Tribute to Katherine Hepburn Brownies -- Tuesdays with Dorie

This is going to be a super quick post, we've been having company and keeping extra busy over the long holiday weekend. Today's TWD treat is picked by Lisa of Surviving Oz, who recently won the TWD logo contest by designing a beautiful logo for our group, thank you Lisa! The brownies are done and look wonderful, won't serve them until later though so no comments yet on taste or texture. My only change was to use semisweet chocolate chips instead of the chopped chocolate, I'm excited about the cinnamon and coffee flavors and can't wait to give these a try. I baked in a small rectangle tart pan and they look so delicious!

Thank you to everyone who posted a comment in last week's Tuesdays with Dorie for my blog birthday and giveaway! The randomly selected lucky winner of a $25.00 amazon.com gift certificate is Jessica of A Singleton in the Kitchen, congratulations Jessica, and thank you so much for your sweet comment :) Give me an e-mail and I will get your certificate out to you asap!


I hope everyone had a wonderful 4th of July -- we are going out of town today but I can't wait to get some free computer time and visit all of my blogging friends when we are home!

Happy 4th from my little messy guy!

My Kitchen My World -- Macedonia

For My Kitchen My World -- destination Macedonia, I found a recipe online for Macedonian Bread and after reading through the directions I thought these would turn out like mini pita type flatbreads and they did. These were very easy to make and puffed up with little pockets.

Before I get to the recipe, I have to tell a little story about a pen pal I had (back when I was in school) that lived in Macedonia. After we had been pen pals for a while I got a surprise letter saying that my pen pal's family had won a visa lottery of sorts to leave Macedonia and come to America and he wondered if I could help his family get to the USA. I got my mom involved and soon we found a Macedonian church that would help his family start out their American dream, it was such an adventure going to the airport -- not for a vacation but to welcome a family to the USA for the first time. I remember us leaving the airport and driving my pen pal and his family to a Macedonian home for a big welcome dinner. Here we were, three families who had never met before, all sitting down to share a wonderful meal and coming together like we were one big family. I'm so sorry to say I lost touch with this pen pal many years ago, I hope he and his family are doing well and would love to sit down now that we are 'all grown up' and reconnect.

Macedonian Bread

(mini flatbreads)

1 package (1 tablespoon) active dry yeast
3 1/2 cups flour
1 1/4 cups warm water
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon sugar

In a mixing bowl, combine yeast with 1 1/2 cups of flour. Combine water, oil, salt, and sugar and add to yeast mixture. Beat for 1/2 minute with an electric mixer at low speed; then beat for 3 minutes at high speed. Work in remaining flour by hand to form a smooth and elastic dough.

Put in a greased bowl in a warm spot, cover, and let rise for 45 minutes. Punch dough down, divide into 12 pieces, and roll each into a ball. Let rest for 10 minutes.

Flatten each ball into a 5-inch circle. Place on a greased baking sheet; cover and let rest for 20 to 30 minutes. Preheat oven to 200°C. (392 F -- I used 395)

Bake for 9 to 10 minutes, until puffed and lightly browned on bottom. Immediately wrap in foil and cool.

These were delicious little breads, open to lots of serving possibilities, I think I'd like them best served with a Greek style salad or falafel -- or both. They were also great with butter and guava jelly :) My favorite part of this recipe is the step at the end about wrapping the breads in tin foil and letting them cool wrapped up. This provided a great chewy texture that I'm used to restaurant flatbreads having, but I haven't been able to recreate at home until now. This is a great recipe to start with if you are nervous about making a pita type bread. I'd love to use it again and add some herbs and maybe garlic to the dough, yum!

If you would like to cook along with us as we "travel" the globe through recipes, please visit My Kitchen My World, next up: The Bahamas!

Pizza Party -- Bread Baking Day

One of our favorite family dinners is pizza. I think everyone loves pizza, it is so versatile, it's fairly easy to make, and the topping combinations are endless. When I heard Bread Baking Day was having a Pizza Party for their 2nd anniversary, I just had to bake along :)

Lately I've been trying lots of new crust recipes, some with semolina flour, all purpose, bread flour, etc. but I'm still having the best of luck with this recipe, which is super easy to start in the bread machine and easily doubled. I recently bought a pizza stone and have been using that for an extra crispy and crusty crust, we have a double wall oven and the smaller bottom oven is not used that often so the stone stays down there, which works out great.

I have a pizza baking 'system' that I've come up with -- I usually bake my pizza on a pan (cookie sheet) and then slide it off of the sheet right on to the oven rack for the last couple of minutes and turn on the broiler to brown the topping. That has worked out the best. The first couple of times I used the pizza stone the top was underdone in my opinion, while the crust was a little too crusty. So I've gotten to the point where to get pizzas just perfect I start on the pan, bake almost completely, broil for a minute to get the top "well done" -- then slide the pizza into the lower oven on the pizza stone for a couple of minutes to crisp up that bottom. It sounds like a lot of work, but really it's not that bad, and it makes the absolute best homemade pizza I've been able to come up with. I'm always getting compliments, and even my super picky husband loves my pizza, although we of course disagree on toppings :)

My old basic pizza sauce started with tomato paste, but lately I've fallen for San Marzano tomatoes, and am experimenting with different brands to find my favorite. My last order of San Marzanos were DeLallo Organic, with the controversial DOP stamps on the label.


These tomatoes are wonderful, they do contain basil, which some San Marzano fans say masks true flavor, but I like basil and don't mind the extra big leaf packed with my tomatoes. Below is a photo of exactly what you get in a can of DeLallo San Marzanos. Yum! I would order this brand again.

To make a simple sauce with the San Marzanos, I just mash they gently with a potato masher, add a touch of sea salt and a touch of sugar. Sometimes I add some minced fresh basil, as well as roasted garlic for a deeper sauce flavor.

I'm also a fan of white pizzas, which I've heard refer to both pizzas with an alfredo sauce or pizzas with no sauce or just olive oil. This one is a Greek inspired white pizza...

topped with Halloumi -- one of my favorite cheeses, thanks to many trips to Greektown when I was younger -- and also crumbled feta and sliced jumbo black olives, drizzled with olive oil and baked. So delicious!

My husband doesn't like black olives or tomatoes, but prefers a more traditional American pizza with lots of cheese and pepperoni. The kids love pizza nights and making their own creations, and are getting more adventurous with their toppings, which is always nice for me to see. Pizza night is fun night around here!

Mini Perfect Party Cake -- Tuesdays with Dorie

Happy Birthday, Nummy Kitchen! I started Nummy Kitchen on June 28th, 2008. I can't believe it's been a year, and what a fun year it has been, I have tried so many new recipes and cooking techniques, joined quite a few fun blog cooking and baking groups, learned so much, and most importantly made so many wonderful food blogging friends! I would have never imagined I'd have as many visitors as I do, or get so many sweet comments on my posts as I do. Each one makes me smile and I am so happy to share with all of you. I joined Tuesdays with Dorie right after I started Nummy Kitchen and am happy to say I haven't missed a single Tuesday since then!

In honor of my "blogiversary," I'm having a little give-away. If you've read Nummy Kitchen, you know that I love online shopping for fun kitchen gadgets, specialty bake ware, and cookbooks, and one of my favorite online shopping sites is amazon, so I'm giving away a $25 gift certificate for you to buy something fun for your kitchen on amazon. How do you win? Just leave a comment in this post by Monday, July 6th, at 10:00pm EST. I will pick a winner on Monday night and announce the winner in my Tuesdays with Dorie post on July 7th.

~~~

Now, on to Perfect Party Cake -- thank you to Carol of mix, mix… stir, stir, for picking this absolutely delicious cake! I am a cake fan, and my favorite is white cake, and I love jam and coconut (even thought I skipped the coconut on my mini), and I adore baked goods with buttermilk, so I had a hunch I would fall for this cake and I sure did.



I baked 6 mini cakes in my Baker's Secret Texas sized jumbo muffin pan. I halved the cake and frosting recipe.


I wasn't too sure about the frosting, but I went with it anyway, and it came together in the end. After the initial whisking of the sugar and egg whites over the simmering water, I have to admit I was kind of put off by the eggy smell, but after whipping with butter and lemon juice and vanilla, this frosting came together beautifully. Although I have to say that this one didn't knock my socks off quite like the frosting we made with the TWD cover devil's food cake, that one was amazing, but this one was still really good!

The cakes baked up perfectly in about 20 minutes, the flavor was mild, the texture nice and moist, what more could you ask for in a basic white cake? I will use this cake recipe again for sure! This was such a fun recipe to put together, and even more special since it has been a year since I started working on Nummy Kitchen. Thank you so much for visiting :)

Gazpacho -- Barefoot Bloggers

Our second Barefoot Bloggers recipe for June is Ina's Gazpacho, picked for us to try by Meryl of My Bit of Earth, thank you Meryl! I am not really a fan of cold soup but was excited to give this a try.

Ina Garten's Gazpacho

1 hothouse cucumber, halved and seeded, but not peeled
2 red bell peppers, cored and seeded (I used green)
4 plum tomatoes
1 red onion
3 garlic cloves, minced
23 ounces tomato juice (3 cups)
1/4 cup white wine vinegar
1/4 cup good olive oil
1/2 tablespoon kosher salt
1 teaspoons freshly ground black pepper


Roughly chop the cucumbers, bell peppers, tomatoes, and red onions into 1-inch cubes. Put each vegetable separately into a food processor fitted with a steel blade and pulse until it is coarsely chopped. Do not over process!


After each vegetable is processed, combine them in a large bowl and add the garlic, tomato juice, vinegar, olive oil, salt, and pepper. Mix well and chill before serving. The longer gazpacho sits, the more the flavors develop.

I halved this recipe and it still made a ton. Even though cold soups aren't my favorite, this soup was wonderful! I was so surprised to like it, I can't wait until it sits overnight and the flavors can mesh together a little more. My littlest loved it, the older two didn't want to try it, and I really can't blame them because I remember not wanting to try gazpacho when I was a child either. Now I am looking forward to trying more gazpacho recipes and experimenting with additional veggies, yum!

Coconut Roasted Pineapple Dacquoise -- Tuesdays with Dorie

Ta-da! Here is my Coconut-Roasted Pineapple Dacquoise, picked for our Tuesdays with Dorie treat of the week by Andrea of Andrea In The Kitchen -- thank you! This dessert jumped out at me the first time I flipped through Baking From My Home To Yours, since I absolutely love coconut and pineapple and it looked like a fun little kitchen challenge.

I did make a few changes, I used macadamia nuts instead of almonds, and sadly ran out of coconut, I used the last up in the meringue but thought I had another bag for the outside, but didn't. I made four layers instead of three and my a last minute decision to skip the ganache and use vanilla ice cream instead, it's just been so hot lately and a freezer friendly dessert was in order. Not to mention that my husband does not like, pineapple, or coconut, or meringue, or macadamias (or almonds!) so I knew this would be a dessert for the kids and I to share, a little at a time, while picky husband can have a bowl of his favorite mint chocolate chip ice cream.

Just a quick little post tonight, we haven't even tasted this yet, so I'll have to report some more after we do a taste test tomorrow, but I'm sure we'll love it. Here are some process photos...

All done, yum! I had a lot of fun putting this together, and I really can't wait to try this since the pineapple coconut combo is one of my favorites.

Update: finally got a chance to try this amazing dessert, all I can say is wow! I think this could be a new favorite TWD treat for me. I loved the chewy coconut in the meringue and the roasted pineapple and the vanilla ice cream worked really well with this. This would be perfect to serve at the end of a summer dinner party. The kids loved it too, my two year old called it "ice cream pizza" -- probably because we always have pineapple on pizza :) I can see making this again for sure, maybe even trying to do more layers, yum!

Cranberry Orange Scones -- Barefoot Bloggers

Our Barefoot Bloggers bonus recipe for June is Ina’s Cranberry Orange Scones, picked by Em of The Repressed Pastry Chef. Thank you, Em! We love scones at our house and the kids and I really enjoyed these, of course picky husband didn't want any because he doesn't like cranberries. I actually forgot that he doesn't like them before I made this recipe, there are so many things he doesn't like that I think I just need to start a "picky husband won't eat" list :)


Cranberry Orange Scones
Ina Garten
with my minor changes in itallics

4 cups plus 1/4 cup all-purpose flour
1/4 cup sugar, plus additional for sprinkling -- I upped this to 1/2 cup
2 tablespoons baking powder
2 teaspoons kosher salt
1 tablespoon grated orange zest
3/4 pound cold unsalted butter, diced
4 extra-large eggs, lightly beaten
1 cup cold heavy cream -- I used 3/4 cup cream and 1/4 cup buttermilk
1 cup dried cranberries
1 egg beaten with 2 tablespoons water or milk, for egg wash
1/2 cup confectioners' sugar, plus 2 tablespoons
4 teaspoons freshly squeezed orange juice -- I used orange juice concentrate for a little extra flavor

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees F. I don't like baking scones higher than 375, they get too dried out at 400 for me so I dropped the temp 25 degrees.

In the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with a paddle attachment, mix 4 cups of flour, 1/4 cup sugar, the baking powder, salt and orange zest. Add the cold butter and mix at the lowest speed until the butter is the size of peas. Combine the eggs and heavy cream and, with the mixer on low speed, slowly pour into the flour and butter mixture. Mix until just blended. The dough will look lumpy! This step I actually did in the food processor (14 cup), which I love for doing biscuit and scone doughs.


Combine the dried cranberries and 1/4 cup of flour, add to the dough, and mix on low speed until blended. I kneaded these in by hand after removing the dough from the food processor.

Dump the dough onto a well-floured surface and knead it into a ball. Flour your hands and a rolling pin and roll the dough 3/4-inch thick. You should see small bits of butter in the dough. Keep moving the dough on the floured board so it doesn't stick. Flour a 3-inch round plain or fluted cutter and cut circles of dough. Place the scones on a baking pan lined with parchment paper. Collect the scraps neatly, roll them out, and cut more circles.

After one sheet of fluted circle scones I decided to try out my new Lodge cast iron scone/cornbread pan.

There was just enough dough left, and I was a little nervous because I wasn't sure if I had filled it too full or not.


Brush the tops of the scones with egg wash, -- I only did the egg wash on my circle scones and skipped the sugar sprinkled on top -- sprinkle with sugar, and bake for 20 to 25 minutes, until the tops are browned and the insides are fully baked.


I was worried these would stick in the pan but luckily they didn't, yay! The bottoms are a little lighter than I expected, which is fine with me, they were fully baked and nice and fluffy inside. I was playing it safe with these and didn't want burned brown bottoms. Next time I know I can leave them in a little longer in this pan.

This recipe makes a huge batch of scones!

The scones will be firm to the touch. Allow the scones to cool for 15 minutes and then whisk together the confectioners' sugar and orange juice, and drizzle over the scones.

Results: We absolutely loved these for breakfast and I would make this recipe again for sure, just leaving out the cranberries in half of the batch for my picky husband :) I think it is a great scone base and open to lots of adaptations.