Saturday, March 15, 2008

You are SO good lookin...

I knew nothing about Babka until Seinfeld enlightened me.
I am a Utahn. My understanding is that those of you who live in the East know all about Babka...so I turned to you for guidance. I searched many food blogs and recipe sights to find what people considered the ultimate Babka. The verdict??? Neither cinnamon, nor chocolate, but a marriage of the two. Apparently, the streusel topping is as important as properly acting yeast. Marry and streusify I did.
Yeast doin' its' thing...
Dough with dough hook
Streusel topping made while dough rises
Inards, also made while dough rises
Large loaf, all rolled up and generously twisted
Preparing mini-loaves. The recipe was supposed to make three large loaves, I did two large and made four small out of the last large. I thought the tiny ones turned out better!!
Tiny loaves before baking
Large loaves before baking
Large loaves straight outta the oven.
Y.U.M.

I have serious intentions of proper experimentation with all kinds of Babka in the near future. If you live in Utah and you'd like to reap the benefits of the gargantuan recipe yield, all you gotta do is give me the word!!

Cracka-Lacka

I like to bake cookies mostly. Why???
Oh, because I love to eat the dough.
But today, I baked crackers. With some inspiration from
Kath and her husband over at Katheats.com, I started
throwin ingredients into a bowl. I ended up with red quinoa,
almond slices, pepitas, sunflower seeds, salt, pepper, and
flax seeds. I toasted all of these and then cooled them. To
this I added whole wheat flour, vital wheat gluten (for higher
protein, that was silly...nobody wants glutenous crackers!!),
olive oil, honey, and water.
Some of them got fresh rosemary and basil in their
dough. Some of them got topped off with delicious
pecorino romano.
They are high fiber, high protein, high MUFA fabu
little treats!

Yeah, I bake my own Birthday cake...

This cake is a ridiculous height. There are two yellow layers and two chocolate layers inside. I contem plated freezing a layer, but I simply couldn't have two of one and one of the other, so tall cake it was.

The layers were chiffon. I used Mark Bittman's basic chiffon cake recipe. It was yellow. In the chocolate batter, I reduced the flour and added that much cocoa powder. I felt this was a good method.

The frosting is vanilla seven minute, with chocolate seven minute marbled in. It was really just going to be vanilla, but I am a frosting girl, and felt as though there wasn't enough. When I decided to make more, I figured the outside might as well match the inside.


Here it is all dressed up.


Meet the folks that would be my parents if I had not parents night...

I don't love noshy food. I just don't feel satisfied standing and picking at things. I like to sit down with dishes and napkins and presentation. A night like this, however, calls for nosh.
Nosh we did.
Smoked salmon with capers, cream cheese, red onion, and lemon (with crostini, cucumber, or water crackers as vehicles).
Crudite and half tomato half herbed dip that I made with a cottage cheese/yogurt base.
Pomegranite margaritas.
And Ryan's contribution...Gin/Champagne/Lemon cocktails.
I managed to make myself sick off of gin one night in high school, and champagne sometime shortly thereafter. Needless to say, I couldn't stomach much of that cocktail, but it sure was tasty!

I don't know who decided it would be a good idea to try to teach a bunch of inebriated souls how to play new card games. That is what ensued after the nosh had been noshed, though. It was rough, we literally threw in the cards pretty quickly after we began.


This is Mrs. Piggy Lopez. She is a pretty tolerant dog.

What Next???


This here is
Christ
mas Eve dessert. I somehow managed to not get a photo of the inside of the cake. WAH WAH. I love love love the way the outside looks. It is a knockoff of the Chocolate Pepper mint Stick Marsh mallow Fantasy Cake from CulinaryConcoctionsbyPeabody.com
I made it with part whole grain flour, and less sugar, part splenda. It was delicious, but you should never ever try to make seven minute (or marshmallow) frosting with reduced sugar. It just doesn't create the same billowy effect. I kind of knew that going in to the experiment, but if you know me, I am pretty stubborn, and I had a "I will make this work" mentality that December day.
If you haven't checked out Peabody's website...go there (but only if you've got a few hours to kill!)

Blogging Hiatus, New Post, Old Food


I am certain there must be some statistic regarding the amount of time a food blogger blogs. For example, 1 in 5 food bloggers post three times then forget all about their endeavor.
So...
the last time I posted was in November. November!!! That's a third of a year that's gone by! Time flies. F.L.I.E.S.
My lack of posting was not for the lack of things to post. Other things have simply found my time. Here, this lovely Saturday
afternoon, I will play a little bit of catch up.

This is a whole wheat german chocolate cake I made for my mom's birthday in December. It was disappointing, honestly. The wheatiness overshadowed the other flavors.
Sorry Mom.

Looks good though, right?
Note to self: play around with recipes in spare time...not for people's birthdays.