Martha Monday: Vinegar Glossed Chicken

This Monday it was my turn to pick the project so I chose the Vinegar Glossed Chicken from the December issue of Martha Stewart's Living Magazine. The name just sounded so rich and yummy. It looked great in the picture too. The recipe called for 5 lbs. of bone-in and skin-on chicken pieces. I did about 3 lbs. of bone-in and skin-on chicken breasts. The idea was to brown the chicken in the skillet, then steam it in broth, and finish it off with a mixture of vinegar, garlic, and rosemary. The chicken browned well but then it took me twice as long to cook it as the recipe said. Once it was FINALLY cooked through I poured the vinegar mixture into the pan. I thought it smelled wonderful. It cooked down and got all shiny. I turned the chicken pieces so they'd be coated in the glaze. Then I plated each piece with a baked potato and salad. We were so excited to eat this but were very disappointed in the results. First, the flavor does not penetrate the chicken so the only flavor you get is on the skin. The skin, because the broth steamed it was not crispy. Instead it was flabby. So even though this great sauce was on it no one wanted to eat it. My kids ate the chicken dipped in ranch dressing. Oh well.However. The meal did not end on a bad note because I also tried the Pumpkin Flan touted in the same article. This was fabulous and so easy! The sugar syrup is made simply by cooking the sugar in a pie plate in the oven. No stove top disasters here. Of course, it took 40 minutes for the sugar to cook down into a syrup rather than the 10-12 minutes prescribed. Once the sugar syrup was done, the custard ingredients are mixed and poured into the pan. This was cooked for about an hour in a water bath in the oven. Out it came and into the refrigerator. After our disastrous chicken, I upended the flan and we all dug in. So good! Just like pumpkin pie without the crust and bathed in a delicious golden syrup. Yum!

Sugared Cranberries

These sweet and tart treats are easy to make and so tasty! I like to call them "natural" Sour Patch Kids. The recipe I use comes directly from Cooking Light and you can follow the link, Sugared Cranberries, to get the recipe for yourself. The only adjustment I make is that I do more cranberries at a time than they call for. They call for 2 cups of cranberries to be soaked in a sugar syrup overnight. I double the amount of cranberries. It all still fits in the sugar syrup so don't double that. In the morning drain the cranberries and roll them in plain old sugar. If you want really pretty cranberries use sanding sugar since it is more brilliant. Don't get rushed and put too many cranberries in the sugar at once because then you'll get clumpy cranberries. Let them dry for an hour or more on a large baking sheet. Serve! Or put them in pretty containers for gift-giving! Enjoy!

Martha Monday: Chocolate Caramel Cookie Bars

This week’s Martha Mondays pick – Chocolate-Caramel Cookie Bars – was chosen by Megan at Megan’s Cookin. I had seen this cookie in the November issue of Living and had salivated over it, but as I am not a huge fan of making cookies in general, I'd dismissed it. So, I was excited that Megan was encouraging us all to try it.

The recipe called for milk chocolate. I was tempted to substitute dark chocolate as that is my favorite but I was afraid to ruin a new recipe so I dutifully purchased three bars of Ghirardelli milk chocolate.

The directions for the crust were easy. Cream butter with brown sugar. Add salt and flour. Press into the bottom of a 9-inch square pan and bake for 30 minutes. On to the caramel. The sugar was mixed with a bit of water and boiled until it was amber in color. These directions are not so helpful but since I'd made candy before I followed my instincts. First, I put the heat on high and NEVER stepped away from the pan because sugar burns in seconds!!!! The directions told us to brush the rim of the saucepan with water so sugar crystals don't stick to the sides. I have found this is a worthless pursuit. It doesn't work and the water just spits back onto me and burns me. Instead I gave the pan a swirl every once in a while and this seems to do the trick. Once I got a lovely amber color, the color of apple juice, I took it off the heat and added the butter and cream. Once this mixture boiled again I poured it over my milk chocolate. I let it sit for a few minutes and then stirred it all together. I poured this on top of the crust and refrigerated it over night.

The last task was to sprinkle with salt. I used kosher salt since I didn't have any course sea salt. Then I cut them into bars. The recipe said it made 16 bars but I cut them smaller. I got 30 out of my batch and I think they were pretty generous cookies. I can't imagine serving someone 1/16 of that pan!

How did they taste? Not bad. Very sweet but I like sweet things. And the salt balanced it a bit. I liked them better after they'd sat out of the refrigerator a bit. It was a pretty easy cookie to make and different from the usual. Were I to make them again I think I'd try some really dark chocolate.

Martha Monday: Iced Applesauce Oatmeal Cookies

This week's Martha Monday project was selected by Robyn of Robyn's Nest and she picked this fabulous cookie recipe for all of us to try. I was so excited when I saw her choice I got right to work without waiting until it was Monday. I too made a few changes to this recipe, using regular applesauce rather than chunky simply because that's all I had. Also, I used pecans in place of the raisins being a professed raisin hater. Yuck!

I thought the dough was rather goopy when mixed up so I refrigerated it for a few hours. Then, using my trusty cookie dough scooper, I scooped it onto baking trays and baked them for the allotted time. Fifteen minutes later these wonderful golden cookies emerged. They were tasty right out of the oven but I let them cool and dutifully glazed them with the maple icing. I found this recipe made more cookies than the recipe said but I usually do make my cookies smaller. Then I don't feel so guilty eating three or four! This was a great recipe. Just a little bit different than the usual oatmeal cookies. I'd definitely make these again!

Advent Calendar

Last month I saw a great idea for an Advent calendar in my Family Fun magazine. I used their basic idea but modified it to suit my own personality. First I went through all my Martha Stewart magazines and cut out windows and doors. Once I'd cut 25 I pasted them on a large, almost poster sized, piece of card stock that was navy blue - blue being the liturgical color of Advent. Once these dried I used a craft knife to cut each window or door on three sides to create a flap. Then I glued the whole thing (making sure not to glue the flaps) to an aqua blue piece of card stock of the same size. Then I used a white pen to write activities in each opening and then I numbered the openings 1-25. 25 says "Merry Christmas!" of course. I fastened each opening down with a tiny spot of glue and let the whole thing dry pressed under some heavy books. Now each day my five-year-old opens a door or window and finds out his task for the day. Here are the ones we've done up to now.

1. Put out the Advent wreath.


2. Wear blue today.


3. Go out for ice cream tonight.


4. Make a Christmas wish list.


5. Buy a toy for the Toys-for-Tots program.


6. Learn about St. Nicholas today.

Martha Monday: Christmas Ornament

This Monday we were invited by MaryAnn at Stirring It Up with Meg to try making these cute photo ornaments. The Martha Stewart website posted directions, four templates and a video. I chose template 1, printed it up, and got to work.

My first complaint is that the directions on the website were not detailed enough, at least for this template. The template I chose has a small ornament hanging inside a larger one and there were no directions for how to accomplish this. Thankfully I'm crafty enough that I figured it out.

My other complaint was in my materials. I tried to make do with what I had and was not impressed with the glitter. Perhaps if I had purchased Martha Stewart's line of glitter I would have been more impressed. Oh well!

All in all it was a pretty simple craft. After tracing the template onto card stock, I cut it out. It was helpful to have a craft knife to cut out the inside and the space for the photo. I glittered them and let them dry. Then I glued the two sides together with the picture in between. As you can see I used different glitter for each side of the ornament. I used a crushed glass snow glitter for one side. This turned out to be my favorite. Then for the other side I used plain old multi-colored glitter. My five-year-old thought this side was the prettiest. Of course, I used pictures of him in the ornament. I know. I know. I should also have used one of my 20-month-old but I don't have any printed up!!!! So, now I'll have to make one for him once I get some prints from Shutterfly. Ooh! And I'll try some Martha glitter too!

By the way, these are not photographed on a Christmas tree because we are not buying a Christmas tree yet. We always leave our tree up for the full TWELVE days of Christmas and if we were to get it now it would be dead by then. So, we will go Christmas tree chopping later in the Advent season.