Its Tuesday, and that means that the TWD’ers are back at it again. This time it was carrot cake! I’ve been wanting to make carrot cake for a while, but I’ve got so much going on it the kitchen, it had just taken a number and was waiting at the back of the line. So, luckily for it, its number was called this week, and I got to play around with one of the tastiest recipes I’ve made in a while.
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When Holly of Phemomenon asked for participants in her one-off foodie event, “Blogging for Babies - An Invitation for Little Wonders” I didn’t hesitate to say yes. This is an event to promote the March For Babies, which does amazing work in the way of improving the life quality of infants, both full term and premature.
I have a particular interest in causes like this one because I work at a childrens’ hospital, specifically doing anesthesia on these little miracles. We sometimes have to anesthetize patients as little as 23 weeks gestation, and they barely weight ONE pound. They are so tiny, and are fighting so hard for their life. Its both heartbreaking and amazing, and I’m so glad that there are organizations like this that are able to help these little ones make it through this rough start to life. Please consider going to the link above to donate to this cause - your money will be truly well spent. Please see below for Holly’s personal statement to everyone regarding this event/cause. Read the rest of this entry »
The difficultly level of this bread is marked as “advanced” in Maggie Glezer’s book. I took one look at that and thought, what the heck. I’ve got a bread class under my belt, and I just won’t take pictures of it if its inedible :).
I adapted the recipe from her book Baking Across America, and this particular recipe is from Della Fratoria’s Bakery. I happened to have all the ingredients on hand which was about 70% why I chose to get started on this recipe last night. The other 30% was that it used sourdough starter, and I’m always looking for a reason to use it! I keep my starter at 100% hydration, and adapted the recipe to account for that.
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I’d been daydreaming about trying my luck at English muffins ever since I saw Susan’s post at Wild Yeast. They just looked so tasty, and so much better than what you get out of a package! I’m so glad that I tried them - they are every bit as good as she promised. I didn’t know until I was about to make them, that English muffins are not baked - they are merely cooked on a griddle (or nonstick skillet in my case) on both sides, much like a stiff pancake batter. I was also surprised by how much milk they required.
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Okay, so not really, but it was fun to make these little bites of chocolatey goodness. Dorie’s recipe for Gooey Chocolate Cakes were what was on this weeks TWD agenda. I had opted to make miniature versions, simply because I wanted to bring all of the left overs to work (especially since hubbs is out of town) and I thought that it would be nice to have more to share - 15 in fact. Dorie says that you definitely need to serve this with something - its too rich to stand on its own, and I’d have to agree. I plated it with some fresh cut strawberries and some seedless raspberry preserves (that I used yesterday in Dorie’s Perfect Party Cake, no less!) and those flavors balanced the richness nicely. I just wish I had thought ahead enough to pour a glass of milk, but I was too focused on eating chocolate.
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It’s that time again! Except this time I feel like a fool. Somehow I had it in my head that this month’s posting was to be done on the 31th (last day of the month, just like last month, which was my first time participating). But my assumption was wrong, and I just realized it today. I went to a few of my favorite DB‘ers sites and saw that they had put theirs up yesterday. I initially thought that they must’ve been breaking the DB rules, (gasp!!) but it was I that hadn’t paid attention. To my fellow DB’ers, I apologize!
I was so excited when Susan of Wild Yeast posted that she was going to be hosting this current BBD, and I was also thrilled that the theme was celebration breads. That excitement didn’t last long though. I sat there for a while and thought about the different celebrations that I’ve been a part of. There were no breads that made a regular appearance, unless you count white sandwich bread, but that was merely a celebration of lunch time at school. There really was nothing that I could say was a heritage bread or a “from my grandmother’s family” bread… I come from a long line of non-cooks. If anything was baked, it was baked by Publix, or Nature’s Own. I liked that Susan had baked Hot Cross Buns for her entry. That got me thinking of a holiday celebration bread, even if it wasn’t my own. I liked the idea of a Pannetone, but I didn’t want to spend the 85 days doing it just as we were coming into spring. So I started to look into Easter breads, or spring celebration breads, and actually found a good number of them out there. **please see the second recipe in this post for my actual “submission” to this BBD - it was much better**
I’m back, TWD‘er’s, I’m back! The kitchen remodel took two weeks more than I thought it would, and now the kitchen is finally done (and clean!). I made this flan on Tuesday, but didn’t realize that it not only had to cool to room temp AND chill in the fridge for at least 4 hours. That was going to be around 11pm, and I had to get to bed.
The kitchen remodel!!! Its finally done! It was four straight weeks (and *very* naive me thought it would be two - ha!) but its finally done and wonderful.
Here are some “before” shots: (the old floor had already been ripped out)
It’s been a wonderful week but it must come to an end. Today is my last day at SFBI’s Artisan 1 Bread class, and I must say.. I’ve learned a ton! I can’t wait to go home and apply everything that I’ve learned, not to mention actually using my at-home equipment, which is so different from the industrial versions that we used during the class.
We started the day with a little bit of lecture. We had made our pre-ferments on day 4 that we were going to focus on today. We made a poolish (named after the Polish, no less), and a sponge. We also did a pate fermentee, and I’ll talk about what happened with that later :)
