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Chicken alfredo pizza - soooo goooooood!

I recently needed to clear up some space in the chest freezer, and so pulled out a BOGO chicken I'd had in there for awhile. Thawed it out, and decided to crockpot it for a change. That left me with A LOT of chicken meat to use up - so we've had it in a variety of things this past week. One of those was a really good chicken tetrazzini recipe, which I got from the surprisingly handy Rotisserie Chickens to the Rescue!, which I also got Sharon awhile back. If you like rotisserie chickens (they're fast, cheap, and tasty!), this book will give you some fun alternatives for when you're in a rut.

Now here's a recipe I DIDN'T get from the book, but maybe it should be in there! Just a little something I came up with, starting with inspiration from Joe over at Culinary in the Desert - chicken alfredo pizza.


I thawed out a blob of my favorite pizza dough, let it rise a bit, patted it out, and topped with with some jarred alfredo sauce, some crumbled bacon I'd nuked, some freshly teamed broccoli, pieces of the cooked chicken, some shredded mozzarella, the rest of the bacon and a little more alfredo and baked it up. YUM!

And I learned a handy new trick recently. If you use a pizza peel and a pizza stone, and like I used to do, manage to get cornmeal sprinkled all over your oven to burn when it's used to slide the pizza dough around - try this instead. Make your pizza on a piece of parchment paper on your pizza peel (or even the non-rimmed side of a cookie sheet), and slide the pizza + parchment paper onto the pizza stone. Then when it's time to come out, just lift the parchment paper up a bit (I find it doesn't feel hot to the touch) and slide it onto your peel. EASY!!

Hedge Apple Hills

So here's my big gift to mom for Christmas this year:


Hm. Doesn't look like much, eh? Well just wait - we'll get there. It was a bit of work, but definitely a fun process. It's been one of those things that took up enough time, and was something always at the back of my mind, or had me cutting out of work a little early to meet with the laser cutting crew, etc that I had a REALLY hard time NOT letting it slip to mom!

My mom owns some family land out in Kansas, which right now she rents out to her brother to farm it. While it wasn't exactly necessary, mom decided to name her land years back - kinda fun actually! Some of you may know what hedge apples are - they're also called osage oranges or monkey balls. Mom thinks they're cool, and I guess they're pretty common out in Kansas. Anyhow - she named her land Hedge Apple Hills, and a couple years back had me design a logo for it - just something she could put on her stationary, etc. Since mom's SO hard to shop for for Christmas, I decided to try turning that sign into some art for her - maybe something rustic looking, something that might've greeted you as you pulled onto her land.

After trying to make contact with some sort of metalsmith/artist months ago, checking with people I know here on campus, contacting artists on the web I've never even met (and never even heard back from!), finally someone on campus pointed me to someone else on campus, who pointed me in the direction of Steve Jordan who works in downtown Kent - less than five minutes from where I work, and just around the corner from my dentist. Cool!

So I met with Steve, and talked to him about what I wanted to do - turn my mom's logo into a metal sign. Turns out my initial ideas (bent wrought iron) and her logo weren't really going to work well together - that was fine, I figured I'd have to modify it. Steve also wasn't going to be able to do the initial work on mom's sign, but pointed me to Quick Service Welding - also in Kent, just a few minutes down the road. Who knew all these cool services were right here in town!?

After meeting with Jim and Spike at Quick Service, we decided I would modify the logo so that it could be laser cut from a single piece of metal. At first I worried this would look "cheap" compared to something constructed, twisted, shaped, etc from metal - but it was worth a shot. Jim had me create the revised logo in a vector format on my computer, which he converted in his CAD software to a format that would work with their laser cutter. Then Spike would take it from there.

And yes, he goes by Spike:


Here's part of the shop where they did the laser cutting...looks like grandpa Carl's old quonset where farming equipment and vehicles were kept!


And here's the computer station where the laser cutting was set up.


Yup, I said laser:


All of the guys I worked with on this project were REALLY cool. While they work more with machine parts, and constructing bigger heavy duty tools, I learned it wasn't so out of the ordinary to ask for something smaller and artsy like this. After we were finished, Spike showed me a slide show spotlighting some of the really cool projects they've worked on - a whale carrier for Shamoo, a giant popcorn popper, a grill, a holey table that chemical-soaked patients are put on to drain through, benches for football stadiums, and more! And they were all more than happy to let me take pictures and video during the whole process.

Here's Spike plunking a big piece of metal on the laser-cutting bed.


Annnnnd starting up the first part of the application that runs all the curves/lines out to the laser cutter...


And then the computer cycles through hundreds and hundreds of starting and ending points (ok, so I had a busy design!).


And there it goes!




Hm, doesn't look like much here, does it?


It was honestly really cool watching all this happen. Sparks were flying (but kept within the confined area), and the laser cutter just zipped along doing it's thing...


A really dark, hard-to-see-what's-going-on video of the laser cutting process, but you can hear me and Spike talking about what's happening:




Here's a cool shot of the almost-complete product.


As soon as the laser cutter was done, Spike knocked out a few loose piece of metal (letters and such that were cut out), and lifted it up - not hot at all!


And here's me with the sign - so the first part was complete!


Once I got it home it was interesting to put the pieces parts back together like a puzzle. I didn't ask to save any of the letter pieces - there would've been too many, most had fallen down into the collection tray beneath the laser cutter, and I'm sure many had starting-cuts in them that would've made them less attractive. But Spike let me grab the HAH and the tree silhoette - cool!


A week or so later I was finally able to get ahold of Steve Jordan - the original guy I met with on the project. Turns out he grew up in Kansas (where mom and dad are from, and pretty much all my relatives live), and knew exactly what a hedge apple was! He had shown me a couple other pieces he'd worked on, described some finishing techniques, and even did a couple different finishes on a piece of scrap metal to show me my options.


I finally settled on hammering of the tree - to sort of give it texture and make it look banged up. We agreed that maybe the rest of the sign didn't need the same texture effect.


And even more hammering!



After seeing a sample of forced rusting, I deciding to pass on that effect - so after the hammering and a quick soapy wash, Steve just gave the sign a coat of high-temp black paint, and then took a scruffy pad (similar to an SOS pad) and scuffed up the sign. Here's the sign pre-scuffing.


And here's Steve with the sign... It turns out I could've done everything Steve did - we have a heavy metal mallet at home, I actually used the same high-temp black paint on the smoker (per Dad's recommendation), I used an SOS pad to add a little extra scuffing once I got the sign home, and Steve told me what polycrylic sealant to use on the sign once it was all done. But I would've had NO CLUE where to start!! And to top it all off, Steve did all of this on his own time!! I made sure to give Steve a small payment to thank him for his work, and dropped off a plate of homemade cookies for him a couple days later, but I worry that wasn't enough for his time and effort.


This guy was really friendly and I think just wanted to help someone make a nice Christmas present for their mom - I had a great time meeting Steve and talking about everything from his metal work to farming out in Kansas and more... Hm...I probably should've taken his cute puppy Cinco some biscuits!

Anyhow, this posting is scheduled to publish Christmas morning. By the time you can read this, mom should have her sign. She's not getting much this year (she's incredibly hard to shop for, plus you know how the economy is tanking!), but hopefully a "homemade" piece of art will go over well. Although I wouldn't recommend taping it to the fridge! ;-)

COOOOOOOKIES!!!

Yup, it's that time of year - the time to cart big platters full of calories, I mean cookies, in to work!

As with each year, I want to make both the popular standbys AND try something new. The Christmas Martha Stewart Living magazine came out with some cool looking goodies. There was a recipe for chocolate ganache-filled chocolate thumbprints that didn't really intrigue me, but then we happened to watch an episode of her show where Paula Abdul came on and made them with Martha. Well, ok, Paula stood there and kinda stumbled around while Martha did most of the making. But that made the cookies look that much more appealing - so I gave them a try. I call them "Paula Abdul's Buttholes" and Brett thinks they should be called "Vicodin Dreams" (or was it "Vicodin Haze"?). Either way - I'm not sure I'd make these again. The chocolate flavor was a bit bitter for me, plus the recipe called for coarse salt in the dough, and it was really noticeable even after the cookies baked - they were a bit "mature" for my taste, while other folks at work said they liked them. Brett scarfed down a bunch too. They do LOOK nice!


And from the Great Cookies: Secrets to Sensational Sweets book I got earlier this year, I tried two recipes, one of which was these snowballs. They were GREAT, but I wish I would've made them a little smaller. They contain ground pecans, and are rolled in powdered sugar twice shortly after coming out of the oven.


The other recipe I tried from Great Cookies was a new version of snickerdoodles. Reallllly good, but I do wish they were taller/puffier. Oh well - still very tasty. (Peter made the snickerdoodle recipe from Martha Stewart's Cookies book - his first time making/eating snickerdoodles actually - and said they came out really puffy. So I might have to see if the recipe makes the difference, or if it was something I did...)


And then of course there's the holiday tradition in our family - chocolate crinkles. MMM! Last year I learned (the hard way) (what other way is there?) NOT to try and fancy these up and use a higher quality chocolate (such as Ghirardelli!) - just stick with the cheaper Baker's chocolates to get the really good taste in these cookies.


Oh, and here's what happens when I'm not telling Brett where all the cookies that I've already baked are stashed. Hm. Grumpy face!


I think I have a pretty good knack for using cookie dough efficiently, and cramming in as many cuts on a single roll-out of the dough before having to wad it up and re-roll, which runs the risk of toughening the cookies.


Why do I always save the decorating of the sugar cookies for last? I make their dough first, then make all these other cookies, THEN have to cut out and decorate these guys after I'm SICK of making cookies. Must rethink this!


However - I can't complain! It was a Christmas miracle - BRETT OFFERED TO HELP with the cookies! I love my Brett!!!


Now he did comment on how I wasn't making the cookie decorating fun - but it was 730 at night, I still had to assembled and bake a chicken alfredo pizza for our dinner (check back later for this!), and we hadn't started the cookie decorating yet! So I whizzed through with the green...


...and moved on to making the pizza, while he worked on the white and red frosting, which was much more meticulous. Seriously - could NOT have done these guys and had our dinner ready without Brett. THANK YOU HONEY!


And once we'd had dinner and let the frosting set on the cookies, Brett helped me assemble trays. He got all the plates and platters, I loaded 'em up, and then he wrapped them afterwards. Here's a tray that one of us would be taking to work the next day (and wow, how greasy does my hair look!?)


So just to recap - and because I didn't list EVERYTHING here that I made - there were snowball cookies...


...and cherry mash bar pieces...


...and chocolate crinkles...


...and sugar cookies...


...and peppermint bark...


...and snickerdoodles...


...and chocolate covered pretzels...


...and more, including three types of fudge that I made (need to remember not to add in some bittersweet chocolate next time - does NOT help the flavor!), and a mixture of non-pareils and other goodies.

Here's what the tray looked like the morning I took it in to work.


Annnnnd here's what it was looking like shortly before lunch. Wow! And we were short-staffed in our dept that day! Thankfully I have friends all over the library who were willing to come eat up the goodies! ;-)


And here's how they show their appreciation! (Thanks Tina!) ;-)

New project for Christmas Eve Feast - pt 5

Well I'm glad THAT'S as done as it can get before we leave tomorrow... Things were going real good up until the point of "frosting" the Yule Log and putting on the chocolate, and then it got a bit frustrating. Here's the log with both ends cut off at an angle (they get stuck on to look like chopped branches later). Sure there's exposed mousse, but that's to be covered with frosting/ganache.


The ganache took FOREVER to start firming up. You were supposed to melt the chocolate in the heated cream, chill it a short bit, and it would firm up. Only it took well over an hour. Then the instructions said to mix it until it became the texture of soft butter. Um. Ok. But won't that make it hard to frost a fragile cake?

MOST of the ganache went on ok, but then it started to thicken quite a bit, and was pulling at the cake. Didn't look awful, but it did turn really pale during the mixing stage. I drug fork tines through it to look like wood grain, as you often see done to Yule Logs, but because it was setting so much, that just tore up the frosting. Hm. Ok, well, it could be an undercoat texture because you were ALSO supposed to put on chocolate "bark" - melted chocolate that had been spread out thin to chill/harden, and then "rolled back and forth" in it's parchment paper to break it into long shards.

Mine didn't do that. I got lots of small shards - very few were long (and I only rolled my parchment paper in one direction, back and forth - not like I crumpled it). Hm. Alright, well, some trees have smaller pieces of bark...so I stuck 'em in all over, making sure to overlap - sort of like fish scales?

Brett said it sort of looks like an alien tree...


Yeah, I guess I can see that. Not much I can do for it now. I dusted it with a little powdered sugar after taking these pictures (not sure that helped matters), and will tuck some of the mushrooms in here and there once we're at Andy & Kelli's...


And I bet you love my classy foil-wrapped piece of cardboard. I had to cut something to size to fit in a long cake/cupcake carrier in the hopes it'll secure the log. Then I'll put that carrier down inside a tub with a lid, and will put bags of ice to either side of the cupcake carrier in the tub - to both anchor and chill it for the ride.

This should be fun.

Let's just hope it TASTES good! ;-)

New project for Christmas Eve Feast - pt 4

This was taken about an hour ago. The rolled up cake came out of the fridge (anyone remember the line "wrapped in plastic" from Twin Peaks!?)...


Then I unrolled the cake and massaged covered it in the chocolate mousse, which ended out tasting pretty good once chilled and firmed up.


As I rolled it back up, it cracked here and there. Years ago I freaked out when I had this happen making one of these things, but this time I just pretty much expected it. The whole thing's holding together pretty well as it is, and once encased in ganache/frosting, it should HOPEFULLY be more stable! The cracking just adds to the "naturalness" of the log.


It pooped:


Now the log's chillin' to firm up. Taking longer than the one hour the recipe recommended, but that's ok. Time for dinner now... Will post more once the thing's complete!