Another Pot Pie? Ooooh, Fudge!

Hamburger Pot Pie

Personal
Yield:  1 8x8 pot pie
Time:  1 hour

1 disk pie dough
1 lb ground beef
Salt & pepper to taste
1 tbsp garlic powder
1 tsp paprika

Gravy
2 regular potatoes, cut into small cubes
1/2 cup chicken stock
1/2 cup half & half
1 1/2 cups milk
1 pkg McCormick Brown Gravy mix
1 8 oz can tomato sauce
2 celery stalks, halved lengthwise & sliced
2 carrots, peeled, halved lengthwise, & sliced
Salt & pepper to taste

Preheat oven to 375°.  Grease & flour 8 inch cake tin.  Heat pan over medium heat; add beef & season with salt, pepper, garlic powder, & paprika.  While beef is cooking, roll out half of dough for crust; transfer dough to cake tin & trim with knife or pizza cutter.  Pierce bottom of crust several times with fork.  Line crust with aluminum foil and fill with beans.  Blind bake crust for 7 minutes.  While crust is in oven, transfer cooked ground beef to a bowl with a slotted spoon.  Add potato & cook until bottoms are brown; add chicken stock, half & half, & milk.  Let warm 1 minute & add gravy mix.  Let come to a boil; stir in tomato sauce until well incorporated.  Return to boil; add celery & carrots.  Season with salt & pepper to taste.  Roll out remainder of dough for tops crust.  Test veggies in gravy; they should be just fork tender.  When gravy is ready, pour over ground beef.  Cover with top pie crust.  Trim edges; cut slits into top of pie.  Place pie on cookie sheet & return to oven for 25 minutes.

Super Easy Peanut Butter Fudge

Facebook:  Just A Pinch
Yield: 8x8 pan
Time:  10 minutes

2 cups sugar
1/2 cup milk
1 tsp vanilla extract
3/4 cup peanut butter

Butter 8x8 dish.  Prepare all your ingredients by measuring them and laying them out for immediate use.

Over medium heat, bring milk & sugar to a hard boil; stirring constantly, boil for 2 1/2 minutes.  Remove from heat.  Stir in vanilla.  Stir in peanut butter until smooth.  Pour into dish & cool.

More Info

Hamburger Pot Pie

This recipe is pretty straight forward.  I will say that I recommend using a pizza cutter to cut/trim your dough with, especially if you roll it out as thin as I do (which I'd say is maybe 1/8 inch thick?  Not real sure how accurate that is).

Super Easy Peanut Butter Fudge

Okay, my original blog post for this was deleted by accident.  Which is a good thing, because now I can bring you this important update about this recipe.  If you watch my video for this recipe (YouTube:  Top Of The Fridge To Ya), you'll see I use a whisk, and that my fudge starts cooling on me very quickly and that it becomes difficult to pour.  Do Not Use A Whisk!  This causes air to be incorporated into the fudge, thus cooling it more quickly.  It also changes the overall texture of the finished product!  I made a second (double) batch just last night (because it keeps going really fast around here), and I used a wooden spoon (and then the spatula to spread it out with, since I had to use the spatula to get the peanut butter out of the bowl it was in anyway) to stir the fudge with.  It came out a more smooth consistency and was more easily poured into the prepared dish.

Overall Meal

So, I don't have pretty shots of the plated food for you to enjoy (because I didn't think to take those pictures this time), and while I would like to post my videos here for these recipes, blogger, for some reason, refuses to recognize my videos from YouTube.  Anyway, if you ask me, you don't really need a side for pot pie; it's a pretty complete meal in and of itself.  And the fudge makes a good dessert/anytime treat.  If you'd like to see my demonstrations of these recipes, check out my channel on YouTube, titled Top Of The Fridge To Ya.

UPDATED 02/13/14:

• Added links under recipe titles to credited source

Questions?  Leave a comment!