Improving My Bread Baking Skills: Part One

Ever since first starting to make bread in January, I've been becoming increasingly addicted to making bread. Lately I've been making different kinds of breads at least once a month, sometimes even once a week. I think part of the reason I enjoy it so much is because it's a true challenge. Each time I make bread, there's nothing seriously wrong with it (meaning, it's edible), but there's always some small improvement I can make to it. One example is in making ciabatta bread. I've made it three times so far, two of which I've blogged about, and it's astonishing how much you can improve your bread making skills with each attempt.

My third attempt has been my best yet. Instead of the couple loaves I've done previously, I decided to make buns. One problem I had when making ciabatta bread before was that I never got the large holes that are characteristic of ciabatta. I always just got smaller holes. This time the bread came out holier, and I'm pretty sure I know how. First of all, my starter mix was left in the fridge much longer than the 12 hours it's supposed to be left for. As a result, it came out with lots of bubbles in it. Secondly, I left the dough for its first rising about a hour longer than the recipe said. I realized that the recipe mentioned the dough would be ready for the next step when there were bubbles dotting the surface, but there weren't any visible after the rising time, so I just waited until I could see them. As a result, my third attempt at ciabatta bread resulted in beautiful big holes.

A Beginner Knitter

For the most part, I consider myself to be a beginner when it comes to knitting. Yes, as a child my grandmother introduced me to some basic knitting techniques including the knit stitch, and I learned how to cast on much later, learned to purl, taught myself the elongated stitch, and with my grandmother's help, even completed a keyhole scarf, but other than that I've never completed anything. I seem to keep coming back to knitting over the years, always tempted by the lovely knitting patterns and colourful wools, but I haven't accomplished much.

About a year and a half ago my sister and I were in a local wool store and suddenly got tempted by one of berroco's knitting pattern books. In particular, we really wanted to have the red sweater on the front, and so we quite spontaneously bought nine balls of berroco's blackstone tweed yarn with the intention that we would each knit half of the sweater. A year and a half later, I'm only just starting on it, and definitely not without a struggle. In case you're interested, you can find a picture of the sweater at the following URL: http://www.berroco.com/287.291/288/288_nectarine_pv.html.

I've found that the yarn splits very easily, so it took me a few gos before I managed to get the stitches cast on properly; I kept breaking the yarn and always had to start over. I finally cast the stitches on very loosely so that I wouldn't have to be as forceful with the yarn, and so far so good. I have about two inches of the lower ribbing on the back of the sweater done, with only one more inch to go before I have to go onto the next step. I'm quite please with the consistent tension of my knitting so far, and it already feels like a big accomplishment to have something that resembles a piece of the sweater.

I'll keep updating my progress here. Hopefully this is a knitting project I will finish!

A Homemade Meal: Hamburger Buns, Molten Lava Cakes, and Coconut Ice Cream

I haven't been cooking a lot lately, but recently I had a burst of energy and enthusiasm, and decided to dive into making some homemade hamburger buns for hamburgers. My mom has been doing a lot of the cooking lately, but upon wondering what we should have for dinner and discovering ground beef in the freezer, I decided making homemade hamburger buns was a good idea since we didn't have any store bought buns.

I decided to try the hamburger and hotdog bun recipe on allrecipes. It's probably one of the fastest bread recipes I've tried, and it was incredibly easy. I decided to brush the buns with a bit of egg wash and sprinkled them with sesame seeds before baking them in the oven.

These buns are incredibly soft and perfect for a hamburger. I'd definitely make them again.

In addition to the hamburgers and hamburger buns, I also decided to make molten lava cakes. I've never made them before, so it was definitely an interesting process, although easier than I thought. I used the recipe at the following URL: http://mehanskitchen.blogspot.ca/2012/02/molten-chocolate-cake.html. I just didn't use the liquor, espresso powder, or orange zest in it, although I'm sure either of these things would have been lovely. I just didn't have any of these ingredients on hand.

Homemade Pasta in a Bacon and Tomato Sauce

My sister and I decided back in August when our parents went away on a trip that it was the perfect time to make homemade pasta, as we would only have to make it for the two of us. Homemade pasta takes a really long time to make, as you have to mix the dough, allow it time to rest, roll the dough through your pasta machine (which can sometimes be really difficult), cut the pasta, and then finally cook it. When we make it for the four of us, we usually make two--three balls of dough, but this time we only had to make one ball. To be perfectly honest, it did still seem to be a lot of work to make just for the two of us, but it was so worth it.

You can find the basic pasta dough recipe here: http://www.italianfoodforever.com/2008/05/spinach-ricotta-ravioli/

One of our favourite pasta sauces is Canadian chef Michael Smith's Tomato Bacon Sauce, so that's exactly what we decided to use for this recipe. It's a very simple sauce to make, using only a can of crushed tomatoes, onion, garlic, bacon, herbs, and salt and pepper, but it makes for a very flavourful sauce. I think anytime bacon is added to something, a dish is brought up a notch, and it's astonishing how much flavour can come from adding a combination of fresh basil, oregano, and thyme from the garden. This recipe created a really lovely, smoky flavoured sauce for our homemade pasta noodles.

If I have one critique at all for this dish, it would be that we may have overcooked the noodles slightly, but it was still one of the best pasta dishes I've eaten.

Lemon Meringue Tarts

These lemon meringue tarts were made for father's day, but I thought I'd write this post any way. My sister and I decided to make these for our father and stepfather. We made something similar for our mom for mother's day, which she enjoyed, only we just used the tart shell and lemon curd, and topped them each with a raspberry and a bit of kiwi. The tartness and sweetness of the fruit went really well with the slightly tart and sweet lemon curd and added a bit of freshness to it. For father's day, however, we topped the lemon curd with meringue and baked them in the oven until lightly browned.

Lemon curd is surprisingly easy to make and takes few ingredients. This simple lemon curd included sugar, lemon juice and zest, and butter; I can't remember if there were any other ingredients, but I don't think there were. The lemon curd got cooked in a double boiler until it was very thick and then cooled and refrigerated.

I chose to use some frozen tart shells from the grocery store, as they are tasty and relatively inexpensive. The tart shells were pre-baked before filling them with the curd.

The final step was to mix up a basic meringue and put the tarts under the broiler to brown the meringue.

Potato Gnocci

Potato gnocchi is one of those things that I've heard is really challenging for the home cook to make. However, due to my love of potatoes, I've always been tempted to try cooking it myself. I've tried the store-bought gnocchi from the pasta aisle at the grocery store, but I really wasn't that impressed with them, but nonetheless, hearing people talk about how lovely and light these potato dumplings can be, I had to give it a try.

The website Italian Food Forever has been of constant inspiration to me over the last few months, and I've found a number of fantastic recipes there, so I decided to go with the potato gnocchi recipe on that website. If you do plan on trying to make gnocchi, have a look at the step-by-step guide to making gnocchi too.

I've heard that one of the most challenging things about making potato gnocchi at home is that people tend to overwork the dough, so the gnocchi end up being really tough and dense, but this recipe seems to work because you bake the potatoes rather than boil them. This means that you don't have to add as much flour to the dough, and it also means you don't have to overwork the dough as a result. I combined the baked potato, egg, salt, and only one cup of the required flour until it was just mixed. Then I kneaded it as the recipe calls for until it was a smooth ball of dough. At this stage, I found rolling the dough out into ropes was incredibly simple. Then I cut the dough into 1-inch pieces and used a fork to make a few indentations. Then I set them aside in the fridge until I was ready to cook them.

Like pasta, you boil a pot of salted water to cook the gnocchi. Then you drop the gnocchi into the water and wait for them to float. Once they're floating at the top, they're cooked. 

I really wanted the gnocchi to shine, so I made a very basic tomato sauce using a can of crushed tomatoes, an onion, three or so cloves of garlic, some fresh oregano, basil, red pepper flakes, and pepper. I began by cooking the diced onion and chopped garlic in a bit of olive oil. Once those seemed soft, I added the can of tomatoes, a pinch of red pepper flakes, pepper, and the fresh oregano. I saved the fresh basil to garnish the gnocchi along with a bit of parmesan cheese.

I was surprised at my success making the gnocchi for the first time, as they were light, didn't fall apart on me, and weren't dense at all. I love Italian Food Forever's recipe and highly recommend it for first-time gnocchi makers.

Spring Mushroom Ravioli with Asparagus

I love ravioli and have only ever made homemade ravioli at home once, but it's just so much time and effort to just get 10 raviolis per person. However, my sister and I were at the grocery store one day deciding what to have for dinner, and I noticed some wonton wrappers and suggested to her that we buy those to make some kind of ravioli. I had heard of using wonton wrappers instead of making your own pasta dough to make making ravioli from scratch a lot easier on time and effort.

Making your own pasta dough from scratch is really fun and rewarding, but the mixing of the dough combined with allowing it time to rest, and also rolling the dough out makes it a really big effort. Not to mention, you still have to make a filling, fill the dough and cut the raviolis out of it, make a sauce, and cook the ravioli. Using wonton wrappers meant that I only had to make a filling, assemble and cut the ravioli, cook them, and make a sauce. It's still a lot of work, but it's a lot less than if you make your own pasta dough.

Here's the recipe I came up with.

Pasta Dough

1 package of wonton wrappers

Mushroom Filling

1 package of roughly three portobello mushrooms
1 package of white mushrooms
1 small onion
4-6 garlic cloves
butter
fresh thyme
salt and pepper to taste

Sauce 
parmesan cheese
olive oil
garlic cloves, chopped
1 bunch of asparagus
salt and pepper to taste

For the filling, cut the onion into chunks. Peel the garlic. Process the mushrooms, onion, and garlic cloves in a food processor.

Heat a pan with a bit of butter and once heated, toss the mushroom, onion, and garlic mixture into the pan to cook. At the stage that you start to cook the mushroom mixture, add the fresh thyme, and salt and pepper (I don't recall exactly how much thyme I used, but keep in mind that it's a strong flavour, so you probably only need 3 teaspoons or so; I just eye-balled it.)

Once the mixture looks cooked, take it off the stove and set aside to cool slightly.

Once the mixture is cooled enough, you can began filling the wontons with the filling. Take a wonton sheet and spoon roughly a teaspoon of mushroom filling in the middle. Cover the filling with another wonton sheet and carefully press the dough around the filling to get rid of air. Use a ravioli cutter to cut the ravioli; a ravioli cutter will not only cut but seal the ravioli. When the ravioli are assembled, place them on a floured baking sheet and cover so that they don't dry out.

When you're ready to cook the ravioli, bring a pot of salted water to a gentle boil and when it's at a gentle boil, drop the ravioli in. When they float, they should be done.

Cook the asparagus in a pot of water until just cooked; the asparagus should be a bright green still and you should be able to stick a fork our knife into it easily.

For the sauce, heat a bit of olive oil in a pan and, once heated, add the chopped garlic. Once the garlic looks soft and cooked, add the cooked asparagus to the mix and some salt and pepper. Toss the cooked ravioli in and some parmesan cheese to taste.

For serving, you can top the pasta with more cheese. This recipe makes approximately 10 raviolis for 3 people.

Recent Cooking Projects

I haven't been cooking many things lately that are out of the ordinary and worthy of posting on this blog, but I did recently make Thomas Keller's soup cracker recipe from the Ad Hoc cookbook, and also some simple apple tarts.

The crackers are incredibly easy to make and I'd highly recommend giving it a try. In an odd way, they reminded me a lot of shortbread for their buttery flavour that you don't get in a store-bought soup cracker, but that butter flavour complements soup perfectly.

I had some frozen tart shells in the freezer, so to make 8 apple tarts all I had to do was peel two royal gala apples, slice them in thin half moons, saute them until just tender in a frying pan with butter or margarine, mix them up with a bit of cinnamon, sugar, and nutmeg, lay the apple pieces in the tarts, and then bake the tarts for about 10 minutes. It's a really nice and simple dessert if you're looking for a quick apple pie fix.

Egg Bread

I've been meaning to write a post about this egg bread I made shortly after Easter, so here it is. I ended up trying a recipe from the following website, which resulted in such a lovely, fluffy bread; I was really impressed: http://www.tasteofhome.com/Recipes/Homemade-Egg-Bread. It also makes two loaves, so it makes the time and effort put into this recipe all the more worthwhile.

It's really not a very different recipe from any of the other breads I've made, except that it includes eggs, milk, and gets braided in to loaf garnished with sesame seeds. Everything simply gets mixed into a bowl, kneaded, left to rise, punched down and left to rise again, shaped, and left to rise a final time before being garnished and put in the oven. You can check the recipe itself for more detail.

The most challenging part of this recipe was forming the braid. The recipe calls for the dough to be divided into 6 ropes and you use 3 ropes per loaf. My sister had to help me with the braiding though, just to keep keep everything we had braided in place while we completed the last part of the braid. I didn't want to seal the ends right away in case we messed the braid up, so we braided the dough before we sealed the ends. Once we allowed the dough to rise after shaping it, it really began to look like the loaf you see above and below in terms of shape, because the dough had puffed up and fused together a bit.

What I found about this bread is that it's one of the first breads I've made that makes a truly fantastic sandwich bread due to its light fluffiness, and I really enjoyed the toasted quality the sesame seeds took on once the bread was baked. This is a great recipe and one I would highly recommend.

Homemade Butternut Squash Ravioli in a Garlic Cream Sauce

 

My sister and I were out at an outlet mall the other day with our mom, grandma, and aunt, and there are a few really nice stores there that sell cookware. As soon as we saw the Remy Olivier pasta machine on sale for only $30 at Stokes, we knew we had to have it. We haven't made much pasta in the past, and not very successfully, but the pasta machine makes it very easy to roll out pasta dough (as long as you don't let the dough dry out too much). We also managed to find an Adamo Imports ravioli stamp at another store, so we were of course really excited to give these kitchen gadgets a try. This meant making butternut squash ravioli with a garlic cream sauce! You can find the recipe and a helpful tutorial here: http://www.laurenslatest.com/how-to-make-ravioli-from-scratch-a-tutorial/. We've never made ravioli before, so we are shocked at how successful we were.

The tutorial provides readers with two filling options for ravioli, but Jennifer and I really liked the sound of the butternut squash filling, so that's what we went with. We didn't bother with boiling the squash in chicken stock, however, and instead roasted the halved butternut squash with a bit of olive oil. This took around an hour to get nice and soft. 

Then we pureed the butternut squash with the other ingredients, which include ricotta, egg, salt and pepper, and an onion and garlic mixture. We added a pinch of nutmeg instead of the ground thyme that the recipe calls for. 

The ricotta really lightened up the squash, so the colour almost reminds me of egg yolk. We refrigerated the filling while we worked on our pasta dough. 

The pasta dough is fairly simple to make. All it is is flour, eggs, salt, and olive oil, which you mix up, knead, and allow to rest for 30 minutes. We made two batches of the pasta dough recipe to feed four people, and I'd say that's roughly what you want. In the end, we each had about 10 raviolis and they're very filling.

We were really impressed by our pasta machine, which rolled out the fresh pasta dough very easily. We found we had problems with the last bit of dough though (which we had wrapped up), and we suspect it dried out a bit while we were working on assembling the rest of our raviolis.  We were able to rescue some bits of dough by rolling them out with a rolling pin before putting them through the machine. Whereas the slightly dry dough was tearing as it went through the pasta machine before, the dried out dough we rolled out with a rolling pin actually went through the machine smoothly. 

 

Once our pasta dough was thin enough, we laid out strips one at a time and piped the filling onto them. We used our stamp as a guide for how many raviolis we could get out of each batch of dough. We then folded the dough over our piped filling and pressed the stamp around the filling. You can see Jennifer stamping out the dough above. We were really impressed with our ravioli stamp, because it not only cuts out the shape of the ravioli, but automatically seals them. I suspect that saved us a lot of time that we otherwise would have spent struggling to seal the raviolis. 

While we assembled our raviolis, we had the others on a floured baking sheet and covered with plastic to prevent them from drying out. 

 

We decided to cook the raviolis in smaller amounts because we were worried about them sticking together. This meant cooking roughly 10 raviolis at a time. We also cooked them at a gentle boil to prevent them from opening. Once they were done cooking, which was when they were floating on the top, we set them aside on a plate.  Then we put the next batch in to cook. 

When all the raviolis were cooked, we drained the pot and placed the raviolis back in. Then we added the ingredients for our garlic sauce, which included cream, garlic, Parmesan cheese, and salt and pepper. The sauce thickened quickly, and then we were ready to serve.

The ravioli were delicious. The garlic sauce was amazing. Jennifer and I would really like to try a sage and butter sauce next time, since that more traditionally goes with a butternut squash filling, but we'll definitely be using the garlic cream sauce again. I think it would make a great sauce for fettuccine, or ravioli with a cheese-based filling. We followed the recipe exactly for roughly how many ingredients we needed for the sauce per 12 raviolis, and it turned out perfect. I should also add that for 40 raviolis we managed to use the full recipe of butternut squash filling, so if you're wondering about amounts you need, that should help you figure out how much you need. I highly recommend these recipes for the pasta dough, filling, and sauce!

Second Attempt at Ciabatta Bread

 

I made ciabatta bread again last week, and I think it turned out better than the first time. It's always good when you can make improvements on your execution of a recipe, and I think a single factor went into making better bread. 

The yeast I used the first time was almost a year old. It didn't occur to me before that the yeast was a bit too old, but Jennifer and I made bread a few times since then and noticed that it always needed a longer rising time than usual. I bought new yeast this time, and I don't know if you can notice it in the picture above, but the bread had those delicate holes that ciabatta is supposed to have.  

The loaves ended up much better looking too. Not that it matters that much when it comes to bread, but these loaves turned out a lot smoother and less wrinkled like my last batch did.

Above all, they had that delicious mature flavour that you get as a result of using a biga mixture in the bread dough, and a thick crust, brown crust that you get from creating steam in the oven.

Honey Chicken

 

I haven't been cooking as much lately, but one thing I did make recently was honey chicken. My sister wanted to make an Asian-inspired meal, so we picked out the honey chicken recipe, and Jennifer focused on making rice, fried yard beans, and some frozen pork and leek dumplings while I made the chicken. 

We had chicken thighs at home, not chicken breasts, so it was a bit of a challenge cutting the chicken pieces up to be battered and deep fried, but other than that it is a very simple recipe. I mixed up the batter, and as I cut the chicken pieces, I dropped the chicken into the batter. It turns out I had just enough batter for about 12-14 chicken thighs. 

Once the chicken had sat in the batter for a bit, I got the deep frier heating. In the meantime, I got a head start on  the honey sauce, which you make on the stove top. Once the chicken is cooked, it has to go into the sauce, so I wanted to be sure it was ready. I really appreciated the fact that, in this recipe, you get to use a lot of ingredients that you probably already have in the house, or you only have to buy once. Ingredients such as honey and rice wine vinegar can last a long time, and once you have these ingredients in the house you can make a variety of dishes. 

Once the chicken was fried, it had a really nice light coating of batter that reminded me a bit of KFC. Then I tossed the chicken into the lovely sweet sauce. It was delicious, and fed four people really nicely. Overall it was incredibly simple and delicious!

 

Homemade Doughnuts

My sister and I decided to make doughnuts last week. The recipe we used is from allrecipes, and it was incredibly simple. Like cookie dough, all the ingredients get mixed together in a bowl; that's it for that part of the recipe. Then the dough gets rolled out quite thinly (they puff up a lot when they're fried).

Jennifer and I don't have a doughnut cutter, so we improvised and used a glass that was the size we liked to cut the outside of the doughnuts, and we found another extremely tiny circular object in our kitchen drawer that worked just fine for the middle. We had to keep in mind that once the doughnuts get fried they expand, so although the "cutters" we used were a tiny bit smaller than we wanted our doughnuts to be, it was fine; the doughnuts ended up bigger by the end.We just fried them for a couple minutes until they were golden and slightly crispy on the outside, and they had puffed right up.

The recipe suggests that you roll the doughnuts in confectioners' sugar once they come out of the fryer, but we just ate them plain. We found them quite delicious that way, although I'm sure confectioners' sugar or even a glaze or cinnamon sugar would be good too.

Creme Brulee

 I was at a cookware store the other day and couldn't resist buying 4 creme brulee dishes. I've never made creme brulee before, but I've really enjoyed it at restaurants, so I knew I had to make it at some point. I was looking for a kitchen torch yesterday too, but the store didn't have it. I've read that you can use the broiler, however, so I decided to use this method instead.

The recipe I decided to reference is on allrecipes. I didn't follow the steps exactly, as a professional pastry chef had reviewed the recipe and recommended a variation in the steps. She did, however, mention that the amounts of the recipe was fine.

My sister and I decided to make this recipe together. We started by separating the egg yolks from the whites. This recipe only uses the yolks, so we set the whites in the fridge to use for something else. Then the egg yolks get whipped up with some sugar and vanilla extract. Once this step is done, the egg mixture should be creamy and thick.

While we were get the egg mixture ready, I also began to heat the whipping cream on the stove until near a boil. Then we slowly added it to the egg mixture and whisked it really quick. I also had the oven preheating to 375 at the same time as we were heating the cream, and I had added hot water to the pan that the creme brulee dishes were going to sit in in the oven.

Once the cream was mixed into the egg mixture, we ladled the mixture evenly into the 4 dishes. The recipe allows for 5 servings, but we found all the custard fit into our dishes.

The custard went into the oven for approximately 20 minutes. Once it was ready, it was just slightly jiggly in the middle. I believe the pastry chef who critiqued the recipe said the custard should have a gelatin-like jiggle.

Parmesan and Herb Buns

 I decided to make a variation on the baguette recipe on allrecipes this week. This time I added a few new ingredients for flavour, which include Parmesan cheese, fresh basil, and fresh rosemary, and I shaped the dough into buns instead.

Like the baguette recipe, the first step was to mix the ingredients together. This included throwing in just under 1/2 a cup of Parmesan cheese (not the stuff in the can), approximately a teaspoon of fresh rosemary, and 6 nice rosemary leaves that were roughly chopped.

Then the dough gets covered in plastic and left to rise for 30 minutes or until doubled in bulk.

Once the dough had risen, I shaped the dough into 4 buns.

Once they were shaped, they had to be left for 30-40 minutes to rise again. Then I put them in the oven to bake at the specified temperature in the recipe. While they baked, I brushed water on the bread to help it brown.

I found the buns were truly delicious with the flavours of the Parmesan, basil, and rosemary. I'd definitely use this combination again, only I felt the dough wasn't as well suited for buns. It's a little bit more dense and not as soft and fluffy as what I like buns to be. I think I'll make baguettes next time instead.

Homemade Pasta

 

Approximately two years ago, my sister and I attempted to make Mario Batali's basic pasta dough from his cookbook Molto Italiano. It was an egg-based dough, and it unfortunately didn't work out for us. We had a hard time rolling the dough out, and it dried out on us so that we really had to cook it a lot longer than we did in reality. We didn't realize this, though, and it ended up being chewy, unpleasant, and undercooked. 

Luckily for us, we've learned a lot more about cooking since then, and I had the confidence to tackle making pasta dough again today, this time somewhat successfully (with a few tiny, but not disastrous, flaws).  This time I chose to make a eggless pasta dough from the Italian Food Forever website, mostly because it gives instructions for rolling the dough out by hand rather than with a pasta machine (which I don't have), but also because the ingredient list is so basic with just flour, salt, and water, and no eggs. 

I began this dough by  mixing the flour, salt, and water on the counter top until it could form a ball. The recipe itself doesn't give exact amounts, but I ended up using two cups of flour per batch (I made three batches), a pinch of salt, and for the water, I just gradually added it to the flour until it could form a ball. 

Once the balls of dough were formed, I wrapped them in plastic wrap and let them rest for a few hours. This way they didn't dry out during the resting time, but the gluten relaxed enough that it was easy to roll the dough out when the time came. The recipe specifies you only need to let the dough rest for 20 minutes, but I wanted to make the dough ahead of time so that I wouldn't have so much to do around dinner time. It really didn't hurt the dough to let it sit longer.

Probably the biggest challenge, and one that wasn't easy for me to recognize until the pasta was cooked, was just how difficult it's to roll the dough out to a desirable thinness. Having not kept in mind that pasta expands when it's boiled, I didn't roll the noodles out thin enough, so I found my noodles were a bit thick once they were cooked. Next time I need to roll the dough out more thinly.

My Kitties

 

 

Cream Cheese Ice Cream

Upon reading recently about the possibilities of making frozen desserts like ice cream, gelato, sorbet, and sherbet at home without an ice cream maker this week, I decided that I had to give it a try myself. I've never made ice cream before, which is mostly because I thought it would be too difficult to achieve an appealing product at home, but also because I don't have an ice cream machine. Nonetheless, ice cream was being made a long time before ice cream makers existed, so I soon realized the possibilities of making this dessert by hand.

I quickly googled some ice cream recipes, got an idea of what basic ingredients are needed to make an ice cream, and checked what I had in my fridge. Although ice cream commonly has a custard base apparently, the most basic recipes have only whipping cream, milk, sugar, salt, and possibly some lemon juice. I knew that I had some whipping cream in the fridge that was going unused, I had milk, and of course some kind of sugar and salt. I also noticed that I had a block of cream cheese in the fridge as well, because I had bought extra when Jennifer and I made our cream cheese icing for the red velvet cupcakes. With these ingredients in mind, I found a recipe online for cream cheese ice cream: http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/Cream-Cheese-Ice-Cream-107998. 

The steps for mixing up the ice cream mixture were the easiest part of the recipe. I simply mixed together softened cream cheese, milk, lemon juice, salt, and sugar with a hand mixer, and then I mixed the whipping cream in. Instead of using white sugar as the recipe calls for (because I didn't have enough on hand), however, I ended up using one 1/4 cup of brown sugar, and because I was concerned about the ice cream becoming brown, I used two 1/4 cups of icing sugar as well. I suppose I could have also used something like honey as a sweetener in the ice cream.

Focaccia

 Today I made focaccia, as it's a bread I've been wanting to make for awhile. When I was in Montreal, I ate what I think was focaccia at the restaurant Venti Osteria, and that's what really got me interested in making this spongy and soft Italian bread. 

I didn't have a recipe in any of my cookbooks, so I searched online for a focaccia recipe and came across quite a lovely website that showcases recipes for Italian food, including a thorough blog post all about making focaccia step by step. You can find it here if you're interested in making focaccia yourself: http://www.italianfoodforever.com/2011/09/how-to-make-focaccia-step-by-step/. 

This recipe is probably one of the fastest and most straightforward bread recipes that I can think of. The bread dough is very basic, with only flour, salt, water, yeast, and olive oil to make up the bread. Everything gets mixed in one bowl, and your rising time is more like a total 2 hours rather than  the 9-12 hours that it takes to make French bread or ciabatta. 

What initially struck me about this recipe was the amount of olive oil that goes in it. You have to include 2-3 tablespoons in the dough itself, then another two tablespoons into the bowl that the dough rises in. Then you pour more olive oil onto the dough to get into the little holes that get pressed into the dough with your fingertips. It maybe doesn't sound like a lot, but it looked like it was a lot. Don't be alarmed like I was though, if you do try the recipe; just follow what the recipe says. The olive oil soaks down into the bread and creates a lovely crispy crust, but a soft, spongy texture that you want in your focaccia bread.

Red Velvet Cupcakes

On Friday evening, my sister decided to make red velvet cupcakes, and yesterday we both made the cream cheese frosting and decorated the cupcakes. We topped them with cinnamon hearts since it's almost Valentine's Day.

I decided I'm going to let Jennifer have the fun of posting all the details about making these cupcakes, so you can check out her post here: http://jennyraggedrobin.blogspot.com/2012/02/red-velvet-cupcakes-with-cream-cheese.html.

Sweet Potato Fries

  

It seems to me that sweet potato fries are becoming a culinary trend. So many people enjoy them, and they are becoming increasingly more available in restaurants and in the frozen food section of grocery stores. Nonetheless, I hadn't actually tried sweet potato fries until this last fall. This was probably mostly due to the fact that I haven't enjoyed sweet potatoes in the past. When I did get to taste sweet potato fries, however, I found that they're really delicious and a nice change from your regular potato French fries. 

So, when I was grocery shopping with my mom this week, I requested that we buy some sweet potatoes so that I could make some homemade fries myself. I've made regular fries by frying potatoes in the deep fryer, so I basically knew the process, but I decided that I wanted to follow Michael Smith's sweet potato fries recipe.Truly, sweet potato fries are incredibly easy to make at home, and even if you don't have a deep fryer, you can still make them in a pot on the stove.

I began by peeling the sweet potatoes and cutting them into sticks, just like you would with a regular potato. I ended up cutting three potatoes, which fed four people comfortably, and we have a bit leftover too. 

Next, I  began heating the vegetable oil in the deep fryer. 

While the oil was heating, I mixed up the spice mixture. This included sea salt, cinnamon, chili powder, and brown sugar.  

Bread Pudding

  

After making French bread earlier in the week, I realized that it wasn't possible for us to finish all of it before it wouldn't be worth eating, so I decided to make bread pudding. I used a bread pudding recipe from the Earth to Table cookbook for inspiration, but I didn't have all of the ingredients that the recipe called for. This meant that I had to come up with a recipe of my own that uses ingredients I had on hand. Here's the recipe. 

Ingredients 

8 cups of French bread (you can, of course, use whatever bread you want)

1/4 cup dried cranberries

1/4 cup raisins

1/4 cup walnuts

2 apples, cubed (I used Royal Gala)

3 eggs

1/2 cup sugar

1-1/2 cups whipping cream

1/2 teaspoon nutmeg

1 teaspoon cinnamon

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1/4 cup maple syrup or to taste

Begin the recipe by preheating your oven to 350 F. 

Next, cut the French bread in to cubes. Measure the bread cubes as you go, and evenly distribute the bread in an oven dish. 

Put the dried cranberries and raisins into a bowl and pour hot water over them. Leave them a few minutes to soften. Once they're soft, drain them, and sprinkle them evenly over top of the bread cubes. 

Chop the walnuts and cube the apples, and sprinkle them over the bread as well. I used royal gala apples because that's what we had, and they worked well because they keep their shape and texture when they bake in the oven. I'm sure any other apples would be fine though.

To begin working on the egg mixture, combine the eggs and sugar in a bowl and whisk them together. Add the whipping cream, nutmeg, cinnamon, and vanilla extract to the eggs and sugar and whisk them. It'll look and spell a little bit like eggnog at this point. Once combined, pour the egg mixture over the bread. Make sure that the bread is evenly covered.