Special Apple Cobbler

I was sooooo in the mood for a decadent baked dessert today! Jeff pointed out that we had lots of apples that needed to be used, and there were several cake mixes (purchased on sale, of course) in the pantry. I did some quick thinking and, by combining an apple pie recipe with the recipe for cake mix cookies, came up with this totally awesome apple cobbler. It turned out so delicious!


Special Apple Cobbler
5 medium-sized tart apples (we used granny smith)
2/3 cup sugar
2 tbsp. flour
Dash each cinnamon and nutmeg
1 tbsp. butter or margarine
1 box spice cake mix
2 eggs
1/3 cup oil

Preheat oven to 375 and grease a 9-inch pie pan. Peel apples and cut into small chunks. Mix with sugar, flour, cinnamon and nutmeg. Spread apples in the pan, dot with butter.

Mix together the spice cake mix, eggs, and oil. Drop by large spoonfuls onto the apples. Bake in preheated oven for 30 minutes.

Too bad we didn't have any ice cream, that would have been absolutely perfect.


I think this concept would work well with other fruit and cake combinations. Peach pie filling topped with yellow cake mix, cherry pie filling with chocolate cake mix - yum!!!

Corned Beef

There's a right way and a wrong way to smoke a corned beef brisket. The right way involves the use of a grill or a smoker. The wrong way involves putting it on the stove to boil, then forgetting about it until the entire upstairs is filled with smoke as the 30-year-old fire alarm emits strange and ethereal gurgles.

Guess which way I did it today.

Well, at least it turned out incredibly delicious anyway.


Though it took me quite a while to clear all the smoke from my lungs.


Happy Saint Patrick's Day!

Biscuit Pudding

I love biscuits - rolled biscuits, drop biscuits, homemade biscuits, pop-the-can biscuits, all of them are so delicious! Hot and steaming, right out of the oven with butter melting down the sides, ooooohhhh, they're just so good.

But what happens when you don't eat them all right away, and they sit around overnight? They get kind of "blah" and unappetizing. No matter what I try, I haven't found a way to make leftover biscuits taste as wonderful as fresh-from-the-oven biscuits. The texture is dryer, the flavor blander. So usually, if we have leftover biscuits from a meal, they just sit around until they get rock hard and we throw them out.

NO LONGER! This morning I decided that I was going to come up with a way to use the golden brown chunks of used-to-be deliciousness left over from last night, a way to turn them into something absolutely wonderful. And I believe I was successful - I now look forward to having leftovers the next time we make biscuits because I'll be able to make this delicious dish again!


All I did was use a simple recipe for bread pudding, and substitute chunks of day-old biscuit for the cubes of bread. And thus I created Biscuit Pudding, a deliciously soft, moist, and custardy dish that is equally good as a breakfast or a dessert. No more bland leftover biscuits sitting around waiting to be thrown away.

Hooray for the frugality and tightwaddery that runs deep in my veins, that allows me to experiment with breathing new life into old foods.


Biscuit Pudding
2 1/4 cups milk
2 slightly beaten eggs
2 to 3 cups day-old biscuits, torn into 1-inch chunks
1/2 cup brown sugar
1 tsp. cinnamon
1 tsp. vanilla
1/4 tsp. salt
1/2 cup raisins

Combine milk and eggs, pour over biscuit chunks. Add remaining ingredients, toss to blend.

Spread mixture in a greased 8-inch baking dish. Set dish in a shallow pan on oven rack. Pour hot water around it 1 inch deep. Bake at 350 for 35 to 40 minutes or until a knife inserted comes out clean.