Especially on a cold day, potato soup goes a long way. Serve with my Garlic Spiral Rolls for a complete meal.
Tag: filling
Chocolate Raspberry Valentine Truffles
These raspberry heart chocolate truffles are the perfect candy/treat for Valentine’s Day. The outside is hard chocolate coating, and the inside is chewy soft raspberry chocolate. To complete that, they are shaped as hearts; but you can shape it any way you want.
INGREDIENTS:
Middle:
1/2 cup heavy cream
1/4 cup raspberry jam
1 1/2 cup chocolate chips
Coating; (if you don’t want to buy it)
DIRECTIONS:
In a small saucepan, heat the heavy cream and the butter until butter is melted and cream is at a slight simmer. Go directly to next step:
Pour the hot cream over the chocolate in a small bowl. (feel free to do variations on different kinds of chocolate; like milk chocolate, or whatever, as long as it is slightly sweetened). Let sit for a second, and then stir until completely smooth and melted.
Mix in the 1/4 cup of raspberry jam. You can also blend it with an immersion blender to make it smooth. Cool in fridge for half an hour or so.
This process will determine the shape of your truffles. And you can be creative here. I used a cookie press (i won from instructables) to press out the refrigerated chocolate cream on parchment paper.
This is purely optional; you can also roll the mixture out and cut out little hearts (no more than 1 inch wide) with little tiny heart cookie cutters when it is hardened. Or, you choose a different way. Ideally, you’ll have uniform little hearts (maybe even smaller than mine) that are easy to dip in the melted candy coating.
after shaping, place in freezer for half an hour before coating in next step:
Once perfectly hardened (in freezer is the fastest way), dip your chocolate centers into your melted chocolate candy coating.
1. First melt the chocolate candy coating in microwave, in a deep bowl. For easy dipping you should have about two cups worth of the candy coating.
2. I used two little toothpicks, and put them underneath the chocolate centers to hold them as they are dipped in chocolate. All you want to do is dip it straight in so that it gets completely covered in chocolate, and then take it straight out. Carefully place on parchment paper.
3. Store in an airtight container once hardened, preferably at room temperature.
How to Make Egg Salad
Egg salad is the perfect snack, lunch, or breakfast. It can be eaten multiple ways: in sandwiches, with crackers, in wraps, or just by itself. On top of that, it is flavorful, and full of protein. And, it is very easy to make.
INGREDIENTS:
(serves 6)
10 eggs (approx. 1 week old)
1/2 cup mayonnaise
1/4 cup mustard
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon pepper
DIRECTIONS:
First, take your raw eggs, and place them in a large saucepan with water filled up about two inches. Bring quickly to a boil, and then remove pan from heat, and let the eggs finish cooking in the hot water for about another 15 minutes.
For more details see: How to Make Hard Boiled Eggs, which is a recipe I found helpful, or see this helpful instructable: Easy Hard Boiled Eggs.
When eggs are almost done through their rest/cook time, create an ice-bath in a large bowl.
When eggs are done cooking, dunk them immediately into the ice bath.
From the ice bowl, pick them out to peel them.
After the eggs have been peeled, place each into a wire egg-cutter, and cut one way, then flip egg around, and cut perpendicularly to your last cut. This will make your egg nicely diced.
Once your eggs have been nicely diced, throw all of them into a large bowl.
Throw in the mayonnaise, mustard, salt, and pepper. Mix thoroughly until combined.
Now you have a nice bowl of flavorful, protein-packed egg salad. This can be put in lettuce wraps, in between two pieces of bread as a sandwich, eaten with crackers, or just consumed completely by itself.
Store in fridge when not consuming.
One Pot Burrito Bowl
This One Pot Burrito Bowl is not only delicious, it’s also fantastically fast to make; If you get your act up, you can make this burrito bowl in one pot in less than half an hour.
And, in one pot, in less than half an hour, you can make enough dinner to serve a considerably large family.
And, if you don’t have enough people to serve this to, it makes perfect leftovers for the next day.
INGREDIENTS:
1 pound ground beef
½ cup salsa
1 can black beans, or re fried beans, or a mixture of both
2 tablespoons taco seasoning
1 cup long grain rice, cooked ahead of time
1 large onion
1 cup monterey jack, shredded
1 can diced tomatoes
1 tablespoon oil
1 yellow bell pepper
¼ teaspoon chili powder
Garnish
chopped fresh tomatoes
sour cream
DIRECTIONS:
Mince both onion and bell pepper finely.
Heat oil in a large deep pan until hot.
Add in the onion and bell pepper to pan, and saute until very brown. Remove from pan to a small bowl.
Add the ground beef to the same pan that you had the vegetables in, and stir and break up with a spatula until meat is cooked and brown. Drain the meat juices that are shown above.
Before you add everything, if you don’t want super chunky tomatoes from the can, you can easily use an immersion blender to blend it up some. (mine basically became tomato sauce).
Then add canned tomatoes, black beans, salsa, taco seasoning, and chili powder, and previously cooked rice.
(for how to cook rice, see here: How to Cook Rice)
Stir all the ingredients until well combined.
You are now sort of done with it. Just one more thing:
For Garnishes, you can cut up some cilantro, and sprinkle that with a generous helping of your shredded cheese over the steaming top of your Burrito Bowl.
Enjoy!
Be sure to check out my recipe on instructables, as well.
Michael's Test Kitchen 