King Cake - Yum!!

Today we made a yummy, yummy King Cake. In case you haven't experienced a King Cake before, it is a sort of cinnamon roll ring usually with green, purple and yellow icing. Where we are from, they are a staple from the Feast of the Tiphany all the way to Mardi Gras day. They are not sold here, so we decided to make our own. We used this brioche recipe for the bread maker to make the dough. Once the dough was finished, I took it out of the machine, rolled it out into a rectangle and added the filling. I wanted a caramel sauce inside, so we used 1/4 cup of softened butter, 1 cup of brown sugar and a dash of cinnamon. We mixed it together and spread it over the rectangle of dough then started rolling it up along one long side. When it was all rolled up, we sealed (or at least I thought we did, but that's another post) the ends and the seam and put it seam side down and connected the edges. We baked it for 30 minutes at 350.

Then, as if there was not already enough sugar, we mixed some powdered sugar with a little milk and vanilla and made a thin icing to drizzle over it. Yummy!

Crockpot Chicken Noodle Soup

The lighting in our kitchen is not the best. With better light, I think the picture would look more appetizing. While it doesn't look wonderful, it did taste wonderful. Here is how I made it.

First, I simmered the carcass of a roasted chicken in about 1/2 gallon of water for about 5 hours. Then, I strained the broth into another bowl, removed the meat from the bones and added it back to the broth, which I then put back into the crockpot. To that I added parsley, bay leaf, carrots, caramelized onions, red peppers, asparagus, yellow squash, cooked white beans and a little salt and pepper. This simmered for another 4 hours. About half an hour before we ate, I tossed in a hand full of pasta and some frozen spinach. It was yummy!



This is the Sun-Dried Tomato Basil Beer Bread we had with it. This bread came from an amalgamation of recipes I found online. Here's how we made it.

3 Cups Flour
1 Tablespoon baking powder (I think I might try using less of this next time)
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon sugar
finely chopped sun-dried tomatoes (I used about 6-7)
2 tblsp finely chopped fresh basil or about 1 tblsp dried basil
1 (12 oz) bottle beer
1/4 cup butter, melted

Preheat oven 375 deg. Grease 9X5 loaf pan

Combine the dry ingredients in a medium bowl. Pour beer over the top and mix to combine (I ended up adding about 1/4 cup milk to the batter as it was a bit dry). Be careful not to over mix as this could result in a tough texture in the finished bread. Poor into the loaf pan and pour the melted butter over the top.

Bake for 30 or so minutes (recipe called for 30 minutes, but it took about 40 minutes in my oven) or until golden brown.