Fried Apple Crepes

After eating the best breakfast of my life at The Depot American Diner in Chicago, I was determined to bring home something like their apple pancake recipe. Not wanting to make a full copy of their recipe, I made up my own recipe for similar awesome taste with a slightly different context- we made it for dessert!

Burckart's Fried Apple Crepes
Makes: 7 crepes
Prep time: 20 minutes
Total time needed start to finish: 1 hour, 30 mins (lots of down time between)

Fried Apple slices
At least one hour before making the crepes, you must prep the apples.
Ingredients:
7 slices of Granny Smith (or your favorite) apple (fatter is better, 1 large apple would be sufficient)
2 tsp cinnamon
2 tbsp sugar

Instructions:
1) Slice the apple from side to side with thin but full slices. Cut out the core on each slice.
2) Fill a 2 qt pot halfway with water, bring water to boiling.
3) Put apple slices in the boiling water. Add cinnamon and sugar to water.
4) Boil for 10 minutes on medium-low
5) Lay apples out on plate to cool and dry



Crepe batter:
Ingredients:
1 c white wheat flour
2 eggs
1/2 c milk
1/2 c water
1/4 tsp salt
2 tbsp melted butter
1 tbsp honey

Instructions:
1) In a large mixing bowl, stir together the flour and the eggs.
2) Gradually whisk in the milk and water.
3) Add the salt, butter, and honey
4) Beat until smooth.

Making the fried apple crepes:

Instructions:
1) Heat a griddle over medium heat
2) Place a fried apple slice in the center of the griddle
3) Flip the apple after one minute
4) Pour 1/4 cup of crepe batter in the center of the apple. Batter should cover the center of the slice, the top, and flow to each side.
5) Cook for about 2 minutes til golden brown. Flip, cook the other side for about 2 minutes also.
6) Serve hot.


In pictures:
Step 2:

Step 4:

Step 5:
It will be time to flip when the crepe doesn't look liquidy around the sides of the apple:


Step 6:




We ate our first time spoils with powdered sugar and whipped creme.

To find The Depot, we used the Flavor Town USA site dedicated to the Food network show, Diners, Drive-ins, and Dives. Here is the show we used to find The Depot:


Finally, I should note that the great apple we used came from yesterday's delivery to our doorstep from The Produce Box. Great apple, great dessert!

Delicious tortilla soup..

I love Max and Erma's tortilla soup. Unfortunately, there is no Max and Erma's around this area in North Carolina. So, I searched on the web and eventually found this recipe that is supposed to mimic its recipe. I copied it without saving the reference to see who made the recipe....but it was delicious and so I thought I would share. For us, it was a bit salty and fattening. So, next we will try to use some of the more healthy request soups, lower in fat and sodium.

Here is the recipe. All said and done, it cost about $25 to make and we had over 10 bowls.

2 cans Campbell's Cream of Mushroom soup
2 cans Campbell's Cream of Chicken soup
2 cans Campbell's Cream of Celery soup
2 cans Campbell's Cheddar Cheese soup
2 (15 ounce) cans chicken broth
1 (15 ounce) can diced tomatoes
1 cup Pace medium picante salsa
1 (4.5 ounce) can Ortega green chiles
1 medium onion, chopped
4 cloves fresh garlic, minced
1 teaspoon red chile powder, more or less to your taste
Salt and pepper to your taste
1/4 cup fresh, chopped cilantro
4 cooked chicken breasts, cut into
small chunks
1 package flour tortillas
1/2 pound longhorn style Colby cheese

In a large stockpot combine and whisk together until smooth all eight cans of soup. Add chicken broth. Add tomatoes, salsa, green chiles, onion, garlic, chili powder, salt and pepper.

Bring all ingredients to a full boil, reduce heat, and simmer for 1 hour.

Add cilantro and chicken breast chunks. Simmer another hour.

While soup is simmering, make your soup toppings: Cut flour tortillas into small thin strips and deep fry in hot oil until lightly browned.

Shred cheese.

To serve: Ladle soup into bowls, top with shredded cheese and fried tortilla strips. I double this recipe and use a 12-quart stockpot. Enjoy!

Creamy Cheese Lasagna

So, I am in the recipe posting mood. Here is a favorite...Last year I set out to make a creamy cheese lasagna like my good friend's mom used to make. I read about 80 recipes and came up with my own. My friend, John, told me it was the second best he ever had behind his mom's. So, I thought I would share the recipe.

The one trick I did learn was to cook it, let it sit to congeal, then heat it again. This is how it stays together when you cut it. This works nicely also if you are bringing it to a friend as you can do the last heating at their house hours later.

1 box of lasagna noodles (16 oz)
1.5 c mozzarella
1.5 jar of sauce
------------------------------
------
Cheese Mixture
1 c parmasean finely grated
1 lb ricotta
1 c romano finely grated
3 eggs
1 clove garlic minces
basil (more basil than parsley or oregano, fresh if possible)
parsley
oregano
--------------------------------

Spray 8x12 - 9x13 pan with cooking spray. Cover the bottom of the pan with sauce light layer of sauce
Start with a layer of noodles (4-5). First and last layers should have the most noodles.
Put 1/3 cheese mixture on the noodles. (Lowest layer should have least cheese)
Approx 3/4 c of sauce on that. Place 4-5 noodles on that.
Another 1/3 cheese and 3/4c sauce.
On last layer, put 1/2c mozzarella on top of sauce. Put final layer of noodles.
Then put remaining mozzarella and then sauce on that. Should be covered in sauce on top.

Bake at 375 for 35 mins covered, 10 mins uncovered. Let sit on counter for 4 hrs uncovered to let it congeal.

Bake again at 350 for 20 mins.

Hot Fudge Sundae Cake

After adding the Dump Cake recipe, I decided to post another dessert for those chocoholics. Another Burckart family favorite is our hot fudge sundae cake. Years and years ago, my mom got this recipe off a Hershey's container and its survived in our family ever since. Hershey's calls it something different now, Hot Fudge Pudding Cake, and uses butter instead of Crisco, but its still excellent.

Not only is this a great treat, but its fun to watch it be made also. You make the cake, then dump sugar and cocoa on top of the cake and pour hot water all over it. So, what goes in the over is a cake with a pool of water over the top. But when it comes out, the water has crept through to the bottom making a layer of rich fudge underneath the cake. Yummy!

Hot Fudge Pudding Cake
Ingredients:

* 1-1/4 cups granulated sugar, divided
* 1 cup all-purpose flour
* 1/2 cup HERSHEY'S Cocoa, divided
* 2 teaspoons baking powder
* 1/4 teaspoon salt
* 1/2 cup milk
* 1/3 cup butter or margarine, melted
* 1-1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract
* 1/2 cup packed light brown sugar
* 1-1/4 cups hot water
* Whipped topping

Directions:
1. Heat oven to 350°F. Combine 3/4 cup granulated sugar, flour, 1/4 cup cocoa, baking powder and salt. Stir in milk, butter and vanilla; beat until smooth.

2. Pour batter into ungreased 9-inch square baking pan. Stir together remaining 1/2 cup granulated sugar, brown sugar and remaining 1/4 cup cocoa; sprinkle mixture evenly over batter. Pour hot water over top; do not stir.

3. Bake 35 to 40 minutes or until center is almost set. Remove from oven; let stand 15 minutes. Serve in dessert dishes, spooning sauce from bottom of pan over top. Garnish with whipped topping. About 8 servings.

The changes we make to it is that it serves like 6 and to use ice cream, spooning the hot fudge on top of the ice cream.

North Carolina Dump Cake

Tonight, Heather had a craving for dump cake. The first and only time we made this was on Groundhog's day this past February, which happens to also be my good friend Derick's birthday. He just so happened to stop by with his mom and dad, and we all had dump cake for his birthday. Then, we had it the next night for the Super Bowl. Well, we are making the same recipe again and I thought I would share it for all of you who have never heard of such a thing.


Spray a 9x13 or 8x13 pan. Dump (Put) each of the following on as layers in order:
20 oz can of crushed pineapple including juice
2 cans of cherry pie filling
1 box of yellow cake mix
(optional) sprinkle coconut on the top
1 stick of butter melted and drizzled evenly over the top.

Bake at 350 degrees for 48 minutes.

Serve warm will vanilla ice cream.

You can substitute the cherry pie filling for other types of pie filling.

Breakfast at the Burckarts

Breakfast here has gotten pretty predictable for Anna and Heather. Anna eats a banana and a half of a waffle while drinking her milk. Heather has also been eating waffles and cannot drink juice since Anna will want it. :-) So, since everyone has been enjoying my waffles, I thought I would put down my recipe here. We make these waffles and store them in the freezer in a big zip lock bag. When Heather or Anna go to have some, they just take them out of the freezer bag and put them into the toaster oven. Here is my recipe:

3 egg yolks
3 cups skim milk
3 cups all-purpose flour
1 and 1/2 tbsp of baking powder
3/4 tsp of salt
1/2 cup of vegetable oil (under if anything)
1 tbsp honey
1 tsp cinnamon

Mix all that together in a large mixing bowl.

Stiffly beat 3 egg whites in a separate bowl. Fold that into the mixture in the larger bowl.

Make your waffles. If you are freezing, let them cool and put them into a ziploc freezer bag (gallon size will be needed). Make sure you take out the air in the bag to keep out freezer burn.