Daring Bakers' Challenge: Quick bread

The Daring Bakers’ February 2012 host was – Lis! Lisa stepped in last minute and challenged us to create a quick bread we could call our own. She supplied us with a base recipe and shared some recipes she loves from various websites and encouraged us to build upon them and create new flavor profiles.

I decided to go for a lemon bread. I think we've established that I love citrus flavors, even during (what is supposed to be) winter. It's chock-full of lemon zest and lemon juice, but I decided to increase the flavor even more by adding on a lemon glaze. As usual, the office enjoyed it. And like the name said, the bread was quick and easy to put together. Best of both worlds!

Happy 2012: NYE & birthday margarita cupcakes, chocolate chip cookies and baguettes

A professor from my journalism school posted a link on Twitter the other day that was really thought-provoking. It was a blog post about questions to ask for yourself about the last year. Yes, perhaps it is something that's written in some form or another every year, but honestly, it made me realize what a wonderful year I've had. The most amazing thing I did in 2011? Get a new job and move to a new city. Am I happy about where I am in life? Completely. I have some amazing friends, many of whom I got to see during the holidays even though they live far, far away. I got to make plans to visit them in 2012. I got to see both of my stepsiblings for Christmas, even though they live in Canada. And as a whole, I'm really happy where I am emotionally and mentally. So 2012, bring it on. Let's make it even better. /end typical year-beginning/year-end post.

I'm not the type of person to really go for the whole big New Year's Eve out sort of thing. But one of my best friends, Tara, has her birthday on NYE, so I celebrated at her house with her family. That included bringing my customary bday gift of cupcakes, which this time was a margarita cupcake. And despite not being kid-friendly for all the little ones running around, I'd say these were definitely a hit. They're basically a lime cake brushed with tequila and then topped with a lime-tequila icing. Pretty good alcoholic treat for NYE!

I've been a little low on energy since the holidays ending. I was busy with family and friends for basically two weeks straight, so my baking was relatively basic, including these brown sugar chocolate chip cookies. Simple, yet always a hit. They always seem to disappear rather quickly at work.

Among the kitchen items I asked for for Christmas (how great is an immersion blender, seriously? Or is that just me being a dork?), I found something awesome on a sort of scavenger hunt Cathie sponsored. She loves to thrift, so on Christmas Eve, she gave each of us kids a $5 and told us to thrift and find something awesome. One of my finds? A baguette pan for $2.75. Not too shabby, especially for something I assume was given to the thrift store because whoever donated had no idea what it was. So on a recent trip to Aunt Betty's, we made a couple baguettes from one of her old bread cookbooks that came out perfectly, even with those little dots on the bottom, which are from the perforations on the pan. What a great find!

Daring Bakers' challenge: Povitica

The Daring Baker’s October 2011 challenge was Povitica, hosted by Jenni of The Gingered Whisk. Povitica is a traditional Eastern European Dessert Bread that is as lovely to look at as it is to eat!

Looks like a basic bread, right? I can honestly say I'd seen this stuff before but never knew its name. It's pronounced po-va-teet-sa, and the Internet tells me it's Croatian. Let's just go with the general Eastern European. Basically, it's bread dough rolled out with a walnut-cinnamon mixture spread out on top, rolled up and then wound around in a pan to get the snazzy pattern.

See snazzy pattern, Exhibit C. I have to admit, Aunt Betty did more of this than I did. I have yet to find a true love for bread, but she makes it all the time, and it's always perfect. I did help with the rolling though, so that counts, right? I was busy making some other treats I will show you later. But, with how good this filling was, I am definitely considering making it again, especially around the holidays. Christmas morning breakfast, perhaps?

Daring Bakers' challenge: Croissants

The Daring Bakers go retro this month! Thanks to one of our very talented non-blogging members, Sarah, the Daring Bakers were challenged to make Croissants using a recipe from the Queen of French Cooking, none other than Julia Child!

Man, just look at those layers. I am going to go ahead and say this is a once-in-thirty-years sort of recipe, similar to the puff pastry Aunt Betty and I made more than a year ago. It's for remarkably similar reasons, too: You have to roll out, then fold, then roll out, then fold, then chill dough over and over again. That's how you get those pretty layers. But everything's worth trying once, and they were pretty good with some nice melty butter and stew that Aunt Betty made. So I'm glad they were the challenge this month.

Another thing I'd do if I ever made these again (in 30 years) is make more than one batch. With the entire process of multiple rests of the dough and multiple risings, it's 12 hours. And it makes 12 croissants. One croissant per hour. Sheesh! But I'm definitely glad I've officially made these, especially because they're officially the second Julia Child recipe I've cooked, after her chocolate almond cake (which I've made twice!). I'm hoping to up that number this winter, probably starting with her classic boeuf bourguignon, or maybe an orange almond version of that cake. Yummmm.

Comfort baking: Butterfinger cupcakes, homemade Oreos, red velvet cheesecake cake, stuffed bread and stuffed pretzels

Does anyone watch the show "American Pickers" on the History Channel? I think I'm hooked. Dad turned it on one day when we were visiting my grandma in the hospital after her vertigo spell during the holidays. My dad loves the History Channel, but I'd always seen him watching shows about the war and that sort of thing. This seems a slightly different take on history. What they "pick" is historical items found all over the country, mostly in those places you see on the side of road that have stuff just piled in the lots. They find some crazy stuff...in the episode I just watched, they bought a motorcycle motor from "Hobo Jack" that ended up being more than 100 years old. In case you haven't noticed, I'm fascinated by this sort of history and Americana, as evidenced by all I write about my family history on here. Also by the stories I like writing best, most recently about a local man who restores pinball machines. So cool!. I know what show is going to fill up my DVR for the next few months!


After all the stress of my holiday season, I needed some serious baking with Aunt Betty. I'm still not completely on my A-game, but I'm getting closer. This stuff helped. Like these Butterfinger cupcakes from my Food Network magazine. Unfortunately, there's no recipe online, and it's from my year-old magazine...I've been wanting to make them for a while. That being said, I'm going to make some serious changes next time I try them. The chocolate cake was good, but too light a crumb for a cupcake. The frosting was actually a ganache, and waaaay too thick for piping like I wanted to. Next time: a light peanut butter frosting. The killer was the brittle on top, which was just sugar, peanut butter and butterscotch chips and tasted exactly like the inside of a Butterfinger. I'm going to make just that sometime soon, dip it in chocolate and make homemade candy. All those went with my Uncle David for his retirement party.


Next on our list was something that reminded me of one of my favorite places to get dessert, the Cheesecake Factory (mainly because there are so many options). Who doesn't love red velvet cake? Who doesn't love cheesecake (besides Kelly)? Put them together, and you get red velvet cheesecake cake. Pretty tasty, although once again, I'd prefer a cake with heavier crumb. It's modeled on the coolest cake spatula thingy my stepmom Cathie got me. It's a high heel with a magnetic heel! Neato. I brought this cake to work and I'd say it was a hit. A few minutes after I brought it in, I told someone upstairs it was there. He said he already knew it was there because he saw a Twitpic. Ah, the joys of journalism and technology.


Our last project for the day was to make a bread I've been wanting to make for a while from Flour Girl. It's a stuffed braided bread, and actually a lot easier than I thought it would be. The dough was basic pizza dough made in the food processor and didn't even need to rise. The recipe called for bacon, but anyone who knows my eating habits knows that I don't eat any pork products, including bacon, and no, I'm not Jewish. I just don't eat it. So we used turkey bacon. Also inside was spinach we cooked down with some olive oil, provolone cheese and sun-dried tomatoes. Dip it in marinara and it made a pretty tasty dinner.


When my newest Food Network Magazine magazine came, on the front it talked about pretzels, which is one of my favorite things to make. What caught my eye especially was pesto-stuffed pretzels. I loooove pesto, especially when it's extra garlicy and cheesy. I think I'm going to need some more practice stuffing pretzels, because you can't taste the flavor of the pesto and the cream cheese that's inside them too much. But the dip I made with the extra pesto and cream cheese is excellent. I will definitely make that again. Also, this was the christening voyage for my new food processor. Verdict: amazing.


Last, I wanted to make some sort of sweet for the night, and Kelly suggested homemade Oreos. I had all the stuff to make them, so I did it. The cookie dough looked like dirt, and was a really strange consistency. The middle is supposed to be white chocolate ganache, which I edited a bit to be more frosting-like. All-in-all, very tasty, especially when dipped in milk. Mmmmm. Next up? Tiramisu cake for a girls' dinner. I get to try out my new cake stand on that one!

Daring Bakers' challenge: Stollen

The 2010 December Daring Bakers’ challenge was hosted by Penny of Sweet Sadie’s Baking. She chose to challenge Daring Bakers’ to make stollen. She adapted a friend’s family recipe and combined it with information from friends, techniques from Peter Reinhart’s book.........and Martha Stewart’s demonstration.


What is stollen, you ask? Or at least that's what I asked. Apparently it's some sort of fruity bread, which honestly didn't sound so hot to me. I'm in that generation that thinks fruitcake is better used as a doorstop. Forget that I don't recall ever actually trying the stuff. When I showed the challenge to Aunt Betty, she got excited, because stollen is also apparently a German bread. We have lots of German in us, as evidenced by her (and my mom's) maiden name: Hofmeister. And our stubbornness. And our work ethic. And that when Aunt Betty really gets talking, her D's mysteriously turn into T's — think "good" said as "gooT."


Anyway, the bread wasn't that hard, besides the fact that it had to rest overnight before we could bake it. Luckily, I was planning on going to her house two days in a row anyway. So in the dough were all kinds of citrus, some almonds, dried cherries (we left out the raisins, which happens to be a food I HATE). It rose overnight, and then we formed it into the wreath shape and we cut the slits. It turned very golden brown, which was a little bit strange. After taking it out, you're supposed to put layers and layers of powdered sugar on top, along with almonds and those weird candied cherries.

All in all, not too shabby. It was a really tasty bread, and definitely would make a good breakfast food. I think if I ever make it again, I'll really edit the recipe. Maybe more like a monkey bread, or something chocolate-y. Hmmm.

The five-hour dessert

I think when I'm stressed, I bake more. That, and when I can't drive. So I'm blogging twice this week. Life in general has been stressing me out a bit, plus I've been sort of chained to my house. I got the new car, and I took it out on my time off when I wasn't busy eating, sleeping or working. Which left days off. Then, when I finally had time to drive, the car would die and need to be jumped. I actually had time to take it out the other night and drove it without killing it (!), and then it died when we stopped at the gas station for water. All signs pointed to needing a new battery, especially after it took 10 minutes to jump it. Turns out that battery turns seven years old next month. I think it was definitely time for a new one. Now I just have to get comfortable driving a stick shift. Sigh.


So on one of those days off when I was planning to drive, I took the day to bake with Aunt Betty. I like to have a couple days off in a row before baking with her, because we inevitably end up taking hours and make multiple things. Focaccia was on the list this time, and then we decided to pick out something from Martha Stewart's Baking Handbook, which Mom got me for graduation. I really want to try making macarons, but apparently those don't mix too well with humidity. So instead we settled on a chocolate napoleon. Little did I realize that it would take five hours....


First, though, the Joy of Cooking focaccia. This is my aunt's go-to cookbook, and she gave me one last year. I can see why, too, because the bread is yummy. It starts its life as pizza dough, but you let it rise longer and then put yummy toppings on top. We did one round of sundried tomatoes, parmesan and herbs and the other with olives, herbs and cheese. Pretty easy for some tasty bread!


Let's talk about this puff pastry for the napoleon though. Homemade puff pastry — don't ever do it unless you've got strong arms and lots of free time. Martha wants you to roll out the pastry six separate times, and since each cycle is actually rolling it out to a 20x9 inch rectangle twice, that's a lot of rolling. Lots of butter, too. See those layers in the picture, though? Yeah, we put those there. Through lots of rolling.


It turned out really yummy though. A nice chocolate custard, fixed by Aunt Betty after it wasn't thickening, a yummy glaze on top and I've made a napoleon! Aunt Betty said the last time she made it was 35 years ago. I think that sounds like a good time frame for the next time I make it! :)


My next day off, I didn't do anything, and it was great. I watched a movie (Serenity, finishing out Firefly — so good!) and read a book (Percy Jackson part 3...seriously some good stuff). The next day, though, was my most productive recently. Replaced my bank card, got a car battery, moved out of my old house and made cookies, all before work! The cookies were a recipe my friend Sarah gave me. This is the same Sarah who asked for vegan cupcakes for her birthday, so these are vegan Mexican chocolate snickerdoodles, a cookie she'd made before too. Seriously, though, easiest cookie ever. Tasty too, with a kick, because it had cayenne pepper in it. It's like eating a cookie and only about 10 seconds later realizing it was spicy. Definitely will be making these again.


My last dessert this week was a quickie last night — lime sherbet. I'm a huge sherbet fan...I think I like it better than ice cream. Blasphemous, I know, but I'm more of a fruit-flavored girl sometimes. I was surprised at how easy it was: milk, sugar, lime zest and lime juice. That's it. It tasted so much more natural than the store-bought stuff, so I will have to try some other flavors soon.

Well, off to bed for me! Have to make sure I get enough sleep to have time to work on my cake pops I've got in the works. Oh, and catch up on Project Runway! I already watched the new Jersey Shore :)

Picnic baking: Root beer cupcakes, apple pie ice cream and bread x 2

Well, it's definitely summer in Kansas. Every winter it gets so friggin cold, and then I can't believe how hot it gets! It says it's 93 right now, but I bet the heat index is way up there. And the thunderstorms have been wild too, what with all the rain and wind and craziness. Saturday I was working and the power flickered before kicking to a generator, which killed the cable, our sites and eventually the internet. Lemme tell you, it's hard to web produce when there's no web. And I've been baking a lot of foods that seem like they'd fit in with a picnic...but it's too hot to picnic right now.


It's been a fairly low-key week for me, which is exactly what I needed. I worked weekend days this week, which meant I was actually around when a lot of other staffers were. Which for me, naturally, means baking. Kelly and I made root beer cupcakes, which I think are totally weird but were a big hit. Root beer concentrate is definitely not the easiest thing to find in Lawrence. The cupcakes have both the concentrate and root beer in them, so they make a really runny batter. We couldn't decide what flavor of icing to do, so I swirled root beer and vanilla together, and then put a straw in them. I think they were cute :) And they newsroom definitely ate them up!


Saturday the weather hit the newsroom, like I said, and Sunday was just plain hot. Monday, though, I went to Aunt Betty's and we did a baking extravaganza. I've been wanting to try out ice cream, which yes, I admit, isn't baking. But it's dessert, so it works. I found this really great recipe for apple pie ice cream, it just sounded perfect for summer! So I made it the night before. I'd never made custard before, which involves cooking a milk mixture to a certain temperature, adding in the eggs slowly, cooking that to a certain consistency and then cooling it down really fast. It made me nervous, but apparently I did it right, because the next day when we put it in the ice cream maker with the apple mixture, it turned into ice cream! And it was sooo yummy. Ice cream might be my new thing, and I don't even really like ice cream that much. But the homemade stuff just tastes so much better, you know? We made a quart, but between me, my aunt and uncle, we finished it off.


Also on the list of things to make was a yummy pesto bread that a friend at work posted a link to. I like making bread at Aunt Betty's because she makes it so often and it always turns out perfectly. We made the pesto from the basil in her garden, definitely tasty. I know I'm going to ask for a new food processor for my birthday, because hers is so much better than my crappy cheap one. Yes, I live dangerously, asking for a food processor. Anyway, the bread was made kind of like a jelly roll, spreading out the pesto inside and then rolling it up, which also meant some pesto squished out. In the end, though, it turned out looking very pretty. My coworkers Sarah and Whitney also made the bread, and Whitney wrote about it on one of our sites. Definitely a fun thing to try making.


When I was browsing the site the pesto bread was on, I also found a recipe for pretzel rolls. You never realize how much goes into making pretzels until you actually start. You make the dough, let it rise, cut it into separate rolls, let it rise again, boil it in a baking soda-water combination, egg wash it, salt it, cut it and then bake it. All of those steps are worth it, though, because these might have been my favorite of the day. They browned wonderfully and were soooo yummy right out of the oven. And they were yummy with peanut butter, too! I think I will make some into sandwiches later.


I wanted to take that ice cream I made earlier into the newsroom, so two nights ago I remade a giant batch. I took it by last night and it seemed well-received. I can already tell how much of a workout my ice cream machine is going to get this summer! In between ice cream-making, I've been doing some massive cleaning and painting. I even organized my baking cabinet so I can see all my cupcake papers for next time I want to bake. I'm a dork, yes.

No cleaning for me today, though. I definitely have the itch to bake again, but instead I'm going to make use of my new gym membership after I take a nap. :) I love summertime!

Distracting desserts

I think I should start a countdown to graduation. It's feeling soooo far away, but I know it's actually really close. I know that because I've started buying my graduation stuff. Cap and gown? Check. Two tassels? Check. Phi Beta Kappa registration? Check (I'm really happy about that one!). Self-designed graduation invites so I save money and have a more colorful invite? Check. Red and blue supplies for graduation-themed cupcakes from Bake It Pretty? Check. Soooo now I just have to make sure I actually graduate. Sigh.

I'm having to prioritize my homework right now into a few categories: have to do immediately, might do later and probably won't ever do. It seems that most is falling into probably won't ever do, but I'm hoping to change that. On Friday, my project draft was due for depth reporting. I think my brain turned into jelly while working on it; let's just say I have a way to go till I feel comfortable with where it's at. Next week a computer test. Ugh.

But, ultimately, it's all worth it for graduation. Because I got a job! I'm going to be overnight reporter at the Lawrence Journal-World. I interned there this summer and was again this semester, but now I've started working the overnight job already (in fact, that's where I started typing this entry...at 5:30 a.m.). For those of you who know me, you know I'm a night owl, so this will work out really well for me. I'm pretty darn excited.

My stress this week, though, was tempered by baking. Actually, I baked when I should have been working on stuff. Baking does a really good job of distracting me from stuff. Earlier this week, I felt like cupcakes, but not enough cupcakes to have to take them anywhere. I made Martha's malted milk cupcakes again, but naturally I've already started editing the recipe to be more malt-y. I put a bunch of malt powder in the frosting, too, too make it more malty. I wanted to make pretty springtime cupcakes, but man, that pink food coloring was strong! Oh well, they were tasty.

Remember that project I was talking about? Well I had to take a break every once and a while, and one of my breaks equaled in Kansas Sunflower Bread. I've made this before, three times actually. Except, it's only worked one of those three times. I'm not sure what the deal is, but I'm thinking I wasn't kneading it enough, so if you make it, be sure to be thorough. Plus, it's a really thick dough, but thick with yumminess, like sunflower seeds, oats and bulgur. It's very substantial bread.

Another break took the form of raspberry lemonade bars. I saw this recipe a while ago, I think originally on Food Gawker, which led me to 6 Bittersweets, which led me to the recipe I used. I put it away for a rainy day, which actually happened to be a brain-melting day. I'm a HUGE fan of Martha's lemon bars, but raspberry lemonade sounded like such a good twist I had to try them. The crust was easy enough, but you have to put the raspberries through a strainer, which I'd never done before. The recipe calls for a cup of frozen raspberries, thawed, then strained to get the juices. I put well over a cup, which I think worked out fine. My only critique of these bars is that the filling is a bit too thick for my liking, and I think a shorter bar would be better. Nonetheless, the bars are sooo tasty. Nice and tart, just like raspberry lemonade should be. I'll definitely be making them when the 100 degree weather hits, whenever that is! Actually, today at work, I read an article that said this winter was one of the warmest on record. I don't know what record they're going by, because it's been SO cold!!

Anyway, I need to really get to studying sometime soon. But for sure I'm making cupcakes today. I haven't decided yet what kind, but I'm thinking cookies and cream or margarita. I'm also considering entering Iheartcuppycakes' Cupcake Hero competition for the first time. She does it every month, and it has a theme. This month's theme is to make a cupcake from the Hello Cupcake book, something I don't have. Seems like a good excuse to buy it, right? I'd like to think I can decorate well enough to not embarass myself, but that's probably not the case. At least I'll improve my skills. We'll see where it goes from there.

The best bread ever, Kansas style

I haven't baked brownies in two days. I think that might be a record right now! Too bad, because it will be broken on Thursday, when I bake brownies for the LJWorld newsroom.

I started my internship there today. It was fun to be back. I think it's always fun for a journalist to start reporting again after a hiatus. It was also super nice to see my friends there.

I'm staying away from the Kansan newsroom right now. Not intentionally, but because I don't need to go that far over on campus often, and it's REALLY cold outside, and I'm finding I have a ton of other stuff I need to accomplish. I have been taking some baked goods there, but it seems to be on the same night each time: Thursday. Probably because that's my easiest day in general.

So last Thursday, Stephen asked for something with blueberries. I was going to make blueberries and cream cupcakes a la Martha, but didn't feel like going through the whole process of cupcaking. So I a la Marthaed a different dessert — blueberry sour cream pound cake with lemon whipped cream. It's a good thing it made two loaves too. I didn't really like the recipe for the whipped cream, because it only used lemon zest. It was kind of weird, so I put lemon juice in as well and then it was super lemony. Went over well though. I didn't get a photo before the last piece, and since I was in the newsroom, the most obvious choice to take the photo was a photographer. So, here is the most professional photo this blog will ever have, shot and imaged by Mr. Tanner Grubbs.

Then I made brownies, but that's old news. The smoked turkey, scalloped potatoes and pasta salad that went with it weren't. Super yummy.

Monday I made monster cookies. When I worked at Capers in high school, a place that served coffee as well as baked goods, it was one of their best-selling cookies. How could it not be? Oats, peanut butter, chocolate chips and M&Ms could hardly be a losing combination. This is the recipe I use, although I leave out the raisins. Yuck. I've made them in the past, though, and they've always come out a little too crunchy for me. This time I accidentally put in too much peanut butter and they were yummy and chewy and wonderful. Plus, they had Valentine's Day M&Ms. I'm such a sucker for holiday baking items.

Like I said, today I started back at the Lawrence Journal-World. I worked there this summer in the features department, and this time I'm doing news stuff. Well I was reading an article that my good friend from the features department Sarah wrote on baking bread. Then I read the chat that came from the article. Included at the bottom were recipes for loaves. I've been mildly successful with sandwich bread, but the recipe for Kansas Sunflower Bread caught my eye. I love sunflower seeds and that kind of thing, so it just looked so yummy. Plus, I'm in Kansas. How could I resist? I like shopping at the Merc when I'm trying out a recipe like this, because buying in bulk for one batch is actually easier. Plus, this called for wheat bulgur. I'd heard of it, but figured the Merc would be the only place to find it. I went through bulk about 4 times before finally asking someone to help me find it...right in front of my eyes. Apparently you have to soak bulgur in water, so I did that and then made my first batch, only to realize my water might have been too hot for the yeast and might have killed it. So I made another batch. Guess which one rose? The first. Figures. I made sure to let it rise extra high, and now I've got a giant loaf. I just tried it, and I think it might be my favorite bread ever. Seriously. I love the crunchiness of the oats and sunflower seeds inside, and because I let it rise for so long, it's nice and fluffy. I will definitely be making it again.

Sigh. Time to get back to homework.

Post-sickness baking

So the last few posts have talked about how I've been sick. Well, it's been a month now. On Monday it started getting tough to breathe, so I decided to go to the doctor. I had to wear one of those masks (like when you get SARS) in the health center. I felt pretty stupid. Anyway, they told me I had an upper respiratory infection. After 2 1/2 days in bed, antibiotics, an inhaler, Mucinex, snuggling with the kitty and a whole lot of Kleenexes, I felt better on Friday. Not exactly the best time to be sick, but what can I do. And, it's senior year, so I'm considerably less concerned about grades. Probably the wrong attitude. Oh well.

So Friday I started to bake. A lot. I had a few days to make up, after all, so I started making some favorites. Lemon bars (for Drew and Co.), pumpkin bread (for Stephen and Co.) and pizzelles. I had press club later, and then people came over for games, so I had enough people over that I could bake that much. We played Catchphrase for three hours. You could tell we were playing with journalism kids. For "Who's who": "Blank blank at KU!" and another, describing one that was a gerund. It was super fun though.

The lemon bars are the old faithful recipe from Martha Stewart that is just perfect, but how it works hardly makes sense. The crust is really strange, as in, you grate butter into your dry ingredients, push it into a pan, freeze it and then bake it. They sure end up yummy, though. The crust is half the bar, but it doesn't taste that way. This is easily one of my favorite things to make.

Then there's the pumpkin bread, a two-loaf recipe. I found the recipe on foodnetwork.com, and it ends up tasting great, but there's one huge problem. The recipe says bake it for 30 to 40 minutes, and it definitely takes 50 minutes to an hour. Can't these people count? The pumpkin loaves made an exit when Stephen returned after Catchphrase with three hungry lacrosse friends. Neither Drew nor I like pumpkin bread, but everyone else seems to, so Stephen took the loaves.

The last recipe is of pizzelles (see the Wikipedia article). They're Italian cookies that almost taste like a waffle cone and are super thin with designs on them. You have to have a special iron (like a waffle iron) to make them, which I have. These have kind of a family history with me. My not-really-grandma Mildred, who is my aunt-through-marriage's mother, makes them every Christmas and sends them to my grandma in an old ice cream container. I steal a few each time, and finally I just asked my aunt for the recipe. It's incredibly simple and only has six ingredients: margarine, eggs (a whole bunch of them!), sugar, flour, baking powder and flavoring. I usually make vanilla, but Mildred makes anise-flavored. The annoying part about these cookies is they make forever to make. The iron only has a spot for two cookies at a time, and it's a pretty huge recipe.

The cookies were a hit though, and I'm thinking of making lemon-flavored ones for the first time tonight. It's strange; I had two papers due Friday and now have almost nothing till finals. It's winding down and I'm finding I have free time. It's definitely a foreign feeling. So last night I watched a musical last night I'd never seen: Meet Me in St. Louis. I absolutely LOVE musicals. My mom is an organist/choir director/carillonneur, and my dad played in KU's marching band, so music is pretty much how I grew up. Music Man, Sound of Music, Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, etc. Meet Me in St. Louis was a Judy Garland one, and I'd forgotten how unbelievable her voice was. A good movie all around. My other new discovery: the Boomerang channel and Cartoon Network. They play the Flintstones, the Jetsons, and Cartoon Network is bringing back Looney Tunes. I'm DVR-ing it.

Anyway, we'll see how much I decide to bake this week. I think it will be a fair amount, because I have a lot of free time at night this week. Another consideration of something to make: oatmeal cream cheese butterscotch bars.

Two weeks of baking

I know, it's been a while since I've posted. I'm going on a month of being sick...except it's not the same sickness. It's morphed like 3 times now, resurging last night when I remembered how I used to sleep with a humidifier. I definitely needed one last night.

I've been doing a fair amount of baking lately and have found some really great recipes, and some that are really flawed too.

I felt like venturing into making cheesecake last weekend, but didn't want a plain recipe. It was Martha to the rescue, though, with a margarita cheesecake recipe. I don't think I've made a cheesecake in the last 10 years, but I used to bake them with my mom. I was a little rusty, so I followed the recipe to a T. The pretzel crust was especially intriguing, and the water bath was confusing to me. It didn't make sense to me that a springform pan, which isn't all one piece, wouldn't leak when put in a pan of water. Well, I was right, and Martha was wrong. So after making a whole cheesecake, I made another. I edited the crust recipe (if you ever make this, use WAY more butter; I put in a whole stick, twice what she said). I also didn't use a water bath, which made it brown uneven and crack. So I improvised and made a lime sour cream topping, and voila! My first cheesecake in a while. Drew, Stephen and Bryan approved, and we ate it along with Canada geese (it actually tasted like steak) while watching/ignoring the KU-Texas football game.

Then came the loaf of bread. The last time I made/attempted bread, it was super dense. Kneading is confusing to me, because the dough always seemed to be sticky. So I went to Aunt Betty's house to make bread. We made everything and just hung out while letting the dough rise. I've been so busy with classes lately I haven't seen her in a while, but the end product was excellent. She lent me her pasta maker too, so that's my next project.

Thanksgiving meant some excellent desserts as well. Holidays tend to be hard for me, considering I don't exactly have a cohesive family any more. I went to Drew's house on Thanksgiving for the second year in a row, which means entering into a family with three boys (one was away), both parents, grandparents, four cousins and an aunt and uncle. It's a huge departure from any of my family, one side of which is seven people total including myself, the other of which never gets together in a large group. It's a great family, and I love being around them, but it's still a little weird. Sometimes I wish I could fast forward to a time when I have my own family and my own traditions that can't be dictated by others and I don't feel guilty about. There were some pretty great desserts though. Cream pie, apple pie, pumpkin pie, and even during dinner carrot souffle. Sounds gross, but it was great.

Last night was my most recent baking episode with chocolate chip M&M cookies. Pretty simple, but Taylor requested them.

Not sure what I plan on baking next. I saw a recipe for egg nog cookies, and boy do I love my egg nog. I have no idea when I'll be able to make them though. Two weeks left of school, and they're both completely booked!

And finally, with some Christmas cheer, Melvin the happy Santa cat (and by happy, I mean super pissed off at me).