The Caffeine Diaries
Randomly enough, I've had to take my wedding rings off 4 times in the last week, for various cooking-related activities. Now, you know, I am not a cook. I am not even really a baker, though I do go cookie-crazy from time to time. So to make 4 different dishes that required rolling in under a week, this is a rare occurrence for me. So, sharing-time.
The first instance was a batch of Buckeyes for the game on Saturday. (Which...oof, I don't really want to talk about it. But we had a watching-party, so at least we were surrounded by other OSU fans who were equally mystified and disappointed.) I wanted them to be a surprise, my contribution to the party, so I whipped them up on Friday while Teo was at work. The filling turned out kind of chalky, which I wonder whether that had to do with the reduced-fat peanut butter, but they tasted really good. I even attempted the whole "melt chocolate in a bowl over a pot of simmering water" trick, which was time-consuming, but turned out well. I used fielchimera's recipe, but I'll link you to rissykay99's recipe at her other blog, since she coached me through it and I don't have the energy to retype the original recipe. (Incidentally, she just finished a redesign over there, so drop by and check that out, though I'm sure she's posting shortly. You can see my work at the top of the screen, as we just wrapped up her final logo yesterday!)
On Saturday, I worked on dough for the empanadas we were making for the party that night. Teo is really into empanadas, with his time down in Paraguay and all, and he makes delicious fillings for them. We used to be able to find frozen discs in this one Mexican grocery store, but they stopped carrying them. I poked around some and found a reasonably authentic looking dough recipe (we just disregarded the pork stuff, obvs) that resulted in some delicious crusty empanadas. The only tough part about it was locating the masa, which we found at a different Mexican grocery store near our new place (only a block away!), but I suspect it's not hard to find at a really well-stocked grocery store or other hispanic food stores. The dough baked up great whether fresh, or in the fridge overnight (we tested it a lot before making the big batch on Saturday night) and was super-easy to make, so that's getting added to the regular routine.
Sunday morning, we tried out some tortillas from a recipe we found on the back of the masa. They were not exactly what we were looking for, as we wanted to wrap them around some of the black bean and sweet potato empanada filling we had leftover and a fried egg to recreate a Northstar Breakfast Burrito. They came out not particularly soft and were tough to roll out, though they tasted good.
And then finally, Wednesday evening, we'd planned on using up a box of hummus mix that had been sitting in my pantry for a Very Long Time. Teo came home from work and asked if we could try making pita bread. I jumped on the internet as soon as he'd left for his run and found a good recipe, but it involved yeast and copious amounts of rising time. I decided just to go for it and ran to the store really quickly to get yeast and started proofing and mixing and such. This was the first time I'd done anything that involved yeast, I've never attempted bread or anything before, so I was really nervous. The dough was super-sticky and hard to work with, but by the time we'd baked them on the pizza stone (very, very late for dinner, but kind of worth it, actually), three and a half of the eight rounds had actually puffed up a surprising amount and formed the little pockets and everything. The others had been worked too much and stayed stuck together, but they tasted really yummy and we used them kind of like flatbread. I'm pretty sure I have a good idea of what I'll need to do differently to get them all to turn out next time, so yay!
Those are my adventures in baking for the week. Seriously, try the empanada and pita recipes if you're looking for something different. They use pretty basic ingredients and are super yummy.
The first instance was a batch of Buckeyes for the game on Saturday. (Which...oof, I don't really want to talk about it. But we had a watching-party, so at least we were surrounded by other OSU fans who were equally mystified and disappointed.) I wanted them to be a surprise, my contribution to the party, so I whipped them up on Friday while Teo was at work. The filling turned out kind of chalky, which I wonder whether that had to do with the reduced-fat peanut butter, but they tasted really good. I even attempted the whole "melt chocolate in a bowl over a pot of simmering water" trick, which was time-consuming, but turned out well. I used fielchimera's recipe, but I'll link you to rissykay99's recipe at her other blog, since she coached me through it and I don't have the energy to retype the original recipe. (Incidentally, she just finished a redesign over there, so drop by and check that out, though I'm sure she's posting shortly. You can see my work at the top of the screen, as we just wrapped up her final logo yesterday!)
On Saturday, I worked on dough for the empanadas we were making for the party that night. Teo is really into empanadas, with his time down in Paraguay and all, and he makes delicious fillings for them. We used to be able to find frozen discs in this one Mexican grocery store, but they stopped carrying them. I poked around some and found a reasonably authentic looking dough recipe (we just disregarded the pork stuff, obvs) that resulted in some delicious crusty empanadas. The only tough part about it was locating the masa, which we found at a different Mexican grocery store near our new place (only a block away!), but I suspect it's not hard to find at a really well-stocked grocery store or other hispanic food stores. The dough baked up great whether fresh, or in the fridge overnight (we tested it a lot before making the big batch on Saturday night) and was super-easy to make, so that's getting added to the regular routine.
Sunday morning, we tried out some tortillas from a recipe we found on the back of the masa. They were not exactly what we were looking for, as we wanted to wrap them around some of the black bean and sweet potato empanada filling we had leftover and a fried egg to recreate a Northstar Breakfast Burrito. They came out not particularly soft and were tough to roll out, though they tasted good.
And then finally, Wednesday evening, we'd planned on using up a box of hummus mix that had been sitting in my pantry for a Very Long Time. Teo came home from work and asked if we could try making pita bread. I jumped on the internet as soon as he'd left for his run and found a good recipe, but it involved yeast and copious amounts of rising time. I decided just to go for it and ran to the store really quickly to get yeast and started proofing and mixing and such. This was the first time I'd done anything that involved yeast, I've never attempted bread or anything before, so I was really nervous. The dough was super-sticky and hard to work with, but by the time we'd baked them on the pizza stone (very, very late for dinner, but kind of worth it, actually), three and a half of the eight rounds had actually puffed up a surprising amount and formed the little pockets and everything. The others had been worked too much and stayed stuck together, but they tasted really yummy and we used them kind of like flatbread. I'm pretty sure I have a good idea of what I'll need to do differently to get them all to turn out next time, so yay!
Those are my adventures in baking for the week. Seriously, try the empanada and pita recipes if you're looking for something different. They use pretty basic ingredients and are super yummy.