Recipe Monday: Buffalo Chicken Bake

     The wife and I make it a point to count calories when we plan our meals for the day. To make that process easier, I bought a few cookbooks that specifically limit the caloric count of each recipe. One of the better books we've found is The 300 Calorie Cook Book from Betty Crocker. The original recipe is from the "Meals For Two" section: "Bar-b-q Chicken Bake" (p. 309). We made some changes. We doubled the recipe to four servings. We also swapped out the barbecue sauce for Franks Hot Sauce (any Buffalo-style sauce would work). We also used a 4-cheese Mexican blend instead of the reduced fat cheddar. We had no access to Bisquick Heart Smart, so we used our ALDI brand all-purpose biscuit mix.

     The end result was pretty good. You'll panic at first when you see that the biscuit mix barely covers the bottom of the pans. It rises up during cooking to give you a crust that's about 1/2" and fairly crunchy around the outside. Cook it a bit longer if you don't want the middle to be a touch soggy. As always, changes and notes are in blue.

Buffalo-Chicken Bake

Ingredients

• 2/3 cup all-purpose biscuit mix
• 2T water
• 2 egg whites
• 1 cup cut up cooked chicken (we cooked our chicken in some cayenne pepper paste for extra heat)
• 1/2 cup Franks Hot Sauce (or Buffalo-style hot sauce of choice)
• 1/2 cup shredded Mexican 4-cheese blend

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 400F. Spray two 8x4" loaf pans with cooking spray.
2. Cook chicken breasts (doesn't really matter how. Microwave if you want. We fried them in a skillet with our home-made pepper paste). Cut up chicken when done (please try not to poison yourself by not cooking the chicken enough)
3. Stir together biscuit mix, water and egg white; spread half in bottom of each pan.
4. In small bowl, mix chicken and hot sauce. Microwave on high for 1 minute (skip microwaving if you are using the chicken hot from cooking.)  Spoon over batter in pans to within 1/2" of edge; sprinkle with cheese.
5. Bake 20-25 minutes or until golden brown; loosen from sides of pan.

Makes 4 servings (2 per pan), about 265 calories per serving. 

Good times!