Baked Potato

No, I'm not going to tell you how to make "the world's best baked potato" or "the perfect baked potato, every time" because people have different opinions on what makes the best baked potato. I will, however, tell you what I do to make my baked potatoes, for selfish reasons... If anything ever happens to the site I Pinned, I won't have a handy reminder of the temperature I bake them at. That would be fairly devastating for me, because baked potatoes are one of my favorite foods, and this is my favorite way to make them. (Seriously, I might just carve the oven temperature into the wall of my kitchen when I own a home one day.)

Baked Potato

Ingredients
potato
vegetable oil
kosher salt

Equipment
foil, baking sheet, oven

Instructions
Preheat oven to 425F. (I REPEAT: 425F! THIS IS THE INFORMATION YOU'RE LOOKING FOR, ALEX OF THE FUTURE! IT'S 425!) Rinse off your potato and pat it dry with a paper towel. Stab it a few times with a fork. (Don't stab your hand.) Holding it over the sink, drizzle vegetable oil on it and rub it with another paper towel to evenly distribute a thin layer of oil all over the potato. Still over the sink, sprinkle it with kosher salt. Set the potato on a foil-lined baking sheet. Bake for an hour.

Yields
A potato. Scalable: use more potatoes.

Total time
An hour.

Cleanup rating 1/5
Don't forget to rinse out the sink, it's all oily and salty now.

Difficulty rating 2/10
I mentioned not stabbing yourself in the hand, right?

Flavor rating 10/10
My favorite food, basically. Obviously you need to dress the potato when it's done, but that's on you. When you make it my way, you get really crispy potato skin. If you don't like crispy, wrap it in foil before you put it in the oven (and then you can skip the pan if you want).

Adjustability: high
Were you just reading that flavor rating bit? You can put ANYTHING on it. I like butter, garlic, cheddar cheese, fresh green onions, and sour cream. I also like pulled pork barbecue. I was just thinking, I'd like to try sauteeing some peppers and onions like you would for a Philly cheesesteak and chopping them up really small and putting them on a potato. And there's always other classics: bacon, broccoli, etc.

Make it with...
Nothing or anything. Great side dish; great main dish. I make mine as main dishes. It's a perfect "Birk's working tonight, what can I make for just one person" dinner. It's a great "I'm not so hungry and/or I ate a late lunch and/or I worked until 9 pm so I need to go to bed soon but I still should eat something" dinner. It's also a steak's best friend. Gets along well with chicken, too. And it's vegetarian (as long as you don't cover it in bacon bits or smother it in bbq) so it's an excellent choice for when you don't really know all your dinner guests very well. Guess what? It makes a good - if unorthodox - breakfast, too!

Cheesy Sausage Bake

I actually made this a while ago... I just forgot to post it. So here it is!

Cheesy Sausage Bake

Ingredients
smoked sausage, 1 package
1 large onion
1 potato
1/2 bag of baby carrots
olive oil
salt, pepper
paprika
sharp cheddar cheese, shredded

Equipment
oven, foil, roasting pan

Instructions
Preheat oven to 400F. Slice the sausage (about the thickness you see in the photo) and dice your onion and potato. Line a roasting pan with foil and drizzle with a little bit of olive oil, spreading it evenly. Put the sausage, onions, and potatoes into the pan and drizzle with olive oil; mix thoroughly with your hands. Sprinkle with sea salt, pepper, and paprika, and toss again to evenly coat. Spread it evenly in the pan. Bake for 45 minutes (stir every 15 minutes) until potatoes are forkable and golden-brown. Turn off the oven. Sprinkle the cheese evenly across the top and return pan to the oven for a few minutes to melt it.

Yields
about 4 servings

Total time
About an hour (about 15 minutes prep time with chopping and tossing, 45 minutes bake time)

Cleanup rating 2/5
The foil lining makes it easy to clean your pan. If you shred your own cheese, you have to clean the grater, which I see as a bit of a pain, but otherwise there isn't much to it.

Difficulty rating 4/10
You have to be present and paying attention the whole hour, because you need to check in and stir it every 15 minutes.

Flavor rating 6/10
It was good. I wasn't blown away by it, but it was very good.

Adjustability: high
You can add or replace ingredients pretty easily (make sure you don't use something that will devolve to mush unless you add it later in the baking process) and you can add whatever spices you want. I think I actually added garlic... I put garlic in everything.

Make it with
...nothing, unless you want to. You've got your veggies, starch, meat, even some cheese in there. I might make a green veggie on the side (peas, broccoli, a green salad) but I didn't this time.

Look, I Made Lunch! Eggs, Potatoes, & Bacon

I've pulled out the Sistema again, finally. Sistema is this great collection of plastic lunchware that I absolutely love and has had the most success getting me to take lunch to work. I have a whole set of green: three containers and three little squeeze bottles for sauces (two of the bottles are blue and pink/purple).

Anyway, this isn't a commercial... I'm just excited about using my Sistema containers again.

Today, I brought lunch that incorporated a little bit of leftovers from last night's dinner! I didn't eat all of my piece of pork, so I cut it into tiny pieces and made an egg scramble with some diced onion and cheddar cheese, which I paired with leftover potatoes from dinner, plus a couple pieces of bacon that were in the fridge!

The little dressing container in the middle of the potatoes on the right has a little bit of honey in it... don't judge, I like syrup or honey with my bacon. It's not as uncommon as you might think (at least not in the South).

I actually used another Sistema container to bring the Accidental Cookies to work, and one of the tiny squeeze bottles to bring the lime icing (it's a little liquidy, so I didn't want to put it on the cookies and have it all drip to the bottom).

Sauteed Apples and Pork Medallions with Pan Sauce

If that doesn't sound like the fanciest dinner I've made so far, I don't know what does.

The only thing I think I would change is that I was dice the apples to get a more thorough cooking. The first 1/4" or so got cooked fine, but if I had waited for the whole halves to get cooked through, the bottom would have become mush. I already made some changes to the original while I was cooking.

As you can see in the photo, I made potatoes (with cumin and garlic powder this time) and peas to go with this.

Sauteed Apples & Pork Medallions with Pan Sauce

Ingredients

2 Granny Smith apples, halved

2 pork medallions (or you can slice your own pork tenderloin, about 1/4" thick)

2 Tbsp flour

1/2 tsp cumin

salt & pepper

1 Tbsp minced garlic

1 Tbsp oil (I used vegetable oil)

1 Tbsp butter

1/2 cup chicken broth

1 Tbsp white wine vinegar

Equipment

stove, pan with high-ish sides, have your plates ready

Instructions

Put oil and butter in pan on medium heat. Sprinkle your apples with salt & pepper on the cut sides. In the meantime, mix flour, cumin, and some salt & pepper. Lightly coat the pork medallions and set aside. Once butter is melted, stir it up and add apples, cut-side down. Cook until they look approximately like the picture (about 5 minutes). Remove them and put on plates. Add pork medallions to the pan and cook about 4-5 minutes on each side (until done). Set aside on plates. Add chicken broth and white wine vinegar to the pan and scrape up any bits from the bottom. After about a minute, add minced garlic and cook for another 2-3 minutes until it reduces a bit. Pour pan sauce over pork and serve.

Yields

2 servings

Total time

about 30 minutes (although I started the potatoes earlier, because they took about 45 minutes)

Cleanup rating 2/5

One of the amazing things about making a pan sauce (other than the incredible flavor it yields) is that deglazing the pan does the "hard" work of cleaning the pan for you! Instead of scrubbing off all the little bits afterward, you just put delicious liquid into the pan and it turns those bits into food! Although, with all the oil and apple juice and broth and meat juices and butter going on, there was quite a bit of splatter (I may have used a bit too much oil) so that made a little bit of a mess.

Difficulty rating 4/10

Actually quite easy. The hardest thing was trying to determine when things were done. I'm pretty sure I've never cooked pork (which is weird, but chicken is just so easy) and I've certainly never sauteed apple halves, so I was a little lost the whole time. Cubing the apples would have made the whole thing a lot easier.

Flavor rating 7/10

YUM. The apples were a little weird (again, they only got half-cooked I think, so cubing would help... or at least slicing). But the pork was very good, and the pan sauce was delicious. (I added the garlic on a whim, and I'm ever so glad that I did. I would probably have added a  little finely diced onion if I had remembered that there was half an onion in the fridge. And maybe used a splash of wine too.)

NEW CATEGORY!!!

Adjustability: high

Obviously, I've already mentioned that the apples were too big. And that I messed with the pan sauce quite a bit (and would do so even more in the future). So this new category will help consolidate all of these ideas. Low adjustability means I don't think I would change anything, or I don't know how. Medium adjustability means I could change one or two things, or I wouldn't change it very much. High adjustability means the possibilities are endless, and/or I have lots of ideas of what to change in future attempts.

NEW CATEGORY!!!

Make it with

This category will tell you what I did make to go with the recipe, or what I might consider making with it. I already mentioned that this one was made with potatoes (with cumin and garlic) and peas. I might also make rice, and any green vegetable you like... broccoli might be good.

Accidental Cookies

So, remember how I was making a ton of Mothers' Day cookies? Well, I screwed up the dough for the raspberry cookies (I forgot to add the sugar... thank goodness I tasted the dough before folding in the raspberries!). I tried to go back and add the sugar and re-mix it, but it turned into a firm dough ball that would not take raspberries well. So I saved it until later, and made these "accidental" cookies! Then I decided that they needed a little something... so I made a lime icing.

Accidental Cookies with Lime Icing

Ingredients

1/2 cup sugar

2 cups flour

2 tsp baking powder

8 Tbsp (1 stick) butter, not softened, cubed

2/3 cup heavy whipping cream

lime juice (about 2 Tbsp? I didn't measure)

powdered sugar (about 1/2 cup? I didn't measure)

Equipment

baking sheet, parchment paper, mixer, oven

Instructions

Preheat oven to 350F. Mix flour and baking powder together. Add butter and knead together by hand. You should get a crumbly mixture. Add the heavy cream and mix thoroughly (with a spoon should be fine). Add the sugar (if you want to be exactly like me, swear loudly about forgetting to add the sugar in the first place). Knead really thoroughly until all the sugar is incorporated. Pinch off small balls of dough and place on parchment-paper-lined baking sheet. Bake about 15 minutes. Let them cool thoroughly on a cooling rack. Mix lime juice and powdered sugar, adjusting amounts until you have the consistency of icing you want. Drizzle over cookies.

Yields

I got about 2 dozen cookies

Total time

Hard to tell, since I made these around making the raspberry cookies, but probably about 30 minutes including 15 minutes baking time.

Cleanup rating 2/5

Any time I'm working with powdered sugar will be no lower than a 2/5. But the dough is really clean, because it's a firm ball of dough instead of a crumbly mess.

Difficulty rating 5/10

Kneading by hand is a pain in the butt. Especially since I did it twice in a row (this batch, then doing it correctly for the raspberry cookies). And getting the icing consistency right is tricky.

Flavor rating 6/10

Birk says the cookies have a biscuit-y feel/flavor, and I don't disagree. But I like them, and it means they aren't too sweet. The lime icing is pretty tart, and I like that too. I feel like this recipe has some tweaking in its future.

Happy Mothers' Day!

I made cookies for my various moms for Mothers' Day (and two of their birthdays, too)!

For my mom, I made walnut butter balls.

For my stepmom, I made gluten-free chocolate cookies.

And for my mother-in-law, I reprised the raspberry-lime cookies, but I used lemon juice like the original recipe said to, instead of lime.

Top left: gluten-free chocolate cookies.
Top right: raspberry-lemon cookies.
Bottom left: walnut butter balls.
Bottom right: For Birk's birthday, peanut butter Kiss cookies.

Happy Mothers' Day!

Gluten-Free Chocolate Cookies

These are the cookies I made for my stepmom! She's gluten-free, and she loves chocolate, so I jumped on this recipe when I found it.

Gluten-Free Chocolate Cookies

Ingredients

1/2 cup butter (softened)

1/2 cup brown sugar

1/2 cup white sugar

1 egg

1 tsp vanilla

1/2 tsp baking soda

1/2 tsp salt

1 cup cocoa powder

1/2 cup chocolate chips

1/2 cup butterscotch chips

Equipment

oven, baking sheets, parchment paper, cooling racks, mixer

Instructions

Preheat oven to 350F. Mix together butter, brown sugar, and white sugar. Add egg and vanilla; mix thoroughly. Combine baking soda, salt, and cocoa powder, and mix into wet batter (be careful not to make chocolate clouds that choke you). Stir in the chocolate and butterscotch chips. They will expand while baking, so give them some room on the parchment-lined baking sheet (about 1-1.5" should do). Bake for 10-12 minutes.

Yields

I got about 15 cookies out of it, but they were pretty big cookies.

Total time

A little under 30 minutes.

Cleanup rating 3/5

Chocolate everywhere. Delicious batter that I know I shouldn't lick off the spoon and beaters and bowl because it has raw egg, but yummy anyway. Definitely an instance of "clean immediately or regret it."

Difficulty rating 5/10

Not hard, but there is skill and patience required when baking cookies. Mixing, measuring carefully, fully incorporating ingredients... it might help to know that I use a hand mixer, so it's a tiny bit trickier than using a stand mixer.

Flavor rating 3/10

Disappointment. I hope my stepmom liked them more than I did. They are INCREDIBLY sweet. And I have an insane sweet tooth... but this is ridiculous. I washed down a bite with some Coke and it made the Coke taste bland like water. Still, though... chocolate. So it's not like a 1 or 2.

Additional note: The original recipe called for white chocolate chips instead of butterscotch ones, and mentioned that you can also add 1/2 cup of chopped walnuts (which I had, leftover from Mom's walnut butter balls, but I was fairly certain that my stepmom and I agree that nuts are great but they don't belong in our baked goods).