Jalapeño Cheese Pretzel Dogs

I've never been one to eat gas-station food... The hubs, on the other hand, drove a furniture truck many a mile when he was a bachelor. Many miles translates into many "32-ouncers" of Dr. Pepper®, many bags of Doritos®, and many, many jalapeño cheese dogs! 
It is in honor of this deep love that I chose to use our June #ImprovCookingChallenge ingredients of jalapeños & cheese in pretzel dogs. 

For this recipe you'll need a package of hot dogs,

a tool to hollow out the dogs

(we found the last one worked the best)

a couple chopped jalapeños  (I removed seeds - you do what you want with them)

a little shredded cheddar and some Greek yogurt to bind enough to stuff...

And of course, the actual recipe...

Then stand back & watch these dogs be devoured!

A couple of the fellas dipped into their favorite salsa, but most chowed down as is!

Make sure you stop by here for my jalapeños & cheese dessert recipe!

You can also see more jalapeños & cheese recipes from my friends if you follow these links:

An InLinkz Link-up

Loaded Potato Scrolls

I asked my fellas what we should fix for POTATO & CHIVES month. I got one request for Irish Stir-fry, and one down on his knees begging that we make Irish Nachos again. ("MOM! Aren't chives just skinny green onions?!") When I tried explaining chives are what's in the dip for Claim Jumper's Loaded Skins®, I then had a request for loaded skins. THAT was when I decided to bake bread -- loaded bread.  So, the Loaded Potato Scroll* was born.

We started with some baked, then mashed Butter Golds. How I managed to save a cup from being devoured by the crew, I have no idea.  But I did have to hide it in the fridge until I was ready to try the recipe!

The chives proved to be the tougher part of this assignment -- I'd planted some in hopes I could have a little harvest in time for the recipe, but our little 90° heatwave proved my undoing. I had to resort to a grocery package... :( 

But the filling... oh the filling!!!!! You can never have too much bacon! This is what we used:

The dough is pretty easy, and so is spreading the filling. If you've used GF flour, the making of the roll & slicing can be a little awkward...

Also, GF flour idiosyncrasies make the rising a little ambiguous.

Since flours brown differently when baked, I decided to use a thermometer to determine when the scrolls were finished.

Because it was such a lovely spring afternoon (in the shade!) we decided to make a little picnic & eat our loaded scrolls (in the shade!)

They were delicious! (...if you can close your eyes & imagine the bread part as tasty, light, fluffy gluten-filled dough!)

I think the filling could take some more bacon, though...

Here's the recipe:

(This recipe is gluten & processed sugar free. It will work using wheat flour, but please adapt the rising & baking times as appropriate.)


*Read why the fellas refer to these as "scrolls" here.

If you're interested in joining our monthly #ImprovCookingChallenge you can find that info here. In the meantime, enjoy these recipes by some of our members:

An InLinkz Link-up

caramel apple butter pecan “star bread”

Were I to live a thousand years I’d never be able to try out all my Pinterest pins!  But this month with our Improv Cooking Challenge ingredients being Nuts & Caramel, I was able to knock out three of them!

The recipe for the slow cooker caramel apple butter I slightly adapted from here. The sweet roll dough recipe I’ve had for years, but you can find a good one here. And finally, the inspiration for the “star bread” was from this pin. OHMYGOODNESS! This stuff tastes soooooooooooooo good!

I love this dough – it’s so easy to work with…

Unfortunately, I had to leave unexpectedly & the bread ended up raising for almost two hours! It overpowered my baking stone. Fortunately the parchment bore the brunt of the mess.

 

We also made pecan waffles to use up some leftover caramel…

You should probably check out the other sites linked here:

An InLinkz Link-up

Pão de Queijo com presunto

April’s been a busy month; so I was grateful the ingredients for the Improv Cooking Challenge were simple. The real challenge with HAM & CHEESE in this house is keeping it stocked! We had a bit of ham leftover from Easter, so I made our first attempt early in the month. I tried a second one with slightly varied ingredients about a week after, but the end result of that one was not so good. Third triumphant endeavor was this morning…In researching gluten-free breads for the past few years I’d come across this recipe many times, but never made it because I assumed it would require too much effort. I was wrong ~ these are quite simple to make. The most difficult thing about them is keeping yourself from inhaling devouring consuming gobbling eating the entire batch!The base “flour” for these goodies is tapioca starch. That is what makes the inside of the roll so deliciously chewy. I used Bob’s Red Mill Tapioca Flour for this first batch. The second notanywherenearsuccessful try was made with arrowroot (because I read a couple recipes which indicated they used that & it worked!) but the inside was terribly gummy. (Problem solved after baking by splitting & toasting…) For the third time’s a charm batch today, I simply used a bag of tapioca starch I bought at the Asian market for 79¢ !The cheese in our first bread was a Medium Cheddar. Second one we used Swiss (at the request of the youngest fella…) Today I used Pepper Jack!The rolls today omitted the ham and were baked on silicon sheets ~ now I have some delicious sandwich rounds!

Here are some more HAM & CHEESE recipes from the Challenge:

An InLinkz Link-up

German Chocolate Breakfast Scrolls

I love idiosyncracies of the English language across the various countries that use it. Several years back I sent in cinnamon rolls with the hubs to a men’s prayer group. An Aussie gentleman could not stop proclaiming how delicious the “cinnamon scrolls” were… So now at our house, whenever I serve bread that has been seasoned, rolled up, sliced & baked – they are designated “scrolls.”
My grandmother’s favorite cake was German Chocolate. I believe that is the only cake she requested a repeat from me. Anyhow, I decided that would be my inspiration for this month’s Improv Challenge: Pastry/Bread Dough & Chocolate 
Having determined my flavor profile, I needed a vehicle to implement it. I went with bread dough, because Grandma was a prolific baker.The difficulty with utilizing chocolate in yeasted dough is that it is prone to inhibit the rising process. In order to try to circumvent that I was inspired to use a recipe I’d tried years ago which has pudding as a base for the dough. It worked! I had no issues with rise…And the filled scrolls rose well, too…I sampled the fresh-baked rolls – so good!
Alas, the fellas in this house proclaimed the tops were too plain, please add a glaze, or something…
What a dilemna! I thought the scrolls too pretty to cover. But in the end I made a dark chocolate glaze, which turned out too difficult to drizzle so I had to spread it over the warm rolls.
And here are more Pastry/Bread Dough & Chocolate recipes from my friends:

An InLinkz Link-up

Hey Mom, I signed up to bring…

…apfel kuchen.
Yeah -- like my son knows how to make an apfel kuchen to take to his post-marching-band-season party!
For some reason my boys are fascinated with German folk traditions & food. For an international dinner years ago in his 5th grade class, “we” made this kuchen:I don’t recall the reason for these “we” baked a few years back, maybe for an Easter brunch:Here’s the one “we” baked for last week’s party:The recipe I came up with for the sweet dough is incredible! (It rises like you would not believe, too…) Here you go:
for the dough:

• 4 c. flour
• 2 t. salt
• 1/4 t. baking soda
• 1/4 c. sugar
• 1 T. yeast
• 2 eggs
• 1 c. Greek yogurt
• 1/2 c. warm water

My hands & arms weren’t in the mood for doing a bunch of kneading, so I tossed all the ingredients into the bread machine on the “dough” setting. I made sure the eggs & yogurt were room temperature before I started. I whisked together the flour, salt & soda in a bowl. The yeast, sugar & water were put in the bottom of the pan. I then put in about half the dry ingredients and started the machine. In went the yogurt, eggs & the balance of the flour mixture.
While that was going in the machine, I used my apple peeler/slicer/corer on 3 beautiful Honeycrisp apples and splashed them with a little lemon juice to keep from browning. I also tossed together the streusel ingredients:

• 1/2 c. flour
• 1/4 c. brown sugar
• 4 T. butter, softened
• 1/2 t. cinnamon

When the dough was finished with its first rise, I divided it in half. Formed it into a sort of disk with a hole in the middle and pressed it into a tube pan (prepared with parchment on the bottom and well-buttered tube & sides…) A layer or two of apples and sprinkling of cinnamon sugar completed the filling. The second half of the dough was prepared same as the first, but this time topped with the remaining apples and covered with the streusel. The oven was set for 350° and the kuchen sat on the counter for its final rise. It more than doubled after 45 minutes, so I went ahead and baked it. After 30 minutes I put foil over the top to keep it from browning too much. Internal temp was 200° at around the 55 minute mark, so I took the pan out to cool on a bottle. The outer ring soon fell off, so the bread on the tube was put on a rack to finish its chill-out. After carefully removing the tube portion, I plated it then mixed up a little half & half/confectioners sugar glaze. Here’s your slice:
I know he’ll be unhappy with me, but here’s what my oldest returned with from their band party. I’ve included my pics of him in uniform so you can see what the certificate is referring to: