Grill Pans, Birthday Cake, and Indian Food

Don't let my lack of posting fool you; the baby birds are not starving. I really do enjoy trying new recipes and have even found a few that we now use in our regular rotation. The thing that I really don't do very well is blog about them. So here you go, another multi-recipe post of a few things I've tried that might be worth mentioning. I'll start with the ones I remembered to photograph:

First up: Grilled Chicken and Pineapple Quesadillas. I saw these on the Pioneer Woman's site quite a while ago but never made them because I didn't have a grill pan and we've had some issues with our outdoor grill. But finally my curiosity about the prospect of indoor grilling got the best of me and I purchased this grill pan. The quesadillas were the first thing I made with it.

The grill pan verdict: I'm actually pretty surprised at what good results this turned out. I guess I had always just assumed that grilling on my electric range could never come close to outdoor grilling. But the pineapple I grilled in this pan was so irresistible that by the time I was able to stop sampling it, I almost didn't have any left to make the quesadillas. I've also grilled chicken and hamburgers in the pan and the only negative I can see is the amount of smoke that ends up in your kitchen instead of outside. (Anyone know what to do about that besides open the windows?) The convenience of this pan is definitely worth the price.

The recipe verdict: This was a great way to dress up ordinary chicken quesadillas. There are a couple of optional ingredients--extra barbecue sauce and jalapeños--and after trying all of the possible combinations we decided that we preferred them with both. I decided to omit the butter on the outside of the quesadillas. I'm sure it would have tasted extra great and fattening.


A couple of months ago my husband The Emasculated Baker (who stopped making cakes because he felt like he was forcing them on his coworkers) turned thirty. I decided to steer clear of his cake recipes as I doubted my ability to duplicate his meticulous attention to detail. Instead I made this souped-up cake mix recipe for chocolate-peppermint poke cake. It was nothing fancy, but it tasted pretty good and if you're the kind of person who likes chopped up candy bars throughout your cake, it's great! When I made it I couldn't find any white chocolate pudding mix, so I used regular chocolate. I also baked it in two 9-inch round pans and made a layer cake with a layer of frosting and extra peppermint patties in between the cake layers. And instead of using the frosting straight from the can, I whipped a cup of heavy cream and folded it into the canned frosting mixed with peppermint extract.


As you may have noticed by now, many of the recipes I try come from The Pioneer Woman Cooks or from PW's community recipe site Tasty Kitchen. I've seen this recipe for Butter Chicken come into the TK spotlight several times and have always been amazed by how consistently high its ratings have been. It's pretty rare for 73 people (at the time of this post) to have rated any one recipe, but over those 73 ratings, it still maintains a score of 4.73 mitts (on a scale of one to five). I've been wanting to try it for a long time, but every time I go to buy carda0mom at my local Wal-Mart and see that it costs over $10 just for a small bottle, I change my mind. Luckily, my cupcake-baking sister just moved into town with a jar of cardamom that she bought for a cupcake recipe. Only in a Martha Stewart cupcake would you find something like cardamom. So excitedly, I made the chicken, adjusting the amount of cayenne pepper in individual portions so that George and I could have it as spicy as we like it while not making it too spicy for the kids. And it was good. I would even say that it was really good. Definitely a recipe that I'll be making again. But I have to say, after the months of hearing all of the raves about this recipe, it was not as amazing as I was imagining it to be and the only reason I can think of to explain my disappointment is that I had such high expectations. So here is my new mantra for life: set your expectations low and you'll never be disappointed. Amen.

I couldn't really imagine eating Indian food without some fresh naan, so I thought I would look for a good recipe to try. And now, months later, I honestly can't remember which recipe I happened to try this time. I know it was one that I got from Tasty Kitchen, but it's been so long and I looked at all of them thoroughly enough that they all look familiar to me now. But quite honestly, whichever one it was it wasn't good enough that I bothered to add it to my recipe box. And this is not the first time I've said that about a naan recipe. This was my third or fourth time making it and I've yet to find a recipe that's worth keeping. Most of them come out a little too...dry? Too reminiscent of those spongy, squeeze-y stress-reliever things? I'm beginning to think that the problem is not in the recipes, but in my technique. So if any of you have a great naan recipe that you like to make, please send it my way and if it turns out bad on me, I will have isolated the problem. Thanks. Through my failures I have made one valuable naan-related discovery: cooking it on a preheated pizza stone in the oven is a lot easier and less smoky than cooking it on a grill.

That's all for this time. I still have a bunch of recipes that I've tried to blog about, but at this point I'd say it's high time I just ended this and posted something.