Almond Cookies

This is Goof's favorite cookie. He knows exactly how long they have been out of the oven, how to refresh them, and if I need to add more or less baking time, but taste and appearance. I decided to make a batch for his office ladies as a nice Mother's day gift along with the cards I got for him.

It's a pretty simple recipe, but very fattening. The dough must look like crumbly fine sand when ready


I use a Tablespoon sized cookie scooper for consistency, also it makes a slightly smaller cookie, which means the perfect bite size.


Of course to make them look really good, you have to use blanched whole almonds, not those slivers or flakes, though the skin on almonds are acceptable, they just don't look as pretty, and if you remove them yourself, then you risk carpel tunnel.



After you placed the almonds on the dough balls, flatten them with your palm. Yes I am wearing gloves. The older I get the more squicked out I am by the feel of oils. Goof is like this too. He can't enjoy potato chips without a napkin in hand.



After all that cookie smashing, the egg wash for a lovely glaze.


Sorry the cookies didn't last long enough for me to even take a finished fresh out of the oven cookie. The house just smells so good, and they taste heavenly. I think those cookies helped contribute to the sale of my house. Seriously, the buyers came over last minute, while I was baking. I had just enough time to pull out the cookies in the oven, put them on the rack, and the dough in the fridge. The oven was on while they were looking around.

I wouldn't get in trouble for this

So I was checking my food RSS the other day and I saw this pop out at me. http://www.bakeorbreak.com/2008/03/18/pecan-pie-cupcakes/
Wowie. I have been thinking about pecan pies lately because well I live in Georgia. The nuts grow out here. I want almonds, then I get them from California. Also since Easter is tomorrow, I was planning my Easter dinner of course. I decided to cheat, and not do a lot of cooking. Goof was given a gift certificate by a vendor, for Honey Baked Hams. Hey I like ham. I was able to order a half ham, two sides, and a pecan pie for our dinner. I decided to bulk it up with mashed potatoes, brown n serve honey rolls, yams, and baked mac n cheese. Upon reflection, there really isn't enough produce. The pre made sides from Honey Baked happen to be sweet potato souffle, and cinnamon apples. Goof loves his sweet potatoes, and well I'm willing to try them another way to like them. I just don't care for them canned in sweet syrup. I still think they taste best fresh baked plain, or mashed with butter, or even to make that ubiquitous candied yam dish with marshmallows, the yams again still have to be fresh baked. The texture just doesn't work for me in the can.

Oops back to the recipe. I am scared of making a pecan pie. Well for one it's not the season for pecans. It's spring so it's getting warm and the AC will come on soon. I don't want to ruin my holiday dessert without a trial run. As I perused this recipe, it looked pretty good. I mentioned it to Goof the other night, and he was intrigued by it. This morning his comment was, "You aren't going to get in trouble for making it." Yes, he loves his sweets, and he does have a liking for pecan pies. I might have to make this in another week or so. I gotta make sure Goof's blood sugar levels go back to normal after this meal. I think we are gonna be eating ham for 3 days, then the leftovers and bone will need to be frozen for a later date.

I was talking with Stinky last week about Easter dinner. Well actually just about holidays in general. I love them for the food. My family was never super religious. Holidays were paid days off that everyone got, and we would get together and have good food. So here I am with my little family still thinking in terms of big families with lots of food. I mean good Lord, I got an 8lb ham. This thing weighs as much as Lulu. Thanksgiving turkeys weigh as much if not more than Mingy. I could eat my dogs I guess is another way of looking at it. Stinky just laughs at me. He says it's pretty obvious that holidays are all about food for me. Hence the walking we must do to keep in shape. I know I'm out of shape from being at home. I'm not as active as I used to be working. So I needs to walk daily. My dogs need to walk daily. Skinny dogs like mine are supposed to have thin waists. Looking down at my dogs, their bodies are turning into long tubes. Like dachshunds. They are begging too many treats from Goof.

We survived the flight back

I'm back from the city by the Bay. Well from the East Bay anyways. For some reason I'm warmer here than back at Mom's house. The wind was so cold! Also it rained in Atlanta while we were gone, so the bitter cold front was missing. Mom told me that Dad hurt his thumb somehow and wasn't able to turn on the wall heater. Not that she uses it much. We used space heaters to warm up our toes. Mom worries about her orchids. Gee, they are her new children. There is a cold front coming in next week, so back to the cold toes. I really want electric socks.

No luggage was lost, and it wasn't a bad flight back. We watched Blades of Glory on the laptop, so we had some fun. It was a much calmer flight back. I did leave CA with more luggage than I meant to. Now I have a complete set of Mom's luggage. I'm sure that will come in handy next time.

Still thinking about all that happened with the family. One thing that was pretty funny and I'll have to post pictures later, is the public housing. A comment that one of my younger cousins made about store bought gingerbread house kits. So since the holidays are over, the joke was still funny, and I teased her about it. I'm going to make a house and she will have to make hers. I plan to share photos of this with the family and all 3 of you out there. If I manage to make more than one, will it become a ghetto? The Acorn projects of Oakland? Make gingerbread gun runners? If I knew the name of some infamous Atlanta project I would name it that. Perhaps if I can make multi-story buildings I can call it New Jack City. Wesley Snipes toting a machine gun in a Jeep outside the complex. How hard would it be to make a crack pipe with royal icing? Heck would you even be able to tell what it is, depending on the size?

Ah well, we are unpacked, but still sorting things out. I've got to sit on Stinky to organize his closet. It looks like the closet puked clothes all over the place. I think I need to grab some more hangers for him. Also a new belt or two for his pants. Dang kid has an itty bitty waist. What any woman would kill for. Wasted on men.

Lips!

Stinky calls these things lips. The first time I made them they truly did look like it. I found this recipe in my America's Test Kitchen's cookbook. Cook's Illustrated is an awesome magazine. Egg, gave me this cookbook a few years back as a christmas gift, and I have put it to use. I go between this cookbook and the Gourmet cookbook. While I love the Gourmet one, ATKC is really a fantastic food bible too. In fact it had more info for the novice cook.

It all starts out like this;

Then it becomes a big pile of this;
Flatten the rounds

using a dowel or a kid's rolling pin

brushed with melted butter, folded and placed in the pan. I only have one large jelly pan, so I used foil to line it, in case I needed the pan again later.

Fully risen rolls


We had these rolls with Goof's beef stew. It was a lovely meal.

Chocolate cake with vanilla buttercream

Well here ya go. My lovely cake. Notice it's not professional grade decoration? I admit I need to take a cake decorating class. Just for the basics. I'm not planning on going all out Duff Goldman-Ace of Cakes-Food Network-ninja on anyone. The crumb coating here. The cake was a basic moist chocolate cake. I did grease and flour the pans with cocoa powder and I used Magic-cake liners I bought at Williams Sonoma. Somehow I didn't tap one of the pans enough and I still got a lopsided layer out of it. Oh well. I need to get a cake turntable. Also some cake cardboard rounds. Actually I like Alton Brown's idea of using an old record player. Oh there are many things I still want for my kitchen. When I am old and kick the bucket I will have one heck of an equipped kitchen I bet. My kid and his kids will find all kinds of pans and stuff. Hopefully his wife will enjoy cooking and baking. If not, it's to the Goodwill or yard sale.

So, our Halloween was uneventful. No trick or treating as Stinky said he didn't want to go, then he changed his mind, but until his next grades come out he's stuck with nothing. No friends, no games, no fun. Unless you count blowing leaves in circles fun. Well with Stinky, he can figure something to keep him from doing what he needs to.

We did go out to dinner and it was nice. I got some lovely presents from Goof. Things that I needed, a new Bluetooth, and a sewing lamp! Gosh, I could have so used it last month when I was up late pulling stitches.

I'm another year older officially. Hmm don't feel like it, but you are only as old as you feel. So here is a slice of cake for you to enjoy my birthday. May you have many happy days.

French Macarons

A couple of weeks ago, the food blog world was a buzz with french macarons. Not macaroons, as in coconut balls sweetened with vanilla or whatever flavorings. These are the cookies I saw years ago watching Jacques Pepin make with his best friend.
The articles are all up on Serious Eats website. After reading all these blogs, and since it's Halloween, I figure I need to get started on making these cookies. I have most of the equipment after 10 years.

The cookies begin like this; a basic stiff whip of egg whites and sugar. Add to this a whole mess of finely ground almond meal, powdered/icing sugar and cocoa powder; I took the photo before the sifting of the cocoa powder so bear with me. After carefully folding in the dry mix, I dropped it all in a ziplock bag. I don't have any pastry bags. Must remedy that. I squeezed them into 2 inch blobs. They are supposed to be 1 inch rounds, but again bear with me. I did the double sheet pans, but not the cracked open oven. The cookies didn't burn and I got feet! I was so happy! My first experience baking these rather temperamental cookies! I did let them sit for about 30 min. Supposedly you let them sit for an hour to two hours to get a skin. Well I got impatient. I didn't have too much trouble peeling them off the parchment paper. I took out the vanilla buttercream I made yesterday and whipped it up again. I spread 1/5 teaspoons on a cookie and topped it off with a cookie of similar size. Not bad for my first attempt. How did they taste? Pretty darn good! I put most of them in a container to let mature overnight. We each had a macaron. It required a glass of milk, pure sweetness. Goof can't say anything needed to change. I think my buttercream could have been smoother, but otherwise, very good. I'm not sure if the cookies were right as they didn't seem to have the height that most professional bakers got. I'm just happy I got feet. Tomorrow the rest of my baking venture of the week.

pure fat!

There is something wrong with fresh buttercream frosting. The need to lick the spatula, whip, and bowl. The immediate rush of sugar and butter on the tongue. The sudden urge for me to drink a big cup of water to wash the butterfat clinging to my tongue.
I hardly ever indulge in frosting. But there is something coming up this week. Kids planning their costumes, and dreaming of the candy loot they will bring home. The scary decorations they will see in some neighborhoods. This is a fun time of year.

baking again

I did a little more baking last night. Had a couple of really mushy bananas so bread was in order. I decided to make another loaf of the egg braid bread and use it for french toast. Well that was all good and dandy, but I am having a problem with the double braid. I split the dough in half and those halves were split into three for the braid sections. I really tried to make them nice and level. The second rise went fine, the egg wash was great. The layers were centered and rose nicely. My problem came in the oven. Somehow the top braid shifted. Instead of a nice stack, I got a lopsided drunk top braid leaning over. I may have to try toothpicks if I really want that double braid look. Hmm, perhaps it's better to go with a single layer braid. No shifting that way. The bread still tastes good of course. I did play with the recipe a bit. I decided instead of the 3T of oil in the starter to go with the same amount of butter. I notice that while my friend uses only 3 1/2c of flour, I am using 4c to get the right dough consistency and pliability. Perhaps it's the attitude. Hey different flour? Humidity? One never knows too may variables when cross country baking.

Last night at the grocery store I was eyeing the turkey necks. Why? Well, this family adores homemade turkey gravy. Stinky can't get enough of it! The dogs go nutty when they see turkey necks. It's that time of year. Thanksgiving is almost upon us. Time for me to start looking at my recipes and decide if I want to go with the usual staples or do something else. Stinky has mentioned ham, but we had a big ham earlier this month. I'm a traditionalist when it comes to Thanksgiving. I want a turkey.

Egg braid bread

One of my dear California friends sent me this recipe. It's pretty simple, not sweet, but a nice bread. Obviously I need to work on my shaping. I think the top braid was too small because I didn't get the right ratio when I was dividing the dough. I was told her youngest son was quite happy with the bread and used it for sandwiches. Very good idea. I think french toast is in order for tomorrow's breakfast, with maple syrup, butter and cinnamon sugar!

This is what it looked like after the second rise and egg wash was applied. The first photo was right out of the oven.

The cut;

And my love of fresh bread and sweet cream butter!


The next bread recipe will be her Hawaiian bread recipe. I need to copy my parker house roll recipe and forward that on to her.

Edited to tell everyone, the bread is gone. Stinky ate 2/3 of the loaf. Goof barely got any. Had to make more for breakfast.

Caramels

I'm exhausted. The the lawn maintenance again. Early to bed for me!

This is what I made last night;

The recipe is up on 101 cookbooks.
http://www.101cookbooks.com/archives/espresso-caramels-recipe.html

Stinky loves them, but he agrees, they need to be firmer.



This is what I made last night with the digital thermometer. What I learned this time around? Well don't need oil when you use parchment paper, and it doesn't necessarily need to be refrigerated. Though, I still think it's the safest place with the damned ants.



I didn't count. I just kept cutting the candy, and papers to wrap. Next time, half the recipe, to keep my sanity. Took me an hour cutting and wrapping and I was pooped after the lawn maintenance.

It must be the season change

I'm still up and I'm awake. Why? Well for some reason I've been craving sweets. The urge to nest. It's fall the weather is getting cooler and I want comfort food. A couple of things are hanging me back. I went to Walmart for groceries. Just staples, but I know that I can get leeks there. Well guess what? They were out of leeks. What everyone else had the urge to make French Provencal soup with pistou? So, I need to head out to Kroger's or Publix and get some there. While I was at Wallyworld, I did pick up a couple of quarts of whipping cream. I have been dreaming about caramels. I see all these candy apples and I start to drool.

I made chocloate cookies with kisses on them this weekend, and today I made expresso caramels. I also found out the new candy thermometer I bought at Wallyworld is off by 20 degrees. No wonder my caramels were way too soft. No hard ball stage here. I decided screw that, and used my digital meat thermometer. I started again. This time I made caramels from a recipe a CA coworker had given me. Lady Lois's Irresistible Caramels. Honest to God that's the name, and boy those caramels were yummy. They were her mom's recipe and she had her mom write them out for me, and mail it. I spent an hour cooking them, and now they are cooling in a pan overnight. I'll post photos of them tomorrow.

I definitely need to get another digital thermometer that is more convenient than the one I have. But anyways I digress. I was looking at the food blogs on my feeder, and the ones with new posts have desserts posted. Blondies or Hello Dolly's, frosting, and stuff. We are all testing our recipes for the holidays I guess.

I have to start shopping around and looking for containers to hold my homemade diet killers. Also need to order dried lavender for sachets and such. It looks like Goof is gonna take time off this Christmas and we can all fly out to CA. Well except the dogs. They are gonna be kenneled. I don't know if we would be able to take both on the flight, and I'm certainly not willing to put them in cargo.

Need an earlier bedtime

I really gotta go to bed earlier. Last few weeks, I've been staying up late, and getting up early to do stuff around the house. Today was no exception. Got up with Goof, cleaned up the bathroom after him, did the dishes, cleaned the bedroom, started laundry, emptied the garbage. This was all before 8am. I had called the house warranty and had a few things repaired. The electrician came over at 9am, did his thing, left within 30 min. Waited around until 1pm for the plumber, thank God he showed up, Stinky's toilet was running! Then the appliance guy came at 4:30pm. He's got to order the dishwasher part. I really didn't get much done waiting around for them. I took a little nap on the sofa with the dogs while waiting for the repairmen. I'm sure it must have been interesting for nosey neighbors, seeing 3 different service trucks on my driveway.

I did notice that Eldest, Bug, and Fred were out playing the the cul de sac. When Stinky noticed them, I was yelling at him to call his friend. We are having another playdate tomorrow. I still don't like them. Interestingly enough the night we went to get Harry Potter, Fred's family were out in the cul de sac setting off fireworks. So is it the fireworks Eldest's mother and Kiosk man don't like? Or is it the lies and exaggerations that came out of his mouth?

I had a great conversation with Egg today about Harry Potter. He finished it Sunday afternoon. Just as I expected. Shark finished it before he did, but as he says, she reads for speed, he reads for retention. Some parts of the book, we pretty much expected, other parts, we were not expecting. Some disappointments, but all in all, we both enjoyed it. He felt the same as I did, the epilogue was for the women who need a happy ending. It would have been enough to end it, and let our imagination take flight. Egg, says that J K Rowling is stepping away from the books for a while, but is not against coming back and addressing the support characters. She won't write about the main three, but that's okay. I'm sure that they would pop up some how. There are some characters, I want more back story on, but now must wait. I've been taking the book, and letting it open where it may and reading from there. I find it's a great fun. Also pick up on details I might have missed.

I made banana bread today. I think I need to work on the recipe. There needs to be more moisture if I want to make muffins, the loaf itself was fine. Stinky felt that I did not put in enough bananas. I guess 6 wasn't enough, though I must say the bananas were a bit on the small side. It was easy enough to make, and I didn't make it too sweet. Perhaps that's what he meant by not enough banana flavor. Hmmm, well we are out of bananas, so next week, we'll try again.

cuatro dulce de leche cake

I was surfing through the food blogs and found this recipe from a bakery in Texas. Now I admit I have never eaten a tres leche cake, so I have no frame of reference. This cake just sounded so yummy especially since my uterus is hating all men.

So a quick perusal of the ingredients, and I realized I had most of the stuff. After work I headed to Wally world to grab some diary and pizza for a sleep over. I spent my evening chatting with friends on yahoo, watching pre-pre-teen boys and boiling cans of condensed milk. Yes, boiling UNOPENED cans of condensed milk. This is the easy way to make dulce de leche. It is so not a west coast thing. Ask a native Californian who is not a foodie and they will look at you weird. So 5 cans of condensed milk in a strainer in a 12qt stockpot with water 4 inches above the cans, on med high heat to a slow boil flipping the cans every 45 min for 4 hours. Then I got tired and I turned off the heat, and let it cool for 8 hours in the water bath. What did I get? Well I learned I could also just let the cans lay on their side and not worry about flipping them. But I did get nice extra thick pudding consistency golden brown dulce de leche.

The next morning it was cake baking time. 2 lbs of butter for 4 cakes were softening at room temp, 4 cups of sugar and 8 eggs. The cakes were nice and dense, smelling heavenly of vanilla and sugar. I did pick up some magi-baking strips and the cakes came out very level and evenly browned. Wohoo! I love me some BillySan. Of course it's an SF company!

So while the cakes cooled I made all the other stuff. The tres leche combo turned into a quatro mixture. I accidently added whole milk,so me not paying attention now have a milk mixture consisting of condensed, evaporated, whole milk, and whipping cream. I did use some for my coffee, yummy.

Using the dulce de leche I mixed 1 c of this thick stuff with 1/2c of warmed whole milk. This is supposed to be a thin caramel sauce from what it looks like. That went into the fridge too.

The carmelized meringue... I'm not sure that turned out right. My torch was low on fuel, so I used a something of Goof's that gave me a nice browning element. The egg whites were room temp since it was a cold day and they had been out all day. The kitchenaid rocks! My candy thermometer met an untimely death, at the hands of Goof, who swears he didn't do it. So what's a girl to do? Use the digital thermomter attached to our handy dandy timer. Gosh, that's one of the best items for $30 I every bought. So I got sugar and a little water on the boil with the temp probe hanging in it waiting for the soft boil stage of 240*. I measure my cup of egg whites and wait. I'm not whipping whites until it's almost time. Well the probe reads 200*, okay time to start whipping. I did it timed it just right, as I got the whites to soft peaks stage the sugar mixture hit 240* I kept a steady thin stream going while the mixer when to work. When it was done I had lovely stiff peak italian meringue.

So finally I had the meringue done and the cakes were completely cooled, so I sliced the cakes only in half, I'm not that talented to do thirds neatly. I may have used too much of my 'tres leche' mixture between the layers, but it was nice, it held the liquid. Frosting is a bitch. I hardly every frost. Well for one, it seems no one can wait for the cakes to cool to add frosting, and another reason, it's hard! I'm not so steady with that darn spatula, offset or straight.

So here I am trying to frost a cake not on a cake pedestal, (yea, another wish item) nor on a proper cakeboard, with this thick meringue. It works but at the same time, it's not as pretty as I would like. I try for the peaks, but remember I hardly ever frost a cake. I really have no experience. It came out okay. Like I said torching is fun. It's neat watching the sugar brown. I drizzled a little of the caramel sauce after I browned the meringue. Slicing the cake was easy. I plated it and did a little dribbling of the caramel sauce, and put some strawberries on the plate too.


I think it turned out quite nicely. Stinky says he loves frosting, but he never finishes a slice that's been properly frosted, he's like me not a true frosting fan. Goof ate his piece and shared some with Lucy too. She seems to enjoy the little licks of frosting.

Will I make this cake again? Yes, but I think I'll avoid the tres leche soaking. I'm gonna try it with a thicker caramel sauce as the filling. A nice caramel cake is just fine. Oh and the massive quanities of dulce de leche? I am told one can of that stuff makes a very nice caramel pie in cookie crumb crust. Hmm now imagine that same pie with pecan pralines in there too!