Tuesday was another throw together dinner of sautéed mushrooms, the drippings from pork chops my husband had cooked on Sunday. the cubed last pork chop, and some peas--all mixed with some spinach pasta. On Wednesday, I experimented with Butternut Curry Soup for lunch. I used 2 cups pureed butternut squash (roasted and frozen earlier this year), 1 1/2 cups chicken/turkey broth, 2 tsp. of Penzey's "The Now Curry," and 6 oz. of full-fat, plain Brown Cow Yogurt. It's good, but next time I'll reduce the curry to 1 1/2 tsp.. On Thursday, I made a salmon loaf.
When we were in California for Thanksgiving, I was given some lemons from trees in my nephew's and my sister's yards, so on Thursday I started to use them by baking six jumbo Lemony Cornmeal Blueberry Muffins. The original recipe, from Abby Mandel, appeared perhaps 25 years ago in The Los Angeles Times food section. I always cut the sugar in half and reduce the oil, and they are great. This time, I also increased the cornmeal slightly and reduced the AP flour, and I added 2 Tbs. of lemon juice (recipe only used lemon zest) along with dried blueberries. On Thursday, I followed Cwcdesign's lead and baked the KAF Butter Pecan Biscotti using Butterfinger chips. I must cut mine large, even though I cut them diagonally, as I only had about 44, but they taste great. Five minutes before I sliced them, I spritzed them with water (a hint from another KAF biscotti recipe that makes them easier to slice without crumbling. I also baked a gingerbread recipe that came with the Nordic Ware medium 2-cottages pan. It actually requires two pans, which I have. The recipe calls for melting the butter before it is mixed in. Recently, I've baked two Bundt cakes that use this technique, and the designs seem sharper. The biscotti and gingerbread houses went to a bake sale for local social services. On Saturday, I baked two loaves of Grape Nuts Bread. I also baked Eggnog cake in a Bundt Christmas wreath pan to take for after service social time at my church tomorrow. For dinner, I made the KAF Thin Crust Pizza.
Thanks, Riverside Len for the link. I did not frost them after all. I did put them on 8-inch cake circles that I covered with the gold foil that Wilton makes (had it left over from a graduation cake a few years back where one school color was gold). I didn't have the right size of Christmas food gift wrap for them, so I had to think about the presentation. I was able to use a bread bag around each, with the cake circle on the bottom, the cake nicely centered on it, then the bag closed at the top with a twisty tie, and a label that I made and attached with red Baker's twine.
The frosting might work with powdered milk from the store. I think, however, that I would process the powdered milk until it was of a very fine consistency. I don't know if the KAF special Baker's powdered milk would work. I don't know if it can be reconstituted in the same way. I do know that it is more concentrated than what we buy in the store.
I wonder if powdered coconut milk might work.
I received a lovely note from Cass today. He actually moved to a new place at the end of September, and he likes it much better as there is more room, AND they allow him to have a countertop oven! So, he bought one and is in the process of getting back into baking cheesecake and shortbread!
He is also cooking. He tells me that he made three pounds of coleslaw last week and gave away all but 1.5 cups that he kept for himself. He is looking forward to making his deli potato salad.
I was happy to hear that he is doing well. If any of the BC members want his new address, e-mail me, and I will send it to you. He enjoys hearing from all of us.
The Great British Bake Off (or Baking Show on PBS) is my favorite. I'm so disappointed that when it moves from the Bebe to it won't be the same. Anyway, I was able to stream this year's after it aired and I think when it makes it to PBS you will all be very happy with the competition and the contestants.
I'll have to see if Hulu will air the American kne
We don't drink coffee, and the non-dairy stuff (which, btw, is generally NOT vegan) is awful in tea, so we never have it on hand. I wonder if the baker's dried milk that KAF sells would work? I'd probably use high ratio shortening, too.
Possibly the two most frequently televised techniques in molecular gastronomy are spherification and foams, the latter especially having been overused on multiple cooking reality shows.
Many techniques involve chemicals, but some involve new cooking tools.
The tool I'd love to play around with is an anti-griddle, which has a constant 30 below zero (F) surface that you can make ices on, but since they cost about $1500, that doesn't seem likely to be in my kitchen at any point.
Immersion circulation heaters have gotten very reasonably priced, though, one model of the Anova was selling for under $100 on Black Friday. (Kenji Lopez-Alt says you can do some sous vide cooking using a beer cooler, which costs even less.)
One technique I do NOT expect to play with is using liquid nitrogen, if mis-handled you can hurt yourself badly or cause major damage in your kitchen.
Ahhhh... One more reason the authenticity of this recipe was suspect - it contained no alcohol. It was sort of like a pound cake with dried fruit.
And looking back at my notes, the English (and Aussies) cover their fruitcakes with marmalade and then seal it with marzipan! I remember doing this part. I chose to just cover the top and not the entire cake. But their is one chance to get it right because after the marzipan meets the marmalade it is not budging!
In hindsight the smart thing to do would have been to make the marzipan larger than the cake and then just trim it. But I do not anticipate anyone asking me for a wedding cake anytime soon.
Around the time that were first married (1972) someone gave us a small jar of brandied fruit. It was great on cake or ice cream. We would add canned fruit to it (usually fruit cocktail in sugar syrup) every now and then to keep it going, it didn't require refrigeration.
We even bought a big blue glass jar to keep it in. It moved with us to Nebraska and from the duplex we had when we first moved to Lincoln to our first house, and I think it was still going when we moved to this house in 1997.
At one point we must have screwed something up because it developed mold, we probably weren't using it enough. We threw out the fruit but kept the big blue jar, it currently has refrigerator dill pickles in it, not brandied fruit. Those pickles are probably about 10 years old at this point and are pretty potent!
I think this is one time when most of us would buy a small tube of colored icing. I've used black icing in a tube because black is another color that is terribly hard to get right.
However, I would have my doubts that they've improved the tips or the icing itself in the past 20 years. If anything, I'd almost expect quality to have suffered somewhat. (Call me a pessimist.)
One of the local grocery stores with an in-store bakery sells icing in pint and quart deli containers, I suspect they buy it in 25 pound buckets, I don't know whether it's made with high-ratio shortening.
These are not gingerbread houses that are put together, but small ginger bundt cakes shaped as houses. (Each two house pan holds 5 cups of batter.)
I have thought of buying (gasp) store icing in a tube.
Royal icing is what is traditionally used for gingerbread houses, both because it does not require refrigeration and because it sets well and can be used as glue to put your house together. (Professionals making showpieces often use an aerosol freeze spray to set it faster, but that's not something found in most home kitchens.)
You can mix it up in advance, refrigerate it, and color it in small batches (once colored it should be used within a day or the colors might get blotchy, gel colors seem less likely to do this than liquid or powdered colors.) Allow it to get up to room temperature before using it, and keep it covered with plastic wrap so it doesn't develop a skin.
Did a lot of baking this week - mason jar Boston cream cakes, KA Honey Wheat Rolls, Vienna bread, molasses cookies, mint chocolate chip cookies.
Mike - love your pie, looks beautiful. I made the Vienna bread with my Italian loaf pan except instead of 2 loaves, I divided each roll in half and had 4 smaller loaves instead. I find that we (my mother and I) can finish a small loaf in a more reasonable time.
Cwc - I do the same thing when I bake any biscotti - cuts the second baking time in half when I stand them up in the pan. One of my favorites is a snickerdoodle biscotti.
I actually just heard from Zen. She's been busy painting and it sounds like she's having issues with the host site (I think that's what it's called). She asked for the information for this site. I gave her the URL and Mike's email address. The boy child is looking at other jobs so she may or may not be staying put.
I've now given up completely on Zen's site -- I cannot get in. Anyone who visits here can see, if they check out the side bar, that we have listed recipes with acknowledgement to the "former" or "old" (hahaha) BC member, and the forums are also categorized, making them easy to navigate. I don't know what else to try other than what has been mentioned. I do appreciate everything people post here.
