1/10/10

For New Years' Eve, I made chicken and noodles. Not exactly a traditional dish, but good all the same. I didn't even make a cake. I'm slipping.

I haven't baked much this week. It doesn't make any sense since I have been home (on vacation) this week, but we still have Christmas goodies to eat. I did make some shortbread cookies from
I made them into thumbprint cookies by sticking my thumb in to make a small bowl to hold seedless raspberry jelly. They have disappeared.
The other thing I baked I never baked before was chicken parmigiana pizza, I used the Art Ginsburg recipe in for the thick crust pizza. That worked out pretty well, too. Even my beloved ate the pizza crust and he likes the thin crust. I did use some drippings from the chicken in the pizza dough. It gave it a better flavor.
As for brownies, haven't made them yet. I do plan to make them, I think I will add some Ghiradelli chocolate to the batter. I have found that "blooming" the cocoa in the melted butter before adding it to the batter seems to bring out a deeper chocolate taste. I should try some dutched cocoa to see how that works in the recipe. It will be interesting.

this week

I tried something new this week - I made German raisin bread. I've never made raisin bread before. It tastes pretty good and I'm not a big fan of raisins.
I also made a raspberry jelly roll - the "Joy of Cooking"'s recipe. I have to remember to get the wider Reynolds Wrap for the jelly roll pan. That would make it easier to transfer the cake to the towel.
I also made a pumpkin cheesecake bar. It was on the back of the box for the pumpkin bread. I didn't realize I didn't buy any pureed pumpkin until too late (I forgot again today) and I had a hankering for pumpkin.
Last week's brownies were quite the hit. Will made sure he got the remaining brownies on Thursday "so they don't go to waste". So this week I used the basic Hershey recipe using the Ghiradelli cocoa, the normal amount of eggs and butter with one addition - a very ripe banana. That seems to give the brownies a more cake like consistency.
I finally dumped out my sourdough starter. it had mold growing on top of it. I don't think sourdough is my thing but darned if I don't see another recipe for sourdough and start thinking "I could do that". I'm still thinking about it...

baking action this week

Let's see, it's a bit of comedy of errors;) I made popovers again and I used cake flour. However, I did not compensate for the difference in weight between cake and all purpose flour and the popovers didn't. They still tasted good, but they were sort of muffiny.
As for the brownies....I used 1/2 cup applesauce to replace 1/2 cup butter. They came out cakey. Then I added a topping - the "Mississippi Mud" frosting from Paula Deen. I think it's a bit too heavy for the brownies. However, Will did manage to say "it's a bit too much" while eating the brownie, so there you are.
I made the raspberry puff pastries from the King Arthur folks. It turned out great. This time, I cooked the raspberries for the filling. I do need to seal the pastry properly because the filling spills out. It was still pretty good.
No cakes this week. Hmm, I must be slipping.....

late posting

I baked last weekend, but I probably wasn't 100%. I made oatmeal raisin cookies for my honey - and they turned out lacelike. Still tasted good, but very thin. I think the dough was too wet.
Then I made brownies - the same brownies I've made a gazillion times and I made a mistake. I put a half a teaspoon of baking _soda_ in instead of baking _powder_. I baked them anyway, but they didn't seem to rise as much. However, all were eaten so it must have been good.
Then for my 26th wedding anniversary, I decided to make a special meal at home - center cut boneless pork chops (one of the honey's faves), a baked potato, corn on the cob and popovers. I haven't made them for a long time and I had to retrieve the pan from where I had stored it. So far, so good. I used "The Joy of Cooking" recipe for popovers, it's my favorite. They rose just fine, browned nicely... and the bottoms stuck to the pan. *sigh* I guess I didn't have my baking mojo this week or something. But they still tasted good. I will really have to grease those pans down the next time I use them.
Right now I'm thinking about making the puff pastry from the "Baking Sheet" - that worked out well for me. before. Or maybe I should open a box of Pillsbury crescent rolls, maybe I won't mess that up.
_enjoy_

June 1

Today I just made a single batch of the Hershey Cocoa's brownies. Nothing tricked out, no special flavor added, just plain old brownies. I can't say either Will or Dan noticed the peanut butter except after I mentioned it.
This week I made my beloved his birthday cake. He likes a yellow cake filled with strawberry Bavarian cream. I uses the "best vanilla cake recipe" in the special cake pans. And I used Jello's recipe of Bavarian cream. The cake did not really stand up to the pan. I should have used shortening to grease it instead of Pam or maybe the vanilla cake is not really meant to be used as a filled cake. It fell apart while I was taking it out of the pans.
The Bavarian cream - it separated into 2 distinct parts. The top was strawberry Jello with the Cool Whip and the strawberries. The bottom was just the strawberry Jello. I'm not sure exactly what I did wrong there - maybe it should have cooled off more? I think next year I will go back to the old "gold cake" recipe I generally use and use "The Joy of Cooking"'s Bavarian cream recipe. I will tell you that my beloved loved it and ate it, so I did something right.