An Old Favorite

This week was my first week back from vacation. Steve and I went to Rapid City, SD to visit his parents and do some sight-seeing. The vacation was great! I came back refreshed... until Monday when I had to go back to work. All of my work had piled up while I was on vacation... great. I am transferring to a different position effective Monday. I've been trying to balance my training for that position with the work of my current (soon to be old) position and that's just my work life! I had decided that I would bake something for my coworkers my last week with them so that was my goal tonight. I came home and had a Mike's; a girl has to unwind somehow, right? After supper, I started on my famous chocolate chip-butterscotch chip cookies. I've made them a zillion times and never tire of them. The recipe originates from the Nestle Tollhouse chocolate chip cookie recipe but I've modified it over the years. Some of the modifications were for preferences in taste, others due to lack of ingredients. The kicker, butterscotch chips, was an inspiration from my cousin Liz. The butterscotch adds a softness to the flavor of the cookie that's very refreshing... in my humble opinion.

In preperation

Fall is here which means staying inside more. While most people seem to dread the changing of seasons (especially summer to fall), I love it. Suddenly a break in what has been experienced for days and something new to see and feel and smell. I eagerly await fall. Fall is the precursor to the holiday season... a season I love. Fall also means more baking for me. During the summer, it is simply too hot to bake. Our tiny apartment can't handle the heat generated by our oven during the summer and we feel as though we are in a sweat shop. But fall with its cooler temperatures brings the perfect baking and soup weather. This weekend I have to bake (I know, poor me!) for a pot luck at my church. Last night I flipped through my personal cook book trying to find something different to make. The problem was not finding a new recipe to try but rather which recipe out of the many to try. You see, I collect recipes... I search through cook books, magazines and web sites looking for recipes that might be good. If I did this only occasionally, it wouldn't be a problem but I don't. I search recipes frequently, dreaming of the day when I will make those recipes and picking up little tips as I go along. Last night I could barely sit still; I wanted to bake so bad! However I didn't have the necessary ingredients and it was late. Today presents an opportunity. Today I am making a list and going grocery shopping... even though Fareway is closed on Sundays. I am braving Walmart on Sunday for my love of baking.

Who Needs Retail Therapy? I've Got Kitchen Therapy!

I always forget how comforting a kitchen can be. There is something about focusing all of my energy into baking that always makes me feel great. I'm a little amazed that I've forgotten this because it was always what I turned to in the past. Mad?

Bake it out. Upset or sad? Bake. Happy? Bake to celebrate. This summer has been horrid for me... I've had a few happy moments and memories but overall the summer has sucked. My job is in jeopardy due to a grant possibly not being renewed and the feelings from it have spiraled into something I can't control, something I can't escape. Something I want to hide from and forget about but can't.

My sister-in-law Heather loves to bake as much as I do and during a recent family get-together we decided to do a girls' night followed by a day of baking. We both desperately needed a girls' night and we both love kitchen therapy. Heather's coworker gave her some peaches with the request to bake him a pie which is what set this day in motion. I brought two of my personal cook books. We looked through mine and hers and came up with a list: Tuscan Lemon Cake (with a lemon glaze!), banana oatmeal cookies, cola brownies, and 2 peach pies. At 9 in the morning we went to Hy-Vee and got the necessary ingredients including sandwich fixins' for lunch. The Tuscan Lemon Cake was first which I mainly worked on while Heather puttered around the kitchen. We had a few drinks the night before so a lot of jamming also went on that day... we needed to get rid of some of the calories we had consumed! Heather had said she likes to bake with other people because she always learns some new tricks. I'm not sure what she learned from me but I want her pie crust recipe. It has vinegar in it and sounded very interesting. It was great to vent about my weird summer or family as we were baking.

The Tuscan Lemon Cake was in the oven and I was working on the cola brownies when our friend (and old boss) Elizabeth showed up for lunch. I adore Elizabeth. She has such a great

attitude and is so easy to be around. I hadn't seen her for awhile so it was nice to have her in the kitchen as well. She was more of an observer since she doesn't bake. She was amazed by the ease in which Heather and I baked. She compared it with being on the set of a Food Network show which I found hilarious! Elizabeth's dog, Jessie, had come with her but had stayed outside in the back yard. My niece Eve had a ball going outside with Elizabeth to play with Jessie and slide shoes down the slide. At the end of the day, most of my worries were out in the open and I had seen people I loved. Kitchen therapy had done it's job.

Citrus Streusel Bread, anyone?

Saturdays I have completely to myself while Steve is at work. This might sound nice in theory but around 3pm, I get really bored. Laundry is usually done, apartment is tidy, and...I have nothing else to do. This is also the hour of bad TV shows on Saturdays and I can only read for so long. I decided this week to make a citrus streusel quick bread. I love citrus and who doesn't love bread? The bread seemed simple enough to make but I needed a couple of ingredients. I finish writing our menu for the next 2 weeks, wrote up a grocery list and headed to Fareway. Side note, I love Fareway. It's a very peaceful grocery store to go to even when it's busy. I can always find what I'm looking for, unlike HyVee where I spend hours searching for something only to give up and leave. Fareway also has reasonable prices even though it didn't stop me from spending nearly $140...we had a lot of restocking to do. But back to the bread. After putting away all of the groceries, I started making the bread. The recipe called for a lemon or orange cake mix; I used lemon since I had it on hand. The best part of the bread was the topping on the bread. The topping was a mix of cake mix, brown sugar and cinnamon with butter cut into it. The recipe also called for pecans but since I don't like the texture of nuts in baked goods, I omitted the pecans. With the topping made and set aside, the rest of the batter came together quite nicely. I tried stirring the batter by hand but it looked a little gluey. Time to bust out the hand mixer! The mixer made all the difference. The batter was still thick but smooth. I spooned the batter into the bread loaf pans and sprinkled on the topping.

Soon my apartment smelled of lemon...it was divine. The loaves cooled in their pans for 10 minutes. My friend Kim came over right after I took the loaves out of the pans. The bread was fantastic. In hindsight, I would double the topping because it's the best part.

Soda Cookies and Potato Salad

Tonight I'm celebrating my heritage. No, there is no holiday today that only I know about. I'm half Irish and a quarter German. The other quarter is a mix of French and Luxembourg. Tonight I made Irish Soda Bread cookies. I've tried to make actual soda bread in the past and failed... horribly the first time, not so horribly the second time. The first time I made soda bread was for my church. My priest hosts a holy hour in March for all the local priests. Soda bread is always served along with other appetizers. I signed up to make the soda bread. A few of the older ladies at church asked if I had ever made it soda bread in the past. "No but my uncle is three-fourths Irish. I'm sure I'll be able to find an authentic recipe," I said with confidence... stupid confidence but confidence none the less. I got a recipe for soda bread that came from Ireland. The bread was awkward. There is no other way to describe it. I signed up for 2 loaves of bread so I had to double the recipe. The bread was a huge mound on the cookie sheet. It looked strange. I can't serve this to a bunch of priests! They're going to think I'm trying to kill them! I thought to myself. My husband agreed the bread was strange looking. I started over. I had no choice. Fast forward 2 months to the Irish soda cookies. Everything went smoothly! I did however wish I had a pastry cutter when I was cutting the butter into the dry ingredients with a fork. I made a not so subtle suggestion to Steve that a pastry cutter would make a good gift. OK, I told him that I want one! I was able to knead the dough (which wasn't possible for the soda bread) and cut it into squares. The cookies turned out awesome!

The other half of celebrating my heritage was the potato salad. Tonight Steve asked me if I knew how to make potato salad. Of course! It's one of my favorite foods and one of the few ways I will eat potatoes. Yes, I'm half Irish and I don't eat potatoes. I'm aware of the irony. However the next time the potato famine comes around, I'll be the only one not affected. I actually grew up eating more German food than I did Irish. My mom was taught to cook by her mom who is not one tiny little bit Irish. We love her despite this fact and have dubbed her an honorary Irish woman. But back to the potato salad. Somehow we had all of the ingredients on hand for potato salad: potatoes, eggs, celery, onion, mustard, mayo and paprika. Eggs and potatoes were boiled and left to cool while I worked on the Irish Soda Bread cookies. Steve was nice and agreed to slice the potatoes. I hate cutting the potatoes for potato salad. The potato always got all over my hands and I can smell the potatoes. It's just a bad scene. I sliced the eggs and celery. Everything went in a big bowl. Some onion was added, along with mayo and mustard. A few taste tests and some additions of mayo and mustard and the potato salad was ready! Sprinkle paprika over the potato salad because I like my food to be fancy.

Kabobs and Smoothies

Tonight Steve and I decided to be adventurous and make kabobs. I had watched an episode of Rachael Ray a couple weeks ago and she was making shish kabobs. We made beef kabobs instead of shish kabobs because the shish part is lamb and I refuse to eat baby animals. Same goes for veal which is a calf (baby cow for you non-farmers). Don't get my wrong... I'm not a vegetarian, not even close, but I prefer my meat to be fully grown. I had looked up Rachael's recipe for the kabobs awhile ago but decided to wing it tonight. Steve cut a beef steak into bite size cubes and I did the same with a green pepper, red pepper, cucumber and half an onion. I seasoned the veggies and the beef liberally with salt and pepper before putting them on the skewers. We were using wooden skewers so we soaked them in water to avoid burning them. The veggies and the meat had their own skewers because each had their own cooking time. Thanks for the tip, Rachael! Another liberal seasoning of salt and pepper and the kabobs were ready for the grill. We also had rice going in our rice cooker for the side. The kabobs cooked really fast on the grill and tasted awesome! I think we've found another summer staple for our menus!

Now for the smoothie! The smoothie is actually tomorrow's breakfast. One of my goals last year was to eat breakfast every day but this habit has been kind of forgotten. I'm trying to revive the habit and make it healthy too. I had a recipe for smoothies from a HyVee magazine. It called for orange juice, which I don't have, and ice, which I refuse to use because the ice in our freezer tastes (and smells) disgusting (no matter what we do). I've made smoothies before and decided to wing it. I did have the fruit and the plain yogurt the recipe called for. I put in the amount of yogurt and the fruit according to the recipe in my food processor. Side note: I love my food processor. The blender I find annoying but I absolutely love my food processor! I gave the yogurt and fruit a whir and took a look. It looked a little skimpy... I added milk and gave it another whir. Not enough cherries... in more cherries went. I gave it a quick taste and concluded... that it needed a little sugar. A couple spoonfuls of sugar (no medicine involved here) blended in and it tasted great! I gave Steve a taste and he gave it a positive review. Breakfast is served!

I Bake at Strange Times

It's true. I bake at strange hours, some by choice, others not so much. Friday, my husband and I went out for supper with a friend from college. We hadn't seen this friend for awhile so supper was a little longer than usual. We went out to eat at our favorite Chinese restaurant from college, 45 minutes away. We got home later than we usually do which normally wouldn't have been a problem. My husband's co-workers were having a "Fruit Saturday" pot luck. He had signed up to bring fruit pizza. I love fruit pizza. I made it a lot when I was studying in Spain and crafted my own recipe. In the past, I remember not being 100% satisfied with the crust. I told Steve to buy ready made sugar cookie dough since it was so late. I didn't want to stay up all night making the pizza after all. Steve stopped by the grocery store to pick up some much needed ingredients... strawberries, cream cheese, the cookie dough, Clementine oranges. I had started slicing the kiwi and measured out the sugar for the crust. Steve came home and we got serious about this pizza. I tried to smooth the cookie dough onto a cookie sheet. I say try because the dough was sticky and kept sticking to my hands as I smoothed it out. I tried using a glass sprayed with cooking spray... it worked... somewhat. Steve started chopping strawberries and peeling oranges. I finally popped the cookie crust into the oven. I debated poking holes in the crust with a fork. My mom does this with pie crust but I decided against it. I'm not really sure why except that it was late and I was a little tired. I turned my attention to the pizza "sauce". The sauce is a fruit dip which is one of the reasons I love this version of fruit pizza. Like I said, it was late and I was a little tired. Instead of adding 2 teaspoons of vanilla to the sugar and cream cheese, I added 2 tablespoons! Yikes! I tried adding more sugar but it was still a little runny. I did the best I could and prayed that it would thicken while it was in the fridge overnight. About the same time, the cookie crust was done... The cookie was bubbling slightly... it looked alive. I pierced it with a fork and stuck it back in the oven. After taking it out of the oven a second time, I popped it in the fridge to cool down. I didn't want the crust to cook the sauce! In the meantime, Steve had finished chopping the strawberries and peeling the oranges. I'm fortunate that he loves to cook/bake as much as I do. It was getting extremely late and he had to be up for work at 6, so I told him to go to bed while I finished the pizza. After 10 minutes of being in the fridge, I decided the crust was ready... if it wasn't I was. Like I said earlier, I didn't want to be up all night making this pizza. I spread the sauce on and started the rows of the fruit. Oranges on the outside, then strawberries, then kiwi, another row of strawberries and a row of kiwi in the middle and I was done! Put some press-n-seal wrap on it and time for bed! Yay!

Making the pizza reminded me of my time in Spain and for a few minutes late Friday night, I felt as though I were in my apartment in Spain making the fruit pizza for my friends to enjoy. I hoped Steve's co-workers would enjoy it as much as my friends in Spain.

With as late as it was Friday night when I went to bed, I expected to sleep in until at least 8 Saturday morning. Not even close! I was wide awake at 5:30! That isn't even close to the time I get up for work during the week. However I didn't want to wake Steve by tossing and turning. I got out of bed and checked my Facebook account. The light of the screen blinded me until I opened our blinds to let natural light in. After 30 minutes of computer time, I was bored. What to do? What to do? What to do? Oh I know! I'll bake the cupcakes that I've been meaning to bake all week! Yup, 6 AM and I'm getting ready to bake. A little side note about these cupcakes: I like chocolate cupcakes but I have yet to find a recipe that I love. I also plan on hosting a bridal shower for my best friend sometime next winter. I wanted to do a trial run of cupcakes and find the best chocolate cupcakes. Texas sheet cake is my favorite chocolate cake. It always turns out perfect and my relatives harass me to make it for them all the time. "I wonder how it would be as a cupcake recipe?" I thought to myself many times last week. Saturday morning I decided to go for it. I measured out the flour and sugar... doing OK so far. The portion of the recipe that requires the butter, cocoa and water to be boiled was a little problematic. I didn't have enough butter. I used what I had and remembered a tip I had heard before but never tried. Applesauce can replace a half cup of oil or shortening in a recipe. Perfect! I have homemade applesauce in my fridge! I did NOT add the applesauce to the boiling cocoa mix... that sounded a little disgusting to me. I did however add it immediately after adding the cocoa mix to the flour/sugar mix. Things seemed to be going just fine for these cupcakes until the eggs. Cracking eggs is both fun and gross. Half of the shell for the first egg fell into the batter. Thankfully, the mixer was not running so I could simply scoop the egg shell out. The second egg behaved itself better than the first and didn't pose a problem at all. I spooned the batter into a muffin pan, lined with white muffin liners. I like white muffin liners better than the traditional pink, yellow and blue liners. Those liners are perfect for Easter or some other spring activity but any other time seem a little weird to me. After fussing over the cupcakes and their cooking time, they were done! They looked and smelled great. I let them cool for hours before I frosted them. OK, that wasn't actually the plan but Saturday is also my day to do laundry and I got a little distracted. I frosted them about 4 in the afternoon (oh yes, baking is a whole day activity for me!). I used my aunt's recipe with one little exception... I added a little more water. I'm still new to the decorative frosting experience and my hands hurts if the frosting isn't a little soft. I tinted the frosting teal (or as close as I could get) and got to work. Sanding sugar was sprinkled on top to make the cupcakes really elegant. I think they turned out quite nicely.

A little side note about the fruit pizza, Steve called me at 11 to say the sauce hadn't thickened and was there something we could do? Nope. Not one thing. Except start over which wasn't an option since he was at work. When he got home, he told me that the middle of the pizza was soggy so he had thrown away those pieces. The pieces on the edge were OK. I consider the fruit pizza to be a half-failure and proof that I probably shouldn't bake when tired. The cupcakes on the other hand turned out great! Proof that I can get up ridiculously early and bake!