DIY Laundry Detergent

Well over a year ago I was introduced, via my friend Michelle over at Burghbaby, to homemade laundry soap. It was kind of a revelation and I have been making my own ever since. I was a Tide w Bleach user for years. Decades probably. See, Hart has a sensitivity to the perfumes and crap used in a lot of cheaper detergents for one, but it’s not like I could get away with using them anyway. Cheaper detergent is no longer cheap when one has to use 2 or 3 times the amount to get clean clothes. Restaurant laundry. It’s mostly gross. Hart is also a runner. Sweaty, gross running clothes also scoff at cheap detergents.

I am a powder soap user, always have been and it’s what I prefer. Tide is definitely one of the pricier brands, even when you get the super huge gigantor box from Costco. They also put that silly large scoop in there to help you use too much detergent so you have to buy it more often. Cheaters. Defeat them by swapping out their scoop for the right sized measuring cup. You will be SHOCKED how much less detergent you go through whether you make it yourself or buy it.

I tried out the recipe Michelle included in that post up there, made the small batch of it and gave it a whirl. It was ok. The issue wasn’t the soap, though. For normal stuff it was fine, but for work & work out clothes I wasn’t as pleased with the results. I also wasn’t a fan of making the small batches. Having the open boxes kind of makes me twitch, as odd as that may sound, and I would rather make a big batch and use them all up and then make them go away. (No…YOU have an OCD issue.) So I tweaked the recipe & ingredients a bit to boost the detergent while still only using 2 tablespoons of soap powder per load and use up whole boxes of stuff.

The batch size for this is about 7 quarts, I use an 8 quart lidded bucket to store it and use my food processor to do all the not-so-dirty-work. I recommend the processor to make this easy work, takes about 10 minutes to toss it all together with the machine; by hand it will be much more work. Either method costs about 1/4 of what I would pay for the equivalent amount of Tide and is well worth the effort.

The ingredients are simple and as much as it kills me the only place that I have consistently found them all is Wal-Mart. The washing soda apparently is a laundry unicorn so I bite the bullet when I have to and go there to get the goods. For the bar soap it can be any kind you like, I liked the smell of this one and it was on super sale. Plain Ivory is generally what I use.

Edit: my friend Amy over on FB made a pretty awesome discovery via Google that will mean I don’t have to go to that dreaded place to get Washing Soda anymore! She discovered & shared with me this post from Nature’s Nurture and Penniless Parenting on how to make it yourself by baking regular baking soda. Chemistry FTW!

• 1 – 3# 7oz box Washing Soda
• 1 – 4# 12oz box Borax
• 8 – Bars of Soap
• 1 – 1.3# Jar OxiClean

Grate the bar soap down with a cheese grater ~ if you are using a food processor the larger grate works perfectly, if you will be mixing by and use the finer grate**. Put the grated soap into a big container with the powdered soaps and mix together. Put back in the food processor with the normal blade and pulse down until it is ground into a powder.As it comes out of the processor dump it into the storage bucket. When all of the soap is ground up dump it back into the big container and mix it all up to make sure it’s well combined. Dump back in the bucket and store it covered.

That perfectly sized blue scoop? That comes in the container of OxiClean FTW! I have a super capacity washer and use 1 scoop (2 Tbsp) per load.

**If you are mixing by hand you will only need to add the powders to the finely grated soap until it’s all mixed up then store. Same amount of soap per load.

DIY Fabric Softener

This one really doesn’t need any photos and is silly easy. Of course, right after I bought a mondo huge new bottle of Downy twitter pointed me at this recipe for homemade fabric softener so I bookmarked it for later consideration. When the bottle ran low I revisited it. I didn’t like having to use a 1/4 cup of it per load, I had planned to reuse my Downy bottle and since I use the concentrated stuff normally I was only using 2 tablespoons per load and saw no reason to change it so I changed the recipe instead.

The recipe calls for a bottle of conditioner – this is purely for smell so pick a cheap brand, normal sized bottle, that you dig the smell of. I used a Suave Sweet Pea scented one that is DAMN close to the smell of regular Downy. Also do NOT sub any other kind of vinegar, none of them work the same as plain white distilled vinegar. I also feel obligated to mention that vinegar and bleach, when mixed together directly, are a chemical bomb combo, so it is not recommended that you use a vinegar based fabric softener in loads of laundry that you use bleach in. That said I do it and have yet to have any kind of issue – the bleach & fabric softener are not directly mixed at any point in the cycle in my washer because I have a fabric softener dispenser in the machine and they are both diluted in water negating the issue – I like to live dangerously.

• 1 regular sized bottle of cheap Hair Conditioner (around 16oz)
• 3 cups Hot Water
• 3 cups Distilled White Vinegar

Ready for the hard part – mix them all together until completely combined (I did this in the bottle by shaking. It made for lots of bubbles but they settled out and I didn’t have to wash anything. Win!) and store in a pour-friendly container. Like I said, I reused the old Downy bottle with the built-in measuring cup in the lid and use 2 tablespoons per load. This is CHEAP compared to liquid Downy. Like a penny per load. And as a hard-core Downy fan I am more than happy with my clothes, bedding & linen using the DIY version.

Part of my love of these two DIY laundry stuff is the cost savings – it is unreal how much cheaper it is to make it yourself and use the right amounts in your washer – but I also love that I can control what goes into the soaps I use. No fillers, no harsh dyes or perfumes. My inner hippie rejoices!

And here is a gratuitous pic of my adorable beasts because they stayed in this position long enough for me to take one. I asked Buster but he couldn’t tell me WHY he feels the need to lay his 90# of fur on Gizmo’s 40# of adorable for napping.

I feel like pierogi gets a bad wrap as this super hard, complicated thing. It really isn’t…well it shouldn’t be anyway. Outside of Twitter filling my days with entertaining nonsense, it has provided me with usually amusing and sometimes frustrating insights into the minds of home & self proclaimed quasi-professional cooks – they like to spend silly amounts of money & time to make things more complicated. I have seen people hunting for special pierogi ‘cutters’ or dough rolling ‘machines’ or specialty folding & sealing ‘devices’. Heh. You need NONE of those things to make pierogi. Seriously. You need a rolling pin, a cutter of some type that can cut roundish shapes (traditionally a drinking glass was the cutter of choice according to my Nana), a pastry brush (which isn’t really necessary, just convenient) and your hands. There is no magical way to make the process faster, there is no machine that makes it easier, there is no tool that makes it more efficient ~ all you do is add more bullshit to be washed & cleaned up to the pile in the sink. If you want to be faster and/or more efficient at making peirogi go hook up with some local church ladies and practice – no gadget from Bed, Bath & Beyond can make that happen, so quit wasting your money on stupid toys and buy a good French rolling pin and a set of round cutters.

This is most definitely Project Cooking. I am of the theory that if I am going to make pierogi I am going to MAKE pierogi and make lots. They freeze beautifully so I make around 15 dozen at a time, eating some and freezing the rest for use as I want them. I will take a full day of pierogi making in exchange for many dinners; it is time well spent. It is also, awesomely, a food item that can be prepped in stages so you don’t have to spend 10 hours in the kitchen all at one time, you can make your fillings & dough the night before and then just get to rolling, filling and cooking the day of. I was making these for my Very Hunky Christmas Dinner and to give to some family and friends so my last run was around 30 dozen. When I was all done and it took me roughly 16 hours from start to finish. That may sound terrible, but for what I ended up with I was silly happy.

Pierogi Dough makes enough for 15 dozen pierogies

The dough recipe I use in my Nana’s grandmother’s recipe, straight from Poland. I have done some googling and see many variations on the theme and have tried some others but this is the one that I come back to every time. Pierogi dough is not pasta dough. Pasta dough tends to be dryer, tougher and a more sturdy dough made from semolina flour, egg, salt and water. Pierogi dough is lighter, made with all purpose flour, sour cream, salt, egg & water. There are discernible differences in flavor, texture, workability and appearance between the two doughs. Pierogi dough resembles a tight pizza dough, white & elastic; pasta dough is generally more yellow and firm.

The recipe calls for sour cream or plain greek yogurt. I have used both with equal success, the yogurt just happens to be naturally fat free so I haven’t used sour cream in forever for anything. I also either mix this by hand or in the mixer, end result is the same so I see no advantage to either method. If you use a mixer use the dough hook attachment and knead with the machine.

• 6 cups All Purpose Flour
• 1 tsp Salt
• 1 cup Plain Greek Yogurt or Sour Cream
• 2 Eggs
• 1 1/2 cup Water

Mix the flour and salt in a bowl. In a separate bowl mix the yogurt, water & eggs. Make a well in the center of the flour, pour in the liquid and mix together by hand or with the dough hook until it comes together as a dough, adjusting with additional flour or water 1 Tbsp at a time until a pliable, soft dough is formed.  Knead, either in the machine or on a lightly floured surface by hand, until the dough isn’t sticky and the outside surface looks smooth. Separate into quarters, form into a disk and individually wrap. Store in the fridge for at least 2 hours before rolling.

The Filling(s)

I always thought I was a potato & cheese girls until I made my own sauerkraut…now I’m not so sure. I am including recipes for both. Either will do a full batch of dough alone, adjust as necessary for however you plan to mix & match.

Potato & Cheese Pierogi Filling

This filling is only as good as the ingredients you add to it, namely the cheese. If you use a better, more flavorful cheese you need to use far less to get impact. I use an aged extra sharp cheddar. Any cheese you use should have good flavor – sharp provolone, feta, chevre, parmesan, fontina, asiago – all good cheese choices. I also use minimal butter, you don’t want the filling to be greasy, and again I use plain greek yogurt in place of sour cream.

• 5# Idaho Potatoes, peeled & medium diced
• 1 medium sweet onion, very small dice
• 1/4 cup Butter
• 16oz GOOD Cheese, grated
• 1/2 cup Plain Greek Yogurt or Sour Cream
• to taste Kosher Salt & Fresh Ground Black Pepper

Get the potatoes into a pot and cover with water. Generously salt and bring to a simmer.They are going to cook until fork tender, same as you would for mashed potatoes.

While the potatoes cook, melt the butter in a saute pan, add the very small diced onion, season with salt & pepper and sweat until sweet smelling and soft, about 7-8 minutes over medium heat. You dont want the onion to take on any color, just completely cook out until sweet.

When the potatoes are cooked drain in a colander. Let the potatoes steam dry for a couple minutes, but they should still be steaming when you go to mash. {Pro Tip: Do not let them cool. Trying to mash cooled boiled potatoes makes for odd, gummy mashed potatoes. That is bad. And unfixable.} Mash the potatoes with a hand masher or with a mixer (paddle attachment or hand) until smooth. Add the onions with the butter, yogurt and cheese, season with salt & pepper and mix until completely combined. Taste and adjust seasoning as needed. Mixture should be thick, firm and should border on over seasoned, remember, it is the filling for a dumpling. Perfectly smooth is not a concern, a couple of small lumps has never ruined a pierogi.

Sauerkraut Pierogi Filling

I make this with my sauerkraut – simmered with beer, bacon, onion, garlic and some spices and stuff. It’s a recipe I have yet to share…noted.  If you have some leftover sauerkraut or the desire to hook up your favorite recipe I would. I am fairly certain the reason that I fell in love with them this time was because of how much I love my sauerkraut. If you dig the stuff straight from the jar/can I’m sure that would work, too.

• 2 1/2# Idaho Potatoes, peeled & medium diced
• 2 cups Sauerkraut
• 1/2 cup Plain Greek Yogurt or Sour Cream
• 1 cup Panko Breadcrumbs
• to taste Kosher Salt & Fresh Ground Black Pepper

Boil the potatoes in generously salted water until fork tender. Drain in a colander and let steam dry for a minute or 2. Mash with a hand masher until roughly mashed. Add the sauerkraut, panko & yogurt, season with salt & pepper and mash together. Taste and adjust seasoning as needed.

Any pierogi filling needs to cool before being used – hot filling balls the dough up. Speaking of…

How to Make Pierogi

The recipe portion of our fun is done, the time to get to work is here. Get a large pot (dutch oven or soup pot sized) of salted water on the stove and bring to a boil. I also set up a cooling rack over a sheet tray to transfer the cooked pierogi to as they come out of the water. Get a couple of trays set up with parchment to hold the raw pierogi.

What you will need:

• your dough & fillings
• couple regular teaspoons
• round cutting implement, around 4″ wide
• water
• pastry brush
• rolling pin
• parchment lined trays

Step #1 roll out the dough on a floured surface. The dough is not delicate,make sure it is not sticking while you roll it out and move it around as you need to. The evenness of the roll is important, not so much the shape. You want an ideal thickness of between 1/8″ – 1/16″.

Step #2 brush off any excess flour and use the circle cutter to cut your rounds. Put them as close together as possible, a little overlapping won’t hurt, getting as may circles as possible out of each disk of dough. Remove the scrap pieces, I roll them into the next disk as I go or you can store them all in the fridge and re-roll the scraps out together when done with the 4 main dough pieces.

Step 3# Brush each round with a pastry brush dipped in water. Place a rounded teaspoon of filling in the center of each round.

Step #4 Fold in half and pinch closed, the water acting as glue to fuse the dumpling together. Press out any air bubbles as you seal them up. Pinch the edges closed for a perfect seal. You don’t want a bunch of edge dough, the pierogi is about the filling! Keep on going until you are out of dough. (This is the tedious part in case you weren’t sure, yet.)

Step #5 When the water comes to a boil and after you have formed all the pierogi boil them in batches until they float, about 2 minutes. The water needs to stay at a simmer while they cook. They are delicate until they are cooked through, so be gentle or you can bust them all up. When they are cooked use a slotted spoon to transfer them to a draining rack.

At this point you can do one of 2 things – eat or freeze them.

To eat them I saute in butter and onions, seasoned simply with kosher salt & black pepper. Saute the julienned onion over medium high heat in a generous amount of butter, let them take on some color then add the pierogi, enough to make a single layer over the onion. Saute over medium heat until the pierogi just starts to brown up. Absolutely perfect!

To Freeze let the peirogi cool completely on the rack. Make sure they are dry and layer them between pieces of plastic wrap on a plate or platter that fits in your freezer. Make sure none of the pierogi touch at all. Place the whole thing in the freezer for a day, until they are frozen solid, then pop them apart and store in Ziplock bags or containers in the freezer. Frozen pierogi can be cooked from frozen, my least favorite way to be honest because it seems to take forever & is horridly inaccurate or can be left to sit out and thaw on the counter for an hour before being cooked, ideal in my opinion.

Don’t be daunted by a project cooking thing like this or think you need a bunch of special tools to make it happen, you don’t. Yes, it does take time, but it yields a LOT of food, so it is time, and money, well spent. I have no idea what a box of Mrs T’s runs for these days but I guarantee these taste better for a fraction of the cost with no goofy preservatives or ingredients. These things last months in the freezer with no adverse effects and have saved my behind for dinner on more than one occasion.

I think next time I am going to try some kind of dessert pierogi…I’ll let you know how they come out!

The cake is a 10″ layer cake – 2 layers each Devil’s Food & Vanilla, separated with vanilla buttercream. I covered it in rolled fondant and hand braided and made the cake decorations out of more fondant.

The bulk of the hair swoops on the top of the cake were yellow cake covered in rolled fondant with the braid wrapping the cake.

This was a super fun girls birthday cake to do and also LOVED the movie!

Coming up next ~ Homemade Pierogies!

For those who don’t know – and I will say now that I am SO sorry if you are in this crowd – ladylocks are flaky pastry tubes covered in powdered sugar and filled with a creamy buttery icing. I briefly searched the internet looking for another name for them and I did not find one, only a minor conflict on whether it is ‘lady lock’ or ladylock. I think it looks better together, so that’s what I went with. And if you do happen to know if it has another name please feel free to share in the comments.

A few months ago I started buying ladylocks any time I was at a relatively decent bakery. I threw away a lot of really bad ladylocks. I ate a lot of mediocre ladylocks and a few good ones. Far too few for my liking. See, my mom used to make these by the hundreds for weddings and graduation parties, she was known for killer buttercream filling for them, so I have consumed more than my fair share of really good ladylocks. None of the ones I bought held a candle to the ones I remembered.

The ones I remembered were not crumbly puff pastry, they were a flaky light pastry tube that did NOT fall to pieces as soon as you took a bite, they held together like a good cookie should. The fillings ranged from the thick gaggy sweet powdered sugar shortening bomb to the even worse faux whipped ‘cream’ that actually contains no cream…or flavor apparently. Few had a decent buttercream, but none had the right pastry with the right filling. Little plastic containers of crushed flaky hope sprinkled with powdered disappointment. So sad.

Clearly the only solution was to get baking. So I called my mom and got her bag of round clothespins, easier than hunting from store to store to find the right ones, and hit the internet to see what They thought about the shells. Shocker – They had MANY thoughts on what makes a good ladylock shell. So I read about what a bunch of people thought about the topic them promptly tossed out most of it because the term ‘Quick Puff Pastry’ kept popping up and I’m sorry but there is no such thing. Even in their own recipes there was no such thing. Anyone who could type that with a straight face was no one I wanted to take cookie advice from. Puff pastry from scratch, even the alleged ‘quick’ method is not quick. Or easy. Mainly though it wasn’t right. Puff pastry could not create the cookie I remember; the dough is too flaky and delicate, too crumbly and susceptible to moisture, like when you were to fill it with buttercream.

So I went with my rememberings and decided to build a dough loosely based on a pie crust, that was mostly the texture and stability I wanted, but it needed to be less persnickety to work with and have a bit more structure. Knocked it out of the park with the first try then made it a few more times just to make sure because I was hesitant to believe that I nailed it off the cuff; at this point I have made these 5 times, all with the original recipe & once with all butter, all came out delicious and pretty and perfect-ish. And shockingly easy. Seriously.

I figure the easiest way to do this is to walk it through beginning to end and share the recipes and procedures as we go. As far as tools you will want around 50 old school round clothespins; you do not want the kind that have the metal thingies in them to pinch, you want to approximately 4″ long round peg-style ones. I found them at my moms after I went to Lowe’s and was told they don’t carry clothespins (really?) and that big yucky W place I can’t stand didn’t have them either. According to the internet they have them at Home Depot. You also need aluminum foil, a rolling pin, pizza cutter, non-stick spray & a cooling rack (ideally), a pastry bag to fill them is also quite handy (but a gallon baggie can be used in a pinch here, too) and a way to dust with powdered sugar – I use a small hand strainer.

Ladylock (Lady Lock) Dough makes about 52

This recipe is made using the Pie Dough Method of mixing, meaning the fat is cut into the dry ingredients, the liquids ingredients are combined then the 2 are folded together using as little mixing as possible so as to develop as little gluten as possible – over developing gluten makes this style of pastry tough and dense, not light & flaky. Another factor to this is temperature. You want the fats to stay cold, so freeze the shortening a few hours before making the dough and cube both the shortening and the butter as soon as you are ready to start. This dough needs to rest & chill before rolling; I went as long as overnight and as little as 2 hours with no noticeable differences in the end pastry.

Now generally I am anti-shortening, but after trying the recipe with all butter I can say the pastry is better when it is a mixture of both butter & shortening.

• 3 1/2 cups Flour
• 8oz Butter, cold & cubed
• 10 Tbsp Shortening, cold & cubed
• 1/4 cup Sugar
• pinch Salt
• 3/4 cup Cold Water
• 2 Egg Yolks
• 1 Tbsp Vanilla

I used the food processor, pulsing half of the flour & sugar with the cold cubed butter until it was the texture of coarse meal, repeated with the other half of the dry ingredients & cold shortening then combined the 2 mixtures in a big bowl. If you dont have a food processor cut the cold, cubed fat into the dry ingredients with a pastry cutter or forks until there are no large chunks of fat & everything is incorporated.

Mix together the water, egg yolk & vanilla. Make a well in the center of the dry ingredients to pour the liquid into. Fold together with a rubber spatula until it comes together and forms a dough, about 12-15 turns. Form together to make a dough ball, divide into thirds and form each into a disk. Wrap in plastic wrap and refrigerate for at least 2 hours.

Baking Molds

I used round peg style clothespins covered in aluminum foil & sprayed with non-stick spray. The foil wrap job doesn’t need to be neat, I discovered after the first time I painstakingly wrapped some of them. It is more important to leave a piece that you can use to remove the mold easily. On this particular clothespin style the rounded top was a smidge wider so that was where we made the ‘handle’.

There are also stainless baking molds available in any number of sizes that I am sure are really very quite nice, but they are also quite expensive, especially compared to the cost of the clothespins. Being able to have so many, 50 or so, meant I could keep a pretty steady flow of these in & out of the oven making it a much faster project. I had a new tray ready to go in when one came out.

While the dough chills get your molds prepped – be that foil wrapping the clothespins or finding the molds. I bake these on parchment lined sheet trays, so get a couple of those set up, too.

Making the Ladylock Shells

I roll this dough in a 50/50 mix of flour & sugar mixed together. Get the oven turned on to 350 & have your prepped molds & pans ready.

Sprinkle your work surface liberally and start rolling. When you are done you want a piece of dough, roughly the shape of a rectangle, that can be trimmed to a rectangle that is 12″ wide and 1/8″ thick. On my first roll I get a 12″x14″ rectangle and they get bigger from there because I roll the scraps into each new disk of dough. If that seems like it might be too much dough to work with throw the scraps back in the fridge as you go, remold them into a disk when you have them all & roll out, same as the others.

Once you hit the width focus on the thickness, and thereby the length. You will be trimming off the outer edges, which tend to be thicker, but the dough should be uniformly thin, as close to 1/8″ as you can get and even.

Once you have it rolled to the right shape use the pizza wheel to square up the dough to a 12″ width and get ready to cut 1″ wide strips in the dough. I use my rolling pin, like in the pics above, as a guide, running the wheel up against the pin and rolling the pin in even 1″ increments across the dough. Toss any odd end pieces in the scrap pile.

Time to wrap the dough around your molds – if you haven’t sprayed them down yet please do so now. The dough must overlap as you are rolling it on to the molds, same us you would, say, a bandage. Wrap the dough once around the bottom of the pin then spiral upward.

Lay the shell on a parchment lined tray. Space them evenly apart, you can fit about 15 per half sheet tray. As they get done move them into the heated oven for 20 minutes. They shells are done when the pastry looks dry and and baked through. They may take on a little bit of color, but hardly any ideally.

With a 20 minutes bake time I had plenty of time to get the next tray(s) ready as they baked, had a nice flow into & out of the oven. When the shells are baked take them out of the oven and lest them sit for 1 minute. Literally. 1 minute. Then start unmolding them, placing the shells on a cooling rack. To unmold hold the shell delicately in your hand and gently pull the clothespins out, doing it while they are hot gives some flexibility to the dough. If you do not get them off the molds immediately you will have trouble getting them off in one piece; as the dough cools it gets crisp, crisp is not conducive to pulling out molds. It really doesn’t burn much, foil gives up heat fast. Let the shells cool completely before filling. Ahhh…the FILLING!

Buttery Buttercream to Fill Ladylocks!

There are eleventybillion different kinds of buttercream. There are Italian ones and meringue ones and French ones and American ones and and and…well you get my point. This is a riff on an American buttercream so its whipped butter with powdered sugar and some vanilla. Sounds easy…and it is…mostly. I call it a riff because it is far less sweet than a typical American decorators icing, more whipped for airy lightness and is perfect piped into these cookies. I use SALTED butter for this. If you use unsalted add a pinch while the butter whips.

The butter for this needs to be soft, not just room temp but softer, I leave it near the stove while I am baking. I use the whisk attachment for my mixer, too, to get as much air in there as possible.

• 12oz (3 sticks) Butter, soft
• 2 cups Powdered Sugar
• 2 Tbsp Vanilla

Whip the softened butter until it light, glossy and almost white in color; this takes time, be patient. When the butter is lightened up add the powdered sugar & vanilla. Mix on low until incorporated then whip on high until light, airy & fluffy. The buttercream should be a light creamy white in color and stiffly fluffy.

Fill a pastry bag, I fit mine with a narrow tube tip but snipping off the top of a disposable bag or gallon baggie also works fine. Fill each shell with a squeeze on each end being careful not to blop all out the ends. When they are filled lightly sprinkle with powdered sugar.

A flaky, lightly sweet, vanilla scented crust filled with a lighter than air buttery buttercream all dusted with powdered sugar. The perfect ladylock. Out of your kitchen. Whenever you want. Or, if it suits you better, out of my kitchen ~ just email me how many you want & for when :)

Boom.

Aside(s):

• The shells freeze well – but don’t fill them before you freeze for best results.Freeze in layers with parchment in between the layers in an airtight container.
• They freeze pretty well filled, but the pastry is a little moist after thawing, as would be expected, really. Same freezing instructions- layers, parchment, airtight.

Been having that problem a lot lately, not posting things because I don’t have pics. Don’t think I am going to sweat that as much as I have been & hopefully post more often. I’m sure there are a ton of people who plan and plot posts but I don’t cook like that. I am more of a what sounds good-found while shopping-is living on my fridge/pantry cook; this leads to great successes and the occasional failure and me more often than not not getting pics of everything I cook. Imma work on that. In the mean time take my word for it that this risotto should be made sight unseen. It does not disappoint.

TO BUSINESS!

Happy Belated Turkey Day! I hope that you & yours ate until you could eat no more! We had a great feast with the family on the actual day then had a Friendsgiving this last Sunday with a BUNCH of awesome ‘Friends’ (see what we did there?!? :)  so needless to say I am just about done with turkey for a bit though I am pretty sure that I have nailed the easiest way to deliciously roast a turkey, but that is another post.

Winter squashes (think butternut, acorn, pumpkin) are different than summer squashes (think zucchini, yellow); they have harder rinds, their meat is not as delicate or tender and they are heartier in flavor and resilience. They start to appear at the beginning of fall and have an amazing shelf life if stored in a cool dark place. Their flesh is very seasonally appropriate ranging from rusty oranges to rich yellows. I kind of love them in all sorts of shapes and sizes and they do come in a variety of shapes, sizes and colors. My personal favorite is butternut squash. Part of my love is the gorgeous color, but mainly it’s because it’s delicious.

image courtesy of Wikipedia

Acorn squash are the other most commonly found, smaller & shaped differently with a slightly lighter flesh but are interchangeable with butternut squash in  most recipes. For me the butternut has better flavor, but the acorn is dead useful is a lot of recipes – picture them halved and stuffed with a brown rice & bean filling baked with some kind of sauce – tasty.

image courtesy of nutritionmythbusters.blogspot.com

Winter squashes are versatile – they can be slow roasted, pan roasted, sauteed, fried, grilled…pretty much anything you can think to do to them can be done – they are tough veggies. And also hearty. Kind of like a potato or sweet potato winter squash adds some substance and uumph to all kinds of recipes. I dig roasting them – halved or peeled & diced, just depends on what kind of time I have. Roasting them until they start to caramelize and soften up gives them a slightly sweet, rich & creamy flavor/texture that makes my mouth happy.

Risotto is nothing to fear, either. It looks and sounds a lot more complicated than it is, and compared to most rices it IS more complicated, but it is so totally worth it. Risotto, when done properly, tastes like it is loaded with cream, cheese and all sorts of other things that taste good but really aren’t all that good for you. It really isn’t though. Risotto is made with arborio rice, a short grain, starchy rice. When cooked the right way it creates its own gloriously creamy sauce that yes, I do amp up with a little cheese, because, well, why not, but doesn’t really need it to be good.

Risotto takes some time & attention. Stock is added in smaller increments while the rice cooks at a slow simmer, absorbing into the rice slowly and creating that creamy saucy goodness I mentioned earlier. It needs stirred, so this isn’t one of those things you can put on low and forget, but the rest of dinner has to be made, too, so I do that while it works its magic on the stove.

I recommend getting your hands on a butternut or a couple acorn squashes and roast them for this recipe. If you don’t have that kind of time or a lack of desire canned pumpkin (a 15oz can) can be used in place of the fresh roasted squash.

Step #1 – I wrote this part for enough to make the risotto, but if you are going to do the work roast off some extra & throw it in the fridge, its delicious as a side sautéed in a little butter or prepared any way that you would make a sweet potato. It also freezes well, too.

Roasted Winter Squash 

• 1 whole Butternut Squash OR 2 Acorn Squash
• Olive Oil
• Salt & Fresh Ground Black Pepper

The Less Laborious but Takes Longer Method Heat the oven to 350 & line a big enough roasting pan with foil. Cut the whole squash(es) in half lengthwise and use a spoon to remove the seeds. I save the seeds and roast them like pumpkin seeds, same delicious difference. Place the halved & de-seeded squash on the foil lined tray, drizzle with olive oil and season with salt & pepper. Roast in the oven, uncovered, until they are tender, an hour to hour & a half, upon occasion even two. The skins will get hard but the flesh of the squash will get soften and start to caramelize on the edges. When done remove from the oven and let set out until they are cool enough to handle. Use a spoon to scoop out the roasted squash and mash with a fork until it is pulpy. The yield from a whole butternut squash or the 2 acorn should be around 3 cups, plus or minus a little on either end. If you prepared extra it can be stored as is or dice it up for later use.

The More Knife Work but Roasts Much Faster Method Heat the oven to 350, line a sheet tray with some foil. Remove the skin from the squash. This is a challenge. I cut off the top & bottom to get 2 flat surfaces and use a paring knife to peel off the rind. This is easier to do, due to the shape mostly, with a butternut squash, the acorn squash can be a pain in the ass. Once peeled (perfection isn’t dire) cut into 3/4″ thick slices then dice. Spread on the foil lined tray, drizzle with olive oil and season with salt & pepper. Roast until tender and the edges start to caramelize a little bit, about 45 minutes to an hour. Remove from the oven, get into a bowl and mash with a fork until it is pulpy. Same 3 cups-ish yield with this method as with the half roasting. Any extras can go into a container and into the fridge for something else delicious.

Roasted Squash Risotto makes enough for 4 generous servings with leftovers

• 1/4 cup Butter
• 1 medium Onion, small Diced
• 2 cloves Garlic, minced
• 1 1/2 cups Arborio Rice
• 3 cups Roasted Squash or 15oz can Pumpkin Puree
• 2 1/2 cups Chicken Stock
• 1/2 cup Fresh Grated Parmesan/Fontina/Asiago/Romano (you get the idea)
• pinch Fresh Grated Nutmeg (optional but I like it a lot)
• Salt & Fresh Ground Black Pepper

Heat a large bottomed saute pan (preferably one with a lid) over medium high heat. Melt the butter, add the onions and garlic. Sweat over medium heat until translucent and sweet smelling, about 4 minutes. Season with a little bit of salt & pepper. I also recommend a wooden spoon for this. It just works best.

Add the arborio rice and saute with the onion until it is coated with butter. Add the roasted squash and let come back up to heat, softening the squash and working it into the rice. When the pan is hot again add 1/4 of the stock and bring to a gentle simmer while stirring. Let it bubble slightly while stirring frequently until almost all of the liquid is gone, it will make a hissing sound as you drag a wooden spoon through it. When it gets to that point add another 1/4 of the stock and stir in. Bring back to a simmer and repeat this process until all of the stock is added and reduced out.

Taste it now for texture, to see if the rice is done. A perfectly cooked risotto should be al dente firm when you bite into it, it should kind of stick to your back teeth a little, there should ne NO crunch and on the flip side no mush. If the rice is slightly underdone add another 1/4 to 1/2 cup of stock and cook into the rice until it is done.

Use heat to adjust the consistency if you need to. The risotto should not be soupy when it comes off the stove, it should be creamy but somewhat wet. Sprinkle on the cheese and grate a little bit of nutmeg over the top, stir in to completely combine. Taste it and adjust the season now with any more salt & pepper. When the flavor is kick-ass cover and let the risotto rest for 10 minutes or so; this lets the sauce set, it should be clinging to the rice, creamy but not gummy once it is done, and all the flavors marry. The color will be a gorgeous bright orange…now go eat it!

Leftovers, if you have any, reheat beautifully and/or make awesome risotto cakes when rolled in some panko and pan fried real quick. I served it with crispy skinned pan roasted chicken thighs and a pile of roasted turnips. A fall FEAST!

I also made this for Friendsgiving. When I was pondering our menu I was thinking about some of our friends that can’t have gluten (no stuffing! NIGHTMARE!), are vegetarian (no bacon! or turkey! Circle of HELL!) and can’t have dairy (*weeping in a corner, brb) and this dish was a winner for all of them. It’s rice – so no gluten, the cheese & butter can easily be eliminated with only a minor difference because the squash is delicious and the stock can easily be swapped for a vegetable one with no noticeable flavor differences, might need a little more salt.

Some easy recipe modifications

To make the recipe vegetarian substitute vegetable stock for the chicken stock.

For Vegan/Dairy-Free substitute olive oil for butter and vegetable stock for chicken.

I need to go find me a few more butternut squash…I think I might have a risotto problem.

Oh…and here’s a cute picture of my dogs to make up for the lack of photo. They both have had it and they though it was pretty damn good, too.

Juliana’s 7th Birthday marked the very first ‘girlie’ cake that I have done. Juliana wanted Barbie for her birthday so her Mom gave Pinterest a browse and sent me some pictures of cakes that she liked for her big day.

She picked out a princess Barbie to be my muse and her birthday cake was created!

The base cake was devils food with buttercream filling. The skirt of the dress hides a pile of red velvet cake sandwiched with cream cheese icing. The top layers are wrapped in fondant to make the skirt and the flower decorations simple gum paste. Juliana’s Mom joked that this was the most amount of pink & purple I have had in the house in, well, probably ever….she was not wrong at all :)

No Barbies were harmed in the making of this cake, actually the Princess inside was still a very viable toy once she had been surgically removed from her red velvet cake/cream cheese icing case.

Wish I could say I was as happy with the photographs as I was with the way the cake turned out…someday I will learn that it is worth the extra 10 minutes to set the lights up when taking pictures at night or, ya know, in my kitchen at any time of day.

*****

Any interest in or questions about custom cakes please get in touch via the Contact Me page. Thanks!

I don’t usually have to play around with a recipe much to get it to work; I make it once, see what it ends up like and see if I need to make any tweaks and I’m done. This one though, this one? Well it took 4 runs to make sure it was perfect. I will say you’re welcome in advance.

I don’t make donuts often, aversion to deep frying at home, then I saw like eleventybajillion people chatting about them on a Sunday in my Twitter feed. Ok. Maybe it was 4 or 5, but whatever. Amish donuts. If you’ve never had them they are truly a divine thing as far as donuts go. Generally you will find the simple glazed yeast donuts that are beyond yummy, but around this time of year the cider donuts start popping up. These are most definitely a favorite treat. They are a cake donut, not a raised one, with either a cinnamon sugar or cider glaze on them.

Well I had apples and fresh cider and a marked lack of desire to go Amish hunting at random markets so I started googling recipes. It’s really amazing when you start comparing googled recipes just how many different ways there are to make a damn donut. And I most assuredly had an ideal donut in my head. Not too sweet or spiced, apple flavor had to be there, texture had to be perfect – moist without being dense, firm crust that wasn’t crisp but also tender. You know…the perfect cider donut. Oh, and I wanted it to be easy, nothing complex or time consuming. Donut cravings will not wait for complicated recipes.

While rambling I jotted down some generalities from the myriad of recipes I looked at and ended up with a very basic recipe that was also silly easy. I made them. They were WAY too sweet; the texture was off, almost sandy from baking powder; the apple flavor was barely a hint and that was completely overshadowed by the sweet. Fail.

I was not discouraged, I already knew the recipe was too easy. Getting any kind of significant apple flavor was not going to happen using straight cider and I wanted to know apple was there – solution – reduce the apple cider with apple until mush and add that to the dough. The texture was also just wrong so some tweaks to the dry ingredient mix and tried again.

They were good – flavor was lightly spiced fresh apple, texture was better but not perfect, too dense & bready. These ones were much more edible though, so less fail but still not just so.

Another couple adjustments to the dry ingredients in attempt #3 yielded exactly what I was going for flavor & texture. Round #4 was just to confirm that the recipe was right and I didn’t ball something up by awesome accident when doing #3 – it happens.

End result – awesome cider donuts and a recipe that isn’t super easy but well worth the effort, I promise!

Stove-Top Deep Frying

Is dangerous. Is messy. Is necessary when one doesn’t own a countertop fryer and wants to make donuts at home. What you will need ~  4″ deep (or deeper) heavy gauge pan w a lid (preferably), a candy/oil thermometer or a digital one that will read over 400 (not all of them do), frying shortening and a functioning burner.

The very most important part of donut cookery is the frying oil. It has to be good oil & HAS to be at the right temperature through the duration of the fry. This is super easy to do if you have a counter top fryer with a temperature control – set it for 350 and move on, frying in batches that don’t overwhelm the machine. I very much by choice do not own a counter top fryer for my house. I don’t NEED to be able to easily dep fry things at home. I also have no DESIRE to have to clean and maintain a fryer at home. Trust me, they are gross. But sometimes you just have to fry, so when I do I set up a fryer on my stove top.

First the oil – I use vegetable shortening (Crisco) to fry in. As a general rule I abhor shortening and do everything in my power to avoid using it in food…but as a frying oil it is superior to liquid vegetable oils. The oil flavor stays neutral through more frying, the foods come out crispier and the browning is perfect. I strain the cooled oil, while it is still liquid, back into the canister it came in for storage, I can usually use my donut grease 3 or 4 times with no issues. Frying in lard or duck fat is also an option if you have them, I don’t or I probably would…because why not? I will say I have separate oil for sweets & savory when it comes to my frying. I do not want my donuts tasting like chicken. Ew.

Fill the pot with enough shortening to get 2+” of liquid gold and heat over medium heat, insert your thermometer or probe into the grease as it heats to the target temp – 350 – making sure the probe is not in contact with any of the pot or cooking surface, that will distort the temp reading. You will need to play with the heat, turning it up & down as necessary to maintain around 350 when you start actually frying. It takes about 30 minutes to safely and slowly heat the frying oil and you ideally want to use it as soon as it as temp and turn it off immediately when you are done. I assume if you are comfortable enough to want to make donuts from scratch you know how your burners work & can monkey with them as necessary.

Most important factor is to maintain the heat. The grease will naturally cool when food is added to it, requiring more heat to keep it around 350, once the food starts to cook the temp will again start to climb so you’ll want to turn the heat down, you dont want the oil to get over 365 or under 340. Too cool and the oil absorbs into the food making it heavy and greasy, too hot and the outside cooks too quickly while the inside stays gummy and raw. Both not ideal OR delicious donuts.

I feel obligated to say this: FRYING FOOD IS DANGEROUS. No matter the kind of oil you use it is all flammable, respect that and know what to do it disaster happens.

1. Do not overfill your pot with grease. With donuts the chances of overfilling the pot and causing a spill are unlikely, but it is still best to err on the side of caution and leave at least 3/4″ between the lip of the pot & the actual oil. When in doubt get a bigger pot or add a lot less oil. Oil + flame/heating element = Fire. Fires are bad.
2. Introducing any kind of wet into the equation will cause potential boil overs, boil overs cause fires = fires are bad. Keep liquid away from hot grease.
3. Have utensils handy to manipulate your donuts with – tongs, chopsticks & a slotted something to remove the donuts from the grease. Your fingers are not an advisable option.
4. I said up there that the ideal pot would have a lid, you NEVER want to heat oil covered up, but if it by some chance does happen to catch on fire that is the fastest, generally most effective and always the cleanest method to use to extinguish the fire. A fire that can’t breathe can’t burn. Slam a lid on the pot and you can suffocate a small fire before it gets larger.
5. If the lid won’t work for whatever reason – a) DO NOT EVER PUT WATER ON A GREASE FIRE. Oil & water never get along, especially when that oil is burning like molten lava. b) Try to suffocate it if you can without burning yourself or spreading the fire.  c) Salt or Milk are two other methods to effectively extinguish a grease fire. Pour both, either or a combo on to a grease fire until the flames are out or suffocatable. If all else fails d) get a fire extinguisher and spray the fire down until it is out.
6. Do NOT panic. Panicking can make people do silly things that when thought about with any amount of logic make no sense – like a restaurant manager I saw try to put out a HUGE fryer fire with a 5 gallon bucket of water ~ he KNEW better, he just panicked. (Fire started from a thermostat shitting the bed, oil got so hot it combusted. Pretty wild.) Don’t panic, use common sense and most of all respect the fact that frying food isn’t just bad for your waistline, it’s also kind of dangerous and all should be peachy.

It may be needless nudgery that I include the safety part, but I have come across way too many people that sincerely did not know how to put out a grease fire. I don’t even remember where I learned it, but I know it. Far too easy to start one by accident and way too easy to make it worse if dealt with the wrong way. Burning your house down, even if its making delicious donuts, will totally ruin your day. I have no first hand experience with this, but feel pretty confident it is a sucky thing to have happen.

Ok now that I have delivered my kitchen safety PSA lets get to the donuts. First thing first was making the apple mash. I took 1 good sized baking apple, it was bigger than my fist, peeled and small diced it. I put the apple in a small pot with 2 cups of fresh apple cider and let it cook for 45 minutes-ish until it was all mushed up and most of the liquid was gone. Final yield was around 1 cup, a heavy cup, of apple mash. It will look like applesauce, but have no spice, just super concentrated apple flavor and will need to cool to about room temperature before it will be useable.

Why can’t I just sub in applesauce for all this reduction cookery, you ask? Well because it isn’t the same thing and I don’t *think* subbing applesauce will have the same flavor impact. It totally could be close enough for horseshoes & hand grenades. I don’t know for sure because I haven’t tried the substitution; if you do let me know how it works out. Throwing in applesauce would take all the inconvenience out of the recipe but I suspect would greatly decrease the apple flavor in the end donut – a sacrifice some might be willing to make in trade for it being so much easier.

I mixed the dough in my stand mixer, but would be just as easy to do with a hand mixer or by hand. I was mindful of working the dough too much and making it too gluten-y, but its not a mixture as sensitive as pie dough so that makes things easier.

Shapes are totally up to you. I made some traditional round ones with holes in the middle – delicious but kind of big. To make those I used a 3″ round cutter and punched the hole out with a 1″ round cutter. Then of course fried off the holes, too. I then decided I liked the holes better and started making them solid 2″ rounds, kind of like a perfect mini-donut. Making the full sized donuts you should get 12 large & 12 holes – making the 2″ round donuts I got around 32. You can even cut them into squares or any other kind shape you have handy ~ donuts are good no matter what kind of shape they are.

Once they are fried it is time to coat. I make half cider glazed and half cinnamon sugar. The Cider Glaze recipe is included after the donuts – really simple mix of powdered sugar and reduced apple cider – and the cinnamon sugar coating is pretty self explanatory. Make sure to coat them while warm so the glaze or sugar mixture stick; they should be barely cooled enough to touch when you are tossing and coating with either the glaze or the cinnamon sugar mix. I thought I would like the cinnamon sugar ones better, I LOVE that crispy sugary crust, but to my surprise the glazed ones really knocked my socks off – the tang from the reduced cider was perfect.

Apple Cider Donuts yield 12 3″ donuts w holes or 32 2″ donuts

• 1 large Baking Apple – peeled & small diced
• 2 cups Fresh Apple Cider

Put the apples & cider in a small pot and reduce over medium heat until they are mash and no obvious liquid is present, about 45 minutes, then cool to room temp.

• 1/2 cup Butter – softened to room temp
• 1/2 cup Sugar
• 2 Eggs
• 1 Egg Yolk
• 1/2 cup Buttermilk
• 1 Tbsp Vanilla
• 4 1/2 cups All Purpose Flour
• 1 Tbsp Cinnamon
• 2 tsp Ground Ginger
• 1 tsp Baking Soda
• 1 tsp Baking Powder
• 1/2 tsp Salt

Whisk together the flour, spices, soda, powder & salt in a bowl.

Cream together the butter and sugar until they are lightened up and start to get fluffy, about 2 or 3 minutes. Add the eggs & yolk one at a time, mixing them in completely between additions. Add the vanilla, buttermilk and apple mash and mix until completely combined.

Mix the dry into the wet just until they come together to make a dough. It will be a sticky dough. Dump out onto a floured counter/surface, sprinkle the top with a bit more flour and knead a few times with your hands, like 6-8 turns, just to bring the dough together. You dont want to add a bunch of flour here or over work the dough; when you are through the dough should still have the tendency to stick to your fingers but be firm enough to work with. Parchment line a tray (I use a flex mat cutting board) and press the dough out into a 1/2″ evenly thick disc and get it into the fridge for about an hour or the freezer for half an hour – this lets the dough rest and the butter firm up making it much easier to work with – a necessary step.

The dough after its chilled.

I freeze it, so while the dough is chilling out in the freezer I get my oil on to heat up over medium flame, reduce the cider for the cider glaze** and get it mixed up, get my cinnamon sugar in a proper tossing vessel & get all my shit together – paper towel lined tray w a slotted spoon for flipping & retrieving and a bakers rack over a sheet tray to let the glazed & sugared donuts drip/drain. I also probably watched some TV & played with the dogs a little bit, too!

Take the dough out when your oil is damn close to 350 & you have all your stuff set up and start cutting out your donuts.

As you cut mash the dough scraps back together, press into a 1/2″ disc & cut some more. As you work the dough the gluten gets stronger and your donuts will get tougher, so work it as little as possible when reforming to cut more. I also usually do not cut anymore after the 3rd reformed disc & pitch out whatever is leftover at that point.

When your oil hits temp add the donuts to it carefully, hot oil will splash and that hurts. I was using a 12″ diameter pot and cooked off 8-10 at a time. They were not over crowded nor in danger of overflowing my pan. They need to cook about 2-3 minutes per side depending on the size donut you are making. When they are golden brown flip them over and let them brown up on the other side for about the same amount of time. Pro Tip – fried foods look darker in the grease than they really are, test one for timing to make sure that the center is cooked and adjust as necessary – do NOT use color as a litmus test until you KNOW that color = cooked through. This is the part where you will need to keep an eye on your oil temp and make any adjustments needed to keep it in the happy zone of 345-355 if you are on a stove top.

Remove the cooked donuts from the grease and drain on the towel lined tray. Get another batch of donuts in the grease, while they cook glaze/sugar toss the cooked ones and get onto the draining rack to cool off some and let the coatings stick on.

the 2″ mini-donuts that I loved the best.

Now eat them. They are best when cooled, honestly, the flavors are all better balanced and the glazes have time to set up totally. I stored them in a plastic container with a lid, that seemed to work beautifully though they weren’t around long enough really for me to say how long they last & there were no sticky issues with the glaze because it dries on the rack before boxing them up.

The recipe was worth the work, and one that I will be making again and again, partly because I liked them and partly because the folks I shared them with did too so these will be making appearances until the cider runs out!

Cider Glaze **

• 1 cup Fresh Apple Cider, reduced to 1/4 cup over medium heat
• 2 cups Powdered Sugar

Reduce the cider over medium heat until it is around 1/4 cup. It will get syrupy, this is ok. {Somewhat related: let it go too long and you get a really tart apple cider caramel…which is not useful here at all but yummy, though I have no idea what to do with it as of yet} Mix the reduced cider into the powdered sugar and whisk until smooth. Put it in a bowl big enough for tossing the donuts in. Mixture should be thick, adjust as you need to with more sugar or cider to get it right.

To glaze the donuts roll them around while still hot in the glaze, remove to a draining rack to let excess drip off. Once cooled I dip the tops again in the glaze because I prefer a thicker glaze coating when the glaze is so delicious.

Let the donuts completely cool, the glaze will harden as they do. I also saw a number of recipes that glazed THEN rolled in cinnamon sugar. I didn’t try it but go nuts!

Aside: you can make the glaze with 1/4 cup unreduced cider, but it just tastes like sweet, the reduced cider adds some nice acidity in my opinion.

Go forth! Make Donuts! Be Happy!!!

I LOVE mac & cheese. I used to love the crap from the box, and I will begrudgingly admit that even now I have the rare craving for the powdered cheese crap – I blame nostalgia & my mom (love you mom!), but nothing compares to the real deal. Especially when you add BACON! Which of course I did :)

The recipe is good without the bacon…so if you are a vegetarian or just a bacon hater feel free to omit it and add 6 Tbsp of extra butter to make up for the missing bacon fat.

My cheese sauce recipe for this kind of application is a roux based bechamel. For those that aren’t culinary encyclopedias a bechamel is one of the Mother Sauces, meaning one of the 5 base sauces most sauces are derived from. A classic bechamel is milk thickened with a roux and cooked at a light simmer until it thickens to a nappe consistency. What the hell is nappe? Well if you dip a wooden spoon/spatula/kitchen spoon into the sauce after it has thickened it will coat the back well and when you drag your finger through it doesn’t run back together. And a roux? Well thats a mixture of fat, usually butter, and flour that when whisked into a liquid will thicken it as it simmers. Their use is varied & common, they range from light blonde to almost dark chocolate brown – mainly used in creole & cajun foods for a nutty flavor. In this kind of thing we stick with blonde, I’ll get into the darker ones later, any excuse to make etouffe is good in my book!

Macaroni is BORING, I use a spirally fun noodle called cavatappi or cellentani, they are a corkscrew shaped stabby pasta with ridges on the outside that hold the sauce better than traditional macaroni. Small shells, penne, gemelli or rotini all work really well, pretty much anything stabby works perfectly fine. The pasta needs to be par-cooked before getting all mixed up. Ideally ALL pasta should be cooked al dente so it still has some tooth to it, for this kind of dish you want to waaaay undercook it. Most of the stabby pastas cook for 11 minutes-ish, since we are going to bake this you should  only cook it for 7-8 minutes so it isn’t mush when it comes out of the oven. The par-cooked pasta should be borderline raw when it comes off the stove.

Let’s chat about pasta cookery for just a second, I’d like to dispel a myth – adding oil to the water doesn’t help it not stick together, stirring does that. Actually the addition of oil does pretty much nothing when added to the water, not even flavor.  The only thing that should be in your pasta water is salt, and a liberal amount of it at that. Taste the water, you should taste the salt, when you do you’ve added enough.

The only tricks to perfect pasta are 1) use enough water – about a gallon per pound you are cooking, the pasta needs room to move, 2) salt your water, it’s the only time you get to flavor the centerpiece of whatever it is you are creating, 3) the water has to be at a BOIL when you add the pasta and returned to a boil as quickly as possible after it is added (side note dont cook it lidded, all it will do is boil over and make a mess), 4) STIR STIR STIR, especially important with stringy pasta. That is the magic that stops the noodles from sticking together, 5) only cook it for the recommended amount of time (or a minute less for me because I prefer it more al dente than they recommend), get it drained as soon as it’s done and last but far from least 6) if you are not using it immediately get it rinsed with cold water to stop it from carry over cooking as it sits. If you are going to use it later rinse it until it is totally chilled, if you’re using it immediately don’t bother; if it sticks together some add a touch of water and smoosh it around right before you need it & it’ll un-stick itself. NO OIL. Lots of people do it, I know, but all you’re doing is making it harder for sauce to stick to the noodles. Why woud you do that? Answer – you wouldn’t. NO OIL. Trust me, I’m a professional :)

The very most important thing ~ CHEESE! For this sauce I used a mix of extra sharp 1 year aged cheddar, monterey jack & jarlsburg, all fresh grated. I recommend grating whatever blend of cheese you use yourself, the cheese tastes better & melts better. I also recommend using good cheese, the flavor is better and you use less because of it. The extra sharp cheddar is for flavor, the jack & jarlsburg more for texture – they both melt beautifully. Mix it up with whatever kind you like and adjust seasoning when you’re done. Can’t forget about the cheese in the topping!! I used fresh grated asiago & aged provolone but any combo of grated hard cheeses will work – aged cheddar, parmesan, fontina, romano, etc.

Time to cook!

Bacon Mac & Cheese makes a 9×13 pan

• 1/2# Stabby Pasta of your choice

The Sauce

• 1/2 cup Butter (1 stick)
• 5 slices Thick Sliced Bacon, diced up (vegetarian version add 6 Tbsp of butter instead)
• 1/2 Sweet Onion, small dice (about 1 cup of diced onion total)
• 2-3 cloves Garlic, minced
• 3 Tbsp Flour
• 2 cups Whole Milk (you can loose less than whole)
• Salt & Fresh Ground Pepper to taste
• Pinch of Ground Nutmeg
• Hot Sauce (Red Hot or Tobassco) to taste
• 2 Tbsp Tomato Paste
• 1/2 cup Heavy Cream
• 1 # Grated Cheese – I used Ex Sharp Cheddar (8oz), Monterey Jack (4oz) & Jarlsburg (4oz)

The Topping

• 1 1/2 cups Panko Bread Crumbs
• 1 cup Grated Hard Cheeses (I used Asiago & Aged Provolone)
• Reserved Bacon from the cheese sauce

Get your pasta water on & salted. When it boils par-cook it for 7-8 minutes, stirring periodically. When it is cooked drain and rinse with cold water until it is fully chilled. Set it aside to use later. Also get the oven heated to 375.

While the pasta is cooking dice the bacon, onion and garlic. Melt the butter in a pot or pan and add the bacon. Render until it is mostly crisped, but not crispy. Use a slotted spoon to remove as much as you can, all of it is not necessary but get out as much as possible, and set on a paper towel lined plate to add to the topping later. Add the onions and garlic to the pan and cook over medium heat until softened and sweet smelling, about 4 minutes. You can see there is still some bacon left in there.

When the onions & garlic are cooked sprinkle the flour over the whole mixture and mix until it is all incorporated and the mixture has no flour lumps. Slowly add the milk while you stir with a whisk, working the roux out and making sure you have no lumps. Leave the heat at medium and stir while it starts to thicken up. Season with salt & pepper, nutmeg, a touch of hot sauce and the tomato paste. Bring it to a gentle dimmer & keep stirring until it thickens to nappe and when you taste it you don’t catch any starchy flouriness. Takes about 8 minutes.

Add the heavy cream, bring back up to a simmer while stirring. Add the grated cheeses and stir until they are melted in and the sauce is totally smooth. Give it a taste at this point and adjust the seasoning as you like; it will probably need some more salt & a little bit more hot sauce…at least I thought so.

While all of this is going on mix all of the ingredients for the topping together in a bowl. Mmmmmmmm…Bacon.

Mix the pasta and the sauce together. It should be a tad saucy, that’s on purpose. Put the sauced pasta in your pan, I use a glass baking dish that is the same volume as a 9×13, it’s smaller but deeper; make sure it’s big enough to hold all the awesome.

Distribute the topping over the top of the pasta mixture evenly.

Bake at 375 for about 40-45 minutes, until the top is golden brown and crisp.

Now the hard part…let it sit for 10-15 minutes to set up. NOW EAT! This makes enough for 4-6 with leftovers. Reheating is best in the oven ~ 350 for about 20 minutes, or in the microwave covered with a damp paper towel for a couple minutes.

You can add all kinds of stuff to this – grilled or roasted chicken, vegetables, more bacon, ham, shrimp (if you do switch up the cheddar with asiago or fontina), fresh herbs. Really flexible recipe to get dressed up or dressed down however you like! Perfect dinner for when the weather starts to get chilly!

The alleged cake was a 6″ dairy-free devils food 10-year anniversary cake {CONGRATS JEN & BRIAN!!}  decorated to match the top tier of their wedding cake in white, lavender & silver. It may have been filled with a homemade strawberry Grand Marnier jam and iced with a butter-less buttercream. It could have been decorated with white & lavender flowers and a silver dust…but you’ll never know because I didn’t get any pictures of it. Even if it did actually exist and was delivered Friday morning looking just as I described it. I am really annoyed I didn’t get any pics in case you couldn’t tell.

The cake I did for Saturday though? That cake was all sorts of awesome and I DID GET PICS…well of the cake anyway, forgot to get any of the cupcakes. Melinda found me through the Twitters – we had a mutual friend – Michelle – that passed along my contact info while Melinda was on the hunt for an Angry Birds cake for her son’s 4th birthday party. Melinda had done her Pinterest Homework and had visited a couple of bakeries looking to have her cake made but was having little luck. So not only does she have the very best name ever (I’m a Melinda, too!) but I dig her taste in cakes. We worked out the details and I was happy to drop off at the birthday party this!

This is an Instagram photo Melinda took from the party. It is the only evidence I have of the cupcakes. They were half vanilla, half chocolate and each iced to be an angry bird sitting on some grass. They were cute & matched the cake perfectly.

Now the cake! Lets start with the top. Sculpted Angry Birds hand decorated with rolled fondant. I am usually very anti-fondant, it tastes like ass, but in this case it was necessary for them to look right. The inside of each is devils food cake pop mixture hand shaped. These took a whole day to get done, but it was like play-doh funtimes!! I made my own fondant and blended my own fondant colors.

The finished cake was a 4 layer vanilla cake iced with buttercream. The sculpted birds were the cake topper and the happy 4th birthday greeting was piped along the side of the main cake. Everything on this cake was edible.

I did up a couple eggs just for decoration. The birthday boy seemed pleased with is cake, as was mom, and I was thrilled to get to play a part in a great birthday!!

On deck I am looking and a GIRLS cake – Barbie all over the place and a wedding-style cake for a birthday party that is going to be GORGEOUS but won’t say much else about until you see it but I am wicked excited to build & decorate it. I am digging the cake decorating.

On the menu next ~ Bacon Mac & Cheese. Yes. Bacon. In homemade mac & cheese. So good. That will be up in the next couple days.

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If interested in custom cake & dessert work please feel free to contact Mindy through the site at mindybakespgh@gmail.com and include pictures when possible.

Biscuits are one of those things that always seemed so daunting to make. Probably because I have had some downright awful biscuits before and if you read a few recipes they range from super easy to kind of a pain in the ass. I, as a general rule, prefer super easy, especially on a Sunday morning before I’ve had a chance to make coffee. I also find it terribly amusing just how many variations there are of biscuits. Prepping this post I ready about 10 and no 2 were alike, all had different liquid/fat/flour ratios, some used self rising flour, some all purpose, some cake…it seems the culinary world at large just can’t make up its mind about what needs to go into a good biscuit.

I know, I know. You can go to the refrigerated isle of any grocery store and buy a busting tube of biscuits, put them on a pan and bake. But they aren’t good. They are ok, definitely better than no biscuits at all, but they lack that light & tender texture of a good homemade biscuit. Considering biscuits really aren’t terribly complicated to throw together I stopped buying the store bought ones a long time ago.

This recipe is easy, uses ingredients that are readily available, outside of the buttermilk but that is easy enough to fake, and is mixed by hand, as a biscuit should be. The not so secret secret to a light, tender & flaky biscuit is in the mixing, or lack there of. The ratio of ingredients does make a difference, but not as much as how you put them together. You don’t want to let hardly any gluten to develop, so you only want to mix it up until it barely sticks together. There will be dry spots, there will be wet spots, it will be kind of ugly. Thats how it’s supposed to look, you just mix until it comes together as a dough, that’s it.

I bake mine off in a 10″ cast iron skillet, gives them a gorgeous crust top to bottom. With homemade biscuits you want to bake them so they grow together, about 1/2″ apart; as they bake they help support each other as they cook for even rising and height. For the record this recipe is also really good as the topper for a pot pie kind of thing or instead of flattening and cutting the dough you can do it drop style like my mom used to when she made chicken & biscuits…great, now I want chicken & biscuits.

Buttermilk Skillet Biscuits makes 12 – 2″ biscuits

• 2 cups All Purpose Flour
• 4 tsp Baking Powder
• 3/4 tsp Salt
• 1 Tbsp Sugar
• 6 Tbsp Butter – COLD
• 1 1/4 cup Buttermilk **

** If you dont have buttermilk you can make it! Add 2 Tbsp of lemon juice, cider or white vinegar to enough milk to make up the 1 1/4 cup of milk needed and stir. The mixture will thicken up and, in essence, curdle making buttermilk. Or at least a close enough version for biscuits & other baked goods

Heat up the oven to 450 and butter a 10″ cast iron skillet.  If you don’t have or are not using a cast iron skillet butter the pan you are going to use. Also works just fine on a tray, just put them in the same configuration as the pan so they touch.

Mix together the flour, baking powder, salt & sugar in a bowl with a whisk. Cut the butter up into little chunks and put in the flour mixture.

Use your fingers to work the butter into the flour. I do this by rubbing. Get the butter tossed in the flour, squish it up to break it up some then pick it up in small handfuls and rub it together. This breaks up the butter and incorporates it with the flour. You could use a food processor for this, but I have an aversion to getting it out and, more specifically, cleaning the bowl and blade for something easy – it seriously takes just as long to do all that as it does to mix it up by hand. You want to keep at it until the butter is totally incorporated and the mixture resembles coarse meal with no identifiable chunks of butter. Pro Tip – take off your rings if you wear any, I always forget.

Make a well in the center of the flour mix and add the buttermilk.

Use a wooden spoon or spatula to stir the wet into the dry. It will be clumpy, but only give it about 10-12 spins with the spoon, enough to get a dough to form, but it will be ugly with patches of wet and dry spots. (If you are doing drop biscuits or using it as a topper of some type you are done and can go about your biscuit making business at this point)

Dump the dough out onto a floured surface and pat into a 3/4″ thick square. You will want to flour your hands for this, it get sticky. You aren’t kneading the dough at all, just pressing it into a square so you can cut it. Use a 2″ biscuit cutter-circle cutter-juice glass-whatever round thing you have that will cut the dough to start cutting circles and placing them in the buttered pan. When you have cut all you can smoosh the dough back together and cut the rest – dont work the dough, just press it together to make a new square. Less is more when playing with biscuit dough.

Put the biscuits in the hot oven for 12-14 minutes, they are done when the tops look dry and are golden brown. Some folk brush them with melted butter – I would have, too, if I knew I wasn’t about to cover them in sausage gravy because it makes them look pretty – pretty is a non-issue when covered in gravy.

Don’t grab the pan, it will be HOT. Dive in as soon as they are cool enough to touch, they will break apart really easily. These keep for a few days wrapped up well and reheat really well wrapped in foil in a hot oven.

Sausage gravy is also pretty easy to toss together, a few ingredients on the stove for about 10 minutes and BOOM sausage gravy. It’s delicious over biscuits, it’s delicious by itself, it’s delicious on grits….it’s just plain delicious. It is loaded with sausage. How could it not be?

I use breakfast sausage to make this because it’s delicious. I prefer to buy the bulk 1 pound tubes of it, if you get/have the ones with the casing just take them out before browning. This gravy is THICK. If it gets too thick thin it down with more milk. If reheating adding a touch more milk is necessary – cold sausage gravy is the consistency of, well, dry wall mud.

Sausage Gravy makes about 5-6 cups

• 1# Breakfast Sausage
• 3 Tbsp Flour
• 2 cups Milk
• 1/2 cup Heavy Cream (optional, add some extra milk if you omit)
• Salt, Fresh Ground Black Pepper & Hot Sause as your heart desires

In a sauce pan brown the sausage in a tablespoon of olive oil. Use a wooden spoon to bust it up, I like mine chunkier so I am a mild smasher. If you like it more finely crumbled use a hand potato masher to break it up. Let the sausage get some color on it while it cooks, it’s just better that way.

When the sausage is cooked sprinkle with the flour and stir it in until all that delicious sausage fat is absorbed – you just made a roux! Add the milk, drop the heat some and stir with the spoon to work the roux into the milk. As it comes to a simmer it will start to thicken up. Give it a healthy dose of black pepper, season with some salt and let it cook at a gentle simmer until all the flour cooks out and it is thick. Add the crea and bring back to a simmer. Taste it and season to your tastebuds liking – I douse it with hot sauce at this point. Red Hot to be exact.

Pour that creamy sausage goodness on biscuits or whatever you want to slather in sausage goodness. Leftovers can be reheated on the stove or in the *gasp* microwave, just add a little bit of milk to thin it out. I like it on the biscuits with a couple of over medium eggs.

Perfect fall weather brunch…or lunch…or Brinner! And if you’re real lucky there will be some extra biscuits you can dot with some jam to snack on, too.