The Vintage Baker

[bigmouthbaker]

These healthy muffins are made with monkfruit and low sugar brown sugar, fresh apples and blueberries and raisins.

[bigmouthbaker]

I'm baaack! Moved to a condo, got a boat, got covid a few times, quit drinking...you know, the usual. Now I'm ready to write again, for my own amusement.

[bigmouthbaker]

Emissions Testing

Posts for Bigmouthbaker

Okay, we all have to do it. I accept that. But having to go THREE TIMES??? It was bad enough to take time out of my busy day the first time; after all MasterChef isn’t going to watch itself.  But I did it, I drove to the unfamiliar part of town and I was very pleasant about the whole thing. Imagine my chagrin when they said I failed because, wait for it, I HADN’T DRIVEN ENOUGH. I was nice about it though, and I could see their point. We had had a pandemic with shutdowns so no, I hadn’t driven much. They gave me another deadline and I made sure to intentionally drive around but no, I failed the second time. This was getting really annoying. I decided to put an end to this. I gave the car to my daughters, who live in PA and drive down here for work, with strict instructions to use my car and only my car for their commute. When the time came for the next test I was prepared to use the age card if I failed again; I had heard someone else get a waiver, he was 93 but still.  However, I passed. I was almost disappointed because I was looking forward to a fight on the basis that enough is enough. But somehow I don’t think the emissions people would have seen my side of things. Maybe by the next time I’ll have aged out? It worked for jury duty.

[bigmouthbaker]

[bigmouthbaker]

One of the pleasures of walking through my current neighborhood is that I get to see and smell my favorite flowers, lilacs. One sniff immediately takes me back to gathering them from my yard when I was in grade school, to take to the May Altar. I can see my mother holding the still-wet-from-dew flowers, wrapping the stems in a damp paper towel and then foil. The kitchen table was covered with drips of water and fallen blossoms, and I was excited but for what I am not sure. Though back then any departure from the schoolday routine was reason enough for mild hysteria. Another memory then floated in, of me in church in a line with my classmates, each of us standing next to a beautiful and very tall girl dressed in white who was holding red roses. I cannot remember what sort of ceremony this was, but the girl gave me a rosary at the end of it. Does anyone who went to Catholic school recall this at all? Clearly the scense of smell is a doorway to the past.

[bigmouthbaker]

These healthy muffins are made with monkfruit and low sugar brown sugar, fresh apples and blueberries and raisins.

[bigmouthbaker]

Oreo cake...chocolate cake filled and topped with oreos.

[bigmouthbaker]

Wonton wrappers stuffed with toasted pecans, walnuts and almonds, coconut and honey, sprinkled with cinnamon sugar and sauteed in butter. A great little treat or dessert that tastes like baclava.

[bigmouthbaker]

Today I made my great-grandmother’s and my Mom’s sour beef and dumpling recipe with gingersnap gravy. It took all day, but is sooooo worth it!

[bigmouthbaker]

Saw this idea in a book (why didn’t I ever think of this?) and had to make them. I filled them with my homemade strawberry filling and added the crimped edges and the chocolate drizzle. 

[bigmouthbaker]

Searching for Crema

When I heard “crema” mentioned on Chopped I knew I would have to make it. However, I missed the part about HOW they made it. I tried to find the recipe online but all I got were ones for broccoli soup.  So I sort of thought this recipe up but maybe not, it might have sunk into my subconscious during the Chopped episode. Anyway here is what I did. First I cooked a bunch of broccoli just till it turned that lovely springtime green color. While it bubbled away I sauteed chopped shallots and canned mushrooms in butter. (Of course fresh would have been better but I didn’t have any.) I added the cooked broccoli to the saute pan and tossed it to coat it in the butter. I had a small pan of light cream on low heat to which I tossed in ¼ teaspoon of dried thyme. (The chicken I’m roasting for dinner, Ina Garten’s foolproof recipe, uses fresh thyme so I wanted to echo the flavor in the sauce.) I incorporated one teaspoon of flour in with the broccoli etc and then stirred in the thyme-flavored cream. It thickened a little just like I wanted. Then into the food processor the combo went. It was a little too thick so I poured in a bit more cream. When I tasted the crema it was good but I could not get any thyme flavor. So I added in ¼ teaspoon at a time and kept tasting. After a few times of this and still not succeeding I was tempted to dump in a lot at once but NO! I knew from the experience of having to google “What do you do when you added too much thyme and ruined your dish” that I had to go slowly. Now either the crema has a thyme flavor or I just convinced myself that it does because I was tired of fooling with it. It tastes good, and when the chicken is done I’m going to add just a bit of the chicken “essence” ie the pan drippings to really bring up the flavor. This was fun!

[bigmouthbaker]

Back in the days when I was making up new muffin recipes constantly there were a couple of flavors that eluded me, and one was Popcorn Muffins. Now I pride myself on creating the exact flavor of whatever muffin I’m making. For example PB&J has to taste like PB&J. My creamsicle variety has to (and does!) taste just like a creamsicle. Same with my Hot Toddy muffins and so on. But somehow I could not get the popcorn flavor right. Just putting popcorn in the batter wasn’t enough to bite into the muffin and say “Ah! This tastes like popcorn!” Now for some serendipity. I watch “Chopped” on the mornings I do my workout. Not a minute goes by that I don’t learn something. Today, one of the basket ingredients was popcorn on the cob. Now you know that on this show the contestants have to make the mandatory ingredients shine, no just throwing popcorn on as a garnish. Well this woman chef did what I think is brilliant. She popped the corn and heated it up in a pan of cream to infuse the cream with flavor, and then she pureed the popcorny liquid in a food processor. What she did with it after that I don’t know because my mind was racing. As soon as my exercising was done I went to my kitchen and popped some popcorn. I put it in a pan with evaporated milk and heated it through. I mixed up my usual muffin batter but threw in about a cup of popcorn and then the pureed mixture. As a topping I made some white chocolate popcorn (which certain former co-workers may remember fondly.) So what’s the verdict? Does the muffin taste moist and delicious? Yes! Does it taste like popcorn? NO! Maybe I should have watched more of the show.

[bigmouthbaker]

I was in the kitchen and apples were there too, so. I googled around looking for something different to make and I saw this recipe for Mini Apple Pies. Now I have made nine inch pies, six inch pies and tiny pies, but never ones done in a muffin tin. This recipe intrigued me because the filling would be done in a different way from mine. I swear by Rose Birnbaum’s method which keeps the filling from being runny when the pie is cut but I was in a mood to experiment. And since I wasn’t making the pies for anyone in particular I was pretty sure they would turn out. Making the filling this new way was quicker and easier but it seemed very liquidy to me and I was sure my oven was going to need to be cleaned after this adventure. To my surprise nothing disastrous happened, the filling stayed inside the crusts, the pies were easy to remove (no sticking) and they are cute. A little sweeter than my usual so next time I’d use less sugar. I will still use RB’s method sometimes, it all depends on my mood.

BTW, to re-read any of my past posts (someone asked me about this) they can be found @bigmouthbaker.tumblr.com

[bigmouthbaker]

Vegan pizza with homemade crust and pizza sauce, carmelized onions and colorful vegetables.

[bigmouthbaker]

Last night I was making chicken for dinner in my Dutch oven. After I had pre-salted it several hours earlier (thank you Samin Nosrat, author of the Salt Fat Acid Heat Cookbook) I browned it in some butter and olive oil. I needed a liquid to help it finish cooking and was about to pour in some wine when I saw the tiny bit of evaporated milk I had left after making cottage cheese salsa the other day. (You almost never use a whole can of evaporated milk, right?) I added that in, not even half a cup, and periodically basted the chicken with it. I was surprised when after dinner my husband said that he loved the cream sauce on the chicken! Well well, I now have another almost-healthy dish to add to my recipe folder.

[bigmouthbaker]

Cookies, chocolate chip and oatmeal.

[bigmouthbaker]

I forget why I had bought the cottage cheese in the first place but I wasn’t using it. I think you all know about my aversion to throwing any food out. So I turned to my trusted adviser Google and found a couple of recipes that would fill the bill. The cottage cheese patties looked like fun but I didn’t have the necessary onion soup mix or cream of mushroom soup. No problem, I had the recipes for these in my favorites folder, and they mixed up quickly. For the last bit of cottage cheese I found a recipe for cottage cheese pesto, but I didn’t have any fresh basil. A quick google search (one I use a lot for “what to substitute if you don’t have…”) told me I could use fresh spinach, which I did have. By the way, I always use about half of the olive oil the recipe calls for, otherwise the pesto is way too liquidy. I plan to use the pesto on the edamame noodles I just bought to try. Both of these recipes made me happy because they not only rescued the cottage cheese but they also taste really good!