Breakfast for dinner!! Well, sort of...

You know, for the most part (baking aside) my dinners have the tendency to be very much on the healthy-ish side. I wish I could say the same for this choice because I'd totally make it more often. Granted- it DEFINITELY beats out McDonald's or Chick fil a in the "good for you" department, but let's be serious, that's not saying much!

As much as I have the will power of... something with a whole lot of will power... (metaphors are a little out of my brain capacity post p90x Yoga X, so deal with it) if I couldn't find a way to treat myself to chicken fingers every now and then, Chick fil a would undoubtedly have WAY too much of my weekly paycheck. To be completely honest, my will power is not that rock solid. But! That's between me and my "MyFitnessPal" app. For the purpose of this particular post, I have amazing will power and this is a delightful albeit not terrible for me break from that. :) Thank you for cooperating.

Growing up in Miami, there seemed to be a solid few years where everyone was having birthday parties at Planet Hollywood. It wasn't only birthday parties, it was report card celebrations, end of the year dance team parties, pretty much any excuse to go out- Planet Hollywood, here we come! I ALWAYS ordered their famous chicken fingers. I have no doubt some high end chefs somewhere spent a lot of time (bahahahaha) concocting the menu for this themed restaurant but they should've given up after the chicken fingers because that's all they needed to guarantee their success! (Wait... are they even still open outside of Orlando?) It wasn't until much later in life that I discovered the secret was in their breading- made of CAP'N CRUNCH!!! Yes, you heard right. A sugar cereal breaded chicken finger. Genius!

After a few trials of piecing together multiple online versions of the Planet Hollywood recipe (thank you AllRecipes.com and Food.com!!), I just sort of picked the parts I liked. I will now impart to you the wisdom and beauty that is this chicken finger recipe. Eat it, love it, never go back to regular chicken fingers!

Cap'n Crunch Chicken Fingers-

You will need:

*One pack of chicken tenderloins

*2 1/2 cups of Cap'n Crunch

*1 egg

*1 cup of milk

*1 cup of flour

*1 tbsp Garlic Salt

*1 tbsp Onion Powder

*1 tsp black pepper

And now, the fun part- Time to get dirty!! :)

I'm a little picky about the extra tendons in tenderloins, so I like to cut them out! But then you end up with the much more finger-like chicken strips. So let's pretend I don't do it because I'm crazy and do it to get the proper "chicken finger" shape... sure, that sounds great!

Then I give someone (in this case, my person) the lovely job of finely crushing the 2 1/2 cups of cap'n crunch in a ziploc baggie. It wasn't until he was done that he asked if there was a rolling pin that would've simplified this task... too late! In the future- take a rolling pin to the baggie!
Then, I made the egg wash. Basically, just mix the milk and egg in a little bowl. You'll have a lot of this left over... but it's just egg wash. So, sorry about it.

I have no doubt there's a technical term for this next part... I don't know what that is so I'm going to call it the flour coating mixture. I then combine all the flour, garlic salt, onion powder, and pepper and mix it all up!

Then, I laid everything out in the order of this fancy photo I photoshopped and got messy. I'm not kidding- I had to rinse my hands off a few times in order to get through all the chicken strips. First, the chicken gets coated by the flour mixture, then a quick bath in the egg wash, and finally, a happy roll in the cereal! I am very generous with the cereal coating. Mainly because that's the delicious part.
Now, this particular time, I laid the fingers out on a foil covered cookie sheet and baked them at 350 degrees for 1 hour.

And then they came out golden and delicious!!!

Voila! Dinner :) Ok, to be honest, I think they come out a little dry baked in the oven. Next time, I'll probably try to take them out before the hour is up. To be even more honest- these are most delicious fried up on the stove top. That is a fact! But- if you're trying to be a little healthier, then they are still very yummy baked. Boring! :) Try this out and let me know how it goes! I really want to make them with frosted flakes, so if you get around to that before I do, let me know how it tastes! I should probably go grocery shopping so I can keep playing in the kitchen. Any fun, out of the norm recipes you think I should try? Send them my way! Until next time...