Posted in Daring Bakers, Sweets on October 29, 2007 | 48 Comments »
Can anyone see the little face?
How about now?
The pictures don’t give the desserts justice but the jack o lantern’s face was more visible in person.
Being so close to Halloween, I couldn’t resist. When I saw this at Target’s I immediately thought of this challenge.
Posted in Breads, Shits and Giggles on October 22, 2007 | 8 Comments »
Speaking of breads, has this ever happened to anybody else? I made a nice cinnamon loaf with nearly a cup of raisins folded into the dough. For the next hour I kept hearing soft little pitter patters coming from the oven. I didn’t think anything of it until smoke started wafting out. The raisins somehow managed to rehydrate themselves and completely jumped out of the loaf as it was baking. The smoke was from a few that came into contact with the cooking coil on the floor of the stove. When I say jumped out, I mean completely abandoning ship. Measure out a scant cup of dried raisins and you’ll see there’s a good handful there. The pictures show the remaining raisins, the smattering on the top of the loaf and a few that were smooshed into the glass bread pan were the only survivors.
Despite this puzzling raisin behavior, it’s probably the best bread I’ve ever made. The texture was just perfect and I’ve since made 2 more loaves for bread pudding and stuffing. Recipe to be posted as soon as I have some more picture to go with everything.
Posted in Breads on October 22, 2007 | 3 Comments »
If you can picture this doubled in size and darker in color, then that’s what the finished product looked like. Sorry, I never did get a picture after it was done. Too bad, because I heard it was World Bread Day recently on the blogosphere and I completely missed it! Here I made 4 different loaves last Tuesday and it never even occurred to me to take pictures of them all. Oh well, there’s always next year.
This one is a breeze as far as yeast breads go because there’s no kneading. Kinda takes all the fun out of the whole thing, I love the kneading and squeezing and punching of dough. Even though I now have a stand mixer and a food processor, I still prefer making bread by hand plus I can control the texture and it just comes out better.
But for this dough, a word of advice, do follow the directions and do not knead by hand. I gave it a short 5 minute massage and ended up having to remake the whole thing.
Another word of caution is to head the temperature directions for the cottage cheese and the warm water. In my opinion, lukewarm is 60 degrees Fahrenheit. Warm is 80F. Again, this is my own opinion. I actually haven’t seen much written about liquid temperatures when it comes to baking. Hmm, maybe I should write Mr. Brown about this.
When you heat the cottage cheese, heat it slowly and evenly over a double boiler or in a saucepan over very low heat. If it’s too hot, let it cool down. One of the ingredients is an egg, if the temp is too high, you’ll get ribbons of scrambled egg in the batch and the bread will come out wonky.
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Posted in Meat, Soups and Stews on October 21, 2007 | 2 Comments »
I used two lamb shoulder chops from the deep freezer we were house sitting and made a delicious stew. These weren’t just the flat little itty bitty chops you find in the grocery store but big thick generous cuts of meat from a local farm. One can buy an entire animal worth of meat but it only happens once a year and you get the meat all at once. My eldest brother does something similar; he and another family go fifty-fifty on an entire cow and divvy up the beef. There’s so much to be stored that he ended up buying a freezer for all the cuts. There’s enough to feed his entire family of five for nearly a year and it’s very good quality. I’m always dead jealous, someday we’ll get out of our apartment and have a place big enough for a freezer and fill it with locally raised meat.
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Posted in Meat, Sandwiches on October 18, 2007 | 3 Comments »
I’m calling this sloppy not because it’s my version of the Sloppy Joe but because I dropped the ball and could very easily have ruined the stovetop. Don’t get distracted away from the kitchen when you’re making these and forget to drain the meat. And don’t dump in the entire bowl of pureed tomatoes all at once, use common sense and add a cup at a time until it gets to the consistency you want. I usually pay more attention to these things but it was the first night we were there and I was dashing back and forth between the main kitchen and the second kitchen looking for things. (There’s a terrible murder mystery and ghost story behind why there are two kitchens in the house. I need the family’s permission before I can retell it here. Or one of the cousins can leave it in the comments section.)
I probably would have killed myself if everything had boiled over and ruined the stovetop.
Luckily it was caught just in time and salvageable after a quick draining. It didn’t have the nice messy texture that one associates with a sloppy Joe but it was still a good meal.
Posted in Real Life on October 17, 2007 | 7 Comments »
This isn’t what it looks like! I’m not trying to skewer the cat and he’s not trying to disintegrate me with his emerald glare of death! Maybe next time I should leave the catgut strings at home.
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Posted in Real Life on October 3, 2007 |
Thank you again for all the encouraging comments and warm welcomes to the Daring Bakers. I’m psyched to find such a great group of people who are as enthusiastic and passionate about baking. I promise to post the recipe of the cinnamon buns frozen yogurt that I made from the leftovers sometime. Gooooood stuff!
For the next two weeks, I probably won’t be able to post much as I won’t have Internet access in the evenings. Q and I are off to house sit in the country. There is a phone and one TV but we’ve decided not to touch either and just enjoy the time away from the city. We’ll be doing lots of cooking out there and I’ll be able to make up for the posting lag when we’re back home. Till then!
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