Schaeffer's favorite recipe and donut cake.

According to my most frequent dinner guest, dining partner, guinea pig, test rat, etc, I have made my best meal yet.


Menu:
Proscuitto, Basil & Mozzarella Stuffed Chicken Breasts (#130)
Doughnuts (#131) with Chocolate Dipping Sauce (#132)


Don't you just love things that are both easy to make and look beautiful?  That is the joy that are stuffed chicken breasts.  There is such an effortless elegance about them.  And on a weeknight, they make dinner special.  
The tweaks that needed to be made to the chicken recipe are they I used chicken breasts that already had the tenders cut from them, so I didn't have to do too much messing about with the meat.  I also nixed the mustard, because I didn't want that flavor to compete.  Mozzarella, basil and proscuitto seemed like a really delicious trilogy of flavors that I wanted to be the stars of the show.  

Line up the proscuitto slices and stack with filling.

Roll up the slices.

Put the rolled mixture inside a slit in the chicken breast.

Another big tweak is that I don't have a grill.  Nice little apartments in the city don't lend themselves to this.  I cooked the chicken breasts right in the skillet, - about 4 minutes each side.  Paired with a variety of greens it was quite a meal.  

But, although the feedback from Schaeffer was a lot of "yum!", I really think I saved the best for last.

I have a fantasy about when I have a family of my own, I want to greet my kids with a cake in bed on the morning of their birthdays.  I think when you're a kid you should be greeted with sugar and icing and cake or ice cream or...doughnuts!  Anyway, no kiddos around here, but I still thought a doughnut cake was in order.  By doughnut cake, I mean doughnuts piled high and drizzled with chocolate sauce and called a cake.  

Doughnuts awaiting hot oil and those being fried.

Cover in cinnamon-sugar.

Extra sauce for dipping!

Happy doughnut eaters.

Just one more.

I read about this recipe a long time ago in the Washington Post, and I think, four years later, it definitely came in handy.  Funny thing is, Schaeffer's mom shared that when her kids were little, they were greeted in bed with a cake on their birthdays.  Better yet...it was always a doughnut cake.


Go on...make a doughnut cake.

168 to go...