COOK WITH ME // EASY WEEKNIGHT FALL DINNER // EASY CHILI & CORNBREAD // CHARLOTTE GROVE FARMHOUSE

Hello friends and welcome back to another Friday gourmet video,

cook

with me. In today's video, we are going to conclude our quick and

easy

weeknight

meals, tonight we will prepare one of my family's favorites, it is my father. -The law recipe for a quick and

easy

chili

con carne which is basically a mainly meat

chili

, there are some beans but it is mainly meat so if your family is like mine and doesn't like a lot of beans then this is it Chili for Plus, it's super easy on a busy

weeknight

, especially ones like now, where it's slowly starting to turn into

fall

.

We're also going to make a delicious

cornbread

, a sweet

cornbread

that again is super easy and simple, and finally we're going. Be making a delicious cake and we could make a margarita tonight. I'm not 100 sure we'll see it. This has been my first week back to school. I'm battling some serious allergies right now. It's been a little crazy. around here, but I'm really excited to

cook

for you tonight. It's a little later than I normally cook so I have the lights on so please forgive me if there are shadows. It's a little crazy tonight, but you know what? this is authentic my friends this is a really crazy cook with me the night my husband just left with my three kids to go to soccer my daughter has to go dancing in about an hour and a half and I have to start cooking, so let's get started.

So normally on a busy weeknight I wouldn't be making a cake, however, we need a little extra for this video. I didn't just want to make the chili and cornbread. Usually in my house, weeknights aren't dessert nights, we save them. for Friday and Saturday and usually Sunday, but desserts are usually saved for the weekend, but tonight is special because I wanted to make sure to add a dessert. I haven't made a dessert in some videos, so I want to make sure I include it. So tonight we're going to make a delicious raspberry lemon cake, excuse me, it's delicious, it has a creamy cream cheese frosting, it's absolutely delicious, the cake is moist and delicious, and we're going to go ahead and start on that before start with our cornbread so the first thing we're going to do is prepare our cake pans so normally you would use a little bit of butter and a little bit of flour however I was running pretty low on butter.

I had what I needed for my recipes so I just sprinkled mine with pam and then I'm still going to flour them, this is so the cake batter doesn't stick to the cake tins. Today I will be using eight inch cake pans, can you tell? Make your cake however you want, this is what the recipe calls for. because this is how I made it, in the past, I made this recipe two other times, it's quite a long process, so this is not what I do regularly, but I really wanted it, the kids really wanted it, it's absolutely delicious, especially in the morning with a cup of coffee, I know it sounds crazy, just try it if you're the type of person to have a cup of coffee after

dinner

, which I definitely can be, this is great with a cup of coffee, just lends itself to That's very good, so if you've never done this process to prepare your baking dishes, it's super, super easy, just put a little bit of pam and then you're going to put a little bit of flour and then you're going to move it around so that everything is good. the pan is covered next we are going to start with our dough so the first thing it requires is 9 tablespoons of butter for some reason today I was struggling to count I was so tired guys I got back into the rhythm of school is very hard especially at the start of school it's so busy I've been on the phone with families left and right as their students get ready to go back to school we have a lot of kids coming back from school last year and it's just I've been very, very busy, so I'm very tired, but next you're going to zest a whole lemon into your dough, so zest is very easy.

You bought this grater at Dollar Tree. You can get fancier ones but just rub your fruit all over the grater very lightly until you remove the top layer of the fruit, make sure you have washed it really well before you do that because you are using the outside so make sure you wash it really well next. we're gonna add a cup of sugar in there and then we're gonna cream this together now my butter hadn't been uh it wasn't soft enough it wasn't out of the refrigerator long enough and that's why it's like

fall

ing apart here that's what you see, butter crumbling is normal when you're starting out, it shouldn't crumble as much if it's softened properly, mine doesn't, so it took me a little extra time to get it to crumble. the cream section or the consistency of the cream, but we got there, just let the butter soften a lot more than mine, it wasn't prepared, so here I am using this little William Sonoma spatula to scrape up all that butter mixture and sugar.

This is also the time I would have added the vanilla but I forgot I ended up adding it later but you want to add it around this time either now or when you add the eggs which comes next. Make sure you are scraping your bowl very well so that you keep all your ingredients. Baking is about getting everything you know in the right measurements it's not like cooking or you can lie so next you're going to add your eggs so you need three eggs the yolk goes into the dough and then you're going to keep the white separate because we're going to beat it, so make sure you separate the eggs, that's what I'm doing here.

There are many different ways to separate eggs. I do it the old fashioned way, which I learned on a full mac in 7th grade. Sometimes it doesn't always work like when I have to scrape it out of egg whites, but you can. Separate the eggs any way that works for you, but again we're going to beat this until you get a nice creamy consistency, it'll be a nice pale yellow color and you'll want to add that vanilla if you haven't already. very easy and now that the wet part of our dough is ready to use, now we are going to foam these eggs, these are our egg whites, you are going to put your mixer as high as you can and you are just going to beat this until you get soft peaks, so I sped it all the way up and cut a big chunk in the middle, but this takes a few minutes, so be prepared for your arm to go in there for a minute, it'll probably take you two to three minutes, um, to get it .

If you know, to the right consistency where it has some soft peaks, like I'm showing you there, you don't want to overmix it because that can make the egg whites hard, but just enough to get those soft peaks next. we're going to get our flowers so the recipe calls for I think two cups of flour check the recipe don't quote me just check it but I think it's two cups I'm using a half cup of tablespoon here so that's why . that's what fits in my jar and then you'll also add baking powder. I don't remember exactly how much, maybe a teaspoon or two, let's see it looks like a teaspoon or two, I don't know if that's half a teaspoon, I think it's half a teaspoon and then a teaspoon of salt that I put on what I had left because it was almost finish and then you need some baking soda and then we'll use the whisk to combine all those dry.

The ingredients are very good and it acts as a sieve. I think you have to sift. I never do that. I just use the whisk and then you will add the yogurt, so the recipe calls for plain or vanilla yogurt Ziggy's vanilla yogurt I think it's vanilla Greek yogurt, you can see the vanilla bean in it, it's delicious, it's very thick and creamy and has just the right amount of flavor, so that's always what I use, but you can use, you know, whatever. works for you, you're going to mix that up and now we're going to alternate between our dry ingredients and our wet ingredients, the only wet ingredient we have left is the egg whites, so this cake batter is pretty thick, it's not. very, uh, not like a cake batter that you would make with a box that you would just pour into the cake pan, this one is quite dry, quite thick, um, so keep that in mind when you're stirring and folding your egg whites.

They will be quite thick and that's okay, it turns out absolutely delicious, the yogurt in it keeps it very moist, I promise it will look a little different to the cake mixes you are using. To see maybe so keep an eye on that and combine all the ingredients and then we'll move on to adding our raspberries so this cake is a lemon raspberry cake but if you prefer something else I think this cake would be too it's delicious with lemon and raspberry sorry blueberry and lemon I make a really delicious lemon and blueberry cookie it's a recipe I got I think it was giada and lemon and blueberry together it's fantastic so if you're not a big fan of raspberries Make this cake, but make it with blueberries and it will be just as delicious, I promise, so let's go ahead and add our raspberries.

Now you want to use frozen fruit for this recipe which prevents the fruit from falling apart while you are adding it to your dough, as you can see here these raspberries have little bits of raspberry in them which will definitely turn my dough red pretty quickly, however, If you can try to avoid those little bits that might hold your dough, you know? white as long as you can, but honestly it doesn't matter, it doesn't change the flavor of the dough at all, so now you're going to divide the dough as best you can into your two cake pans, uh, mine were definitely not even one of my cakes got a little bigger than the other one, but it's not a big deal, you'll also see this in real life right here, so I miss the cake pan for a second and have to take it out. and play it again but that's real life guys these videos are like I'm really cooking for my family it's not the studio or I'm this is real life I'm really cooking this food for my family so they will see it. those mistakes sometimes and that's okay, you'll also see later that one of my cakes doesn't, or one, yeah, one of my cakes doesn't rise all the way and that's okay too, it's no big deal, so you're just going to put your cake. mix it in your cake pan and then you're going to roll it out now, as you can see here, this cake batter is definitely more like a bun, it's definitely very, very thick, but when it bakes, it really softens up and it's very very moist. , but spread it out as best you can and make sure it's as even as possible.

You can weigh it if you want, if that's important to you, that wasn't important to me, you know, it's about the taste, not the presentation, but it really is delicious, so you roll it out, prepare it and then you put it in the oven, you will put it at 350 degrees and bake it. for about 30 minutes unless one side is bigger than the other like mine and you may have to leave it there for a couple more minutes but put it on there and it will be ready in no time so we have our cake in the oven um and now we're going to start with our cornbread so this is the most delicious cornbread you've ever had you'll never go back to any other recipe I promise you the first time I tried this recipe was probably 10 ago Years ago, a friend of mine at work suggested it to me and I never went back, so here's the secret mix for yellow cake.

You're probably thinking what, but yellow cake mix is ​​the secret to the best, sweetest, moistest cornbread. The way this recipe goes is that you use one box of yellow cake mix and two boxes of jiffy corn muffin mix, so I have one here and one there, but this is your magic combination to make the most delicious recipe. cornbread now the chili con carne we're going to make today is a little bit sweeter it's absolutely delicious and you pour it over the cornbread it's to die for so we're going to make it so we can have it in the oven and then we'll get started with our chili.

Now this recipe will make a sweeter, cake-like cornbread, so if you're not a big fan of sweet cornbread, definitely don't try this recipe, just follow the normal recipe, but this one. It's going to make your cornbread very fluffy and cake-like and my family loves it, in fact my husband told me the day we had this, he said can you make this for my birthday cake instead of a cake? It was fun. um but basically you're going to mix your two dry ingredients for your cake box mix your two boxes of jiffy cornbread mix uh and then you're going to add all the ingredients that you would add to the back of both boxes so I'm starting now adding the ingredients that the cake mix calls for and then I'll add the ingredients that the two boxes of cornbread call for, you'll mix it all together and then you'll get that in a 9x13 dish, my 9x13 dish I only have one and I actually it's in my fridge because we made that tik tok baked sushi so it's in my fridge right now but I used a different saucepan which definitely increased my baking time because it wasn't asthin it wasn't that thin a layer but it requires a 9x13 dish so it will bake very quickly probably in about 30 minutes and now it's finally time to start on our chili so this chili is a little different again , it's a little bit sweeter, but we're going to start with our vegetables, so you're going to need an onion and here I'm just using a regular onion, but you can use whatever type of onion you prefer.

This one I think is a yellow onion and then you'll also need two bell peppers. The recipe tastes best if you avoid the green peppers, the red and yellow really give it the most delicious flavor, but if you really like the taste of green pepper it is quite strong, if you like that flavor definitely add it. Good too, so go ahead and cut all your vegetables into very small cubes. They're all kinds of fun tools to help you dice your vegetables like little choppers and things like that, eh, but I like this the old fashioned way.

I enjoy cutting and using a knife, so I do it the old fashioned way as often as I can. My oldest son also loves using the knife so he has been teaching himself how to do it and one thing I want to point out really helps. In these shots is my cutting board so my wooden cutting board got wet and was wet for a long time and it warped the shape of my cutting board so as you can see it is not flat on the counter and it keeps sliding . everywhere and it was driving me like absolutely crazy so I'm definitely going to buy a new one in fact I might go get one today because I love cutting on a wooden cutting board but oh my goodness I was so disappointed , I don't remember how it got wet, I think they put it in the sink and then it just sat there.

I don't remember how it got to the sink. I definitely didn't put it in the sink, but it did. Put it in the sink anyway and um it sat in the water and it was the wood, you know, the porous wood just got absorbed and now it's very warped, but it's okay, I'm going to buy a new one. I bought it at home goods, there it was. It's not very expensive, it was like 25 dollars, I'll get another one, but that's going to drive me crazy. It drove me crazy while doing it. It drove me crazy while editing.

And it's driving me crazy now as I add this. voiceover so I'm probably driving you crazy um but I know my plan is to get a new one so again just dice all your vegetables very very small and then we'll take them to the stove here in a moment and I'll let them sweat and get really sweet before adding our ground beef. Before I started working on the stove, I went ahead and checked my cake. One cake was definitely done and ready to go, however the other cake definitely wasn't. It was a little bit thicker than this one, so we're going to let it sit in the oven a little bit longer while I grab one of my big pots and add probably the equivalent of half a tablespoon of grease these pans that I use are caraway.

They ask me a lot about them. They're non-stick so you don't really need a lot of oil or butter or anything, but I only add a little bit because it helps sauté my vegetables, so add the diced vegetables to the pot, let them sauté and sweat, they'll sweat for probably about five minutes and then I'm going to add my ground beef, so today I'm going to use about a pound and a half of ground beef. I would have doubled this recipe because everyone in my family really loves it and it is just as good a day or two later, the leftovers are just fantastic so I wish I had made more.

I could have also frozen it, but that's okay, this is what Looking back, I'll probably make a double batch next time, but once you have the meat, go ahead and divide it up as small as you can and you'll mix it in with those sauteed veggies and you will leave this. cook now, you'll want to use a fairly low-fat beef. I use a 96 because I didn't want to have to worry about draining it, so it's up to you, but you want to keep it that low. uh as much fat as possible so go ahead and add about a teaspoon of chili powder.

I end up going back and adding more, but I always start with a little bit and add more later because I can't take it back. next we will add our beans, so for this recipe we will use pork and beans, you will need a large can and then one of the small cans, if you don't like a lot of beans you can use just one can, but you really want to use a big one and another small one and this gives it a unique flavor. It's not like any other chili I've ever tried. I told you this is my father-in-law's recipe.

Don't know. I'm supposed to share it so keep it a secret but it's absolutely delicious it's such an interesting sweet chili it's very different from any other chili I've ever had so next we're going to add some tomato soup so first you can mix it. that and try it and see if you like it, if you feel it needs a little more you can add another half can or another whole can, but it's up to you what you like, I like it with both cans so I'm going to put two full cans of tomato soup, but it will depend on you and what flavor you like, so try it first and see if you like it and then you can add more.

Another thing I add in this is to However, I add a few pinches of garlic powder to this recipe. My family really loves garlic, so we added a little garlic in there, but my father-in-law's recipe doesn't call for it, so you can try it without it. you like add it if you think it's necessary next we're going to work on the frosting for our cake so this recipe calls for just a regular lemon buttercream. We like a cream cheese frosting on this cake, so that's what I'm doing. So to make the frosting, I'm making one stick of butter and one eight ounce package of softened cream cheese and then we're going to add five cups of powdered sugar.

This gave us a ton of frosting and my family doesn't love it. Ton of frosting on the cake, so I actually put a very, very thin layer between my two cakes and then I put, you know, a pretty substantial amount on the outside, but this makes a lot of frosting, so if you like a lot of frosting this one It's your way to get all the frosting you want, however if you don't like a lot of frosting you don't have to use it all, we definitely didn't, you're going to grab that lemon you grated. cut it in half, I'm taking out some of the seeds and then I'm going to use my lemon juicer right here and my lemon juicer, lemon juicer, that's nothing, it's a lemon juicer and we're going to juice the whole lemon. in our frosting now, if you don't like it super spicy, you can just do one, but we're doing both and I think you could also add a little bit of vanilla if you wanted.

I didn't do the other trick I did. What I do with my frosting is I always use salted butter because I think having a little salt with all that sweet really balances the flavors so go ahead and mix it in until the frosting comes together it will be a little thicker this is not a light and fluffy buttercream, but you can make it. I think it calls for a light and fluffy buttercream but we like it with cream cheese so it's up to you what you want to do so I'm going to start with the cake that has that big dent in the middle and I'm just adding a little bit of frosting and then adding a very, very thin layer here between the two cakes, literally enough to cover the cake, but usually if it was just me making this cake for a crowd and not for my family.

I would have added more in the middle because it definitely calls for it, but my family doesn't like a ton of frosting so I added a generous amount here all the way to the top. and I'm just spreading it. I'm using a cake turntable. You can find them at Michael's Hobby Lobby on Amazon pretty much anywhere. They are very, very affordable for a very affordable price. You know, use it at home as a turntable for mom's cakes. It's definitely not professional by any means, but it gets the job done, so I'm going to ice this cake very quickly, very, very generously and nonchalantly.

This isn't meant to look fancy, it's just meant to taste delicious. once I have my cake frosted, I use a spatula to add it to my cake stand. Here this cake stand is my favorite. I bought it at IKEA. It lives on my counter because I think it's awesome. I love the scalloped edge. Is very pretty. nice so now I'm just adding a little bit of those leftover frozen raspberries on top that have already thawed and they're nice and soft and our cake is ready and it's almost time to eat. I'm getting really excited, so lastly I'm going to go ahead and cut up our cornbread so our cornbread is ready.

I'm going to go ahead and cut it here into uh, you know, some squares, I don't know, some bigger pieces, some smaller pieces, it depends on what you like and then I. I'm using my knife here, which wasn't working very well, so I ended up grabbing a little spatula I bought from the pampered chef. I actually use it for cookies when I bake cookies, but I only use it to scoop out our cornbread here. I'm going to butter it all up and then we'll go out to the back deck and eat. My mouth is watering now, just like it was when I was cooking all this.

I can't wait to eat this and I hope you do. Give it a try, it's such a delicious and easy weeknight fall meal. Okay, my friends'

dinner

is ready and I'm ready to eat. I'm sitting outside on the back deck. It's a beautiful night in late summer and early fall. I'm going to go ahead and try our chili here, delicious of course, I can't keep you waiting with dessert so let's go ahead and try our pie. It looks incredible. I definitely want to make sure I have a little bit of everything in my bite, it's tangy and sweet and that yogurt gives it a little more flavor and then all that lemon in our frosting, the lemon zest inside our cake is absolutely delicious and very refreshing Okay, my friends, that brings us to the end of another foodie. video of cooking with me on Friday I hope you enjoyed this video I'm excited to sit down and enjoy this dinner with my family we're going to have a movie night and I'm going to put out my jams and make that margarita like this I hope you enjoyed this video, yeah You did it, be sure to give it a big thumbs up and until next time, my happy eating friends, bye.