Tiramisu Cake

The story behind this cake was that I had coffee liqueur that I was not using, and what best to use it for, but Tiramisu. I had thought about making the traditional tiramisu, but when I was looking up a recipe I found this cake recipe that had even more reviews than the traditional, plus I didn’t have to find a place that sold Lady Fingers in Ogden. This Tiramisu Layer Cake recipe can be found at Allrecipes.com by clicking here.

I used the same white cake recipe that I had made just a week before. The recipe calls for a cake mix, but I feel that’s cheating, so I made my own. I divided the batter into thirds, and added the instant coffee. A tip on instant coffee: I buy the boxes with the little packets, because those about a tablespoon. They are much cheaper than buying a bottle, and they are already pre-measured. Besides, who honestly wants to have a bunch of instant coffee granules anyway?

I baked my cakes the day before I assembled the cake. I wrapped each layer in plastic wrap to keep them moist.

The day of I put together the mascarpone cheese, sugar, and liqueur together. It was really thick, because the mascarpone was cold. I heated it in the microwave for a few seconds. DO NOT DO THIS! The liqueur curdles the mascarpone, rendering it unusable. So after ruining my $5 mascarpone cheese, I got a $1 cream cheese package and re-tried the filling recipe. I let the cream cheese warm up on it’s own before adding the rest of the ingredients, so there was no risk of anything curdling.

I then unwrapped my cake layers and started by poking the first layer with a fork all over and then spooned on the coffee and liqueur mixture on top. I spread on the filling. I did the same with the next 2 layers, except put the frosting on top at the last.

I covered the top with sifted cocoa powder and put chocolate curls along the bottom edge. It was gorgeous and yummy. I took it to a friends gathering that night and it was huge hit!
Make sure you keep it refrigerated though, if you don’t plan on eating it right away, so the whipped cream frosting doesn’t slide off.

**Also, it is now my new goal to take better pictures...these ones were awful - though the phone camera didn't help.

Cinnamon Swirl Bread

This bread was so great!

It was actually cinnamon raisin bread, but I don’t enjoy raisins in bread, so I cut them out. The recipe made 2 loaves, but I knew I wouldn’t be able to eat that much bread, so I halved the recipe. I would also recommend only making a 1/3 - 1/4 of the filling, because there was way too much for 1 loaf of bread even halved.

The recipe:
½ package of yeast
1 cup warm water
3 ¼ cup all-purpose flour
½ stick of butter
¼ cup sugar
1 egg

I put the yeast and water together and let bubble for a few minutes, before adding the rest of the ingredients. I put everything in my bread maker and pressed start. I let the dough rise for the first time in the bread machine, but that ended up taking forever, because it doesn’t get warm enough. I can’t complain though, I got it for $5 at a yard sale. The second time I put the oven on warm for a bit and then turned it off, before putting the bowl full of dough with plastic on top in the oven. In between the first and second rise though, I patted the dough into a round and then folded the bottom third up, the top third down, and the right and left sides over. Put the seams on the bottom of the bowl. I don’t really know if it matters which you do first, it seems like it wouldn’t, but I followed directions. This rise took an hour.

Filling:
¾ cup brown sugar
1 tablespoon cinnamon

I rolled the dough out into a rectangle about 12x10 inches. I put only about half the filling on, before I thought, this is freaking ton of sugar. So I probably only used between a ¼ and a 1/3 of the full recipe, which is double what I just listed above! Then I tucked in the sides before rolling up the dough and putting it into a grease loaf pan. I let this rise about 30 minutes. I brushed the top of the loaf with a beaten egg and then baked at 425˚ for 45 minutes. I ended up putting foil on top about halfway through, because it was getting really brown.

It was delicious! It makes great French toast too after it’s been a few days and it’s dried out somewhat.

Berry Tart

This was a Mother’s Day dessert for my mom. It was such a warm spring day that I didn’t want to do anything real rich or warm. I settled on this fruit tart that ended up being very light and refreshing. It would be great for a summer barbeque with cocktails.

I used Martha’s tart dough recipe, which was a mistake. Don’t use it. It sucks. It’s stick and hard to work with, and then I crumbles after it bakes. No, instead use a REAL French tart dough recipe. I got this from a co-worker when I worked at a kitchen store. She was from France and would bake delicious tarts all the time. Her dough recipe is really simple to make and I’ve never had any problems with it.

Pate Brisée (French for Tart Dough) Recipe by Aurore Williams

1 ¾ cup flour
1/3 cup sugar
pinch of salt
½ cup butter
2 eggs
1 tablespoon vanilla

In a large bowl, mix flour, sugar, and salt. Add butter and work with fingers or pastry blender. Mix in the eggs and vanilla, first with a spoon then by hand. Work the dough until smooth. Split dough in half and roll out one half into a circle big enough to fit into your tart pan. Trim edges and bake as recipe directs. Makes 2 tarts.

I normally half the recipe, because I usually don’t make 2 tarts. It’s easier enough to split in half though, and it makes such a nice dough.

Despite the disappointing crust, the tart turned out really well. I was planning on using strawberries, blueberries, and blackberries, but my frozen blackberries were a little more juicy and falling apart than I wanted. The strawberries and blueberries worked nicely though. It was very patriotic! I thought it would be something perfect for the 4th of July!

I made the dough and pre-baked it the day before Mother’s Day and I also made the custard portion of the pastry cream the day before.

Pastry Cream:

2 cups whole milk (or what I did was 1 cup milk, 1 cup cream)
½ cup sugar
1 tsp. vanilla
4 egg yolks
¼ cup cornstarch
2 tablespoons butter

I cooked the milk, sugar, and vanilla over medium heat until it came to a simmer. I then realized that I was only supposed to put half the sugar in the milk mixture and put the other half in the egg mixture, but it turned out fine anyway. After whisking the egg yolksand cornstarchI added the hot milk mixture ½ cup at a time while constantly whisking. If you don’t, you’ll end up with a scrambled egg custard. After everything was incorporated, I put it back on medium-high heat for 2 minutes until it thickened. Then I transferred it back into a bowl and added the butter. I whisked until the butter was melted and the mixture had cooled somewhat. I then put this in the fridge with plastic wrap touching it, so it wouldn’t form a skin.

On the day of I folded in a cup of whipped cream (without any sweetener) to the custard mixture before smoothing it into the tart crust. I then sliced and arranged the strawberries and blueberries on the top of the cream.

I skipped the lavender syrup all together, which is what the recipe had called for. I didn’t have any lavender, and besides, I thought that the cream and the berries themselves were sweet enough. I didn’t want to make it overly sweet.

This was definitely a big hit. It not only looked beautiful, but it tasted amazing. I wished I had used my always faithful crust though.It’s something different than the usual gelatinous fruit tarts that many people make. It’s really easy to make too. You can do most the things before, and then just assemble everything the day of the event.

White Cupcakes with Chocolate Icing

These were the best cupcakes I’ve made to date. I think the secret was using cake flour as opposed to all-purpose flour. They came out so light and fluffy, and not overly sweet.

I decided to make these cupcakes, because I had leftover chocolate frosting from Val’s cake I believe. It was store-bought and chocked with so much sugar that I was not about to go bad any time soon, but I wanted to get rid of it.

I had never made a white cake before, so this was a first. I had just found my new favorite store, Winco, and bought cake flour, so I was able to make this recipe. Cake flour doesn’t contain any rising ingredient like all-purpose flour does. It also has a very white silky texture, different from all-purpose. Between the flour itself being lighter, the fluffy egg whites that were whipped into soft speaks, and sifting all the dry ingredients 3 times, this is a very light cupcake.

The recipe I used was Heavenly White Cake recipe from Allrcecipes.com. I halved the recipe because I figured I only had enough icing for about a dozen cupcakes.

The batter itself has a very sweet smell and taste to it. I was scared at that point that they were going to be super sweet cakes, but surprisingly they weren’t at all. They were perfect! Sadly, I did forget to add the vanilla and almond extract. I didn’t realize until I had them poured into all the cups and ready for the oven. L Even without those two ingredients, they were really yummy!

Potato-Onion Tartlets

These were a recipe from Martha’s book. They are basically exactly what they sound like: little potato onion tarts. The recipe called for puff pastry for the top crust part, but I’m not a huge fan of puff pastry and it calls for much too much butter than my poor self can afford, so I ended up using just a simple savoury tart crust.

I also didn’t have any mini tart pans, so I used my muffin tin instead. I buttered the tin and then put a few onion rings on the bottom, followed by the sliced potatoes. I sprinkle salt and pepper atop the potatoes before putting the tart circle cut out on top.

I put them in the oven for about 30 minutes at 425˚.

Then I proceeded to make the balsamic vinegar syrup, which consisted of ¼ cup balsamic vinegar with a pinch of sugar. You bring this to a simmer and reduce to a syrup.

The tartlets smelled really good when they were done, but tasting them wasn’t as good. They didn’t taste bad, they were just really bland. The best part was the vinegar, because it added something other than starch. There needed some other spices or something, but I’m not very good at picking out savoury spices. I’m good at the sweet stuff. J

I also don’t have a picture of these, because didn’t look that great.

Whole Wheat Bread

My first loaf of yeasted bread that hasn’t turned out like a brick! Woot! This is the original recipe that I referenced, but I changed quite a lot. It’s still not quite what I want though. I’m going to try again and tweak it some more until I get it right.

So here is what I actually did:

1 1/8 cups warm water

2 1/2 cups whole wheat bread flour

½ cup white bread flour

1 1/2 teaspoons salt

1/3 cup honey

1 tablespoon vital wheat gluten

1 tablespoons vegetable oil

2 tablespoons ground flax seed

¼ oz active dry yeast (approx. 2 ¼ tsp.)

I put the warm water, yeast, and honey in the bread machine and let bubble for 10 minutes. Then I added the rest of the ingredients before hitting start on my bread machine.

I didn’t cook the bread in the bread machine, because last time I did that it didn’t work out so well. So after the bread had gone through both risings I put the dough in a grease loaf pan and baked it in the oven at 350˚ for about 30 minutes. Voila! I had bread! It was nice using the bread machine for the work, but it didn’t seem to work well for making the bread rise. I think next time I will do the rising myself and just knead in the bread machine.

Also, I added the flax seed instead of oil, which tasted fine right out of the oven, but the day after it was a little dry. Next time I think I will add another tablespoon of oil. If you’re having trouble finding bread flour, go to Winco! It’s an amazing store with barrels and barrels of bulk flour for cheap! You can find bread flour, pastry flour, cake flour, ground flax seed, nuts, oats, pasta, and more. It’s amazing. Go there.

Granola

I was not thrilled with this, which is why there are no pictures. I got this from this “Make-a-Mix” book I have. The mixes are good. The recipes are not, so far, are not. It’s from like ‘80s though, so really, what can I expect?

If anyone has a good granola recipe, please tell me. I have a tried a few, and none have really jumped out at me as good.

Chocolate Blackberry Ice Cream Cake

Okay, so I cheated on this one. I used a cake mix. I can’t find a good chocolate cake recipe. Not one that is as fluffy and moist as the Betty Crocker cake mixes anyway. Every time I’ve tried, I’m always disappointed. I blame the altitude. Most of the cakes I’ve tried call for too much liquid and they sink because of the high Utah altitude. I need to just make me own. For this one I cheated. I used one dark chocolate Betty Crocker cake mix, which I added the oil and eggs it called for. Instead of water though I put in coffee, which brings out the chocolate flavor more. I also added half a packet of chocolate pudding to make it even more chocolatey. I baked the cake in two 9” round cake pans.

I did make the ice cream from scratch though. J I didn’t even have a recipe for it I just had leftover cream that I didn’t know what I would use for so I put it into my little ice cream make with some milk, sugar, and vanilla. Once the ice cream started to set up somewhat I added in the blackberries and let it go for the rest of the time.

Once the cakes were cooled I wrapped them in plastic wrap and put them in the freezer overnight. The next day I pulled out the ice cream to let it thaw so I could spread it on the cake. I put the ice cream in between the two cake rounds and then wrapped in plastic wrap and put in the freezer for another hour before frosting.

I also cheated on the frosting too. I bought two cans of Betty Crocker Dark Chocolate frosting. A lesson in buying frosting the store: ALWAYS buy Betty Crocker. Duncan Hines sucks ass, and Pillsbury is not much better. That is all.

After frosting the whole cake I put it back into the freezer. This cake was super yummy!! I had never made a cake with ice cream, so I happy it turned out so good. My sister really liked it, which was good since it was her birthday cake. The only complaint I had was that I think it would have been better with store bought ice cream, because my homemade was rock when put in the cake. I think store bought ice cream would have stayed softer. Though maybe not?

St. Patrick's Day Cookies

I am very very sad to say that I did not get any pictures of these! They were adorable too! We had clovers, leprechauns, and pipes. Alas…I did not. The recipe I used is a recipe I use a lot for my cut cookies. I got it from a friend from high school. He gave homemade heart cookies for Valentine’s Day and I thought the cookies were amazing, so asked for the recipe. So via note in between classes he gave me his grandmother’s cookie recipe:

1 ½ cups sugar
¾ cup shortening (I know it’s strange it’s not butter, but I swear they are great! I’m sure they’d be even better with butter.)
½ cup buttermilk (you can also substitute 1 tablespoon vinegar and then filling to ½ cup with milk-let stand for 5 minutes. I usually do this, since I don’t normally have buttermilk in my fridge.)
2 eggs
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
½ teaspoon lemon juice
3 ¼ cup flour

Cream together shortening and sugar, before adding the eggs and buttermilk. Mix dry ingredients together, then combine with the creamed mixture, along with the lemon juice. Chill for AT LEAST 1 hour. (I find that longer works out better, because it is such a soft dough to work with.) Roll out ¼ inch think and cut into desired shapes. Bake in an oven for 8-10 minutes at 375˚.

I usually always use this recipe whenever I make cut out rolled cookies. They are a nice basic cookie that isn’t too sweet when paired with frosting. They also stay very soft, which is what I like most about them.

The Epic Zombie Cake

This was THE most epic cake I have ever made in my entire life. I made this for my boyfriend, Matt’s birthday, because he is a zombie freak. ;)

First of all, I looked online for pictures of other zombie cakes, because I had no idea where to start. I found a few pictures I liked that were not too complicated. I decided on a sheet cake for ground with a zombie head coming out from the earth.

I then went searching for good cake recipes. I thought this Black Magic Cake sounded like a winner from Allrecipes.com, but I thought it kind of went along the theme of zombies. ;) Then I searched for a red velvet cake recipe, because of course you want the head to be red when you cut into it. I chose Red Velvet Cake.

I made the sheet cake first, because I knew it would be the easiest. It sunk. The recipe just couldn’t handle the high Utah altitude. So, if I make it again I will add more flour. I even had a feeling that it might sink before I baked, because the batter was so runny. A thicker batter and I would have been okay. It worked out though, because I was going to be digging a hole for the head anyway.

Next I went on to the red velvet cakes. I wasn’t exactly sure on how I was going to bake the head, or what I was going to bake the head in. I thought about a stainless steel bowl, but I didn’t want to buy one, because I hate them. Plus, my mom mentioned that it made not cook all the way through and I didn’t want to risk it. I came up with the idea of buying a little cake round and doing layers. As I was walking around Smith’s buying the groceries though, I came across a package of mini aluminum pie pans. PERFECT! I spent $4 for a package of 6. I greased an floured them really well to made sure they didn’t stick and then made the red velvet batter. I almost used an entire bottle of red food coloring to get it be red enough. Also a weird thing about red velvet cake, you have to combine baking soda with vinegar, so they react and bubble and then fold that into the batter. I found it really interesting, since I had never made red velvet cake before. It was something new.

I poured the batter amongst five of the pans about ¾ of the way full and put them in oven. I checked them after half the time, because I didn’t want them to overcook since they were smaller than the usual cake. They didn’t sink! They didn’t stick! They turned out great!

While the little cakes were cooling, I started on the topping for the sheet cake and the filling for the head: a Mocha Mousse recipe from Martha’s book. It was basically whipping cream with sugar, chocolate, and instant coffee. The result: AMAZINGLY DELICIOUS! My mom kept eating it, until I finally had to yell at her to stop. I put about half of this on the top of the sheet cake and then covered that with chocolate cream oreo cookies that I had run through the food processor. I had dirt! I put this in the fridge.

I then started on the Swiss Meringue Butter Cream frosting (also found in Martha's book) that I was going to use for the flesh of the zombie’s head. This recipe calls for 3 sticks of butter. Yes. I said 3. I figured if there was that much fat it had to be good right? It’s a meringue butter cream, so I start by whisking egg whites and sugar over simmering water. After 3 minutes of that I took it off the heat and kept whisking until stiff peaks formed. Which, by the way, never happened. I whisked until I could whisk no more by hand and then had to borrow an electric mixer from my mom and they still didn’t get where they needed to be. So I said screw it and added the butter. It got stiff then. I only added 2 ½ sticks before I decided that it was stiff and fattening enough. I probably could have stopped at 2 though. So now I had my flesh, so I needed to start building the head.

By this time, the little red cakes were cool, so I cut them in half. I started stacking them by putting the mocha mousse in between each cake layer. I got to about three when my stack started sliding, and all the mousse was oozing out the sides. I took the stack apart and scraped off the mousse. I started again, but this time, I piped a dam of butter cream around the edges before filling with the mousse. This time it worked. Before moving the stacked cake layers over my mom dug a hole in the “dirt” sheet cake. Then she moved the layers over and I stuck 4 dowels all the way through the layers down to the pan of the sheet cake. That sucker was not going to go anywhere, which is what I needed for my trip to SLC.

So the head was in place and I was ready to color the flesh. I took out about a half cup for the brains and colored it red, and the rest I colored a grayish blue color. I piped on the flesh at first to fill in the cracks and then used a spatula to smooth it out.

Meanwhile my sister made the eyes. She came up with the brilliant idea of using blow pops covered with white chocolate and then stuck on gummy lifesavers with half a black jelly bean in the middle. They turned out super creepy, as you can tell from the photos. We stuck those into the head and piped some more frosting around them.

After the three of us, my mom, Val and I all poked at the flesh, especially the nose, and decided it was good. Val worked on the lips. I thought she did very well. I piped on the brains and added the coconut hair, which ended up falling off into the dirt as well, and then I had to cover it with more dirt. Val came up with the brilliant idea of dropping red food coloring all over to make it super bloody looking and she also added the awesome wound to the cheek.

At the very end we added all the gummy worms coming out of his mouth and head, and also the dirt. I think the end result was pretty gruesome. J Matt was ecstatic! The best part was getting all the thumbs up from Matt and his friends. I felt like a super cool girlfriend. ;)

Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Cookies

These are one of my favorite cookies to make. They’re soft and delicious. I’ve even had people who don’t like pumpkin like these cookies. It is not a Martha recipe. I actually got the recipe from Allrecipes.com. They are super simple to make too. The hardest thing was finding the pumpkin at this time of year. Apparently pumpkin is not in all stores year round? I had no idea, because I usually only make pumpkin things when pumpkin is in season, so I have no problem finding it. For some odd reason though, I have been craving them this February. I finally found a can at Reem’s grocery store (of all places), and was super excited!

I actually have a little movie of the process of baking these, because I had an art assignment due. I chose to take pictures of my sister, Val pretending to bake them for my project. Then she ate them all. J

Linzer Hearts

I found this recipe in Martha Stewart’s Baking Handbook and thought it would be perfect for Valentine’s Day.

I made these cookies with my sister for a Valentine’s Day treat. I didn’t have time to spend hours making cute Valentines, so these cookies ended up being my Valentine to everyone who had one.

They are a very elegant, heart-shaped cookie filled with raspberry preserves. The dough is basically a hazelnut shortbread. The recipe definitely does not skimp on the butter, that’s for sure.

You have to grind the hazelnuts in the food processor in order to make the dough. I ended up almost making hazelnut butter, because I pulsed them for too long, no thanks to my sticky buttons on my processor. (I have since cleaned them.) It was crazy to see the consistency of dry nuts turn into almost a smooth oily butter. I almost would like to try making some sort of nut butter now just see the transformation again.

Fortunately I ended up having two different sizes of heart shaped cookie cutters for the bottom and top parts of the cookies. You could also use the middle mini hearts for just plain shortbread cookies, but I chose to just keep adding them back to the dough and making more sandwich cookies.

They are definitely a cookie looks as good as they taste. I was not disappointed in any way by these cookies, other than they are very time consuming. Though that’s to be expected, especially in baking!

Margarita Cake

I am sad to say that I did not get a picture of this cake! It was pretty too! It was a bundt cake with a glaze and green lime zest on top.

So this cake is inspired by the actual Margarita drink. The cake itself even contains tequila and triple sec, as does the glaze. I brought this to a fiesta I was going to and it went so fast I didn’t even have a chance to have a piece, but I heard it was good! I sprinkled the top with lime zest for a pretty green color and put a little bowl of salt to be sprinkled on top each slice if you so chose.

I got this recipe from Allrecipes.com again. I changed a couple things. It was kind of a cheating recipe. It called for a cake mix and instant pudding. I used a lemon cake mix instead of an orange cake mix like it called for. I couldn’t figure out why it called for an orange cake anyway, because it is a lemon-lime drink.

Also, when I made the glaze it was REALLY runny, so I would encourage to just add the liquid a little at a time, or just add more sugar.

Blackberry Cream Cheese Pastry

I made these up too. I used the Pate Choux recipe from Martha’s book, and was not impressed. I have a better and easier recipe of my own that I would have used, but it was online, and alas, no internet at home. I got the idea for these when I worked at Macey’s in Logan. They had these cream cheese raspberry Danishes that were amazing. Every morning that I worked at 6 am I would get one. They called them Danishes, but the dough was more like a cream puff dough than a Danish dough. So that’s what I used for mine, a cream puff “dough.” I put dough in quotes because really it’s not like a dough at all. It’s flour, butter, water and eggs, but it calls for so many eggs that It’s more of a creamy mixture than a hard dough. You actually put it into a frosting bag and pipe it onto a cookie sheet. I piped out little disks and then froze them for 15 minutes, before taking them out and adding a rim to the edge of the disks and then put them back in the freezer for 15 minutes.

For the cream cheese mixture, I used Neufchatel cheese, which is basically low-fat cream cheese, but I can’t taste the difference and it happened to be what was in my fridge. Plus, it’s softer than cream cheese and I thought that would be nice for the pastries. I warmed it just a bit and added a couple tablespoons of milk and sprinkled some sugar. Just to add a tiny bit of sweetness, but I knew that the blackberries would be sweet, so it would even out the tang of the cream cheese. I used blackberries instead of raspberries because I have a bunch in my freezer. I let them thaw and then mashed them with a spoon and sprinkled probably…. 3 tablespoons of sugar to a cup, cup and a half of blackberries.

I pulled out the frozen pastry disks and put a dot of cream cheese and a spoonful of blackberries. I only did this on half, because I wasn’t sure if I wanted them to be baked with the filling or have the pastry be baked and then add the filling after. So after baking them, I filled the other half. I decided I liked the ones with the non-baked filling. They are fresher tasting, but because you put it on while they are warm, the cream cheese still melts a little. They were quite delicious. J I think I would bake the pastries a little longer next time though until they are brown and somewhat crispy. They were much too soft for my taste. All in all I thought it was a fairly good recipe to be made up, and had very little sugar.

Challah Bread

In honor of being called Jewish-looking by my mother, I decided to bake Challah bread. First of all Challah is pronounced hall-uh, or if your Gwen Stefani… Holla. (No, I do NOT like Gwen Stefani.) Challah bread is typically made for the Sabbath and/or Jewish Holidays. If you want more info click here (though it is Wikipedia, so believe what you will.)

Ahhhh yeast! Yes, it does scare me. Every time I think I’ve going to either kill it, or it’s somehow going to grow at an alarming rate and become a huge gob of dough and take over my oven and then eventually my house. A little paranoid? No…

Despite my paranoia with yeast I made Challah bread. Now, this is a lesson to those of you who don’t read through your recipes all the way before you make them. I usually do, but for some reason on this particular recipe I did not. So..alas, I ended up putting an extra egg. It was supposed to be 8 egg yolks in the dough and a whole egg to brush on top. You guessed it. I put 8 yolks and a whole egg in my dough. I don’t think it changed it too much though.

I was surprised at how fast it ended up baking though. I let it rise for an hour in an oiled bowl until it doubled in size. Then I braided it. I tried to figure out how you braid it with 6 instead of 3, but I couldn’t figure it out for life of me, and living in an Amish house with no internet I couldn’t Google it. So I ended up braiding it just normally with 3. Then the recipe said to let it rise for another hour until doubled in size. But, it doubled in size in 20 minutes. So I ended baking it a lot sooner than I anticipated. I brushed another whole egg on top and put it in the oven. This also said that it would take 50-60 minutes. It was very dark brown at 40 minutes though. I was actually really lucky that I checked on it, because otherwise I would have had a very black loaf of Challah bread. Fortunately I did check it just in time. J

The thing that sucked the most though was that it stuck to my pan horribly. Even though I greased the whole pan and supposedly it is non-stick. So I lost almost the entire bottom of my loaf, but it was still good. It makes most excellent French toast. J

Brownies

For years I have sucked at making brownies. Even when using a mix they have ended up in disaster. It was not until this last year that I found a recipe that didn’t end up in a gooey glob of a mess in the end.

Surprisingly, this is a Martha recipe! I like them because they call for chocolate instead of cocoa making them a denser brownie. Plus, it doesn’t have that flakey crust, which I’ve found a lot of people like, but I hate it. Her recipe calls for bittersweet chocolate, which usually ends up more expensive. I’ve found though that it’s just as easy and cheaper to user semi-sweet and not add as much sugar. I just use the semi-sweet chips, because they are cheap, but they also melt faster than buying a big block of chocolate.

It’s essential too to melt the chocolate with a double boiler. Yes, I know, it’s tempting to stick it in the microwave and just zap melt it. BUT I cannot tell you how many times that I’ve burned my chocolate this way. Just be patient and melt it the old fashioned way.

I also like to sprinkle my brownies with a mini-chocolate chips. It’s fun and cute.

BAGELS!

So yes, it’s been over a month since I’ve been blogging.  Not to say that I haven’t been baking though.  I just haven’t been blogging about my baking.  I am going to try and catch myself up with the recipes I’ve done.  On the plus side I am going to try to bake a lot more new things, because I am poor and can’t afford to buy them.  Like bagels! 

Yes, I made bagels.  I thought it would be a pain, but it really wasn’t.  PLUS, it made my house more humid because of the boiling water.  (My house is so dry it’s ridiculous!)  I took an online recipe from allrecipes.com, (awesome website!) and modified it.  White bagels that I made into whole-wheat bagels…of course, I know it’s not surprising.  At least this time they actually turned out good rather than my other recipes that haven’t.  Instead of 3 cups of white flour (which was actually supposed to be bread flour, but I only had all-purpose) I used 1 3/4 cups all-purpose flour, with ¾ cup of whole-wheat flour (this was all I had left L) ¼ cup of wheat bran, and a ¼ cup of wheat germ.  Surprisingly not too heavy, though I think they would have been better with more whole-wheat pastry flour, which is a bit lighter than normal wheat flour. 

One thing I thought was interesting was there was no fat in the recipe.  Is this normal?  Yes and no.  I looked up a few different recipes and some have a little and some have none.  After finishing my recipe, I think I would add a little oil or shortening to my next batch, because they were a little on the dry side.  Everything else in the recipe I followed, for the exception of making them mini bagels instead of full sized.  This recipe also said to make little balls, flatten them and make a hole in the middle with your finger.  No.  This is cheating.  You don’t make bagels this way!!  You roll out the dough in a rope shape and then twist the ends together to make a circle.  I guess if you make them the other way you wouldn’t have to worry about them coming undone.  I didn’t have this problem though.  Just make sure that when you twist the ends together that they are stuck well.

The boiling was the best part I think.  It’s also what makes a bagel, a bagel.  The boiling water is what creates that smooth chewy outside.  You only have to boil them for a minute before draining them on a paper towel and baking them.   Brush a little egg white on top to make them shinier and to stick on any toppings you would like.  I put sesame seeds on half of mine, because I don’t really like anything in my bagels, and sesame seeds were all that I had.  They puff up a little when you boil them and then a little more when you bake them, but still don’t end up much bigger than the size you make them.

I was okay with the end result.  They were a little on the heavy side as when as dry, so for next time I would use the pastry flour and add some fat to make them more moist.  I think it might also be fun to add some herbs and see how those turn out.