Cheesy Dinner Roll Leaves

This is a sponsored post by Challenge butter, but the text and opinions are all mine. Thank you for supporting brands that make Kylee's Kitchen possible!

Did you get stuck with “roll” duty again this year for Thanksgiving? I hate to break it to you, but it’s probably because your family doesn’t think you can cook. But they’re wrong! If you can follow directions, you can cook!

So this Thanksgiving I want you to surprise everyone by making these festive, cheesy leaves. I saw another blogger make these with crescent roll sheets. But I cannot for the life of me figure out how she did that because when I tried it, the crescent roll sheet was way too flimsy and the leaf didn’t hold it’s shape.

So my solution was to use pizza dough! You could also use puff pastry. It honestly doesn’t matter because you’re going to brush butter on it and cover it in cheese and seasoning anyway.

When it comes to decorating these leaves, use whatever cheese and seasoning combination your heart desires. The goal is to decorate them in a way that makes the look like autumn leaves. I used cheddar cheese, Italian seasoning, and paprika. Pesto would also be really good!

It’s important to note when you bake these leaves the cooking time is not nearly as long as a normal pizza crust because, of course, they’re a lot smaller.

These beautiful roll alternatives are delicious plain, or I think they would be tasty with hummus too!

Cheesy Dinner Roll Leaves

Ingredients

• 1 pizza crust
• 2 Tablespoons Challenge butter, melted
• 1/2 cup cheddar cheese
• 2 Tablespoons Italian seasoning
• 1 teaspoon paprika

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 375 degrees Fahrenheit and place parchment paper on baking sheet.
2. Cut leaves using cookie cutter on pizza crust and set on prepared baking sheet
3. Brush melted butter on top of leaves
4. Sprinkle cheese, Italian seasoning, and paprika on top, or whatever seasonings you desire.
5. Bake for about 6 minutes or just until the leaves start to turn golden brown.
6. Serve plain or with hummus.

Deluxe Grilled Cheese Sandwich

This is a sponsored post by Challenge butter, but the text and opinions are all mine. Thank you for supporting brands that make Kylee's Kitchen possible!

I’m a sucker for a good sandwich. In my opinion, texture, flavor and color are key. And even though grilled cheese sandwiches can be as basic as you want them to be (think Kraft Singles and Wonder Bread), I think they deserve the same love that every other sandwich receives.

Bread

So let’s first discuss the bread. It should be thick enough to securely hold all of your toppings, but it shouldn’t taste like you’re just eating a mouthful of bread.

My favorite bread to use for grilled cheese is sourdough. It’s just the right thickness and it doesn’t have a very strong taste, which is great because we want the flavor of the cheese to stand out.

Butter or Mayonnaise?

In the past week I’ve learned that some people prefer to spread mayonnaise instead of butter on the outside of the bread before cooking it in the pan. Apparently, it’s supposed to make the outside of the bread crispier.

I tried it, and I don’t like it. I say butter all the way! I always use Challenge butter in the pan beforehand in addition to spreading it on the bread. Challenge butter is 100% real cream butter without any hormones, additives, or fillers, and I think it makes a big difference in the taste.

Cheese

Cheese is obviously the most important part of the grilled cheese sandwich. I don’t recommend using more than two types of cheese at once because you don’t want the flavors to overpower one another. If you do use more than one type of cheese, make sure they complement each other and pair well before you stick them on a sandwich.

If you’re stuck in a rut and you’re looking to try something new, Kareen Stephens, Brand Manager at Schuman Cheese, shared some advice on her favorite cheeses for grilled cheese sandwiches.

She says soft cheeses work really well and offer a fabulous melt.

“Our Cello Fontal has a smooth, creamy texture with a mild flavor that offers an amazingly gooey melt. Asiago is also great for melting and has a nice sweet and balanced flavor. One cheese that is sure to upgrade any grilled cheese recipe is Tallegio, which has a strong pungent exterior that reveals a delicious buttery soft cheese inside,” Stephens said.

Since a lot of the soft cheeses have a mild flavor, she recommends pairing them with cheese that has a sharper flavor like Copper Kettle Parmesan and Parmigiano-Reggiano.

Toppings

I don’t think you should go “over-the-top” with toppings because like I said earlier, you want the cheese to be the main focus.

Bacon and prosciutto are always good choices. I also love adding fried egg with a nice runny yolk to dip it in. And I love the texture of avocado on a sandwich.

Deluxe Grilled Cheese Sandwich

Yield: 1 sandwich

Ingredients

• 4 Tablespoons Challenge butter, divided
• 1 egg
• 2 slices sourdough bread
• 2 slices sharp cheddar cheese
• 3 slices bacon
• 1/2 avocado, sliced
• 2 slices gouda cheese

Directions

1. Add 1 Tablespoon butter to a skillet on medium heat. Once melted, add an egg and cook for two minutes on one side before flipping it to cook on the other side. Cook one minute longer, and remove from pan and set aside.
2. Add another Tablespoon of butter to skillet and let melt. Use 1 Tablespoon to butter one side of a single slice of bread and stick butter side down in skillet.
3. Add 2 slices of cheddar cheese, bacon, avocado, fried egg, and 2 slices of gouda cheese.
4. Spread 1 Tablespoon of butter on second slice of bread and add it to top of sandwich, butter side up.
5. Cook sandwich for about 4 minutes on medium heat and then use a spatula to flip it to the other side. Cook an additional 3 minutes on the other side and serve immediately. 

Easy Parmesan Garlic Knots

This is a sponsored post by Challenge Butter, but the text and opinions are all mine. Thank you for supporting brands that make Kylee's Kitchen possible!

Every year, someone is assigned “bread duty” for Thanksgiving. Usually it goes to the person who doesn’t want to make anything (or who you don’t trust to make anything).

But good bread is the foundation of every meal, and this year if you’re assigned bread duty you should embrace it and empress everyone with a delicious homemade treat!

Easy Parmesan Garlic Knots look fancy, but they could not be simpler!

Start with a can of refrigerated biscuit dough and cut each pre-sliced biscuit in half. Slightly stretch the dough so it looks like a rope and tie it into a knot. That right there is the most difficult part of the recipe. Except for the part where you have to open can of refrigerated biscuit dough. Why do they have to make it so scary?

Next your going to brush the biscuits with a butter-garlic-Italian seasoning-cheese mixture. You’re going to want to pour the mixture on the biscuits but resist because you’ll need the leftovers for later.

Pop the biscuits in an oven heated to 375 for about 8 to 10 minutes. Start checking on the biscuits at 8 minutes to see if the bottoms are golden brown. The bottom is the best indicator because if you only look at the top it may be too late and you’ll have burnt biscuits. And the only Thanksgiving rule is don’t serve burnt biscuits.

Once you take your biscuits out of the oven, brush them with the butter mixture again and watch as the warm biscuits soak up the melted butter.

Impress your friends and family and pop them in the middle of the table. You can serve with marinara sauce or plain. They’re delicious either way!

This time of year I feel especially grateful as I look forward to Thanksgiving and a table full of more food than all of us can eat and leftovers for days. 

However, I know that many people don’t get to experience this luxury, and millions of children go without food on a regular basis. Challenge Dairy is partnering with UNICEF to fight and raise awareness of the childhood malnutrition crisis with a campaign called “Pin a Recipe, Feed a Child.” 

In order to participate, all you have to do is go to Challenge Butter’s “2016 Pin a Recipe, Feed a Child” Pinterest board. For every recipe that you pin from this board, Challenge will donate a meal to UNICEF for a child in need.  These meals go to wherever UNICEF determines they are most needed, and in the past, Challenge Dairy says many of the meals have gone to children in the U.S.

Currently, there are 95 recipes on their Pinterest board but more recipes will be added throughout the duration of the campaign which ends on December 31, 2016.

Easy Parmesan Garlic Knots

Yield: Makes 16 garlic knots

Ingredients

• 16 ounces refrigerated buttermilk biscuit dough
• 1/4 cup Challenge salted butter, melted
• 3 Tablespoons Parmesan cheese
• 1 Tablespoon Italian seasoning
• 1 teaspoon garlic powder
• 1/2 teaspoon salt

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees Fahrenheit
2. Open can of refrigerated biscuit dough and cut each biscuit in half
3. Roll each halved biscuit into a rope and tie into a knot
4. Place knots onto a prepared baking sheet
5. Mix melted butter, Parmesan cheese, Italian seasoning, garlic powder, and salt.
6. Brush knots with mixture; make sure to save leftover mixture for later.
7. Place in oven and bake for 8 to 10 minutes
8. Remove from oven and immediately brush knots with leftover butter mixture 

Extra Chocolate Zucchini Bread

This is a sponsored post by Challenge Butter, but the text and opinions are all mine. Thank you for supporting brands that make Kylee's Kitchen possible!

If you’re from the Midwest, you know that zucchinis are abundant in the summer. Most everyone I knew grew them in their gardens. They start popping up in June and they keep on coming until late August and even September. My family would eat zucchini every which way, but my favorite way to eat them was in zucchini bread.

For anyone who has never had zucchini bread, I just want to let you know that zucchini's role in the bread is a functional role. It helps keep the bread moist for days after baking without contributing much flavor. Minus the green flecks in the bread, you wouldn’t even know that there was zucchini in it.

Zucchini bread falls into the “quick bread” family. Quick bread is bread that is made with a leavening agent other than yeast. Yeast breads can take hours to rise and they can sometimes be finicky and tricky to make. On the other hand, quick breads are made with chemical leavening agents (baking soda and/or baking powder). Chemical leavening agents are very reliable and quick and yield uniform results.

But it is very important to note that chemical leavening agents start reacting immediately once they are mixed with liquid and because of this you cannot make the batter ahead of time. You must bake the batter immediately after mixing it.

The recipe below is a chocolatey version of the recipe my mom has been making for years. However, as you take a look at the ingredients, you'll notice that there really isn't much extra-added sugar and fat. That's because I cut the amount of sugar in half from the original recipe and I replaced half of the butter with applesauce. You could also replace half of the white flour with whole wheat flour, but I wouldn’t recommend substituting more than half because it could significantly change the taste.

Feel free to add mix-ins like chocolate chips, nuts, raisins, dried pineapple, or coconut to the batter as well! And of course, I recommend spreading a thick layer of Challenge butter on the bread. Challenge butter is 100% natural, without the use of the synthetic hormone rbST.

Extra Chocolate Zucchini Bread
Yield: 1 large loaf (9in x 5in) or 2 small loaves (5.75in x 3in) or 12 regular-sized muffins

Ingredients

• 1 cup flour (125 grams)
• 1/2 cup unsweetened cocoa powder (60 grams)
• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 2 large eggs
• 1/2 cup brown sugar (103 grams)
• 1/2 stick Challenge butter, melted
• 1/4 cup applesauce (62 grams)
• 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
• 1 cup shredded zucchini (about 1 medium-large zucchini, 150 grams)
• 1/2 cup chocolate chips

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 325 degrees Fahrenheit; prepare loaf pan with non-stick spray
2. Combine flour, unsweetened cocoa powder, baking soda, baking powder, and salt in medium-seized bowl; set aside
3. Combine eggs, brown sugar, butter, applesauce, and vanilla extract in large bowl; fold in shredded zucchini
4. Pour dry ingredients into bowl of wet ingredients; stir until just combined
5. Fold in the chocolate chips
6. Pour batter into prepared loaf pan
7. Bake for about 45 minutes for large loaf pan (Or about 35 minutes for small loaf pan; or about 15 minutes for muffins)
8. Store leftovers in airtight container for up to 5 days