Blessings Darlings!
An early heat wave is going to be starting here tomorrow. Temperatures will be in the 90's and the humidity will be high for 5 days. Therefore, I did some preparations to help reduce my electricity use during that time.
That means that today I totally caught up on the ironing, so I won't iron at all during the heat wave (the Spawn will, since he didn't iron his work clothes. His choice). The Spawn made blueberry muffins, and pizza for dinner tonight - we won't bake desserts during the heat wave, and will grill and/or pressure cook dinners. Bread and rolls are about to go into the oven, so we won't bake those during the hot days. We don't need the loaf bread at the moment, so that will go into the freezer for a few days.
Late spring allows me to do this. The hot weather isn't unrelenting ... nor is the cold weather. A little preparation, a little care to work with, not against, nature goes a long way right now.
Frondly, Fern
Showing posts with label baking. Show all posts
Showing posts with label baking. Show all posts
Wednesday, May 29, 2013
Monday, May 7, 2012
Cool!
Blessings Darlings!
This past week - the first week of May - temperatures here were around 90 every day and the humidity starting going up, up, up. So now that a cool front has moved in and temperatures are barely 70, I'm catching up - and trying to get a head of - cooking.
Since I bake most of our breads, that means two or more loaves of bread a week plus some rolls. After breakfast this morning we were down to 4 rolls and two slices of bread left. So now I've got two new loaves of bread in the oven. Bialys will wait for another day.
I also have been working on the alchemy of changing 1.5 cubic feet of frozen bones into stock. That, too, involves the oven. Ovens, actually - the 'regular' oven for roasting the bones and then the hay box oven for simmering the soup. I'm about half way done with batches of stock, and will be continuing that this week.
Because, as you know, summer follows spring. And I won't want to turn on the oven then. I wish I could fill the freezer with more baked goods .... but I've got it so filled with sale-priced meat that there's no room. I'll have SOME more room when the bones are replaced by stock, but loaves of bread a BIG suckers.
Yeah. First world problems again. I justify it by saying it's about using everything that come into the house down to the last bit. But it still comes down to too much stuff coming into the house.
Frondly, Fern
This past week - the first week of May - temperatures here were around 90 every day and the humidity starting going up, up, up. So now that a cool front has moved in and temperatures are barely 70, I'm catching up - and trying to get a head of - cooking.
Since I bake most of our breads, that means two or more loaves of bread a week plus some rolls. After breakfast this morning we were down to 4 rolls and two slices of bread left. So now I've got two new loaves of bread in the oven. Bialys will wait for another day.
I also have been working on the alchemy of changing 1.5 cubic feet of frozen bones into stock. That, too, involves the oven. Ovens, actually - the 'regular' oven for roasting the bones and then the hay box oven for simmering the soup. I'm about half way done with batches of stock, and will be continuing that this week.
Because, as you know, summer follows spring. And I won't want to turn on the oven then. I wish I could fill the freezer with more baked goods .... but I've got it so filled with sale-priced meat that there's no room. I'll have SOME more room when the bones are replaced by stock, but loaves of bread a BIG suckers.
Yeah. First world problems again. I justify it by saying it's about using everything that come into the house down to the last bit. But it still comes down to too much stuff coming into the house.
Frondly, Fern
Sunday, May 8, 2011
Neglected
Blessings, Darlings!
It's Mother's Day. I called my Mother, but can't afford to send her anything. I don't think that the Chubby Hubby has called his mother yet. The spawn ... well. He got me nothing, didn't say Happy Mother's Day or anything. Around 11 I told him I was hurt. Around 12 I told the CH to order the Spawn out to get me a card. So now I have a card. CH didn't get me a card, or say anything, but he's overwhelmed by our finances so he's getting a pass this year.
So I'm cooking for me today. I made a cream sauce, and then Eggs Florentine for breakfast. I'm baking one of my favorite cakes right now. I'm considering forcing the guys to eat vegetarian for dinner, but might make dol sat bi bim bop for dinner.
Le Sigh.
Frondly, Fern
It's Mother's Day. I called my Mother, but can't afford to send her anything. I don't think that the Chubby Hubby has called his mother yet. The spawn ... well. He got me nothing, didn't say Happy Mother's Day or anything. Around 11 I told him I was hurt. Around 12 I told the CH to order the Spawn out to get me a card. So now I have a card. CH didn't get me a card, or say anything, but he's overwhelmed by our finances so he's getting a pass this year.
So I'm cooking for me today. I made a cream sauce, and then Eggs Florentine for breakfast. I'm baking one of my favorite cakes right now. I'm considering forcing the guys to eat vegetarian for dinner, but might make dol sat bi bim bop for dinner.
Le Sigh.
Frondly, Fern
Sunday, January 23, 2011
Busy Kitchen!
Blessings, Darlings!
I'm busy in the kitchen today, making soup and bread and probably cookies or cake.
HOWEVER - I'm changing the day I post foodie stuff to Tuesday, since everyone seems to be too busy on Mondays to read anything. Not sure what I'll post on Monday, of course.
Frondly, Fern
I'm busy in the kitchen today, making soup and bread and probably cookies or cake.
HOWEVER - I'm changing the day I post foodie stuff to Tuesday, since everyone seems to be too busy on Mondays to read anything. Not sure what I'll post on Monday, of course.
Frondly, Fern
Monday, January 3, 2011
Crescent Cookies
Blessings, Darlings!
Since I was too busy to blog during the Solstice Holiday Season I'm going to start the year blogging about cookies.
My family is pro cookie, and we bake. The Chubby Hubby's cookie specialty is a recipe he got from his mother, Crescent Christmas Cookies. I've no idea where his Mother got it from. Family? A woman's magazine? A bag of flour? I bless whatever the source was! Very rich, pleasantly sweet, pecan nutty, he makes a double batch because, while with a week of aging they become even better than when first baked, they are go good when first baked that one batch never survives the aging process!
Baking this year was complicated by the oven in the new-to-us house. The temperature control in it is not particularly accurate. I SO wish I had a digital thermometer to test it with, but I used two analog oven thermometers in it when we first moved in. Set at 350 F (and left to pre-heat for 20 minutes), one read 305 degrees, the other read 325 degrees. Either way, the oven runs low when set at 350. Set at 450, the oven thermometer team said it was far more accurate, one reading 450 one reading 445. Alas, this recipe calls for baking at 325 degrees!
So we set the oven at 350, and ended up baking them longer than the recipe called for. Rather like doing good BBQ, 'low and slow'! They turned out particularly well. I'm posting the recipe as we got it, but you might want to experiment with lower temperature/longer time baking if you try it yourself.
And, yes, you MUST do the creaming with your hands. I tried making them myself at the end of 2009, using a blender. They didn't hold their shape, baked up wrong, were miserable.
CHRISTMAS CRESCENT COOKIES
Ingredients:
1/2 pound butter 2 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/2 cup sugar 1 tablespoon water
2 cups flour, measured before sifting 1/4 teaspoon salt
1 cup chopped Pecans Powdered sugar
Cream butter with hands. Add sugar, vanilla, water, and cream them together, again with your hands. Sift flour and salt together, then stir them into the butter mixture. Add nuts and mix thoroughly.
To form the crescents, pick off a walnut-sized piece of dough, and roll it into a crescent shape. Place on baking pan, spaced about an inch apart.
Bake 20 minute in a slow (325 degree) oven. Removed when the 'points' of the crescents are lightly brown, but before the entire cookie is brown. They will be pretty delicate at this stage, place carefully on racks to cool a bit. While still warm, roll in powdered sugar.
Makes not nearly enough cookies.
Enjoy!
Frondly, Fern
Since I was too busy to blog during the Solstice Holiday Season I'm going to start the year blogging about cookies.
My family is pro cookie, and we bake. The Chubby Hubby's cookie specialty is a recipe he got from his mother, Crescent Christmas Cookies. I've no idea where his Mother got it from. Family? A woman's magazine? A bag of flour? I bless whatever the source was! Very rich, pleasantly sweet, pecan nutty, he makes a double batch because, while with a week of aging they become even better than when first baked, they are go good when first baked that one batch never survives the aging process!
Baking this year was complicated by the oven in the new-to-us house. The temperature control in it is not particularly accurate. I SO wish I had a digital thermometer to test it with, but I used two analog oven thermometers in it when we first moved in. Set at 350 F (and left to pre-heat for 20 minutes), one read 305 degrees, the other read 325 degrees. Either way, the oven runs low when set at 350. Set at 450, the oven thermometer team said it was far more accurate, one reading 450 one reading 445. Alas, this recipe calls for baking at 325 degrees!
So we set the oven at 350, and ended up baking them longer than the recipe called for. Rather like doing good BBQ, 'low and slow'! They turned out particularly well. I'm posting the recipe as we got it, but you might want to experiment with lower temperature/longer time baking if you try it yourself.
And, yes, you MUST do the creaming with your hands. I tried making them myself at the end of 2009, using a blender. They didn't hold their shape, baked up wrong, were miserable.
CHRISTMAS CRESCENT COOKIES
Ingredients:
1/2 pound butter 2 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/2 cup sugar 1 tablespoon water
2 cups flour, measured before sifting 1/4 teaspoon salt
1 cup chopped Pecans Powdered sugar
Cream butter with hands. Add sugar, vanilla, water, and cream them together, again with your hands. Sift flour and salt together, then stir them into the butter mixture. Add nuts and mix thoroughly.
To form the crescents, pick off a walnut-sized piece of dough, and roll it into a crescent shape. Place on baking pan, spaced about an inch apart.
Bake 20 minute in a slow (325 degree) oven. Removed when the 'points' of the crescents are lightly brown, but before the entire cookie is brown. They will be pretty delicate at this stage, place carefully on racks to cool a bit. While still warm, roll in powdered sugar.
Makes not nearly enough cookies.
Enjoy!
Frondly, Fern
Friday, April 16, 2010
I'm a KitchenAid Slut
Hi. My name is Fern, and I'm a KitchenAid slut.
For years I eschewed getting this tool. I kneaded all my bread by hand. I mixed my batters by hand or with cheap, small, underpowered hand mixers. I was hands on! I was ecologically minded! I avoided using electricity and tools where they weren't needed!
Being .... me .... that is, cheap .... I go to a lot of garage sales (after mapping the newspaper listings out using a map, to save gas going from one to the next). A few years ago at a garage sale near city hall .... there was a Kitchenaid standing mixer for sale. With most of the most important part - the blending paddle, the dough hook, the whisk, the pouring shield. Wish it had the meat grinder, but.... Anyway, it was $70. I NEVER spend that much at garage sales. I tried to pass it up. I even called the husband, who said I was nuts if I DID pass it up.
How good a bargain is this? A friend of my friend Jess found one for Jess, sans the pouring shield, for $100, and Jess got teary over THAT bargain.
The Kitchenaid came home with me.
But it didn't get used.
I guess I was intimidated. Again, I had spent a LOT of money. But I had a history of doing my hand made foods .... literally by hand. It was new to me. It wasn't my tradition.
Fortunately, my son didn't have my history. He took a look at it, and took a look at a few episodes of America's Test Kitchen (ATK), and started baking. Chocolate cake, of course. With chocolate frosting (but for that he used the $6 garage sale food processor, that I also use).
I kind of snuck up on the idea of actually USING the thing by watching my son use it. And by watching Alton Brown use them on Good Eats, and Christopher Kimball use them on ATK.
It was the ATK recipe for Pizza Bianca that drove me to actually start using the mixer. Not that I exactly followed the recipe (forgive me, Christopher Kimball, for I have sinned. And I sinned beautifully). I used the mixer for the pizza dough, but did the toppings for the Chicken Flatbread pizza from our favorite (and now dead) restaurant, the Pomo Grill.
It rocked. It rocked unbelievably.
Today, I have two types of bread rising, both batches started in that Kitchenaid stand blender. Mixing and kneading is done in a fraction of the time of doing it by hand, and I'm never tempted to underknead.
I've become 'easy'. I'm just a Kitchaid Slut.
Frondly, Fern
For years I eschewed getting this tool. I kneaded all my bread by hand. I mixed my batters by hand or with cheap, small, underpowered hand mixers. I was hands on! I was ecologically minded! I avoided using electricity and tools where they weren't needed!
Being .... me .... that is, cheap .... I go to a lot of garage sales (after mapping the newspaper listings out using a map, to save gas going from one to the next). A few years ago at a garage sale near city hall .... there was a Kitchenaid standing mixer for sale. With most of the most important part - the blending paddle, the dough hook, the whisk, the pouring shield. Wish it had the meat grinder, but.... Anyway, it was $70. I NEVER spend that much at garage sales. I tried to pass it up. I even called the husband, who said I was nuts if I DID pass it up.
How good a bargain is this? A friend of my friend Jess found one for Jess, sans the pouring shield, for $100, and Jess got teary over THAT bargain.
The Kitchenaid came home with me.
But it didn't get used.
I guess I was intimidated. Again, I had spent a LOT of money. But I had a history of doing my hand made foods .... literally by hand. It was new to me. It wasn't my tradition.
Fortunately, my son didn't have my history. He took a look at it, and took a look at a few episodes of America's Test Kitchen (ATK), and started baking. Chocolate cake, of course. With chocolate frosting (but for that he used the $6 garage sale food processor, that I also use).
I kind of snuck up on the idea of actually USING the thing by watching my son use it. And by watching Alton Brown use them on Good Eats, and Christopher Kimball use them on ATK.
It was the ATK recipe for Pizza Bianca that drove me to actually start using the mixer. Not that I exactly followed the recipe (forgive me, Christopher Kimball, for I have sinned. And I sinned beautifully). I used the mixer for the pizza dough, but did the toppings for the Chicken Flatbread pizza from our favorite (and now dead) restaurant, the Pomo Grill.
It rocked. It rocked unbelievably.
Today, I have two types of bread rising, both batches started in that Kitchenaid stand blender. Mixing and kneading is done in a fraction of the time of doing it by hand, and I'm never tempted to underknead.
I've become 'easy'. I'm just a Kitchaid Slut.
Frondly, Fern
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