Kid-Friendly Baked Chicken Nuggets, with Avocado and Mango Sauce

The avocado and mango sauce is not in this picture, because my 5 yr old would have taken its presence personally. You all know what troublemakers avocados and mangoes are...

Ever since we watched an episode of Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution, my five year old has had a love-hate relationship with chicken nuggets. So for him, and to honor my first reader request (thanks, Dianne!), here is a kid-approved chicken nugget recipe that even Jamie Oliver would like. My son likes to eat them dipped in ranch dressing and ketchup. If you aren't a picky eater yourself, you may like them on rice with the avocado and mango sauce.

Kid-Friendly Baked Chicken Nuggets

• chicken breasts, cut up in chunks
• eggs, 1 egg per breast
• flour, 1/4 cup per breast
• butter for the bottom of the baking pan
  

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees. Butter your baking pan. My mom likes to put extra butter in the pan.

Crack your eggs in to a bowl and scramble them with a fork.


Pour your flour in to another bowl (I prefer a shallower dish).


Next, chop your chicken to whatever size you prefer. I like to make the pieces smaller since I have a toddler but you could make them traditional nugget-size.


Dip the chicken pieces one at a time in to the egg, and then coat with flour and place on the baking sheet.


Bake for 20 minutes, turning them over after the first 10 minutes. They are ready to be eaten. Just add your child's favorite dips. Here they are with peas, veggie chips, and ketchup, ranch and applesauce for dipping.


Avocado and Mango Sauce:

• 2 avocados
• 1 mango
• 1 tbsp lemon juice (or the juice from half of a lemon)
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1/4 cup of water

I used to make the avocado and mango sauce and serve it with poached chicken over rice, but it works just as well with these chicken nuggets.

You will need to use a blender to puree the fruit. First, peel the avocados and the mango, remove the pits, and cut them in to chunks.


Now, add the 1/4 cup of water and the 1/2 tsp of salt and the 1 tbsp of lemon juice. Puree it, but only for less than a minute.


And it is ready to be added to your chicken. Here is it over brown rice and chicken. Enjoy!

Brownies a la (Faux) Mode

For the 4th of July, I had great dreams of making a layered pudding and berry dessert - vanilla pudding, strawberries, blueberries and cherries, layered in a patriotic way, served over brownies. Unfortunately, the vanilla pudding soaked in to the berry layers so that you mostly saw just vanilla pudding with very (VERY) narrow ribbons of red or blue showing through in some parts. When the pudding and berries were spooned out over the brownies, everything mixed together and looked lumpy. Suspiciously lumpy. Did I mention that my bottom layer was chocolate pudding? The whole thing looked... primordial... with the vanilla and chocolate pudding swirling around, covering unidentifiable berry-lumps. Surprisingly, the pudding, brownie and berry mixture tasted divine - once you got past the appearance. I decided that I needed to find a better solution to the pudding problem. Vanilla pudding soaking in to the chocolate brownies is fine, but the berries need to stay on top, unless you are doing some kind of Halloween dessert.

I tried again and came up with this method of putting it all together:

Brownies a la (Faux) Mode

This dessert is super easy - a fun twist on putting ice cream on brownies. Plus, you can make the dessert dishes up ahead of time so that when you are ready to serve dessert, everything is ready.

You will need:

• one pan of brownies (from scratch, from a mix, from a bakery - no judgment here)
  
• one box of vanilla pudding mix (per every 4 servings of dessert - assuming 1/2 cup of pudding per serving)
  
• 2 cups of milk (per box of vanilla pudding mix)
  
• berries (any berries will work, just wash them)
  
• cherries for the top of each serving (optional)
  

First, start with a square of brownie: not too big, not too small. You want an optimum pudding to brownie ratio, so you may need to make this dessert several times to figure out exactly the ratio you prefer. I like a 1 1/2 inch by 1 1/2 inch brownie but my dish is very narrow at the bottom so I cut my brownie a tiny bit smaller so it would fit.


Next get your pudding mix and the 2 cups of cold milk ready. I like the Trader Joe's vanilla pudding - only 99 cents, no crazy ingredients, and the box is cute.


Pour 2 cups of cold milk in a bowl and whisk in the pudding mix for 2 minutes.



Let it set for 5 minutes and then whisk again, until it is smooth. Spoon approximately 1/2 cup of the pudding on top of the brownie. I added more in this picture because I like a lot of pudding.


At this point, go ahead and get your berries ready to add. I sliced the strawberries and removed the tiny stems that were still in some of the blueberries. I hand-pitted the cherries using a handy tool for removing cherry pits, but you can also use a paring knife.

Sprinkle the berries on top, and it is ready!