Month 2 day 20: Brunch pie and cake

Today I made:
Perfect Brunch Pie, Food Network Magazine March 2010

G made:
2-Minute Chocolate and Salted Caramel Mug Cake (adapted)

This brunch pie was great. I didn't follow the recipe exactly. I don't like olives, so I kept them out and then just was extra generous with all the other ingredients to make up the extra cup of volume. I also added a leek, because we had one left over with nothing planned for it. The onion I used was white, not red, and I used dried oregano and thyme instead of fresh.
This was my first time working with phyllo dough. We didn't often (ever?) use it at my house growing up, although my best friend's parents AKA my second set of parents sometimes cooked with it (my friend and I would often eat two suppers, one at each of our houses). I've heard that it's tricky to use, so I was a little nervous. It wasn't that hard to use, although I didn't read the box instructions beforehand that said it takes 2 hours to thaw... whoops. We were suddenly glad we kept forgetting to invite people to eat with us. Anyway, once it thawed it was fine to work with, although indeed fragile. It's very tasty though! And really the recipe didn't call for that much butter or other things... it very well could have been a Cooking Light recipe. We now have about 30 more sheets in the freezer, so I'll be on the lookout for more recipes to use it on. I would definitely recommend this recipe. Nothing needs to be cooked beforehand-- you just chop up vegetables and cheese, and whisk an egg and milk, and then arrange with the phyllo dough. Then it bakes for about an hour, so I think it would work well with a brunch party or something-- defrost the phyllo dough overnight in the fridge and prechop everything, throw it together and pop it in the oven and be done with it, then spend the next hour setting the table or getting other dishes prepared.

For dessert, G made himself a microwaved mug cake. We were inspired by an awesome website someone posted to facebook of 18 recipes that can be made in a mug. We adapted this recipe too to fit what we had around:

• 4 tablespoons all purpose flour 
• 7 tablespoons salted caramel hot cocoa mix 
• 1/4 teaspoon baking powder 
• 1/4 teaspoon salt 
• 1 egg – beaten 
• 3 tablespoons buttermilk 
• 1 tablespoon melted butter 
• 2 of Grandpa's homemade caramels dropped into the middle of the batter 

microwaved for 1.5 minutes, during which time it rose up like a souffle. G liked it, and it was entertaining, but he said he really wished it had been a molten chocolate cake instead. Personally, I feel like if you have to measure all those things anyway and dirty up a bowl, you might as well make a real cake. When I lived in Japan you could buy mug cake mixes that just had to be mixed in the cup with an egg. But my old roommate who joined us for brunch pie pointed out that it's pretty good to have a cake that can cook in 2 minutes. Urge to satiety, you can bake and eat this cake in the span of 10 minutes. So that's pretty good I guess. G says he's happy we found the recipe, which he'll whip out some evening when he wants a nice dessert. I would guess if you stuck in some chocolates instead of caramels you could make a molten lava cake easily enough.

Having a sip of cake

That's it for March! There were two recipes we had planned to make but didn't because things came up. There were several more recipes that didn't we didn't choose to make, but wanted to keep for future reference. The rest of the magazines are off the shelf for good! Tonight we'll go out to eat as a reward for G, who would much prefer if I had started a restaurant review blog. See you in April!

March's best recipe winners: 

G's choice: Corned beef hash

My choice: Pork lover's tamale pie