3 Mustard Chicken For Dinner With Mendel Bread For Dessert

Photo: Butter Your Biscuit: Click the photos for each blog’s recipe.

I was served a delicious 3 Mustard Chicken dinner by a friend, which I’m too lazy to make without a few tweaks. I don’t aim to buy 3 different mustards for one chicken dish to complicate its preparation! First, I’ll list the original ingredients, my friend’s recipe:

3 Mustard Chicken

Ingredients:

4 boneless, skinless chicken breasts
3 tbsp Dijon mustard
3 tbsp whole grain mustard
2 tbsp hot-honey mustard
1 to 2 tbsp honey (adjust to taste)
2 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
2 tbsp chicken stock
Salt and freshly ground black pepper

Next: The 3 Mustard Chicken Dinner with Debra’s tweaks:

Photo: Sandra Valvassori

4 boneless, skinless chicken breasts
8 tbsp of any mustard - I have Dijon and yellow mustard. (Sometimes I buy spicy brown or whole grain, but didn’t for this.)
1 tbsp honey

1 cup water (I like sauce!)
1 large chicken bouillon

2 minced garlic cloves

1 medium onion, sliced

1 teaspoon of either dried rosemary or thyme (Both are tasty on chicken and look pretty. I used rosemary.)

1/4 teaspoon of red pepper flakes

Salt and pepper to sprinkle on the raw chicken breasts

A pad of butter to grease the pan

A sprinkle of dried parsley after it was plated

Directions:

1) Salt and pepper both sides of the chicken.

2) Whisk together the mustard, water, chicken bouillon, honey,  garlic, and spices in a bowl into a smooth sauce.

3) Butter a baking dish. Lay onion slices on the baking sheet, and arrange the chicken breasts on top. Alternately you can cook it in a 12” chef’s skillet on a stovetop, covered with a lid.

4) Pour the mustard-honey sauce over the chicken breasts, fully coating each piece.

5) Bake in a preheated 400°F oven for 30 minutes or until the chicken breasts are white and tender. Alternately, simmer at midium-low on top of your stove until the chicken is fully cooked.

Photo: The CookieRookie

Let the chicken rest for at least 5 minutes before serving. Slice the chicken breasts and pour a good amount of sauce over them. Serve with potatoes and vegetables of your choice.

While hot-honey mustard is delicious and I love it, I don’t think you need to buy it for a chicken dish when you use mustard, honey, and red pepper flakes as ingredients. As noted, this dish can also be cooked in a 12” skillet on a stovetop. Steel or cast-iron skillets heat up hot and cook evenly, grilling to perfection. Drizzled in honey-mustard sauce, I bought 3 very large chicken breasts and sliced them to serve on a platter. The chicken breasts get so tender, and the sauce tastes amazing! This may the way I make chicken from now on. The dish works equally well with chicken thighs for dark meat lovers.

Mine on the stovetop

I have no idea who created this scrumptious recipe, as it's floating around the internet on all forms of social media. The finished mustard chicken from the 3 cooks I’m featuring on my blog looks amazing! Click the identifying photos to go to their blogs to compare their recipes. Making this recipe our own leads down the same road to deliciousness!

🌆🏢🥯🏙🗽🏛🌆🏢🥯🏙🗽🏛🌆🏢🥯🏙🗽🏛🌆🏢🥯🏙🗽

What a fabulous melting pot New York City is! Inspired by my Jewish friends and neighbors who’ll celebrate Yom Kippur soon, here is a simple dessert for tea(s), or when you make this mustard chicken dinner for friends. It can be made days ahead of the dinner:

 Mandel Bread is a traditional Jewish biscotti-type cookie. It is short for mandelbrot, which means almond bread. Dry, not overly sweet, like Scottish shortbread, but a different tasting cookie.

Ingredients:

3 cups all-purpose flour

From Sparks Kitchen

1 1/2 tsp baking powder

a pinch of salt

1/2 cup white sugar

1 tsp cinnamon - Traditionally, the finished rectangular cookies are rolled in cinnamon sugar, but I toss the cinnamon into the batter.)

1/2 cup vegetable oil

3 large eggs

2 tsp almond extract

1/2 cup of nuts (any, chopped almonds or walnuts or pecans)

Directions:

1) Using a fork, mix the dry ingredients in one mixing bowl.

2) With a fork, mix the wet ingredients in a 2nd mixing bowl.

3) Incorporate the wet and dry ingredients. Fold in the nuts, and refrigerate for 2 hours. This prevents the dough from spreading out.

4) On a buttered baking sheet or long baking pan, shape and the dough into a long, flat, even log and bake at 350 degrees F for 25 - 30 minutes, until it is lightly browned.

5) Cool the finished cookies for 15 minutes (so they don’t fall apart), then cut into rectangles, squares, or diagonals. You do you! These cookies go back onto the baking sheet for a 2nd baking at 25o degrees F for another 20 minutes. Remove and cool. I do not roll them in cinnamon sugar because I don’t want them sweeter or the mess of sugar falling off the cookies, nor do I relish getting my fingers mucked up. Avoid messes and extra dishes to wash by not creating situations for the messes to occur! 

Sparks Kitchen has ultra-fancy mentel bread stacks that can be ordered for pickup, delivery, or shipping. Even easier, and there’s no shame in buying the cookies! We can do both at different times, right?😋

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A Milk Cake

A recipe on Facebook that found me is from the page, N'oven Foods. Called a Milk Cake, it's very similar to a Buttermilk Cake. Both are sponge cakes. I'm posting the recipe because I think it solves the problem of too much cake without enough visitors to eat it!

The only cakes worth the calories are either homemade from scratch, or made by a good bakery, not from a box of cake mix, but sometimes a 2-layer cake is too much of a good thing. The following recipe is for a 6-inch single-layer homemade cake ... and you can either bake it in an oven or on a stovetop!

Milk Cake by N'oven

Ingredients:

2 tablespoons butter

1/2 cup milk (Bump it up to condensed, half and half, or cream if you wish.)

2 large eggs

1/2 cup sugar (I use 1/4 cup sugar.)

1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

1 cup all-purpose flour

1 teaspoon of baking powder

I add a tiny pinch of salt

Directions:

1) Mix the butter and milk in a saucepan. Bring it to a boil and set aside.

2) In a mixing bowl, crack 2 eggs and using an electric mixer blend for one minute.

3) Add 1/2 cup of sugar and continue mixing until foamy.

4) Next use a strainer to shift in the flour, baking powder, and salt. Pour in the vanilla extract. Continue mixing either with an electric mixer, a whisk, or even a spatula. 

5) Into the bowl, incorporate the hot milk and butter with the dry ingredients and continue mixing.

6) Pour the batter into a well-greased 6" baking pan, The video places the pan on top of a metal trivet inside a bigger pot with a lid to cook on a stovetop for 30 minutes. I'll bake mine inside the oven at 350 degrees F for 30 minutes. But if we're ever somewhere (camping?) without a stove, there's an alternate way of "baking" it!

A-ha, the original cooking method on a stovetop explains why this cake is 6" and one layer. I bet you could make the cake without using 2 pans and a metal trivet by simply pouring the batter into a buttered cast iron skillet covered with a lid. Cast iron skillets get very hot and cook evenly on a stovetop or inside an oven. I think since cornbread can either be baked in an oven or cooked in a skillet on a stovetop, the same would work with a Milk Cake. Like pancakes, only slower and higher.

The recipe ended here on Facebook, but not in Debra's kitchen where dark chocolate and a little bit of milk get melted in a microwave and then poured over the finished and cooled Milk Cake. A  ganache topping is France's contribution to the desert world.:)

Clearly, a Milk Cake is editable plain; sprinkled with powdered sugar; or frosted. Icing with shredded nuts, or chocolate sprinkles would work too. You do you!

I've made cakes when a friend was coming over for coffee. My friend eats a slice and I eat a slice and then I have the rest of the cake I no longer want that ends up in the freezer.

This delicious recipe is a coffee hour or tea time keeper! It solves 2 problems: no oven (but you can bake it in the oven) and unwanted leftover cake. Sometimes all we crave is a single day of cake.

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Is Ice Cream the Ambrosia Of the Gods?

Photo: Braum

In Homer's epic poems, the Illiad and the Odyssey, the gods are always eating Ambrosia and drinking The Nectar of the Gods although in early editions they may be one and the same, so indistinguishable. In Homer's work, the divine food is consumed on top of Mount Olympus and thereby tied to immortality, magical powers, and godliness. 

Photo: ultraboardgames

I can't be the only person on earth ever to wonder what precisely Ambrosia and The Nectar of the Gods are. Scholars think both could be honey ... or if one is a drink, Nectar is likely mead while only Ambrosia is honey. Like the brains who study these questions in depth, I also guessed they are honey and an alcoholic beverage. (Hey academics, perhaps my blog can save you years of research. Read on.😊)

As I have another guess for Ambrosia if we accept it is separate from the Nectar of the Gods. I think ambrosia is likely ice cream since once you let yourself eat ice cream you can't get enough. In your mouth, it has magical powers!

Because in my family we have no desire to weigh 300 pounds, I don't buy ice cream for the freezer until the end of June. The weather in early June can still be nippy, so we try to hold off until the real summer with steamy hot weather arrives. We buy ice cream throughout July and August, then try to stop once fall is upon us. I also buy wafer cones because it slows us down and we tend to eat less ice cream if we lick it on a cone. You have no idea how much ice cream you can scoop out to fit into a bowl in our house! It's our magical power.😛

Photo: freepik

So, readers, we ate our last ice cream cone on Thursday, August 31st and the question is, will I buy one more carton of ice cream (or 2, or 3) as summer is not officially over this year until Saturday, September 23rd? Also, we have 2 rows of wafer cones left in a box. They shouldn't go to waste, right?

I decided yes, buy another carton if temperatures soar again and no, we've eaten plenty already if they don't.

Ice cream is a dessert I buy readymade since I can't make it better, healthier, easier, or cheaper at home.

By the way, we do eat ice cream throughout the year to celebrate birthdays and as dessert if we host a dinner or are invited to dinner, or if we treat ourselves with a trip to an ice cream shop. I just don't keep it in the freezer outside of the summer months. Unlike the ancient Greek gods (image ↖credit) we must leave home to eat it during the fall, winter, or spring seasons in the interest of health and not adding another 50 pounds to our frames! We don't have the discipline to skip ice cream if it's in the house because ice cream really is the Ambrosia of the gods! It's soooo good you can't stop eating it!!

Do you love ice cream?🍦

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Mini Italian Cream Cake

Sometimes I crave a slice of cake, not a big 9-inch cake that I must eat all week long to finish, but only a slice! So I bought two 4-inch Fat Daddy aluminum cake pans and got the idea to reduce the quantity of a cake recipe to make the equivalent of a slice of cake. I'm thrilled with the results! It took a pandemic to think of experimenting to make a single-serving cake, and in fact there's more than enough to share with a partner.

Nobody knows how Italian Cream Cake got its name since the cake is from the American South, not Italy. Here's how to make a 4-inch mini cake:

Mini Italian Cream Cake

Ingredients:

2 tablespoons butter

1 tablespoon shortening or vegetable oil

1/3 cup sugar

1 egg, separated

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1/4 cup flour

1/2 teaspoon baking soda

1/8 teaspoon salt

1/2 cup buttermilk

1/4 cup chopped pecans

1/4 cup shredded coconut

You will need two small 4" cake pans, buttered and floured.

Directions:

1) With an electric mixer cream together the butter, shortening (or vegetable oil) and sugar.

2) Add the egg yolk and vanilla.

3 Next toss in the flour, baking soda and salt.

4) Add the buttermilk. If the batter is too thick, add a little more for a not too thick (or too thin) consistency.

4) Whisk the egg white in a separate clean bowl until stiff peaks form, then use a specular to fold it into the batter.

4) Next fold in the chopped pecans and shredded coconut.

5) Pour the cake batter into the 2 buttered and floured mini cake pans.

6) Bake in a 350 degree F preheated oven for 25 minutes or until the centers are done. The cakes will bounce back when touched. Remove from the oven and cool. Before the pans are completely cold lift out the cakes.

Italian Cream Frosting

Ingredients:

Ending up with 4 layers

2 ounces cream cheese, soften at room temperature

2 tablespoons butter, soften

1 box confectioner's sugar (You won't need the entire box.)

1 squirt of vanilla extract

1/4 cup of ground pecans

Directions

1) Toss the softened cream cheese, butter, vanilla, and confectioners' sugar into a mixing bowl and mix until smooth and fluffy Never measuring, I pour the powdered sugar into the bowl until I get the frosting consistency I desire. 

2) Spread the frosting on a cold cake in-between layers, as well as the top and sides of the cake. I cut my two 4'' cakes in half to get 4 layers of cake.

3) Sprinkle ground pecans all over the top of the frosted cake. 

Note: I don't need frosting for just myself to be as decadent. So I lightened it by omitting the butter and cream cheese. I used cottage cheese and skim milk instead of cream cheese because I didn't want to open a package of cream cheese I had to finish by myself. Sans butter, the frosting is less creamy. Not what I would serve guests, but the tastes still satisfies. It's good!

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To feed more people here are the portions of ingredients for a 9-inch cake:

Full Size Cake

1 stick of butter

1/2 cup shortening

1 cup + 3 tablespoons of sugar

2 cups flour

1 teaspoon baking soda

1/2 teaspoon salt

5 egg, separated

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1 cup buttermilk

1 cup chopped pecans

1 cup shredded coconut

Directions:

1) Follow the steps above increasing the amounts of ingredients. 

For myself alone, a no butter icing.

2) Use either two or three 8'' or 9'' cake pans to make either 2 or 3 cakes. Southern bakers usually make 3 cakes for 3 layers.

Full Size Cake Frosting:

8 oz cream cheese, softened

4 tablespoon butter, softened

box of confectioners' sugar

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1/2 cup chopped pecans (toasted if you make the effort.)

As you see without guests, I don't go crazy decorating a cake with tons of icing. Crushed nuts are the finish and enough of a good thing!

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