Good thing I had extras

Ever start making something and realize the universe REALLY doesn't want you to do that? Everything was going wrong with my baking last night, from discovering that 3c of flour is a lot - like, most of a bag of flour lot - or breaking the yolk while separating the eggs or running out of vanilla extract while pouring it or discovering the second bag of brown sugar was hard as a rock. I still can't believe I didn't spill the vanilla extract while fumbling for the second bottle and the only thing that did spill was a dusting of flour.

I was baking chocolate chip cookies as a hostess gift for a friend, in large part because she and I had a long discussion about home baked cookies. I was horrified that she'd bought some generic brand of chocolate chip cookies - why not bake them, since they're so easy! Well, now I know: they are easy, but time consuming, between waiting for all 5 batches to come out of the oven (did I mention 3c of flour is a lot?) and washing the mixer. It would've been faster if I had an additional pair of baking sheets, but the end product, while filling the description of large chewy cookie, didn't thrill me enough to go through all that labor. I'm not convinced I could learn to make them so much better than preservative-laden store bought that I should go through the effort. Read More......

Hapless Cake Attempt #1

I feel compelled to bake a cake because I bought adorable little cake pans from Michael's. I also had an excess of blueberries in the house, so I thought I'd modify a "Berry Good Shortcake" recipe from the manufacturer and make a chunky blueberry syrup and call them Inaugural Cakes and bring them to work tomorrow.

It was a disaster from the beginning. My food processor couldn't accomodate all the ingredients, so I had to cut the butter by hand and my arm got tired long before the mixture resembled "coarse breadcrumbs." I over-Pam-ed the pans. I ran out of milk and used yogurt as a substitute. I still don't know which of the above caused the cakes to overflow - I would love it if my muffins rose that high out of the pan - and the butter? Pam? to ooze onto the floor of the oven, causing smoke to come billowing out of my oven and filling my apt.

Believe it or not, the cakes taste fine, or rather they taste as they should. It didn't dawn on me until I put the first bit in my mouth, that people make shortcake with biscuits. They're decent semi-sweet biscuits, but so not worth the calories. Or the mess. eek! Read More......

Southern cornbread for Yankees

For years, my friends have been trying to get me to use cast iron, but I've always found it too heavy. Then Julie gave me extremely detailed instructions on how to cook with cast iron (including the intricacies of bacon drippings) and I found an adorable little 6-1/2" skillet by Lodge. I've been making frittatas for the past few months with a small pan that fits in my toaster oven, so I figured I'd try the same with my cast iron skillet, to boost the iron content of my breakfast. However, Cook's Illustrated says that it's best to cook a few things before trying eggs in Lodge's cast iron skillets.

I have a thing for Southern food, so when I saw that Cook's Illustrated provides recipes for "northern" and "southern" cornbread, I had to try making the latter, just to check what I've been eating all these years - I didn't think the cornbread at Dallas BBQ was that sweet.

The recipe calls for heating oil (or preferably bacon drippings) in the skillet while mixing the rest of the ingredients. I tried it in the toaster oven, but before I'd finished mixing even the dry ingredients, I noticed popping and hissing from the toaster. I frantically turned off the power, and ran around opening windows and exhausts - and moved the skillet to the oven. It went without a hitch there, although I was nervous that I'd overfilled the pan.

Turns out I have been eating northern cornbread all these years. The first bite tasted terrible, because I wasn't expecting a dry polenta. Once I got used to it though, I could see eating it with barbecue chicken or maybe as the crust of a chicken pot pie. Not having any of those in the house, I had it with a slice of smoked cheddar. I'll definitely be making more of this. Read More......