PEEP, PEEP, PEEP!

Now, I can deal with jelly beans, chocolate bunnies and chocolate eggs - they are like the true Easter candy.  I am NOT particularly fond of PEEPS, however.  The sugar coated, yellow marshmallow chickens were not part of my youth, and they seem like some sort of alien  food - all I have to do is look at them and my teeth start to hurt from the thought of all that sugar.  But my hubby loves them, especially when they get a little old and chewy. No, PEEPS were not part of his youth, either.  But nowadays he just loves the little critters. A couple of years ago a friend told me that you can "age" fresh PEEPS by putting them in the microwave and nuking them for 20 - 30 seconds.  The first time we tried this we ended up laughing our butts off as we watched these critters blow up to 3 times their size as the marshmallow heated and made jokes about the PEEPS that Clayton.

So imagine my joy when I found another novel recipe using PEEPS on the Facebook page of my friend Tina.  This is called a PEEPS Sunflower Cake, and is supposed to serve 12. But the recipe calls for 19 PEEPS, and how do you divide 19 PEEPS in 12 servings?  You can find the recipe here  on the Taste of Home website.

I guess you could change the flower up and make it a dahlia or mum by adding a second row of PEEPS on top to make more "petals" .  Then you could change the color of the frosting and the PEEPS as well, and use the pink or purple chickens.  Or you could just forget about it and make an angel food cake with rainbow sprinkles in the batter - at least that looks like Easter.

Do any of you readers have a PEEPS recipe that you would like to share with the rest of us? Just click on "comments" below and share.

Huli-Huli Vous?

I love barbecue in all of its variations. My dad was a great barbecue master, and his sauce was legendary in northeast Phoenix. Unfortunately for my brothers and me, Dad never shared his recipe (“It’s my secret, and if it is what makes you come home every couple of years, it will remain a secret”, he would laugh.) Dad’s recipe was never passed along to us and the closest I ever found to it was Everett and Jones Mild Sauce. Now, Everett and Jones is an East Bay institution, and it was where you would most likely find me and a cold beer on a Friday night when I lived in Oakland. Imagine my delight when I found Everett and Jones Sauce at my local Safeway a few weeks ago! I made my poor family eat ribs drenched in Everett and Jones until they could not look at another rib!

  

So what does that have to do with huli-huli? For that matter, what is huli-huli? In a few words, it is Hawaii’s own famous barbecue sauce. Huli is the Hawaiian word for turn, and huli-huli (turn, turn) chicken is one of the Oahu’s great delicacies. It became familiar as a fund raising tool on the island after Ernest Morgado came up with the recipe in the mid-1950s. He mixed up all the flavors of Hawaii (brown sugar, shoyu (soy sauce), pineapple, and ginger) and came up with a great marinade and basting sauce. In the early 1970s I would find huli-huli chicken stands wherever I drove around the island, functioning as a fundraiser for Little League, church choirs and just about any other activity that needed to raise money. Used to be that you would never find it on any restaurant menu, only in roadside stands where cooks lovingly cooked and sold their wares. Yum – it was one ono kaukua (delicious food).

So here is the huli-huli sauce recipe that I was given by a co-worked before I left Honolulu. My original recipe calls for ¼ of a pineapple, pureed. I have substituted ½ Cup of frozen pineapple juice concentrate – so much easier to work with, and the taste is almost identical.

Huli-Huli Chicken Marinade and Basting Sauce

• ½ Cup Catsup
• ½ Cup Shoyu (soy sauce)
• ½ Cup Dark Brown Sugar
• ½ Cup Frozen Pineapple Juice Concentrate
• ¾ Cup Sherry
• 2” Piece of Ginger Root, finely minced
• 2 – 3 cloves Garlic, mashed
• 2 – 3 cut up chickens 

Mix all ingredients together. You can marinate chicken pieces for a few hours before grilling or just brush sauce on chicken before placing on grill. Turn and baste frequently, until chicken is done, probably 30 – 40 minutes.

I Have A New Recipe To Share - Oreo Cookie Cake

I am very lucky to work with an amazing woman named Chris.  She always has a wonderful smile and just the sunniest disposition.  She also loves to bake and has a husband who is not particularly fond of sweets.  Every Sunday, Chris brings in the results of a new recipe that she found and just had to try.

2 weeks ago Chris brought in the most amazing Oreo cookie cake, which disappeared very quickly.  She kindly shared the recipe, citing that it was a quick cake to make up.

So here is Chris' recipe for the Oreo Cookie cake.  I haven't made it myself, but I can tell you that I have tasted it and it is very yummy. The recipe looks like it would be really easy to make.  Enjoy!

1 package  (18 1/4 oz.) white cake mix
16 Oreo cookes, coarsely crushed
1 pakage (3 oz.) cream cheese, softened
2 Tbsp. milk
2 C. heavy whipping cream
3/4C. powdered sugar
Additional Oreo Cookies for garnish

1. Prepare cake batter according to package directions, stir in crushed Ores.  Spoon mixture into a greased and floured 10" tube pan.

2. Bake at 350 degrees for 33 - 38 minutes or until a toothpick inserted neat the center comes out clean.  Cool for 10 minutes before removing from pan to a wire rack to cool completely.

3. In a small bowl, beat cream chees and milk until smooth.  Beat in cream until mixture begins to thicken.  Gradually add powdered sugar; beat until stiff peaks form.  Frost cooled cake. Garnish with additional cookies.  Refrigerate leftovers.

The World's Easiest Cake

No stamping today, but I do want to share one of my all-time favorite recipes with you - the South African quilters' yogurt cake. This cake is easy and fast to make up, and wonderfully moist. But before I give you the recipe, I would like to share the story of how this recipe came to me.



While living in South Africa, I decided to teach quilting out of my home because I needed money to purchase fabric for my own quilts. Now you need to know that food is central to anything that South Africans do, including classes of any sort. They are especially fond of "tea", which occurs at least twice during any day (once in the morning and once in the afternoon). "Tea" does not imply that the beverage called tea is actually drunk, tea implies that one stops whatever one is doing for at least 30 minutes to drink some sort of beverage and eat sweets. In fact, coffee is becoming the preferred beverage for tea. Anyway, one of my students brought this cake to class one day, and left the un-eaten remains for me to share with my family. Because of its' simplicity, this cake became the staple tea item that I served at all future classes. The ease of the cake is that the most of the ingredients are measured in the empty yogurt cup. I hope you enjoy this!

Place all ingredients (in order listed) in mixing bowl:

1 - 6 oz. cup of yogurt, any flavor (our favorite is strawberry, YUM!)

3 empty yogurt cups full of self rising flour

2 empty yogurt cups of sugar (note: recipe works well with Splenda!)

1 empty yogurt cup of oil

1 tsp. vanilla or almond extract

3 whole eggs

Mix well. Pour into an oiled and floured bundt pan (or 2 prepared loaf pans). Bake at 350 degrees for 1 hour. Turn cake out of pan(s) when cool.



If you ever ask me to bring something to a potluck, odds are that I will either bring this yogurt cake, bread pudding, or my chicken enchiladas (depending on the amount of time I have to cook). I hope you enjoy this cake as much as my family and I do.