blog blocked

Well, sorry I haven't posted in a while-but it took a huge effort to be able to get back on the blog. for some reason, unknown to technically challenged me, I was not able to access the blog. it kept telling me my username was wrong-but then when I asked for help-it sent the same name! so go figure.

Having limited time these days due to ridiculous travel schedule-I was unable to cope. I'm not sure I was really able to cope this evening-but I did.

Of course now I have nothing to say. Too exhausted from technical trials to get anything of relevance out.

Hope to post more regularly again soon. Sorry for the interruption. Life gets in the way....but a new Diva Class is in the works.

Orange Roll recipe request

I have had numerous requests for the orange roll recipe. I will gladly give it out. However if you are untrained in yeast it may not come out as you like the first time. I would wait and post with pictures-but the requests have been too many to wait and I am traveling so much i will not get to making them again for a while.

This roll will linger in your mind and you won't be able to let them sit on the counter. If you make the recipe and you don't have a big family gathering and you don't want to gain five pounds-immediately put the leftovers in Ziploc bags and freeze them. they freeze very well and will then be just out of range of your "oh those rolls are in the kitchen" mindset. Trust me on this one-willpower has no chance.

So here is the recipe:

Dough:
1 cup milk
½ cup sugar
3 tablespoons butter
½ teaspoon salt
3 eggs, slightly beaten
2 ¼ teaspoon yeast
4 cups flour

Warm milk to just about boiling; add sugar, butter and salt. Remove from heat and let cool a bit. Add eggs once cooled.

While mixture is cooling, start yeast in ¼ cup of water and a teaspoon of sugar brought to between 105 and 115 on a candy thermometer.

Add to egg/milk mixture.

Place mixture in a mixing bowl of an electric mixer fitted with dough hook attachment. Add flour one cup at a time. Process dough until it climbs the dough hook-about three to four minutes.

Remove dough from bowl and drop into a bowl that has been buttered and is large enough to accommodate two to three times the current volume. Dough will be sticky and soft

Cover with plastic wrap that has been buttered.
Let Rise till doubled in a warm spot (85 degrees is ideal-but 70 will do). About one hour.

In the meantime, make the filling:
1 cup very soft butter
1 cup sugar
Rind from two oranges

Mix all ingredients by hand in a bowl. set aside till ready to use.

Once dough has doubled, drop it onto a lightly floured counter and separate it into three pieces.

Take each piece and roll it into a rectangle about 8” x 20”.
Spread the dough with 1/3 of the filling mixture.
Roll the dough so that it is 20” long when rolled. Cut into approximately 1 1/2 “ pieces and place cut side up into well greased muffin tins (grease even if non stick). Each log should make about 12 rolls. You can make them bigger if you like-you’ll just have fewer rolls. I personally like them larger.

Brush JUST BEFORE PLACING IN OVEN with egg diluted with 1 teaspoon water.

Bake in 400 degree oven for 10 minutes or until golden.

Cool in pans. If you can, tip them on their sides to cool (individually in each muffin cup take the roll and tip it sideways).

These rolls are best warm. If you make them in advance simply reheat them in the oven for ten minutes (covered) or in the microwave a couple at a time for 8-10 SECONDS.

Bon Appetite you are NO gourmet!

UGH! Well as most of you probably have heard by now, Gourmet magazine went out of business last month. Much to my horror, my subscription will be fulfilled with Bon Appetite. This is really a bad food magazine. I had not read it in years-and now I know why.

The visuals are very unappealing with very little photography to speak of at all. And what is photographed is as bland as the recipes sound. It has a true identity crises, not sure if it is a health magazine, a foodie mag or perhaps "busy mom's guide to fast food at home" magazine.

In any event-it is NOT a replacement for Gourmet who's food jumped off the page in glorious beautiful photography. Tempting your taste buds with glistening juices or creamy textures. It was truly a beautiful magazine written for those who love food.

The articles were vivid and engaging - educating your mind and your palate.

As close as I have come to Gourmet is Saveur. It has all the same virtues of Gourmet. It does seem to be a bit more experimental that Gourmet ever was-but that is a good thing after reading the bland and benign Bon Appetite. Don't bother with this one folks!

"I'm not afraid of butter!"

No-that was not a quote from me. As many of you know-I am addicted to butter with no desire to do anything about it. Inclined to treat butter as a condiment, I am greatly buoyed by meeting others who share my wild abandon for this fabulous food.

SO imagine my joy this past weekend when I was speaking with Connie about my cooking classes and she announced-unprompted I might add-"I'm not afraid of butter!". Of course I knew right then and there that Connie was my kind of gal.

This was later solidified when she practically tore the waiters arm off as he tried to take away the Brownie sundae we had ordered. Exclaiming that it was chocolate and anything chocolate was worth eating.

Well, I couldn't agree more! Thank you for that refreshing attitude. I might add she is a little bit of a thing. Her secret-a husband that drags her up and down mountains via skis, bike, foot or any other way he can imagine.

I have to get that active part down a little better. Maybe then I would be tiny too-but for now-I'll settle for fat dumb and happy-and healthy!

Butter and chocolate and garlic. The keys to a happy life as far as I'm concerned, And now I can say I am not alone in these thoughts!

Rosemary Chocolate Caramel Nut Bars

Sorry, just realized I forgot to post last Christmas cookie recipe! I was putting away all the Christmas things and found this last recipe hanging out-meaning it had never gotten in to the blog.

It is a bit of a pain but worth the effort. The rosemary flavor is such a subtle surprise that the look on your friends' and familys' faces will be worth the effort. They will not be able to identify the flavor-but it is very appealing!

This makes a jelly roll pan of cookies that you can cut to whatever size you want-I recommend 1" cubes.

Base Crust:

2 cups flour

1/2 cup fine cornmeal

1/2 cup sugar

1/2 teaspoon salt

2 sticks butter-cold cut in to small pieces

2 large egg yolks

3 tablespoons heavy cream

Topping:

1 cup walnuts (4 oz)

1 cup raw shelled pistachios (4 oz)

2 cups sugar

1/2 cup water

1 cup heavy cream

1 tablespoon finely chopped fresh rosemary

1/4 teaspoon salt

1 cup roasted/skinned hazelnuts (4 oz)

8 oz bittersweet chocolate

Preheat oven to 350

Cornmeal Crust:

In a large bowl, whisk the flour, cornmeal, sugar and salt. with a pastry blender or 2 knives, cut in butter till mixture resembles cornmeal (I use the food processor-make sure you don't over process!!).

In a small bowl, mix beaten egg yolks with cream. mix into cornmeal mixture until a dough forms. Use your hands to do final kneading and blending.

On a lightly floured surface roll out the dough to your pan size (jelly roll-about 15x10). Roll the dough onto the rolling pin and transfer to the ungreased pan. (I use parchment paper on the bottom so that I can remove the whole sheet of cookies and cut on a cutting board).

Press the dough firmly into the bottom of the pan and up the sides. Freeze for 30 minutes. Bake for 12 minutes.

Topping:

Spread the nuts on a cookie sheet (will have to do multiple times for all the nuts) and bake till fragrant-about 8 minutes.

In a medium saucepan combine the sugar and water. swirling the pan once or twice till the sugar is dissolved. Simmer over moderate heat, brushing down the sides of the pan with a wet pastry brush from time to time until a deep golden brown caramel forms-about 18 minutes.

NOTE: this is where the recipe can go wrong. The above sounds simple enough-but never seems to happen that simply. First, if you don't have the right pan the process will never happen. I discovered that this year with a pan that looks like a good pan-but is not a good conductor of heat and therefore never allowed a caramel to form. I have also tried my copper pans and they are TOO good a conductor of heat and the caramel burns. SO I have found the best way to do this is with a regular saucepan. If it takes a lot longer or a lot less than 18 minutes something went wrong. Good luck!

If you were successful with the caramel, while it is cooking, heat the cream and rosemary in another pan. add salt and remove from heat. once caramel is formed in above instructions,

SLOWLY add the hot cream to the caramel. It will sputter and spit and bubble-that's ok, just continue to stir and it will settle down to a nice caramel (hopefully :)> ).

Now add the roasted nuts to the caramel mixture and toss well.

Spread the nut mixture over the cooled crust. Bake in oven for about 25 minutes. the topping will be golden and bubbling. Let it cool a little (about 15 minutes).

In the meantime, break up the chocolate into a bowl and place it in the microwave for about 1 minute. Check it-if not completely melted put back in for 30 seconds at a time till mostly melted. stir it to finish the melting process.

TIP! NEVER NEVER NEVER touch melted chocolate with water. even a drop of water or a not totally dry wooden spoon will make the chocolate seize immediately. Make sure EVERYTHING is totally dry!

Brush the chocolate over the semi cooled nut mixture. Let cool till set. Cut into desired size bars.

These can be made up to a week in advance and left whole (not cut into bars).

hallelujah Challah

Hallelujah!-I finally figured out what happened to that Challah bread during the diva session. And this is pretty funny.

As you know, I couldn't imagine why it didn't turn out since i had made it quite successfully before. I couldn't really persuade myself that Martha had put out a bogus recipe. But here I was with prove that this was not right.

I kept the recipe on my counter because I was going to make it again this week just to see what the problem was with this recipe. Well, turns out it isn't the recipe-it's ME! and my old age creeping up on me.

After I discovered my error, I let a couple of people read the recipe and they all thought the same thing. Everyone-including me-read 1/4 cup water-not 3/4 cup as the recipe states. The print is SOOOOO tiny that unless you have a magnifying glass-it looks like 1/4.

So since this summer when I last made the bread-to January, my eyes have gone south enough that I could not read that tiny print. Lesson learned-WEAR THE GLASSES!
oh dear. Guess I am getting old. Lesson learned.

Ghee!

No, I didn't spell that wrong. Ghee is an Indian name for clarified butter. You see it in the stores sometimes.

So what is it and why should you use it?

If you melt butter, it will separate and if you take the clear part and pour it off from the solid part that is clarified butter (clear part)- Ghee.

And why is this useful? Well, it has a much higher smoke point than regular butter so if you are using it to brown or to saute, the chances of it burning are much lower. also, it imparts a nuttier taste than regular butter.

So in general, it is a better butter-if you can imagine such a thing! something better than butter!

It is a bit of a pain to make-so try just buying it. Try it-you'll like it. :).

Diva Doings

From Saturday's Diva session our booty:

2 dozen orange rolls

8 nut roll loafs

12 Humongous cinnamon buns

1 failed challah with pears

We had a great time learning about and making some really yummy yeast products last Saturday. the ladies discovered that yeast is alive and treated to a little warmth and sugar-will grow quite nicely in your baked goods.

The Diva disaster of the day was the Challah bread. This is a perfect example of following a recipe leading to failure. I had made this bread twice before with fantastic results. it is a Martha Stewart recipe so I usually do not worry about her instructions as they are usually spot on. However in this one she failed miserably.

When I made it the first two times I followed my knowledge of bread making and put together the wet ingredients with the yeast at the right temperature, then added the flour one cup at a time. Her recipe calls for putting everything in the bowl. Since I follow a recipe when the Diva's are here-I did just that. What I got was a molten piece of lead. So-good lesson for the ladies and myself. There are generally accepted practices for bread making that need to be followed. See picutre of challah which I pulled from the trash to photograph. We pulled it apart in class and noted all its postive (dough was very tasty even though it was very very very very dense), and negative-inedible due ot density, attributes. I threw it away, then decided to photgragh for your viewing pleasure:

good bread gone bad. (first picture)

When you make bread in a bread machine one of the reasons you don't get the proper rise is because everything goes in the machine at once. the other reason is that you should use rapid rise yeast (which is different from instant yeast). However no one tells you that-so how would you know? frankly I am not sure why anyone would use a bread making machine-and if anyone wants mine-feel free to ask. its been in the basement for decades. And hopefully the ladies at the session will have theirs in thier basement after our session and seeing how easy it is to make truly delicious bread. Not something that resembles a combination football chef's hat and tastes like them too!

Excluding the Challah-everything else was absolutely scrumptious. I altered the dough recipe for the Nut Roll and it is just perfect. three days later it is still moist and lovely. So a good experiment. I altered it by using 2 eggs and 2 egg yolks instead of 3 eggs. I also added 1/2 cup of the water at the end. Made the dough very moist but with plenty of lift.

We ate well, and laughed well and forgot about the snow that was falling outside.

YEAST DIVA SESSION SATURDAY JAN 2!!!

Sorry for the late notice-but I sent an email to most of the Diva's and got lots of out of office replies. Didn't think to follow up on the blog!

anyone interested in the yeast session please call or email me (innerdd@hotmail.com).

Releasing Your Inner Domestic Diva

Featuring

All Things Yeast

This session will focus on a very specific topic. Yeast: How to use it, how to store it, how to buy it, how to love it. (who doesn’t love good bread???!!)
Yeast is actually very easy to use but has some pretty specific science associated with it. Understand why sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t. Improve that success ratio and conquer the “fear of yeast”.
We will prepare at least three very luscious sweet breads--with samples to take home. I think you will leave with a desire to go home and bake bread and make someone very happy!
PLEASE JOIN US SATURDAY JANUARY 2, 2010
10:00am-3pm
This will be a longish session since yeast requires rising time-but we will be busy the whole time. Plan to come in the morning and remain for at least four to five hours.
Returning Divas $35
New Divas $40