War Bread p. 207

This bread is called war bread because it has rolled oats, cornmeal and whole wheat flour in it, to make the more scarce white flour "go farther". I guess I did even better because I used a full cup less white flour than the recipe. That is getting to be the norm though.

The bread felt very solid as I was kneading it, and it turned into a dense loaf. I personally don't call these large loaves, but that's what they are supposed to be. The family all enjoyed this bread just fine. I thought they wouldn't like the cornmeal in it, but it hid quite well. All in all, I liked this bread. I would make it again and maybe let it rise a little longer the first time.

Bowling Pin Cookies

Well, I fell in love! How about you?

I was even more creative than usual today! I started the day making paper bags from a roll of paper out of the craft room. The paper bags will be loot bags for the bowling birthday party. So I stamped them with stars and added a black explosion shape with a white bowling pin pasted on. They looked so good, that I decided to make bowling pin cookies for the "loot". So I made a batch of sugar cookies. Then I found an old, split, metal cookie cutter that was shaped like a mushroom. I reshaped it into a bowling pin, and voila!

I was only planning on making one bowling pin per child (8) because I thought I would have to cut them all by hand. After my miraculous creation of a cutter, I went crazy and did up the whole batch! 4 1/2 dozen, I think. Then I iced them with royal icing. (Found out it is hard to ice a cookie while taking the picture of doing so!)

Anyway, there are the white bowling pins... well, not quite, eh?

So, I tinted some piping gel red and started giving these guys their stripes.

They looked great! But not really fun.  So I added smiles and eyes to 10 of them, to decorate the place settings at the party.

The cookie recipe I used was originally in the Sesame Street's "Big Bird's Book of things to Do" (or something like that) that I got when I was 7. The recipe was called "Cookie Monster's Cookie Dough". Of course, what ELSE would Sesame Street call it? So, here it is:

Cookie Monster's Cookie Dough

Blend in a mixing bowl:

     3/4 cups butter, softened

     1 cup sugar

Beat in:

     2 eggs

     1 tsp. vanilla

Add:

     2 1/2 cups flour

     1 tsp. baking powder

     1 tsp. salt

Mix all together. Chill for 1 hour. Roll out chilled dough to 1/4 inch thick (or slightly less) and cut into shapes. Place cookies on cookie sheet so there is 3/4 inch between cookies. Bake at 400 degrees F for 6-8 minutes. (My little bowling pins took exactly 6 minutes!)

Now, go eat some COOOOOO-kies! Gobble, gobble, gobble, yum, yum, yummmm.

or, if you're like me, you want to ice them. I covered 2/3 of my bowling pins with this recipe:

Royal Icing

1 egg white

pinch of salt

1 tsp. lemon juice

1 1/2 cups icing sugar

Mix all ingredients together and use immediately or cover closely and refrigerate. This icing hardens quickly.



That is also the recipe I use as cement for my gingerbread houses. Not only does it harden quickly, it does get quite hard. If it is too stiff, you can add a wee bit of lemon juice. Have fun creating!

Two Tier, Two Layer Chocolate Birthday Cake, part 1

So, I found about 200 ideas that I looked at on the web last night. In the process, I learned that a 9 x 13 cake has been done SOOOO many times, that it is boring. I also learned that MMF is MarshMallow Fondant. Now you know. I already like fondant, and am willing to try new, cheaper things, so when I am out of fondant, I will make some MMF. Back to my cake story - I liked one that had two round tiers. So I doubled my usual chocolate cake recipe that fills two 9" round pans and filled two 8" and two 9" pans. I am out of time tonight, so I'll give you the recipe tomorrow.

While these cooled, I made a chocolate fudge icing to be a thick surprise between the layers.

Then I levelled the cakes. I used a long, serrated edged knife as seen here and just "sawed" off the tops. I saved those tops for week-day dessert. I looked at the cuts from eye level to see if they looked level. I trimmed a bit and then filled the layers and stacked them. I cut down the 8" cake to give it straight sides and make it a more noticeably different size of 6 1/2".

The party is on Thursday so I covered the two tiers separately and froze them. Earlier today, I cut out 17 three inch high bowling pin shapes from a mix of white fondant and gum paste. That was fun. They will go around the cake. Stay tuned.

Muffins, Rolls, Bread and Squares

Wow! What a day of baking. It was snowing, and I had nowhere that I had to go so I baked until lunch time. I made four recipes I've never tried before. The first recipe was Orange Cranberry Muffins from "Company's Coming Kids Cook!" page 32. They were easy enough that my 8 year old could have made them, for sure. They were delicious to anyone who likes orange and cranberry. I thought it was odd to blend up a complete orange so I grated in the rind, sectioned the orange and just used the sections and the rind. After a chat with mom, I found out I could have really used the whole orange - that it works well. So I will - next time. I like that I can send them to the peanut-free school with the children.

After the muffins, I was on to Lenora's Yeast Rolls from THE bread book, page 474. This recipe had the unexpected ingredient of mashed potato. But I've been planning to make these since I made my weekly menu on Saturday so I had some mashed potato in the fridge. I mixed them up and this is how they looked just after kneading. The recipe said to knead "until it becomes smooth and velvety under your hands." That's exactly what it did! It was so soft and velvety - beautiful.

While these rose, I mixed up "The First Loaf" recipe from page18 of the book. It was a standard, white bread recipe. While everything was rising, I played "school" with the children. My pre-schooler was the teacher. I learned some numbers today! Then I had to shape the  rolls. There were 8 types of rolls to choose from. (Growing up, I was only really familiar with pan rolls, so this choice was exciting.) I chose 4 that seemed easy and made 6 of each. The top pan has Bowknots and Rosettes, then there's Crescents and finally, Cloverleafs in the muffin tin.

I brushed them with melted butter before rising and after baking. Then we tested them. They were HEAVENLY! I could not believe how delicious they were. Was it the melted butter coating them or the potato in them? I don't know, but they were soft, delicate and absolutely wonderful! Even the ones that got a little dark on the bottom still tasted great. I did make a note for future to only bake them one pan full at a time so as not to scorch them. 

"The First Loaf" bread turned out nicely too. The recipe says it makes 3 small or 2 medium loaves. I made 2. They look lovely. Only my oldest had room to eat a piece and she said it was great.

To finish my baking I made "Chocolate Chip Squares" from "Company's Coming 150 Delicious Squares" page 123. They were exactly like making chocolate chip cookies, but easier because you just put them in a square pan. They tasted just like cookies too. We all Loved them!

Now I must go for a walk and burn off some of those delicious calories!

Surprise Birthday Cake

This is the result of my finding out about a friend's birthday the day before it happens. What fun!

On Thursday evening, she invited me and a few friends over for coffee on Friday morning. So, I went to sleep thinking, "I should make a cake for her!" I woke with the children at 6am, fed them crepes like usual and started baking my standard chocolate cake at 7 am.

The cake was out of the oven and cooling in a snowdrift at 8:00. I made up a batch of chocolate fudge icing and a batch of buttercream icing while the cake baked. Then I hustled 2 children to the bus stop, filled the almost cool cake layers with the fudge icing and put the cake in the fridge. I took the third child to pre-school and returned to decorate the cake (I used the time in the van to think of how I would decorate the cake).

When I returned to my kitchen, I slapped on a crumb coat of buttercream and quickly rolled out the white fondant. I used the Wilton's "wide glide rolling pin" and their "roll and cut mat".  Those tools made my job easy. I used the Wilton "Italic Make Any Message Press Set" to imprint "Happy Birthday Melissa" on the white fondant. I rolled out a few pink fondant/gum paste hearts and a length of "ribbon" and applied them to the cake with a dab of water. My drive called saying she was on her way which meant I had 10-20 minutes so I added the blue piping at 9:30, to finish the cake. Melissa was very surprised and delighted!

Old Order Amish Bread

For my first recipe, I opened the book to a random page and made the first recipe for which I had all the ingredients. (Old Order Amish Bread, page 48). As a weekly bread-maker, finding the ingredients for this bread was no problem! I even had bread flour in the pantry - not always the case. The recipe called for 5 - 6 cups of bread flour but I could not knead in more than 4 cups! No matter, though, it turned out lovely, light and fluffy. The loaves were smaller than my "usual" loaves of bread, but perfectly acceptable to my husband and 4 children. The first loaf was eaten before it was even cold! As a final note, this bread was time consuming to make, since it needed a third rising.