[Mike Nolan]

We wound up doing a combination of lavash pizza and takeout from Valentinos Pizza.

[Mike Nolan]

15 => 40 is an unusually large difference in baking time.

[Mike Nolan]

Recipes for gingerbread cookies and recipes for gingerbread houses are different, the former are designed to be edible, the latter are designed to be sturdy, for construction.

[Mike Nolan]

I'm making semolina bread this evening, because we used the last of it at supper. With two more people in the house, we are going through bread a lot faster.

[Mike Nolan]

We wound up making spaghetti for dinner tonight.

[Mike Nolan]

I tried making a batch of sponge candy and it didn't come out quite right, it sort of collapsed as it cooled and that means it isn't very spongy, not sure exactly what I did wrong, but I'm going to try another batch later this afternoon. I've got a new candy thermometer, the probe on my old one died, and I'm not fond of the pot clip that comes with this one, it sort of wiggles on the side of the pot, so I'm going to play around with finding a way to hold it in place more firmly. I think the old pot clip may work with this probe, I think they're the same diameter.

I've got milk chocolate melting and will temper it when the sponge candy is ready to be enrobed.

[Mike Nolan]

What kind of molasses did you use?

I find the decorating the part I'm worst at.

When Necco wafers were discontinued (thankfully only temporarily), I think it was the fans of gingerbread houses who raised the biggest fuss and helped get them back into production.

[Mike Nolan]

We had some leftovers with salad and our granddaughter had an egg-on-toast.

And we finished off the chocolate cream pie.

[Mike Nolan]

The best pie apples are small cell, large cell apples tend to be good eating apples, the kind you take a bite out of and the juice dribbles down your chin.

This was a strange year for apples, that might have affected the Honeycrisp you bought.

[Mike Nolan]

Last week I was on a forum where they were talking about artichokes. I tried growing them from seed several years ago, I did get 2 or 3 tiny artichokes in October just before the frost hit. With the grow lights we have now, I might be able to get them a bit further along before transplanting them outdoors.

They're kind of an interesting looking plant, though I wouldn't call them pretty, they are thistles, after all. (But the other site, a photography forum, had some nice pictures of artichokes in full bloom, BIG purple flowers.)

There was a vendor at the Sunday farmer's market a couple of years ago that was trying to grow enough artichokes to sell them. They had a small basket of them toward the end of market season. They were hoping to mulch them to keep them from dying off when it froze, but they didn't have any artichokes the next year so I'm guessing that didn't work, and that they weren't productive enough to be profitable.

Some people grow them in a large planter, which could be brought in when cold weather arrives, but the plant gets pretty big and I'm not sure where I'd keep them over the winter.

I looked at the possibility of growing them hydroponically, but they need 2-3 weeks of sub-50 but not freezing temperatures to vernalize or they won't produce fruit the next season, and a plant is only good for 5-6 seasons. (And they're so big they'd be a challenge to grow hydroponically at home.)

[Mike Nolan]

The veal Marsala was excellent, the cooked roux in the brown sauce adds a distinctly nutty flavor to the sauce. We had it on wide noodles, with a side of steamed broccoli, followed by a slice of chocolate cream pie with a little caramel sauce drizzled on it.

[Mike Nolan]

My pea pods have started blooming, this happened literally overnight!

Now we'll see if they set fruit. Pea pods are supposed to be self-pollinating, one source says sometimes they pollinate themselves even before they're fully open.

Part of the fun of gardening is just seeing the plants develop.

Attachments:

You must be logged in to view attached files.

[Mike Nolan]

Honeycrisp is a medium-sweet pie, I don't personally think it makes a good cooking apple, it is a large-cell fruit and I think it gets a bit mushy when baked.

[Mike Nolan]

Are there people who actually eat the gingerbread house? I've always thought that kind of gingerbread, almost a dead dough, was nearly inedible.

[Mike Nolan]

The chocolate cream pie is one of the pies we made at SFBI pastry school. The recipe calls for semi-sweet chocolate, I tried 25% milk chocolate this time, and may try 50% next time.

I'm getting more comfortable with using the hand-cranked laminator, I made 700 grams of dough this time, that was enough that I was able to get in 3 letter-fold turns which gives me 55 layers. I split it in half for final roll-out.

It looks like for planning purposes 700 grams of dough will make about 16 chocolatines, as I think they shouldn't be too big. Croissants come in a wider range of sizes, though we prefer small or medium ones rather than the 90-120 gram big ones that are common at bakeries. I need to see if there's a way to reduce the butter leakage, though.

I want to try making a kringle. I might try the O&H recipe that's on the food network site (https://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/kringle-recipe0-1941189), it uses egg and lemon extract in the dough. The raw dough has a pronounced lemon odor but by the time it is baked it is much more subtle. I may need to play around with scaling it down. The butterscotch filling that is part of that recipe is great, I've used it to fill Danish.

[Author]

Posts