Northern Indiana has had a hot spell, so my husband wanted me to do a roast in the crock pot, particularly a pork roast, since we found one at a good price last week. I had sworn off of doing so after my last pork roast in a crock pot disaster (not cooked through) and earlier overcooked. This time I'm cooking it for longer on low, and using a recipe, "Pork Loin with Apples and Sage," from "Meals in Minutes: Slow Cooker"--recipes by Norman Kolpas (pp. 48-49). It used 1 cup chicken broth and 1 cup apple juice. I had neither readily available, so I used 1 1/2 cups water and added 2 Tbs. of the boiled apple cider that KAF sells. Seasonings are onion, garlic, sage, and cinnamon. Granny Smith apples are added an hour before it finishes. I'll add to this post after dinner tonight about how the recipe works for us.
Analysis: The meat was dry, although still tasty. Next time I will cook on low for five hours rather than almost six, before adding the apples. I will reduce the sage from 2 tsp. to 1 tsp. I will increase the boiled apple cider from 2 Tbs. to 3 Tbs.
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This topic was modified 8 years, 7 months ago by
BakerAunt.
For Sunday breakfast, I baked a new recipe: "Apricot Sour Cream Scones," from The River Street Inn, in Sun Valley, as featured in Bon Appetit (November 1997), p. 199. I did not have dried apricots, so I substituted mixed dried fruit. I substituted in 3/4 cup whole wheat pastry flour (total flour is 2 cups). I made an 8-inch rather than a 9-inch round to cut into 8 wedges. Instead of using the egg wash and a light sprinkle of brown sugar, I spread a light bit of sour cream on each and sprinkled with sugar in the raw. The texture is light, and I love that sour cream taste. I'd never used it in scones before.
Ok, this is not baking but whatever . I eat instant oatmeal for breakfast and I discovered that if I crunch one TJ's ginger snap (they have real ginger bits) into my oatmeal along with splenda I'm in heaven. Oh and I add a little coconut milk. HMMMM
I buy KAF's pastry flour, otherwise I'd probably use Gold Medal unbleached flour as well (I keep it in the freezer until I open the bag.) I've tried whole wheat pastry flour (the only pastry flour I can find in local stores) in a pie crust a few times, didn't care for it.
The black cocoa sounded interesting, that may be on my KAF wish list. I bought some lemon powder from them a while back, I used it in the frosting for the Eclipse cookies I made in August.
The blog post is interesting. I've moved away from using KAF AP flour in my pie crusts. I think that I get better results with Gold Medal, or using some pastry flour. I wonder how the peanut butter crust would go with a chocolate pie filling or maybe a banana one.
The "Light-as-Air Lime Pie" in the KAF Whole Grain Baking Book (pp. 469-471) features lime juice in the crust as well as in the pie. I've not made it and only thought of it, as I've been combing through that cookbook lately and remember seeing it.
I have a recipe for a cornmeal pie crust that was featured, probably by the L.A. Times, with a pumpkin pie. I used that crust with a hamburger meat pie, but I haven't made it in years, since my husband is not fond of ground beef.
Don't feel too bad, Italian Cook. I've also inadvertently set a timer for hours rather than minutes. Sigh.
While we are on the subject of kitchen goofs, when I was making my sandwich buns yesterday in the bread machine, I started it, and thought that does not sound right. I looked inside and it was liquidy. Then I realized that I'd not added the 2 cups of regular flour to the whole wheat flour. (I have to go outside to the garage apartment to get my whole wheat flour out of the refrigerator, and thus forgot to add the regular flour when I returned.) I quickly put the rest of the flour in, and as it was only three minutes into the kneading cycle, all was well.
As I said before, anyone who says that he or she never makes mistakes in cooking or baking is either lying or does not cook or bake.
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This reply was modified 8 years, 7 months ago by BakerAunt.
I made dinner rolls that use cottage cheese in the dough. Have made them before. This time, I did two things wrong: (1) For the second rise, I put the balls of dough in a muffin pan. The recipe clearly says to put them in a 9" round pan. Nevertheless, I didn't notice that. (2) I set the baking timer for hours, not minutes. I ended up with beautifully brown rolls, but they're too crusty. I saved one for my broccoli soup dinner (from freezer), and gave the rest to my husband. He likes crusty bread.
The problem with these goofs is that I had planned to freeze the rolls for guests in October. I ended up with a product I wouldn't serve to a guest. It's one thing for us to eat them, quite another for guests.
I also made blueberry pancakes this morning. I'm going to call those my baking/cooking for the day, since I did those successfully.
There was a speaker at the farmers' market today whose talk was on the apple orchards that once were a major part of this area. When he was asked why they were no longer here (the last one closed in 2000), he said that the movement toward commercialization and few people baking with apples had led to the closings. Sigh. We need a Make America Bake Again movement.
We did most of the catering work for our son's wedding, which was in our back yard (on a very hot 4th of July), but the cake came from someone who does wedding cakes professionally.
The 'Elegant White Cake' recipe in the KAF cookbook is pretty good, but making a tiered cake (and especially decorating it) is beyond our skills and patience. If you've never read the Susan Reid blog on making buttercream frosting, I highly recommend it. See Buttercream Frosting
I've considered taking the cakes course at SFBI, but what I really want to take is the weekend course on baguettes or the week-long bread course that includes baguettes. But I need to get in better shape, doing the Chocolate Academy course in Chicago a year ago was VERY tiring.
First, I was making a two wedding cakes - the brownie cake and an Australian style fruitcake (the groom was an Aussie). This was in the nascent days of the web and there were no recipes online so it was some trial and error with some non-baking Aussie friends acting as taste testers (and they tried some really vile cakes). I eventually got it right with a couple days to spare.
I moved onto the bride's cake. She was a dear friend of mine and I tried to convince her to allow a mutual friend who was a James Beard nominated pastry chef to make the cake but my friend wanted me to make it. The cake was fine but I could not make the buttercream without it breaking (I was not allowing it to cool before dumping in the butter). This was all happening the morning of the wedding. At the last minute my brilliant girlfriend suggested I used whipped cream and we decorate it with flowers. She saved the day.
Of course I should have waited to put the whipped cream on until AFTER we transported it. And I should have made EXTRA whipped cream to repair any damage that happened on the ride over but we made it to the wedding on time with both cakes in one piece!
The mother-of-the-bride put the cake at the end of the buffet and after the wedding the husband of the bride went through the line and cut himself a huge corner of the cake before the bride and groom cut it. I can still hear the shrieks from the bride and her mom.
But the brownie cake was completely consumed (I should have but did not make a topper -doh!) and the fruit cake was about half gone. And it was heavy. So it was a success and I will retire with my streak intact.
Friday dinner is Sloppy Josepines (uses ground turkey)--a recipe that I have posted on this site. It will go with sweet corn and steamed broccoli.
Aaron, I used to drag myself to do pumpkins until I found a simple puree recipe. I had been cutting up the pumpkin, cutting off the peel and either simmering it on the stove or in the microwave. That was tedious. Now, I cut them in half lengthwise (although the odd pumpkin I used this time would probably have been better split horizontally due to its shape), then use a grapefruit spoon to scrape out the seeds. (Note: I do not eat grapefruit or use grapefruit spoons. My mother gave me a set in my everyday eating utensils, and my husband's parents had some that we inherited. They do come in handy for other uses.)
I put them cut-side down in a heavy roasting pan (Calphalon) then let it bake at 325F. The small pie pumpkins usually take an hour or so, depending on size. Sometimes I can do two pumpkins at once. When the skin starts to collapse in on the pie pumpkins (or the flesh is tender), I remove from the oven, and allow to cool a bit in the pan until I can handle them. I turn each half cut-side out, cut into slices, and usually the peel comes off easily, and I put the pieces into the food processor to puree it. I measure it into containers, with some earmarked for pie, and others in half cup or one cup containers. I use it throughout the year.
It is important to use pie pumpkins. I think the variety I bought in Texas was called Baby Bear from Melissa's.
My mom always used our jack-o-lantern pumpkin--one reason that she always had a watery pie that took forever to bake--because she hated the idea of food going to waste, a trait that I share, although I send any jack-o-lantern off to the compost pile. At one point, when my father was discharged from the navy, and was unemployed for a few months, my mother was able to get a station wagon-load of big pumpkins after Halloween that the vender was giving away. We ate a lot of roasted pumpkin with butter in those months. When you are feeding eight children, half of whom are teenagers, you do what you have to do. It's amazing that I still like the taste of pumpkin.
I've never been able to make roasted pumpkin seeds that I wanted to eat. I only like them hulled, and I've not heard of any easy way to do that at home.
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This reply was modified 8 years, 7 months ago by BakerAunt.
I may just have to buy that cookbook, Aaron.
Friday afternoon, I baked the Wheat-Oat Flax Buns from the KAF site. I substituted in 3/4 cups buttermilk, deleted the special dried milk, added 1 Tbs. flax meal, omitted the orange juice reduced the yeast to 2 tsp. and the salt to 1 1/4 tsp. I also use the whole egg in the dough, as I do not seed the buns. I used the bread machine to mix and knead the dough, as it does a better job on a small amount than my 7-quart Cuisinart does. This recipe makes a wonderfully light, smaller bun, although you could make fewer and make them larger. I make this recipe a lot. We will have it with Sloppy Josephines this evening.
I also baked "Golden Cinnamon-Pumpkin Bars, from KAF's Whole Grain Baking (pp. 353-354. My only change was to add 1 Tbs. of flax meal, and instead of canned pumpkin, I used a cup of the puree from that Galeux d’Eysines pumpkin I processed earlier in the week. I've made the KAF recipe before, and marked it as "excellent," my highest rating. I did note at that time that the bars are better the day after baking when the spices mellow.
Back, many, many years ago when I was in college the dining hall would serve something called "New England Squash Pie". When I asked the cooks what it was like they would say "pumpkin pie" and, indeed, it tasted much like pumpkin pie.
Looking online for recipes it appears "squash pie" is made with butternut squash instead of pumpkins but has the same trio of ginger, cinnamon, and nutmeg that is in everything come fall. I've always been too lazy to roast my own pumpkins which is, perhaps, why I did not think there would be much difference between varieties of pumpkins (or other squash) when you start adding sugar, eggs, and the trio.
One such recipe can be found at this link.
My eyes are old, weak and tired, I had to read your post at least twice before I saw that there was a link to Rosie's book. I may have to see if I can tweak the default template to make links easier to recognize. (That's one reason why I often write: See this link: XXXXX)
Having spent 20 years in the publishing industry, I'm well aware of intellectual property rights issues and try to respect them as best I can.
