Yep. Have to try this bread recipe. It was quite an adventure. Was going to get started making it when I discovered I had NO YEAST! No yeast. Didn’t seem possible in this house but there I was. Wanting to get a lot done so didn’t want to break the work rhythm to go get it. Picked yeast up in the evening when I was running another errand.

Mixing the dry ingredients together using the trusty Kitchenaid. No yeast was in here as I discovered later. Oops!

Innocently heating the milk for the English Muffin Bread!

Get home & decide to get this going. Mixes up super easy. Got the batter in the loaf pans. Set them aside covered with a damp cloth. Go back to check them about 30 minutes later. They haven’t risen a bit! Big failure! The recipe says it takes about 45 minutes to rise so baring a miracle these puppies are NOT going to rise enough. Glance to the side. There sits my brand new unopened jar of yeast! Oops! Maybe it’s not the recipe. Maybe it’s operator problem. Maybe I’ll retry the recipe in the morning.

Here I am adding flour still under the delusion I'm making bread.

The batter that I so innocently was going to rise & make a beautiful loaf of bread.

Nice & cool in the morning so it’s a wonderful time to retry a bread recipe. Again the English Muffin Bread batter mixes up easily. This time I try making it WITH the yeast. Suspect that will have a positive influence on the outcome. Check the bread in the loaf pans after 20 minutes and lo they are rising. Must be the yeast! The bread rises just as quickly as the recipe says & I slide the bread pans in the oven.

"Real" bread--you know, the kind that has YEAST in it.

Bread cooks for the required time. Pull out of the oven 2 beautifully browned loaves of bread. Oh yes, it is going much better today. Naturally, I have to give the bread a taste test. Slice off a piece as soon as the bread has cooled, butter it & share it with Sarah. It’s good! That’s our verdict. I have to be honest though & say that I’m not sure how often I’ll actually bake this bread. As delicious as it it, & it IS delicious, I prefer breads that can serve double duty. We enjoy using homemade bread for our sandwiches & this is not a sturdy enough bread for sandwiches. If you’re only looking for something to slice & eat or slice, toast & eat, you’ll be very happy with this bread.

All those beautiful airholes are what makes for wonderful toast!

If you’re an experienced cook, I’m sure you enjoyed my “little” mistake. Probably reminded you of a few of your own mistakes when cooking. If you’re a novice cook, take careful note. Doesn’t matter if you’ve cooked for 50+ years, there are going to be times when you make mistakes. It’s not the end of the world. Just try again. Sometimes when you make a mistake, you’ll like the results better, but not when you leave the yeast out of your homemade bread. Trust me on that one.

This is Geraldine's small fondant mat. It's the perfect size for this project!

Today is a great day for playing with one of the fondant molds I bought. I’m excited about it & quickly gather everything needed. Not sure what colors I want or what colors I already have, I grab some unopened fondant & the bags of leftover fondant. (Good fondant is very expensive & way too expensive to waste. Save any pieces you don’t use on a project. When you have time, you can make flowers, leaves or geometric shapes to use on a future project. Those are words of wisdom Norman Davis gave us at ICES.

Rolling out the fondant to use in the mold.

I have a wad of yellow fondant a little bit smaller than a half dollar & a wad of orange fondant about the size of a quarter. That looks to me like a good place to start! Place both pieces of fondant in the microwave & heat them just a few seconds. Even after being carefully wrapped in several layers of Saran Wrap & placed in Ziploc bags, fondant will get stiff to rock hard. A few seconds in the microwave will soften it enough to knead. Be careful though not to heat for anything but very short bursts. It is sugar dough & will get too hot to safely handle. Heated long enough it will even start to melt.

Gently place the fondant over the mold. Be careful to cover all sections of the mold!

Butterflies are not a solid color so I knead both pieces of fondant together until they are soft & pliable but not completely blended. I then take my 6-inch fondant roller out & proceed to roll the dough out on my mat. (I will do another post on the mat. It’s that good.) Once the fondant is rolled out to 1/8 thickness, I pick it up & gently lay it on the bottom part of the mold. Previously, I had taken my finger & dipped it in powdered sugar & rubbed it on the inside of the mold. Then I shook the mold so almost all of the powdered sugar was shaken out. With my fingers I gently pat the fondant into the crevices of the mold. Once I have a pretty decent impression, I pick up the top 2 pieces & lay them on top of the fondant lining them up on the indented fondant. Then I take the roller & firmly roll the top pieces into the fondant & bottom piece of the mold. If this is done properly, you get an almost clean cut of the butterfly pieces. Pull the top pieces of the mold off & you’re ready to gently push the fondant out of the mold. Now you have two beautifully impressed butterfly wings. I’ll use them in the future on a cake or some cupcakes.

In this photo, the top of the mold has had gentle pressure applied to force the fondant into all crevices of the mold. Excess fondant was carefully peeled away.

You can see the impressions from the mold once you removed the top portions of the mold. Then turn the mold over & gently tap to remove the butterfly pieces.

After removing the butterfly half from the mold, use a tapered spatula to do detailed removal of small bits of excess fondant. Do NOT use a knife as there is too much danger of nicking your mat.

After making a few of these, I pull out a small piece of blue & a small piece of green fondant. Knead both of these into the leftover fondant from making butterflies & make some more butterflies. The mold only needs to be rubbed down with powdered sugar after the fifth set of butterfly wings. That’s how well this mold works. It’s been a good afternoon. Played with one of my new molds until I’m very comfortable using it. As a result of using the mold, I have several beautiful fondant butterflies to use.

A pair of orange & yellow butterflies drying on a wire rack.

A multi-colored butterfly half ready to have the excess fondant gently removed.

Notice the shy smile this fellow has.

After baking & cooling the cookies, it’s time to decorate them. The cookies are coated with orange royal icing and brownish green royal icing & outlined. Now the fun begins! I have made pumpkin cookies where I tried very hard to get each cookie to look alike, but these are going to be jack-o-lanterns. We all know that each jack-o-lantern is different from all the rest & has its own personality. That’s the intention with these cookies.

Hmmm almost a beatnik look. Remember beatniks? Doobie Gillis anyone?

I loaded the piping bag with brown royal icing & start decorating. As I pick up each cookie, I study it & it seems to tell me what it should look like. Some have faces only & some have hair. A few of them call for beards. Then there are the shy ones that hide behind their glasses. On it goes, until each one is finished. None of them look alike so I’m pleased. Not sure they’re fierce looking, but they definitely don’t look like any cookies my mother would have made.

The more traditional look

Blueberry Scone Bite ready for eating.

Some days, even in the middle of grieving, you wake up & are overwhelmed with a need to do a certain thing. This morning, buttermilk was calling my name. I have lots of it in the refrigerator. The buttermilk was nagging me today. Use me. Try something new. Use me. I swear it was calling me.

So I went to allrecipes.com to search out something. A feature this site has that I love is the ingredient search. You enter the ingredients you want to use and what category of recipes you want & it brings up a list of recipes for you to ponder. The only ingredient I listed was buttermilk, the category I chose was Bread and I didn’t list any ingredients I did not want to use. The search brought back a listing of 357 recipes.

I rambled down the list looking at titles of recipes. Not in the mood to fix biscuits of any kind. Besides I have several good biscuit recipes. Any time I find a name that sounds interesting, I either click the link or look at the number of stars a recipe has received. If it doesn’t have at least 3 stars, I don’t waste time looking at it. I prefer looking at recipes that have at least 4 stars.

The chocolate chip scone bites are on the silicon mat. Trying to decide what to add to the bowl for the next batch.

Moving down the list, I come to Buttermilk Scones. Hmmm. Sounds interesting & I haven’t found a scone recipe I like yet.  Planning on printing out the recipe to try later. I don’t feel like going to the trouble of patting out scones & cutting them. So I move the mouse over some of the reviews to see what they say. Not only have the reviewers liked them, but also several of them have fixed them like drop biscuits. That tidbit of info gets me to thinking!

Dropped the dough like drop biscuits. Aren't the mini-chocolate chips sweet in there?

Suddenly, I’m not interested in printing out the scone recipe. I’m fixing scones this morning. Very simple recipe that mixes up in a very short time. Having trouble deciding what to add to them. Shall I have blueberry or chocolate chip scones? Neither. Instead of deciding, I pull a little of the dough out & add some mini-chocolate chips to it. Spoon it onto the cookie sheet. Next, I pull out half of the remaining dough and add some raisins to it. I add blueberries to the remaining dough.

When the cookie sheet is full, I place it in the oven & set the timer for 9 minutes. When the timer goes off, they’re very ghostly looking so I bake them an additional minute and a half. Pull them out to cool on the rack. Bake the blueberry scones. As the scones cool, I debate about putting a light glaze on them. I decide against it & tell Sarah the scones are out of the oven.

Naturally, I change my mind & decide if I’m trying them out, I should try them with a glaze. While Sarah is scarfing a chocolate chip one down, I mix up a glaze using confectionery sugar and orange juice. Drizzle it on the scones & they’re good to go. The recipe is definitely a keeper. If you give it a try, I think you’ll be pleased.

Drizzled a bit of glaze on the scone bites. Will cover the scones more heavily next time.

The Great American Cookie Cookbook

Today I have decided to try a new recipe. On page 44, you’ll find the recipe for Malted Dream Drops. This is the one I’ve decided to try. All the needed ingredients are in my cabinet so I’m good to go. The dough is easy to mix & not at all time consuming. It needs to sit in the refrigerator for an hour so I work on other things.

As you can see, this cookbook is held together by tape.

It’s 2 hours before I get back to working on the cookies. I notice that dough is still a very soft dough in spite of being chilled.  Fill the first cookie sheet & set it in the oven to bake. As I pull the baked cookies out of the oven, I see a potential problem. The cookies have spread out a great deal instead of being a nice puffy cookie as the photo in the book shows. The first thing I do is check the recipe to see if I made any mistakes. This could be quite a problem as the difference in spread will not only affect the appearance of the cookie but also the taste. The cookie dough goes back into the refrigerator for another hour.

Malted Dream Drops are flat & spread out instead of puffy like they should be.

When the first batch of cookies cool off, Sarah & I taste them. This is our sworn duty & we take it seriously. The Malted Dream Drops are ok but nothing spectular. They have a nice malt taste but just don’t impress. We decide to reserve judgment until tasting the next batch. After an hour is up, I throw another batch of the cookies in the oven. The dough is a bit stiffer but still pretty soft. Again, no surprise here, they spread out on the cooky sheet. Again the taste test shows them to be an alright cookie. Our definition of an alright cookie is one that tastes as good as you get out of the box or bag off the grocery shelf in the store. If we’re taking the time to bake them, we expect more!

They didnt come out quite like they should have & still were decent, so eventually Ill come back to them & try again. If I can figure out why they were spreading too much, I know it would make a lot of difference in the taste. Perhaps then, Sarah & I would have a different opinion of them.

Drained macaroni

With all of Jim’s health problems, it’s no wonder I’ve been craving all kinds of comfort foods. Sarah’s been wanting me to fix some macaroni & cheese for awhile now so I’ve decided to get to it. I have several macaroni & cheese recipes I use depending on the cheeses I have onhand & which one I feel will suit my tastes better at the time. Some of them are very simple & easy with only 1 cheese involved; some are more complicated & use several cheeses. Today, I don’t want to have to pick up more cheese & just want a simple basic macaroni & cheese. As usual, I have cheddar cheese onhand.

Layered macaroni, cheese, & cracker crumbs just needing milk poured over them.

That’s why I went with the simplest & most basic one I have. Once again, I’m using one of my great-grandmother’s, Mama Bobo. Cook 2 cups of macaroni in boiling, salted water until it’s tender. Drain the macaroni. Grease a 2-quart casserole dish. Place 1/4 of the macaroni in the casserole dish  & pepper it to taste. Taking 2 cups of shredded cheddar cheese & 2 cups of crushed cracker crumbs, layer a 1/4 of the cheese over the macaroni & cover with 1/4 of the cracker crumbs. Continue this until all ingredients have been used. Then pour 2 1/2 cups of milk over the layers in the casserole dish. Place in a 350 oven, uncovered & bake for 50 minutes. Try to refrain from eating it until it has cooled enough you won’t burn your tongue!

Pepperidge Farm Goldfish crackers with parmesan cheese

Tonight I did something different. I usually use the whole wheat Ritz crackers for the cracker crumbs. We have some Pepperidge Farm goldfish crackers that are made with parmesan cheese. Nobody in the family has liked them that much. Not wanting to waste them, I decided to use them for making the macaroni & cheese. You wouldn’t think such a small detail would matter, but frankly, we liked it even better than usual. I have some more of those crackers left so will try it again & see if they do work better or if it was just we were so hungary.

Oops. Somebody has already been in the mac & cheese!

Leftover roasted chicken being cut up for Wild Rice Chicken Soup.

Have some roasted chicken left over from the other night. Have this hankering for a pot of soup. Good combination. Start the search first through my recipes to see if anything strikes my fancy. If it doesn’t, I’ll move onto hunting a new chicken soup recipe.

Ah! Wild Rice & Chicken Soup. Hmm, sounds like I have the one! Pull the medium crockpot down & start throwing ingredients in there. First thing I do is start cutting the chicken off the bones & cutting it up into bite-sized pieces. Then I slice my celery and baby carrots. Baby carrots aren’t required. I simply have started keeping baby carrots since I can usually find them for the same price as regular carrots. (Less cutting is required for them.)

The mushrooms are rinsed & easily sliced. All the vegetables are now in the crockpot. I add the can of soup & stir throughly. Start adding the chicken broth & discover I have a problem. I have miscalculated how big this batch is! Pull down the large crockpot & transfer all the ingredients into it. Finish adding the required chicken broth & water. Turn the crockpot on to the low setting & leave it alone.

Bowl of the finished Wild Rice Chicken Soup

Left it alone all afternoon to cook while I worked on other things. Soup is another one of those foods that I consider a comfort food–especially on cool days and evenings. Once it’s ready, Jim is in the soup  several times before going to bed. Even though I know better, he swears he’s never had the soup before. Tells me it’s the best soup he’s ever had. However, that’s not the first time I’ve heard that so let’s just say he really likes this soup.

Wild Rice and Chicken Soup
1 can cream of mushroom soup            1 cup celery
2½ cups chopped cooked chicken        1 6 oz. pkg. long grain & wild rice mix
2 cups sliced fresh mushrooms            5 cups chicken broth
1 cup coarsely chopped carrots            5 cups water

In crock pot combine soup, chicken, mushrooms, carrot, celery, rice and contents of seasoning packet. Gradually stir in broth and water. Cover and cook on low setting for 6 hours.

Sarah is learning to drive so most Sundays the 3 of us hit the road for an hour of her practice driving. While I sit in the back free to think,  Jim concentrates on what Sarah is doing. Having time to think, I remembered I still had a pie crust in the freezer.

Yes, sometimes I make pie crusts from scratch, but I’m also not above using Pet Ritz frozen pie crusts. They are so handy & make a decent pie crust. Don’t care for the rolled refrigerated pie crusts. One, it’s too easy for them to tear at the folds. Two, if I’m going to have to carefully coax the crust into position & trim it, I might as well make my own crust is how I see it. The same can be said for their boxed pie crust mix. I’m not going to use a boxed mix if I’m going to have to roll out the dough and worry about tearing the crust putting it in the pie pan. It’s going to be me making it from scratch if I have to put that much work into it.

So as we go around in circles in the National Cemetary, I mentally go through the list of ingredients needed to make a chocolate pie. Yes! I have everything I need. I mention what I have in mind & get greeted with great enthusiam.

When we get home, I pull the pie crust out of the freezer & give it a short time to thaw. Hunt up the recipe & I’m ready to go. If you’re in the habit of mixing up pudding using the pie directions, you really need to try this recipe. You’ll never refer to a pudding pie & chocolate pie in the same sentence again. This makes an absolutely wonderful pie. I have been making it for at least 40 years. I have no idea how many years before that, that my mother made this pie.

Chocolate Filling

1 ½ cups milk                                           3 egg yolks, at room temperature

¾ cup sugar                                             1 tsp. vanilla

¼ cup flour                                               ¼ cup butter

¼ cup unsweetened cocoa

Meringue

3 egg whites, at room temperature          6 tbl. sugar

½ tsp. cream of tartar

Roll out the pie pastry (or use a prepared pie crust) to line a 9-inch pie pan. Prick the crust all over with a fork & bake in a 425∘F oven for about 12 minutes or until golden brown.

To make the filling, stir the sugar, flour and cocoa in a large saucepan. Add about ½ cup of the milk to make a past & then continue adding the milk a bit at a time until all the milk has been added. Keep stirring the entire time to keep any lumps from forming. Cook over medium heat, stirring until the mixture thickens & comes to a boil. Cook for 2 minutes and remove from heat.

By hand, beat the egg yolks in a medium bowl. Gradually add several tablespoonfuls of the chocolate mixture to the eggs while continuing to beat the eggs. Repeat this action. Now add the egg mixture to the chocolate mixture, stirring the entire time. Put the pan back on the medium heat & cook, stirring, over low heat for another 2 minutes. Add the vanilla & butter. Let cool while you make the meringue. Pour into the pie shell & cover with the meringue. Make sure you don’t leave any gaps between the pie filling & the pie crust.

Meringue

Beat the egg whites in a clean bowl with the cream of tartar until you have soft peaks. Gradually add the sugar while continually beating the egg whites. Beat them until you have stiff peaks. Spread the meringue over the chocolate filling.

Bake the pie in a 350∘F oven for 15 minutes or until the meringue is lightly browned. Let the pie cool to room temperature before serving. (IF you can keep everybody out of it.) If there are leftovers, refrigerate them.

As I said earlier, I have fixed this pie for over 40 years & it’s a huge family favorite. Frequently I add 1 tsp. of orange extract when I add the vanilla to the chocolate filling. It highlights the chocolate flavor.

Chocolate pie after it came out of the oven.

1 chocolate pie, 3 people and 2 hours later

The one change I make to the recipe is to leave out the pecans. Having heard Paula talk on her shows about how much she loves pecans, I’m sure she would be heart-broken if she knew. However, I don’t care for walnuts or pecans so I don’t use them. (I do make an exception for fruitcake.) The cupcakes mix up quickly & easily which is a definite point in their favor.

The baked banana pineapple cupcakes cooling on the wire racks.

Sitting on the rack cooling, they are a temptation Jim cannot ignore. He asks if they’re available to eat. Being assured that he can have however many he wants of them, he starts in eating them before they’re iced. He questions me about what kind of icing I plan on putting on them. He seems satisfied when I tell him I’m going to use a cream cheese icing. However, he’s a bit skeptical about being able to taste the pineapple in them once the cupcakes are iced.

This is when it occurs to me, that it’s a good thing he didn’t wait for them to be iced before eating 3 or 4 of them. Keeping what he said in mind, I decide to add some undrained crushed pineapple to the icing. We’re both pleased with the taste of the pineapple in the cream cheese icing so it’s time to frost the cupcakes. That job doesn’t take long. After getting into the cupcakes again, Jim tells me the icing is good on the cupcakes & highlights the pineapple in the cupcakes.

What they look like iced.

The batter mixes up easily & smells good. A quick taste of the batter has me convinced before they’re baked that I’m going to like this recipe much better. In no time, the vanilla cupcakes are baked & sitting on the racks cooling. At this point, I’m pleased with progress & ready to start filling the cupcakes. Ice the cupcakes & run to get dressed.

I take a big box of a mixture of cupcakes. Need a bunch as we’ll sit & sample & dissect the cupcakes. I make a point of taking a lot more than we’ll need. The leftovers will be for Kay’s family. That’s my treat to her family for providing the spot for this month’s MNO. The cupcakes were a huge hit. The banana cupcakes were voted as the best ones of the bunch.

Uniced chocolate cupcakes with marshmallow filling.

But no, the more I look at the assortment, the more I think it’s missing something. Chocolate cupcakes!! Ok, that’s it, I have to try the new chocolate recipe I found. Get them mixed up & baking. The kitchen smells really good. It’s also getting a lot of attention from the family. They’re circling the table keeping an eye out for when the cupcakes will be ready to eat.

Vanilla cupcakes filled with chocolate ganache.

While the chocolate cupcakes bake, I decide what to do with the vanilla cupcakes. The decision was made to fill half of them with some of the leftover chocolate ganache from yesterday’s Peanut Butter Brownie Cupcakes. I learned my lesson yesterday, so I immediately fill a decorating bag with some barely warm chocolate ganache. Using a tip & a decorating bag, filling cupcakes is an easy job. In just a few minutes, I have filled the ones I want to have the ganche filling.

The recipe for the chocolate cupcakes came with a recipe for marshmallow filling so I make that. It looks good, but I just have a hard time thinking marshmallow filling is a good idea for vanilla cupcakes. I keep looking at the ganache. Beginning to think that maybe I ought to fill all of them with it, when it hits me that if I take part of the marshmallow filling & mix it with the ganache, I’ll have chocolate marshmallow filling. THAT sounds good in vanilla cupcakes! In a short time, I have two bowls of marshmallow filling. One is plain & the other one is chocolate.

The remaining vanilla cupcakes get filled with chocolate mashmallow filling. I have quite a bit left so I divide the chocolate cupcakes. Half of them get the plain marshmallow filling & half of them get the chocolate marshmallow filling. I might be prejuidiced, but the chocolate marshmallow filling tastes very good.

The finished cupcakes--chocolate cake with marshmallow filling & vanilla icing.

The finished vanilla cupcakes.