Egg Separation Tips from The Kitchn

More lovely and useful tips from The Kitchn! 3 Ways to Separate Eggs

Bacon Wrapped Dates

HAPPY MEMORIAL DAY, EVERYONE! Let's take a moment to appreciate all those awesome people who've risked their lives for us. And what better way to celebrate their sacrifices then by eating bacon! Wait--is that right?

Oh yes, you read that right. I love these things, customizable to appease just about any picky palate (save the vegetarian/vegan). So easy, so delicious, so quick to make. Who wouldn't love them?! The only thing I would say to the recipe below is the cook time is off. That really depends on what your bacon needs, how thick it is, etc. I would say eye it and decide for yourself. If you're reading this post and remotely interested in making this recipe, most likely, you've eaten enough bacon in your life that you can discern between raw and cooked bacon.

*Please note: the recipe below uses blue cheese as the stuffing, I just left that all out. :D

4.5 out of 5 stars. I took off 0.5 stars because let's face it, it ain't healthy at all.

Extra tips:
-Try using pineapple or another hard fruit for the center.
-For a creamy twist, try stuffing the dates with soft cheese such as cream cheese or feta (just like the recipe below)

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Recipe found here.

Ingredients

• 1 pound sliced bacon, cut in half
• 1 pound pitted dates
• 4 ounces blue cheese

Directions

1. Preheat the oven to 375 degrees F (190 degrees C).
2. Slice dates in half, and open them up. Pinch off pieces of blue cheese, and place them into the center of the dates. Close the halves of the dates, and wrap a half-slice of bacon around the outside. Secure each one with a toothpick. Arrange in a baking dish or on a baking sheet with sides to catch any grease.
3. Bake for 30 to 40 minutes in the preheated oven, or until the bacon is crisp. Turn dates over after the first 20 minutes for even cooking.

Glazed Lemon Cookies (from Gale Gland)

Today was a bad day. Why was it a bad day? I'll tell you why. I made these and they turned out TERRIBLY. You remember my crappy Momofuku kitchen sink cookies? These were much worse. It wasn't that they tasted bad, or were burned beyond belief. I have no idea what happened. Well, that's wrong. I know I put in too much butter, but I got lazy. So, yes, I added too much butter, but then that doesn't explain why some cookies (a very few) baked out okay, and why some died like a puddle of mud...brown puddle of mud. SIGH.

To add insult to injury, I used up the last of my powdered sugar on the glaze and then had to throw away half the glaze, if not more, because I threw away half of my cookies if not more cuz they were CRAPPY.

I ain't gonna take pictures of my crap, so no pictures for you today. sorry.

So yes, if you were wondering--it's true. You really need to follow directions and measurements in baking because it is a science, boys and girls. Don't try to be ridiculous like me and go all lone soldier.

If you make these right, they taste quite good: 4.5/5 stars. They have a shortbread type consistency.

I think...

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Glazed Lemon Cookies

3/4 c unsalted butter @ room temp.
1 c sugar
2 tbsp grated lemon zest
2 tbsp lemon juice
2 c + 2 tbsp all-purpose flour
3/4 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt

preheat convection oven to 325 (conventional to 350) and line 2 baking sheets with parchment paper

in mixer w/ paddle attachment or electric hand mixer (its much easier with these) beat butter and sugar on low speed till smooth (don't incorporate air...just blend)

add lemon zest and juice, continue to mix on low until incorporated

add flour, baking powder, and salt, mix on low for 1-2 minutes

check the dough by squeezing some in your hands - it should be crumbly but still form a ball; do not overbeat

scoop dough onto baking sheets with a 1 tsp measuring spoon (mounded spoonful)...they should look like little balls of dough, but don't pat the dough into shape with your hands because they'll look unnaturally smooth after baking

bake until edges turn a light golden brown (~8 minutes) ...don't overbake and dry out cookies by letting them go golden brown all over

transfer cookies to rack and let cool, then glaze (optional)

glaze: 3 tbsp lemon juice + 2 c confectioners' sugar (blend until smooth)

dip tops of cookies into glaze and let cool/dry

i like to fill a pastry bag (or ziploc with corner cut off) with the glaze and drizzle glaze over cookies instead of dipping

Baking Tips from The Kitchn

Here a few interesting things to read to help you have your own adventures in the kitchen. Enjoy!

http://www.thekitchn.com/thekitchn/tips-techniques/10-bits-of-baking-knowledge-and-knowhow-morning-roundup-117804

Creamy Lemon Crumb Squares

This picture doesn't do these things justice. They looked and tasted a lot better than this, honest. That might explain why I once again included the original picture from Pioneer Woman (I love href="http://thepioneerwoman.com/">Ree).

Onto the good stuff--I made these because for some reason when I read this, I thought I read that they were going to turn out more like lemon bars. Yea, not so much. Their title is really what they are. They're really easy to make, but honestly, the fact that a whole can of condensed milk goes into this rather scares me. That added with the butter and sugar--well, no one said the Pioneer Woman made low fat or healthy stuff. It still tasted good after all was said and done, but I had a few hang ups about it. I feel bad saying anything negative about PW but this is a blog about adventures and the good, the bad, and the ugly. The good--the crumb was really quite good, more crumb with less creamy lemon would have worked for me. The bad--when it says crumb squares, its more like really crumbly squares which is what they were. You definitely need to serve these chilled so that they solidify with the topping more, but even then, its quite a mess. Completely unrelated, for some reason, I kept tasting a weird diet taste after I ate it, I can't explain it. If you've ever had diet soda, its that same weird lingering aftertaste with these.

The ugly? The mess you get from the crumbles getting all over the place.

Sidenote: When using an entire can of something liquid, it really is a better idea to just open the can rather than putting holes in it and watching the thick liquid very gradually ooze out as years of your life pass away, hair turns grey, dust starts to settle...and we're back.

3.5 stars out of 5. Sorry, Ree!! Good, but had weird diet taste and really bad for you.

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Below from here.

• Prep Time 15 Minutes
• Cook Time 25 Minutes
• Difficulty Easy
• Serving Size 12
  

Ingredients

• 1-⅓ cup All-purpose Flour
• ½ teaspoons Salt
• 1 teaspoon Baking Powder
• 1 stick (1/2 Cup) Butter, Slightly Softened
• 1 cup Brown Sugar (lightly Packed)
• 1 cup Oats
• 1 can (14 Ounce) Sweetened Condensed Milk
• ½ cups Lemon Juice
• Zest Of 1 Lemon

Preparation Instructions

PREHEAT OVEN TO 350 DEGREES.

Mix butter and brown sugar until well combined.

Sift together flour, salt, and baking powder.

Add oats and flour to butter/sugar mixture and mix to combine.

Press half of crumb mixture into the bottom of an 8 x 11 inch pan.

Mix together condensed milk, lemon juice, and lemon zest. Spread onto the bottom layer of the crumb mixture. Top with the other half of the crumb mixture, but don’t press.

Bake for 20 to 25 minutes, or until golden brown.

Allow pan to sit on counter for 30 minutes after baking. Cut into squares and refrigerate for a couple of hours or until cool.

Serve cool.

Homemade Cream Cheese Frosting

For a recent 30th birthday bash for a friend, I helped frost cupcakes into baseballs as this friend is an avid *ahem* Angels fan. I don't remember how many cupcakes there were, but two cans of store bought frosting wasn't enough to cover all of them and disgustingly enough, we discovered that the third can was actually already opened by someone at the store. They had decided to take a finger of frosting for themselves prior to putting the can back. GROSS.

We decided to make our own frosting to finish off icing the white part and then we needed additional frosting for the red stitching of the baseballs. Little did we realize that this little adventure, which should really have not taken that long turned into almost an hour long project.

The original recipe is below, but it should be noted that we halved it since we didn't need that much, and we added an additional 1/2 stick of butter when the frosting was so thick it was a lumpy ball that couldn't be used in a piping bag (or the ghetto version: a ziploc bag). I had the priveledge and joy of using my friend's beautiful KitchenAid mixer. (*pause for moment in heaven*) When day, when I get married...well, rest assured it's gonna be on the registry.

Back to the topic at hand. The original mistake I made with this recipe was that I used the whisk attachment when creaming together the cream cheese and the butter instead of using the paddle attachment as it usually tells you to do in recipes. It was a terrible mistake because it wouldn't even beat properly and all the butter got stuck whisk blades (is that the proper term, I don't know) and I had to spend a lot of time with a spatula and a butter knife trying to push out pieces of butter and cream cheese from between the whisk blades. After this, I proceeded to mix it BY HAND because there was no way I was going to use the whisk again. Not my idea of fun.

My mind was also not in the right place and I just poured in the vanilla in the beginning rather than waiting while I poured in the powdered sugar. Thanks, my friends, for putting up with my confusion. Weird, I tell ya, weird.

After all was said and done, and the extra butter added (you could probably also decrease the powdered sugar amount or cream cheese amount to get a thinner frosting), I scooped the frosting into a ziploc bag opened over a cup and squeezed the frosting into the bottom corner of the bag. If you've never made a makeshift piping bag for frosting, always remember--snip the hole for the frosting smaller than you think you'll need. Sounds simple enough, but it isn't always the first thought, and you really only need a small hole to frost. You can always cut a bigger hole if you need to, but you definitely can't cut a smaller hole...and if you can, well, please talk to me after the show, thanks!

Oh! Sidenote-dying the frosting red was an interesting time. I used more than a bottle of red frosting to make it this bright red color, and after that I proceeded by adding more in hopes of getting a darker, fuller red---yea, no dice. I even tried adding a TAD of blue to just get it darker, nope. It tried to turn purple on me instead, so I had to add more red to make it red again. I felt like a mixologist. I've never worked with food coloring before so I don't know how it works. But I will say, if you work with fondant, I think the chemistry of that is a little more sensitive.

Moving on, I had fun making these, sans the (i will admit they're cute) Angels tags that luckily I did not have to attach. My friend's very crafty wife made them and really, they are quite cute, even if they do advertise for that other Los Angeles team. (But we who really live in So Cal know that Anaheim isn't even in LA, but hey, who's counting?)

Anyway, the frosting is quite yummy if you love cream cheese frosting, but I docked points for its annoyingly thick texture for which we were not prepared. These are some of the pics I took from the party with my SLR. *sigh* SLR pictures are so much prettier than my point-in-shoot pictures, why don't I use my SLR more?? Enjoy!

4.5 stars out of 5! Wonderful and I'll definitely make it again!


This was my first time piping anything. Couldn't tell, could ya?? I'm sure the squiggly, uneven lines and the runny parts weren't clues.

I love these people because they know how to throw a party. What do you mean, you ask? I mean this---CHOCOLATE FONDUE FOUNTAIN, YES!!!!!!

Warning, gratuitous usage of chocolate follows...







And last but not least: nothing says Happy Birthday like a Birthday steak. Yes, you read that correctly.


Go Meat! Happy Birthday, Junior!

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Recipe from here.
This recipe makes 3 cups of frosting. Plenty enough for any regular cake.

Ingredients

• 2 (8 ounce) packages cream cheese, softened
• 1/2 cup butter, softened
• 2 cups sifted confectioners' sugar
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Directions

1. In a medium bowl, cream together the cream cheese and butter until creamy. Mix in the vanilla, then gradually stir in the confectioners' sugar. Store in the refrigerator after use.

Super-Soft Snickerdoodles

I was so disappointed with this recipe I didn't even bother taking pictures of my cookies. I think this "adventure" failed on several points. First of all, I tried to be sneaky in a sense and tried to substitute a third of the flour with whole wheat flour. But the thing is, whole wheat flour is just different, it usually requires more liquids and well, these cookies came out dry. I think I should have fully melted my butter rather than mostly melted it. It made a lumpier batter rather than a smooth batter. Then there's the matter of where I tried to use my convection oven again, and if you'll notice, this recipe only takes 7 minutes to bake. 7! So, needless to say, I didn't know when they would be done with my convection oven because using that makes everything go faster. Annoyingly so, my cookies on two separate racks cooked unevenly, regardless of the fact that I used my convection oven and so I burned the ones on the bottom rack while the top were just slightly overdone. They came out not very sweet (don't ask me how the whole wheat flour, use of convection oven, and other such factors contributed to that one cuz im stumped), really soft (i realized AFTER i made these that i like my snickerdoodles crispy, good timing I know), and just overall not good. I didn't even bother serving them to my small group for whom I made them because I was like ugh. Instead, I sent them off with my mom to my mom's work where they will basically devour almost anything and got a call from my mom the next day about how she and her coworkers loved it because it wasn't so sweet and it went great with her coffee.

Go figure.

Needless to say, I was NOT impressed with this recipe and will NOT be making it again. And then, you gotta think...whoever heard of a snickerdoodle recipe with no cream of tartar? Bleh.

No picture, no good!

2.5 out of 5 stars. No thank you, and never again.

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Recipe from here.

Super Soft Snickerdoodle Cookies
makes about 3 dozen cookies

1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter
1/2 cup dark brown sugar
1 cup white sugar
3 cups flour
1/4 teaspoon cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon nutmeg
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
3 eggs
1 teaspon vanilla extract

For the cinnamon sugar:
1/4 cup white sugar
1 tablespoon cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon nutmeg

Heat the oven to 425°F. Gently melt the butter in a saucepan or in the microwave and let it cool while you mix the dry ingredients. Stir together the sugars, flour, spices, baking soda, and salt. Whisk the eggs into the cooled butter and add the vanilla. Stir the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients, stirring just until it comes together.

In a soup plate or shallow bowl, mix together the white sugar, cinnamon, and nutmeg. Form small 1 1/2-inch balls of dough and roll them in the cinnamon sugar. Place them on an unlined, ungreased baking sheet and flatten slightly. Bake for 7 minutes then remove and let cool on the baking sheet for 5 minutes. Remove to a wire rack.

The dough can be refrigerated for up to 5 days, well-wrapped. It can also be frozen in logs.