Crackers are pretty exciting to me! You can get them in boxes and they are OK, but there is something about how they are a factory-made kind of thing that makes me want to make remarkable crackers by hand. Just kind of saying 'hey look I can make stunning crackers I am as good as a machine'.
Anyways, I made my first batch of crackers today after reading up a couple recipes. Predictably, I added rye flour and buttermilk to the mix because I am all crazy for rye and buttermilk. Basically, you want to cut some flour with butter shortening as if for pie, then mix it with enough water/milk to make a dough. Also, you want some baking powder in there too to puff it up.Mix your dry stuff, set your butter to "Coarse Meal", turn said meal onto a clean counter, sprinkle the buttermilk over top, and toss together until you've got a dough. Lightly flour your counter and roll out the dough into a big rectangle (1/8 inch thick or less), and trim the edges. Cut crackers, prick with fork a bunch of times, and bake at 350ºF for 7-10 minutes.
I made two batches, being the first batch and the 'scrap trimming' batch. The first ones stayed mostly flat and have a nice crumbly texture but didn't puff up much, the second ones got worked a little harder as they were rolled and re-rolled, and they puffed up a couple large pockets. I'm not sure exactly how done I want these to be. One thing with rye flour is that it cooks much darker than wheat, in that where wheat would be golden-brown, rye looks burnt-brown. Some of my crackers are still pale, some of them are dark and crisp, and I'm not sure which I like better. Warm, I'm loving the paler, softer ones with goat cheese and shaved smoked brisket, though the crispy fellows will probably keep better.
Will certainly make more crackers later, these are pretty simple!
Wednesday, May 19, 2010
Monday, April 26, 2010
Peanut Butter Chocolate Cookies
WHAM BAM HEY HO LOOK IT'S MORE COOKIES
TAKE: 1/2 cup butter, 1/4 cup smooth peanut butter, 1/4 cup chunky peanut butter, CREAM TOGETHER on high in a mixing bowl.
ADD: 1/2 cup white sugar, 1/2 cup packed brown sugar, BEAT until combined
BEAT IN: 1 egg, dash vanilla, 2 dashes baking powder.
---PARTITION BATTER IN HALF---
--FIRST HALF
INCORPORATE: 1/2 cup flour, 1/2 cup chocolate chips
MIX, SET ASIDE
--SECOND HALF
INCORPORATE: 1/2 cup cocoa powder, 1/2 cup flour
MIX, SET ASIDE
ROLL OUT the chocolate dough (should be stiff) on parchment paper, to 1/6 inch thick. DUMP the chocolate chip dough on the chocolate dough, and spread it around. USING THE PARCHMENT PAPER AS AN AID, ROLL UP both dough together. Form the resulting log into a ball, as you would to shape a loaf of bread, by pulling it down and pinching it together in the back. REPEAT this motion a few times, until you've got some nice marbling happening.
PLACE neat little balls of dough onto parchment which is itself on a baking pan, then bake at 350ºF for seven minutes if you flattened the cookies, nine minutes if you left them as balls.
TAKE: 1/2 cup butter, 1/4 cup smooth peanut butter, 1/4 cup chunky peanut butter, CREAM TOGETHER on high in a mixing bowl.
ADD: 1/2 cup white sugar, 1/2 cup packed brown sugar, BEAT until combined
BEAT IN: 1 egg, dash vanilla, 2 dashes baking powder.
---PARTITION BATTER IN HALF---
--FIRST HALF
INCORPORATE: 1/2 cup flour, 1/2 cup chocolate chips
MIX, SET ASIDE
--SECOND HALF
INCORPORATE: 1/2 cup cocoa powder, 1/2 cup flour
MIX, SET ASIDE
ROLL OUT the chocolate dough (should be stiff) on parchment paper, to 1/6 inch thick. DUMP the chocolate chip dough on the chocolate dough, and spread it around. USING THE PARCHMENT PAPER AS AN AID, ROLL UP both dough together. Form the resulting log into a ball, as you would to shape a loaf of bread, by pulling it down and pinching it together in the back. REPEAT this motion a few times, until you've got some nice marbling happening.
PLACE neat little balls of dough onto parchment which is itself on a baking pan, then bake at 350ºF for seven minutes if you flattened the cookies, nine minutes if you left them as balls.
Monday, March 29, 2010
Mail-Box Cookies
Things need to have names. I can't just call everything utilitarianly descriptively 'oatmeal chocolate chocolate cookies w/buttermilk and coffee'. In this high-paced world of aggressive market branding, I need to name things with catchy, memorable, distinctive names, lest I be swept up in the latest wave of Pepsi-Chip Super Sweet Biscuit Snacks or something.
So, since these cookies are designed for optimal mailability (spell check has not called me on that, I can not believe mailability is a word!), they are called mail-box cookies for now. Maybe I will think of something better later, I am not totally pleased with that name, but moving on, recipe time:
This recipe is just a modification of the recipe off the bag of oats, but I have made it better by killing the raisins and adding exciting things like chocolate and chocolate chips and coffee. I discovered the outsides made nice-ish crispy shells that kept the insides soft for a notably long period of time, hence my desire to mail them to people.
In bowl the first, cream your butter and sugar together with beaters at medium-high, then add the rest of the wet stuff and beat until creamy.
In bowl the second, mix all the dry stuff.
In bowl the third, combine bowls the first and second and mix until combined (bowl the third should be a symbolic pointer to either bowl the first or bowl the second).
Form into balls the size of the balls inside of golf balls, put on a cookie sheet w/parchment paper, and bake at 350ºF for twelve to fifteen minutes, until they firm up.
The differences between this and the recipe on the bag that I based this on are that I scrapped raisins, cinnamon, white sugar, and most of the flour, increased the brown sugar, added cocoa, chocolate chips, coffee, and buttermilk. As well, I made the cookies larger and formed them into balls so that the insides would hopefully stay soft as they travelled in the postal system.
Essentially, they are either buttery chocolate cut stuffed with oats, or oats cut with buttery chocolate.
If you are lucky, maybe these will show up in your mail box.
So, since these cookies are designed for optimal mailability (spell check has not called me on that, I can not believe mailability is a word!), they are called mail-box cookies for now. Maybe I will think of something better later, I am not totally pleased with that name, but moving on, recipe time:
This recipe is just a modification of the recipe off the bag of oats, but I have made it better by killing the raisins and adding exciting things like chocolate and chocolate chips and coffee. I discovered the outsides made nice-ish crispy shells that kept the insides soft for a notably long period of time, hence my desire to mail them to people.
In bowl the first, cream your butter and sugar together with beaters at medium-high, then add the rest of the wet stuff and beat until creamy.
In bowl the second, mix all the dry stuff.
In bowl the third, combine bowls the first and second and mix until combined (bowl the third should be a symbolic pointer to either bowl the first or bowl the second).
Form into balls the size of the balls inside of golf balls, put on a cookie sheet w/parchment paper, and bake at 350ºF for twelve to fifteen minutes, until they firm up.
The differences between this and the recipe on the bag that I based this on are that I scrapped raisins, cinnamon, white sugar, and most of the flour, increased the brown sugar, added cocoa, chocolate chips, coffee, and buttermilk. As well, I made the cookies larger and formed them into balls so that the insides would hopefully stay soft as they travelled in the postal system.
Essentially, they are either buttery chocolate cut stuffed with oats, or oats cut with buttery chocolate.
If you are lucky, maybe these will show up in your mail box.
Sunday, March 21, 2010
Buttermilk Brownies
I love brownies and I love buttermilk, so I thought I'd try and combine the two. Also I am hungry and wanting brownies and no cafes are open past 8:00 PM in this nutty little town.
Anyways, here's the first take:
OK go go go MELT the BUTTER in a pot over medium-low heat. When melted, add the COCOA POWDER, mix well, remove from heat. Add SUGAR, mix, add COFFEE and BUTTERMILK, mix, add EGG (sans shell), mix just until combined. That reads a bit like one of those old-style text based adventure games, doesn't it? Weird. Combine the flour and baking powder in a big ol' bowl, add wet ingredients plus chocolate chips, mix just until combined (but do make sure you haven't left any flour clumps in there, those are unpleasant.
Portion batter into a greased muffin tin, bake at 350ºF for fifteen minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean when stuck in the middle of the biggest of those suckers.
You could go ahead and use a brownie pan or something, but then you've got to cut them and things, whereas a muffin tin gives you delicious, good-to-go little servings.
Post-analysis: These are a little cakey. There must have been too much fluid in the batter, and there wasn't enough chocolateyness too them. Taste pretty nice, but they are not what I was going for.
Not terribly sweet, which I like (and mom likes, apparently), and you can't really pick up on the buttermilk flavour too much. I think the simplest thing might just be to stick with cream-cheese if I want to the cultured dairy flavour in brownies, because buttermilk brings too much fluid to the stage.
I may try a brownie recipe with strained yogurt later.
Anyways, here's the first take:
OK go go go MELT the BUTTER in a pot over medium-low heat. When melted, add the COCOA POWDER, mix well, remove from heat. Add SUGAR, mix, add COFFEE and BUTTERMILK, mix, add EGG (sans shell), mix just until combined. That reads a bit like one of those old-style text based adventure games, doesn't it? Weird. Combine the flour and baking powder in a big ol' bowl, add wet ingredients plus chocolate chips, mix just until combined (but do make sure you haven't left any flour clumps in there, those are unpleasant.
Portion batter into a greased muffin tin, bake at 350ºF for fifteen minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean when stuck in the middle of the biggest of those suckers.
You could go ahead and use a brownie pan or something, but then you've got to cut them and things, whereas a muffin tin gives you delicious, good-to-go little servings.
Post-analysis: These are a little cakey. There must have been too much fluid in the batter, and there wasn't enough chocolateyness too them. Taste pretty nice, but they are not what I was going for.
Not terribly sweet, which I like (and mom likes, apparently), and you can't really pick up on the buttermilk flavour too much. I think the simplest thing might just be to stick with cream-cheese if I want to the cultured dairy flavour in brownies, because buttermilk brings too much fluid to the stage.
I may try a brownie recipe with strained yogurt later.
Friday, February 5, 2010
Pita Bread Photos
Don't think I ever posted pictures of pitas in the oven before, but they are one of the more interesting things I've baked. They swell up like balloons with steam and look ridiculous!
Look at that ridiculous one in the back! He is like, standing on his tippy-toes or something!
Look at that ridiculous one in the back! He is like, standing on his tippy-toes or something!
On Updates:
So bi-daily was a nice idea but I found myself scrambling or dredging through the kitchen sometimes when I didn't want to be. I would like to have a regular schedule, and when possible I will endeavour to do such, but I think a much more useful meter will be to set out some targets and try to get those done within the month.
To that end, my immediate goals are makowiec, hot cross buns, and pizza pops. For makowiec, I'd like to do a bunch of reading and do a write-up with sources and references and what I changed and why. Hot cross buns I will try a few different things with, like icing cross versus pastry cross or yeasted dough versus baking powder. The hot cross idea that sounds the best in my head right now is just making little brioche rolls and putting a sweet pastry cross with a hint of almond on top. Man I am looking forwards to that.
Also, pizza pops! The samosa dough I just used should work fairly well for that. It'll definitely take some work to perfect the filling, though, and I think I'd let the yeast get up to speed a bit more and let them rise a bit before baking so we get a lighter, pizza-ier dough pocket.
Also I'd like to make some 'healthier' (not full of butter) breakfast muffins, but I so completely non-stoked for baking muffins without butter that that is definitely lowest priority in my mind right now.
That's mostly what I hope to get up to before march, and I think it's very doable. I'm aiming to get those things done well and have some simple updates like 'pastry scraps:' or 'baked in buttery pastry in a ramekin'. Ten posts in February will be my minimum goal, assuming I don't leave town for a week again!
To that end, my immediate goals are makowiec, hot cross buns, and pizza pops. For makowiec, I'd like to do a bunch of reading and do a write-up with sources and references and what I changed and why. Hot cross buns I will try a few different things with, like icing cross versus pastry cross or yeasted dough versus baking powder. The hot cross idea that sounds the best in my head right now is just making little brioche rolls and putting a sweet pastry cross with a hint of almond on top. Man I am looking forwards to that.
Also, pizza pops! The samosa dough I just used should work fairly well for that. It'll definitely take some work to perfect the filling, though, and I think I'd let the yeast get up to speed a bit more and let them rise a bit before baking so we get a lighter, pizza-ier dough pocket.
Also I'd like to make some 'healthier' (not full of butter) breakfast muffins, but I so completely non-stoked for baking muffins without butter that that is definitely lowest priority in my mind right now.
That's mostly what I hope to get up to before march, and I think it's very doable. I'm aiming to get those things done well and have some simple updates like 'pastry scraps:' or 'baked in buttery pastry in a ramekin'. Ten posts in February will be my minimum goal, assuming I don't leave town for a week again!
Wednesday, February 3, 2010
Samosas!
We are kind of living an exercise in frugality right now, so the question of the day was how to feed two people with the one chicken breast left in the freezer. The answer: samosas! These are essentially dough packets, stuffed with a fairly dry potato & chicken curry. None of the samosa recipes I referenced called for either eggs or yeast in the dough, but I love the yeasty taste in dough and I thought an egg would give us a richer pastry, so that's what I did. Samosas, as I interpret them, are just some sort of curry dish stuffed in some sort of pastry, and this is what I came up with.
Dough:OK, proof the yeast in the warm water with the sugar in some sort of proofing vessel (like a bowl!). When it's floated up from the deeps, add 1/2 cup of the flour, mix well, cover, and set aside for an hour in a not-cold place. When that's done, it should be bubbly and alive, so add the oil and egg and mix well. Add a cup of the flour, mix until it forms a raggedy messy mass, then work in the rest of the flour until you've got a nice feeling dough. Knead well for at least ten minutes, because you do want this dough to be stretchy, strong, and workable. Form it into a ball, and let it rest & rise while you fix the fillings.
Filling:Cut the potatoes into 1/4 inch cubes and parboil them for five minutes. Put the oil in your cooking pan, add the mustard and heat it up. When the mustard seeds are crackling and popping, it's ready for the garlic and ginger, which should be minced together, and, if you have it, mashed up in a mortar and pestle. Fry the garlic and ginger for about thirty seconds, then add the garam masala and chili flakes. Toss in the chicken and onions, and when the chicken looks cooked on the outside, through in the chopped carrot and potatoes. Fry a little longer, then add the stock and let cook uncovered. Once the stock has all cooked away, it's ready to go! Let this stuff cool while you prep the dough.
Defleat then divide the dough into six equal portions. Form each piece into a ball and roll out into a big circle, about an eighth of an inch thick. Keep the rolled circles covered to prevent them from drying out, as this makes them more difficult to handle. When they're all rolled, Cut them in half, place stuffing on half of each half, leaving a border and fold over, stretching the top flap as necessary to fit over the filling. For those of you in Waterloo, this makes them in the style you get at Farah's foods. I have an certain fondness for those ones because of all the times I've wandered from the MC to Farah's at 4:00AM looking for matlab fuel. Diagram (grey is filling, fold from left over right):
Bake in a greased pan or just on parchment paper at 350F for 20-25 minutes, until the pastry is cooked.
I did two sizes to see how they'd go. I ate three of the tiny ones for lunch, mum had two. The bigger ones might be good for a breakfast or lunch on their own. I'm having one of the big ones for breakfast tomorrow, and the other big one is in the freezer, and mom will eat it for lunch on Saturday. Part of this experiment is to see how well these things freeze for re-heating, so I'll update when the frozen ones are consumed.
Post-analysis on the samosas has determined that the filling could have been a bit tastier. Maybe more spices would of helped, or more garlic or ginger. If you think that you can make a better curry than me, you probably can. I am OK at curry but not great. If you deviate, just remember that you want your filling to be fully cooked and edible before baking. Mom thinks they'd be better if they were a little wetter inside, so perhaps it might be an idea to add a bit more stock and then thicken it up with some starch or flour.
The dough is also a little cakey in the crumb. I'm OK with this, it is the product of my yeasting and egging it. The dough would be OK without those, though, if you don't like the texture.
Dough:OK, proof the yeast in the warm water with the sugar in some sort of proofing vessel (like a bowl!). When it's floated up from the deeps, add 1/2 cup of the flour, mix well, cover, and set aside for an hour in a not-cold place. When that's done, it should be bubbly and alive, so add the oil and egg and mix well. Add a cup of the flour, mix until it forms a raggedy messy mass, then work in the rest of the flour until you've got a nice feeling dough. Knead well for at least ten minutes, because you do want this dough to be stretchy, strong, and workable. Form it into a ball, and let it rest & rise while you fix the fillings.
Filling:Cut the potatoes into 1/4 inch cubes and parboil them for five minutes. Put the oil in your cooking pan, add the mustard and heat it up. When the mustard seeds are crackling and popping, it's ready for the garlic and ginger, which should be minced together, and, if you have it, mashed up in a mortar and pestle. Fry the garlic and ginger for about thirty seconds, then add the garam masala and chili flakes. Toss in the chicken and onions, and when the chicken looks cooked on the outside, through in the chopped carrot and potatoes. Fry a little longer, then add the stock and let cook uncovered. Once the stock has all cooked away, it's ready to go! Let this stuff cool while you prep the dough.
Defleat then divide the dough into six equal portions. Form each piece into a ball and roll out into a big circle, about an eighth of an inch thick. Keep the rolled circles covered to prevent them from drying out, as this makes them more difficult to handle. When they're all rolled, Cut them in half, place stuffing on half of each half, leaving a border and fold over, stretching the top flap as necessary to fit over the filling. For those of you in Waterloo, this makes them in the style you get at Farah's foods. I have an certain fondness for those ones because of all the times I've wandered from the MC to Farah's at 4:00AM looking for matlab fuel. Diagram (grey is filling, fold from left over right):
Bake in a greased pan or just on parchment paper at 350F for 20-25 minutes, until the pastry is cooked.
I did two sizes to see how they'd go. I ate three of the tiny ones for lunch, mum had two. The bigger ones might be good for a breakfast or lunch on their own. I'm having one of the big ones for breakfast tomorrow, and the other big one is in the freezer, and mom will eat it for lunch on Saturday. Part of this experiment is to see how well these things freeze for re-heating, so I'll update when the frozen ones are consumed.
Post-analysis on the samosas has determined that the filling could have been a bit tastier. Maybe more spices would of helped, or more garlic or ginger. If you think that you can make a better curry than me, you probably can. I am OK at curry but not great. If you deviate, just remember that you want your filling to be fully cooked and edible before baking. Mom thinks they'd be better if they were a little wetter inside, so perhaps it might be an idea to add a bit more stock and then thicken it up with some starch or flour.
The dough is also a little cakey in the crumb. I'm OK with this, it is the product of my yeasting and egging it. The dough would be OK without those, though, if you don't like the texture.
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