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!

Holiday Baking

This post is a little late but I've just gotten organized from the holidays. Every year at work, the Employee Committee holds a bake sale/silent auction the week before Christmas. This year the bake sale was a benefit for a coworker who is battling melanoma. Normally I would only bake a couple of things but this was for a good cause. I decided to go all out and bake a ton of goodies. I started baking at 8 AM on December 19th. This was a Saturday so I was home by myself in the morning. First up was a Mt. Dew cake which is very easy to make. This cake uses a lemon cake mix (I know) and pudding mixes as the base. I whisked both mixes together and in a seperate bowl mixed together the wet ingredients (eggs, oil, Mt. Dew). I combined all of them together and poured the batter into a bundt pan sprayed with Pam. Pop that into the oven for 55 minutes and I can relax. I was also racing to finish a scarf that I was making for my grandma for Christmas. I'd pop the cake/cookies into the oven and then go knit for a little while. The Mt. Dew cake smelled delicious and was done after 55 minutes. I pulled it out of the oven and placed it on the counter to cool. Back to knitting. After 10 minutes or so, I went to the kitchen to remove the Mt. Dew cake for the pan. I flipped the bundt pan over a cooling rack and nothing happened. The cake didn't come out. Ok, this is ok. I grabbed a butter knife and gently scraped along the sides of the pan. This is has happened before and isn't that big of a deal. I flipped the pan over and with a couple of shakes, the cake came out! Yay! Or maybe not, yay. The cake had chunk missing from it's side. Dang it! Changing the plan--I will be bringing a goodie tray to the bake sale with slices of Mt. Dew cake.

Next up, was some orange chocolate scones. I found this recipe in a Taste of Home magazine. It sounded great. The recipe uses pancake mix and heavy cream. Great, I can do this. Or maybe not. I didn't have heavy cream so I decided to substitute sweetened condensed milk for the heavy cream. It's not exactly the same but same concept, I thought. I had an orange so getting the grated orange peel was not a problem at all. But I didn't have the milk chocolate candy bars I needed. I did, however, have some German chocolate left over from making my husband's birthday cake. I decided to use that. I grabbed my food processor and pulsed the chocolate until it was coarse. The recipe said to knead the dough. Not happening... the dough looked more like pancake batter than bread dough. I can improvise, I thought as I poured the batter into an 8x8 greased pan. Pop that into the oven and we are good to go. I did learn from my earlier mistake with the Mt. Dew cake and let the scones cool in the pan completely before removing to a cooling rack. I personally didn't care for these but my husband said he liked the scones. They went onto the goodie tray as well.

I decided to make dinner rolls using my mom's recipe. I made the dough and left it to rise. I decided to take a nap. It was almost noon and keep in mind that I had been baking since 8 AM that morning. The dough was fully risen by the time I woke up. I was a little worried that it had rose too much. But I continued making the rolls. I kneaded the dough and shaped it into rolls in a glass 8x8 pan (greased, of course). I did save out one roll in a seperate pan for myself to try. Those went into the oven and I started on my next recipe.

I found a recipe for vanilla cherry chocolate cookies from the food network. I was going to make them for my dad for Christmas because he loves cherries and cookies. Perfect! I followed the recipe to a T and everything was going great. I put pan after pan of cookies in the oven. The cookies didn't spread out as much as I prefer but were still good. I did run into one tiny problem with them. A few of my cookie sheets are pretty old and black. The cookies on these sheets were a little burnt on the bottom. These cookies did not go into Dad's present or the goodie tray. I took them to work for our pot-luck in my department.

The rolls came out great. The goodie tray looked great. It contained Mt. Dew cake, orange chocolate scones, pecan bars (I made those the night before) and vanilla cherry chocolate cookies. It netted $15 at the bake sale. My coworker bought my dinner rolls for $8. I'm excited to find out how the dinner rolls tasted at her family's Christmas.

Sorghum Snaps

Today I decided to make my great grandma's Sorghum Snaps for a pot luck at work. I've made this recipe many times before and wondered if I would have anything interesting to write about. Great Grandma never fails to entertain and there were a few interesting mishaps. The recipe calls for a cup of shortening--Great Grandma used lard but since I don't have lard, I used Crisco. Add in a cup of sugar and we were off to a great start. Grab the jar of sorghum and we've hit a road block. I couldn't get the jar open. Sorghum is a sticky substance similar to molasses but a faster moving substance to be sure. I haven't made this cookies for over a year so I was afraid the jar would be glued shut. If my husband Steve had not been home, this entry might be a lot more interesting as I tried to open the jar. But Steve was home and he got the jar to open slowly and we were back in business again. The two eggs that were supposed to go in were resting on the counter. I grabbed one egg, cracked it on the counter and aimed it at the mixing bowl. The egg decided to shoot the opposite direction and some egg white landed on my bright pink shirt. I'm sure Great Grandma was giggling in heaven as she watched me making the cookies. In went the ginger, cinnamon and salt without a problem. Even the baking soda in boiling water didn't cause me any problems. At this point, the dough was a funky gray color... uh oh. I don't remember the dough looking like this. The only choices I have are to throw out the dough and start over OR continue. I felt adventurous (and realized there probably wasn't enough sorghum to start over) so I continued by adding the flour. The dough gradually came back to a brown color and I felt more confident. A little taste of dough confirmed my decision. It tasted exactly the way it was supposed to. I grabbed a small bowl of sugar, the dough and my pans and went to the table. I rolled the dough into balls and then in the dough. Criss-cross with a fork and pop them in the oven. The cookies were coming along great! I even found a way to prevent from having to roll the cookies in the sugar: put the ball of dough on the sugar and swirl the bowl. Genius! Well, it was until I swirled the bowl to hard and sugar fell onto the table. So here I sit, typing with egg white, sugar and flour on shirt... but the cookies came out great! Maybe I was right when I was ten: the cookies will come out great only if you make a huge mess in the kitchen.