© Margaret's Morsels
Showing posts with label congealed. Show all posts
Showing posts with label congealed. Show all posts
November 18, 2015
Thanksgiving Recipe Roundup
May 8, 2013
Celebrate Mom
Mother's Day is big business in the restaurant world. According to the National Restaurant Association, Mother's Day is the most popular day to eat out. This is precisely why I don't want my family to take me out to eat on Mother's Day! While I appreciate the sentiment, I'd rather go out to eat when it's not as crowded, prices aren't inflated and restaurants aren't in a hurry to turn the table and seat the next patron. If, for one reason or another, your mom feels the same way, fix her a home cooked meal instead. If that thought scares you because you're not a cook, check out the recipes below. This baker's dozen includes recipes for the novice as well as the experienced cook and those in between. Click on the words in bold to see the recipe. If none of these are mom's cup of tea, check my blog for lots more recipes.
Bright and Early:
Baked Omelet Roll: Six ingredients, a blender, 13 x 9 x 2-inch pan and spatula are all you need to make this impressive looking dish. You can add meat, vegetables or cheese as a filling, but make sure whatever you use is fully cooked.
French Toast Souffle: Although the word "souffle" may sound intimidating, this recipe is really easy to prepare. You don't even need a souffle dish! It's baked in a 13 x 9 x 2-inch baking dish. When baked, it makes a delicious sauce that can be spooned on top instead of using syrup. It has to be assembled and refrigerated the night before it's baked.
Salads:
Chicken Tender Salad: A bed of salad greens topped with chicken tenders, bacon, hard-boiled eggs, tomatoes, shredded cheese, croutons or potato sticks and some dressing would cost upwards of $8.00 in a restaurant. This homemade version -- which can be made with a package of salad mix and a box of frozen chicken tenders -- tastes just as good and is a fraction of the cost.
Chicken Salad: This is the best chicken salad I've ever eaten! It takes time to make, but it's worth the effort. It's best when made a day ahead of time so the flavors have time to blend. Add some celery sticks, croissants and a congealed salad to round out the meal. To impress mom, place scoops of chicken salad on a lettuce lined platter and top each scoop with a sprig of parsley.
Cherry Gelatin Fruit Salad: This recipe only uses four ingredients and all of them are sugar-free! It can be made using a decorative mold, individual molds or a 2-quart serving bowl. It's a nice accompaniment to chicken salad.
The Main Event:
Easy Pork Chops and Apples: There's no need to peel apples or brown pork chops with this recipe. Spread canned apple pie filling in a baking dish, add the pork chops and top everything with packaged stuffing mix. Serve a vegetable or two on the side and you've got a meal that was easy to prepare.
Broccoli Quiche: You don't have to make the pie crust, cook the broccoli or, if you don't mind spending a little extra, grate the cheese to make this quiche. Add a green salad and some fresh fruit and you've got a meal mom will love.
Baked Ziti: If you can boil water, you can make this pasta dish. It's so tasty, mom will never guess it only costs .67 cents a serving! Add a green salad and some garlic bread and you've got a filling meal.
On the Side:
Potatoes O'Brien: This recipe uses frozen steak fries instead of fresh potatoes. This makes the dish quick to prepare because you don't have to peel potatoes. It also makes cooking time minimal. This is delicious served with a baked omelet roll.
Macaroni and Cheese: This side dish is tastier than anything you get from a box! The hardest part of the recipe is boiling water. You don't even have to cook the sauce on the stove; the ingredients are mixed up in a bowl.
Bread Basket:
Cinnamon Muffins: This was the first Mother's Day recipe I ever posted on my blog. These muffins start with a package of yellow or white cake mix and require more mixing than measuring! The muffins can be made in a regular size muffin tin or miniature ones.
Sweet Endings:
Lemonade Pie: You won't need any measuring cups or spoons to make this no bake pie. You will, however, need a can opener and an electric mixer. Unlike a lot of no bake pies, this pie gets it creaminess not from Cool Whip, but from cream cheese. You need to allow four hours for it to firm up in the freezer before it's served.
Sour Cream Cherry Cheesecake: Mom will never guess this cheesecake isn't made from scratch. A package of no bake cheesecake mix is doctored up and the result is a cheesecake that tastes homemade. If you don't like cherries, substitute your favorite flavor of pie filling instead.
© Margaret's Morsels
August 27, 2012
Obviously Orange
According to a recent news report, July, 2012, was the hottest month in the lower 48 states since the government started keeping temperature records 117 years ago. A good way to beat the heat is to serve something cold for supper. One of my favorite warm weather pairings is homemade chicken salad and a refreshingly cold congealed salad. Most of the time, I make my husband's favorite, cherry gelatin fruit salad, but sometimes I switch things up and serve an orange salad instead.
The recipe I'm sharing, Fruity Orange Gelatin, offers a triple burst of orange flavor. Not only does the recipe call for orange gelatin, but also mandarin oranges and, what makes the recipe so refreshing, orange sherbet. If you can find it, you can use sugar-free sherbet instead of the regular kind.
Remove the sherbet from the freezer and let it stand at room temperature a few minutes to soften. When it's soft, measure two cups and put the rest back in the freezer. To get an accurate measurement, use measuring cups designed for dry ingredients.
Bring the water to a boil and remove from the heat. Add the gelatin and stir until it's dissolved.
Add the sherbet.
Stir until melted.
Add mandarin oranges and crushed pineapple. Although fresh pineapple is delicious, don't use it in a congealed salad. It contains an enzyme that prevents the gelatin from congealing. Stir to combine the ingredients.
Pour the mixture into a 2-quart serving bowl or decorative mold. Make sure to thoroughly spray the mold -- including crevices -- with nonstick cooking spray before adding the mixture. If you spray a square or rectangular dish with cooking spray, the salad can be cut into squares and served on lettuce leaves for a pretty presentation.
The cherry gelatin fruit salad can be confused with strawberry, cranberry and raspberry. You won't have that problem with this salad, though, because people will know it's obviously orange!
Fruity Orange Gelatin
10 to 12 Servings
1 (6 oz.) pkg. sugar-free orange gelatin
2 cups boiling water
2 cups orange sherbet
1 (11 oz.) can mandarin oranges, drained
1 (20 oz.) can crushed pineapple (undrained)
Bring water to a boil; remove from heat. Add gelatin and stir until dissolved. Stir in sherbet until melted. Stir in oranges and pineapple. Pour into a 2-quart serving bowl or decorative mold. Chill until firm.
© Margaret's Morsels
November 15, 2010
On the Side: Part Two
Last week, I wrote about a Thanksgiving side that appears on my table some years, but not others. As promised, today I'm going to write about the Thanksgiving side dish that, like the proverbial Christmas fruitcake, gets no respect at all, but is practically obligatory on the Thanksgiving table. It's the side dish you either love or hate. For most of my life I hated it. You've probably guessed I'm talking about cranberries.
Why have cranberries become the brunt of so many jokes? Probably because we've encountered them combined with a multitude of ingredients that do nothing to enhance the flavor of the cranberries.
Each Thanksgiving, my mother made a congealed cranberry salad with cherry gelatin, fresh cranberries, celery, nuts and several kinds of fruit. I hated it as a child and I hate it as an adult. At the other end of the spectrum, my mother-in-law always served canned jellied cranberry sauce on Thanksgiving. I didn't like it any better than I did my mother's cranberry salad concoction.
A couple of years ago, I found a recipe for Southern Cranberry Salad. The recipe sounded delicious so I decided to make it for Easter. My in-laws loved it and, surprisingly, so did I. Seeming overnight, I became a cranberry convert.
This is not my mother's cranberry salad!
The adage less is more is certainly true with this recipe. It only uses five ingredients, but they compliment each other and produce an extremely tasty salad. Unlike my mother's recipe that used fresh cranberries, this recipe uses a can of whole berry cranberry sauce. This means I can make the salad year round and not just October through December when fresh cranberries are in season. This is a good thing because it's a wonderful accompaniment to an Easter ham.
I always use sugar-free gelatin and this recipe is no exception. Cranberries are tart so, if you want the salad to be a little sweeter, you might opt to use a package of regular gelatin instead. Although the recipe calls for cherry gelatin, you could substitute another red gelatin if you prefer. I think the salad would be delicious with cranberry gelatin.
This salad is an easy holiday dish because it can be made ahead of time. Sometimes I use a jello mold; other times, I put the salad in a Corning Ware casserole dish. If I'm not unmolding the salad, I don't bother greasing the dish. If I'm molding the salad, I follow the tips mentioned here.
Southern Cranberry Salad
8 Servings
1 (3 oz.) pkg. cherry gelatin
1 cup boiling water
1 (16 oz.) can whole berry cranberry sauce
2 (11 oz.) cans mandarin oranges, drained
1 (8 oz.) can crushed pineapple, drained
Bring water to a boil. Remove from heat and add the cherry gelatin. Stir the gelatin until it is completely dissolved. Add the remaining ingredients; blend well. Pour mixture into a greased 4-cup jello mold or a 2-quart dish. Cover and refrigerate overnight. Refrigerate leftovers.
© Margaret's Morsels
August 24, 2010
Mad About Molds
I don't know where I found the recipe for Cherry Gelatin Fruit Salad, but I've been making it for over a decade. It is my most requested congealed salad recipe. People are surprised when they find out it only uses four ingredients. You can't tell when you're eating it that those four ingredients are sugar-free.
I love to use decorative molds when I make congealed salads. If you don't have a mold, you can use any food container that has a distinctive shape. I've used silicone pans, cake pans and muffin pans. It's nice to make the congealed salad in holiday themed pans, if you have them. It adds festivity to the holiday table.
Items I've used as molds.
A nice touch is to make the salad in individual molds. Not only does this look pretty on a serving platter, it's also good for portion control when you're feeding a lot of people. If you know how many people are attending, you can make one mold for each person.
If you want to buy some molds, I highly recommend plastic ones that have a top and bottom lid. After you put the mold on the serving platter and remove the second lid, the salad drops out of the mold onto the serving platter.
This mold has a lid on the top and bottom.
No matter which container you use, be sure to spray it generously with nonstick cooking spray. If you don't, you might have trouble getting the salad out of the mold or it might tear up in the process.
Right before you remove the salad from the mold, wet a paper towel and rub it on your serving platter. The damp platter makes it easy to move the salad if it's not in the right spot.
To remove the salad from the mold, fill the kitchen sink with enough hot water to come halfway up the sides of the mold. Put the mold in the water for 10 seconds. Invert the serving platter over the mold and turn both upside down. If the salad doesn't come out of the mold, run a thin blade knife around the sides to loosen the salad. It should easily release from the pan.
Whether you mold it or serve it from a bowl, I hope you'll try this recipe. It is quite tasty and you won't even miss the sugar!
Cherry Gelatin Fruit Salad
8 Servings
1 cup unsweetened applesauce
1 (6 oz.) pkg. sugar-free cherry gelatin
1 (12 oz.) can diet 7-Up
1 (8 oz.) can unsweetened crushed pineapple (undrained)
In a saucepan, bring the applesauce to a boil; remove from heat. Stir in gelatin until dissolved. Slowly add 7-Up and pineapple. Pour into a mold or 2-quart serving bowl. Chill overnight.
© Margaret's Morsels
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