magic sprinkles

Practice Swatch: Crocodile Stitch

2012-01-05T14:44:00.001-05:00

This stitch is actually fairly easy to do, once you get the rhythm of it. I've been experimenting with techniques and yarns. Here's my first stab at it using Red Heart "Soft" Yarn. Not a fan so far. The strands unwind and I get lots of scraggly looking pieces. Too bad since I adore the color.

I've been doing this swatch using Teresa's YouTube instructions and I've started another swatch as well using a different technique and yarn, which I'll post later and compare my thoughts on the two.

Any ideas on what to turn this little swatch into?

Christmas Scarves for Boys

2012-01-02T16:00:00.003-05:00

When I went to my sister's house for Thanksgiving I saw that she had picked up crochet again. I had been rolling this around in my mind too, and I had actually packed yarn and a hook for the drive (13 hours!) but discovered that I get car sick if I focus too closely on detail work or reading. {Sigh.} Lucky that the library has books for download as this makes the time FLY. The Lost Hero by Rick Riordan was entertaining for everyone. Anyway, seeing that my sister was back in crochet mode was all I needed to get myself going again. She gave me an awesome book that has stitches in it that I'll share another day.

I knew I needed to start back in an easy fashion, and nothing is easier than a scarf. I made 3, one for each kid (actually 4 - N didn't like his original so I ripped it out and started over) and I'm fairly happy with how they turned out. The pattern is a riff from the Lion Brand Yarn "2-Color Scarf". I changed it up into a 3-Color Scarf because I thought that a stripe of red would pop the grey and black and that the gray would be a nice foil for the purple and black. Be sure to block your finished creations, especially if you think they're a little crooked or lumpy looking. I soaked them down, wrapped them in a towel and squeezed out the excess water. I spread them out on the laundry room counter and re-shaped so that the edges were even and lines were straight. Straightening out everything when wet does the trick!

Tip: If you're just starting out crocheting, the Homespun is rather challenging to use. The way the yarn is constructed makes it a little hard to see stitches or count, so if you're really, really just starting, I'd suggest a regular worsted yarn for your first few projects until you get in the groove.

Colors I used of Lion Brand Homespun
Black
Edwardian (Gray)
Candy Apple (Red)
Barrington (Purple with Teal) In real life, this looks nothing like the swatch online. This is a great reason to check dyelot - make sure that you buy enough yarn to finish your project from the same dyelot. You can find the numbers for each lot on the back of the skein wrapper. Dig through the bin at the store and buy an extra if you think you'll be close, keep the receipt and return if not needed.

Amigurumi Penguin!

2012-01-01T18:20:00.008-05:00

Isn't he adorable???

I enjoyed making him and after many consultations to the pattern (which is from Lion Brand Yarn and can be found HERE), the picture and tips and tricks off the internet, he's done. I was hoping to get 3 of them done for the boys, but he's a one-of-a-kind for right now. I'm really itching to make a crocodile stitch scarf for myself that I have beautiful yarn for. (More about the itching part and the scarves I made for the boys for Christmas later...)

Here are the materials I used for him:
Red Heart Super Saver Yarn in White, Black and Gold
LaPetite #735 black buttons
Polyfill from Joann

What should we name him?

Yummus Hummus

2010-08-24T11:58:00.007-04:00

So.
I've missed you. How are you? I've been thinking about you and wondering what's going on in your world.
Things here are a little hectic with the start of school, but so far we're getting along nicely.

Went to a friend's house Saturday (yes, they give me shore leave every now and then) and I felt like I needed to bring something. This I decide about 20 minutes before I need to be there. And my pantry is empty. What the heck can I bring, AND for extra points what can I bring... that I can eat?

(This tastes 1000 times better than it looks)

Love her or hate her, Sandra Lee is secretly brilliant in situations like these. Fast, easy and totally delicious. So much so that I think.....

There's a Hummus Among Us

1 large clove of garlic (we have the kind already minced... I use about a tablespoon)
1 can (15.5 oz) of garbanzo (chick peas) beans
3 tbs. sour cream (KEY INGREDIENT!)
3 tbs. lemon juice (I use the bottled kind)
1/2 t. salt
1/4 t. ground cumin (another KEY ingredient)
1/4 c. extra virgin olive oil

Mince garlic (if you use fresh) in the food processor, otherwise scoop a heapin' helpin' out of the jar. Dump this and everything else into the food processor, except the olive oil. Process until ALMOST smooth. With machine still running add the olive oil and process until mixture is smooth.

Serve with corn chips, or for you of whom I am very jealous, warm pita chips. Yes, I know I could make or buy GF stuff like this, but I have to be at a party in 20 minutes... and if I choose to bake GF, pita chips won't be on the top of the list.

Celiac's Silver Lining...

2010-01-06T07:52:00.007-05:00

Is that I lost 26 pounds in about 2 1/2 months.

Yes, dear friends, I found out in June that I have Celiac's Disease and am gluten intolerant. All that Daring Baking and Tuesdays with Dorie was making me feel even more miserable than usual. Once I figured it out and started eating gluten free it made a world of difference. I feel 1000% percent better. I have energy and my moods are more level and I'm just... well, happy. I've been eating almost no carbs at all (for fear of cross contamination) and have had to buy all new clothes. (The Pants of Shame went to Goodwill about a month ago.)

So, this is why I've dropped off the face of the blog. I've been trying to get my new lifestyle into the groove and just haven't had the time or inclination to document and photograph everything I put in my mouth. In the beginning I was thinking about food ALL THE TIME and just didn't want to feel compelled to write about it too. I've found tons and tons of great resources and blogs from other people, so I'm grateful for that, but I'm not ready to jump in there also.

I may pop in and out here, but I'm still in my coocoon stage and taking baby steps in the learning process. I still follow your blogs, but not as regularly as I'd like. I am so proud of you for continuing onward!

Be sweet, take care and allez cuisine!

Lisa

Dr. Teeth and the Origami Mayhem

2009-05-05T21:06:00.009-04:00

The Tooth Fairy is putting in overtime these days, and going broke. We've had several years with nary a tooth being lost and now it's a veritable tooth avalanche. Here at Chez Hatch, the Tooth Fairy brings GOLDEN DOLLARS. ooooooooooh. It used to be the one with Sacagawea on them, now the Presidents are out and about. The Messy One actually turned up his nose at Martin Van Buren, saying that he had one of those already. Excuse me? The Tooth Fairy isn't keeping track of what you have and what you need for your collection, kid. Suck it up and take the money.

It also turns out that the Tooth Fairy recently lost her mind and decided to surprise the kids with origami money holders. It takes her a really long time to make each creation. She told me that it took her almost 45 minutes to make a dog basket for No Thank You Boy which held his loot. Unfortunately, since she started something (and didn't realize that so many teeth would be coming out in such short order), she can't stop. Rumor has it that tonight she'll be making a panda for the Messy One as that's his favorite animal. (Edit: Holy cow! The Tooth Fairy just showed me the diagram for the panda. No way, Jose. Each kid gets one paper creation and she calls it a day.)

We have at least 8 more loose teeth over here between all 3 boys. It's going to be interesting...

The Hatchlings read this blog occasionally, so please post any comments with care. :D

Messy One - Tooth #9

April 26, 2009

Origami basket

No Thank You Boy - Tooth #9
April 27, 2009
(Yes, the very next day, because he can't be outdone by his brother and have him get money, fame and origami and he not. It "just fell out" at school. Riiiiight.)
Origami dog basket thingy

The Little One - HIS FIRST TOOTH! awww

May 3, 2009
Origami dog (he thinks it's a cat though)

The Messy One - Tooth #10
May 5, 2009
~~Origami Panda - maybe. We need to see what turns out.~~

Daring Bakers Challenge, April 2009: Abbey's Infamous Cheesecake

2009-04-28T22:18:00.014-04:00

The April 2009 challenge is hosted by Jenny from Jenny Bakes. She has chosen Abbey's Infamous Cheesecake as the challenge.

If my camera was working you would be able to actually SEE this infamous cheesecake, but The Little One got hold of it and the lens is stuck in the partway open/partway closed position and it won't budge so there are no photos, AND I get to try and find someone local to fix it. (sigh) That being the case, you'll have to rely on my riveting narrative and incredibly descriptive descriptions to help you visualize this masterpiece.

I do love cheesecake. My grandmother passed along a recipe for Fire Island Cheesecake from the NY Times from back in the 50's and it's my go-to recipe. It was with some trepidation that I made Abbey's Infamous Cheesecake, because you don't mess with my grandmother. She's 93 and healthy as a horse - her short term (and increasingly her medium term) memory is shot because of Alzheimer's but she's a feisty one, that one is. She almost got into fisticuffs with her roommate at the nursing home over a sweater, so now she has a private room. (Yes, she's THAT little old lady) But enough about her for now... let's move on to the recipe, shall we?

I have a set of 3 springform pans - 8", 9" and 10" as well as 4 wee little pans that measure about 3" to 4" across. I debated using those, but since I just used them for February's challenge, I decided to go full size and pawn off the results to school, as sadly there is no cheesecake to be eaten in this house for some time to come. With the ~~victims~~ lucky recipients in mind, I set to work.

I decided to do a Kahlua flavor cheese cake: coffee liqueur in the batter and a little instant coffee mixed in with the graham cracker crumbs. I used about 2 tablespoons of the instant since I didn't want to overwhelm the flavor, but I was also hoping that it wouldn't be underwhelming either. I'm a bottom and little bit of the sides crust girl, so I extended it up about a 1/2 to 3/4 inch past the bottom. The batter came together flawlessly. Sooooo finger-licking good.

Grandma's recipe doesn't call for a waterbath, so I waffled: yes, no, yes, no, nes, yo. Do I have a pan big enough to hold both the water and the pan itself? Will my pan leak? It's not the way grandma did it.... In the end I decided to follow the directions (don't faint, it's not THAT unheard of for me) and did the waterbath but made sure that I wrapped the bottom tightly in foil - I had a blowout in that pan once with something too liquidy leaking out, so I assumed that the reverse would be true as well. Cooking was uneventful and I felt comforted knowing that both recipes have the cheesecake chilling out in the oven for an hour after the formal cooking process was over.

It was beautiful! All waxy looking on top, hiding that luscious interior, giving me that seductive "come hither" look.... I resisted temptation and took it away the next day to class. The kids were in CRCT testing (which I won't describe here but it's REALLY high pressure for both teachers and students) and they needed a small respite. My offering up to the testing gods was well received. The teachers were in Heaven over it and they went on and on about how wonderful it was. Ok, with feedback like that.... I had to taste a small piece. It WAS good - it was very creamy and stuck to the fork just like it's supposed to and it had a nice subtle coffee flavor. High marks all around.

Thanks to Jenny for selecting this month’s Daring Bakers Challenge. You can find the complete recipe on her site. To see what all the other DBer’s did, you can find the blogroll here and if you’d like to join the monthly party, info about that can be found on that page as well.

Stir Fry Pork Tenderlion w/Asian Veggies

2009-04-16T16:50:00.005-04:00

I've been dabbling with all sorts of heart healthy recipes, but this is the first one I remembered to photograph. There's no real recipe here, just a bunch of healthy stuff stirred up together into one big smash. I used very little oil for the "frying" part and also used very lean pork tenderloin sliced up into slivers. (Tip: meat slices easiest and you have more control when it's slightly frozen or slightly defrosted, depending on which way you meat is coming from - fridge or freezer). I used very little soy and teriaki sauce (mucho sodium) and got creative with fresh ginger and garlic instead. The sauce packets that came with the frozen veggies went into the trash since I couldn't trust the sodium, msg and other weird stuff in there. DH and I had only a little bit of rice and a monster salad alongside it with Trader Joe's Soy Ginger Fat Free salad dressing. Without further ado - the pseudo recipe. Vary amounts based on your family.

Stir Fry Pork Tenderlion w/Asian Veggies

1 - 2 lbs lean pork tenderloin, sliced thin

2 -3 cups frozen Asian vegetables, cooked/defrosted per package directions

1 tablespoon freshly grated ginger

1 tablespoon garlic, minced

1 tablespoon olive oil

1 tablespoon teraki sauce

1 tablespoon soy sauce

Spray a non-stick pot with cooking spray and quickly sautee/brown the slices of pork, working in batches to assure even cooking and so that the pan doesn't cool off. Remove meat to separate plate. Heat the oil and add the defrosted vegetables and sautee briefly, to warm through and add flavor. Whisk together ginger, garlic, teriaki and soy and add to pot. Return meat to pot together with any accumulated juices, stir gently to combine and heat all items through. Serve over rice.

Happy Easter!

2009-04-12T19:23:00.001-04:00

Happy Easter, one and all!

Sheer Heart Attack (alas, no Daring Bakers)

2009-03-28T17:54:00.012-04:00

(part of my new cookbook collection...)

Yes, my internet friends, I haven't fallen off the face of the earth and there is no Daring Bakers March Challenge to be found in this post. Why? Well, things have been quite interesting here at Chéz Hatch of late....

My 49 year old DH was driving to work and he felt like he had indigestion, so he stopped for a Chick-fil-A chicken biscuit. That didn't help. He then felt like he was wearing about 4 or 5 layers of shirts and that they were all bunchy at the elbows and about 10 sizes too small (aka: squeezing in the chest and arms). He got to work and tried to lay down to see if that would help his "indigestion" which by now in his head had morphed into "The Flu" since he was now also nauseous and sweating. When his flu and indigestion didn't improve, one of his co-workers asked him if he needed to go to the hospital. He said he was ok and to give it a minute. After a minute and when he refused to take a call from one of his important clients, the co-worker told him "That's it. You're going to the hospital. Now."

So, my DH gets to the emergency room. One of the nurses came out of the back, took one look at him and hustled him back to the triage area at which point he was relieved of his shirt, hooked up to a bunch of monitors, had an EKG, and IV with blood thinners pumped in.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, I get a call from one of the company's owners telling me that my DH has been taken to the hospital with chest pain and she thought I needed to go there now. I called school, arranged for the hatchlings, tried to call other people to no avail, resolved to cancel T-Mobile as soon as the contract is up in May (no bars my damn a**) and waited for the calm to wash over me. It did.

I met with the doctors in the triage room and they told me that they were going to take him to the Cath Lab and take a look to see what was going on. The main doctor came out after about 45 minutes and told me that he was all done. Huh? How is he? What did you find? Will he have to have surgery? When will you operate??? Um, Mrs. Hatch, it's all done. Really all done.

Modern medicine is so amazing. They fixed him up completely in that 45 minutes. They ran a cathater (cath) up through the artery which runs from your groin to your heart and took x-rays. They found that the main artery which runs down the front of his heart and one of it's tributaries was completely blocked at the junction point. If he had gotten to the hospital 15 to 30 minutes later there would have been a completely different outcome. {shudder} Via the catheter, the doctor took "a balloon with little knives on it" and roto-rootered out the tributary and put a stent in the other. I saw my DH shortly afterwards and he was awake for the procedure (thanks to the chicken biscuit they couldn't knock him out since he had food in his stomach). They officially admitted him and took him upstairs to the heartcare floor. The nurses all thought he was going home the next day and kept trying to convince us of that opinion, but the doctor kept him for an extra day. There were probably more tests and monitoring to be done, but secretly, I think that the doctor wanted to make a real impression on my DH and kept him the extra day so that it wouldn't feel like a drive-through lifesaving. (I'll have a medicated stent please, and hold the onion.)

Bottom line is that he is fine and that he knows that he has some serious lifestyle changes to make including dates with the nutritionist, physical therapist, sleep apnea/sleep center people and maybe a yogi. Unfortunately nagging wives don't have the same impact as a cosmic 2x4 wakeup call up-side the head. A nagging wife with a real 2x4 might be a different story though.

Please learn the warning signs for heart attack and stroke. Heart attack symptoms are different between men and women. Please learn what the different risk factors are for heart disease and resolve to make better choices, especially if you have more than one risk factor. Listen to your nagging wife, husband, partner, friend or child. Please. You matter.

I may be MIA for a little while longer, but we're all doing well here and taking baby steps on the road to a new heart-healthy life. For those of you who knew about this and who have been supporting us, who brought us dinner, offered childcare, kept us in your prayers and more, thank you. Thank you from the bottom of MY heart.

Daring Bakers Challenge, February 2009: Chocolate Valentino (Flourless Chocolate Cake)

2009-02-28T19:14:00.018-05:00

The February 2009 challenge is hosted by Wendy of WMPE's blog and Dharm of Dad ~ Baker & Chef. We have chosen a Chocolate Valentino cake by Chef Wan; a Vanilla Ice Cream recipe from Dharm and a Vanilla Ice Cream recipe from Wendy as the challenge.

Nothing says February quite like hearts, flowers and chocolate. And Birthdays if you live in our house. Rolling (quite literally) off Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Years comes February, host to 3 birthdays and Valentine's Day and all the associated merry-making that goes along with it. I've not dropped off the face of the planet, by the way, I've just been a little, ah, busy of late.

I looked at this recipe and it was similar to one that I already make, but in this one the egg yolks and whites stand in opposite corners and then come to play separately in the form of egg yolks mixed directly into the chocolate and the egg whites beaten into stiff peaks and then folded into the batter. Ok - I'm up for something new.

Since I didn't want to use the whole POUND of chocolate the recipe calls for I halved it. I added 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon and 3/4 teaspoon ground chipotle pepper powder to give it some interest. The batter was tasty and it had lovely golden fat blobs floating about in it, shimmering like molten sunlight. Since I was using individual pans, I reduced the baking time significantly and dropped it to about 10-15 minutes. I decided to use this cake/recipe for The Little One's birthday cake since I was cupcaked out from making a batch for school. My DS had given me these mini springform pans years ago and I've finally used them. We were going to have a small gathering of 8 people for his birthday "party" so I cut these little babies in half - each person got to eat half a cake! We really know how to celebrate around here.

Since these were such unique sizes/shapes I dug out 2 platters that were probably supposed to be used for appetizers or dips or somesuch, and repurposed them as party plates. I went for the homemade whipped cream topping option - I have made ice cream before - but transporting all this and 3 kids with ice cream was a little out of my league at the moment. Two cakes, a blob of whipped cream in the middle and a light dusting of cocoa powder to keep everything for looking so stark and Bob's your uncle.

Thanks to Wendy and Dharm for selecting this month’s Daring Bakers Challenge. You can find the complete recipe on their sites.

To see what all the other DBer’s did, you can find the blogroll here and if you’d like to join the monthly party, info about that can be found on that page as well.

Nutella Cake (don't get overly excited...)

2009-02-18T10:11:00.020-05:00

I can't BELIEVE I missed World Nutella Day 2009 back on February 5th. I found out about it on the 7th and hastily moved to correct this heinous oversight. Since my kids all lovvvvvve Nutella, I decided that I needed to make a Nutella Cake for the Big Boys' birthday. Scrounging around the internet I found one from Nigella Lawson's book: How to be a Domestic Goddess.

I actually had all the ingredients on hand. (No way. Way.) I had ground hazelnuts left over from the French Yule ~~Log~~ Cake we made for the December Daring Baker's Challenge and I had a fresh, unscathed jar of Nutella waiting in the wings.

This cake looked so amazing! Too bad it didn't taste amazing. I was so disappointed and the kids were too. They were so jazzed about a NUTELLA BIRTHDAY CAKE!!! (singing: Mom is great, made us Nutella cake!) They were dancing around for joy, but after we sliced into it, it tasted absolutely nothing like Nutella when all was said and done. It just tasted like a so-so chocolate cake, although the ganache was good. Even my DH said "This isn't your best." Now that's saying something.

To make up for the Nutella-less birthday cake, on their actual birthday I joined them at school for lunch....... with a full jar of Nutella and three spoons. Happy boys. Happy girl. Happy Birthday.

I'm including the cake recipe here for posterity. Maybe I did something wrong, so you may want to try, but personally I wouldn't waste the ~~liquid gold~~ Nutella again on this one. Chalk it up to a learning experience, but it all worked out in the end with a little ingenuity and a few spoons.

Stiff egg whites

*sniff*

Batter with egg whites folded in

In the pan - it was very thick batter - it did not pour. I had to spread it in and around.

Skinned, toasted hazelnuts

Le cake

Le cake avec ganache et hazelnuts

Nutella Cake
adapted from Nigella Lawson and her book: How to be a Domestic Goddess.

Cake:
6 large eggs, separated

pinch salt

1/2 cup unsalted butter, softened

1 13-ounce container Nutellla

1 tablespoon Frangelico (hazelnut flavored liqueur) or rum

1/2 cup finely ground hazelnuts

4 ounces semi-sweet chocolate, melted and cooled

Ganache/topping:
4 ounces semi-sweet chocolate

1/2 cup heavy cream

1 tablespoon Frangelico or rum

4 ounces whole hazelnuts, toasted

Method:
Preheat oven to 350 degrees; butter a 9-inch springform pan.
In a large bowl (preferably metal), whisk the egg whites and salt until stiff. In another bowl, cream the butter and Nutella, then add the Frangelico, egg yolks, and ground hazelnuts. Fold in melted chocolate.

Add a blob of beaten egg whites to the chocolate batter, and mix gently until well-combined. Fold in the remaining whites, one-third at a time, very gently but thoroughly. Pour into springform and bake for 40 minutes. Test for doneness by inserting tester, which should come out mostly clean; lightly pressing finger into top to check for a slight bouncing-back; and observing edges beginning to separate from pan. Let cool completely, in pan, on a rack.

Toast the hazelnuts in a dry skillet, shaking them around frequently. Do it for about 5 minutes, or until they are lightly browned, then let cool completely. If hazelnuts came with skins on, put them in a towel after toasting and rub around; this will remove most of the skins.

Chop chocolate, and add to sauce pan with cream and Frangelico over medium-low heat. Once chocolate is melted and components are combined, whisk until mixture reaches desired thickness, then cool. Remove rim of cake pan and pour cooled ganache over, spreading lightly to create a smooth, shiny surface, and apply hazelnuts all over.

Pantry Raid: Snack Time

2009-02-12T15:47:00.002-05:00

Ok folks, another snackage that I came up with. The pictures aren't so hot, but you get the idea. The kids came home today from school: "We're hungggry and there's no snacks." Not proper English, but you get the point as did I. I've committed to paying off any new charges on the credit cards every month so that there aren't any carry over balances, which means no grocery shopping until the next statement cycle comes up. This translates into the Pantry Principle: I'm going to use up as much of the stuff in my pantry/fridge/freezer as I can before going shopping again. This is good, because some of this stuff hasn't seen the light of day since I bought it, or it's been lingering in limbo - half used/half eaten and just hanging out in the aforementioned locations.

Here's what I came up with today: using the tortilla concept that Chocolatechic came up with earlier in the school year, I broke out the tortillas that have taken up permanent residence in the fridge. Check! One package used up. Then I thought about Nutella. (I always think about Nutella, but today I decided to actually use it instead of eating it with a spoon on the sly.) What else do I have hanging around here? Nestle chocolate chips - monster Sam's club size bag - check. Cream cheese - check. And this other weird thing: about a third of a roll of sugar cookie dough. Don't ask where the other 2/3 went. So that was in the freezer (it's harder to eat when it's frozen) and I thought that it might be good chunked up and rolled into the tortilla. Check! Another thing used up. So, I stick the cookie dough in the microwave to defrost. Guess what happens to cookie dough when you forget to check on it? It melts and gets spreadable like peanut butter. Woo Hoo! A happy accident for once.

Use any combination of the following and spread on the tortillas and roll up:

Nutella
Chocolate chips
Melted sugar cookie dough
Cream cheese (they weren't really crazy about the one that had this in it, but your mileage may vary - YMMV)

Aside from the cream cheese ones (and the Messy One gladly ate those) they were a big hit all the way around and everyone loved them So, the kids are snacked, I didn't spend any money and my fridge and freezer are a little cleared out. It's a good day.

Melted sugar cookie dough is spreadable

The finished product.

Chocolate Chip Crescent Roll Snackage

2009-02-11T19:37:00.002-05:00

Easy peasy and big impact. They LOVE these and it takes about 15 minutes from the time you pop the can to pulling them out of the oven.

Chocolate Chip Crescent Roll Snackage
1 Can cresent rolls
chocolate chips

Unroll the cresent roll dough and place a small (or medium :D) amount of chocolate chips on the wide end.
Roll up the crescents like normal with the pointy end last
Bake according to package directions.

Serve and enjoy lavish praise.

I may stick mini marshmallows in with the chips next time.....

Chocolate Bourbon (Batter Buzz) Cake

2009-02-10T08:26:00.005-05:00

I don't like football, or most sports for that matter. The Superbowl is remotely passable if there's a party with friends and even at that, I only actually watch the screen when the commercials come on OR during halftime when the chances are significantly higher that someone will have wardrobe malfunction. (Last year however, the thought of a Tom Petty wardrobe malfunction kept me in the kitchen the entire time with my eyes averted. {{shuddder}}.

You'll remember from my Toffee Crunch (aka Ghetto Toffee) post that I like to bring food fabulousness with me wherever I go. What to bring, what to bring? I thought about making my famous marbled sour cream pound cake, but eh, I'm tired of that one, even if it does rock. Then across the RSS feed comes Chocolate Bourbon Cake from Elise at Simply Recipes. Hmmmmm. It's not the Derby, but I'll stretch those culinary sports alcohol bonds and go with it anyway.

Having said that, if you have a grownup affair to go to, you need to make this cake. I'm not a hard liquor fan at all (at all!), and never would I have thought it was possible to get a "batter buzz" from like, ah batter, but oh yes you can! I didn't even eat that much! This stuff packs a wallop.

Learn from Elise and her dad's experience and use the whole cup of whiskey. The bundt pan will be very full when you put it in the oven - place it on a cookie sheet just in case it decides to flee the bonds of bundtpan-dom. Mine started this abstract art type of thing when the sides cooked faster than the middle and started to flip over. Cool.

When the cake is done, leave it in the pan for the prescribed 15 minutes and then flip it out onto your serving dish. Sprinkle with a little more bourbon. At this point, I covered it and put it in the fridge. I made it on Saturday and was going to serve on Sunday. I've found that most of these bundt pan cakes are so much better the next day. The flavors have had time to meld and the cake is 10 times easier to slice. Dust with powdered sugar before slicing. Use a serrated knife and voila! It's cake.

I also whipped up (tee hee) some whipped cream and added a little confectioners sugar and about a tablespoon of the bourbon to create Bourbon Spiked Whipped Cream to serve on the side. Everyone went nuts over this one and the kiddos were sad that they couldn't have any, but hey, that's why I made the toffee. I think I even spotted one guy eating the whipped cream plain. Winner!

Chocolate Bourbon Cake Recipe
from Elise at Simply Recipes

Ingredients
1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter, softened, more for greasing pan
2 cups all-purpose flour, more for dusting pan
5 ounces high quality, unsweetened dark chocolate
1/4 cup instant espresso (can use instant coffee)
2 tablespoons unsweetened cocoa powder
1 cup bourbon whiskey (can use 1/2 cup), more for sprinkling
1/2 teaspoon kosher salt
2 cups granulated sugar
3 large eggs
1 tablespoon vanilla extract
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 cup confectioners’ sugar (powdered sugar), for sprinkling

Method
1. Preheat oven to 325°F. Grease and flour a large bundt pan (10 cup capacity), or two 8- or 9-inch loaf pans. Melt chocolate in a microwave oven or in a double boiler over simmering water. Let cool.
2. Put instant espresso and cocoa powder in a 2-cup (or larger) glass measuring cup. Add enough boiling water to come up to the 1 cup measuring line. Mix until powders dissolve. Stir in whiskey and salt; let cool.
3. Beat softened butter until fluffy (2-3 minutes on high). Add sugar and beat until well combined. Beat in the eggs, one at a time, beating well between each addition. Beat in the vanilla extract, baking soda and melted chocolate, scraping down sides of bowl with a rubber spatula.
4. With the mixer on low speed, beat in a third of the whiskey espresso cocoa mixture. When liquid is absorbed, beat in 1 cup flour. Repeat additions, ending with whiskey mixture. Scrape batter into prepared pan and smooth top. Bake until a cake tester inserted into center of cake comes out clean, about 1 hour 10 minutes for Bundt pan (loaf pans will take less time, start checking them after 55 minutes).
5. Transfer cake to a rack. Unmold after 15 minutes and sprinkle warm cake with more whiskey (about 1 - 2 Tablespoons). Let cool. (I refrigerated mine at this point). Sprinkle powdered sugar through a mesh sieve over the cake before serving.

10

2009-02-09T04:11:00.001-05:00

Hey, you still asleep? You sleep alot. I don't want to miss ANYTHING.
Hey, wake up will ya? Guess what? We're gonna be best friends.

Yes, they were actually that small. 4lbs, 9oz and 5 lbs, 2 oz.
(but do the math - you're looking at 9 lbs, 11oz. of baby right there)
7 weeks early. They would have been HUGE full term. I might have literally popped.

The first 2 hatchlings (pictured here just shy of 10 years later),

along with the 3rd one.

(That story to follow in about 16 days. February is a busy month around here...)

Happy Birthday boys,
Love,

Mommy

Chocolate Almond Saltine Toffee Crunch {swoon}

2009-02-08T16:45:00.010-05:00

When I saw these on Baking And Boys! by Katrina I KNEW I had to make them, especially when they also popped up on Lisa's Jersey Girl Cooks blog on the very. same. day. It was totally in the stars and fate said that I would be making these at some point, soon. Edit: Props to Lisa over at The Cutting Edge of Ordinary too (I love all my Lisas ;D), plus Ghetto Toffee sounds wayyy more like it.

Superbowl Sunday party. DH's Office People. Must make and bring something fabulous, yet incredibly easy.

Enter Chocolate Almond Saltine Toffee Crunch. I had 2 women almost tackle me (pun intended) wanting the recipe. Good thing it's easy to remember. This stuff IS addicting and so simple to make. In fact, you probably have all the ingredients on hand in your pantry RIGHT NOW to whip up a batch of these. Be sure you have somewhere to take them as I promise you will eat them all in one sitting if not.

Chocolate Almond Saltine Toffee Crunch

1 1/2 sleeves of saltine crackers (or as many as it takes to completely cover your tray)
1 cup butter (2 sticks)
1 cup light brown sugar, packed
1/4 tsp. almond extract (optional - a little goes a long way)
2 cups chocolate chips

Preheat oven to 350º. Line jelly roll pan with foil and spray with non-stick spray. (If you use a silicone baking mat, use the foil underneath anyway - makes it easier to lift out.) Lay crackers out flat on foil.

Melt sugar and butter. Add almond extract and bring to boil, whisking until all are incorporated and mixture looks "foamy" (about 3 to 5 minutes). Pour over crackers and spread to coat. Bake 5 minutes in 350º oven or until bubbly.

Remove from oven. While hot, sprinkle evenly with chocolate chips, let soften and melt, then spread. It will take about 4 - 5 minutes for all the chocolate to melt enough to spread. Offset spatula works great here. Sprinkle with whatever toppings you like or leave plain - I used toasted almonds.

I put the tray into the freezer for a few minutes to flash freeze, removed it and popped the slab of toffee out of the pan and peeled off the mat and the foil. Lay it on a cutting board and using pizza cutter, cut into squares. Alternately, you can break it into pieces. Keep stored in the refrigerator (if they last that long).

Daring Baker's Challenge for January 2009 - Fortune Cookies! (aka: Tuiles) with Bonus Video

2009-01-29T10:31:00.060-05:00

The red cutout is by No Thank You Boy. It's the Chinese symbol for spring (or so he's told) and they did it in school.

This month's Daring Baker's challenge is brought to us by Karen of Bake My Day and Zorra of 1x umruehren bitte aka Kochtopf. They have chosen Tuiles from The Chocolate Book by Angélique Schmeink and Nougatine and Chocolate Tuiles from Michel Roux.

The Challenge was not a recipe per se, but more of a technique used to make tuiles. "Traditionally, tuiles are thin, crisp almond cookies that are gently molded over a rolling pin or arched form while they are still warm. Once set, their shape resembles the curved French roofing tiles for which they're named."

Okaaaaaay. So, I went a-searching for what the heck to make since the butterfly example and the use of a template didn't really float my boat, when I realized... EGAD! These are fortune cookies! AND Chinese New Year was Monday, January 26! Happy Year of the Ox! (So tonight we're gonna party like it's ~~1999~~ 4707).

You so know I would have inserted a link to an appropriate music video here, but His Royal Purple Badness has threatened to sue YouTube if they put any up, and goodness knows we don't want to get Himself's knickers in a twist, not that he probably wears any. But again, as usual, I digress.

Here's the "how-to" on the fortune cookies. Recipe and tweaks to follow.

Part I : Baking Prep

Part II : Cookie Formation

My modified fortune cookie/tuiles recipe is below or you can find the original one at Bake My Day here. Additional equipment needed to make fortune cookies: muffin tins, cotton gloves, coffee mug, spatula and fortunes printed on little paper slips. You can see how I used the equipment in the above video. For fortune cookies, the batter is best if it's a little runny, but I did chill it for about an hour (30 minutes is fine, I just got busy doing other stuff) to let the flour integrate and then pulled it out of the fridge and let it re-soften for about 30 minutes. You need the thin cotton gloves to safely handle the hot cookies without burning your fingers and the mufin tin is so that they hold their shape; they will unbend if you don't put them in there. Store in an air tight container.

Confucious say:

Try make cookies. Much fun and you can do with ease.
Man who run in front of car get tired.
Man who run behind car get exhausted.
Man with one chopstick go hungry.

Celebration of Lisa's 100th post with giveaway coming soon.

I hear and I forget. I see and I remember. I do and I understand.
(Confucious really say this last one)

yes, I did wrap the tripod (Joby's Gorillapod) around the cabinet frame to shoot the video :D

Thanks to Karen and Zorra for selecting this month’s Daring Bakers Challenge. You can find the complete recipe on their sites.

To see what all the other DBer’s did, you can find the blogroll here and if you’d like to join the monthly party, info about that can be found on that page as well.

Fortune Cookies

Following is a recipe adapted from a book called “The Chocolate Book”, written by female Dutch Master chef Angélique Schmeinck.

Preparation time: batter 10 minutes, waiting time: 60 minutes, baking time:10-12 minutes per batch. I made a double batch and got about 28 cookies.

Ingredients:

¼ cup softened butter (not melted but soft)

½ cup sifted confectioner’s sugar

1 dash of vanilla extract

1 teaspoon almond extract

2 large egg whites (slightly whisked with a fork)

½ cup sifted all purpose flour

Butter/spray to grease baking sheet or use silicone baking mat or parchment paper

Unique Equipment:

muffin tin(s)

thin cotton gloves

spatula

coffee mug

fortunes printed on slips of paper

tablespoon measuring spoon

Using a handheld mixer or a stand mixer fitted with the paddle (low speed), mix/cream butter, sugar and vanilla and almond extract to a paste. Keep stirring while you gradually add the egg whites. Continue to add the flour in small batches and stir to achieve a homogeneous and smooth batter/paste. Be careful to not overmix.

Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and chill in the fridge for at least 30 minutes to an hour to allow the flour to incorporate. Take it out 30 minutes before you plan to use it. (This batter will keep in the fridge for up to a week).

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Using a tablespoon measure, spoon out tablespoonfuls of the batter onto the baking sheet. I did 6 at a time. Swirl the batter into a fairly uniform circle about 3 ½ inches in diameter. Don’t worry if the batter seems a little see-through in places; it will even out in the oven. Bake for about 10 – 12 minutes, checking at the 9 or 10 minute mark. You want to see that the edges are turning golden brown.

Before you're ready to pull them out, have your cotton gloves, muffin tins, fortunes, mug and spatula at the ready. Pull the pan out of the oven. Working quickly, use the spatula to lift one of the circles off the sheet and lay it in your gloved hand. Take a slip of fortune paper and lay it on one half of the circle. Fold the cookie in half, gently holding the outside edges. Move to the coffee mug and bend it in half over the edge. Voila! Fortune cookie!

Place the newly bent cookie in the muffin tin so that it will hold its shape and not unbend. You may have to put some of the remaining cookies back into the over for a few minutes to re-soften so that they bend nicely.

Shirley's Beef Stew

2009-01-26T18:45:00.003-05:00

Not that Shirley, our friend Shirley who used to live down the street until we moved. We still go over there every Friday (we have Date Night with her) and sit and visit after the kids get home from school. No matter what she makes for dinner, the kids eat it. I've made stuff at home and smuggled it into her house and she's served it as if it was hers and they've licked the plates clean, whereas at MY house they would turn their noses up at it.

This is her recipe for beef stew. It's rather a loose recipe, and I've used my imagination along the way and adapted it for what I have on hand, so feel free to morph it yourself and judge quantities based on your family and number of servings.

Shirley's Beef Stew

1 lb. beef stew meat, cut into bite size cubes
flour for coating meat
vegetable oil for browning meat and sauteeing veggies
2 ribs celery, chopped
1 onion, chopped
a couple of handfuls of peeled, baby carrots, cut in half
3 cloves garlic, minced
1/2 cup red wine
2 cans of diced tomatoes (14 oz)
4 cups beef broth / beef stock /or water with Better Than Bullion swished in it to make 4 cups
1 cup dry pasta, shape of your choice
parmesean and crusty bread for topping

Take the bite size cubes of meat and flour them all sides - I throw them in a plastic grocery bag (check for holes first!) along with a cup or so of flour, a teaspoon of salt and a couple of grinds of black pepper. Leave some air in the bag and tightly twist the top to seal. Over the sink please, shake, shake, shake until all pieces are evenly coated. Add more flour if needed. Reserve some of the flour for thickening the stew if needed at the end.

Brown the meat all sides in a large dutch oven or pot, working in batches so that the pot doesn't cool off and so that any extra moisture doesn't steam the meat. Remove all meat from the pot and set aside.

Take your chopped veggies and garlic and saute them in a little vegetable oil until the onions are soft.

Pour in the beef stock and red wine, deglazing the pan if needed. Add the meat back to the pot, cover, reduce heat and simmer for 1 hour.

After 1 hour, add the dry pasta to the pot and cook for time indicated on the package. Add more liquid if needed, or conversely use some of the reserved flour to thicken.

Serve with crusty bread and a dusting of parmesean cheese.

Mmmmmmm.

Pizza... Thingies

2009-01-20T20:08:00.011-05:00

Yesterday we were at a friend's house and she had Rachael Ray on. Rach (Raych?) was making these pizza thingies and I mentally noted them. Fast forward to tonight where SURPRISE! I have nothing planned for dinner for the kids. (MY dinner is a completely different post, let's say it shall be thusly called "Lettuce Topped With Precisely 2 Tablespoons of Fat Free Salad Dressing, Equaling 2 Points Total, Since the Prescribed Allotment of Points for the Day Has Already Been Consumed". Ah, well there goes that scintillating post.)

Messy One ate FIVE Thingies, No Thank You Boy ate FOUR (yahooo!) Thingies and the Little One ate TWO. DH gets the last one, unless Messy One gets there before bedtime. Without further ado, I present you with -

Pizza Thingies
Easy! Fast! Fun! Customizable! Winner Winner Winner!

Use one tube of Pillsbury (or whoever) croissants (I used the giant croissant 6 pack, but you could use biscuits just as well) and unroll all the sheets flat. Preheat the oven according to the package directions.

Take each of the 3 rectangles (equalling 2 croissants) and divide into quarters. Ditto for the other 2 sections.

Lightly spray a muffin/cupcake pan with cooking spray. Shape each of the dough pieces into a circle shape and press into the pan.

Bake the dough for the time shown on the package or until they become browned. My time was less. Remove from oven and using the back of a spoon (or Pampered Chef wooden dumbbell looking item) make a hollow in the dough, deflating it a little.

Brush the dough with olive oil and spoon a little spaghetti sauce into the well, exact amount to taste, but maybe a tablespoon or two. (This isn't an exact recipe ya know)

Fill up the wells with your choice of "toppings". We used various combinations of pineapple, pepperoni, ham (ala sliced up lunch meat), Parmesan cheese and mozzarella cheese.

Bake for 10 minutes or until cheese is melted. Pop out your mini Pizza Thingies with a spoon and serve.

This is Hard Tack

2009-01-19T21:02:00.008-05:00

If anyone is seriously considering making this, please comment and let me know and I'll share my cook's notes with you. By the end of this exercise, I used 3 bags of flour and made enough of this stuff for over 150 kids. Most of them thought it was a great joke and had fun pounding their hardtack on their desks. At the end, I had about a dozen kids coming up and begging me for more. Makes me wonder what their parents feed them OR what trouble they were going to get into on the playground...

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Courtesy of National Park Service, Gettysburg National Military Park
http://www.nps.gov/archive/gett/gettkidz/hardtack.htm

Hardtack was a biscuit made of flour with other simple ingredients, and issued to soldiers throughout the war. Hardtack crackers made up a large portion of a soldier's daily ration. It was square or sometimes rectangular in shape with small holes baked into it, similar to a large soda cracker.

Would you like to try some hardtack? It's very easy to make and here's the recipe:

2 cups of flour

1/2 to 3/4 cup water

1 tablespoon of Crisco or vegetable fat

6 pinches of salt ;)

Mix the ingredients together into a stiff batter, knead several times, and spread the dough out flat to a thickness of 1/2 inch on a non-greased cookie sheet. Bake for one-half an hour at 400 degrees. Remove from oven, cut dough into 3-inch squares, and punch four rows of holes, four holes per row into the dough. Turn dough over, return to the oven and bake another one-half hour. Turn oven off and leave the door closed. Leave the hardtack in the oven until cool. Remove and enjoy! (And make sure your parents try some!)

There Is No Way To Attractively Photograph Cream Cheese Spread

2009-01-14T12:34:00.002-05:00

No, there isn't. I tried. Unfortunately, while this looks like the cat had a bad case of indigestion, in fact it was a really great appetizer. If you squint your eyes, you can even see how I even tried to form the cream cheese into a little star shape instead of just plopping the cream cheese down like the brick that it comes in. This was so delicious. Although no one asked me for the recipe, their actions did the talking. After all the crackers (and even the molecule size fragments of crackers) were used like mini-spatulas to get up every last bite, I was seriously afraid one person was going to lick the plate to get the last bits up.

Cranberry and Red Pepper Jelly Spread

1/2 cup red pepper jelly
1/2 cup canned whole cranberry sauce
1 8 oz. brick cream cheese

Combine jelly and cranberry sauce in a separate bowl, stirring well to combine completely. Spoon over cream cheese. Serve with crackers.

LMAO

2009-01-08T23:08:00.016-05:00

For those of you with a quirky sense of humor, you simply must go check out this style commentary blog. It's called "Go Fug Yourself: Because Fugly Is The New Pretty".
http://gofugyourself.celebuzz.com/

One of the TWD people who posted their CV a while ago mentioned it (I forget who) and I've been hooked ever since. Some recent comments (and Cathy for some reason YOU keep rolling thru my mind as being a connoisseur of tidbits such as these):

* "this look is evocative of a tangerine that's been cross-bred with a Vegas waitress."
(scroll down to the bottom)

* "it reminds me a tad too much of the really ugly interpretive stained-glass windows in one of the churches my mom used to go to -- "

* This one you just need to read for yourself.

* OH! this one too. Speechless.

RUN! Go check it out now. You'll thank me in the morning.

Barefoot Bloggers: Flap, Jack, Do It Again, aka: Ina Garten's Banana Sour Cream Pancakes

2009-01-08T09:47:00.005-05:00

Breakfast.... for dinner. This is one of my kids’ favorite “special” treats. Little do they suspect that Breakfast for Dinner is when mommy didn’t think of what to make until it was waaay too late to whip something up and that she was just not in the mood to do so.

Enter Ina Garten’s Banana Sour Cream Pancakes. (Cereal is holds the number 1 spot on the BFD charts, followed closely by Eggos and french toast sticks). We made these on the weekend and froze the leftovers. (Just layer them in between sheets of wax paper and pop the brick of pancakes/waffles/french toast in a ziptop bag and into the freezer for later).

Easy to make and DH and the kids liked them (well, except for the Little One. Apparently he’s a pancake purist and doesn’t like “stuff” of any kind in his pancakes, so we didn’t add bananas to a few just for him; I had a bite and then went back to my oatmeal.) As an aside, we do the same sprinkling of fruit on top of pancakes with blueberries and apple slices. For apples, just core and peel then slice into thin rings and plop them on top of the uncooked side before flipping.

Many thanks to Karen of Something Sweet by Karen for selecting this recipe. If you yourself would like to make these Banana Sour Cream Pancakes, you can find the recipe on the Food Network site here or in Ina Garten’s book, Barefoot Contessa Family Style, page 177. To join the BB community or to see what all the others did with this, please visit the the Barefoot Bloggers site.

TWD: Time Off for Bad Behavior

2009-01-07T17:41:00.018-05:00

This is not me.

Hello my TWD friends! I've pleaded insanity and gotten a TWD hall pass for the next couple of months. My hips, cholesterol and wallet all need a little time off, but rest assured that I'll come back to worshiping at Ms. Greenspan's feet when things are under control. I WILL keep posting items, just not TWD's. I hope to live vicariously through you and will continue to cheer you on! Allez cuisine!

(This is NOT me either, but I sure feel this way!)

and they carved the Roast Beast...

2009-01-06T13:23:00.014-05:00

We loooove our beef at Christmas time. It's a family tradition to make prime rib, and since the all kids on my side of the family are at our house, that's where Christmas dinner is. Do you like our matching Jessie Steele aprons? My DS got them for us. Oh yeah, the prime rib is those large swaths of red on the messy counter in the background to the left. We were so overcome by the overwhelming and consuming desire to consume mass quantities of wonderful, juicy, rare beef that we completely forgot to take a proper picture.

The KEY to making a wonderful prime rib is dry aging. Yes, just like you see in fancy restaurants, dry-aged beef. It's a totally brainless method and will give your meat so much more flavor. Order or pick out your prime rib - each rib will feed about 1.5 to 2 people. (Yes, from what I understand there are some .5 people out there). Ask your butcher to cut the ribs off the hunk o' beef and then tie them back on with butcher's twine. This will make carving so much easier and you don't lose that succulent rib meat. drool drool. Clear out a space in your fridge large enough to hold a pan with the meat in it. The pan should be large enough to provide for air circulation around the meat. Rinse and pat dry the beef with paper towels. Fold up several sheets of clean, dry paper towels and put them in the bottom of the pan. Plop the meat on top of the paper towels and put it in your fridge UNCOVERED for 3 - 5 days. It will not rot or get funky if the temperature is where it should be, just below 38 degrees. Change out the paper towels every day. The beef will get a hard, dry (as in dry-aged), crusty layer all around it. This is GOOD! This is where the flavor comes from.

I always use Alton Brown's recipe for prime rib. I must say that the directions in his book I'm Just Here for the Food (I have the original edition, not 2.0) are a different than what's online, and I have never gone to the trouble of finding a terracotta pot to cook the sucker in. I always leave my pizza stone in the bottom of the oven so that the heat is more evenly distributed and so the darn thing doesn't get broken in a cabinet somewhere.

This will melt in your mouth, it's so amazingly good. I'm sooo craving some now, but the leftovers are long, long gone...

Dry-Aged Standing Rib Roast

Adapted From Alton Brown's I'm Just Here for the Food

1 (4-bone-in) standing rib roast, preferably from the loin end
Canola oil, to coat roast
2 Tablespoons Kosher salt and freshly ground pepper, to cover entire roast
1 cup water
1 cup red wine

1/4 cup thinly sliced leek

1 - 2 Tablespoons garlic or unsalted butter

To dry-age the roast: Place a refrigerator thermometer at the back of the bottom shelf of your refrigerator. Reduce the temperature to just below 38° F. Cover the bottom of a roasting pan with several layers of paper towels. Place the roast, bone side down, on the towels, and store-uncovered-at the back of the bottom shelf of your refrigerator. Allow the meat to age for 3 to 5 days, checking the refrigerator temperature often.

When you're ready to roast, let the meat sit out of the refrigerator for 1 hour until it reaches room temperature.

Preheat the oven at 250° F for 1/2 hour. Rub the roast with just enough canola oil to make it shine, then rub with the salt and pepper. Place the meat in a shallow roasting pan, bone side down (to prevent the meat from sitting in liquid). Insert the probe of your thermometer into the center of the roast and set for 118° F. (We are carnivores and like our meat RARE, so we set ours for 110° F and count on 10 – 12 degrees carryover). Place the roast in the oven and keep at 250° F.

When the meat has reached 110° F (about 2-3 hours, depending on how large of a cut of meat you have - monitor it closely), remove the roast and cover lightly with foil. Raise the oven temperature to 500° F. When the oven reaches 500° F, let it heat for another 15 minutes, then return the roast to the oven until the desired degree of crust is achieved, about 10 to 15 minutes. Transfer the roast to a cutting board and cover with foil. Let it reat for at least 10 -15 minutes before until ready to serve or carving

Place the roasting pan with its accumulated juices on the cook-top over medium heat and deglaze the pan with 1 cup of water. (The drippings will be sallll-ty, so test it out before you add the other ingredients – you may need to dilute it with water or supplement with pre-made gravy.) Allow the liquid to come to a boil, scraping occasionally until any bits stuck to the pan are freed. Add the wine and then transfer the liquid to a gravy separator. Allow five minutes for separation of fat from juice and then pour the liquid (but not the fat) back into the pan. Add the leek and return to a simmer. Stir in the garlic butter and serve over lovely, red slabs of goodness.

Yield: 10 servings

Temperature chart for beef:
Rare: 120-127 (cook to 110 and count on 10-12 degrees carryover)
Medium Rare: 128 – 135 (cook to 118)
Medium – why bother? Get yourself another cut of meat.

YIKES!!! Recipe Analyzer

2009-01-02T20:02:00.021-05:00

Quantity (3) Barefoot Blogger Banana Sour Cream Pancakes

OK, so this is good AND bad. I found a free recipe analyzer online and started plugging in some of the recent things I've made and some of the upcoming Barefoot Blogger recipes....

I tested it out using a few online Cooking Light recipes where I could match up what they had listed versus the analyzer. Most things were quite close. If there is an unusual or specific ingredient, the analyzer gets a little confused. I'm not saying it's perfect, but at least it will give you a ballpark figure if you have nothing else to compare to.

Try it for yourself and see what you think. Tuesday's With Dorie might blow its mind.

http://caloriecount.about.com/cc/recipe_analysis.php

Here is (1) one TWD Buttery Jam Cookie (assuming a yield of 40 cookies)

Barefoot Bloggers: Pappa was a Rolling Stone Al Pomidoro

2009-01-02T18:55:00.014-05:00

A thousand pardons. I am a few days late in getting this posted in the month of December, but it is done and thusly sent out into cyberspace. I plead guilty but insane and beg for your understanding and forgiveness.

From Back to Basics: This “is a classic Italian tomato soup that’s thickened with leftover bread”. As usual, I made some modifications to this recipe, based on the ingredients I had on hand. I didn’t have any ciabatta bread or leftover bread of any ilk for that matter, so I used good old Publix whole wheat, cubed up into pieces. Fennel? No gots. Scallions look sort of the same, but different taste and much smaller, but what the hay. Plum tomatoes? Also no gots, but I did have canned diced tomatoes and a whole, fresh tomato. I cubed that up and into the pot it went. Homemade stock? (snicker) Red wine? YES!!! We have wine. I like to cook with wine and sometimes I even put it in the food.* Fresh basil? Alas, my beautiful basil plants are gone for the winter. Dried basil it is. Other than that, I had everything needed.

This was pretty easy to make. I cubed up some more of the wheat bread to make the croutons and I sprinkled parmesan cheese in and on the soup. Messy Boy liked it, I liked it and DH hasn’t tried it yet - he just got home from work. (Update: he likes it.) The Little One and No Thank You Boy turned their noses up at it, but No Thank You Boy did like the croutons.

Many thanks to Natalie of Burned Bits for selecting this recipe. If you yourself would like to make this Pappa Al Pomidoro, you can find the recipe on the Food Network site here or in Ina Garten’s new book, Back to Basics on page 68. To join the BB community or to see what all the others did with this, please visit the the Barefoot Bloggers site.

(*props to WC Fields)

This is one serving, based on the 6 serving size noted.
Go to http://caloriecount.about.com/cc/recipe_analysis.php to analyze YOUR recipes.
The 1/2 cup olive oil is what puts it over the top in the fat category...

Happy New Year!!!

2008-12-31T19:10:00.003-05:00

May the coming year bring you happiness, health and properity.

(and the occasional cheesecake)

TWD: Sorry, No Scutterbotch Pudding or Cheesecake

2008-12-30T20:44:00.009-05:00

Step aside folks, keep moving, nothing to see here, keep moving.

I did complete 3 out of 5 recipes for the month, so I think I'm ok in the rule book. I hope to be able to get back in the weekly groove with Dorie in January...

Daring Baker's December Challenge: French Yule Log (in 6 Part Harmony)

2008-12-28T23:16:00.038-05:00

This month's challenge is brought to us by the adventurous Hilda from Saffron and Blueberry and Marion from Il en Faut Peu Pour Etre Heureux.

They have chosen a French Yule Log by Flore from Florilege Gourmand.

6 elements, 8 layers, 19 pages of instructions, 2 caramel burns, 3 days, 2 helpers, 1 exhausted Daring Baker. This one was a doozy! I merely read the instructions started hyperventilating. My palms got sweaty and I got all confused and in a complete tither. Of course, since everything else in December gets me confused and in a complete tither, I did the whole ostrich deal and waited until Thursday to start on this creation. Some people were doing an actual “log-ish” type thing. I pounced on two teeny weenie little words literally on the very last page of the 19 pages of directions. At the very bottom of the very last page I saw: “springform pan”. Can you say life preserver?

The whole log concept and inverted vs. right side up assembly vs. upside down assembly vs. dacquoise on the top or bottom or both, version A or version B, etc., was making my brain vibrate and eyes cross. (breathe, breathe, breathe). X'ing out all the variations I wasn't using with a big fat sharpie helped me get my brain wrapped around this. I took the straightforward approach and did mine in a 9” springform pan, right side up with one layer of the dacquoise biscuit on the bottom. I chose hazelnut as the overall theme for the cake (sorry I refuse to say that we worked like fools for 3 days on a LOG) and Hazelnut is the flavor du jour. My mom and sister were here and they helped with the execution. More on that later.

The 6 prescribed elements are:
1. Dacquoise biscuit
2. Dark chocolate mousse
3. Dark Chocolate Ganache Insert
4. Praline Feuillete (Crisp) Insert
5. Vanilla Crème Brulèe Insert
6. And finally, Dark Chocolate Icing

The order in which I made these components did not follow the order above.

I did mine as follows:
1. Vanilla Crème Brulèe Insert
2. Dacquoise biscuit
3. Praline Feuillete (Crisp) Insert
4. Dark Chocolate Ganache Insert
5. Dark chocolate mousse
6. And finally, Dark Chocolate Icing

1. Vanilla Crème Brulèe Insert
My sister and her husband went on a recent cruise to French Polynesia including Tahiti and Bora Bora (yeah, it does sound like a Bugs Bunny cartoon, but they did go and had a grand time, I might add) and brought back with them (among many other wonderful things) a kilo of vanilla beans. Yes, you read that right – one kilo of Tahitian vanilla beans. Guess what I got for Christmas? :D I got a nice bottle full of beans and some homemade vanilla extract. Yum yum. I scraped down one of those precious lovely little beans and parked it in the cream to infuse a while. While that was soaking I started on the...

2. Dacquoise biscuit
DH went to Whole Foods during lunch one day and faithfully picked me up some whole hazelnuts (filberts to some) and had the spice/nut guy grind up a container into hazelnut meal for my recipe. This was fairly straightforward. There was no piping into pretty little spirals like some of the directive pictures suggested – I smushed it down on the silpat and into the oven it went. Pulled it out to cool and cut to size. Easy peasy, unlike the.....

3. Praline Feuillete (Crisp) Insert
Can you say caramel? Again? Incredibly inconceivable as this might sound I could not find store-bought praline anywhere down here. And this is the South, mind you! Land of Nathalie Dupree and Paula Deen! I think it’s a conspiracy. I smashed up some of the whole hazelnuts with a rolling pin, and I had some caramel sauce left over from November’s caramel cake and used that. Twice. The first batch scorched while I was reheating it. Being the frugal girl I am, I asked my DS and DM to rinse all the sugar out and salvage the nuts for round 2. Round 2 was better and I pulled it off in the blonde stage and before it became an amber brunette. I used les Krispies des Rice in lieu of la gavottes/lace crepes for the “crisp” part of the program. I sprayed 2 plastic spoons with Pam spray and tossed the rice krispies with the hazelnuts and sugar mixture. I then plopped it on some waxed paper, put another layer on top and flattened it out to make my circle. Into the fridge and later cut it to size. Then we jumped...

4. Back on the Crème Brulee wagon.
I thought I’d be clever and use the springform pan to cook the brulee, but that quickly changed when it sprang a leak and started flooding out of the bottom. Quickly flipping through my brain for ideas – EUREKA! The silpat circular baking pan I have – the kitchen gods were smiling on me (at that point) as the diameter was the same as the springform pan. Yay! DS helped me pour it all in and we popped in the oven without a hitch. I froze it after it cooked and it popped out of the silpat like a frisbee and nestled down so neatly into the springform pan. Little did I know that the kitchen gods are fickle and can turn on you (and your mother) in an instant. This was made abundantly clear in the next step, the...

5. Dark Chocolate Ganache Insert.
“Step 1: Make a caramel”. Ok, we made another caramel, we burned another caramel and we burned our fingers on the molten lava sugar. (Gee, I wonder if it tastes as burnt as it smells? Let's have a sample...doh!) Blisters for both me and my mom – that crap is HOT. Just as bad as hot glue (insert Voice of Experience here). It hits your finger, burns the heck out of it then instantly cools ever so slightly, so that it turns from liquid to solid and it’s stuck on your damn finger, continuing to broil the flesh underneath it and you can’t get it off. More of my good friend Silvadene cream, followed by a miracle product my DS brought me – Melagel, made from teatree/melaleuca plant. Amazing. No scars, not blisters and not sensitive to heat or touch the next day. A must for every kitchen and home. But I digress. Screw the “make a caramel” part. Kraft made the caramel, we stirred the chocolate into it. I smeared it onto the dacquoise layer with a spatula. Little did we know that the next step held yet more challenges like the...

6. Dark chocolate mousse.
This includes a Pate a Bombe which is a term used for “egg yolks beaten with a SUGAR SYRUP, then aerated.” Helloooooo! CARAMEL IS A SUGAR SYRUP! and this has the word BOMB in the title! I’ll spare you the details, but this layer turned out slightly chunky, as the SUGAR SYRUP BOMB turned into chunks of hardened caramel/sugar and no amount of whipping, beating, magic bulletting or smashing would break them up. So, slightly chunky it is. I refrigerated the mousse per somewhere I read, but wound up having to microwave it to make it workable again. No piping here but more smearing with a spatula and fingers.

At this point, all the layers are cut and assembled in the following order:
Dacquoise
Ganache insert
mousse
praline/crisp insert
mousse
creme brulee insert
mousse

and the whole shebang went into the deep freeze for the night. Today I unmolded the cake and it was this nice, sturdy wheel thingy. Very nice. Then I started on the last (TYG!) step, the...

7. Dark Chocolate Icing.
I mixed the gelatin with water and let it rest for 15 minutes. I came back and pouf! She is gone. “Ah, honey, where’s the little bowl that had goopy stuff in it that was on the counter? In the dishwasher – it was empty wasn’t it?” I hope to heaven that it dissolves completely in there. Made it again and babysat this time. This was easy peasy as well, but it took a long time to cool. I finally got impatient and dumped it on the cake. I had to pick it up and roll the sides around in the pan to coat them. Thank goodness it was frozen solid.

Back into the chiller for about a half hour and then into the fridge. The 1/2 hour maximum defrost is a huge underestimation. It was in there for the entire run time of the movie Wall-E (98 minutes, FYI) and it still was frozen solid. I carved it up regardless to take my photos and tried a bite. Frozen = eh, it’s just ok. I've left the slice out on the counter during the time I'm typing this (also about 97 minutes and counting) and ran in there just now to re-try it = mmmmmm much better and the threatened apocalyptic catastrophe of melty, runny stuff is nowhere to be seen. Nothing has pooled or gotten all gloppy– it’s room temperature, tasty and all the layers are still intact. (Note: still in one piece after 3 hours and tastes even better.)
NOW I can taste the hazelnuts and the chocolate. Veni, vidi, vici, venti.
(I came, I saw, I conquered, I got the t-shirt and a latte.)

Thanks to Hilda and Marion for selecting this month’s Daring Bakers Challenge. You can find the complete recipe (all 19 pages :D) on their sites.

To see what all the other DBer’s did, you can find the blogroll here and if you’d like to join the monthly party, info about that can be found on that page as well.

Merry Christmas to All

2008-12-25T22:35:00.007-05:00

and to all a good night!

I hope that your Christmas was everything you wished it would be and more.
Sending all of you special hugs on this magical day,
Lisa

Random Image

2008-12-18T16:26:00.006-05:00

I have NO earthly idea why this vignette of white and silver has been composed in my bathroom sink or where the bow came from. I just walked in the room and this stopped me in my tracks. There's nothing under the bowl. And why the spoon? Mysteries abound.

TWD: Buttery Jam Cookies

2008-12-16T21:20:00.005-05:00

For your consideration: Buttery Jam Cookies from Baking: From My Home to Yours by Dorie Greenspan, page 80 featured this week on Tuesdays with Dorie.

Short and sweet today, my dearest sweeties! I have a BOATLOAD of things to do tonight to get ready for the morrow. It's Winter Party for the Little One and I am the Room Mom who needs to help, bring some supplies, teacher gifts and flowers for one of the teacher's half birthday AND some paying work as well, woo hoo! It's a whirlwind I tell you! A whirl wind!

Thank Heavens I made these cookies three weeks ago. I would have been really crazy otherwise ;) (You can see one of the Linzer Sables hanging out in the background.)

These were easy peasy to make - I used peach preserves and while this combo was good and buttery, they didn't taste very peachy. Maybe something stronger like apricot would have been better. Hmm. I might make these again, because they were good and if I do, I'll be trying apricot jam.

Thanks to Heather of Randomosity and the Girl for choosing this recipe. To see what all the other TWDers did with it, check out the blogroll here. If you'd like to try making Dorie’s version of Buttery Jam Cookies for yourself, you can find the recipe on our hostess’s blog, or in Dorie Greenspan's Baking: From My Home to Yours.

Barefoot Bloggers: Coq au Vin

2008-12-15T02:16:00.018-05:00

Flambé better late then never! I love a good flaming pot of food, especially when I intentionally set it ablaze and not accidentally. This post is late due to my unfortunate incident with the exploding water. My hand healed really well and I can use potholders and everything now just like a big girl.

Coq au Vin. Chicken au vin, coq and wine, chix and wine (which is what we really have here when I'm with my friends, versus cooking like a fool right now) and at last we settle on chicken and wine. I really chopped up this recipe and made it my own due to extreme laziness and the fact that my kids don’t eat anything with “weird” ingredients like small frozen whole onions or (heaven forbid!) cremini mushrooms. DH HATES ‘shrooms, so there’s no point throwing them in just for myself to hear everyone whining and moaning about it and then having to pick them out.

The chicken part was easy – I used boneless skinless chicken breasts as I was too lazy and cold to walk downstairs and shuffle thru the freezer to dig out parts or defrost the bowling ball that is a whole chicken down there. Parts is parts. I also just used up every last shred of carrot in the house – literally just shredded from making a carrot cake - so I used parsnips. If anyone asks, they’re albino carrots. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it. So, I blithely start making the chix wit’ wine in my Colossal Pan. Yes, it actually IS called the Colossal Pan. This is one of my favorite pans - it's a big 6 quart puppy and because it’s so big, it’s almost a pot. Would that make it a pant? Hmmm.

Anyhoo, I cooked the bacon (I crumbled it after frying it whole because who wants to dice when they can crush?) I browned the chicken, I sautéed the onions. I added the garlic. I’m thinkin’ to myself – WOW 5 large cloves of garlic? You go girl! Alas, I have the cookbook open to page 2 of the recipe and forgot that my ingredients are on the page before – the pot roast on page 117 uses 5 cloves of garlic, if anyone’s interested – so my c.o.v. had 5 cloves instead of 2. Good thing I love garlic.

Moving forward to the flambé part.

I got the Colossal Lid to my Colossal Pan, just in case I needed to smother the flames before setting my kitchen alight, and grabbed a long fireplace match. I lit it from these cute little penguin candles from Bath & Body Works. Aren’t they sweet? Cinnamon scented, discounted with purchase, you can get coupons from their website if you sign up for email. But I digress. I pour in the cognac and light the match and POOF! Up in flames goes the pan. Coooool. Messy one comes running thinking I’m about torch the place and also says Cool when he is assured that I MEANT to set fire to dinner this time.

Now, I know you’re thinking, well Lisa, that Colossal Pan doesn’t look like it has an oven proof handle. And of course, you’d be right. It always usually helps to actually READ the recipe – I missed the whole preheat your oven thing or else I’d have started out in the other pot that can go in the oven.

Presto changeo. Through the miracle of the internet and my DH who washes the dishes without complaint, the dinner is now clad in stainless steel.

40 minutes later, we’re good to go. I thickened up the sauce with the flour/butter paste and stopped there as we weren’t partaking of the ‘shroom and onion action. Served with egg noodles and they liked it. What? Oh, those are albino carrots honey. No? Oh, silly me those are actually potatoes. You like potatoes. Eat them. No whining, Santa knows when you whine. Trust me.

Many thanks to Bethany of this little piggy went to market for selecting this recipe. If you yourself would like to see exactly how easy, simple and tasty this Coq au Vin is, you can find the recipe on the Food Network site here or in Ina Garten’s new book, Back to Basics on page 116. To join the BB community or to see what all the others did with this, please visit the the Barefoot Bloggers site.

The Electric Mixer

2008-12-13T17:43:00.003-05:00

(Click to enlarge)

My classic symbol of comfort and home is flaming cherry red. ;D

How NOT to Roast Garlic...

2008-12-11T22:26:00.011-05:00

This is what NOT to do:
1) prepare 2 perfectly innocent heads of garlic by peeling the skins off, leaving the root intact, then cutting off the tops of the cloves and rubbing the entire thing with olive oil, especially into the cut areas.
2) put said garlic heads into 2 cute little mini-Pyrex ramekins that you love and are the only 2 you have left from a set of 6.
3) put the above assembly into the microwave for 5 minutes.
4) get distracted doing something else in another room
5) come back into the kitchen trying to find the source of that horrible burning smell.
6) open the door to the microwave and have massive clouds of thick, choking gray smoke billow out.
7) set off the fire alarms and fill the whole house top to bottom with smoke and that sickening burnt stuff smell that will take about a week (or more) to fully disappear. Open all the doors and windows in the interim, letting all the heat (and smoke) out.
8) try to clean the inside of the microwave out using spray cleaner and Barkeepers Friend.
9) set your favorite 4 cup Pyrex measuring cup in the microwave with 1 cup of water and a splash of lemon juice and bring to a boil so that the water vapor helps steam off the goop and clean out the smell that is now permeating the guts of the microwave.
10) open the door to the microwave and remove the favorite measuring cup and have the bloody thing start reboiling, overflowing onto your hand.

Things TO do:
11) scream obscenities at the top of your lungs that would make a sailor blush and fling the cup and liquid across the room in the general direction of your porcelain sink and have it shatter in there into a million pieces. Try to get it all in the sink and not have it splash all over the floor and cabinets. Avoiding hurling it through the window is also a good idea.
12) run your now scalded hand under cool water for several minutes until you realize that your state is in a drought and that they changed the billing /water tier consumption rate charges on your house and that it will cost a small fortune to keep running the water. Yell for your 9 year old to bring you a bowl (NOW!) and plunge your hand into the bowl of cool (not cold) water. Add a few ice cubes when the water becomes bearable.
13) sit there for, oh, about 1 1/2 hours, swishing your hand gently back and forth. While you're doing this, it's a good time to make your kindergartener sit and write out 10 times "I follow class rules". This will take the whole 1 1/2 hours, so it is a constructive use of your otherwise free time.
14) call every urgent care center within a 20 mile radius and discover that they all close at 8:00 pm and that unless you want to go camp out in the ER until morning with all the really sick people, you're SOL.
15) call Walgreens to see if they have anything and learn that the answer is no, not really.
16) send your husband to dig around in the medicine closet and find the jar of Silvadene burn cream that expired back in 2005, but that you kept "just in case".
17) realize that this is one of those moments and apply the cream. Have pain ebb and flow between excruciating and tolerable for about an hour.
18) breathe a deep sigh of relief and gratitude that the old cream still works and that the pain is abating.
19) do not take a picture of your hand to document the experience.
20) be extremely grateful that the cream and cold water worked and that the burn is not near as bad as it could have been.
21) tell the internet and the Barefoot Bloggers that you were going to make the coq au vin but got sidetracked by all this and you'll do it in the next few days. Beg forgiveness and plead insanity. Type the post with the one good hand and two fingers from the other because you are not 100%, but can't be separated from your computer and the internet for any length of time without going loco.
22) the next time you boil water in the microwave for a longish period of time, put a bamboo skewer in the water to give the bubbles an escape route and not explode on you.
23) buy a jar of roasted garlic at Trader Joe's or Harry's/Whole Foods. You'll have it on hand (ow!) when you need it in a pinch and don't have time to roast it properly.

Leaves

2008-12-11T12:42:00.003-05:00

Salud! The story of our visit with Shirley Corriher

2008-12-10T00:02:00.001-05:00

Messy One wants to be a scientist and a chef. He also wants to be an architect / archaeologist / astronaut (architectolonaut) when he grows up. For Christmas, I asked him what he wanted and he came up with "Something with cooking. And books". Okey-dokey. Sure thing kid. That about narrows it down.

A few weeks ago I went to a book signing and lecture at the Margaret Mitchell House for Shirley Corriher's highly anticipated new book Bakewise. She and Alton Brown were at the event; Alton was acting as master of ceremonies, asking Shirley questions and keeping her on task. (That woman could EASILY talk about salt for 2 hours, and you would be FASCINATED and want to hear more.) I had a great time (sorry, no photos. DH lent me his camera... without a memory card in it and my phone takes suckky pictures) and I left with a copy of Bakewise and visions of the Tunnel of Fudge cake flitting about in my head. (You should get her book Cookwise too. Amazing!!!)

One of the women I went with tipped me off that Shirley would be giving a demo at Harry's / Whole Foods "Salud!" cooking school. Bing! Lightbulb! I reserved 2 tickets. One for me and one for the Messy One. Of course we were late getting there, but not tooo late. It hadn't started yet, but we were the last ones into the classroom which holds only about 24 people. As expected, Messy One was the youngest one there and we got the hairy eyeball from everyone when we walked in. Some credit here people! I KNOW better than to take No Thank You Boy. That would never have worked. Messy One? No problem. He was an angel: he listened politely, didn't fidget, paid attention and even took some notes! I was so proud, even when he wiped his runny nose on his shirt sleeve. (Completely understandable. We're still working on nasal manners and hygiene around here.)

The demos Shirley did were corn bread, chocolate crinkle cookies, deep dark chocolate cake, rustic pear fruit tart, chocolate ruffles (the woman is simply BRILLIANT!!!! BRILLIANT I tell you!) and a decadent chocolate ganache. Everything was amazingly good and we got to taste it all. Of course Messy One was covered in chocolate from ear to ear, but then again, most of us were and with him, food head to toe is to be expected.

The corn bread was basted with butter on the top AND bottom ("wretched excess", she called it) and served "wedding cake style". This is another BRILLIANT idea when you have to serve a round cake thing to a bunch of people and don't want to get all skimpy on the slices or wedges. How to: Cut an inner circle inside the cake about half waybetween the edge and the middle. Slice the outer ring into wedges and the inner into slices - everybody's happy, they get a nice chunk of cake and your creation isn't carved into crumbs.

We had a great time. Shirley signed our recipe packets and complimented him on his manners and his love for food and science. All in all, a great time.

Merry Christmas, Messy One.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Linkage:
Chocolate Crinkle Cookie Recipe
AJC Article about Book Event
AJC Article
Tunnel of Fudge Recipe
Margaret Mitchell House

Saving Documents: an EASY Way

2008-12-09T14:01:00.004-05:00

(Today's TWD is next/below this post)

This makes my life so much easier, I thought I’d share.

Instead of physically printing out important documents you get online, like receipts from online purchases, invoices, order acknowledgements, coupons :D (when legal or moral), use this FREE program to create pdfs of them instead.

http://www.exp-systems.com/

If you're a couponer and have a scanner, you can also print/pdf and save copies of your original cash register receipts, rebate forms , UPC’s or other proofs of purchase before you mail off your originals.

To use this program, instead of clicking on “print” and then selecting your regular ink printer, you select the “pdf redirect printer” in the print drop-down box and it creates a pdf file you can then save. Save everything to a folder called “receipts” or something like that and you’ll have all those things in one place, and not reams of paper to keep track of.

If for some reason you need the documentation, all you do is then print the file on your regular printer or you can forward it directly as is to the company as evidence.

Think outside the box!
You can also use this method to keep copies of recipes (hallelujah!) , directions, instruction manuals or ANYTHING you want to print and keep for posterity, but not have paper clutter.

If you scan them in, you can also save Legal documents like your will, insurance papers, picture of your passport, driver’s license, credit cards – anything you’d REALLY need if things were stolen or if your house burned down or if your computer crashed.

You can save these files from catastrophe by emailing these pdfs to yourself at an online email service (like hotmail, gmail, etc. or similar site that you can check from another computer anywhere on the planet) and then save the documents in your inbox or saved items box. If you’re traveling and need this info, you can just get online and print the files in whatever country you’re in.

The possibilities are endless.

TWD: Grandma’s All-Occasion Sugar Cookies

2008-12-09T00:02:00.008-05:00

For your consideration: Grandma’s All-Occasion Sugar Cookies from Baking: From My Home to Yours by Dorie Greenspan, pages 146-147 featured this week on Tuesdays with Dorie.

And there was much rejoicing. Yum yum yum yum yum! FINALLY! A TWD recipe that was easy to make, with no exotic or expensive ingredients (like nuts) AND it actually tasted great, which is always a plus in my book. I was feeling more than a little discouraged over the last few TWD recipes and was dreading making any more "eh, metza metz" things that didn’t put my ingredients to their best use. Q'est que c'est metza metz? It's Italian slang for so-so (which you say while rotating your hand back and forth).

These cookies were such a refreshing change! I made the dough last weekend when I made the Linzer Sables - I also completely trashed the kitchen in the process. I made all three TWD cookies simultaneously; the sables, these sugar cookies and the buttery jam cookies that are next week’s offering and just got them all knocked out at once. I also made the dough for Shirley Corriher’s Chocolate Crinkle Cookies from Bakewise which we've just dished out, sugared up and popped in the oven as we speak.

I grated the rind of an orange into these cookies and decided to do the slice and bake method since I did the cookie cutter thing with the sables and was over that action. I shaped them into a square shape and threw them in the freezer (for 5 days) wrapped in waxed paper until I could get to them (in other words, as today's deadline approached.)

Yesterday I pulled them out and sliced them into ¼” disks and topped them off with Turbinado (raw) sugar. They smelled heavenly and as the scent wafted through the house, the kids were chomping at the bit waiting to tear into them. After they ate their Lentil Soup (coming soon) they were allowed to get at the cookies. They LOVED them! Not too sweet and a very interesting flavor.

Many thanks to Ulrike of Küchenlatein for choosing this recipe. To see what all the other TWDers did with it, check out the blogroll here. If you'd like to try making Dorie’s version of Grandma’s All-Occasion Sugar Cookies for yourself, you can find the recipe on our hostess’s blog, or in Dorie Greenspan's Baking: From My Home to Yours.

Salud! with Shirley

2008-12-05T09:08:00.006-05:00

```````````````````````

EDIT: Ohhh! Sorry to keep you hanging! I promise to try and write about this tomorrow! Messy One has a swim meet all this weekend, and I'm still up (now at midnight Friday) cooking for the hospitality suite. TWO different egg casseroles (one of which needs to be there at about 6:30 am; same bat time/channel Sunday for the other) and TWO marbled sour cream cakes - w/two new flavor riffs previously untried but the batter is to die for! I need to split these up and share the love with the pool staff - they have been very helpful, and meets can be stressful.

Also (don't hate me) we're supposed to go to Tom Colicchio's brand spankin' new Craft Atlanta tomorrow night. Taking pics will most probably be tacky, so I'll need to use my imagination to document it all for you! Oh the excitement!

TWD: Linzer Sables

2008-12-03T17:24:00.013-05:00

For your consideration: Linzer Sables from Baking: From My Home to Yours by Dorie Greenspan, pages 134-135 featured this week on Tuesdays with Dorie which is actually Wednesday With Dorie this week.

Sometimes you feel like a nut, sometimes you don’t. More nuts this week with Dorie. I scanned thru the upcoming recipes and there are no nuts coming up next week or the week after. Phew. I was worried. I really didn’t want to make this recipe because of all the pricey nuts involved. Maybe I’m hoarding for the winter, but I didn’t want to spend any more of my frozen cache on a recipe that may or may not turn out. I did hear on NPR the other day that there’s a nut shortage in some parts of the country. Ok people, it was squirrels and acorns, but I’m trying to make a point here! What if people nuts are next?! Oh stop! Nutty people will always be in plentiful supply, but I'm talking about the actual nuts themselves! I’m driving myself ~~nuts~~ crazy thinking about it.

I keep all my nuts in the basement freezer and in surveying my loot I have 8 jars of macadamias (on super sale at CVS last week - score!), 5 cans of salted peanuts, 4 cans of honey roasted peanuts (Kroger on sale and BOGO), 1 ½ bags of pine nuts, 2 cans of cashews, a small bag of pre-shelled pistachios, smallish boxes of walnuts, almonds (whole and sliced) and a plethora of pecans. I have a huge bag and a half that I bought from Sam’s for last week’s Twofer Pie. Like I said, I was having nut-spending phobia BUT the Ghost of Linzers kept showing up. Everywhere I kept running into these Linzer Sables. Everywhere! Then to top it off, sitting in my inbox was yesterday’s "Day 2" Food Network 12 Days of Cookies recipe. Yes, it was… Pistachio Linzertorte Cookies from Paula Deen. AAAAAH! Guilt, guilt, guilt, it’s written all over your face. I knew I must make these or I would be haunted forever.

I used the pecans, I figured that I could sacrifice those to the Linzer Sable gods and ground them up in my Magic Bullet and turned them into dust. The cookies went together fairly straightforward – no major surprises, although the dough does need to be really cold/almost frozen in order to get the cutouts out of the dough. It is somewhat labor intensive, but not hard so this is something that needs to be preplanned or split into two sessions, the dough half and the cookie making half.

Contemplating the jam. Alas, I think I have a problem here as well.

I’ve discovered that I have a jam, jelly, preserve fetish, but I can ~~create a diversion~~ proudly say that Nancy at The Dogs Eat the Crumbs has a bigger and more impressive stockpile, and I won’t even go into the Pam cooking spray collection that Cathy of The Tortefeasor has. We can go for intervention together. Nuts, jam and Pam. I’ll find a recipe for those three and get back to you.

Anyway, I chose the traditional seedless raspberry jam for the pretty cutout cookies, and filled the leftover thumbprint cookies with some of that as well as Peach preserves and Sweet Potato Butter. I had the Nutella out, but there again, I have a spending problem. I didn’t want to cash it in on these cookies. I swear, it’s a nut thing. Plus, I easily justified it by the fact that the Nutella flavor overrode the pecan flavor and that would have cancelled it out. (Hmm. I need to buy some hazelnuts.) Recipe made, conscience cleared.

The verdict? These were surprisingly good – I haven’t tasted the pretty ones yet since I’m taking them to a friend’s house tonight for her birthday, but the baker’s sample was really good.

Thanks to Dennis of Living the Life for choosing this recipe. To see what all the other TWDers did with it, check out the blogroll here. If you'd like to try making Dorie’s Linzer Sables for yourself, you can find the recipe on our host’s blog, or in Dorie Greenspan's Baking: From My Home to Yours.

Chili Today, Hot Tamale

2008-12-02T16:45:00.008-05:00

I am not a chili fan (and it doesn’t like me either), but the Y chromosomes in the house are big fans. My DH especially loves chili, but I really don’t like the canned slop that they sell in the store. In perusing the labels, I’ve been Horror Struck! (insert rolling of eyes and gnashing of teeth here). This is also not taking into account that the “serving size” is less than half a can and the nutrition info is labeled thusly. You need to do the math to determine how much artery clogging sludge is in each can, because let’s face it, does your Manly Man eat 1 cup (246 grams) at a time or eat the whole can? The whole can of course! One little gem has 180 fat calories/20 grams fat (aka: 30% of your daily value) and 8 grams of saturated fat which equals 40% of your DV. Fiber and sodium are equally off the charts.

Keeping this in mind for my men, I made chili. I made CI’s Simple Beef Chili with Kidney Beans, to be precise. None of them like green peppers, so those were left out and I eased up on the amount of heat: I halved the cayenne and chili powder and only used about a teaspoon of cumin – it’s one flavor they haven’t grown to like yet.

They loved it. Men/boys sitting around snarfing chili, crunching up saltines and making low grunting noises over their bowls. Just sampling it to get the seasonings right gave me heartburn. Nope, male bonding and chili. I’m good with that.

Cooks Illustrated Simple Beef Chili

Good choices for condiments include diced fresh tomatoes, diced avocado, sliced scallions, chopped red onion, chopped cilantro leaves, sour cream, and shredded Monterey Jack or cheddar cheese.

Makes about 3 quarts, serving 8 to 10

2 tablespoons vegetable oil or corn oil
2 medium onions, chopped fine (about 2 cups)
1 red bell pepper, cut into 1/2-inch cubes
6 medium cloves garlic, minced or pressed through garlic press (about 2 tablespoons)
2 pounds 85 percent lean ground beef (see variations below)
2 (15-ounce) cans red kidney beans, drained and rinsed
1 (28-ounce) can diced tomatoes, with juice
1 can (28 ounces) tomato puree
Table salt
1/4 cup chili powder
1 tablespoon ground cumin
2 teaspoons ground coriander
1 teaspoon red pepper flakes
1 teaspoon dried oregano
1/2 teaspoon cayenne pepper

1. Heat oil in large heavy-bottomed nonreactive Dutch oven over medium heat until shimmering but not smoking, 3 to 4 minutes. Add onions, bell pepper, garlic, and spices; cook, stirring occasionally, until vegetables are softened and beginning to brown, about 10 minutes. Increase heat to medium-high and add half the beef; cook, breaking up pieces with wooden spoon, until no longer pink and just beginning to brown, 3 to 4 minutes. Add remaining beef and cook, breaking up pieces with wooden spoon, until no longer pink, 3 to 4 minutes.

2. Add beans, tomatoes, tomato puree, and 1/2 teaspoon salt; bring to boil, then reduce heat to low and simmer, covered, stirring occasionally, for 1 hour. Remove cover and continue to simmer 1 hour longer, stirring occasionally (if chili begins to stick to bottom of pot, stir in 1/2 cup water and continue to simmer), until beef is tender and chili is dark, rich, and slightly thickened. Adjust seasoning with additional salt. Serve with lime wedges and condiments if desired.

Thank you to the Fabulous and Talented Cathy over at The Tortefeasor for giving me The Butterfly Award!

Thanks Cathy! You sincerely rock.

Daring Baker's November Challenge: Caramel Cake with Caramelized Butter Frosting!

2008-11-29T19:45:00.006-05:00

This month's Challenge was Caramel Cake with Caramelized Butter Frosting, recipe courtesy of Shuna Fish Lydon, as published on Bay Area Bites. We had to make both the cake and the frosting.

This month’s Challenge hosts are Dolores of Culinary Curiosity, Alex aka: Brownie of the Blondie and Brownie duo and Jenny of Foray into Food. Natalie of Gluten-a-Go-Go is assisting with alternative baking methods.

In the spirit of Thanksgiving, THANK HEAVENS for David Lebovitz. The man is brilliant. He suggested using a strainer over your caramel pan to stop the spatters and preventing the equivalent of Culinary Napalm (perfect description from Alton Brown) from splattering me and my kitchen.

This was actually fairly easy. I was quite worried about burning myself, but that didn’t happen, and I followed Shuna’s directions for the caramel challenged to a “T” and it all came together beautifully. I was afraid of my regular cake pans not being “tall” enough, so I used my 9” springform pan – fabulous! It pulled away from the edges just like it was supposed to and it turned golden brown and delicious.

Thanks to Dolores, Alex and Jenny for selecting this month’s Daring Baker Challenge. You can find the complete recipe for the caramel cake, frosting and optional caramels (which I did not make) on their sites.To see what all the other DBer’s did, you can find the blogroll here and if you’d like to join the monthly party, info about that can be found on that page as well.

Barefoot Bloggers: Mexican Chicken Soup

2008-11-27T00:04:00.000-05:00

This Mexican Chicken Soup was another fast and easy recipe from the fabulous Ina G! It took no time at all to make and the ingredients come together effortlessly to make a warm and comforting meal. We’ll be savoring this soup all week long, in between turkey leftovers. In fact, if this wasn’t due today, Thanksgiving Day, I would have made it using leftover turkey instead, but there’s no reason YOU can’t do it! :) What a fine way to finish off the T-day bird.

Many thanks to Judy from Judy’s Gross Eats for choosing this recipe. If you yourself would like to see exactly how easy, simple and tasty this Mexican Chicken Soup is, you can find the recipe on the Food Network site here, or in Ina Garten's book, Barefoot Contessa at Home, page 34. To join the BB community or to see what all the others did with this, please visit the the Barefoot Bloggers site.

TWD: Twofer Pie!

2008-11-26T22:34:00.008-05:00

For your consideration: Twofer Pie from Baking: From My Home to Yours by Dorie Greenspan, page 321 featured this week on Tuesdays with Dorie which is actually Wednesday/Almost Thursday With Dorie this time around.

I still have tons of cooking and baking to do for Thanksgiving tomorrow. I've been hard at work since 4:00 and it's 11:00 now - you should SEE the kitchen. It's trashed, but I've completed the majority of things I needed to get done. I am so thankful for my DH who cleans while I cook. This pie is one of the deserts. I had help with it - The Messy One was all excited to get into the kitchen and make this with me. We had fun doing this together and it was definitely a learning experience for him, especially reading directions and learning how to measure and pour things. :)

I’m making another Dorie pie, the Sour Cream Pumpkin Pie at the same time – that one is in the oven, but as you can see, the Twofer Pie is finally done. It took over an hour to cook and I finally decided that I couldn’t wait around anymore and jacked up the temp to 350 from the prescribed 300. No harm done that I can see, but I’ll let you know after tomorrow how it tasted. (Preparation update: that one took a long time too. I turned it down to 325 from the 450 and it still took about 25 minutes longer. Next time I'll just drop both to 350 and watch the clock.)

Thanks to Vibi from La Casserole Carrée for choosing this recipe. To see what all the other TWDers did with it, check out the blogroll here. If you'd like to try making Dorie’s version of Twofer Pie for yourself, you can find the recipe on our hostess’s blog, or in Dorie Greenspan's Baking: From My Home to Yours.

Update: Definitely not a keeper for us. I left this one behind at the inlaws in almost it's entirety. :(

TWD shall be T(hursday) With Dorie

2008-11-25T12:59:00.003-05:00

Since this week's recipe is supposed to be best consumed on the day it's made, we have been given special dispensation to post our Thanksgivinggy recipe on Thursday.
Allez cuisine!

Wired

2008-11-25T00:08:00.007-05:00

Wired. Hard wired. Homerun wired. Wired direct from my computer out to the Bellsouth box in the street. Happy girl. Do not stop, do not pass go, do not collect 200 dollars. Do yank out yards and yards of old yucky mid 1960's cabling and replace it with shiny new 2008 cabling. (Not that there's anything wrong with the mid 1960's - only cabling from that era is old and yucky. People from the mid 1960's are quite lovely, youthful, fresh and beautiful.)

Low Voltage Guy: Ah, ma’am, do you have a trashcan for these wires and cables?
Me: Sure, why don’t you just use this big, huge, blue tub.
LVG: Well ma’am, that’s sort of a nice bucket. Don’t you have a trashcan somewhere?
Me: A trash can?! Oh, no! I want to keep all this mess.
LVG: (looking wary) Ma’am?
Me: (nodding head) Oh yes, I definitely want to keep it. Definitely. Please put in all in here. Thank you. I want to take a picture of it.
LVG: You what?
Me: (smiling slightly) I want to take a picture of it.
LVG: Ah, well, um, yes Ma’am. Here you go.
Me: Thanks so much. This is perfect.

Me: (in my head, singing/dancing- Yes! A picture! A picture to show my friends why I’ve been gone for so long. A picture to show all my INVISIBLE friends that the problem has been dealt with and that these new cables should shake with fear while transmitting the pictures of their sad, old and now very dead precursors and that they should be warned that I can flick my magic wand and make this happen to them and they will end up in a bucket if they do not obey my bidding! Bwah hahahahaha) (Ok, so I’ve missed you guys a lot).

Thank you for hanging in there with me! I’ve got some catching up to do. Hugs, hugs and more hugs for all the well wishes you sent and I’ll be seeing you soon! Online!

I Heart...

2008-11-20T13:10:00.003-05:00

I heart all of you who left lovely things to say about my last post.
I heart the public library because they have free internet access.
I heart my DH for putting up with my tremendous, childish, embarrasing rant about my losing my DSL connection yet again.
I heart the people who are coming to my rescue and fixing my DSL connection / ripping out the old wires / running all new cabling which will hopefully fix the problem once and for all as I am done with this nonsense.
I heart the people I work with for helping me work around these computer issues I'm having.
I heart my neighbor who has an albuterol nebulizer and answered the phone at 3:30am and let us come down to use it on the Messy one who couldn't breathe.
I heart modern medicine and the doctor who gave us a boatload of free breathing treatment samples.
I heart my DS who sent me a lovely book on King Tut and some cute Jessie Steele aprons.
I heart all the moms who came today and helped with the kindergarten Thanksgiving Harvest Feast.
I heart Publix for having an awesome in-store Feast on Tuesday and where we basically ate dinner on all the yummy food they had out.
I heart the Good Samaritan who found my Coach silk scarf that I lost at the Publix Feast and turned it in.
I heart MT who gave me a discount card for Coach as I think I need an early Christmas present for dealing with all this without losing my mind.

I will be back soon-
Heart,
Lisa

The Tao of Pudding

2008-11-18T00:24:00.009-05:00

For your consideration: Arborio Rice Pudding: White, Black (or Both) from Baking: From My Home to Yours by Dorie Greenspan, pages 412-413 featured this week on Tuesdays with Dorie.

Repress the gag reflex and don't yack, it's just a really crappy picture. When I first saw this recipe I was skeptical – I even halved the recipe. I was in agreement with some of the other TWDers who commented that rice pudding doesn’t exactly bring whoops of excitement into their lives. One of the news flashes was a post from Herself, stating that there was a typo regarding the cooking time: “50” minutes, not 30. Glad I read that before I started.

I followed the directions faithfully, halved the recipe and increased the cooking time and ya know what? I LIKE rice pudding. I do. The spoonful I ate convinced me that I definitely like it “plain” without the extra vanilla or chocolate that the recipe calls for. Not black, not white or both. Neither. No yin, no yang, just plain. The Tao of Pudding and my life of late or so it seems.

A bloggy friend just demanded of me “Where the hell have you been?” Sorry I’ve been absent for a while. In addition to recovering from that cold, I’ve been seriously down in the dumps and it all revolves around food, glorious food. I went MIA, only made a half batch of pudding, didn’t experiment, only ate one spoonful, and barely stirred up enough enthusiasm to take a questionably passable picture – what’s up with that, Lisa? Well, you see my lab tests came back as definitely reflecting my participation in TWD and my love of food in general. My cholesterol and triglyceride levels seem to indicate that molten butter is starting to course through my veins while expanding my waistline at the same time. Which explains the tone of this pudding post and also my conundrum. Metaphorically speaking, since I can’t eat it, my DH shouldn’t, and my kids won’t (well, except for the Messy One)…. What’s a girl to do? Needless to say this little kick in the pants has taken me a while to process offline and figure out what I want and how to get there.

I've decided that I’m gonna shake, shake, shake it off because where I’ve landed is that I’m going to re-explore the Cooking Light/Light Cooking side of the food fence. I did Weight Watchers for a few years and I know how to dance that dance. The other weight loss program that really (really) works is Take Shape for Life/Medifast. Yes, it’s true. Just like the infomercials, I dropped over 13 pounds in 2 months: after that I was feeling so great that I dove head first into a pound of unsalted butter and wallowed around in it. I'm still down 8 pounds, so that's reason to celebrate, but I want to go all the way to my dream weight. So, an actual diet and eating mindfully: those two things should help with the diet part of the "diet and exercise" mantra (yin, yang, ok so I get it already). Doing T-Tapp at home and going to classes and meeting my friend at the gym (does it HAVE to be 5:00 AM though?) are the exercise part. Yin, yang, rhymes with Tang and I love orange Tang and oranges with chocolate and those orange chocolate wham things and (I need help.)

Before I cross over to the dark side, I’ll be posting some recipes I’ve already made and photographed, but haven’t uploaded yet. Some of these are oh so bad but OH so good. If I can bring myself to revisit those pictures and stop from salivating ( just the thought of this one particular recipe is making me drool and causing tears of joy to spring to my eyes, and yes it involves browned butter sauce, and is quite possibly The Best Thing I’ve put in my mouth EVER!) (and probably the big reason for those abysmal test results), I will share those with you so you can steer clear of my wicked ways. Yin. Yang.

As for the Rice Pudding? It was good. Really good. Thanks to Isabelle of Les gourmandises d’Isa for choosing this recipe. To see what all the other TWDers did with it, check out the blogroll here. If you'd like to try making Dorie’s version of Arborio Rice Pudding for yourself, you can find the recipe on our hostess’s blog, or in Dorie Greenspan's Baking: From My Home to Yours.

Barefoot Blogger: Herb Roasted Onions

2008-11-13T23:39:00.012-05:00

These were so fast and easy to make. They are, in a word, delicious. I'm eating them like candy as we speak, because in fact, this picture was taken mere moments ago when at 10:15 pm I realized that TODAY was the date to submit my first Barefoot Bloggers recipe. Thankfully I had the onions on hand and I thank the stars yet again for my fabulous herb garden, which despite the chill is still lovely and verdant.

Eating onions like candy? She's lost it. Oh, but listen and let me woo you. They are just slightly caramelized so they are subtly sweet while the dijon mustard and lemon gives them a hint of tangy-ness. I love the technique of leaving them joined at the bottom so they fan out really pretty on the plate. They are soft and silky smooth with the occasional crunch of a particularly toasty bit. I literally whipped this up at the very last minute and it came together so fast. I do believe that these will be gracing the table here at Thanksgiving.

Tremendous thanks to Kelly from Baking with the Boys for choosing this recipe. I don't think I would have looked twice at it otherwise and I would have been missing out on something so simple and yet so elegant.

If you yourself would like to see exactly how easy, simple and tasty these Herb Roasted Onions are, you can find the recipe on the Food Network site here, or in Ina Garten's book, Barefoot Contessa at Home, page 156. To join the BB community or to see what all the others did with this, please visit the the Barefoot Bloggers site.

Marbled Chocolate Orange Sour Cream Pound Cake (and thanks!)

2008-11-12T21:00:00.027-05:00

This sad, sad little slice is the one that almost got away. I almost forgot to take a picture of this test sample it before applying it directly to my hips. (Hello, it IS called pound cake for a reason.)

"Obligation baking" forced me into the kitchen last night to whip up something for a school event this morning that I promised I'd send something in for last week; last week before I became congested nasal ditsy zombie girl. (My illness is/was a sinus infection, by the way. I got some super duper antibiotics today - more on that later - and I’m hoping they work fast. Thanks for all your well wishes! They really helped brighten my soggy spirits!)

Back to drool. This is my go-to recipe when I need something easy, fast and fabulous. I almost always have all the ingredients on hand and I can add in different flavors or mix-ins so that it has a different spin every time.

Last night I decided to do orange. I’ve never made one this way, but I do love those chocolate orange slammer thingies that come out at Christmas; you know it looks like an orange made out of chocolate, where you whomp it on the table and all the sections of “orange” come falling out into individual slices of deliciousness? Mmmm. (Just for you, right now I googled “orange whack chocolate foil” and lo and behold: these are Terry’s Chocolate Oranges. Look for them on your grocer’s shelves soon. The Dark Chocolate ROCKS!)

But I digress. But just so you know, in my book, Orange + Chocolate = YUM.

~~Excavating~~ Digging in the back of the fridge for the sour cream part of the program, I passed a ~~huge vat~~ carton of Fat-Free Vanilla Yogurt that a friend had given me and was yet unopened. After going to a lecture the other night by She/He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named-Until-I-Write-The-Post, I was inspired to swap out half the sour cream with the yogurt. This is not unusual, as I usually do most of my recipes using the guinea pig method: I deliver the results to the unsuspecting victims and wait for feedback that way. So far, so good.

As for this cake? I loved it. LOVED. IT. I am so making this one again, as there were no leftovers to gorge myself on since I sent it off to school. Of course, as you saw in the pitiful photo, I did officially have to test it, just in case, and of course I did it for You. You, so I could faithfully report my findings and so You could see the photos. I don't mind. You're worth it.

The ironic part of the official testing part all goes back to being sick. I got sick right at the time that I had my regular physical scheduled for, which was today. The Good: one co-pay (yes!), The Bad: you know how you're not supposed to eat or drink anything before a physical? Like how they call and give you the drill (say it with me now): "Nothing to eat or drink after midnight the day of your appointment except for dry toast and black coffee" and I'm thinking who the hell eats dry toast and black coffee on a good day? Um, remember how I said I was whipping this decadence up last night? (You know where I'm going with this, don't you?) Picture me as a rabid wolverine: snarfing down my test sample(s) at 11:55 pm, chugging milk straight out of the jug to go along with it, crumbs flying everywhere - I think I even got it in my hair. I didn't care. Man it was sooooo good. And oh yeah, the yogurt thing? Couldn't tell the difference at all. I took samples from everywhere, just to be sure, just for You.

As for the physical (thanks for asking), well.... hmm. I've done the weight/scale thing two different ways in the past: 1) I tell the nurse that I am wearing 10 pound shoes (each), or 2) I do it like we did it at Weight Watchers: you've waited in line for 20 minutes and finally it's your turn to be weighed, electronically, to the ounce. You step up to the counter, (hello, how are you, fine) give them your papers, casually approach the scale, and since you don't want to hold up the rest of the line, BAM! you whip into a frenzy, frantically stripping down to almost naked in the middle of the place, taking off your shoes, socks, belt, jewelry, watch, earrings, sunglasses, ballcap, hair clip, while at the same time emptying your pockets of keys, phone, tissues, gum and Splenda packets, dumping them all on the floor in a heap, making sure you went potty right before it was your turn to jump on the scale and drop most of your dignity (hold my place in line, 'kay? I'll be right back), exhaling deeply while sucking in your gut at the same time, and holding it all in place before stepping up on the platform, praying they'd get the measurement before you passed out from not breathing. I had on 10 pound shoes today. It was too damn cold to go thru all that work, when I know I well deserved whatever the evil thing had to say.

After all that, in case you are inspired to try this creation, here's the recipe. I don’t know where I got my original one from, but I did find its maternal grandparents on the Nestlé’s site. Enjoy.

Marbled Chocolate Orange Sour Cream Pound Cake
Adapted from Nestlé’s recipe found here

Ingredients:

1 cup (6 oz.) Nestlé Semi-Sweet Chocolate Morsels (I used Ghirardelli 60% Cacao chips)
1 pkg. (18.25 oz.) yellow cake mix
4 large eggs
1 cup sour cream (I used ½ cup sour cream and ½ cup fat-free vanilla yogurt)
1 cup water
3/4 cup vegetable oil
3/4 cup granulated sugar
1 tsp. orange extract (or insert other extract flavor here. It’s good without any extras too.)
Powdered sugar for dusting (optional)

Directions:
Position rack in center of oven. Preheat oven to 375° F. Spray 10 inch/12 cup Bundt or tube pan with cooking spray or Baker’s Joy spray.

Microwave morsels in medium, uncovered, microwave-safe bowl on HIGH (100%) power for 30 seconds; Stir to blend. Morsels may retain some of their original shape. If necessary, microwave at additional 10 to 15-second intervals, stirring just until morsels are melted. Set aside.

Combine cake mix, eggs, sour cream, vegetable oil, water, granulated sugar and extract (if using) in a large mixing bowl. With an electric mixer, beat on low speed until moistened. Beat on high speed for 2 minutes.

Spoon 2 cups of batter into the bowl with the melted chocolate. Use the mixer and completely mix the batter with the chocolate to make chocolate batter. You now have two bowls of batter: one chocolate and one yellow. Spoon batters into prepared pan, alternating/layering them, beginning and ending with yellow batter. I usually get just one layer of chocolate sandwiched in between the 2 yellow, but sometime I can slip in a small chocolate one as well.

Bake for 55 minutes or until wooden toothpick (I use a bamboo skewer) inserted in cake comes out with only a few crumbs sticking to it. (Very “clean” toothpicks sometimes equal an over-dry or over done cake.) Cool completely in pan. (Yes, completely). Unmold onto either cutting board or serving platter. This cake needs to be refrigerated overnight in order to create beautiful, clean slices. If you have a good quality electric knife that works great! Slice and serve as desired: chilled, room temperature or warmed slightly in microwave. Optional: dust with powdered sugar before serving.

Variations:
You could add peppermint extract, lemon extract (and/or use a lemon cake mix), you could do chocolate cake mix with chocolaty swirl (I’d bump up the quantity of chips for this one), pecans; the list is endless.

TWD: Kugelhopf (and a Kold)

2008-11-11T13:11:00.005-05:00

For your consideration: Rugelach from Baking: From My Home to Yours by Dorie Greenspan, pages 61 – 63 featured this week on Tuesdays with Dorrie.

This will be a short and sweet post – I have a head cold (or who the heck knows, it might be wicked allergies) and a major deadline for work – not the most conducive situation for pithy, entertaining blogging. I hope you will please also forgive me for not visiting your fab blogs of late – again, crazy busy, super congested and foggy headed, but I’ll be pouring over every loving detail soon, I promise. For now, let’s just say that Nyquil, Afrin and Kleenex (with Aloe) are my three BFF’s for now. (The way I’m going thru them, here’s an insider tip – buy stock in Kleenex.) Last night I DID manage to take a break and went someplace fun and totally foodie. I’ll share all the juicy details with you soon!

Back to TWD: this Kugelhopf was fairly straight forward, although the prep time was quite long. This is an all day affair or a 2 day-er if you pop it in the fridge overnight. I used a Bundt pan and my Kitchenaid stand mixer. It took forever (forever!) to rise to the top of the pan – I think I gave up at 4 or 5 hours and threw it in the oven and it all turned out swell. I sent it to work with my DH – they gave it rave reviews. Personally, I'm saving my calorie allotment for each day for chocolate, plus raisins in stuff isn’t my favorite.

Thanks to Yolanda of The All-Purpose Girl for choosing this recipe. To see what all the other TWDers did with this recipe, check out the blogroll here. If you'd like to try making Dorie’s version of Kugelhopf for yourself, you can find the recipe on our hostess’s blog, or in Dorie Greenspan's Baking: From My Home to Yours.

Random Image

2008-11-07T21:55:00.001-05:00

This tickled my fancy. Smoked pork, anyone? What about pork butt?

Class Feast!

2008-11-06T00:06:00.002-05:00

My son’s kindergarten class had a Feast on Monday, sort of a warm-up to Thanksgiving if you will. Everyone brought something: I was carb girl. (and then some.)

My instructions were to bring authentic, traditional-like-the-pilgrims-had dishes, but for some reason this kept echoing through my head…..

Lightning McQueen: "Alright, Luigi, give me the best set of blackwalls you've got."
Luigi: "No! No, no, no. You don't know what you want. Luigi know what you want. Blackwall tires. They blend into the pavement. But a this... whitewall tires! They say, 'Look at me! Here I am! Love me.'"
Lightning: "Alright, you're the expert."

from the Disney/Pixar Film "Cars"

My slightly off the white-wall offerings were (and forgive the photos, I barely remembered to take any at all!):

Buttery Rice with Vermicelli

(topped with buttery toasted pine nuts, mmmmmm....)

yes, I did scrub it and then soak it for 3 hours...
Apple Sage Cranberry Dressing
with fresh sage from my herb garden and apples from last weekend

Corn Pudding
(They totally snarfed this one up!)
and 10 Minute (homemade) Applesauce
(again, with fresh apples from the orchards - feel free to omit the brandy like I did here, but I've made it before with, and oooh, it's gooooooooood!)

Better than a Ferrari, eh? ;)

TWD: Rugelach

2008-11-04T11:52:00.007-05:00

For your consideration: Rugelach from Baking: From My Home to Yours by Dorie Greenspan, pages 150-151 featured this week on Tuesdays with Dorrie.

For my rugelach, I used Sweet Potato Butter (with Honey) that I picked up during last week’s apple orchard/farm stand trek to the North Georgia Mountains (post to follow – yes I’m behind… again). Since I’m not a big fan of cooked raisins, I simply left those out.

I followed the recipe and did the radial/pizza wedge method described in Dorie’s book first. Disaster. If you want to try this particular method, use LOTS of flour to dust the counter, don’t roll the dough too thin and work very quickly so that your dough doesn’t warm up too much. I had to use my handy dandy offset spatula once again (it’s quickly becoming one of my top 5 favorite utensils, previously relegated to the bottom strata of one of my drawers) to scrape them each off the counter, jimmying them up with an edge of flour. My chunkies were too chunky and didn’t cut well with the pizza cutter and the dough tore up a little.

For the second half of the dough I decided to actually go look at the TWD P&Q area for this recipe. (No, I have no idea – maybe Posts and Questions? Mind your P's & Q's?) EVERYONE had a grand time with these and nobody’s fused to the counter like mine did. I did check out one of the links posted there that sent me to Martha’s website where she had a video of 2 gals making these for their bakery. They did the jellyroll pinwheel thing. Hey, if it works for Martha, it works for me. Well, sort of. My dough didn’t stick to the counter this time, having learned that lesson, and I also made them on my non-stick silicone baking mat. They were sort of crumbly anyway, but they did look reasonably better than the pseudo-crescents however. I dusted them with Turbinado sugar, maybe too much sugar though because it got runny and caramelized all over the baking sheet.

I liked this recipe and these tasted amazingly good. I'm sharing my cook's notes/trial and errors with you so you can learn from my experiences. I’m just frustrated with myself for not fully mastering the execution of it. If attempted it a few more times, I might get the technique right. These tasted great but looked less than beautiful. I took them to school and once I talked everyone past their homeliness, they got rave reviews.

Thanks to Piggy of Piggy’s Cooking Journal for choosing this recipe. To see what all the other TWDers did with this recipe, check out the blogroll here. If you'd like to try making Dorie’s Chocolate-Chocolate Cupcakes for yourself, you can find the recipe on our hostesses blog, or in Dorie Greenspan's Baking: From My Home to Yours.

POSTSCRIPT:
Do not wait until the last minute to make next week's TWD.

It takes HOURS / DAYS. Please read the recipe completely, and a Bundt pan works fine.

Awardz!

2008-11-02T22:52:00.009-05:00

Wow, you all have been busy checking me out! I'm so thrilled that you like what you see! Thank you, thank you, thank you!

I've gotten 3 awards that I am Sooooo proud of AND that I also get to pass along. Yay!

I'm thrilled down to my toes to be the recipient of the "I'm a Chocoholic Award" from The Blonde Duck at A Duck in Her Pond, because yes, I am a Chocoholic, thank you very much. You must visit the Blonde's ultra cool blog. Not only is she ultra blonde and ultra beautiful, she's one heck of a writer and cook. Drop by today!

I’d like to pass this on to:
1. Bridgett of La Bella Cook
2. Barbara of Barbara Bakes
3. Nancy of The Dogs Eat the Crumbs
4. Nancy of A Recipe a Day
5. Lisa of Lisa is a Baker
6. Lisa of The Cutting Edge of Ordinary
7. and Cult Jam (just kidding on this last one – it’s an 80’s joke, son.)

I also received the Kreative Blogger Award from the lovely and talented Bridgett of La Bella Cook. She blends both sweet and savory delights with a splash of history tossed in for spice from time to time.

Here are some other lovely and talented ladies:
1. Cathy of The Tortefeasor
2. Katrina of Baking and Boys!
3. Di of Di’s Kitchen Notebook
4. Amanda of Amanda’s Cookin’
5. Charmain of Christie’s Corner
6. April Marie Claire at Girl Japan

I also received the tres stylish Arte y pico award* from Lisa over at Lisa is a Baker, and oh, boy is she ever. In addition to creating some fab food, she absolutely cracks me up – you’ll love her blog and her great sense of humor! Go check out her tempting yummies and commentary/photos of marching bands, Jan Brady and Grace Kelly posthaste!

Passing this back on to some of my favorite blog eye candy:
1. Clara at I(heart) cuppycakes and her equally fabulous other blog
2. I (heart) food 4 thought
3. The Food Librarian at (yeah) The Food Librarian
4. Maria of Two Peas and Their Pod
5. Teanna at Spork or Foon?

Many, many thanks to those of you who've stumbled upon my little blog. I appreciate all your comments and your encouragement!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
*Here's the scoop on the Arte y pico award, and its rules--but I won’t turn you in if you don't play--- no need to feel the burden of a 'chain letter', but if you do, be sure to mention the origin of the award (details below!)

This award was created in Uruguay by a fellow blogger who makes dolls exclusively from recycled materials. Her blog can be reached by clicking here.

Pick 5 blogs that you consider deserve this award, creativity, design, interesting material, and also contributes to the blogger community, no matter of language.

Advertise name of the author and also a link to his or her blog to be visited by everyoneEach award-winner, has to show the award and put the name and link to the blog that has given her or him the award itself.

Award-winner and the one who has given the prize to show the link of “Arte y pico” blog, so everyone will know the origin of this award.

Share these rules."

Alchemy

2008-10-31T12:57:00.017-04:00

In celebration of Halloween, I'm going to share with you a very secret and very complex recipe. Here is my son, cradling the precious ingredients in the palm of his hand.

This pairing takes the unique and distinctive flavors of two very rare ingredients and upon combining them into one, creates a taste explosion in your mouth and (get this) makes you imagine the presence of another totally absent ingredient – Chocolate! {{Spooky!}}

Here’s the recipe:

1 handful of candy corn

1 handful of salted peanuts

Directions: Combine in the palm of your hand and eat, just like that.

Now tell me if this doesn’t taste EXACTLY like a Baby Ruth bar. Yes, I know you're jumping up from your computer right now to go and check this out. Go ahead, I’ll wait. (insert humming of Jepoardy theme song here)

SEE??? Or am I just crazy, wanting to create chocolate out of thin air? Is this modern day alchemy? Oh ho ho yeah. Merlin had it all wrong: who wants to convert lead into gold when you can create CHOCOLATE! ........ Mwahh ha ha ha ha!

Happy Halloween!

Daring Baker's October Challenge: Pizza Dough!

2008-10-29T00:06:00.003-04:00

This month's Challenge was “Pizza Napoletana” from Peter Reinhart's “The Bread Baker's Apprentice”. You had to film or photograph your tossing attempt and you needed to use both a “sauce” (or something otherwise spreadable) and “toppings”.

I would NEVER have made this without the DBers, much less video taped myself doing it! Please excuse my disaster of a kitchen and remember that the camera makes you look at least 10 20 pounds heavier than you actually are.

What a riot!

My variations were

Pizza 1: Apple with Caramelized Onion, Walnuts and Cheddar on a dough primed with Basil Flavored Olive Oil. (In hindsight, I should have sauteed/swished the onions in balsamic vinegar before putting them on the pizza. One bite without and I knew something was missing. I spritzed it on afterwards and it made it so much better.).

Pizza 2: Blue Cheese with Toasted Pine Nuts and Caramelized Onions on a spread of Mashed Roasted Garlic. Oh my. Sooooo good!

Cook’s Notes:
-I made the “regular” dough, aka: not the gluten-free one
-I used my stand mixer to combine the ingredients and knead the dough.
-I froze 4 of the 6 balls of dough for a later date
-I used an offset spatula to get the pizza off the cookie sheet and onto the pizza stone and then again to shimmy it off the stone and onto the cutting board
-I will use flour next time as the ballbearing / dough movement vehicle – no question. I forgot how I don’t really care for the gritty feeling of the cornmeal.

These pizzas were so wonderfully good - I can't wait to make good use of the stash of dough in my freezer and maybe get the kids into the act!

Thanks to Rosa from Rosa's Yummy Yums for selecting this month’s Daring Baker Challenge. You can find the complete recipe for the pizza dough on her site.

To see what all the other DBer’s did, you can find the blogroll here and if you’d like to join the monthly party, info about that can be found on that page as well.

TWD: (Shama Lama Ding Dong) Chocolate Chocolate Cupcakes

2008-10-28T00:27:00.030-04:00

If I searched,

This whole wide world,

I'd never never never, find me a girl,

Who'd love me, The way that you do.

Cause You're my Shama Lama, Rama Rama Rama Ding Dong

Baby, you put the ooh mou mou oh oh oh oh,

back into my smile, child

That is why,
That is why,

You are my sugar dee doo doo, yeah.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
(Can't name that tune? It's from "Animal House". Click here to sing along :D )

So Hit It: Here are Dorie's Chocolate-Chocolate Cupcakes but twisted up a bit. I used a rounded 1/4 cup of cocoa powder, added a teaspoon of instant coffee and changed out the buttermilk for sour cream. And The Filling. Oh the filling! The filling is the Hostess Ding Dong pure sugary bliss filling found here. I also used Nutella in some of them (Nutella! Where have you been all my life??? But that's another post.)

Thanks to Clara of I Heart Food4Thought for choosing this recipe. To see what all the other TWDers did with this recipe, check out the blogroll here. If you'd like to try making Dorie’s Chocolate-Chocolate Cupcakes for yourself, you can find the recipe on our hostesses blog, or in Dorie Greenspan's Baking: From My Home to Yours.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

On another note, Tayna from Sunday Baker is celebrating her one year blogaversary this week with all kinds of fun things, including some giveaways, fun discussions, lots of recipes and more. Please check out her blog and if you want to be entered in her drawing, just leave her a comment. It's that simple. Be sure to mention me in the comment so I can get an extra entry in the drawing! ;) (You never know, if I win the cookbook (Taste of Home's Best Loved Cookies and Bars), you just might get a little something from me in return!) Check out this blog, you won't be sorry!

Guess Whooooo We Saw Tonight???

2008-10-27T00:27:00.002-04:00

Wooo HOOOOOOO!
Tulip is back!

Thanks for all your wishes!

New Apron and a Question for You

2008-10-26T11:21:00.009-04:00

I've got a new apron! I love it! It's so girly and cute. I love the scalloped edges and that it's made of oil cloth. I can wipe up the inevitable splatters really easily and it has a really nice feeling about it. I got it on Ebay so there was no touchy-feely before I bought it, but I was surprised that it was much higher quality than I expected. Happy girl, happy dance!

Question: Do you wear one, and if so what does YOUR apron look like? Do tell!

Cheater’s Apple Cake

2008-10-24T14:10:00.007-04:00

Yes, I admit it. I take shortcuts. I do. I melt chocolate in the microwave, I've used store-bought pre-chopped mirepoix (carrots, onions and celery) and (gasp!) I occasionally use boxed cake mix in lieu of scratch cakes.

Before we left for New York, I had a ton of apples to use up. (I was afraid to come home to this if I didn’t). I’d recently seen a whole crop of apple cake recipes (tee hee – crop, apples) pop up on the blogosphere in recent weeks and knew that this was the final destination for mine.

Culling thru all the different recipes, nothing jumped out at me saying:

I AM EASY. MAKE ME AND USE UP ALL YOUR APPLES TONIGHT, DO NOT WASTE FOOD, AND BY THE WAY YOU STILL HAVE A LOT OF LAUNDRY AND PACKING TO DO AND WHERE IN THE WORLD ARE ALL YOUR TRAVEL SIZE LOTIONS AND POTIONS SO THAT AIRPORT SECURITY DOESN’T LOSE THEIR MINDS AND HAVE TO DO A FULL PAT DOWN ON YOU, EVEN THOUGH YOUR UNDERWIRE THAT LIFTS AND SEPARATES WILL STILL MAKE YOU RING LIKE A 5 ALARM FIRE, SLOW DOWN THE LINE AND THEN YOU’LL GET HATEFUL LOOKS FROM THE GRAND POOBAH LA DE DAH MEDALLION MEMBERS WHO HAVE NOW MISSED THEIR FLIGHT SITTING IN FIRST CLASS WITH FREE PEANUTS AND HEADPHONES BECAUSE OF YOU AND THEY DON’T CARE ABOUT APPLE CAKE AND IF YOU MAKE IT CAN YOU SEND IT INTO WORK WITH DH SO THAT IT DOESN’T GO BAD AND THAT THEY WILL THEY EAT IT AND LIKE IT AND NOT MOCK YOU IN FRONT OF THEIR INFLUENTIAL FRIENDS.

Nope, hard to believe but I didn’t see anything like that.

So, what I did was… I cheated. and kept my fingers crossed. I used a yellow cake mix and then added yummy things to it.

Put me on double secret probation if you need to, but I refuse a foodie pat down. It goes without saying that the underwire is non-negotiable - I’ll nip you with my baby nail clippers if you try anything funny.

Cheater’s Apple Cake

Tube cake pan or bundt pan
Baker’s Joy spray (yes, another vice) or Pam cooking spray

Ingredients:
1 box yellow cake mix
Eggs, oil and water per box directions
6 apples, peeled, seeded/cored and chopped
Zest and juice of one orange (yes, it was languishing on the counter)
1 tablespoon cinnamon
Pinch cardamom (optional)
1/4" cup brown sugar, packed

Pre heat oven as described on cake mix.

In a large bowl, combine the apples with the orange zest, orange juice, cinnamon, sugar and cardamom (if using). Leave it to macerate (ohh, big word) while you start on the cake.

Open the box of cake mix. Clip off any Box Tops for Education and throw in your junk drawer so that when your kid comes home telling you about the school contest du jour, that you can toss a couple his way and not be wracked with guilt.

Prepare the cake mix per box directions.

Pour ½ of the cake batter into a greased tube pan or bundt pan. Take the apple mixture and gently spoon it over the batter. Pour the remainder of the batter over the apples. Gently thump the pan on the counter a few times to get out any air bubbles.

Bake as directed on package or until center is set. Be sure to test after required time as this may take longer to finish due to the apple content. I like to use a bamboo skewer to test for doneness.

Cool for 15 minute before removing from pan. Finish cooling on wire rack.

White Chocolate Rice Krispie Treats

2008-10-22T15:27:00.007-04:00

I was in the mood for a Halloweenie, fallish treat. What says that better than Rice Krispie Treats? Here's a grown up version that is sure to get you in the mood.

White Chocolate Rice Krispie Treats
Makes 20-50 treats

Adapted from David Lebovitz and Kellogg's original recipe

3 tablespoons (45g) salted butter
3 1/2 ounces (100g) white chocolate, finely chopped
1 cup (100g) candied peanuts (I used salted, honey roast peanuts)
10 ounce (300gr) bag marshmallows, snipped in half
6 cups (200g) Rice Krispies

1. Spray or lightly-oil a 13 x 9-inch (approx 30 x 22cm) rectangular pan.
2. In a large saucepan, melt the butter over low heat. Add the white chocolate and stir until melted.
3. Add the marshmallows and stir constantly over the heat until completely melted. (If they start to scorch on the bottom, remove from heat and continue to stir, placing the pan back on the heat occasionally, and stirring until smooth.
4. Remove from heat and add the candied peanuts and Rick Krispies until well combined. A rubber spatula or flexible pastry scraper works best. I used salad tongs and did the fluffing method to stop the rice krispies for getting smashed and the hot marshmallow from burning my fingers.
5. Scrape into the prepared pan and smooth the top. Let cool.
Serving and storage: Cut into neat bars or squares with a sharp knife. These are best enjoyed the day they're made, although they can be covered snugly with a sheet of aluminum foil and stored at room temperature for 2 to 3 days longer.

Cooks Note:
DO NOT top with milk chocolate drizzle like I did on these in the pictures. Totally changes the flavor and the white chocolate part is shunted to the background :(

TWD: Pumpkin Muffins

2008-10-21T10:04:00.003-04:00

For your consideration: Pumpkin Muffins from Baking: From My Home to Yours by Dorie Greenspan, page 13, featured this week on Tuesdays with Dorrie.

I made 2 variations of the recipe - the basic batter was the same for each, I just changed up the mix-ins. I used chopped pecans in the batter and smushed a few walnut halves on the top for both. The things I changed were that I substituted cranberry "raisins" (aka: craisins) for the regular raisins the recipe called for and for the other variation, I swapped in chopped dates. The craisin muffins were much better recieved than the date ones.

I wasn't quite sure what to expect from this recipe - I guess I was thinking this would be more pumpkin bread-ish and just manifesting itself in muffin form. These had a much different texture than the pumpkin bread I'm familiar with: this was much denser and not as sweet. I was looking for a bolder pumpkin flavor, this one was rather subtle. If that's the way you like yours, then this recipe is right up your alley.

Thanks to Kelly of Sounding My Barbaric Gulp for choosing this recipe. To see what all the other TWDers did with this recipe, check out the blogroll here. If you'd like to try making Dorie’s Pumpkin Muffins for yourself, you can find the recipe on our hostesses blog, or in Dorie Greenspan's Baking: From My Home to Yours.

La La La-sagna

2008-10-20T17:20:00.017-04:00

EDIT: Woooh! This recipe has been featured on Key Ingredient!

I've been seriously craving lasagna. Rich ooey gooey layers of cheese, pasta and meat sauce, nice and bubbly hot with the cheese strands stretching tenaciously from plate to fork. So I wanted lasagna, but without the extra step of boiling the noodles first and then layering the hot, eel-like strips in the pan. My kitcken was over 80 degrees(!) and I wasn't in the mood to deal with another hot pot - I get cranky when I'm hot and that's definitely not a good thing. I'd bought some of the Ronzoni Oven-Ready Lasagna noodles as test to see if they made life any easier or if they were destined to become one of those things that sounds better than it is.

I made up some really quick sauce, morphed several recipes and took a little creative license to come up with the one below. The end result? Pretty darn good! I was surprised to see that the noodles did expand as advertised and that they "cooked" up nicely - not mushy and not hard. I'll use these again since dinner time around here always seems to sneak up on me AND the kids all ate it. Winner.

Lasagna

Ingredients:
12 pieces oven ready lasagna noodles, uncooked and unsoaked (I used Ronzoni)
1 ½ lb. ground beef
1 large onion, sliced
4 cloves garlic
3 cups (about 28-oz. jar) spaghetti sauce
4 medium diced tomatoes (or 1 can diced)
2 Tablespoons tomato paste
1 teaspoon dried basil
1 teaspoon dried oregano
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon sugar (optional)
1/4 teaspoon ground black pepper
4 cups (2 lb.) ricotta cheese
2 eggs, slightly beaten
2 cups (8 oz.) shredded mozzarella cheese, divided
1/4 cup grated Parmesan cheese
1 tablespoon chopped fresh parsley

Instructions:
1. Heat oven to 350°F.

2. In large skillet, cook meat and onions until meat is browned and onions are soft. Add garlic. Stir in spaghetti sauce, diced tomatoes, tomato paste, basil, oregano, salt and sugar (to taste); simmer 20 minutes on low heat, stirring occasionally.

3. In large bowl, stir together ricotta cheese, eggs, 1-1/2 cups mozzarella cheese, Parmesan cheese, parsley and pepper.

4. Spread about 1/3 cup meat sauce on bottom of 13 x 9 x 2-inch glass baking dish. Arrange 3 pasta pieces widthwise over sauce. Pieces should not overlap or touch side of pan since they will expand when baked. Spread one-third cheese mixture over pasta; spread with about 3/4 cup meat sauce, covering pasta completely.

5. Repeat layers TWICE more, beginning and ending with pasta. Top with remaining meat sauce, covering pasta completely; sprinkle with remaining 1/2 cup mozzarella cheese and additional Parmesan cheese, if desired. Cover with foil.

6. Bake 30 minutes or until hot and bubbly. Remove foil; bake about 10-15 minutes longer, or until hot and bubbly. Let stand 5 minutes before cutting. 10 to 12 servings.

La-la-lasagna

I've been seriously craving lasagna. Rich ooey gooey layers ...

See La-la-lasagna on Key Ingredient.

My Little Town

2008-10-19T23:41:00.004-04:00

Recipes and food to come tomorrow. We were away at a swim meet all weekend, so in the interim, I thought you'd enjoy savoring a couple of quick snaps of my little hometown in upstate New York. We visited last weeked during our whirlwind tour, and yes, the sky and trees really were that brilliantly colored.
Enjoy the eye candy~

Tulip Anderson

2008-10-18T00:03:00.023-04:00

We have an owl. It’s name is Tulip Anderson. Why? Well, when we went to name it, both Big Kids (age 5 at the time) blurted out their choice simultaneously. Anderson! Tulip! One kid said it's name should be "tulip" because it has a tulip-like marking on it's face. Ok, I'll buy that. As for Anderson - I have no idea why. When questioned, the kid doesn't know why either, he says it just popped out of his mouth. So, there you go - spontaneous thought and compromise at it's finest.

World, meet Tulip Anderson.

Tulip is a red phase Eastern Screech Owl that came with the house. We bought our house with a number of fine amenities, including but not limited to a resident owl. I can watch Tulip's box from the window in the study while I work on the computer.

We're not 100% sure of his/her gender. I'm personally convinced that she's a girl due to the fact that baby owlet faces peep out of the little hole in the springtime. We all refer to her as a "him" for some odd reason though.

He (see?) usually disappears in the spring after the owlets are hatched and ready for takeoff, and he comes back when the weather gets cool again. Last year, Tulip didn't show up until Christmas. We were scared because this past spring we found a large, dead bird of prey in the bushes near his tree. It was face down and partially covered with leaves so we couldn't tell if it was Tulip or not. DH says never touch a dead bird, so we scooped it up with a shovel and buried it in the woods. We were all a little sad in case our friend was gone for good.

I was so surprised and HAPPY when I saw Tulip's little face peeking out at me a few weeks ago! We saw him on and off for about a week... and then... The Squatter moved in. My first clue was when I noticed something odd - there was a little green leaf poking out of the owl box hole. Hmm, curious. Then more greenery. Double hmm. Then one day the Messy One shouts "Hey, look! There's a squirrel going into in Tulip's nest!" Hmmh. How did he get past the metal shields? Time to clean house.

DH is in charge of all that natureish wildlife type of stuff, so it's his job to de-squirrel the owl box. He's an animal husbandry kind of guy anyway, in fact he was in 4-H with Holly Hunter (yes, that Holly Hunter) way back when and they were in a chicken judging contest together. What's involved in a chicken judging contest you might ask? Among other things, feeling it's butt bones to see if it has good egg laying potential. Predictably we have a joke around here about chicken butts. Yes, I know it's lame, but it's a location joke: you have to be there to think it's funny. OK, getting back on track (did I mention I think I'm ADD?).

My Dear Husband(ry guy) and the kids get ready to clean out the owl box and jettison the squirrel nest. DH gets on a ladder with a hoe and starts opening the box.

I'm in the house standing at the study window, camera in one hand and phone in the other, ready to call 911 if DH falls off the ladder. Now I know you're thinking "Oh ye of little faith". Yep, that's me, but I made it to all the way up to Senior Girl Scout and my motto is Be Prepared (and document it on film.) No chicken ifs ands or butts here.

Turns out I should have been more worried about a crazed squirrel attack. Indubitably.

Mr. Squirrel came home to find an eviction notice and his naugahyde loveseat and black & white TV on the curb. What a racket he made! All I could picture was those old cartoons where the squirrel is so pissed off at someone that he starts going "aiaiaiaia aiaiaiai" and starts shaking its fist at the offending person. The squirrel wasn’t happy about being ousted, but he was trespassing. I guess he didn't read the sign. There are plenty of trees and several bazillion acorns around here so I'm pretty confident that he's now shacked up with some little hottie squirrel and is getting ready to chill out for the winter in his new digs.

We haven't seen Tulip since we first became aware of the problem and spotted the suspicious greenery. I hope he comes back to his nice clean house soon.

Keep your talons crossed.

Mmmmmm. Garlic.

2008-10-15T19:57:00.015-04:00

I love garlic. I don’t think I could ever be a vampire or hang out with one, unless someone like Edward actually came along and if he had an aversion to garlic, then maybe, just maybe, I’d consider it.

We went to Harry’s/Whole Foods to get some items and I was absolutely transfixed with the garlic there – a mountain of pearly lumps covered with lovely white papery skin, just lying there, glowing with that oh so subtle luster, showing no hint of the exquisite deliciousness inside waiting to be coaxed out. (That sounds almost wicked, doesn’t it? Indeed. :>)

Here’s how to roast and toast your way to your own small mound of lusciousness.

Roasted Garlic

1. Peel off the outermost layers of the garlic head skin, but leave the paper on the individual cloves. You just want to peel off all the excess, but leave the head itself intact.
2. Carefully cut the tops off each of the individual cloves of garlic, just enough to let the olive oil soak in (coming next step) and to be able to squeeze the roasty toasty clove out after cooking. You might want to use a pot holder to hold the garlic while cutting to reduce the need for a trip to the ER if the knife slips. Some of these little guys can be slightly challenging to behead.
3. After the tops have been trimmed, place the garlic heads in a cupcake/muffin pan. This keeps them upright and the oil in one place.
4. Pour about 1 teaspoon of olive oil into the palm of your hand and rub the garlic head around in it until it’s well coated, working the oil down into the little creases and crevices.
5. After the initial oil application put the head back into the muffin tin and pour another teaspoon of oil on top, letting it soak into the cut off tops and down into the clove.
6. Cover each one individually with aluminum foil. Bake for 30 minutes. The cloves should be browned and soft when done.
7. Cool to touch and then gently squeeze the clove until the meat pops up out of the outside shell. You may need to use a small knife or scissor to free any reluctant cloves.

8. Spread these golden jewels on crusty bread, mash slightly and serve over pasta, or {evil grin} eat them plain, warm from the oven. Mmwwaahahaha!

TWD: Lenox Almond Biscotti

2008-10-14T10:08:00.028-04:00

For your consideration: Lenox Almond Biscotti from Baking: From My Home to Yours by Dorie Greenspan, pages 141-143, featured this week on Tuesdays with Dorrie.

This was supposed to have been almond biscotti, but while I was in NY I had a monstrously large almond biscotti purchased from a cute little roadside farm stand, and I didn’t have the taste for more. I decided to take advantage of the fall flavors and do a Pumpkin Spice Biscotti instead. I changed the recipe thusly: instead of 1 cup sugar, I did ½ sugar and ½ brown sugar, added 1 tsp. cinnamon, 1 tsp. nutmeg, ½ tsp. ground ginger and ½ tsp. cloves. I did leave the actual almonds in since I wasn’t in the mood to chop up any pecans, which would probably have been better.

I think that substituting the sugar and the fact that I got distracted (again) and walked away from the mixer (oooh, look! shiny metallic object!) and accidentally let the butter beat itself into soup, that this made my “dough” more of a “batter”. There was no “stick-to-your-fingers dough” anywhere near here last night. I had more of a thickish batterish thing going on that I stuck in the freezer for about 30 minutes to firm up. I think this helped somewhat - I shudder to think of what this might have looked like without time in the chiller. As it was, it was rather uni-biscotti/uni-brow looking, sort of like a prom date I once had. (Loooooong story)

The rest of the recipe was swell, although for the second baking, I couldn’t figure out what the heck “stand them up like a marching band” was supposed to mean. A diagram or small photo would have been most helpful. Since our high school didn’t have a marching band (or maybe it did, but I most certainly wasn't in it and that whole time period is a nasty blur anyway: uni-brow, remember?) and since the Tournament of Roses Parade isn't for another 2½ months or so (OMG! WHAT?! ONLY 2½ MONTHS UNTIL NEW YEARS DAY?!) (see, there I go, hyperventilating and getting distracted again - serenity now! serenity now!), I kept them on the baking sheet in the same orientation as they originally baked, but skootched the pieces apart by about an inch so the cut edges would have a chance to get all crispy.

I was surprised that these turned out as well as they did since I’ve never made biscotti before. If I had, maybe I’d know what that whole marching band thing was about and not have to dredge up unpleasant visions of an excessively Neanderthal forehead and an equally ugly tuxedo. (Picture if you will: a black tuxedo with extra wide lapels and a baby blue shirt with massive quantities of ruffles down the front with a dinky bow tie perched delicately at the neck with a uni-brow on top. And no, I am not making this up.) These were great plain (the biscotti, not ape-boy, thank you very much) and I also dunked some in chocolate for a different change of pace (again, definitely NOT Cro-Magnon man, although a dunk in hot wax might have helped him somewhat. Actually, in hindsight, no, it wouldn't have, although he did try. My corsage was bigger than a dinner plate. It was one of those wristlet ones, so my knuckles dragged the ground on that side. I'll bet he felt a special kinship with me at that point) and packaged the rest up to send in to school.

Thanks to Gretchen from Canela & Comino for choosing this recipe. To see what all the other TWDers did with this recipe, check out the blogroll here. If you'd like to try making Lenox Almond Biscotti for yourself, you can find the recipe in Dorie Greenspan's Baking: From My Home to Yours.

The Big Apple and an Award!

2008-10-13T14:17:00.026-04:00

Hi! I'm back! The big secret was that we flew up to New York for a surprise party for my dad's 70th Birthday. I have no idea who in my family actually reads this thing, but didn't want to take any chances on blowing the surprise so I needed to keep it hush-hush. All in all we were there for about 5 days - we decided to add a couple of days to the trip, pull the kids out of school and see some of the fantastic sights that the city has to offer.

This is me and my sister in Battery Park getting ready to take the ferry out to see the Lady herself. I had hoped we'd both get to wear crowns, but since that wasn't an option, I took the torch and here I am lifting my lamp beside the golden door.

The NYC Wine and Food Festival was going on while we were there but everything was sold out and I don't think I could have convinced the kids that seeing Alton Brown, Rachael Ray and Bobby Flay would be more exciting than visiting The Whale at the Museum of Natural History (more about the whale later - I'm personally rather disappointed about the whale). I've got to download all the rest of the pics we took and sort thru them, but I'll share soon.

While I was gone, the lovely and talented Barbara of Barbara Bakes gave me the "E for Excellent" Award! Thanks so much! What a nice surprise for ME to come home to. I in turn, would like to share this Most Excellent Award with some bloggers who I think are pretty neat: Nancy at A Recipe a Day always has recipes that I think my kids will eat; April Marie of Girl Japan offers up a unique perspective on life abroad with social commentary (and food) in the mix; and finally Lisa who lives on The Cutting Edge of Ordinary who generously shares her family and food with all of us.

Chicken Cacciatore “Pronto”

2008-10-13T12:51:00.003-04:00

I went to the library the other day and was relatively surprised to realize that they have a large selection of cookbooks available for checkout. DUH! Cook. Book. Library. Ok, so maybe sometimes I’m a little slow on the uptake folks.

I sat on the floor, happy as a clam perusing the shelves, completely unaffected by the reproachful looks shot at me between the stacks by the librarians. :) One of the books I ended up checking out was The Best of Cooking Light. No Thank You Boy helped me choose Chicken Cacciatore “Pronto” for dinner, sans mushrooms (of course). I traded the thighs for chicken breasts, added some chiffonaded basil and served with store bought gnocchi. For some reason the CL picture is much “browner” than mine, probably because of the mushrooms.

High marks all the way around!

Cornflake Chicken

2008-10-11T09:29:00.004-04:00

So I have this big box of cornflakes left over from the holycraptheseareamazing cookies burning a hole in my pantry (metaphorically speaking, of course). What to do? Cornflake chicken, of course.

Cornflake Chicken

4 boneless, skinless chicken breasts
2 cups Cornflakes, crushed. (I start with about 2 cups and add more as needed. I hate to waste perfectly good flakes.)
1 egg,
Flour for dredging
Vegetable oil for frying

1. Wash and pat dry the chicken breasts.
2. Set up a little 3 part breading station for yourself:
a. Flour. (depending on the meat involved I either use a shallow pie pan or the ol’plastic bag method wherein you coat it shake n’ bake style)
b. Egg wash. Beat one egg with about 3 tablespoons of water in a separate shallow dish.
c. The breading – cornflakes in this case, also in a shallow dish.
3. Go thru the breading process – coat the chicken with flour, dip into the egg wash and then roll it around in the cornflakes, pressing down so that they stick well.
4. Heat the oil in a non-stick pan or cast iron skillet.
5. When the oil is hot, carefully place the chicken breasts in the pan.
6. Allow the chicken to cook at least 4 minutes on each side or until the flakes are golden brown, the chicken is cooked through and juices run clear.

Serve with greenish looking mashed potatoes :)

Quick and Easy Cinnamon Bun Bread

2008-10-09T09:17:00.000-04:00

I’ve been visiting a lot of blogs lately and have been inspired. Here’s the latest baking inspiration from Nicole of Baking Bites: Quick and Easy Cinnamon Bun Bread.

These morsels of delight were oh so good and easier than I thought. Next time I won’t use ALL the icing – it was a little too sweet for me (yeah, it can happen occasionally) but they got rave reviews from the kids, DH and the neighbors. And me too of course. You can find the original recipe on Nicole’s fabulous site here.

No TWD this week and then I'm outta sight

2008-10-07T14:50:00.004-04:00

I would have attempted to make the great looking Caramel-Peanut-Topped Brownie Cake that all the TWDer are making this week, if not for two things: one I'm going out of town tomorrow and am trying to get everything organized and packed all while keeping the house clean (although it does still smell like smoke), and two, which may be more important, my DH discovered my secret stash of peanuts and snarfed them. All. I've been told that football will do that to a man.

Tammy of Wee Treats by Tammy chose this weeks' TWD recipe. To see what all the other TWDers did with this recipe, check out the blogroll here. If you'd like to try making the Caramel-Peanut-Topped Brownie Cake for yourself, you can find the recipe in Dorie Greenspan's Baking: From My Home to Yours.

Outta sight:

I'll be out of the blogosphere until Monday at which time I'll regale you with fascinating tales from our trip. I don't have any experience with pre-dating blog posts, but I'll try and see if they come thru. If not, I'll see you Monday!

stupid stupid stupid

2008-10-06T21:04:00.003-04:00

A man walks down the street,

He says why am I short of attention ... Got a short little span of attention And wo my nights are so long ...

Honey and Peanut Butter Granola Rollas

2008-10-05T15:32:00.003-04:00

Chocolatechic posted this recipe back on September 17, 2008 and I made it pretty much the minute I saw it. Her photos and how-to are the best. Go there for the play by play experience.

This is SO easy and it since it’s a unique shape, fun to eat. The novelty factor was huge in and of itself. Winner.

The Bake Sale

2008-10-03T12:29:00.018-04:00

Wow. I am so behind in my postings. Here are the recipes I made for our school bake sale back in mid-September. I wanted to make some things that appealed more to the teachers than the kids, because, let’s face it, kids will eat anything. Teachers, not so much.

I went trolling around the internet and my google reader to see what I could find that would be good for a bake sale. Here were my criteria:
1. Easy to make
2. Reasonably inexpensive ingredients
3. Easily packaged
4. Not too messy to eat
5. Something worth .25 to .50 cents
6. Something different than the ubiquitous oatmeal or chocolate chip cookies.

After a lot of searching, I came up with 3 recipes.

Here’s the first:
Butterscotch Coconut Drop Cookies
from Recipezaar

These turned out well, but came out much thinner than I anticipated. The cookie was very chewy and even somewhat “flexible” for lack of a better term.

Number 2: Rocky Road Smores/Brownie Muffins

These came from Anna of Cookie Madness. Very nice and a big seller. I toasted the finished product under the broiler for a few minutes to toast up the marshmallows and melt the chocolate a little bit so everything would stay put.

Third: (ready for a mouthful?)

Jumbo Chipotle Chocolate Brownie Muffins with Praline Topping.

I also found this basic recipe and idea on Recipezaar, but I morphed it into a brownie served in individual jumbo sized muffin cups. I added about 1 tsp. of ground chipotle pepper to the batter. I had read in the comments about doubling the topping. I did this and it was way too much for this serving method.

These didn’t photograph well, but they were so good. Just the right amount of pepper to give a teeny bit of heat and interest.

I was exhausted after cooking all day, and my kitchen looked like it had imploded. I had to leave to run hither thither and yon taking kids to activities, so I put up the perishables and left the rest for later. To my amazement, DH beat me home (this in itself is remarkable in that he was home while the sun was still out) AND he cleaned up the mess! Shocked, amazed and oh so grateful. Thanks honey.

I’m not sure how we did at the sale, but my kids were very happy gorging themselves on sweets. The Big Ones even bought some wee gifties for their teachers. Those are two smart cookies, if I do say so myself.

TWD: Creme Brulee

2008-09-30T07:52:00.005-04:00

For your consideration: Crème Brulee from Baking: From My Home to Yours by Dorie Greenspan, page 393, featured this week on Tuesdays with Dorrie.

Simple to make, easy elegance. Breakfast of Champions. I waited until the last minute and made these last night. I just (just) toasted these up and needed to taste test them to be sure they passed muster. I have a butane torch (thanks D!), but haven’t quite figured out how to use it yet. I’m a little freaked out by it and am afraid I’ll scar myself for life, but DH said he’d help me work it out. Since it’s 8:00 am and he’s already left for work, here they are brulee’d under the broiler. Yummy, but way too sweet to eat the whole thing before 8:00 am.

I made a half batch (yes I used 1.5 egg yolks) and made 3 ramekins. I followed an idea from Dorie’s Playing Around cooks notes and made espresso brulees, but didn’t feel like cheesecloth, beans and straining, (oh my) and following the recipe to the letter, so I added a small palmful – maybe about 2 tablespoons – of instant espresso powder to the cream mixture before whisking into the egg mixture. Works for me.

This was a good recipe and the caramelized sugar was crunchy and had nice texture. If I make this again, next time I’ll use less sugar in the custard. I can’t be sure if the added sweetness was because I messed with the recipe and cut it in half, or if this is the way it was intended. The espresso powder really adds an interesting flavor that lingers on the tongue.

Side note: Remind me to test the temperature of my oven and then see if I need to (or if I can) recalibrate it. I think it’s off, as this recipe took longer than I think it should have to cook, just like the Dimply Plum Cake.

Thanks to Mari of Mevrouw Cupcake for choosing this recipe. To see what all the other TWDers did with this recipe, check out the blogroll here. If you'd like to try making Crème Brulee for yourself, you can find the recipe in Dorie Greenspan's Baking: From My Home to Yours.

A Dip for Mr Dennis - Country Pork Spareribs

2008-09-28T13:00:00.003-04:00

Yes, it’s an AB sort of weekend. I wanted to make these country pork ribs on the grill. Typically I do ribs one of several ways. I either par-boil them and then baste with sauce on the grill (like my daddy showed me) or else I’ll brine them. Today was a brine day. Why brine? Visit here for a complete scientific explanation. Alton Brown, King of the Briners had a great visual example of the brining process using Barbie dolls, but I can’t find it online. Anyway, he has an interesting brine for pork in his James Beard award-winning cookbook “I’m Just Here for the Food”. This is a great cookbook that is also a “how-to” and “why-to” of cooking. Can you say SCIENCE?! Along with the recipe, he shares that “Mr. Dennis” is a euphemism for the family pig.

A Dip for Mr. Dennis
Adapted from Alton Brown’s “I’m Just Here for the Food”

Software:
Target cut of pork
1 tablespoon juniper berries
1 tablespoon whole black peppercorns
10 whole cloves
1 ½ cups kosher salt (I cut it by half to ¾)
½ cup molasses

Hardware:
Tea ball or paper coffee filter and string
Medium stockpot
2-gallon plastic bucket

Combine spices in tea ball or tie them securely into a paper coffee filter and place in pot with salt and molasses. Add water and bring to a boil. Remove from heat and cool to room temperature. Remove tea ball and discard the spices; pour the liquid into the bucket and add the meat. Allow the meat to brine for at least 6 hours or as long as 12 hours. Remove the meat from the pan, pat dry and immediately cook as desired.

Since I was only using about 5 large “ribs” I cut the amount of salt way back and marinated for about 2 hours. I rinsed the meat off before cooking as well. Grill over med-high heat until juices run clear. Lip-smackin’ pork goodness.

Daring Bakers, September 2008: Lavash Crackers

2008-09-27T18:01:00.025-04:00

I am now a Daring Baker and this is my first project!

September 2008: The Challenge: Make vegan and/or gluten free Lavash Crackers and create a dip/spread/salsa/relish to accompany it. As chosen by Natalie from Gluten A Go Go, and co-host Shelly, of Musings From the Fishbowl, chose Lavash Crackers from Peter Reinhart's The Bread Baker's Apprentice: Mastering The Art of Extraordinary Bread.

I was a little intimidated by this concept, but that’s the point of Daring Bakers – challenging yourself to do that which has not been attempted before. I assembled all my ingredients and started in. I had read a question from another DB newbie about using her brand new KitchenAid stand mixer to make the dough. Hmmm, if I did that I would miss out on all the kneading action and I wouldn’t be stretching myself and trying new things. Be Daring! I did think however that it that might be interesting to compare the differences between machine kneaded dough and hand kneaded dough, so I did it both ways as an experiment (and you know how I love experiments!)

The first batch of dough I did in the mixer and it was ok. I didn’t think that it got kneaded enough, and when I baked up these batches, I had a lot of air bubbles come thru. As for the “by hand” dough, 10 minutes of kneading was way not enough. 15 minutes was not enough. Turns out 20 minutes worked for me. It’s rather relaxing once you get over watching the clock and I could feel it change texture and morph into something entirely different than when I began.

Since I had plenty of dough I made 4 different types of crackers. For each one I rolled over the toppings with the rolling pin to imbed them into the dough so they wouldn’t flake off.

Rosemary, basil and sea salt.

Hungarian paprika, poppy seed, ground mustard and sea salt,

Plain sea salt (not pictured as it's kind of boring looking)

And a sweet variation: cinnamon sugar (gotta have my magic sprinkles!), slivered almonds and coconut.

I tried using cookie cutters, but the first 3 shrank up so badly, I ceased and desisted. Interesting how those puffed up like little pillows!

Now for the dip. Fun fun fun! I roasted about 6 heads of garlic the other night (which I'll post soon!), knowing I wanted to do something garlicky with the dip. Again, it had to be vegan and/or gluten free. I had a number of homegrown tomatoes gifted to me that needed to be used up before they got funky so I combined the two in my Magic Bullet (love that thing) and pulsed slightly until I got a nice chunky salsa-eque dip. Chiffonade of basil leaves and ooooooooh so yummy. I am quite anti-oxidated right now.

Many thanks to Natalie and Shelly for choosing this gluten free and vegan recipe. To see what all the other DBers did with their Lavash, check out the blogroll here. If you'd like to try making either one of these recipes for yourself, you can find the recipe in Peter Reinhart's The Bread Baker's Apprentice: Mastering The Art of Extraordinary Bread. or see below.

Lavash Crackers

Recipe Reference: The Bread Baker's Apprentice: Mastering The Art of Extraordinary Bread, by Peter Reinhart. Ten Speed Press, Berkeley, CA. Copyright 2001. ISBN-10: 1-58008-268-8, ISBN-13: 978-158008-268-6.

Here's a simple formula for making snappy Armenian-style crackers, perfect for breadbaskets, company and kids...It is similar to the many other Middle Eastern and Northern African flatbreads known by different names, such as mankoush or mannaeesh (Lebanese), barbari (Iranian), khoubiz or khobz (Arabian), aiysh (Egyptian), kesret and mella (Tunisian), pide or pita (Turkish), and pideh (Armenian). The main difference between these breads is either how thick or thin the dough is rolled out, or the type of oven in which they are baked (or on which they are baked, as many of these breads are cooked on stones or red-hot pans with a convex surface)...The key to a crisp lavash,...is to roll out the dough paper-thin. The sheet can be cut into crackers in advance or snapped into shards after baking. The shards make a nice presentation when arranged in baskets.

Makes 1 sheet pan of crackers

* 1 1/2 cups (6.75 oz) unbleached bread flour or gluten free flour blend (If you use a blend without xanthan gum, add 1 tsp xanthan or guar gum to the recipe)
* 1/2 tsp (.13 oz) salt
* 1/2 tsp (.055 oz) instant yeast
* 1 Tb (.75 oz) agave syrup or sugar ( I used sugar, and would have used honey if not vegan)
* 1 Tb (.5 oz) vegetable oil
* 1/3 to 1/2 cup + 2 Tb (3 to 4 oz) water, at room temperature
* Poppy seeds, sesame seeds, paprika, cumin seeds, caraway seeds, or kosher salt for toppings

1. In a mixing bowl, stir together the flour, salt yeast, agave, oil, and just enough water to bring everything together into a ball. You may not need the full 1/2 cup + 2 Tb of water, but be prepared to use it all if needed.

2. For Non Gluten Free Cracker Dough: Sprinkle some flour on the counter and transfer the dough to the counter. Knead for about 10 minutes, or until the ingredients are evenly distributed. The dough should pass the windowpane test (see http://www.wikihow.com/Determine-if-Bre … ong-Enough for a discription of this) and register 77 degrees to 81 degrees Fahrenheit. The dough should be firmer than French bread dough, but not quite as firm as bagel dough (what I call medium-firm dough), satiny to the touch, not tacky, and supple enough to stretch when pulled. Lightly oil a bowl and transfer the dough to the bowl, rolling it around to coat it with oil. Cover the bowl with plastic wrap.

2. For Gluten Free Cracker Dough: The dough should be firmer than French bread dough, but not quite as firm as bagel dough (what I call medium-firm dough), and slightly tacky. Lightly oil a bowl and transfer the dough to the bowl, rolling it around to coat it with oil. Cover the bowl with plastic wrap.

3. Ferment at room temperature for 90 minutes, or until the dough doubles in size. (You can also retard the dough overnight in the refrigerator immediately after kneading or mixing).

4. For Non Gluten Free Cracker Dough: Mist the counter lightly with spray oil and transfer the dough to the counter. Press the dough into a square with your hand and dust the top of the dough lightly with flour. Roll it out with a rolling pin into a paper thin sheet about 15 inches by 12 inches. You may have to stop from time to time so that the gluten can relax. At these times, lift the dough from the counter and wave it a little, and then lay it back down. Cover it with a towel or plastic wrap while it relaxes. When it is the desired thinness, let the dough relax for 5 minutes. Line a sheet pan with baking parchment. Carefully lift the sheet of dough and lay it on the parchment. If it overlaps the edge of the pan, snip off the excess with scissors.

4. For Gluten Free Cracker Dough: Lay out two sheets of parchment paper. Divide the cracker dough in half and then sandwich the dough between the two sheets of parchment. Roll out the dough until it is a paper thin sheet about 15 inches by 12 inches. Slowly peel away the top layer of parchment paper. Then set the bottom layer of parchment paper with the cracker dough on it onto a baking sheet.

5. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit with the oven rack on the middle shelf. Mist the top of the dough with water and sprinkle a covering of seeds or spices on the dough (such as alternating rows of poppy seeds, sesame seeds, paprika, cumin seeds, caraway seeds, kosher or pretzel salt, etc.) Be careful with spices and salt - a little goes a long way. If you want to precut the cracker, use a pizza cutter (rolling blade) and cut diamonds or rectangles in the dough. You do not need to separate the pieces, as they will snap apart after baking. If you want to make shards, bake the sheet of dough without cutting it first.

6. Bake for 15 to 20 minutes, or until the crackers begin to brown evenly across the top (the time will depend on how thinly and evenly you rolled the dough).

7. When the crackers are baked, remove the pan from the oven and let them cool in the pan for about 10 minutes. You can then snap them apart or snap off shards and serve.

Daddy Makes Chocolate Chip Pancakes

2008-09-25T23:31:00.009-04:00

Sunday is “Daddy Makes Breakfast” day. Daddy makes “real” breakfast: bacon, toast or English muffins slathered with butter, eggs, French toast or like today, pancakes. A few weeks ago when I bought blueberries, it was blueberry pancakes. Today it’s Chocolate Chip Pancakes. (YES! I AM going to use up these chips this century! Now don’t get me wrong, these chips are adorable, but they have almost no chocolate taste whatsoever.)

I have a big mason jar filled with Alton Brown’s “Instant Pancake Mix” or sometimes DH just uses Bisquick. Hey, I say, as long as you’re making breakfast honey, you can do what-eh-va you want, as long as you clean it up. I generally don’t eat starch for breakfast, so the boys and Daddy chow down on his masterpieces.

The secret to add-ins for pancakes like chips and blueberries is to dole out the batter first and then put the extra ingredients on the uncooked “second side”. When you flip the flapjacks, the add-ins will get incorporated beautifully with no running or clumping. For blueberry pancakes, they’ll stay pancake color and not turn that funny blue-gray color.

You can freeze any leftovers by layering them with waxed paper and then keeping them in a zip top bag. For reheating, I just throw ‘em in the toaster. :)

Black Bean Taco Pasta

2008-09-24T11:12:00.005-04:00

As usual, I lost track of time and had nothing planned for dinner. I wanted something pasta, something fast (!), something not necessarily low fat/cal but something that had protein but not meat per se as I’m trying to scale back on the amount of that I use on a weekly basis. Back from my Weight Watchers days, I remembered I had a recipe for Taco Soup (supposedly a “One Point” recipe for those of you in the know). I modified my original recipe to be kid friendly – they liked it, but next time I need to only use a tablespoon or so of the taco seasoning instead of the whole pouch. (Mommy, this is a little “spicy”.)

Black Bean Taco Pasta
Serves 4

EVOO for sautéing onions/garlic
1 medium onion, chopped
3 cloves garlic, minced
1 Tablespoon Taco seasoning (pouch)
1 can diced tomatoes
1 can chicken broth
1 can black beans, drained and rinsed
1 can corn, drained
½ cup sour cream
Kosher salt
Fresh parsley, chopped
½ - ¾ pound uncooked gemelli pasta

Boil pasta according to package directions. In the meantime, in a large skillet, on medium high heat sauté the onions and garlic in the EVOO until soft. Add the taco seasoning and stir briefly until powder is absorbed. Add the tomatoes, chicken broth, corn and beans, deglazing the pan if needed. Bring mixture to a simmer. Add sour cream and stir thoroughly. Cook for about 5 minutes for flavors to meld and sauce to thicken. Add salt and pepper to taste. Toss cooked gemelli pasta with sauce, sprinkle with parsley, serve and enjoy.

TWD: Dimply Plum Cake

2008-09-23T08:47:00.028-04:00

For your consideration: Dimply Plum Cake from Baking: From My Home to Yours by Dorie Greenspan, page 41, as part of the Tuesdays with Dorie baking clan.

I was initially inspired to make this plum cake based on a post by Smitten Kitchen and then when it popped up on the TWD "to-do" list I knew it was meant to be. This was super easy to make although it took wayyyy longer than 40 minutes to cook through. I wound up resetting the timer several times and had to cover the top with foil to prevent it from becoming too brown. I think overall it was in for an extra 25-30 minutes. No big deal there though.

My plums were of such a size and shape that I only fit 12 plums on mine, (the recipe called for 16) but that was plenty for full plummy, yummy effect.

I haven’t sliced into it yet, but the batter was really, really good! There’s a teacher birthday at school tomorrow and I’m bringing it for her celebration. I’ll report back on the flavor then.

Many thanks to Michelle of Bake-en for choosing this recipe. To see what all the other TWDers did with this Dimply Plum Cake, check out the blogroll here. If you'd like to try making either one of these recipes for yourself, you can find the recipe in Dorie Greenspan's Baking: From My Home to Yours.

(Hey, you lookin' at me?)