C Mom Cook

January Daring Bakers' Challenge - Scones (Biscuits)

2012-01-27T00:01:00.008-05:00

As much as I love being challenged each month to make something new and exotic, this month's challenge was just as daring, but for a total different reason. Rather than being something new and fancy, this month's challenge had us going back to basics.

Audax Artifex was our January 2012 Daring Bakers' host. Aud worked tirelessly to master light and fluffy scones (a/k/a biscuits) to help us create delicious and perfect batches in our own kitchens!

Now, there was a bit of discussion about terminology, as the words "scones" and "biscuits" have slightly different meanings depending on your geography. See, Audax is in Australia, and so when he challenged us to make scones, he clarified for us North Americans that we were actually to make what we refer to as biscuits, rather than what we think of as scones. But then he clarified for any British/European Daring Bakers that he wasn't referring to cookies, rather to the baking powder raised flaky bread-type goods, usually served with a meal. So funny how the same words have slightly different meanings based on geography...

So Audax provided us with a basic recipe for biscuits, as well as a ton of information regarding ingredients and methodology, and recommended that we practice on as many batches as we could in order to learn how we could each get the best results as possibly in our own kitchens.

So I got started darn near right away.

The basics of the recipe are easy.

Whisk (well, sift, but I whisk) together flour, baking powder and salt.

Add in cold butter, cut into small pieces.

Cut or rub the butter into the dry ingredients.

Add in a liquid, milk or buttermilk, usually, to create a dough.

Cut the dough into shape.

(I just cut with a knife, as I don't have a biscuit cutter, and it also meant less handling of the dough on my part...)

Then bake!

They should rise in the oven and be light and flaky.

See? A little flaky... not perfect, but not bad for a first batch, right?

For this batch, I actually added a little bit of sugar with the dry ingredients, as I'd planned them to be our dessert, rather than to go with dinner.

Biscuits are wonderful for blueberry (or any fruit...) shortcakes!

Woo hoo! Challenge off to a great start!

But that's all it was - a start.

Because I had many more ideas.

When I'd first read the challenge, my first thought was that this would be the perfect opportunity to try a breakfast that I'd heard about many times, but had never myself tasted - biscuits with sausage gravy. While looking for a recipe for the sausage gravy, I came across a variation on the biscuit recipe, as well, so figured I might as well try that out. You know, for comparison purposes.

The ingredients were the same, thought the quantities were a bit different, and the resulting dough was, by design, much wetter.

And rather than cutting the biscuits, they are basically rolled, then placed into a springform pan.

They baked up beautifully, but were very different from the challenge recipe.

And they were delicious with the biscuit gravy.

My next attempt was a spur of the moment decision. We were having soup for dinner one night, and about an hour before dinner, I realized that I didn't have bread or rolls to go with the soup. It wasn't enough time to make dinner rolls (even my quick recipe for those requires an hour and a half), so I decided to give the challenge biscuits another try.

I followed the recipe word for word, and was very careful about how I handled the dough.

And I think the results spoke for themselves.

I was amazed when I opened the oven and saw theses toppling biscuit towers. And talk about flaky. Now that is a biscuit! (and it went great with our soup, too!) (In case you are curious, the biscuits rose so high on the cut side of the dough - the side that didn't rise as high was the un-cut side from the way I'd shaped the dough before cutting them into shape.)

But did I stop there? Not at all! The next week, with my next soup, I actually planned on biscuits! But not the plain biscuits, this time I wanted to to spice them up, and try garlic cheddar biscuits.

All that this required was two additions.

Garlic powder whisked into the dry ingredients.

And grated cheddar cheese mixed in after the milk.

And this time, I used a drinking glass as a biscuit cutter, as I wanted to see how the biscuits would rise if they had a cut edge on all sides.

That worked really well.

A much more even rise, and deliciously flaky biscuits.

I may just have to invest in a biscuit cutter.

And, just for good measure, I decided to try one last batch. Chocolate. I can't believe I didn't think of it myself, but the credit for that goes to one of my fellow Daring Bakers (thank you, Korena!!). It was as simple as replacing a quarter of the flour with cocoa powder. And adding a bit of sugar.

Somehow, my batter wound up a bit too wet and sticky.

(see those chunks of butter? yum.)

So the biscuits didn't rise as much, but it certainly made for a fun dessert!

Audax, thanks so much for this challenge - I have really enjoyed practicing, and am feeling so much more confident in my biscuit skills as a result!

To check out all of the delicious, flaky goodness baked up in the kitchen this month, check them out here.

Basic Biscuits

(from the challenge)

1 cup flour

2 teaspoons baking powder

1/4 teaspoon salt

2 tablespoons cold butter, cut into small pieces or grated

approximately 1/2 cup cold milk (have a bit more ready, just in case)

Preheat oven to 475 degrees. It is a good idea to put your baking pan in the oven at this point, too, to allow it to preheat as well.

Sift or whisk together the flour, baking powder and salt in a medium bowl.

Rub the cold butter pieces into the dry ingredients until it resembles very coarse bread crumbs, with no pieces bigger than small peas.

Add most of the liquid and mix well until it forms a sticky dough. (Using a dinner/butter knife works really well for the mixing here. Don't ask why, it just does.)

At this point, you can rest the dough in the fridge. I had the best luck resting the dough for about half an hour before proceeding with the rest of the recipe.

Turn the dough out onto a lightly floured work surface. Knead the dough gently, without pressing too hard, just a few times until the dough is smooth. Rather than regular kneading, I had luck with more of a "folding" movement on the dough.

Pat the dough into a rectangle roughly 4 inches by 6 inches and approximately 3/4 of an inch thick. Cut the biscuits, either using a knife (cutting into squares) or a biscuit cutter (or drinking glass), carefully gathering together and pressing out the dough scraps to cut as many biscuits as the dough can make.

Place the cut biscuits on the (preheated) baking pan (carefully! it's hot!) and bake for 8-10 minutes, until the biscuits have risen and are lightly colored on the tops. The biscuits are ready when the sides are set.

Transfer the biscuits to a cooling rack.

These are best served warm.

There are countless variations to this recipe, from using buttermilk or cream in place of the milk to using shortening or lard to replace some or all of the butter. You can add sugar and/or spices to alter the flavor or mix in herbs, fruits or cheese to make different kinds of biscuits.

Try as many variations as you can and have fun with it!!

Crock Pot Lasagna

2012-01-24T21:58:00.002-05:00

Lasagna in the crock pot? Yeah, sounded a little weird to me.

But with little miss's busy activity schedule, the crock pot is a necessity in order to have meals on the table at the right time on some nights.

So when daddy chose lasagna as our crock pot meal this week, I was willing to give it a shot.

There is really not that much of a difference between "regular" lasagna and crock pot lasagna, at least as far as the preparation is concerned.

I made a meat sauce the way I always do and prepared the ricotta filling the way I always do. All I didn't do was boil the noodles (though I know there are recipes for lasagna that don't require boiling the noodles first, but I digress...).

Then I built the lasagna right in the crock.

Small layer of sauce, uncooked noodles, ricotta mixture, a generous sprinkling of cheese.

Repeat a couple more times, top with a final layer of sauce and sprinkling of cheese, then just put the lid on the pot.

Then turn the crock pot on to low and, well, that's it.

Five hours, a few chores and one ballet class later, here's what we came home to:

Well look at that! It's an oval shaped lasagna!

It was a little tough to serve it out cleanly, but other than that, there was no difference between this and my "normal" lasagna, I just didn't have to be home at a specific time to get it into the oven. Pretty convenient!

This got good reviews all around, so I think we have a new crock pot meal to add to our arsenal!

Crock Pot Lasagna

(just the way I usually make lasagna, adapted for the crock pot... no recipe source)

for the sauce:

1 - 2 tablespoons olive oil

1 medium onion, chopped

1 medium green pepper, chopped

1 - 1 1/2 lb ground beef

salt/pepper/garlic powder/Italian seasonings to taste

1 26-ounce jar of your favorite pasta sauce

1 14-ounce can diced tomatoes or tomato sauce (or another half a jar of pasta sauce - your choice. I've done it both ways.)

for the cheese layers:

3 cups ricotta cheese

2 eggs

1 teaspoon garlic powder (or to taste)

1 teaspoon Italian seasonings (or to taste)

1 cup shredded mozzarella cheese

1/2 cup grated Parmesan cheese

(you can adjust the mozzarella and Parmesan amounts if you like your lasagna ooey-er and gooey-er!)

1 1-lb box lasagna noodles, uncooked

to make the sauce:

In a large pot, heat the olive oil over medium high heat, then add the chopped onion and green pepper. Cook until the onions are translucent and the peppers have softened. Add the ground beef and brown until cooked through, breaking it up so that it is in crumbles. Drain any excess fat. Add the sauce, tomatoes (or, well, the more-sauce) and spices and simmer for 15 minutes. Set aside to cool a bit.

to prepare the ricotta:

In a medium bowl, combine the ricotta cheese, eggs and spices. Beat with a spoon until smooth and creamy.

to construct the lasagna:

In the stoneware of your crock pot, spoon a small amount of sauce - just enough to cover the bottom.

Layer in noodles, barely overlapping, to cover the bottom of the pot as well as you can. Mine took three to three and a half noodles per layer - don't be afraid to break the noodles to fit your crock.

Spread one third of the ricotta mixture over the uncooked noodles, then sprinkle with about one third of each of the other cheeses.

Top the cheese with one third of the remaining sauce, then another layer of noodles, another layer of ricotta and another sprinkling of mozzarella and Parmesan.

Repeat with another layer of sauce, noodles, ricotta and shredded cheeses.

After your third layer of cheeses, add a top layer of noodles, then cover generously with your remaining sauce, making sure that all of the noodles are covered with sauce. Sprinkle with the remaining mozzarella and Parmesan.

Set crock pot to low and cook for about five hours.

We served ours with broccoli and garlic bread, and this was a delicious dinner.

Egg-Free Pancakes

2012-01-22T20:44:00.001-05:00

I know that this will be hard to believe, but we ran out of eggs this week.

Not only did we run out of eggs, but I didn't run out to the grocery store as soon as it happened.

Weird.

It even snowed, and we still didn't run out to buy eggs! (Why is it that as soon as the forecast calls for snow, the entire world needs milk, eggs and bread??)

The egg-less state of our refrigerator didn't cause any real problems... until today. Because you need a big, fancy breakfast at least once over the weekend, right? Usually, in our house, that means eggs and some kind of breakfast meat, or maybe French toast or pancakes or waffles... each of which, as far as my experience has shown, requires at least one egg.

Rather than turning to cereal, I turned to Google, and found this - a recipe for egg-free pancakes with rave reviews from those who had tried it. Woo hoo! We can still have a very weekend-y breakfast!

The recipe is actually very easy.

In one bowl, mix together the dry ingredients - flour, sugar, a bit of salt, and a bunch of baking powder.

In another bowl, mix together the wet ingredients - milk, vegetable oil, melted butter and, of all things, orange juice. Which, by the way, I was also out of (what the heck was up in my house this week???), so I substituted with cranberry-pomegranate juice.

Which is why you can see traces of purple in the bowl.

The resulting batter is pretty much like normal pancake batter, just a little thinner (though it was a little lumpier than my usual pancake batter... and it did thicken a bit as it stood...)

Because the batter was a little thin, I decided to use my little pan and make the pancakes one at a time, rather than the big one I'd planned to use, as I thought that if I made multiple pancakes at a time, they'd spread into each other and become a bit sloppy looking.

These actually cooked up really well. Something about the reaction between the baking powder and the juice allows them to be fluffy and light and hold together really well, even without any egg.

I decided to make half of our pancakes with blueberries.

And I topped them off with a yummy drizzle of maple syrup.

And then it was time to see if they'd pass the kid test.

First up, little miss.

She loved them. Gave them two thumbs up.

Next, little man.

He'd have given them a thumbs up if he could have stopped shoving pancake pieces in his mouth. You know he likes it when more ends up in his mouth than in his high chair seat. Or on the floor.

And, in case you are curious, daddy and I liked them too. We may just make them again, even when we have eggs.

Which, by the way, we finally went and bought.

Egg-Free Pancakes

(from Art Of Dessert)

2 cups all-purpose flour

1/4 cup sugar

1 1/2 tablespoons baking powder

1/2 teaspoon salt

2 cups milk

1/4 cup vegetable oil

1/4 cup orange juice (I substituted cranberry-pomegranate juice and it worked beautifully)

1/4 cup melted butter

In a medium sized bowl, sift (or whisk) together the flour, baking powder, sugar and salt. In a separate bowl, whisk together the milk, oil and juice. Slowly add in the melted butter, then mix the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients and stir together until incorporated.

Note that this batter tends to bubble up and then thicken due to the baking powder. You can gently stir it to break down some of the bubbles, which will also thin it out again for you, if you need to.)

Pour 1/3 - 1/2 cup of batter onto a hot griddle or non-stick pan. Cook each pancake until you see a few bubbles rise to the surface and the edges begin to dry, then flip them over to cook the other side until it is lightly browned.

I added a few blueberries to some as they cooked on the first side. Little miss suggested chocolate chips, which you could try, too.

Enjoy!

Note - the Art of Dessert blog is written by a woman who has children with a variety of food allergies, and the recipes on her site always indicate which allergens are contained in each recipe. She also has great recipes that exclude specific allergens. If you have food allergies, know someone with food allergies, or cook for someone with food allergies, I recommend checking out her blog.

English Muffins - Challenger Number One

2012-01-17T21:27:00.002-05:00

And we have our first challenger in the English Muffin Off!

My first attempt at English muffins was so successful, that I mentioned trying a couple of other recipes, just for fun.

Today I tried challenger number one - Peter Reinhart's recipe from The Bread Baker's Apprentice. I've had the book for a while, and I love every recipe I've tried so far, so it seemed only fair to have this one be first up to compete against the Alton Brown recipe I made before.

While the ingredient list is fairly similar, the process was different between the two recipes. In the Alton Brown recipe, the yeast was activated first, but otherwise, everything was just mixed together with a wooden spoon, and the dough only rested for half an hour. It is a very quick recipe, as far as yeast bread recipes are concerned.

This one? Not quite as quick.

First, the dry ingredients were whisked together, including the dry yeast.

Then, using the KitchenAid, butter and milk were mixed in.

At this point, the paddle attachment is switched for the dough hook, and the dough is kneaded for eight minutes. The dough, while soft and silky smooth, is much more of a bread dough than the Alton Brown dough, which is more of a batter.

At this point, the dough rests. In my normal dough-resting spot.

And it rests for much longer than the previous recipe. This rest, during which the dough ferments, is 90 minutes long.

After which the dough is shaped into balls, something that was impossible with the other dough. Though this does eliminate the need for those trusty English muffin rings...

Then the tray of shaped dough balls is rested. Again. In my normal dough-resting spot.

And this is another 90 minute rest.

Then it is time to cook the muffins. Like the previous recipe, these are cooked on a pan.

The idea is that, once they hit the pan, they'll flatten out a bit... umm... after the recommended 5-8 minutes on the first side, the bottoms were golden brown, but they hadn't flattened much...

5-8 minutes on the second side, and here was the other difference... they needed to be put into the oven to finish cooking through.

So after 5-8 minutes on each side, then another 5-8 minutes in the oven, they were finally ready.

The cornmeal and color gave them the look of real English muffins, but they were definitely rounder and taller than I'd expected. They didn't quite stack like the others had.

But the test isn't in how they stack, it's in how they stack up!

I ate my first one straight off of the cooling rack - no splitting, no topping, no spread, I just ate it. And it was delicious, and pretty light. But very different from the other ones. A bit more bready and definitely less sweet.

Later tonight we actually split one open to do a real comparison.

Well, the crumb was beautiful, but not quite nook-and-cranny looking. But toasted with some butter, daddy said that these tasted more authentic, more like the store-bought English muffins you think of. And little miss liked these more than the others.

Me? I think I like the other ones a little bit more, but they are both absolutely delicious, and I am glad to have a couple of options available to me now!

So if you are keeping score, we actually have a tie right now... I prefer the Alton Brown English muffins, little miss and Daddy have these slightly ahead. You'd think that would put these in the lead, two votes to one, but this is my blog, so my vote carries extra weight... or something like that... Little man likes them both.

So if you have some extra time, definitely give these a shot - they are worth the wait.

English Muffins

(from Peter Reinhart's The Bread Baker's Apprentice)

2 1/4 cups bread flour

1/2 tablespoon granulated sugar

3/4 teaspoon salt

1 1/4 teaspoon instant yeast (I used active dry, as that is what I have)

1 tablespoon shortening or unsalted butter at room temperature (I used unsalted butter)

3/4 to 1 cup milk or buttermilk at room temperature (I used milk)

cooking spray

cornmeal for sprinkling

Stir together the flour, sugar, salt and yeast in the bowl of an electric mixer.

Using the paddle attachment, stir in the butter and 3/4 cup of milk on low speed. Mix until the ingredients form a ball. If there is still loose flour in the bowl, dribble in some of the remaining 1/4 cup of milk. The dough should be soft and pliable, not stiff. (I needed about 1/8 cup of the remaining 1/4 cup.)

Switch to the dough hook and knead the dough for about 8 minutes.

Cover the dough in the bowl with plastic wrap and allow it to rest (ferment) at room temperature for 60-90 minutes, until the dough doubles in size.

On a clean work surface, divide the dough into six equal pieces, and shape each piece into a ball.

Place all six dough balls on a baking sheet, which has been covered with parchment paper, sprayed lightly with cooking spray and sprinkled with cornmeal. Then mist the tops of each ball with more cooking spray and sprinkle them with a bit more cornmeal. Cover the pan loosely with plastic wrap. (I use the same piece as before.)

Proof the balls of dough for 60-90 minutes, until they nearly double in size.

Heat a skillet or griddle over medium heat and preheat your oven to 350 degrees.

Spray the pan lightly with cooking spray then transfer the rounds to the pan, with the rounds about an inch apart and not touching. You may need to work in batches (I did three at a time). Keep the rounds not being cooked covered with plastic wrap.

Cook the rounds on the pan 5-8 minutes, or until the bottoms cannot cook any longer without burning. The bottoms will be a rich golden brown. Carefully flip each muffin and cook on the other side for another 5-8 minutes as before.

Transfer the muffins, once cooked on both sides, to a baking pan and bake them at 350 degrees for 5-8 minutes. It is important that you transfer each batch right from the stove top pan into the oven and not wait for the second batch to come off of the griddle, as they will not respond as well to the final cooking if they cool down from the pan.

Transfer the baked muffins to a cooling rack and cool at least 30 minutes before serving.

Enjoy!

January Daring Cooks' Challenge - Tamales

2012-01-14T00:01:00.009-05:00

I love Mexican food. I don't think that is a secret.

The thing is, I don't really know all that much about it, other than that I like it.

I mean, I watch Rick Bayless on PBS, and I'll play around with a few flavors here at home, but what I've made at home are mostly the easy, cheating, Americanized versions of Mexican dishes. Tasty, but not all that authentic.

This month I had a chance to change that, and make some real Mexican street fare!

Maranda of Jolts & Jollies was our January 2012 Daring Cooks hostess with the mostess! Maranda challenged us to make traditional Mexican Tamales as our first challenge of the year!

To say that I was excited when I read this would be an understatement.

However, due to the specialized ingredients required and the amount of time that it takes to fully prepare the meal, it took me a while to actually get started. But once I did, it was super fun.

This is a pretty picture-heavy post, so I will try my best not to be too wordy, and I'll let the pictures tell the story as much as possible.

For starters, I had to decide on a filling. My intention had been to prepare these for a family dinner, so they needed to satisfy a range of pallets, so I didn't want to go too crazy or spicy. I decided on a slow cooked shredded pork filling, so I put a beautifully large pork roast in the crock pot and let it do its thing for 12 hours overnight.

Wanting to make the most of my time, I also prepared the tamale dough the night before, so I had to get creative with counter space, as you can see.

The main ingredient of the tamale dough is masa harina, a flour-like powder made from dried hominy (corn).

Traditionally, the masa (masa harina, maseca... I call it masa for short, though...) is mixed with baking powder, salt, broth and lard or pork fat. I used vegetable shortening instead of the lard, though I have heard that you can use oil, which is something I may try next time.

The finished dough had the consistency of cookie dough.

Pork cooking, dough made, I was excited for the next morning.

We woke up to the delicious smell of the pork, which was enough motivation for us to start in on the next steps.

Soaking the corn husks.

That was the other specialty ingredient. I know many Daring Cooks had trouble procuring them, but I am extremely fortunate to live only a few miles for a totally cool little hole-in-the-wall Mexican grocery. That was a fun experience in and of itself. But I was able to purchase corn husks, and little miss helped me prepare them.

She counted them, and then we placed them in a big pot, covered them in water, then weighed them down with a plate to make sure they didn't float up.

Then it was time to shred the meat.

Yeah, 12 hours in the crock pot and it practically shredded itself. Yum.

The last prep-step that I needed to do wast to cut thin strips from a few of the corn husks, which would serve as ties to hold together the tamales once they were rolled.

Filling, check. Corn husks soaked, check. Dough ready, check. Corn husk ties ready, check. We're ready to make tamales!

A scoop of dough is spread out onto a corn husk. The best tool for this, from the few that I tried, was my fingers.

The dough should be a pretty thin rectangle.

Then a line of filling (I tried to be generous with my filling) is spooned down the middle of the dough.

Then the whole thing is rolled up in the corn husk, making a neat little package.

Cool, huh?

Once I got the hang of it, I started working two at a time.

Then daddy got in on the action, too.

The hardest part was tying those little knots!

But we soon had a nice pile of neatly rolled and tied tamales all ready to go.

The traditional method of cooking tamales is to steam them. I decided to try two methods of steaming our tamales - I put most of them in my biggest pot, into which I'd put my vegetable steamer basket. Then I tried a few in my bamboo steamer, too.

And then they steamed!

An hour later, during which I prepared all the sides for our feast (or, really, fiesta!), we were ready to take them out.

Not sure if you can tell, but the dough puffed considerably during the steaming process, and it also darkened by a shade or two.

We just brought the whole tray to the table and then we were ready to dig in!

Even before tasting the tamales, I was really pleased with how everything had turned out. The whole process of preparing the different components and rolling the tamales was a lot of fun, and the finished tamales just looked fun, all wrapped up and ready to just grab.

So how were they for a meal?

With Mexican rice and black beans, in addition to tortilla chips and fresh salsa (made by daddy!), this was really a delicious meal.

We found the dough to be a little dry, which is something I will have to work on, but all in all, this was a very fun meal and a truly wonderful challenge.

Maranda, thank you so much for truly being a hostess with the mostess!

To check out the delicious tamales cooked up in the kitchen this month, check them out here.

Masa Dough for Tamales

(from the challenge)

1 1/3 cups lard or vegetable shortening

1 1/2 teaspoons salt

1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder

4 cups masa harina

1 1/2 - 2 cups chicken broth (I needed the full 2 cups)

In the bowl of an electric mixer, cream together the lard (shortening), salt and baking powder. Mix in the masa harina one cup at a time.

Reduce the mixer speed to low, then gradually add in about 1 1/2 cups of broth.

If the mixture is too dry, you can gradually add in more broth, about two teaspoons at a time. The final dough should have the texture of cookie dough.

Maranda provided us with several choices of fillings. You can see the full challenge recipes here. For my filling, I slow-cooked a pork shoulder in the crock pot, seasoned with garlic salt, cumin and oregano, along with a cut onion and a couple of garlic cloves, for 12 hours, then shredded the meat, using the cooking liquid to moisten the shredded meat as necessary.

To prepare the tamales:

One 8-ounce package of dried corn husks (I had a one pound package, so I used about half - I made 24 tamales, and cut two additional corn husks for the ties.)

One batch of masa dough (above)

Filling of your choice

Place the dried corn husks in a large pot and cover with water. Place a heavy plate or a smaller pot full of water on top of the husks to keep them in the water. Soak the husks at least three hours, up to a full day.

Take two or three of the softened corn husks and cut or tear them into quarter-inch strips. It is a good idea to keep these strips in water so that they stay soft and don't become too brittle to tie.

Unfold a corn husk (or two at a time, if you would like) on your work surface. Scoop about a quarter of a cup of the prepared masa dough onto the husk, near the top. Carefully press the dough into about a four inch square, making sure to leave two to three inches at the bottom of the husk to be folded up (see photos above).

Place a heaping tablespoon of your filling in a line down the center of the dough.

Fold the dough around the filling, into the corn husk, and wrap the husk around the dough. Carefully fold up the bottom portion of the husk and secure the "package" with one of the husk-ties.

If using a big pot and a steamer basket, stand the tamales in the steamer basket (already in the pot, with a couple of inches of water in the pot). If your tamales don't fully fill the tray in the basket, place crumpled up aluminum foil in between the tamales to fill the space.

Steam the tamales for 45-75 minutes, until the dough puffs, deepens in color and pulls easily away from the husk.

Buen provecho!

Avocado Pudding

2012-01-12T20:16:00.001-05:00

So, for various and sundry reasons, we have kind of been on a Mexican food kick around here recently.

In preparation for a Mexican feast we had planned for this weekend, we picked up a few avocados at the produce stand. Now, the thing we always have to keep in mind about avocados from our local produce stand is that, while they are always the best price around, they are also pretty hit or miss as far as their ripeness. They are always at one or the other extreme of the spectrum - either at that oh-my-gosh-I-have-to-use-this-right-this-minute stage of ripeness or at the gee-I-should-have-planned-a-week-ahead-for-when-I'd-feel-like-having-some-avocado stage.

Daddy and little miss bought the best four avocados they could find. That is, the four that really seemed like they were justabout ready, that would be ready in time for our feast. Unfortunately, they were still a bit hard for our weekend feast, so I just figured I'd use them later in the week.

But as the week progressed and I'd only used one of the avocados, it was time to get creative. So I thought I'd see what I could find in the way of avocado desserts. Apparently avocado ice cream is very popular. And one day I may try it. But what caught my eye was this recipe for avocado pudding. It looked easy and the combination of ingredients sounded tasty.

With the help of my mini-blender and a few ingredients, I was on my way.

One avocado.

Half a cup of coconut milk (the recipe called for nut milk or rice milk, I thought coconut would be tasty...), the juice of half a lime, some agave nectar.

Just a minute of blending then turns this:

into this:

Thick and creamy and, well, a cool shade of green.

The recipe says that it makes two servings, but I divided it into three so that daddy, little miss and I could each have some.

And while little miss said that this wasn't her favorite dessert, daddy and I both really liked it - it was mild and smooth, and tasted vaguely tropical, with the hints of coconut and lime.

If you have a spare avocado, I'd recommend giving this a shot - and it makes dessert feel healthy!

Avocado Pudding

(only minorly adapted from Dog Hill Kitchen)

1 avocado

1/2 cup coconut milk (or nut milk or rice milk)

5 teaspoons agave nectar (or honey)

4-5 teaspoons lime juice (I used the juice of half of a lime, but it was a pretty big lime...)

a pinch of salt

Blend together the avocado, milk, agave nectar, lime juice and salt. Scrape down the sides of the blender cup if necessary and continue blending until smooth. You can adjust the sweetness if necessary by adding additional agave nectar/honey.

Enjoy!

Sourdough Banana Cake

2012-01-06T21:16:00.001-05:00

One of the concerns that I had regarding maintaining my new sourdough starter had to do with its regular feedings. You see, when feeding a sourdough starter, in order to feed it enough to keep it thriving, you feed it an equal amount (by weight) of flour and water as the starter that you have. Sounds confusing. Say you have 100 grams of starter. When feeding it, you feed it 100 grams of flour and 100 grams of water. Now, not having a kitchen scale, I have to improvise a little. So, say I have one cup of starter. I then feed it one cup of flour and somewhere between 2/3 and 3/4 of a cup of water. So after feeding the starter, you have twice what you started with. Make sense?

Here's the thing - unless you want to wind up with vats and vats of sourdough starter, or unless you are doing a ton of sourdough baking, doubling the starter at each feeding can make things get out of hand. Which is why most people start by discarding a portion of what they have. If they haven't baked since the last feeding, they discard half of the starter, then feed it, so that they will net the same amount of starter after the feeding as before.

And I have difficulty wrapping my head around the idea of discarding food products, even if it is (for all intents and purposes) just a few cents worth of flour and water. One option is to give the "discard" amount of starter to a friend, thus giving them the gift of a lifetime of sourdough baking. Unfortunately, I currently have no takers for sourdough starter... any takers, leave me a comment and I'm happy to share. So I had to find another alternative.

And what I found is that there are some clever bakers out there who have developed recipes for just this purpose - recipes that use "unfed" sourdough starter (ie: what you would be discarding or giving away). Very, very cool.

The first such recipe that I found was for a Pumpkin Spice Cake, and it looked delicious.

Unfortunately, I had no pumpkin available to me when I was ready to test out this method of "saving" my sourdough "discard." So what is a baker to do? Improvise. What I did have on had were these:

Ripe bananas, begging to be turned into something delicious. Pumpkin out, banana in. I was ready to go.

In one bowl, I combined my dry ingredients - flour, sugars and delicious smelling spices.

And in another bowl, I combined the wet ingredients - mashed bananas, sourdough starter, egg, oil and a splash of vanilla (not in the pumpkin cake recipe... I told you, I improvised and made it my own!).

Dry ingredients whisked together, wet ingredients well mixed, I combined the two, and the the thick batter went right into the well-sprayed Bundt pan.

45 minutes later, voila:

It smelled heavenly and rose beautifully.

I actually baked this at night, once the kiddos had gone to bed, and let it cool overnight so that we could have it for breakfast the next morning.

But there was still one thing missing, that little miss was more than happy to help me add.

The glaze.

Because who doesn't need extra butter and sugar coating their breakfast, right??

Little miss mixed together the confectioners' sugar and milk.

And then took over photographer duties while I drizzled.

And then we were ready for breakfast.

Yum. Not to shabby for some discarded sourdough starter! Little miss and I each had seconds, and even little man enjoyed it.

This was breakfast and snack and dessert for a couple of days. We will definitely be making this again.

Sourdough Banana Cake

(adapted from Versatile Vegetarian Kitchen's Sourdough Pumpkin Spice Cake)

1 cup unfed sourdough starter, at room temperature (if you store your starter in the fridge, just let it sit out for about an hour before starting)

1 1/2 cups all purpose flour

1/2 cup sugar

1/2 cup brown sugar

2 teaspoons baking soda

1/2 teaspoon salt

1 egg

1/4 cup vegetable oil

1/4 cup plain yogurt

1 to 1 1/2 cups mashed ripe banana (I used three large bananas)

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1/8 teaspoon ground nutmeg

1 teaspoon ground cinnamon

1/2 teaspoon ground cloves

1/4 teaspoon ground ginger

for the glaze (optional):

2 tablespoons melted butter

1 cup confectioners' sugar

1 - 2 tablespoons milk

Preheat oven to 350 degrees and generously spray a Bundt pan (you can use a 9" x 13" pan if you would prefer).

In a medium sized mixing bowl, combine the sourdough starter, mashed banaas, oil, yogurt, egg and vanilla. Mix together until everything is fully combined.

In a (separate) large mixing bowl, whisk together flour, salt, baking soda, sugar and spices.

Add the wet ingredients to the dry ingredients and stir until just combined.

Pour the batter into the prepared Bundt pan and bake for 45 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean. (The recipe offers a cooking time of 35-40 minutes if you are using a 9" x 13" pan.)

Allow the cake to cool in the pan (on a cooling rack) for about 10 minutes, then turn the cake out onto the rack itself and allow it to cool completely.

To prepare the glaze, mix the melted butter and confectioners' sugar in a bowl, then slowly add enough milk to make a smooth, flowing glaze. Stir very well to ensure that you have removed all of the lumps. Once the cake is completely cool, use a spoon to drizzle on the glaze.

Enjoy!

English Muffins

2012-01-03T20:56:00.001-05:00

Happy New Year!

I have so many fun and tasty things to share with you, it's hard to pick where to start. Well, that's not exactly true. I have a few I was going to post, but then I had the opportunity to FINALLY make a recipe I have been wanting to try for a LONG time, so it seemed appropriate to start there.

I have been wanting to make homemade English muffins for, well, a while. I have seen several different recipes, but hadn't yet actually taken the leap and made them. Then little miss and I went to a morning play date at a friend's house and what did they have for breakfast? Yup. Homemade English muffins. And WOW were they yummy. The mom told me that they were from Alton Brown's recipe and that they were super easy to make. But there was a catch. They require a piece of kitchen equipment that I don't have. English muffin rings - metal rings that help contain the batter and guide the muffins' lift as they cook. What to do...

I started out by looking for the rings whenever I was out and about, but I had no luck. So I turned to the Internet. Much to my surprise, Google found them for the best price at Sur La Table. Unfortunately, shipping would cost more than the rings themselves. But then I found out that there is actually a Sur La Table only about half an hour from home. How did I not know this before?? So, bright and early yesterday morning (okay, so they open at 10 am, not really that early...) I went and picked up a set of English muffin rings.

And yesterday afternoon, when we got home, I got to work.

My friend was totally right - this recipe is very straightforward.

Powdered milk, a bit of sugar, a touch of salt and a pat of butter are mixed and dissolved together with some hot water.

While that cools, bloom some yeast.

Then combine the two with some flour.

Then mix together with a wooden spoon.

The resulting mixture is more like a batter than bread dough. Don't worry, that's how this one goes. After half an hour of rest, the batter grows beautifully.

And we were ready to go! I don't have an electric griddle, so just used my biggest pan on the stove top. Heat the pan and set out the rings...

Then scoop in the dough! The batter was a bit sticky, so scooping cleanly was a challenge, but not too bad. Once the rings were filled, I covered the pan and let them cook for about five minutes, at which point I lifted the lid so I could flip the muffins to cook them on the other side.

Man, the yeast was working overtime yesterday, because these muffins rose beautifully. Five more minutes, covered, on the second side, and I soon had my first ever batch of homemade English muffins!

I have to get the knack for what the right heat is for my burner and pan, but, despite them being a little dark on the surfaces, they were soft in the middle and were not overcooked at all.

They did rise a bit unevenly, as you can see when I started playing with photo composition...

But little man didn't seem to care... he just wanted to get his hands on them...

By the way, he loves them.

And in case you are curious, split with a fork, they absolutely had nooks and crannies, just like real English muffins are supposed to!

I can't believe it took me so long to make these. They are delicious.

Now, before I promise to make these over and over (which, well, I probably will), I really want to try a few of the other recipes I've seen. So this is just the beginning of what I hope will be an English Muffin-Off, C-Mom style.

English Muffins

(from Alton Brown, The Food Network)

1/2 cup non-fat powdered milk

1 tablespoon sugar

1 teaspoon salt

1 tablespoon shortening (I used butter)

1 cup hot water

1 envelope dry yeast (I used 1 tablespoon of active dry yeast, bought in bulk)

1/8 teaspoon sugar

1/3 cup warm water

2 cups all purpose flour, sifted

non-stick cooking spray

In a bowl, combine the powdered milk, 1 tablespoon of sugar, 1/2 teaspoon of salt, shortening and hot water. Stir until the sugar and salt are dissolved and the shortening is melted. Let cool.

In a separate bowl, combine the yeast and 1/8 teaspoon of sugar in the 1/3 cup of warm water and rest until the yeast has dissolved.

Add the yeast mixture to the dry milk mixture. Add the sifted flour and beat thoroughly with a wooden spoon. Cover the bowl and let it rest in a warm spot for 30 minutes.

Preheat electric griddle to 300 degrees (or set a pan on a medium/medium high burner until heated).

Add 1/2 teaspoon of salt to the rested mixture and beat thoroughly. Place metal rings (3-inch English muffin or crumpet rings) onto the griddle (pan) and coat lightly with vegetable spray.

Using a #20 ice cream scoop, place two scoops of the mixture into each ring and cover with a pot lid or cookie sheet and cook for 5-6 minutes. (I have no idea what size my ice cream scoop is, so I just tried to fill each ring about 2/3 full...) After 5-6 minutes, remove the lid and flip the rings using tongs or a spatula. Return the cover to the griddle/pan and cook for another 5-6 minutes, until golden brown. Move the muffins to a cooling rack, remove the rings and allow the muffins to cool.

To cut the muffins, split them with a fork.

This recipe made 8 muffins for me.

Enjoy!

Sourdough Pancakes

2011-12-29T09:12:00.002-05:00

Thanks to this month's Daring Bakers' Challenge, I have been spending a lot of time teaching myself about the wonderful world of sourdough. As I mentioned in that post, once my starter really got going, I started bookmarking all kinds of recipes and ideas of ways to incorporate sourdough (or, sourdough starter, really) into my everyday baking.

My first non-bread use of my starter came in the form of pancakes.

One thing about cooking or baking with sourdough is that, with many of the recipes, it takes a little bit of advance planning. Luckily, it is nothing too complicated, it's just that these recipes need a bit of extra time. Such was the case with the pancake recipe I selected. It was actually no big deal at all - the night before I planned on making the pancakes, I mixed together a "pancake starter," which was simply made by stirring together some of my still-as-of-yet-unnamed starter, flour and water - kind of like giving the starter a feed, just in slightly different proportions.

Give this a stir, cover with plastic wrap and go to sleep. See? Not complicated at all, just needed a little bit of advance thought.

The next morning, all that was left to do was to mix together a few additional ingredients,

and then incorporate those into my pancake starter.

Then, well, it's pancake batter! You know the drill... onto the griddle...

wait a couple of minutes...

(yeah, the sourdough made these bubble extra cool...)

Then flip and eat and enjoy!

Yeah, we ate them right out of the pan and were so excited to try them that I didn't take a picture... oops.

BUT, both little miss and I agreed that they were just okay. I mean, they were decent pancakes, but not our favorites. They were missing something. The recipe that I was following was actually for blueberry pancakes, but, well, it's December in the Mid-Atlantic... blueberries aren't exactly in season... so I just made the pancakes as, well, pancakes. But as I said, they were missing something.

So for pancake number two for each of us, we improvised.

Chocolate chips.

All I can say is GOOD CALL.

I know what you are thinking, "of course chocolate chips, chocolate makes everything better!" But this was beyond that. The combination of the tang from the sourdough and the sweetness of the chocolate chips was exactly what this recipe needed. (you know, in place of the blueberries, which probably would be just as delicious...)

Little miss and I were very happy with our breakfast that morning.

And, in case you are curious, I covered the un-used batter with plastic wrap and put it into the fridge so that we could have fresh pancakes the next morning. This recipe does make quite a bit of batter, so we had pancakes for three days in a row. But I promise - no one was complaining!

Chocolate Chip Sourdough Pancakes

(only slightly adapted from Macheesmo)

Pancake Starter:

1 cup sourdough starter

1 1/2 cups water

2 1/2 cups flour (I used 1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour and 1 cup whole wheat flour)

The night before you want your pancakes (or if you want them for dinner, just do this at least four hours in advance), combine the starter, water and flour in a large bowl or container. Loosely cover and set aside until you are ready to make the batter.

Final Batter:

1 egg

2/3 cup milk

1 teaspoon baking soda

1 teaspoon salt

2 tablespoons sugar

2 tablespoons butter, melted

Rested pancake starter

Chocolate chips

Whisk together all of the batter ingredients, except for the starter (and the chocolate chips...), until well combined. Add the combined wet ingredients to the pancake starter and fold everything together until everything is mixed together, and is approximately the consistency of thick gravy.

To cook the pancakes, heat your pan or griddle until it is hot (a drop of water will dance when it hits the pan or griddle when it is hot enough). Melt some butter on the pan or griddle and pour 1/3 to 1/2 cup of batter at a time (these make pretty big pancakes) onto the surface. I used a small pan and made one pancake at a time, but you can make as many as your pan can accommodate. Once the batter has been poured onto the pan or griddle, sprinkle chocolate chips on top. We were very liberal with our chocolate chip sprinkling... Within a few minutes, you will see the edges begin to dry and lots of bubbles on the surface. That means your pancakes are ready to flip, so carefully flip them to cook the other side. Wait just a couple of minutes, and your pancakes are done!

Serve as you like them best - butter and syrups, a sprinkling of powdered sugar - whatever works for you.

Happy breakfast!

December Daring Bakers' Challenge - Sourdough

2011-12-27T00:01:00.016-05:00

No beating around the bush in an intro this month... this challenge was awesome.

Our Daring Bakers Host for December 2011 was Jessica of My Recipe Project and she showed us how fun it is to create Sour Dough bread in our own kitchens! She provided us with Sour Dough recipes from Bread Matters by AndrewWhitley as well as delicious recipes to use our Sour Dough Bread in from Tonia George's Things on Toast and Canteen's Great British Food!

Sourdough has actually been on my mind quite a bit recently. One of my bloggie friend (Hi, Jenni!) has been talking a bit about sourdough recently, and it really peaked my interest. I mean, I dabbled in wild yeast and levains once before, but I can't really call that an attempt at sourdough. And any research I have done about sourdoughs usually wound up confusing me - lots of talk about "hydration" and everything being carefully measured out by weight... it just seemed a bit overwhelming.

And then Jessica announced the challenge.

And I jumped in with both feet.

Me being me, I did a ton of reading about different methods of making sourdough starters. I mean, I fully intended to follow Jessica's recipe and methods very closely, but I wanted a better understanding of the whole process. Basically, the idea is to cultivate the wild yeasts and (healthy) bacteria that lie dormant in the flour. If you really dive into it, it is very scientific. But even if you don't, it is still pretty cool.

So we started out with some flour (whole wheat flour - less processed, more natural yeast to be activated) and some water. That's it. Just mix the two together.

Then cover it loosely and find a decently warm place for it to live for the next week or so...

Then, each day, as per Jessica's directions, we fed this. With more flour and water. Little miss helped.

Within four days, we were showing signs of life!

Yup, all those bubbles were exactly what I was hoping for. And it started smelling... well... yeasty. The best description I can think of for the smell was like a kind of sweet, kind of tangy beer-like smell. But that is a good thing. It means that everything was working like it was supposed to.

At this point, I noticed on the Daring Bakers forum that many of the more experienced sourdough bakers were discussing their existing sourdough starters. It seems that most folks maintain their starters for, well, ever. And, as it is a living thing that they maintain, they give their starters names. Hmmm... definitely something to consider.

Now, Jessica provided us with options. She provided with two options for starters and two options for breads to make with those starters. One option was for a rye-flour based starter, which would be used to make a rye sourdough loaf. As you may have noticed, I didn't go with that option. I followed the wheat starter process, and, now that my starter was alive and kicking, was ready to try my hand at the wheat based loaf recipe that was provided, for a French Country Bread.

The French Country Bread recipe is a little different from some of the other sourdough bread recipes I have seen. Generally, sourdough breads are made by combining sourdough starter (that has been "activated," or fed about four to twelve hours prior to beginning baking), flour, salt, and sometimes a bit of additional water into a dough, then allowing the dough to rest while the natural yeast does its job... yada, yada, yada, it's a very straightforward process. The French Country loaf had an extra step built into it - turning the sourdough starter into something called a "Production Leaven," then incorporating that leaven into a dough.

Creating the production leaven is basically just refreshing the starter, but in different proportions than a normal feed of the starter, and using a combination of both whole wheat and all purpose flour.

Jessica indicated that the leaven might be a bit stiff at this point. That it definitely was.

Then the leaven was set aside for a few hours. When it was done resting and ready to go, it was time to make the actual dough. Once again, this was a combination of the basics - flour, water and a bit of salt. This all comes together in a very sticky dough. Very. Sticky.

The dough is kneaded right on the counter, then the production leaven is placed right on top of it.

The whole thing is then kneaded a whole lot more (and I hand kneaded this - no KitchenAid used in this recipe. I really wanted to get a feel for the dough, and it is a very wet, sticky dough, so I really wanted to know what I was doing...), at which point it is ready to rest again. And this rest is achieved right on the counter, covered by a bowl.

This rest gives the natural yeasts time to activate and for the dough to aerate. At this point, the dough is ready to be shaped. Most sourdough breads are shaped in special proofing baskets (called a banneton), but I just used a round, plastic colander, lined with a very heavily floured dish towel.

And once again the dough rests. As you may have noticed, from start (or, well, starter...) to finish, the primary ingredient in sourdough bread is time.

So five hours later, we were ready to go. I turned the dough out onto a parchment paper covered baking sheet and scored it.

Then into the oven it went.

And then I got even more excited, because man did it smell good.

And 45 minutes, I saw something interesting. The bread rose kinda funny in the oven.

Looked a bit like a muppet, I thought...

But from a different angle...

Look! A rustic looking loaf of real sourdough bread!

The next morning, we cut into it.

Not too shabby. I was kinda hoping for more of those big, airy holes that you think of with these rustic loaves, but I am wondering if a more mature sourdough starter will help with that.

Regardless of the (lack of) airiness of the loaf's crumb, it tasted delicious.

And it's just the beginning. As I mentioned at the beginning, I did a ton of reading, and bookmarked a ton of recipes to try now that I have an actual starter. I have tried a few so far that I will share in future posts.

So now the question remains, what do I name my starter?

Jessica, I can't thank you enough for this amazing challenge. You have been an awesome, patient and enthusiastic host, answering more questions than I've ever seen asked about a single challenge. I am so excited to now have my very own sourdough starter, and I look forward to years of delicious sourdough baking, all thanks to you!

To see the delicious breads and sourdough creations baked in the kitchen this month, check the out here.

French Country Bread (starter and loaf)

(recipe from December 2011 Daring Bakers' Challenge)

Wheat Starter - Day 1:

Ingredients:

4 1/2 tablespoons whole-wheat flour

3 tablespoons water

(total: scant 1/2 cup)

Directions:

In a tupperware or other plastic container, mix the flour and water into a paste.

Gently cover (put the lid on loosely or cover loosely with plastic wrap) and set aside somewhere warm.

Wheat Starter - Day 2:

Ingredients:

4 1/2 tablespoons whole-wheat flour

3 tablespoons water

scant 1/2 cup of starter from Day 1

(total: scant cup)

Directions:

Stir the flour and water into the mixture from Day 1. Cover and return it to its warm place.

Wheat Starter - Day 3:

Ingredients:

4 1/2 tablespoons whole-wheat flour

4 teaspoons water

scant 1 cup of starter from Day 2

(total: scant 1 1/3 cup)

Directions:

Stir the flour and water into the mixture from day 2. Cover and return it to its warm place.

Wheat Starter - Day 4:

Ingredients:

3/4 cup plus 1 1/2 tablespoons unbleached all-purpose flour

1/2 cup less 4 teaspoons water

scant 1 1/3 cup starter from Day 3

(total: scant 2 2/3 cup)

Directions:

Stir the flour and water into the mixture from Day 3. Cover and return it to its warm place. At this point it should be bubbling and smell yeasty. If not, repeat this process for a further day or so until it is.

(note: be sure that your container can accommodate not only the starter, but the growth that it will experience as the yeast forms.)

French Country Bread

Stage 1: Refreshing the leaven

Ingredients:

2 cup less 1 tablespoon of the wheat leaven starter created above (or another wheat starter, if you have one, refreshed per the day 4 instructions above)

6 tablespoons less 1 teaspoon whole wheat flour

1 cup plus 2 teaspoons unbleached all purpose flour

1/2 cup water

Directions:

Mix everything into a sloppy dough. It may be fairly stiff at this stage. Cover and set aside for 4 hours, until bubbling and expanded slightly. (note: mine was very stiff and didn't really bubble, but it did expand a bit.)

Stage 2: Making the final dough

Ingredients:

3/4 cup less 1 teaspoon whole wheat flour (plus more for dusting)

2 cups plus 2 tablespoons unbleached all purpose flour

1 1/4 teaspoon sea salt

1 1/4 cups water

1 3/4 cups production leaven from above step (this will leave approximately 1 cup of extra production leaven, which you can save, discard or re-incorporate into your starter the next time you feed it, or use in another recipe of your choice)

Directions:

Mix the dough with all of the ingredients except for the production leaven. It will be a soft dough.

Knead on an unfloured surface for about 8-10 minutes, getting the tips of your fingers wet if you need to. Use a dough-scraper (or washed, expired credit card, if you don't have a dough scraper) to stretch and fold the dough, making the dough smoother and more elastic.

Smooth the dough into a circle, then scoop the production leaven into the center. You want to fold the edges of the dough up to incorporate the leaven, though this might be a messy process. Continue kneading for a couple of minutes until the leaven is fully incorporated into the dough.

Spread some water on a clean bit of your work surface and lay the dough on top. Cover with an upturned bowl, lining the rim of the bowl with a bit of water. Leave for an hour, so that the gluten can develop and the yeasts can begin to aerate the dough.

Once the dough has rested, you can begin to stretch and fold it. Using wet hands and a dough scraper, stretch the dough away from you as far as you can without breaking it and fold it back on itself. Repeat this in each direction, to the right, towards you, and to the left. This will help create a more 'vertical' dough, ready for proofing.

Heavily flour a banneton or proofing basket (or a tea-towel lined bowl) with whole wheat flour and rest the dough, seam side up, in the basket. Put the basket in a large plastic bag, inflate it, and seal it (I covered mine with plastic wrap, as I did not have a large enough plastic bag). Set aside in a warm spot for 3-5 hours, or until it has expanded a fair bit. It is ready to bake when the dough responds to a gentle to a gentle poke by slowly pressing back into shape.

Preheat the oven to 425 degrees Fahrenheit. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper, then carefully invert the dough onto the sheet. Make 2-3 cuts on top of the loaf (to allow for expansion) and bake for 40-50 minutes, reducing the temperature to 400 degrees after the first 10 minutes.

Cool completely on a cooling rack.

Enjoy!

Cookies for Santa (Peanut Butter Blossoms)

2011-12-24T20:19:00.001-05:00

Is there anything better than creating holiday traditions with kids? Well, how about creating yummy holiday traditions with them?

One of the traditions in our house, as in many around the world, is making cookies to leave for Santa on Christmas Eve. To thank him for coming, and to give him a boost of energy for the rest of his trip.

This year, during a very fun horse-drawn carriage ride with Santa, little miss asked the big guy what his favorite kind of cookie was. The answer? Peanut butter. Hmm... Seems the jolly old fella has something in common with several of the folks in our house... So, of course, when I asked little miss what kind of cookies we were going to make today, she reminded me of Santa's request, and insisted that we make Peanut Butter Blossoms.

These are pretty easy to make, and are super delicious. And you know a recipe is going to be good when it starts out like this:

Yup, a whole stick of butter and a big ol' scoop of peanut butter. Some sugar, some vanilla, some flour, this cookie dough comes together really easily, and we were soon ready to shape the cookies.

The cookies themselves are just peanut butter cookies, shaped into balls and rolled in sugar.

The "blossom" comes as soon as the cookies are out of the oven.

In order to keep things moving along, we actually had a sort of assembly line going. I shaped the dough and rolled it in the sugar while little miss (with the help of wonderful Aunt D) unwrapped our Hershey's Kisses chocolates. Actually, little miss chose to make half of our cookies with Kisses, and half with Hugs, which are pretty much the same thing as the Kisses, just covered in white chocolate.

As soon as the cookies come out of the oven, a Kiss (or Hug) is carefully pressed into the middle of each cookie. The heat melts the bottom of the chocolate, adhering it to the cookie, and the pressure of pushing the candy into the cookie makes the cookies "crackle."

Pretty festive, isn't it?

We soon had our cooling racks full of delicious treats, all ready for Santa.

And maybe for someone else, as well.

Little miss carefully selected the two best cookies for Santa, and set them out with milk and a letter.

I think he'll be delighted.

Merry Christmas to all who celebrate, and I wish you all a wonderful holiday season!

Peanut Butter Blossoms

(from Hershey's)

48 Hershey's Kisses chocolates (though I usually only wind up with about 36 cookies...)

1/2 cup shortening (I use unsalted butter, at room temperature)

3/4 cup creamy peanut butter

1/3 cup granulated sugar

1/3 cup packed light brown sugar

1 egg

2 tablespoons milk

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1 1/2 cups all purpose flour

1 teaspoon baking soda

1/2 teaspoon salt

granulated sugar (for rolling the unbaked cookies)

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees and unwrap the chocolates.

Beat the shortening and peanut butter in a large bowl until well blended (I use my KitchenAid mixer). Add 1/3 cup granulated sugar and brown sugar, beat until fluffy. Add egg, milk and vanilla and beat well.

In a separate bowl, stir together the flour, baking soda and salt. Gradually beat the dry ingredients into the peanut butter mixture.

Shape the dough into 1-inch balls. Roll each ball in granulated sugar and place onto ungreased cookie sheet.

Bake for 8-10 minutes or until lightly browned.

Immediately press a chocolate into the center of each cookie. The cookie will crack around the edges.

Remove the cookies from the cookie sheet to a wire rack and allow them to cool completely.

Makes around 4 dozen (though I usually get about 3 dozen from this recipe...)

Enjoy!

Sweet Potatoes and Apples in Caramel Sauce

2011-12-17T20:23:00.000-05:00

I know Thanksgiving was a couple of weeks ago, so everyone is probably all turkey-ed out, but in our house, we decided that there is no better time than, well, now for a Thanksgiving dinner repeat. Okay, it's partly because the grocery store had turkey on really, really good sale this week, and also partly because I'd been marveling recently as to how I have never actually cooked a turkey myself... whatever the reason, we had a pseudo-repeat-Thanksgiving last night, and it was delicious.

Now, if you ask little miss what her favorite part of the Thanksgiving meal is, she will always, always tell you that it is the yams. I'd like to think it is because sweet potatoes are, in and of themselves, so delicious, but in reality, it's because it's the only side dish that allows her to have marshmallows with her dinner. And, seriously, who can blame her...

So in looking for recipes in the run-up to this weeks pseudo-Thanksgiving, I knew candied yams had to be on the menu. Little miss loves the ones we have every year at my in-laws' house, so I almost just asked for that recipe, but did a quick bit of searching to see what other options I had.

And what I found spoke to me so loudly and so clearly, that I knew I'd be giving it a try.

This is a recipe for candied yams that includes apples, and rather than a fruity sauce, it is a caramel sauce. If marshmallows with dinner is good, think how good marshmallows and caramel would be with dinner! Winner.

I started by baking my sweet potatoes. Once they were cooled, I cut them into chunks and scattered them in my casserole dish along with chunks of apple. The recipe called for tart apples, but all I had were Gala, so I used those.

So far, pretty healthy looking, right?

Not for long.

Next? Take brown sugar and whisk it together with some cornstarch.

Add a tablespoon of butter and a pinch of salt, then pour boiling water over everything.

Transfer this to a pot, and cook the whole mixture until it starts to thicken and the liquid starts turning clear, you know, the way gravies do when they are done.

Pour the syrup over the sweet potatoes and apples, and bake.

I don't have pictures of this whole middle part, because by this time I was also working on stuffing and green beans, so the camera was all but forgotten for a few minutes...

But once the apples are tender, it is time for little miss's favorite part - the marshmallows. The recipe calls for mini-marshmallows to be scattered over the top. I used my homemade marshmallows, which I'd cut to the size of mini marshmallows.

A couple of minutes under the broiler, and voila:

Yummy ooey gooey goodness that we couldn't wait to taste.

And let me just tell you, it did not disappoint. It was so delicious, it was like dessert right next to the turkey and cranberry sauce.

Seriously, I told daddy that I want to turn this into a pie. And I think I may just play around with that idea, to be honest. This was so good, you absolutely have to give it a try. Soon.

Sweet Potatoes and Apples in Caramel Sauce

(from Get Off Your Butt and Bake!)

5 medium yams or sweet potatoes (I used 3 very large ones)

(or you could use 2 cans of canned yams or sweet potatoes, drained well)

3 tart apples (though I used Galas, and it worked beautifully)

2 cups boiling water

1 cup brown sugar

3 tablespoons cornstarch

1 pinch salt

1 tablespoon butter

Cook the yams until they are just about done. Skin them and cut them into chunks. (If using canned, just drain them.) Layer the sweet potatoes with chunks of apple in a 9" x 13" glass dish/casserole.

To prepare the sauce, mix the brown sugar with the cornstarch and blend well. Add 2 cups of boiling water, slowly, along with the salt and the butter. Cook this over medium heat until the sauce has turned clear in color. (It will still be brown, but it will turn shiny and nice, you will know it when you see it.)

Pour the glaze over the yams and apples. Bake at 300 degrees for 1 hour, until the apples have softened.

Sprinkle the top with mini-marshmallows and melt them under the broiler. Watch it very closely, as they brown very quickly and you don't want them to burn.

Make this soon. I bet you'll love it!!

December Daring Cooks Challenge - Char Sui Bao (Cantonese BBQ Pork Buns)

2011-12-14T00:01:00.006-05:00

As you may have noticed, we love Asian cuisine around here. And I am seriously excited by trying to learn to prepare more of it at home. Not only is it cheaper and healthier than the take-out variety, but it is a ton of fun, too.

So you can imagine how excited I was when I saw the announcement for this month's challenge.

Our Daring Cooks' December 2011 hostess is Sara from Belly Rumbles! Sara chose awesome Char Sui Bao as our challenge, where we made the buns, Char Sui and filling from scratch - delicious!

This challenge involved two aspects - first, the Char Sui (Cantonese BBQ pork), then preparing the Boa, the buns (which, in itself, involved two aspects - the filling and the dough!). The whole challenge had my mouth watering from the get go, and had me very excited to pay a nice visit to the local Asian grocery. See, the actual list of ingredients for the marinade for the pork was pretty long, and involved a few specialty items. And even the not-so-specialty items, well, I knew I could save a buck or two if I got them at the Asian grocery. So off we went, list in hand, and came home with all kinds of fun ingredients, all ready to prepare our marinade.

The marinade was very easy to prepare. The hardest part for me was grating the fresh ginger root, something I have never actually done. My first attempt resulted in me, well, juicing it more than grating it, but I finally wound up with what I needed and was ready to proceed with the rest of the recipe. Which consists of a tablespoon or two of each of the ingredients you see above, all dumped into a bowl. Kind of like this.

A little whisking later, and all that was left to do was to pour it over the meat.

This then went into the fridge. I actually prepared the marinade and meat before bed one night, and let it rest in the fridge until I was ready to pop it in the oven the next evening, so it had plenty of time to really flavor the meat.

The result of all of that time was a really juicy, flavorful cut of meat.

This made for an outstanding dinner. Seriously, we had to stop ourselves from eating both pieces that we'd prepared, since we knew we needed the second piece for the second half of the challenge.

Daddy, little miss and I all absolutely loved it. Little man had to miss out on this one, since one of the ingredients in the marinade is hoisin sauce, for which I used the homemade hoisin sauce recipe that I'd provided to the Daring Cooks during the Moo Shu challenge, which happens to contain peanut butter. Next time I make this, I'll find a substitute, because I know he'd have loved this, too.

After that delicious dinner, we were all eagerly anticipating the next part of the challenge, the buns.

Sara provided us with two options regarding the buns - we could steam them or bake them, depending on preference and availability of kitchen tools (for steaming). I was so excited by this challenge that it was just the motivation I needed to finally purchase a bamboo steamer. Sara provided two dough recipes, too - one for each cooking method. I chose to follow the recipe given for the steamed buns, but, out of curiosity, decided to steam only half the buns and bake the other half. Call it a science experiment if you like, we just really wanted to see what the differences would be.

The dough is a sweet yeast dough, made with scalded milk, sugar, oil, salt and flour. A pretty basic dough and very quick to come together. I started the dough first.

Then I proceeded to prepare the filling, which mostly involved chopping the reserved Char Sui pork.

And chopping a couple of onions.

The onions and meat were tossed into a pan to be heated, and then a few sauces (oyster sauce and dark soy sauce, as well as some sesame oil) were added for extra flavor.

The resulting deliciousness was then thickened with a basic slurry (cornstarch whisked into chicken stock).

Then set aside to cool, while the dough finished resting.

At this point, it was time for the hands on part, the actual construction of the buns.

The dough recipe indicated that it would make 20 buns, but I divided it up into 16 portions, which worked really well. Each portion was hand-rolled into a ball, then flattened into a disc with a rolling pin.

Into each portion, I spooned a tablespoon or so of the prepared filling.

I then tried like heck to seal each bun using the process shown in this video, provided to us by Sara. It is not as easy as it looks, but I wound up with some buns that, well, kinda looked something like they were supposed to...

I cut little squares of parchment paper to go under each bun in the steamer to make the steamer easier to clean, also. Half of the buns went into the steamer baskets, and the other half (which, luckily, didn't need to have those cool pleats), went onto a baking sheet.

Funny enough, both sets of buns cook, via their own method, for about the same amount of time. Very convenient! So fifteen minutes later, dinner was ready!

I am so glad that I tried both cooking methods simultaneously, because comparing them side by side was really interesting. The steamed buns expanded more during the cooking process, and the baked buns retained more of the sweetness of the dough. The steamed buns both looked and tasted more authentic, but the baked buns were a bigger hit with little miss (no surprise there!).

But they were both absolutely delicious.

Sara, thank you so much for this amazing challenge. I will definitely be making everything again, both the delicious Char Sui and the awesome Bao. I can't wait to try all kinds of different fillings for those buns, too, and to play with my new bamboo steamer, as well!

You can check out the work of my fellow Daring Cooks here.

And here are the recipes I used, as presented in Sara's challenge (and the changes that I made are noted), which I highly recommend trying out for yourself!

Char Sui

1 pork filet/tenderloin (roughly 1 - 1 1/2 pounds)

4 large cloves of garlic, crushed

1 teaspoin (3 gm) ginger, grated

1 tablespoon peanut oil

1 1/2 tablespoons maltose (a sweetener. You can substitute honey for this, which is what I did)

1 1/2 tablespoons honey

2 tablespoons hoisin sauce

1 tablespoon light soy sauce

1 tablespoon dark soy sauce

1 teaspoon oyster sauce

1 tablespoon shaoxing cooking wine

1/2 teaspoon ground white pepper

pinch of salt

1/2 teaspoon five spice powder

1/2 teaspoon sesame oil

1/2 teaspoon pillar box red food coloring (I omitted this)

Trim the pork loin to remove the fat and tendon and slice the meat lengthwise so that you have two long pieces. Then cut each piece in half. By cutting the pork into smaller pieces to marinate them, you will end up with more flavorsome char sui. If you want to leave the pork in once piece, you can do that as well. Place the meat into the container in which it will be marinated.

Combine all the other ingredients in a bowl and mix well to combine

Cover the pork well with 2/3 of the marinade mixture, reserving the remaining 1/3 covered in the fridge for use in basting the meat while cooking. (I actually poured all of the marinade over the pork and it worked out very well.) Marinate at least four hours or overnight.

When ready to cook, preheat the oven to 350 degrees.

Cover a baking dish or tray with foil. Place a cooking rack onto the prepared dish or tray on which to cook the pork. (I do not have an oven-appropriate rack, so I cooked my pork directly on the foil, which I'd sprayed with non-stick cooking spray.)

Transfer the meat from the dish in which it was marinated to the baking dish or rack.

Bake for ten minutes at 350, basting and turning the meat.

Raise the oven temperature to 400 degrees and cook for 20 minutes more, until the meat is cooked through.

I used bigger pieces of pork, so I cooked my meat at 350 for 15 minutes, then at 400 for 40 minutes. I then turned the oven to the broil setting and cooked each side for just a couple of minutes to help char the outsides.

If you would like, you can also grill the meat (rather than oven baking it), or you can sear it in a pan prior to putting it in the oven.

Char Sui Bao

for the dough:

1 cup milk, scalded

1/4 cup sugar

1 tablespoon oil (I used canola, but the recipe didn't specify)

1/4 teaspoon salt

2 1/2 teaspoons dried yeast (I used active dry)

3 cups plain flour (I used all purpose)

Scald the milk, then stir in the sugar, oil and salt. Leave this mixture to cool until it is lukewarm. Once the temperature is right (around 105-110 degrees), add the yeast, then let it sit until the yeast is activated and the mixture becomes frothy, about 10-15 minutes.

Sift the flour into a large bowl.

Add the milk/yeast mixture to the flour. Bring the flour mixture together with your hands, then knead on a lightly floured surface for approximately ten minutes. (I sifted the flour into the bowl of my KitchenAid mixer, then used the dough hook and incorporated the milk/yeast and did the kneading all in the machine, which worked out great.)

Place the dough in a lightly oiled bowl (I kept it in the KitchenAid's bowl, just gave it a little spray of oil on top) and cover with a damp cloth. Leave it to rise until it doubles in size, 1 - 2 hours, depending on the temperature of your kitchen.

for the filling:

12 ounces prepared char sui, finely diced

2 shallots, finely diced (I used onions as I did not have shallots in the house)

1 tablespoon dark soy sauce

2 tablespoons oyster sauce

1 teaspoon sesame oil

1/4 cup chicken stock

1 teaspoon cornflour (corn starch)

1/2 tablespoon vegetable oil

Heat the vegetable oil in a wok or pan. Add the diced char sui to the pan and stir, then add the onions. Cook for one minute. Add the soy sauce, oyster sauce and sesame oil and stir fry for another minute. Whisk the cornflour and stock together, then add to the pork mixture in the pan. Stir well and keep cooking until the mixture thickens, about one or two minutes. Remove the mixture from the pan and place into a bowl to cool. Set aside until ready to use.

To prepare the buns:

Once the dough has doubled in size, gently deflate it and divide it into 20 portions (I did 16 and the sizing worked great). Roll each portion into a round ball.

Use a rolling pin to roll each ball into a circle approximately two inches in diameter. Using your hands, gently pull the edges out to enlarge the circle to about three inches in diameter (mine were a little bigger) (this makes the edges thinner than the center, keeping the center of the bun stronger for the filling, and keeping it from cracking).

Place a good sized tablespoon of filling into the middle of the circle of dough.

Gather the edges of the dough and seal the bun.

If baking the buns:

Place the bun on a parchment covered baking sheet, seam side down.

Preheat your oven to 392 degrees F (200 degrees C, converted exactly, is 392. Close to 400 on your dial, for those of us whose ovens aren't quite that precise...).

Brush the top of each bun with egg wash (if desired).

Bake for 15 minutes, until golden brown.

If steaming the buns:

Place the bun on a square of parchment paper inside the steamer basket, seam side up (you can attempt the pleating method in the video above, if you are so inclined). Set your pan of water on to simmer.

Place your steamer basket(s) over the pan of water, covered, and steam for 12-15 minutes.

I promise, it's actually quite a simple process, and is absolutely delicious.

Enjoy!

Steamed Baby Bok Choy

2011-12-12T20:51:00.001-05:00

I bought myself a birthday present this year.

A bamboo steamer.

I have kind of been wanting one for a while, but didn't really have a real reason. And I don't really have room for it in my kitchen... But I finally caved, for reasons that will become clear later this week... One trip to the Asian grocery later and I am now the proud owner of a two-tier bamboo steamer! Woo hoo!

I wanted to give the steamer a test run right away, so I thought some steamed veggies would be a safe place to start. I even found a good recipe for inspiration.

Now, the steamer didn't come with instructions, so I did some googling and, well, figured that I would figure it out. I did learn, though, from another food blogging friend (thank you, Cuppy!) that you have to prime a steamer prior to its first use by cleaning it with warm soapy water and steaming it empty for 30 minutes.

Once that was done, I was ready to give it a go.

I started by cutting each of three baby bok choy in half.

I then laid the cut baby bok choy into the two baskets of the steamer.

And then we were ready to go. I poured a couple of inches of water into the bottom of my widest pan, brought it to a boil, turned the heat to medium and set the stacked and covered steamer right into the pan.

About ten minutes later, I took a peek.

Look at that! Beautifully steamed baby bok choy!

A little sauce and we had an instant, yummy veggie side for dinner.

I can't wait to try all kinds of fun things in my new steamer. Hooray for fun kitchen toys!

Steamed Baby Bok Choy

(from Souvlaki For The Soul)

1 bunch baby bok choy (as many as can fit in your steamer, I used three, my bunch came with five)

2 tablespoons oyster sauce

2 teaspoons soy sauce (I used dark soy sauce)

1 teaspoon sesame oil

If desired, cut the baby bok choy in half (I did). Make sure to clean the bok choy well, as grit can be stuck between the layers. Layer the baby bok choy into the baskets of the steamer.

Boil a pan of water, and when it comes to a boil, place the bamboo steamer over the water. Cover the steamer and leave it for 5-10 minutes (depending on the size of the bok choy).

For the sauce, heat the oyster sauce, soy sauce and sesame oil over a low, gentle heat until warmed through. You can also combine them and microwave it until warm.

Drizzle the sauce over the steamed bok choy.

Enjoy!

Gingerbread Cookies

2011-12-09T07:53:00.001-05:00

In this new online world, I have made many invisi-friends. Other stay at home moms, other food bloggers - there are amazing communities full of some really great people out there. I am honored to have been asked to guest-post on the blog of someone who spans both communities - someone I met as a stay at home mom who also happens to write a really fun blog, Adventures in Mommy-Land. She's hosting a week of guest posts for a virtual cookie party, and asked me to share a recipe! You should check out her blog and the other delicious recipes that have been shared this week. And for fun, here's a link, and the post that I shared over there!

Hi! I am Shelley from C Mom Cook. I have been reading Charlene's blog for years, and am so excited to be a part of this online cookie exchange!

In our house, baking is a family affair. My five year old daughter has been helping me in the kitchen from the time she could stand on a chair or stool, and my almost one year old son loves to take part as well. From helping to measure or pour ingredients to mixing and stirring, or even just getting their hands into everything and making a flour-y mess - it's all about fun and learning.

We carry this family baking spirit right on into the holidays with us each year. We bake a wide variety of treats over the entire holiday season, to be enjoyed by everyone - friends, family, teachers, members of our community. And in our house, no one cookie says "Happy Holidays" quite like a gingerbread cookie. Sure we make lots of other cookies (and devour every crumb!), but there's nothing quite like the deliciously warm, spicy scent and flavor of gingerbread to make the season that much more special.

The following is our favorite gingerbread cookie recipe.

Gingerbread Cookies

(from Grandma's Molasses)

8 tablespoons (1 stick) butter (at room temperature)

1/2 cup sugar

1/2 cup molasses

1 egg

2 cups flour

1 teaspoon baking soda

1/4 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon ground ginger

1 teaspoon cinnamon

1/8 teaspoon ground cloves

In a mixer, cream together the butter, sugar and molasses. Add egg and beat until well combined.

In a separate bowl, sift together the flour, baking soda, salt and spices.

With the mixer on low, slowly add the dry ingredients to the butter/egg mixture.

Once the dough has come together, wrap it in plastic wrap and allow it to rest in the refrigerator for at least two hours (or you can put it into the freezer for an hour, if you are pressed for time). (The dough can rest in the refrigerator overnight, too, if it is easier to make it a two-day process.)

When you are ready to bake the cookies, it is best to divide the dough into portions, to allow the portions not being used to remain in the refrigerator while you are working with one section.

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.

Roll each section of dough to approximately 1/4" thick and cut into shapes using the cookie cutter(s) of your choice. Lay each cookie onto a baking sheet, about an inch apart. You can decorate the cookies with sprinkles or chocolate chips prior to baking, if you wish.

Bake each tray of cookies for 8-10 minutes.

If you choose to decorate these cookies after they are baked, allow them to cool fully first.

Please note that this recipe makes delicious cookies, but shouldn't be used for gingerbread houses - you need more of (what we refer to as...) a "construction grade" gingerbread cookie for house-building, and these cookies are soft and chewy.

Happy Holidays!

Carrot Cake

2011-12-05T21:21:00.001-05:00

As you may have noticed, I love trying new recipes. As you may also have noticed, I also love cake. So it may surprise you to know that I have never baked a carrot cake before. And it's not that I don't like carrot cake - I do. A lot. But for some reason that I do not understand, I have always assumed that carrot cake would be difficult to make. It always seemed gourmet. Fancy. Difficult. But we decided to make carrot cake for dessert for this weekend's family dinner.

Since I was nervous about this difficult undertaking, I spent a bit of time searching for recipes. Apparently, carrot cakes are pretty customizable - there are so many different recipes that, while similar, each put their own spin the cakes. I finally picked a recipe and decided to just go with it, giving myself plenty of time, in case it really was as hard as I had always worried.

Holy moly, I have never been so glad to be wrong.

This cake was delicious, and not even hard to make.

I started with the hardest part - shredding the carrots.

Yes, I hand grated the carrots. I would have used the mini-food processor attachment to the immersion blender, but the baby was napping and I didn't want to wake him. So my box grater and I got to spend some quality time together.

I then went to the pantry to grab a can of crushed pineapple. That I was certain was in there. Only to find that it wasn't in there. You'd think I'd have known that, seeing as I just totally reorganized the pantry... So I decided that I would make a couple of adjustments and create my own version of a carrot cake. I mean, hey - all the cook kids are doing it...

So instead of crushed pineapple, I found a can of sliced pears (in juice, not syrup).

I lightly mashed the pears with my potato masher and was good to go.

Next it was time to put everything together. In one bowl, I combined all of the dry ingredients.

I always love how the different dry ingredients look together.

Then the KitchenAid did the majority of the work, mixing together the eggs, sugars, oil and vanilla, then incorporating in the dry ingredients.

The resulting batter was super thick.

That was remedied, though, by the addition of the carrots and mashed pears.

I decided to omit the raisins (chocking hazard) and chopped nuts (allergen) (I am sure you can see where I am going with this...) from the recipe, too, so that little man would be able to taste the cake after dinner as well. Because that would just be fun. So that yummy batter was poured into a pan and was ready to go into the oven.

While the cake baked, I turned my attention to frosting. Because half of the reason that I love carrot cake is the cream cheese frosting. Yum. I decided to make one more adjustment to the recipe, making it, too, my own.

Yup. Maple syrup. It was all I could do not to just dig in to the mixer bowl with a spoon...

And, despite the fact that I didn't make the cake fancy in any way shape or form, I still think it looked pretty good by the time we were ready to go.

So the results?

Yum.

The cake was moist and delicious, had a really great combination of flavors, and was absolutely fantastic with the maple cream cheese frosting.

And, while he didn't get to try the frosting, little man certainly enjoyed his cake!

This cake was very easy to pull together, and was a total hit with the entire family. I will definitely be making it again.

Carrot Cake

(adapted from Homemade by Holman)

1 cup sugar

1 cup brown sugar

1 1/3 cups canola oil

3 eggs

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

2 1/2 cups flour

2 teaspoons baking soda

2 teaspoons cinnamon

1/4 teaspoon ground ginger

1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg

1 1/2 teaspoons salt

1 pound carrots, peeled and grated

1/2 cup mashed pear (most of a can of canned, sliced pears, in juice, mashed)

Preheat oven to 350 degrees and spray a 9" x 13" cake pan (the original recipe called for 8-inch cake pans, and said that the batter filled three).

In bowl of electric mixer fitted with paddle attachment, combine sugars, oil, eggs and vanilla. Mix on medium speed for about two minutes.

In a separate bowl, combine flour, baking soda, salt and spices and whisk together.

With the mixer on low speed, add the whisked dry ingredients to the sugar mixture and combine until just incorporated. The batter will be very thick.

Fold carrots and mashed pears into batter, mixing until well distributed.

Pour the batter into the prepared ban and bake for 34-37 minutes, until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean. (The recipe indicates that 8-inch round cakes should bake for about 30 minutes.)

Allow the cake to cool completely (on a wire rack).

Maple Cream Cheese Frosting

(from Martha Stewart)

1 8-ounce package of cream cheese, room temperature

1/2 cup (1 stick) butter, room temperature

1 tablespoon maple syrup (I doubled this)

1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract (I doubled this, too)

2 cups confectioners' sugar

In the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, beat the cream cheese and butter together until smooth. Add maple syrup, vanilla and confectioners' sugar. Continue beating until well combined and smooth. Just be careful when adding the confectioners' sugar, as it wants to puff out of the bowl as the mixer goes! You can adjust the amount of confectioners' sugar to get the frosting consistency that you want.

Enjoy!

Pecan Pie

2011-11-30T13:56:00.000-05:00

I can't believe how the time is flying. The year is flying by, and it's holiday time already!!

With Thanksgiving last week and December only hours away, it's a very busy time for, well, just about everyone I know. It's also a pretty busy time in the kitchen, between huge family feasts, yummy holiday treats and fun edible gifts.

I don't host the holiday feasts, though I hope to one day. We do our big holiday meals with daddy's family. But I bring dessert. I offer to make anything that will help out, but dessert is usually the key. And one dessert that is generally requested year after year, as was the case this Thanksgiving, is pecan pie.

I have been making this pecan pie in this particular crust for many, many years. I am almost embarrassed to let you know how unbelievable easy this whole recipe is. Even the crust. While I do love my go-to, all butter, normal, roll-out pie crust, I always default to this easier one for this pie. I have no idea why, it's just what I do.

And when I say easy, I mean easy.

Put all of the ingredients right in the pie plate in a big, messy clump.

Use a fork to mix it all together. Well, a fork and a teeny bit of patience, because for a minute there, it'll look like there's not enough liquid to wet all the dry...

Use your hands to press it into shape.

Prick the dough all over with a fork.

Aaaannnd.... umm... that's it. Obviously you want to bake the pie shell, especially if the pie recipe calls for a fully baked crust. But that's it. No cutting in of shortening, no resting in the fridge, no fighting with a rolling pin... a seriously easy crust that actually tastes flaky and delicious. I half bake mine prior to making the pecan pie (see recipes below), and it comes out pretty darn nicely, I think.

Now, I made this crust after dinner the night before Thanksgiving, then proceeded to make the rest of the pie after the kiddos went to bed, as it always tastes better the next day. So before sending the kids off to dreamland, I took care of the noisy part of the process - chopping the pecans in the (mini) food processor (attachment of my much-loved immersion blender).

Once the nuts are chopped, the pie is super simple to put together. Yup, even easier than the crust.

All of the ingredients go into one bowl.

Mix them until they're well incorporated, then pour the whole thing into the prepared crust.

Then put it in the oven for 45 minutes.

And don't tell anyone that it was that easy.

Pecan pie is magical to me, how the nuts rise to the surface and create that shell, and all the gooey, sweet deliciousness stays underneath...

With a bit of whipped cream (or vanilla ice cream!) it is the perfect end to a holiday meal.

So what is your favorite holiday dessert?

Easy Pie Crust

(from allrecipes)

1 1/2 cups all purpose flour

2 teaspoons white sugar

1 teaspoon salt

1/2 cup vegetable oil

2 tablespoons milk

Preheat oven to 400 degrees.

Place all ingredients into a 9 inch pie plate. Using a fork, stir everything together. Pat the mixture into the bottom and up the sides of the pie plate. Using the same fork, poke holes in the bottom and sides of the crust.

Bake for 15 minutes or until light brown.

(I usually bake it for no more than 10 minutes with the pecan pie recipe that follows)

Pecan Pie

(from allrecipes)

1 9-inch pie shell

3/4 cup white sugar

3/4 cup light corn syrup

3 eggs, beaten

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1 pinch salt

1 cup chopped pecans (I usually over-flow my cup, being very generous with the pecans...)

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Prick pastry shell in several places wit a fork and bake in preheated oven for 5 minutes. (you can skip this step if you followed the above directions for the easy pie crust)

In a large bowl, combine sugar, corn syrup, eggs, vanilla, salt and pecans. Mix well, then pour into pie shell.

Bake in preheated oven for 45 minutes. Check the crust after 30 minutes - if it is getting too brown, cover the edges with foil. When fully baked, the pie will still be a little loose in the center, but will fully set as it cools - be careful not to over-bake.

Enjoy!

November Daring Bakers' Challenge - Filipino Desserts

2011-11-27T00:01:00.011-05:00

Catherine of Munchie Musings was our November Daring Bakers'host and she challenged us to make a traditional Filipino dessert - the delicious Sans Rival cake! And for those of us who wanted to try an additional Filipino dessert, Catherine also gave us a bonus recipe for Bibingka which comes from her friend Jun of Jun-blog.

I love to try new things and learn about foods from around the world. So when the challenge was revealed this month, I was super excited.

The main dessert that Catherine challenged us to make was the Sans Rival, literally translating to "without rival" - I mean, it's so good, even the name tells us it's the best! The dessert is made by layering crispy, nut-flavored meringues with rich French buttercream. Umm... yes please!

Having never heard of the dessert prior to seeing the challenge, I did a little bit of online digging, just to see other pictures, learn as much as I could, and to compare recipes - I find that doing so helps me feel more comfortable when making something so completely new. After a few quick searches, I found a very similar recipe that looked gorgeous, and just happened to be on the blog of a fellow Daring Baker, Oggi. The only difference, as far as I could tell, was the number of eggs called for. The challenge recipe called for ten egg whites and five egg yolks, leaving the baker with a surplus of five yolks. Oggi's recipe called for five whites and five yolks - nice and even! So, while making sure to use the challenge recipe as inspiration, I followed Oggi's measurements so as not to have to worry about any extra ingredients.

The first step, no matter which recipe you follow, is to separate the eggs.

Then the two separate components have to be prepared. I began with the French buttercream, as it needed to be cooled at a couple different points during the preparation. The egg yolks were transferred to the bowl of my stand mixer, and I began to prepare a syrup of sugar and water, boiling it until it reached about 235 degrees.

Then, with the mixer on high, the syrup was slowly and carefully poured down the side of the mixer bowl to mix in with the whipping yolks.

(notice I stressed slow and careful. If you go to quickly, you wind up with scrambled eggs. Which is not the idea here. So go slowly and carefully.)

The mixer then continued to do its thing for another 15 minutes, at which point the mixture looked something like this:

And it tasted kind of like marshmallow cream. Yum. This was transferred to a bowl and set in the fridge to cool for a while.

Interestingly enough, when it came out of the fridge a couple of hours later, it looked like this:

All those little bubbles... kinda cool. And it still tasted like marshmallow cream. What? Don't you taste along the way?

Anyway, in order to turn that bowl of deliciousness into a rich French buttercream, there was one additional ingredient required. Butter. Which was beaten until totally fluffy in the mixer.

And then mixed in with the yolk-syrup-deliciousness. Then the whole thing was put back into the fridge to wait for the meringues to be ready.

Which was actually what I was working on while the yolk-syrup-deliciousness was in the fridge the first time.

After thoroughly cleaning out the mixer bowl from the yolks, into the bowl went the whites.

A few minutes whisked together at high speed, a little sugar and voila!

I folded some finely ground pecans into the finished meringue, and began to create my shapes. Catherine's recipe called for baking the meringue in 9 inch cake pans, covered in parchment and well coated with cooking spray. But, given how rich everyone said that the dessert was (and the fact that I only have two 9 inch round cake pans and was out of parchment paper), I decided to improvise. I thought that making individual sized Sans Rivals might be a fun idea, so I began to pipe little, flat rounds of the meringue.

As you can see, I did also make four slightly bigger rounds - I thought I would make a half-sized version, as well, in addition to the personal sized ones... I had plenty of meringue, so I figured why not.

The flat little nutty meringues baked up quickly and beautifully.

And I was now ready to build the dessert!

I started with the mini ones, as they were planned to be the dessert for our family dinner that evening.

With clean hands, I began the layering process.

Mini meringue, buttercream, another mini meringue, more buttercream, yet another mini meringue, a decorative pipe of buttercream on top, and a pecan half for decorative fun.

I chose to do only three layers of meringue for the little guys to make them easier to eat - I thought of them as Sans Rival petit fours, and thus didn't want them too tall to be able to bite into.

They turned out great, and made a fun little dessert to dinner that night!

We all enjoyed it, and thought that the combination of flavors and textures was fantastic. And most of us agreed that the single serving size, due to the richness of the buttercream, was perfect. It shouldn't surprise you that little miss was the one asking for seconds.

I did also construct the half size Sans Rival with the four five-inch meringue circles that I'd prepared. I tried to prepare it using the traditional (as described in the recipes) presentation, using four layers of meringue and coating the outside with crushed nuts (again, pecans for us).

I thought the dessert made a beautiful presentation in full, and it was just as yummy, if not more so, the second time around. I actually think that it tasted better after having sat in the fridge for a day.

And the layers of crispy and rich deliciousness were just super fun to eat.

In addition to the Sans Rival recipe that Catherine provided to us, she also presented two other recipes, as optional for this challenge. One (the Bibingka) required ingredients and tools that I just don't have at this time. The other, though, I found to be intriguing, and it looked simple, so I thought I would give it a shot. It was for salted eggs.

Salted eggs are basically eggs preserved in brine. That's it. Raw eggs in a brine solution. Turns out this is actually quite common, no matter how odd it seemed to me upon reading it. So I just had to give it a shot.

I took out a 16 ounce canning jar and found that three eggs fit perfectly in it.

The brine solution was easy - one part salt to four parts water (I went with 1/3 cup salt and 1 1/3 cups water - it was the amount of water that worked for my jar once the eggs were in it. Yes, I measured it out with clean water first...), with a few peppercorns added to the pot as well. The recipe actually called for bourbon or whiskey, too, but I skipped the booze.

Once the brine solution was boiled and cooled, I strained it into my jar of eggs.

I then put the lid on the jar and... let it sit. For two weeks. On the counter. I looked at it daily. With curiosity, mostly. Daddy looked at it with something a little closer to wariness or fear... or something between the two...

After two weeks, I figured I might as well try the eggs. Apparently the most common way to prepare the eggs for eating after brining them is to hard boil them. So that is what I did.

The results were... interesting. The eggs cooked up a little oddly, with the whites not feeling quite as firm as the hard boiled eggs I usually make (ie: ones that haven't sat for two weeks in a salt bath...), but the yolks seemed almost overcooked, at least the outer portion of them did.

As for the taste? Well, they tasted like salty eggs! Even through the shell, the brine really did permeate the entire egg, adding the saltiness to both the white and the yolk. It seemed like an interesting science experiment, but not one I am likely to repeat.

The Sans Rival, on the other hand, was fantastic, and will be made again for a fun occasion. I have included here the recipe that I used, with hints from the challenge presentation.

Catherine, thank you so much for sharing these new recipes with us and for being such a wonderful host!

To see some of the beautiful creations baked up in the kitchen this month, check them out here.

Sans Rival

(from Oggi)

Meringue

5 egg whites

1 cup sugar

1 1/2 cups chopped cashews or almonds (or pecans!)

1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

Beat the egg whites until stiff. Add the sugar gradually, continuing to beat. Fold in the nuts and vanilla. Pipe the whites onto parchment paper in the desired shapes, or divide the mixture into 4 or 5 very thin rounds. Bake the meringues at 350 degrees until golden brown. Turn the oven off and let them sit in the cooling oven until cool (about two hours total).

French Buttercream

1/4 cup water

2/3 cup sugar

5 egg yolks

1 cup (2 sticks) butter, room temperature

Boil water and sugar together until it spins a thread (about 235 degrees on a candy/deep fry thermometer). In a stand mixer fitted with the whisk attachment, beat the egg yolks on high speed. Slowly and carefully pour the mixture over well beaten egg yolks, with the mixer continuing to mix on high. Continue to beat until thick (about 15 minutes). Transfer the mixture to a bowl and chill in the fridge for an hour.

Cream the room temperature butter, then add the well chilled egg mixture. Beat well to combine fully.

Final Assembly

Prepared meringue layers

Prepared French Buttercream

1/2 cup chopped nuts (same nuts as used in meringue)

Set the bottom meringue on a board or platter (the serving dish works fine!). Spread a thin layer of buttercream, then top with another meringue. Repeat with all your layers, spreading a thin layer of buttercream on each meringue layer. Top the final layer with buttercream, and spread more buttercream over the sides. Decorate with the chopped nuts, either pressing them into the sides or sprinkling them all over the cake.

Refrigerate the cake until ready to serve. It also freezes very well.

Enjoy!

Oatmeal Cookie Granola

2011-11-22T14:21:00.001-05:00

I am kind of on an oatmeal kick recently. Well, I want to be on an oatmeal kick. So I have been looking at all kinds of recipes for fun and different things to do with oatmeal. In my searching, I came across a recipe for some yummy looking and sounding granola, so I bookmarked it.

Would you believe that I have never made granola before? Granola bars, sure. But just granola, nope. In fact, I don't even really know what one does with granola, other than eat it as cereal... yes, that includes sprinkling it on yogurt or ice cream. What, you don't do that with your cereal?

Anyway, it looked good and sounded really straightforward, so I figured what they heck. So once the little ones were fast asleep, I got started.

The basis of granola is oatmeal, so we started with that. The recipe actually called for two different kinds of oats - old fashioned (check, got those) and something called Coach's Oats. I have never heard of them, but the recipe said that you can just use more regular oats, so that is what I did. The recipe also called for a bit of quinoa to be mixed in with the oats, which was intriguing to me. So I started by tossing together my oatmeal and quinoa.

Dry ingredients set aside, I began preparing what I think of as the dressing for the granola - the wet ingredients that give it its flavor and hold it together. This recipe called for honey, vanilla, cinnamon, brown sugar and coconut oil. As luck would have it, my sister recently "loaned" me a jar of coconut oil. I hadn't actually ever tried it yet, so I think that was one reason why this recipe was calling to me... Interestingly enough, coconut oil is pretty solid at room temperature, which makes scooping it fun, but it, along with all the other yumminess went right into a pot to be melted all together.

Once the honey and coconut oil were completely melted and the sugar and cinnamon were completely incorporated, the liquid was ready to be poured over the waiting oats (and quinoa).

Aaaannnddd.... that was the hard part. I kid you not, that is as complicated as it gets. I carefully stirred the entire mixture together to make sure that all of the oats (and quinoa) had their fair share of coating, then poured the whole thing out onto a silicone-baking-mat-covered cookie sheet, which then went into a 325 degree oven.

Once the pan went into the oven, in addition to doing the dishes, I quickly chopped about a cup and a half of almonds. After 15 minutes, I took the pan out of the oven, gave it a toss (carefully, with a spatula) and sprinkled the chopped almonds on top.

At this point, it just takes a couple more iterations of "bake for 15 minutes then toss it around a bit" for the granola to be done. Who knew it was so easy?

After about 45 minutes of total cooking time, the granola will begin to turn golden brown, and that is when you know it is done. One more toss as you take it out of the oven for the final time, and the I just let it sit and set overnight.

When I came down for breakfast the next morning, I was pretty excited. The kitchen still smelled lovely from the vanilla and brown sugar and cinnamon-y goodness, so little miss and I dug right in. I had mine over vanilla yogurt (yellow bowl) and little miss had hers with milk.

The taste did not disappoint. Sweet but not overly so, nutty, warm and absolutely delicious.

Little miss then reminded me that one of her cookbooks has a recipe for cookies that have granola cereal as an ingredient. So I think I know what we'll be baking this weekend...

So how do you eat your granola?

Oatmeal Cookie Granola

(adapted from Cheeky Kitchen)

6 cups old fashioned oats (or 4 cups old fashioned oats and 2 cups of Coach's Oats)

1/2 cup quinoa

3/4 cup honey

1/4 cup brown sugar

2/3 cup coconut oil

1 1/2 tablespoons vanilla extract

2 teaspoons cinnamon

1 to 1 1/2 cups chopped almonds

Preheat oven to 325 degrees.

In a large bowl, stir together the oats and quinoa; set aside. In a medium saucepan, combine the honey, brown sugar, coconut oil, vanilla and cinnamon. Heat over medium heat until just melted, then pour the syrup over the oat mixture, stirring carefully until well coated. Turn the oats onto a cookie sheet that has been covered with a layer of parchment paper (or a silicone baking mat). Spread the oats into an even layer. Bake for 15 minutes. After 15 minutes, remove the granola from the oven and stir the nuts into the mixture. Return the pan to the oven and bake for 15 more minutes. Use a spatula to flip the granola over, then cook for an additional 15-20 minutes, until the edges are lightly golden brown. Remove the pan from the oven, stir the granola around one more time, then allow it to air dry and harden overnight before serving.

Enjoy!

Strawberry Crumb Topped Muffins

2011-11-18T21:02:00.003-05:00

Little miss is in afternoon kindergarten. Which means that we have the whole morning every day. Which is great. We can do errands or be lazy... whatever the day calls for.

On those mornings when we don't have anywhere to be, we have the opportunity to make breakfast a little more fun. And there is a greater than 50% chance that, when asked what she wants to make for breakfast, that little miss will pick some kind of muffin. I actually have a few muffins in the queue to post here that we have made for breakfasts recently, but this one was too fun to wait on.

Little miss chose a recipe in my file called "Banana Streussel Muffins." The only problem with this selection was that she had just eaten the last banana the previous morning. And I hadn't been to the store to buy more yet. So what is a mom to do? Improvise. Grab the box of strawberries in the fridge and make the recipe our own.

While I washed and hulled the strawberries, little miss started working on the muffin batter. She measured the dry ingredients and whisked them together.

I then hit the strawberries with the immersion blender to make a puree.

Little miss then incorporated the strawberry puree into the other wet ingredients.

We then worked together to carefully incorporate the wet ingredients into the dry, being careful not to over mix. Then, as I spooned the batter into the sprayed muffin tin, little miss worked on mixing together our crumb topping.

A generous sprinkle of topping on each muffin, and we were ready to bake.

And the results of our experiment?

They looked and smelled delicious out of the oven.

So how did they taste?

Little miss loved them.

And in case you are curious, so did little man.

This was his first muffin. And his first taste of strawberry. I see many more baked goods in his future...

Strawberry Crumb Topped Muffins
(my own recipe!)

For muffins:

1 1/2 cups all purpose flour

1 teaspoon baking soda

1 teaspoon baking powder

1/4 teaspoon salt

1 1/2 cups strawberry puree (just under one pound of strawberries, washed, hulled and pureed)

3/4 cups sugar

1 lightly beaten egg

1/3 cup melted butter

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

For crumb topping:

1/3 cup brown sugar

2 tablespoons flour

1/8 teaspoon cinnamon

1 tablespoon butter, room temperature

Preheat oven to 375 degrees and spray a 12-well muffin tin with non-stick cooking spray.

In a large mixing bowl, whisk together the 1 1/2 cups flour baking soda, baking powder and salt.

In a separate bowl, beat together the strawberry puree, sugar, egg, melted butter and vanilla.

Carefully add the strawberry mixture to the flour mixture and stir until just combined. Spoon the batter into the prepared muffin tins and set aside while you prepare the crumb topping.

In a small bowl, combine the brown sugar, 2 tablespoons flour and cinnamon. Incorporate the 1 tablespoon of butter by either cutting it in with knives, with a fork, or even with your fingertips until it resembles coarse crumbles. Sprinkle the topping over the tops of the prepared, unbaked muffins.

Put the muffin tin in the oven and close the door. Lower the oven temperature to 350 and bake for 18-22 minutes, until they test done.

Enjoy!

November Daring Cooks' Challenge - Cooking With Tea

2011-11-14T00:01:00.002-05:00

This last month has been a pretty busy one. Between school and sickies, little man starting to practice walking, computer issues and some pretty crazy weather, there's been a lot going on. Then the Daring Cooks' challenge for the month was announced, and it was a really interesting one.

Sarah from Simply Cooked was our November Daring Cooks'hostess and she challenged us to create something truly unique in both taste and technique! We learned how to cook using tea with recipes from Tea Cookbook by Tonia George and The New Tea Book by Sara Perry.

What an intriguing idea! While Sarah did provide us with some really interesting and cool recipe ideas for guidance, the only true requirement that she gave us was that we must prepare a savory dish using tea.

I immediately started trying to come up with something different. Then, in the course of an outing one day, I saw a variety box of fruit flavored teas (decaf! bonus!), and it came to me. Cranberry sauce.

My family has a tried and true cranberry sauce recipe that we generally tend to pull out around this time of year. Why not kick it up a notch and make it using tea?

To begin, little miss helped me to brew a cup of raspberry zinger tea.

Each bag is actually intended to make two cups, but I wanted my tea to be a bit strong, so that the flavor would (hopefully!) come through in the finished sauce, so I allowed the bag to steep in just one cup of hot water.

After a few minutes, the tea was good to go.

Little miss loves to help me sort through the berries, pulling out any that are too white, too brown or too squishy.

To the cranberries, we added both white and brown sugar, then little miss added our star ingredient.

The resulting mixture was mixed well, then brought to a boil, then allowed to simmer until most of the berries popped. As the resulting mixture cools, it thickens up beautifully, and the resulting sauce made a perfect side to our dinner. Not that I can remember what we had for dinner that night. I just know that we all enjoyed the cranberry sauce!

Now, please know that I had intended to try at least one more tea-dish this challenge cycle. Sarah provided us with a really cool idea of making Chinese tea eggs - hard boiled eggs that are partially cracked (but not peeled), then soaked in tea, creating a super cool pattern on the eggs once they are peeled. Unfortunately, I didn't have the chance to try it. Yet. I promise I will. She also gave ideas for soups and stews that sound super tasty. And that I promise to try as soon as possible.

Sarah, I am sorry that I didn't have a chance to try out more of the amazing tea ideas that you inspired this month, but I thank you for getting the tea-wheels in my head turning, and I truly look forward to trying lots of tea recipes in the future!

To see some of the creative tea dishes brewed in the Daring Kitchen this month, check them out here.

Raspberry Zinger Cranberry Sauce

1 bag cranberries

1 cup raspberry zinger tea, brewed strong

1/3 cup white sugar

1/3 cup brown sugar

After washing and carefully sorting through the berries to remove any under or over ripe ones, combine all ingredients in medium saucepan. Bring the mixture to a boil, then reduce heat and allow to simmer until at least two thirds of the berries have burst, stirring occasionally. Allow the mixture to cool in the pot until ready to serve or store.

Pumpkin Shortbread... almost...

2011-11-09T21:39:00.002-05:00

I am not sure if you have noticed, but I have been doing a little bit of work on the blog recently. Nothing too major, but I am trying to make it a bit better, a bit easier to navigate...

In addition to these changes, I started a Facebook page for the blog to help share the fun. If you are on Facebook, stop by and "like" my page - you can find it here.

I was so excited when the first "like" came in that I offered that first fan a treat as a thank you. I mean, what could be better? Become a fan of a cooking blog, get a yummy treat in the mail! Easy, right? Umm... yeah. Didn't quite work out that way.

We have had crazy craziness around here recently, and I actually haven't done as much baking, especially not extra baking recently. But then I stumbled across a recipe that looked so seasonal, so delicious, and like the perfect thing to share with a friend and fan. Pumpkin shortbread. I was set.

Everything started out great. The idea of these bars is basically that of a pumpkin pie with a shortbread crust, just baked in a square, rather than in a classic pie pan.

The shortbread crust, using both brown and white sugar (YUM!) came together quickly and easily.

And I carefully (and with washed hands) pressed it into my foil lined pan.

I then prepared the pumpkin layer, which was carefully poured on top of the (unbaked) shortbread layer.

And then the whole thing goes into the oven. The recipe called for it to bake for about 50 minutes, or until the top is golden brown. Well, after 50 minutes, the timer beeped, but the top was nowhere near golden brown. And the pumpkin layer wasn't really set. I checked it again after 5 more minutes. Then 5 more... then 5 more... I think you know where this is headed. I finally figured it was as cooked it was going to get, and pulled the pan out of the oven. After letting it cool in the pan for a little while, I used the foil to pull it out, and here's what it looked like:

Not quite like I'd imagined, but not too bad... I figured that once I cut off the edges then cut it into squares, it'd be closer to what I'd pictured.

Silly me.

All that extra baking time killed my shortbread. While keeping the pumpkin layer soft. I can't even tell you how much time and patience it took to cut off the edges.

I tried. Really hard. I even then tried to cut it into squares. But the bottom was too tough and the top refused to hold its shape. So it was definitely not send worthy. We wound up eating the topping by scooping it off of the shortbread, as it was just too tough to cut real pieces or bite through them even when we tried.

Needless to say, I was pretty disappointed.

But I thought I'd share anyway, since the concept and intention were good, and, well, it just goes to show that they can't all be winners!

April, if you are reading this, I promise I'll send something... at some point... just not these... :)

(recipe to follow... due to the technical difficulties we had earlier in the week, I lost all my bookmarks, and I can't seem to track this one down again, but I still wanted to share the story... I will update the post with the link and recipe as soon as possible...)

It's a Pantry Party!

2011-11-08T21:06:00.000-05:00

Aaaand we're back! Sorry for the delay and technical difficulties. Hopefully we've got those all worked out and can be back in business.

One of my friends, who happens to have a pretty fun blog, recently issued a challenge to some of her blogger friends - clean the pantry and share before and after pics for all the blogosphere to see. Well, seeing as this is a blog about food, I thought that sounded like a ton of fun. So I immediately said yes.

Now, one thing you must understand is that I don't have a real pantry. I have a jelly cupboard in the kitchen where the majority of the baking supplies are kept (you know, the flours, the sugars, the yeast and baking powder and vanilla - all the frequently used staples). It also houses cereals and snacks and other high-frequency food stuffs. And then, down the half-set of stairs, on the landing, on the way from the main floor to the basement, we have another "pantry" area, a double slider door set of shelves where we keep the non-perishable food stuffs - the pasta, cans of beans, unopened bags of chips and more cereals... Every once in a while, I'll go through parts of one of these areas, but, with the frequency with which we cook and bake around here, it's not surprising that things very quickly turn into a jumbled mess.

So, without further ado, here's what I was able to do!

I started with the double slider pantry.

Here's what it looked like before...

The lighting there is not great, and, seeing as it's the landing in the middle the stairs, there's not a ton of space... but that's what it looked like. Jumbled mess on the left, jumbled mess on the right.

I took everything out, got rid of things that were purchased prior to the birth of my child... yeah, the one in kindergarten... *blush*

Then I tried to give it a little rhyme and reason.

And here's how it ended up:

So much better!! Not perfect, and I think I still have room for improvement, but at least it is easier to see everything, not as jumbled, and it actually makes a bit of sense what is on which side. And there are no more expired items in there...

Next came the jelly cupboard. I am in and out of this little cabinet countless times a day, and little man loves opening it and pulling things out of it... so it winds up looking like this...

Yes, with that little man right there.

Once again, everything got taken out. Shelves were wiped clean of all the flour, sugar and, well, quinoa... yeah. Then I tried to put everything back, again, trying to instill a little big of logic into the setup. Any un-opened items were moved to the downstairs pantry area, and everything else was put in as logically as I could manage... And the result:

All breakfast items on the bottom shelf, then the baking ingredients divided between the top two shelves.

There is definite room for improvement, but, honestly, that would require a significant overhaul of pretty much pretty much every kitchen cabinet... which will take much more time. But I am very pleased with what I accomplished, and am very glad that I undertook this challenge.

To see the inspiration for this challenge, check out what happened in the H family pantry. :) And if this inspired you in any way shape or form, let me know and I'd love to link over to your before and after!

Technical Difficulties...

2011-11-07T21:38:00.003-05:00

I just wanted to apologize for the delay in posting... again. This time it is a computer issue. I have several posts in the queue, but due to some technical difficulties, can't get them up quite yet. I appreciate your patience, and promise to bring back the fun and yumminess as soon as possible!

Pumpkin Waffles

2011-11-01T20:23:00.003-04:00

Sorry for the delay in posting - things here have been crazy. Between Halloween, a freak October snow storm and the resulting power outage (and the resulting near-flood... yeah...), I haven't had a chance to share with you some of my recent yumminess.

After making the pumpkin pull-apart bread I had plenty of leftover pumpkin puree, and couldn't wait to use it in, well, everything. So the following night we had breakfast for dinner, and I made pumpkin waffles for the family.

As I have mentioned before, we love waffles in this house. Little miss would eat them daily if given the option, and so would I, if someone else would just come clean the waffle iron for me...

Waffle recipes range anywhere from the super simple to the multi-bowl, somewhat complicated variety. While I am pretty settled on a pretty simple but tasty regular waffle recipe, I wasn't positive if I wanted to experiment that night with pumpkin-ifying it, so I looked for simple but tasty pre-pumpkinified recipe. (what? I can't create words?) I settled on this one.

First the dry ingredients are mixed together. I always love the look of the different textures and tones...

I did add a dash of nutmeg in addition to the called-for cinnamon. Just to up the pumpkin-pie feel of the waffles.

I also used a half cup of fresh pumpkin puree instead of the half cup of canned pumpkin called for int he recipe.

But, as I said, I was looking for simple, and the draw of this recipe was that it required no egg separating or electric equipment for whipping egg whites. So once the dry ingredients were incorporated in one bowl and the wets in another, everything else was just stirred together.

Then it was time for the waffle iron to do the rest of the work.

And soon the yummy smelling golden deliciousness was tempting us all...

While the waffles were cooking, I worked on the topping. You need a veggie to go with dinner, right? Well, with breakfast for dinner, you go with fruit. Right? So I sliced up some apples and cooked them in a pat of butter with some cinnamon and maple syrup.

So how was dinner? With a side of bacon it was breakfast-licious.

I love pumpkin season!

Pumpkin Waffles
(adapted from Family Fun)

2 cups all purpose flour
1/4 cup sugar
1 tablespoon baking powder
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1 dash ground nutmeg
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 eggs
1 1/2 cups milk
4 tablespoons butter, melted
1/2 cup pumpkin puree (you can use canned, but I use fresh)

Preheat waffle iron according to manufacturers' directions.
In medium-sized mixing bowl, sift together the flour, sugar, baking powder, cinnamon, nutmeg and salt. In a separate mixing bowl, whisk together the eggs, milk, melted butter and pumpkin. Pour the wet ingredients over the dry ingredients and stir until just combined.
Spray your waffle iron with non-stick spray and cook the waffles per the manufacturers' directions. (Mine took about half a cup of batter for each waffle, and each waffle cooked for about five minutes.)

Enjoy!

October Daring Bakers' Challenge - Povitica

2011-10-27T00:01:00.010-04:00

There are so many cool things about being a part of the Daring Kitchen. Two of the big ones for me are the great people who are a part of the community and the cool new foods we get to make and taste. This month, those two things came together for our Bakers' challenge!

The Daring Baker’s October 2011 challenge was Povitica, hosted by Jenni of The Gingered Whisk. Povitica is a traditional Eastern European Dessert Bread that is as lovely to look at as it is to eat!

I had never heard of a povitica before, but after reading through the challenge, I couldn't wait to try one. Then everyone started posting their results on the forums. And they looked outstanding. And, from what they all posted, they tasted even better.

Which, for some reason, totally paralyzed me.

But I finally went for it this weekend.

The dough has a bunch of steps (and uses a whole bunch of dishes), but actually comes together quite easily.

In one bowl, I activated the yeast. In another I melted some butter. In another I cracked eggs and beat them...

A little scalded milk, a bit of flour and a whole bunch of kneading later, I had a beautiful, smooth dough.

And a mere hour and a half later, that little ball of dough turned into...

...a bigger ball of dough! It rose beautifully and retained its beautiful, smooth feel.

Now, I knew that I would be making this a two day process. So I had little miss help me to deflate and re-knead the dough before covering it with plastic wrap and slipping it into the fridge for a slow second rise.

Now, the traditional filling for povitica, as Jenni told us, involves walnuts. Daddy is allergic to walnuts, so we skip those in our house. Pecans always make a good substitution. So, after putting the dough in the fridge, I quickly ground up some pecans so that I could pull together the filling in the morning without waking anyone up with the mini-food-processor.

The first thing that I did in the morning was the pull the dough out of the fridge to allow it to come back up to room temperature.

Then I set to preparing the filling. The recipe that Jenni provided makes enough dough to make four loaves. I prepared a half-batch, so needed filling for two loaves. I chose two different fillings. Both, though, require butter melted in a pot with milk. So I did that in one step.

While the milk and butter did its thing on the stove, I prepared my two fillings - one, the traditional filling (subbing pecans for the walnuts) as outlined in Jenni's recipe, and the other using fresh pumpkin. Because, after all, it is October.

I divided the milk and butter mixture between the two bowls, then little miss helped me stir.

Both bowls.

At once.

And then it was time to get down to business. The dough was divided in half, and then each half was rolled as big and thin as possible. The dough is really strong, and with a little bit of time and patience, I was able to put my rolling skills (honed over several recent challenges, including this one...) to good use.

The dough was still a little chilly, but I went with it... and was able to get it pretty thin.

Then I spread on the filling.

First the pumpkin....

Then the pecan (with a hint of cocoa...).

The idea, once the filling is on the stretched-out dough, is for the whole thing to be rolled up, then curled into a greased loaf pan. Thus, once the bread is baked, each piece has a really cool swirl pattern.

I actually tried two different methods of rolling up the dough to see how it would affect the patterns once the breads were cut. You can see the difference just from the baked loaves.

Interestingly enough, there was not a huge difference on the inside, though. But I pretty much chalk that up to my not really knowing what I was doing when I coiled them into the pans, so couldn't really "plan" the swirls that well... But, regardless, the results were pretty cool.

The pecan and cocoa was little miss's favorite.

And, if you really forced me to choose, I think I might say that the pumpkin was mine.

But they were both delicious, and the dough baked up beautifully. It's really versatile, and I am betting that it would be really, really good with a wide variety of fillings. And the swirl patterns looked even cooler the further into the bread I cut. But at that point I was too busy chomping to take pictures.

Jenni, this was an awesome challenge and an awesome recipe. Thank you so much for your talent, creativity and encouragement this month - I always love baking (and cooking) with you!

And I highly recommend checking out the really cool poviticas baked up in the kitchen this month - I think the Bakers really outdid themselves!

Pumpkin Pull-Apart Bread

2011-10-21T21:41:00.002-04:00

I am a summer girl. I love the sun, warm weather, playing outside and being barefoot. As a result, the change from Summer to Fall is sometimes a little sad for me. I don't like cold weather. I don't like having to bundle up in layers. I don't like the little leaves that get tracked into my house... BUT, there are some things that I love about the Fall. And pumpkins are very, very high on that list. What makes the chill in the air exciting (okay, bearable...) to me is the thought of all the yummy treats I can make with the fresh harvest bounty.

This year, I decided to jump into pumpkin baking season with a new (to us) recipe that daddy found for pumpkin pull-apart bread. It just looked so good, I knew I had to start there.

There are so many delicious flavors at work in this recipe, and it takes a few steps to prepare, but it is so worth it.

It starts with brown butter. Basically, you put butter in a pan and let it cook until the milk solids begin to turn, well, brown. Then you rescue it before it burns. Because brown butter = tasty, burnt butter = nasty. Trust me.

Most of the dough ingredients, except for (most of...) the flour are mixed together by hand.

Then you can let your stand mixer knead in the flour. Or you can do it by hand if you enjoy that kind of thing. Or if you don't have kids who you may have to pick up quickly, without time to wash the sticky dough off of your hands first... whatever works for you. The end result is a lovely, smooth ball of dough that you cover in plastic wrap and allow to sit for an hour or so.

At some point during that hour, prepare the filling for the bread, which is simply a mixture of sugar, cinnamon and nutmeg, which looks pretty in a bowl and smells delicious in a kitchen.

After the hour, the dough should have doubled. Mine actually more than doubled. I think my yeast was as excited for pumpkin season as I was.

Here is where it gets fun. The dough is punched down (little miss, as usual, helped with that part), then rolled into a rectangle, and then brushed with more brown butter.

Yum.

Then the butter is sprinkled liberally with the sugar and spice mixture.

Yum again.

There is a LOT of the sugar mixture. Just go with it. Don't think about it, just sprinkle away. Then use your hands to kind of pat it down to help it adhere to the dough and butter. Little miss loved helping with that part, too.

Next came the part that had me... nervous? Perplexed? A little of each, probably... I have read so many pull-apart bread recipes trying to get a better understanding of this process, but none really made it 100% clear, so here's my attempt at explaining what I did, based on my understanding of it...

Using a pizza cutter (it's easiest), cut the butter and sugar and spice covered dough rectangle into six equal strips. Or, as close to equal as you can manage.

Then each of those strips needs to be cut into six. Every recipe I read said to simply stack the six strips on top of one another and cut them all at once. I tried to make my life a little easier by stacking them into two shorter piles - I don't know that my pizza cutter could have gone through all six layers at once, and I wanted to minimize how far I was moving each sugar-coated layer. But you do what works for you.

You now have 36 little rectangles of delicious dough-y goodness. Now start to place the rectangles, one at a time, into a greased loaf pan, and kinda press them together as you go.

As you can see, I tried to be all nice and neat about it when I started. I filled up one side of the loaf pan all neat and fastidious like. Then, seeing that the other "half" of the pan was too narrow to do the same, I was much more haphazard in how I put them in. I'll have to figure out a better method next time, but, in all honesty, it really doesn't matter.

You'll also notice a pretty thick layer of the cinnamon-nutmeg sugar on top of mine. I rolled my dough out on wax paper, which wound up being much smarter than I'd anticipated. The wax paper caught all the spiced sugar that spilled off during the layering/cutting/picking up and moving rectangles parts of the process, and once I had the pieces in the pan, I simply (and carefully...) picked up the waxed paper and tipped the left-behind sugar right back onto the dough. It's like I did it on purpose or something...

All that was left was to let the bread rise once again, then bake at 350 degrees for 30-35 minutes.

Which makes the house smell amazing. Again.

And the results?

I don't know if you can tell from the picture, but this was delicious. De. Li. Shus. I would love to show you a picture or two of the slices of this bread, of the interior, of how cool it was to pull off another rectangle every time you walk by the pan... But we ate it all before I could remember to photograph that... So I may have to make it again. You know, just so I can take those pictures for you.

The recipe did call for a (delicious sounding) glaze that I didn't bother with, but I may just try it when I make this again.

Pumpkin Spice Pull-Apart Bread
source: Willow Bird Baking

For the bread dough:
1/2 cup milk
3/4 cup pumpkin puree
1/4 cup white sugar
2 tablespoons unsalted butter
1 teaspoon salt
2 1/4 teaspoons (1 packet) yeast
2 1/2 cup bread flour (I actually needed about 3 cups, but that might be because I used fresh pumpkin puree, which was more liquidy than canned...)

For the filling:
1 cup granulated sugar
2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg
2 tablespoons unsalted butter

To make the bread dough:
In a medium saucepan over high heat, brown the two tablespoons of butter, stirring once it begins browning, so that it browns evenly. Once it is the color of dark honey, remove the pan from the heat and pour the butter into a large, heat-safe mixing bowl. In the same saucepan, over medium-low heat, warm the milk until it begins to bubble (not boil). Remove the pan from the heat and pour the milk into the same mixing bowl as the butter. Let the butter and milk mixture cool to about 100-110 degrees.

Once the butter and milk have cooled, stir in the sugar and yeast, and let it sit for a few minutes. Then stir in the pumpkin, salt and one cup of the flour. Using the dough hook attachment on the stand mixer, knead in the rest of the flour 1/2 cup at a time. Once the dough has been incorporated, knead about four minutes, until the dough is smooth and elastic.

Place the dough in a greased bowl and cover it (with plastic wrap or a damp cloth). Let it rise in a warm, draft-free place until doubled, about an hour.

While the dough is rising, prepare the filling by whisking together the sugar, cinnamon and nutmeg. Toward the end of the rising time, brown the remaining two tablespoons of butter, the set it aside to cool.

Once the dough has risen, knead a sprinkling of flour (about one tablespoon) into the dough, then let it rest (covered) for another five minutes. On a floured work surface (or, a floured, wax-papered work surface), roll the dough into a rectangle approximately 20 inches by 12 inches, being careful that the dough does not stick to the work surface. If the dough resists being rolled (if it snaps back to its smaller shape when you roll it), cover it and let it rest for about five minutes. Patience is worth it for this.

Using a pastry brush, spread the reserved brown butter over the surface of the dough, then sprinkle it with the cinnamon-nutmeg sugar.

With the long edge of the rectangle towards you, cut the dough into six strips with a pizza cutter. Stack the strips on top of one another and cut this stack into 6 even portions. (It is easiest to accomplish these "cut into six" steps by first cutting each shape into half, then cutting each half into three - it makes it easier to visualize.) Place the cut portions, one at a time, into a greased loaf pan, pressing them up against each other to fit them all in. Cover the pan with a damp cloth or plastic wrap and allow it to rise in a warm place for 30-45 minutes, until it (once again) doubles in size.

Towards the end of the rise time, preheat your oven to 350 degrees. Once rise, bake the loaf for 30-35 minutes until it is dark golden brown on top. Allow it to cook for 20-30 minutes in the pan on a wire rack.

Enjoy!

Plum-Nectarine Buckle

2011-10-17T21:06:00.003-04:00

So as not to leave you hanging, I wanted to share with you the final installment of our adventures with plums. After the plum cobbler and plum dumplings, would you believe that we actually had a few plums left? And after a trip to the produce stand, we had nectarines, too. A quick google search later, I found the perfect confection to try - Plum-Nectarine Buckle.

A buckle is similar to a fruity-coffee cake - a dense cake, fruit, and a crumb topping. How could I not make something like that??

The first step is to cut the fruit. This is also the part that takes the longest.

The next step, which little miss was more than happy to help with, was to make the base batter. She helped me smooth it into the pan, too.

The batter is then topped with the cut fruit, and then sprinkled with the crumb topping.

Simple and straightforward (though it does generate a lot of dishes, but hey... you have to have something to do while things are in the oven!) - my favorite kind of recipe.

And when the timer beeped, we were met with this:

Pure yumminess. Perfect for breakfast, snack, dessert and, well, constant noshing.

This recipe is an absolute keeper. And I think it would work with any number of fruits. I have some strawberries in the fridge and blueberries in the freezer that are calling to me to be turned into a buckle as I type... I can't wait!

Plum-Nectarine Buckle

6 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted
1 1/2 cups all purpose flour
1 cup plus 2 tablespoons sugar
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1/8 teaspoon ground allspice (I used cinnamon instead)
3/4 teaspoon salt
1 large egg
2/3 cup whole milk (I used 1% - it was all we had)
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
3/4 pound plums, halved, pitted and cut into 1/2 inch thick wedges (2 cups)
3/4 pound nectarines, halved, pitted and cut into 1/2 inch thick wedges (2 cups)
1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice

6 tablespoons unsalted butter, softened
1/4 cup packed light brown sugar
1 cup all purpose flour
pinch of salt

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Brush a 9 inch square cake pan with 2 tablespoons of the melted butter and set it aside. Whisk together the flour, 3/4 cup of sugar, the baking powder, allspice (cinnamon), and salt in a medium bowl. Set aside.

2. Whisk together egg, milk, vanilla and remaining 4 tablespoons or melted butter in another medium bowl. Add the egg mixture to the flour mixture and stir to combine. Spread batter evenly into the buttered pan.

3. Toss the plums, nectarines, lemon juice and remaining 1/4 cup plus 2 tablespoons of sugar in a large bowl. Spread the fruit evenly over the batter.

4. To make the crumb topping, use a fork or your fingers to work together the brown sugar, flour, pinch of salt and softened butter (I added a sprinkle of cinnamon, too) until the mixture resembles coarse crumbs. Sprinkle the topping on top of the fruit.

5. Bake at 350 until a cake tester (toothpick) inserted in the center comes out with moist crumbs, about 75 minutes. Let cool in the pan on a wire rack for an hour before serving.

Enjoy!

October Daring Cooks' Challenge - Moo Shu

2011-10-14T00:01:00.004-04:00

The October Daring Cooks' Challenge was hosted by Shelley of C Mom Cook and her sister Ruth of The Crafts of Mommyhood. They challenged us to bring a taste of the East into our home kitchens by making our own Moo Shu, including thin pancakes, stir fry and sauce.

Waaaiiit a minute... Did that say C Mom Cook? Isn't that... here?? Yup! That's me! I got to host this month, and what a fun experience it has been! And with my sister's help, I think we found a great challenge to share with the group. The Daring Cooks' community is awesome and I am so amazed and impressed by all of the members who participated this month.

What follows is pretty much how the challenge was presented to the community. I hope everyone who participated enjoyed it as much as I did, and anyone who didn't, or non-Daring-Cook-readers - give it a try!

I kind of lucked into the position of hosting this challenge – I think I accidentally volunteered when working on a FoodTalk article late last year, but was then so excited to see my name on the hosting schedule, that I just had to go with it. Deciding on what to present, however, was another story. I considered and tested several different ideas before settling in on one.

I am extremely fortunate to have a friend and neighbor who went to culinary school, and with whom I always discuss my latest kitchen adventures. Recently she offered me an unbelievable gift – she offered to loan me her binders and notes from culinary school. I turned each page carefully, amazed by the information, tips, and recipes it contained. And then I saw it. A recipe for Moo Shu. All of the other ideas I'd been tossing around were tossed away. Moo Shu is one of the dishes that introduced me to Chinese food, and remains a favorite of mine. A simple, yet multi-component dish, my challenge was chosen.

The recipe that was included in my neighbor's binder was intended for restaurant use, with fancy ingredients, make-ahead components and scaled very large. Perfect for inspiration, but not the best recipe for a home cook with limited access to specialty ingredients and not needing to feed a restaurant full of people. After poring through cookbooks and websites, I selected the recipe for this challenge because it is both accessible and adaptable to a variety of dietary requirements, while maintaining authenticity to what Moo Shu is supposed to be.

Deh-Ta Hsiung, a renowned authority on Chinese cuisine, published a beautiful book called The Chinese Kitchen. The book is a wonderful and encyclopedic volume containing a wealth of information about all aspects of Chinese cooking, from ingredients to process to history. The recipes are accessible, flavorful, and clearly written. His recipe for Moo Shu, like the others, is straightforward and delicious, and is what I am sharing with you for our challenge.

In preparation for this challenge, I contacted Mr. Deh-Ta Hsiung, who is pleased to have his recipe as our challenge. Mr. Hsiung is widely considered an international expert on Chinese cooking, though his original work was in the arts and film-making. Chinese cooking was his passion, though, and he proceeded to take lessons from top Chinese chefs and work in professional kitchens around the world. Having written numerous books and articles, Mr. Hsiung is a respected authority in the world of Chinese cooking.

About this dish, specifically, Mr. Hsiung offered us a brief anecdote from his earliest work, regarding the origins of this dish's name. In The Home Book of CHINESE COOKERY, Mr. Hsiung discusses the dish as follows:

PORK LAUREL (MU-HSU PORK)
Some explanation is needed for the name of this dish. In China, we have a tree called kwei; according to my dictionary, kwei is called laurel in English, and it is a shrub rather than a tree; but the laurels we have in the garden of our London home never seem to flower at all, while the Chinese laurel is a large tree which produces bright yellow, fragrant flowers in the autumn. The pork in this recipe is cooked with eggs, which give a yellow colour to the dish – hence the name. But to add to the confusion, the Chinese name of this dish is mu-hsu pork, mu hsu being the classical name for laurel (are you still with me?). So you might say that calling it pork laurel is taking a poetic license.

Simply put, Moo Shu is a stir fry, containing thinly sliced or shredded vegetables, meat (traditionally) and scrambled egg. It is usually served on flat, thin, steamed pancakes, and is accompanied by a complementary sauce.

Moo Shu pork (the protein most commonly used in Moo Shu dishes) originates in Northern China (commonly attributed to the Shandong province, though sometimes attributed to Beijing), rising in popularity in Chinese restaurants in the West in the 1960's and 70's. As the dish became more popular, different restaurants adapted the recipe to meet their own styles, or to accommodate for expensive or hard-to find ingredients, so there is a lot of variation among recipes. Common among them, though, is a basis of cabbage and the inclusion of scrambled eggs.

The history and etymology of the dish are widely disputed, as indicated by Mr. Hsiung's anecdote above. There are two primary theories as to the origin of the name. Many, including the author of our challenge recipe, suggest that the Chinese characters, read as mu xi, refer to a tree that blooms with small, fragrant blossoms. They suggest that the scrambled egg in this dish is reminiscent of these blossoms, and thus a variety of egg dishes are referred to as mu xi. An alternative suggestion uses the Chinese characters reading mu xu, roughly translating to wood whiskers or wood shavings. The dish is thus named, it is said, due to the appearance of the shredded vegetables and meat, resembling wooden whiskers, or wooden shavings that were used as packing materials.

Recipe Source: The challenge recipe provided for the Moo Shu filling comes from The Chinese Kitchen by Deh-Ta Hsiung. The pancake recipe comes from the same source, though we have also provided an alternate method for preparing them, adapted from a variety of online demonstrations. The sauce recipe provided is from epicurian.com.

Notes:

A few notes about the traditional main ingredients of a Moo Shu stir-fry:

Cabbage

The primary vegetable within the Moo Shu stir fry is generally cabbage. While there are many varieties of cabbage available, the most traditional for this style of dish is the Chinese cabbage, also known as Napa cabbage.

Chinese cabbage is a traditionally cool weather crop which thrives during the shorter days of the year, so it is normally planted during the second half of the calendar year. It generally reaches maturity within about three months after planting. In order to provide a continual supply of the vegetable, a late crop is planted in areas with appropriate conditions. There are several varieties of Chinese cabbage, which all have delicate, sweet flavors, and blend well with the other foods with which it is cooked. It also holds up well to various cooking methods, which is why it makes a good base for dishes such as Moo Shu. Stored in the crisper of the refrigerator, Chinese cabbage can keep for up to ten days.

Scallions

Scallions, also known as green onions or Spring onions, are milder than most other species of onion. They may be eaten raw or cooked, and are very common in Asian recipes. Scallions are generally sold in bunches with the roots still attached. Stored properly, in a plastic box to allow them to breathe, they can keep for up to a week in the refrigerator.

Bamboo Shoots

Bamboo shoots are the edible shoots of a variety of bamboo species. They are available fresh, dried and canned. Fresh bamboo shoots must be parboiled to eliminate a harsh, bitter poison, hydrocyanic acid, prior to being eaten or used in recipes. Dried bamboo shoots must be soaked prior to use. Both parboiled fresh and reconstituted dried bamboo shoots need to be rinsed with fresh water as the final preparation step. Canned bamboo shoots are parboiled and require no reconstitution, though should also be rinsed.

One of my favorite quotes about bamboo from The Chinese Kitchen is as follows:
Traditionally, the bamboo symbolizes the virtuous man, bending in the wind yet never breaking.

Fungus

Not generally a word most casual Westerners associate with food, there are a wide variety of mushrooms that are used in Asian cooking. The specific fungus specified in Mr. Hsiung's recipe is dried black fungus, which has long been cultivated in China. While there are many different varieties available in China, there are only a few commonly available in the West. Stored in a dry, dark place just as they are packaged, they can last indefinitely. Once reconstituted, they can be stored for up to five days in the refrigerator in a bowl of fresh water.

Thin Pancakes:

Makes 24-30 pancakes
Preparation time: about 10 minutes plus 30 minutes' standing time
Cooking time: 45-50 minutes

Ingredients
4 cups (960 ml) (560 gm) (19¾ oz) all purpose flour
About 1½ cup (300ml) (10 fl oz) boiling water
1 teaspoon (5 ml) vegetable oil
Dry flour for dusting

Directions:

Sift the flour into a mixing bowl. Gently pour in the water, stirring as you pour, then stir in the oil. Knead the mixture into a soft but firm dough. If your dough is dry, add more water, one tablespoon at a time, to reach the right consistency. Cover with a damp towel and let stand for about 30 minutes.
Lightly dust the surface of a worktop with dry flour. Knead the dough for 6-8 minutes or until smooth, then divide into 3 equal portions. Roll out each portion into a long sausage and cut each sausage into 8-10 pieces. Keep the dough that you are not actively working with covered with a lightly damp dish cloth to keep it from drying out.
Roll each piece into a ball, then, using the palm of your hand, press each piece into a flat pancake. Dust the worktop with more dry flour. Flatten each pancake into a 6 to 8 inch (15 cm to 20 cm) circle with a rolling pin, rolling gently on both sides.
Place an un-greased frying pan over high heat. Once the pan is hot, lower the heat to low and place the pancakes, one at a time, in the pan. Remove when little light-brown spots appear on the underside. Cover with a damp cloth until ready to serve.

Alternate method for preparing the pancakes:
Once the dough has rested and been kneaded again, divide it into an even number of small pieces, rolling each into a ball. Working with two balls of dough at a time, dip the bottom of one ball lightly into sesame oil and press it onto the top of the second ball. Press the double layer flat, then roll the doubled pancake layers into 6 to 8 inch circles. In a dry pan, cook on each side until dry and lightly blistered (but without browning). Separate pancakes after cooking.

Alternately (I know, an alternate to the alternate...), if you would prefer not to dip the dough in the sesame oil, you can achieve a similar result with a slight modification. Again working two pieces at a time, roll each piece into a three inch pancake. Using a pastry brush, brush sesame oil onto the top of one of the pancakes, and top it with the other pancake. Further roll the doubled pancake into a 6 to 8 inch circle and cook as the above alternate method. This method was actually our favorite of the three, and yielded the best results – very thin pancakes that held up a little better and had the most authentic texture. We had the best luck brushing a bit of sesame oil on both circles of dough, then sandwiching them together. Just be careful separating the pancakes after cooking them on both sides – heat (steam) does get caught between them, so don't burn your fingers!

Links to a video demonstrating these alternate methods can be found in the Additional Information section below.

Notes:

Be sure to use very hot-to-boiling water, as it helps relax the gluten, which will aid in rolling the pancakes super thin.
Adjust the heat of your pan as needed to cook the pancakes without burning them. I had to keep my burner on medium (rather than low) heat in order for my pancakes to cook properly (low was drying them out too much without cooking them fully), so watch your pancakes carefully.
If the pancakes are not to be used as soon as they are cooked, they can be warmed up, either in a steamer for 5-6 minutes, or in a microwave oven for 20-30 seconds, depending on the power.
And, in case you are curious, we both asked our local Chinese food restaurants about their Moo Shu pancakes, and they informed us that they purchase them prepared, and simply steam them for their customers as they order the dish.

Moo Shu Pork:

Serves 4
Preparation time: 25-30 minutes
Cooking time: 6-8 minutes

Ingredients
2/3 cup (1 oz) (30 gm) Dried black fungus ('wood ears')
½ lb (450 gm) pork loin or butt
¾ cup (3½ oz) (100 gm) bamboo shoots, thinly cut
3 cups (6 oz) (170 gm) Chinese cabbage (Napa cabbage), thinly cut
3 large eggs
1 teaspoon (5 ml) (6 gm) salt
4 tablespoons (60 ml) vegetable oil
2 scallions
1 tablespoon (15 ml) light soy sauce
2 teaspoons (10 ml) rice wine
A few drops sesame oil
12 thin pancakes to serve

Directions:

Soak the fungus in warm water for 10-15 minutes, rinse and drain. Discard any hard stalks, then thinly shred.
Thinly cut the pork, bamboo shoots and Chinese cabbage into matchstick-sized shreds.
Lightly beat the eggs with a pinch of salt.
Heat about 1 tablespoon (15 ml) oil in a preheated wok and scramble the eggs until set, but not too hard. Remove and keep to one side.
Heat the remaining oil. Stir-fry the shredded pork for about 1 minute or until the color changes. Add the fungus, bamboo shoots, Chinese cabbage and scallions. Stir-fry for about 2-3 minutes, then add the remaining salt, soy sauce and wine. Blend well and continue stirring for another 2 minutes. Add the scrambled eggs, stirring to break them into small bits. Add the sesame oil and blend well.
To serve: place about 2 tablespoons (30 ml) of hot Moo Shu in the center of a warm pancake, rolling it into a parcel with the bottom end turned up to prevent the contents from falling out. Eat with your fingers. (See Final Preparation and Serving section below for more complete details.)

Notes:

I have used white mushrooms and dried black mushrooms in this recipe, but any variety of mushrooms, either fresh or reconstituted dry, can be used.
I did all of my chopping ahead of time and set all of the chopped ingredients aside in separate bowls. The cutting was the longest part of the process. Once I started cooking, it really came together quickly and beautifully.
In a pinch, you can use pre-chopped cabbage, usually sold as a cole slaw blend, as the basis of your Moo Shu.
If the stir fry is ready ahead of time, you can reduce the burner to low and cover the pan until you are ready to serve.

Hoisin Sauce:

(source: http://recipes.epicurean.com/recipe/13249/hoisin-sauce.html)

While most restaurants, or at least those at which I have ordered the dish, serve this with plum sauce, none of the cook books or online recipes that I have seen have referred to that as being traditional. Most that reference serving it with a sauce call for it to be served with hoisin sauce.

Ingredients
4 tablespoons (60 ml) soy sauce
2 tablespoons (30 ml) peanut butter OR black bean paste
1 tablespoon (15 ml) honey OR molasses
2 teaspoons (10 ml) white vinegar
1/8 teaspoon (⅔ ml) garlic powder
2 teaspoons (10 ml) sesame seed oil
20 drops (¼ teaspoon) Chinese style hot sauce (optional, depending on how hot you want your hoisin sauce)
1/8 teaspoon (⅔ ml) black pepper

Directions:
Simply mix all of the ingredients together by hand using a sturdy spoon.
At first it does not appear like it will mix, but keep at it just a bit longer and your sauce will come together.

Final Preparation and Serving:

Each of the three components that comprise the complete Moo Shu dish are served separately, and the diner prepares each serving on his or her own plate. Most restaurants provide four pancakes, a serving of Moo-Shu and a small dish of hoisin sauce as a single serving. To prepare each pancake for eating, the following is the most common process: a small amount of hoisin sauce is spread onto the pancake, on top of which a spoonful of the stir-fry is placed. In order to prevent (or, realistically, minimize) the filling from spilling out while eating, the bottom of the pancake is folded up, then the pancake is rolled, similarly to a soft taco. Once rolled, the prepared pancake is eaten immediately.

You can take a look at all the wonderful versions of Moo Shu that were cooked up this month here.

And thank you again for cooking with me this month, Daring Cooks! You guys are the best!

Plum Dumplings

2011-10-04T21:26:00.001-04:00

Remember that plum cobbler from last week? It wasn't really a fluke... it was just the tip of the iceberg.

You see, for many years, my mother in law has told stories about her childhood. For a time, her Nana lived with her family, and we have heard many tales of the traditional Eastern European foods that she ate as a result. One delicacy that she lovingly remembers are plum dumplings - whole plums wrapped in potato dough, covered in a mixture of butter and bread crumbs.

But in all these years, we've never tried them.

Until now. Nana found the Italian plums and set forth the challenge - let's recreate her Nana's plum dumplings.

We perused many recipes, then settled on this one, but, if I am going to be completely honest, we used the recipe as a guideline, not as a strict set of instructions.

The first step was to make the dough, which was very similar to gnocchi dough, something with which I am already pretty comfortable. One difference this time? Nana loaned me her potato ricer!

Man, that thing made mashing up those potatoes a cinch! Once the potatoes were riced and cooled, they were simply mixed with eggs, salt and flour.

A little hand-kneading and, voila!

Dough in hand, we headed over to my in-laws' house for the actual preparation. They found these beautiful Italian plums, small and perfect for wrapping.

Instead of measuring and/or rolling out the dough, we did it the old fashioned way - by hand and by feel. Nana started us out, enclosing the plums in the potato dough.

It was kind of a sticky process, but it worked out decently. Using what I had learned from making gnocchi, we were careful not to handle the dough too much, so that the dumplings would wind up as light as possible. Little miss was quality assurance, making sure that each plum was fully enclosed, with no purple poking its way out.

Once we'd enclosed all of the plums that we could using the amount of dough that we had, we were ready to boil them. We put as many in the pot as we could without crowding them, as we didn't want them to stick together.

The one thing were were unsure about was the cooking time. Depending on which recipe you look at, they cook for anywhere between 15 and 30 minutes. That's quite a range... so we just put them in the boiling water and waited to see what would happen... And we were pleasantly pleased to watch them rise to the surface of the water as they cooked! Keep in mind that's a whole plum, pit and all, inside each of those dumplings - and they all floated! We were amazed.

While they cooked, we prepared our topping.

Butter, bread crumbs and a touch of cinnamon sugar. Super easy, super tasty. Dumplings done, they were drained and put right into the pan of breadcrumbs.

Then came the real test - how were they? Not wanting to wait, we actually had what we call "backwards day" that night - we had our dumplings for "dinner" and our "real" dinner afterwards (and, in true backwards day fashion, called the real dinner, "dessert".) So we each started with a dumpling, generously covered in crumbs.

So how were they?

I think they were pretty good! Nana said that they were just like her Nana's. I think it was pretty nostalgic for her. And I think it was pretty cool watching my kids' Nana share something with them that her Nana shared with her. If that sentence makes sense...

These were a hit with the whole family, too - the dough wound up pretty light, which was great, and the plums were juicy and delicious.

All in all, it was a taste of generations past and I was really glad to be a part of it.

And, by the way, there were some leftover plums. Want to know what we made with them? Stay tuned!

Plum Dumplings
for dumplings:
5 medium potatoes, peeled, boiled, riced and cooled (my potatoes were a little smaller than I'd consider medium, so I used 7)
2 large eggs
1 teaspoon of salt
2 -2 1/2 cups all purpose flour
16-18 Italian prune plums

for topping:
4 tablespoons (1/2 stick) butter
1 1/2 cups bread crumbs
1/4 cup cinnamon sugar

1. In a large bowl, combine the riced potatoes, eggs, and salt. When well combined, add the dough and knead together (I did this by hand) until a soft dough forms. (My dough took just over 2 cups, not the full 2 1/2 cups.) Cover the dough with plastic wrap and allow it to rest for 30 minutes.

2. Place a large pot of lightly salted water on to boil. Meanwhile enclose each plum in the potato dough. You can choose the method that works for you - either rolling out the dough and cutting out squares in which to wrap each plum or simply taking hands-full of the dough, flattening it in your hands and carefully wrapping the plums. Go with what works for you, just make sure that the plums are fully enclosed. Carefully lower each plum into the fully boiling water. Boil 15-30 minutes, until they float. (Ours took about 15-20 minutes.)

3. While the dumplings are boiling, prepare the topping. Melt the butter in a large skillet, then add the bread crumbs. Carefully brown the bread crumbs, then stir in the cinnamon sugar. Once the dumplings are cooked, drain them and place them into the skillet with the topping, making sure to coat each one well. Serve and enjoy!

September Daring Bakers' Challenge - Croissants

2011-09-27T00:01:00.004-04:00

I just love it when a Daring Kitchen challenge is announced and it is something I have been hoping to make. And that is exactly what happened this month!

The Daring Bakers go retro this month! Thanks to one of our very talented non-blogging members, Sarah, the Daring Bakers were challenged to make Croissants using a recipe from the Queen of French Cooking, none other than Julia Child!

I was so excited when I saw this month's challenge. I have made croissants before, and have been hoping for an excuse to make them again. Between the time and the butter, it always seemed like I needed an excuse. Well, this month I had my excuse!

The recipe that Sarah provided us was long and detailed - many, many steps, detailed pictures, and about twelve hours start to finish. Well, once I had my excuse, I wasn't going to put it off any longer, so I just jumped right in.

The recipe starts like most normal bread doughs - blooming some yeast.

Mixing in some flour.

Then setting the dough to rise. So what starts as a little ball of sticky dough like this:

In three short hours, turns into a lovely soft, beautifully risen ball of dough like this:

The dough is then pressed out by hand into a rectangle:

Then folded like a letter.

At this point, the dough is set to rise for a second time. While the recipe calls for it to rise for an hour and a half, I actually put the dough into the fridge overnight. Then in the morning, I just set the bowl on the counter to come back up to room temperature and it worked like a charm! So my second rise looked a little like this:

While the dough was coming back up to temperature, I worked on making my butter block. While this recipe actually called for spreading the butter onto the rolled out dough, I decided to go the more traditional croissant-making route of enclosing a rolled out block of butter into the dough.

One little stick of butter (much less than in most recipes!) all rolled into a flat little square, all ready to be enclosed in the rolled out dough.

The next steps are what turn a block of dough and butter into, well, it's still dough and butter, but what it turns into is called laminated dough.

The process involves a series of rolling and folding. The dough is rolled into a rectangle, then folded in three like a letter. Each iteration of this is called a turn. It has to be done gently, so that the layers stay distinct, the dough doesn't rip, and the butter is fully incorporated throughout the dough. It also has to be done slowly, with the dough resting in the refrigerator in between sets of turns so that the butter doesn't get to warm or melt into the dough.

Once the butter block was folded into the dough, I completed the first two turns, then set the dough into the refrigerator for a couple of hours.

I then took out the dough, let it rest for a bit, and completed two more sets of turns.

I then covered the dough and set it in the fridge overnight again.

The next morning was Saturday, and I was excited to make fresh croissants for brunch. The recipe says to cut the dough into sections and work section by section, to make sure that the butter doesn't get too warm during the rolling process, but, seeing as I had little miss and little man with me, I figured I could probably move fast enough to shape the croissants all at once.

I rolled the dough into a long rectangle and cut it into eight triangles.

Each triangle was then stretched a bit and rolled up, wide end to tip, to create the croissant shapes.

After proofing, I coated the croissants with egg wash, preheated the oven, and re-egg washed them.

Fifteen minutes later, brunch (or, well, the bread portion of brunch...) was ready.

These were delicious. Light, surprisingly buttery, considering that there was only stick of butter in there, and deliciously flaky.

After the success of my first batch, I had two more versions that I wanted to make. The first was based on croissants that we sometimes treat ourselves with when we go out - whole grain croissants. To do this, I swapped out the all-purpose flour called for in the recipe with whole wheat flour. I was concerned, though, that the whole wheat flour wouldn't stretch well. So I used part whole wheat flour and part high gluten flour, and hoped for the best.

As I went through the same steps as with the first batch, I was increasingly encouraged by how beautifully the dough rose throughout the process.

And once the croissants were rolled out, I was very excited.

The whole grain croissants that we have bought are topped with a delicious seed mix, kind of like an everything bagel. To duplicate this, I sprinkled a seed and spice mix onto half of the croissants after the first egg wash (little miss doesn't like the seed mix, which is why we only did half).

And once these came out of the oven, we were just as excited. Little miss had her croissants:

And daddy and I had ours:

And in case you are curious as to how the whole wheat/high gluten flour combination worked out, as far as the lamination of the dough, it worked out beautifully!

I had every intention of making a third batch of these, and turning them into filled croissants (think chocolate!), but the month proceeded to get away from me. But now that I have played with this dough a couple of times, I am feeling much more confident in my ability to make laminated dough, and can guarantee that I will give these another go in the not too distant future.

Sarah, thank you so much for this challenge. It was just the push I needed to make croissants again, and I am so excited that I now have the confidence to keep going with it. I can promise that I will be making these again!

To see the beautiful croissants baked in the Daring Kitchen this month, check them out here.

Plum Cobbler

2011-09-23T20:32:00.003-04:00

I have mentioned it before, but I kind of have a standard, go-to cobbler recipe. It's not a traditional cobbler, more like a fruit-and-cake-y kind of thing, but it is delicious, goes well with most fruits, and is super easy to make.

So today I found myself thinking about plums.

Mostly because I happened to have several of them in the house just begging to be turned into... something. There weren't enough for an actual pie, so I automatically thought of the cobbler. Plum cobbler? Never heard of it. So of course I had to try it!

Once the plums were sliced, the batter came together very easily.

The mixed batter is poured into the pan... which has been sitting in the preheating oven, allowing half a stick of butter to melt. Then the plums were set on top of the batter. But don't mix anything. You'll see the three different layers.

Plums over batter floating in melted buttery goodness. I promise this works.

See? Can't even see the plums! Actually, I am thinking it probably could have used a couple more plums... but I used all I had.

I made this while little miss was at school, and by the time I picked her up, it was all ready for our afternoon snack.

This was absolutely delicious. Little miss and I really enjoyed our snack, and when Daddy came home, he did his best to spoil his dinner with nibble after nibble...

As a side note, I just love the color of the cooked plums.

Plum Cobbler
1/4 cup butter
1 cup flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
3/4 cup white sugar
3/4 cup milk
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
6 plums, pitted and sliced (you could use more - totally up to you!)

Preheat oven to 325 degrees. Set the butter in a 9" x 9" pan and set the pan in the oven while it preheats. This will melt the butter. Just be careful not to let the butter burn.

Combine the flour, baking powder, sugar, milk and vanilla until well mixed and pour into the pan. Resist the urge to mix it together with the melted butter. Spread the plum slices over the batter. Again - don't mix anything.

Bake for 55-60 minutes.

Breakfast Pizza

2011-09-21T21:56:00.003-04:00

Ah, pizza. So good, you can eat it any time of day!

We have made pizza several times, and last weekend, we decided to make one of the breakfast variety.

We looked around online at many pictures and recipes, then decided that we didn't really need a recipe - it's breakfast on a pizza. We could figure that out.

We started out on Saturday night by making the pizza dough. In an effort to keep our breakfast "healthy," I used half whole wheat flour. Once the dough was made, I wrapped it in plastic wrap, set it in the fridge and, well, went to bed.

Come Sunday morning, we were ready to get started.

We scrambled some eggs. We cooked some bacon. We diced some onions. Then put it all on the crust.

Then we grated up a whole lot of cheddar cheese and sprinkled it over the whole thing.

Twenty minutes later, breakfast was ready.

An omelet on a pizza crust. What could be better?

A cup of coffee, some cut up peaches on the side, this was a delicious breakfast.

So what kid of pizza will we have next??

Whole Wheat Pizza Crust
1 tablespoon yeast
1 cup whole wheat flour
1 teaspoon salt
1 cup warm (around 100 degrees) water
a splash of olive oil
1 cup (approximately - maybe more, maybe less) all purpose flour

In bowl of stand mixer, whisk together whole wheat flour, yeast and salt. Turn on mixer, fitted with dough hook, to low speed, and slowly pour in water, then oil. Add all purpose flour slowly until dough comes together in a ball. Allow dough to rest, covered, for half an hour. This is the point where I put the dough into the fridge, wrapped tightly in plastic wrap. When ready to use, take the dough out of the fridge and let it rest at room temperature for at least half an hour. Roll out the dough, cover with your favorite toppings (make sure that the toppings aren't hot when you put them on the dough!), then bake for 20 minutes at 400 degrees.

September Daring Cooks' Challenge - Stock and Soup

2011-09-14T00:01:00.002-04:00

First off, let me start by apologizing for not posting as much recently. I promise - I spend a ton of time in the kitchen, and not only for the Daring Kitchen challenges. I even take lots of pictures, too! I have just been bad about sharing what we've been doing. But I promise I'll do better.

That being said, it is time for another Daring Cooks' Challenge!

Peta, of the blog Peta Eats, was our lovely hostess for the Daring Cook’s September 2011 challenge, “Stock to Soup to Consommé”. We were taught the meaning between the three dishes, how to make a crystal clear Consommé if we so chose to do so, and encouraged to share our own delicious soup recipes!

I love soup. Especially a good, hearty, wholesome soup chock-full of yumminess. I've actually shared several different soups right on this very blog (here, here and here). And nothing makes soup taste better than homemade stock.

In preparation for my stock, I saved all of the chicken bones from our roasted chicken dinners. Two roasted chicken dinners, to be precise - I wanted lots of good flavor in there, and I wanted all that natural goodness that comes to stock from having all those bones in there.

I covered all that chicken (well, okay, two carcasses, one with half the meat still on it) with water and brought the heat up.

Then I set to chopping. Onions, carrots, leeks, celery - all right into the pot.

Then I let the pot do its thing. As soon as it came to a boil, I lowered the heat to a simmer, and just let all of those delicious flavors do their thing.

After a couple of hours, it was time to see what we had. I fished out all of the bones, then ran everything else through a strainer into containers.

Now, I wasn't sure, going into this, what kind of soup I wanted to make. But after smelling the amazing aroma of chicken stock all day, my creativity was strongly overwhelmed by my desire for some comfort food. So I made chicken soup.

Now, Peta did challenge us all to make something to serve with our soups. And what goes better with chicken soup than, well, bread? There is nothing like a yummy piece of toasty bread, all covered in butter, to dip into soup and to clean the bowl, mopping up every drop of goodness.

So I made some yummy long rolls. When the cooled, I sliced them most of the way through, then popped them back into the oven for a few minutes to toast up.

Then we each got a few rounds, nicely buttered, next to our soup.

YUM.

Now, In addition to making soup, Peta challenged us to try our hands at the very difficult process of turning our stock into consomme. Consomme is basically a clarified stock, in which the flavors are concentrated but the clarity is, well, pretty stunning. I saved a quart of my stock in order to try this process.

Then I forgot what it was saved for and used it to make quinoa pilaf.

Nope, that's not a pot of soup, that's my delicious, flavorful stock ready to be absorbed by a pot full of quinoa.

The good news is that the delicious, full bodied stock added an amazing richness to the quinoa.

Again - YUM.

The bad news is that this past month has been the hottest in this region in decades, and by this point, my family did not want more soup. So I didn't go for a second pass at this challenge.

The upside of this, though, is that it has given me a personal goal of attempting to clarify stock into consomme. And it gives me a reason to look forward to the cooler weather in the months ahead - lots more stock, lots more soup, and the continuation of this challenge.

Peta, you are a lovely, gracious and super sweet hostess, and I thank you for this delicious challenge. I hope to try all of the recipes that you provided us for inspiration this month!!

To see the yummy goodness simmered up in the Daring Kitchens this month, check it out here.

August Daring Bakers' Challenge - Candylicious!

2011-08-27T00:01:00.006-04:00

The August 2011 Daring Bakers’ Challenge was hosted by Lisa of Parsley, Sage, Desserts and Line Drive and Mandy of What the Fru itcake?!. These two sugar mavens challenged us to make sinfully delicious candies! This was a special challenge for the Daring Bakers because the good folks at http://www.chocoley.com offered an amazing prize for the winner of the most creative and delicious candy!

Wait, did that say candy? Well, there is no better way to get the attention of a sweet tooth or her five year old daughter than to mention the word candy. From the moment I read the challenge this month, I was excited. Now, you know my opinion about when the challenges include contests, but not even that could dampen my spirits.

Lisa and Mandy (two totally awesome ladies and amazing foodies) provided a whole lot of recipes as inspiration for us, and challenged us each to make (at least) one chocolate and (at least) one non-chocolate based candy.

The first candy that I decided to try was one for which they provided a recipe, and it is called pate de fruit. Pronounced "pat du fwee," this is basically a fresh fruit jelly candy. I love anything fruity, and a fresh fruit candy seemed right up my alley. Unfortunately, the only fruit of which I had an abundance at the time was bananas. Do a google search for banana pate de fruit. Not a lot comes up. Undeterred, I tried anyway.

Little miss helped me peel and chunk up my bananas.

Then using my immersion blender, we turned the bananas (plus one peeled, chunked up apple, for the natural pectin in it and to add just a bit extra...) into a puree, which we then cooked on the stove top over medium heat to 225 degrees.

The cooked jelly is then poured into a pan and sprinkled with some sugar, than left to set.

Once the jelly sets, it can be cut into shapes, rolled in some sugar, and, voila! Beautiful candies! Right? Well, mine never quite set enough. I tried to make little pate de fruit dots using my apple corer.

Umm... okay, they stuck. Using a toothpick to get them out, I kept trying...

They look pretty good, right?
Now look at them from a different angle...

Umm... I don't think they are supposed to ooze down through the rack like that... Not wanting to scrap all the hard work, I scooped the rest of the jelly into a jar, and now have candy flavored jam instead of, well, candy.

Not to be deterred, and inspired by another Daring Baker on the forums, I decided to try a different non-chocolate candy - rock candy. I mean, what a fun science lesson for the five year old, right? Growing our own sugar crystals? Cool!

So we wet and sugared some lollipop sticks to provide something onto which our sugar crystals could grow.

We then made a super saturated sugar syrup (twice as much sugar as water), which we boiled, flavored (using candy flavoring concentrate) and colored in rainbow colors.

We set our sticks into the jars (and glasses), we then set the whole thing aside and waited excitedly to watch our candy grow.

And then we waited some more.

And some more.

We saw sugar crystals grow, all right... just not on the sticks.

Yeah, that is a pretty rainbow of hardened sugar on the glasses. As for our rock candy lollipops?

Not so much.

Trying not to get too discouraged, I actually tried again. This time using string instead of lollipop sticks, just to see if that was the problem.

It wasn't. I don't have a picture of the final fail on this one, but suffice it to say it didn't fare any better than my sticks. Daddy tried to make the best of the situation by using some of our rock candy syrup as simple syrup to make us some mojitos, but, well, that didn't work out so well either...

Ever vigilant, I tried another non-chocolate candy, again inspired by another Daring Baker in the forums. She showed us some super cute, super easy gummy candies, made using a package of jello, extra unflavored gelatin, and a little bit of water. Little miss helped me make this one.

The resulting liquid is then poured into candy molds. I used a cupcake-decorating sqeezy tube to make it a little easier for little hands to help.

The resulting gummies were... okay. They tasted like highly concentrated jello (which, well, they are...), but had a kind of weird consistency. And, while they were easy to peel out of the candy molds, they stuck to everything else, including the paper plate onto which I put them fresh out of the candy molds... So I rolled them in some white sugar to relieve some of the sticking.

I can't call them a complete fail, because I think they worked out how they were supposed to, but I can't not call them a fail, because a day later, they were almost impossible to chew - it was like chewing a chunk of rubber. Not pleasant. Oh well.

On to the chocolates, shall we??

Lisa and Mandy provided us with several scrumptious looking chocolate recipes as well, and I decided to try to make truffles. I made two kinds - plain milk chocolate, and mint-milk chocolate. The process for making the truffles themselves is straightforward - make a simple ganache, let it set, then shape it into truffles. The ganache is simply chopped chocolate melted by being mixed with simmered heavy cream. Easy peasy, right? And to make the mint? Simple - just add some fresh mint leaves to the cream as it simmers!

I let the mint steep in the cream for an hour, then reheated it and strained it over my chopped milk chocolate bits.

Once all of the chocolate was melted, I set the bowls aside to cool a bit, then into the fridge to set completely.

When I was ready to make my truffles, I simply scooped:

and rolled (with a little help from some little hands):

I then set my rolled ganache truffles into the fridge to harden back up, as I was really hoping to coat them in lovely tempered chocolate. Note my classy sticky note reminding me which are the plain milk chocolate and which are the mint ones...

Now, tempering chocolate was kind of the whole point of this challenge. Unfortunately, tempering chocolate is quite an exacting process. It requires time, patience and a specific kind of candy thermometer. None of which I possess. Did that stop me? Nah! I chose to try tempering my chocolate using a method called seeding. Basically, chocolate pieces are slowly melted over a double boiler, then the temperature of the melted chocolate is carefully lowered by mixing in unmelted pieces of chocolate. Make sense? The temperatures are also very specific, but without a chocolatier's thermometer, well, I couldn't control that so well. But I tried.

Because tempering is usually easiest with larger amounts of chocolate, I decided that, in addition to coating my truffles, I would try to make another kind of chocolate candy as well. And since my truffles were safe in the fridge, I started with my molded, filled chocolates. I painted my mold (okay, a silicone ice cube tray) with my "tempered" chocolate.

For my filling, I chose a delicious cinnamon caramel sauce that I have made before. But someone must have told the caramel sauce that I was making it for this challenge. And we all know my track record so far on this challenge. For the first time ever in my caramel-sauce-making history, my caramel crystallized.

Seriously?? Luckily it wasn't too bad, and after straining, the sauce was fine.

Once again using my cupcake decorating squeezy bottle, I filled my chocolate painted molds.

By this time, though, my "tempered" chocolate had cooled, and had become hard to pour. Umm... that was quick... I tried to bring it back up to temperature, but, well, I had no idea what I was doing. Daddy helped me, too, giving his attempt at re-tempering the chocolate, and we somehow managed to get all of the caramel covered with chocolate, sealing off the candies.

When it was time to pop them out of the molds, this was the result:

Umm... those look frozen, don't they? They aren't I promise. They just don't look tempered at all. Or even all that attractive for that matter, truth be told.

They tasted delicious, the cinnamon caramel and milk chocolate tasting delicious together, but they will not win any awards. Anywhere. And unless they were refrigerated, they were also a little messy to eat.

As for the truffles, well, they didn't fare much better. We managed to coat a few in the "tempered" chocolate, but had so much trouble that we soon gave up. So the truffle on the left is the milk chocolate, simply rolled in sweetened cocoa powder and the one on the right is the mint chocolate, with a milk chocolate coating.

They turned out alright, but not fantastic. The mint chocolate set much firmer than the milk, so while they look the same in these photos, that is only because they were stored in the fridge.

A few minutes later, the milk chocolate truffle (on the left) was super soft and mostly lost its shape. Oh well.

So, if you're counting along, that is one pate de fruit, two attempts at rock candy, one batch of gummies, two types of truffles and one attempt at filled chocolates. None of which worked how they were supposed to. Challenge 7, me 0. Ouch.

So to make myself feel better, I also made some peach fruit leather. Because little miss thinks it's candy, and I will encourage her to think so.

In reality, it's fruit. Lots of peaches, one third of a cup of sugar.

The fruit is cooked down, then blended smooth with the immersion blender.

The syrup (which, by the way, would be awesome as, well, syrup!) is then spread onto a rimmed baking sheet and set in a (very) low oven all day. Or as long as it takes.

The result is delicious. We roll it, then use kitchen scissors to cut strips as we want them.

Simple, delicious, and decidedly not a fail.

Lisa and Mandy, you ladies are awesome. Daring Bakers? I am in awe and, to be honest, very jealous of all of the results I saw on the boards this month. Hats off to all of you for some beautiful, delicious looking candies.

I highly recommend you check out the sweet confections prepared by our bakers this month. You won't be disappointed.

August Daring Cooks Challenge - Appam and Curry

2011-08-14T00:01:00.003-04:00

One of the best things about the Daring Kitchen is being introduced to new styles of food. One of the other best things is the amazing community of really great people, not to mention inspirational cooks. This month, the two come together, with the challenge being hosted by one of the members who is always super supportive, super creative, and whose dishes are always amazingly inspiring.

Mary, who writes the delicious blog, Mary Mary Culinary was our August Daring Cooks’ host. Mary chose to show us how delicious South Indian cuisine is! She challenged us to make Appam and another South Indian/Sri Lankan dish to go with the warm flat bread.

I have embarrassingly little experience with Indian food, and thus even less knowledge about it. The challenge looked fantastic, and I was excited to try something new, but I was also extremely nervous. While the appam themselves looked relatively straightforward, all of the curries and accompanying dishes that I was seeing had massively long lists of ingredients including things that I'd never heard of before, much less knew what they tasted like.

After a trip to a local Indian grocery for inspiration, though, I got up the nerve to dive in.

The appam require some prep work and fermentation time, so I started with that recipe. I set some plain (raw) rice to soak overnight, then gathered up the rest of the initial ingredients - yeast (bloomed in sugar water) and a small amount of cooked rice.

Straining the soaked rice was tougher than it should have been, since I don't actually have a big sieve. I thought about using one of my colanders, but I was worried that the holes were too big, and that the rice would drain out with the water. So I went at it with my little sieve.

The ingredients were to be blended together to make a (very) thick batter. Not having a full sized blender, I used my mini-blender, which actually worked much better than I could have hoped.

And then the batter was covered and set on top of the stove, covered in plastic wrap, for the whole day to ferment. Yup, all that done by 8 am.

With the appam batter doing its thing, I was able to spend the afternoon focusing on the curry. I scoured the internet looking for a recipe that I felt comfortable with. Meaning one that didn't require me to buy tons of specialty ingredients, as well as one that my five year old would eat. When I found this one, I knew it was the one to try. Chicken cauliflower curry sounded delicious, and the review were good (and offered some delicious sounding modifications), so I knew I had a my recipe.

In addition to all of the vegetables, the curry requires specific spices. Like curry powder. Which is not something I have ever cooked with before. My sister (and fellow Daring Cook) happened to stock up on a variety of Indian spices in preparation for this challenge, and graciously shared some with me.

The recipe that I chose didn't call for all of these spices, but I wanted to include them anyway, so in addition to the ready-to-use curry powder, I prepared the other spices to include in my dish. I dry-pan-roasted fenugreek seeds and ground them in my mini blender.

Then crushed green cardamom pods to release the seeds, to add into the curry as well.

Preparing the curry was surprisingly simple. I sautéed onion and garlic, then added chicken to the pan to cook through. Once the chicken was ready, I simply layered on the other components - first vegetables, then the spices, then finally added coconut milk and stock to create the sauce for the curry.

Once all of the ingredients were added to the pan, I put on the lid and let it simmer away, filling my house with delicious smells.

Curry doing its thing, it was finally time to do the final preparations on the appam. The fermented batter being too thick to use, coconut milk is added, plus a touch of water (if needed, and I did) to create a batter slightly thicker than milk.

In order to make the appam, a few tablespoons of the batter (three worked well for me) are swirled around a lightly greased pan.

The pan is then covered to allow the appam not only to fry, but to steam.

And after two minutes, voila!

Once the appam were done, it was time to take the lid off of the pan of curry, and I was so excited by what I saw.

I was a bit unsure as to how to plate everything - some people served their curry on their appam, some on the side... I went for the side, to allow each of us to choose how we wanted to eat it, but I wound up putting most of my curry right onto the appam anyway.

I was really pleased with this dinner! While it was probably significantly less spicy than most traditional Indian fare, I think it was a really great recipe, and made for a really nice change of pace dinner.

The only problem was that there was a LOT of appam batter. Luckily, Mary told us that it can sit in the fridge for a couple of days, and gave us an idea as to what to try with the leftovers. Apparently, if you crack an egg into the batter after it is swirled in the pan, then cook it like the appams, it becomes something called an egg hopper:

As you can see, I thought that sounded like a good breakfast. The only problem is that I like my eggs cooked a bit harder. So I tried to flip my egg hopper to further cook the egg. The result, when I tried to check on it, was that the yolk broke, making the breakfast less than photogenic.

It was, however, delicious, and a great use of some of the leftover batter!

Mary, I can't thank you enough for introducing me to the delicious world of Southern Indian cooking. You were a fantastic, enthusiastic and energetic hostess and provided us with a great, well researched, fun and delicious challenge!

If you'd like to see the other delicious dishes cooked up in the Kitchen this month, check them out here.

National S'mores Day (one day late)

2011-08-11T20:44:00.005-04:00

National S'mores Day? Who knew there was such a thing?? I most certainly didn't. At least not until last night, when a facebook friend mentioned that she was celebrating it with s'mores cupcakes.

You may or may not have noticed throughout my posts that I love s'mores. So I had to celebrate, too. I asked my friend for her recipe and she was more than happy to oblige. You can check it out on her blog here.

The cupcakes are yellow cake with graham cracker crumbs and chocolate chunks folded in. Rather than using a boxed yellow cake mix, I used my favorite yellow cake recipe, which, honestly, is just as easy as using a mix. I then used the food processor attachment of my awesome immersion blender to turn honey grahams into crumbs.

The crumbs and a bunch of chocolate chips were carefully added to the batter, which was then divided up among the cupcake pans.

Once the cupcakes baked and cooled, it was time for the marshmallow frosting. The frosting is pretty much a basic buttercream with marshmallow fluff mixed in. I actually happened to have just the right amount of marshmallow cream in the house (which was a shock, as I usually don't buy it...), so we were in business.

The frosting spread beautifully, to the point of dripping over the edges of the cupcakes.

After a few minutes on the cupcakes, though, the frosting set and the cupcakes were ready to be shared among my neighbors, since there is nothing better than spreading the s'mores love. Plus, if we had a full batch in the house, I'd eat the full batch.

These were super delicious, but I should have used more chocolate chips. While I definitely got at least one chip in each bite, no picture I took made it look that way...

So I hope you enjoyed National S'mores Day, or that you will, like me, create your own s'mores celebration with these delicious cupcakes.

S'mores Cupcakes

(adapted from Cinnamon Girl Recipe's yellow cake recipe)

2 cups all purpose flour, sifted

1 1/4 cup sugar

1 tablespoon baking powder

1 teaspoon salt

1/2 cup butter, softened

1 cup milk

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

2 eggs

1 cup graham cracker crumbs

1 1/2 cups (okay, a couple of handfuls... I didn't measure...) chocolate chips

Preheat oven to 350 degrees and either line a cupcake tin with liners or spray it well with non-stick cooking spray.

In a large mixing bowl, whisk together the flour, sugar, baking powder and salt. Add the butter, milk and vanilla and beat (either with a hand mixer or in a stand mixer) for two minutes, occasionally scraping the sides of the bowl. Add the eggs, one at a time, beating between additions, and then beat for two more minutes. Carefully fold in the graham cracker crumbs and chocolate chips, just barely mixing them into the batter.

Pour the batter into the muffin tins until about 2/3 -3/4 full. Bake at 350 degrees for about 25 minutes.

Allow the cupcakes to cool in the tin (on a wire rack) for about 10 minutes before removing them from the tin. Allow them to cool completely before frosting.

Marshmallow Frosting

(from Adventures in Mommy-Land)

1 jar (7 oz.) marshmallow cream

1/2 cup butter, softened

2 cups powdered sugar

1-2 teaspoons milk (as needed)

Soften the marshmallow cream in the microwave for about 15 seconds to make it pour-able. Beat the softened butter, powdered sugar and marshmallow cream until well blended. Slowly add the milk, starting with one teaspoon, until the frosting is the spreadable consistency you want.