I was asked to feed dinner to my nieces, Sarah and Christine as well as my neighbour's daughters, Kate and Claire. Last minute, my sister in law decided to join us, so dinner for 9!
It took a while to find a main course. What is it about the 70's that required every meal to have a can of soup in it. Finally decided to surrender to it and found a recipe for Chinese Chicken with a can of mushroom soup in it (Seriously? is this a staple in China?). Oh well, thought it sounded interesting, so off we go!
Chinese Chicken (this is a doubled recipe)
9 chicken breasts
2 tbsp oil
2 tbsp soy sauce
2 cans mushroom soup
1/3 cup vinegar
1 cup brown sugar
1 onion, minced
In a frying pan, combine soy sauce and oil. Heat to high. Brown chicken pieces evenly. Combine all other ingredients in a mixing bowl. Place browned pieces in baking dish. Add pan juices to soup mixture and stir. Pour liquid all over chicken and bake at 375 for 40 minutes.
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| The sauce - not very attractive |
Review
Despite my reservations (food snobbery) about the mushroom soup, this was really, really good! I served with some Chinese noodles (a quick recipe from Martha Stewart: http://www.marthastewart.com/337592/chinese-noodles-with-sesame-dressing ) and stir fried veggies. The chicken had a sweet taste which is always popular with kids. Sue commented that the sauce would also be very good with meatballs. Forgot to take a picture of the finished product.
Dessert was an easy pick. I found a recipe in the recipe box some time ago for peanut butter cake. This was a big dessert at the Duke house (Oma's daughter, Lucy and her family) and I was looking for a big audience to serve it to.
Peanut Butter Cake
1/2 cup butter, softened
1 1/2 cup sugar
1 egg
1/4 cup peanut butter
2 cups flour
2 tsp baking powder
1 cup milk
Cream butter and peanut butter and sugar. Add egg. Gradually add flour and baking powder, alternating with milk. Pour into 2 greased and floured layer pans. Bake at 350 for approximately 35 minutes.
Icing
1/4 cup butter
1 tsp vanilla
1/4 cup peanut butter
2 1/2 cups icing sugar
2 tbsp milk
Cream butter and peanut butter. Add vanilla. Add icing sugar and milk and whip until very fluffy. Ice cake and decorate with chocolate sprinkles, if desired.
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| Wilhelmina cleaning the peanut butter off of the spatula |
Result
The kids inhaled it!!! All loved it and all wanted milk with it. I'm not a big peanut butter fan and really liked it as it wasn't overly 'peanut-y'. Would totally make this again.
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| FABULOUS! |
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| Sarah too busy eating to give a review. |
