Christmas Cooking Part 1 Mastering the Croissant

I absolutely love croissants. I have mastered the actual recipe and am now working on mastering variations of the recipe. Today, I made regular croissants, pain au chocolat, and pain aux amandes. For Pain au Chocolats, I recommend using bittersweet chocolates or chocolate sticks (you can find them a places like kingarthurflour.com). For the Pain aux Amandes, I found a can of almond paste made by solo at Harmon's Grocery Store. It worked so much better than the tubes of almond paste. It had more moisture and the flavor was incredible. Happy Baking!

Croissant

Pain au Chocolat

Pain aux Amandes

Proofing

Proofing: A step in creating yeast breads and baked goods, during which the yeast is allowed to leaven the dough.

When making doughs, they need time to proof. Professional baking shops have a proofer that looks kind of like an oven. It keeps a constant temperature and a specific percentage of humidity (depending upon the type of dough). You can create the same type of environment in your oven by heating the oven to the lowest degree allowed on your oven (mine is 170F). Turn off the oven and open the door slightly to get it to cool to between 75 & 85 degrees. Place a low pan with boiling water in the bottom rack of the oven. This will create the humidity needed so that you don't need to use saran wrap. Keep an eye on your dough while it rises until it reaches the size you need.

When proofing doughs that are high in butter, if the oven is too hot the butter will leak out.

100% Homemade Beef Stroganoff

My mom has made beef stroganoff my entire life. I love it. When I moved into my apartment, I didn't have the same cookbooks as her and was sadly disappointed by many of the stroganoff recipes I found. Many of the recipes are more...semi-homemade calling for cream of mushroom soup, onion soup, or onion soup mix. I prefer the full home made kind. It can be served over rice or egg noodles, I prefer rice. This is a dinner that can be ready in 30 minutes or an hour depending on when you want to serve. I am horrible with measuring...I don't actually measure anything with this recipe so if you feel like maybe 1/4c ketchup is too much, just put in a squirt or so. If you don't want to use 1 cup of sour cream, just use a couple of spoon fulls. It's all about finding the recipe and taste you like the best. It's not a science, these pieces all work well together no matter what. I like my stroganoff to be thick, while my mom likes hers a bit thinner. To get your stroganoff to be thick, add a little more flour and let it simmer to thicken.

Beef Stroganoff
(for 2 with a days worth of leftovers)

1 sirloin steak cut into strips or cubed (you can also use stew meat or ground beef)
4 Tablespoons Butter
1 can mushrooms (or 4 oz cut up mushrooms)
Worcestershire sauce for taste (about a tablespoon)
Garlic, salt, & pepper to taste
1 can beef broth
1/2 onion minced
2 Tablespoons flour
1 c sour cream

Saute the mushrooms in 1 Tablespoon of butter. Remove mushrooms. In the same pan, brown steak with the butter. When the steak is brown on the outside, season with salt, pepper, garlic, and worchestershire sauce.

Add 2/3 of the beef broth, onion, and ketchup. Cover and simmer 15 minutes or until the beef is tender. Blend the reserved broth an meat and add to beef. The mixture will begin to thicken. Add mushrooms and heat to boiling stir for about 1 minutes. Add sour cream and heat through.

Serve over rice or egg noodles.

Caramel Coating

When I was cooking for Halloween, I came across an excellent recipe for a mix of treats covered in caramel. This would be a fabulous recipe for Christmas if you are doing neighborhood gifts, or if you just like to make sweet treats for the Holidays. For my Halloween recipe, I omitted the peanuts and added plain M&Ms instead of candy pumpkins.



Caramel Coating

1 cup packed brown sugar
3/4 cup light brown syrup
1/4 cup butter, cubed
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1/2 teaspoon baking soda

In a large saucepan combine the brown sugar, corn syrup, and butter; bring to a rolling boil. Boil for 6 minutes, stirring occasionally. Remove from the heat; quickly stir in vanilla and baking soda until mixture is light and foamy. Immediately pour over chosen snack mix and toss to coat. Bake, uncovered, at 250 degrees for 1 hour, stirring every 15 minutes. Cool completely before eating.

The Snack Mixture for Halloween was

3 quarts popped popcorn
4 cups Cheerios
4 cups Chex
2 cups salted peanuts
1 package (16oz) candy pumpkins

Mix all ingredients together, except candy pumpkins. Prepare caramel coating and follow the directions. After the mixture has been baked, add candy pumpkins.

Pastry

I have been trying out the art of pastry which can be fairly difficult depending on what you are making. There are six types of pastries I am going to focus on:

Shortcrust/Sweetcrust: tart shells

Phyllo: Greek/Middle Eastern, made for things like baklava

Flaky: pie crusts

Puff: croissants, cheese straws, hor'devours, danishes, beef wellingtons, and the list goes on

Choux: French, used for cream puffs, eclairs, and so forth

I have mastered the puff pastry and flaky pastry. Today I wanted to try out the choux pastry. The first recipe I used (from Williams-Sonoma Baking cook book) wasn't that fabulous and was a little runny for me. Then I found another one and was able to make these beautiful little cream puffs. I filled them with whipped cream and will try and find a custard recipe later. I didn't make any eclairs, just puffs for today, but they came out beautifully.

Frightening Fingers

From Taste of Home's Holiday & Celebrations Cookbook

INGREDIENTS

• 1 cup butter, softened
  
• 1 cup confectioners' sugar
  
• 1 egg
  
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
  
• 1 teaspoon almond extract
  
• 2-3/4 cups all-purpose flour
  
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
  
• 1 teaspoon salt
  
• Red decorating gel
  
• 1/2 cup sliced almonds
  
  

DIRECTIONS

In a large mixing bowl, cream butter and sugar. Beat in the egg and extracts. Combine the flour, baking powder and salt; gradually add to the creamed mixture. Divide dough into fourths. Cover and refrigerate for 30 minutes or until easy to handle.
Working with one piece of dough at a time, roll into 1-in. balls. Shape balls into 3-in. x 1/2-in. fingers. Using the flat tip of a table knife, make an indentation on one end of each for fingernail. With a knife, make three slashes in the middle of each finger for knuckle.
Place 2 in. apart on lightly greased baking sheets. Bake at 325° for 20-25 minutes or until lightly browned. Cool for 3 minutes. Squeeze a small amount of red gel on nail bed; press a sliced almond over gel for nail, allowing gel to ooze around nail. Remove to wire racks to cool. Yield: about 5 dozen cookies.

Printed from tasteofhome.com Oct 26, 2008

Copyright Reiman Media Group, Inc © 2008

Halloween FEAST

I love Halloween food. Every year I try and make crazy food and this year was kind of a toss up, I wasn't in charge of the party or the menu which was really nice because I only had to worry about my little part. I had to find appetizers and desserts to make to go with Chicken Parmesean and Calazone Mummies by Friday (this was on Wednesday). The week had been really busy because Wednesday night is game night and we played Halo forever so I didn't have time to think about it and Thursday we went to Body Worlds and didn't get home until late. When Friday rolled around I had to hurry and throw somethings together but luckily I buy those little cooking magazines in the supermarket around Halloween and flipped through and found some fun ideas. I have some incredible ideas for next year that include a full thorax and flesh eating worms that I won't have time to do this year so stay tuned!!!

This Year...

Maile used white donuts, gummy life savers, and m&m's for eyeballs
Oreo's, licorice, and m&m's for spiders

Maile made a cookie cake and frosted it

Pilsbury Halloween Cookies
Brownies w/Frosting and chopped Snickers & M&M's on top

Caramel Popcorn w/Cheerios & Chex

I bought these bags at Target in the Halloween section

Last Year's Halloween Party:

Last Year, I hosted the Halloween Party, Drew and Allison did the decor and I cooked all the food. I found these really neat cups that are skeleton hands holding the cup, you can buy them at the party store but they are cheaper at oriental trading. (I'm sorry I don't have better pictures of the food items) The Menu was:

-Dinner in a Pumpkin (Rice, Ground Beef, Mushrooms and Spices placed in a pumpkin that has been cleaned and bake until the inside of the pumpkin is soft)
-Boo Ghost Rolls (Rhodes Rolls shaped like ghosts glazed with egg yokes)
-Green Salad
-Witches Fingers (Almond cookies shaped like fingers with Almonds and Red food gel for nails)
-Ogre Toes (Peanut butter cookies shaped like toes with peanut m&m's for the toe nails)
-Pumpkin Shaped Orange Popcorn Balls (Made with orange jello and food gel, I used green dots for the stems)
-Shrunken Heads in Apple Cider (Peel 6 apples and carve faces in them. Bake in the oven at about 350 until the heads shrink and are very light brown, place in cider)
-Buried Witch Cake (bake two chocolate square cakes, one is the base, the second your crumble up for the dirt. Frost inbetween the square cake and the dirt. My mom made the hat, arms, and feet out of fondant)
-Spiced Pumpkin Seeds (I saved the seeds from the pumpkin and baked them in worchestershire sauce and salt until brown)

Little Goodies: Caramel-Chocolate Apples and Mini Doughnuts

We had friends over last night for Halo night and before it started I was really bored. When I am bored I usually pull out my cookbooks and bake something, but we don't really have that much in our fridge right now, but I had a lot of caramel so I made apples. After I had cleaned up my amazing apple mess I had a brilliant idea to pull out our mini doughnut maker and make some doughnuts!

Chocolate Caramel Apples




1 package caramel (I bought mine at Harmon's and it came with sticks)
2T water
4-6 granny smith apples

Wash the apples thoroughly and place a stick in each apple. Melt the caramel and water in a bowl over boiling water or a double boiler. When melted, dip the apples in.

For the dipping chocolate

Chocolate

Melt 6 ounces semi-sweet or bitter sweet chocolate. When melted dip the apples. Place in the fridge for 30 minutes to cool.

White Chocolate

Melt 6 ounces white chocolate chips. Add 1/2T vegetable oil. I am still working on perfecting this recipe, this is basically a recipe for fondue. After coated with chocolate, roll in cinnamon-sugar.

I threw in some pretzels too for fun



MINI DOUGHNUTS!!

This is a mini doughnut maker we got at Williams Sonoma, all of the recipes come with the maker.

Easy Dinners: Fajita's

I was feeling extremely lazy Monday night and Natty was on his way home from practice. While I was exploring the refrigerator for something edible I found (I really shouldn't say found because that sounds terrible but I really didn't know they were there) some tortillas. My husband is an extremely picky eater and sometimes it's super easy to make him dinner and sometimes I get frustrated when I can't think of anything he will eat and I make a baked potato and make him find something himself (which is usually Kraft and only Kraft brand Mac & Cheese). So I had some tortillas and we have a lot of chicken because we eat chicken more than anything else. We don't use peppers because Natty doesn't eat them, but onions and peppers are really good if you saute them. You can top them with anything you top a taco with and it takes around 15 minutes and dinner is ready.

Easy Peasy Fajita's

Chicken Breasts cut into strips
1/2 Onion
1 Green Pepper
1 Red Pepper or 1 Yellow Pepper
Taco Seasoning

Toppings:
Cheese
Sour Cream
Guacamole
and anything else you can think of

Grill the chicken breasts until they are cooked through. Add the peppers and onions, saute with taco seasoning. When the chicken and veggies are about ready, heat up the tortillas in a separate pan (they become more flexible and are warm)

Cooking Adventure 1: Cake Baking

On Saturday, Natty's mom asked me to bake a cake for Sunday Dinner. She sent up a Williams-Sonoma Cake Mix and frosting which made it easy for me. I have never baked an entire cake, I have baked cupcakes but never a full cake. The cake was three layers and actually turned out really pretty. I will have to work on my frosting techniques a little bit. For my cake pans, I traced the bottom of the pan onto parchment paper and cut it out, that way the cake didn't get stuck to the bottom of the pan. I also put the frosting into the mixer before putting it on the cake which made it nice and light and fluffy. The cake plate is also from Williams-Sonoma.

Welcome!

Welcome to What is Tacia Cookin'! I will post my recipes, ideas, and pictures here. I love to cook and bake, my favorite thing to make is pastries (although they are incredibly difficult). I love all types of food and am willing to try anything. My favorite stores are Williams-Sonoma and Tony Caputo's. Tony Caputo's offers some really awesome cooking classes you can check them out here - http://www.caputosdeli.com/cookingclass/.