Saturday Morning Doughnuts

Way back when I first started following The Pioneer Woman's website her recipe for homemade glazed doughnuts caught my eye. I bookmarked it and then moved on since I didn't own a metal slotted spoon and had zero experience making anything that required yeast. Then for the past couple of weeks the recipe has been featured on the front page of her website and it has been taunting me. Seriously. I thought about doughnuts all week long. I haven't had a doughnut in ages, not since Stephanie and I went to that vegan doughnut shop in Las Vegas back in September.

I decided this would be one of my projects for the weekend. I made the dough last night - all looked well. I took it out of the refrigerator this morning and rolled it out and still - all looked well. Even after I cut the doughnuts out using a biscuit cutter and a shot glass (side note: I used a Corona shot glass that my sister got me for my 21st birthday - why does Corona make shot glasses? Anyone?) they still looked like they were supposed to.

Then I went to let them rise using my standard bread trick of heating the oven up to the lowest possible temperature and then turning it off. I have to do this because we keep the house at basically a freezing temperature. Ok maybe it's more like 63 degrees. It's still pretty cold though if you ask me, and too cold to let things rise properly. Unfortunately this is where things went terribly wrong. Here are my doughnuts after an hour of "rising":

Sad, sad flat doughnuts. Luckily I had left a few doughnut holes in a pan on top of the oven that seemed to rise correctly.

 I did try to fry a couple of the sad flat ones just to see if maybe they were salvageable. They weren't really. But the doughnut holes worked out alright! Here are the glazed results:

And here is the difference between the flattened greasy doughnut, and the doughnut hole that actually rose properly:

You want to know the worst part? Doughnuts aren't even as good as I had built them up to be in my head. The only reason I kind of want to make them again is because I'm mad that I messed them up. I'm considering it - I suppose I could bring them in to work on Monday, but I don't know. It's kind of a lot of work to prove to myself I really can make them correctly. Maybe I should just go back to baking.

Hopefully I have better results to share with you from tomorrow's Sunday Dinner!

-C

All of My Favorite Things

I finally got around to uploading the pictures of a few of things I made this weekend. I'm excited because I've been messing around with Photoshop some and downloaded a bunch of new custom actions to use!

I didn't quite get around to making the things I mentioned in my previous entry, but I think it was pretty close! First off I made Banana Bread - I love banana bread so much, I think I would make it all the time except that I rarely buy bananas! If you read my last post where I mentioned how much I love VegWeb you probably know that is where I got the recipe - you can find it here. I like it because it uses very few ingredients (and ones I always have on hand, except the bananas of course) and it tastes just like the bread I remember as a kid except  there are no eggs or dairy!

Speaking of bread, I also finally got around to making the Gruyere Stuffed Loafs that I have been meaning to make for quite awhile now (Roma - if you're reading this, thanks for the recipe!). Luckily it was a three day weekend because I planned to make the bread Sunday only to realize I needed to let the starter sit over night! I'm glad I noticed that and was able to get it started and still make the bread on Monday! This bread was a little bit messy to make, but I think it was worth it - how can you go wrong with bread stuffed with cheese? I don't think it's possible.

To go with the bread I made a recipe that I came across back around Thanksgiving time but never ended up making. It is for a Hazelnut and Chard Ravioli Salad from 101 Cookbooks. I'm still really into kale and not as much a fan of chard, so I used that instead. I also used a Butternut Squash ravioli - I can't recall the name of the brand, but they come in the freezer section and they make several vegan varieties! Other than that the only change to the recipe I made was to throw in a bit of butter when I tossed the ravioli with the vegetables. I really recommend this recipe - I think it's a perfect winter meal (and it sure feels like winter here still, there was snow today!).

But now on to the best part - candy! Since I made Sea Salt Truffles last week I decided I wanted to do the same, but with caramel. Do you remember how much I love caramel? It's a lot. Since the last (and only time) I tried making it it came out a little too soft I tried to get the temperature just a tad higher - that backfired and I ended up with inch-thick toffee. Not very edible unfortunately, unless you want to risk breaking a tooth. Thanks to the three day weekend (again!) I had time for a redo. I made some that were coated in chocolate and sprinkled with sea salt and a few that had caramel wrapped around a hazelnut and dipped in chocolate.

Two people at work told me the hazelnut ones were the best things they had ever eaten, one person told me the sea salt ones were better than anything at See's, and another person told me that it was their new favorite caramel (and that they also really like caramel)! I'm thinking I should really set up a business here! Maybe someday...  wouldn't that be nice?

Speaking of, I'm actually going to take a weekend class here in another month on starting your own catering business. A girl can dream, right?

-C

P.S. As I was adding photos I realized I forgot to mention the Olive Oil Cakes with Lemon and Thyme! They were pretty good - nothing too eventful. Unfortunately I didn't think you could really taste the thyme at all and I was really hoping for a nice flavor combination there. If you like lemon though, these cakes were great!

Breaking News!

We didn't win the Mega Millions $355 million jackpot. Not really a surprise - but what did surprise me when I searched for the winning numbers was how many people care about Mega Millions. The real-time results in Google were flying by like crazy! I've never actually bought any sort of loto ticket before (personally at least, Jonathan does on occasion) - I had no idea it was such a big deal.

In other breaking news, my meal planning is already not going well. Safeway never has what I am looking for, and today they didn't even have what I needed for my back-up dinner plan! I ended up making Saturday's Mac & Cheese tonight thereby completely confusing the weeks plan (but it was delicious, so I'm not going to complain anymore... mmm cheese with bread).

Speaking of bread, I made a loaf of 50/50 white/wheat bread yesterday and it turned out amazing! It rose much more than my first loaf - not sure if that's because I used a new jar of yeast or because I tweaked the method slightly, but either way I am quite happy with this whole bread making situation!

Also, that vegan fried fish I tried to make the other day? Not very fishy. However the beer batter was kind of nice, perhaps I can find something else to use that on. I don't really like deep frying though, not because of any health reasons exactly but more because I don't like wasting all that oil and I don't know what to do with it afterward. Also, I usually end up hurting myself.

Vegan Fish & Chips

Enough rambling - the real reason I started writing this was to share something I found online that I thought was really neat. It's a calendar designed by The Cottage Industrialist that tells you what produce is in season on a given month, and it is adorable. Here's a link to this year's design. I stumbled on last year's calendar first, and I actually think it's a little cuter - but not so much that I'm willing to go through and manually edit all of the dates to match this year. If you have the patience here is a link to 2010 as well!

I haven't spent a lot of time looking at this blog, but so far the things she has posted are great. I only wish I could be that artistic! Hope you enjoy the calendars - I know I am printing out two copies tomorrow!

-C

New Year - New Recipes

Happy New Year! I can't believe how fast 2010 went... seems like only a few months ago we were celebrating last New Year's Eve. Best part about the past year? Finding my passion for cooking! I always enjoyed cooking, but I was never as excited about it as I am now. Getting the Harvest Box really helped to spark that interest and I'm so excited for it to return in June!

I received a ton of great cooking related gifts for Christmas (a lot having to do with cookies - I think my coworkers will be happy about that too, or not - depending on their New Year's resolutions :-) ). But right now my new favorite thing is the Kitchen Aid stand mixer I just bought at Costco! I'm really excited about bread making - I tried my first loaf ever this past week and it went pretty well! It was definitely time consuming, although not really involved, I'll just have to keep that in mind for tomorrow when I try out some more recipes!

We ate half the loaf the first night with some Havarti cheese (I found vegetarian Havarti, yay!). It reminded me of working Saturdays in the bakery when lunch would be fresh rolls with Havarti cheese from the block that must have weighed 10 pounds in the back room. This was before I found out the cheese had rennet - saddest day ever. But all that is fixed now - I can have all the bread and Havarti I want!

Fresh Bread!

This week I will try to make a french bread to go with the stew we'll have on Tuesday (New Year's resolution: work on planning out meals for the week and reduce the number of grocery trips we make) and pizza dough for Pizza Friday (I don't think this planning will last long - but I might as well give it a shot).

On a non-bread related note, tonight I am attempting to make vegan fried fish. Weird, right? I thought it sounded interesting though and even though I wasn't really a fan of actual fish, I did have some vegan fried fish at a place in Portland once and it was amazing! Last I heard though, that place had turned into a vegan strip club (only in Portland), and so there will be no more delicious fake fish for me anymore. Fingers crossed this recipe turns out edible!

-C