Mocha Fudge Pudding

This little dessert is one of those things that you can whip up and have in the oven while you are eating dinner. By the time the dinner is eaten, the dishes are done, and the kids are in bed, you get to sit down with a warm bowl of loving chocolate. Add a dollop of ice cream and you are right smack in the middle of downtown Bliss.
My grandmother Hilda told me about this recipe first. Hilda has a sweet tooth that is unequaled. Her advice, "Don't eat the whole thing in one day." Apparently, doing that can lead to issues with your innards, so I would avoid that route. Be warned, though, it will be tough.
Since I first tried this recipe, I have since seen dozens of variations (even a lemon version).
A little advice: it will look like a hot mess when you put it in the oven. Between the batter, the crumbs sprinkled over it and the hot coffee poured on top, you will believe in your heart that you have messed up the recipe or that I, Vertigob, have sent you down a primrose path. Fear not, my little puppies, when you open the oven, you will find, as if by magic, a puffy cake, floating on the most amazing hot chocolate sauce you have ever eaten. So be brave and enjoy!
Mocha Fudge Pudding
1 cup flour
3/4 cup sugar
2 tbsp. cocoa
2 tsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp. salt
1/2 cup milk
2 tbsp. melted butter
1 tsp. vanilla
1/2 cup brown sugar, firmly packed
1 cup hot, strong coffee
Blend flour, sugar, cocoa, baking powder and salt. Stir well.
Add milk, butter and vanilla. Mix well.
Spoon into 8 well-greased custard cups or a well-greased 8-inch square pan.
Combine brown sugar and cocoa. Sprinkle evenly over batter.
Pour 2 tablespoons of coffee over batter in each cup or 1 cup coffee over batter in pan.
Bake at 350 for 25-30 minutes.
Serve warm with whipped cream or ice cream.
Die a little with each bite you take because this dessert is so wonderful.

Chicken, Gravy and Biscuits

Left to right: Grace, Alice and Hilda (my grandmother) circa 1938.

Don't the look they The Three Graces?(thanks Wikipedia.org!)

This recipe is one of the perennial favorites in our house.

I have very fond memories of my great aunt Alice making this when we stopped to see her one day. You could just tell she would have made this meal if we were coming or not. A hot meal at lunch time was THAT important to her. We were just stopping in for a visit, but she insisted that we stay for a meal. Well, she earned my eternal admiration when she pulled out all the stops and served up Chicken, Gravy and Biscuits.

She was a truly great lady. She did not believe in dry cleaning. She figured if you couldn't wash it in the washer and dry on the clothes line or in a dryer, it wasn't worth having. I loved her a great deal. She was no nonsense. She baked her biscuits on a cake pan turned upside down. Oh how I loved finding that out!

She also did the New York Times Crossword Puzzle every Sunday...in INK! I actually witnessed her, sitting and working intently until she got the whole thing done. She was so dedicated and did not even look up until she had that think licked. We all just sat around talking while she toiled away.

She was married to Jimmy who was my grandfather's dearest friend. Jimmy was a bit of a troublemaker and a bit of a rabble rouser. He refused to use a map. He believed the compass was good enough. He called my Aunt Alice "Sally."

They were one of those couples that you see walking, and even though they are pushing eighty, they are still holding hands. And they are holding hands because they want to, not because they need to. I love love love those couples.

I can only hope that Mr. Smith and I are lucky enough to end up that way. That is the plan, anyway.

So, here's the deal.

Get yourself some chicken. You can start with raw chicken, if you are feeling terribly industrious. If you don't have much time, or you hate dealing with raw chicken, go get a rotisserie chicken at the grocery store. It works just fine and cuts your prep time to virtually nothing.

You can use this method to cook the chicken.

It is so handy and can be done well in advance. Just get some heavy duty foil, put it on a cookie sheet, add some carrots, celery and onion. Peel the carrots, get a few stalks of celery and cut the onion into nice size chunks, nothing fancy. Make a "raft" in the center of the foil. Put the raw, skinless, boneless chicken breasts on top of the vegetables.

Seal up the foil so that you have a nice packet. Place in a 350 degree oven for about 45 minutes or until the chicken is cooked through. You will have some beautiful broth, some nicely steamed veggies and some cooked chicken ready to use in any number of ways.

You can go ahead and use it for Chicken a la King, which I highly recommend you try. Very nice for a large group.

Or you can just cut up the chicken, make yourself some gravy and serve it over biscuits. You can even use the herb biscuit recipe that Emeril used with the Chicken a la King.

This gravy recipe is pretty much fool proof. I have doubled it, I use it for Mr. Smith's Turkey Pot Pie, we have it every Thanksgiving.

It is unfortunately called Zippity Doo Dah Gravy. I didn't name it.

4 Tablespoons margarine

4 Tablespoons flour

2 cups water

2 teaspoons Chicken Better Than Buillion

Melt the margarine in a medium saucepan. Stir the flour in to make a nice roux. Wisk in the water and then add the buillion. Just keep stirring it until it thickens to the consistency that you like. Some people like thicker gravy. My father, heaven help me, likes thin gravy. Don't ask me why.

Once you have your gravy, cut up your chicken and stir it into the gravy. Are you getting hungry yet?

Now all you need is your very favorite baking powder biscuits, baked to perfection.

Split one or two of those babies and spoon the Chicken and Gravy over them.

After you swoon and recover, eat, enjoy and wax poetic about how wonderful simple food can be.

You are welcome!

Dessert Shot Cuteness

We bought these little shot glasses several months ago and put them in the cupboard that no one can reach. It got really dusty up there. I am talking DUSTY. The shelf is in the top of the cupboard in the laundry room, we are talking huge amounts of lint and I had to climb on the washer. I am vertically challenged, after all.

But they keep niggling away at me. The idea of what I wanted to do with them.

Ever since I saw the photos of the dessert shots in the King Arthur Catalog, I have been on a mission. I wanted to make some dessert shots. I wanted something with pudding, or cheesecake filling, or berries, or butterscotch, or, or, or...the possibilities are ENDLESS! You could make a dessert shot BAR! How much fun would THAT be?

Today, in honor of Mr. Smith getting his staples out, and getting poor Leftie manhandled (sorry, honey, but he is a doctor!) I decided to go where no vertigob has gone before.

The results were a huge success. And, can I just say, terminally cute? These things are ridiculously CUTE!! The cuteness just makes me want to scream, that is how damn cute they are.

So, to start I just wanted something simple. Mr. Smith is always looking for a homogenous experience (no lumps or crunchy parts, please). So I just got some Nabisco Famous Wafers, some Chocolate Instant Pudding and some Cool Whip and layered them using a long-handled ice tea spoon.

Luckily, these shot glasses can be ordered with tiny little cuter than cute spoons to eat the desserts. I would recommend them. That way, you can make sure to get EVERY tasty morsel of dessert. Life is short, make sure to get every morsel!

If you haven't used the Famous Wafers before, they are like the outside of the Oreo cookies without that troublesome greasy "frosting." Nuff said. They are to die for and you can use them to make all kinds of crusts (pie, dessert, etc.) or you can just eat them when you have PMS and don't have any other chocolate in the house. Of course, I don't know anyone that would do such a thing. I would never associate with such a person! Please...I have more self respect than to hide in the kitchen, eating chocolate wafers in the middle of the night! Or something like that. Or, dipping them in peanut butter. Or spreading them with softened ice cream. That, all those things would be wrong wrong wrong.

Okay, enough! I am sure I will be posting more about these glasses in the future. Stay tuned!

Post post: Pop Pop believes that these are far too small. It is his opinion that they need to be about four times the size and the spoons need to be larger too. Some people just miss the point completely!