I think my obsession with bread is getting a little scary. For the past few days I have been dreaming about dough and loaf pans. I’m sure part of this is due to agonizing over what to register for at Williams-Sonoma. Do I get the plain ones or the non-stick Goldtouch ones that Cook’s Illustrated gave praise to? In the end, I ended up putting both on the registry, the more the merrier. Will it all fit in our small space? That might be the tricky part.

I have made this grilled focaccia bread from The Bread Bible twice this week. Twice in 3 days actually. It’s good, it’s one of the few breads that I can make in the same day (most of the breads suggest popping the sponge in the fridge overnight for the most flavour), and it’s easy. I like how I can use the grill which is perfect for a hot summer’s day and the bread is small enough for 2 people to finish off in a day. There’s a step where you slide the bread off a baking sheet and put it straight on the grill for grill marks, then place it on the sheet to finish baking. I find that the grill marks get lost once it goes back on the pan and I’m thinking it’s an unnecessary step.

I plan on making the Challah from the book as it’s been on my list for the longest time. Sour dough is also on my list of things to do including making the starter from scratch. I’m not sure if I want to be that committed though…sour dough starter is more effort than taking care of fish. I won’t buy starter either, I want the full experience.

I’m a wee bit late for Sugar High Friday, but it’s been a busy week. I made this on Monday, but didn’t have time to post until now. I really wanted to do the meringue theme that’s hosted by One Messy Kitchen (which is the current state of mine). I had been eyeing the Gateau Diane recipe since I had bought the Bittersweet cook book years ago and this was my chance of trying it.

Meringues aren’t usually an issue for me. They’ve been pretty successful every time except for one recipe. This time, I made the meringues twice and I wasn’t happy with both results. The first time I made the recipe it was pretty humid. The egg whites after whipping to stiff peaks seemed to have melted by the time I folded in the chocolate/walnut mixture. I don’t know if it’s because I underwhipped, overwhipped, the humidity, or that I took too long to mix. The meringue came out very flat so I tried it again with the a/c on. The second one turned out a bit better but still a bit too flat for my liking. I think next time I’ll double the meringue recipe to make it taller and I’ll bake it on a silpat marking the rounds with icing sugar. The parchment paper was a pain in the ass and my meringues cracked trying to peel them off.

The cake flavour-wise is amazing! Meringues which are usually very sweet aren’t due to the bittersweet chocolate flecks speckled throughout. The dark chocolate whipped ganache also lessens the sweetness of the meringues. I made my neighbours come by and eat this cake at 9:30pm which they were quite happy to do.

Despite all this trouble I would make this again. I love cakes with meringue layers so I need more practice to make something more presentable.

Okay, that’s my niece. My brother-in-law thinks that she looks like a German boy in this picture.

I don’t know why I’ve been so obsessed with these things. The Dutch baby, or German oven pancake is great to make when you don’t feel like hovering over the stove flipping pancakes. I tried Steamy Kitchen’s recipe. It was so easy to throw together, perfect for a lazy Sunday (or any lazy day).

I saw the Dutch baby recipe before in the Bread Bible, but thought I needed a special pan so I never used it. I went back to the recipe and found out you could halve the recipe which is perfect for 2 people. I also got to try out my new All-Clad 8″ pan that was an impulse buy.

This recipe takes longer to put together as it involves a 1 hour rest, cutting slits in it before the baking is done, and a few other things. Definitely a bit more effort is involved. Rose claims that this recipe gets rid of the rubbery/eggy bottom.

The result?

Hands down this recipe wins. The eggy bottom is non-existent and the Dutch baby rose evenly. Speaking of rising, these definitely rise. I was a bit shocked the first time I baked one and one side was about 8 inches high! They deflate shortly after, but I thought that I had done something horribly wrong.

Here’s a picture of it rising in the oven:

Overall, both recipes are good. I’ll use the Steamy Kitchen one when I want something effortless and I’ll use the Bread Bible recipe when I feel like putting more work into it. One day I hope to create a hybrid of these recipes and have a happy medium. I highly recommend a cast iron pan so it doesn’t stick. I also recommend making these — yum!

Recipe from Steamy Kitchen here.

Recipe from the Bread Bible here (Note: the hand method has the milk accidentally omitted. Add in the milk before the eggs)

Greedily I bought a Le Creuset to make No Knead Bread (but justified the cost by telling myself I would make other things in it). It’s been 4 months and I’ve used it to make some awesome risottos and soups. What about the intended purpose? Never got around to it until now.

As everyone and their mom have made this bread with adaptations to the recipe to yield an even better result, I just dove right in and forgot about looking up those helpful hints and tips. I found this video afterwards and realized my dough was too gooey. I will use 1 1/2 cups of water next time. Before making this I also realized I didn’t have instant yeast, only dry active yeast. I wish I had found Smitten Kitchen’s note to use 1/3 teaspoon.

When I poured the dough onto the counter to make it into a ball I thought for sure it was going to fail. Was I going to be the first one who screwed up No Knead Bread? I kept going and eventually poured the unshapened dough into the pot.

The result?

Excuse the jagged cut marks, I’m hoping to upgrade our Target Chefmate knives to some fancier (sharp) ones.

It still tasted good! The crust is very very crunchy. It was pretty easy to make that next week I’ll make it again with some adjustments. It went stale pretty quickly and I gave a chunk to my dog who then proceeded to chew on it for a good 5 minutes and then drank his ENTIRE bowl of water.

This wasn’t a mind blowing bread for me (the brioche? Now THAT was mind blowing), but I am definitely making it again with adjustments.

Yesterday I turned 27. I invited my family over for a little bbq. I’ve been dying to make ribs and this was a perfect occasion. Some dinner rolls were also in order. There was a little problem I didn’t realize until the day of. The ribs take 4 hours or so to cook and the rolls needed the oven to be preheated for an hour. This is where a second oven would come in handy. I eventually moved the ribs over to the bbq to finish off so I could use the oven for the bread. I guess I could have used the grill to cook the ribs from start to finish, but I’m a Nervous Chef which means I worry excessively.

Everything came together great (I pushed back dinner by an hour to get everything done on time) and Movie Man was great helping me out. I could not have achieved dinner on time AND a clean place without him.

First the bread:

I used the Butter-dipped dinner rolls from The Bread Bible. There is a bit of an error where to sub dry milk replace the water with scalded non-fat milk (cooled to lukewarm). The portions are wrong, just sub the amount of water in the starter with the milk. I had trouble pinching the ends to make a tight seal because my hands were covered in melted butter, but this didn’t effect the end product. The rolls were delicious and buttery enough to not need butter (my dad even said this). Even though the process of making them was lengthy (4 hours of rising time), I will make them again. I also greedily kept the leftovers of the rolls even though I generously let my family take the leftover ribs home.

The ribs:

I just recently found Steamy Kitchen’s blog and it has amazing recipes. The ribs are from the site. Movie Man doesn’t eat pork or beef so he used the glaze for his chicken which he said was very tasty. My sister also requested the recipe. These ribs are good, make them. I even flubbed and used side ribs instead of baby backs and they were still great.

Recipe for bread here
(Note: 1 1/8 teaspoons is the salt for the recipe)

Recipe for ribs here.

I’ve been meaning to go strawberry picking for a few years now and every year I run out of time. This year was no exception. I had a major strawberry shortcake craving and went to my grocery store to pick up some (non-local — tragic!) strawberries and cut up the strawberries to macerate where it sat in a container for far too long.

I didn’t use a shortcake recipe, I used my favourite scone recipe and made biscuit shapes instead of in one big round. For the berry cream I took a couple of strawberries and a little whipping cream which was then whirred in my Magic Bullet.

Delicious!

When Movie Man was living in L.A. and I first went to visit him, the first thing he did was take me to Chipotle’s straight from the airport. He raved on about this Mexican place and how the burritos were humongous and absolutely delicious. I’m not a big fan of Mexican food and my only experiences with burritos and tacos are sadly from Taco Bell. I didn’t think it would really be my thing.

I ate at Chipotle’s 3 times in the 7 days I was there. I was hooked. Sadly, in Toronto I haven’t found a burrito that matched Chipotle’s (Johny Banana is pretty good, if only they were as big as Chipotle’s). Fortunately, Chipotle’s have decided to expand their chain into Canada and Toronto will be the first store in Canada! It will be open this year at the Toronto Life Square. As it is in somewhat walking distance from my place, I can burn off some of the 1000+ calories walking to there and back.

Here is a handy calorie calculator of Chipotle burritos. My favourite burrito is 1040 calories. Also, a word of warning to those on a vegetarian diet…their pinto beans are cooked with a small amount of bacon in it.

Thanks to everyone who congratulated me on my engagement! It’s been a whirlwind of trying to lock down a venue and while my vendor assures me the site is booked, I am in disbelief until we put down some cash and sign the contract.

While Toronto has been drenched with rain, we have been having some hot days as of late. I whipped up some maple walnut ice cream to satisfy my sudden craving for this flavour. I worked off of a recipe I found in a magazine (sadly, I forget the name but I’m sure it was from Chatelaine and the issue was this year) where I volunteer at. The results were delicious and the 10% cream in conjunction with the whipping cream made for something not too heavy.

Here is the modified recipe:

Maple Walnut Ice Cream

1 cup of walnuts, chopped in chunks
1 1/4 cup maple syrup
1 cup whipping cream (at least 35% milk fat) or heavy cream
2 cups 10% cream (a 500mL carton)
6 egg yolks
1 teaspoon maple extract

Directions:
1. Toast walnuts (I did mine for a few minutes in a 350 degree oven).
2. In a small saucepan bring 1 cup of maple syrup to a boil and reduce until it’s reduced to 2/3 (about 4 mins)
3. Take off the heat and add both creams. Put mixture back on burner and lower the heat so it’s a simmer.
4. In a separate bowl, whisk egg yolks. Slowly pour yolks into the saucepan and stir until it’s thick enough to coat the back of the spoon (it should register 120degrees if you’re worried about raw eggs).
5. Add maple extract and the the rest of the maple syrup (or more maple syrup to taste)
6. Chill overnight and make the ice cream in your ice cream maker.

Just in time for Canada day, I had no problem thinking of something for the Sugar High Friday hosted by the Domestic Goddess. What does Canada taste like to me? Butter tarts! It’s sweet and just like Canada, is diverse. A butter tart can contain nuts, raisins, currants, or none at all. For me, I like pecans and absolutely no raisins. For this recipe, I chose to use walnuts instead as a cheaper alternative.

And since we’re talking about Canadian foods, I’ve got a craving for a Caesar, ketchup chips, and poutine (not all at once).

Recipe for butter tarts here (note: I omitted the caramel called for in that recipe but added a caramel drizzle from some leftover caramel I had made earlier).

Sorry for the lack of posts. These past few weeks have been busy and I am happy to announce that Movie Man finally popped the question!

P.S. Please excuse the lack of photos on the previous entries. It seems when I upgraded my Flickr plugin for wordpress it stopped formatting all the photos properly!

When I was a child my favourite pudding was tapioca pudding and surprisingly not chocolate. I craved the stuff and I must of went through huge vats of it during my childhood. Recently I had a craving for it when miraculously Movie Man’s mother had made some. With that craving satiated I wanted some rice pudding.

I’ve never actually had rice pudding in my life. Well, except that one time when I was visiting a relative at the hospital and bought one from a vending machine…you can probably guess that was a bad idea.

This rice pudding is from the book Sticky, Gooey, Messy, Chewy and it calls for an obscene amount of milk. I accidentally bought too little of the whole/homo milk (note to self: convert cups into ml to see how much is exactly needed) so I subbed the rest with 2%. In hindsight, I probably should have halved the recipe as I had exactly half of the milk needed. I wasn’t too sure if my pudding would turn out because it was looking extra watery. Even with cooking it longer it still didn’t look thick enough so I just left it as is and finished the rest of the recipe. Thankfully it still turned out and I’ll try it again later on with the full amount of milk.

I added a wonderful spoonful of some homemade dulce de leche and it made for a nice sweet treat. I sort of followed the directions from the book, but instead of using a glass pie pan I left it in the glass container holding my leftover sweetened condensed milk. After taking it out of the oven it looked like I had ruined it. It looked like a custard and not anything like the images I saw in Google. Turns out I was missing one crucial step — whisking it makes for a nice smooth sauce. Success! You can make it by boiling the can in water for a few hours and have the risk of having it explode OR you can make it in the oven. Here are good directions.