Stretching

This year at Cookbook Club, I decided I would try new things that I have thought were too difficult in the past. In part, I was motivated by this post at Chocolate and Zucchini, "A Bucket List for Cooks."

Here, you can see I conquered, No. 33 "Make your own crust for a tart, quiche, or pie." I made a crust for this tart (Sara Moulton's Everyday Family Dinners) and a quiche (Mastering the Art of French Cooking). This is "Joanne's New and Improved Blueberry Tart," about 1/4 of the blueberries are cooked down to goo and fresh berries are stirred into it. I love it so much more than regular fruit pie. (I hate the goo for some reason.) Oh wait, I also did an onion tart (even more tart-y than this one, which I find very pie-ish) for Alice Water's The Art of Simple Food.

I did the quiche twice because the dude and I got confused about which week it was. We ate a lot of very rich quiche those two weeks. So I feel pretty confident about my pie crust.

I also decided I should try working with filo dough. Everyone says it is so difficult that I just never have. I decided to make tiropita when we did Greek Revival: Cooking for Life. If you know spanikopita, tiropita is spanikopita without the spinach. (Yes, plain cheese!) I made little triangles. Of pure cheesy deliciousness! And also, working with filo isn't on the cook's bucket list because it's not that hard.

I have also checked off "Make caramel." I made it for Caramelized Banana Rum Ice Cream (from The Everything Ice Cream, Gelato, and Frozen Desserts Cookbook). Yes you caramelize the bananas, and you stick toffee chunks in it, but the ice cream is caramel flavored.

I think "Make a laminated dough" may be next. The dude and I were awfully fond of Danish danishes.

I Made It! Cookies

I Made it Monday; I Photographed it Tuesday

I alluded to making cookie of the month club for my grandmothers last Christmas but haven't actually said much about that project. I could not for the life of me come up with gift ideas for these old ladies last December. Nothing. And then my aunt was complaining about how Maggie eats nothing but cookies and I thought, "Eureka!" Which is probably not what she wanted me to think. She wanted me to think about how to get complete nutrition into her without resorting to Ensure.

So every month for the past year I've made cookies. These here were supposed to be applesauce cookies. (I do try to up the nutritional content occasionally.) We had opened a giant jar that we didn't want to go to waste. And then while it was waiting to be made into cookies, it moldered.

So these are Reese's Chewy Chocolate Cookies (those are peanut butter chips). I took the picture this morning, but the weather is horrible. Go look at the pretty cookies on the Hershey's site. I'll wait.

Here are the recipes I've made so far this year in case you were looking for cookies to make. (I'm looking at you, Sweetpea.)

January: Toffee Bit cookies
February: banana cookies (Fanny Farmer)
March: pineapple and pistachio cookies (Fanny Farmer)
April: Laura Bush's Cowboy cookies (small size)
May: koulourakia* I cheated; my cousin made them!
June: White chocolate chip--I used Ghirardelli chips, but I don't remember which recipe. (In fact, my aunt had to check the letter I sent my grandmother to see what they were because I forgot June all together.) I think oatmeal may have been involved, but nuts were not.
July: Lime Meltaways
August: Nutella Kiss (Maggie says, the best yet!)

*a Greek shortbread, style cookie.

Day O' Craft

Yesterday, we finally got it all together to give my niece her day of crafting for her birthday (January). If you hearken back to that original post, you will remember that I was using this gift as an opportunity to get he craft room in order. Well, I haven't succeeded. On the positive side, she did say, "This is the cleanest I've ever seen this room."

The dude and Lala started by slicing and brining cucumbers to make pickles. Then they moved on to bread making. During the first rise, we took her to a little dive near our house that she likes for their fried mozzarella sticks. Oh, to be so easily charmed! On the way home, we stopped at A.C. Moore to pick up roving to make the felt acorns.

Breadmaking was declared to be hard work. But when she ate her slice of bread, she even ate the crust. That's something else.

The pickles had onions in them which was a bit off-putting to her. When the dude said something about "the vegetables" she kind of freaked, worried that there'd be even more than cucumbers and onions. But she gave them the thumbs up and that's without the 4-6 week "mellowing" period.

She got a bit bored making felt balls, and frankly so did I.

I showed her how to use some of the roving to do needle-felting, because I am the kind of aunt who lives dangerously by giving a ten year old really sharp needles. She made amazing little pictures. I don't know what either of us are doing with our scenes, but they're pretty cute!

(Pie is one of the horses Yayo rides. Lala made this for her.)

About halfway through our felting session, she asked me, "Can we do this for Christmas next year?" So the day was an unqualified success!

And thanks much to the dude for doing this all on his birthday. (I'll show you his present tomorrow.)

This morning I ate the bread toasted with butter and homemade strawberry jam. Oh, mama. I've got the best husband in the world!