One Word Sunday…sugar

Making blueberry crisp

for One Word Sunday

Weekly Photo Challenge: Circles 2…kitchen circles

While skimming through photos for another post, I came across another batch of circles to share for the first challenge of 2016, “Circles”.  It’s very different from my first response, but a beauty of a different type, a type found while adding ready to bake.  I love the other-worldly feeling of this shot.  Hope you do too.

 

Cee’s Oddball Photo Challenge 2015 Week 12…Bubble man

When baking, I never know who or what will appear.  But I keep my camera nearby for occasions just such as this one.  As I’ve said so often before, oddball photo ops are everywhere, even in the liquid portion of my recipe.

Here’s lookin’ at you, kid! (Visual kitchen humor)

When cooking or baking, I often grab my phone to take a photo of some interesting sight or creature created by mixing, melting, adding, or other kitchen process.  This one caught my attention and then I tarted it up a bit just for fun.  I hope you enjoy it.

Phoneography Challege: Edible Delights

The Phoneography Challenge is issued on Monday morning for the entire week.  The theme/themes for each week repeat monthly and can be found included in each week’s post.  That means you can start agonizing over which photo/s to use early and set up your post at your leisure.  If you take photos with a phone or tablet, please consider joining us.  It’s fun, the people are great and you’ll see many beautiful photos.

For the Challenger’s Choice this week, I decided to take on the challenge of “Food” as my theme.  There are many wonderful food photographers and I don’t claim to be one of them.  But I do like to take photos of food I think people will enjoy hearing about and imagine eating.  I played around a bit more with editing this week and am pleased with the results.  What do you think?  Which is most appealing to you (as a photo?)

These scone are adapted just slightly from “Moosewood Restaurant New Classics” recipe.  They are delicious and distressingly healthy.  Here’s the link to the post where I shared the recipe as well as a few others:  https://sustainabilitea.wordpress.com/2012/07/28/dinner-and-scones/.  Enjoy!  And if you try them, let me know what you thought.

Scones (edited in Picasa with boost and vignette)

These two burgers are from Michael Symon’s “B Spot”, http://bspotburgers.com/.  The top one, a portobella burger which, as I recall, was dubbed “Why?” (as in why would you order that when you could get a “real” burger) and came with free bacon.  I say “was” because search as I might, I don’t see it on the menu any longer.  Too bad!  It was wonderful!

Portobella mushroom burger (edited in Picasa with saturation and museum matte)

“Lola”, also from “B Spot”, is a burger with sunny side up egg, bacon, pickled red onions, cheddar cheese.  My sister-in-law loved it, although it can be a bit messy!

“Lola” (edited in Picasa with museum matte and saturation)

What’s your choice?  Either way, you won’t walk away hungry and if you still have room, there are scones for dessert.

Now go forth and take photos!

Succulent Saturday

A divine marriage, that of a croissant and chocolate; their child, the delicious pain au chocolat.
Easy to enjoy if you live near a great bakery or in France.
However, there’s a more-than-just-good alternative if you have a Trader Joe’s near you.
If so, with a bit of pre-planning, you can make your own pain au chocolat to go with tea, coffee, hot chocolate or the tipple of your choice.

Black Forest biscotti

Last night found me hustling around the kitchen making and baking biscotti. I posted the recipes for chocolate chip biscotti and honey almond biscotti in a previous post, https://sustainabilitea.wordpress.com/2012/02/14/biscotti-for-valentines-day/, but these are special biscotti, the Black Forest biscotti that contain both tart cherries and dark chocolate chips, as well as cocoa powder.  Like other biscotti, these make great gifts.  I imagine you could gild the biscotti lily by dipping these in chocolate, either on one end or on one side, but they’re just fine the way they are.  Enjoy!

                                                                Black Forest Biscotti

Preheat oven to 350. Bring water just to boiling, add cherries and set aside.

1/2 c. dried tart cherries (2 1/4 oz.)
1 c. water

Cream:

1/4 c. butter, room temp.
3/4 c. sugar

Blend into butter/sugar combination:

2 eggs
1 t. each vanilla extract and almond extract

Fold in:

1/2 c. chocolate chips (I like to use Ghiradelli double chocolate for that dark chocolate taste.)

Drain cherries, pat dry and stir in.

Sift together in another bowl:

2 c. + 2 T unbleached flour
1/3 c. unsweetened cocoa powder
1/2 t. salt
1 1/2 t. baking powder.

Fold wet ingredients into dry until dough holds together when pressed with lightly floured hands.

Place on an oiled/sprayed baking sheet. Shape into a 14 X 4 X 1″ long. Bake 25-30 minutes or until just firm and slightly brown. When cool enough to handle (about 10 minutes), cut into 3/4″ pieces. Bake for 5 more minutes per side.

Optional: Add 1/2 c. sliced, toasted almonds.

(about 20)
from Moosewood Restaurant New Classics

Ready to bake for the first time.  If you don’t have a pan long enough, just make two shorter logs.

After a 10-minute cooling period, slice.  An electric knife works wonderfully for this.  Return to the pan, but the little piece at each end is the baker’s prize!

Ready for the second baking of 5 minutes per side.

Cooling.  Be sure to wait until the chocolate chips (melted now) have cooled before eating!

An apple a day

Sunday as a day of rest is a great idea, but everyone still wants to eat and eating out can get expensive.  If you don’t eat out, somebody has to fix a meal, so here’s a little something to help you out.  It goes perfectly with a glass of milk, a cup of coffee or a cup of tea to start your day or for dessert later on.

Fabulous focaccia (gluten-free, too)

Focaccia.  Yum! 

Our daily bread

I just took a loaf of homemade bread out of the bread machine, my second after many, many months of not using the machine.  How could I forget how amazing the smell of baking bread is and how much better than store-bought it tastes??