Friday, October 24, 2008

Chocolate Chip Cookie Cake

This is a recipe Rebecca learned from one of her friends and taught me. It is really easy and quite a tasty dessert. We entered a decorated version of this cake at the Southeastern Louisiana University Homecoming cooking contest. It won second place. We chose to do this cake because the homecoming theme was "Southeastern Sitcoms" and all entries had to relate to a sitcom. Our cake was called "Pheobe's Tollhouse Chocolate Chip Cookie Cake" based on the "Friends" episode where Pheobe made Monica make endless batches of chocolate chip cookies trying to recreate her grandmother's recipe. In the end, they found out that Phoebe's grandmother used the recipe on the back of the Nestle's chocolate chip package.  HaHa

One Yellow Cake Mix (any brand) 
1/2 cup of oil 
2 eggs 
1/2 bag of chocolate chips 

Mix the cake mix, oil, and eggs together into a thick batter. Add chocolate chips. Bake in a greased 9X12 pan or 12" round cake pan at 350 degrees for 20-25 minutes until brown

Tuesday, October 7, 2008

Potato Soup with Andouille

It is getting cooler at night and it makes us yearn for soup! This is one of our favorites. I often make this soup with bacon instead of andouille. Andouille, for those not from Louisiana, is a smokey cross between bacon, ham and sausage. Look in your specialty meat section. 

5 lbs. white potatoes peeled and diced in salted water just to cover potatoes 
One quart half and half 1 stick of butter one onion diced 
1 lb. andouille sausage, diced (bacon may be substituted) 
1/2 cup flour 

 Boil potatoes until just before fork tender.  Add half and half to potatoes and water. Bring up to temperature. In a separate skillet, brown andouille (or bacon) until rendered. Add butter and onion. Sautee onion until soft and translucent. Add flour to andouille, butter and onion mixture. Cook for a minute or two until flour is light brown. Add the flour, andouille, butter and onion mixture to the potato, water, and half and half mixture. Stir until creamy. Add salt and pepper to taste. Top this soup with grated cheddar cheese or sour cream. You can serve it in a bread bowl for a special presentation