Search Results for '("C'

[navlys]

We had store bought salad and cheese bread. The electrical system in our building suffered a fire at 1am Sunday. We will have no electricity for months. Our neighbor in the condo (Florida) helped us to connect to generator so we could plug in the refrigerator. Needless to say neither the stove nor microwave nor dishwasher is working.We have to wash dishes in cold water. We are scheduled to leave on the 24th for home and since the weather hasn't been too bad and the weather is good we will stay til then. Can't wait to get home and start cooking and baking again.

[BakerAunt]

My other baking project on Wednesday was pita chips. I used the recipe on the KABC website, which is the same as one that I cut out of one of the KAF catalogues to try. The recipe for the pitas is not hard, although the directions are a little sparse (“mix and knead to form a smooth dough”). I mixed initially with the paddle, holding the oil back until the rest was incorporated, added it and mixed, then used the dough hook for 2 minutes. That worked. Rolling out the balls of dough to 6-inch circles was not difficult, as I used my little wooden rolling pin that came with the ravioli mold (and no, I have never made ravioli with it). I rolled a ball on a small square of parchment paper, with saran on top. To get them off the parchment, it helped to turn them over onto the Silpat mat, peel off the parchment, and then lift them and move them to the hot stone in the oven. I need to work a bit on the drop onto the stone. I did well with the one in the far back corner, but I had some issues dropping the one in the front left corner perfectly flat. Five of the eight have nice puffs, and the others are salvageable.

After the pitas cooled, I cut four of them in half. I used kitchen scissors after starting each with a knife and used the knife at the end if I needed to cut through any of the center. The top parts are thin, and the bottom parts are thick. I decided to bake the chips made from the top ones separately from those I would make with the thicker bottom parts. Each half gets cut into eight wedges. The recipe calls for them to be brushed first with olive oil and sprinkled with salt. However, I used the kitchen scissors to cut them into wedges, then brushed them with olive oil. I did not add any additional salt. (The recipe already has 1 ½ tsp.) I baked on the convection setting, third rack up, but left the temperature the same. I did the thick ones first, with 10 minutes on one side and about six on the other. The thin ones I did for about 5 minutes, then 3 minutes.

I was hoping to use these with humus for a visitor on Friday, but I am not sure they are impressive or good enough. I will try them out tomorrow. I reserved four of the pitas, in part because my husband is excited about trying them for sandwiches, but also because they did not come out as chips as well as I had hoped--and certainly not like the picture from the catalogue.

[chocomouse]

I worked in the flower beds again today, and got the rock garden all cleaned up and mulched. This is very early in the season to have this done, but it's been so dry (still in a drought from last summer) and warm this year that plants are coming up early. My husband has rototilled the garden, brought home a truck load of mulch, and will be getting a load of manure on Saturday. We are expecting snow tomorrow and Friday - a storm watch for a town about 30 miles south says they will be getting 12-18 inches of that white "poor man's manure". I've not seen any totals for us, but being near the river, we probably won't get much and it will all melt on Saturday.

[BakerAunt]

Wednesday night’s dinner was Turkey-Zucchini Meatloaf with Peach-Dijon Mustard Glaze. I also roasted potato wedges tossed in olive oil with Penzey’s Mural Seasoning. We rounded out the meal with microwaved frozen mixed vegetables.

I may be getting down to the last of the peach jam I made two years ago. Getting good peaches to make more may be an issue. I was able to buy them twice in different years from a vendor who had organic peaches as a sideline to her honey business. The peaches were "ugly" (her words) but delicious, and they made fantastic peach jam. However, the crop often depended on whether there was a freeze (as in 2018) or not. She stopped coming to the market after spring 2019. I miss her peaches and her honey.

[Mike Nolan]

Brown butter cream cheese frosting is something I would like to try. What's the ratio of cream cheese to brown butter?

The usual ratio for cream cheese frosting is 2 parts cream cheese and 1 part butter, but the last time I made it (for my Hot Cross Buns) I used 2 ounces of butter to 8 ounces of cream cheese, and we liked that very much

Update: Based on the copy of her recipe on the WaPo site, it looks like she's starting with a standard 2-1 ratio.

[BakerAunt]

I'm also of the no pineapple in carrot cake persuasion (also no cocnout). My recipe came with a Wilton round cake pan. I haven't baked it in a couple of years, probably because I need to avoid that divine cream cheese frosting. The frosting Cwcdesign describes sounds even better.

[Mike Nolan]

I don't think I've made carrot cake with pineapple in it, but it sounds better (at least to my wife) than one with coconut in it. (She really doesn't like coconut.)

[Mike Nolan]

I think wall ovens, which are higher up, might make handling easier, but I've only worked with them a few times at my son's house. (My mother-in-law's house had a wall oven that she never used, she preferred the one in the stove, when someone did try to use the wall oven it turned out it had never been wired up!)

[cwcdesign]

For Will's birthday, I made a family favorite that we call Chicken Juniper, named after my Mom's horse and my Dad's boats. It is also known as Elegant Chicken in the Forum Feasts community cookbook. Dried beef, chicken (I use tenders now) wrapped in bacon, with a sour cream and mushroom sauce, sprinkled with paprika - a really 60's/70's casserole. It is baked low and slow. I served it with green beans and brown rice - we have a could of days of leftovers.

Turns out it's my brother's birthday dinner as well!

[cwcdesign]

Will's birthday was Sunday. On Saturday, I made the brown butter cream cheese frosting from Dessert Person to frost the carrot cake I had frozen the Sunday before. The frosting is delicious - you just need time to make the brown butter and then bring it back to the right consisitency. Claire had said to frost the layers while frozen - I was concerned because they wouldn't sit flat and I thought I had put too much frosting on the edges between the layers to fill the gaps. She also suggested that you frost the frozen cake and let it sit in the fridge for 24 hours before serving.

I shouldn't have worried. This was by far the best carrot cake I have made (sorry KABC) not too sweet - carrots soaked in buttermilk, toasted pecans and no other additions. Spices were grated fresh ginger, cinnamon, dried ginger and a tiny bit of clove. The cake rehydrated and with the frosting was just right.

[Mike Nolan]

The 8 strand one seemed easier for me to do than the 5 strand one, which sounds strange.

After he gets set up in Israel, I think he's planning on doing a class with a 10 strand braid. Of the ones we made yesterday, I am probably most likely to make the 8 strand, though I do want to practice the rose one again. (I think I left out a step on the batch that I made later in the day, I need to watch the video of the class again.)

The 11 strand braid was huge, 1100 grams of dough. It'd be good for a large gathering, though.

His Challah recipe is one that doesn't have egg in the dough, though it does have sugar. He says doughs without egg keep the bread softer longer. We'll see.

[BakerAunt]

Chocomouse--my husband plants with his trusty shovel. He planted a little more than a hundred red pine, a little more than 100 burr oak. He planted 7 black spruce, 4 white fir. He bought these which are between 2 and 4 years old.

Then there are the ones he is growing to plant: 6 sugar maples, 5 jack pine.

He has started a lot of tamarack and grey birch. These are from seeds, so they have a way to go if they make it. He has them in containers on the sun porch. He figured out in the winter how to open a window and put a frame over it with plastic to keep the cold out and let the sun in during times when the sun shines. (You may recall that the new enclosed porch windows block the heat, so that is how he gets around it.)

Some of the trees are replacements for ones that the drought killed last year, and some are replacements for the ones the deer (so cute and so destructive) got.

[BakerAunt]

I made clam chowder for my lunch on Sunday, and for the next couple of days, using the recipe from my old Betty Crocker cookbook. I put in extra potato, and I also add ½ tsp. celery seed, a tip from my college roommate.

Sunday night dinner (it is in the oven) is Pork Loin Roast with Barley, Butternut Squash, and Kale, a recipe that I adapted from a Cooks Illustrated one that did not work that well. I am using the last butternut squash I had from the autumn farmers’ market; it stayed fresh in the cold apartment over our garage. I really like this one-pot recipe on a cool (50s) rainy day—the way it is supposed to be in northern Indiana in the spring. The rain is always welcomed, especially since my husband is well on his way to planting an additional 250 trees.

[BakerAunt]

We ate the last of the rye bread on Sunday, and as I had planned a dinner that requires the oven, I decided to bake a single loaf that I could do in the morning and early afternoon. I had bought some Six-Grain Blend from KABC, so I decided to try the recipe on the bag. I read the reviews on the website before starting. I made a few changes in that I used 2 cups of white whole wheat flour and substituted Bob’s Red Mill Artisan bread flour for the remaining 1 cup of AP. I replaced 1 Tbs. vital wheat gluten with 1 Tbs. First Clear flour, and I added 2 Tbs. special dry milk. I replaced 1 cup of the water with buttermilk and soaked the grains in it before starting. I replaced the sugar with 2 Tbs. maple syrup (and cleaned out an empty jar with the water in which I proofed the yeast). I used canola oil. I found that I needed about ¼ cup more water, perhaps because the grains absorb the buttermilk but also because I used more wholegrain flour. I mixed in the bread machine. The dough rose both times in about an hour. I baked for 35 minutes, then needed about 3 minutes more. It looks nice and smells delicious. We will cut into it tomorrow at lunch.

[Mike Nolan]

I was talking to someone yesterday who is looking for a recipe for English Muffin Bread (she can't get it when she visits her family in California any more), so I'm bringing this thread up to the top again. She like it for French Toast. (With all the Challah I'll be making later today, I think there will be some French Toast on the menu here soon.)

There's a URL upthread to a site that has James Beard's recipe (from Beard on Bread, one of my favorite bread books), I note that it uses both yeast and baking soda, presumably the latter, added after the bulk rise, helps produces bigger holes more like an English Muffin.