October Goods: Better Late than Never

Morning, kittens. : )

It seems that lately I've been getting distracted by shiny things (or people... or a person... shut uuuup). And in the midst of that, I realized that I missed giving you a few things. So here they are, in no particular order.

1. Pecan-Topped Pumpkin Bread from Cooking Light


I made this pumpkin bread, ate a bit, shared a bit, and French toasted the rest. No complaints here...

In the interest of full disclosure, I skipped the pecan topping (a good choice since I ended up serving it to someone with a nut allergy) and subbed whole wheat flour for some of the AP.

2. Potato Soup


I love soups, but only on certain days. Well... those days come more often once fall sets in. On this particular night, I made a rich, cheesy, sour cream potato soup that ended up reminding me of my grandma's mashed potatoes. Mmmm... I really wish I'd written down the recipe.

3. Pumpkin Beer Cupcakes with Alicia's Halloween Decorations


Adorable, no?! I followed The Bitchin Kitchen's recipe for Pumpkin Beer Cupcakes with Maple Cream Cheese Frosting exactly. Well... that was the intent, at least. As it happened, I halved the recipe without incident... until it came time to add the pumpkin ale... at that point I forgot I was halving and added the full amount of pumpkin ale. But... ya know... it didn't hurt anything. My snafu resulted in a light, almost sponge-like cake.

While I baked and iced, Alicia made these cute cleavers, tombstones, pumpkins and undead hands out of gum paste she died, sculpted, and painted. Another fab collaboration, if you ask me.

4. Chicken Soup for a Sickie


Mmmhmm... another of those soup days. This one was necessitated by two things: a sore throat and a lot of leftovers. A creamy chicken and rice soup was just what I needed and the leftovers from the leftovers kept me happy for a next couple of days. Again... recipe... I don't have one for ya.


Sooo... now that we're both caught up... let's November together, yes?

Fries of a Different Type...

Not everything is what it seems. If you know me, you should know this.

If you've read my blog, you should also know this. C'mon... I'm the girl who eats (and likes) facon. And turkey burgers. And carrot fries.

But today I have some uh-ther fries to tell you about. They're made of...

*drumroll, please*


Bagels!

Hahaha... You're excited. I can tell. : ) I can hear you buzzing on the other side of the screen.

Truth be told, I had tried bagel fries on campus last week, so this experiment was more of a recreation than anything else.

Whatever the case... I started by slicing a bagel into steak fry-like shapes. Then I tossed them into a skillet of butter and garlic...

Let them hang out and toast a bit...
Flipped them a couple of times to toast on all sides... (salting as I turned)

And la-tee-freakin-da. Bagel fries.

Mmm... delicious and buttery. So awkwardly decadent. I couldn't decide if I should be savoring the moment or... ya know... treating it like a bagel.

In the end, I decided that if decadence arrives in a bagel fry package, then it's not my place to question it.

I used some of my bagel fries to scoop up some forty spice hummus too. That, also, was not a bad call.

*drools on keyboard*

Oops. Sorry. Anyway... gotta run! Hundreds of cupcakes hang in the balance!

(Not kidding. Keep your eyes on the blog and twitter for updates!)

Bagel Brunch!

I don't know what it is about bagels, but I love them.

Love, love, love them.

What else do I love?

Well, a lot of things. But for the purposes of this post... BRUNCH!

So, this week I picked up some bagels and this weekend, I had an Aha! moment.

Why can't I french toast a bagel?! Well... boys and girls... I can now tell you without any hesitation that there is no good reason why I (or you) can't french toast a bagel.

Walk this way.



Step 1: Turn on Grey's Anatomy (oh hai, Arizona!) and slice your bagel at least once. I sliced mine into 4 pieces. 3 would be perfect... but my bagel was pre-sliced. So... 4.

Step 2: Crack two eggs into a big, shallow bowl. Whisk them up with 1/2 tablespoon of milk, 1/4 tsp of cinnamon extract, 1/2 tsp vanilla extract.


Step 3: Dip a slice-o-bagel in the egg mixture, and fry it up.


Step 4: Reassemble the bagel as the slices are fried. Place in front of Grey's Anatomy episode still in progress.


Step 5: Add butter and syrup to taste. Enjoy the bagelly goodness.

Mmmm... I wholeheartedly approve.

What would be better? Some sort of fruit topping. Or filling. Or cream cheese filling with a fruit topping. Just saying.

Those bagelly layers are just screaming for something colorful and tasty. Hmm... I'll keep you posted.

Carry on, brunchers!

Dark Rye Bread: The Untasted Loaf of Mystery

I received the following text message the other day:

"Been meaning to ask you... Have you ever made a dark rye bread?"

Now, some of you might have read that as a question. But, I'm willing to bet that there were also some of you (those of you a little bit more like me) who read that as the glove-slapping, gauntlet-laying challenge that it is. In my head, the text might have well said:

"Dark Rye Bread: GO!" or "Dark rye bread today. Make it happen."

I took the challenge and scoured the interwebs until I found Lady Disdain's Drama-Free Rye Bread. The title caught my eye, but the recipe won me over. It really did look drama free.


So I went to the health food store and picked up Wheat Germ and Dark Rye Flour. Went to the grocery store for molasses and caraway seeds, but alas they were out of the latter. Next time.

If you want to look at the recipe in all its traditional glory, head over to Lady Disdain's blog. If you want to see how I did it, then follow me.


I tossed these dry ingredients into the KitchenAid mixing bowl.

1 package (2 1/4 teaspoons) dry yeast
1 cup dark rye flour
1 cup whole wheat flour
1 tablespoon wheat germ
2 teaspoons salt
4 tablespoons buttermilk powder


I stirred it briefly, just to get everything mixed up.


In a small saucepan, I heated the following wet ingredients just enough to activate the yeast in the dry ingredients
1 cup water (to create buttermilk out of those 4 tablespoons of powder I used earlier)
3 tablespoons molasses
2 tablespoons canola oil

Slowly add to the dry ingredients and beat at medium speed.


Gradually add between 2/3 and 1 cup bread flour to create a slightly sticky dough.


Once the flour is incorporated, switch to the dough hook and let it knead for 8 minutes. This was the point at which I tweeted about how a bread machine is probably not in my future. I felt so odd passing off this part of the job on my KitchenAid. At this point in my life, I like the therapeutic aspects of kneading, I guess.


Anyway... Once that job was done, I placed the dough in a lightly greased bowl in a warm place (the closet my water heater lives in) to rise for an hour.


After that rise, I rolled the dough out on a lightly floured surface.


And then I rolled it up like a tight jelly roll (without the jelly, of course) and plopped it in a greased loaf pan to rise in a yet warmer place (my oven, heated to 150 and then turned off) for another hour and a half.


After that second rise, it mostly filled the pan. Next time I'll do both rises in my oven. I think I keep my house too cool for dough to really rise well without it. I thought it was getting warm enough to try again... but I'll just stick to what I know.


Lady Disdain's directions instructed me to bake the loaf for 35-40 minutes at 375 until the loaf is "well browned and sounds hollow when thumped on the bottom." Bakers... this question is for you: Do you honestly dump out your loaf just so you can tap it on the bottom to check for doneness? This seems so bizarre to me.

I didn't dump it out. I went by the "well browned" bit. I was afraid the top would burn and I know my oven runs hot... so my loaf came out at 25 minutes and looked like this.

So how did it taste? What did it look like on the inside? Was it cooked through?

Hmm... I'd love to know. I made this loaf for the texter I mentioned at the opening of this post. And... I gave it to him. But... he's busy and hasn't tried it yet. So... the results of my first attempt at a dark rye bread remain a mystery. Ah, well.

But... the construction of the bread was as drama-free as any bread I've ever made. The next time I'll just slice that sucker and make myself a reuben before I hand off the rest of the loaf.

Dark Rye Challenge: Met. (-ish)

Cranberry Walnut Bread Leftovers

So did you come up with your guesses for my Cranberry Walnut Bread leftovers?

Evan got one of them. So he gets all the points.

With my half loaf of Cranberry Walnut bread, I made...


French toast in the usual way.

and...


Bread Pudding a la Pioneer Woman. I went without the Whisky Cream Sauce this time and none of my coworkers complained.

Both were quite delish. The bread pudding was bomb. Make it now. ; )

Step-by-Step Braided Bread

It's been a while since I wrote up a labor-intensive step-by-step post of a complicated kitchen endeavor. Well, good sirs and madams, wait no longer. What follows is the 11 pic procedure for baking a gorgeous loaf of braided bread. I made the Cranberry Braided Bread by Two Fat Als with only minor changes.


Whisk 3 c. bread flour, 1/4 c. sugar, 2 envelopes quick-rising yeast, 1 1/4 tsp salt, and 2 T buttermilk powder together in a large bowl.


Add 1/2 c. water, 2 eggs, 2 T melted butter, 1 1/2 T vanilla extract and stir until combined. Gradually add 1/3 c. hot water until the dough forms a soft, sticky ball.


Knead dough until smooth. This will take about 7 minutes. Mine wasn't uber-smooth but I knew I'd keep kneading it in the next step.


About 1/4 c. at a time, knead 1 c. cranberries and 1/2 c. chopped walnuts into the dough.


Place dough ball in lightly greased bowl, cover with plastic wrap and a dish towel, and place in a warm place to double in size, about an hour and a half. (While kneading the dough, I heated the oven to about 200 degrees and then turned it off. The residual heat works like a dream.)


See what I mean? Punch down the dough and...


divide it into four equal(ish) parts. Set one part aside and roll the other three into about 13'' long snakes.


Braid the three dough snakes together and turn both ends under. Move the braided loaf to a lightly greased baking sheet. Beat one egg and brush the braided loaf.

Divide your remaining dough ball into three equal parts and roll them into about 10" snakes. Braid the snakes and place this smaller braid on top of the larger. Brush the small braid with egg and allow the loaf to rise a second time, about another hour or so.


After the second rise, brush the loaf with the beaten egg again and bake for 45 minutes at 325 degrees.


And it's just that easy. Two Fat Als insist that you allow the loaf to cool for at least 45 minutes before you slice it, but that didn't happen for me. I was already late to the party since I mis-timed the rises, so I hack the loaf in half and ran out the door. No one was any the wiser.

The bread itself was quite good. The cranberries brought a sweetness to the bread that was refreshing. I'm sure this would have only been bettered by the orange extract that Two Fat Als used (I substituted vanilla extract here), but I didn't have any of that in the house. For me, the bread toed the troublesome line between sweet and... bread... so the next day I used the second half of my loaf to make two other dishes.

I bet regular readers already know what those two dishes were. I'm nothing if not consistent. (I'd appreciate any comments to the contrary. Things like "No way, Amanda! One of the things I love about you is your spontaneity!" will do nicely.)

Cranberry Walnut (Fail) Bagels

If you caught yesterday's post on my bagel flub-up, then you can probably guess where this post is going. : )

My cranberry walnut bagels are... tasty... but, as improperly yeasted bagels will be, they are flattish.


The flavor is great and actually pretty close to the Panera original, so I'll try these bagels again with the proper Active Dry yeast. Lesson learned!

Overall, I count this bagel-making experience as a success, despite the yeast faux pas, because the bagels are 1) beautiful and 2) breakfast for the next two days. Allllright.

Give us this day our daily Guinness

And forgive us our box mixes, as we forgive those who store buy against us.

Or... something like that. I may be off... but I'm close, right?

Ladies, Gentlemen, and the rest of us, sometimes the easy way out really is the most rewarding. Right before Christmas, I picked up a beer bread mix that had been discarded near the onions at Walmart and it might have been the smartest decision I made in 2009.

(Call shenanigans and see if I don't smack you. I dare you.)

Anyway... here's how I went from two bottles to heaven.

This beer bread mix requires only 12oz of beer (not lite), so I used what I had... Guinness Extra Stout. Mmmm...


Now... about this pic... I took a normal cheesing-with-ingredients-pic and then forgot that I set the camera to take 2 pictures. So, pic 2 caught me dancing to the electrofunk I was playing at the time. Of course I liked the bizarre pic more.

Back to the bread... the most difficult part was opening both bottles. That's... not bad.



Then again... getting the mix out of the bottle was also a bit of a challenge.


I mean, really, is the kitsch factor great enough to justify the literal bottleneck?! In the packagers' defense, they do include a helpful "Tip" on the back: "Use a long kitchen utensil to loosen flour if any remains in the bottle."


Oh... okay... sure... but I just have a question for ya. What "long kitchen utensil" would you recommend I use to reach about 12" into a bottle that has an opening smaller than a nickel?

In the end, I just shook it. Like a polaroid picture. And that did it.


The beer goes right on top of the mix, gets stirred in with a wooden spoon (per the bossy bottle... I used a bamboo spoon and I don't think the bread was any the wiser), and then the whole shabang goes into a greased and floured loaf pan.


While the bread was baking for 45-50 minutes (I pulled it at 42) at 375 degrees, I whipped up a Vanilla Cinnamon Honey Butter to go with.


Of course I didn't think to set out my stick of butter earlier, so my non-microwaving self chopped up the butter and set it on top of the stove for a few minutes.


I then whipped the butter into submission and added 1 and 1/2 tablespoons honey, 1/6 teaspoon vanilla extract, 1/6 teaspoon cinnamon, and a pinch of salt since my butter was unsalted.

And then I waited patiently for the bread to bake. And when it came out...


Uhhh... I was... pleasantly surprised.

Kids, this bread is wicked good. My loaf was perfectly baked at 42 minutes. It formed a perfect crust all the way around without browning much at all. The insides are tender and so delicate for a bread mix. It might as well be from scratch. No one would call you out if you showed up with this goodness, I promise.

Now, the Guinness Extra Stout does pack a punch. The bread tastes pretty stout itself. I love a good stout (which is why you can find it in my fridge), so I couldn't tell you how this will go over with non-fans. I'll update with that info later.

But... may I recommend that you pair the bread with a sweet butter? Perhaps... a Vanilla Cinnamon Honey Butter? That just might do the trick.


Ungh. This bread and butter combination is really. really. good.

I finished that piece you see in front of you, and I immediately cut and buttered myself another one.

Since I can't imagine that there is much difference between one odd beer bread mix and another, I'd give you a great big thumbs up for the beer bread mix. If you see one... especially if it is oddly placed... I think that must have had something to do with the goodness of mine... then pick it up and try it out. Hopefully you'll be as deliriously happy with yours as I am with mine.

Siiigh.

Not Yo' Momma's Grilled Cheese

Would you like a grilled cheese?

Who is going to say no to that? Honestly. (The answer is "no one".)


For this super fab grilled cheese, I started with two slices of the homemade Honey Wheat Bread and several slices of provolone cheese.


I buttered it, grilled it, and heated up some tasty V8 Sweet Red Pepper Soup to go with. Easy, tasty, and such a satisfying rainy day lunch.

Oh, but wait, what is this business?


Ladies and gentlemen... the interlopers in this sandwich are jalapeno slices. The addition of jalapeno brings a bite to this otherwise understated grilled cheese. The honey wheat bread is sweet, the provolone is waxy (or at least I think so), and the jalapenos tie them together with a bit of sass.


Dipped in the red pepper soup, this sandwich begs to be bitten.


And I certainly did not keep it waiting long.