Baked fish.
Yeah right.
This was actually a breaded salmon recipe but the only free photos were of raw fish.
It was a… strange process. This recipe involves these things: eggs, a little milk, crushed Italian-style croutons, Italian seasonings and then lemon wedges and horseradish sauce for toppings.
First, you mix your wet ingredients in a bowl. Eggs, milk, and… well that’s it.
Next, you crush up your croutons with a pastry cutter. Which I have been using A LOT. I used it for crushing butter into flour for biscuits and smashing Fritos. There’s something very satisfying about crushing.
Third, take your crouton crumbs, Italian seasonings, and… well that’s it.
Then this is the weirdest part: you dip the salmon into the egg and milk mixture, and then press the breading into the egg coated salmon. How weird is that?
Then I baked it.
4.5 out of 5 stars. Because I don’t really like fish that much.
Applesauce bars.
It’s a cake.
Look, I don’t like being played for a fool. These, “applesauce bars” are not bars at all. This is a fucking cake.
5 out of 5 stars.
Freeze-your-own herbed vegetable blend.
Now that’s what I’m talking about.
This recipe? 4.5 out of 5 stars. Pretty good, right? Well it’s kind of hard to fuck up putting something in the freezer.
But I did.
The recipe involved a lot of prep. I was cutting vegetables and blanching them. For those of you who aren’t familiar with the cooking term, “cutting,” it’s when you take a knife and with a loose wrist, chop at the vegetable until it’s cut into tiny pieces but not so tiny it’s liquid.
After prepping and blanching the vegetables, I made butter. I mean, I didn’t churn it in one of those wooden buckets with a mop, but I melted a stick of butter or two, (throwing off the lawyers once again, heh heh) and then I added a bunch of herbs and spices to it. I made mine Italian-style. With Italian herbs.
I boiled corn for this.
Then I took the butter and put it in a freezer bag. A small one. And then I put that bag in the freezer for a while. Maybe an hour?
After the butter got more solid and the vegetables were done blanching, I cut the butter into little pats and put them in an even BIGGER freezer bag. I mixed up the pats of butter and the vegetables and then shoved the bags into the freezer.
The only problem is that later when I used these frozen vegetables to eat with some dinner meat, it tasted like there was no salt in anything! So I had to add salt. Not the end of the world, though. People in the world are living in extreme poverty, I can handle adding a little salt to my dinner.
Angel food cake.
This is what an angel food cake is supposed to look like.
4 out of 5 stars.
One thing about this recipe is that it tasted very good. Another thing about this recipe is I waited too long to make the icing and the cake went stale.
This cake involved taking powdered sugar and mixing it with something and I just killed it with my electric mixer. Also powdered sugar went flying everywhere all over the kitchen because I don’t know what I’m doing. It smelled so good though. The final result.
This recipe has only a few ingredients. You probably have them in your house. I can’t say what they are because I might get sued.
Eggplant parmigiana.
I actually did take this picture. It turned out kinda cool, right?
4.5 OUT OF 5 STARS! This almost turned out perfect except for a few snags along the way:
- I undercooked the eggplant a little.
- The top was browned but the eggplant was not completely cooked in the middle.
But goddamn if it didn’t taste good anyway. The taste makes up for the fact that I ruined it.
Next time I would lower the temperature from 400 degrees to something else. Maybe 350 degrees? 375? I don’t know. I’ll keep trying. I’ll never give up on this. Not now. Not ever.
Bean and beef enchilada casserole.
Beautiful lighting.
Rating: 4 out of 5 stars.
This one was pretty good, guys. This recipe had a normal amount of ingredients for an enchilada casserole. And it was pretty easy to make too. Just gently, carefully, and lovingly place the enchiladas in the pan. Then dump that enchilada sauce on top with a lot of cheese.
That’s it. I’ve never been to Mexico but I imagine I’d be pulling a fast one on my host family if I whipped up this sucker for them. They’d be like, “Is this… is this authentic Mexican food?” And I’d be like, “Nope! Just a casserole! Just a bastardization of enchiladas!” Then we’d laugh about it and keep saying, “Come on, you old dog! Pass more enchilada casserole over here!”
Bacon and blue cheese biscuits.
Don’t put honey on a bacon and blue cheese biscuit. Please. For my family.
This is your basic biscuit recipe but with a twist. Can you guess the twist? It’s adding bacon and blue cheese. That’s the surprise.
All-purpose flour, baking powder, sugar, salt, cream of tartar, butter and milk. But there’s more: bacon. and. blue cheese.
How did it turn out? 1.5 out of 5 stars.
I like the concept. But the application? It tasted like eating a piece of wood. It was dry, dusty, kind of hard, and a beaver was watching me the whole time.
I think the biscuits turned out dry because I followed the directions, which had a range to put them in the oven of 10 minutes to 14 minutes. What the f is with ranges on a recipe? I just want to know how long to cook it for. Don’t make me guess. I am using a recipe. If I wanted to use my cooking intuition, I wouldn’t be using a recipe. Don’t make me think, BH&G!!!
I just touched the biscuits and they weren’t browned like the directions said and I thought they might still be dough-y so I left them in the oven for the full 14 minutes. Amateur chef mistake!
Overall, I would try this recipe again. Maybe if I put them in the oven for only 10 minutes they would have turned out better. Also though, I don’t really like biscuits.
Caramel apples.
What a disaster but also so good! 4 out of 5 stars. My problem with this recipe: I was bad at it.
Apples, sticks (the grocery store kind, don’t make the same mistake I did), caramels (unwrapped, don’t make the same mistake I did), and whipping cream. And nuts, if you like them like me.
You take the caramels and dump them in the saucepan. Then you put some of the whipping cream in there. Stir it around a lot for a long time over a medium or medium low heat if you have a stove like mine that sucks.
When it’s nice and liquid-y enough, you take your apple, shove a stick up its core, and dip the apple into the caramel sauce.
One little problem though. I couldn’t figure out how to get caramel on the whole thing so I was just kind dipping the apple in there and getting half of it covered and then using the spatula to spoon the caramel over the rest of it. It ended up pretty uneven with some of the caramel not even on the apple and some GIANT blobs of caramel on the other side of the apple.
Also the stick fell out so it was basically just me holding an apple and dipping it in boiling hot caramel trying not to get it on my fingers but I got it on my fingers and it burned me.
It was ok though because I knew it was going to taste like magic. I had chopped some deluxe mixed nuts as finely chopped as I could (which is not a lot), and I rolled the apple in the nuts. Then I set it on a baking sheet with no wax paper because I was out.
Here’s the best part though!! It tasted like the carnival!!
Next time, I would probably get my friend who was a chocolatier to make them for me. That’s the only thing I would do differently if I were to cook it again.
Egg casserole.
Again, not a picture I took, but still looks like the uncooked egg casserole before I put it in the oven. I plan to take pictures when I cook. I just haven’t yet because I didn’t think of the blog post idea until I had already cooked a few of the BH&G recipes.
2.5 out of 5 stars. It turned out fine. But I probably used way too much french bread. Lucky for you though: I like french bread.
This recipe is simple and nice. 7 ingredients: bread cubes, meat, vegetable, 4-6 oz. shredded cheese, 4 eggs, 1 1/2 cups dairy, and then you got your seasoning. The recipe gives more detail about potential options but I’m afraid of being sued so I just kept it nice and vague for the lawyers who are always trying to sue me over my blog.
I made this with bacon, broccoli, cheddar, milk, and some Italian seasoning as my variation options. And it turned out good. But just good.
I’d make it again. But only begrudgingly. I’d do it for my children. (I don’t have any children).
Black bean-chipotle burgers.
This is also not a picture I took. It’s a stock photo. But it kind of looks like how the “burgers” turned out.
First of all: 1 out of 5 stars. I have several complaints about this recipe but you should also know: it was just ok to eat and taste.
This recipe requires a lot of ingredients so watch out. One of the little problems I had was that even though I followed the directions EXACTLY, the burger patties flew apart when I put them in the pan and it just kind of… turned into a stir fry.
Which is fine. It still tasted ok. But there was another problem.
I got the tostada shells from the store and they were carefully packaged and then I opened the box and the tostada shells were completely crushed into tortilla chip size! Who did this??
So not only were they not burgers, considering they were supposed to be in a tostada shell, but it kind of turned into nachos.
I would probably cook this again though. I like nachos.
Hot chocolate.
Well, I didn’t actually take this picture. It’s a stock photo. But it looks very nice, doesn’t it?
This recipe was pretty short and simple. Just how I like my men.
It calls for 1/3 cup semisweet chocolate pieces, 1/3 cup sugar, 4 cups milk and I added some tiny marshmallows to mine. Makes it feel like fall. Or winter.
The only problem I ran into with this recipe was that it was too hot. But don’t worry, I just waited for it to cool and then I could drink it again.
Overall, I give this recipe 5 stars out of 5 for its simplicity and how good it tastes. It’s way better than hot cocoa mix.
So make some hot chocolate today! Come on. Make some hot chocolate!
