Homemade Marshmallows

Yesterday I decided to make some homemade marshmallows. I've been spending a lot of time lately with the Earth to Table cookbook that I've been reviewing for this blog, and with it being winter now I've been drinking hot chocolate more often than before. This means, of course, that I had to give the marshmallow recipe in the Earth to Table book a try.

I've never made marshmallows before, so I was surprised by how easy it is and how basic the ingredient list is. The marshmallows consist of nothing more than cold water, gelatin, corn syrup, sugar, vanilla extract, salt, and icing sugar (all things I had in the house already). I began the recipe by allowing three packets of gelatin to bloom in cold water. While the gelatin was softening in the water, I put the sugar, some cold water, and corn syrup on the stove to bring to a boil until the bubbles were large; this took approximately 5 minutes. Then I mixed the gelatin with a hand mixer, poured the cooked sugar syrup over the gelatin and continued mixing. Once it looked frothy, I added the vanilla and salt and mixed it a bit more. The marshmallows were supposed to get light and fluffy, and I wasn't exactly sure if my mixture reached the point it was supposed to be at, but I knew I had mixed it longer than was specified so I went ahead and poured it in a greased baking dish that had the icing sugar sprinkled on it. Then I sprinkled more icing sugar on top of the marshmallow mixture and allowed it to set overnight. It began to set very quickly, so I was reassured that the marshmallow was at least going to firm up.

I did do a bit of research afterward, however (on the joy of baking website), and watched the video there on how to make marshmallows. I can tell you now that my mixture was nowhere near thick enough, and I found out that because I was using a hand mixer, I really should have mixed the marshmallows longer than I did. Rather than the mixture being thick and difficult to spread, mine was watery and spread evenly right away. But, it did begin to firm up immediately, like I said, so I was still hopeful that the recipe would work out for me. 

Book Review: The Earth to Table Cookbook (The Recipes)

I've decided that I'm going to include book reviews each month about the different books I'm reading or using. This month it's the cookbook Earth to Table by Jeff Crump and Bettina Schormann. My sister has discussed some of the recipes from this book in her blog, but I feel that bringing them up again is the only way I can give an accurate review of the book.


One of the first recipes that Jennifer and I decided to try was the pizza dough. There's no doubt that it worked as it was supposed to; the crust was yeast-based, and rose to be slightly puffy and dense. Unfortunately, I found that it was too dry, which was further extenuated by the fact that we chose to use the squash, sage, and pancetta toppings shown in the book; there was no sauce included in the recipe. Luckily, we also made up our own toppings for the dough that same night, which included tomato sauce, cheese, mushrooms, red peppers, and basil. The tomato sauce gave the dough a much nicer, softer texture. I think the dough is worthwhile to make, but you have to have something saucy on it. For myself, I'm going to stick to a different recipe that has a softer crust; that's just my preference.

As I've mentioned before, my sister also made the Oatmeal Molasses bread from the book. This recipe was a definite success. Up until this point, we hadn't made much bread so I was impressed that it even rose to begin with. It had a nice, sandwich-bread texture, basically a good slicing bread. Before it gets baked, you're supposed to top it with some oats. I found the bread was at its best as a breakfast bread; we ate it with apple butter or strawberry jam in the morning which was very delicious!

The Family Christmas Tree

We put our Christmas tree up this week. It's a real tree that we cut down at a tree farm, so it smells wonderfully piney and fragrant. The tree itself is huge and bushy, so it's able to hold the multitude of decorations our family has collected over the years (some of the ornaments are older than my sister and I!).

For me, the best decorated Christmas trees are the ones that include ornaments that have memories attached to them. I prefer to trim a tree with old, worn ornaments that have a special history than to decorate a tree with a bunch of shiny new ornaments (not that I dislike new decorations; we don't all necessarily have those family heirlooms, but you can certainly start somewhere!).For example, my stepfather has decorations that were handmade by an aunt, while some of our ornaments were made by my sister and I when we were in kindergarten or brownies. Some of them were handmade in recent years, or were given to us as gifts by someone special (like teachers and aunts). As we take each decoration out of the box one by one, we each have different memories to share; there's definitely something more special about that than hanging new ornaments on the tree.

Cranberry and Lemon Trifle

I recently bought four individual-sized trifle bowls and I've been excited to make trifle ever since. I've been thinking about a Christmassy trifle recipe, but I couldn't find any I liked, so I decided to create my own. I've never made trifle before, but I know that it usually consists of cake, something custard-like, fruit, and whipped cream, so I decided to use a lemony cake, lemon curd, cranberry sauce, and whipped cream. When I thought about something that would go with a Christmassy ingredient such as cranberries, I knew lemon was the answer, because my sister and I have been making a lemon-cranberry loaf recipe for a couple years and we love it. It's a classic combination that works and tastes delicious!

Here's what you need to make the trifle:

Ingredients

• About half a can of cranberry sauce
  
• Enough whipped cream to top trifle
• One pouch of lemon pie filling such as no name brand's "lemon pie filling and dessert mix" (as well as additional ingredients to make it depending on box instructions)
• Lemon-flavoured cake

I began my trifle recipe by making a lemon cake. I decided to use http://www.foodnetwork.ca/recipes/Eggs/Dairy/recipe.html?dishid=9123. It's really a recipe for lemon Madeleines, but they are cake-like with a lovely springy texture and bursting with lemony flavour. Instead of a Madeleine pan, I used a round cake pan, but you could use a Madeleine pan if you really want to; I'm sure it would look really pretty too.

Besides the Madeleine recipe you could also, of course, buy a cake mix. If you can't get a lemon-flavoured cake mix you could get a lemon and add the zest of the whole lemon to whatever cake mix you do have.

For the lemon filling, I used a pouch of lemon filling powder and simply followed the directions on the box. I really wanted to use lemon pudding, which I'm sure would be good, but this is great as well. You could make a lemon curd from scratch at home or buy some at the store, whatever works for you.

I used a can of cranberry sauce because I couldn't find any fresh cranberries to make my own. I'm sure a homemade cranberry sauce would be better than canned, so if you can, you should try that instead.

Christmas Cookies

We tend to do a lot of baking around Christmas, but most of it is eaten on Christmas day. Usually we end up with far too much, but we enjoy baking for Christmas because it is one of our traditions; it's difficult to give up on baking even though some family members are trying to avoid a lot of the sweet stuff. There's just something about the whole baking process, Christmas music playing in the background, the smells wafting from the oven, and the decorating of cookies that says Christmas to me.

We started our Christmas baking with shortbread cookies. We usually bake multiple batches, but in our attempt to bake a little bit less, we only baked one batch. As it turns out, most of them are already gone so we need to bake one or two more batches so we'll have some for Christmas. We cut them quite thin so they browned really nicely and have a kind of tender crispness. They are definitely at their best if they aren't too thick. There aren't many ingredients either; you just need butter, cornstarch, flour, and icing sugar to make the cookie dough. The simplicity of the recipe, and the taste of the cookies have definitely made this recipe a winner!

We also decided to bake gingerbread cookies. Unfortunately, I couldn't find the recipe we used last year, so we decided to give another gingerbread recipe a try this year.

I think what makes this particular recipe so good is the spices that are mixed into the dough. The dough is so fragrant with cinnamon, cloves, ginger, and nutmeg that it reminds me of pumpkin pie. The molasses gives the cookies a nice flavour, and a dark brown colour, as well.

Christmas Wreath Making

As you can see, my sister and I decided to make some fresh Christmas wreaths today. I had been wanting to make one ever since I read about someone's wreath-making efforts on another blog last year, and we finally got around to it.




We each made our own wreath, one for the front door, and one for the side door. The first and last pictures of this post are my sister's, and the one on the red door is mine. They both turned out really beautifully.

My sister and I began by walking around the yard, cutting boughs and branches, and picking dried flowers from the flower beds. We came in with all sorts of branches including cedar, pine, and burning bush branches with red berries on them. We also gathered pine cones, as well as dried black-eyed Susan's, columbines, and a very fragrant flower that I don't know the name of.

Baking Baguettes

Remember the baguette recipe I told you about in my bread making post? I decided to make it again today. My friends invited my sister and I over for dinner tonight at one of their houses, so I made the baguette recipe as our contribution. They're making pasta tonight, so the bread will be a good accompaniment. Here's the URL again if you're interested: http://allrecipes.com/recipe/french-baguettes/.

I actually ended up doubling the recipe. The recipe makes 2 baguettes, but I know that we'll eat them quickly so it's always good to have extra.

It's a simple bread recipe. Although the recipe is for a bread maker, I just mixed all of the ingredients in a bowl, only I switched around the order a bit. I find that when I make bread it's generally more successful in rising if I start the recipe by mixing the yeast into warm water, so I began this recipe that way as well. Once I did that, I added all the rest of the ingredients, mixed them up, and left them in the bowl to rise for 30 minutes.

Shaping the baguettes was really easy too. My sister and I have made this recipe in the past, but I've found that the less fuss with shaping them makes a better looking baguette. You have to roll the baguette out in to a rectangle, and then you have to roll it up in to a log shape. When my sister and I first made the recipe, I was so worried about getting the fold on the bottom of the baguette sealed properly. Now I realize that it resolves itself when the baguettes bake; once they're baked, you barely notice there was a fold at the bottom to begin with. Once you have your baguettes shaped, you just cut slashes into them, leave the baguettes to rise for another 30 minutes, and then brush them with egg wash and pop them in the oven for 25 minutes or so.

Bread Making

Bread making is something that I've recently gained an interest in. Of course, my mom owns a bread maker and I've made bread in it a few times, but I had never made bread without the use of a bread maker until I came across a spectacular baguette recipe on allrecipes.com. You can find the recipe here:http://allrecipes.com/recipe/french-baguettes/There's just something about being able to make a loaf of bread from ingredients that don't resemble a loaf of bread at all that I find really appealing; in that way it's unlike cooking most other things.

My sister recently renewed my interest in bread making when she made a lovely Oatmeal Molasses bread recipe from the cookbook Earth to Table. You can actually view a blog post about it at the following link, if you're interested: http://jennyraggedrobin.blogspot.com/2011/07/oatmeal-molasses-bread.html


My latest adventure with making bread involved Laura Calder's Miracle Boule (that's it in the pictures) from her book French Taste. It's called a boule because of its ball-like shape, and it ended up having a nice, chewy texture with a lot of air bubbles in the middle. The recipe was really simple, consisting of nothing more than flour, yeast, salt, and water, which makes it a little bit healthier than other breads, because it doesn't have any sugar. All I had to do was mix all of the ingredients, and then leave it to sit for 12 hours. Once that time was up I had to shape the dough in to a ball, and leave it to rise for another 2 hours. After that, it went into a dutch oven and baked in the oven. Needless to say, I was really impressed by the bread and would highly recommend it to anyone. Because of this, here's a link to the recipe: http://www.foodnetwork.ca/recipes/recipe.html?dishid=9041.

Homemade Christmas Ornaments

As the Christmas season is rolling around, I've been itching to do Christmassy things. I began today by making some homemade Christmas ornaments. I found a number of cute homemade Christmas ornament ideas at this website: http://www.homemade-gifts-made-easy.com/homemade-christmas-ornaments-to-make.html, just in case anyone is interested.

When making these ornaments, I used a combination of scrapbook paper, construction paper, and extra Christmas cards that my sister and I never sent out. A good idea is even using the inside saying of a Christmas card as part of the decoration, rather than just what's on the front. The construction paper had been sitting around here for a long time too, so all I had to buy was a bit of scrapbook paper. Part of the fun of making these ornaments is by being as creative as you can by using leftover things you have around the house.


I plan on taping these on presents in place of (or with) bows this year. Then the people that are getting gifts from me this year can put them on their trees next year. Of course, I'm making extras so I'll probably end up with a few of my own too.