Little Bits of Life…

Here’s a super-cute project that, while time consuming, is very fun and relatively easy to make. I used a cake mix (from the box) but changed it, as per the instructions in the back of the Hello, Cupcake! book this recipe comes from. In spite of the warning in the book about not using a mix with pudding, that’s what I used because it was all I had on hand. Also, I used whole milk and lemon juice instead of buttermilk, again because it was what I had on hand. The cupcakes domed nicely and were very sturdy. One box made enough cupcakes to have 12 large and 24 mini owls.

Many thanks to Kimball, who split the eyes for me. I’d suggest actually buying Oreos instead of a knockoff (which is, unfortunately, what I did). The mini Oreos came apart very easily, but the large cookies weren’t Oreos and they were a pain in the neck to separate!

Well, I did finally get around to trying out the flour tortilla recipe I was hoping to make. I think the tortillas taste great, though they are a bit small (6" round or so) and, as has been my finding thus far with all the flour tortilla recipes I’ve tried, a little hard to roll out. If I try to roll them out thinner so they are bigger (what I’m going for here is 8 or 9 inch round), they end up folding on themselves when I put them in the pan, and then all is lost! As soon as they hit the cast iron they start cooking, so you have a tortilla that looks more like a handkerchief that somebody dropped on the ground than something you would use to wrap up your taco meat. They still taste great, but look a little stupid. What I really need is someone who is actually experienced at this to show me how to make them! Or to quit trying to make them thin and just have really huge but FAT tortillas. I guess that’s a toss-up.

At any rate, here’s what they looked like. I made Tex-Mex Burger Quesadillas out of them, and they turned out fairly decent. In the first picture, you can see the one on the top right was a little over-done. That was the first one, and I realized quickly that my pan was WAY too hot. Turned it down in a hurry and the rest came out much lighter.

Everybody liked them and Kimball was especially pleased with the tortilla shells. He didn’t know they were home-made until I told him.

We ran out of our stumpy loaves of whole wheat bread last week, so I made some more. It went fairly well, though I’m still not ready to call it great.

I did make a few modifications from my previous attempt:

1) More water. This was mostly by accident. I added probably an extra 2-3 oz of water. Then, because I didn’t want to grind more flour, I didn’t add any extra flour to offset the extra water. This meant the dough was rather more wet than I would have liked, but I figured this bread was a work in progress and I could stand to have an over-wet loaf to see how it would perform.

2) Less rising time. This time I didn’t let it rise forever. Instead, I put it in when the dough was ready to bake, which did work out to be about 90 minutes after shaping.

3) I made one large loaf in my big pan and 1 small loaf in my mini loaf pan. The mini loaf weighed about 6 1/2 oz when I portioned it. I was shooting for 9 oz, but figured that was close enough.

I still wasn’t terribly happy about the height of the loaf, though it was certainly better than last time. I’m still not convinced my loaf pan is 1.5 lb and I may try the whole recipe in the pan next time, just to see if I can get it nice and high like I want. My pan does have rather wide and sloped sides so it is spreading out quite a bit. Also, I think that since the dough was so wet it looked like it may have spread a little more than I liked. That’s a terrible description of what I actually saw but I can’t figure out how to describe what it did. It was almost like the top around the edges was bubbly or something.

So anyway – we’ll eat this loaf and I’ll try again. It still tastes great, in spite of the visual problems. As always, a work in progress.

Erica has been asking me for a few weeks if we could please have spaghetti and meatballs for dinner. I haven’t made meatballs in a VERY long time because when it comes to cooking with meat, I’m cheap and I hate making things that call for lots and lots of meat. But, ever trying to please my family at dinnertime, I decided to look around a bit and see if I could find a good "meatball" solution. I know wheat can be used as a meat extender, so I searched online and found this recipe for meatballs.

While I don’t know that I’d go so far as to call them "the best" like the name states, they were pretty good and Erica was very pleased, polishing off at least 4 meatballs. Isaac (who is not really a big meat eater) ate half of one and announced he didn’t really want a meatball after all, and Cambria ate a few bites of hers before starting a food fight with the kitchen floor. Kimball said he liked them "as long as you know to expect the wheat," but I didn’t really notice it. I think probably had I used cracked bulgur he would have noticed it less, but since I tried and failed to crack my (homemade) bulgur, we just used it whole.

Ok – as promised, here are the modifications I made to the recipe: it calls for 4 oz of ground beef and 4 oz of Italian sausage – I used 8 oz of ground beef, as my family isn’t fond of Italian sausage and I didn’t have any on hand. I used 1 whole egg instead of 2 egg whites (using just the whites would have been healthier, but I hate to waste the yolks because I’d just have to trash them). I used 1/3 cup wheat berries to make bulgur so we ended up with a bit more bulgur (and I decided to use it all in the recipe). I also used more hot water (and actually boiled the water and bulgur rather than just letting them soak). Instead of whole wheat bread crumbs I opened up the freezer and found a bag of 4 1/2 hot dog buns and another bag containing 1 hamburger bun that we’ll probably never use. I tore those up and dried them out a bit after defrosting, and made bread crumbs out of that. Seemed to work pretty well, though it made 2 cups of crumbs so I think I’ll try and make another batch of meatballs this week and freeze them for another day.

I gave the whole wheat bread recipe in The Bread Baker’s Apprentice by Peter Reinhart another shot yesterday. My previous attempt while visiting my sister was mediocre, but I thought I’d give it another shot because I really want to find a great wheat bread recipe and I was sure I could improve on my past experience by making a few important changes.

The last time I made this loaf it turned out dense and small, though with a decent flavor. I have since spent a lot of time looking at the recipe and thinking about what I might have done incorrectly. I came up with three mistakes that I wanted to correct: 1) the recipe calls for some coarsely ground whole wheat flour, and we used finely ground whole wheat flour in its place; 2) the recipe calls for instant yeast and we were using active dry yeast, so we increased the amount of yeast by 25% but neglected to activate the yeast before adding it; and 3) as we were kneading we added extra flour to keep the dough from sticking to our hands.

On Friday the last of the most previous loaf of Light Wheat Bread (also from the Reinhart book) was finished up, so I whipped out my wheat grinder and ground up the required amount of wheat for the Whole Wheat Bread recipe, using my kitchen scale to accurately measure the wheat. I ground some on what my grinder says is "coarse" (it looked about the same to me, but I didn’t inspect it terribly closely) and the rest as finely as my grinder will grind. I made the soaker and poolish, remembering to activate my yeast before adding it to the poolish, and let them rest overnight. The next day I mixed up the rest of the ingredients, again activating the yeast before adding it. I added no extra flour, and in fact added a little more water while kneading. Instead of flouring my hands and my kneading surface, I used wet hands (this is an amazing trick (thanks, Hans) – the dough won’t stick to your hands if they are wet which I never would have thought of). The dough easily and quickly passed the windowpane test, and so I let it rise. After it had risen I divided the dough into 2 equal parts (each roughly 18 oz) and formed them into loaves, placing them in my pans.

This is where things started to go south.

The recipe says it makes two 1-lb loaves, and so I dutifully placed each of my formed loaves in its own loaf pan. What I didn’t know was that my loaf pans are NOT 1-lb loaf pans. Apparently they are more like 1.5 lb loaf pans, or possibly 2 lb (though my bread mentor says most likely they are 1.5 lb pans). I followed the instructions in the recipe, waiting for my bread to "crest above the lip of the pan". I waited the specified 90 minutes without the loaf rising nearly this high, figured it must just be extra cold in my house, and kept on waiting. And waiting, and waiting, and waiting. Unfortunately, I waited so long that by the time I finally gave up and put the loaves in the oven, they were so over-proofed that they fell while baking. The picture below was taken just before putting them in the oven:

Flat topped bread is not very pretty to look at.

Fortunately for me, the loaves, while flat on top from falling and rather wide and stumpy from being in the wrong sized pan, still tasted wonderful. They were not dense, nor were they jaw-tiring to chew. The flavor was excellent (notice I say was – we’ve already polished off the first loaf) and my children and husband all enjoy the bread thoroughly. I’ll be making this again, probably this week. But this time I’ll be portioning the dough a bit differently. I think I’ll make one loaf using about 3/4 of the dough and put it in my regular loaf pan and then use the remaining dough to make mini loaves (or one loaf, depending on how much dough is left). And I’ll be going off the dough response instead of the height of the rise to know when to bake it.

Stay tuned.

I’ve never made quiche before, and actually didn’t really even know what it was until I decided to make this one for dinner. Since I don’t know what quiche is supposed to taste like, I have nothing to base my opinion on, but I thought it was pretty darn good. I made seasoned potato skins and biscuits topped with a very thin layer of honey to go with it, and it went over pretty well. Cambria ate as much as me again. Erica ate a little of hers but didn’t seem to like the quiche or the biscuits much, though (surprise here – she hated them last time) she wanted more of the seasoned potatoes. Isaac ate all his quiche so he could have more biscuits, and Cambria ate all her quiche and two biscuits – again, more than me!

Kimball said my crust was perfect, which was a great accomplishment because until now I’ve never been able to get a nice flaky crust on anything. I always add too much water and knead it too much. So thanks, Jenni, for the tutorial whenever that was (Thanksgiving?). I apparently learned something.

The biscuits were made from the recipe on the bisquick box (again I halved the recipe), but I didn’t cut them into individual biscuits until after I cooked them. It took a bit longer to cook that way (maybe an extra 4 minutes or so) but they were done all the way through. I probably kneaded them a little long so they weren’t as flaky as they could have been, but that could also have been from mixing up the dough about 20 minutes before I was ready to bake them. Also could have been because I made them from a mix instead of from scratch.

Modifications to the quiche recipe: I cut the entire recipe in half (including only making half a pie shell), mainly because I wasn’t sure my family would eat it or enjoy it and I hate having tons left over that nobody will eat but me. I don’t have half and half, and honestly didn’t even really know what it is, but I substituted 1/2 cup reconstituted dry milk and 1/2 cup heavy whipping cream for the 1 cup half and half. (I have since learned that half and half is a mixture, 1 to 1 ratio, of whole milk and cream so my substitution was pretty close.) I also used up the rest of the reconstituted apples left over from the Mini Tarts I made on Monday instead of cutting up fresh ones. Instead of using a 9" pie pan I used a smaller pan (it holds about 5 cups water) with straight sides. I got the crust in there and then regretted it because I wasn’t sure the pieces would lift out without munching the crust, but they came out beautifully. Also, it says to cook it to an internal temperature of 165 but no more than 185. I don’t have an instant read probe thermometer so instead I cooked mine until a knife inserted in the center came out clean (as per my Betty Crocker instructions) and it took about the 45 minutes the recipe claims.

These were ok, but not wonderful. They gave me a touch of heartburn which is always a bummer. Isaac ate his and Erica ate most of hers, but Cambria only picked at her plate. Kimball said it was pretty good, especially the corn tortillas which he says he normally doesn’t like. Unfortunately (because this means I’ll be eating enchiladas every day for a week), even though I didn’t make the full recipe, we still have a ton of leftovers. The fresh corn on the cob was the saving grace of the meal.

Modifications to the enchilada recipe: I used ten 6.5" corn tortillas instead of twelve 8" (because my new tortilla press is 6.5" not 8"), and I halved the rest of the ingredients. I may have had a touch more chicken than a cup, but it was pretty close. As always, I used low-fat cream cheese and low-fat sour cream instead of the regular stuff. I baked at 350 instead of the 325 it calls for only because I didn’t notice it said 325.

The corn tortilla recipe was wonderful, especially the instructions. (You can read about my tortilla making experience here.) I probably added close to 1/2 cup extra hot water.

Tonight’s dinner was a repeat from several months ago. I liked it so much we had it again. Also, it leaves potato peels which I love to season and bake as a side dish (that the kids don’t really like but I love and Kimball likes). So we had it again and Kimball took some pictures for me. The recipe calls for 2% milk but I used skim. I used regular medium cheddar cheese instead of the reduced fat extra sharp cheddar. However, if I had extra sharp cheese I would have used it – I think it would taste very good with this soup. The only other variance is that it took my flour/milk mixture more like 20 minutes to thicken and bubble, instead of the 8 minutes the recipe claims. Maybe if I warmed the milk in the microwave before adding it to the flour it would take less time.

Responses from the kids: Isaac ate his, Erica ate hers and said she loved it, and Cambria ate more than I did! Another success – two nights in a row is pretty good for our house.