Dark Chocolate Orange cake is no lie

After the heavenly lightness of the last cake (pineapple cherry chip), I decided to do something completely opposite: dark, rich and decadent. The obvious answer involved chocolate. Lots and lots of chocolate. I did have one glaring problem, though... no chocolate cake mix. Yes, I know, I could do the 'hard' thing and make it from scratch but I'm lazy and I *did* have white cake mix. So how do you make white cake mix into chocolate (even, dare I say dark chocolate)? Duh, cocoa powder. And I DID have a metric crap-ton of cocoa powder, so my problem, it turned out, was not so much a problem as an opportunity to adjust the amount of delicious chocolate I could put into my cake. I was the master of my own cake-y destiny! 

So! It's time to gather your ingredients and implements, kids. Remember, this is a chocolate orange cake, so you may have to do some shopping.

Ingredients:
1 box white cake mix
3 eggy-wegs
2 sticks of butter (instead of the oil called for in the recipe on the box)
2/3 c of cocoa powder
2-3 oranges (I prefer Valencia oranges, as they tend to be juicier. You can do blood oranges, navel oranges, whatever floats your boat. You're going to want AT LEAST 1 cup of juice)

Implements:
A baking pan (or pans)
An oven
Measuring cups
Mixing bowl
Non-stick spray
Whisk/spoon

1. Take butter out of refrigerator to get it to room temp
2. Pre-heat oven to 350F
3. Grease pan(s)

PREPARE TO GET JUICY!

4. Juice your oranges into a bowl/cup/whatever you're going to use to contain it. *make sure you keep the seeds out. Some pulp is no biggie, so long as you don't mind biting into it later once it's in the cake. If you're not into that at all, you can use paper towel/strainer/cheesecloth to strain out the pulpy bits. Set the juice aside for later

5.  Pour cake mix into large mixing bowl
6.  Add in cocoa powder and mix until combined well
7.  Slice up butter sticks so they are easier to work with and add to the mix
8. Add eggs into mix
9. Stir CAREFULLY - it will be lumpy, that's ok. We're gonna help it out in a second.
10. Add in 1 C of orange juice (this is in place of 1 C of water from the cake box recipe) and mix. If it feels a little bit thick, you can add more juice to loosen it up a bit. It will still be a thick batter - maybe the texture of brownies
11. Bake @ 350 for 20-25 minutes - until not-gunky in the center

Just like with the last cake, we can make icing quick and easy. This time, instead of letting it just be icing, we're going to put in some orange juice so that we get another lovely kick of citrus. For the icing,  you'll need:

At Least 3 Tbls. Milk
3 Cups Powered Sugar
1/2 cup (like Butter
3-8 Tbs of the orange juice

And all you really need to do to all this lovely stuff is mix it together. Add more/less orange juice to taste. If you feel like it's too sweet, put juice in. If it's too juicy or orange-y, put more sugar in. Tada!

Also, I know I didn't mention this last time but.. it's a good idea to let your cake cool off before you frost it. At least 20 minutes. I know it's PAINFUL to wait sometimes, but it's a better idea to ice it when it's cool because the icing won't run into any cracks and/or run straight off the cake.

Cherry Chip Pineapple Cake

Well, it was about time for me (Rabbit) to make my own post right? So here I am, with dessert. A super-moist, lovely cake that is perfect for summertime and is good for almost a week if you keep it in the refrigerator. Yeah, that is, if it lasts a week without you nomming it down in the first few days.

You will need the following -

Ingredients:
1 box (yes, I cheat) cherry chip cake mix
3 eggy-wegs
2 sticks of butter (instead of the oil called for in the recipe on the box)
1 can of crushed pineapple (20 oz)

Implements:
A baking pan (or pans)
An oven
Measuring cups
Mixing bowl
Non-stick spray
Whisk/spoon

**NOTE!** I am baking at 1,117 ft above sea level in the desert, in the middle of the summer right before monsoon season. If  you are higher or lower by any significant measurement (+/- 1,000 ft), more or less humid and/or living in a place that actually gets rain on the regular, your baking time and/or temperature may need adjustment. I cannot and will not be held responsible for cakes that go flat, take longer to bake or burn pre-baking time in my elevation. Baking is a tricky business! Times and temps change with ingredients, humidity, barometric pressure, elevation, whether or not a squirrel has farted in a 1/4 mile radius and billions of other things that I simply cannot adjust for.

(Kobold's Note: That's FAR too much effort. YMMV, Cook at your own risk, baking is easy :-P )

PREPARE FOR AWESOMENESS!


1. Take the butter out of the fridge if you keep it there, so that you can have it at room temp by the time we have to do anything with it.
2. Pre-heat oven to 375 degrees
3. Gather the rest of your ingredients and implements

GENERATE AWESOMENESS!

1. Empty box'o'cake mix into mixing bowl
2. Add eggy-wegs
3. Add now-soft butter sticks (I like to cut them up into squares with a butter knife so I don't have to fight with giant lump-sticks).
4. Mix until thoroughly combined
5. Add pineapple chunks - be sure to include juice.


BAKE AWESOMENESS!

1. Grease pan(s)
2. Pour batter into pan(s) - if you're using more than one, make sure to spread out the mix evenly
3. Put pan(s) into preheated oven
4. Bake @ 375 for 25 minutes. Mine took 28 total, but 25 is when you should start checking

And the Kobold Says:

What Rabbit didn't tell you is when it comes to the finer points, I come from a long line of people who know how to bake. What happens when Rabbit doesn't have frosting? "Kooobbbooolllddd make me a simple white frosttiiinnggg!!!" Yep. You can tell we are related, right?

You will need:

• At Least 3 Tbls. Milk
• 3 Cups Powered Sugar
• 1/2 cup (like Butter
• 1 Tbls. Vanilla Extract - I like vanilla. 

And what do you do?

You mix it. All of it. Mix it real good. You might need a little more milk. It happens. I wanted a thinner frosting, because we didn't want to coat this already super sweet thang in a super thick layer of sugar. This, spread over a slightly hot cake makes for a thin coat of vanilla-y goodness.

We frosted, stacked, frosted. We didn't do the sides. It was an almost subtle touch for something made with 3 garsh darn cups of powered sugar. Sweet, sweet, Columbian... Ahem sorry I got lost.

Slammin' your Salmon

I think that's a euphemism for taggin' your mom. If it's not, it will be after today. Once it's on the interewebs it's true!!!!

I know I've been a bad panda or some shizz with my writing. I'm going to make it up to you, I swear! You there, in the short skirt with the wedges. Yeah you know who I'm talking to.

Ahem..

Salmon with Garlic Parmesan Noodles. 

What we need:

• Salmon (I had just over a pound)
• 1 Tbsp. Cayenne 
• 1 Tbsp. Paprika - For this I like smoked. But, really, your call yo.
• 1 Tbsp. Garlic - Just over, just under. This is "How garlicy you wants it"
• 3 Tbsp. Butter
• 1 Tbsp. Extra Virgin Olive Oil
• 2 Tbsp. Flour (not pictured because I'm lame)
• 1 Cup Milk
• 1 Cup Chicken Broth
• 1 1/2 Cup Parmesan Cheese all shredded like
• Pasta for all involved
• I sliced up some scallions for on top.
• 1 Tsp. Salt
• 1 Tsp. Pepper
• A squizzert of lemon juice

Let's Cook

The Salmon is easy:
Squirt some Lemon Juice on your fishy bits.
1/2 the cayenne, the paprika, 1/2 the salt , 1/2 the pepper. These get sprinkled all over the fishy fish.
Throw it in the oven at  about 350 this takes like, 20 minutes. I cook it until I nudge it with a fork and it flakes, and is a opaque.

Of course I'm going to assume you know how to boil noodles. They are easy - Follow the box directions. It involved something like, boil water, cook noodles.

Throw in your butter, oil, and garlic. As the butter melts you're going to brown your garlic, break open some flavor. I threw in the rest of my cayenne at this point. After everything is a bit cooked, stir in your flour. You want this all stirred in, it'll thicken a bit.

Add your milk and broth.
Bring this to a boil  while stirring and then reduce heat.
Stirring occasionally, you want this to thicken. It takes a bit, and if it doesn't seem to be thickening, sprinkle in just a little more flour.
Once thickened , I went about as thick as a real heavy cream, stir in your cheese and let it melt and get gooey and yummy.

From there? Plate it all up and eat. Toss your shallots over the top of the pasta with sauce. It's not that hard of a meal. It's a bit rich, but with just a tad bit of bite. You can add in some garlic bread if you want, a small salad, what ever makes you happy. If I didn't have to feed Miss Rabbit I'd probably add in a small salad with some light sesame vinaigrette. 

Nacho Nacho Man... I want to be a Nacho Man

Now picture a large bearded man shimmying and spinning around.

With that, I give you :

Nachos. 

I'm not going to hold your hand. They are freaking nachos. You lay down chips, throw some cheese, and make it hot and melty. I think there are chimpanzees in the wild who make nachos from leaves and cheese. Don't ask where a monkey gets cheese, you don't want this answer.

What am I going to do? Instead I'm going to walk you through how to not make your nachos suck. I mean, you would think this wasn't possible, right? But cheap cheap cheese and boring chips sucks. Unless you're drunk, and then a cardboard box with what might be cheese is freaking incred-e-balls.

So there are some tricks to nachos.

• Season that chip
• Pick a good cheese
• Add a few veggies and/or fruit
• Don't bake your meat 
• Citrus is your friend.
• Lay-yers.
• Don't cook it too long!

This is simple come to life. So lets break it down:

Seasoning is going to save your face. A little granulated garlic sprinkled around? Awesome. Some pepper, cayenne, chili powder? Totally. Just, don't go over board. 

Cheese should be simple. Grab something that melts. But I honestly love to either shred my own cheddar, colby, asadero, anything that melts good. Blend it! The generic pre-shredded Mexican Blend? Not a bad option! Really. In most cases it's got a good base to it that'll take seasoning well and melt without burning the chips in the process. 

Fruits and Veggies are great things to sneak in. Green onion, slides and spread about, you can run the gambit on the colors of peppers. Those sweet peppers they sell that are all colorful. Avocados, pineapples, shallots, normal onion, garlic cloves. They key here is don't over power the cheese. You want everything to be friends. 

I cook my meat separate. This seems odd. You can brown it, toss it over the top, and let it bake. But I prefer to cook my meat in a skillet while everything else bakes. I then toss it over when everything is hot. It gets it's own seasoning, I normally make the meat more savory than spicy, because I often use things like chili or cayenne already on the chips. This gives a layer of flavor, and saves your chips from baking the grease from the meat in, where while skillet cooking you can repeatedly drain that off. 

Citrus. Seriously I love lemons and limes. The juice from these is magic when lightly squirted over the chips. It soaks in just a bit, bakes, gives the chips flavor, brings out flavors from other things. Then you can get fancy. Ever had nachos with a bit of orange or blood orange flavoring? Mangos? Yes please. 

Layer it. Don't just hope your cheese and spices will soak in - They don't. A layer of chips, season and cheese, a layer of chips, season and cheese. It's like Nacho Lasagna and it's worth the few extra moments of effort. Gives more bites of cheese and flavor and far fewer naked chipy-whips.

 Cooking it.This is, to some, a science. To me? I cook it until the cheese melts, the top layer gets a slightly grilled cheese look. I cook at about 350/375 and it normally takes me just long enough to bake it as it does for me to cook my meat.  

Nachos are easy. The problem is they are easy to mess up and make boring, or suck.

Enjoy them, think a bit about what tastes good, and melt some yum.

Spaghetti C-asserole - Fun with noodles. Plus dessert!

That's what she said!

Casserole is a bad word to a lot of people I know. And not in the fun four letter words you try to freak out grandma using kind of way. Instead it's a word often associated with dissonant mixings of Hamburger Helper or hot dogs and ice cream. But, you know what? I'm pretty sure casserole just means "Shoved together and baked." **Editor's note: (AKA: Rabbit is typing now) A casserole is, by definition, either the dish or serving vessel that the food that it is cooked in - being that casserole is from the French word "case," ie: casserole pan or casserole dish - or the food inside the dish; usually comprised of meat, vegetables and a starchy binder (flour, potatoes, rice, pasta, etc...) as well as a crunchy or cheesy topping. Don't let him fool you, he knows this.**

So, Miss Rabbit in her wondrous research capacities found us something from The Food Network gave us what they called Chicken Spaghetti. Me? I called it casserole and did what I could do to make it feed far less than an army of starved Tolkien Dwarves.

The last part only kind of worked. We also mainly swapped normal onions for Shallots because we are freaking fancy, dammit.

Know what goes well with it? What we politely called Very Confused Irish Cannoli Pie.

Chicken Spaghetti Casserole 

Doesn't that look awesome? I think I ate 3 times that much, and Miss Rabbit about that much too. And then we ate dessert .

Ingredients

• 1/2 a chicken
• 8 ounces Cheddar cheese
• 1/2 a Red Pepper
• 1/2 a Green Pepper
• 1 can of Cream of Mushroom soup
• 2 Shallots
• 1/2 lb of Spaghetti noodles
• 1/4 Tbls. Black Pepper
• 1/8 Tbls. Salt
• 1/4 Tbls. Cayenne
• 1/4 Tbls. Mrs. Dash because I'm lazy

Cookin' It

Boil a chicken for about 35-40 minutes. I'll be honest, I threw in some cheater Italian Seasoning in right on top while it boiled.

Slice n Dice your peppers and shallots

Break your sketti into 1/3s

When your chicken is done, pull it from the broth.
Take 1 cup of your broth and set it to the side.

Cook your noodles in the broth left in the pot. You cool then until they are Al Dente, pretty much half cook them, give or take. You want them soft, but chewy.

Skin and bone your chicken.
Add the veggies, 3/4 of your cheese, the noodles, and soup together.
Remember all those spices? Toss them in there too.
From there mix that bad boy of a mess. It will be messy. I love it.

Sprinkle the rest of your cheese right on top.
From there you bake it 350 for about 40 minutes. 

It's freaking fabulous, right? I mean, go Food Network for their idea!

Very Confused Irish Cannoli!

This came as a whim. We wanted cookies, then we wanted frosting, but nothing in the frosting isle looked good, but then I saw the pie pans, and well, I had an idea.

**Editor's note: It is frequently a good thing when Kobold has an idea, so I usually just let him run with it. This one scared me a little, to be frank. That is, until he laid out what he was going to do with it. Then I grabbed my chocolate chips and let him have at it. My only real contribution, I might add, was the chips. To be fair, I'm usually the one that does dessert/baking but I was feeling lazy and it WAS his idea, after all. We can't always be winners at everything. I promise I'll quit being lazy and put up some more delicious/enticing desserty type things later. **

Ingredients

• A package of cookies - We did sugar cookies
• 2 packages of instant vanilla Jello pudding
• 2 cups of milk
• 3/4 cup of Irish Cream
• Chocolate Chips for yumminess

Not Quite Cooking

Smash your cookies up and moosh them into the pie pan

Mix your Jello mix, milk, and choice of Irish Cream

Pour that in the Pie Crust, sprinkle your chocolate chips.
Let this whole thing set up for a while.

We made this while the chicken boiled, so it sat up for a while. In the future I'll probably make the cookie crust from scratch so I can make a whole crust. This does not serve like a pie. You scoop out as much as you can with a serving spoon, mix it together, and nom it until your eyes cross.

Steak Medallions are not Gold Medals for Carnivores

So, to me these are super simple too. And they are probably a little healthier than the Mac n Cheese Biscuits.

Steak Medallions - or Medals for Meat Eaters

Ingredients:

• About a pound of steak.
• Package of bacon
• Choice of sides:
• We did carrots, green beans, and bread.
• About 5 cloves of garlic
• 1/2 Tbsp. of pepper.

Cook it!

Cut your steak into pieces that are about 2 1/2 " or so

I didn't take nearly enough pictures but lets' describe:
I slice the garlic cloves. I get about 4-5 slices per clove.
Place one of these slices against the steak, wrap the steak in a piece of bacon.

So I really forgot to take pictures the other night. Like I've said, I've been busy at work and my brain is fried. But, I covered the steak part. That's easy, right?
After wrapping them in bacon, sprinkle your salt over the top, and toss it in the over at about 375 or so for about 20 minutes. Sorry, these always come out about medium. I blame the bacon being all, pork, and not super safe to eat "rare."

For my sides, well, I'm a simple creature. I like cold carrots. Those are easy.

The green beans? Well, those are more fun. 

Fill your pot with water enough to cover the beans. Throw in the beans, a little left over bacon (I normally have about 2 strips left) and what ever is left of your garlic. I throw them in while the water is heating, by the time it's boiled long enough to cook the bacon, everything else is done. 

The bread? Well, that's bread. Cut it, butter it, toss it in to get toasty while your steak bakes!

Hopefully this week I'll be back into my normal groove and be able to give a few more ideas and better pictures for you all to Eat Too Many with me n Miss Rabbit. 

Mac n Cheese Biscuits!

Sorry for the delay my loyal readers. Things have been, a bit, hectic, with work.
I've been a bad blogger and not cooking as much, or at least nothing as unique and fun as I like to post. Then again, I also haven't been taking pictures or updating. I deserve to be beat with a wet noodle. One of the big flat ones. I like rice noodles..

Ahem!!!

On track, though, not all meals have to be complicated, right? I mean, people liked the PB&J Wontons, so lets give another great example!

Mac n Cheese Biscuits!

These are super easy, and lovely things. There are so many things you can do with them (that I will give examples at the end with!)

Ingredients:

• A can if Biscuits: I use the Grands Original, not flaky ones.
• A box of Mac N Cheese: Kraft.. I don't care what people say. 

That's it! Right? Freaking simple!

Lets get Cookin'

Open your biscuits.

Cut them open!

Cook some Mac n Cheese

Stuff your biscuits

Close them nice

Lay them out nice

Bake them for 15 minutes or so (Depending on your oven, biscuits, etc)

Seriously that's all! These are super easy and tasty things. There are so many variants and things you can do to these. You can insert cut up hot dogs while cooking them (yum!) or place a few on top and let them cook in as well. You can make  a basic "ketchup glaze," by watering down the ketchup some and lightly brushing it over the biscuits. 

Are these healthy? Probably not. But dammit they are yummy..