Oh, Well....That Sucked

Channeled Recipe – Dump Cake

So, it’s Mother’s Day and I wanted to do something a little out of the ordinary. It had been a long time since we’d done a channeled recipe and that’s what I was up for.

So, it’s in the oven. I do hope it turns out. Actually, if you see this on the web it did. Otherwise we’d have another go at it.

And, I argued with them through the whole thing…I wish I was more gracious about this. Maybe if I did it more often and wasn’t so faint of heart and a more daring-do sort of person.

Dump Cake ala Seth and Assorted other Folk in Spirit

Grease and flour the little pan. I believe it is 9”x9”. We won’t know until it comes out of the oven. I’m not measuring it now. It’s hot. But, they say it is 9”x9”. We’ll go with that. If it’s any different I’ll fix the recipe.

Pour in half of the cake mix. I used Pillsbury yellow cake mix.

Prepare the apples: I peeled and diced up about 4 or 5 apples. There were some brown spots and I had to cut those out, so if you’re using really primo apples you’ll probably only need 4 of them. In the end it measured 2 cups. I put them into a sauce pan and added one TBS of butter and ¼ cup of brown sugar. Cook them up a bit. The juice from the apples comes out so you’ll have a bit of liquid to work with. But, watch them towards the end…it could all start burning on you if you’re not watching. In all? About 3 or 4 minutes. Just until they’re soft. Oh, and throw in a handful of raisins towards the beginning so they plump up nice too.

Pour the apple and raisin mixture over top of the dry cake mix in the pan. Sprinkle about half of the remaining cake mix over the apples and raisins. Pour over a whole stick (1/2 cup) of butter that you’ve melted in the microwave. Now, top this with what is left of the cake mix. Sprinkle with cinnamon sugar if you want to. Oh, and I sprinkled a little cinnamon sugar into the apples as they cooked too.

Mix it up a little bit. Not until it is smooth. Just lumps and bumps and it looks sort of interesting. Top with a ¼ cup of nuts.

Put it into a 350 degree F oven for 45 minutes. I’m using a convection oven, so if you’ve got a regular oven this might go for an hour. Use your cake tester to see if it is done.

I suppose you’d better let it cool a bit before you cut into it. I imagine this would be really good warm with vanilla ice cream.

The Results: It burned. At half an hour the top was like totally burned. So, if and when I do this again I think the oven should be at 325 and the time about half an hour and I watch it like a hawk. I ate the part that didn't burn and it was good with vanilla ice cream like I thought it would be.

Bierocks

Here are the bierocks I made last weekend. TipsFromTheTrailer.com inspired me to a great dinner.

I used one pound of hamburger and a pound of sausage, browned with a chopped onion and then mixed in a shredded head of cabbage. Seasoned and when cooled down a bit put a soup spoon at a time on a round of bread dough. These pictures are from before they all got baked. Next recipe I make I'll be sure to snap a picture before we plow into them. Man, these were good.

Out of a recipe using 3 cups of flour in my bread machine I got 12 rounds of bread and used up about half of the meat. So, it really makes a lot. Oh, before I loaded on the meat I put some shredded mozzarella cheese on the dough.

So, it went bread in hand, cheese and then meat. Pinch up the ends of the dough and put the pinched and sealed side down on a parchment paper lined cookie sheet. I brushed them with an egg wash to make them shiny. Bake at 350 degrees for half an hour or so. These were really terrific. DeeDude gives it a big old thumb's up.

We also thought we might try some Swiss cheese instead of the mozzarella.

Yummy Pot Roast

I didn’t take any pictures, but I want to say we had a really tasty pot roast yesterday. It was just a tad over 2 pounds; a piece of chuck shoulder pot roast at $3.99 a pound. I sprinkled it with salt and pepper and then seared the bejesus out of it in a little bit of olive oil in a dutch oven. I was careful not to move it around a whole lot, though I did try right at the beginning. As it hit the pan it stuck! But, I remembered what Rachael Ray said once that the meat would be released once the sear was on it. She was right. Once it was seared I asked DeeDude to hold it aside while I slipped in a half a chopped onion on the bottom of the pan. The meat sat on top of that for the duration of cooking.

Where the recipe called for wine I substituted: 2 cups of water, 2 teaspoons of sugar and 1 beef bouillon cube. What didn’t get measured, but was added to this liquid was: A really healthy squirt of catsup, a splash of Worcestershire sauce, a really healthy dose (I emptied what was in the bottle) of Teriyaki sauce and a good splash of balsamic vinegar. I poured this around the meat. I had based all of this on the recommendations from Elise at Simply Recipes, though I ended up veering way far away from her recipe. I used more liquid and not the wine or garlic or seasoning she recommended. What I needed was the technique and the time and that onion at the bottom of the pan.

Once everything was in the pot and the lid was on (little steam vent was closed) all of this simmered away on a really low heat for about 2 ¾ hours. I was shooting for 3 hours total cooking time, but at the 2 ¾ mark I loaded in 4 chopped carrots and 4 potatoes to cook the last 15 minutes of the 3 hours. It was absolutely exquisite.

Oh, and I made a gravy too. The liquid that was left after the cooking was done was to die for, it was so tasty. But, I wanted more for a gravy, so I added another bouillon cube and a cup of water, stirred that around until it dissolved.

I thickened it the old fashioned way, the way my mother always did, with a flour and water mixture. Again, I didn't measure, but I did a new technique with it that I thought was pretty neat. Inevitably, I don't stir the flour and water enough to get all the lumps out. Yesterday, I filled a cup with water, loaded in some flour and stirred it for awhile with a fork. Then, the brainstorm! I poured it through a sieve and all the little wanna be lumps were left behind! It was the smoothest gravy I've made in years.