52 Weeks of Baking week 5 (3 for me)

This is definitely a long write up of my baking session WOW I hope I don’t loose you in the details.
In my house Thursday is becoming “Baking day”. But It has taken a while for me to get this all written up because I was so tired after all of it.

This week I had to make 10 dozen cookies for a swim-meet. My daughter is a swimmer on a swim team and they are hosting their spring meet this weekend. Yea I did volunteer. In the end I got the most wonderful thank you’s both by email and in person.

So I chose to make 3 basic cookies an oatmeal raisin, a Snickerdoodle, and of course Chocolate Chip.

I decided to use different recipes than I have in the past. And I decided I needed to double each of them

For the Oatmeal raisin and the Sinckerdoodles I enlisted my fun cookbook that recipe from "Vegan Cookies Invade Your Cookie Jar", I am not vegan but I was introduced to some of these cookies at Christmas time. I received a box of cookies at Christmas from a good friend who is vegan and they were great I wrote about it here. The two recipes are “City Girl Sinckerdoodles” on page 46 and Oatmeal Raisin on Page 75

For the Chocolate Chip I decided to go high tech I have an iPod touch and it goes everywhere with me. A good friend of mine let me know that one of my favorite cook book now had an app. Mark Bittman’s How to cook everything. It has the whole book. I have the book it is really big.

So I paid the $1.99 and checked it out. It makes the book more searchable by ingredient and for me vegetarian. So I decided I should test it out. I chose the Classic Chocolate cookies recipe.

I did some math and came up with 7 dozen from single batches of each and that is not accounting for dropped, burned and taste-tested cookies and other manners of reducing donation count.

OK so I had some other thing I needed to do on Thursday besides bake cookies and so I shopped for the extras I needed and planned out the attack. I decided that I would work by oven temp starting with the low temp and working up and then by simplicity.

First up were the oatmeal cookies, I loved the caramel color that the dough was before adding oatmeal and raisins. These ended up a with darker undertones visually that I am used to with Oatmeal cookies. I hoped then for some caramel undertone which they sadly lacked. Don’t get me wrong they were good.

Next up was the City Girl Snickerdoodles, as I double this recipe I miscalculated how much margarine I had in the house and had to replace with some vegan shortening and a little butter.

I was so surprised at how fluffy the dough was. The making the balls was a lot easier when I put a couple table spoons of the Cinnamon and sugar mix on a small plate and rolled the balls that way. Holly loved these cookies. I will be making them again for her. Unfortunately I burned one sheet full. It was sad as I had hoped to keep more than one for the family.

Lastly at the end of the day was the Chocolate Chip cookies. So very traditional. It it is in the print version as well as the iPhone/iPod Touch app.

This is a flat chewy chocolate cookie recipe. Not a cake style one. Alton brown has a long segment on the differences in chocolate chip cookies on his good eats show. Every one in my house loved them.

I was so busy making the cookies (180 in the end that proved my insanity this week) That I didn’t take as many pictures as I would have liked.

This is my HUGE box of cookies. 10 1/2 Dozen! What a day of baking!

52 Weeks of Baking weeks 3&4 (or 1 and 2 for me)

I, Vicki, have joined swap-bot and in there there is a challenge for 52 weeks of baking. As many of my loyal readers may know I have a love for making cookies. Well, I like other baking as well and I will try to make other things.

I Have decided that once my partners rate me (I send to at this point 2) I will post here what I got well the rating from the last two weeks are in.

The challenge is this (I am quoting from the swap coordinator RedRubyOnFire, who has a blog on blogger too)

“If you like me, find baking therapeutic, calming and satisfying join me on this challenge - 52 Weeks of Baking!
What we will swap - 1) A little paragraph about the day of the baking and the experience gained that day. 2) A photo of the result 3) A link to the recipe if found on line or state where it is found, and a review of it - eg: if it's good or not, or if you made some modification
All the above is only for the baking you did within the swap dates (20th - 27th April) and not those you have done previously. The challenge is to bake once a week.
What you can bake - anything!”


So this is what I have done:

April 13-20th : Peanut Butter Chocolate Pillows

I chose as my first is a recipe from "Vegan Cookies Invade Your Cookie Jar", Peanut Butter Chocolate Pillows.

I am not vegan but I was introduced to some of these cookies at christmas time. I received a box of cookies at christmas from a good friend who is vegan and they were great I wrote about it here.  I am challenging myself to make as many of the recipes out of it. I chose one of my favorites from the box I received.
As my readers will note this is not the first time I have cooked from this book. And this time I was really surprised at the ease of this recipe. The last recipe I made from this book involved reducing some pureed pumpkin and this was “mix and roll”.  See Here is me making them.

What I may do differently next time is reduce the amount of oil a little as it is quite oily as you can see from the sheen of my hands. I was surprised that they flattened out so much. My taste testers all liked them. I found them very sweet.  I don't know how to change that other than possibly buying unsweetened peanut butter or making my own. I suspect it would only slightly reduce the sweetness.

April 20th-27th Banana Bread

I was exited Last Thursday when I got out of bed. I was going to make Banana bread. I have a nice typed out recipe card that I got years ago from the assistant to my dentist and the mother of a kid I worked with. The bananas were at the point where the kids generally wont eat them and they are perfect for bread.

I hopped down stairs and began to get things together, but I could not find the recipe card. I hadn’t used it since February but it was not in any of the usual places. I saw 2 bananas were riper than I thought so I felt I was at a do or die point. So I went to the cook book shelves (yes I have a lot of cook books) Looked at many but in the end I went for my Better homes and garden cook book. I found a recipe and after reading it through decided I would adapt it. I began to get the ingredients together and grabbed the 2 very ripe bananas only to discover that they were the only 2 Bananas in the house the children had eaten the rest for breakfast.

As I had measured the flour and cracked the eggs I decided to adapt the recipe further by filling out the 1 ½ cups of bananas with some apple sauce - unsweetened simple apple sauce.

Finally I got all the ingredients mixed.

At this point I realized the oven was not on. I had set the timer for 3 hours and 50 minutes instead, ah these modern ovens with all the buttons.

So on went the oven. About 5 minutes later I started to small burning. Now this was a problem earlier in the week when my husband was making a quiche. He said the exposed crust was burning but now I know that something was spilled in the back of the oven. (I'll spare you a picture of that)

Finally about an hour after I had started to make the quick bread I put it in the greased pan and put it in the oven.

I then started this took a shower and started to clean up my mess.

At 45 minutes in I put foil on the top to prevent over browning as the book suggested. And then back in for another 15 minutes. That is all it took! The skewer came out clean. (I always use a wooden 6 inch kebab skewer instead of a tooth pick)



Here is my recipe adapted from Better Homes and Gardens New Cookbook limited Edition (2005). Page 119. (the Pink for Breast cancer edition)

Dry:
1 cup all purpose flour
1 cup whole wheat flour (book calls for 2 cups all purpose flour but I like to use as much Whole wheat flour as I can)
1 ½ teaspoon baking powder
½ teaspoon baking soda
½ teaspoon cinnemon
¼ teaspoon salt
¼ nutmeg (OK I never measure nutmeg any more I have whole nut megs that I grate using a micro-plane grater and just guess)

Wet:
1 ½ cups mashed bannanas and apple sauce
½ cup canola oil
1 cup sugar
2 eggs

Last:
¾ cup chocolate chips (not in the book but I always put chocolate in my banana bread)

(Book calls for nuts and a streusel type topping neither of which appeal to me. So I didn’t do them)

Preaheat oven to 350
Grease or oil a large Bread pan (book says 9X5X3) I am not sure the size of mine
Combine Dry ingreadents in a bowl and set aside
Combine wet in mixer bowl ans beat until well combinded
Add half of dry and stir until wet add remained and stir until mixed.
Stir in chocolate chips

Put in greased pan and in to oven Bake for 45-60 minutes until wooden tooth pick comes out clean and is golden brown If necessary cover with foil for the last fifteen minutes to prevent over browning (I did this it was amazing I have had trouble with over browned tops and underdone insides It didn’t happen this time!).

So you ask how it tastes? I liked it there was a nuttiness from the whole wheat flour and it was not too sweet even with the full cup of sugar, fruit, and chocolate chips.  Griffin said it was so-so, I think he could tell the recipe change. Bill liked it and ate about half the loaf. Holly never the fan of baked good skipped out on it.

Now to plan for next weeks baking.

Long time gone and Its orange

I know that I have been gone from here for over a month. I did cook and will try to make up some posts in the next week.

I want to tell you about the orange day.

Tuesday I cooked in orange.

I had two cooking experiments to do today one was butternut squash gnocchi and the other was “Sell Your Soul Pumpkin Cookies” from “Vegan Cookies Invade your Cookie Jar”.

Both seemed like huge undertakings. I was making the gnocchi from scratch, something I have only done once before with regular potato gnocchi. I was a little nervous, probably due to the fact that in the two recipes I was looking at both referred to ability to make gnocchi as if it was some mystical power.

Well I read the two recipes and decided to use the one I found on Too Many Chefs. The article mentions that she has no real idea how much flour she used and called for 1 butternut squash. The other called for 1 butternut squash that was about 1 ½ pounds. I had 2 butternut squash and was planning on using the smaller on that weighed closer to 2 pounds. So the vaguer recipe seemed the better fit to my situation.

A comment (and in the directions to the recipe I saw at Gourmet Sleuth) mentioned that one should let the freshly cooked squash sit in a sieve overnight in a bowl to let it give off some of it’s liquid. Not something I wanted to do last night but cooking the squash in the morning and letting it sit for about 4 hours was what I could manage. It gave off very little liquid in that time. So I’m not sure that would have been a benefit for me with this squash.

As always, cutting the butternut squash was hard. I ended up jamming the vegetable cleaver in to the cut I had made and pounding the works on the cutting board until it split. The result was not a pretty cut but it didn’t need to be presentable so it was not a problem. I used vegetable cooking spray to coat it for roasting, easier than trying to brush some on. (Word to the wise, don’t use baking spray that has flour in it for this application.)

Roasting the squash in the oven gave off the best aroma. The result was wonderful. I grabbed the end just under the shell/rind/skin and it lifted off with ease leaving only the golden soft sweet smelling flesh. I was easily able to scoop up the tender squash and put it in my microwave steamer basket to use as a sieve. I let it cool this way for 4 hours.

4 hours later it was time to also do the most complicated step of the cookies: reducing a cup of canned pumpkin to a half cup of pumpkin. So I put the pumpkin in a sauce pan and the eggs for the gnocchi in the bowl of my stand mixer. Taking some knowledge that I picked up from Alton Brown on one of his many “Good Eats” shows, I cracked the eggs on a plate and I mixed the eggs and squash using the whisk style beater. I slowly added the flour until it was very sticky and then slowly removed the beater while it was still on so that I didn’t have to scrape it and slow enough not to make a big mess.

Every so often I stirred and checked on the pumpkin. It said it could take an hour to reduce and then it would have to cool. With all this cooking of orange vegetables for lengthy times I was beginning to think I had a theme going and might be a bit crazy.

As I added and added flour until I had a sticky dough. Nothing went wrong with pumpkin no browning no burning and it did indeed reduce down like it said. I also ended up with a large amount of beautiful gnocchi dough.

As the pumpkin cooled I rolled and cut the gnocchi dough. I made the “snakes” of dough about a thumb thickness and cut them into 2 ½ finger width pieces.

Boiled them until they floated and returned them to the rinsed clean vegetable dish with strainer that I had cooled the squash in earlier. The kids could hardly wait and attacked them with forks and pronounced them good.

We had dinner with them in a garlic and roasted tomato jarred sauce and grated parmesan. Very yummy. I made so many that some needed to be frozen (“some” equals 119) I put the cooked gnocchi on sheets of waxed paper and left to dry for an hour (just to get the excess water off before they go in the freezer)
*

While they were drying I made the cookies. I’d never made vegan cookies before, at least not specifically. These turned out to be very easy after the pumpkin was reduced and cooled. It was, in the end, put everything in the mixer and blend it all together.

I put them in the oven and they were beautiful

I never took a picture of them finished. And by the time I realized that, we had eaten them all.

Some time simple and easy is perfect

I have been under the weather for the last few days. This has meant I haven’t been up to cooking much or thinking to hard about food. It also means I got to the end of my planned menu and did not make a new menu or shopping list.

So here we got to tonight and a plan needed to happen. We had plenty of leftovers. We could of had some of that. But the kids have not been pleased with what is left.

I surveyed our fridge and cupboards. Protein in the house was turkey bacon a variety of beans and eggs. Having had plenty beans and it being Meatless Monday Eggs won.
We had a half cup or so of cheese so I thought either cheesy scrabbled eggs or a cheese omelet.

Veggies We actually had a rather large bag of green beans in the crisper. They were in great shape so there is our veggies.

We don’t have enough potatoes for a full dinner and I wanted to round out the meal the bread in the house is a wonderful whole grain and the kids don’t like it much too seedy for them. In the cupboard was several boxes and bags of pasta none of which is enough for a meal but together they work.

So we had a simple dinner of cheesy scrambled eggs, green beans and buttered pasta.

Every one was so pleased that a picture could not be taken.

So here is to really keeping it simple.

Dinner on a Saturday Night - Winter Vegetable Chili

We haven’t made this in some time, but it has been a favorite vegetarian meal of ours. It’s just a bit time and effort-consuming to make and the kids usually aren’t that thrilled with it. But to heck with the kids, we’re making it this weekend.

We found the recipe on a cooking website more than a decade ago, but as far as we can tell, the website is now defunct. Fortunately, we saved it to a file on our local computer. In fact, I’d recommend that to anybody who finds good information online. You can’t expect to retain access to it in the future, even if it’s a major corporate site. Things change too fast and are outside your control. So, copy copy copy…

Winter Vegetable Chili

4 tsp olive oil
1 medium-size butternut squash (1 3/4 pounds), peeled and cut into 3/4-inch cubes
2 medium-size carrots, diced
1 medium-size onion, diced
3 T chili powder
1 can plum tomatoes (28-ounce)
1 can chopped mild green chiles (4-ounce)
1 c vegetable broth
1/4 tsp salt
2 can black beans, rinsed and drained (15- to 19-ounce)
1/4 c chopped fresh cilantro
4 T non-fat sour cream (optional)

In 5-quart Dutch oven over medium-high heat, heat 2 teaspoons olive oil. Add butternut squash and cook, stirring occasionally, until golden; remove.

In same Dutch oven heat 2 more teaspoons olive oil; cook carrots and onion until well browned. Stir in chili powder; cook 1 minute, stirring.

Add tomatoes with their liquid, chiles with their liquid, vegetable broth, and salt; over high heat, heat to boiling. Reduce heat to low; cover and simmer 30 minutes, stirring occasionally with spoon to break up tomatoes.

Stir in black beans and butternut squash; over high heat, heat to boiling. Reduce heat to low; cover and simmer 15 minutes or until squash is tender and chili thickens. Stir in cilantro. Serve with sour cream if you like.



Butternut squash is really tasty and cooks up very well, but it is a royal pain in the ass to peel and cut up. I have a large vegetable cleaver (looks like a meat cleaver, but intended for veggies). It’s got a nice and heavy blade, but I still think I need to get a wooden mallet to pound it through sometimes.

Lunch

Bill and Holly returned home in time for lunch. Since they has spent the morning at our local grocery store Bill picked up some stuff we needed to make dinner and some chicken for lunch.  We had in the pantry a chicken helper. Holly has decided that will eat chicken, eggs, dairy, and ham but no other meat product right now. I am am limiting myself to eggs and dairy. Bill and the kids had the chicken helper for Lunch it looked pretty good but I couldn’t bring myself to eat it.

So, I needed to fend for myself. Lunch on weekends is always a complicated question. Given a full kitchen to eat from there is too much choice. Since the noodles that the rest of the family was eating looked good the idea of noodles sounded good. I saw the flat of ramen we have and thought I know the cheap college dinner I used to make back then. 

It went like this:
I package of ramen
½-1 cup frozen vegetables
1 egg beaten

Put ramen and vegetables in a pan of water heat on stove for 5 minutes on high. Stir. Drain off some of the water to soup consistency you want add beaten egg while stirring. Add ramen seasoning to taste.


But today it didn’t happen that way. Once I got the water noodles and ramen cooking I realized that I had eaten 2 eggs today and thought that I really didn’t want to have more.  But  I felt that I wanted a little protein in my soup.  I opened the fridge. There in the meat drawer were two Smart Dogs. We had used the rest of the pack earlier this week for a veggie beanie weenies. I decided to substitute them in.  The package gave the instruction of after bring the water to a boil turn it off and place the dog in for 2 minutes. So I drained down the water seasoned it brought it back up to boiling turned it off and put the cut up pieces of the Smart dog into the mix set the timer for 2 minutes.

 While I waited I made my tea. Yes, more tea!

It now seems I need to write that tea post now.

Breakfast

I have never been a traditional breakfast eater. My favorite breakfast has been a microwaved “baked” potato with some cheese. When my family got a microwave in the 1980s I discovered this and I would make one while packing my lunch and eat it on the bus to school Yes I was breaking a big rule. It was great in the cooler months. It kept me warm until I was ready to eat it. Sometime I wonder if I would have made two if I lived in a cold climate like I do now back then.

So here’s a bit about what we did for breakfast this morning.

Bill and Holly had to go to the local store to sell Pizza Hut coupon books for her swim team so they left a bit early.  Bill had a day old fry cake. Holly had nothing. She has never been a fan of breakfast. She would prefer to wait until 10:00 before eating this has been he way since she was a baby. She would sleep nurse before 6am and then not again until after 10am.

So this is what I had.


2 boiled eggs, a tangelo, a small baked potato with cheese and a mug of tea.
Not pictured was the glass of OJ. I’m fighting a cold so I wanted to up the ante on the vitamin C.

Griffin slept but when he got up this is what he wanted.


Day old frosted fry-cake, apple, tangelo, and a tube of blueberry yogurt.
Once he had eaten some of every thing he got a glass of chocolate milk.
I know many of you are checking you blood sugar and brushing your teeth having read and seen that. Griffin needs extra calories. His Chocolate milk is whole milk with Carnation Instant Breakfast. The amount of calories in a fry-cake for it’s size is tremendous so I indulge him. In all the meal for him represented 820 calories give or take a few.

So that is our habits for breakfast on weekends.

Week days well has much less to be desired. Griffin is a toaster waffle boy complete with syrup (he has a snack at school where he takes a package of muffins and some fruit snacks). Holly might have a glass of something to drink and I am yogurt and tea. I am not sure Bill eats unless he has cereal at work.

Ah well Breakfast is the forgotten meal so much of the time.