Graham Crackers

So, summer means hiking, and hiking means good hiking snacks. Luckily, I have just discovered the smorgasbord of food blogs, sharing with me delicious treats to make. (My favorite waste of time tastespotting.com. It is a collection of the Web's best food pictures, updated constantly.) There are tons of recipes that you can make from scratch.
   One I just discovered is graham crackers, which are also a great hiking food. I am headed out on a trip where I will be doing a lot of hiking. Thus, it is time for graham crackers. These crackers surprisingly taste like, well, graham crackers. I love them because of the sea salt that you add. It gives this kick of saltiness that I always love combined with sweet flavors. The key thing with these crackers is to make them thin. They aren't as crunchy and crumbly if they aren't thin. Enjoy!

Graham Crackers
 from 17andbaking.com

Ingredients:
2 1/2 cups plus 2 tablespoons (375 grams) unbleached all-purpose flour (can swap 1/2 cup for whole wheat flour, or 1 cup for whole wheat pastry flour)
1 cup (176 grams) dark brown sugar, lightly packed
1 teaspoon (6 grams) baking soda
3/4 teaspoon kosher or coarse sea salt (4 grams)
7 tablespoons (3 1/2 ounces or 100 grams) unsalted butter, cut into 1-inch cubes and frozen
1/3 cup (114 grams) mild-flavored honey, such as clover
5 tablespoons (77 grams) milk, full-fat is best
2 tablespoons (27 grams) pure vanilla extract

1. Pulse the flour, brown sugar, baking soda, and salt in a food processor to incorporate. If you don't have a processor, like me, you can whisk it together. Add the butter and pulse on and off, on and off until the mixture is the consistency of a coarse meal. At this point, I used a hand mixer. It took some work, but I got it done.

 2.  In a small bowl, whisk together the honey, milk, and vanilla extract. Add to the flour mixture and pulse on and off a few times or mix on low until the soft, sticky dough barely comes together.

3.  Lay out a large piece of plastic wrap and dust it lightly with flour, then turn the dough out onto it and pat it into a rectangle about 1-inch thick. Wrap it, then chill it until firm, about 2 hours or overnight.

4.  Divide the dough in half and return one half to the refrigerator.
5.  Sift an even layer of flour onto the work surface and roll the dough into a long rectangle about 1/8 inch thick (thinner is better). The dough will be sticky, so flour as necessary. Cut the dough into 2″ squares using a fluted cookie cutter or rolling cutter.

6.  Place the crackers on one or two parchment-lined baking sheets and sprinkle with the topping. Chill 15 to 20 minutes in the freezer. Repeat with the second batch of dough. Gather any scraps together into a ball, chill until firm, and re-roll.
8.  Adjust the oven rack to the upper and lower positions and preheat the oven to 350°F. Prick the crackers with a fork or wooden skewer, then bake 15 – 20 minutes, or until golden brown, rotating the pans halfway through. The cracker will not seem completely firm, but will harden as it cools. You might want to test out a few crackers to see what time works best for you.

Sticky Toffee Pudding-or Heaven on Earth

Before I go on an extended description of the transcendental nature of this dessert hitting your taste buds and removing, momentarily, all sorrow and pain--let me explain something. Pudding  in the dialect of the Britons is not the Jell-O-packet concoction that we Americans think of. Pudding is essentially the word for cake.
  Now that there is more clarity on the name of this  loveliness, I will begin to explain what this particular pudding is all about. I first tried this pudding while studied abroad in Scotland. So, this treat is not just a dessert for me; it is the entrance to memory--memory of a land I adore. Needless to say, I had very high expectations for this dessert and this recipe succeeded. Imagine rich caramel sauce with layers of flavor poured abundantly over a moist, warm spiced cake and you have Sticky Toffee Pudding. As I took my first spoonful of the sticky toffee (the sauce was done before the cake was fully cooked), I kept saying again and again to myself, I can't believe this tastes this good; I can't believe I cooked this. It is one of those recipes that you feel like has come from a restaurant with a skilled chef at its head. The best part is that anyone can make this cake. There is nothing super hard about any of it. The only thing for you to do is mix it up real quick, sit back, relax, smell the ambrosial aromas swell within your kitchen, and then forget about all the sugar and butter that is in it.
Cheers!

Sticky Toffee Pudding
(recipe from http://www.recipezaar.com/recipe/Udny-Arms-Sticky-Toffee-Pudding-113993)

Ingredients

Pudding

• 1/2 cup butter
• 2 cups powdered sugar
• 2 eggs
• 3 cups flour
• 8 ounces dates (pitted and cut into pieces)
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 2 cups boiling water

Sauce

• 1 cup butter
• 2 3/4 cups brown sugar
• 1 pint whipping cream

Directions

For the Pudding:.

1. Cream butter and sugar until white and fluffy.[Yes, it is correct that you are using powdered sugar, and yes, you are essentially making icing here.]
2. Beat in eggs gradually.
3. Fold in flour. [The consistency is a dry dough, kind of like a pastry.]
4. In a separate bowl pour the boiling water over the dates and soda.
5. When water is absorbed, add other ingredients and cream mixture.[There is a lot of water still left over. When it says "water is absorbed" it means that the dates have plumped up not that the water is removed.]
6. Bake in 9" x 13" cake pan in moderate hot oven (350 F) for 40 minutes. 

For the Sauce:

1. Mix all ingredients and bring to a boil.
2. Poke holes in top of cake and pour half of mixture over top, allowing sauce to soak into cake.
3. Brown under grill before serving.
4. Keep remaining sauce hot and spoon onto still warm pieces of cake cut into 3" squares.
5. Top with whipped cream. [The cake is just fine without whipped cream, but it is very rich. This would taste delicious with vanilla ice cream. There is plenty of extra sauce to pour over ice cream.]

This cake is so good; I hope any readers out there will try this cake. It is a definite on my bakery list. Please enjoy!

Amazing Bread

So, this bread may very well be the genesis of my love of bread making. Oh, the loveliness that is warm bread fresh from the oven. I really can't think of very many things that are more amazing than that smell, wafting through the air, entering my soul with the warmth of a mother's hug. Homemade bread is like, in the words of the great Michael Jackson, L-O-V-E, L-O-V-E, love.

Now, I share this precious recipe with you. It is the recipe that began my inquiry into finding the best bakery recipes around. It goes by no other name but Amazing Bread. My only challenge left with this bread is to practice making it just as wonderful as a whole wheat or half whole wheat rendition.

This recipe comes in two sizes, so I will do each size (4 loaves and 2 loaves--they are probably about a 2 pound size loaf each)

Amazing Bread

4 Loaves:

5 1/3 C. warm water (so as to not kill your yeast, but warm enough to wake those little guys up.)*

2 Tbsp. yeast
2/3 C. sweetener**
2/3 C. oil
2 Tbsp. salt
13 1/3 C. flour (you can do half of the flour whole wheat and half regular white wheat)

2 Loaves:
2 2/3 C. warm water*
1 Tbsp. yeast
1/3 C. sweetener**
1/3 C. oil
1 Tbsp. salt
6 2/3 C. flour

*For those of you who have never baked with yeast before, I generally try to get the water just a little warm to the touch. You aren't looking for hot water.
**I use honey here, which I think makes a little difference. The loaves come out smelling like honey, but if you want to use sugar, it will still be a great loaf of bread.

So, I have made this bread by hand and by throwing all the ingredients into my bread maker on dough setting and then cooking it in the oven. (I personally hate the way my bread machine cooks bread. The crust is usually disgusting, so I just use it to mix up doughs.)

When making it by hand, you mix the first five ingredients together. If you want to proof your yeast, you can put the first three ingredients in a bowl and wait for the yeast to bubble, showing that it is awake and ready to make some amazing bread for you. Then I mix in about three cups of flour until combined. I keep adding a cup of flour at a time. Around the time I have 6 cups in the batter, I need to take the dough out and begin kneading it on the counter. I continue to add the flour until the dough is no longer sticky. As with most baking, the flour measurements are not exact. If you get a nice, not-too-sticky dough after 6 1/3 cup, you can stop. If you still have a sticky dough after adding all the called for flour, then add some more. (The measurements I describe in this paragraph are for the 2 loaf version.)

After you have kneaded the dough together, place it back in your mixing bowl, cover it with a greased piece of plastic wrap and let rise until doubled.

After it has doubled, knead the bread once more in flour on your counter. Split into loaves and place in greased pans. I have cooked this bread in bread pans and also just free form on a cookie sheet. Both taste great, just different looks. Let rise, covered,  until doubled once more.
Once doubled, cook at 350 degrees for 20 minutes. I have had to work with this 20 minutes quite a bit depending on the size of the loaf, so you will want to check the centers of your bread.

And then you enjoy this blessing of bread that has entered your home. It is a lovely, lovely treat--especially with honey or jam.

Here is a picture of these loaves using some "antique" bread pans I just inherited from my grandma. There is something magical about these pans. They cooked the bread perfectly--perfect crust, perfect bottom, perfect inside. I am excited to own these pans. But, don't worry. This bread turns out really well no matter how I have made it.

Cheers!

Irish Soda Bread

So, I had never eaten or baked this bread before, so I am not sure what it is supposed to taste like.  But it is interesting, and not in a bad way. It has a very distinctive flavor. No, I don't want to make this bread again and again, but it is fun to make around St. Patrick's Day. I also think it is really cool that it tastes as good as it does without using any yeast.

Quick story about this bread before I move on to the recipe. We had a potluck on St. Patrick's Day at work. I brought the Irish soda bread. After lunch, I ran it up to our breakroom and put it in th fridge. When I came up three hours late to claim my bread, someone had taken it. I was shocked. I work with a bunch of elderly volunteers doing Church history. I guess it must of just looked that good.


Irish Soda Bread (from Our Best Bites blog)
 

1 cup flour 

2 3/4 cups whole wheat flour 

1 1/4 teaspoons salt 

1 1/4 teaspoons baking soda 

2 teaspoons white sugar 

4 Tbs butter

2 cups buttermilk 

1/4 cup vegetable oil 

For Topping:

1 tablespoon buttermilk or milk

1 teaspoon white sugar

Preheat oven to 400 degrees F. Grease a cookie sheet or other shallow baking pan.

 

Whisk together the flour, whole wheat flour, salt, baking soda, and 2 teaspoons sugar in a bowl.

Cut the butter into the flour mixture until pieces are crumb-size. 

Make a well in the center of the mixture and pour in the oil and buttermilk. (As you can tell, I underestimated the depth that would be needed so make a large well.

Stir with a spatula until dry mixture is completely moistened. Move the dough to a lightly-floured surface. Lightly knead the dough a few times and then form into a round ball and pat down a little. 

Place the dough into the prepared pan; pat down and around to form a round loaf. Cut a cross into the top of the loaf with a sharp knife. Brush the top with 1 tablespoon buttermilk or milk, and sprinkle 1 teaspoon sugar over the top. 

Bake in the preheated oven for 30 minutes. Reduce heat to 375 degrees F, rotate pan and bake another 25-30 minutes. 

Allow loaf to cool on a wire rack for about 15 minutes before slicing. 

Cheers!

Success #2: Hu La La Cookies

So, it is official, Lion House has the best recipes. 2 out of the 3 recipes I have made were exceptional (the other recipe wasn't bad either, but just not amazing). This cookie recipe is thick, crunchy, and rich.

  The recipe is different than your average cookie mix. You mix in most of your dry products first, and then  cut in butter (like a pastry). Finally, you add in eggs to make it a dough. Yes, this process takes a little more tender, loving care--but it is beyond worth it.
   Now, for all those out there that do not like coconut tons, these cookies do have a lot of coconut in them, but the flavor is not overwhelmingly coconutty. The coconut adds more to the texture than it does to the flavor.
   Just one last note before I get to the recipe. The cookie dough is dry and needs to be patted together to make into cookies. It also does not spread much at all, so whatever size you make, it will end up being the same size.

Enjoy these amazing cookies!!!

Hu La La Cookies

2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1 cup sugar
1 cup brown sugar
1 teaspoon baking powder
3/4 teaspoon baking soda
3/4 teaspoon salt
1 cup butter, softened
2 cups coconut
2 cups rolled oats (I used quick-oats, but old-fashioned oats will just make it chewier.)
3 egss
1 teaspoon vanilla
2 cups milk chocolate chips

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. In a medium mixing bowl, combine flour, sugars (I always get excited when you have a reason to pluralize non-count nouns. Yup, I am a grammar dork.), baking powder, baking soda, and salt.

Cut in butter and mix until well blended. [This will take a bit of time. I used a fork, but if you have a pastry cutter, that will work even better. Don't worry if it is still very dry when the butter is mixed in. It will turn into a dough with the eggs.)

Add coconut and oatmeal and mix briefly. [I also like that the recipe uses the word briefly here. I am not sure what that means exactly, but I just mixed the coconut and oats all the way in.]

Add eggs and vanilla. Mix well. [This also takes a bit of stirring, but even if you don't believe it, there is enough liquid to make the whole bowl into a dough.]

Stir in chocolate chips.

Bake 10 to 12 minutes. Makes 3 1/2 dozen cookies.

Oatmeal Fudge Squares--My First Absolute Success

Ok, so this past weekend I was stuck in my apartment all by myself. My roommates were out of town. With the beginning of the Olympic games and a lot of work I need to catch up on, I barricaded myself into my apartment to watch and work and bake--so maybe the work part went out the window. Anyway, I discovered this delicious and bakery worthy cookie square. I made some for a party the next day and everyone said they were amazing also.
  Thus, I present to you these morsels of loveliness. Served hot, they are the perfect pairing for ice cream--fudge and cookies. Served cool they are some of the richest and scrumptious snacks you have ever had. I got the recipe from the mother of all Mormon baking books, Lion House Baking.

Oatmeal Fudge Squares

Ingredents:
1 cup butter or margarine, softened
2 cups packed brown sugar
2 eggs
2 teaspoons vanilla
2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 1/2 cups quick-cooking rolled oats (I used old-fashioned and they turned out fine)
1 (14-oz.) can sweetened condensed milk
1 (12-oz.) package semi-sweet chocolate chips
1/4 cup margarine
2 teaspoons vanilla
1 cup chopped walnuts (optional)

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease a 9X13-inch baking pan and set aside. In a large mixing bowl, cream together butter and brown sugar.

Add eggs and vanilla.

 

In a small bowl, sift flour, baking soda, and salt (I used a whisk.) and add to creamed mixture. Mix in oats.

In heavy saucepan, mix sweetened condensed milk, chocolate chips, and margarine and heat until chocolate is just melted. Stir in vanilla and nuts. (To tell you the truth, I forgot to add the vanilla both times I made this. I also didn't have nuts. I didn't miss either in the finished concoction.)

Spread two-thirds of the dough into prepared baking pan. 

Spread with chocolate mixture. Drop remaining one-third of dough on top by spoonfuls. Bake for 25 minutes. Cool (or don't), then cut into bars. Makes 36 bars. 

These are seriously amazing. The picture does not do it anywhere near justice. The fudge-cookie combination is so, so good. Yum!

Cheers!

Scottish Shortbread

In honor of Robert Burns's birthday in January (the 25th), the recipe for this time is Scottish shortbread. I have been apprehensive to share this recipe because I think there is room for improvement, but it is not too bad. The recipe is good, but I think the texture could be a little bit more crumbly like Walker's shortbread. But before the recipe, a poem by Rabbie Burns. In time for Valentine's Day, a romantic poem with a little crassness.

To a Louse:

Ha! whaur ye gaun, ye crowlin ferlie?
Your impudence protects you sairly;
I canna say but ye strunt rarely,
Owre gauze and lace;
Tho', faith! I fear ye dine but sparely
On sic a place.

Ye ugly, creepin, blastit wonner,
Detested, shunn'd by saunt an' sinner,
How daur ye set your fit upon her-
Sae fine a lady?
Gae somewhere else and seek your dinner
On some poor body.

Swith! in some beggar's haffet squattle;
There ye may creep, and sprawl, and sprattle,
Wi' ither kindred, jumping cattle,
In shoals and nations;
Whaur horn nor bane ne'er daur unsettle
Your thick plantations.

Now haud you there, ye're out o' sight,
Below the fatt'rels, snug and tight;
Na, faith ye yet! ye'll no be right,
Till ye've got on it-
The verra tapmost, tow'rin height
O' Miss' bonnet.

My sooth! right bauld ye set your nose out,
As plump an' grey as ony groset:
O for some rank, mercurial rozet,
Or fell, red smeddum,
I'd gie you sic a hearty dose o't,
Wad dress your droddum.

I wad na been surpris'd to spy
You on an auld wife's flainen toy;
Or aiblins some bit dubbie boy,
On's wyliecoat;
But Miss' fine Lunardi! fye!
How daur ye do't?

O Jeany, dinna toss your head,
An' set your beauties a' abread!
Ye little ken what cursed speed
The blastie's makin:
Thae winks an' finger-ends, I dread,
Are notice takin.

O wad some Power the giftie gie us
To see oursels as ithers see us!
It wad frae mony a blunder free us,
An' foolish notion:
What airs in dress an' gait wad lea'e us,
An' ev'n devotion! 

Shortbread:

Ingredients:

• 1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1/3 cup white sugar
• 3/4 cup butter

Instructions:

     Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Blend all ingredients well. Dough will be stiff and crumbly.

Press into a 9 x9 inch buttered dish.

 Prick top with a fork.

Bake until pale golden brown on the edges. Cool and cut into squares. (I dumbly forgot to take a picture of the shortbread after it was done cooking, but it stays relatively light like the way it is before it is cooked.)

Be prepared for buttery goodness. Cheers!