I Made It Monday

So long story short. Last week was one just plain forgotten. Girl Scout camping was okay but the car breaking down in the middle of No Freaking Where was decidedly not fun, especially when the battery on my phone was going, we were hungry, tired and grungy AND I as a girl (if you know what I mean). Then a week of illness. A head cold got Cyra and stomach bug hit me mighty hard. All that equaled a big "Piss Off" to the world. Which was okay because it was clearly needed. On my end. Not the world's.

Anyhow, After a week of nothing and finally feeling better, I went about this weekend like a prisoner after doing twenty years for a parking ticket. Saturday I tackled the lawn and realized that despite Scott's assurance that I don't need a machete for the Zombie Apocalypse, I most certainly need one for the lawn! Then I spent Sunday baking.

Oh yes, my friends, I give you plenty of warning, this is a yummy I Made It Monday. I give to you:

Battle of the Beer Breads

I've been wanting to make beer bread for a while now and finally found some motivation. It could have been the sheer amount of beer crowding my refridgorator. Or maybe the...nope. It was pretty much all the beer in the house. Now, fair and honest here, I do not drink beer. I don't like it. Never have. Give me whiskey, rum, Bailey's! Scott, however is a big fan of beer - it's his job, you see, so we often have a good deal of it around. 

Beer bread is another matter altogether and I do like it. So, this is what I had sitting in the fridge:

Budweiser, Shock Top End of the World Midnight Wheat, Goose Island India Pale Ale, and Murphy's Stout

And wouldn't you know it I happened to find a whole slew of recipes online for beer bread. For simplicity's sake, I'm not going to upload a gazillion photos of batter and individual loaves. I'll focus on the ingredients and show the end results altogether at the...you know...end.

First up, the Shock Top. This beer, clearly for the December 22nd apocalypse, has been around the longest and needed to be used up. I really wanted to actually try drinking it with it's hint of chocolate, chili and other spices, but I just never got around to it. I found this recipe, at Tasty Kitchen, made with a touch of honey that I thought would compliment the Shock Top nicely.

Cast for Honey Beer Bread: flour, sugar, baking powder, salt, honey, beer, and melted butter.

This was an easy recipe to put together. And Holy Moly! Melted butter! The butter was poured over the batter once it was in the loaf pan. I'd never seen that done before and I had my doubts, but man! did it turn out pretty.

Next, I went with the Murphy's Stout. I found a recipe on TheKitchn for a Cheddar and Chive Guinness Bread that looked like it would be delicious. Again with the melted butter! So much butter! Many of the recipes I looked at called for drenching the batter in butter. Who am I to argue with butter?

Ingredients: Flour, sugar...blah blah blah, cheddar cheese and chives!

For the last two loaves I used the same basic recipe I found on FarmGirlFare. Now her actual recipe is for a dill and cheddar beer bread, but she gives instructions for just a basic loaf. I used the India Pale Ale alone for one loaf and then for the loaf I made with the Bud, I threw in a packet of Ranch seasoning.

Cast: blah blah blah BEER! Could it be any simpler?

Rinse and Repeat. No wait! That's shampoo.

Out of all the recipes I tried, the last one is the easiest to throw together and the quickest cooking. Although, honestly I found that pretty much all the recipes are alike in the basic ingredients and the variations come with the extra seasonings and spices. FarmGirlFare offers a variety of flavors to try.

Now for the reveal:

From left to right (by beer): Shock Top, Murphy's. IPA, and Bud

By far I think my favorite was the Honey Beer Bread with the Shock Top. It's a bit sweeter and with just a hint of the chocolate and chili it could almost pass for a heavy cake. It could have used a touch more honey, I think, and a little less butter. The girls also preferred this loaf.

The Murphy's Cheddar and Chive was I think had the most powerful beer flavor come through. It's very hearty and I thought it could do with a bit more cheese and possibly some oats or nuts or seeds. This was Scott's favorite.

Out of all the breads, the India Pale Ale was kind of boring. There wasn't any punch, any zing, any pizzazz like the others to compliment the hoppyness of the beer. Also, it was very crumbly and the lightest of the four loaves. The girls didn't favor this one at all!

The Budweiser Ranch bread needed something more. Maybe some cheese, I'm not sure. Thinking about it, maybe it was the recipe itself because both the IPA and the Bud followed the same recipe and both ended up feeling incomplete. I like the lightness of the bread as compared with the denser loaves, it just needs something to punch up the flavor a tad.

All in all, I'd say it was an overall success. I think in general I have learned two very important things: first, all beer bread recipes are pretty much the same and very simple which means there is a lot of wiggle room to improvise and devise my own recipe; and two, the darker the beer, the better the beer bread. 

Bonus Bread Photo:

I also, because I'm crazy and was clearly on some sort of bread making trip, made a loaf of Irish Soda Bread which turned out so delightfully good that I'm going to need to make another loaf ASAP, because this one won't last for more than a day!

I Made It Monday

I've mentioned before how I am a gamer - I should clarify that though I play video games and board games, my love is tabletop RPGs like Dungeons and Dragons and, of course, Pathfinder. For the past two plus years I've been playing in a single adventure path ("adventure paths" are self contained adventures that take a character from 1st level to a high level over the course of six interconnected adventures, hence, adventure path).

Two weeks ago my gaming group and I completed an entire adventure path. It is the first campaign I have ever finished. It was sad to see it end. Characters that we had developed over two years suddenly ready to retire and new characters and a new campaign to start. As sad as I was to see the old campaign come to a close I was excited to start a new one. Yesterday, my group started a new adventure path called Skull and Shackles in which we, the characters, get pressed into piracy.

I love pirates. I love pirate themed anything. And as it happens I also love to bake. Typically I make some kind of dessert, snack or treat for my guys each session. I spoil them really. But that's okay because I love baking so much that I can sometimes overdo things and having three extra guys in the house helps to take care of the food.

So this week for the start of the campaign I made my guys hardtack.

Seriously.

The dough was so sticky I had my doubts to whether I would actually be able to roll it out.

Now, I wanted my guys to actually eat the stuff so I didn't go with a traditional flour, water, salt recipe. I found one that called for oats, honey, and buttermilk. Again, not exactly hardtack, but...similar.

Interestingly enough I actually have a small round biscuit cutter.

 

The bottoms of the hardtack got a nice golden brown but the top remained a slightly pale shade of dough. "Dough" is a color, right?

Pretty, right?

These actually tasted pretty good. Although not technically "hard" the guys still got a chuckle out of it and Scott and the girls said they wouldn't mind some in their lunchboxes to snack on during the day. I'm definitely going to make these again but next time with a touch more honey and maybe some cinnamon or nutmeg.

And because I didn't want my guys to get stuck with scurvy (because who in their right mind would) I made a lemon wafer cookie. Oh my goodness this cookie was just about the most delicious lemon cookie I have ever made before.

A crisp buttery cookie with a tart lemon glaze. Yum!

I Made It Monday

Can I tell you a secret? I really hope this doesn't ruin my baking street cred, but I have never made pizza from scratch before.

Still think I'm awesome?

Look, pizza from a pizza joint has always been more convenient albeit expensive. It just never occurred to me to make it on my own. Maybe because making a yeast dough, until this past year, was intimidating. Maybe because until we moved ordering a pizza didn't seem like a luxury.

We love pizza. Back in the day, we had it almost weekly. Now it has become a special event item, ordered for a celebration, a reward or a special night. Our taste buds live for the days when a visiting family member offered to pay for some pizza.

I had a hankering last week for pizza, a desperate yearning that gnawed at me for days. But rent, power and groceries told me that pizza would have to wait. While I was menu planning (the only thing that keeps me on budget when I grocery shop) I was flipping through The Pioneer Woman's cookbook and found her recipe for pizza dough. (FYI - the recipe I used from her book, is not on her website so far as I can tell, however, this link will bring you to her page for a number of her pizza recipes. All of which look delicious.)

Light bulb!

If I want pizza, I thought, why not just make it. Yeast no longer scares me, we already have veggies down on the list, what's adding one or two more and the only major expense, cheese and meat, could be wiggled into the budget if I got rid of something, say like cereal, and planned more pancake breakfasts.

Pizza, my friends, was back in our lives! Bigtime!

Cast of delicious characters minus the sauce. The sauce was shy (I forgot to take it out for the photo and didn't feel like a reshoot.) Also, although I have sausage out, I ended up just using the pepperoni and some diced ham I already had in the fridge.

I chose to make an minor investment in pizza pans although I'm sure I could have used my cookie sheets. I figured if I had pizza pans I would be more likely to make pizza again to justify the cost the pans.

Pizza dough is a sticky dough unlike bread dough. And there isn't any kneading. Although I used the Pioneer Woman's recipe, I modified it slightly to make it a bit more zesty with the flavor. I added basil, marjoram, garlic and pepper to the flour before mixing in the proofed yeast. My dough looks nothing like the photo's in PW's book but from the get go it smelled heavenly.

Three hours of rising later, my dough still didn't look like the pictures, but I figured if it had risen I must have gotten something right.

I really love chopping vegetables. It's relaxing and delicious all at the same time.

Parmesan. Yum.

Fresh mozzarella. Double and triple yum!

The pizzas assembled. It was hard taking photos while I was in the middle of added the toppings so I just took shots of the finished products. The dough was stretchy and although I wanted to try my hand at tossing the dough, I refrained. I have marvelous self control.

Pizza #1 - half Hawaiian, half pepperoni

Pizza #2 - I guess you could call it a supreme.

And finally the finished and cooked homemade pizzas:

 

Now, certainly there were some problems. Stretching the dough out was an issue. I tended to stretch it too thin in places. Also, I left the dough for the second sitting out uncovered while I made the first pizza and the dough got a tad dried out. Scott (who knows a thing or two about pizza, having worked in the industry) said that I overloaded the middle with toppings which prevented the crust in the middle to fully cook - it was a bit on the mushy, doughy side. The sauce I used was store bought and more of a marinara than a pizza sauce and I probably should have stuck with a plain pizza sauce. But other than that and despite the mushy middle, these were phenomenal and I could have kicked myself for not attempting homemade pizza before this. 

Maybe after a few tries I'll look to making my own sauce too. And maybe, just maybe, if my gardening goes well this year, I'll truly be able to call a pizza "totally made from scratch." 

Well, except for the flour. And the yeast. And the cheese. So I guess I'd just be able to call it mostly almost totally made from scratch.

Photo A Day - Happened This Weekend

It was Cyra's birthday this past week. A whole decade old. I find it quite disconcerting how quickly she is growing, not just in age, but in maturity, attitude, and jeesh! height! The girl is one inch shy of five feet. She is six measly inches shorter that I am. When she was born she was long and skinny and the doctor and nurses commented that she'd probably be pretty tall. At each yearly check-up she is off the charts in height.

Sigh.

We didn't do much for her on her actual birthday since it fell during the week. She requested an oh so fabulous bacon wrapped meatloaf for dinner and instead of cake I made tapioca and stuck a candle in it. The cake would wait until Saturday when she would have her party.

This year she opted for a small one with her two best friends. And that was fine with me (budget, budget, budget!). The only thing she really wanted to do was to go bowling. She talked about it constantly for weeks leading up to her party. So as soon as the girls arrived, off we went to the bowling alley!

I love bowling balls. Shiny and colorful! Just begging for a photo op!

Cyra's big feet! No, really! She's already wearing a women's size 7!

The cake, of course, came later!

Chocolate cookies and cream cake with cookies and cream vanilla frosting and (not pictured) a scoop of cookies and cream ice cream. Can we sense a theme here?

Story of a Cake Photo Edition

You didn't really think that I wouldn't take photos of the cake, did you?

mmm...melting chocolate and butter. What a great base for a cake.

A little yolk and sugar.

Beating those egg whites into shape!

Fold the egg whites into the chocolate base.

I could totally eat this as is!

It isn't there just yet...

Grating chocolate is tiring.

Almost looking like the photo!

There it is. I plan on adding a touch of fresh whipped cream with a touch of vanilla for garnish instead of the chocolate curls. Also, this is the very same orange plate that I served it on the first time.