Please post all chit-chat in the Discussion Topic. This topic is restricted to recipe nominations made by staff cookers.

All recipes that were posted in the Recipe Submission Topic that meet minimum participation requirements are eligible to be nominated by a staff cooker until May 17th, 23:59 ST. A nomination means that staff member promises to, with the exception of overwhelming circumstances, create that dish — and immediately means that dish has been nominated to win the Gold Medallion. When a staff cooker has finished a dish, they will post picture proof that they have actually created the dish, optionally with or without a description of how the cooking process went and how they felt about the dish.

All nominated dishes will then be graded by staff cookers & gourmet experts based on two rubrics, being a) Appeal and b) Creativity. Additionally, staff that have cooked a dish will also grade the dish based on c) Taste. These individual staff member grades will be averaged, and then a weighted average over all staff members will be calculated (with the grades of the staff members that have cooked a dish slightly outweighing the grades of staff members that did not cook a dish). The highest overall average graded dish wins the Gold Medallion! (In the case of a tie, multiple Gold Medallions may be awarded.)

This also means multiple staff members may nominate and cook the same dish. However! Rest assured, this absolutely does not mean the dish has a higher chance of winning. It only means that multiple staff members were interested in cooking and tasting the dish, and that all cookers will be able to grade the dish based on taste in addition to the gourmet experts’ visual-only grades for appeal and creativity :)

All dishes that have met minimum participation requirements but are not nominated, and all nominees that did not win, will equally receive 1 gem.

* On account of being a participating staff cooker. BIASES SHALL NOT PASS!

Okay, I admit, I couldn’t wait. That, and I have two hellish weeks coming up, so I made sure to get my hands dirty (..well, tasty) right away! First, I had to convert the units LadyHawke listed in her recipe to work for Europeans (Google’s reply to ‘how much is one cup?’ was rather unsatisfactory, WHAT DO YOU MEAN IT VARIES PER INGREDIENT?! Silly non-metric system users ;3;). As soon as I believed that was in order, I divided the recipe by 6, because I was getting the impression I’d be making a whooooole lot of dough if I made it as it was — glad I did, because this was already enough for 7 scones, and still we only eat them per half 8D

I left out the second batch of sugar because, well, I’m trying to eat less sugar, but otherwise I believed I stuck pretty faithfully to the ingredients and the instructions. That said, I’m absolutely certain I did things wrong, and that the cream & honey may not have been perfect, but.. I HOPE THIS WAS ABOUT RIGHT! (Goodness was I happy that the dough actually came together. That would’ve been embarrassing. Ehehe~) The final picture is one of the scones cut open, and as you can see, they could’ve probably used a few more minutes in the oven — this was a little over 25 minutes, but then when we tried one a little later on, it’d ‘finished’ from the residual heat, we think?

As for the taste! We quite like them :3 Sadly, the vast amount of butter and the sugar mean I won’t make this recipe very often because it doesn’t really fit with my eating habits at the moment, but I loved being able to taste all the ingredients, and I really liked how I was able to notice what the pinch of salt did — If I do make it again, I might add a little bit more cinnamon/honey, though!

Side note: This recipe allowed me to conquer myself! I.. have a passionate distaste for butter, and touching butter, and.. kneading butter with my bare hands :| BUT I DID IT YES! (and it was absolutely disgusting, but then it turned into super tasty crumbly dough and then it was all good in my world again :3)

Onwards, to the next challenge!

I love my veggies, so I was all over this recipe.  Ohh yes, omnomnom!  Glitch wanted to make a meatloaf, and I wanted to make a veggie sandwich.  He replied “okay, just make me a bite when you make it, and I’ll make meatloaf!”  Well, the meatloaf is in the fridge since the “bite” I made him was half of a giant sandwich, haha!

My grocery store did not carry sprouts (*sob* i love sprouts TnT), so I got olives instead.  Well, I thought I got olives.  But I accidentally got crushed olives.  WHOOPS.  Oh well, I can STILL make this work.  Also, the bread I got was superman bread so it was like I AM BREADDDDDDdddd BIG AND STRONG, so I probably should have scooped out some of the inner bread guts before making it, since I was unable to eat my entire sandwich because my tums got full.

Anyway, glitch’s face was hilarious when he tried his first bite. “* u *” and he made a happy noise.  It is a very delicious recipe!  Below are some pics of my sandwich journey.  HOLD MY HAND AND JOIN ME:

Zomg. I love vietnamese spring rolls, but I CAN NEVER FIND THEM VEGETARIAN!  Okay I have found them veggie in the states. But not here in Germany. SO I WAS ALL OVER THIS RECIPE!

-I used vegetarian “filets” that i cut up into strip-like pieces instead of meats
-Carrots, Zucchini, Salad, Thai Basils, Mint and Rice Vermicelli were my other ingredients!
-I also added some chili flakes to the “sauce” I cooked in the skillet after the veggie filet was done. I likes the spicy.
-I bought the ingredients from memory and totes didn’t think of the ginger. So I used powdered ginger that I had in my spice cupboard. IT WAS DELISH but i bet fresh would have been EVEN BETTERRRR
-In the future I think i might substitute alfalfa sprouts for the rice vermicelli, and smaller wraps. LOL! they didnt fit in my bowl I had to rotate them around to get water everywhere. FAIL!  xD!

They were super delicious, too! Omg. I ate everything that I made and wished I had made more(except not, because I was really super full) The only stumbling blocks i had were “you dip.. the wrapper.. Do you need to let it soak or just quickly dip and put it onna plate??” After the first near catastrophe(i let it sit toooo long in the waterrr oops xD) I realized it was literally dip and put it on the plate. OuO SO MY PIX ARE BEFORE I STARTED ROLLIN’  and my subsequent 2nd and 3rd rolls, because yeah the first was not pretty(although delicious).

My goodness this recipe involves a lot of vegetable chopping 0.0! Some my mom had never even prepared at all, and that’s saying something! We tried four vegetable stands at the market and two supermarkets and were unable to find turnips (not the right season for them here), and we used celery greens instead of celery stalks, but otherwise I believe we stuck to the ingredients. Oh, and we used chicken stock we still had handy!

I started by chopping up all the veggies, and popping the initial batch into the oven — turns out, 45 minutes on 180 degrees celcius was a little long, and that meant a couple bits at the top dried out ohnoes ;3; Then I proceeded to chop chop chop, had a delayed onion reaction (;3;! -cry-) and tasted some raw ginger (hnngg =.=). With the first batch in the oven, we prepared the onion/garlic in a separate pan, and as that pan isn’t really big enough to hold all the soup & the stock was already in our biggest pot, we prepped the rest of the steps in the pan (as can be seen in the pictures) before adding it all together with the stock. It all timed perfectly, as we had just added them together & it started to boil from simmering for a few minutes when the veggies from the oven were ready, and then we added those as well.

It smelled absolutely deelishusly! Our neighbour dropped by just after we finished and she has a pretty weak stomach, but when we told her about the soup & showed it to her, she said she might drop by later to come get a bowl.. ..Which she did (well, a mug which read “Very Big Mug”), sipped, told us she loved it (at least three times), went home, had it for dinner.. ..and then she called us, to thank us twice more. Hina, my neighbour absolutely adores your soup. My mom thinks it’s lovely, too, and although I’m usually not a fan of adding so many ingredients together, gosh, that was a hearty & filling & tasty dish *.* Super practical to pop multiple extra portions into the freezer & take out at your convenience, too; Easy lunch! (We got approx. 8 portions from it, by the way ^^)

I was skeptical. Very skeptical. I’m a mac n cheese purist, and rarely even eat it with ketchup. So putting the hallowed mac with -beans and meatybits-!? Almost unthinkable. BUT I DID IT ANYWAYS. It was was surprisingly delicious. Also super filling. A+ Comfort food! I only made half the recipe from the post, and I still have a ton leftover! Omg. SO MUUUCCHH

Adjustments I made:
-Used veggie crumbles instead of beef
-Used cheddar.
-Spices: I apparently lack garlic powder or things of that nature so i used real garlic and real onion(hubby will love me tonight!), and chili-flakes(where does one even find fire roasted chipotle?? Gotta scour my supermarket, i bet it’s scrumptious!)

OM NOM NOM!! !  !  !

I had a can of beans sitting in my kitchen for ages,which was another reason I wanted to try this. Finally use these baked beansies! xD

All my ingredients!

OKAY I COOKED IT! *nervous about putting them together*

Allright sittin’ down to mix it- HEYYY GET OFF MY FOOD!  That fish is such a brat. :|

OKAY MIXED! STUFFING MY FACE TIME!  And it was good. As I said before. OMNOM!!! :D!

Allright. I struggled with this one.

Okay, let me start at the beginning. I noticed these are -flour free- and was very interested to see how they would taste in the end. At work we make a kind of.. Well I don’t want to call it a cookie, as it is spherical, but it’s -like- a cookie and the dough is made made of marzipan, almond meal, powdered sugar, and egg yolk(And maybe something else, but point is: they are flour-free!). So I assumed this worked on a similar idea - the eggs and dryness of the almonds probably hold it together.
It also just so happened that I had all the ingredients at home -except ground almonds-. I did, however, have a ton of ground walnuts!  “Great, I’ll just substitute them,” I thought. WRONG! Walnuts are a loooot greasier than almonds. like. A LOOOOT and I totally forgot this fact and didn’t decrease the butter. So, the first batch ended up being pretty greasy and therefore inedible. :X

Seeing as they are called -Brilliant Brownies- I KNEWWW I had to give them a 2nd chance. And so I did. AND THEY ARE GOOD!  *pleased* *omnomnomnom* Although I only made half the recipe the 2nd time(OMGGG it’s still HUGE!), and I put 2/3rds of the sugar into the egg whites to make them more stable and easier to mix with the butter/chocolate/almond goo. If I had been thinking on the first batch, I’d just have done it right away. But it was really late and fey’s brain was rather turned off, I did not. And therefore the egg whites were obnoxious in round 1. <_<;;

Adjustments:
Aside from putting most of the sugar into the egg whites, and making half, I followed this one pretty closely. OH! I also put in a pinch of salt to the egg whites. Also makes them more stable. :D

ENOUGH CHATTER!  SHOW US THE GOODS!

The first one before baking. I don’t have a small square pan so I just used a pizza pan the first time around.

Baked! Doesn’t look bad but. MAAAN fulla grease(lol oops)

ROUND 2 IS A GO! (aww lookie my lil mixer mashine, too. INNIT CUTE??)

STIFF PEAKS! OuO Fluffy clouds actually are bad and mean you’ve gone too far. It happens SUPERFAST if there’s no sugar, though. Probably has to do with sugar’s water binding skillz. Just an educated guess, I don’t know the actual chemistry of it, though. I ONLY KNOW WHAT WE DO AT WORK and what they taught me in school. xD

GOIN’ IN THE OVEN! (this one is noticeably lighter in color, thanks to the eggwhites behaving themselves OuO)

BAKED! I used an american pie tin for this half recipe. probs 20cm rather than the 30 of the pizza thing? *hasn’t measured either, though*

OMNOMUS INTERRUPTUS!  AGAIN! Ugh! *chases fish away and devours brownie*  I drank some milk with it, too. OuO

I know I originally requested recipes with low dairy, but man, mac and cheese-esque recipes are a weakness of mine!

The instructions for this recipe were rather vague, but I got the gist of what I needed to do to from the ingredients. I cooked up some sliced chicken breast over a medium heat in a smaller pot. Added some onions, then zucchini, some of the cilantro, and salt to taste. After that was done I put it to the side. Cooked up my pasta, drained, and turned stove to a medium heat. First combined the milk and cream of chicken with the pasta. I adjusted the pasta to sauce ratio to my liking. Then added cheese, rest of the cilantro, mixed, and then dumped my chicken and veggies at the end. Added bread crumbs/panko for a little crunchiness in my bowl.

I really like the flavor and the sauce is nice and smooth. :D

Adjustments made:
- Added some veggies to the recipe
- Reduced serving size
- Switched parsley to cilantro
- Added a little bit of hot pepper cheese to the cheddar for variety
- Ended up using whole wheat pasta (thought I had other pasta at home but nope. Oops!). As it tends to be on the dry side for me, I made the sauce a little saucier, ahaha

Ingredients? Check. Instructions? Check. ...What do you mean did I get the egg, mom? Oh, I didn’t yet. Check. Conversions? Well… I should note, I did replace a quarter of a cup worth of sugar with honey (as suggested in the recipe as an alternative), but otherwise stuck faithfully to all the instructions.

Generally speaking, making the recipe went quite well! The batter was tasty (not super-duper-overwhelmingly so, but I honestly wouldn’t have guessed something was wrong with it), and the result initially smelled pretty good. But then.. It didn’t. Chances are, as fey suggested upfront, that to counter balance all the moisture from the bananas and liquidy honey we should leave out half a banana or so, but then I thought, well, the recipe said to try 1/2 a cup of sugar & 1/3 of a cup of honey as an alternative, so might as well try!

It didn’t work so well ;3; If the moisture wasn’t it, though, I must have gotten something wrong with the conversions… When we cut it open, as you can see in the last image, it was all squishy inside, and after a little while it no longer smelled very good either. We eventually had to chop the crusty bits so we could eat those & throw out the middle :( I’M SORRY D=!

I should note upfront that because of my changed eating habits in the past few months, I’ve been eating a lot of things I didn’t like previously, and clearly my taste buds have changed. That said, 6-months-ago-me would have NOPE!‘d all the way away from this recipe. I never liked paprika (bell & banana peppers), I only recently discovered what pesto/avocado even taste like, have developed a sudden liking to mushrooms (raw/baked, not cooked) only in the past three months, don’t believe I’ve ever had spinach raw before, and the alfalfa just made me O_o???

And so I tackled this recipe, because it looked super duper tasty, and I’d been hearing rumours amongst staff of how tasty it probably would be.. & I was absolutely blown away :| The person I was sharing the meal with wasn’t even halfway through their sub when I’d finished mine, and I absolutely wouldn’t have minded having some more.

Mannn this was good @_@ ffff.

I sang that song while I was making the cake!  I wanted to make this recipe because I almost always have the listed ingredients on-hand, and because I LOVEEEEEE banana-anything.  You certainly can’t go wrong with banana + cake.  glitch helped me out on some parts of the recipe and he was super excited to try it out too!  It turned out SUPER YUMMILY and we promptly ate about half the cake.  WHOOPS.  hahaha.  Definitely a recipe we’ll be trying again in the future. :D

I want to begin by saying that my mom made a wicked mean pot roast, which we ate regularly as I was growing up. It was one of the very few meat dishes she prepared that I genuinely liked. See, I never was a fan of meat, and becoming vegetarian was super easy. I just stopped eating meat on that first day and never went back. However, being human A FEROCIOUS TOOTHY DRAGON, I do on occasion have exceptions to the rule. Pot roast is one of them, to the extent I will eat the veggies and sauce that have been cooked with the meat. I still abstain from eating the meat itself, the potatoes and carrots taste better to me anyways! xD At any rate, my husband is a die-hard meat eater, and as soon as I saw this recipe here I knew that
1. It would be super easy to convince my hubby I that should make it
2. Pot Roast!
3. Give me an excuse to unpack my crockpot and use it again! Poor thing is neglected. ;;

Differences in prep:
My soup packet said 1 liter of water, annnnd Silly me used that. LOLOL!  SO MUCH SAUCEEE!  I also browned my meat in a skillet at the beginning and used the red wine to quench it. I didn’t actually measure how much red wine I used, though. Just dumped it in! 8D! *fey follows directions SO GUD* Oh, and I let the meat go alone for 3 1/2 - 4 hours before popping in my veggies. I like them a little firmer, even though they were just potatoes and carrots.

RESULT:  It was delicious! I left it in the crock pot a whole 8 hours(or was it 7 1/2? I poked at the meat and it fell apart and I knew it was done. :B) We had some old potato dumplings in the fridge from an earlier meal. Usually the Germans eat them with pork roast, but I reheated them and they went perfectly with the roasty sauce. Hubby is also terribly pleased that we have TONNNNNNNNNNs OFFFFFFFFFF LEFTOVARRSSS!  He will be having delicious lunches at work next week, I think. Either that or we’ll just nom it for dinner again!

As soon as I saw this recipe, I knew I had to make it. I love mushrooms, and I love pasta, and I have this beautiful little rosemary plant that’s desperately in need of trimming. I started working my schedule around to make some time for cooking, and as soon as a free evening came up, I was off to the grocery store.

I’m not a fan of tomatoes or onions, so I just went with the basic recipe. I forgot to buy cheese, because apparently I am not capable of memorizing a four-item shopping list, so the pasta came out a little more “dry grasslands” and a little less “swamp.” I tried to compensate by using more olive oil and adding more herbs for flavor, and it came out very tasty! The only thing that wasn’t great was the pasta itself, and that was my fault entirely. It’s been awhile since I cooked pasta, and I was so afraid of overcooking it, I wound up undercooking it instead, so it had an unpleasantly grainy texture. I had enough left over for the following night’s dinner, though, and after I added some water in and microwaved it, it was perfect :)

I wanted to make this one since I saw it. The recipe sounded all interesting, because i’d never made anything like it before. xD Finding the time between work and various other RL things has been difficult this week. BUT I managed to make it yesterday!

It’s delicious! I am pleased. Hubby is also pleased. We agree that it tastes similar to Raffaelo, eventhough raffaelo has almonds. And Fancy had walnuts. I suppose it was the buttery/coconuttyness that did it.  I ended up having numerous questions while trying to make it, but I couldn’t get actual answers, so I ended up making some stuff up. I also had to read the recipe like 283120012 times over before I finally realized there was no baking involved. The billionty safety warnings made me switch into skim-read mode, and then i kept thinking I was skipping bits, so I’d go back and re-check on it. BUT IT WORKED IN THE END. OuO

Specific questions I had/substitutions I made:
1. The double boiler thing with the butter and egg. I let my butter melt together with the sugar, and then I tossed the egg in there. I felt that if I had tried to put solid butter/sugar/the one egg in the double boiler at once the egg would have burnt/cooked by the time the butter melted. Perhaps not, but I wasn’t in the mood to risk it. Next time, I will probs just heat it over the flame. My stupid pot kept sliding around while I was mixing and having only a bowl over the flame will be easier to control. Might use a wire whisk to scrape the bottom to avoid burnings, too.

2. I was really wishing a temp was there for the end point on the butter/egg mixture. When we use raw egg in whipped cream cakes/desserts, we bring it to 75-90°C, until it reaches the right “creamyness” (Zur Rose Abziehen -> pull it to the “rose”) and also sterilizes the egg(we use pre-pasteurized egg for this at work, so salmonella is MUCH less of a worry, but at home I don’t have that!) And according to my little infrared thermometer, it was about 65°c when the sugar had dissolved. So I kept stirring it for a bit after to get the temp up a bit more.

3. We don’t have Graham flour here, therefore also no Graham Crackers. No quakers, either! <<; BUT google told me I could substitute whole grain butter cookies for graham crackers. SO I DID! *crunchcrunch*

4. OMGG i forgot the salt in my butter/egg/sugar mixture CRY CRY Which is extra bad because american butter has salt and german butter does not. SO EVERYTHING IS EXTRA SWEET unless i add in extra salt to make up for the butter differences(recipe just said “butter” not sweetcream) So I just sprinkled a bunch on the bottom part after I made it and before I put the icing on it. TASTES FINE. BWAHA I WIN!

5. I think I put too much instant pudding mix in, because the 2 tablespoons milk was -not enough-. I added another tablespoon and it was spreadably delicious!

7. I used toasted ground walnuts. Because I had them. And they need to be used. :B I stole bought them from work! *cackles*

6. Man if I make these again, I’mma pop some choco chips in with the dry-bits. I BET THAT WOULD BE SCRUMPTIOUS!

Oh, this was delicious. Bananas don’t last long in my house, so I had to cut the recipe by a third because I was only able to save two bananas. I guess it’s a good thing I did, since I probably shouldn’t be eating an entire banana cake by myself :D

One of my bananas was extremely, extremely ripe, to the point where it started to fall apart when I picked it up. I cut the sugar in half because of it, and also because I wanted to add chocolate to my cake. I wasn’t able to find any chocolate chips, but I did find a Hershey’s bar hiding in the back of a cabinet, so I broke off chunks of that and used it in place of chips. I was also out of walnuts, but I had some pecans left in a jar of mixed nuts, and in those went. There was a lot of improvising going on with this recipe, ha.

Oh boy. I’d been eying this one since it was first submitted. I actually made it a week ago, but haven’t been able to post this until now. It was delicious! Every issue I had with it was my own fault for changing the recipe.

I didn’t want to go the Easy Mac way, but for some reason my grocery didn’t have vegetable ziti. I went with Whole Wheat: big mistake. It really mellowed out the spices in a bad way. Similarly I also skipped most of the spices and went just with the Herb de Province and most of the BBQ I found in my fridge. It was still great, but could have used that extra kick. I also put way too much cheese in. I realize this sounds crazy to most people, but an entire tub of parmesan really drove down the spices even more. That being said, I was chomping at the gate to get eat this and also really enjoyed how it tasted having been chilled overnight. I didn’t reheat it and it was still great cold!

proof

I don’t have any action shots because I can’t read directions, but I do have proof.

I’m honestly a little surprised that this got disqualified for bias and then I was appointed to review it. I was expecting my Mycenaication would be way too much for Juney to handle and she’d kick me out for that. Anyway, a thing’s a thing and here’s my thing in picture journal format:

The first thing I did was check for ice.

Then I checked the fridge.

Any there?

YEP! Also note leftover Troll Mash

So far so good. Next I need to pick out a bourbon. This is the tricky part.

So many choices

I don’t do well with choices.

After thinking about this for way too long, I went with the Basil Hayden. Then I had to pick again because somehow I have two bottles of this stuff but they’re both empty.

I’m an idiot

Finally I found a glass

Wahoowa!

Then it was time to drink it. It was good. Just like I remembered.

I’d also recommend adding some simple syrup and bitters (or as I call them, liquid Christmas) to spice things up. Plus it gives you an excuse to be an adult and have a mason jar full of concentrated sugar water in your fridge. Good life choices all around.

I have an action shot, but I haven’t been able to upload that yet. Maybe I’ll put it up later when I can.

This recipe was so cute and simple. I just wanted to try it before time ran out! I don’t actually have much to say about making this. it was simple, fast, easy-peasy. Some of the marshmallow oozed out of the buns onto my baking tray, but I kind of expected that. xD I generally tried to keep the parts where I closed the buns at the bottom to make it harder for it to explode out. xD

OH AND THEY ARE NOMMY! omnomnomnomnomnom!  I ate like 2 right away. <<;;;;

I admit I made this a week ago but I never got the time to sit down and actually write how I felt about it. And I admit, I…thought I had garlic powder…but it was ginger powder. So I had to make do and chop up a garlic and toss it in instead. XD It still came out delicious though! Except I used the macaroni pasta instead of normal pasta and okay, I do NOT have a good macaroni to broccoli mental ratio.

In the end I tossed so cheddar cheese on it because parmesan cheese just wasn’t….cheesy enough for me. But just a tiny bit of what I made filled me right up and it was soooo delicious and easy! (This will be my go-to meal next semester!)

Made this a couple of days ago and haven’t gotten around to posting til now, oops! I had two ripe bananas around the house and decided to make this. Even though the recipe called for three bananas, the two that I had were pretty big so I figured it would be enough. Also cut down the sugar to 1/2 cup and the butter to 1/4 cup to lessen the sweetness.

Looking around the kitchen, I found some dried cranberries and tossed it into the mix. I also found some walnuts and debated incorporating it. In the end I decided to split my batter into two pans and put walnuts on one of them. The batter I made end up being less than I expected, so I ended up having two tiny “bar” loaves and this probably ended up being a good thing.

I also ran into the problem where the middle didn’t cook evenly and it was somewhat moist in the middle. Fortunately enough, I think my tiny bar cakes helped to cook the middle better so it wasn’t super moist in the end. After letting the tiny loaves cool down, I had a taste and despite the middle looking moist, it was tasty and reasonably firm. The cranberries were a nice bit of sour to balance the sweetness of the bananas. :) The outside ended up a little dark because I was concerned about the middle when I was baking it so I ended up over baking the outside by a little bit. Oops! Still, very good regardless! I will probably try this again and add some more flour next time.

Adjustments made:
- Used 2 bananas
- Reduced sugar to 1/2 cup, used brown
- Reduced butter to 1/4 cup
- Tossed in dried cranberries and walnuts

Staff will now deliberate and a winner will be announced in one week!