Such a Heel

My goal this year was/is to post exclusively from my mobile devices - whatever I had on hand at the time - phone, tablet.  Just not on the computer.  But since I keep on forgetting to charge my mobile devices, I think that tonight I'll make an exception - otherwise it will be days and days before I post.

My DH & I watched the Superbowl yesterday and my super plan was to get the heels turned on my pink socks.  I had one done, so I just wanted to get the other one done so I could move forward to the ankle and cuffs while I was commuting this week.  Best laid plans, though...

I thought I did a great job on the heel - it looked like a heel, but when I looked at it again this morning, I found out that it really wasn't a heel at all - it was more of a pocket.  A pocket with a missing side.

So I ripped it out and did it again.

I figure that's not too bad considering that the last time I knit a pair of socks it was actually 5 times knitting for 1 pair of socks.  This time it's only been 1 1/2 times knitting a pair of socks.  Now that I'm on to the ankle and cuff, I feel pretty confident that I'll actually just zip on through without having to rip the whole thing out again.

I've even been eyeing my next ball of sock yarn and contemplating what they'll look like.  I guess I just like tempting the fates!

Other things going on...there's a yarn crawl coming up.  I'm helping with the advertising for it - sending announcements out to newspapers and such.  It looks like fun, but I don't think that our truck would be able to make the journey.  So while I'm enjoying helping out - I find it really ironic that I probably won't get to go!  More savings for Rhinebeck!

I haven't finished spinning up my little bit of wool that I got at Rhinebeck this past year.  I keep plugging away at it on the little slicker brushes that I got, so about 1/10th of a 1/10th of an ounce at a time.  My DH says it looks like I'm picking out each individual fiber and brushing it.  That's pretty accurate.  But it was supposed to take a long time to do, so I guess it is fulfilling its purpose.

Oh, I made the steak sandwich for the game, but just did veggies and dip.  No brownies, no nachos.  Very basic.  It was wonderful.  We both enjoyed the sandwich - a lot! Our little pup even had a piece of steak.  She was very well behaved for the entire evening after that - until the last bite of sandwich was eaten, then it was back to normal.

I'm actually on a quest for a better brownie recipe made with cocoa instead of chocolate.  Last week I tried the one that I used to make when I was just learning how to bake.  It was horrid!  Cakey, dry, not much chocolate flavor.  Today I whipped up the Joy of Cooking brownie.  We'll see how it rates tomorrow.

To go along with the brownie, I'm testing frosting recipes.  Actually it was the frosting testing that spurred on the brownie testing.  My friend, D-, makes a fantastic frosting.  He says it's so simple and gave me the recipe.  I tried it last week.  If I had stuck to his directions, I would have been glueing sand to the top of the brownies.  I added extra water to get it to come together.  I think he left something out.  So I'm on a quest for that as well - a terrific mocha buttercream recipe.  I made some modifications and have a new one to go with this week's brownies.  DH thinks it's pretty good.  I thought the initial texture and flavor were okay.  We'll see how it holds up.

See? This is why I'm on the mobile platform.  All this blathering on and no pictures.  So dull.

But I'll continue a bit anyway.  I got the town to let us use the town hall for a gardening lecture series.  I'm giving the first one on winter gardening.  I'm the first to admit that I am not the best gardener in the world, but I do know some great gardeners.  My DH is already nervous for me!  He thinks I need to prep and practice.  I mentioned that I might just show up in my gardening togs - dirty jeans and a t-shirt.  I thought he was going to have a stroke right there on the spot.

One way or another it's happening 2 weeks from now.  Maybe if I don't advertise it?

Just a thought...

Sink, Sank, Sunk

They always say that historic homes have character.

What they mean is that in a historic home everything breaks and in order to fix it you have to build a custom bit of this or that to fix it. Then when you almost get it fixed, something else along the way is going to break as well.

Of course my DH and I have gotten wise to some of our bucolic manor's more devious little fixes. In January, every year like clockwork, the plumbing breaks. We never know exactly which bit of it is going to break. We can only guarantee that it will break.

So when the kitchen sink drain pipe burst, we were not terribly surprised.

As my dear friend S says - this is the joy of home ownership!

After rummaging through our spare plumbing parts, we found a flange that fit, the managed to get the rest of the pipes puttied, taped and put back together again.

Of course the house anticipated this and tossed another challenge in the form of a leaky hot water faucet.

All of this led to one thing...midnight pizza!

I got my dough recipe many years ago from a friend who worked in a pizza shop in Brooklyn. (Thanks E!) it's quite delicious.

Take 2 cups of flour, 2 1/4 teaspoons yeast, 1 teaspoon sugar and 1/2 teaspoon salt and mix that together. Pour in 1 1/4 cup warm water. Mix that for 3 minutes. It looks like ... It's pretty disgusting. Don't worry, it gets better.

Knead in 2 more cups of flour or as much as it will take until it forms a dough.

Drizzle some oil in a zip top bag and put the dough in it. Let it sit in a warmish spot until it rises and doubles in size.

Punch it down and divide it in half for 2 regular pizzas. Let it sit for 30 minutes. I usually put 1 in the freezer for later at this point.

Oil a pan and stretch out the dough. Coat with 1/3 cup sauce, add topping of your choice. Bake at 475 for 10 minutes.

Perfect for a late night/early morning plumbers pizza!

Practice Pies

There's something about an impending storm that makes me want to bake.  So I baked a pie - okay, so I baked 4 pies.

My DH had gotten a bunch of apples from our local cooperative extension - they were doing taste tests for macintosh apples - and he promised to return them in the form of pie.  It was a great opportunity for me to practice my apple pie baking skills.

I'm pretty good at baking special "fancy" apple pies.  I've even won a few ribbons for them.  But the basic 2-crust apple pie still strikes fear into my baking heart!  Will the apples cook to the right bite or will they be mushy?  Will the bottom crust cook?  Will it set up after it bakes or turn into a runny mess?

All of these baking fears crowd into my head whenever I even think about making a basic 2-crust apple pie.  What makes if even more humorous is that the apple pie was the first pie I ever baked!  I should be ever so confident about it.  But I'm not.  So practice time!

I made enough basic pie dough for a 2-crust pie, rolled it and popped it into the fridge.  I sliced up enough apples for 6 cups of apple per pie.  I tossed the apples in lemon water and then sprinkled the apples with 1/2 cup sugar, 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon, 1/4 teaspoon nutmeg, 1/4 teaspoon cardamom, 1 teaspoon vanilla, 1/4 cup flour, 1 Tablespoon of corn starch and 1/4 teaspoon of salt and gave it a really good stir.  Then I put the pie dough in the pie tin, spooned out the apples and put them in the pie tin, dotted the top of the apple filling with 1 Tablespoon of butter...

Then - and I swear I couldn't stop myself! - I drizzled a couple of Tablespoons of caramel over the top of the filling.  It's the fancy pie raising its' head.

Then I brushed the edge of the bottom crust with water, set the top crust on ... top and pressed the edge together.  I used a simple spiral roll to seal the edges together and then went back and did the pinch between the index finger and thumb thing all the way around for a traditional look.  Finally I put in 6 1-inch slits in the middle of the pie and 6 2-inch slits around the edge of the pie (about an inch in from the edge).

Finally, I brushed it with milk, sprinkled it will sugar, and put it on a 1/4-tray baking sheet and popped it into an over at 350-degrees to bake for an hour.

I had all sorts of internal debates about whether to start the oven on a higher temp, bake for 10-minutes, lower the temp, bake for 45 minutes.  But at the end of the day, I wanted this to be a really simple and straightforward pie.

Well, except for the caramel.  Because it just tastes so good in apple pie.  Especially if you don't use a lot.  Then it's there, but it's not "in your face" there.

My Dh delivered the pies.  They were very well received and disappeared out of the tins as fast as he could cut them.

You have to love that!

Of course, now he wants me to bake another one so he can get a piece.  Maybe for Thanksgiving.

Midnight Muffin Madness VI

The madness continues with Nutty Pumpkin Muffins.  Even knowing that the next 2 weeks are muffin free didn't take the pressure off of making muffins for "Other People".  But since it's Fall, and the pumpkins are coming in, Nutty Pumpkin Muffins are just the ticket for Midnight Muffin Madness VI.

So - onto the muffins!

The wet: 1 3/4 cup pumpkin puree, 1 1/2 cup white sugar, 1 1/2 cup brown sugar, 4 eggs, 2/3 cup orange juice and 1 cup butter (melted and cooled).

The dry:  3 1/2 cup all-purpose flour, 2 teaspoons baking soda, 1/2 teaspoon baking powder, 1 teaspoon cinnamon, 1 teaspoon nutmeg, 1/4 teaspoon ground cloves, 1/4 teaspoon allspice, 1/2 teaspoon ginger, 1 1/2 teaspoon salt, 1 cup pecans (toasted), 1 cup raisins.

Okay, first things first.  Put the raisins in a little bowl and pour the orange juice on top of them so they get all plumped up with the orange juice (instead of turning into those little dried out nuggets of cement).  Set that aside.

Measure out the flour, baking soda, baking powder, cinnamon, nutmeg, ground cloves, allspice, ginger and salt.

Whisk that all together so the spices are mixed in with the flour.  Even though the baking powder and baking soda aren't spices - they're chemical leaveners - but "chemical leavener" sounds so ... icky, even though it's just bicarbonate - a salt.  Let's just call them a spice and mix them about as well.

Anyway...

Strain the raisins out of the orange juice.  Hang on to the orange juice.  We'll add it to the wet ingredients.  Toss the raisins into the dry ingredients.

Chop up the pecans a bit to make them more bite sized and toss those in to the dry ingredients as well.

Give that a stir so the raisins and pecans get all coated with the flour mixture.  This way they will float in the muffin, not sink to the bottom.

Measure out all of the wet ingredients into a different bowl - adding the butter last.

Give it a good stir - and keep stirring - then stir it some more until all of the butter is mixed in.

Add the wet mixture to the dry mixture.  Give it a quick stir - 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5 - done.

It's okay for bits of flour to be peeking out here and there.  It will all work out in the oven.

Scoop out the mixture into lined muffin tins.  Fill them until they're about 1/4-inch from the top of the tin.

Bake at 350-degrees for 25-30 minutes, then take them out of the muffin tin and put them on a rack to cool.

Make sure you put them towards the back of the counter or your little 4-pawed friend might just think that it's a treat for her!  (But none for her because they have raisins in them - very toxic - causes kidney failure.)

Midnight Muffin Madness V

Round 5 of Midnight Muffin Madness and we're over halfway home!  This week it's Banana Nut Crunch Muffins.  Moist banana nut muffins with a crunchy banana streusel topping.  My DH was making excuses to stay home today to keep them all to himself, but wisdom prevailed and he took the muffins and headed off.

Okay, I might have suggested that there was absolutely no way he was going to eat all of those muffins by himself after I stayed up until the wee hours of the night making them and he had best get to gettin' them out the door and into Other People's tummies before I took them and handed them out on the train.

Anyway... on to the muffins!

The wet:  4 large bananas very ripe, 1 cup sugar, 1 cup brown sugar, 2/3 cup melted butter (cooled), 2 eggs, 1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract and 1/2 cup buttermilk.  Plus for the topping:  4 Tablespoons brown sugar, 2 Tablespoons butter.

The dry:  3 cups flour, 2 teaspoons baking soda, 1 teaspoon baking powder, 1 teaspoon salt, 1 1/2 teaspoons cinnamon, 1/2 teaspoon netmug, 1 cup chopped walnuts.  Plus for the topping:  4 Tablespoons flour, 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon and 1/4 cup crushed banana chips.

Measure out your dry ingredients and whisk them together.  Make sure to coat all of the chopped bits of walnut with the flour mixture so they float in the batter.

Mash up 3 of the 4 bananas.  I use a potato masher for this.  I was thinking that I would use a fork - like with guacamole, but I wanted the banana pieces to be a little more substantial than a fork would give me.  I chopped up the 4th banana into 1/4-inch pieces for an extra banana boost in the bite.  Yum!

Lightly beat the eggs.  My girlfriend always asks what this means, so...  Just beat them until they are broken up and mixed a bit.  They'll still have streaks of white in them and they won't be frothy.

Add the vanilla.  I used clear vanilla even though the recipe has brown sugar in it so I could have used the brown vanilla.  But I used the clear anyway.

Add the rest of the wet ingredients - sugar, brown sugar, egg, vanilla, bananas - and then pour in the buttermilk.

Then pour in the cooled melted butter and mix it up.  The butter will start to re-solidify because the buttermilk is cold.  That's why you want the butter to be cooled - and also so you're not pouring hot butter into beaten eggs.  You don't want scrambled eggs in your muffins.  (Unless you do, then feel free.  I guess.)

Take a minute now to get your topping together.  Measure out the flour, brown sugar, cinnamon and butter into a bowl.  Then crush the banana chips.  I just used the bottom of a measuring cup to crush them up.  They should be a little chunky, but not too much.  Maybe about 1/8-inch to 1/4-inch pieces.  Toss that in with the rest of the topping ingredients and mash together with a fork until it's a sand-like-esque consistency.  Well, as sand like as it can get considering there are chunks of banana chips in it.

Add the mixed wet ingredients to the whisked dry ingredients and give it a quick stir.  This muffin batter it more on the stew consistency side.  It's a bit loose.  This made me want to stir it extra in order to really make sure everything was well incorporated.  But don't!  Over-stirring leads to hockey pucks.  Trust me on this.

Scoop a healthy amount into the lined muffin tin - until it's about 1/4-inch from the top of the tin.  Don't worry if you see little bits of flour here and there - it will all work out when it bakes.

Sprinkle the topping around the outside edge of the muffin.  Enough will fall into the middle of the muffin to coat it without there being too much on the middle of the muffin to keep it from rising.

Bake at 350-degrees for 25-30 minutes.  In my over it took 27 minutes for them to come out a golden brown banana goodness.

Place them on a cooling rack and let them cool for as long as you can keep your DH and your pup away from them.

And there you have it!  Midnight Muffin Madness V - Banana Nut Crunch Muffins.

Midnight Muffin Madness IV

It's round 4 of Midnight Muffin Madness and this week the "Other People" will be feasting on Orange Cranberry Nut muffins.  Mmmmm - tasty!  It's too early for fresh cranberries - and all of the frozen cranberries are long gone, but thanks to the good folks at Ocean Spray, all is not lost!

The wet:  1 cup buttermilk, 2 eggs - beaten, 1 1/2 cups sugar, 1/4 cup whole cranberry sauce, 6 Tablespoons melted (and cooled) butter, 2 Tablespoons orange zest and 1/4 cup orange juice.  Plus for the glaze: 1/4 cup freshly squeezed orange juice.

Wait!  Where's the orange juice?

There it is.  Nevermind...

The dry:  4 cups all-purpose flour, 2 Tablespoons baking powder, 1 teaspoon salt, 3/4 cup chopped walnuts and 3/4 cup dried cranberries.  Plus for the glaze:  1 1/2 cups confectioner's sugar.

Measure out the dry ingredients and stir them together.  Make sure that the dried cranberries are individual - no clumps - so they all get coated in flour and "float" in the batter.

Measure out the wet ingredients, leave out the butter and the orange juice at first.  Stir together the wet ingredients and then add the butter - stir that up.  Then finally add the orange juice and stir that up.

Now pour the wet mixture into the dry mixture and give it a quick stir.  This batter is a bit stiffer than the Midnight Muffin Madness batters I, II, and III.  The spoon will stand up in it after it's mixed together (and slowly fall over...), but that's an okay thing.  The butter milk and butter keep it nice and moist.  Oh, and the glaze.

Put 2 nice sized scoops of the batter into the muffin tin lined with cups.  They won't even out until they get into the oven, so they kind of look like little ice cream cups.  Except they're not, they're raw muffin dough cups.  Nevermind...

They go into a 350-degree oven for 25 minutes.  Then take them out and let them cool while you make the glaze.  These ones dome up nicely, I think.  And the dried cranberries take up some moisture, but they're still a bit chewy.

For the glaze, put the confectioner's sugar in a bowl and then add the 1/4 cup of freshly squeezed orange juice 1 Tablespoon at a time.  The amount of orange juice you use is going to depend on how humid it is, so put some orange juice in and give it a stir until it reaches a "ribbon-like" consistency.  You also don't have to sift the sugar before you add in the orange juice.  The lumps will work themselves out as the sugar absorbs the liquid - so no worries there.  After you've got it mixed up, just set it aside until the muffins have finished cooling.

At this point it's usually a good idea to explain to your pup why eating all of the cooling muffins on the counter would not be a good thing.  Even though she really really wants them.  Awww!  I'm going to have to make her some biscuits!

Drizzle a bit of the glaze on the muffins.  Just a bit at a time because the glaze will spill over the cups and they'll be all sticky.  And who wants to pick up a sticky muffin?

The glaze will set up and harden a bit, but it melts in your mouth when you take a bite.  Mmmmm!  The thing that works really well with these muffins is that they can be packed in layers even with the glaze because the glaze hardens.  

So now my DH can take 2 dozen little muffins off to "Other People" to eat.  

I think I need to make a bigger batch next time so there are some leftover for us!

Midnight Muffin Madness III

Round 3 of Midnight Muffin Madness was an unexpected surprise for my DH.  Tomorrow he won't be gifting them to the usual "Other People", so he didn't think that I would make them.  But I just couldn't help myself - it's the madness of the muffins that drove me to it.

These Orange Cinnamon Streusel muffins were super fast - and since I had almost all of the ingredients in the pantry, it was super easy too.

The wet:  2/3 cup melted butter, 1 cup melted orange juice concentrate, 1 cup buttermilk, 2 teaspoons vanilla extract, 4 eggs, the zest from 1 large orange.  Plus for the topping: 4 tablespoons butter, 1/2 cup sugar.  Plus for the filling:  6 Tablespoon brown sugar

The dry: 4 cup flour, 4 teaspoons baking powder, 3/4 cup sugar, 3/4 cup brown sugar, 1 teaspoon salt.  Plus for the topping:  1/2 cup flour, 1 Tablespoon cinnamon.  Plus for the filling:  1 Tablespoon cinnamon

Filling, right!?  This has just got to be a good one.

In the big bowl, measure out your dry ingredients - flour, salt, brown sugar, sugar, and baking powder.

In the first small bowl, measure out your filling:  brown sugar and cinnamon.

In the second small bowl, measure out the streusel topping:  butter, cinnamon, flour and brown sugar.

Zest a large orange into the bowl that you're going to put the wet ingredients into.  This way all of the oils from the orange zest will make their way into the muffins.

Make sure you wipe down all of the zest that gets on the back on the grater - all glistening and full of flavor.

Mash together the streusel topping with a fork until it is combined yet still chunky.

Mash together the filling with a fork until it is combined and looks like wet sand.  Except it won't be wet because there's no butter.  And it won't taste like sand.  Don't ask me how I know that.

Measure out your wet ingredients and whisk them together - eggs, buttermilk, melted butter, orange juice concentrate, orange zest, and vanilla.  This is going to be a little thick because of the combination of the orange concentrate and the buttermilk.

Add the wet to the dry and mix it together quickly.  There will be a few streaks of flour and a few lumps of sugar, but that's okay.

Put 1 scoop of the muffin mix in the muffin cup.  You can press down on it a bit to even it out on the bottom of the cup if you want to, but I like leaving it in a scoop so that when I put the filling in, it gets all over the inside of the muffin instead of just being a lump of filling in the middle of the muffin.

Sprinkle a generous teaspoon of the filling on top of the first scoop of muffin mix.  It's okay if it falls off of the mix and rests on the bottom of the muffin cup.  It will sort itself out when it bakes.

Top the filling with another scoop of the muffin mix.

Spread out the second scoop of the muffin mix gently on top of the filling.  Don't spend a lot of time, though.  Your baking powder is activated and you need to get these in the oven soon.  Besides - it will all sort itself out in the baking.

Top generously with the streusel topping - try to put it on a little lighter in the middle of the muffin so the weight of the topping doesn't stop the muffin from rising.

It's also okay to leave a few spaces of muffin mix showing through the topping.  Now just pop them in the oven at 350 for 20-25 minutes.

So.  What to do with all that wait time?  And some orange juice?  Hmmm...

Screwdriver, of course.  I love the citron flavored vodka with orange juice.  I think it cuts the sweetness of the orange a bit.  Oh - and the mason jar makes a good shaker for the orange juice.

Yum.  But the muffins are done.

I love the way the streusel melts and caramelized around the top of the muffin - and the filling spreads out in bits on the inside.

The best part was the look on my DH's face when he saw the muffins cooling on the rack in the kitchen.  He was so surprised!

I wonder how many of them will make it until morning?