Super Bowl Playoff Eats

The following took place on Playoff Sunday

There's a trend regarding Super Bowl food that includes meat. In fact, some might say you are committing a sin if you don't have meat at your tailgaiting party or your party at home. I don't really know about that, seeing as I couldn't care less about meat, but meat we made nonetheless.

Before I get to the meat, Super Bowl parties must have snacks.

Wasabi-coated peas are one of THE best snacks in the world. Crunchy, savory, and very spicy!

Now back to the main course, which was Spicy Honey-Brushed Chicken Thighs for sandwiches, though I used chicken breasts.

Clockwise starting at the top: Kosher salt, garlic powder, chili powder, ground cumin, paprika, and red pepper flakes for the dry rub.

This rub is so great that you should double it and keep it around. I forgot I did that back in March, when the recipe first came out in the Cooking Light magazine. Yes, I had whole bottle of it and I forgot...


Rub it on the chicken

I could just have used mayonnaise and mustard, but I don't like mayonnaise (unless it's homemade or horseradish mayonnaise) and I wanted to make it extra special, so I made a cilantro pesto. It also tastes great as a chip dip.

And here is a pile of meat, sure to satisfy anyone. (Unless they don't eat meat, in which case you're screwed. >.<) Make sure you cover the chicken, or any meat, with foil and let it rest for 10-15 minutes. It will give the juices a chance to redistribute within the chicken so it won't ooze out when you slice it. Especially if it's chicken breasts, which we all know lacks flavor to begin with.

Another very important component to a sandwich, besides the innards, is the bread. If you're making subs, you want a roll with crusty and chewy outtards (but not difficult to chew through) and spongy, flavorful innards. If the bread reminds you of sawdust, get rid of it. If necessary to fit more innards in, you might need to hollow out the insides a bit.

For me, the best part of events such as the Super Bowl isn't so much the eating of the food as it is the making of it. A foodie always looks forward to an event that requires food, which sometimes means we develop an interest in the main event itself. (Giants!! And they are going to win because Conan's turtle race said so. HA!.) Sometimes. But mostly, from our viewpoint, it's usually about the food.

Daring Bakers and the Lemon Meringue Pie

There is no good month to miss when you're a part of the Daring Bakers. This month's challenge looked to be a fun one, but I wasn't able to fit it in. That doesn't stop you from seeing how the other DBers did on the challenge, though!

Daring Bakers Blogroll

Natl. Peanut Butter Day and Happy Belated Birthday to Elvis Presley!

The following took place on 24 January 2008

I know what you might be thinking, "What the heck does peanut butter have to do with Elvis Presley?" If that's what you were thinking, SHAME ON YOU! As punishment, you must watch the King make is favorite snack, a fried peanut butter and banana sandwich. Too bad Elvis didn't know he was a foodie. :(

Despite what you may have thought about peanut butter and me, it's not my favorite snack. It gives me a claustrophobic feeling, though I swear that a tablespoon of natural peanut butter cures hiccups, followed by a few swigs of water (so says my brother, and he's right). But Elvis, however, brings out my peanut butter love in the form of warm, gooey peanut butter. In fact, I meant to celebrate Elvis' birthday by making a grilled peanut butter and banana sandwich, but I forgot. Now it's your turn to say SHAME ON YOU, Christina! As soon as I saw the recipe for King Cupcakes from Cooking Light, I knew I could rectify my mistake, and since this is National Peanut Butter Day, talk about killing two birds with one stone!

Are not these the cutest? The perfectly domed crowns are beautiful! When I talk about a great-looking cupcake, this is what I mean.

Cream cheese-peanut butter frosting. The lighting gives it a jaundiced-hue...


Glamour Shots by Deb


This is the cupcake's equivalent to a mug shot. It's punishment is to be consumed immediately.


The perfect amount of frosting is the same for the espresso-milk ratio in a cappuccino, which is 1/3 frosting (espresso) to 2/3 cupcake (milk).

Did this recipe do justice to the King?

Cupcake: For the little amount of banana in the recipe, I was worried it might not stand out well in the baked cupcake. I was kind of wrong, as there was a pleasant banana essence, though it didn't scream "OOH, BANANA!!" That usually means it has the potential to be overpowered by the frosting...

The texture of the cupcake was between dense and light. It had a decent amount of sponginess without being rubbery, but it didn't have that wonderful melt-in-your-mouth feature. It was also decently moist without being sticky or gummy and didn't immediately turn to mush as soon as you begin to chew it.

Frosting: If you recall from the last post, I really enjoy peanut butter frosting. What intrigued me about this recipe was that it called for cream cheese. Tasting the finished frosting alone, it had a wonderfully subtle tanginess that I felt enhanced the peanut butter frosting experience. I'm adding this to my recipe box. It was very light and airy, like the frosting for the chocolate-chocolate-banana cake was.

(I added an extra ounce of cream cheese, 2 Tbsp. of peanut butter, 1/3 cup confectioner's sugar, and 1 1/2 Tbsp. of milk to make more frosting. If you don't want to make more, you still need at least 1 1/2 teaspoons (1/2 Tbsp.) of milk or else it's too thick.)

The combined effect: As I said above, the ratio of frosting-to-cupcake is 1/3-to-2/3. Why? You don't want to overpower the cupcake. (The only reason to overpower the cupcake is if it's a terrible cupcake, which usually means the frosting will be terrible, which in turn means you shouldn't be eating it to begin with.) Well, the banana flavor of the cupcake wasn't as noticeable versus eating the cupcake itself. If you take a bite with too much frosting on your fork, it really overpowers it, but if you stop thinking about the taste, it all melds together into a subconscious banana-peanut buttery fusion. I would, however, prefer a cupcake with more banana taste next time.

The only part I wasn't able to do was sprinkle chopped peanuts on top because I didn't have any. It would have given it a great texture contrast, as well as cutting the sweetness, though this wasn't really uber sweet at all.

Personally, I think the King would have approved. Upon biting into a cupcake version of his supposedly favorite snack, he would have replied, "Thank you, thank you very much. ;)."

(Another foodie, Culinary in the Desert, blogged about King Cupcakes back in February. Read it. Click this here link!)