Snickerdoodles

I felt a little proud when I pulled these cookies out of the oven. My mood improved when they were actually soft and palatable. I became ecstatic when I managed to take a good-picture-in-natural-light photo shoot and so now I just have to share them. 

I will be perfectly honest. Snickerdoodles aren't my favorite. I like me the choco-late chip variety myself. (I also find them to be really hard to work with - sticky sticky messes - that turn out reaaaalllly flat and hard or like sugar bomb bread balls, which happens when I try to counter the sticky with a little extra flour. Anyway, back to why I made these...)

So...I'm almost out of butter (this recipe does have shortening in it) and I don't have any real chocolate chips (white don't really count) so what else can you make when the Elders are coming for dinner and you want something to sweeten the deal? Snickerdoodles. And they just so happen to be one of Erik's favorite cookie, which he hardly ever asks for because he knows they are not my cup of tea. So win, win, win, and win. Winners all around!

This particular shortening snickerdoodle recipe has been made once before in my house with limited palatability and thus allows me to give you a little tip. Tip: Shortening has a shelf life and it gets old and starts to smell funny and will make your cookies taste gross. So keep that shortening fresh - like less than a year old, ok? Ok. Now you know.

My taste tester...She approved.

Good.

Try them. (But make sure to share so you don't eat them all yourself, accidentally, even though you don't really like them.)

Snickerdoodles

Yield: 2 dozen (at least)

Dough:
1 stick (8 tbsp) butter, softened to room temperature
1/2 C shortening
1 1/2 C granulated sugar
2 large eggs

2 tsp cream of tartar
1 tsp baking soda
2 1/2 C flour
1/2 tsp salt

Coating:
1/4 C granulated sugar
1 tbsp cinnamon

Preheat oven to 375 F. (My oven is on the too hot side - something I just discovered after a year of using it. I baked these babies at 350 F for 11 minutes. Just to be honest, true, and real with you!)

With an electric mixer, beat the butter, shortening, and sugar together until light and fluffly, about 2 minutes. Add eggs and beat until well mixed.

In a separate bowl mix together the cream of tartar, baking soda, flour, and salt.

Stir the dry ingredient flour mixture into the butter/sugar/egg mixture until flour is just incorporated.

In a shallow dish or bowl, combine sugar and cinnamon to coat dough with.

Form into 1.5 inch balls, roll in cinnamon sugar coating and place on a lightly sprayed/silpat-ed/parchment paper-ed (you pick) baking sheet. They will spread a lot. If you want them to be perfectly round, you probably will want to space them farther than a normal cookie with fewer on the sheet. If you don't care that they run into each other then do a normal 3 X 4 placement.

Bake for 9 - 11 minutes until golden brown around the edges and slightly puffed in the middle. They flatten after removing them from the oven. Let sit 2 minutes on baking sheet, then remove them to a cooling rack to finish cooling.


From Mel's Kitchen Cafe - Classic Snickerdoodles

Food Disappointment

Do you ever have disappointing food days? You know - you find that perfect recipe. The picture looks good. You can just imagine how delightful it will taste when it is all said and done. You cook or bake exactly as the recipe instructs. O! It is going to be the best thing ever!!

After heavy anticipation you open the oven door and WHAMO! disappointment hits. Your cookie, cake, bread, casserole, cinnamon rolls, soup, etc. etc. etc. is the biggest failure of the day. And then you feel sad, and never want to cook again and wonder why you just spent those however many minutes in the kitchen making your masterpiece, only to have it FAIL!

Oh my achin' back!

That happened to me. Just in case you were wondering.

I saw this recipe on the back of the Kroger graham cracker box (that should have been my first warning - I don't really trust package recipes).

Irresistible Graham Cracker Cookies.

Mmm. Perfect! They just so happened to have the same ingredients as Grandpa Nelsen's Da...ng Good Cookies (censored for the sensitive) or Magic Cookie Bars. But they were cookie form! Good, chewy, round delicious cookie form! I could only just imagine what was awaiting me through the door of the recipe!! I also thought they would be the perfect recipe to share on this blog!

But my imagination failed me, for instead of expecting the best, I should have been anticipating the worse. I pretty much thought my night was over when I pulled these out of the oven.

Flat. Too sweet. Weird with the graham as the majority of the flour. 

So let this be a lesson to all. Actually there are several lessons. 

1. Package recipes probably won't work the first time.

2. Store brand packages are probably trying to recreate the name brand package's recipes in a suspicious form. (The Magic Cookie Bars recipe appeared on the Keebler box of graham cracker crumbs that I bought.)

3. Sometimes people have bad days in the kitchen and the food turn out not very photogenic.

4. Margarine that has been in the freezer for 8 months may not be the best ingredient to use in baked goods. :)

Fortunately I didn't have to throw them away. My husband, daughter, and church peeps did me a favor and ate them on Sunday (sorry if you are reading this now and ate one).  

Blueberry Lemon Bread

The first time I made this bread, I licked the beater (yes, I eat raw eggs in the form of sugary bliss) and I knew that I must share this recipe. It is simple and straight forward. We had a quite a stock of blueberries that we had picked earlier this summer and I needed a creative outlet to use them up. This recipe was mentioned by a friend and knowing that I had tried it before at another friend's house, I was excited to try it myself.  (Rest assured, these blueberries had now been frozen so don't feel pressured to run out and buy fresh berries. Frozen work fantastically!)

The batter, all whipped up, is heavenly in and of itself. And the bread is simply divine. It is sweet enough to be desirable, but not so sweet that you feel like you probably shouldn't have eaten it. The crust is a bit crisp, while the inside is light and soft. The touch of a lemon glaze on top puts the bread into the irresistible category. The combination of blueberries and lemon are the tangy delight that your taste buds have been hoping for all night.

So just go try it.

Also, I promise I make things besides blueberry bread type things. I just can't help that they are so good!

Blueberry Lemon Bread

Yield: 1 - 8 x 4 x 2.5 inch loaf pan

Bread
2 C flour
2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt

1/2 C butter at room temperature
1 C sugar
1/2 C milk
1 1/2 C blueberries (fresh or frozen)
2 large eggs

Lemon glaze
1/3 C sugar
1/4 C lemon juice

Preheat oven to 350 F. Grease your loaf pan.

In a mixing bowl beat butter and 1 C sugar until well blended. Add eggs one at a time, beating until light and creamy.

Mix flour, baking powder, and salt together in separate bowl and add to the creamy mixture alternating with the milk.

Gently stir in blueberries.

Bake 1 hour 5 minutes, or until the bread no longer jiggles when you give it a little shake. You can also do the tooth pick test. The crust will brown.

Prepare lemon glaze. I suggest heating up the lemon juice in the microwave or over the stove so the sugar will dissolve.

Let cool in loaf pan for 10 minutes. Remove from pan and place on rack. Poke with holes on top and sides and coat with lemon glaze.

Cool completely (if you want it to retain loaf shape).

Recipe received from Emily S., though Katherine W. and Amy H were also mentioned upon receipt

Yogurt From Your Kitchen

It took me awhile to get on the "plain - maybe Greek - yogurt" bandwagon. I think I was convinced when I realized just how much sugar is in not plain yogurt...especially if you buy the el cheap-o kind. To be honest, though, I still bought it. But then I saw on Mel's Kitchen Cafe that I could make my own yogurt! Well, the little chemist/bacteria grower inside of me (I spent a whole summer growing e.coli) decided that I would do just that!

The end result? Delicious. Creamy. Wonderful! It has become a highly versatile staple in my kitchen, making its way into pancakes, coffee cake, cookies, butter, frosting, bread, my daughter's stomach...pretty much everything! I do have to say there is something quite remarkable about the fact that I can get my daughter, who is two, to eat it with very little sugar. 

I do have to say, I am not sure if this is legitimate Greek yogurt. I use Greek yogurt as a starter, but my kitchen is no Dannon food processing plant. I do know that if you strain it long enough, it is very very thick and that, to me, is the greatest indicator of it's wholesome delight!

I have now made yogurt for almost a year and I am sold that it is the most affordable way to make it. It also is yummy and healthy I'm not going to pretend that I know all the health benefits. I am not the nutrition facts label, but I can tell you that there is no high fructose corn syrup or loads of artificial sweeteners and yet it still is edible!

(This post is for my mother. Love you, Mom! It is not in its most refined form. If you really want to make yogurt and are confused, comment or call me and I will help you straighten out our worries.)

Yogurt

You must plan ahead to make this delicious stuff. It will take about 6 hours to prep the yogurt, 8 hours to culture and another 4 - 6 hours to strain the whey. I usually begin at 3 PM, let the yogurt culture overnight, and strain it in the morning.

1 gallon of milk (I have used everything from skim to whole)
1/2 C powdered milk
1 6 oz cup of plain Greek yogurt - I just get whatever is cheapest. You want it to say that it has life cultures in it. If it names the life cultures, even more legit. If it doesn't, but does say "live active cultures" then it will still work. But get Greek.

Cheese cloth or flour sack dish towel

Begin at 3 PM.
Pour 1 gallon of milk into a (at least) 5 quart crock pot. Turn the crock pot on high and allow the milk to warm up to 178 F. This is the pasteurization step. First you must kill all the unwanted bacteria before you can put the wanted bacteria in. This can take anywhere from 2 - 4 hours.

When the milk has reached 178 F, remove the stoneware portion of your crock pot from the heater portion. Remove about 1 C of milk from the crock pot to a bowl, add the powdered milk, whisk until dissolved and pour back into the crock pot through a strainer (catching any clumps that did not dissolve).

Allow the milk to cool until it reaches 125 F. You can aid this cooling process by stirring it every so often or putting it on a cold cast iron pan to help draw the heat out - just in case you are anxious to go to bed.

It will probably be around 8 or 9 o'clock PM before your yogurt cools.

Again, remove about 1 C of milk from the crock pot and pour it into a bowl. Add the Greek yogurt starter to the bowl and whisk until smooth. Add the mixture back into the crock pot and mix into the milk.

By now your yogurt should be between 112 F and 119 F. This is the temperature you want to incubate it at for 8 - 10 hours. If it is a little cooler than 112 F, don't panic too much. You can reheat it, or just leave it. The rate of growth of bacteria will be slightly slower. If you do reheat, don't kill your bacteria friends in the process!

Put the lid back onto your crock pot. Wrap your crock pot in a heavy beach or bath towel. Line a cooler* that is big enough to fit your crock pot with a heavy blanket - like fleece or heavier. Place your towel-wrapped crock pot into the blanket lined cooler, wrap the blanket around the crock pot and let it incubate for 8 - 10 hours. Your little bacterias will be as happy as a clam in salt water and they will produce delightful yogurt for you.

When you awake the next morning, pull your yogurt out of the cooler. Line a strainer or colander with the cheese cloth or clean flour sack towel and place it on a large pot - like a stock pot. Transfer the yogurt to the strainer and put the strainer/stockpot combo into the fridge. I like to drain the whey for at least 4 hours. If the yogurt gets too thick, you can always add whey back in.

When the yogurt has become chunky and thick, remove it to a blender or a large bowl and blend it or whisk it with an electric hand mixer until it becomes smooth. This process will also thin out the yogurt. Be careful not to over blend or over whisk. Blending - 2 or 3 pulses, maybe 4 - 5. Whisking - until it looks delicious to you.

Pour your yogurt into storage containers. I use glass jars with canning lids because yogurt can easily take on the taste of whatever used to be in your storage container (garlic yogurt makes great sour cream!)

You can also save all that great whey to use in your pancakes and bready items - just don't do a 1 to 1 substitution for water. You can also add a bit to smoothies. We think it has protein nutritional value - but we have only speculated.

So there you have it! Yogurt.

Let me sum up.

Heat milk to 178 F.
Add powdered milk.
Let cool to 125 F.
Add yogurt starter.
Temperature should be between 112 - 119 F.
Wrap in towel and blanket. Put in cooler for 8 - 10 hours.
Drain whey off through cheese cloth/towel.
Blend until smooth.
Enjoy!

*If you don't have a large cooler, then you can use your oven. I would warm it up to about 200 F and then turn it off before you put your towel and blanket wrapped crock pot in it. It will help to keep the surroundings warm.

If you want to do this but feel nervous, do just 1/2 gallon of milk. No one can cry over 1/2 gallon of milk if it doesn't work...but a full gallon at $3.78 a gallon. That is something to cry over. :)

And as far as eating it goes - I find that a couple of sprinkles of sugar, some lemon juice and a few berries, especially black berries, makes for a delightful combination. You can also add any sort of jam (homemade strawberry), syrup, honey...you name it, try it! The lemon juice takes some of the edge away and results in less sugar to help it taste delicious.

courtesy of Mel's Kitchen Cafe with a revamp of the incubation process