Maple Bacon Walnut Green Beans, and Candied Walnuts

Yes, vegetables are inherently good for you. But sometimes you feel like making them as bad for you as possible. Adding bacon, maple syrup, and candied nuts to them is a good way to accomplish that goal. Here's how:

Maple Bacon Walnut Green Beans

adapted from here

Ingredients
about a pound of green beans
3 T maple syrup
2 T olive oil
1 T red wine vinegar
1/2 t Dijon mustard
2 cloves garlic, minced
6 slices cooked bacon, chopped
1/4 cup chopped candied walnuts

Equipment
whisk; pot; colander; large bowl; stove

Instructions
Bring a pot of water to a boil. Boil the green beans for 3-5 minutes (they should still be crisp). While the beans boil, whisk the syrup, oil, vinegar, mustard, and garlic together. Drain the green beans immediately and put them in a large bowl with ice water. After three minutes, drain the green beans again. Pat them with a paper towel, then toss them in the dressing. Top with bacon and walnuts. Salt and pepper if preferred.

Yields
4 servings

Total time
15 minutes

Cleanup rating 3/10
If you do this correctly, you should only have one bowl that needs good cleaning. Other than that, you have the pot you boiled the green beans in, and the colander. (And a whisk.)

Flavor rating 8/10
How can you go wrong? It's salty and sweet, bacon-y and maple-y, and still a crisp green vegetable.

Difficulty rating 6/10
For a side dish, there's a bit of work that goes into this, but it pays off. Don't forget that there are steps not technically included here (like cooking the bacon, and if you're making the candied nuts yourself, you need to get that done before you start, too).

Adjustability: low
There aren't many things you could do differently here. I suppose you could use prosciutto instead of bacon if you're the fancy type. The original recipe used pecans, but I had walnuts, and sliced almonds would be good too.

Make it with...
As you can see in the photo, I made it with a potato-onion-sausage saute (also delicious) but this could go with anything you'd pair with green beans. Beef, chicken, pork, turkey, something vegetarian (although these are decidedly non-vegetarian, what with the bacon and all).

---

If you can't find candied nuts to your liking or at all, or you have some plain nuts on standby that you want to use up, this is how I made mine. They weren't perfect, and I would adjust the recipe or find a different one (or just make the nuts earlier and let them dry some more before making the green beans) but it works!

Candied Walnuts
adapted from here

Ingredients
2 cups of nuts (walnuts, in my case)
4 T butter
4 T brown sugar
sprinkle of cinnamon (optional)

Equipment
microwave; bowl; parchment or wax paper

Instructions
Melt the butter in a bowl. Add the nuts and toss to coat evenly. Add the sugar and cinnamon (optional) and stir until incorporated. Spread on paper and allow to cool.

Yields
2 cups of nuts (plenty more than enough for the green beans recipe)

Total time
5 minutes

Cleanup rating 2/10
Only one bowl (and disposable paper) but it's a sticky mess of a bowl.

Difficulty rating 2/10
Stupid easy, just don't burn your fingers on the bowl.

Flavor rating 6/10
They're pretty good, but if I were going to eat them by themselves, I'd change something... I just don't know what.

Adjustability: low
You could add other spices, but there isn't much to this recipe, so there isn't much you can change.

Make it with...
Obviously, with the green bean recipe above. But you could put these on salads or eat them as a snack.

Pineapple & Soy Sauce Chicken

Pineapple Soy Sauce Chicken

Ingredients

two boneless, skinless chicken breasts

can of pineapple juice (a little less than a cup)

1/2 cup of soy sauce

1/3 cup of brown sugar

Equipment

slow cooker

Instructions

Put it all in a slow cooker and cook on low for 6-8 hours (6 for fresh, 8 for frozen).

Yields

two servings

Total time

6-8 hours (negligible prep time)

Cleanup rating 4/5

Sticky juices in a slow cooker? Yuck. But there aren't little pieces of things to scrape off the slow cooker, so that's a plus.

Flavor rating 5/10

It was okay. The chicken was a little dry because it had to cook longer than was ideal due to our work/school schedules yesterday, and I think the sauce needed something. Maybe a little orange? I don't know. But it was edible and we ate it. Adding some of the sauce to the rice made it a little better.

Difficulty rating 1/10

You saw the instructions section, right? Stupid easy.

Adjustability: low

If you change this much, it will be a different recipe. But like I said, it needs something to fix it.

Make it with...

We had white rice with it, which went really well. I planned on sauteeing some bell pepper to add a veggie to the mix but I was hungry when I got home so we just ate without the veggie.

Kitchenventory
Everything in this recipe belongs in my kitchenventory. Chicken breasts are a common staple of our diet, soy sauce and brown sugar are always in the cabinet, and we almost always have pineapple juice on hand for mixing drinks.

Skillet Potatoes

I cam here thinking I was just going to post a nice picture of tonight's dinner, but I discovered - to my surprise - that I had not yet posted the recipe for skillet potatoes! So instead, that's what you get tonight. I also made chicken (with Parmesan and salt and pepper and garlic powder) and zucchini (with Parmesan and salt and pepper and dried garlic and dried onion) but the recipe is skillet potatoes, which are... just amazing. I'm astonished that I haven't posted this yet.

Skillet Potatoes

Adapted from here

Ingredients

a pound of Yukon gold potatoes (that was about 5 of them)

half an onion, diced

1 Tbsp and 1 Tbsp of vegetable oil

salt

1 Tbsp minced garlic

Equipment
microwave-safe bowl, microwave, skillet, stove

Instructions
Peel and dice your potatoes and put them in the microwave-safe bowl. Toss them with a tablespoon of oil and some salt. Microwave for 10 minutes, stirring after each minute or two. Add minced garlic and onions and toss. Heat a tablespoon of oil in a skillet and add potatoes. Cook for a few minutes until they start to brown, then stir/flip until potatoes are browned and your life is delicious.

Yields
two big servings (I really like potatoes... a whole skillet of these sounds like a serving to me)

Total time
about 20 minutes

Cleanup rating 2/5
You have a couple dishes to do here (cutting board, microwave bowl, skillet, etc.) and they're all oily, but it isn't that bad.

Flavor rating 9/10
Have I ever given anything a 10/10? If so, this is probably a 10 instead of 9. It's really amazing and delicious and makes me so happy.

Difficulty rating 6/10
You have to be very present (taking something out of the microwave and stirring it every minute for ten minutes takes a lot of attention, plus the whole skillet thing requires a bit of presence).

Adjustability: low
Other than adding seasonings or maybe some other vegetables, there isn't much else you can do to this. The original said you could use red potatoes instead but I like peeling Yukon golds.

Make it with...
Everything. Or nothing. Just make them. Always. Now. Go make them. Right now.

French Onion Soup

French Onion Soup

Ingredients

3 large yellow onions (slice 'em up)

4 Tbsp butter

1 cup white wine (I used pinot grigio)

42 oz beef broth

Salt and pepper

bread

shredded cheese (I used Gouda)

Equipment

slow-cooker, skillet, stove

Instructions

Melt the butter in the skillet. Add onions and saute until they're soft and a little bit browned. Add the wine. Pour it into the slow-cooker with the beef broth, and a dash of salt and pepper. Cook on low for 4-5 hours. Toast the bread lightly. Serve in bowls with bread on top, cheese on top of that, and add a little more soup on top of the cheese to melt it all together.

Yields

4-6 bowls of soup

Total time

4.5 hours: About 15 minutes of prep, 4 hours in the slow-cooker, 10 minutes to finish off

Cleanup rating 4/5

Slow-cooker recipes always have higher cleanup ratings. We didn't like this enough to keep the leftovers, so I strained the liquid out of it with a colander into the sink, and threw out the remaining onion pieces. Plus you have more dishes than you normally get from a slow-cooker recipe: skillet, knife and cutting board, and the five billion tears from cutting up so much onion at once.

Difficulty rating 3/10

There are many steps, but none of them are particularly difficult. You do need to try to get the onion slices approximately the same size for even cooking, but that's probably the trickiest part.

Flavor rating 4/10

Meh. I don't really know what went wrong with it, but it just wasn't very good. The wine flavor was pretty strong, which is not what I want out of a French onion soup. I think that was the biggest problem. I would cut down on the wine.

Adjustability: low

There isn't much to French onion soup. There's onions, liquid, then bread and cheese. It's rare for "peasant food" to not be very adjustable, but this one doesn't have much of anywhere to go. Different onions, different wine, different broth, different bread, different cheese, but they're all the same basic ingredients. For what it's worth, the gouda worked really well, even though the original recipe suggested Swiss.

Make it with...

I made it with beer mushrooms, sauteed beer brats with garlic, and potatoes. It could be its own meal, or go with all sorts of things.

Beer Mushrooms

You know what's awesome? Beer. You know what else is awesome? Mushrooms. But guess what wasn't double-awesome? These beer mushrooms. They were okay.

Beer + mushrooms = beer mushrooms

That's them, on the right, with beer brats and potatoes.

Ingredients

8 oz mushrooms

2 Tbsp butter

1/2 cup beer

salt and pepper

Equipment

skillet, stove

Instructions

Melt butter in a skillet. Add mushrooms. Add beer. Cook for about 30 minutes, letting the mushrooms absorb all the beer. Salt and pepper to taste.

Yields

3-4 servings

Total Time
about 30 minutes

Cleanup rating 2/5
The thing about making something with a lot of butter and leaving it in the pan while you eat dinner is that it gets that fatty stuff all over the pan. I think it's kind of gross, but it's easy to clean up.

Difficulty rating 2/10
Patience factors into difficulty, which is the only reason this isn't a 1/10.

Flavor rating 3/10
Meh. I like mushrooms. I like beer. (At least, I like the beer I used for this.) I didn't really like this.

Adjustability: low
Use a different beer (the original recipe recommended a stout, maybe that was part of my problem) or use different mushrooms, maybe add some other herbs/seasonings, but that's about all you can do.

Make it with...
I made this to go along with French onion soup, sauteed beer brats with garlic, and potatoes (they were sliced this time to make them cook a little faster). You could make them with just about anything... chicken, pork, beef, vegetarian meals, whatever.

Game of Thrones Dinner: Honeyed Chicken and Spiced Squash

I know, I disappeared from this blog for a while... Sorry! But I haven't been cooking as much because I've been doing... everything else.

Last Saturday, Beth and Chris and I entered a cosplay contest at Tidewater Comicon... and we won best group! In celebration of our cosplay (Melisandre, Margaery, and Oberyn) I wanted to make an easy dinner for everyone from the Inn at the Crossroads. I wanted to make olive bread but the timing didn't work out very well, so this is what we wound up with:

I made a pressed-for-time (some might call it "lazy") version of Honeyed Chicken. I cheated and used pre-made rotisserie chickens, but I made the sauce. I also made Spiced Squash with it (I used the modern recipe, but used butternut squash that was growing in the yard so I wouldn't have to buy acorn squash). And to pull it all together, I threw together a green salad out of what the in-laws had growing outside: a couple different types of lettuce, spinach, tomato, and some red onion Birk chopped up while I was out picking everything else.

Sauce for Honeyed Chicken

from Inn at the Crossroads

Ingredients

1/2 cup apple cider vinegar

1/3 cup honey

dash of mint (I had to use dried)

handful of raisins

1 Tbsp butter

Equipment

saucepan, spoon, measuring cup, stove

Instructions

Combine everything in a pan and cook until the raisins start to plump. Pour it over the chicken when it's done. (Yes, it's that simple!)

Yields

I actually doubled the recipe since, as you can see in the photo, I had two chickens. (I was channeling the Hound, I guess.) But the recipe makes plenty for one full chicken.

Total time

For the sauce, maybe 10 minutes total. I was reheating the chickens so that took about 30 minutes.

Cleanup rating 2/5

I expected something with this much honey to be a huge mess, but it wasn't bad. I recommend cleaning out your pan pretty quickly though, because it does that thing where the fat floats on the top if you don't use all the sauce, and I think that's kinda gross. And rinse out your measuring cup with really hot water right after you measure the honey, and that'll be less of an issue later.

Difficulty rating 2/10

It's a really simple recipe. Even if you had to roast a chicken from scratch, I wouldn't put this over a 5/10. The timing is easy, the cooking is easy... you do need to be able to keep an eye on it, but I had Birk around for that.

Flavor rating 6/10

I thought it was a little heavy on the apple cider vinegar, but everyone else said it was good. I think it went really well with the already-seasoned rotisserie chicken, so the flavor plays well with others. And I'm pretty sure some of the vinegariness went away as the sauce cooled.

Adjustability: low

Other than adding herbs, I don't know how I could change this, but I also don't know why I would. It's basic and yummy.

Make it with...

Obviously, chicken. I don't see any reason you couldn't make it with turkey instead. I wouldn't use it with other meats, or with anything other than poultry.

Spiced Squash

from Inn at the Crossroads

Ingredients
a squash (I used butternut)
1/2 cup maple syrup
1/4 tsp nutmeg
1 tsp cinnamon
1/4 tsp allspice (I skipped this because we didn't have any)

Equipment
sauce pan, stove, baking sheet, oven

Instructions
Cut up the squash into approximately 1" pieces. Preheat the oven to 375F. Heat the maple syrup in a pan with the spices for about 3 minutes, stirring constantly (do not let it boil). Remove it from the heat. Arrange your squash pieces on a baking sheet (I highly recommend lining it with foil first). Pour the sauce over the squash, coating the pieces as evenly as possible. Bake until tender, about 20 minutes. If you managed to reserve any sauce, heat it in the last few minutes and pour it over the squash when you take it out of the oven.

Yields
Two fairly big butternut squashes fed me and five friends, and the sauce was just the right amount.

Total time
This only took about half an hour, with Birk cutting up the squash while I worked on the sauce for the chicken.

Cleanup rating 2/5
Not bad, but you are heating maple syrup in a pan. I'd recommend using all the sauce on the squash to begin with, and cleaning the pan immediately, while the squash is in the oven. And if you follow my advice about lining the baking sheet with foil, it'll make it 10x better.

Difficulty rating 3/10
I learned that butternut squash is pretty tough to cut; it's kind of like a sweet potato. Beyond that, this is a very simple recipe... it's like a sweet version of my potatoes!

Flavor rating 7/10
I don't eat a lot of squash, but maybe I should start. This was really good. It's excellent for fall weather! I think I might mount an effort to get squash everywhere instead of pumpkin. (Nothing against pumpkin, I'm just not a big fan of it in everything... just pie, really.)

Adjustability: low
There are only so many spices that would go well on a squash, and there are only so many types of squash, and that's all you could really change, because that's all you're using.

Make it with...
Of course, I made it with the honeyed chicken, which was an amazing combination. But I think you could make it with anything that you consider a fall or winter meal. It's a side dish that plays well with others. And it's an excellent and easy vegan dish if you have guests with dietary considerations at the holidays. (It's also gluten-free unless you have a really weird maple syrup.)

Olive Bread

Beth and Chris and Christopher made this (among other delicious things) for my bachelorette party. Several weeks back, Tara mentioned how good it was, and something along the lines of how you can't find bread like that in stores or anything. So I thought I'd make some to bring for dinner this past weekend!

Ignore the Little Visitor Damson... Turns out I forgot to take a photo of just the bread.

Olive Bread

from Inn at the Crossroads
Ingredients
6.5 cups flour
1.5 Tbsp yeast
1.5 Tbsp kosher salt
1 Tbsp honey
1/4 cup olive oil
2 3/4 cup lukewarm water
1 cup chopped pitted Kalamata olives
1 sprig chopped rosemary
1/4 cup corn meal

Equipment
LARGE bowl, plastic wrap, oven, baking sheet

Instructions
In the bowl, combine 1/2 cup of the flour, yeast, and 1 cup of the water. Let it sit for 10 minutes. (I used this time to chop the olives up.) Add the salt, honey, oil, rest of the flour and water. Mix (I used a spoon) until the dough starts to come together; add olives and rosemary. Keep mixing until all the loose flour is incorporated. Cover loosely with plastic wrap. Let it rise for 1.5 hours. (It's supposed to expand a lot, so have a bowl big enough for that! Mine didn't expand THAT much, but I spilled some yeast...)
Dust two baking sheets with corn meal. Divide the dough (it should be sticky) into pieces (I did half; if yours rises more, thirds works too) and pull the edges under until you have a ball-shape. Set them on the baking sheets. Let them rise another 30 minutes while you preheat the oven to 450F. Slash the tops with a serrated knife (I totally forgot to do this and it wasn't devastating). Place them in the oven and bake for 30 minutes. The crust should be medium brown (see photo) and firm (I tapped it with a table knife and got a lovely hollow-ish sound).

Yields
I made two loaves; I believe when Beth made it, she got three.

Total time
about 3 hours

Cleanup rating 4/5
The dough is sticky, both of my loaves stuck a tiny bit to the pan, and you have to measure some messy stuff (I got flour everywhere, somehow, and honey is always a pain, though delicious).

Difficulty rating 6/10
For bread, this is insanely easy. It's a no-knead bread, and I managed to ace it on my first try, so it really is ridiculous how easy it is... for bread. But it's an involved process with lots of steps, and whenever you're baking, you have to be very accurate with your measuring.

Flavor rating 8/10
I love this stuff. But I like olives. Birk doesn't like olives; he isn't fond of this bread. Should go without saying, I suppose. The original post says you won't have a single bite without an olive bit in it, and I have found this to be absolutely true. You've got a basic white bread with a great crust (not thick, not hard) and salty little olive bits everywhere, and a hint of rosemary.

Adjustability: low
Maybe someone who's more accustomed to making bread would be able to adjust this recipe more, but this is the first time I've made real bread. (Sure, I made that honey beer bread, but that felt more like a hybrid biscuit-and-cake.) Maybe there are other things with similar density to olives that you could put in the dough? Use something other than rosemary to flavor it? I'm not really sure.

Make it with...
By chance, it went perfectly with what we had for dinner Saturday (a sausage-tomato-cream sauce on rigatoni). It's also a wonderful stand-alone snack. If I were having a wine-and-cheese party, I'd slice this up and set it right next to the cheese plate. It's a hearty bread but not terribly filling, so it goes with a ton of things.

Churro Bites

I made these as a quick-and-easy dessert to take to dinner with friends, since I was also busy making olive bread as a surprise for them.

Churro Bites
inspired by this post

Ingredients
box of angel food cake mix (or if you have a good recipe, make one from scratch)
several Tbsp cinnamon (throw in some Vietnamese cinnamon if you want it strong!)
several Tbsp sugar

Equipment
oven and cake pan (if you need to make your cake), cutting board, knife, bowl

Instructions
Make your angel food cake according to package instructions. Allow it to cool completely. Mix sugar and cinnamon in a bowl. Cut the cake into bite-sized cubes. Roll each cube thoroughly in the sugar and cinnamon (tap them to shake off the excess).

Yields
a whole cake's worth

Total time
about an hour; check the instructions on your cake box; mine took 30 minutes, and I let it cool for about 30 minutes outside of the pan

Cleanup rating 3/5
You'll get cinnamon and sugar everywhere, but that's relatively easy to clean up. Other than that, you only have a few things to clean (bowl, pan, knife, cutting board). My hands always get a thin stickiness on them from working with angel food cake, though. Wash everything thoroughly! (Like you should anyway.)

Difficulty rating 3/10
Any idiot can bake an angel food cake. (You literally preheat the oven, mix the box of powder with the prescribed amount of water, pour it into a pan, and put it in the oven.) Letting it cool is a matter of not doing things, and cutting it up is less difficult than I expected (I had a fantastically sharp knife, though). Just don't try to rub your eyes while your fingers are coated in cinnamon. Not a good idea.

Flavor rating 7/10
Angel food is my favorite cake (it's like a giant, fluffy, marshmallow... but cake!) and I love cinnamon sugar, so this is pretty awesome. The original recipe called for frying the cake cubes in oil, which would have given them that awesome crispy churro texture, but I had neither the time nor the inclination to fry them. Some of the feedback I got (all positive) was that they're strong, and you so often get cinnamon-flavored desserts that barely taste like cinnamon at all. (I shared the secret: Vietnamese cinnamon.)

Adjustability: low
I don't know what else to do to these things. You could fry them like in the original post, or make an icing to drizzle on top or dip in, but that's about all I can think of. If you use a different type of cake, it would probably get too crumbly.

Make it with...
Everything. I originally decided to make them when we were going to have fish tacos for dinner, but it worked equally well with sausage-tomato-cream sauce and rigatoni. It would work with just about anything, I think. Or as a stand-alone dessert.

Honey Mustard Dressing

I can't even try to introduce this one. I found it in an image on Pinterest (from Spark People but the image is here). Everything I want to say belongs in a section below, so here we go... honey mustard dressing.

Honey Mustard Dressing

Ingredients

1 1/2 Tbsp olive oil

3 Tbsp plain Greek yogurt

1/4 cup balsamic vinegar

1 Tbsp soy sauce

1 1/2 Tbsp Dijon mustard

1 1/2 Tbsp honey

Equipment

bowl, whisk

Instructions

Combine ingredients in a bowl and whisk until thoroughly incorporated.

Yields

Enough for maybe 4-5 salads? Maybe about 1/3 cup?

Total time

5 minutes

Cleanup rating 2/5

Lots of liquids to be measured so you need to clean your Tbsp several times (or have a bunch of them on hand and clean them all after).

Difficulty rating 1/10

Mix things in a bowl? That's literally all it is. Mix things in a bowl.

Flavor rating 5/10

What a weird honey mustard. Yeah, there's honey in it... and mustard, too. But that much balsamic vinegar makes it very weird, and the Greek yogurt is a little apparent for my tastes. Birk really liked it, which I guess is great, but I don't think I'll repeat this one. When I brought Birk his plate, he said, "I thought you were going to make honey mustard?" So it's obviously not your usual honey mustard... but not bad.

Adjustability: low

I wouldn't have a clue how to change this. I'd just find a new recipe if I wanted something different.

Make it with...

Well, it was good on our salad, which it was intended for. It might be good drizzled on fresh bread, too.

Bonus photos: Dinner was avocado chicken with potatoes and salad made of lettuce from our planter, cucumber, and homemade croutons.

Skillet Corn

I forgot to take a photo of this one. So I'm borrowing the photo from here, which is where I got the recipe from.

From here

Before I made this, I didn't really know what creamed corn was. It just brought to mind a tin can of gelatinous goo with corn in it. (Turns out, I wasn't far off on that count.) But I described to a coworker this corn that I made over the weekend, and she said it sounded like creamed corn. So I guess creamed corn is actually pretty good. At any rate, the original recipe poster called this skillet corn, which sounds way more delicious than "creamed corn."

Skillet Corn

Ingredients

3 cups corn

1/2 tsp salt

pepper to taste

1 Tbsp sugar (I'm fairly certain I accidentally left this out)

1/2 cup water

1 Tbsp flour

1/4 cup milk

Equipment

skillet with lid, stove

Instructions

Put corn, salt and pepper, sugar, butter, and water in 10" skillet. Cover; simmer 15 minutes (stir occasionally). Combine flour with milk. Stir into corn. Cook another 5 minutes, stirring constantly.

Yields

about 3 cups of corn

Total time

20 minutes (negligible prep time, 15 minutes to simmer and 5 minutes to finish it off)

Cleanup rating 2/5

All you have to clean is a pan, spoon, and whatever bowl you put the corn in. And the measuring cup. Nothing sticky or anything; very simple.

Difficulty rating 3/10

Just make sure you stir constantly after you add the milk; I'm always very wary after adding milk to a hot pan because I know it can do weird, disgusting things. The rest is incredibly easy.

Flavor rating 5/10

Yum. It might have been better if I had remembered the sugar, but it was still good. It went perfectly with burgers and hot dogs on a beautiful-weather Father's Day.

Adjustability: low

I don't know what else you could do to it.

Make it with...

Well, like I said, it went great with cookout food. But it would also work with... pretty much anything. Chicken, beef, pork, whatever.

Maple Cookies

Happy Fathers' Day, everyone!

You know what I love about making cookies as gifts for people? I get to taste test them.

My dad loves a good maple bar, so when I ran across a maple cookie recipe on Pinterest, I thought they might make a good gift for him.

Maple Cookies

Ingredients
1/2 cup butter (softened)
1/2 cup brown sugar
1 egg
1/2 cup maple syrup
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
2 cups flour
2 Tbsp sugar

Equipment
oven, mixer, baking sheet, cooling rack

Instructions
In a large bowl, cream butter and brown sugar. Add the egg, syrup, and vanilla; mix until combined. Add soda, salt, and flour; mix until combined. Refrigerate for about an hour. Preheat oven to 350 F. Put sugar in a small bowl. Shape dough into 1" balls and flatten slightly; dip one side in sugar and set on greased baking sheets (sugar-side up). Bake 8-10 minutes. Cool on wire rack.

Yields
2 dozen cookies

Total time
90 minutes (a few minutes to mix everything, 1 hour to refrigerate, a few minutes to roll into balls, 10 minutes each for two batches to bake)

Cleanup rating 2/5
As long as you can manage to not get syrup everywhere while you're measuring, this is only as messy as a basic sugar cookie (simple enough to get the batter off the bowl and beaters, throw your measuring implements in the dishwasher, you're done).

Difficulty rating 3/10
The hardest part is creaming the butter and sugar, which is so easy.

Flavor rating 6/10
They're pretty good. They don't have a strong flavor (which I prefer, personally) but they're nice. I used light brown sugar, so that probably makes a difference.

Adjustability: low
I don't know what I could do to change this recipe. Maybe some kind of frosting to make it sweeter, or throw some walnuts in there?

Make it with...
Nothing, they're cookies. If I were a coffee drinker, I might think they go well with coffee... I'm not sure.

Dipping Sauce for Dumplings

This is the incredibly easy sauce I made to go with our chicken dumplings. It almost doesn't even call for a separate post. But here it is!

Dumpling Dipping Sauce

Ingredients
2 Tbsp honey
1.5 Tbsp hoisin sauce
1.5 Tbsp orange marmalade

Equipment
bowl, spoon

Instructions
Mix the ingredients together in a bowl. (Told you it was easy.)

Yields
Um... about 5 Tbsp of sauce. Based on math.

Total time
5 minutes

Cleanup rating 3/5
It's sticky and you don't want to let it sit overnight or it will be harder to clean.

Difficulty rating 1/10
You saw the instructions, right?

Flavor rating 8/10
YUM. I like sweet sauces, so I love it. Maybe a little less honey is called for. It was delicious though.

Adjustability: low
I'm sure you can mess with this one, but I don't know what I would do with it.

Make it with...
Well, the dumplings, of course. It would make a nice dipping sauce for most Chinese-style foods, really. Or just plain stuff, like grilled chicken or steamed veggies.

Bonus photos:

Lime Cake

Let's talk lime cake. I made this for Game of Thrones night! Everyone said it was good (and I agree). (Apologies for the photo... I forgot to take a picture when it was still whole... so this is the piece I took to work the day after.)

Lime Cake

Ingredients
1 cup sugar
2 1/2 Tbsp butter (room temperature)
2 eggs, well beaten
juice of 1 lime
1 1/2 cups flour
2 1/4 tsp baking powder
powdered sugar

Equipment
mixer, oven, 8"x8" square cake pan

Instructions
Preheat oven to 350F. Cream the sugar and butter. Add the eggs and lime juice and mix thoroughly. Add the flour and baking powder and mix thoroughly. Pour (my experience was more like "drop") into your greased and floured cake pan (I had to spread it evenly with a spoon, so do that if you need to). Bake 25 minutes (inserted toothpick should come out clean). Let it cool for a few minutes in the pan, then turn out onto a cooling rack to finish cooling. Sprinkle with powdered sugar before it's completely cooled (it will stick better if it's a little warm).

Yields
I don't know, an 8"x8" cake.

Total time
About 45 minutes (maybe a little longer if you forgot to get your butter up to room temp before you get started). It takes a little while to get the butter and sugar creamed (unless I'm doing it wrong).

Cleanup rating 2/5
Remember my rule about rating cleanup of things that involve powdered sugar? That applies here. Also, I didn't cool my cake on the cooling rack so it kind of stuck to the plate but still, not a biggie.

Difficulty rating 4/10
The most difficult thing about this recipe is creaming the sugar and butter (not my favorite thing in the world to do). Remember: I use a hand mixer. So that contributes. But you have to get the batter spread evenly in the pan or it's probably not going to turn out well for you.

Flavor rating 8/10
YUM. Everyone seemed pretty happy about this one. It almost totally disappeared, which is a good thing for cake.

Adjustability low
At least, as far as I know, it's low. The original recipe recommended garnishing with chopped peanuts, which I planned on doing, but I had no peanuts. I want to look into some kind of honey sauce I could put on top... but still, options are limited.

Make it with...
My coworker Missi was the lucky recipient of my other leftover piece that came to work with me, and she said it was screaming for coffee (not in the way that it's dry but in the way that it would pair extremely well with coffee). I don't drink coffee, so I wouldn't know, but I'll take her word for it. I think it would go really well with some fresh strawberries too.