Nothing beats fresh baked goods...

I'm endlessly inspired by other bloggers. I love browsing and getting recipes from fellow cooks in the blog world. I find Chuck from The Knead For Bread, to be an absolute genius. I think he has some of the most appealing pictures and recipes out of any of the blogs that I follow.

Inspired by his post on English muffins, I decided to give his recipe a try, and actually go all out and top it with tomatoes, spinach, and poached eggs as he did. I started getting them ready at around 10pm last night, which was a little late for such an endeavor, but I was excited to try them.


English Muffins
Adapted from The Knead For Bread

Ingredients:
1 1/4 cups lukewarm water (approximately 110 degrees F)
3 1/2 cups bread flour
1 packet instant yeast
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
1 large egg white
cornmeal

Method:
Mix together Water, 1 cup flour, yeast, and baking soda in a large bowl. In a separate clean bowl, whisk egg white to stiff peaks, don't over beat or egg white will become dry and separate. Mix 1/3 of the egg white into the batter, and mix until combined, continue with the rest of egg whites. Once fully incorporated, start adding the remaining 2 1/2 cups of flour, 1/2 cup at a time. With about 1 cup remaining, move dough to counter and knead in remaining flour. Knead for 7 minutes, until dough is very smooth. Transfer to a greased bowl and cover with plastic wrap. Let rise for approximately 1 hour, until doubled in size.
Once dough has doubled in bulk, turn it out onto a floured surface, press with knuckles to release some air, then roll out to 1/2 inch. Cut out 3 inch circles, you can mash up the remaining dough and roll the scraps and cut again, repeat until you don't have any more dough. Place circles on a cookie sheet coated with cornmeal, and top with more cornmeal. Cover with plastic wrap and let rest for 1 hour.
10 Minutes before you're ready to cook them, turn on your griddle to medium high heat. Spray griddle with nonstick spray. Place each muffin on the griddle, I was able to cook 8/batch. Flip every 4 minutes, cooking for a total of 16 minutes. Repeat with second batch.

I topped mine with vine ripened tomato, fresh spinach, and a poached egg. I also added thick sliced local bacon, for those who eat pork products.


They were also delicious with a bit of butter and strawberry jam.

Chinese Night!

The same night I made spring rolls, I made sesame chicken and soba noodles with bok choy.


Sesame Chicken
Ingredients:
2 large chicken breasts (approximately 8 ounces)
1 teaspoon vegetable oil
1 can of pineapple chunks, with juice
3 tablespoons hoisin sauce
1 tablespoon freshly grated ginger
1 tablespoon minced garlic
1/2 cup soy sauce
1 teaspoon sesame oil
1 tablespoon sesame seeds
1/2 teaspoon red pepper flakes (as desired).

Method:
Chunk chicken into small bite size pieces. Add the chicken to a hot pan with vegetable oil, sautee until no longer pink. Add in the juice from the can of pineapple, hoisin sauce, and soy sauce, ginger and garlic. Stir until combined and cook until sauce has slightly thickened. Add in pineapple chunks and sesame oil. Sautee for 2 minutes, or until pineapple is heated through. Top with sesame seeds and red pepper flakes as desired.


Soba Noodles with Bok Choy
Ingredients:
1 package fresh soba noodles
1 cup chicken broth
1 ounce hoisin sauce
1 ounce soy sauce
1 head bok choy, chopped
1 teaspoon ginger

Prepare soba noodles as directed on package.
Meanwhile, wilt bok choy in 1/2 cup chicken broth, approximately 2 minutes. Remove from pan and set aside.
Add the remaining 1/2 cup chicken broth, hoisin sauce, and soy sauce to the pan and stir and heat through. Add in prepared soba noodles, bok choy, and ginger. Stir over low heat 4-5 minutes until noodles have absorbed the sauce.

Spring rolls

We're very lucky to have a fantastic produce grocery store in my relatively rural area. While shopping the other day, in an effort to have a more diverse menu this week, we picked up a head of napa cabbage, bok choy, soba noodles, and spring roll wrappers. I came home and found some ideas of what to do with each of these ingredients and ended up making spring rolls, bok choy lo mein, and sesame chicken.


Spring Rolls
Ingredients:
1 head napa cabbage, shredded
2 large carrots, grated
4 scallions, sliced on the bias
Spring roll wrappers

Method:
Sautee together all ingredients, with no liquid or fat in the pan.
Soak spring roll wrapper in hot water for 10 seconds, until soft. Put 3 tablespoons of filling in the center of the wrapper and form into rectangle. Wrap from the left over to the right, fold up from the bottom and down from the top. Roll the entire roll to the right to finish wrapping the roll. Set aside.

Crepes

A light, sweet, delicious dessert that's low calorie too!

Crepes filled with cool whip and strawberries topped with chocolate sauce:
Recipe adapted from Alton Brown:

Ingredients:
2 Large eggs
1 cup flour
2 teaspoons sugar
1/2 cup water
3 tablespoons melted butter

Method:
Place all ingredients in blender and blend until well combined.
Let rest for one hour in the refrigerator, this allows the bubbles to dissolve, which will make the crepes less likely to tear while cooking.

Heat crepe pan and pour 2 tablespoons of batter into the pan. Rotate pan until thin, even circle is made. Cook crepes until lightly brown, flip and cook for additional minute.
Repeat until all batter is used.

Honey Roasted Chicken

Who doesn't love a roasted chicken, twice baked potatoes and lemon garlic broccoli? That's what the thought was when planning last night's dinner.


Honey Roasted Chicken

Ingredients:
1 Whole chicken cut up
2 Tablespoons Thyme
2 Tablespoons Lemon juice
3 Tablespoons butter
3 Garlic cloves
2 Tablespoons Honey
1 Teaspoon Salt

Method:
Preheat oven to 425 degrees.
Pat chicken dry and place spaced out on a roasting pan. I used a cookie sheet with a silicone mat. Mix thyme and lemon juice in a microwave safe bowl. Add butter and melt it all together in the microwave, for 30 seconds. Mince and add garlic and microwave again until butter is thoroughly melted. Add honey and salt, and stir well until combined. Rub butter mixture over all the chicken parts. I rub it both over and under the skin, since there is honey in the rub it will caramelize in the oven, so I like to have it under the skin to add flavor.
Roast the chicken for 35 minutes, or until internal temperature reaches 160 degrees.

Success!

Daring bakers, take 2

After my tuiles went very poorly, I decided I had to give them another go around. This time I used much less flour than the recipe called for. I had a much thinner batter this time around, and after some googling, I got some tips to help me smooth them into thin rounds easily. The differences in my results were amazing. This time they came out a delicious, light crisp cookie. They were completely delightful. I served them with some strawberry lemon meringue and fresh strawberries.


I was taking pictures of my completed challenge when my sister Jenn and her step daughter Jaclyn came home. Jaclyn is a strawberry fiend, and was dying to try some immediately!

I made Jaclyn her own plate to enjoy.


And enjoy she did. She dug right in! She dipped the strawberries in the meringue and gobbled most of that up, and then ate the cookie.

According to her, they were both a huge success!

Daring Bakers Disaster!!

This month's challenge is brought to us by Karen of Bake My Day and Zorra of 1x Umruehren Bitte aka Kochtopf. They have chosen Tuiles from The Chocolate Book by Angelique Schmeink and Nougatine and Chocolate Tuiles from Michel Roux.

After checking the challenge early in the month, I decided it was easy and it could wait until a little later in the month. And that would have been a good plan except that this week got a little bit crazy. My cousin is making her Bat Mitzvah this weekend and in helping other family prepare to travel out to Colorado to help her celebrate, I got very busy and forgot all about the challenge. It wasn't until this evening when I got a call from Kristyn, from over at SugarHoot, that I remembered that I had to bake. She told me they were easy, and I'd have no problem doing them tonight...Boy was she wrong.

I think I need to take some more time and really examine the recipe to see where I messed up, I think they were too thick, and I think the batter was too thick. I plan on remaking them tomorrow to
see if i can make it better...


But for now, here are my tuiles!

Smells like Christmas...

If you were to ask my mom, Christmas isn't Christmas without snickerdoodles. These are her favorite cookie, so when I went on my baking adventure 2008, I had to include them for her. I made 7 types of cookies, all with different flavors and textures. The simplest of these was the snickerdoodle. With just a simple coating in cinnamon sugar before baking, they have a subtle sweetness that matches their chewy texture beautifully.

Classic Snickerdoodles

1 1/2 cups sugar
1/2 cup butter; softened
1/2 cup shortening
2 eggs
2 3/4 cups flour
2 teaspoons cream of tartar
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt

1/4 cup sugar
2 teaspoons cinnamon

• Heat oven to 400 degrees
• Mix sugar, butter, shortening and eggs in a large bowl. Stir in flour, cream of tartar, baking soda and salt.
• Shape dough into 1 1/4 inch balls. Mix 1/4 cup sugar and cinnamon. Place 2 inches apart on an ungreased cookie sheet.
• Bake 8 to 10 minutes or until set. Remove from cookie sheet and cool on wire rack.

Cookies cookies everywhere...

These cookies go by many different names Russian tea cookies, pecan balls, or in my family, snowballs. All of the recipes are very similar and they are topped with the unmistakable adornment of crisp white powdered sugar. The look of a powdered doughnut draws in kids and the unmistakable flavor hooks them for life. The cookie is slightly dry, and barely sweet, and definitely not overwhelming. My cousins have been known to eat entire tins before realizing what they were doing, or being caught by their parents!

Grandma's Snowballs
This recipe is written exactly how my grandmother wrote it on her recipe card...Not my style, but it is her recipe after all...

Beat well:
1 egg
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Cream together:
Egg mixture
1 cup butter or crisco
1 1/2 cup powdered sugar; sifted

Sift together:
2 1/2 cups flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon cream of tartar
1/4 teaspoon salt

Add:
1 to 1 1/2 cups chopped walnuts

Chill 30 Minutes in refrigerator

Form into 1 inch balls

Preheat oven to 400 degrees

Bake 8 to 10 minutes

Roll in powdered sugar immediately out of oven; Caution will be hot!!

Cool and roll again in powdered sugar

Cookie Spectacular.

I truly love the holiday season. Everything about it makes me happy. It is the time of year when I get to spend copious amounts of time with my family, bake obscene amounts of cookies, and finish the day with a wonderfully delicious Harpoon Winter Warmer. I really love that beer, I look forward to it all year long.

For my first of the many holiday cookie posts to come, I'm going to highlight chocolate chip cookies. This recipe was adapted from all recipes. This dough is by far the best cookie dough any of us have ever had.

Chocolate chip cookies - Makes 3 Dozen (we got closer to 5 dozen worth of dough, but we actually produced 4 dozen cookies)

Ingredients:

• 2 1/4 cups all purpose flour
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1 cup butter, softened (I like to leave my butter out overnight if I know I'll be baking the next day)
• 3/4 cup brown sugar
• 1/4 cup white sugar
• 1 (3.4 ounce) package jell-o brand vanilla instant pudding mix
• 2 eggs
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 2 cups chocolate chips

Directions:

• Preheat the oven to 350 degrees
• In a large bowl cream together butter and both sugars. Blend in instant pudding mix. Add eggs and vanilla extract.
• Mix in flour and baking soda.
• Once blended stir in chocolate chips.
• Bake for 10 to 12 minutes, until edges are slightly browned.

Recipes to Rival Month 1

Squash soup is what was on the menu this month over on recipes to rival!
The requirements were that we had to make our own stock, something I had never done, use squash, and use a vanilla cream garnish of some sort. I was really excited when I read the challenge because I had been wanting to make squash soup since fall began. This finally gave me the perfect excuse to just do it already! I liked the leniency of this specific challenge because as long as I made my own stock and used a vanilla garnish, i could use whatever squash soup recipe I wanted. I ended up making up my own after reading and getting inspired by other recipes.

I started on the Tuesday before Thanksgiving by making the stock and roasting the squash. I used my two favorite squashes, butternut and acorn. They're so flavorful and naturally sweet.

Once my stock had boiled away for hours and my squash was wonderfully tender, both went into the refrigerator overnight.

The Wednesday before Thanksgiving in my family is what we call pie day. All of the women come over to my mom's house and we bake all the pies and we do a ton of prep work for the big day. I made the soup for dinner for everyone, it was delicious. Everyone liked it. I uses the butternut squash, acorn squash, an apple and a pear. I used an immersion blender to smooth the squash, apple, and stock together.
Once smooth, I added some apple cider, salt, pepper, and nutmeg. I tasted and tasted and tasted and couldn't figure out what to add in order to make it not taste like baby food. After some googling and searching, I decided to add 6 tablespoons of butter. That fixed my problem perfectly. It was amazing.


I then made whipped cream with vanilla bean. That was so delicious. I actually used what I needed for the soup, and then sweetened it for use on the pumpkin pies on Thanksgiving. So yummy!

I garnished with the vanilla whipped cream and some sage leaves.

DB: Caramel Cake!

I know I'm a little bit late with my Caramel Cake post, but Thanksgiving was just crazy!

This month's challenge was Caramel Cake with Caramelized Butter Frosting, by Shuna Fish Lydon. The host this month was Dolores from Culinary Curiosity with help from Alex from Blondie and Brownie, Jenny from Foray into Food, and Natalie from Gluten-a-Go-Go.

I was a little nervous about this month's recipe, simply because in the challenge there was a comment about how this cake it truly about baking. I was excited about that because I obviously like to bake, and I like a challenge, hence joining the group...However, I was nervous as this was the first time I took on a recipe that I thought to be challenging.

The recipe was very detailed with many different steps. We had to make a caramel syrup, brown butter, make frosting, and make a cake. The syrup was the part that I found to be the most difficult. I've made hard candy before, in the form of candy canes, but I had never made caramel. The recipe warned to wear long sleeves when pouring the water into the caramel, I ignored the long sleeves, but poured the water in with an oven mitt on my hand. Oh Boy! I was SO glad I made that decision. It really exploded. It was insane. I whisked it a little, and took it off the burner and let it cool. I read the recipe wrong and accidentally added like a cup of the syrup when it only called for 1/3 of a cup. oops. The cake still tasted pretty good, but it was a little overwhelmingly sweet, but that was to be expected when you mess up the recipe!

I made a 9x9 inch square cake, and it cooked for a relatively short time, like 30 minutes. It smelled delicious! While it was cooking I browned the butter and made the frosting. That part was truly delicious. I loved the brown butter, I thought it was delicious and added a great nuttiness to the frosting which balanced my excessively sweet cake nicely.
I loved the cake, and it would have been truly delicious if I had added the correct amount of syrup.

Have your cake...

After caking the cake decorating classes earlier this year, I have become the official cake maker for all family functions. I love this job, I love trying to think of what everyone will like and seeing their faces after they see my creations, that are hopefully everything they hoped for.
September and October are insanely busy with birthdays and anniversaries in my family, so not everyone got cakes, which made me a little sad, but I wouldn't have left my kitchen between 9/20 and 10/29! There are 20 birthdays/anniversaries in that time!
What I was able to do is make cakes for all my cousins who fall in there, and then a separate one for our September/October birthday celebration that we have.
This was my Grandfather's cake, he turned 76 this year. He is a huge country music fan, and a good old southern boy. He adored the simplicity of it, and also the cowboy hat theme. His cake was one layer of vanilla and one of chocolate, filled with buttercream frosting.

This cake was for my cousin Danielle. I'm really close with both her and her twin sister, Devan. Since I started with the decorating, she had been telling me precisely what she wanted, the doll cake that they make. She wanted it to look like Belle from Beauty and the Beast. I didn't have much creative license on this one, as she was very specific, but she was superbly happy with the results. Danielle is a chocolate freak! Her cake was chocolate chocolate chocolate. Topped with a thin layer of vanilla (yellow) buttercream.

Then there is Devan's cake. She had no idea what she wanted. I looked back through my cake pictures then the idea hit me. She loved these two cakes I made way back when I started. Her favorite cake that I've made is actually my first cake. It had star tipped circles on it. Then she liked the cake I made for my own graduation party cake. It was insanely bright colors. Her favorite color is yellow and she is the most energetic 15 year old you'll ever meet. I love that about her, so I tried to make the cake feel like her. I think I was pretty successful, and she really loved it. Her cake was vanilla with vanilla frosting, and covered in mmf.

DB Pizza take 2!

My pizza was a resounding success the first time, but my immediate family got a little mad at me for sharing it with my cousins instead of them. So I remade it for my mom, sister and her boyfriend.
I have to say, I found the dough to be slightly fool proof, as I ran out of bread flour half way through and started using all purpose flour, and still had the same delicious results as I had in the first go around. I love the dough recipe, and will never buy dough again!
This time we had:

BBQ Chicken Pizza. This had Sweet Baby Ray's honey bbq sauce, sauteed chicken, thinly sliced red onions, and mozzarella cheese.

Pepperoni Pizza

Plain old cheese pizza

Peppers and Onions Pizza

Everyone enjoyed it the second time around too. The BBQ chicken was by far the winner this time. However, that is always the winner around here, no matter how the pizza is prepared!

I think that face means that Jenni liked it, what do you think?

When the lights go out...

A few weeks ago here in New York we had a Saturday full of miserable weather, it didn't start out so bad, in fact it started out as a relatively normal northeast autumn day. The sky was blue, with a brisk breeze blowing colorful leaves around. Unfortunately that brisk breeze was bringing in a storm that would eventually leave us without power for more than six hours.... While the rain wasn't a huge surprise to us, as the weathermen had predicted it quite explicitly, the wind was quite unexpected.
Based on the predictions of the weathermen, Precious and I had decided to make chicken and dumplings for dinner. A delicious, warm and cozy food. Growing up with a very picky eater for a father, I had never before tried to cook or eat it. Presh says that the only recipe that she likes for chicken and dumplings is the Cooks Illustrated version. She saved it to her computer a few years ago when she discovered it, and I have been unable to relocate it on their website, but we used the version that she had saved.
Everything started out fine, we started cooking sometime around 4 pm while her 5 year old was contently playing his Nintendo DS and her 4 month old was snoozing soundly in his Stokke. (I'll post more on that later - as I think it is by far the best baby "supply" she has!) We teamed up and chopped and chopped all of the vegetables. The recipe makes a ton of food, we had enough for 3 adults for dinner the first night, then 4 adults the next night. So we finely chopped carrots, celery and onion, a mirepoix if I may. While she cleaned up after our chopping extravaganza, I went ahead and started browning our chicken thighs. We bought half with bones and skin and half without, in a futile effort to make this meal slightly better for you, and by that I mean that is what the grocery store had available.

Once all the chicken was browned and removed from the pot, we drained off all of the excess chicken fat and tossed in all of the nicely chopped vegetables and sauteed until tender. This may not seem like a difficult process, but if you have ever tried to lift a LeCreuset pot, you'd understand that a 13 qt french oven pot is nearly impossible to lift above elbow level to attempt to drain off extra fat!

Once all of our vegetables were nice and soft we added in some flour to make a nice non-floury tasting roux.

The flour turns this gorgeous light brown color, and then you add in the chicken stock and whole milk. Bring it to a boil and plop all of the nicely (now cold) browned chicken back into the pot.

For us, this is when the drama started, the power went out! Luckily, the stove is gas powered, and it was already on, so we could finish cooking the dinner. I do know that you can light a gas stove with a match when there isn't power, but with an infant in the house, I wasn't going to try it for the first time! The good news is that once the chicken was nestled soundly in the cooking liquid, it simply had to simmer away for the next two hours.

After two hours of simmering, and numerous flashlight lit stirrings, we pulled out all of the chicken and shredded it. Then we made the dumplings and dumped the shredded chicken into the pot again and topped with the dumplings.

I covered it and we let it simmer for 15 more minutes and then our lantern lit dinner was served!

Brittney really enjoyed the meal, I don't believe she was actually eating at warp speed, I'm willing to bet is has more to do with my lack of abilities with the dslr camera I was playing around with.

I'm thinking the thought going through her mind at this exact moment is, "Julie, I swear if these pictures end up on your blog, I'm going to beat you!" But, alas here they are...She's gorgeous and enjoying my food, I see no wrong!

Zachary did not like the idea of the power outage, nor did he like the chicken and dumplings. Okay, I guess it isn't fair to say that he didn't like the chicken and dumplings, he didn't try them, he didn't like the idea of them either I suppose.