Chopped Challenge #6: Pierogies & Bacon-Wrapped Meatballs

For Chopped challenge #6, I gave Justin pierogies, turkey bacon, chicken bouillon, and beer. He likes to drink beer but isn't a huge fan of cooking with beer--he'll eat some stuff but can be pretty picky about it. I know that cooking with it was a bit of challenge for him then because he didn't want to do anything that would end up having a strong beer flavor. He decided to boil the pierogies in a mixture of beer and chicken bouillon and then fry them to brown them a little bit. Along with that, he made some homemade meatballs and wrapped them in the turkey bacon before baking them. He said that it wasn't the most elegant dish, but it was still pretty tasty. I especially enjoyed the meatballs. If you like a stronger beer flavor, feel free to cut down on the water or add another beer--these only have a mild hint of beer-ness to them. (Beer-ness is a word, right?)

Bourbon Pumpkin Seeds

Every year when Justin carves pumpkins for Halloween, he saves all the seeds to make some sort of snack for himself. The past few times, he's been disappointed with the result, so this year he tried 4 different options to come up with one he really liked. This one was his favorite, which I could have predicted since it has bourbon in the recipe.

Chopped Challenge #5, Part 3: Maple Bourbon Barbecue Sauce

I have to say, I really like this barbecue sauce. I'd never made homemade barbecue sauce before, and now I'm not really sure why. You just toss a bunch of stuff in a pot and let it cook down, stirring it occasionally. It's really easy, and you can make it taste like whatever you want really. I'm definitely going to make barbecue sauce more often now.

This sauce in particular is really sweet. I'm serious. There are 5 ingredients in there that have the main purpose of adding sweetness. A couple more add sweetness as well as other qualities. I also don't like my barbecue sauce to have a lot of spice to it, so if you're into that sort of thing, you might want to up the amount of cayenne you add or add in some other spicy ingredients.

Amaretto Bundt Cake

My mom used to make this cake fairly often. It's simple because it starts with boxed cake mix and also doesn't require frosting. It's also incredibly delicious if, like me, you love amaretto. Mom always used yellow cake and vanilla pudding mix, but I think it's just as good (and maybe better, actually) with chocolate cake and chocolate pudding mix. The recipe is the same either way, so feel free to experiment. I bet that a pineapple cake would be delicious with this recipe actually. I suppose you could also use other types of alcohol, too. You could make a screwdriver cake with orange cake mix and vodka or maybe a strawberry margarita cake with strawberry cake, a bit of lime juice, and tequila. If you give it a try, let me know how it works out.

Tiramisu

We were having one of Justin's coworkers over for dinner, for which I made my mom's spaghetti and meatballs. I wanted to make something Italian for dessert to go with it, and what's a better choice than tiramisu? It's really great for a dinner party or other special occasion because it seems fancy but is actually really easy to make at home, aside from the part where I had to drive all over town looking for ladyfingers. Additionally, for the best flavor you should make it the day before, also freeing up time to spend cooking the rest of your meal the day of.

Bourbon Bread Pudding

I came across this recipe on Bon Appetit's website while browsing around one day last year. Knowing that Justin's dad loves bread pudding and that we all love bourbon in just about anything, I decided that I would attempt to make this for Thanksgiving. I made it as the original recipe stated with the exception of leaving the crust on the bread and omitting the poppy seeds. It was insanely amazing. Justin's dad declared that I have to make it every time we come to visit. I talked him down to at least making it a new Thanksgiving tradition. It really was that good. (Confession time: I'd never had bread pudding before that. Every restaurant in New Orleans has bread pudding on their menu, but as a kid, why would you want to order a dessert with bread in the name when you could order something with ice cream, cookie, brownie, or cake in the name instead? Having had this as my first one, I judge all other bread puddings based on this one; they have a lot to live up to.)

Bourbon Chocolate Buttercream

It's a proven fact that alcohol makes everything better. Why have orange juice when you could have a mimosa? Why eat spaghetti sauce when you could have vodka sauce? Why eat plain, boring chocolate buttercream when you could have bourbon chocolate buttercream? Alcohol and food are best buds--they love to hang out together. Let's embrace their friendship!

As sad as I know you will be about this, I'm not going to be sharing the brownie recipe with you. I was trying out a new recipe from one of my many cookbooks; this one was supposedly voted New York's best several times (according to the author at least), but I don't get it. Either the people in NYC don't know what a brownie should taste like, or the author is crazy. These brownies had great chocolate flavor, but the texture was absolutely terrible. They were super dry and crumbly and not at all what a brownie should be. The only saving grace was the frosting that I made to put on the top. Therefore, I'm going to share the frosting recipe with you but not the brownie one. (You wouldn't like it if I did. Trust me.) You can use this on brownies, cake, cookies, cupcakes, or whatever else you can think of. This recipe made enough to put a fairly thick layer on top of an 8x8 pan of brownies. If you want to pipe it in big swirls on top of cupcakes, I'd suggest maybe making a double batch.

Chopped Challenge #1: Sausage & Herbed Polenta Cakes with Citrus-Tequila Rosé Sauce

Justin and I spent a lot of time watching Chopped on Food Network when we were living in Indiana. At some point, we decided that we should give it a try ourselves, but we never actually got around to it for whatever reason. We thought about it again recently and decided to actually try it this time. Our plan is to alternate who cooks and to do this once per grocery list (every two weeks or so).

For the challenge, one of us selects four ingredients that the other must use to cook dinner. We can use whatever other ingredients we want, and because right now we're telling the cook what the ingredients will be when we're making our grocery list, we can buy whatever extra supplies we need while we're at the store. (We don't have a lot of pantry space here, so we don't have a ton of extra, basic ingredients on hand usually.) The only two guidelines we really set up are that the four ingredients all have to be something we both eat--I can't make him cook with peas, and he can't make me cook with pumpkin--and they can't all four be super calorific, meaning we can't pick butter, bacon, heavy cream, and maple syrup. Lol.

Boozy Wedding Cake Ice Cream

A while back Justin found an article about how Valerie Lum and Jenise Addison had come up with a way to make alcoholic ice cream. Not ice cream with a flavor similar to your favorite alcohol. Not ice cream with a hint of your favorite alcohol in it. We're talking about ice cream that can contain a cup of hard liquor, coming in around 13-proof, which makes its alcoholic content approximately equal to wine. What a genius idea!