What's for dinner?

That was the question I was asking myself this afternoon. Usually we try to have some kind of meal plan each week, taking advantage of the sales at the various stores around us, but we haven't actually done that the last couple of weeks. Between that and me spending most of the afternoon at my sister's house, I was kind of in a scramble come, oh, 4:15 this afternoon. Kinda late to get started, for the most part.

I knew that there were some good meat sales at the one food store closest to us, so we ran there on the way home from my sister's. That's when I saw the ground beef. And it spoke to me. Not literally. I would probably not only have not bought it, but would quite possibly have run from the store had it actually talked... Anyway, of all of the things I saw, ground beef was the one I wanted for tonight. Because we had a LOT of chicken last week. So, knowing we had some really good hoagie rolls at home, I decided we could make meatball parmesean hoagies.

By the time I made it home and put the rest of the groceries away, I had just enough time to throw together the meatballs and get them into the oven. It's a good thing that these come together so quickly! Rolling meatballs is not necessarily my favorite thing to do, and keeping little miss from helping me roll them is sometimes a challenge, but just in time, these were in the oven and we ran outside to play some catch and kickball.

Once the meatballs were cooked, it was a simple matter of smothering them with tomato sauce and shredded Italian cheeses, then popping them under the broiler for a minute or two and, viola! Dinner! Not too shabby, considering that I had no clue only an hour and a half before, huh?

This was the perfect quick dinner, and I purposely made a double batch of meatballs, for a completely different meal later on this week. Woohoo! Glad I am back to having a plan!

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Golden Sweet Cornbread

I have been meaning to post this since, well, since the jam post, but it was a fun and busy weekend, and the weather has been really nice (near 60* today! woohoo!), so I haven't been on the computer much.

But this is the most delicious cornbread, for those of you non-purists who allow for cornbread to be sweet and not made in a generations-old cast iron skillet...

In all honesty, I lucked into this recipe. One of my go-to recipe sites is allrecipes.com. I stumbled across it years ago, when searching for my first ever pumpkin pie recipe, and now refer to it often, though recently as a reference point (ie: to compare with other recipes, or to find out user reviews of different recipes). Anyway, however many years ago it was, I decided one day to try to make cornbread, so entered "cornbread" into the search field at the top of the page. I am not sure how many results came up that day, but, just so you know, when I did it just now, it brought back 188 results. After much browsing, I settled on one. And have never searched for another. I have received rave reviews on this recipe. Unless the need arises for a truly savory cornbread (as I said, this one is a sweet one), then this will be my cornbread recipe for life.

When I made the jam the other day, it was just calling out for cornbread, And since this is really quick to make, I decided to just go ahead and do it. And little miss can practically do this one herself at this point. I mean, if I let her crack eggs... which I have only done a couple of times... Anyway, she measured, stirred, mixed... and that is really the extent of it!

The pretty plain-looking, flat batter is poured into a pan, and a mere 20-25 minutes later, you have this:









Cakey and a little crumbly, and deliciously sweet, this cornbread is so good. Little miss was asking me, pretty much from the second it went into the oven, when she could have a piece. That's how good it is.

You should definitely try this.


Golden Sweet Cornbread

Ingredients:
1 cup all purpose flour
1 cup yellow cornmeal
2/3 cup sugar
1 tsp salt
3 1/2 tsp baking powder
1 egg
1 cup milk
1/3 cup vegetable oil

Method:
1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees F (200 degrees C). Spray or lightly grease a 9 inch round cake pan.
2. In a large bowl, combine flour, cornmeal, sugar, salt and baking powder. Stir in egg, milk and vegetable oil until well combined. Pour batter into prepared pan.
3. Bake in preheated oven for 20 to 25 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted into the center of the loaf comes out clean.

To see the original on allrecipes, click here.

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Strawberry Jam

I can't wait for summer. I will settle for spring, which, obviously, comes sooner, but I am a big fan of hot weather, and all of the fun outdoor activities that come with it.

Ignoring the snow still piled up outside my door, there was a new sign of the warmer weather to come this week - strawberries went on sale at the food store. Which means that it is strawberry season somewhere, which gives me hope that strawberry season can't be too far away here.

I wanted to take full advantage of these first strawberries, to enjoy them as much as possible, so I decided to buy a whole bunch of them and make strawberry jam today.

I have only ever made strawberry jam once, with my now-mother-in-law, when my husband and I were dating. It was pretty fun, and I can't believe that it's taken me this long to do it again, but it was fun to now do it with little miss.

She loves strawberries, so I was very impressed with the fact that she was as big a helper as she was - I pretty much expected her to eat all of the berries as we went along, but she didn't - I gave her her own bowl from which to eat, and she was great about following the recipe with the rest of them.

Making jam is very straightforward, and pretty easy to do. Which makes me wonder why I buy jam... hmm... Anyway, the first step was the most fun for little miss - smashing the berries with a potato masher. The berries need to be crushed, but not completely pulverized, so as not to destroy the natural pectin in the fruit.

These crushed berries were boiled with juice, pectin (powdered, from a box - speeds things up and helps the jam set) and sugar, though I did opt to use the no-sugar pectin, which greatly reduces the amount of sugar needed to set the jam. I didn't want jam that was so sweet as to overpower the natural deliciousness of the strawberries. And when I say boiled, I mean a rigorous, heavy boil. Whoa.

At this point, though, I was a little worried. After this rigorous boil, the recipe tells you to put the jam in jars and, well, you're done. My jam was a bit looser than I had expected. I had decided to make only half a batch, which meant using half the box of pectin, and I eyeballed the "half" measurement, so I was worried right away that maybe I hadn't added enough. But as it cooled, it really started to set better, and the result was really great. I think I will stick with the no-sugar pectin in the future, as the fresh taste of the fruit is really, well, refreshing.

And I can only imagine how much better jam will taste with fruit that we pick ourselves this summer...

But for that I will have to wait.

But for now, this went perfectly with the cornbread that I made today (but I'll tell you about the cornbread another day...). We had it for dessert tonight. And I am pretty sure we'll be having it for breakfast tomorrow, too.

And I have a couple other uses for this jam, too. So stay tuned!

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Sweet Cinnamon Biscuits

One thing that we love about the weekends is the time to have a big, fun breakfast. Usually that entails eggs, some kind of breakfast meat, hash browns, coffee... sometimes bagels, sometimes toast... whatever we have and whatever sounds good.

But the weekend has two days, and I can't have that huge a breakfast both days... so I found a recipe to make the other weekend day special this week. It's actually a recipe that I have had floating around the house for... man... who knows how long. I received it in the mail in a pack of recipe cards that were sent to me trying to get me to buy the whole binder and set of recipe cards... I threw away all of the paperwork, but put the recipe cards in a drawer. I have looked at them a few times, but have never made any of them. Until this weekend.

I was looking for something cinnamon-bun-ish, but that I could throw together in the morning, and thus, that didn't need long rise times. That's when I found the card from this set for Sweet Cinnamon Biscuits. The picture showed what looked like a cinnamon bun, but the recipe was more reminiscent of a buttermilk biscuit. The key? It looked easy and quick. It was time to try the recipe.

The good thing about this being an easy recipe was that my helper could help out with just about every single step, from measuring:









to mixing:









to kneading:









to rolling out the dough:









to mixing up the filling:









She was actually really excited to start the day off making these. I was worried that she wouldn't want to have to wait for her breakfast, but she was pretty cool with it. The rolled out dough was buttered and all that sugary goodness that little miss was mixing was spread onto it, and then the whole thing was rolled up and sliced up to be baked. The house smelled delicious, between these baking and the coffee brewing.

By the time these came out of the oven, we were all ready to eat. These were delicious. I was shocked - mostly that I had had this recipe sitting in a drawer for who-knows how long, when I could have been eating these biscuits. With how easily and quickly these come together, and how delicious they taste, these will definitely become a part of the regular rotation.

You should absolutely try these.



Sweet Cinnamon Biscuits

Ingredients:
2 cups sifted all-purpose flour
1 tablespoon baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 cup vegetable oil
3/4 cup buttermilk
8 tablespoons (1 stick) unsalted butter, softened
3/4 cup granulated sugar (I did half white sugar and half brown sugar)
1 teaspoon cinnamon

Method:
1) Combine flour, baking powder, salt and baking soda in a medium bowl and mix
well. Stir in vegetable oil. Add buttermilk and stir just until blended.

2) Knead the dough on a lightly floured surface until smooth. Roll dough into a 15 x 8 rectangle.

3) Preheat the oven to 400*. Grease a 9 inch round baking pan lightly.

4) Spread butter over the dough. Combine sugar and cinnamon in a small bowl and mix well. Sprinkle over butter. Roll up rectangle, jelly roll fashion, starting from one long side. Pinch seam to seal.

5) Cut the roll into 1 1/2 inch slices. Arrange the slices, cut side up, in prepared baking pan. Bake until lightly browned, about 15 to 20 minutes.

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Daring Bakers Challenge - Tiramisu

It's that time of month again!

The February 2010 Daring Bakers’ challenge was hosted by Aparna of My Diverse Kitchen and Deeba of Passionate About Baking. They chose Tiramisu as the challenge for the month. Their challenge recipe is based on recipes from The Washington Post, Cordon Bleu at Home and Baking Obsession.

When I first saw the challenge, I was very excited. Tiramisu? Delicious. I have even made a version of it a few times, and it was always very well received.

Then I read a little further. This wasn't just constructing tiramisu. This was making every component. From scratch. Including the marscapone cheese. Umm... making cheese? Yeah. A little daunting. Add to that making savoiardi biscuits (lady fingers), pastry cream and zabaglione (zabagli-what? yeah, that was my first thought, too...) and I quickly moved from excited to, well, still excited, but pretty nervous, too.

My apologies, once again, because this will be a long, picture-heavy post.

One of the first considerations I had for this challenge was time. There were five components that had to be made for this challenge, three of which need to be chilled completely before the final product could be constructed. So I had to determine when each would be made, and make time for each step, to ensure that I could have time for a re-do if I goofed anything up majorly. Which was a big concern I had.

I decided to start with the marscapone, since it was what I was most nervous about, and since it has to be refrigerated for the longest amount of time - overnight to 24 hours. I have never even had (to my knowledge, anyway) marscapone, much less made it. The tiamisu I have made in the past? Yeah, uses cream cheese instead. The process of making marscapone is actually quite straightforward - heavy cream (as pure as you can find) is heated in a bowl placed into a pan of simmering water until it reaches 190 degrees Fahrenheit, at which time lemon (or lime) juice is added to help thicken the cream. Simple enough, right? Well, I hit a snag that, from what it seems on the Daring Baker forum, was pretty common. My cream would not come to 190 degrees. It was supposed to take 15 minutes. I was standing and stirring for over 45 and I still could not get any higher than 170. Turns out that my equipment was the problem. I thought maybe my candy thermometer was broken, but it seems that the pyrex bowl in which I was heating the cream was actually insulating it too much, and therefore preventing the cream from heating any more. But I found that out later. What did I do at that point? Figured I might as well push my luck and add the lime juice to my 170 degree cream and cross my fingers. It seems that luck was on my side that night, because only a little bit of stirring later, my cream was thickening beautifully, with only the faintest hit of a curdle, and I knew my cheese was ready to be drained. Several layers of cheesecloth in a sieve over a bowl, and I had officially made my very first cheese. This went into the fridge to chill.

The next morning, I decided to tackle components two and three - vanilla pastry cream and zabaglione, which I looked up, and is an egg-custard, usually flavored with marsala wine. These were made in the morning, because they require at least four hours to chill, so I figured I would aim to make them both first thing. Little miss was very happy to help me whisk together the ingredients for the pastry cream, and as this is cooked over low heat (and I was standing right there), I let her take a turn. When it was time for the zabaglione, though, I did that one myself, since it is cooked in a double boiler - didn't need anything going off balance and near-boiling water splashing on her. I used coffee (decaf) instead of marsala, to ensure that this would be a family friendly dessert. And I am not a big wine fan, anyway. The double-boiler picture here actually shows how frothy the zabaglione was as it was coming together. It actually cooked up quite a bit darker, and was a really nice, thick, custardy consistency. That's the finished product, over on the left. It only took about an hour to make both of these, and soon enough, they were in the fridge chilling.

In case you are wondering what little miss was up to while I was stirring, stirring, stirring hot custard, it was this:









Yup. The kid loves to do dishes, so if I need a few minutes I put some warm soapy water in the stoppered-sink, give her a new sponge, and throw all kinds of plastic cups and bowls in there for her. She loves it. I only hope she loves it as much in 10 years when she has to do it as her chore, rather than for fun...

But I digress.

The next major component for this challenge was the savoiardi biscuits, or, as I know them, lady fingers. I was never a fan of lady fingers - I only ever bought them when I was making a tiramisu, and, in my opinion, they were basically a placeholder for all the creamy goodness. Until now. These biscuits are, for lack of a better word, lovely. Light, airy, delicate cookies, I can't even begin to explain to you how much better they are than their store-bought counterpart. They come together so easily, even considering that eggs have to be separated. With a sprinkling of powdered sugar before being popped into the oven, they are just fantastic. They are stand-alone worthy, no longer relegated to placeholder status. I could tell, though, looking at my completed biscuits and then at the pan in which I was planning on making my tiramisu, that one batch would not be enough to make all three layers that the recipe called for, but this was really no problem. I quickly made another batch, and was very happy to know that I would have extra biscuits for snacking on. Yay!

And can you believe all of that was done by lunch time?

After dinner that night, I got ambitious, and decided that we should finish up the tiramisu so that it could chill overnight and be dessert for the next day's dinner. Which happened to be Valentine's day. Aaww.

So after dinner, I whipped up the final component, and the only one that I have made before. Fresh whipped cream. Yum. The whipped cream was gently folded into the combined marscapone, zabaglione and pastry cream to make a quadruple-y delicious and, somehow both rich and light cream. The next part was the part little miss was looking forward to all day. Dipping the biscuits in cooled, sweetened coffee to create delicious layers of biscuits and cream. Then the whole thing went back in the fridge.

And the result?

So good. So much better than my old version of tiramisu.

So good, in fact, that I decided to make another, only to get a little more, well, daring.

Yes, there is more.

For my second tiramisu, I decided to try a different flavor, rather than another traditional coffee tiramisu. I chose berries.

To do this, I took a bag of frozen mixed berries and cooked them down and strained them to make a concentrated berry juice. I used this berry juice in place of the coffee used in the traditional one to flavor the zabaglione and for dipping the biscuits. Such a little change, but wow.

This was just as good as the first one, and had such a fresh taste to it, thanks to the berries. I even took a piece of this one in to the gym for my taste-tester to try, and she said "wow" a few times, with a big smile, so I am thinking it went over pretty well.

Deeba, Aparna, I cannot thank you enough for this challenge. I learned something new with each component, and can guarantee you that I will be making this again. And again.


Full recipes can be found here.

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Pseudo Snow Day

The forecast for today was for snow. Lots of snow. Heavy, wet snow. And considering how much snow we have had recently, and how major another foot of snow would be for the area, the local area school districts canceled school for today. Which meant that preschool was canceled, too. We woke up to only a thin coating (well, you know, over the mountains that still haven't melted from last time...), but big heavy flakes falling from the sky. Snow day plans in effect.

We started the day with celebratory snow day pancakes. Little miss helped make them, then also helped pick out the snowman cookie cutter. Because it was a snow day.

After breakfast, we did lots of crafting, including cutting, coloring, stickers, glue and general messiness. When it was time for a break from the crafts, we decided to go outside and build a snowman. The only problem with this was that there really wasn't really all that much new snow. It wasn't sticking at all to the sidewalks or roads, and there was still only a light coating over what had already been there. The good news, though, was that what was there was very easy to pack together, and even the old snow, with the temperature above freezing, was easy enough to gather together and sculpt into a little three-year-old sized snowman. Or... mutant snow monster, considering how it wound up looking. Either way, we managed a muddy snow man out of the slush.

After lunch and more crafts and a whole lot of playing, I continued with my snow-day meal plan, despite the fact that, as of that time, and despite the fact that big flakes had been falling from the sky all day, there was probably a bit less snow on the ground than there had been at the start of the "storm."

What could be better on a chilly and (supposedly) snowy day than homemade chicken soup? Little miss helped me chop veggies (with her toy knife and toy cutting board - I promise I don't let her touch the real knives) and put them in the pot. Carrots, celery, potato, onion and leek, along with some stock simmering on the stove, I also let her pick what shape noodles she wanted. She picked small shells. Add in the remainder of this week's leftover chicken, and this turned into quite a hearty meal.

So according to my kitchen, it was a snow day. According to what I saw out my window? It might as well have been rain. But this storm is supposed to last through noon tomorrow, and the snow has finally starting to stick. So the weather people have another 16 hours to prove that this wasn't all just hype.

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It was supposed to be an easy dinner...

I have quite a bit of leftover chicken in the fridge, from various cooking endeavors over the last few days, so I knew, going into the week, that we'd be having leftover chicken in different forms this week. The plan for tonight was BBQ pulled chicken. Easy and delicious.

Well, not quite as easy as it could have been... because I didn't have any rolls in the house. And BBQ pulled meat goes on rolls, right? I usually make rolls using the Amish White Bread recipe, making one loaf and six rolls rather than two loaves. But I was in the mood for something a little different today, so off I went, searching for a roll recipe that would speak to me.

After a few minutes, this one did. It's funny. It spoke to me through a small thumbnail picture on foodgawker, and then I was confused when I clicked through to the actual recipe and found that, rather than a recipe for rolls, it was a recipe for challah, that was also made into rolls. Not to be deterred, I decided to stick with this choice, and little miss and I proceeded.

My helper was very involved today. And I think she had a pretty good time, too. Usually she helps me whisk together dry ingredients for recipes, but today, for this one, she helped me whisk the wet ones. And had a lot of fun with the new method I taught her for whisking - rolling the whisk between her palms rather than the traditional whisk-stirring. Hey, we had to get the honey mixed in well, right?

Ingredients whisked, and KitchenAid mixer enlisted to do the majority of the heavy kneading for this, we had a couple of hours to play and dance and generally have a good time.

Once the dough rose, there was lots to do, and little miss was happy to help.

The dough had to be punched down:









Then, once divided into smaller portions, it was rolled:









and shaped into rolls:









which, after being proofed, were basted:









at which point they were finally ready to go into the oven, and, finally, they were ready:









They smelled heavenly, the color was really nice, and tasted pretty good. The only complaint I have is that the crust was pretty thick, so not exactly the perfect sandwich rolls, but all in all, pretty good!

So, rolls ready, chicken shredded and simmering in BBQ sauce, I thought I was all set. Until I realized that I didn't have a side dish! I mean, BBQ sandwich and veggies is, technically, a fine meal, but I always have a side, some kind of starch. With only 35 minutes until dinner, my options were kind of limited... I didn't want rice, but what else was there time to make? Then I remembered a friends blog post the other day for breakfast potatoes. Which, when I read it, reminded me of a heftied-up version of hash browns that I sometimes make. Easy! I'll make the hash browns! I usually use leftover baked potatoes (I usually bake extra potatoes just to be able to make them), but, having none, I quickly scrubbed a few potatoes and threw them into the microwave. I have never actually microwave-baked potatoes before, but it came in super handy today! While they cooked, I heated some extra virgin olive oil in a skillet and added in some roughly diced onion. Once the potatoes were done, they were also roughly diced, thrown into the pan, and gently spiced with garlic sea salt. That's it. Just keep them moving enough so that they don't burn, but let them get nice and crispy. Instant side! And I finished with a few minutes to spare!

So that's what happens when an easy meal turns into a not so easy one, but winds up not to difficult after all!

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