01.24.10
Posted in Beef, Breakfast, Cookies & Candies, Dessert, Dinner, Meats, Persnickety Bits, Pies & Tarts, Poultry, Quick Breads, Sides, Veggies at 7:34 pm by julie
It’s been a few months since I’ve managed to post anything on the blog. I wish I could use the busy holiday season as my excuse, but that really isn’t the case. In truth, I’ve been faithfully cataloging our meals by date, complete with edited photos and recipe notations. However, when it comes time to write up a finished post, I stall out trying to find some way around the admission that most of the food I cook these days is purely utilitarian. I cook largely from the pantry because getting to the grocery store is often problematic, and my pantry is stripped to the basics for financial reasons, so most of the time I feel like the little Dutch boy, constantly plugging the gaps in my recipes with substitutes. I’m also trying to cook for, and around, a 22-month old who is simultaneously going through a picky phase and cutting his 2-year molars. I like to say that cooking is the only hobby I can make time for these days, but it’s not true if I define the hobby aspect as pushing my boundaries with new ingredients and techniques. It’s all I can do to get a coherent meal on the table these days, and writing it in black and white on the blog just drives that point home.
I know I’m not the only one out there whose financial and family responsibilities sometimes overshadow the fun parts of cooking, so I’ll try to get past my writer’s block and get back to the posts. They may not always be exciting or challenging, but hopefully they may help some people who are in a similar predicament. I’ll start by filling in a few of the gaps since the holiday season.
We didn’t cook Thanksgiving dinner on Thanksgiving this year. We were invited up to eat with my husband’s relatives, and shared a great day with them. Nolan ate heartily and had a fantastic time sharing toys and kisses with everyone there. I brought along a batch of whole wheat-walnut butterhorns, a loaf of pumpkin bread with a banana cream swirl (leftover cannoli filling, actually), and two pies, white chocolate pecan and cinnamon crumble apple. We came home with just some the desserts leftover, and the refrigerator almost seemed haunted by a lack of turkey and sides; the extra pie disappeared far too quickly for our health.
About a week later, I gave into my itch and made a mini-Thanksgiving dinner centered around a roasted chicken. I used some pre-mixed turkey brine to flavor the chicken, but miscalculated the percentages, because the chicken came out extremely salty, so much so that the gravy I made from the drippings was nearly inedible. At least it was just a 4-lb chicken, and the sides helped balance out some of the overseasoning: steamed broccoli, apple and onion cornbread stuffing, mashed potatoes, pureed sweet potatoes with sherry and fried onions, and yeasted pan rolls left over from a previous meal. We didn’t much care for the stuffing, which was a little dry and gritty for our tastes, but I may not have added enough liquid. I liked the sweet potatoes quite a bit because they walked that line of sweet and savory; Jeremy thought they were good, but left off the fried onions. For dessert, I made a caramelized walnut tart that was very tasty and roundly appreciated. I should note that all of these items were made from the freezer and pantry.
The week before Christmas, Jeremy came home from Costco with an 11-lb turkey. I admit that my heart fell when I saw it, because we had talked about doing some sort of beef roast for Christmas dinner, and I thought he was changing the menu without a consult. As it turns out, there was just such a good deal on turkeys that he couldn’t pass it up: something like $10 for a turkey that size. This time I avoided the brining, and rubbed my turkey with miso butter; I also baked a loaf of bread in advance so we would be able to have our standard slow cooker stuffing, and tried out a carrot souffle since we were out of yams. The turkey made for great leftovers and stock, but was generally forgettable. The carrot souffle was interesting and worth making again with a few tweaks. I didn’t have sharp cheddar so I just used medium, which costs less. Although I minced the onion as finely as possible, we found their texture to be unpalatable in the otherwise smooth souffle, since they are added raw after the carrots are pureed, and didn’t cook through in the oven; next time I would either grate the onion on a microplane, saute it minced, or possibly cook it along with the carrot. It would definitely be a good change of pace for us from time to time, though, since I always seem to be working my way through a big bag of organic carrots from Costco.
I wasn’t able to make my Daring gingerbread house in December because I ran out of most of my baking spices (cinnamon, ginger, cloves, and vanilla), and needed to save what little I did have on hand for edible baked goods, like molasses spice cookies. The latter were addictive, made from my last little bit of freshly ground whole spices, plus organic molasses and demerara sugar. I also made my personal favorite, pecan snowballs, and tried out some cinnamon-kissed chocolate oatmeal cookies from Dorie Greenspan’s Baking.
With all those cookies in the house, we forsook a fancy dessert to go with our Christmas dinner, which was made all the more festive by my parents’ arrival at the airport at 4pm on the very day. I had anticipated making as much of the meal in advance as possible, and splurging on a beef tenderloin roast that would take less than an hour to cook, but the cost of a standing rib roast was so much more reasonable that I adjusted the plan. The roast was dry-brined overnight in the fridge, and removed to room temperature as we walked out the door for the airport. Upon returning, we opened presents and nibbled on stuffed mushrooms and fresh bread with white bean hummus until the roast and fixings were ready. I went with a porcini jus, sweet potato puree with goat cheese and truffle oil, mustard roasted potatoes, and the cream braised Brussels sprouts that I’ve made for my folks before. The roast beef came out delicious and perfectly cooked, the Brussels sprouts vanished in a flash, the roasted potatoes were adequate, and Jeremy thought the goat cheese masked the flavor of the sweet potatoes (which may have been why I thought they were pretty good).
The leftover prime rib made for excellent sandwiches in the days after Christmas, but the most interesting meal we had was not one I cooked. My father was kind enough to share his new speciality with us: ebelskivers. He’s made many varieties of these tiny round pancakes, both sweet and savory, usually with a dollop of filling hidden inside like a treasure. This time, he filled the ebelskivers with a cinnamon apple filling, and topped them off with powdered sugar. They made perfect, tender little bites, and we all loved them, so much so that I really wish I had an ebelskiver pan now.
That pretty much brings things up to speed. Since Nolan started cutting his 2-year molars just after New Years, he’s barely been eating at all. Suggestions on how to fatten up a scrawny toddler greatly appreciated!
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09.21.08
Posted in Baby Food, Persnickety Bits at 10:03 pm by julie
It’s hard to believe, but our little Nolan is already half a year old. We purposefully chose to delay solids with him until 6 months of age, but since he was 26 weeks old yesterday and will be 6 months by date tomorrow, we decided it was time to give his two little teeth something to do. I plan to make all of Nolan’s baby food, and on overwhelming recommendations, we chose mashed avocado for his first food.
The sweet, innocent baby has no idea what is in store for him. He’s thinking, sweet, a cool new toy to play with, a stylish accessory, and my own little chair. When’s my next bottle?
Then Mommy stuck some green mush in his mouth.
After a few attempts, he got tired of the new game pretty quickly and started turning away and gluing his lips together. A new persnickety palate in the making… (That, by the way, is something I dearly want to avoid. Having struggled with being an exquisitely picky eater all my life, I want to encourage Nolan, so far as I can, to be a healthy, adventurous eater. Hopefully, that will also mean forcing myself to overcome certain aversions by way of example.)
But maybe it isn’t so bad… (This is a classic Nolan face, by the way. He slides his jaw side to side like Bill Murray in Caddyshack.)
I think we ended on a good note. This is just practice food anyway. I mashed up half the avocado with a drop of lemon juice and froze it in teaspoon-sized blobs for our next attempts. I’ve got bananas and brown rice (for homemade cereal), and want to make some homemade applesauce and pears while they’re in season. Wish us luck, and any suggestions would be appreciated.
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08.14.08
Posted in Cuisines, Dinner, Italian, Leftovers, Pastas, Persnickety Bits, Veggies at 5:25 pm by julie
Oh lordy, it is 100F outside and close to 90F indoors—way too hot to think about cooking! But the house has been cleaned up and the baby is still asleep, so I’ve got time to revisit an old post I meant to write way back in early June, when the weather was still mild and reasonable—seems like ages ago. My mom came for a visit the second week of June, to keep Nolan and me company while Jeremy was away at a training for work. While she was here, we were incredibly busy remodeling our back room to make it fit for a home theater room (our previous HT room was a bedroom that had to be sacrificed for Nolan’s nursery; both are still works in progress at this point). Over the course of five days, we emptied, cleaned and repainted the room, purchased Roman shades and an area rug, and started putting together a new TV stand. We also had a drawing of Jeremy’s framed, got the dog’s toenails clipped, and—the point of this post—visited the Salem Wednesday farmer’s market.
Among other things, we came home from the market with Hood strawberries for ice cream, a bouquet of curly garlic scapes, and a huge bagful of fava beans. While Nolan napped after all the excitement and my mom worked on painting the baseboards, I macerated berries, buzzed up an easy recipe for garlic scape pesto, and got the favas shelled, blanched and peeled. When dinnertime rolled around, all I had to do was cook pasta and toss it together with the favas—quickly sauteed in olive oil—the pesto, and a splash of cream. The pesto turned out to have an intense garlicky heat, much more powerful than I had anticipated. A little went a very long way, so we had lots left over. (I mixed some of it into scrambled eggs, which helped tame the flavor but produced some awfully unphotogenic beige eggs, a disappointment since the pesto itself was such a sprightly spring green.)
As for the room, I keep trying to take photos that actually show what it looks like now. (You can see, a bit, its previous state in this photo, which was taken from nearly the same stance.) Alas, the problem is that I can’t back up enough with our camera’s lens to capture more than a corner of the room at one time. But this should at least give you the gist of it, complete with ugly purple couch and pretty German shepherd pup. What you can’t quite see to the left is the TV, and to the right is a built-in bookshelf, the stairs to the basement, another big window, and three hanging pots containing herbs that keep dying (I think it is just too hot back there now—currently wilting are sage, lemon thyme and basil plants). We still need to get some speakers and other equipment set up, and take care of a few finishing touches like more artwork, but I’m pretty happy with the result, considering our limited options.
My laptop is about to fuse to my knees, so I’m going to give it a chance to cool off. Man, that strawberry ice cream sounds really good about now… time to make a fresh batch of something cool and refreshing, I dare say.
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04.04.08
Posted in Eggs, Persnickety Bits at 3:08 pm by julie
I remember making deviled eggs for the first time when I was a little kid. I was an incredibly picky eater (what? really?), but deviled eggs were definitely on my list of eatables. So at some point I decided to try making them myself. I knew where my mom’s recipe was, so I pulled it down while the eggs boiled (20 minutes at a hard boil, eek! No wonder the yolks always turned gray around the edges.) and opened it to the right page.
I knew deviled eggs had mustard in them because I had watched my mom make them before. It gave me pause when I first found out, because I don’t use mustard as a condiment, even today, but the taste of the eggs was so wonderfully creamy that I just tried not to think about the contamination while I was eating them. But it was a different story when I went to make the recipe myself.
I happily sliced eggs and popped out the very hard-boiled yolks with a spoon, mashing them up with Miracle Whip, cider vinegar and salt. I pulled the squeeze bottle of mustard out of the refrigerator and spent a long while contemplating whether or not I should leave it out. Would it really make any difference if I did? In the end, I convinced myself that the mustard was in the recipe for a purpose (though what that might be I couldn’t imagine). I made myself squeeze a blob of day-glo yellow mustard into the measuring spoon, accompanied by a trickle of watery liquid that made my nose wrinkle in disgust, and plopped it into the egg yolks. I stirred it through as quickly as possible to put the whole traumatic experience behind me, scanned the yellow mush for heterogeneous streaks of mustard, and stuffed them back in the whites with a sprinkle of ancient paprika for the final touch. Cautiously nibbling my first bite, I was pleased to discover that they tasted just like my mom’s deviled eggs, wonderfully creamy and salty with an edge of vinegar tang and not a bit of mustard taste to be found.
That moment, I believe, was the origin of the Persnickety Palate. Even though I have continued to be—and am to this day—a very picky eater, that moment was the first time I willingly put an ingredient I didn’t like into a recipe and had faith that I might still be able to enjoy the outcome. It was a small step because I already knew I liked the taste of deviled eggs, but the fact that I was making them myself—controlling the amount of the abhorrent ingredient and the ultimate flavor of the dish—gave me the confidence to proceed. And that is what the past few years of cooking have been about for me.
Not that I am always happy with the outcome of my personal culinary adventures—there have been many meals that I ended up eating only a few bites of. But I have also taught myself not to be afraid of trying so many new foods that the successes are totally worth the disappointments. Among the ingredients I am no longer afraid to use? Mustard, of course. I don’t use the day-glo sort in a squeeze bottle, just Dijon and whole grain; and I still don’t use it as a condiment. But it frequently pops up in many other capacities in my kitchen, and I think I am a better cook because of it. I might even have to try making my own mustard one of these days.
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03.25.08
Posted in Persnickety Bits at 8:48 am by julie
…before I post again. Our little sticky bun is finally out of the oven. Meet Nolan Michael:
Born March 22, 2008 at 12:17 a.m. after just 7 hours of unmedicated labor. 7 lbs 2.3 oz and 20″ long. We just got home from the hospital yesterday because, true to form, we already have another persnickety palate in the house: Nolan wasn’t much interested in eating anything for the first day or two and lost 9% of his body weight. But he is starting to get the hang of how “hungry” feels, and we’re making forward progress with the assistance of a breast pump.
There will be more photos of Nolan at our main blog, JcSparks.com. I’ll post again here once we’ve got our schedule a little more worked out. Good thing I didn’t put off my Daring Bakers challenge this month!
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02.25.08
Posted in Dinner, Meats, Pastas, Persnickety Bits, Pork and Ham at 3:03 pm by julie
I’ve been neglecting the blog again, and yet I keep taking photos of what we’re making and planning out my posts, so I’m going to try and play catch-up this week. Actually, I had a legitimate excuse for the first few days: a silly cooking-related injury.
I decided to make stuffed pork chops for dinner one night. I’ve done rolls and stuffed thin cutlets, but I’d never stuffed a piece of meat pocket-style before, so this was a first, and I was very pleased with the result of my knife skills. I was able to keep the side opening an inch or less wide, so that it could be easily resealed with a single toothpick. Once the seared chops were in the oven to finish cooking, I started in on some Marcella-style green beans with Parmesan, parboiling and then setting them in cold water. By that time, the pork was cooked. I set the skillet of chops back on the stovetop, grabbed the colander of drained beans, and turned around to deposit them in another pan on the back burner, grabbing the handle of the skillet with my left hand to move it out of my way.
You can see where I’m going with this. I’m usually very good about getting out my silicone handle cover, but I was being absent-minded, and before I knew it, my hand was alight with pain. I (quite literally single-handedly) finished off the pan-sauce for the chops and a very simplified version of the green beans while gripping a big bag of ice cubes for dear life in my throbbing hand, but had no appetite anymore, not to mention insufficient means of cutting into a big pork chop, generally a two-handed operation. The chops and green beans ended up in the fridge for a few days, before I could muster up enough good will to tackle them again.
Since I’m not a fan of reheated meat, I didn’t bother trying to reheat the chops whole. Instead, I diced them up into chunks (fondly admiring my stuffing handiwork in the process, as you can see from the top photo), and reheated that with the remains of the pan sauce and green beans, adding some chicken stock and a splash of cream to get a more fluid consistency. Served over farfalle, it was a satisfying conclusion to a painful experience. And believe you me, it’s an experience I don’t intend to duplicate anytime soon, stuffed pork chops or no.
Mushroom-Stuffed Pork Chops
I used thick boneless chops from Costco for this recipe, shallots in place of onion, and some rather stale whole wheat sandwich bread because it happened to be on hand. My mushrooms were a mix of dried mushrooms, rehydrated and chopped, and I ended up not needing all the filling for that number of chops, probably because I seriously doubt I could have shoved 1/2 C of filling into a single chop.
4 pork loin center chops boneless or bone-in, trimmed
3 T vegetable oil
1 C cubed (1/4-inch) bread
1 onion, chopped
2 C thinly sliced mushrooms
2 cloves garlic, minced
1/2 tsp each salt and pepper
2 T minced fresh parsley
1/2 C white wine or chicken stock
1 C sodium-reduced chicken stock
1 T all-purpose flour
1 T butter, softened
Slash edges of pork chops to prevent curling. With knife held horizontally and starting at rounded edge, cut wide pocket in each chop. Set aside.
In large ovenproof skillet, heat 1 T of oil over medium heat; fry bread, stirring often, until golden, about 10 minutes. Transfer to bowl. Add 1 tbsp of the remaining oil to skillet; fry onion, mushrooms, garlic and half each of the salt and pepper over medium-high heat until onion is softened and mushrooms are golden, about 6 minutes. Add to bread along with parsley. Let cool. (Make-ahead: Cover and refrigerate for up to 24 hours.) Stuff about 1/2 cup of the stuffing into pocket of each chop. Secure with toothpicks. Sprinkle with remaining salt and pepper.
In skillet, heat remaining oil over medium-high heat; brown chops. Transfer skillet to 400°F oven; roast until juices run clear when pork is pierced and just a hint of pink remains inside, about 15 minutes. Remove to platter; remove toothpicks and tent with foil.
Add wine to skillet and bring to boil over medium-high heat, stirring and scraping up any brown bits; boil until evaporated, about 3 minutes. Add stock; bring to boil. In small bowl, blend flour with butter; whisk into stock and simmer, stirring, until thickened, about 3 minutes.
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12.31.07
Posted in Persnickety Bits at 11:46 pm by julie
2007 was a year of ups and downs, and altogether, I’m very glad to bid it goodbye and welcome a new year. While we wait for midnight, here are some of the highlights (and lowlights) of the past year:
January: This was before the formal start of my food blog. I had been keeping a personal food journal offline, and Jeremy set me up a private blog to write out recipes online for easier access, since we don’t have a printer. We tried out the ice cream maker (a present from my folks) for the first time with chocolate velvet ice cream, and I butterflied my first chicken.
February: I made Jeremy some massamun curry for his birthday with the help of Curry Simple, and I actually thought it was pretty tasty, a big first for me. For Valentine’s Day, there was a Meyer lemon tart with a chocolate-painted crust, and we decided we still don’t like citrus-chocolate combinations; I used the other half of the pâte sucrée recipe to make an all-chocolate tart, and that was much better!
March: I cooked with veal and *gulp* whole fish for the first time, and got over my fear of flipping crepes.
April: Some Greek lamb meatballs made me realize that maybe it was time to start making my food blog public. I began photographing our meals more regularly, with the help of the new camera lens we got to document the life and times of our German shepherd puppy, Freyja. I found my way to my new standard for roast chicken, and tried celeriac for the first time.
May: The farmer’s market opened for the season: we took Freyja out to meet all the other dogs and their people, and I bought pea shoots and rhubarb and asparagus. We discovered the mushroom stand at the market and gave roasted maitake mushrooms a whirl; I practically did a gig when I found the Silver Falls Creamery booth and its delicious goat cheese.
June: Our big excitement for June was a brand-new blue Prius, our first car since selling the Jetta in 2004 when Jeremy headed off to art school. We celebrated our 8th wedding anniversary with a chocolate emergency kit and a trip to the beach. I made spaetzle with my new ricer, cooked with fava beans for the first time, and made the best strawberry ice cream ever.
July: Freyja’s lack of interest in being housebroken finally led us to rip out our carpets and refinish the original flooring underneath. I learned that the Lake Oswego farmer’s market near our vet’s office has an artichoke vendor, and found a zucchini recipe I actually liked. I won my first foodblog contest with boysenberry cobblers, and read Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows while eating scones. Even more exciting, I joined the Daring Bakers and participated in my first challenge, strawberry mirror cake.
August: This was a difficult month. We lost our eldest ferret, Pandora, who had been part of our family since just a few months after our wedding. We were also shocked to find out we were pregnant, although we didn’t announce it publicly for a few months. In the food world, I made brownie batter ice cream and ate lamb with a spoon. I also ate a lot of out-of-season grapefruit, and kept wanting mac and cheese even though it was too hot out for it, but that wasn’t the best blog fodder. The Daring Bakers August challenge was a fabulous milk chocolate caramel tart, which gave me the opportunity to get over some of my caramel-making fears.
September: September was bookended with cinnamon rolls. I started the month with sweet potato cinnamon rolls, and ended it with the Daring Bakers challenge of cinnamon and sticky buns (and the announcement of our own bun in the oven. I cooked my first duck for Labor Day, ate water buffalo yogurt, made homemade ricotta, and gleefully baked a grape pie. I was also fortunate enough to win a copy of Morimoto’s new cookbook from Cooking with Amy.
October: October was a doozy. We were pretty badly rear-ended on the freeway on September 30th, so we spent a good part of the month recovering physically and emotionally, wrestling with insurance issues (it was a 6-car pile-up), and mourning our mangled car. I didn’t do much blogging because we also had family visiting around my birthday on the 21st, and a month-long scare over abnormal quad screen results that culminated in a successful amniocentesis. Fortunately, we had the World Series to distract us, and two great teams to root for (with accompanying pastries, of course!): my home-town Colorado Rockies and a rocky road brownie tart, and Jeremy’s lifelong favorites, the Boston Red Sox, who may have won the series thanks to the collective willpower of the Daring Bakers and our bostini cream pies.
November: We breathed a sigh of relief in November, and celebrated with comfort foods: gussied-up mac and cheese; homemade chicken noodle, roasted cauliflower, and baked potato soups; apple cider donuts; and a smorgasbord of Thanksgiving favorites, including the be-all and end-all of apple crumb pies. I even found time to make potato bread for the November DB challenge.
December: At long last, we got our Prius back, almost as good as new. I conquered souffles for the first time and made some gorgeous sandwich rolls for barbeque brisket, and then it was off to the races, Christmas baking-style. Three loaves of quick bread, six batches of cookies and candies, and a DB-style yule log later, it’s probably a good thing we bought ourselves a Bowflex for Christmas. 
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09.30.07
Posted in Bread, Breakfast, Foodblog Events, Persnickety Bits at 11:47 am by julie
This month has been cinnamon roll heaven. I already had plans to make sweet potato cinnamon rolls with my leftover sweet potato puree when the Daring Bakers September Challenge was announced: the Cinnamon Rolls and/or Sticky Buns from The Bread Baker’s Apprentice
by Peter Reinhart, one of our favorite bread books. I decided to go ahead with my sweet potato recipe and call it a warm-up round for the real thing, but it made an enormous panful of rolls that we were eating for nearly a week, and we needed a break before I dove back in for another batch or two.
The original plan was to do them last weekend, but I had no yeast left, and we ended up going to Ikea and Whole Foods instead. (And why on earth was there only tiny little packets of yeast at Whole Foods? Was I just looking in the wrong place or what?) I decided to bring a batch to my staff meeting on Friday the 28th instead, but we learned on Thursday afternoon that a VIP/force of nature was going to be visiting the library, and the staff meeting was postponed a week. This after I had already signed up to bring treats to the meeting and mentioned to several people that the plan was for cinnamon rolls…so I see another batch of these in my future later this week.
Since I was just making rolls for my husband and myself after all, I didn’t rush and got the dough started on Friday evening after a long walk at the park with our puppy. The dough came together nicely: I used active dry yeast (vs. instant), warmed buttermilk (vs. powdered milk), unbleached bread flour (vs. AP), butter (vs. shortening) and lemon extract (vs. zest). I did have to add quite a bit of extra flour to get the dough to form a ball as described; it had been so wet that the dough hook wouldn’t have had much effect, so I added in half a cup at a time until it looked right, perhaps as much as 1 1/2 C extra.
After switching to the dough hook, I set the timer and went in the other room to gather dishes for loading the dishwasher. Now I should explain that our stand mixer and Cuisinart sit on top of our portable dishwaser, because our kitchen is old, ill-arranged, and seriously lacking outlets and counter space. When I came back to check on the dough, the mixer was on the verge of attempting suicide by leaping onto the floor. It had walked forward at least a foot. I talked it down off the ledge, loaded some dishes (all of which were rattling wildly because of the mixer), and then rescued the suicidal mixer from another leap. By the time 10 minutes were up, I was exhausted, the mixer was thinking about overheating, and the dough was gorgeously pillowy and elastic, with a satin sheen. It was the first dough I’ve ever made that windowpaned perfectly, and if I’d had three arms or a husband who wasn’t playing a video baseball game, I would have captured that proud achievement on the camera.
I have to admit that I diverted from the recipe a bit here. After the dough was safely ensconced in a greased bowl and deposited on the running dishwasher (for some moist heat in my cold, cold house), I gave my husband instructions to pop the bowl in the fridge before he came to bed and retired for the night. I knew it was going to take longer than two hours to double, and I wasn’t about to stay up that late, so the dough was retarded after the first rise rather than the second. It worked out just fine, though, as you can see. When hubby took the dog out for her morning constitutional, I pulled the dough from the fridge again to warm up, and got back in bed.
From there it was a simple matter of rolling out the dough, sprinkling on the cinnamon sugar, and rolling it back up into a log. I used the old dental floss trick to cut it into 10 rolls, saved three in the fridge for sticky buns tomorrow, and arranged the rest on a baking sheet for their second rise.
Since my house was still cold and my tummy was hungry, I used the warm-oven trick to help facilitate the second rise, turning the oven on just for a minute or so to make it an insulated proofing box. I was satisfied with the rise after 45 minutes, in part because by then it was 10:45am. But they look nice and puffy, don’t they?
The sad thing was that the 7-hour lamb from earlier this week overflowed in the oven, so instead of perfuming the house with the smell of cinnamon rolls, the kitchen smelled like burning lamb jus. But twenty minutes later, we forgot about the acrid scent, because our cinnamon rolls looked like this:
Mmmm, cinnamon rolls! I told Jeremy that the book said they had to rest for at least 20 minutes before we could eat them. He made sad eyes at me and basically told me I was starving him to death, so we started eating about 3 minutes after they came out of the oven. What can I say? I tried!
I’ll admit to one more slight tweak to the recipe, out of necessity. I made a half recipe of glaze, and because we were out of milk, I used heavy cream (warmed in the microwave) instead. Also, after taking the pretty photo above, I thought to myself, who am I kidding, and loaded that sucker up with frosting.
Much better! We made short work of these cinnamon rolls. They were soft and fluffy, and the sticky glaze made up for what we perceived as a lack of cinnamon-sugar goo in the interior of the rolls. Jeremy didn’t care for the citrus element of the rolls, so if—correction, make that WHEN—I make these again, I’ll use vanilla instead of lemon in the glaze. Personally, I didn’t mind the hint of lemon after a bite or three to get used to it.
Since I’ve made cinnamon rolls several times before but never sticky buns, I knew I needed to give those a try in order to continue calling myself a Daring Baker. I put aside three rolls for that purpose because I still wasn’t convinced that I’d like sticky buns, and they fit nicely into my ceramic loaf pan. This morning, I pulled the plastic-wrapped buns out of the fridge in their pan and made the caramel glaze, which was an entirely different process than I had expected. A scattering of pecans (no dried fruit for me, please), and the rolls were nestled into the pan for their second rise. They baked for about 35 minutes, rested for 5, and we dug in.
I was pleasantly surprised by the fact that I liked the sticky bun variation nearly as much as the cinnamon rolls. I’ve never had them before, but the caramel seemed to have just the right amount of flow and tackiness, and the flavor was more to Jeremy’s taste becaue I used vanilla instead of lemon extract this time. I would definitely consider making this variation again, and I’m very glad I tried it.
Please be sure to stop by the Daring Bakers blogroll and check out everyone’s fabulous creations. For this fantastic recipe, visit Pip in the City, the blog of September host Marce in Argentina.
You may be wondering why, since I only made two cinnamon roll variations for this challenge, I titled the post the way I did. Well, the third bun in the oven is the proverbial sort: I am now 16 weeks pregnant. Hopefully that will account for all my recent laziness in both cooking meals and writing up posts about them, not to mention the sudden tendency toward comfort foods and emphasis on calcium and protein and fiber and whatnot. At least I’ve been very lucky, as a foodblogger, in that I haven’t been subjected to any morning sickness or weird food cravings!
I am a member of the Theta Class of Daring Bakers, inducted in July 2007. Below is a list of previous challenges:
Strawberry Mirror Cake – July 2007
Milk Chocolate and Caramel Tart – August 2007
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