Lemon Sables

I made the traditional french sable recipe from Dorie Greenspan's new book, Baking From My Home to Yours, but at lemon zest. They are a yummy, buttery, shortbread cookie. I like them because they aren't too sweet, the sugar on the outside edge add enough sweet but do not over power the richness of the cookie. They were easy to make and I will definately do it again. They remind me of those danish butter cookies you get in tins around Christmas, the ones with pretzel shaped cookies dipped in clear decorater's sugar, yum yum.

Truffles galore!

These are some of the 100+truffles I made for Christmas gifts this year. I got the recipe from Carole Bloom, cookbook author, teacher, and more, during a cooking class I took. The same class as the peanut brittle. She made the Chinese five spice truffles for us in class and gave us the recipe for it. I took that recipe split it in half and made three different flavors using the same basic idea as the original recipe. I made 5 spice, orange, and mint truffles. My favorite is the orange, I used the fresh zest of an orange that I steeped with the cream and a couple teaspoons of grand marnier over the chocolate. I also really like the 5 spice which are different but addictive. I used 70 percent Schrafen Berger chocolate which is my go to chocolate. The recipe says it makes 60 truffles but each half recipe of mine made 35-45 truffles. I guess I made mine on the small side but I kinda like it that way because they are that rich.

peanut brittle

I made peanut brittle last night. It was the first time I have tried and after I burnt the first batch of sugar, which made the whole house smell like toasted marshmellows, I succeeded. The recipe was from cookbook author Carole Bloom. I took a class with her at the cooking school in town and she made them. Hers was the best brittle I ever had so I had to try and make it for Christmas. She dipped hers in chocolate, which I might do, but I liked it plain. It was an easy recipe to follow and except for my burning sugar, it came out perfectly. I liked the fact that I didn't need to use a candy themometer. I should have some more of her recipes up in a few days. Yum yum.

Me write good

Here is a long over do photo of the cake I made for my sister-in-law's birthday in September. It is the same cake I made and wrote about last spring, a recipe from Alice Medrich. It tasted and looked just as wonderful the second time around. I really am posting this so that my brother can see that I do have decent penmanship when I use frosting.

Gram's best

I found this recipe for Chicken Pot Pie in an issue of Saveur magazine, my favorite zine. The recipe said it was really chicken n' dumplings and they were right. The recipe, which requires you make your own stock, is easy to follow and very very yummy. The thing that is really cool is that they taste just like how I remember Great Gram's, my great grandmother, chicken n' dumplings tasted. We have been trying to recreate her amazing dish without any luck since she died. I was excited when I saw the recipe and thought I might have found something to compare to hers and I was right. It is just like I remember hers. I make it all the time and the leftovers are quite yummy reheated or cold.

fall food fun

This week feels like fall finally. I am making lots of yummy fall things curtesy of Martha Stewart Living Magazine. I am making many different things from the October issue. Yesterday I made the apple cider seltzer. It was good but a little sweet I think I might put in more seltzer water next time. Today I made the yummy desert from one of the menus, apple three ways. It consists of a baked apple, apple cake and apple ginger snow. I photographed like they did but my favorite is the second one. It is very yummy. I wil definately hang onto the apple cake recipe, yum, yum, yum. The apple ginger snow is very light and good too. It is basically lightly sweetened egg whites whipped with apple sauce folded in. So I learned how to make apple sauce yeah. The tastey part is the maple syrup you drizzle over the top, the real stuff.

cupcakes

I made fun cupcakes today! Yeah! They are yummy. I used the recipe for fast fudge cake in Alice Medrich's Chocolate holidays book. The cake is awesome, very moist, chocolatey, and easy to make. I think this will be my fool proof cake recipe from now on. It took me 5 maybe 10 minutes max to make the batter and only 20 minutes to cook the cupcakes. The other cool part is that I had everything to make the cake in the pantry and most people would have it too. Very delicious, almost brownie like but not as heavy. Then I made the frosting, which was another winner. I got the buttercream recipe from the CIA Baking at Home cookbook. I made the regular buttercream and the mocha buttercream. Both of them are very yummy and taste amazing. I love the recipe because you don't have to make a sugar syrup and then add it to the butter while its creaming. I always get a mess that way and nothing edible. This recipe was fast and easy and you cream the butter and then added powdered sugar. It's well worth making and the recipe will also be my standard frosting recipe from now on. Now I need to work on my decorating skills. Yum Yum.

Fun tourist shots!

These are fun photos from my trip up north this summer with my folks. I personally think went all the way to Montana to she the giant penguin, but the offical story is to see the parks, teton, yellowstone, glacier, and Banff. I also like the shot of my dad "the Exhibit," but my money shot is of the lake in Glacier. I took it on 120 also but it's not the same becuase by the time I got the camera out of the car, my dad had moved the car down the road to the bathroom, the water had ripples on it. Never leave the car without all needed gear.

hmmm

I just wanted to say I was big when I was little.

I made a real pie!

I did it. I mean I really did it. I made a real pie. Yes, it was not pie soup, but real old fashioned blueberry pie. This time I mixed the berries with sugar, cinnamon and lots of flour. It was awesome. The crustt was very flaky and the inside was good and juicy and held it's shape like pie should. Now I think I can do it. It is a step in the right direction.

Biscuits!!!

Yeah, I love biscuits. These were good ones, too. I tried the buttermilk biscuit recipe in the CIA book and they were great. The best part were they were flaky. I folded the dough as I rolled it and I think that is why there were distinct layers in the dough. The cool part was that you could pull off layer by layer of the biscuit. yum yum yummy. I will make them again.

Muffins!!

Muffins make me happy. And the blueberry muffins in the CIA book make me very happy. They were easy to make and they are some of the best all around blueberry muffins I've ever had. Rick, my husband, liked them but thought they were a little too sweet and too light. I think poo poo on him. They are awesome and yummy in my tummy.

pie

I can not make Pie. But, in the next few weeks I am determined to learn how. I decided to make a blackberry pie using the crust recipe in the CIA book. Well the crust was good, but I have another crust recipe I like a tad bit more. The bad thing was that like usual I had pie soup. Way too much liquid. I even added cornstarch to thicken it. It didn't work. The thing, pie I mean, was ok if you can drain it first. I did look nice. Stay tuned for more pie making atempts.

Blackberries!!!

I love pick your own berries. This past week I went up towards Fredricksburg, Texas and picked blackberries. It was fun, but HOT!!! The sad thing is the farm that I pick at, like other farms in the area, was hit with terrible weather and doesn't have a single peach on their trees. Peaches of course are their main crop. But, they had yummy blackberries. They are the coolest people and gave me some of their surplus squash and cucumbers.

white bread

I made another recipe in the Baking at Home with the CIA and it was yummy. The recipe, White Wheat Bread, was easy to make and pretty quick for yeast bread. The bread reminded me of the hot white bread loaves you get at restaurants before dinner. The only trouble was scoring the bread. I really need a straight razor to make a clean neat cut. I also need to make a deeper cut. Hopefully I make another loaf soon.

cool site!

I have found a very cool website. I think I might just have to get their catalog. The site is www.boiledpeanuts.com. They sell southern food a staples for those of us who can not get their favorite southern snacks like boiled peanuts!!!! I love boiled peanuts! The coolest thing is the t-shirt with the solgan, "I brake for Boiled Peanuts." I might just have to get me one of dem.

more bread

I received a wonderful book for my birthday, CIA Baking at Home. It is great and it teaches you how to make bread,s pastries, cakes, desserts and all good things baked. So, I read through the intro to the book and decied I would try and bake everything in it start to finish. I don't know if I'll be able to meet this challenge, but I will try. The first recipe is a honey wheat yeast bread. The recipe is one of the easiest yeast bread recipes I've seen. The bread turned out o.k., but it browned to fast. The only problem was the instructions for putting the bread in the baking pan. I ended up up with good tasting bread that was a little too brown and had a skinny center. All and all it was a good recipe with decent results.

Red

This is great movie advertising for Nacho Libre. I hope it is as funny as it looks. I got a cool medium format photo of this too.

Strawberries and Cream

I seem to be stuck on Strawberries. I have so many strawberries now I am getting tried of them. This is a dessert I made for Easter lunch. It's a light and yummy dessert perfect for spring. I made strawberries and white chocolate mint cream in a cookie cup. I got the cookie recipe from this month's Martha Stewart Living Magazine and I got the mint cream recipe from Alice Medrich's Chocolate Holiday's book. If you like mint you would love this. I used El Rey white chocolate which really makes a difference. The cream was heavenly. This is a fun easy dessert that impresses, but doesn't take a lot of work and is somewhat healthy.

strawberry shortcake

In honor of the wonderful strawberry season I decided I should go strawberry picking. After a couple of days of nursing sore muscles from bending down and picking berries, I decided I needed to do something with the over 5lbs of berries that I picked. Then I opened up the May/June issue of Cook's Illustrated and saw exactly what I needed to make, "The Best Strawberry Cream Cake" on page 24. It was a fun and pretty easy recipe to make. The cake tasted like a perfect strawberry shortcake. It was sweet but not too sweet, you mostly taste the fresh berries in the wonderful whipped cream. The chiffon/sponge type cake had a good structure and I did a decent job of cutting it into three layers even though it was my first time cutting a cake into layers. The cake cut easily next time I need a longer knife. I also think it might be a good blueberry cream cake, but I might add more cream cheese and sugar to the frosting for a slightly different taste. cheerio.

Happy St. Patrick's Day

Today I made brown bread for St. Patrick's day. I got the recipe from the March 2006 issue of Saveur Magazine. The recipe is for Doris Grant's Brown Bread. It turned out pretty good but very dense. I still haven't found recipe that tastes like the stuff we ate in Ireland with every meal. I was very tried of brown bread when we left after a week on th emerald isle, but after a few months I craved it again. I guess finding good brown bread is a good excuse to go back, huh. If I could only convince my husband that that was true. This recipe was good if you put some butter and maybe a little orange marmalade on it. I hope everyone enjoied their Guiness and Corned Beef and Cabbage.

Mmmm Chicken

I have found the best fried chicken around. Yes, the best. The best was at one time in my home town of Pensacola, Florida at Hopkin's House. But, alas, Hopkin's is no more and the chicken is gone. Then there is Babe's Fried Chicken in Burleson, Texas, 10 miles south of downtown Fort Worth. It's a family style restaurant where you get yummy fried chicken and unlimited sides and biscuits. I get to go to the mecca of chicken goodness once a year after the Southwestern Photojournalism Conference in Ft. Worth. It's a tradition for everyone to go after the conference and a good tradition at that. This year I showed a part of me that few people see and became a Babe's Hokey-Pokey superstar. I was honored. I cna't wait for next year.

mardi gras

Last week was fun. I went home for an extended weekend and photographed Mardi Gras in Mobile, Alabama with my dad and some friends. I then hung out in Mobile some with my friend Carisa it was a blast. I ate enough moonpies to last me a long while and as the photo shows they were everywhere. Carisa is a moonpie purest and says you should only eat the original Moonpies, but I just say as long as they're orange flavored then they're good. The other photo is of beaded nuns on Fat Tuesday in Mobile. I saw this and it made me smile, but I was chicken and Carisa had to kick me just to go shoot it. It's just a portrait but it makes me smile. I especially like the short nun on the right.
More to come soon of this weekend's photo conference and Babe's Fried Chicken in Ft. Worth.

fortune cookies!

Happy Valentine's Day!
Here are some fun Valentine's day cookies. These easy to make and you can write you own messages or fortunes on the ribbon. They taste wonderful too, much better than those conversation hearts. They are also good for parties of all kinds. Have a great day. The conversation hearts do have their place though.

danish anyone?

This week I decided to make a Danish Braid. The recipe is from the book, Baking With Julia. The danish took a couple days to make because you have to chill the dough overnight. The making of the danish wasn't hard or really too time consuming and the finished product looked similar to the photo in the book. The cool thing is that the dough can be refridgerated for a while and you can use it for other pastries, the recipe for the braid only used half the dough recipe. The end result is very pretty and impressive even though it is not too difficult to make. The down side is that it taste good but not great. I used a berry filling with pastry creamfor the inside and it tasted like those nutri-grain strawberry and cream granola bars. Then I cut another piece and sprinkled some of the coffee sugar glaze on it and it tasted better. I think the second piece had more of the cream and that helped, the first piece was on the end. My conclusion, make it if you really want to impress with a fancy looking danish but throw away the end pieces and definately pour on the glaze. It was fun and now I can say I made a danish, plus I got to use my food processor I got for Christmas for the first time. Adios!

Mmmmm Chocolate Cake.

This was fun. I made this chocolate cake this week. I went to a chocolate class taught by Alice Medrich, the chocolate queen before Christmas and learned how to make this cake. A friend's birthday was this week so I made it for his birthday, but I really was just looking for an excuse to make the cake. The cake is three layers of devil's food cake with a whipped choclate ganache between the layers and coated with a bittersweet choclate glaze and chocolate fans attached around the sides. I used Scharfenberger semi-sweet and bittersweet chocolates and a little white chocolate on the fans to create a color contrast. The cake was fun and I would meke it again but only for a special occasion. First, it's not a cheap cake to make, between $30 and $35 dollars if you use the good chocolate, and second it is time consuming, you can make it over a few days but the day you assemble it requires a least half a day.
I have to say the cake is worth it. It has so many different flavors of chocolate and melts in your mouth. It is very rich though and a small slice will satisfy anyones chocolate cravings for days.
Adios!

Krystal!

Long time no post. But, I'm back and maybe this year I'll keep up with this thing. Now to important things.

I am excited! I mean excited! My krystals have arrived. No longer do I have to drive to Mississippi on I-10 to get those greasy gems. Tomorrow morning the first Krystal burger will open in San Antonio, Texas.
I love these burgers. Why? Becuase they are yummy. So called meat squares with onions, mustard, one pickle on a bun that is greasy in spots along the edge, and it comes in a little square box who can beat that. I grew up on these things in Florida. They had one across from my dad's office and we'd eat there if I went to work with him when I was out of school. Then when I was in high school they put one on my way home. I think I gained 20 pounds in a year and a half thanks to those yummy burgers. mmmmmmmm.
I went to college in south western Kentucky just north of Tennesse and found a funny thing, White Castle. Yes, White Castle, a sorry attempt at making a Krystal. What was so funny was that we were on the Krystal/ White Castle line, we had them both across the street from each other. If you went north of the town no Krystal, if you went south no White Castle. I decided to test the two one time and there was no comparison. KRYSTALS!!!!! Win, eight thumbs up. So tomorrow I will make a krystal trip and taste that yummy goodness again, no more 8 hour trips to feed my craving.
I am glad it's about 25 minutes away, maybe I won't gain any extra weight htis time.