Sour Cream Enchiladas and Guacamole

One of the great things about coworkers is sharing recipes. I'm very lucky that a girl in my office has a father that runs a Mexican restaurant and occasionally brings in Guacamole. And by that, I mean she cuts everything up and makes it in the office. Amazing! Well, I had some sour cream left over from my ranch dressing and I found some chubs of ground beef in the freezer that I needed to use. So I decided I'd grab some avocados and do something Tex-Mex.

As far as using the sour cream went, I LOVE Chicken sour Cream enchiladas. And the nephews always have tortillas around the house. It seemed to me, that switching in ground beef would work out all right, so I looked up some taco seasoning for it and found a promising enchilada recipe. Plus, I ran out of chili powder so I couldn't do a red sauce, and I had no chicken. So, improvising!

Chicken Enchiladas with Creamy Green Chile Sauce

This is the recipe I used as a guide. I picked it because I had most of the ingredients on hand, like the cilantro and green chiles. I think it's a little tough to ruin a recipe like this even when substituting things you have in the fridge. For example, other than using beef instead, I had cheddar, not monterey jack. And I used flour rather than corn tortillas. Use, they were a bit droopy, but they were tasty and I'm not that picky about them.

And they look pretty. So there! For the beef, I mixed up some seasoning and dumped what was left of a jar of jalapenos into it, plus half of my can of chiles as I had too many. If you buy pre-mixed seasonings you should search around on allrecipes or Yummly. Most of the time, you probably already own all the spices you need to make the mix.

Taco Seasoning

And of course, the aforementioned Guacamole recipe that is just perfect. Though I argue with one of the nephews as to whether or not Cilantro is a must. In my opinion, it is.

Guacamole 

Now to chase all that down, I decided to make a key lime pie. I've never made one before and rarely get a piece. Usually only if I go out to lunch with my sister and split one with her. But, we rarely get dessert, so...

Key Lime Pie

Note, the recipe uses sour cream. See a trend here? That's my justification for making pie right there. I was cleaning the sour cream out of the fridge... really...

Grating key limes, let it be said, it awful. Next time I try this I'm using big limes to see how it goes. Also, this little casserole dish is stoneware I got from World Market. It's awesome and cleans up great and is basically a 9" pie plate. The crust you see is just a standard Betty Crocker pie crust recipe out of Ye Olde cookbook.

And that little chunk out of the pie? That is a nephew, caught red-handed taking slivers. To "test" the pie before getting some. Right. Testing. Well, that is why I don't have a picture of an intact pie. :D

Why yes, it is a pretty tasty key lime recipe.

Onion Buns, Barbecue and Dark Chocolate Cake

I get the feeling I'm going to make people bored saying it, but baking bread rocks. It really does. I may never buy bread from a store again.

Confession time here, I am addicted to these little onion rolls from Albertson's Grocery. Problem is, they don't always keep long and they are often out. So hey, my other loaf came out great, I started looking for a recipe. I can do this!

For my sammiches, I bought a huge pork tenderloin from Costco and decided to go with pulled pork barbecue. It was a very simple, if odd, recipe.

Slow Cooker Pulled Pork

1 pork tenderloin (2 pound)
1 bottle root beer
1 bottle barbecue sauce
1 package buns

Basically, dump the pork and root beer in the slow cooker and low for 5-6 hours until it shreds easy. Take it out. Shred, mix in sauce. Slap on buns. Enjoy! Simple! I used Virgil's for the root beer because it's very flavorful and Rudy's for the sauce as they sell large bottles. Because my pork loin was 8 pounds, I blame Costco.

Now, the buns I went with were from the website of the flour I buy. They were fantastic. 6 star. Incredible. Possibly better than the barbecue. If I manage to wheedle some smoked ham from my sister (raises pigs), I think I could put people into a happy food coma with these.

King Arthur Flour Onion Buns

Filling
1 medium onion, diced
4 tablespoons butter
1 tablespoon sugar

Dough
1/4 cup warm water
1 tablespoon yeast
1/2 cup milk, scalded and cooled
1 egg
4 tablespoons butter
2 tablespoons sugar
1 1/2 teaspoons salt
3 cups King Arthur Unbleached All-Purpose Flour

Glaze
1 egg
1/4 teaspoon salt

Topping
Parmesan cheese

I'm not going to put the how-to here, just click the link for that. I am going to list what I changed after making it twice.
1. No scalded milk, because lazy. I just used water.
2. Halved butter used to cook onions because butter
3. Halved butter mixed in with dough, same reason. 
4. Chopped up butter and added it to onion mixture when it was done cooking so it would melt, because save me a pot and flavor butter with onion.
5. Added onions to flour before mixing dough, because I've tried adding the fruit/veggie thing after the first rising and it's messy. And it gets under your nails and it's gross. Now, if you've a bread machine you wouldn't have this issue. I don't, so I do! So I add it early and justify it by saying it mixes the onion flavor in more thoroughly. So there!

Aren't they pretty? The little bowl is what I used to cut them. And they expanded quite a bit. I tried a biscuit cutter for the second batch and they were still a little large. Next time, I'm using a glass and making them more "slider" style.

I should add, I mixed up some ranch dressing for some leftover celery in the fridge. I don't like buying ranch as I usually won't eat a full bottle, I end up throwing half away. And likewise, I usually have leftover sour cream. The texture of home made ranch is much better. It's also pretty easy to make once you know what's in it.

Ranch Dressing

I flip the quantities of Mayo and Sour Cream in it, because I like sour cream.

That extra little thing on there? That's a Black Magic cake with chocolate cream cheese icing. And it's also fantastic. And I do mean award winning good :D

Black Magic Cake

Now you may look at this and think, coffee? Bleh! But I swear, you can't taste it. And I put espresso in it too. I'm sure you'd miss it if you used water but I suspect it helps the very dark chocolate color. It's also incredibly moist and while I'd love to layer this cake, that might be a feat of gymnastics that would not end well. It's not a cake that needs icing at all, but I happen to have a recipe I use for icing that I love that I altered for this cake.

The problem is that recipe is firmly in my head. It's from something my grandmother used to make that was really a quick no cook cheesecake. 

Quick Cream Cheese Filling/Icing

1 Large Tub Cool Whip
2 Blocks softened Cream Cheese
Powdered Sugar to taste (about 1/3 cup)
Vanilla if desired.

Mix together in blender and spread at will! The nice thing with this is you can make it diabetic friendly by using truvia and getting sugarfree cool whip. And it's great just on fruit or layered under pudding in a crust.

For the above cake recipe, I wanted more cream cheese taste, and the cake I made was a half recipe. So I didn't need that much. I used half a block of cream cheese and half a small tub of cool whip. Maybe 1/8 cup of powdered sugar and 1-2 tablespoons of cocoa. It was potent. I kept it in the fridge rather than icing the cake directly and spread it on as needed.

I'm going to take that cake to work and wreck many diets. Yes I am :D It was good. And it was gone before the barbecue.