit I am not a reuben fan, but The Farmer and his mom love them so I thought this would be a good way to make Reubens for them.

Olive Pepperoni Spread
1 package (8 ounces) cream cheese, softened
1/2 cup pizza sauce
1 c. (4 ounces) shredded Italian cheese blend
1/4 c. sliced and quartered pepperoni
2 T. sliced ripe olives

First spread the cream cheese into a 9-inch pie plate.

Layer with pizza sauce, Italian cheese, and pepperoni.  (I probably used a bit more of each of these than the recipe called for as I went off of appearance.)

Bake at 350 degrees for 10-15 minutes or until cheese is melted.  (10 minutes is what it took in my oven.)

Sprinkle with olives and serve with bagel chips.

It's a long story, but I didn't even get to try this as I never made it to this Easter celebration and there were no leftovers so I think it pretty much speaks for itself.


Reuben Spread
2 pkg. (8 oz. each) cream cheese, cubed
3 3/4 c. shredded Swiss cheese
1 can (14 oz.) sauerkraut, rinsed and well drained
4 pkg. (2oz. each) thinly sliced deli corned beef, chopped
1/2 c. Thousand Island salad dressing
Snack rye bread

After cubing the cream cheese, shredding the Swiss cheese, rinsing and draining the sauerkraut, and chopping the corned beef, combine the first 5 ingredients in a slow cooker.  Cover and cook on low for 4 hours, stir to blend.  Serve with snack rye bread.  (Notice, I used one of those amazing crock pot liners... a must for this recipe.)

The Farmer said he would only tweak this recipe by toasting the rye bread before serving.

So needless to say, these will be recipes I will be holding onto since they appeared to be liked and were quite easy to make.  Hopefully that will be the case with what what we are cookin' and bakin' up for this weekend as we will be celebrating Big Sissy's First Communion on Saturday.  I sure hope I can keep up with the dishes and my emotions.