Day 5: Sunday Dinner/Spicy Dr. Pepper Pulled Pork, Onion Strings, and Vanilla Bean Scones for Dessert

It's Sunday and like normal we were in the kitchen from the time that we arrived home from church.  But oh man was it worth it.  The dinner we chose last weekend for this weekend was Spicy Dr. Pepper pulled pork with Onion Strings.  If you like the Onion Strings at Chili's you will for sure love these.  And for dessert we had Vanilla bean scones.  Which made so many that I think I'll take the remaining ones over to my friend Tara's house for her and her family. 
It's strange to say that when you are in the kitchen cooking and preparing for a Sunday meal like this you always get the dessert done first.  So that's what I'll start with here.

Vanilla Bean Scones:

Here are the ingredients that you will need.

Just FYI, the candle is not part of the ingredients.  With such little counter space I had to find a little bitty spot to place all of these.  My husband was helping so wonderfully in the kitchen, but taking up SO much space.  But he was hard at work getting the vanilla beans prepared for me, so I let him have his space.

 

What he's doing there is splitting the vanilla bean in half and then taking all the good stuff out of the middle of the bean.  That good stuff there is going to be placed in some heavy cream and let sit for about 15 to 20 minutes.

While that's sitting and getting all tasty sift your flour, sugar, salt, and baking soda together.  And then take your butter...wow....2 sticks of butter, that sure is alot.  Cut your sticks of butter into pats and place them in your bowl of flour mixture and use your pastry cutter to get it all crumbly.

This sure was hard work on my "guns" :) 

In another bowl mix together your egg and vanilla cream mixture that's been sitting there getting all tasty. 

Once you have that all mixed up then it's time to pour it into the flour/butter mixture.  Mix together with a fork.  When it's mixed together real well place it on a floured area.  Move over honey I'm taking up all the space now :)

Roll out into a square, I had to use my hands to make it like a square.  Don't be scared to do that. :) Next you want to take your unformed square and make it like a formed square by using a pizza cutter.  Again..this makes sense to me hopefully it makes sense to you.

Here is what you want it to look like.

Looking at that now.....man that looks good.  Next time I think I'll use a ruler and make sure that it's "perfect".  Just joking, well maybe not.  That actually sounds like a good idea.
Now you want to make your triangles, below you can see the pictures on how we did that.

Place your triangles on a cookies sheet and bake for 18 minutes.  Once those 18 minutes are up take them out of the oven and let them sit on the cookie sheet for about 15 minutes. This is what they should look like when you take them out of the oven.

 While they are sitting on the cookie sheet for those 15 minutes you can start on your icing.  This is the point where I noticed......MAN....I'm out of powder sugar.  I guess a small box of powder sugar that is more than half way isn't going to be enough when you need 5 cups.  Off to the store my honey went...what a sweetheart he is.  As soon as he came back from the store I grabbed the powder sugar from him measured it out and sifted those 5 cups.

While I'm sifting away my husband is over there getting the good stuff out of another vanilla bean and placing it into the milk.  It needed to sit there for at least 10 minutes.  It took almost those whole 10 minutes sifting all that powder sugar. 

After the 10 minutes was up I placed the vanilla/milk mixture into the powder sugar and used the whisk to get it all mixed up real well.  I had to add a little bit more milk so that the icing wouldn't be too thick.  So now...time to start icing these bad boys.

You can ice just the top or you can dunk it in the icing and ice the whole thing.  We decided to ice the whole entire thing.  Now they are all iced and ready to go:

But be prepared they are very sweet.  These would go great with a cup of coffee.  Here's the link if you wish to make the scones yourself.  Vanilla Bean Scones

Now onto the mail entree of our Sunday dinner. 

Spicy Dr. Pepper Pulled Pork:

This meal here is something very easy to prepare doesn't take alot of ingredients.

As you look at the ingredients you see chipotle chili's in adobo sauce.  My husband asks me, what's  adobo sauce?  I said you....oh wait...that's not adobo that's a dodo.  Well he didn't think it was too funny, well I thought it was.  Back to the meal here. :)  Place your onions in the bottom of your pot.  The recipe actually says to place in a dutch oven, well we placed it in our crock pot; which works perfectly fine.  So we placed those onions in the bottom of the crock pot and tossed the meat in there.  Season time....salt and pepper and that's it.  Just enough to taste, no real measurements there.  Throw in the brown sugar and the chili's with adobo sauce.  We actually didn't use the whole thing cause we didn't want it too spicy for the kids. 

Then pour in the good stuff....Dr. Pepper.

And that's it...place the lid on it and let the crock pot do it's job.  We cooked it for 8 hours and turned the meat every 2-3 hours.
Now look how good this looks...

This tasted so good.  I think it could of been spicier but it's all good. :)

If you want to make this here is the link: Click here for recipe

Onion Strings:

Yes these are just like the ones at Chili's....probably better.  They are so good....greasy....but I think that's what makes them good.

Cut up your onion, the good thing about making these at home is that you can make them any size you want.

We made them thin so that you can't really taste the onions.

Place them in a shallow dish and pour in your buttermilk, time to take a bath you onions.



These will need to soak for about an hour.  When these are done soaking mix your flour, salt, pepper, and cayenne pepper.  If you want them to have a little kick...add more cayenne pepper.  Now it's frying time.  Heat up your oil to 375 degrees and then take a good hand full of the onions with some tongs and place it in the flour mixture.

Tap off as much of the extra flour as your can.  Place in the heated up oil.  Be prepared it will be hot.

Once they are a golden color, they are done and can be removed.  Place them on a plate covered with paper towels.  Try not to eat too many before dinner is served.  Here is the recipe.

NOW DINNER IS SERVED!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!