That’s right, a girl…well more like a woman. A food loving, hockey loving, bacon loving woman! And I’m not talking about me.
A while back now Kristen of Dine and Dish came up with an idea for veteran food bloggers to “adopt” a fellow food blogger who has been food blogging for less than a year. Who did I luck out getting? Rene of Pages, Pucks and Pantry. That’s right, a hockey fan. And come to find out we have a lot more common than we knew. From our love of bacon to The Girls’ Next Door. She owns more cookbooks than me(so jealous). Both our mother’s are cancer survivors. And we like our Stouffer’s Macaroni and Cheese to be crispy on top.
Rene is off to a great start with her blog. She updates it often. In various forms. She has what she calls Small Bites which tell little tidbits about things from what chefs are visiting the San Francisco area(she lives in San Jose) to toilet shaped ice cream bowls(can you imagine) to what coffee drinks Starbucks are currently offering. She has recipes, I plan on making the Twinkie Tiramisu…white trashish…yes I am quite sure…but it’s probably pretty tasty! She highlights the wide variety of cookbooks she owns(and she owns a lot). And like any good fan the topic of hockey sneaks in.
I think it is great that her blog has a focus. So often many blogs do not. I think a well focused blog helps make for a successful blog. And that is one of my tips to new food bloggers:
1. Figure out what you are trying to say. I have people ask me all the time if all I do is eat bread and sweets…um no. That is just the main direction of my blog because that is what I seem to know the most about and therefore can help more people that way. We eat plenty of real food people. Having a focus to your blog is a good thing.
2. Don’t go around to other people’s sites and ask them to read your blog. Don’t email them and ask them to be on their blog roll. It’s a tad desperate and not the way to go about it. Desperate women don’t get men and desperate food bloggers don’t get readers. Stick with doing what you love and the people will come. BUT it will take awhile. I blogged for well over a year before I had more than two people leaving comments. If you want other people to read you blog leave a comment on theirs. You have to leave your URL when you post a comment on most blogs so it is already there. More likely than not if you leave a comment to that blogger they will, just out of curiosity go and see yours.
3. If you want to improve the traffic on your blog enter blogging events. There are lots of them out there for you to chose from(say the Time to Make the Doughnuts Event that Tartelette and I are doing!)
4. Photos. Those are good. I will be honest and tell you that if you don’t have photos and you are not a blood relative(and even if you are) the chances of me reading your blog is slim to none. We are visual creatures. I started with a $100(on sale) camera(Nikon Coolpix 4600). It was a point and shoot and I did just fine with it…even won a few DMBLGIT awards with it. So don’t use the excuse that you don’t have a good camera. And if you don’t take that great of pictures…keep at it, you will. It, just like everything else, takes time.
5. Actually blog. There are so many bloggers who get all excited, run out and start a blog, and then nothing. I know because I was one of them. I really did not get serious into blogging until a year into it. Then it became addictive.

For even more great tips see Kristen’s blog.

I decided to make something to honour my newly adopted blogger. But what? I had originally tried to do something using her favorite team, the San Jose Sharks, but I don’t buy shark and their colors are teal and black. There is no teal food and if there is there shouldn’t be. So I went with bacon. Rene has blogged a few times about the almighty bacon. So I thought a bacon packed sandwich seemed like a good idea. Since a bacon sandwich is not really a recipe I went with making bread to use to make the sandwich with. I chose the classic Ciabatta bread. It works great if you are making panni’s and that’s what I was doing.
If you have never made Ciabatta bread, be warned, the dough is a sticky one and DO NOT add more flour to fix this…just go with the stickiness. If you want to recreate my lunch today it was 6 pieces of baked bacon(I love this…all the fat of frying but none of the mess), Dijon mustard, two slice of sharp cheddar cheese and two slice of Ciabatta bread. Slap some butter on the outside of it and throw on the Panni Press…and there you go.
So head on over and see Pages, Pucks and Pantry. The food blogging community is so supportive…show a little support to Rene.

Ciabatta Bread

Ingredients:

For sponge
1/8 teaspoon active dry yeast
2 tablespoons warm water (105°¢â¬115° F.)
1/3 cup room-temperature water
1 cup bread flour

For bread
1/2 teaspoon active dry yeast
2 tablespoons warm milk (105°¢â¬115° F.)
2/3 cup room-temperature water
1 tablespoon olive oil
2 cups bread flour
1 1/2 teaspoons salt

Make sponge:
In a small bowl stir together yeast and warm water and let stand 5 minutes, or until creamy. In a bowl stir together yeast mixture, room-temperature water, and flour and stir 4 minutes. Cover bowl with plastic wrap. Let sponge stand at cool room temperature at least 12 hours and up to 1 day.
Make bread:
In a small bowl stir together yeast and milk and let stand 5 minutes, or until creamy.

In bowl of a standing electric mixer fitted with dough hook blend together milk mixture, sponge, water, oil, and flour at low speed until flour is just moistened and beat dough at medium speed 3 minutes. Add salt and beat 4 minutes more. Scrape dough into an oiled bowl and cover with plastic wrap. Let dough rise at room temperature until doubled in bulk, about 1 1/2 hours. (Dough will be sticky and full of air bubbles.)
Have ready a rimless baking sheet and 2 well-floured 12- by 6-inch sheets parchment paper.

Turn dough out onto a well-floured work surface and cut in half. Transfer each half to a parchment sheet and form into an irregular oval about 9 inches long. Dimple loaves with floured fingers and dust tops with flour. Cover loaves with a dampened kitchen towel. Let loaves rise at room temperature until almost doubled in bulk, 1 1/2 to 2 hours.
At least 45 minutes before baking ciabatta, put a baking stone or 4 to 6 unglazed “quarry” tiles (see note, above) arranged close together on oven rack in lowest position in oven and preheat oven to 425° F.

Transfer 1 loaf on its parchment to baking sheet with a long side of loaf parallel to far edge of baking sheet.

Line up far edge of baking sheet with far edge of stone or tiles, and tilt baking sheet to slide loaf with parchment onto back half of stone or tiles. Transfer remaining loaf to front half of stone or tiles in a similar manner. Bake ciabatta loaves 20 minutes, or until pale golden. With a large spatula transfer loaves to a rack to cool.

Spurce: Gourmet Magazine, March 1998

I’m sure this happens to you. Your friend tells you “you’ve gotta see this movie!” And then another person tells, almost everyone you run into says something about the movie. So you go and see the movie and you sit there thinking the whole time, “what the hell? This movie is lame, did I see the same movie as them?” Now right off the bat I will admit that I tend to like the “out there movies.” I am a huge fan of documentaries as I find real life far more fascinating than anything Hollywood could come up with. But it just seems more and more as of late the movies that I “have to see” are the least memorable of the year.
This seems to happen with food blogs with me from time to time. People rave and rave and I check it out. And though it is nice or what not, it just doesn’t do it for me. Of course I’m sure that is what people say about my blog. One such food blog(and here is where you will gasp in disagreement with me), David Lebovitz….Living the Sweet Life in Paris. I’m a fan of the Perfect Scoop cookbook and I keep going back to the site  from time to time because I will see it mentioned and think, okay go check it out again. On one of my many trips over to the site I saw a picture of Lemon-Glazed Madeleines and they spoke to me.
I had recently purchased mini madeleine pans…this is what happens, get a bigger kitchen, fill it with more stuff! I bought many an other kitchen un-necessities also. When I bought the pans, I had these madeleines in mind. The original recipe has you hand dip the whole madeleine into the glaze. That recipe made 24. I made mini ones and stopped at 64 of them. I wasn’t about to single dip them all. So they just got glaze thrown at them…worked for me.
I chose to use Meyer lemons because I had quite a few of them. These were super addictive and thus inspired the pictures as they truly were like popcorn to me. I had to stop myself last night to make sure I would have enough of them for the picture. I inhaled the rest of them for breakfast after I took the photos. As you can see by the picture my dog was quite the fan also.
So with these I am starting to become a fan of the David Lebovitz website. I still don’t truly “get it” but I do like the recipes.

Meyer Lemon-Glazed Madeleines

24 cookies(or about 64 minis)

3 large eggs, at room temperature
2/3 cup (130g) granulated sugar
rounded 1/8 teaspoon salt
1 1/4 cup (175g) flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
zest of one Meyer lemon
9 tablespoons (120g) unsalted butter, melted and cooled to room temperature, plus additional melted butter for preparing the molds

3/4 cup (150g) powdered sugar
1 tablespoon freshly-squeezed Meyer lemon juice
2 tablespoons water
1. Brush the indentations of a madeleine mold with melted butter. Dust with flour, tap off any excess, and place in the fridge or freezer.

2. In the bowl of a standing electric mixer, whip the eggs, granulated sugar, and salt for 5 minutes until frothy and thickened.

3. Spoon the flour and baking powder,  into a sifter or mesh strainer and use a spatula to fold in the flour as you sift it over the batter. (Rest the bowl on a damp towel to help steady it for you.)

4. Add the lemon zest to the cooled butter, then dribble the butter into the batter, a few spoonfuls at a time, while simultaneously folding to incorporate the butter. Fold just until all the butter is incorporated.

5. Cover the bowl and refrigerate for at least 1 hour. (Batter can be chilled for up to 12 hours.)

6. To bake the madeleines, preheat the oven to 425 degrees.

8. Plop enough batter in the center of each indentation with enough batter which you think will fill it by 3/4′s. Do not spread it.

10. Bake for 8-9 minutes(the mini take about 7 minutes) or until the cakes just feel set. While the cakes are baking, make a glaze in a small mixing bowl by stirring together the powdered sugar, lemon juice, and water until smooth.

11. Remove from the oven and tilt the madeleines out onto a cooling rack. Drizzle glaze over madeleines. Allow glaze to set.

Storage: Glazed madeleines are best left uncovered, or not tightly-wrapped; they’re best eaten the day they’re made. They can be kept in a container for up to three days after baking, if necessary. I don’t recommend freezing them since the glaze will melt.

Source: Adapted from davidlebovitz.com

In order to throw your diets off(no not really) Helen(my less evil twin as I like to call her) of Tartelette and I decided to co-host a Doughnut Event.
Oh yeah! Bring it on!! We love anything with butter, flour, eggs and sugar but more so when deep fried and maybe drenched in caramel or toffee sauce!  We know you have been craving some doughnut goodness and looking at all the countries around us, we can tell that there are lots of local specialties involving fried dough. We also realize that some of you are paying attention to their waistline this time of year, so we are okay with baked doughnuts, don¢â¬â„¢t make it a habit though, that will break our hearts! You don¢â¬â„¢t have to own a deep fryer to participate either, any form of pan frying can do (don¢â¬â„¢t go justify to your better half your latest appliance purchase and blaming it on us!!).
Our only “requirement” is that your entry be a sweet one (plain, fruit filled or other)¢â¬¦.because…well, that’s just us!
 
To participate send us your entry at (luvbriere @ gmail DOT com) or (mytartelette @ gmail DOT com) by midnight February 12th(PST), the roundup will be split on both our blogs on the 15th.
Name:
Blog name:
Blog URL:
Post title:
Post URL:
Picture:
Location:

Your entry must be a new entry, no back logging. Also be sure to mention the event in your post.

You aren’t going to be able to see most of my pictures. My photo host has been down(all weekend and was suppose to be fixed on MONDAY!)and apparently all the competent employees are not working on the problem, just the morons. You are seeing some photos because my husband feeling my frustration put a few up on another host site.