All Purpose

I’ve been MIA lately, I know. I’ve been sick since like August it seems. Nothing serious, just allergies but it’s getting old, really old. So I’ve done a few baking things and some knitting stuff and even some yard work.

I made croissants. Real croissants. From scratch. They were really good and our neighbor, who’s mother is French, said they were very close to real French croissants (I need to get a full report about what was missing).

So I got this book, Baking, a few weeks ago and it has great step by step instructions for all kinds of baking stuff. I think it could be a baking course on it’s own. Anyway, I’ve been wanting to do something challenging so I decided to try croissants. It’s a lot of work, and a lot of butter, but they turned out great and the instructions were good and easy and had photographs to go with, which I love. Anyway, croissants!

I also made bread a lot lately, including my Rosemary Olive bread and Chocolate Cherry bread, which I got from this book . I’ve been making these breads for a while so nothing new, but nice to have fresh bread. I hope to make bread a lot more as it cools down for fall/winter here.

I’ve been knitting a lot and just finished a sweater (post to come soon) and started a new one. I’ve also started the long process of cleaning up and preparing the yard for fall/spring gardening. I cleaned out my dead tomatoes and can you believe that the basil I planted with them is still alive and is at least 4 feet, yes feet, tall. We’re planning on harvesting it all over the next week or two and making some pesto.

I’m going to try to do the Sweet Potato biscuits tomorrow (for Tuesday’s with Dorie) because they sound yummy and I need to master biscuits. I’ve had bad biscuit mojo the last few years.

No Comments | In: baking, garden, knitting, life | tags: basil, bread, croissnats, tuesdayswithdorie. | #

So remember that whole baking thing? Right. So it’s Tuesday and I realized when I got home that I still have not done a TWD this month and the souffle (which I missed last week) and these turnovers were the two things I wanted to do for September. So I flew by the seat of my pants and made these turnovers today, well tonight.

First, I made soup for dinner, Winter Minestrone. It was good.

Then quickly while the soup simmered I made the dough (I did a half recipe of this) and threw it in the fridge. The dough did not come together for me that easily, it actually seemed a little dry when the recipe said it would be wet. I squashed it into two balls and chilled it for about 20-30 minutes. Did the recipe say an hour? Sure.

Then I pulled it out and rolled it out using the plastic wrap method, which works like a charm I must say. I gotta remember that one. Then I folded it and chilled for about 20 more minutes, while I mixed together the dry ingredients and cut up the apples. I added a dash of curry to the dry stuff for fun.

Did the recipe say chill for 2 hours? Yes it did. I don’t have time like that though. I decided to just go for it and unfolded and rerolled the dough in plastic a couple of times to smooth the creases and then used ramekin as a dough cutter. It did work but the stickiness of the dough made me decide to do one pass through with the ramekin and save the rest of the dough and filling for tomorrow and a proper chilling.

So then I went to put the apples down and fold it all over and…

more like burritos than turnovers.

But I have to say they turned out delicious and that crust is awesome. The Italian said he could eat a whole plate of them.

So lessons for this week are to plan ahead, and get better lighting in my kitchen.

3 Comments | In: baking, tuesdayswithdorie | | #

So I have this book called Baking: From My Home to Yours by Dorie Greenspan. I’ve had it for a couple of years and I’ve made a few things from it, but really not much, which is a shame because it seems like a great book. I guess I sometimes forget about it though.

Then I found this whole group of people from all over the world that have this book too and they bake a recipe from the book every week, and then they all blog about it. Isn’t that so cool? So here I am, writing my first Tuesday with Dorie post. Yes, I know it’s Wednesday all ready, but I’m still figuring out the timing for all this.

So first let me admit that I don’t have a money shot of the brownies. It just got too late and I was tired and sunburned. I’ll post some more pics to Flickr and this post later today, including a money shot of the cooked brownies in all their glory (if there are any left when I get home).

So the recipe was pretty easy. I had a couple of bumps, mostly of my own doing. First, I though there was instant coffee around, but I was wrong. Ok, no biggie. Then I found out the nuts I had were really old. Like scary old. So no nuts. Alrighty, no problem full steam ahead.

Then as I as melting the butter I realized I needed to sift the cocoa. Fuck. I’m sure if you direct your attention to the following picture you’ll understand. That metal thing? Yeah, that’s my “sifter”.

Is it resting in a measuring cup? Yes, yes it is. Let’s just say my wrist is still smarting from that and leave it at that for now.

Despite all that it came together pretty well. I was a little concerned about the texture of the batter, not that it looks scary here or anything.

And I was a bit worried about my “oven”, but no way was I turning on the real one.

It baked for exactly 30 minutes, and it turned out swell in the end. The Italian (aka my husband) asked that if I make them again I make them just the same: no coffee, no nuts. The cinnamon was not prominent last night but after resting it definitely comes out more. The texture is great with a crispy top layer and super gooey inside. Very decadent, very yummy.

You don’t need the book to try these! You can find the recipe on the NPR site (scroll down a bit).

I will work on my note taking and photo documenting abilities for future installments. Promise.

2 Comments | In: baking, tuesdayswithdorie | | #