Cooking
Every year I try to learn something new in the kitchen or practice something that I learned. Trying new recipes to change up the menu at home is something that happens fairly often. I occasionally look through magazines or cookbooks or see what my friends are trying to come up with ideas.
I tend to go through phases. Ice cream and frozen desserts was one of them. I'm close to being comfortable with ice cream. I have a really good vanilla base recipe that they gave us in school. After making a recipe as directed I usually go back to that base and modify the amount of fruit or flavouring to get where I want to be. In almost all instances I've gone back to that one recipe as the base. As a result we've had a kick ass espresso ice cream, peach, orange, and orange date. More experimentation is in the near future as it's the desert that I've been bringing to my cousin's place for the holidays. The Jack Daniels ice cream remains the big hit, but I think that it could use a little stronger flavouring. What is new to me is using Xylitol so that my Dad who is diabetic can enjoy it without a spike in his blood sugar. The cherry ice cream was not strong enough, so it's back to the drawing board when they are back in season.
Brandied cherries was a new experiment this year. I'm pretty happy with how they have turned out, although a recent taster felt that they were a bit medicinal. I just added another cup of brandy and 1/2 cup of sugar as I ran out during the initial run. We'll see how that mellows over the next 6 weeks. The hope is that by the holidays, it should be ready to gift to my cousins.
Curing bacon was a huge success and something that I will DEFINITELY do again. Enjoying it in a frisee salad was a luxury and a bit of a challenge given that before last weekend, I'd never ever even attempted to poach an egg. I did it, but was not happy with the result. The difference between today and 20 years ago is that a simple Google search yielded a number of videos that I could watch to see what others did. As a result, and 4 eggs later, I'm feeling pretty good about that.
I'm still working on perfecting a vanilla scone that is not too dry or too sweet. I'm pretty happy with the texture of the scone itself and used a recipe from the FCI to get there. Now it's just a matter of getting the vanilla flavour strong enough in the scone itself. The glaze was making me crazy because no matter what I did I could not get that nice thick white glaze that I've seen time and time again. The trick seems to be a little corn syrup. Now it's just a matter of figuring out how to heat it long enough to get rid of the corn starch taste in the powdered sugar, so that the glaze in and of itself is tasty. I'm close, but it could be a dozen more batches until I'm really happy with it.
The other thing that has me very intrigued is princess cake. I'm hoping to spend some time playing with that later in the year.
Next skill to work on - getting mushrooms just right.
I tend to go through phases. Ice cream and frozen desserts was one of them. I'm close to being comfortable with ice cream. I have a really good vanilla base recipe that they gave us in school. After making a recipe as directed I usually go back to that base and modify the amount of fruit or flavouring to get where I want to be. In almost all instances I've gone back to that one recipe as the base. As a result we've had a kick ass espresso ice cream, peach, orange, and orange date. More experimentation is in the near future as it's the desert that I've been bringing to my cousin's place for the holidays. The Jack Daniels ice cream remains the big hit, but I think that it could use a little stronger flavouring. What is new to me is using Xylitol so that my Dad who is diabetic can enjoy it without a spike in his blood sugar. The cherry ice cream was not strong enough, so it's back to the drawing board when they are back in season.
Brandied cherries was a new experiment this year. I'm pretty happy with how they have turned out, although a recent taster felt that they were a bit medicinal. I just added another cup of brandy and 1/2 cup of sugar as I ran out during the initial run. We'll see how that mellows over the next 6 weeks. The hope is that by the holidays, it should be ready to gift to my cousins.
Curing bacon was a huge success and something that I will DEFINITELY do again. Enjoying it in a frisee salad was a luxury and a bit of a challenge given that before last weekend, I'd never ever even attempted to poach an egg. I did it, but was not happy with the result. The difference between today and 20 years ago is that a simple Google search yielded a number of videos that I could watch to see what others did. As a result, and 4 eggs later, I'm feeling pretty good about that.
I'm still working on perfecting a vanilla scone that is not too dry or too sweet. I'm pretty happy with the texture of the scone itself and used a recipe from the FCI to get there. Now it's just a matter of getting the vanilla flavour strong enough in the scone itself. The glaze was making me crazy because no matter what I did I could not get that nice thick white glaze that I've seen time and time again. The trick seems to be a little corn syrup. Now it's just a matter of figuring out how to heat it long enough to get rid of the corn starch taste in the powdered sugar, so that the glaze in and of itself is tasty. I'm close, but it could be a dozen more batches until I'm really happy with it.
The other thing that has me very intrigued is princess cake. I'm hoping to spend some time playing with that later in the year.
Next skill to work on - getting mushrooms just right.