Chicken and Dumplings

On a cold day there is nothing more comforting to me than a bowl of warm soup.  I love making it, I love eating it, and I love the leftovers.  This year I decided to try chicken and dumplings rather than my traditional chicken noodle soup.  I have always avoided dumplings because I thought they were hard to make.  I was wrong, they were easy peasy to make!  As a result,  I instantly fell in love with the tender dumplings, flavorful chicken, and thick broth.

On top of easy to make, this recipe is super inexpensive; especially if you make your own chicken broth.  This meal has become one of my quick go to meals because it can be made in about 30 minutes.  I did cut down the portions of the dumpling recipe because I always ended up with too many dumplings, but you can easily increase them if you want a higher dumpling:chicken:broth ration.  ENJOY!

Chicken and Dumplings
Recipe Source: Eat At Home

about 2-3 cups cooked chicken
6-7 cups chicken broth
1 cup flour
1 Tbs. butter
1/4 tsp. baking powder
pinch of salt
about 1/2 cup of milk, (it may take a bit more or less)

In a large pot, bring the chicken broth to a simmer.

While the broth is coming to a simmer, combine the flour, baking powder and salt.  Cut the butter into the flour mixture until it is well incorporated.  You can use a fork, your hands, or a mixer for this step.

When the butter is well incorporated, stir in the milk.  Mix with a fork until the ingredients form a ball.

On a heavily floured work surface, shape the dough into a disc.  Roll it out about 1/8 in thick.  Using a pizza cutter, cut the dough into squares about 2x2.  If they aren't perfect it is no biggie :)  At this point the dumplings can be frozen or stored in the refrigerator.  Flour a piece of waxed paper and place the dumplings on the wax paper.  Freeze them in a single layer then transfer to a baggie or store them in the refrigerator on the wax paper.

When the broth is at a simmer, drop the chicken in and raise the heat to boiling.  When the broth is at a full boil, drop the dumplings in.  Don't worry about the extra flour on them because this will help to thicken the broth.  Allow the dumplings to cook 12-15 minutes or until they are cooked through and don't taste like raw flour when you bite into them.

Turkey Stuffing Eggrolls

There is one combination that I adore at Thanksgiving, turkey and stuffing all in the same bite. Add in cranberry sauce or gravy and it is perfection! I made these egg rolls a few years ago and they have become a staple turkey leftover meal every year since. I make these the day after thanksgiving and freeze them individually, or use turkey meat from the freezer and make a quick batch for dinner.  Enjoy!

I added this post to Real Food Deals over at Premeditated Leftovers

Turkey Stuffing Egg Rolls
Recipe Source: A Cook's Quest

1 package square egg roll wrappers
leftover turkey
leftover stuffing

Lay an egg roll wrapper on the counter. Place some stuffing and some turkey on top. Wrap up and seal the edge with water. Fry or bake until golden brown and serve with gravy or cranberry sauce for dipping.

Total Cost-$2.99
Egg Roll wrappers-$2.99

Nothing Comes from Nothing, as the Song Says, but Something Definitely can come from Leftovers

What does one do with a little bit of this and a little bit of that after a cake or cookie project? A few tablespoons of shaved chocolate, a baggie full of chopped pecans? A scant cup of chocolate ganache that was tossed into the freezer at Christmas time? Well, sometimes odds and ends like this can contribute to a joyful amalgam. That's what happened with the cake pictured here. On a Sunday afternoon a month or two ago my husband mentioned he would like to bring a cake to work the next day for a small birthday celebration. So, being in a baking mood (which is most of the time, of course) I set to work and quickly baked a two-layer yellow butter cake from scratch. Nothing fancy or too laborious.

Things were looking a little dicey when the new frosting recipe I tried didn't come together well. Though it tasted good, it didn't look smooth and worthy of coating a special-occasion cake. So I used it only to fill the cake, not on the outside. Afterall a cake's visual appeal is often partly illusion, is it not? Next, I defrosted a container of ganache leftover from a holiday project and used that to cover the outside; perfect, I thought. But, despite ganache's natural lusciousness, more illusion was called for. Out came the chopped toasted pecans. I think these were leftover from a cookie project, also at Christmas. But just which cookie, I can no longer recall. No matter, the pecans complemented the ganache perfectly in taste and substance. For the final touch, I sprinkled the top generously with shaved/grated chocolate, a combo of dark and milk chocolate Callebaut. (This intriguingly flavored, very high-quality chocolate can be purchased in roughly hewn chunks from a local gourmet market near my house. I use it frequently for a variety of purposes when baking. It's pretty versatile and extremely handy to have around. Not really too pricey either, all in all.) And the final touch for this impromptu celebration cake? A charming little starfish crafted in a flash with a tiny bit of the dark Callebaut, melted in the microwave and poured into an inexpensive Wilton candy mold. Voila! An easy and relatively quick cake worthy of an office celebration.

So, if anyone ever tells you there is no room for improvisation or creativity in baking just tell them to back off, because we all know that's simply not true!