Spectacular Sautéed Green Beans

To pair with the Hashbrown Casserole, we decided to make these spectacular green beans, but sadly they turned out not-so-spectacularly. The recipe called for garlic, which Katie forgot to bring from her house, so we used garlic powder instead, and since we were halving the recipe Hailey suggested using half the amount of soya sauce. Once again ignoring Hailey's suggestions, Katie poured in a lot of soya sauce, not thinking it would make any difference! Wrong! The beans soaked up the sauce and turned out very salty; we gave them a new name; Overpowering Sautéed Green Beans. Realizing our (Katie's) mistake, we vowed to try the recipe again sometime, but we'll actually stick to it the next time!

Hashbrown Casserole

On a cold night is December what better meal to make than the Duggar's Hashbrown Casserole! Katie and Hailey were getting together for a mini Christmas celebration before they went to visit family for Christmas. We decided it only made sense to make a few Duggar recipes! Before dinner we exchanged gifts and to Hailey's excitement Katie had bought them both a Duggar apron that read "I -heart- the Duggars (All of them!)". What a fun thing to make our Duggar recipes even more exciting!! We put on our aprons and got to work. The casserole was pretty easy, but took a while to bake, like most casseroles do. It was delicious, with creamy sauce and crispy cornflakes on top! Merry Christmas Duggars! Thanks for all the yummy recipes!

Butterscotch Brownies

We were invited to the house of our newlywed friends, Jackie and Jeff, for dinner and dessert, and specifically to make them a Duggar dessert! We enjoyed a lovely dinner and then whipped up this easy and delicious recipe. As newlyweds, of course they showed off some of the kitchen appliances they got as wedding presents, and Katie's eyes lit up when she saw the Kitchenaid mixer! As a former Sears employee, she'd seen lots of stand mixers but had never been so fortunate as to actually USE one, but Jackie was gracious enough to let her christen it!
With the help of the marvelous appliance, we quickly made the brownies - which aren't brownies at all as they don't have any chocolate, earning the nickname "Frownies" (fake+brownies= frownies) - and popped them in the oven. They were sweet and chewy, and a great alternative to brownies (for the strange people out there who don't like chocolate).

Afterward, we learned that Jackie and Jeff are hoping to compete with the Duggars and are aiming for 25 kids, and even have a name for their own reality show, called "Move Over, Duggars!" They sent us home early that night... ;)

Chicken Pot Pie

We were a little skeptical about this recipe since it called for canned, cubed chicken, but Hailey especially is all about authenticity so we just went for it! Katie, also wanting to stay true to the way the Duggars make it, insisted on buying frozen pie shells, though Hailey was unsure about how those would work. Upon arriving at Hailey's and re-reading the recipe, we realized it actually called for pie crusts, like Hailey had thought at the grocery store, but it was too late to change anything. So, we mixed the ingredients and put them in one pie shell, then turned the other one upside down on top of it! It turned out very well despite Katie's mistake, and was surprisingly better than expected... and of course very simple, so something we'll make again!

Grandpa Duggar's Favourite Banana Cake

Duggars, I love how easy your recipes are - and how delicious!! This was another good recipe - yellow cake, holes cut in it, vanilla pudding, topped with bananas! This is one of the recipes featured in an episode of 19 kids and Counting (Duggars' Big Thaw). As the title explains this was Grandpa Duggar's favourite! He enjoyed it on his 73rd birthday in the episode. We enjoyed eating our banana cake while watching the Duggars do the same! Again - a Duggar recipe is way too much for just the two of us so we brought it into work. I think people in the office are growing to like the Duggars more and more with each new dish we bring in!

Duggar Homemade Rolls

Yum! These were such a delicious treat! The rolls were fairly easy to make - although working with yeast can be tricky, but we got them to rise nicely so all was well. The difficult part was Hailey's oven...you see we make most of the recipes at Katie's house because her oven isn't crazy, but for this recipe we were at Hailey's. The problem with the oven is that it never stops heating up - it just keeps going up which can be a problem! We had to turn the oven off and on every 5 mins in order to keep them from burning - the tops were a little brown, but still delicious! The recipe was definitely for a family of 19 kids though because it made lots of rolls. The CCO office wasn't complaining since we brought them in the next day! 3 o'clock treats!

Chocolate Mocha Heath (Skor) Cloud Brownies

This recipe had some help from our other favourite cookbook, the CCO cookbook (stay tuned for the next blog "Cooking our way through the CCO cookbook: One Recipe At A Time"), when we discovered that the Duggar recipe didn't include a recipe for the actual brownies. Once the brownies were in the oven we got to work on the mocha icing, a combination of pudding and Cool Whip, topped with Skor bits (supposed to be "Heath" bars but we don't have those in Canada). Hailey was the first to try them and decided that if she liked coffee flavour, the brownies would be delicious, but graciously let Katie (who does like coffee) to lick BOTH beaters and enjoy the rest of the brownie! Win-win-win (because we thought of it)!

Buckeyes

This delicious treat from Michelle's home in Ohio was a huge hit at the CCO Progressive Supper! What beats chocolate and peanut butter? We actually found this recipe very time consuming/difficult to make - it wasn't really worth it. We ran into a problem when we tried to melt the chocolate using our makeshift double boiler (a glass bowl in a pot)...something went wrong because the chocolate didn't really melt. Instead it became a poo-like substance - not something you want to dip peanut butter balls in. Luckily we had access to car so we ran out to get more chocolate chips and all was well! When all the dipping was done we had a taste. It is a very rich treat and very buttery. Not our favourite Duggar recipe, but other seemed to enjoy it! It was the first dessert finished at the Progressive Supper!

Grandma Mary Duggar's Chocolate Icing

We naturally decided to couple Grandma Duggar's cake recipe with her chocolate icing recipe because, well, why wouldn't we? Partway through making it we realized that it was likely meant to be more of a drizzle icing when what we needed was something think enough to stick the fondant we were making to the cake. Katie thought letting the icing cool and adding more icing sugar would be the trick, but Hailey was concerned about the time that would take (and we were already a few hours into our cake-making extravaganza)... so Hailey's solution = add some cornstarch! Katie protested, worried about the taste, but Hailey assured her that it had no flavour. As it turned out, it took nearly a whole box of cornstarch to get the icing to our desired consistency, and while the flavour was pretty much the same, there was a distinct pasty texture...but covered in fondant, we're sure the party guests didn't notice!

We made our fondant an orange-y gold colour and added some gold luster dust; gold since it was Andre's 50th birthday. We covered both tiers of the cake, and on the top tier constructed a wrestling ring complete with mini wrestlers, in honour of Andre's wrestling days. We also had a Saskatchewan Roughriders logo printed on edible paper; Andre's favourite football team. The "Roast & Toast" party had almost 100 guests, most of whom admired and enjoyed the cake and icing! It was a hit!

6 hours & 45 minutes
8 cups of icing sugar
Triple the amount of a Duggar-sized cake recipe

Being the ones chosen to make Andre's cake: Priceless

There are some things money can't buy; for everything else, there's cornstarch!

Happy 50th Birthday Founder!

 

Grandma Mary Duggar's Buttermilk Chocolate Sheet Cake

Katie and Hailey were asked to make the cake for Andre, the founder of Catholic Christian Outreach, on his 50th birthday. We were searching for a recipe and why search any further than the Duggar book! We actually had to triple the recipe! (We never thought We'd have to triple a recipe used by a family of 21.) The cake was easy to make and was so moist. We added a dark chocolate caramel ganoche as the filling which was also delicious. Making this cake was a big event since we were making so much of it and had big plans to decorate! In total our cake making and decorating too 6 hours and 45 mins, but it was well worth it! The cake was a hit at the party! Grandma Duggar, you make good cake!!

Oven Fries

We had our friend Lindsay over for dinner and she had read about our Duggar recipes and wanting to enjoy one herself. Not having time to make a trip to the grocery store Hailey raided her cupboards to see what we could make and we opted for the simple, yet delicious oven fries! They're just potatoes brushed in oil, salt, pepper and garlic seasoning and baked for 20 minutes, and will make a tasty addition to many meals! Definitely a side dish that can be whipped up in a flash!

Jim Bob's Amazing BBQ

We decided to make Jim Bob's BBQ for lunch at work today. The recipe is tuna mixed with BBQ sauce. We spread it on bread, added cheese and toasted it. It was quick and easy to prepare and delicious as always. This is definitely a favourite, one that we will repeat for years to come!

Lemonappleade

We paired the Tuna Noodle Casserole with what we hoped would be a refreshing beverage, lemonappleade, while at the same time testing out Katie's juicer for the first time! It looked like it was off to a good start until we realized how quickly the pulp added up, and spent extra time draining the juice out of the mushy mess, making a still slushy-like concoction. Only halfway through did we notice that we were supposed to use golden apples (rather than the MacIntosh ones we had), making our juice far more tart than it should have been and giving it a strange brownish colour. It was refreshing, but our consensus: it just wasn't worth the work

 

Quick-and-Easy Tuna Noodle Casserole

Being that it was a Friday night, the first meal we decided to make was Quick-and-Easy Tuna Noodle Casserole. True to it's name it was quick and easy, however making only a fifth of the recipe proved slightly difficult as we had a lot of leftover evaporated milk. We modified the recipe slightly by sticking the casserole in the oven for 10 mins rather than just serving it. It was a satisfying meal, easy to make after a day at work!

The Goal!

We are best friends who love the Duggar family and have set out on a goal to cook our way through all the recipes in their book "The Duggars: 20 and Counting". For recipes see http://www.duggarfamily.com/recipes.html or http://tlc.discovery.com/tv/duggars/recipes/recipes.html