Hello, this is a test post.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

Chocolate Pudding and Opinions

So I recently thumbed through The Flavor Bible by Karen Page and Andrew Dornenburg and they said something that caught my attention.  To paraphrase, American home cooks rely too much on recipes while failing to learn to trust their own intuition.  Instead of taking the time to learn why a recipe works, and the way to modify it to make something that suits their own pallet, they just blindly do whatever the cookbook tells them and then complain about their results.  For example, I was clicking around trying to find a chocolate pudding recipe and I stumbled upon this unhappy critic.  "When I added the one teaspoon of salt I thought, "boy that seems like a lot of salt". Well, it was. I scooped out two big spoonfuls of this to eat and I could barely swallow it."


What the hell is wrong with you?  If something seems like too much salt for you, THEN ADD LESS SALT!  There seems to be two or three people like this on every highly rated recipe I find.  Anybody can follow the instructions for a recipe and have it turn out ok.  That doesn't make you a chef, or a good cook.  The difference is being able to adapt a recipe to fit your needs and tastes and still have it turn out ok.


Anyway, I'm done.


So I'm at my boyfriends and I didn’t bring my camera, so there aren't any pictures for this.  You'll just have to make it and see.


Adapted from Chocolate Cornstarch Pudding from All Recipes

• 1/4 cup honey
• 2 T dark brown sugar
• 3 tablespoons unsweetened cocoa powder or 2 squares of unsweetened chocolate (I used four squares of Ghirardelli 100% cocoa bar that no one was going to eat)
• 4 T cornstarch
• 1/8 teaspoon salt
• 2 3/4 cups milk
• 2 T. margarine or butter
• 2 t. vanilla extract

Directions

1. In a saucepan, melt the chocolate over very low heat, being careful not to burn.  Stir in the honey and brown sugar.  It might start to seize on you, but that’s ok, we'll whisk it out.  Add about 1/4 of a cup of milk then whisk to temper.  Add another two cups, saving the remaining 1/2 cup.  Raise the heat to medium.  Add the cornstarch to this 1/2 cup of milk in a separate bowl (or drinking glass, if that's what's close) and whisk to combine.  This will prevent the cornstarch from causing lumps.  Add this slurry to the saucepan and slowly heat, whisking often.  You'll know it's ready when it begins to thicken, and the mixture coats the back of a spoon.  Let it thicken for just a minute more, then add the butter and vanilla.  Pour into serving bowls and chill until firm*.

*If you want (and I don't know why you would) cover with plastic wrap directly on the surface of the pudding to avoid what is affectionately known as "pudding skin".  Pudding skin is, in my opinion, the only reason to make chocolate pudding from scratch.  It has a more concentrated flavor than the rest of the pudding and a thicker texture.  If you haven't tried it, give it a fair chance for me, please.  If you’re one of those people with texture issues though, you might want to opt for plastic wrap.

Date Pecan Cinnamon Rolls Tinged with Failure

Sorry I haven't updated!  I made some date cinnamon rolls and took lots of loving, detailed pictures, but they came out completely sucky.  Then I thought of a better blog name, and started angsting about changing, and then it was Labor day and I left for the weekend.

So after careful consideration, although the "roll" part of my cinnamon rolls was tough and dry, the filling was actually pretty good.  Like, really good.  So, how about I give you the recipe and you annotate with your favorite cinnamon roll dough.  The brioche recipe from Julia Child's Joy of Baking is awesome, and if I find my cookbook, I'll post it.  I couldn't find it at the time, and ended up using something else which wasn't half as good.

The inspiration for the filling is my late Grandma's date pinwheel cookies that she made every year at Christmas.  I took a similar filling, added pecans and spread it evenly on the rested dough.  The recipe is as follows:

1 1/2 cups dried dates
1 cup chopped pecans, or your other favorite nut
1/3 cup brown sugar
1/4 cup water plus more as you see fit
1 1/2 tsp cinnamon

Heat the water and the dates over medium heat, until the water boils and the dates get smushable.

(So apparently, photo upload isn't working right now.  Just pretend there's a picture of some dates and water in a small to medium saucepan)

Add the chopped pecans, brown sugar, and cinnamon.  Stir it all together, and keep cooking until the dates break down into a spreadable paste.  You'll have to keep adding water one to two tablespoons at a time until this happens.

(Insert pretend photo)

Once it does, set aside to cool and then spread over rolled out cinnamon roll dough.

(Insert pretend photo)

Allow to rest and then bake according to cinnamon roll dough directions.

Volia!  Sort of.  Please don't allow my ineptitude to keep you from making this filling.  It really is delicious.

Ok, so now that that's over with (I feel like a club president with my blog), I have to ask. If I changed the blog address to http://makeitupbakeitup.blogspot.com , how would people feel?  Is there an easy way to copy the text and photos of my previous two blog posts?

Also, I'm going to make a twitter account for whichever blog title I go with, so you won't have to keep checking back here for updates.  I'll let you know.  Because I'm classy like that.

Apple Butter

Ok, with yesterday being September first, I went ahead and made apple butter.  It seemed wrong to do it still in August, with it being  a seasonal thing, but I had been dreaming about it since June.  It's super simple to make, and cheaper and more delicious than the stuff you find at the store.  The only thing I would have done differently is make a larger batch.  The apples reduced significantly and towards the end I had some scorching on the sides that I had to kind of scrape off.  Overall the process was a success.

You'll need:
About 7 large apples or 10 medium apples of your choice
(I used Granny Smith and Gala)
About 3/4 - 1 cup of brown sugar, depending on your sweetness preference
(I don't really like overly sweet things, so I might have gone with even a little less than that, but feel free to add more if you want)
1.5 tsp of apple pie spice
and I totally would have scraped a vanilla bean if I had had one.  And wasn’t broke.

Peel the apples really well (we want this smooth like butter, with no chunks of peel) and core.  Dice into small pieces, because the larger they are, the longer they take to break down.  Put into a slow cooker crock and add the rest of the ingredients.  Put it on low for eight hours.  It's nice to do this before bed, so when you wake up the house smells like a Glade candle and you can have fresh apple butter for breakfast.  Put it in containers and store in the fridge for up to a month.

If you don't have a crock pot you could probably make it in a sauce pan, although I haven't tried.  I would add about 1/4 cup of water and bring it to a simmer over medium heat and then turn it down to low, checking occasionally, until it’s the desired consistency.

If its too chunky for your liking, feel free to run it through your food processor or go over it with a potato masher.

It tastes awesome on toast with peanut butter, or when dipped with pretzels.  I also saw a recipe for apple butter cheesecake, which kind of needs to happen soon.

Failed Granola Bars aka Granola

So I recently discovered that (sans burning it) its kind of impossible to mess up granola.  This weekend I wanted to make a nice, dense granola bar to eat for breakfast.  Unfortunately, my wet to dry ingredient ratio was waaay off and I ended up with a crumbly mess.  But! fortunately, I was able to resurrect it from its ashes and make a pretty respectable yogurt topping/hot cereal.

So for granola, you need a ratio of 5:1 dry to wet ingredients.  You want enough wet stuff to moisten the dry stuff without making it soggy.  A recent trip to my bulk food store yielded me with

Steam pressed oats
Oat bran
Wheat flour
Ground flax seed
Nuts and Berry mix (which had almonds, pecans, dried cranberries, cherries and blueberries and served me very well)

and a scouring through the cupboards left me with
Honey
Chunky Peanut Butter
Brown Sugar
Vegetable Oil (this helps give texture and helps everything get spread around evenly)
Cinnamon
and Vanilla

But here's where the beauty comes in.  You want coconut vanilla?  Go for it.   Maple brown sugar cinnamon?  Do it.  Dried apple pieces with apple pie spice?  Well, you get where I'm going.  Just so long as you make sure to follow the general guidelines.

I mixed about 4 cups of oats, and a cup each of oat bran, wheat flour and nuts and berry mix.  I then put about 1/4 of a cup of ground flax seed.  I mixed these well together in a very large bowl.  Then in a small sauce pan, I mixed 2/3 cup of peanut butter, 1/2 cup honey, 1/2 cup brown sugar, 2 Tbs of Olive oil (because it's what I had on hand) and a couple pinches of cinnamon and about 1/2 tsp vanilla.  I heated this over medium low heat, just to get it loosened up so I could easily mix it up with the dry stuff.  When I added this to the dry stuff, it still looked a little, well, dry.  Then I had a stroke of genius.  I added enough water to moisten (about 1/4 of a cup) and let it sit for an hour.  This let the oats soak up the moisture and helped them par-cook in the oven, in case I wanted to eat it with hot milk for breakfast.

Once this happens, place on a cookie sheet (or two since this was a double batch so I could share).  Spread out and place in a 275 degree oven.  Stir every 15 minutes until crispy and lightly brown (about 45 minutes to an hour).  Then let cool and store in an airtight plastic back.

I took some photos, but my camera cable is MIA.  I'll try to post them when I find it.

Enjoy!

It's food-tacular!