I've said it before, and I will say it again....the food blogging community never ceases to amaze me with their generosity. I have two case in points. Almost two months ago, when Tanna, of My Kitchen in Half Cups, came into town I was lucky enough to meet up with both her and Lynn, from Cookie Baker Lynn, for lunch. Lynn was a sweetheart and had made us each aprons(plus homemade cookies of course). Mine had little pea pods all over it(see below). She did such a good job on them(I am always fascinated by people who can sew) that my husband accused me of buying it. I assured him it was a gift...not sure if he believed me though. Second case in point was most recently. Veronica of Veronica's Test Kitchen had asked me for my new home address. I thought I might be seeing a new home card in the mail, but instead was a giant box of goodies, from spatulas to a pastry brush to dish towels(and more!) What a housewarming gift for me. Far better than all the bills that usually pile up in the … [Read more...]
Giving gingerbread a roll….
I had mentioned that the idea of using the pumpkin brioche to make cinnamon rolls sounded good to me....and it still does. But after more thumbing through The Secrets of Baking I found a Gingerbread Brioche, and so you know I had to give that a try! I decided that the gingerbread brioche is what I would make into buns. I wanted to do something less traditional. Around last Christmas, my friend M brought gingerbread with a lovely lemon sauce to Book Club as her treat. And what a treat it was. I had never had lemon sauce with gingerbread before. My mom always served it with whipped cream(nothing wrong with that!) and once you get in a rut, you get in a rut. So I thought, how can I incorporate that into a bun? I made the brioche as the recipe called for but made a lemon sugar for the filling and a lemon sauce to go over the top of them. These are soft, spicy, tangy and tasty all “rolled” into one. Be warned: This dough is not like normal brioche...it is sticky and doesn't … [Read more...]
Girls Just Wanna Have Fun(Flan)….
One of my culinary confessions in life is that I love those stupid from a box, Funfetti cupcakes. I think I am allured by the birthday cakey flavor of the cake and the festiveness of all the colors of the Funfetti. So when I was making a cake the other day that required 8 egg whites(it will be on the blog later), I could not bring myself to throw out 8 egg yolks. I hadn't planned on making anything else that day, but my plans changed. During the move, I found many a lost treasure lurking in my cupboard. One of those were my colored sugar crystals that I used for my homemade Pop Tarts. I decided that I would pay tribute to my favorite boxed cupcakes in the form of flan, yes flan. You can add just about any flavoring you want, I didn't add any this time around, but a dash of vanilla would have been nice. I think little kids would be drawn to these. I think they are a lot of fun(as the name would imply). As you can see, the crystals do melt and form a sauce(I wasn't sure if they would or … [Read more...]
Yet another use for canned pumpkin….
Right around the time of my move, two of my favorite blogs, Veronica's Test Kitchen and Dessert First both made brioche from Pure Dessert. They both did a wonderful job of replicating the beautiful, buttery brioche that I wanted to make it...and surprise, surprise...I just happen to own that cookbook. :P But along the way I ran into one of my many forgotten about cookbooks while I was unpacking. I ran across a recipe for pumpkin brioche and thought that sounded pretty darn perfect. I must say that there is very little pumpkin flavor in the brioche, it simply makes it super moist. It is not made to be a sweet bread either, I made part of the recipe into rolls and ate them with chicken and couscous(which my husband amazingly enough liked the rolls...he hates pumpkin). I did on one of the loaves spread butter and sprinkle it with pumpkin pie spices...which helped to bring out more of the pumpkin flavor...or maybe it was all in my mind(most likely :) ). I want to make these into some sort … [Read more...]
