Baking

Its been a crazy busy week and most all I have done is bake scones, biscotti, bread, and the like! Soon I will be creative in my kitchen!

Down and Out and Up and At'em!

So last week I contracted a severe ear infection and sinus infection that left me weak and tired and generally not feeling like baking! GASP! My oldest daughter even made dinner for me! I was a total wreck. Alas the evil crud is almost gone and with it my energy levels have come back albeit somewhat diminished!

Monday I made up for lost time by baking bread, brownies, biscotti, and granola! Then today I made cookies and a very yummy bowtie pasta dish!

UP next...Biscotti!

Putting on the docket Croissants because unless I force myself to say I am going to do it I am afraid I will back out. Lets just be honest here. Its not like they are a one day kind of bread. NO the amazing little things take 3 WHOLE days to make. Really, who has time for that? EVEN me who stays home. Lets just be reallllly honest here. I am intimidated. Yes I admit it I am. To think that a simple fluffy crispy tasty bread could take upwards of 3 days to make is a bit much even for me! When I could make a batch of biscotti and eat the whole batch by myself its scary to think I could do that with croissants and they are made with TONS of butter. Heart attack here I come. Maybe I should get back in the habit of walking every morning first??

Next week or the next you can expect me to be posting about croissants!



Hold me to it!

Tzatziki

So I went out with some friends the other night and had my first taste of Tzatziki! There was SO much garlic in it that it tasted spicy...YUM! Of course now I will smell like garlic for a week! The next night which happened to be Valentines I was craving Tzatziki so badly that I made it for dinner. I made that and my man made Hummus and we ate with greek olives and Na'an bread.

Tzatziki is SO easy to make. All that is in it is sour cream, low-fat yogurt, cucumber and about 400 cloves of garlic! OK so not really 400 but it  calls for between 4-10! THAT'S some kinda garlic flavor, but OH so worth it! This is SO good I ate it again today for lunch. My kids even like this stuff. You should try it! Lots of different recipes and most call for Greek yogurt of which I had none and the restraunt told me what was in theirs and it was sour cream so I am assuming that its possible that they used the sour cream instead of the greek yogurt. I just used one cup sour cream and one cup yogurt!

Pavlova

We was invited to a Valentines party! How fun! We were asked to bring an appetizer or dessert. I brought both though for the appetizer I just brought Boursin cheese and wheat thins! Boursin cheese is my all time favorite cheese for spreading! Try some you will LOVE it!

For my dessert I made Pavlova! OHHHH Yum. It is this wonderful crispy chocolaty goodness! It has a layer of chocolate then a layer of whipped cream and then topped with raspberries or strawberries! It was a wonderful night spent with friends!

LOVE=Biscotti

I have never tried to make Biscotti. I know what you are thinking..WHY ever not? Me the scone queen? NOT make biscoti? Truth be told I never liked it. It seemed silly to bake up something so hard you have to dip it in coffee to soften it just to be able to consume it. Last Christmas my dear sweet neighbor came to play cribbage with us and brought over a treat for us. Biscotti from Costco. Of course you cant turn down someones kindness therefore I gingerly bit into said biscotti and was pleasantly surprised my teeth did not fall off!

Incidentally I looked up biscotti on Wikipedia. This is what I found:

The word "biscotti" (pronounced /bɪˈskɒti/, Italian pronunciation: [bisˈkɔtti]) in Italian is the plural form of biscotto and applies to any type of biscuit (in the UK sense of a very dry, hard cookie or cracker).

Thus began the inkling in my heart to try my hand a such a feat. Of course a year goes by and still I do nothing but TODAY, I just made up my mind to do it. I had the almonds and the vanilla which both are of upmost importance to the success of biscotti. Remind me another day to speak to the use of vanilla!

I used a simple recipe found of Joyofbaking.com. OH MY! How in the world did I make it SO long without having made this simple yet easy dessert? I shall never know. I can see biscotti, TONS of biscotti in my future. Much like a scone recipe it begs to be altered and played with. I shall!

I love biscotti!

Bread Baking Class

Last night I hosted my first ever Bread Baking Class. I had to limit the size so I scheduled 2 classes and made 5 spots available. I taught the basics of bread baking and the how to and why. It was SO much fun. I had a great group of people who asked TONS of questions. My next class is scheduled for next Friday night and I cant wait to teach them as well.

I decided that because bread can be a little bit time consuming to have the class show up with one bread halfway through the process like they do on food network! I showed them first what a mound of dough already risen looked like and then how to shape it into 2 loaves. Then I started the other bread process and when it was time to rise I baked the first loaves. It went smoothly! 

I made Honey Oatmeal Bread and 7 Grain bread. Both breads rose and did wonderfully. We ate both loaves of the Honey Oatmeal Bread and relaxed and really enjoyed the time. 

I am now considering teaching a class at my kids' school. They go once a week to a program and they go to all different kinds of classes. I think it would be neat to pass along the tradition.

Perogies are in!!!

 

I have been blessed with my husbands family recipe for Perogies and tonight I made them with a friend! I must say that if I had made them alone, I would probably still be making them! They are quite a handful to make!  Perogies are a polish goodness, that has a delicate sour cream dough filled with potato, cheese, and onions. They can also be filled with a prune filling, but I didn't attempt that !  This was tonights dinner of choice and though they are not a complicated recipe by any means they take time. The dough smells quite heavenly and is such fun to work with! I will try this again but will be sure to have lots of helping hand in the kitchen! Thanks Kelly for the help and time!!

180

Thats the number of cookies my daughter and I made for the YFC outreach dinner we did! The dinner was a smashing success and the kids LOVED Kyla's cookies. She was so encouraged her first words were...when can we do that again. Whose kids want to outreach like that?

I realize this is not my typical post for food but it is food related and an encouragement....even the smallest things can cheer a person.

NEXT UP????

Home made Perogies. They are home made polish pasta that are filled with either a plumb filling or a potato and onion filling. Mine will be the latter and I shall tell of our success!