How to make butter at home

I made my boyfriend and I some popcorn the other night, and we like melted butter on our popcorn (I know, who doesn't, right?)

Well the popcorn was all made (hot air poppers rock!) and I melted some butter. When I went to pour some on the popcorn, I noticed the butter didn't smell right. I thought it was just me though, so I put some on the popcorn anyways. We took a bite of the popcorn and we both looked at each other and said "eww!" The butter had an awful taste to it.

I went into the kitchen to double check the date on the butter. It didn't expire for another month. So apparently, the butter was rancid somehow. How this could have happened, I have no idea.

This made me look into making my own butter. Butter is expensive, and I'm tired of it going to waste. It seems like sticks of butter go to waste a lot more than butter (or spread) in a tub.

So I found out you only need one ingredient to make your own butter: Heavy Whipping Cream.

We went to BJ's last night and bought a quart of heavy whipping cream. I just emptied it in my Viking mixer and let it get to work. After a few minutes, the Heavy Whipping Cream turned really thick, like this:



This is only stage one. It goes through many stages. Keep whipping it, and it turns to, well, you probably guessed - whipped cream.



But you have to resist your urges to just stop at Whipped Cream and add it to your favorite desserts :) Keep whipping!



It starts to thicken a little more and starts to turn yellow. It's still way too soft though, so keep whipping!



It is starting to look more and more like butter! But you have to keep whipping until it starts to liquify a bit. The butter will separate from the cream, making you buttermilk. Keep whipping!





And here you can see how the butter is starting to "crumble" and you have the crumbly butter, and the liquid buttermilk. Now you are ready to start squeezing out the buttermilk from the butter! You can use a cheesecloth to lay out the butter and squeeze out all the buttermilk that you can. (You can save the buttermilk if you'd like to use it for something else). I didn't have any cheesecloth, so I just used a fine strainer to squeeze out as much buttermilk as I could. The more buttermilk you can squeeze from it, the longer your butter will last.

The best way to get the buttermilk out of your butter is by "rinsing" it with ice water. Pour ice water in with your butter, squeeze the butter, and pour out the milky white liquid. Keep repeating this until your water is clear. Then you know you have all of your buttermilk out of your butter.

When you get as much buttermilk squeezed of the butter that you can - you have two options. Put it back in the blender and gently blend in some salt, if you like salted butter. Otherwise, you are ready to put it in your container and start using it! I do like salted butter, so I put in a little salt, and then put it in my glass jar container.



It came out so smooth, creamy and delicious!! I just may never buy regular butter in the stores again. Well, unless I have a REALLY good coupon, that is :)

This process should take less than 10 minutes to make if your Heavy Cream is room temperature when you start. The colder it is, the longer it will take to break down. But since the mixer did all the work, I was able to do other things while it was making it's magic. I weighed the butter, and one quart of heavy whipping creamed gave me 14 oz of butter. (Almost one pound!) This will last us for quite a while!

If you try this, let me know how it turned out for you!

Home made crispy Tortilla Pizza

 

BF texted me a little while before he came home for lunch and requested Tortilla Pizzas for lunch.  Soo.. I figured while I was making them I'd post the recipe and directions for you guys, since this is so yummy and easy to make!

Get out all your pizza ingredients.

You will need:

Flour Tortillas (any size you like), Sauce, cheeese, and any toppings you like.

I actually prefer mine without sauce, so you can make them that way too.

First, you need flour tortillas, you can use any size.  Place them on aluminum foil and then on a cookie sheet.

Then place them in the BROILER in your oven.  Keep a close eye on them.  When one side gets slightly crispy, flip them over until the other side is also crispy.

When they are crispy on both sides, take out of the broiler.  Add your sauce and any toppings you like.

Wrap the edges of the tortillas in aluminum foil, because they tend to burn.  Then place back in the BROILER until all the cheese has melted and they are done to your liking.

When they are done to your liking, remove from broiler, unwrap the aluminum foil from the edges, and devour!   They are SO yummy!!

They are light, thin, crispy, and oh-so-delicious!

Enjoy!

Recipe: Homemade italian chicken soup

My grandma is from Italy, and I spent a LOT of time growing up around her, watching her in the kitchen, learning to cook just like her!  Other than her sauce, this was probably her most requested dish.  Her chicken soup!

You can make it just as is, or pour it over egg noodles, but in my family we pour it over rice!  Brown rice is my favorite with this.

Here's the recipe:

• Clean chicken with cold water and salt.  I put in a whole chicken - you can put in chicken pieces if you'd rather, but you want the skin on, as it gives the soup more flavor.
• Fill a large pan with water, and bring it to a boil.
• Slice carrots (I put in 2 small bags of mini carrots), celery, and put in whole onion - not cut up. (I skip the onion & celery)
• Put chicken in boiling water with the following:
• Dash of crushed mint
• Tbsp of Italian Seasonings
• Tbsp of Parsley flakes
• 4 Tbsp salt
• 1 Teaspoon pepper
• 1/2 of a tiny can of tomato sauce
• Meatballs:
• 1 Lb Hamburg
• 2 Cups bread crumbs
• Handful of parmesan cheese
• Tsp of italian seasonings
• 2 Tbsp garlic powder
• 2 eggs
• salt, pepper
• Roll meatballs into tiny balls, put in boiling soup.  Add handful cheese on top of soup and stir.  Simmer for a few hours.
• Pour over rice and devour!

If using a pressure cooker, just toss all ingredients at the same time into the pressure cooker, and cook on pressure 60-70 for 70 minutes.

Enjoy!

Grilled Ground Beef Gyros

Recipe:

Grilled Ground Beef Gyros

Ingredients:

1 (8 ounce) container plain yogurt
1/3 cup chopped seeded cucumber
2 tablespoons finely chopped onions (I did omit since we don’t like onions)
1 garlic clove, minced
1 teaspoon sugar
Filling
1 lb lean ground beef (or you can use ground turkey)
1 1/2 teaspoons dried oregano
1 teaspoon garlic powder
1 teaspoon onion powder
1 teaspoon salt
3/4 teaspoon pepper
4 pita breads (store-bought or you can try my easy bread machine pita)
3 cups shredded lettuce
large tomato, chopped
1 small onion, chopped

Directions:

1 In a bowl, combine first 5 ingredients. Cover and refrigerate. In separate bowl, combine ground beef and seasonings. Mix well. Shape into 4 patties. Grill, covered, over medium to high heat for 10 to 12 minutes or until meat is no longer pink, turning once. Cut patties into thin slices. Stuff into pitas. Add lettuce, tomato, and onion. Serve with yogurt sauce.

Prep Time: 10 mins

Total Time: 22 mins

Recipe Source: Food.com

Chicken Tacos

I hate to admit it, but I didn't think tacos with anything other than hamburger would taste good.  I love chicken, but it never even occurred to me to try chicken tacos.  They just didn't sound that good to me at all.  But when my boyfriend and I were in CA visiting his family last year, his sister made us chicken tacos.  Other than the onions she put in them (yuck!) they were delish!  So we got the recipe from her and now we eat them about 2-3 times a week!

If you like onions, then dice some onions and cook them by themselves until they are caramelized, and then add the following ingredients.  If you don't like onions, then this is how we make them:

All you need is chicken breasts, garlic salt and pepper.  Yep, that's it!

Cut up your chicken breasts, I like to dice them into small pieces.  Sprinkle some garlic salt and pepper on them, and then put them in a hot pan with just a little bit of oil that is already hot.  We like canola oil, as it's healthier than vegetable oil.  Fry the chicken breasts and keep seasoning them with the garlic salt and pepper to taste. 

When the chicken is cooked it will look like this:

  

Now, while I'm cooking the chicken, my boyfriend is frying up some corn tortillas in canola oil.  I used to also think you could only eat processed shells like Ortega.  Wow, was I wrong.  These corn shells fried in oil are the BEST!!

The next and most important step - fill the taco shells, and devour!  My boyfriend likes cheese in his, I like mine just chicken and shells.  Fill with whatever you like.  You will love these!

Enjoy!

CHILI'S chips & salsa recipe!

So, my boyfriend and I are big fans of the restaurant Chili's.   We eat there maybe once or twice a month when possible.  We absolutely LOVE their tortilla chips & salsa.  So much in fact, that we even ordered some to bring home with us a couple of weeks ago.  The other night I decided to do some research and see if I could find their salsa recipe.  And bingo!  Found it.  And I can say this because we made this last night and it smelled and tasted just like we got it at Chili's!

For the chips you can buy chips already made in the stores, but Chris made these from fresh corn tortillas and they were DIVINE!  Just cut up some corn tortillas into triangles, and fry them in canola oil, and then let them drain on paper towels.  Salt if you like, but I actually prefer them unsalted.

And now for the salsa recipe!

Ingredients:

(1) 10 oz can of Ro-Tel

(1) 14.5 oz can whole peeled tomatoes (do NOT drain)

1 1/2 Tbsp finely diced raw jalapeno (include seeds only if you want the salsa hot!)

1/4 cup diced onion

3/4 tsp garlic salt

1/2 tsp cumin

1/4 tsp sugar

Directions:

1.  Place jalepenos and onions in a food processor and run for approx 5-10 seconds.  

2.  Add Ro-Tel, tomatoes, sugar and cumin.

3.  Process all ingredients until thin, but not completely pureed.  Just think of the consistency of Chili's Salsa and aim for that.

4.  Place in a covered container and shill for two hours.

5.  Serve with warm tortilla chips.

ENJOY!

2-Layer Easter Cake

I think this cake came out pretty good considering it was my first attempt at basket-weaving the frosting! This is a 2-layer chocolate cake with blue basket-weave frosting, green colored coconut and the eggs are made of fondant. I didn't have any jelly beans and was actually going to cover the whole cake in fondant but decided not to at the last minute, so just made eggs from some of the fondant.

The basket-weaves didn't come out exactly as I'd hoped, next time I'll be sure to do the vertical weaves first, place in the fridge, and when they harden I'll then do the rest. Lesson learned :)