Red Velvet

I have my friend Christiana to thank for this one. We were at Republic Coffee last Tuesday and she wanted a piece of Red Velvet cake but they were out. To which I said "I should make a Red Velvet cake" and she said "Why haven't you?!" So I did. I think I vaguely remember making a RVC once before but it was probably waaay back. For this one I made cupcakes, using the RVC recipe from the Sweet Melissa book, but halved. The cupcakes came out well, the last batch got left in the oven a little bit long though and developed an extra crunchy top. I fixed that problem by sawing off the hard top and covering it up with the cream cheese icing. I liked these but I still think they were missing something. I was pondering melting a little semi-sweet chocolate to add, but I don't know how badly that would throw off the red color.

Tuesdays with Dorie: My Best Chocolate Chip Cookie

Who doesn't love a chocolate chip cookie? Very few people. This week's selection was My Best Chocolate Chip Cookies, chosen by Kait of Kait's Plate. I've made these before with espresso powder, they were excellent. The first go-round I learned they spread like mad because of the two sticks of butter. So this time I made them plain, omitting the nuts and lowering the butter content to one and a half sticks instead of two. I like a more cakey cookie anyway and you get that result with a little less butter. All the hand-chopped chocolate creates that bumpy, tweedy texture Dorie talks about in the book, when you take a bite you don't really know what size piece of chocolate you'll get, there are tiny slivers and bigger chunks and they just add to the charm of the cookie.

Hearts

I know lots of people find Valentine's Day over-commercialized and a made-up holiday and hearts are cheesy, blah, blah, blah. And really my significant other and I have never done anything over the top for each other. But I think anytime you have the opportunity to be sweeter to the important people in your life you should.

Have some hearts, cheesy or not.

Extra sweets

I say 'extra sweets' because normally I only do my TWD dessert and we work on eating that all week. However this past week I made three extras. First was the Jam Cake with Brown Sugar Rum Glaze from this book. It's a delicious, moist cake with a giant swirl of jam running throughout. The recipe calls for two cups of jam (any kind) and I used a jar of homemade strawberry jam one of my aunts gave me at Christmas. The glaze is cream, brown sugar and butter with a tiny bit of rum added at the end. I loved this cake, I think I might have had some variation of it during my childhood because it tasted very familiar to me.The second thing was Cardamon Crumb Cake from Dorie's Baking book. I made it on Monday during out surprise snow day. I'm really surprised no one has chosen this for TWD yet, it's delicious. Extremely moist and sweet with citrus flavors as well as a hint of espresso. It would be so good served at a brunch, a keeper for sure.Third, was Orange Scented Scones from the Sweet Melissa Baking Book. A simple scones recipe was orange zest and ground oats, pretty tasty for a weekend breakfast.

The kitchen workout

So this book got opened again over the weekend. This time the challenge was homemade ravioli. Lots of the food blogs I read have made homemade pasta like it's no big deal so I had to try it, even if it might turn out less than great. The dough came together quickly, mainly I just got sticky hands. The recipe was eggs + water + flour (amazing what you can make with just those three things).Then the dough needed to rest for a bit, wrapped in a damp kitchen towel, while I made the filling.The filling recipe also came from the book, it was ground round, ricotta, onion, garlic, & some spices. The recipe in the book also called for spinach but I omitted it. After the filling was made it needed to cool and I set to work rolling out the dough, and herein lies the workout part. It's hard on your hands and forearms to get that ball of dough down to a manageable size. It took what seemed like ages (in reality probably 15-20 minutes) to flatten it out. to this.Now it was time to fill it up, which was pretty tricky to get the filling in there without having it ooze out the sides.Once the ravioli was filled and cut into squares it had to set out for 30 minutes to get a good seal and then I popped it in the freezer for about an hour before cooking it. The end result was okay, I made a few mistakes and the dough should have been thinner but okay for a first try I think. Plus I got that great upper body workout.

Tuesdays with Dorie: Rick Katz's Brownies for Julia

This week's chocolate-y little selection was chosen by Tanya of Chocolatechic. These brownies had just a few basic brownie ingredients but it was the technique of putting the batter together that made them different. Half of the egg/sugar mixture was whipped up separately from the rest of the batter to create a lighter but still very fudgy brownie. These were a hit at the party I shared them at. A simple recipe I'm pretty sure I'll make again.

Surprise snow day

Here in Memphis snow or the threat of snow is 'big doings'. The local news stations trip over themselves to get you the 'most complete coverage' of any impending weather threat. Oddly no one really mentioned the threat of snow yesterday (probably everyone was wrapped up in the Super Bowl) and surprise! This morning we awoke to a city blanketed in the white stuff. I got ready for work per usual because in the nearly five years I've been at my current job I've never had my boss call and tell me not to come it. So by 7:30AM I was showered and dressed and padding around the backyard taking pictures before I headed out when Bossman #1 rang and told me we were having a snow day. Craziness I tell you! Of course by noon most the snow was melting and it was raining/sleeting. But I very much enjoyed my extra day off, thanks Mr. Bossman #1. Here are some shots I took before everything started to fall away.

The front of our abode

Looking down our streetMy snow-filled raised bedsSnow on our little flowering cherry treeLooking straight up from underneath one of the fig trees

Bread & butter

I have had this book for almost a year and haven't baked a thing from until this weekend. Everyone has raved about it but I didn't the right equipment so I just put off making anything from. I realized I should just improvise and make something from it, so it did. I made the Olive Oil bread dough and used one portion of it to make Prosciutto & Rosemary Flatbread (also from the book). Except I had some diced pancetta in the fridge instead of prosciutto so that's what I used. The rosemary was from my garden, still hanging on despite the frigid temps and sleet. It turned out really well, it didn't rise as much as I thought it would but other than it came out really nicely. I just used a cookie sheet with a Silpat since I don't have a baking stone (have to get one). The bread was crispy and the rosemary was fragrant and a perfect compliment to the pancetta. The dough makes four portions of bread dough so I have enough for some other projects during the week. There's a recipe in the book for a Neapolitan pizza I might try, as well as a Philadelphia style stromboli. Maybe next week I'll tackle something else from the book, maybe a baguette.

Since I made bread it was only fitting I make butter too. Months and months ago before I got my KitchenAid a friend told me about how you could make butter with a standmixer, an idea I filed away for when I got my much lusted for KitchenAid. Fast forward to now, there's not time the present, or in my case, a weekend afternoon. The directions came from here and I used almost an entire quart of heavy whipping cream. There was a lot of waiting for the cream to whip past the whipped cream stage, it took at least 20 minutes for the butter to seize up and try throwing off the buttermilk. Boy was there a lot of buttermilk too. After the buttermilk was poured off I rinsed the butter by kneading it in cold water until the water was clear. It was a ball by then and I stuck back in the mixer to whip some air into it and add some sea salt. It tastes just like butter, although more creamy than store bought. I can really tell it's made from actual cream. A fun and easy project, makes me have lots of respect for those (like my great-grandparents) who churned butter in one of these.

A quick knit & yarn love

I cast off my Saroyan scarf last Saturday afternoon, such a quick knit, it only took me about 5 days of knitting about 1.5 hours a day. I blocked it last Sunday, I kind of suck at blocking but I think the scarf turned out okay.

I can tell you this I'm madly in love with Madeline Tosh yarn, so much so that I joined the Magnolia Society. It'll be the first yarn club I've joined but I can't resist such gorgeous, soft yarn. The first shipment comes sometime this month.

The Featherweight cardigan got frogged because as much as I tried to not think about it the incorrect M1 increases made me angry at myself and I knew I wouldn't want to wear the thing when I finished. So I put it aside and cast on the Minimalist Cardigan from Interweave Knits. The yarn is Berroco Vintage I bought at Stash's NYE sale this past year. It's knitting up well and I love the way seed stitch looks, I keep petting it. The sweater is seamed so I'll be knitting a back piece, a left front, a right front and two sleeves and then seaming them together. This will be my first seamed sweater whenever it gets finished.

Tuesdays with Dorie: Milk Chocolate Mini-Bundt Cakes

It's a shame I didn't double this recipe. I say that because the recipe calls for mini-bundt pans, which I didn't have. So I used a muffin tin, that was really too small. The little cakes (baked for 16/17 minutes) overflowed the confines of the tin and stuck together, creating a not-so pretty picture. Which is a complete shame because the cake is really, really good. So good that I decided I have to bake this again really soon but doubled and in a real bundt pan. Because the cake has such a great flavor and moist crumb and is begging to be made again. I did skip the glaze but based on the comments of other TWDers it was probably better that way. This would be great with a chocolate ganache on top though I think.Thanks to Kristin of I'm Right About Everything for this week's selection!

Iced in

Alright Memphis folks, did you survive the ice? I got to go home a little early Friday, made it back safely and did not leave the house again until this morning. Friday afternoon I knit and we watched the ice/snow/sleet come down. I had gone to the store Friday morning before the icydeath started so we had supplies (toilet paper, cat food, chocolate chips, chicken).

Inspired by Rebecca at Ezra Pound Cake (who lives in Nashville) I made a chocolate-chip skillet cookie. It was gooood but I always find it's a total PIA to clean my cast-iron skillet after using it.

By Saturday morning all the ice/snow had stopped and the left our street an ice-rink. So I slapped some pancake batter together and knit and knit and knit. In the afternoon I ventured out to take a few pictures. This tree that sits right between our driveway and our neighbor's fence got top-heavy and flopped over on top of the Jeep. It didn't damage anything and it needs to be trimmed back anyway. We were lucky nothing large came falling down, only some small limbs in the backyard and a few on the roof.

The rest of the weekend we spent housebound, watching bad television, knitting (Doug made lures) and reading. When we were in Nashville a few weeks ago I bought two other Betty Smith books I didn't own. I've read three of her books many times but it didn't stop me from picking up Maggie-Now and reading a few chapters.