Hello again! I just paid for this site again so I thought I should write something. When I began writing this blog I had hoped to write about my general rambling thoughts but ended up putting recipes. But first some random thoughts.
I start my day in my kitchen. Hubby and I sit at the kitchen table with our laptops and drink coffee. We call these lazy mornings. He listens to whatever he listens to and I work the NYTimes word puzzles. I work at least six of them starting with Spelling Bee and ending with Wordle. I tell myself that this helps keep my mind sharp and improves my vocabulary. Really I do them because I enjoy word puzzles.
On occasion I sit on the backyard deck with my coffee. There I can watch the birds and squirrels feeding at the bird feeder along with the occasional bunny rabbit.
It is hot here this summer. I roasted vegetables one evening and that heated up the kitchen. But since we eat dinner in front of the TV in the living room it was not a problem. Given this situation I thought I could bake something. But what? I’ve been putting off going to the grocery store so must use what is in the house. There is buttermilk so what can be done with this? I had already made buttermilk pound cake cupcakes so I wanted something different.
I have made this pie before. I like it because it is less sticky sweet than regular pecan pie. You will need the following ingredients:
1/2 cup butter
2 cups sugar
5 eggs
2 Tablespoons flour
2 Tablespoons lemon juice
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 cup buttermilk
1 cup chopped pecans
1 unbaked pastry shell
Cream butter and sugar in large mixing bowl. Add eggs one at a time, beating well after each addition. Blend in the flour, lemon juice and vanilla. Stir in buttermilk and pecans.
Bake at 325 degrees F for 55 minutes or until set. Cool on wire rack. Store in refrigerator.
I found this recipe in one of those women’s magazines that feature home cooks who send in recipes. The magazine then prints them the size of recipe cards that can be cut out and put in a recipe card box. I keep my clippings in notebooks.
Notes: I did not chop the pecans so they did not float nicely to the top of the pie for a pecan crust. Refrigerating the pie will help with cutting into neat slices.
Here’s the setting: Thanksgiving Eve afternoon Granddaughter and I are making bread rolls. I had found a recipe that makes three dozen which is the amount needed, a dozen for our annual Thanksgiving Eve Birthday Feast (for Granddaughter and Son-in-Law) and two dozen to take with us to Step-daughter’s house on Thanksgiving Day. Granddaughter and I were enjoying watching the dough being kneaded in the KitchenAid mixer and admiring how it pulled away from the sides. We enjoyed poking at the dough and were pleased with its elasticity. We divided the dough after the first rise into three sections. I showed her how to divide her section up into twelve “equal” pieces and she set about making cloverleaf rolls in the muffin tin. I arranged two dozen rolls in the 9 x 13-inch pan for overnight rise and baking in the morning. All was good.
Except…for some reason I decided to actually paint the rolls with egg wash. Granddaughter painted her rolls with the brush and then I had her paint mine. We let her rolls rise and then baked them for our dinner feast and they were delicious. No leftovers. The larger pan was covered loosely with plastic wrap and put in the fridge for overnight.
Thanksgiving morning arrives. We have our breakfast of eggs, bacon, juice and of course coffee. I have let the overnight rolls sit on the counter for at least an hour to take the chill off. They look okay. I figure they will have an oven rise and puff up nicely. They bake and when I pull them out of the oven they look sad. They are done but they look very sad.
What to do? We are trying to leave the house by 10:00 AM to drive 3 1/2 hours to New Jersey for dinner today.
I have a reputation as a baker to maintain in this family. I don’t think I can take these and present them in good conscience. It’s 9:10 AM at this point. This is where 60-minute rolls come in. I have them in the Fleischmann’s Bake-it-easy Yeast Book, which is more of a booklet. The one I have was published and printed in 1971. This has been a standard roll recipe through the years and I am relieved to have thought of this. I’m making the bread dough and am at the second rising when Hubby starts shooing folks on their way saying we are wanting to leave at 10:00 and it was now 9:50 AM. I have to tell him we are slightly delayed because the rolls are not baked yet. Daughter reports she remembers using this recipe for our Christmas Eve dinner and half for Cinnamon Rolls for Christmas morning when it was just her, Son, and me. We say our goodbyes to the visiting family all who have other destinations for the day and start packing the car for our journey. We are on the road by 10:45 AM. All told the Sixty Minute Rolls took 1 hour and 10 minutes.
3 1/2 to 4 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
3 Tablespoons sugar
1 teaspoon salt
2 packages active dry yeast
1 cup milk
1/2 cup water
1/4 cup butter
In the large bowl of the stand mixer thoroughly mix 1 1/2 cups flour, sugar, salt, and undissolved yeast.
Combine milk and water and butter in a Pyrex measuring cup and microwave for about 1 1/2 minutes until the temperature is between 120 and 130 degrees F. Butter does not have to melt. Gradually add this to the dry ingredients and beat 2 minutes at medium speed, scraping bowl occasionally. Add 1/2 cup more flour and beat at high speed for 2 minutes. Add additional flour to make a soft dough. Knead until smooth and elastic, about 5 minutes. I use the bread hook of the mixer. Put in greased bowl, turing to grease the top. Cover and let rise in warm place for about 15 minutes.
Turn onto lightly floured board and shape into 24 rolls. Place in greased pan and let rise, free from draft, for 15 minutes. Bake at 425 degrees F for about 12 minutes until done.
Notes:
In my haste I believe I used only one packet of yeast. Actually, I used 2 1/2 teaspoons of Fleischmann’s Bread Machine Instant Yeast. I have since made the recipe again and used the proper amount of yeast and they do rise a bit more.
Also, the instructions for the first rising say to put the bowl in a pan of warm water. I have never done this, ever.
I use the microwave for heating the liquids, one can use the stovetop. I always use a thermometer to test the temperature.
I use the same mixer bowl as the greased bowl by moving the dough to one side, brushing the pan with oil (or cooking spray), rotating the bread back to the other side and adding more oil. Holding on the ball of bread dough and swirling in the bowl makes sure it is oiled all over. Granddaughter enjoyed doing that bit.
I don’t remember why I had brushed the rolls with egg wash before the second rise after shaping. That does not make sense. I wonder if I let both pans have their second rise and then brushed with egg wash right before the first pan went into the oven and the larger pan go into the fridge? I generally don’t use egg wash anyway. Odd!
We arrived on-time to family in New Jersey with our rolls, Hubby’s stuffing, and “the best ever chocolate cake you have ever eaten in your life”! Step-daughter renamed the Best-Ever Chocolate Cake that I have been making since my childhood.
Happy belated Thanksgiving to all, and Happy Holidays and Merry Christmas!
I was reading Paul Hollywood’s new cookbook, Celebrate: Joyful Baking All Year Round, and his famous chocolate cake recipe is in there. I like chocolate cake. I have several go-to recipes but thought I would try this one. After all, it is famous!
For this cake one needs to have a full container of cocoa powder and three 4-ounce bars of bittersweet chocolate, plus sour cream and heavy cream, and three-plus sticks of butter. It calls for a frosting and a ganache and raspberries, fresh and frozen. My substitutions were as follows:
Unsweetened chocolate for bittersweet as I forgot to look up the difference.
Frozen cherries as raspberries are not in season and are rather expensive.
A completely different ganache using dark chocolate chips and not needing 7 more ounces of bittersweet chocolate and heavy cream which I forgot to buy.
For the cake:
1 ½ sticks butter, softened
1 cup light brown sugar
1 cup granulated sugar
3 large eggs, at room temperature
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 ½ cups sour cream (plus one tablespoon, which I forgot)
2 cups all-purpose flour
1 ¼ cups unsweetened cocoa powder (this is a huge amount!)
1 ½ teaspoons baking powder
½ teaspoon salt
1 ½ cups frozen cherries
Grease three 8-inch cake pans and line with parchment paper. Heat oven to 350 degrees F.
Beat butter and sugars until light and fluffy. He calls for using the whisk attachment but I used the paddle which I use for all cakes. Scrape down the batter and whisk again. Add the beaten eggs, vanilla, and sour cream with the mixer on low speed.
Stir the dry ingredients together and add large spoonfuls by spoonfuls to the batter while mixer is still on low speed until fully incorporated. Use a spatula to fold in the fruit.
Spread the batter in the prepared pans. This was a thick batter and a bit difficult to spread in the lined pans. Bake for 25 minutes until the cakes have risen slightly and start to pull away from the sides. My cakes took 30 minutes and did not appear to rise significantly but tested as done. Leave the cakes in the pans for 5 minutes and then remove to wire racks to cool.
For the frosting:
4 ounces bittersweet chocolate, broken into pieces
¾ cup cocoa powder (it’s a lot of chocolate here)
5 Tablespoons boiling water
1 ½ sticks of butter
scant ¾ cup powdered sugar
Melt the chocolate and set aside to cool slightly. Mix the cocoa and boiling water to form a paste. I had to add an extra Tablespoon of water. In the mixer bowl, beat the butter until very soft and then add the powdered sugar and beat until pale and fluffy. Add the melted chocolate and the cocoa paste and beat until smooth. When the cake is cool, spread one-third of the frosting between each layer and on top. Spread around the sides of the cake and let sit for one hour.
When frosting is set, make a ganache and pour over the whole cake. Decorate with the fresh fruit.
For my ganache I melted one cup dark chocolate chips with 1/3 cup evaporated milk, boiled for one minute, removed from heat, and then whisked in 2 Tablespoons butter. This needs to be mixed until it thickens. I poured it over the cake a bit too soon and had a bit of runoff. But that cleaned up tastily!
Thoughts:
I had expected the cake to rise a bit more than it did. This may be because it is on the mixer for a long time and I may have beat the air out of the eggs or the baking powder was old. I have since tested the baking powder and it is active so that is not the culprit.
So this is a dense cake in texture and in chocolate flavor. It is like a fudgy brownie and not cake-like. After three days I felt like I had overdosed on chocolate. And I like chocolate!
For Church brunch I got it in my head to make a lemon something since I had lemons languishing in my refrigerator. I put them in a Ziploc bag which seems to keep them longer than loose in the crisper drawer. I had to look through several of my many cookbooks to find the recipe. I knew I had one somewhere other than the internet! I like cookbooks. I hope they do no become obsolete!
I found the recipe in a Better Homes and Gardens collection book America’s Best-Loved Community Cookbook Recipes: Brunches and Lunches (copyright 1996). I am not sure where I got this from but I do know I got it in the past several years and probably spent no more than $5 for it at some tag sale. It only calls for one lemon.
½ cup butter
1 cup sugar
2 eggs
1 teaspoon finely shredded lemon peel
1 ½ cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
½ cup milk
½ cup chopped pecans
First grate the zest from the lemon and then squeeze the juice. Save the juice for making the glaze. This is best when the lemon is at room temperature. Or first, grease the bottom and halfway up the sides of an 8x4x2-inch loaf pan and preheat the oven to 350 degrees F.
In a medium bowl stir the dry ingredients together. In a large mixing bowl cream the butter and sugar until fluffy. Add the eggs and 1 teaspoon of the lemon peel mixing well. Add the flour mixture and the milk alternately (I really have to look up the reason for this) and then stir in the nuts. Spread the batter in the loaf pan and bake for 55-60 minutes.
For the lemon glaze, take the lemon juice (about 3 Tablespoons) and the rest of the lemon peel (if you remembered to divide the zest!) and ¼ cup sugar and stir in a small bowl. Pour this over the hot bread and then let the bread cool in the pan for 10 minutes before removing to a wire rack to cool.
This is a nice moist bread. The cookbook adds a recipe for orange cream cheese which I did not make. A smear of cream cheese on a slice might be nice but it is very pleasant as is.
I finally got around to tackling the clearing out of my baking cabinet. This corner cabinet holds the flour, sugar, flavorings, and all the other items needed for baking, including pans. In removing everything before rearranging I found that I have a variety of flours that I should start using. One of these was oat flour and on the back of the bag was this recipe. It used only oat flour and rolled oats, no all-purpose flour needed. And I had some overripe bananas languishing in the freezer.
The problem with baking and wanting to bake is that Hubby and I are the only ones to eat the baked goods and we do not need to be eating all these baked goods, tasty though they may be. So Church was having a brunch which gave me opportunity to have a baking weekend. Yay! I made two things for the brunch and one for Hubby and me, mostly Hubby. This also gave me material for three blogs. Stay tuned for the others.
This recipe is on the back of a bag of Bob’s Red Mill oat flour. I could not figure out if this recipe is also on their website. They do have a number of recipes on there.
2 cups oat flour
½ cup rolled oats
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
½ teaspoon salt
1 cup mashed bananas, about 3 small
¼ cup granulated sugar
¼ cup brown sugar
½ cup milk
1/3 cup oil
2 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
For this recipe I used nondairy oat milk and avocado oil. Preheat the oven to 400 degrees F and put paper liners in a 12 cup muffin pan. Mix the dry ingredients in a medium bowl. Mix everything else in the bowl of your mixer to combine thoroughly. Stir these together and then divide into the muffin cups. Bake 18-20 minutes. Allow to cool in pan a few minutes before removing to wire rack to cool.
These are light and airy which surprised me. A touch of butter and jam would go well with these muffins. They had some banana flavor but it was mild.
Protein in the morning is recommended as part of a healthy eating plan. Hubby has taken this to heart. Eggs are his staple. And he loves cheese.
For this breakfast Hubby uses a meat, eggs, cheese, and vegetables. He began with a frozen pepper and onion mixture as well as frozen chopped spinach. Now he will use whatever frozen veg is available. This may include green beans, spinach, broccoli (for me), mixed veg and/or peas, even leftover roasted potatoes. For meat he began with bits of bacon and then Steakums. Recently he bought beef stew meat and chopped it into bits. He also uses leftover chicken, Canadian bacon, leftover pork.
All of this is sautéed in the cast iron skillet with an egg on top and then covered with cheese and served in a bowl.
It is a hardy breakfast and tasty. The different meats and vegetables make it variable.
This is another food item that does not require a recipe, in my opinion. You may have a family recipe tradition with particular herbs and spices or quantities but I do not. I did not grow up eating this dish although Mom served us a lot of casseroles. I have seen a variety of recipes for this and I know that I have Americanized this dish as I do not use lamb. I have made this vegetarian using lentils but Hubby does not like that much. At a restaurant in Boston recently the chef made this with a tomato based meat mixture. My step-daughter and I thought that was odd, or at least, rather unique. That chef also put a piece of puff pastry atop the mashed potatoes for an interesting presentation.
The church I attend has a rotation of serving a weekend meal at our local soup kitchen. For simplicity they serve Shepherd’s Pie as the main dish and not have a potluck by the parishioners. The recipe suggested is as follows:
2 pounds ground beef, browned
1 large onion, chopped and sautéed with the meat
2 cans creamed corn
2 cans green beans, drained
Mashed potatoes to cover, instant or real (about a 2 /1/2 pound bag)
Salt and pepper to taste
The meat and onion is put in a 9 x 13-inch pan. Spread vegetables over meat and mashed potatoes on top. Bake at 375 degrees F for 25-30 minutes.
I indulge in a delivery service of locally sourced meat and I receive a pound of ground beef each month. This month I made a Shepherd’s pie, pictured below. I do not use the above recipe although it does make a tasty dish. Mine is a mixture of ground beef with sautéed vegetables in gravy. This is topped with mashed potatoes and baked until the top is crusty but not brown. The insides will be bubbling. Cool for a short while, serve, and eat.
The type of vegetables can vary. For me it depends on what I have around but mostly consists of a bag of frozen mixed vegetables added to sautéed chopped onion. This is cooked with the browning of the meat. I then add a half cup of broth and then another half cup mixed with a tablespoon of cornstarch. This makes a moist but not loose meat mixture under the mashed potatoes. Cheese and sour cream can be added to the mashed potatoes as desired. Although it is a hardy meal Hubby and I usual have two serving each! We won’t be losing weight this way!
I like custard: tarts, pies, plain, caramel, the lot. I was wandering the house wanting to make a simple dessert of some sort. I looked up custard in several cookbooks and settled on the custard pie from Pushcarts and Stalls: the Soulard Market History Cookbook. When in St. Louis I like visiting the Soulard Market. Just walking into the spice shop is an olfactory treat.
I had one sheet of frozen puff pastry which I took out to thaw. I thought a puff pastry crust would add a bit of interest to a custard pie. Custard is milk/cream, eggs, sugar, and vanilla. Very simple and most ingredients are already in most kitchens.
One unbaked pastry shell
½ cup sugar
3 eggs
2 cups cream: I had 1 1/2 cups cream so I topped it off with oatmilk.
1 teaspoon vanilla
Nutmeg
1 egg white beaten until frothy
I omitted the last two ingredients. I forgot completely about the nutmeg, and did not bother coating the inside of the pie shell with the egg white.
I blind baked the puff pastry in the pie tin. I should have rolled it out a bit to fit better but I did not. This would have prevented a bit of seepage behind the crust. Ten minutes in a 400 degrees F oven did nicely.
Beat the custard ingredients in a mixer with a whisk or just by hand. Pour into the pie shell. Place on a baking sheet (important in case of leakage) and bake for 30 minutes.
In rereading the recipe now I find that I was supposed to reduce the temperature of the oven to 350 for the pie and the higher temperature was for the par-baking of the shell. Well, my pie took 35 minutes at the higher temperature anyway.
It was not that pretty coming out of the oven. So I found a small amount of frozen mixed berries in the freezer and cooked those down with a splash of cranberry juice to make a small compote to serve with the pie.
This was a tasty pie. It is not too sweet and the puff pastry was a nice shell for it. It made it a bit lighter than a regular piecrust. Yummy!
Hubby was sick with a prolonged cold, not Covid, thank you for asking. He has not been sick for years, actually since he had Covid three years ago. But this was not Covid, no fever, no sore throat. He tried researching and decided it was allergies. We had recently been to the regional agricultural fair and had wandered around the animal barns with horses, cows, sheep, goats, and hay. He recalled that he may have had an allergy to hay in his childhood. But antihistamines did not clear this up, so he went back to cold medicine. Lo and behold, he got better on the 11th day, so his cold ran just over the 7 to 10 day course.
What to feed a cold? Or is it starve a cold, feed a fever? Either way soup is the answer. Now soup is just liquid with bits of food floating about in it. I have read and followed recipes for soups but unless it uses specialized ingredients is a recipe really necessary?
Liquid: broths and stocks of multiple varieties: chicken, beef, vegetable are the most popular. Milk and cream are possibilities as well.
Bits of food: vegetables of all sorts, meats of all sorts, and combinations of the two. I don’t know of any meat soup that does not use veggies as well. Pasta and grains are a nice addition as well as canned beans. One of my favorite things is to throw open packages of frozen vegetables in the soup. This uses up the veggies and adds variety to the soup.
I made a chicken noodle soup. I had a quart of chicken broth and a package of two boneless chicken thighs. This would be the easiest. After thawing the chicken I put it in a pan of water to poach. The advantage to this is that it makes an additional chicken broth!
The key to good soup is to sauté the mire poix. My usual is finely diced celery, carrots, and onions. For a different flavor profile one could use red and green peppers and garlic with the onions. Sautéing makes these bits of vegetables more flavorful and less bland when swallowed up in pots of broth.
Notes on pasta and rice: I cooked the egg noodles separately and did not add them to the soup itself. We put noodles in the serving bowls and ladled the soup over. This way the noodles don’t keep absorbing the liquid and become mush. I suppose if that happened one could put it all in a blender and make cream of noodles soup!
It has been a while since I last wrote. I am going to try to write again but in my retirement I have been embracing the “I don’t have to” about schedules and activities. Yes, I do pay the bills and minimally clean the house and get up and dressed every day, feed the dog, cook sometimes, keep medical appointments, etc. I guess there is a lot of things I do but on my own time. I have not been baking a whole lot in the summer between heat waves and camping trips.
I was perusing the New York Times cooking section and they listed a number of favorite fall baking recipes that looked and sounded interesting. This Basque Cheesecake was one of them. I know I have made a Basque Cheesecake before but that was the King Arthur Flour recipe which I apparently altered slightly. It is somewhere in a past blog post. Here is the link for this one https://cooking.nytimes.com/recipes/1024483-basque-cheesecake.
I gathered all the ingredients. Well, actually, I wandered off to the grocery store to buy more cream cheese. This calls for 4 ½ packages! I had heavy cream from making pastry cream for cream puffs recently. And 5 eggs which, luckily, have come down in price. Line a 10-inch spring-form pan with parchment paper that extends up the sides. Preheat oven to 400 degrees F.
1 ¾ cups sugar
36 ounces of cream cheese at room temperature
¼ teaspoon kosher salt
5 large eggs
2 cups heavy cream
¼ cup all-purpose flour
Cream the cheese and sugar in a stand mixer. I mixed this for 5 minutes. Add the bit of salt. Then beat in eggs one at a time. Then the cream. Sift the flour on top and mix in. This makes a lot of batter. Pour this into the prepared pan and bake for 50-60 minutes until “burnt” on top. Let cool completely before removing from the pan. This is a large cake so having flat spatulas on hand to help move it to a cake plate will be handy.
Voila!
This is a light cheese cake, not at all dense like New York Style. But it is very pleasant.
mykitchenmythoughts 