Once upon a time there was... Dipped Shortbread Cookies

I know these cookies seem a little untimely now that it's April... they made a lot more sense when we made them back in December.  


Despite the holiday sprinkles, this basic dipped shortbread recipe is good all year.  It's actually a very nice, light spring cookie!  


Maybe you'll want to find some sprinkles with bunnies or something on them instead, though.  Of course, if you have red and green sprinkles leftover still, we wouldn't hold it against you if you wanted Christmas cookies in the springtime - they would still be delicious.

Cookie Extravaganza! Peanut Butter Surprise Cookies

You didn't really think our cookie extravaganza was only two kinds of cookies did you?  After I posted that picture of us sitting on top of a giant mountain of ingredients but then only followed up with two blog posts, did you wonder if we just posed like that for fun? And to tease you with the possibility of cookies?  Well fear not, castle farm cookbook blog readers, we have more cookies up our sleeves (if we had sleeves there would ALWAYS be cookies in them). 

We found this recipe in Taste of Home Best Loved Cookies magazine.  They are a peanut butter cookie with a surprise inside as you might have guessed by the name "peanut butter surprise cookies".  Although we like to keep surprises secret, it would be difficult to tell you how to bake these without telling you the surprise.  We would have to come up with some sort of elaborate plan where you tell us you are baking them and we sneak to your kitchen and add in the surprise ourselves.  

But since we are but two small farm animals, it seems much easier to just give away the surprise.  As long as you promise not to tell other people before they eat it.  Then, wait for them to take a bite, and yell "surprise!".  

So, do you promise to do this?

Chicken Piccata Recipe from the Castle Farm Cookbook

Oh, chicken piccata, how I love you. Before there was the castle farm cookbook, or even the castle farm, there was just a cow and a pig learning to cook. And one of the first things we learned to make was this delicious chicken piccata.

If you've never had chicken piccata before, you should know that chicken piccata is what cows dreams are made of (along with grass, grassy hills, grazing on grassy hills, mooing, and cute pigs).

Luckily, it's quite simple to make.

ingredients 

• 2 4-oz flat chicken breast peices
• some flour
• some salt, lemon pepper, and lemon peel
• 2 Tbsp butter
• 1/3 c. lemon juice
• 1/3 c. white wine
• pasta

* this gives us enough sauce to dip baguette in the leftover. If you want to make more or less of this easy recipe, just keep the proportion of lemon juice/wine even.

instructions

1. Put some flour in a shallow dish, sprinkle with seasonings. we never measure and are pretty liberal with the seasonings.
2. Dip chickens in the flour.
3. Melt butter in a skillet. cook chicken over medium-low heat until no longer pink.  See how pretty it is now?
4. Remove chicken from the skillet. add wine and lemon juice. stir, scraping up the bits, and bring to a simmer. let it simmer a minute or two.
5. Serve, by pouring sauce over chicken and pasta. garnish with parsley.

Yields: 2 servings

Perhaps now you can see this is why I dream about chicken piccata. It's really beautiful, isn't it?

Moo!

Cookie Extravaganza! White Chocolate Cranberry Oatmeal Cookies

I was trying to come up with a creative name for this cookie that wasn't such a mouthful. I did not come up with one. So these cookies with a long name will stay long-named.

We usually make just plain oatmeal cookies. (Although last year we added chocolate chips). The pig likes his oatmeal cookies to be slightly overbaked, hard, and crunchy, but no one else does. That means the pig ends up eating most of the oatmeal cookies. So we needed a new plan for our oatmeal cookies...

Once upon a time there was... Crockpot Chicken Enchiladas

We have one more recipe left to share from our October Greek Week, but it's going to take a while to finish. Rather than leave you hanging again, we have a great simple recipe for crockpot chicken enchiladas.

We first discovered these at Samster Mommy - her recipe looked so delicious and easy that it inspired us to give it a try. We combined hers with the one on the enchilada can and some new ideas of our own to create this Castle Farm version. This is a really great weeknight recipe and it makes fantastic leftovers for lunch all week!

Greek Week Presents... Tzatziki

Since we just gave you a wonderful pita recipe, it's only fair that we give you a few things to dip them in. No Greek feast would be complete without Tzatziki!

This recipe is a Castle Farm original, created through many test batches to find our favorite blend of seasonings.

Greek Week Presents... Pitas!

Greek Week continues on the Castle Farm Cookbook! To those just joining us, we are having a week long celebration to mark our blog's first birthday.

No Greek feast would be complete without an appetizer of pita and dips. We made pita pocketsa while ago, but we have never shared our favorite pita recipe with you.

Once upon a time there was... a clue...

Hey Castle Farm Cookbook readers, are you excited for our special celebration next week?!?!? Here's a big clue, the recipes will be all about one of our favorite places....

Once upon a time there was... Twice-Baked Potatoes

Last week when we shared our recipe for Scalloped Potatoes, we got a little carried away talking about all the ways to combine potatoes and cheese. The first thing that popped into our heads was Twice-Baked Potatoes. Mooooo. (That's what cows say instead of ooooo. And all the time really.)

This is another recipe that our fancy food processor revolutionized. We used to have to spend a very long time shredded lots of cheese, but now we put it in the top and hit the button and have a giant bowl of perfectly shredded cheese. We probably end up with more cheese in our potatoes this way, since hand shredded tends to lead to lots of eating along the way....

Even with the revolutionary technology of the food processor, this recipe is a nearly 2 hour process. Don't let this scare you! It's easy! But maybe save it for a weekend night.

The Castle Farm recipe does not contain bacon, since Cornelius objects. In fact, the original source at All Recipes includes bacon. So, if you want to add bacon to yours, I won't tell.

Baltic Cruise

Unlike our other posts this week, this post is not about cheese. It is also not a Blooper. It's not even about food at all! Now you are probably thinking what kind of a food blog is this??? We promise, there is a perfectly good explanation!

We left you all hanging without any new posts for a long time this summer. . . While you were all staring at your computer screens hoping and praying for your favorite food blogging animals to return, we were busy taking vacations. We shared some pictures here and here of our International Tour of America roadtrip, but we did not post pictures of our other summer adventure. So, while we were not sharing delicious recipes with you, here's what we were up to!

toured Copenhagen

standing on either side of the Berlin Wall

Once upon a time there was... Scalloped Potatoes

You might notice a little bit of a theme this week. CHEESE.

We highly recommend putting cheese on as many things as possible. Potatoes, of course, are one of the best pairings for cheese. Twice-baked potatoes, cheese fries, cheesy mashed potatoes... there are so many possibilities when it comes to mixing cheese and potatoes. Today, we will show you how to make just one of them: scalloped potatoes.

Once upon a time there was... Pretzel-Crusted Chicken Breasts with Cheddar-Mustard Sauce

This is one of our all-time favorite recipes. As you may be aware, we really enjoy smothering things in cheese. And it just so happens that this recipe makes a giant pot of cheese that can be used for smothering! Rachael Ray is behind this terrific idea - we've only slightly adapted her recipe.

Once upon a time there was... Watermelon Sherbet

Technically, it's still summer. We realize that school has started and leaves are starting to fall in some places, but it's still summer for another 2 weeks... That means you still have time to make this sherbet! You can still find juicy watermelons in the grocery store and the weather is warm enough to crave an ice cold treat - but only for a few more weeks!

Once upon a time there was... Summer Roasted Chicken

Well Castle Farm Cookbook readers, we're back! Did you miss our cute faces and delicious recipes? I bet you did! Well, we missed you, too! We had a long, unannounced, unexpected summer break from our blogging. We took several vacations (an International Tour of America, a Baltic Cruise, and a Poconos weekend) and we moved (still outside the beltway in DC). We're 90% unpacked at the new Castle Farm, so now its time to get back to blogging.

For our first new recipe, we decided to make a summer roasted chicken. During the summer, we do not often consider roasting chickens - it's a very fall thing to do. But we added some lemon, basil and thyme instead of apples and potatoes, and now its a summery meal. This recipe is a Castle Farm original! We're also pairing this one with some prepared potato and macaroni salads to complete our summer meal.

International Tour of America, Part 2

Hi readers, we are very sorry for our lack of posting, but we have been so busy with our various trips and events! Before we leave for another two week adventure, here are some more pictures from our International Tour!

Here's the Parthenon:

And the great pyramid of Memphis:

Here we are with the famous Peabody ducks:

And with a kangaroo! (they are really soft and furry, by the way)

And in case you forgot this was a food blog, here we are with some cheese:

That doesn't really have anything to do with the International Tour, but we do love cheese!

We'll get back to actual recipes soon, we promise.

Moo!

Once upon a time there was... Bulgur Wheat with Caramelized Onions & Pine Nuts

We've been intrigued by quinoa for a while now... such a funny word. So, we were watching our favorite food blogs for a good recipe to try. Then we saw it! On Cara's Cravings, a really delicious looking recipe for Quinoa with Caramelized Onions & Pine Nuts. We gathered our ingredients and started to cook up the onions. Then, we discovered a problem. In trying to buy quinoa, we somehow ended up with bulgur wheat. As it turns out, this was not too much of a problem, they are very similar. So we supposed it doesn't matter what grain you use... We've heard quinoa is healthier, but the bulgur wheat was quite tasty. Maybe we'll get around to trying quinoa someday. For now, here's our inadvertently-adapted-from-Cara's recipe.

Once upon a time there was... Broccoli and Cheddar Soup

So, we are not the biggest fans of eating our vegetables. . .

But we do like cheese! So, in order to eat our vegetables, we smother them in cheese!!! Really, this is an excellent idea that can be applied to most foods you might not otherwise like.  (Adding some onion and butter can't hurt either.)  There are a lot of variations of broccoli and cheese soup out there, but we really liked this classic, simple one we found on AllRecipes.

Once upon a time there was... Chicken Piccata Pasta Toss

Chicken Piccata is one of our favorite recipes. So, when we first heard about a piccata pasta toss, we knew we would have to try it. It came out great the first time we made it and every time since. This wonderful idea is originally from Rachael Ray but we adapted it to make the portions less completely ridiculous.

Once upon a time there was... Farm Animal Buttermilk Pancakes

Breakfast Week continues!! We love buttermilk pancakes. Blueberries, chocolate chips, strawberries, and warm maple syrup can only make them better. But do you know what makes them the best? Shaping them like farm animals!!! When we were at our local Williams-Sonoma we saw these and knew we had to have them. Luckily, the pig's mom saw our faces too and bought them for us. We were going to use a recipe that we had found online, but there was a recipe right on the package of the molds that was almost identical, so we followed that instead. This recipe is also a tutorial on using these fantastic molds.

Once upon a time there was... Easy Banana Bread

Welcome back to our second day of breakfast week! Today we are doing another great breakfast meal that you can make on a Sunday afternoon and enjoy all week. Plus, everyone loves banana bread - especially monkeys! That's why we've asked our friend Grover the monkey to help us out today.

There's a lot of recipes out there, but this is Grover's favorite because he has made it many times and it always comes out perfectly. He found it in The Everything Cookbook. The recipe makes two loaves, so if you don't want that much bread, you can always freeze one for another week of breakfast. It also halves pretty well, so if you just have a banana sitting on your counter that is too old to eat, make some banana bread!