December Meme: December 28
Dec. 30th, 2014 06:40 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
seerofbreadBAKING ADVENTURES as prompted by krait. I was late with the one before it so I figured I could at least be consistent. (Also yesterday got pretty busy in the afternoon, after I finished my LATEST technicallynotbaking CREATION)
Billionaire bars
These were actually a while ago. Shortly before Dragon*Con, I believe? I sort of wanted to modify them to make "genius billionaire playboy philanthropist bars" but honestly they have too much going on already. They're a great thing to make if you want to spend all day making something (there's plenty of "downtime" while things set but there's also always something else to make while you do that) but I don't think they freeze very well. It's hard to say for sure because they did also suffer through Dad bringing them halfway down the east coast on public transport without refrigeration because I forgot them.
Crumb cake
Honestly don't remember if this was before or after the billionaire bars. I think I found the recipe off of What The Fuck Should I Bake? I think I made it because it was one of few things that didn't ask for an ingredient we didn't have, even though the most common things that we run out of are on the ingredient list? Anyway, it came out so wonderful that I feel like it really needs credit for helping me step out of the "super basic cakes and a lot of things from pre-made mixes" zone of baking and into.... whatever zone I'm in now.
Aside: I really have to recommend this blog, if not for the recipes then just for the general reading. Gotta admit, I'm easily bored by a lot of food blog commentary (sorry I don't care how much your kid likes these cookies, I care a lot more about eating these cookies myself) but these guys spice it up pretty nice.
Nutella banana bread
This is probably the beginning of the "needs-based baking," which is in quotes because we never need more sweets in the house. Mom complains about it a lot (she does a lot of diets), Dad and I can't really get through it, I suspect that my brother restrained himself carefully because he was worried his testosterone would drop if he were seen near a cupcake. But we do get foods that don't get eaten in time to be eaten fresh, and then it's a race to bake them.
This was when my brother still lived at home. (Granted that was true until about a week ago, and he's just across the street.) At that point he was eating a lot of bananas, but then.... he went to drill, where he couldn't eat the bananas in the house. So they went brown. So I looked up banana bread recipes, and look at this. It's beautiful. The first time I made it, we didn't have two bread tins, so I tried to bake it in a high-walled ceramic standard pan thing but the walls weren't actually high enough, because it turns out banana bread rises really fucking high. RIP tiny bits of banana bread dough, lost to the searing heat on the bottom of the oven, survived by brethren who survived into delicious bready adulthood.
Taylor Swift cookies
I did not make cookies like Taylor Swift, butacerbictomes reblogged this post and I was like, "Wow I am not going to pass up the opportunity to say that I got my cookie recipe from Taylor Swift," and I saved the recipe that she linked to. (Her method of making chai baked goods seems really inefficient when you think of chewing on loose tea leaves and better means of chai baked goods.) (Those don't get their own thing because there isn't really a story behind them, just tastiness.) But I didn't make them like this.
For some reason, my mom bought coconut flour. I'm still not totally sure why. I had no idea what difference it would make, so I did an experiment where I made one batch replacing vegetable oil with coconut oil and another replacing wheat flour with coconut flour. The former came out, like, super delicious, and shortbready and awesome; the latter, uh. Turns out coconut flour is really dry and makes for some super dry/crumbly cookies, as evidenced by later experiments. I'm not totally sure what to do with it now, other than maybe some sort of biscotti or something else that I can totally coat in chocolate.
But actually in general I really have to recommend baking with coconut oil. If you ever have a chance, try making brownies but replace the vegetable oil with coconut oil. It's beautiful, and it also works with spice cake and pretty much anything.
Almond persimmon cream cheese tart
At some point, my dad signed us up for this thing where local farms put together a box of produce and it gets delivered to our door every other week. This has been pretty good for our food variety; we wind up with a lot of leafy greens that are like, "What the fuck do I do with this?" and then we learn what to do with this and now there's a box of kale chips on the counter that is expiring much more slowly than fresh kale. The biggest problem we had were the persimmons, which I don't think I'd ever seen before; the only reason anyone in the house identified them is because the box comes with a checklist saying what came from where. Needless to say, nobody had any idea what to do with it.
I recently got a Windows 8 computer, though, and with it is the cool Food and Drink app where I can find a bunch of recipes. This is how I was able to make a persimmon tart. The, uh, the actual result was not great, which Dad thinks is because I baked it too long but I think is because I tried to beat a block of cream cheese into liquid by hand.
Almond butter cups
These are great and delicious. They technically aren't baking, but they're a lot closer in what you actually do to baking than, say, donut holes, so I'm totally going to count them.
I made them because we have almond butter that's going bad. Did you know almond butter will eventually go bad? It will. Open it and make almond butter cups before it's too late.
But everyone who tried them loved them. I made like forty-eight in my second batch and I probably scratched every single mini cupcake tin in the house getting those suckers out, because I'm a dumbass and didn't use liners. This makes it really lucky that I got a silicon mini cupcake sheet for Christmas because these are currently as close to a signature dish as I've gotten. (I mean technically the coconut oil brownies, but those are from a mix so fuck that I can outdo a goddamn brownie mix.)
Caramelized pineapple lassi
This was yesterday. It was delicious. However if you want to make it I'm going to have to tell you to somehow exert enough patience to chill it first, and also probably blend it for more than 60 seconds probably if you don't want to get pineapple in your teeth. (Probably depends a bit on blenders and their settings but. IDK. I don't think I know anyone who is worse at blenders than me so this is probably something you can figure out.)
This one I found when I was new to Food and Drink app and was just looking for things to put in a collection of sweet drinks and shit. But then Dad got a pineapple for his traditional pineapple-glazed Christmas ham. (I don't remember what I had instead of ham but it sadly would have clashed terribly with the glaze so I didn't have any this year.) And it was a huge fucking pineapple, so we probably would have been tripping over leftovers even if I hadn't probably accidentally persuaded him to use canned pineapple in the glaze by mentioning my recipe for a caramelized pineapple lassi.
Lately I've been feeling like I need more icons. I definitely need a Jane Crocker icon. Just for baking.
Also shit I have another of these things to do today don't I oh shit.
krait. I was late with the one before it so I figured I could at least be consistent. (Also yesterday got pretty busy in the afternoon, after I finished my LATEST technicallynotbaking CREATION)Billionaire bars
These were actually a while ago. Shortly before Dragon*Con, I believe? I sort of wanted to modify them to make "genius billionaire playboy philanthropist bars" but honestly they have too much going on already. They're a great thing to make if you want to spend all day making something (there's plenty of "downtime" while things set but there's also always something else to make while you do that) but I don't think they freeze very well. It's hard to say for sure because they did also suffer through Dad bringing them halfway down the east coast on public transport without refrigeration because I forgot them.
Crumb cake
Honestly don't remember if this was before or after the billionaire bars. I think I found the recipe off of What The Fuck Should I Bake? I think I made it because it was one of few things that didn't ask for an ingredient we didn't have, even though the most common things that we run out of are on the ingredient list? Anyway, it came out so wonderful that I feel like it really needs credit for helping me step out of the "super basic cakes and a lot of things from pre-made mixes" zone of baking and into.... whatever zone I'm in now.
Aside: I really have to recommend this blog, if not for the recipes then just for the general reading. Gotta admit, I'm easily bored by a lot of food blog commentary (sorry I don't care how much your kid likes these cookies, I care a lot more about eating these cookies myself) but these guys spice it up pretty nice.
Nutella banana bread
This is probably the beginning of the "needs-based baking," which is in quotes because we never need more sweets in the house. Mom complains about it a lot (she does a lot of diets), Dad and I can't really get through it, I suspect that my brother restrained himself carefully because he was worried his testosterone would drop if he were seen near a cupcake. But we do get foods that don't get eaten in time to be eaten fresh, and then it's a race to bake them.
This was when my brother still lived at home. (Granted that was true until about a week ago, and he's just across the street.) At that point he was eating a lot of bananas, but then.... he went to drill, where he couldn't eat the bananas in the house. So they went brown. So I looked up banana bread recipes, and look at this. It's beautiful. The first time I made it, we didn't have two bread tins, so I tried to bake it in a high-walled ceramic standard pan thing but the walls weren't actually high enough, because it turns out banana bread rises really fucking high. RIP tiny bits of banana bread dough, lost to the searing heat on the bottom of the oven, survived by brethren who survived into delicious bready adulthood.
Taylor Swift cookies
I did not make cookies like Taylor Swift, but
acerbictomes reblogged this post and I was like, "Wow I am not going to pass up the opportunity to say that I got my cookie recipe from Taylor Swift," and I saved the recipe that she linked to. (Her method of making chai baked goods seems really inefficient when you think of chewing on loose tea leaves and better means of chai baked goods.) (Those don't get their own thing because there isn't really a story behind them, just tastiness.) But I didn't make them like this.For some reason, my mom bought coconut flour. I'm still not totally sure why. I had no idea what difference it would make, so I did an experiment where I made one batch replacing vegetable oil with coconut oil and another replacing wheat flour with coconut flour. The former came out, like, super delicious, and shortbready and awesome; the latter, uh. Turns out coconut flour is really dry and makes for some super dry/crumbly cookies, as evidenced by later experiments. I'm not totally sure what to do with it now, other than maybe some sort of biscotti or something else that I can totally coat in chocolate.
But actually in general I really have to recommend baking with coconut oil. If you ever have a chance, try making brownies but replace the vegetable oil with coconut oil. It's beautiful, and it also works with spice cake and pretty much anything.
Almond persimmon cream cheese tart
At some point, my dad signed us up for this thing where local farms put together a box of produce and it gets delivered to our door every other week. This has been pretty good for our food variety; we wind up with a lot of leafy greens that are like, "What the fuck do I do with this?" and then we learn what to do with this and now there's a box of kale chips on the counter that is expiring much more slowly than fresh kale. The biggest problem we had were the persimmons, which I don't think I'd ever seen before; the only reason anyone in the house identified them is because the box comes with a checklist saying what came from where. Needless to say, nobody had any idea what to do with it.
I recently got a Windows 8 computer, though, and with it is the cool Food and Drink app where I can find a bunch of recipes. This is how I was able to make a persimmon tart. The, uh, the actual result was not great, which Dad thinks is because I baked it too long but I think is because I tried to beat a block of cream cheese into liquid by hand.
Almond butter cups
These are great and delicious. They technically aren't baking, but they're a lot closer in what you actually do to baking than, say, donut holes, so I'm totally going to count them.
I made them because we have almond butter that's going bad. Did you know almond butter will eventually go bad? It will. Open it and make almond butter cups before it's too late.
But everyone who tried them loved them. I made like forty-eight in my second batch and I probably scratched every single mini cupcake tin in the house getting those suckers out, because I'm a dumbass and didn't use liners. This makes it really lucky that I got a silicon mini cupcake sheet for Christmas because these are currently as close to a signature dish as I've gotten. (I mean technically the coconut oil brownies, but those are from a mix so fuck that I can outdo a goddamn brownie mix.)
Caramelized pineapple lassi
This was yesterday. It was delicious. However if you want to make it I'm going to have to tell you to somehow exert enough patience to chill it first, and also probably blend it for more than 60 seconds probably if you don't want to get pineapple in your teeth. (Probably depends a bit on blenders and their settings but. IDK. I don't think I know anyone who is worse at blenders than me so this is probably something you can figure out.)
This one I found when I was new to Food and Drink app and was just looking for things to put in a collection of sweet drinks and shit. But then Dad got a pineapple for his traditional pineapple-glazed Christmas ham. (I don't remember what I had instead of ham but it sadly would have clashed terribly with the glaze so I didn't have any this year.) And it was a huge fucking pineapple, so we probably would have been tripping over leftovers even if I hadn't probably accidentally persuaded him to use canned pineapple in the glaze by mentioning my recipe for a caramelized pineapple lassi.
Lately I've been feeling like I need more icons. I definitely need a Jane Crocker icon. Just for baking.
Also shit I have another of these things to do today don't I oh shit.
