Wedding Shower

Hey y'all, I'm Paula Deen and guess what? Michael and I are engaged. So today I thought it would be

fun to share this special occasion by throwing a wedding shower. But before we get started

we're going to have to take a trip to Bird Cookie Company for a peek into how these bite-sized

morsels get there more than just a mouthful taste. And we're going to leave with those famous key lime

coolers that are going to make the perfect crust for my key lime tarts. And we'll share a laugh or

two when I make Michael's pickled shrimp that's so good, I promise they won't outlast my marriage

And we're going to tie it all up in a knot with my sesame chicken strips and simple saltines

that are perfect for any party. Y'all gather around the wishing well. I think we're all in for a surprise

Hey, today is one of the happiest

shows I've ever done. Believe it or not, it's about a bride and a groom. And you're not going

to believe this. At my age, I'm 56 years old. I've got two grown sons. I'm an old lady

And I have met the man of my dreams. And he asked me to marry him. And I said, yes

It almost looks real, doesn't it, girls? Michael said it only took him three tries with the

little diggers in that machine. I just love it. He picked the perfect one. Well, in order to get

ready for our show today, we're going to have to take a quick trip to Bird Cookie Company

So y'all don't go anywhere. I want you to stay and help me plan my bridal shower

So I'm off to my favorite specialty shop, Bird Cookie Company, to pick up some bite-sized

melt-in-your-mouth key lime coolers. My friend Kay was good enough to show me

how they meet the high demand for these yummy creations. How many cookies do y'all make today, Kay

Oh, I'd say in the hundreds of thousands. My goodness, and what kind are y'all making right now

These are the key lime coolers. Kay, I appreciate so much you helping me today

It's always so good to see you. Well, good to see you, and I hope the recipe turns out great

Don't forget to bring samples. I will bring you a sample because they're really, really good

Hard to improve on these little babies, but... You can do it. This recipe's pretty good

You can do it. You have a great day. It's always good to see you. Good to see you

I got our cookies, but before I do that, I want to show y'all one of Michael's favorite dishes

and it's pickled shrimp. And he was the cutest thing. He kept telling me about these pickled shrimp

these pickled shrimp. And finally one day I said, how about showing me how you make these great

pickled shrimp? So we got into the kitchen and he was so cute girls. Watching Michael is like

watching molasses pour. He's that slow. And he was so, so cute. I really had to stop myself from

slapping him and moving him out of the way and just letting me do it. But it was so much fun

watching him that day. Now his pickled shrimp is very, very simple. He starts with a medium-sized

shrimp, and I have actually split these down the middle and already deveined them. So we've

got our water boiling. Just going to pour our shrimp right on in there, and these won't

take but just a couple of minutes. You can see already how quick they've turned pink

I've got me a bowl of ice water ready. Go ahead and pull our shrimp out

And then we're going to plop them into our ice water. This dish takes about ten minutes to put together

and I think Michael spent about an hour and a half doing this

All right, so we've got our shrimp in our ice water. Now I'm going to let those sit there because I've already got some

that's been peeled. All right, now we're gonna get us a jar

You can use any kind of jar you want. And I'm gonna start by putting our shrimp in

And I think this is exactly the way Michael does it. So we wanna make sure we do it just like he does

I can do it a little faster. Maybe that's why I'm on TV and Michael isn't. All right, so we're gonna layer a few shrimp in there

and then we gonna take our onion and throw over in there And then I got some garlic cloves and drop it over in there like that And then we gonna come back with a few more shrimp

We're gonna drop a little peppercorn in there. Michael really, really likes spicy things

Go figure. Think that's why he chose me? So we're gonna drop a few bay leaves in

We'll do a couple on this layer. And a couple of more onions, and a few more shrimp

and a few more peppercorns, another clove of garlic. I'm gonna give that a shake and shake that down

And then we're just gonna squeeze a lemon over that, and we're gonna cover it with an apple cider vinegar

Look how pretty that is. Now, the only thing about this dish

is we actually put this in the refrigerator and let it sit for two weeks

Makes a wonderful gift. So I'm gonna stick this in the refrigerator

and when our shrimp are ready, we're gonna need something to eat along with it

And I don't know about y'all, but I don't always keep the fancy crackers in the house

but I always have a soda cracker or a saltine cracker. So I'm gonna show you how to kinda fancy those up

Now there's several different ways that you can do this. You can brush these in olive oil

you can brush them in butter, or you can brush them in an egg wash

using the whites of the egg. I think I'll choose the butter

So we're just gonna pat those with butter. We have to have something

that will make our ingredients stick to them. All right, I'm gonna brush this second half in egg wash

and we'll see if it makes a great deal of difference. All right, here we go

Now, to do your crackers, you can put mostly anything you want to on them

but I like to start with a little parsley. Now I'm putting a few sesame seeds on these

And see how pretty they're looking? All right, now I'm gonna sprinkle a dark sesame

to give them just a little contrast in color. All right, now I'm gonna put a little caraway seeds on it

I love caraway. So we're gonna throw this in like a 325 degree oven

And I've got another pan already ready

Wow, don't those look great? Those don't look like that ordinary soda cracker, do they

I've actually got some shrimp that Michael did about four or five days ago, so I'm gonna

get those and we're gonna try his along with our cracker. Let's see what he did

They're so good, they're so tart, they they make me pucker. Mmm. The cracker is

is just perfect with the shrimp. Y'all don't go anywhere, cause coming up next I'm doing chicken strips

And I want to tell y'all how Michael asked me to marry him. So romantical

All right, I want to show y'all how to make just some divine chicken strips for your man, honey

You'll just blow them away, or for your woman. In fact, I told y'all I wanted to tell you

how Michael proposed to me, so guys, y'all don't go anywhere. I want y'all to listen closely

because it might give you a few ideas of your own. I'm going to start with a marinade on our chicken

We're actually going to let this marinate in the refrigerator overnight. We're going to start with some sour cream

and a couple of teaspoons of celery salt, fresh chopped garlic, the juice of a half a lemon

half a teaspoon of salt, and about two teaspoons of Worcestershire. And that sour cream is gonna break down that chicken

and make it so unbelievably tender. And it's just gonna be perfectly delicious

Now I've got some strips already cut here. I've taken just a boneless chicken breast

and sliced them up. And y'all, I want to remember now, working with chicken, you want to make sure

you don't do any cross-contamination. And you want to make sure you wash your hands

and your board real, real good. A tablespoon of Clorox mixed in a gallon of water

will work nicely to clean any of your surfaces with. Now I'm gonna just toss those around

and make sure they're coated real, real well. So I'm going to put these in the refrigerator

and let them sit overnight In the meantime I got some that I did up yesterday that are ready for us to go So anyway I want to tell y how Michael proposed to me

It was Christmas morning, and all of our family had gathered around

and I'm running around looking lovely. Well, I had noticed the night before

that a new gift had appeared underneath the Christmas tree, and it was back to the back, and it said, Paula

Well, I pretended that I didn't notice, and I thought, well, I'll get that when the time's right

Look at this wonderful pan, y'all. It's a heavy cast iron with a grill surface on it

because when we cook these chicken tenders, they won't sit in any grease they're going to sit up

This is a wonderful heavy pan. Before I go on with the story, I'm going to take sesame seeds

And this is just a white sesame. And you can actually even use dark, too

And breadcrumbs. And we're gonna mix that together real good. And we're just gonna take our chicken breast out

we're gonna roll them in our breadcrumbs and our sesame seed, put them on our pan, and into the oven

So anyway, Michelle, Michael's daughter, comes over to me, and she said, you've got to open your gifts

So I went over and I sat down in the chair, and they pulled out that box that

I had seen it said Paula on it, and it was shaped in the shape of a house

So when I sat down with this box, I noticed that the room got quiet and everybody was watching me

So I thought, what's going on here? Because I truly had no idea

So I opened the box, and there was another box inside. Now the first box said Paula

The next box that I opened was surrounded by all this candy, all my favorite Hershey's chocolate kisses and all this stuff

So I opened the next one, and it said, love. And I still was not reading what was on the box

So I had opened a box that said, Paula, I love. So I went to the next box

It was surrounded by candy, and it had you on it. and I still did not realize what was going on

I couldn't figure out the message, and finally my niece, Kari, yelled out

and she said, Paula, are you reading the message? And I said, well, it said, Paula, I love you

So I went to the next box and opened it up, and it said, Will

When I saw Will, everything clicked. And I looked up at Michael and he was propped against the bar over there looking at me just grinning

And I said, no! And then I said, yes, I mean, yes

And I thought it was just the sweetest thing. This big, tough, quiet river man had just chosen the perfect way to propose to me

So I've got these ready to go into the oven. And now all I'm going to do is drizzle these with butter

I don't have to tell you that in the South we're big chicken eaters

Okay, we're gonna put those in the oven, and we're gonna cook these anywhere from 18 to 25 minutes

And I've got some that should be ready over here. And look how delicious they look

Nice and golden brown. And you can see how the grease went

to the bottom of our pan. Oh, these look so, so good

I'm gonna just sprinkle a few black sesame seeds and a little lemon twist

Now I think all I'm gonna do is serve this with a very simple honey mustard sauce. Mmm

The girls are gonna love them. Y'all stay tuned because y'all remember those key lime coolers we went to get

Well, coming up next, key lime cooler tarts. You know, I didn't think that you could actually improve a key lime cooler, but I got in the

kitchen one day and started playing around, and I found out, believe it or not, we could

actually improve them a little bit by putting them inside a tart and letting this serve as our crust

So it's just double goodness there and they're so easy to make. We're going to make a cream cheese

center for these using an 8 ounce package of cream cheese some sugar an egg two tablespoons of lime juice and a little lime zest Okay there we go

And we're just going to beat this until it's kind of nice and creamy

And while that's creaming, I'm going to come over here. I've lined our miniature muffin tins

with the little paper liners. I found that when we went to eat them the other day

they stuck a little bit, so I'm gonna just give them a light spray

so that they'll come out. All right, now I'm gonna take our key lime coolers

and just drop into the bottom, and that's gonna be our crust

All right, our cream cheese is ready. Now we're just gonna come over here

and drop our cream cheese down on top of our cookie. Just like that

It's probably about a heaping teaspoon. You know, Michael and I are so involved in food

and I'll never forget our first date together. We came back in from the most wonderful boat ride

Finally, I said, would you like a bite to eat? And he said, yes, that would be nice

So I go to my pantry, pull out my box of pork rinds

go to the microwave and pop them in and bring them back to the sofa and sit down

And he's very gracious. He said, you know, I think these are the best pork rinds I've ever tasted

And he said what was really going through his mind was, now I found this girl that's supposed to really be a good cook

and she's serving me box pork rinds. What's up with this? So these are ready to go into the oven

and we're going to bake these for about 10 to 12 minutes. and I've actually got a pan back here that's cooled

So these are ready for us to fill. Because our next step

you want to make sure they're totally, totally cool because we're going to pipe them with whipped cream

and as you know, heat and whipped cream will make a mess

So we've got these nice and cool, and we're going to take our whipping cream

that's been sweetened with a little sugar, and this garnishes them nicely, makes them taste good

So you can see how they kind of fell in the center, which is just perfect

It gives us a little pocket, and we're just going to pipe our cream right into there

So how pretty are those? I'm just going to take these out and put a few on the plate

and I have some sugared lime zest. And if you don't want to go to that trouble

you can just grate some lime zest and kind of sprinkle on

Doesn't that make a pretty plate? I'm going to take the paper off

and you can see why I sprayed them lightly because they could have a tendency to stick on you

Mmm. I really didn't think you could improve on a bird cookie

but I think we've done it. Y'all hang around because never thought this would happen

but I'm going to be giving you some tips on wedding showers. For a few quick tips on today's recipes

try playing around with Michael's marinated shrimp by using different vinegars. The balsamic vinegar might be a good one that you really like

or just plain old white vinegar, red wine vinegar, as opposed to what we use today, which is the apple cider vinegar

And on sesame seeds, most recipes that come for sesame seeds, you only use a few, so you've always got plenty left over

Make sure that you store them in an airtight container, and you can actually freeze these, and they would last up to a year

Now, when it comes to topping your cheesecakes with the whipping cream, never use a metal bowl because the whipping cream can actually pick up a metallic taste

So always use a chilled glass bowl for your whipping cream, and it'll turn out to perfection

I hope that y'all don't have to do this but one time, but in case you do, I hope these recipes will come in handy

I think you'll just love Michael's pickled shrimp and the sesame chicken strips and the little key lime tarts made with the key lime cookies from Bird Cookie

And, of course, our jazzed up soda cracker. I hope that y'all will enjoy these recipes

and the best part about today's show is that all the friends I've made working here on the show

surprised me with my very own wedding shower