CDKitchen 100: Recipe 3

Sorry for the gap in posts, but I HAVE been working on the recipes; just not uploading them. Bad me, I know. But I come bearing gifts! Lots of blueberry gifts!

I went to the local Farmer's Market and picked up a bunch of these little blue suckers for a nifty little price. I've been meaning to tackle blueberries for a while now, especially since they're not my favorite little berry (strawberry's got that title). I figure this challenge would be just the thing to give them a second chance.

I just hope I don't end up like Violet Beauregarde there. Gulp.

Blueberry Fritters

Ingredients

• 1 1/2 cup flour
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 2 tablespoons of confectioner's sugar
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1/3 milk
• 2 eggs (separated, not divorced)
  
• 1 cup fresh blueberries

In one bowl, pour in all the dry ingredients.

Mix them all together.

Now after all that hard work, let's just forget about it and move on. We had our fun with it.

Time to separate the eggs.

The kids were never the same afterwards.

Be careful to save the yolk and beat the whites lightly in one bowl, like so:

In another bowl, put the yolks in and stiffly beat it to show how to take it like a real man, er, egg:

Yolk's on you - ha ha ha. ...Get it?

Going back to the soon-to-be-wet ingredients, take the bowl and make a sort of "well" or "indentation" in the dry mix and pour all the milk in.

Drowning microbes since 1988.

Add the whites and mix:

BUT LO! THERE'S MORE!

Here's where I made one of my boo-boos. Instead of putting in the blueberries first, I put the egg yolks in:

AND THEN I MIXED! OH NOES!

Well, it doesn't look too bad.

Ick.

Okay, NOW I put in the blueberries (I am ruining this recipe.)

Mix it around.

Let's get a close-up of that.

OH MY GOD, THAT DOESN'T LOOK GOOD. ...Those blueberries look sort of like chocolate chips to me. Hmmm.

Alright, we've done all we can. Now we let it chill for about 30 minutes.

In the meantime, get the rack ready, ladies...

....Uh...

THIS SORT OF RACK, I MEAN

Don't forget paper towels, y'all.

And the oil! In the saucepan!

Heat it up, nice and hot.

Now here was my problem... on the original recipe, it says to take two spots and make a sort of "ball" for the fritter and then dip it in the oil to cook. I tried that and it was surprisingly difficult. But I managed to get through it. This is what I hate about fried foods though... I can never tell if they're cooked enough on the INSIDE or not.

So I always manage to burn them (I've learned to love this taste; others can't.) Someone once said you have to listen for a distinct crackle/popping sound... and me? Well, I've pretty much destroyed my hearing with my iPod.

Oh well.

Voila! Fini!

It looks...

It looks... burnt. And not appetizing. At all.

Yeah, you said it, Simba.

Oh boy.

But biting into it, it's not terrible, especially if you coat the thing in powdered sugar. Like really, really coat it.

So what do I think of this recipe? Not a favorite, for sure -- I may have done a few things wrong such as:

• My cousin's chef friend said that I was supposed to use peanut oil instead of regular corn oil. It gives it a better taste. Also, there's supposed to be enough oil to completely immerse the fritters in. I was rather stingy and only filled it in halfway.
• I didn't know how to "fold", and silly me, didn't look it up before I tried to "fold" on my own. My stirring probably made the batter heavier than it needed to be.
• I left a few of them (okay, most of them) in the oil too long and probably made it more "burnt"/brown than they needed to be.

However, my better half says that they came out rather tasty; for me, however, they tore the roof of my mouth. Literally. Couldn't eat for a few days without wincing.

Do it again? Maybe, in some distant future when I'll forget why "fritters" strikes fear into my heart.

Find the recipe @ CDKitchen (Blueberry Fritters).

Stay tuned for blueberry muffins next!

Amir, oh Amir!

I'm fairly certain I want to marry this man one day.

Why?

He's insanely, geekily cute. (Psst, is he taken? JK, JK.. SORT OF.)

Check him out in the vid below.

See more funny videos and funny pictures at CollegeHumor.

CDKitchen 100 Challenge: Recipe 2

Yeah, I'm not gonna eat that sort of bear claw (despite Pedo Bear's desire for you to put his limbs in your mouth...)

Today we're gonna treat ourselves to a more delicious, consensual pleasure bear claw filled with an entirely different sort of filling: chocolate.


Bear Claws with Chocolate Filling

Ingredients

• Frozen roll dough from last post
  
• thaw that mountain of goodness out
• Flour, as needed
• 3 tablespoons of butter
• 1 egg, beaten (not stirred -- I will never tire of this joke)
• 1/4 cup of chopped pecans
  
• 1/4 cup of brown sugar
• 1/2 cup of organic semi-sweet chocolate chips

Now the recipe calls for shredded coconut and I absolutely detest coconut. I seriously, seriously, seriously, seriously, seriously dislike the stuff. One time I ate a cookie with coconut shavings and I spit it out as soon as I realized that crunchy stuff with a milky sort of taste was COCONUT, my ARCH NEMESIS. This common enemy has led me to have an alliance with a famous cartoon character: Angelica Pickles.

"Stupid babies... and coconut."

That aside, I think this recipe looks really easy, but then again I've never made bear claws before.

Gulp. This should be interesting.

First we're gonna start by taking out our mutual friend, Grandma's Sweet Roll Dough, made fresh last night and refrigerated overnight.

Gonna take off the excess packaging since I was terrified it'd dry up and haunt me for the rest of my life.

Gentleman, we have the technology.

Dust the (clean) countertop.

And now we're gonna pound it into eight little 4-inch circles.

Those don't look like circles...


Gah, I made them all different sizes.

After that, we're gonna take a small bowl and combine some butter, brown sugar, and chocolate chips (Coconut couldn't make it to the party cuz he wasn't invited, see.)

I had to wait a bit before it sort of thawed down and then I managed to mix it up really good, like so:

Place 2 tablespoons of the mixture in the middle of each roll.

Fold in half and press the edges to seal.

(This sort of reminds me of a dumpling process.)

Place on a baking sheet sprayed with a cooking spray. I use Slipat, which has seen better days, but never needs any sort of spray! I highly recommend them.

Take some scissors and cut into the folded rolls four times to give it a sort of "claw" look. Make sure you do this on the sealed edge side and not the other side.

Hopeless Scissorhands at your service.

Take out a brush (I used a silicone one) and brush the tops with egg.

Sprinkle with pecans for that nutty, pretty look.

Cover with a plastic wrap. Great, more packaging. Gag.

And let it rise like the Undead.

It's alive, it's alive! Mwahaha-*hack hack cough*

Wait 30 minutes for it to rise properly. Use this time to preheat the oven to 350 F degrees. In the mean time, let's go do something fun like have a drink or something.

When the time is up, take off the plastic (this is crucial if you don't want your bear claws to taste like melted Mattel toys) and pop it into the oven for 20 minutes.

Proceed to back to your drink and become smashed (but not too smashed.)

Don't tell me I've had enough! I'll tell you when I've had enough.

Set up a cooling rack on the counter and check every now and then until the bear claws look a nice, friendly golden brown color (the color of bears!)

Viola!

Mmmmm.. Satisfied customer. Now pay up. (He ate the big one in one sitting; talk about an appetite!)

Some notes: The dough took really long to thaw. Next time I'll just leave it on top of the turned off burner to expedite the process.

Another thing that was hard to do was to get an exact size down for the bear claws. Oh well! Because I made one super big, I ended up using an entire bag of organic chocolate chips instead of the recommended amount. Mmm. Chocolate-y.

The dough recipe I used gave me too much dough to work with and I didn't have another slipat to use so I ended up just make 1 super huge bear claw and four medium sized ones. I'll make more later.

All in all: good, good recipe. Compliments to CDKitchen!

Look forward to my next post on blueberry fritters, y'all! Happy Valentines Day!

(Original recipe: Bear Claw with Chocolate Filling, via CDKitchen)

CDKitchen 100 Challenge: Recipe 1: Grandma's Sweet Rolls

...Grandma?

I'm pretty sure when the recipe for "Grandma's Sweet Rolls" was uploaded to CDKitchen, they didn't have this lady in mind (although she would've made for a pretty cool Grandma to bring to show-n-tell...) Nevertheless, I've never made sweet rolls before so the recipe (to me) might as well have come from that old lady from Dinosaurs.

Grandma's Sweet Rolls

Ingredients:

• 1/2 cup of sugar (check)
• 1/2 cup of vegetable oil (check)
• 2 teaspoons salt (check)
• 2 packages dry yeast (check)
• 2/3 cup milk (check)
• ...scalded (check...)
• cooled (check...)
• and don't burn yourself (OW! ...check!)
• 2/3 cup lukewarm water (ahhh...I mean, check)
• 2 eggs, beaten (not stirred)
• 5 cups flour

To follow the directions precisely, we start with the yeast: tear up the two packages into a bowl...
and pour in half the water with a pinch of sugar. Set that bad boy aside. I had to mix it up and it started to clump; do not worry (I think), this'll just go away if you stir it around for a bit. As for the water, that bit was confusing and involved a bit of math: how much is 1/2 of 2/3rds anyway? I just poured two 1/3rds into a 1 cup and then poured half of that into the bowl.

...And prayed.

Meanwhile, my milk overrunneth.

Ahhh!

Oh, ew, this is what happens when you don't watch your milk. You get this brown thing that mocks you with its putrid brown-ness.

Yeah, we're just gonna set that aside and pretend it never happened.

...Because it didn't.

Combine the cooled off milk, oil, sugar, salt, and remaining water.

Yeah, that doesn't look so good...

Stir in one cup of flour...

Then add the eggs (that I have beaten, mwahaha)

...and yeast mixture.

and I'm supposed to eat this eventually...

Mix in the remaining 4 cups of flour, and mix it around until it feels more like cement mixture than edible dough.

Clean off your work stations, boys and girls. Feel free to use either a disinfectant wipe ala Swine Flu fear, or if you're green, white vinegar works just fine too. And if you're me: a simple wet towel does the trick. Dry it off and dust with flour.

Slam that dough onto the counter

...and begin giving it a 2-minute massage it'll taunt its other girlfriends with.

"oh honey, I know -- men! pfft."

Roll it up in a cute little ball, and put it into a greased bowl to sit its timeout in.

You're not gonna remember a thing, heh heh heh.

Now, we gotta wait about 45 minutes (let's go watch House!)

Mmmm.... House.

Ding! 45 Minutes is up, which means you have to punch like it owes you money, and then when it comes back for more, you have several options to do with your dough:

• Bake it into a variety of things, such as "sandwich buns" or "sweet rolls" for cinnamon and jelly, as per suggestion of CDKitchen.
• Save it and freeze it, like how I'm going to for my next recipe post dealing with Bear Claws.
• Go after its family in order to give the message across that you're not joking around. 'Cause you're not.
  

Come back tomorrow when I make chocolate bear claws out of Grandma's Sweet Roll Dough, nom, nom nom.

Some notes: This dough seems rather thick and heavy; I'm not sure if this is normal, since I'm not accustomed to handling dough. And the dough didn't seem to rise that much so I'm a little anxious that I either did something wrong or if there's something missing from the recipe. Anyone have a comment on this?

(Recipe found here: Grandma's Sweet Rolls, via CDKitchen)

The 100-Recipe CDKitchen Challenge

I've been itching for pastries, particularly since I've been exercising more lately and as a consequence, wanting to eat more. I felt the hankering for some sweet baked goods and wandered down to CDKitchen.com. A lot of the baked goods I saw didn't have photos attached, let alone comments so I felt it my mission to do a self-challenge over the course of the year to try 100 baked good recipes from the site and to upload the photo process. We'll see how it turns out!

Challenge Details:

-100 Posts by the time the year is up (Deadline: Midnight of December 31st, 2010)
-100 individual recipes from CDKitchen.com
-Upload photo process and review for each individual recipe.

Next recipe/post to watch out for: Grandma's Sweet Rolls.

Parking Day LA DEMO

It was so hot today at the demo spot (Madison and Santa Monica Blvd). So, so hot. I almost melted in my sneakers. I had to wear booty shorts because the thought of being restrained in anything more almost blew my brain out my ear.

School's starting soon, should be able to get a grip of cool projects. I will start my first sewing expedition (if all is well with the machine) next week.

:D

COME TO PARKING DAY L.A. SEPT. 18! I shall be in the LOADING ZONE group passing out delicious pie coins and cupcakes!

Sustainability Challenge: Cupcakes and Pie Coins

Okay, so it's not an easy challenge but it might save me money in the long haul. Jeremy asked me to participate in Parking Day LA, a public collective project with an objective:

"... bring together a diverse constituency of community groups, neighborhood councils, design & architecture firms, professional organizations, non-profits, cyclists & pedestrian advocates as they work together to transform numerous parking spaces & parking lots located throughout LA into ephemeral parks for the day. By occupying a parking spot and feeding the meter, volunteers will enhance the street with a sustainably designed pocket-park." - Parking Day LA, About Page.

I'm in the bandwagon with all the local Greensters, a cycling group that supplies a sustainable choice in the film industry.

I'm doing a cupcake cart, offering cupcakes by the cupboodles for every boy and girl in town.

Right now different ideas are being thrown around. The moment I suggested using bags or popsicle sticks, it was a definitive "NO!" So, hmm, how am I going to give out bundles of cupcakes and pie coins if I can't put them in a bag, or offer them individually on sticks?

He suggested I use reuseable containers for storage and to hand them out with gloves. I'm not sure what planet he came from, but on Planet America a lot of people would find it gross and give them a weird flashback to the icky lunch lady from the high school cafeteria. (Remember when you caught her picking her nose with the gloves ON?)

Food service is gross. No way around it. The act of eating food reminds us that we have to poop sometime, and the thought of poop makes us want to vomit, and when we want to vomit we often burp, and when we burp it makes us feel satisfied.

Weird [reverse?] circle of life.

Another suggestion he brought up was to have my cupcake cart (which is just a heavy cargo bicycle with a cardboard rendition of a cupcake posted on the front) be almost like an ice cream serving station with this scenario: I open up my cardboard cupcake, at the top tier will be a selection of cupcake flavors for which they'll have they choice and I'll slather on a delicious frosting.

Logistic nightmare for a long, hot day (which will be hot, since it's September, and it will be long since it's all day, biking across the city). The frosting will melt, the cupcakes may not stay, and it may still involve me handing out food in plastic gloves.

There's no real way around this but this sustainability crap is a pain in the pass. There are no biodegradable plastic "treat bags" or "100% recycled from newspaper" popsicle sticks. No "keep me forever" lightweight cardboard boxes, or decorative styles that coordinate with this demand.

I get the sneaking suspicion as if I'm doomed to fail. How can an amateur baker rise up to this challenge? It seems almost too difficult.

But a commitment is a commitment. And I foresee myself donning on those hot, sweat-inducing gloves. In reality, it comes down to a thought: disposable plastic gloves that will get dirty from a bike ride across the city, or the simple cleanliness of a cellophane bag?

Sometimes sustainability sucks.