Pretty Girl Bakery

I made the dough for these on Tuesday and last night rolled out 3/4 of the dough.  Slice and bake are definitely easier but I had just purchased my very first set of cookie cutters and I wanted to use them. It was time consuming and I should mention that I used powdered sugar instead of flour when rolling them out.  I know some people complained about them tasting too flour-y. A few I sprinkled some sprinkles and some others are plain so I can ice them or make little sammiches out of ‘em. That’s the good news.

The bad news is that J went on a little four day excursion to Japan so that he can use up his vacay time before he quits his current job and took my camera with him because his is somewhere amongst a bunch of boxes in a storage room since he moved out of his apartment and in with me for the next four weeks. So I don’t have pics. I will save a few for some snapshots when he gets back on Tuesday, but most of them are getting shipped off to friends for the holidays. It didn’t even make that many anyway. I don’t know how Dorie squeezed 50 out of that dough. And I do plan on making the butter jam cookies for next week so my TWD may bleed into Wednesday until my beloved J returns.

J was finishing up the move out his apartment on Sunday and was in need of dinner when he got to my apartment.  Sadly the first thing I offered to make was Kraft Mac & Cheese. I can’t believe that was my idea of giving the one I love some dinner!  So right before I went to the grocery store I noticed I had left over turkey meat from Thanksgiving and I needed to get some carrots & celery to make turkey stock so I thought I’d just whip up some noodle soup. I haven’t had time to make the turkey stock so I substituted in some canned chicken broth and the end result was probably the best soup I’ve ever eaten. J thought so too.

Homemade Turkey Noodle Soup:

4 cans chicken broth or 2 quarts Turkey stock

1/2 chopped onion

1 stalk celery

1/2 cup or so chopped carrots

2 cloves chopped garlic

kosher salt to taste

2 cups chopped cooked Turkey meat

8oz pasta (2oz pasta for every 15oz liquid)

On medium high heat add chicken broth to stock pot. Let this heat until it simmers, and reduce heat if it comes to a boil.  Next add the onion, celery, carrots, garlic and salt (about a pinch or two) and simmer for ten minutes or until vegetables are tender. Last add the turkey and pasta; cook until pasta reaches desired tenderness.

My next new thing is bread. I always sort of put my nose up when I heard someone talk about the bread they made.  I’m not talking about banana breads or orange cranberry breads. I’m talking about sandwich bread, baguettes, rolls. Because in the past no matter what I did my bread (I always tried to make standard white sandwich bread) tasted like the Pillsbury boxed pizza dough you make in home ec. Ew. Honestly. Then I found out about this. A few months ago I stumbled across Pete Bakes, and made his chocolate chip coffee cake which is honestly divinity in an 8×8 glass dish.  I continued to follow what Pete baked and a couple weeks back he presented this gorgeous deli rye bread. And I thought, wow this guy is just on the ball with baking because I could never do that. I was wrong. Dead. wrong. Zoe Francois has a website where she makes tons of delicious things, not just bread.  However I’d been eying up her website and the book and then when she posted on how to make bagels I couldn’t stand it anymore and ordered the book.  This is after I swore to myself that the cookbook buying binge from the month before was it for awhile.  I could not wait. It arrived right before Thanksgiving and I was about to dive in until I hit some stumbling blocks in regards to a pizza stone.  I was going to use unglazed quarry tile (as recommended by Pete here) but when I went to my local Home Depot, they didn’t have it. So I eventually made it to Target and found a cheap pizza stone.  Next I needed a bucket  so I went back to Home Depot and bought a standard five gallon bucket with lid and punched some holes in the top. Perfection for $5 USD. On Sunday I finally (!!!!) got around to making the bread now that I had secured my bucket. She’s not kidding when she says “in five minutes a day.” It took me longer to measure out the ingredients and get water to the right temperature than to have the old Kitchenaid mix it together.

Here’s a picture of the dough at the 2 hour mark once I put it in the bucket to rise:

And here’s a picture of where the dough level was in the bucket at that point.  Keep in mind that the bucket was probably 1/5 full when the dough was first made and it’s a five gallon bucket:

So on Sunday while I was getting the turkey soup together I through my first loaf in the oven along with a mini loaf for J to have with his soup.

And a profile view:

RESULTS:

This was beyond anything I ever thought I’d make bread-wise. Absolutely positively fantastic fantastic fantastic. In fact I am a complete store bought bread snubber. I cut two slices for a sandwich at work on Monday, and then Monday night J and I accidentally finished off the loaf and it was too late to make more. So when Tuesday morning came and I had no sandwich bread J reminded me that the end of the Nature’s Own whole wheat was left I looked at him and said, “As if I’m even going to eat that crap!” Want to know the icing on the cake? This bread tastes EXACTLY like the loaves of bread we would get when I was growing up at the local Italian bakery (you can still get it but I’m only home a handful of times per year).  This loaf tastes brick oven baked and I did it all in my little old gas oven. I’m stoked to go home for Christmas and  make this.  No one in my family is going to expect this.  And it makes me happy that we don’t have to wait for a Thursday or a Saturday to snap up some fresh loaves and hope the bakery didn’t run out.

Now I leave you with a picture of J’s dinner I made on Sunday with the accompanying roll:

I’ll post my TWD tomorrow.  I know that’s against the rules but the past four weeks have been insane with a very big change coming in J’s life especially, and mine too.  But that’s another post for another time. Now I’m off to have a little fresh bread with butter and olive oil snack with J before bed. This bread book is the end of any waistline I might have ever had.

This week’s recipe Twofer Pie was chosen by Vibi of La casserole carrée, and can be found on page 321 of Baking:  From My Home to Yours. It’s the love child of pumpkin and pecan pie and I personally would rather call it Pumpcan Pie. I thought this was delicious.  I don’t think I’d substitute it in for pumpkin pie and you’d be hard pressed to find me making a pecan pie on my own accord, but this was snazzy. I made little tartlets using my cupcake pan.  And I’ll admit I just used a storebought crust.  Things here have been crazy and I just didn’t want to mess with crust. I used a three inch circle cutter to cut out the dough and then I pressed it in, filled and put them in the oven.  I did 10 minutes at 450 and then 20 at 300.  It could have used another 10 minutes at 300 because the filling is very wet and not firm but I don’t really think anyone can tell. hah! And now I am very tired from a long week so I’m calling it quits.  Enjoy the picture and I hope you enjoyed your pie!  HAPPY THANKSGIVING.

On page 21 of Baking: From my home to yours, Dorie has a recipe for a Basic Biscuit and how manipulate the recipe for buttermilk biscuits.  I had buttermilk left over from the Chocolate Chocolate Cupcakes. These were amazing and smelled especially great while in the oven.  I did freeze most of them and when baked they didn’t puff up quite a bit as the fresh ones but still had a great taste and texture to them.

buttermilk biscuits

The holiday baking season is here, along with some November birthdays.  J went to LA for the weekend to take care of some business and my best friend is turning 25 on Saturday so I whipped up a batch of the Chocolate Chunkers.  I’ve been dying to make them since it was one of the first recipes I witnessed in the making when I was deciding if I should participate in the group or not.  I don’t have too much to say about making these.  I didn’t use nuts or fruit, just bittersweet chunks and white chocolate.  I think next time I’ll pull back on the white chocolate, or use peanut butter or butterscotch chips.  I ate one warm and it was delicious.  They’re also damn good straight from the freezer:-)

This week’s TWD is the Black and White Arborio Rice Puddings and it’s being hosted by Isabelle. I did not particpate this week.  I do love rice pudding, however, I don’t know anyone else in this city who likes it and while I certainly can eat it all by myself it’s not so good for the figure. At the moment my figure is described as sack of potatoes… certainly I don’t need to be sack of rice and potatoes.

Things around here have been crazy which is why I haven’t posted since the Rugelach.  I’ve definitely been in the kitchen and have stuff to post, but I haven’t been around on the weekends to get to it.  Last weekend J and I were in Florida for the Space Shuttle Launch which was really amazing, and then we went to the Magic Kingdom on Saturday.  We had an early early flight home on Sunday and I still feel exhausted from it all.  This weekend though I hope to spend the majority of it in the kitchen.  I’m definitely making next week’s recipe, and I need to start making cookie dough so I can freeze it and bring it out when Christmas gets closer.  I really want to do cookie baskets as gifts.  Speaking of on Serious Eats this morning I saw a discussion about Mailable Holiday Food Gifts.  I thought the list was pretty good.  Also someone suggested using marshmallows as padding for anything that’s not tightly packed and breakable.

This week’s TWD is hosted by Grace over at Piggy’s Cooking Journal. She picked rugelach and wow, this was just entirely delightful to make. After a little wikipedia search I found that this is a Jewish dessert usually made with pareve to make it kosher, instead of cream cheese and butter.  I certainly don’t have any pareve and I can attest that the rested raw dough was really yummy, especially if you accidentally dropped some of it in the cinnamon sugar repeatedly while putting the cookies together.  I have the tiniest food processor ever and it was a cheap-o purchase so I was a little concerned about the dough.  I don’t think I overworked it.  It rolled out smooth and tasty.  Much to my dismay Target did not have any apricot preserves and I’d already done my shopping at Publix so raspberry it was.  I spread the jam, chopped up some bittersweet chips and sprinkled chop pecans all over it. My pizza wheel was a real jem although a few times it got caught on a nut or a chip and ripped the dough slightly while I was trying to cut through it.  Then I rolled them up, put them on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper and placed them in the freezer.  My apartment gets unbelievably warm when I turn my gas oven on.  And it was already 10pm last night and I was exhausted so they are in the freezer and I will bake up a few tonight, and save the rest for those nights when I’ve popped dinner in the oven and can add a little snack to go with.  I’m still timid about the pecans because I don’t really like nuts but the bits of ingredients I was getting on my fingers were delightful… and yes, I licked the pizza wheel.  I will definitely make these again.  These seem like such a good holiday cookie.  For Christmas I’m thinking about a nutella spread with macadamia nuts and white chocolate chips. There are so many things you could do with this dough including using it as a base for meat or vegetable hors d’oeuvres.

ready for their close up!

About three weeks ago J’s mom was in town and J was making pad thai for dinner.  I wanted to make a nice dessert to go along with it and I had all of the ingredients since my caramel peanut brownie disaster, and thought that this would be nice after a spicy peanutty dish. I adored the picture of the tart of page 356 and I had just bought a 9 inch tart pan at IKEA a few weeks back so when I got home early that day I broke out my bake box and got started.  Dorie recommends using the Sweet Tart Dough of page 444 and it was buttery and delicious. If you make this you need to make sure to definitely bake it until it’s done. I think mine took about 40-45 to bake and get the edges slightly crisp.  In her recipe for the caramel she says to add the butter after the caramel comes to a deep amber color but I found that by the time mine got to that point it already tasted a little bitter and I still needed to cook it longer to add the butter and the cream. I should have added the butter and cream when the caramel reached a warm amber color.  I found the caramel tasted like those Werther’s candies at that stage.  My other suggestion for making this is to not add the peanuts to the caramel but rather spread the caramel and then sprinkle the peanuts on top before pouring the ganache.  It makes it very easy to spread instead of getting the spatula hung up on clumps of peanuts.  The next time I make this I’d use semi-sweet instead of bittersweet chocolate, and add macadamia nuts instead of the peanuts.

I change my mind a lot.  I try not to but when I find a better idea I change. So even though I just started The Bake Box I decided to change my website to Pretty Girl Bakery.  I was having a hard time creating a feel for The Bake Box.  It sounded like such a good name, but it wasn’t really me and that what I’m paying for this space to be about.  I hope to have some time this weekend to put a new look on it although I think my IT guy might kill me

TWD:  This week was Chocolate Chocolate cupcakes picked by Clara over at iheartfood4thought. Anyway, I have not had time to find my usb cord for my camera.  J’s mom was in town and then his friends were in town (and we had way too much fun!) so I’ve been busy and barely home.  I walked into my apartment last night for the first time in about a week.  So I made the cupcakes before hand and at the moment they are being stored because I think we’re probably doing some sort of Halloween thing this weekend and I want to wait to fill and decorate them so they aren’t bad by the time we arrive.  And if plans don’t materialize well, I guess the guys where J works will be getting some yummy treats. Put I do promise pictures at some point in the next… year:-)

Last night I pulled out all of the ingredients to make the Pumpkin muffins.  I was quite excited about this.  I’ve come to love pumpkin over the last few years and last winter found myself making some pumpkin muffins out of Women’s Health magazine. For the recipe I substituted half of the flour with whole wheat flour, and I eliminated the nuts, raisins and the seeds on top.  Instead I made a cinnamon brown sugar crumble with chopped pecans.

I seem to have lost the usb for my camera so as soon as I find that and figure out how to upload pics I’ll be able to show you how they turned out.  Also, I’ve got pics of Dorie’ creme brulee and the chocolate-caramel peanut tart that I made to go along with pad thai on Friday. yum.