Future Chef

Tags

children, food

My friends on Facebook already heard this news. What good is Facebook if you can’t brag a little about your kids from time to time?!?

This week I tried a couple more new recipes – and they were disasters!

First, I tried to make a dessert using strawberries and rhubarb. The shortbread crust was a beautiful golden colour, but it crumbled when I tried to put it on the plate. And my tart compote wouldn’t thicken. What’s a girl to do?

When the freshly baked cookies crumble, put them on ice cream – jennsmidlifecrisis

The second recipe I attempted was cauliflower fritters. Despite sticking to the non-stick frying pan, the texture was spongy and soggy, and just…wrong! Surprisingly, the one person in our family who won’t eat cauliflower thought they were delicious. My Dad (a fellow cauliflower-hater ) would disappointed!

Cauliflower is nothing but cabbage with a college education.- Mark Twain

Thankfully, Little Guy’s baking attempt fared much better.

This week, his class held a Bake-Off! In addition to researching the nutritional value of their healthy meal or dessert, they had to bring in and display their goodies for 6 judges. Here’s where the bragging comes in: Little Guy won the title of Jr. Chef Champion for 2017, which included a chef’s hat and apron, and the coveted Golden Spoon Trophy!

He was pretty excited! Me too! Thank you to Mama Wears Mascara who shared this recipe a few years ago:

Black Bean Chocolate Cupcakes (Gluten Free & Dairy Free)

1 (14oz) can organic black beans
4 eggs
1/2 cup agave syrup or honey, or 3/4 cup sugar
3 tbsp. dark cocoa powder
1 tsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp. baking soda
2 tbsp. safflower or sunflower oil, or coconut butter (melted)
1 tsp. vanilla extract

Preheat oven to 350F. Line a 12 cup muffin pan with paper cups.

Drain and rinse black beans well.

Combine all ingredients in a blender or food processor. Blend until beans are fully pureed.

Pour the batter into cups and bake 20-25 min. or until wooden toothpick comes out clean.

I didn’t get to taste a single cupcake! I hope I can talk my future chef into making more!

All you need is love. But a little chocolate now and then doesn’t hurt.
-Charles M. Schulz

K is for Killaloe Beaver Tails

Tags

#atozchallenge, food

 

It’s a Canadian thing and they are delicious. I look for them at every Fair and every amusement park! Beaver Tails! No, not this!

By Steve from Washington, DC (American Beaver) (CC by-sa 2.0), via Wikimedia Commons

 

This!

 

BeaverTails are fried dough pastries, hand-stretched to resemble a beaver’s tail.

They originated in Killaloe, Ontario in 1978. By the beginning of this year, there were 119 franchise and license locations in five countries: Canada, the United States , Dubai, South Korea and Japan. 

They come with different flavours! Last year, Little Guy had one with icing and chocolate cookie crumble. But my favourite is the Killaloe Beaver Tail – sugar, cinnamon and a squeeze of fresh lemon. Yum!

 

Wordless Wednesday: Pasta

Tags

food, photography

New Year’s Eve, 2016.

Life is a combination of magic and pasta. – Federico Fellini

Happy Wednesday!

One Bowl or Two?

Tags

cooking, food, humour

Binge watching My Kitchen Rules (MKR) is having a serious effect on me. Last night, instead of admitting we were having leftovers again, I described our meal as the following:

Roast beef with brown gravy and sautéed red capsicum and mushrooms, together with sweet potato mash. For dessert, warm apple cranberry crisp.

So what if the roast had rested in the fridge for 3 days now? It was resting in gravy! So what if the mushrooms were a little wilty when I started? So what if the crisp wasn’t crispy anymore? It sounded more appetizing than leftovers…again!

Last weekend, I decided to learn how to make pasta. I know…me with all the cooking disasters and crime scene photos! But if I can’t travel to Italy this year,( especially after studying the language for the past year)…surely I could learn to cook like a nonna. And I reasoned that my bread baking skills were proof that I could be certain of success! If not success, than a really great blog post on what NOT to do.

I have been waiting to try my new pasta machine since my birthday, which was in April, but with the brutally hot summer that hasn’t given up its grip yet, I’ve had to keep waiting. And I could wait no longer.

Last Saturday was the “Day“! I spent the morning reading an excellent article on the “hows” and “whys” of making perfect pasta. Then I cleared off my dining room table and spread out my grandmother’s pastry mat, still dusted in flour and remnants from the last time she used it. I set out my bowls, my flour, and my eggs. I set up my iPad with step by step instructions (with photos). And then I stood there, holding Nana’s rolling pin and saying a little prayer…

* * *

If you were expecting a long-winded tantrum on my terribly traumatic flop with flour…for once, you will be disappointed! Sorry!

Everything went scarily smoothly. My egg nest blended together. I only broke a slight sweat kneading the dough.  Hubby manned the crank on the pasta machine for most of the dough, and boiled it up for supper (60-90 seconds per quarter batch of dough). We even tried all the attachments, so we had options: fettucini and tagliolini.

One bowl or two?

Next time, I’ll cut the pasta threads in half before boiling so it’s easier to dish it up. Or I’ll take on the challenge of ravioli!

And I’ll make a double batch because this one…didn’t last long!

Buon Appetito e weekend felice!

Oh Balls!

Tags

food, humour

Oh Balls!

Cake balls, that is!

Our church is holding a community yard sale this coming weekend to raise money to support a weekly ministry to the needy and homeless in the downtown core. I offered to organize a bake table.

What was I thinking? Or as Hubby would ask “were you thinking?” Yes, I was thinking that there are probably others out there, like me who go to church bazaars and Farmer’s Markets for the home-baking!

Unforunately the response of local bakers to help me hawk their wares has been underwhelming, to say the least, and not being one to back down from a challenge, I have been experimenting with new recipes and tucking the “not so disastrous” results in the freezer. I eat the disasters and my bathroom scales reflect my rate of success.

On Saturday, I let myself be talked into trying cake pops! I diligently took notes during the youtube video. I went to 3 different stores, in 2 different towns, to get my supplies – cake mix, icing, chocolate wafers, sticks, sprinkles. How hard could this be?

First, I baked my rainbow chip cake, cooled it, cut off the edges and scalped the top. I enlisted Little Guy to break it up. Then I added the icing. The first bowl was perfect. The second bowl ended up with the baby cereal, or cat vomit (how I’ve come to know this is a long story involving a barn cat, a chicken…it’s a long story)! The more I (wo)man-handled those balls (and I was not gentle), the more moist they became…

I added icing sugar and put it in the fridge to set…now it was cold rainbow chip cat vomit.

So my Mom made a 911 call to her cousin, who is a fabulous baker. While they enjoyed a lovely visit, my Aunt Mary, who was enjoying the show from a safe distance and sharing in the banter, went out and returned  with a store-bought coconut pound cake. I used most of it to firm up my soft balls…

My Grandmother fell and I spent most of Sunday with my Mom at the hospital, so nobody touched my 60 frozen balls.

On Monday, I decided I should play with my frozen balls before trying to get my balls safely home on a 3 hour road trip. I pulled 3 out and let them thaw, while I melted a bowl of red velvet chocolate wafers.

We murdered Little Guy’s first ball in the bowl of congealing blood-red chocolate. I had to pry it out piece by sticky piece. He licked the bowl clean any way.

I managed to stab my first ball and coat it with tacky chocolate, before it slid down the stick before breaking in two. Same with the third ball. By now my heart had sunk and split too.

Finally, I melted some pink chocolate and pulled out two more frozen balls from the freezer. I coated each one using only my fingers, and sprinkled them profusely before the chocolate melted.

Messy Sucess?

They taste pretty good. But Oh, Balls…cake balls! What to do with the other 55!

Chocolate doesn’t ask silly questions. Chocolate understands.

Deliver Us From Evil…

Tags

baking, cooking, family, food, humour

Around 5:30 last night, Hubby wandered into the kitchen and asked me, “what are you doing?”

I continued stirring onions in the frying pan but eyed him suspiciously. “I’m cooking”.

“What are you cooking?”

“I’m cooking käsespätzle”

“Bless you!” he replied. And then he started praying, “Deliver us from evil…”

* * *

As the two people who read this blog know, I am not a great cook. I’m not even a fair cook. My family survives on what I feed them…they come from strong Irish stock. And every now and then I try something new.

This weekend, I tried 3 new recipes in 2 days. I blame my Bible study group. We meet every other Sunday evening and each family takes a turn providing dinner. One mother of 4 boys made a yummy Egyptian dish (that I can’t pronounce but starts with an “M”), and then suggested that we each bring an ethnic dish from our backgrounds on our nights (btw, she’s Scottish & Irish)…

* * *

My background is Scottish, Irish and German, but…several generations ago. I searched and chose 4 recipes: German chocolate cake, käsespätzle, Irish wheat bread, and Colcannon. I went grocery shopping and bought everything I needed …for 3 of those recipes. Oops.

“Life is uncertain.Eat dessert first!” – Ernestine Ulmer

I started with German chocolate cupcakes. (I would have baked black forest cupcakes with kirsch whipping cream, but knowing my track record for disaster, I didn’t want to tempt anything involving alcohol). They are divine! (and full of fat)

It went downhill from there…

Then I moved on to Irish wheat bread, which does not reqiure yeast so no time to prove. I got my upper body workout mixing the thick, gelatinous glop and tossed it in the oven. I marked it with a cross, just like the recipe said…

Little Guy thought this cupcake looked too plain…so he added Smarties to his!

The bread was salty and the crust was bitter…just like a few Irishmen I know.

“Being Irish, he had an abiding sense of tragedy, which sustained him through temporary periods of joy.” – William Butler Yeats

That was Saturday…and my family was still alive and well.

Sunday evening, I made käsespätzle…I mixed my dough carefully, measuring the 250g of flour with our scales (which to date had only weighed wooden toy cars). Then I measured that 250 g with 3 different measuring cups & got 3 different measurements… so maybe I wasn’t always the problem in my cooking disasters?

While the dough was rising for 20 minutes, I sauteed onion rings, and grated gruyere cheese. Yum! The recipe said to sieve the dough through a colander into a pot of boiling water, to form mini cylindrical shapes of “pasta”. Instead, my dough oozed slowly through the holes like viscous yellow snot. Once cooked, it rose to the surface of the water like white, dead & bloated mutant maggots. I choked back the bile forming in my throat and tasted one and I had a flashback to the paste I used to eat in Kindergarten. But I persevered, ditching the colander and using two spoons to drop little blobs of gummy dough into the water until I thought my back would break.

By this time, Hubby was back with pizza.

All was not lost…while it looked…unappetizing (and the onions were undercooked and crunchy – messed those up too apparently), my käsespätzle was delicious.

And I will never make it again!

My family are still alive and well; they have been delivered from evil!

Gut montag!

 

Bread Basket Case

Tags

family, food, humour

I started out the week with great intentions and a calm spirit. I kept the calm spirit, but the week has flown by and my great intentions…meh! So last night, tired and out of time, I (stupidly?) decided to bake bread, somewhere between laundry and packing for a road trip. Yes, a road trip despite the fact that we had snow and freezing rain all night (and this morning, everything is white and coated thickly with ice).  Baking bread, does not involve a machine; I do it the good ol’ fashioned way – hard labour! With sticky fingers and the sweat of my brow.

It started out well.

First, I washed some dishes so I could carve out some counter space.

Next, I dug out my ingredients. At Christmas, I had measured out my dry ingredients for bread and packed it for the trip to my parents, just in case we needed some fresh bread over the holidays. I also packed extra flour. But I had put both in the same container (one in a baggie) and I had no idea which was the mix and which was the extra flour.

I tasted them – they both tasted like…flour. So I measured both packages to figure it out. Luckily, they were different measurements, by a 1/4 cup!

I mixed and mixed, until I thought my arms would fall off. Then I kneaded it vigorously for 5 minutes, and put it in the oven to prove by the light of the bulb.

Once proved, I punched that sucker (which is extremely satisfying) and started to work it into the shape I wanted – a simple braided loaf. I cut my dough and started to roll and stretch it into long, thin strands, but the dough kept bouncing back to its original shape. Yelling at it and calling it names did not make it behave any better. I worked quickly and carefully because I didn’t want to work it too much. It wasn’t until I went to braid it that I realized…I had cut and rolled it into 2 pieces. Braids require 3. Insert expletive here!

I knew the dough was getting cool and I needed to prove it again, so I started twisting the pieces together anyway. They were thicker in the centre and the ends were refusing to stick together. I rolled it into  a circle, but it looked more like softserve. Or this guy’s hair…

I let it prove again, then baked it. On the plus side, it came out looking less like”softserve” hair, but on the downside, it resembles an updo for a Granny…

I suppose it’s still something worth celebrating! When a basket case like me decides to bake at the end of a long day, at the last minute, with the pressure on, it could have been SO much worse!

 Wish me luck slicing this so I can get it into the toaster!

This basket case is still hopeful that she’ll be joining the mass exodus from the city this evening with Big Guy and Little Guy, traffic and weather permitting! The roads still look like skating rinks and thousands of customers are without power, so Big Guy may be working overtime outside.

It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas around here!

Happy Easter!

 

Mmmm…Marshmallows

Tags

cooking, disasters, food, humour, sweets

Berry Blush. Toasted Coconut. Vanilla Bean. Maple Bacon. Pineapply Rosemary.

Just a handful of flavours gourmet marshmallow makers have dreamed up. “Mallow artists” are revisiting and heightening this long overlooked fluffy delicacy and waving “good-bye” to the spongy, store-bought variety so many of us savoured around the campfire as kids.

Those mass-produced chemically-induced blobs of goo on the grocery store shelves were put there in the 1940’s. Marshmallows date back to ancient Egypt, where marsh mallow root juice was used as a thickening agent for early cough drops. Centuries later French confectioners added egg whites and sugar to create meringues.

For most of us, marshmallows conjure up nostalgic images of families perched on metal lawn chairs around a campfire. I have some of those nostalgic memories too. Golden-brown on the outside with a hot, sticky melted centre, at the end of a stick we pulled from the bush. Mom made us wash our faces and hands, sticky with gooey guts and consequently caked in sand and pine needles too, before we were slid into our sleeping bags.

I also have memories of marshmallows bursting in flames before it turned black and fell into the flames. On one occasion, in a desperate attempt to save my treat, I waved my stick so hard that my flaming marshmallow became a flaming projectile. In slow motion, it flew to my right and hit my brother in my knee. I ran to get the medical kit while he screamed in agony, as the melted blob burned his skin.

I don’t think he’s ever forgiven me.

Marshmallows are a combination of corn syrup, sugar, water, salt and gelatin. When heated, mixed and whipped, it becomes a delightful treat! No baking required. Marshmallow makers say that they’re finicky at first, but easy once you’ve perfected the knack. I don’t know… I don’t exactly have a knack for baking, even the easy things……like rice krispie squares with the store-bought variety of marshmallows.

What a Mess: “If Stupidity got us into this mess, then why can’t it get us out?” – Will Rogers

I think I’d better leave this project for the “mallow artists”.

Source: From Cupcake Craze to Puffy Phase

Blue Cheese & Death Wings

Tags

food, humour

They begged and pleaded but when the moment of truth came, they hesitated. I don’t blame them.

Our group was exhausted Friday night, having risen before the sun, crossing the border, and spending the day in worship and classes at the Christian Musicians Summit. For supper, someone suggested wings.

There must have been close to a dozen different flavours of wings in the menu, along with at least a dozen warning signs about the “heat” levels around the restaurant:

Here’s the question…if medium is “hot” and Hot is “very, very hot”, how hot are the wings several levels below that? How hot are the wings listed below “suicidal”? How hot are “death wings”?

The two teens we had with us begged our fearless leader to order death wings. He relented and ordered 5. They saved them until they had eaten their fill of the other spicy wings.

Our lead guitarist went first, but didn’t seem to have any reaction. Next fearless leader and teen #1 took a bite. Within a few seconds, both fearless leader and teen #1’s faces turned a little pink and their eyes watered. Fearless leader finished his wing, chewing with his mouth open. Teen #1 made a valiant attempt. There was a lot of gasping like a fish out of water…and a lot of water being consumed. The whole time, teen #2 was laughing…

Now it was her turn! Teen #2 took a bite and waited. She commented that it wasn’t “so bad”. Famous. Last. Words. Her laughter quickly faded, her smile dimmed, her eyes opened and the tears started to flow. She wasn’t crying; she was simply unable to stop the tears from streaming down her face. Then her nose started to run too. Her sips of water turned to guzzling. She threw herself across me, reaching for celery sticks. Someone suggested she try the blue cheese dip to soothe the burning.  Twenty minutes earlier she had whined that “blue cheese is so gross”. Now she was frantically searching the tabletop for the styrofoam cup. She dunked her celery sticks and as she chewed it (with her mouth open slurping in air to cool her tongue), and whined that it was “so disgusting” while dunking and biting off more. She tackled me a second time for more celery.

By now, Teen #1 had given up the battle, and was wrapping his wing in a napkin so he could dispose of it in the plastic bucket. No need to smear more sauce on his fingers. While we were distracted, Teen #2 started to use the celery stick to apply the blue cheese dip like lip gloss. If I ever see “Blue cheese lip gloss”, I’ll be sure to buy it just for her.

They both admitted it, that ordering death wings was a mistake. The 5^th wing went to the compost heap, untouched.

At bedtime, as we turned out the light, Teen #2 groaned, “I can still feel the wings”!

I whispered back, “death wings”!

Thank you, Enablers!

Tags

birthday, cupcake, family, humour, sweets

“An enabler is a person who by their actions make it easier for an addict to continue their self-destructive behavior by criticizing or rescuing.” – Darlene Albury

Last week, many of my friends and family member were “enablers”…they enabled me to sample and savour many different types of birthday cake. And they were all good!

On Tuesday, my friend delivered a red velvet “tear-away” cake (with fluffy white icing) to one of my bosses, who stored it in the other boss’ office until they could “surprise me”. I shared the bounty.

On Tuesday night, I baked Betty Crocker Reese® cupcakes to celebrate my birthday. Ask my Dad – in his family, chocolate cake is a synonymous with “party”! They were really time-consuming, bur worth consuming!

On Thursday night, Hubby and I went on an impromptu “girls’ night” and I smacked down a supple slice of white chocolate triple-berry cake. I didn’t share…

My parents visited this weekend and we had a family orgy. They brought Henry (O Henry!) in cake-form. Alas! I fear that while I love my husband, my steamy affair with Henry (O Henry) is destined to continue!

And finally, on Sunday afternoon, Hubby brought home a decadent chocolate mousse cake, which resulted in a number of suggestive sounds emanating from my frosting-covered lips.

Add that up! That’s 6 cakes in 5 days.

Thank you to my family and friends for enabling me to enjoy my birthday with such memorable treats!

This Monday morning, I’m taking my car to the mechanic to get the snow tires removed, and I’m walking home…in the hopes of enabling my body to fit into my new jeans by the weekend!

Let’s call it rehab.

Happy Star Wars Day!