Daring Bakers: Gingerbread

I knew I'd have an issue with this month's challenge with my whole baking hiatus and all. When I saw what the challenge was, I groaned at the thought of it. There was no way I was gonna make one of those cheesy gingerbread houses

Then I started thinking about it. I read the rules over a couple times trying to think of a way around it. Then it came to me. I decided I was gonna do a gingerbread version of some sort of satanic cult type thing. See, that would be so much cooler. I started looking for assorted satanic symbolism when I found pics of the Jonestown mass suicide. I found gingerbread templates for the church. I figured I could use one of those chalk outlines to make my gingerbread people look dead. I had figured out how to make tubs of purple koolaid. I figured a river of blood would be good too.

However, in the end, my hatred for Christmas won. I didn't actually make anything and stuck with my baking hiatus. It might be my indifference that one. Just think how cool my gingerbread house would be if I had done it.



The December 2009 Daring Bakers’ challenge was brought to you by Anna of Very Small Anna and Y of Lemonpi. They chose to challenge Daring Bakers’ everywhere to bake and assemble a gingerbread house from scratch. They chose recipes from Good Housekeeping and from The Great Scandinavian Baking Book as the challenge recipes.

Barefoot Bloggers: Sausage Stuffed Mushrooms

OK this is probably gonna seem weird but I actually liked the leftovers better than the stuffed mushrooms themselves. At first I made them and ate a few and they were decent. Decent enough to eat but not amazing enough to write home to mom about. I stuck the rest in the fridge, where they sat for several days.

At that point I didn't feel like reheating them and having them again. So I chopped them up. I added them to some sweated onions and olive oil, some spaghetti with a bit of pasta water and voila, a whole new dish! I am not entirely sure how this happened but it ended up tasting really creamy. I am thinking that's because of the pasta water emulsifying with some of the oil but so not intentional but it came out really good! Which is a good thing because I have about 6 meals worth of it left. At least I can put a few in the freezer and I can have them when I come back.

While I took pics, I am too lazy to find my card reader right now.


Here's the recipe for the mushrooms. Chosen by Michelle. Thanks for the tasty leftovers!

Barefoot Bloggers: Croissant Bread Pudding

I'm late, I know. I have a good excuse. Like I usually do. I got some sort of nasty stomach virus. One that had me getting to know my bathroom waaaay too well. OK that was probably enough information to gross you out and not make you want to read the rest of this post.

Anyway, this is not a dessert for when your stomach is not feeling well. Especially if you are lactose intolerant. Not with all that cream and richness. So this had to wait until that passed. And the week after that... well.... so I'm slow.

I fudged the recipe a bit. I used 8 mini croissants. I used fat free half and half. I cut back the recipe, 4 cups 1/2 and 1/2, 6 yolks, 2 whole eggs, 1c sugar. I baked it in a few individual ramekins and a loaf pan. Oh and I added chocolate chips instead of raisins. So did I really follow the recipe at all? Not very well. Oh well.

I found it very eggy. I think it would have been better if I'd cut it back by an egg. Although I thought I had because I saw comments that said it was eggy. Oh well.

I have put off posting this because I keep meaning to put my pics in but alas I am lazy and I give up so these are getting posted now.


Here's the recipe. Thanks Peggy.

Turkey Pho

I actually had really little food left from Thanksgiving. I had made a 13 lb turkey and a few sides. All I had left was a little bit of turkey, cranberry sauce and a couple asparagus spears. The biggest thing I had left was the turkey stock.

I used the carcass to make a big pot of turkey stock. I had brined my turkey so that made my stock super simple. If you don't brine it (but why wouldn't you, it's so easy!) then you might need to get some seasonings in there.

I used the chunks of meat that came off the bone during the broth making process for the meat in this dish. I suppose you could add other turkey meat if you don't have enough but mine had tons of meat left.

Now if you are looking for an authentic pho, you should probably go to the original recipe. Me, I'm trying to use leftovers and make something relatively healthy (relative to me so as long as it has less than 1 lb of butter it's healthy) and uses what I have.



Broth

Get your biggest stock pot. Put all the remaining bones, skin, gristle, and I threw in all the herbs and whatnot. Pretty much slice off the meat you are gonna eat and throw everything else into the stock pot. You may want to break apart some of the bones to fit it into the pot. Add water until everything is just covered and cover the pot. Heat on medium high heat until you just start to see a bubble or 2. Then turn down to low. You are aiming for 190 so you should only see a bubble every once in a while. This helps keep the broth clear. Leave it on low for 8 hours. Skim the fat and foam off the top periodically. Strain out all the bones and gristle. Cool on the counter until it reaches room temp. Then portion out and refrigerate or freeze. When you refrigerate it, it will gel up.

Pho
based on this recipe from Steamy Kitchen

2 quarts turkey broth
2" piece of ginger
2 tbsp coriander
4 cloves
1 all spice berry
2 tbsp sugar
2 tbsp fish sauce

Simmer everything together for 1.5 hours. Remove the ginger, coriander, cloves and all spice. I put the spices in a strainer submerged in the broth for easy removal.

Serve with:
Dark meat turkey
rice noodles
roasted asparagus
Sriracha
Hoisin sauce
Green onion, cut into small rings

Daring Bakers: Cannoli (sorta)

I'm sorry but getting out the deep fryer and dealing with the oil is too much work for me. And besides which, it's the daring bakers so I baked. OK I'm making excuses, so sue me.

Instead I decided to make cannoli cups. I made them in a mini muffin tin. I rolled the dough out really thin, cut circles and pressed them into the mini muffin pan and baked at 450 until they were brown. They did crisp up although they didn't have the bubbly texture that fried ones normally have.

I used some red wine instead of marsala so mine turned out a not so appetizing shade of purple. Oh well. I tried. And they still tasted good. I used the regular cannoli cream recipe and then i fudged my own pumpkin cream. They ended up a bit mushy when I took the rest to work the next day but that was expected. I ate them while they were fresh and that's all that matters.






The November 2009 Daring Bakers Challenge was chosen and hosted by Lisa Michele of Parsley, Sage, Desserts and Line Drives. She chose the Italian Pastry, Cannolo (Cannoli is plural), using the cookbooks Lidia’s Italian-American Kitchen by Lidia Matticchio Bastianich and The Sopranos Family Cookbook by Allen Rucker; recipes by Michelle Scicolone, as ingredient/direction guides. She added her own modifications/changes, so the recipe is not 100% verbatim from either book.

'Tis the Season

It's that time of year. If I cared enough I'd find some horrible Christmas music to play here. It's the time when people get especially stupid.

So, as with the tradition I started last year, no baking from now until New Years. While I do like cookies and all the rich flavors typically associated with this time of year, I don't like all the garbage people do. I'm still up in the air about posting any of the saved posts that I have.

Now that I live in the Bible Belt, it might be even worse. It's a pretty close contest because at least I don't live across the street from a church now.

With the way people behave, I don't even want to leave the house during this time of year. Even more than I usually am. If I do go out at all, I'll go at really odd hours just to avoid all the stupid people. All the people who claim to be good Christians but are really just doing it for the gifts. So that they can put themselves into debt and then go on welfare and bitch about tax6es.=

We have a plant wide dinner and meeting in December each year. They actually say a prayer at the start of it. A nice Christian prayer. Because obviously everyone should be a good Christian. Who are busy being completely disrespectful of everyone else because they need to get to Church. Am I the only one who finds this slightly offensive? How would the 'good Christians' feel we did a Muslim prayer?

And just think, I'm writing this on a Sunday where I'm relatively calm.

Barefoot Bloggers: Company Pot Roast

This recipe was chosen by Lisa. She has a lot of fairly diverse recipes on her blog. It's a great place to look for ideas when you want to make something new.

It's a fairly simple pot roast. Perfect for a cold rainy day. Well, it was 75 and all sorts of sunny the weekend I decided to make it but no worries. It was still good.

I used a fairly small roast, about 2 lbs, because who wants to be eating the same pot roast for the rest of their lives? Even if it is good, it needs to go away at some point.

Initially when I added the wine, it smelled and tasted really wine-y. I was a bit concerned about this and thought I should have held back on the wine and added just a little. Fortunately, after a couple hours in the oven the wine mellowed out.

I didn't actually do the flour thickening thing because the sauce was pretty thick with the pureed veggies in there. It didn't seem to reheat all that well because the sauce separated but oh well.