~ firefly-dreaming a virtual home to learn (or teach!) alternative methods of solving problems we find facing us each day. By sharing ideas & knowledge on living with less stress, more joy & embracing tolerance & compassion we are working towards building a sustainable future for all living beings.
Happy Wednesday Bread Heads and others! Welcome to the Candy mini-series inside the Sunday Bread Mega-Series!
Tonight we'll be making a really easy candy that always blows people away, especially those from the South, Orange Pralines. This is a variant on the traditional pecan candy. Like the original, this is basically pecans and sugar, but the addition of heavy cream and the zest of an entire large orange makes them especially delicious.
The only problem with this candy is try as I might I just can't get it to look that fabulous. The patties are a little irregular and the candy is always a white that looks vaguely like cookie dough. But they taste so good that once people try them they completely ignore the looks and just scarf!
If you are looking for the pervious candies in this series you can find them at the links below, or if you want to see all the recipes from the nearly 2 year old Sunday Bread series, you can just click on the Sunday Bread tag.
Happy Tuesday Bread (or in this case Candy) Heads!
All knowledge is dangerous, some pieces more so than others. Tonight I'm going to share a very dangerous piece of knowledge, how to make caramels!
Like bread there is a lot of really crappy caramel out there in the world. Good caramels should be creamy, with a strong dark note of cooked sugar. It should not be too soft nor too sticky. The good news is that I have a perfect recipe for caramels that anyone with a candy thermometer can make.
I have been messing around with making caramels for the last 15 years. Over that time I have tried a lot of different recipes. Finally about five years ago I decided to synthesize one. What I was looking for was more flavor while maintaining the lack of stickiness and the al dente consistency. It turns out that it all comes down to the amount and the types of fat that you use to cook the sugar. This recipe has condensed milk, whole milk, whipping cream and butter in it. Lots of different styles and moisture levels in the dairy give this caramel the complexity I was looking for.
If you are looking for the first two recipes in this week long miniseries, you can find them at the links below:
Happy Monday and welcome to a highly irregular Sunday Bread!
This is the time of year to be thinking of making great sweet treats for all your friends and family. Since there is a time limit, I decided that instead of dribbling the recipes out every Sunday that I'd do one a night every night this week, that way by the weekend you'll have six recipes for just the very best candy!
Tonight we are going to make one of the all time easiest candies, peanut brittle. Even though it is not hard to do, there are a lot of pitfalls that trip people up when they first go to make this particular confection.
Everyone has had bad peanut brittle; there is too much brittle not enough peanuts and it is so thick it needs a set of "Jaws of Life" to bite off and then an impact drill to get it out of your back teeth. Not exactly fun for the whole family, eh?
The trick with peanut brittle (or any brittle) is to be right on top of the candy the whole time. This recipe needs to be made in a three quart or larger pan, but because of the amount of ingredients it is nearly impossible to use a thermometer and you can over cook it if you don't pay attention.
It is also important for success that you measure out everything in advance, when the sugar is cooking you don't have time and the same when it comes off the heat and is cooling. So get all the ingredients in bowls in advance and you'll be far along the path to great candy.
Finally, if it is important to spread the candy out to a nice single layer of thinness while it is still relatively hot. If you don't you'll have a big rock hard block of sugar entombed peanuts, and no one likes that.
But enough warnings and cautions! Let's make some candy!
So, let's get the housekeeping out of the way, then we'll dive in to candy making. The long over due and long awaited Sunday Bread Cookbook "A Liberal Sprinkle of Flour" is now available for sale!
It has sixty recipes in it from the Oxford Fruit Cake to Scones to French bread to Rye bread and more! It makes a great gift for anyone who wants to bake but could use some very specific directions.
You can order it from Amazon Create Space at this link (I get a couple of shekels more that way) or just go to Amazon.com and search either A Liberal Sprinkle of Flour or Bill Egnor, either way you'll find it there.
There is some formatting issues for Kindle versions of the book but they should be available late Monday afternoon. I hope you'll all enjoy the book as much as I enjoyed putting it together!
This is a repost of this recipe. Last year I posted it too late for most folks to make (since it needs time to age) but here is it in it's glory, the most perfect and perfectly edible fruit cake, the Oxford Fruit Cake.
Happy Sunday Bread Heads!
When people tell me that they don't like fruit cake, I completely understand. They have never had a real fruit cake, instead they have had some gloppy over processed thing with one of the greatest sins against nature, the commercially candied green maraschino cherry. Who could like such a thing?
This week we're still doing recipes that I have been carting down to the Occupy DC folks. Things have changed for the better in the camp's kitchen this week. They totally reorganized it, putting all of the food prep area in the back, segregating the storage areas for donated food and generally making it a more professional style operation.
All of this is good news for the folks who are feeding the occupiers and the occupiers themselves. They are also starting a news letter and you're donations will be highlighted. Just so you know here is what has been delivered to Occupy DC through your donations:
40 loaves French bread
200 Peanut butter cookies
200 Oatmeal Cookies
120 Chocolate Chip Scones
120 Oatmeal Raisin Scones
30 loaves Pumpkin bread
230 Peanut butter cookies
30 loaves Zucchini bread
We are down the 100 dollars in the fund, which should cover another three deliveries. If anyone would like to donate or donate again, you can do say at Paypal using the egnorbill@gmail.com address.
This weeks recipe is going to be the Zucchini bread that was delivered yesterday. Though this is still a quick bread is not as cakelike as many of the recipes you'll find out there. It comes to me via one of my Mom's friends and has been a staple of our holiday baking and giving for years. It also is more nutritional than a cookie but still has a good sugar hit which is the request that I got from the folks in the Occupy DC kitchen.
This week we'll be continuing with recipes that I have been baking for the Occupy DC folks. This is my little grass roots effort to do what I can to support the protesters. The way it works is that Kossaks (and others) donate some money for ingredients and transport and I donate my know how, time and electricity to getting gobs of high quality baked goods down the folks in McPherson Square.
So far we've delivered 40 loaves of French Bread, 200 Peanut Butter Cookies, 200 Oatmeal Cookies, 120 Chocolate Chip Scones and yesterday 120 Oatmeal Raisin Scones, which happen to be today's recipe.
If you would like to help out in this effort it is pretty easy. Just go to Paypal and use the e-mail address egnorbill@gmail.com to send whatever you can. I will keep doing this as long as there are people willing to pay for the cost of ingredients and transport (the Metro in this case).
This week and probably for the next few weeks we are going to be doing recipes that I am baking for the Occupy DC folks.
Last week I asked if anyone would like to donate some money for ingredients and transport of baked goods to the protestors. Little did I know that we'd get such a big response! As of today there has been $425 donated!
I originally thought that I would just bake French bread, because it is just flour, water, yeast and salt, and could deliver a few hundred loaves. But when I brought the first 40 (two 8 hour days of baking will net you 40 lovely French bread loaves) the ODC folks told me they had a lot of bread already (they did).
They asked if I might bake something else for them, suggesting cookies. So, thinking about a cookie with a good sugar hit and some kind of nutrition led me to Peanut Butter Cookies, which is this week's recipe.
I am going to continue to bake what the protesters ask for, figuring that they know what they want and it really is all about them not what I think is the better food. If you would like to donate to this effort, you can message me and I'll give you the account to use for Paypal. I'll also be providing updates on the deliveries either here or my nightly Water Cooler post.
Now, on to the cookies! As with everything that is baked I have particular and strong opinions about cookies. They should not be really small nor large. They should always be al dente, a mushy cookie is under cooked and crispy cookies tend to be too dry. They should also be able to last (in terms of being edible, not necessarily in terms of being around uneaten) for at least a week in a reasonably air tight box or tin.
This Peanut Butter cookie recipe is one that fits the bill all the way around. The cookies come out delectably chew with a great peanut butter flavor. Best of all the recipe makes between 60-70 two to three bite cookies!
This week I got asked by a frequent reader why it was I had never given just a plain old white sandwich bread recipe. This kind of startled me, because I think that all kinds of breads I have shared with you are sandwich breads and are made from white flour.
Still looking back over this series I realized that I really had not shared a bake-in-loaf-pans white bread. So, I'm going to remedy that right now!
When it comes to sandwich breads I am more than a little particular. I want a loaf that is a bit airy but also has a firm enough crumb to hold up to mayo or mustard or any other condiment that I might want on my Dagwood.
For this reason I like this rich white bread. It has milk, butter and eggs in it, so it stands up well and keeps better on the counter while waiting to be turned into gastronomic delights.
Now that you know what the end result will be, let's bake!
This week we are going to make the prefect brownie. Now I know that just about everyone makes brownies and they pretty much all think that they make them prefect, but it is just not true.
Brownies are supposed to be chewy and moist, but far too often bakers (even some professional bakers) will mistake under-cooked for moist and gooey for chewy. Under-cooked dough is never a good treat, no matter how much chocolate is in them.
So in an effort to save this venerable treat from gaining a reputation for inedibility, I will walk you through the factors that make for a prefect brownie.
One of the elements that is most often overlooked is the baking pan. Nearly every home in America has a 9" x 13" Pyrex baking pan. It is a very nice dish and has a lot of uses, but fully baking brownies is not one of them. While glass can be a reasonable conductor of heat, it is not the same as an aluminum pan.
Glass just does not do the same job of heat transference and as a result the brownies baked in glassware are almost always undercooked in the middle. Blech! If you don't want to buy a new baking pan, you can do what I do, bake them on a sheet pan, that has a raised edge and is 12" x 18" (you do get a thinner brownie and have to reduce the baking time to 15 minutes).
Or you can go to a local restaurant supply store and pick up an aluminum pan for about $10, if you really must have the thicker brownies. In any case you must have a metal baking pan for this to work right.
The next thing that people do that ruins brownies is to rush. Brownies, if you look at the recipe, are basically a soufflé. They have a lot of sugar and eggs, but not a lot of flour. This means that you must get the lift for the pastry out of the structure of the eggs and the means a lot of beating, 10 minutes worth to be precise.
By betting the eggs and sugar together for this amount of time will give you a very nice fluffy base for your brownies. They will cook through but still be tender, chewy and moist.
Another step that seems to be lost on most recipes is the buttering and flouring of the baking pan. This is really important as it allows the cooled brownies to release from the pan.
Finally, the mistake that nearly everyone makes; cutting them too soon! Brownies need at least, at the very least, 2 full hours to cool and settle. By waiting this time you will have a much easier time cutting them and they will hold together when lifted from the pan much better.
Okay, now that we have that out of the way, let's bake some brownies!
This week we're going to make one of my all around favorite breads, Rosemary Garlic Bread. It is made with both white and whole wheat flour and has a wonderful texture to go with the evocative aroma of rosemary that you get any time you are near this bread.
This is great sandwich bead, but I particularly like it for cheese toast on a cool fall morning. Topped with a nice slice of sharp white cheddar and broiled for 2 minutes it turns into a hearty and satisfying breakfast that even the little ones will ask for!
This week I found myself with a beautiful bunch of apples and decided it was time to try something fall like with them. What I came up with was this cake, Apple Cake with Caramel Whipped Cream.
The recipe started out with what is called a pudding cake, a pretty basic batter cake, then I added ginger, cinnamon and nutmeg to give it a more fall like flavor. Tart Granny Smith apples are pressed into the batter then brown sugar and dried raisins are spread over the top. After baking the cake is served warm with a dollop of caramel whipped cream. All the great tastes of fall in one outstanding (if I do say so myself) cake!
In a lot of places it is starting to fell like fall. The mornings are crisp, the days are not as hot and what we crave to start the day begins to change. Oatmeal and things drenched in maple syrup come back into the menu. Which brings us to this week's bread.
Maple Oatmeal Bread is a wonderful loaf. It has the lovely hardiness of an oatmeal bread with a light sweetness. It smells and tastes of maple syrup with out being overpowering. And it is one of the best pieces of toast you will ever have for breakfast!
The downside, such as it is, is that you must use real maple syrup for this recipe. Using Aunt Jemima syrup will just not produce the results. Real maple syrup is rather expensive, but if you look around you can find it for less than $10 for an 8.5 oz bottle. A lot of that will depend on where you live, of course. The closer you are the North East United State, where most of the maple syrup comes from, the less expensive it will tend to be.
Now that I've teased you enough, let's make some bread!
It is great to be back after a two week hiatus where the packing boxes nearly got the better of me and Liz!
We when we got here to Damascus, we found that our moving truck would completely block the parking lot/road around the townhouses. Since we got here late in the day and were wrecked from driving we could not unload that night and we could not leave the truck out front. We found a very nice general store owner who let us park the truck behind her store over night. So this week's baking is going to her.
We are going to be making Kolache. This is a braided and knotted bread from the Ukraine. As is the case with traditional breads there are a million variations. Mine is rich variant made with whole milk and egg yolks and features walnuts and dried cherries. It is a really good looking bread and lovely to eat.
This recipe makes two loaves so you'll have one to eat and one to share. That is if you can force yourself to give it away. But enough small talk! Let's bake!
Happy Sunday Bread Heads! This week (today) is the love of my life's birthday. Since that is the case we are going to make Grand Marnier Birthday Cake! I am not the best with decorating cakes. I've had the classes but being a lefty and, frankly, having less love for a gaudily decorated cake than most I just don't practice enough to be great at it.
However that does not mean that I can't make a lovely caked that will be devoured to the last crumb, and today I am going to show you all how to do the same. This recipe is a classic white cake with Grand Marnier meringue butter cream frosting.
The classic white cake is super versatile, you can make it into round cakes, or a sheet cake or a nice thick cake in 9"x 13" pan for squares. The best part, and we'll get back to this later is that you can make it in advance and refrigerate it for up to week or even freeze it for up to 2 months!
