Archive for January, 2008

American Sandwich Bread

January 28, 2008 at 9:24 pm · Filed under Cooks Illustrated, bread

My parents gave me their KitchenAid mixer a year ago. They aren’t really appliance people and I actually can’t remember them ever using it. You might expect that I started using it the minute I brought it home. But you would be wrong. It’s older than I am, and appliances that are old enough to purchase alcohol make me nervous. I was worried I would break it, or that I would turn it on and discover it didn’t actually work, or that…actually, just those two things. So it sat on the bottom shelf of my appliance cupboard for almost a year. Last month, I was making marshmallows, and you absolutely need a stand mixer for the marshmallows I was making, so I finally pulled it out. You’d think I would have taken it easy for the first run since I was so worried about breaking it and all. Not so much. The recipe I was using had several reviews stating that it had caused massive KitchenAid destruction. But it worked, and the marshmallows didn’t cause its twenty-one year old motor to die, so now I use it a lot. This weekend I did something I’ve been wanting to do since I got it, and made bread.

Loaf with several slices

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Strawberry-Banana Muffins

January 26, 2008 at 10:21 pm · Filed under muffins, strawberries

If I lived in my dream world, this would primarily be a baking blog, and I would do enough baking to update it twice every day. Unfortunately, I’m the only one in our house with a sweet tooth, so if that were the case I would weigh at least 300 pounds. Probably more. So I’m always looking for occasions when I have a captive crowd to devour my baked goods so that I won’t have half a pie calling out to me from the kitchen. This morning, even though I had a training at 9 o’clock on a Saturday, I looked on the bright side. It was a great opportunity to make one of the muffin recipes I’ve bookmarked recently.

Cut Muffin

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Protein Bars

January 25, 2008 at 7:30 pm · Filed under Alton Brown, dried fruit, snack, tofu

Goodness, this first week back at school was exhausting! There’s several things I’ve been meaning to tell you about all week, but every evening when I get home and sit down at my computer there just aren’t any coherent words in my head. I think I need to reinstitute nap time. However, the payoff of having such an exhausting week is that I have Friday off. So to celebrate my return to being a well-rested, functional human being, let me tell you about the protein bars I’ve been noshing on all week.

Cut Bar

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Simple Pierogi

January 20, 2008 at 6:45 pm · Filed under dinner, potatoes

I usually do not enjoy potatoes. I don’t like them mashed or baked, I don’t seek out french fries or chips (although I’ll eat them if they’re in front of me), and just the thought of potato salad makes me a little queasy. So I was a little surprised when I realized that potatoes played a starring role in dinner two out of the past three nights. First, there was the gnocchi. And then last night there was pierogi. Yummy, potato-y pierogi.

Browning the pierogi in a cast iron frying pan

I made this recipe for the first time last fall and it was a complete and utter flop. Not only did it fail, it failed on a night when John’s sister and her boyfriend came over for dinner. It was my first time boiling potatoes and I completely undercooked them. So the filling ended up lumpy and gross, and I was terribly embarrassed. I was somewhat redeemed by the apple tart I made for dessert, but I still feel badly about that dinner. Knowing that the failure was entirely my fault, I put the recipe aside with intentions of making it again. It took a few months to get there, but I’m glad I finally did.

Filling the pierogi

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Gnocchi

January 19, 2008 at 8:14 pm · Filed under Michael Chiarello, dinner, egg yolks, pasta, potatoes

My mother used to make some of the best gnocchi I have ever tasted. That’s right, used to. I haven’t been able to convince her to make them for probably five years or more. Including the time when I was sixteen and asked for gnocchi as my birthday dinner. “It’s too much work!” complains the woman who makes six or more loaves of bread almost every week. And there was the challenge. Could gnocchi really be as much work as she said it was?

A baking sheet lined with parchment paper and full of formed gnocchis

The short answer is no, not really. It was work, for sure, but not too much. If I had started early enough (which I could have, since I’m still on winter break), we could have eaten dinner at a reasonable time. Instead I started around six, and ate dinner at about the same time as most of California (we’re in New Hampshire). I am very lucky that John is so patient with me.

A formed gnocchi and a fork

However, I am going to have to sit down with my mom and get some lessons on forming gnocchi. I ended up with only one that looked the way I wanted it to. The rest all looked a little sad and deformed. But they tasted fantastic. Not quite as good as my mom’s, but still very good. And the best part is that there’s a whole bag of homemade gnocchi sitting in my freezer just waiting for me to need a quick weeknight dinner once the new semester starts up.

Read on for the recipe.

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