Print this Article

This quick post is so a friend can share in this recipe… but hey we are all friends here on the inter­net so give this yummy egg nog recipe a shot!  It does have alco­hol in it so beware.

Ingre­di­ents:

1/3 Cup + 1Tbs. Sugar

1 Pint Whole Milk

1 Cup Heavy Cream

3 Oz Bourbon

1tsp Grated Nutmeg

4 Large Eggs

 Method:

The parts are made in stages and then com­bined, so firstly:

Sep­a­rate Whites from Yolks. Yolks into one bowl and whites into another.

Whip yel­lows at high speed until they lighten in color.

Add 1/3 cup sugar.

Add Cream to Milk and then the entire mix­ture to the yellows.

Add nut­meg.

Mix.

Add Bour­bon

Chill mix­ture while clean­ing mixer and then do this bit:

Whip whites at high speed to soft peaks

Add sugar and whip to stiff peaks

Then:

Inte­grate the yolk mix­ture with the whites by care­fully stir­ring in.  Don’t destroy all the whites fluffy good­ness as they give a light­ness to the nog.

ENJOY!

Print this Article

Ok, this recipe needed a “do over.”  A huge part of the online bak­ing com­mu­nity is about shar­ing, that’s a large part of why we do this: a shared love of food and cook­ing it.  We all see recipes and foods online or in cook­books that we like and it’s per­fectly fine to go ahead and make them and then to write about your expe­ri­ences.  But, and here’s the point… I saw this recipe for yummy cook­ies on Caroline’s Choco­late & Car­rots blog and thought I’d see how they turned out since I have more than one friend these days who has a reac­tion to flour prod­ucts but still likes a sweet, baked treat.

In my haste yes­ter­day to:

1. Gather up two dogs to take them to the vet for shots
2. Wash my car and vac­uum the inside in 105 degrees
3. Go to the post office, video store, bank, City build­ing, library
4. Get Star­bucks
5. See what Hobby Lobby had on sale
6. Buy lunch
7. Gro­cery shop for our healthy eat­ing lifestyle change
8. Go to the gym
9. Do some work for a client or two (need money from time to time…LOL)
10. Remove the cov­ers from both air con­di­tioner con­densers to clean them and help Hubby(and about destroy both in the process),

I hit the “pub­lish” but­ton on my Word­Press post instead of “save draft” which inad­ver­tently posted a half baked arti­cle which didn’t give any credit to Car­o­line and her recipe at all.  Luck­ily for me, she was very under­stand­ing and polite about it… Sorry Caroline..

Any­way, here is the recipe and they are really great cook­ies so you must bake them!

One of the first things I do before I bake is set all my ingre­di­ents out and all of the equip­ment I’m going to be using… This is called mise en place or putting every­thing in it’s place. You can read more about that term here…

Mise en place — putting it all in order ready to bake!

Method

• First off, pre­heat your oven to 350°F (180°C) (F to C temp con­verter here)
• Pre­pare your bak­ing sheets with sil­i­con mats or sprayed parchment
• Com­bine all dry ingre­di­ents into a bowl (flour, cocoa pow­der and salt)
• Fold in 3 egg whites and then vanilla
• Only beat until mix­ture is moist and fudge brownie like.  If it’s too dry then add an addi­tional egg white.
• Fold in choco­late chips
• Using a table­spoon, place cookie mix onto pre­pared bak­ing sheets, leav­ing room as they will spread. (I got 12 on a half pan sized bak­ing sheet)

On the tray

Bake for approx 14 mins or until the tops begin to crack. They will have a shiny gloss fin­ish to them.

Fin­ished Cookies

Haha… my first embed­ded video..

Points to consider:

If you are using a con­vec­tion oven adjust the tem­per­a­ture down by about 25 degrees and you can usu­ally reduce your bake time by a minute or two.  Keep an eye on your cook­ies as all ovens vary a little.

Many vari­ables can affect your bak­ing… humid­ity, alti­tude and the age of your prod­ucts.  For exam­ple, the older the flour  is the drier it can be, there­fore often requir­ing the addi­tion of more liq­uid than nor­mally called for just to get it to the right con­sis­tency… don’t panic, there is NO FLOUR in this par­tic­u­lar recipe, this was just an exam­ple of a variable.

Enjoy and happy baking!

Print this Article

As a Food­buzz Fea­tured Pub­lisher I had received a great coupon from Pep­peridge Farms and wanted to make a meal around their pas­try.  Easy!  Chicken Pot Pie.  I used my coupon to buy the frozen sheets of pas­try and lined two pie plates, made my fill­ing and topped with two puff pas­try lids.  Deli­cious, quick and very affordable!

Ingre­di­ents:

1.5 T olive oil
2 cups diced onion
1 cup cel­ery
1 tsp. minced gar­lic
4T all-purpose flour
1 ea. 10 oz bag  frozen peas and car­rots
2 cups chicken stock or strong veg­etable broth
2 cups diced chicken

1 pack­age Pep­peridge Farms puff pas­try
Melted but­ter as needed

Method:

Using a small stock pot, heat oil and sauté onion and cel­ery until translu­cent.
Add the diced chicken and cook until done.
Add gar­lic and sauté two min­utes more.
Add flour and stir with a wooden spoon until well incor­po­rated.
Pour in stock and stir.
Sim­mer until fill­ing has thick­ened.
Sea­son with salt and pep­per to taste.
Add remain­ing veg­eta­bles and stir until all is cooked thru.

Roll out pie crust and cut it about 1/2 an inch larger than the pie plate  you are using.  Add some of the fill­ing.  I usu­ally fill it almost to the edge.  I do brush the edge of the bot­tom pie shell with egg wash and then add the top crust, also rolled out to be a bit larger than the plate.  Secure the top crust to the bot­tom with a fork or by a fold­ing method whichever you are used to.

Bake in pre-heated 400° oven until the crust is nice and golden as you want to make sure the bot­tom crust is cook­ing also.  The fill­ing is already cooked so you just have to ensure that it is warmed through espe­cially if you had pre-made it and it was refrigerated.

When you have a nice dark golden colour on your pas­try you can remove it and serve it up!

Print this Article

My fam­ily love Chi­nese style bbq pork buns (char siu bao).  I had made a roast pork the night before last and wanted to use up some of the left­overs.  Of course my pork wasn’t roasted in the tra­di­tional Chi­nese bbq style, but with the addi­tion of a sauce mixed into my roast pork, I felt I could get away with it. For the bun dough I used the mas­ter recipe from my copy of Arti­san Bread in Five Min­utes a Day.

Ingre­di­ents:

Bun dough:

Mas­ter Recipe here.

Roast Pork:

2 cups of roast pork diced (I used left­overs remember)

Sauce:

(Adapted from The Chi­nese Kitchen by Eileen Yin-Fei Lo)

For the Fill­ing (make while the dough is ris­ing):
5 table­spoons low-sodium chicken stock
1 tbsp oys­ter sauce
2  1/2 tsp sugar
2  1/4 tsp tapi­oca or corn starch
2 tsp ketchup
1  1/2 tsp dark soy sauce
Pinch ground white pep­per
1 tbsp oil
1 small onion, cut into 1/4-inch pieces
3/4 cup bar­be­cued pork, cut into 1/2-inch pieces
1 1/2 tsp Shao Xing rice wine or gin
1 tsp toasted sesame oil

In a small bowl, com­bine chicken stock, oys­ter sauce, sugar, tapi­oca starch, ketchup, soy sauce, and white pep­per; set aside.

Heat a wok or pan over high heat for 40 sec­onds and add oil. Coat wok with oil using a spat­ula then add onion. Lower heat to medium, and cook until onion turns light brown, about 2 min­utes. Raise heat to high, add pork, and cook, stir­ring, for 2 min­utes. Add wine, and stir to combine.

Stir the reserved stock mix­ture and add it to the pan. Cook, stir­ring, until the sauce thick­ens and turns brown, 1 to 1 1/2 min­utes. Add sesame oil, and stir to com­bine. Trans­fer to a shal­low dish. Cool to room temperature.

Assem­bly:

Pre­heat oven to 375F.

Once the dough has risen for the first time I took small pieces of it and flat­tened it to the size of a small saucer using floured hands so it didn’t stick.

Then take about one heaped table­spoon of the pork fill­ing and place in the cen­ter of the dough disc.

Gather up the sides of the dough disc to form a ball shape enclos­ing the fill­ing.  Be sure to seal the fill­ing inside of the dough or it will leak out.   I placed my buns with the gath­ered seam side down and brushed with a beaten egg to give them a glossy finish.

Place buns on a sheet pan dusted with some flour and bake in the oven for approx­i­mately 15–20 mins depend­ing on your oven.

I served mine with a plum sauce for dip­ping which was a great compliment.

***As I said before, these are a quick cheats way to make pork buns, so if you are look­ing for the tra­di­tional char siu bao, then this recipe prob­a­bly isn’t for you.  It was really a way of using up our left­overs and enjoy­ing the pork in a dif­fer­ent way to how it was first served up.

Print this Article

Ok, so it’s not cake or sug­ary but there are times when we need to eat some­thing else around this place.  One of my daugh­ters is vegan and I have been research­ing and exper­i­ment­ing with new vegan & veg­e­tar­ian recipes.  It’s a new year and “some” of us could stand to lose a few pounds and eat health­ier in gen­eral.    I have been work­ing on dif­fer­ent types of hum­mus and so far we like the results.

The type I made didn’t have any tahini (ground sesame seeds etc)  in it.  Basi­cally I took:

1 can of gar­banzo beans/chick peas

1/4 cup of extra vir­gin olive oil

1 table­spoon of lemon juice

2–3 heaped tea­spoons of roasted red pep­per paste

1/2 tea­spoon of cumin (add more to your own taste)

pinch of kosher salt

1 heaped tea­spoon of crushed garlic

Add all of the ingre­di­ents to your food proces­sor or use a hand blender/wand, either will work.  Blend until you reach a con­sis­tency that you like and serve with pita chips or hot naan bread cut into tri­an­gles which is how I served it.

Healthy and so quick to make. I made this batch five min­utes before I left for a New Years Party and every­one loved it!