I had never heard of Chicken and Dumplings until I moved down south a few years ago. Boy, was I missing out. The creamy stew of chicken, veggies, and broth topped with hearty fluffy biscuits made of cream and flour is the ultimate comfort food for a cold winter day.

This recipe takes only one hour and you get great results. Though you don’t make your own chicken broth here, this is the real deal, no short-cuts like using cans of globby cream of chicken. There’s no need to cheat by using canned biscuits either – these drop biscuits are easy to put together. You can even use shredded leftover Thanksgiving turkey in place of the chicken (just skip to step 2).

Chicken and Dumplings

Stew:
5 cups low-sodium chicken broth
2 lbs boneless, skinless chicken breasts, trimmed
5 Tbs unsalted butter
4 carrots, peeled and sliced 1/4 inch thick
1 large onion, chopped fine
1 tsp salt
3 garlic cloves
6 Tbs all-purpose flour
3/4 cup dry sherry
1/3 cup heavy cream

Dumplings:
2 cups flour
1 Tbs baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1-1/3 cups heavy cream

Directions for the stew
1. Bring broth to a simmer in Dutch oven over high heat. Add chicken and return to simmer. Cover, reduce heat to medium-low, and simmer until chicken is just cooked through (about 10 min). Transfer chicken to a plate and tent with aluminum foil. Transfer broth into large bowl.

2. Return empty Dutch oven to medium-high heat and melt butter. Add carrots, onion, and salt and cook until softened, about 7 minutes. Stir in garlic and cook 30 seconds. Stir in four and cook, stirring frequently, for 1 minute. Stir in sherry, scraping up browned bits. Stir in reserved broth, cream, thyme, bay leaves, and pepper and bring to boil. Cover, reduce heat to low and simmer until stew thickens, about 20 minutes.

Directions for dumplings
Stir flour, baking powder, and salt in large bowl. Stir in cream until incorporated (dough will be very thick and shaggy).

To finish
Discard bay leaves and return stew to rapid simmer. Shred reserved chicken and add to stew along with any accumulated juices, peas, 3 tablespoons parsley. Using 2 large soup spoons or small ice cream scoop, drop golf ball-sized dumpling onto stew about 1/4 inch apart (you should have 16 – 18 dumplings). Reduce heat to low, cover, and cook until dumplings have doubled in size, 15 – 18 minutes. Garnish with remaining parsley. Serve.

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Where do the recipes on the back of cans of beans, boxes of cereal, bags of candy, jars of jam and other packaged foods come from? And more importantly, are they any good?

I figure they’ve got to be some of the best of the best recipes if they are worthy to be printed on every single container and were chosen by the corporate food gods, or test kitchens, if they have one, to best showcase the ingredient being sold.

Well, I’ll test out those recipes for you as part of a new Eat My Charlotte series: “Back of the Box.”

The first Back of the Box (or Bag, in this case) recipe to test: Hershey’s Kisses: Peanut Butter Blossom Cookies.

I forgot how good these classic peanut butter and chocolate cookies are. Warm out of the oven, the peanut butter cookie is soft and the chocolate is melty (not fully melted, but not hard either).

Making them is a cinch: Make the dough, roll the dough into balls, roll the balls into sugar, bake. The fun part is mushing the Hershey’s Kisses into the cookie balls when they come out of the oven.

I’d say this recipe is pretty darn good. There are a lot of impostor recipes out there, but I have absolutely no complaints with this one, so it’s a winner. The cookies even stay soft and yummy on the second day.

Delightfully Delicious Hershey’s Kisses Peanut Butter Blossoms

48 Hershey’s Kisses Milk Chocolates
1/2 cup shortening
3/4 cup creamy peanut butter
1/3 cup granulated sugar
1/2 cup packed light brown sugar
1 egg
2 Tbsp milk
1 tsp vanilla extract
1-1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
Granulated sugar

Heat oven to 375 degrees. Remove wrappers from chocolates.

Beat shortening and peanut butter in large bowl. Add 1/2 cup granulated and brown sugar, beat until fluffy. Add egg, milk, vanilla; beat well. Stir together flour, baking soda and salt. Gradually beat into mixure.

Shape dough into 1-inch balls. Roll in sugar; place on ungreased cookie sheet.

Back 8 to 10 minutes or until lightly browned. Immediately press at Kisses Chocolate into center of each cookie. Remove from cookie sheet to wire rack. Cool completely. Makes about 4 dozen cookies.

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Now that it’s cooler outside, my ice cream maker is working so much better. It has finally decided to cooperate. During the hot summer months, I could churn and churn without results because the frozen canister would defrost so quickly in the 80 degree weather. Now, it works like a charm – I can get ice cream in 20 minutes. Luckily, I appreciate ice cream year ’round, so eating massive amounts of ice cream now makes me just as happy as eating it during the summer.

So now I’ve started churning out batch after batch of ice cream. The most current flavor is pumpkin pie ice cream with molasses cookie crumbles.

As you can see, this ice cream makes for great ginger molasses and pumpkin pie ice cream sandwiches. For the cookies, follow this recipe.

Pumpkin Pie Ice Cream
Ingredients:
1 cup heavy cream
1 cup milk
3/4 cup brown sugar
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon ground ginger
1/4 teaspoon nutmeg
1/8 teaspoon ground cloves
4 egg yolks
1 cup pumpkin puree
1 splash bourbon
A handful of gingersnap crumbs or ginger molasses cookie crumbs.

Directions:
1. Heat the cream, milk, sugar, cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg and cloves in a sauce pan until it almost boils, about 5 minutes.
2. Reduce the heat to low.
3. Add one tablespoon of the cream mixture to the egg to temper it.
4. Add the egg to the sauce pan.
5. Cook at low heat without boiling, until it is slightly thickened and coats the back of a spoon.
6. Strain mixture with a sieve to remove clumps.
7. Add pumpkin puree and stir.
8. Chill the mixture in the fridge.
9. Freeze according to the instructions for your ice cream machine. (Add crumbs when the ice cream begins to become the texture of soft serve.)

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There’s nothing that says “celebration” like a few dozen cupcakes. Cupcakes are cute, festive, whimsical, and bite-size (well, that depends on the size of your mouth I guess). And they don’t require plates and utensils.

So to celebrate my friend landing a new job in Atlanta, we made her a cupcake buffet. For my cupcake contribution, I decided to go with a crowd-pleasing flavor combo of peanut butter and chocolate. It’s win-win. These rich, thick chocolate cupcakes are filled with a Reese’s-esque peanut butter filling and topped with a creamy peanut butter frosting made of cream cheese, whipped cream, and peanut butter.

So how good are the treats? These cupcake cuties are profanity-proclaiming good. Explicatives spewed from friends’ mouths as soon as their teeth sunk into the filling. Just check out this photo:

To make them, just plop some of the thicky thick sour cream chocolate batter on the bottom of the cupcake liner, then place a peanut butter filling ball on top, and then cover with more batter. The cupcake batter is very dense – bakes up really well and holds also up the heavy peanut butter filling balls.

For the frosting, I used a size 1M Wilton frosting tip to get the big swirls on top of the cupcakes. No professional pastry bag is needed here – use a large Zip-Lock bag and snip off one end to accommodate a large coupler and the 1M tip, then fill with the marshmallowy frosting. (Be sure to lick the frosting bowl.)

Chocolate Peanut Butter Cupcakes

Ingredients:
For the filling:
1 cup confectioners’ sugar
¾ cup creamy peanut butter
3 tbsp. unsalted butter, at room temperature
½ tsp. vanilla extract

For the cake:
1 2/3 cups all-purpose flour
¾ cup unsweetened cocoa powder
1 tsp. baking soda
½ tsp. salt
1 cup sour cream
2 tbsp. milk
1 tsp. vanilla extract
8 tbsp. unsalted butter, at room temperature
1½ cups sugar
2 large eggs

For the frosting:
8 oz. cream cheese, at room temperature
4 tbsp. unsalted butter, softened
½ cup creamy peanut butter
3¼ cups confectioners’ sugar
1 cup frozen whipped topping, thawed

Directions:
Preheat the oven to 350° F.  Line two cupcake pans with paper liners.

To make the filling, combine the confectioners’ sugar, peanut butter, butter and vanilla extract in a bowl.  Beat with an electric mixer on medium speed until well combined.  Roll the mixture into 1-inch balls (at least 24) and set aside on a baking sheet.

To make the cake batter, combine the flour, cocoa powder, baking soda and salt in a medium bowl; whisk together and set aside.  In a liquid measuring cup, stir together the sour cream, milk and vanilla extract.  In the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, combine the butter and sugar, and beat on medium-high speed until light and fluffy, about 2 minutes.  Beat in the eggs one at a time, scraping down the bowl as needed.  With the mixer on low speed, alternately add the dry ingredients and the sour cream mixture, beginning and ending with the dry ingredients.  Mix just until incorporated.

Spoon a tablespoon or two of batter into the bottom of each cupcake liner.  Place a ball of the peanut butter filling in each cupcake well and top with the remaining batter so that all the cups are filled.  Bake for 18-22 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.  Allow to cool in the pan for 5-10 minutes, then transfer to a wire rack to cool completely.

To make the frosting, in the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, combine the cream cheese, butter and peanut butter until smooth. Slowly mix in the confectioners’ sugar, beating until smooth and well blended.  Mix in the whipped topping until smooth and fluffy.  Frost cooled cupcakes as desired.

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Do you appreciate a fun guy?

I hope so. This recipe for stuffed fungi (hardy har har), aka. Stuffed Mushrooms, is fabulous. Even those people who don’t like the slimy, mushy texture of cooked mushrooms might enjoy this appetizer recipe — the mushroom caps are only sauteed and still hold their crunch. You just fill them up with a mixture of cheeses and pop them in the oven. I served them up at my dinner club last night and they were quite the hit … as fun guys usually are at parties. (Stop rolling your eyes. Can can see you.)

To make these, you only need six ingredients. Which is a good thing because recipes with ingredient lists over 10 items scare me. I used Gorgonzola cheese here and I halved the recipe easily. You can assemble the dish in advance and store it in the fridge until you are ready to broil them.

The ingredients: (clockwise) Worcestershire sauce, mushrooms, green onions, Gorgonzola, cream cheese and butter.

Decapitate the bad boys.

Mix up the stuffing goodies.

Stuff 'em good.

Stuffed Mushrooms

2 lbs medium mushrooms
6 tablespoons butter
1 (8 ounce) package cream cheese, softened
1/2 cup crumbled blue cheese
2 tablespoons chopped green onions
1 dash Worcestershire sauce

1. Remove stems from mushrooms; chop enough stems to equal 1/2 cup.
2. Cook 1 pound of the mushroom caps in 3 tablespoons of the butter over medium heat for 5 minutes; drain off fat.
3. Repeat with remaining 1 pound of mushroom caps and 3 tablespoons butter.
4. In a medium bowl, combine cream cheese and blue cheese, mixing until well blended.
5. Stir in chopped stems and green onions; fill mushroom caps.
6. Place on cookie sheet and broil until warm and tops are golden brown.

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Yes, I know, ice cream is for the summer! But this is a special fall edition flavor of ice cream – Maple Pecan.

And they’re not just any regular plain pecans in this ice cream, they are buttery toasted, candied pecans.

This custard-based ice cream is sweetened with maple syrup (the real stuff – none of that Aunt Jemima gunk). Oh yes, and it has a splash of bourbon. The recipe says it is optional, but I demand that it is mandatory.

Maple Pecan Ice Cream
Recipe courtesy of Closet Cooking

3/4 cup pecans (roughly chopped)
2 tablespoons butter
2 tablespoons brown sugar
3/4 cup maple syrup
1 cup heavy cream
1 cup milk
4 egg yolks
1 splash bourbon (optional)

Directions:
1. Melt the butter in a pan.
2. Add the pecans, toss to coat, sprinkle on the sugar and heat until the pecans are nice and toasted, about 3-4 minutes.
3. Remove the pecans from the heat and let cool completely.
4. Heat the maple syrup, cream and milk in a sauce pan until it almost boils, about 5 minutes.
5. Reduce the heat to low.
6. Temper the eggs and stir them into the cream.
7. Cook at low heat until it thickens and can coat the back of a spoon.
8. Remove from heat and stir in the bourbon.
9. Strain the mixture at this point to remove any bits that may have formed while warming.
10. Chill the mixture in the fridge.
11. Freeze the maple custard and toasted pecans according to the instructions for your ice cream machine.

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For some reason I am feeling generous today and I am going to share the recipe for one of my favorite cookies with you, my faithful reader. It must be the upcoming holiday season…

These Ginger Molasses Cookies have an amazing soft and chewy texture. The trick is to refrigerate the dough 24 hours before baking. I’m thinking this has something to do with achieving the chewiness of the cookies.

Because the balls of dough are rolled in a mixture of granulated and demerara sugar before baking, they have a sugary crunch when you bite into them. What’s demerara sugar? Demerara is a type of unrefined sugar with a large grain. When sugar cane syrup is dehydrated, it forms the large golden brown crystals. Using demerara gives the cookies a bigger crunch than just using granulated sugar alone.

The cookies will puff up while they bake. To ensure a chewy texture, be careful not to overbake.

Sparkley! This picture doesn't show how pretty and glittery these cookies really are.

If you want to go overboard (like I always do), serve them with homemade Maple Pecan Ice Cream.

Ginger Molasses Cookies

1 stick butter, softened
1/3 cup cup dark molasses
1/8 cup water
1/4 tablespoon salt
1 1/2 cups brown sugar
2 eggs
3 1/4 cups unsifted flour
1/2 tablespoon baking soda
1/2 tablespoon cinnamon
1 teaspoon ground cloves
1 heaping teaspoon ground ginger
1/4 cup mixed sugars (demerara and granulated sugar)

Cream butter, molasses, water, salt and brown sugar together. Beat in eggs, one at a time. Sift dry ingredients together and add gradually to the creamed mixture. Mix well (dough will be stiff). Refrigerate for 24 hours.

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Roll dough into 1.5-inch balls and roll each ball in the sugar mix to cover. Bake for 13 to 16 minutes.

The recipe for the Maple Pecan Ice Cream to come…

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If you are faint of heart when it comes to cooking with heavy whipping cream and lots of eggs (or wary of high cholesterol), you might want to stay away from this recipe. This Bread Pudding with Spiced Rum Sauce recipe asks for eight, yes EIGHT, eggs and 2 cups of whipping cream. I’d say it’s darn worth it though. Drizzled with the rum sauce, this bread pudding is a fantastic fall dessert. It’s incredibly easy to make and impressive to serve — this recipe is restaurant quality because it actually comes from a restaurant in Mississippi.

This picture does not do the bread pudding justice. Not too pretty, but you'll understand the hype once you eat it.

I halved the recipe and used a 9×9 pan. A tip: It’s best to assemble the bread pudding and let it sit overnight in the fridge before you bake it in order to let the bread really soak up the creamy mixture. And, if you use cinnamon raisin bread, you can skip a step and omit adding more raisins.

Bread Pudding

8 large eggs
3 1/2 cups whole milk
2 cups sugar
1 1/2 cups whipping cream
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 1-pound loaf cinnamon challah or cinnamon-swirl bread, cut into 1-inch cubes
1 cup golden raisins

Butter 13×9x2-inch glass baking dish. Whisk eggs in large bowl to blend. Add milk, sugar, cream, and vanilla; whisk to blend well. Stir in bread and raisins. Pour mixture into prepared baking dish. Cover and refrigerate 2 hours.Preheat oven to 350°F. Bake pudding uncovered until puffed and golden, about 1 hour 15 minutes. Cool slightly (pudding will fall). Serve warm with Spiced Rum Sauce.

Spiced Rum Sauce

1 cup (packed) golden brown sugar
1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter
1/2 cup whipping cream
2 tablespoons spiced rum or dark rum
3/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon

Stir brown sugar and butter in heavy medium saucepan over medium heat until melted and smooth, about 2 minutes. Add cream, rum, and cinnamon and bring to simmer. Simmer until sauce thickens and is reduced to 1 1/2 cups, about 5 minutes. Serve warm. (Can be prepared 2 days ahead. Cover and refrigerate. Bring to simmer before serving.)

Makes 1 1/2 cups.

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When the weather gets chilly, a nice warm hearty pasta totally hits the spot. This Pumpkin and Sausage Pasta is the perfect fall dish — it contains pumpkin, flavorful sweet Italian sausage, and just a hit of cream. I usually balk at recipes that call for heavy cream, but did you know pumpkin is loaded with the important antioxidant beta-carotene? Feel good about eating this dish! It makes a lot, so invite some friends over.

I served the pasta with Bread Pudding with Spiced Rum Sauce for dessert. The recipe for this heart-stopper will be coming soon…

We can thank the queen of 30-minute meals, Rachel Ray, for this recipe.

Pumpkin and Sausage Pasta

1 tablespoon extra-virgin olive oil, plus 1 tablespoon
1 pound bulk sweet Italian sausage
4 cloves garlic, cracked and chopped
1 medium onion, finely chopped
1 bay leaf, fresh or dried
4 to 6 sprigs sage leaves, cut into chiffonade, about 2 tablespoons
1 cup dry white wine
1 cup chicken stock, canned or paper container
1 cup canned pumpkin
1/2 cup (3 turns around the pan) heavy cream
1/8 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg, ground or freshly grated
Coarse salt and black pepper
1 pound penne rigate, cooked to al dente
Romano or Parmigiano, for grating

Heat a large, deep nonstick skillet over medium high heat. Add 1 tablespoon of olive oil to the pan and brown the sausage in it. Transfer sausage to paper towel lined plate. Drain fat from skillet and return pan to the stove. Add the remaining tablespoon oil, and then the garlic and onion. Saute 3 to 5 minutes until the onions are tender.Add bay leaf, sage, and wine to the pan. Reduce wine by half, about 2 minutes. Add stock and pumpkin and stir to combine, stirring sauce until it comes to a bubble. Return sausage to pan, reduce heat, and stir in cream. Season the sauce with the cinnamon and nutmeg, and salt and pepper, to taste. Simmer mixture 5 to 10 minutes to thicken sauce.

Return drained pasta to the pot you cooked it in. Remove the bay leaf from sauce and pour the sausage pumpkin sauce over pasta. Combine sauce and pasta and toss over low heat for 1 minute. Garnish the pasta with lots of shaved cheese and sage leaves.

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Take this twist on plain tomato bruschetta and spice things up. Here’s a quick and dirty recipe for a healthy and delicious crab and shrimp version of bruschetta that I learned from a friend. It’s a snap to throw together and tastes great.

Crab and Shrimp Bruschetta
Serves 2

A handful of raw shrimp, peeled and roughly chopped
1/2 can of good quality crab meat
1/2 avocado, diced
1 tomato, diced
1/2 red onion, diced
1 lime
A handful of cilantro, chopped
French baguette
olive oil

In a small saute pan, melt a pat of butter. Cook shrimp and crab together until shrimp is cooked through. Set aside.

Combine avocado, tomato and red onion in a bowl. Squeeze lime over mixture. Add cooked shrimp and crab into bowl. Toss together. Mix in the cilantro. Season with salt and pepper.

Cut the baguette into slices, slightly at an angle. Place slices on a baking sheet and drizzle with oil. Season with salt and pepper. Bake in a 350 degree oven for 5-10 minutes, or until lightly toasted.

Plate the bread toasts and scoop a spoonful of bruscetta filling over.

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