Crumb Cake, Bad Lighting, and 13 Years

Have you ever had a block of time that you wish would never have happened?  When things just go down and make you feel yucky for a good amount of time?  Yeah, well that time is now.  Plus, this whole time is falling on my 13th wedding anniversary!  It all started last week when I read the blog about the Mexican cookies.  I really took it personally and it took me a few days to get the downer feeling off of me.

Crumb Topping

I was ready for that feeling to be gone and to make this New York Style Crumb Cake from Brown Eyed Baker for my husband for the morning of our anniversary when I literally went into the kitchen at 11:55pm the night before.  The lights didn’t come on.  Actually, the last two beams that hadn’t gone out completely flickered sadly and wouldn’t stay on.  Five minutes later, exactly on our anniversary, my husband comes home from work and I give him a kiss and give him the news.  No biggie right?  Except for the fact that he wouldn’t watch Breaking Bad with me, it was a nice night and I knew that I probably wouldn’t make the crumb cake in the morning because it would be a Home Depot day.  So the next day I buy a big box of fluorescents, right size and wattage and everything, and head home.  Justin was eager to get the new lights in, then we flip the switch, and NOTHING happens!  Are you kidding me!  We still don’t know what is wrong, have no idea what to do, and we would rather not call an electrician because, well, we have three kids to feed.  So after realizing then that my anniversary was going to suck (we weren’t going to celebrate that day anyway and homeowner issues really ruin the mood), the next thing I thought about was my blog.  I know my blog doesn’t have the best pictures, but I also know that the best pictures that I can take don’t use the flash from my camera.  Seeing as my kitchen is dark with a small window, I just went into a funk thinking that I couldn’t post anything.

Just before I cover the entire cake with crumbs.

You know what finally got me out of my funk?  This cake!  As soon as I was finished making it, even before I tasted it, I knew things would be alright.  I knew I could just tell you why my pictures would be crappy for a couple of posts and just trust that you would give me a pass.  Hopefully, sooner rather than later, everything will be fixed and not only will I have usable light in my kitchen but good light.  Also, when my husband came home last night, he said, “Oooh, is that crumb cake?”  That went a long way for me in reigniting the anniversary mood and seeing as we are supposed to celebrate today…fingers crossed!

Crumb Cake Baked!

GeekyLink for today is a Fringe reference.  Seeing as I completely glossed over the season premiere of one of my favorite shows, I figure I owe it to them to give a shout out.  This T-shirt just cracks me up My Two Dads!  Also, for my money RedBubble has some of the best nerdy T-shirts out there in terms of variety.  There are plenty more sites and I may reference them in the future but at least compared to a site like CafePress, RedBubble has more interesting Fringe and more overall Dr. Who shirts.  As for the episode, if I don’t get more than one cumulative minute of Joshua Jackson in an entire episode, I am gonna freak out!  Seth Gabel will do for now, I guess.

Polvorones Rosas (or Big Pink Mexican Cookies)

Wow, the week I have had.  NOTHING sweet had been working out for me.  I made these chocolate cookies with marshmallows baked inside and I didn’t make enough that didn’t burst open and/or I felt were baked long enough to post a recipe.  I did use half a large marshmallow, though, so if I can get the cookie to work with a mini marshmallow then I will post it.

Earlier in the week, I tried to adapt a different cookie recipe and it just wasn’t right.  Then over the weekend I tried to make candy (OMG, caramel is tough!) twice and once, I cooked it too long (my friend and I chewing for days, pretty funny!) and the next time, not quite enough.  Geesh!  So I figured I would make something that I have made before but had not posted.  I have made these cookies before but I still wanted to see if I could tweak the recipe I used before or find another.  Then after hours of research on the internet (seriously, hours because polvorones can refer to Mexican wedding cookies/cinnamon cookies/cookies with ground nuts, a Filipino candy, or a Spanish Christmas cookie) I had just narrowed down the recipes I was considering, when I came upon what I felt was the meanest blog post ever.  I will not name the blogger but the whole point of the post was to complain about some of the cookies I grew up eating.  She even goes so far as to broadly say that “the Mexicans make shitty cookies”.

Ready for the oven!

Just stab me in my heart!  She was not picking out one particular kind of cookie, either, in the post she was reviewing about five.  To be fair, the picture in her post does not contain a big pink cookie and yes, I do kind of get what she says.  Yup, depending on the panaderia (Mexican bakery) you go to, sometimes you can taste the “Crisco, sugar and flour,” but then stop going to that panaderia!  She goes on to dismiss all Mexican bakery cookies as “clownish” although she does give credit to churros and tres leches cakes as being delightful Mexican sweets.  My husband says that she is entitled to her opinion and I that I should calm down.  I guess he is right.  I do have one last point, though, nowhere in her post does she mention Mexican hot chocolate.  She was eating her cookies all wrong!  You need a nice mug of Ibarra or Abuelita to dip them in!  Everyone knows that.  

Overall, I got the feeling that she thinks the cookies are just too simple to be taken seriously.  Seriously, I made these cookies three times with what I felt were completely different results.  The first batch, I made too thin and they tasted too buttery but they were nice and soft.  The second time I decreased the butter a bit and tried to make them without a mixer, using only my hands (something I had seen on youtube), adding the sugar last.  Those cookies, I thought, came out too tough.  My husband liked them, he doesn’t like how the bakery cookies tend to fall apart, I kinda do.  The third time, I went back to the first recipe and the first method but made sure to not make the cookies too thin.  That seemed to do the trick.  They didn’t taste too buttery and they were soft and they didn’t fall apart easily but they probably would if dipped in chocolate.  That is exactly what I was going for.  I was lucky that the recipe only makes a dozen cookies, otherwise I would be in big trouble.

Sprinkled with sugar just out of the oven.

O geez, my GeekyLink for the week is SO awesome and so totally obscure.  Again, I must reference Kevin Smith and his SModcast Internet Radio network.  I guess a few months ago Walt Flanagan, from the Tell ‘Em Steve Dave Podcast, challenged this band to put music to a song he wrote.  The result is an AWESOME song called “I Sell Comics” by Courage My Love.  I figure it references comics so it qualifies as a GeekyLink.  I have been listening to this song over and over all week.

Ham and Cheese Pull Apart Party Bread

Do you see this bread?  This is for real and I made it.  I have had two baking fails this week and looking at this beautiful and awesome bread makes it all worthwhile.  This bread tastes as good as it looks and it is just as fun to eat.  OK, I’ll admit it, it is a bit of work.

The funky butter mixture that you mix into your dough.

Mostly it just takes awhile, and it really isn’t that complicated if you take your time.  The first time I made this was last year for the Superbowl and I was under a time crunch, it was my first time, and I messed up but I still was able to finish it in time for the party.

I have to credit my father in law with the idea for the perfect condiment to go with this bread.  He thought it would be great to slice it open and spread mustard on it and really, that takes it to another level.  When I made it to watch the Emmys with my friend, we used the mustard as a dipping sauce and it was sooo good!  I highly recommend it.  Geez, I guess you could even make a sandwich with one of the rolls, which I hadn’t even thought of since I consider each roll as its own sandwich, but I bet that would be crazy awesome!

Doesn't it look like a pretty dough, waiting for its second rise?

I got this recipe from Cookingbread.com.  It is a really great site and you can even view some recipes as tutorials with step by step instructions that can be very helpful.  The only problem is that you can’t click on the pictures and make them bigger, which, when attempting a complicated recipe like this could be very useful.  They have some version of every kind of recipe for bread you could ever want.

Rolled out and sliced into sections with cheese spread on every other one.

This bread is flaky, buttery, and cheesy, what else is there?

For my next post, I hope to bring you something sweet but as I said before, that whole side of my baking hasn’t been going well for the past week.  We’ll see how it goes.

Rolled up and ready for eggwash, shredded cheese, and final rise.

Thrilled about my GeekyLink for this week and I actually have Kevin Smith to thank for it.  I follow him on Twitter and I am a big fan of his SModcast network.  Anyways, he tweeted something to this guy, basically saying that his daughter is a Whovian because of this guy’s album.  For anyone who doesn’t know or didn’t figure it out, a Whovian is a Dr. Who fan.  This guy, Charlie McDonnell, has a band called Chameleon Circuit and yes, oh yes, they make Dr. Who music!  It is decent music too!  I wasn’t expecting much.  I have heard sci-fi fan music before (yikes!) so their albums, that you can hear in their entirety on the website, were a real treat.  Some songs are better than others because all of the band members take turns writing and singing the songs.  I haven’t downloaded anything yet because I haven’t listened to them all but I am sure their song called “Mr. Pond” will be one of them.  Rory Williams is my hero!

One last picture before the recipe…

Just before it goes into the oven.

Rosemary Olive Oil Bread

I haven’t shared yet one of the best things I love about baking.  I LOVE baking bread.

I love the smell of the yeast proofing, watching the dough rise, my mouth watering the entire time it is baking.  I have had a few bread fails but nothing so major as to turn me off to it completely.  The only problem I ever have with it is having the time to make it.  Even the first time I attempted a yeast dough, I didn’t think to read ahead in the directions (I was a teenager), I started it way late in the evening, oops.  My girls have activities in the afternoons so any recipe needs to be able to be risen and baked before we leave or I have to be willing to stay up late with it or (and I love these recipes, I don’t have enough) be able to be put in the fridge to rise overnight.  I have a sourdough recipe I like to make that I have timed perfectly from when I get home from taking my daughter to school to just before I pick her up, but that is another post (I killed my sourdough starter in the spring, I have to start another).  Regardless of how involved it can be, nothing can beat freshly baked bread.

This is a Rosemary Olive Oil bread from ahintofhoney.com.  It was awesome dipped in olive oil and balsamic.  My eight year old and I ate half of it all by ourselves in about ten minutes.  Do I have to tell you how much I love that she loves dipping her bread in the olive oil and balsamic?  Anyway, this is a fairly easy and quick bread to put together.  The only issues I had were that the recipe called for a pizza peel and a pizza stone.  Those problems were easily remedied with parchment paper and an upside down sheet pan.  Once I did use my cast iron skillet warmed in the oven but in trying to get my dough from the parchment paper to the skillet, I ended up deflating it.  I may try that again but next time I will turn the skillet upside down and just leave the dough on the parchment.

Plain fresh baked bread smells great but this one with the rosemary…you can’t even imagine!  Don’t imagine.  Do it.

I really recommend getting your hands on some fresh rosemary.  I have made this twice and the fresh rosemary makes SUCH a difference.

As far as my GeekyLink goes, where the heck is my frikin (yes, I said frikin!) Pottermore entrance email?  What is the point of winning early access if I only get a two week jump on the general public?  There are people that have been on the site for almost two months!  Plus, Twitter just keeps rubbing it in because it is house pride week and they are picking a house a day and people tweet about what is great about their houses.  Here I am all early access with no email and I have to read about all of these people that are so proud of their houses and I haven’t even been put into one yet!  My eight year old (actual and my inner one) is super bummed.

Oven Baked Apple Donuts

What a long weekend!  It started early Friday, with getting everything ready for the fair and didn’t end till I popped one of these in my mouth on Sunday night.

The fair was a major success!  Despite the exorbitant prices and a mini meltdown early in the day by my son, there was fun and good food to be had all around.  Plus, it wasn’t too hot.

Saturday was just as fun with the beginning of soccer season starting bright and early for us at 8AM.  My oldest had a great time and a great game.  My four year old…I just don’t think soccer is her thing.  At one point, she picked up the ball and put it in front of the goal so she could kick it in.  It was hilarious!  Not for the action in and of itself, it was the look on her face when she did it.  She was fed up and you could tell.  Also, when we got home, she kept saying soccer was boring.  However, she still kept asking when her next game was, so we shall see.  We also stayed at the soccer fields to watch my nephews play.  The only tough part of the day, was reining in my two year old the entire time.  Afterwards, my friend came over and we caught up on Dr. Who and the season finale of Torchwood.  Once she left, it was back to work menu planning for the coming week.

Sunday was grocery shopping and catching up on dishes.  Finally, at the end of the night, I got to bake.  I was able to make some yummy stuff, covered in cinnamon sugar. Plus, I got to bake with apples.  

I told you I was gonna!  These little itty bitty donuts were just perfect.

I didn’t feel the need to change a thing.  I did add a bit more apple, but that was just because I had a few more cut up and I figured why not.  I also did mess up a bit on the method (I forgot to add the butter before the apple mixture, oops) but it all turned out alright.  The only thing that would have made this recipe better is if I had put the batter in the fridge overnight so I could have baked them first thing in the morning.  Then, they would have won an award for the Best Monday Morning Breakfast Ever!

Mmmm, cinnamon sugar…

Now, back to Dr. Who and Torchwood…

Lots of fans of the Doctor have issues with Amy and Rory, I am not one of those people.  Any man that waits two thousand years for his woman is a man I can get behind.  Of course he would still love Amy aged thirty five years more, was it even really a question?

The ending of Torchwood was kind of a bummer.  Poor Alexa Havens (former Babe from All My Children) died in the last episode and since I had heard they were going to do another season, I was really disappointed.  Not in the episode, however, because any fan of the non mortal Captain Jack Harkness can totally get behind the ending.  However, I read a review that said overall the season was a 44 minute episode stretched to 440 minutes.  Yeah, kinda.  Still excited that there will be a season five!

GeekyLink Alert!  Now that we are finished with Torchwood, my friend and I are going to watch Joss Whedon’s Firefly.  We both heard it was great.  She has seen Serenity (the Firefly movie) and is a big Buffy fan.  I am a Nathan Fillion fan (ever since One Life to Live), but hadn’t seen the series.  So I will let you know how that all goes, we have only seen the pilot so far.

Cinnamon Blueberry Cookies with Cream Cheese

Dang it is hot!

Maybe that is why I changed these cookies so much.  They were supposed to be Lemon Blueberry Cheesecake cookies.   Nice, crisp, clean summer flavors.  I had every intention of making them.  I bought lemons and everything!  The cheesecake part started me thinking a bit about fall, though.  We have had a mild summer here in So Cal for the most part but, around my birthday and just this past week, it has been scorching.  I just want the summer to be over and fall to be here.  So I decided to change it up a bit.  To be honest, I wasn’t sure it would work.  I just tried my hardest, using all the baking skills I have learned so far.

It all turned out well!  Next time I might add more spice and you don’t really need the cream cheese, the cookie can stand on its own, but it is a nice little nugget to bite into, but so are the blueberries already.  This is one of those soft pillowy cookies that is almost like biting into a cake.  No crunch.  I did miss that a little, so I added a bit of cinnamon sugar immediately after they were baked and that helped.

{Note, if adding cinnamon sugar, add it immediately after baking not before.  It just won’t be the same, the cookie is soft and will just absorb the sugar, not let it stay crunchy and crystallized.}

I really want to try it with diced apples (Apple Cheesecake Cookies anyone?)!  I want to try LOTS of recipes with apples.  I want to try LOTS of recipes with these flavors.  I want to be able to bake, but it is just so dang hot!  To be fair, I did bake these yesterday in the scorching heat but I want to be able to bake and still be relatively comfortable.

It is supposed to cool down from this weekend till the middle of the week.  I can’t wait!  I am so excited!  I am also excited because I get to go to the fair with my husband and kids later today.  Then, tomorrow is the first game of the soccer season for my oldest AND the first game ever for my four year old, yay!

Sunday, I am baking.

My GeekyLink is something I wish I could have shared on my first post.  I just found it on The Nerdist website this week.  Yes, I am still actively trying to get you to watch Dr. Who.  This trailer Three Doctors, One Trailer shows all of the Doctors since the series came back: Christopher Eccleston, David Tennant, and of course, the current Doctor, Matt Smith.  I really like it but I do think it is a bit Eccleston heavy (and a bit Tennant lacking) considering he was only the Doctor for one season, but I figure, he WAS the first new Doctor so he is kind of important.  Don’t forget The Girl Who Waited is coming up on Saturday.

Adapted from hotpolkadot.com

Makes about 18 cookies

1/2 cup unsalted butter, room temperature

1/4 cup granulated sugar

1/4 cup light brown sugar

1 teaspoon vanilla

1 egg

1 1/2 cups flour

1/4 teaspoon baking soda

1/4 teaspoon baking powder

1/2 teaspoon salt

1/2 teaspoon cinnamon

1/4 freshly grated nutmeg

1 heaping tablespoon yogurt

1/2 cup blueberries

1/4 package cream cheese, cut into 1 teapsoon cubes (optional)

either sugar or a blend of cinnamon sugar for sprinkling (optional)

Preheat oven to 350 degrees and position a rack in the center.  Line a baking sheet with parchment paper.

In the bowl of an electric mixer with a paddle attachment, cream together the butter and sugars until it is light and fluffy.  Blend in the vanilla and egg.

In a separate bowl, whisk together the baking soda, baking powder, salt, cinnamon, nutmeg, and flour.  Mix half of the flour mixture into the wet ingredients.  Mix in the yogurt and blend, then mix in the rest of the flour mixture.  Gently fold in the blueberries so as not to burst any.  Refrigerate the dough for about 15-20 minutes to help make it stiff enough to roll.

For each cookie, roll 1 heaping tablespoon of dough into a ball then flatten it slightly into a disc shape.  Place cream cheese cube into the center and form the dough around it creating a ball again.  Bake them for about 10-14 minutes until the edges brown slightly.   Immediately, sprinkle with sugar.

How Browned Butter Blueberry Muffins Changed My Life

What can I say?  These muffins changed my life.  How, you ask?  It all goes back to Joy the Baker.  O boy, am I a fan.  She called these muffins perfect.  I would not have started this blog let alone done all the baking I have done since, if I hadn’t started reading her blog.  She is funny, independent, and she teaches me new things about food.  She is always learning new things too (like a few days ago she had to learn the hard way not to put parchment paper under the broiler).

I had never heard about browned butter till these muffins.  Now, if I see any recipe that calls for browned butter I immediately bookmark it.  Remember back in the day, when everyone popped popcorn over the stove and then melted their own butter on the stove top to pour on top of it?  This is that butter, cooked just a bit longer.  Now, the butter for this recipe in particular is unsalted so even though it smells AWESOME while it is browning, if you try to taste it you will be sadly disappointed.  It won’t be what you are expecting (I had to learn that the hard way, yuck).

Strawberry Pie and High School Football

My husband is gone now, like he will be 75% of Fridays from now till mid-December.  He is attending a high school football game, like lots of proud fathers are beginning to this year.

Our son is only 2.

My husband is just going because he wants to go!  He knows who the players are in our area, in our state, and sometimes a few superstars from around the country.  This is not college (which I LOVE watching by the way and he does too, but we have soccer games are coming up on Saturdays) or professional (which I can tolerate but he doesn’t watch too much anymore).  This is high school.  He goes to certain games that he thinks will be good that week.  He learns what kind of offense and defense each team plays.  He hates the schools that move kids in from other areas…

Are you bored yet?

I am in awe of how much he knows and love that he has something he likes to do but I HATE being alone with the kids on Friday nights.  Every other night he is home, only Wednesday and Thursday because of his schedule, I could take him or leave him but on Fridays we all just hang out.  Usually, I am more mellow because I tend not to cook on Fridays.  Now, any time we might want to go out on a Friday night (just us or as a family), it depends on whose playing.  Just sub Red Sox baseball for high school football and I am Drew Barrymore in Fever Pitch.  At least, today, he was able to go with our oldest, usually she has dance and then he goes with his dad (who couldn’t go tonight).  I hope they are having a good time together.  I also hope he realizes that he will only get to go to two more games this month, because we have our anniversary coming up and he promised the kids we would go to the fair.  After that, we probably won’t see him on a Friday night till the week of Thanksgiving.  O well.  

Maybe if I can make this pie every Friday he will stay home?  Or at least some version of it, changing fruit as the seasons do?  This was the first thing that I had made in a long time, where he just shoved it in his mouth till it was gone.  If he doesn’t like something, he will just have a bite or two, say it was “alright” and not finish it.  This was gone in about two minutes.  He liked it.  He even had a great big piece the next night.  There would still be more if my two year old didn’t keep picking at it in the fridge during the day AND having slices for his dessert.