My birthday was last Thursday. I always like to make cakes, so I made myself a very simple cake. My husband offered to make me one, but you know, I kind of like to do it myself. I didn't have as much time to devote to cake-making as I have in years past due to the fact that I have a really little baby and a two year old who both take up a lot of time. However, I made one of my old, super easy, cake favorites. A simple white cake baked according to the directions on the package and topped with a mixture of Cool Whip and Yoplait yogurt. It may sound strange, but you have to trust me. It makes for one of the most refreshing, light, and easy frostings you can imagine.
As a special birthday gift to myself, I decided to make a recipe I've been meaning to try for years: a copycat version of Macaroni Grill's Chicken Scaloppine.
I'm the kind of person that always orders the same thing when I go to a restaurant. Sure, I'll try something different...until I find something crave-able. Once I've made such a find at a restaurant, I never turn back. It might be boring...but it's safe. How many times have you been faced with the following decision at a restaurant: the tried and true yummy dish you've had time and time again vs. the tasty looking and appealing, but shot-in-the-dark, new dish? And how many times have you been disappointed when you ordered the new dish only to wish that you'd gone with your old stand-by?
Plus, I so rarely get to go out to eat these days that I just can't afford to take that chance! However, maybe next time I go to Macaroni Grill, I'll try something new because now I can make their Chicken Scaloppine at home! Seriously, it tasted so close to what you can get at the restaurant.
I am including the original version of the recipe as well as the recipe I made with my own changes.
Now, I'll just need to try Olive Garden's recipe for Stuffed Chicken Marsala at home someday...maybe I'll do it for my birthday next year. Because seriously, these restaurant recipes are pretty ingredient-heavy and they aren't usually low-fat either. Just the ticket for a once-a-year kind of celebration! And did you know that Olive Garden has a recipe section on their website? It really has some great recipes on it! Check it out. I wish more restaurants did that. I mean, come on, it hasn't made Olive Garden lose any business, has it? I don't think so!
I love Chicken Scaloppine. The recipe that my sister, Laurie, shared just the other day for Chicken Piccata (because let's be honest here, Macaroni Grill's Chicken Scaloppine is basically Chicken Piccata with a bunch of other yummy things thrown in) is the traditional, basic, and much lighter version of this recipe. But sometimes you want to indulge and splurge. Besides, I knew that I wouldn't be able to get out to go to dinner!
Oh, and just a note: I'm going to include the recipe for the lemon cream sauce as I found it online. I'll explain more in the recipe notes, but the sauce didn't work out for me, so I created my own. I will share my version of the sauce recipe as well.
Buon appetito!
Simple Cool Whip Yogurt Frosting
Ingredients:
1 regular sized tub of Cool Whip
1 container Yoplait yogurt--any flavor
Directions:
Mix Cool Whip and yogurt together until well-blended. Use to frost the cake of your choice.
Source: My Mom found this recipe suggestion years ago in a magazine or something. You can find many suggestions by doing a Google search of your own. Betty Crocker also has a similar frosting/cake recipe on their website.
Notes: I used peach Yoplait yogurt and it was fantastic. Strawberry also works well. My husband bought the larger sized tub of Cool Whip and and two containers of Yoplait peach yogurt. So, I mixed the two together. I like a lot of frosting, so I used more than I would have by following the regular recipe, but I didn't use up all of the frosting because it definitely made a lot. I would compare this frosting to the whipped cream frostings you can get at bakeries. If you wanted a simple white (non-fruit) whipped cream frosting, you could mix in some vanilla yogurt instead of fruit yogurt. The yogurt gives it a nice tang and it changes the consistency of the Cool Whip so that it is similar to whipped cream frosting. Yum!
Oh, and I always put a dollop of frosting on the cake plate prior to placing the first cake layer on the plate. It helps the cake stay in place while you are frosting it.
Macaroni Grill Chicken Scaloppine (Original Copycat Recipe)
Ingredients:
Lemon Butter Sauce:
4 ounces lemon juice
2 ounces white wine
4 ounces heavy cream
1 pound butter
Salt and pepper, to taste
Chicken and Pasta:
8 (3 ounce) chicken breasts, pounded thin
Oil and butter for sauteing chicken
3/4 cup flour, seasoned with salt and pepper, for dredging
6 ounces pancetta (I used prosciutto instead of pancetta because that's what Macaroni Grill uses)
12 ounces mushrooms, sliced
12 ounces artichoke hearts, sliced
1 tablespoon capers
1 pound cappellini pasta, cooked
Chopped parsley, for garnish, if desired
Directions:
To make the sauce:
Heat the lemon juice and white wine in a saucepan over medium heat. Bring to a boil and reduce by one third. Add cream and simmer until mixture thickens (3-4 minutes). Slowly add butter until completely incorporated. Season with salt and pepper. Remove from heat and keep warm.
To make the chicken and pasta:
Heat a small amount of oil and two tablespoons butter in a large skillet. Dredge chicken in flour and saute in pan, turning once, until browned and cooked through. Remove chicken from pan and add pancetta or prosciutto, mushrooms, artichoke hearts, and capers. Heat until mushrooms soften and are cooked; add chicken back to pan.
Cook pasta according to package directions.
To serve:
Place cooked pasta on each plate. Add half of butter sauce to chicken mixture and toss. Taste and adjust, adding more sauce if needed. Place chicken mixture over pasta. Garnish with parsley. Alternately, mix pasta and chicken mixture together. Toss with butter sauce.
According to the Copycat version, it serves 10. I think it would serve 10 if you had bread and salad, but if you just serve the pasta, it serves 6-8.
Source: I found this on the cdkitchen website. Here's the recipe's exact link.
Ingredients:
Lemon Butter Sauce (my version):
1 cup whole milk or 1 can evaporated whole milk
1/2 cup lemon juice
1 stick butter
Salt and pepper, to taste
1 tablespoon capers, drained
Chicken and Pasta:
8 (3 ounce) chicken breasts, pounded thin
Oil and butter for sauteing chicken
3/4 cup flour, seasoned with salt and pepper, for dredging
6 ounces pancetta (I used prosciutto instead of pancetta because that's what Macaroni Grill uses)
12 ounces mushrooms, sliced
12 ounces artichoke hearts, sliced
1 tablespoon capers
1 pound cappellini pasta, cooked
Chopped parsley, for garnish, if desired
Directions:
To make the sauce:
Melt butter in a saucepan. Remove from heat. Using a wire whisk, very slowly add whole milk or evaporated milk and lemon juice. Then simmer over low heat until completely heated. Season with salt and pepper. Add capers. Remove from heat and keep warm.
To make the chicken and pasta:
Heat a small amount of oil and two tablespoons butter in a large skillet. Dredge chicken in flour and saute in pan, turning once, until browned and cooked through. Remove chicken from pan and add pancetta or prosciutto, mushrooms, artichoke hearts, and capers. Heat until mushrooms soften and are cooked; add chicken back to pan.
Cook pasta according to package directions.
To serve:
In a large serving bowl or platter, toss pasta, chicken mixture, and sauce all together. Forget the parsley because you almost always forget to add the parsley garnish anyway! Serve!
Notes: Here is why I made the changes to the recipe that I did.
There was NO way that I was going to use a whole pound of butter to be used on a pound of pasta. So, I tried to change up the sauce to make it without the pound of butter. I basically used equal parts lemon juice and cream, and a half pound of butter with a splash of white wine vinegar. I did NOT like the sauce at all. To me, it tasted nothing like what you get in the restaurant. Having the ratio of the lemon juice equal to the whip cream made it too bitter for my taste. Plus, it had kind of an unpleasant sweet flavor to it. So, then, I tried all sorts of things to "fix" the sauce. But nothing helped. Maybe it really did need a whole pound of butter for the ratios to be correct. But I couldn't justify eating that.
So, I threw the first sauce effort down the sink. I then made my version which had 1 cup of whole milk (I had used up all of my cream), 1/2 cup of lemon juice, 1 stick of butter, salt and pepper, to taste, and capers. It tasted so much like the restaurant version. I was quite pleased with it. It coated the pasta and chicken mixture nicely...and it didn't use a whole pound of butter! Though, after throwing the first sauce down the sink, I did go through almost a whole pound of butter. Oh well.
My only warning with using milk instead of cream is that you can't add the milk while the butter is super hot, otherwise the milk will curdle. If this happens, I suggest adding a little cornstarch, and then bringing the sauce to a low boil to thicken the mixture. The cornstarch thickening the sauce will help the sauce look smoother, and it will coat the pasta better. However, if you use evaporated milk, you won't have to worry about it curdling.
Also, the restaurant doesn't serve up a whole chicken breast. So, I butterflied the chicken breasts and pounded them thin. I cut them into medallion sized pieces. It helped it cook much more quickly and made it easier when it came to tossing the whole pasta/chicken/sauce mixture together. In the future, I might actually slice the chicken into strips before tossing it with the pasta.
There's no need to cook the prosciutto prior to adding it in with the other ingredients after you've finished cooking the chicken. However, I would suggest sprinkling the prosciutto into the mixture rather than throwing it in all at once. I put mine in all at once and the prosciutto kind of stuck together.
Above: I made this again recently (July 2013) and took more pictures. The other pictures had been taken with my old camera. The pictures were too dark and didn't do the pasta justice. I wanted a picture that showed just how delicious this pasta really is.
Yummy, yummy, yummy!
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