Winger's Amazing Sauce Burgers and Sweet Potato Fries

We are just raving this week that I finally found a burger that's tastier than going out to eat.  The key was to buy a bottle of sauce from our favorite place to get burgers.  The second key was to make hamburger buns with the recipe from Prudence Pennywise.  That is one of the most successful "try a new recipe" experiences I've had.  I had the mistaken impression that hamburger buns were just rolls, but these are exceptional.

So for the hamburgers, just grill up your beef and when it is done, pat out the grease and let a piece of swiss cheese melt on the top.  Add lettuce, tomatoes, winger's sauce, and ranch dressing.  Serve with my made-up recipe for Sweet Potato Fries.

Sweet Potato Fries

Shredded yams
Bread crumbs
Garlic salt
Flour
Molly McButter
Oil

Toss yams in oil until sticky.  Add a hand full of flour in equal parts with bread crumbs, then add 1/2-1 tsp. garlic salt and a sprinkle of Molly McButter.  Toss everything together and then, I don't know if this is necessary, I refrigerated overnight.  Pouring some oil in the bottom of the pan, I cooked these in a 400 degree oven for 25 minutes, stirring halfway through.  The oil in the pan in the oven made it kind of like frying them, which turned out to be important because yams make really soft fries and needed some crisp.

Cheesecake Favorite Recipes

I have TWO excellent baked cheesecake recipes: a fast, sweet, and creamy one and a slow, textured, tasty one. One takes about 15 minutes (plus an hour baking and 4 hours waiting), the other about an hour (plus 2-3 hours baking and 6 hours waiting).

White Chocolate Cheesecake

2 pkg. cream cheese

1/2 c. sugar

1/2 tsp. vanilla

2 eggs

2/3 c. melted white chocolate

1 graham cracker crumb crust

Mix cream cheese, sugar, vanilla thoroughly, then add eggs one at a time. Stir in the white chocolate, pour into crust, and bake 350 degrees for 35 minutes or until center is almost set. Leave in oven to cool if you want to prevent cracking. Refrigerate before eating.

The second:

Oreo Cheesecake is beautiful and TOTALLY worth the wait.

 

Copycat Tim Tams

There is an Australian cookie called Tim-Tams and I changed around a recipe from a college roommate to make it resemble this cookie. The trick is how to EAT the cookie. You nibble off the top, and you nibble off the bottom, then you suck hot chocolate through the cookie, and eat it up before it has a chance to fall into your cup of hot chocolate.

Copycat Tim-Tams

Almond Bark (dipping chocolate)
Town House butter crackers
Chocolate Frosting and Powdered Sugar
OR Peanut Butter
Colored Candy Chocolate (optional)

Add powdered sugar into the chocolate frosting until it becomes dry/thick/mold-able. Spread/mold it onto half the crackers and use the other half to make a sandwich. OR make the sandwich with peanut butter and crackers (this is not as good for hot chocolate dipping). Dip in the melted almond bark. Pipe colored candy chocolate on the top.

Maple Syrup and Strawberry Syrup

I developed the strawberry syrup from our family recipe for maple syrup. You can use other kinds of berries instead of strawberry. The picture with the animal waffles is actually raspberry syrup.

Maple Syrup	Strawberry Syrup
2 Cups Sugar	2 Cups Sugar
1 Cup Water	1 Cup Strawberry (Pureed)
Few Drops of Mapleine	Few Drops of Lemon Juice
Bring sugar and water to a slight boil, turn off and add maple.	Bring sugar and strawberry to a slight boil, simmer 10 minutes, turn off and add lemon juice.

5-Step Garlic Chicken Pizza

5-Step Garlic Chicken Pizza:

Step #1 - Precook the chicken in a crock pot (that's the trick to all things chicken). Just move from freezer to crock pot (on high) at least 3 hours before you need the chicken.

Step #2 - Prepare pizza dough.  Spray and coat pizza pan with cornmeal so the pizza won't stick later. 

Step #3 - Spread with a white sauce (like ranch dressing).

Step #4 - Add Oil, italian seasoning, garlic salt, and fry the chicken in a really hot frying pan.  I cube it out of the crock pot and then it only has to grill for a minute or so.

Step #5 - Spread on the toppings: the garlic chicken, a can of tomatoes (squeeze out the juiciness like you would putting pinneapple on pizza), and cheese.  Bake according to pizza dough directions.

P.S. Sorry, the picture is of the COLD pizza the next day :)