So last week before I went out of town, there were 2 more recipes that I tried.
Here's how it went.
Huge Cookies!
Yote wanted cookies, so I decided to make him some. I used real vanilla not imitation vanilla extract for these, and I think it made a HUGE difference. They really do taste a lot like bakery cookies, and I found that storing them in a tight container they didn't get too hard. If I had put a piece of bread in there to keep them moister that would have worked too. The only downside here is how HUGE the cookies are (Soda can included for reference). For the record, the dough if you aren't terrified of the raw egg in it, is absolutely the best.
It may be my (crappy cheap) oven, but contrary to the reviewer's comments about needing to shorten the cooking time, I needed to lengthen it by several minutes.
SparkleFox's Rating 5/5
Big Fat Chewy Chocolate Chip Cookie From All Recipes.com
Greek Restaurant Whole Wheat Bread
Unfortunately no photo again. I have to get better than that.
I was fairly disappointed really. I used non-fast acting yeast and converted the times per the books instructions, and I also note I don't use parchment paper but silicon baking liners.
Problems:
1. Even cutting the time to the "low" end of the conversion, I let the bread rise much too far on the first rise, so it came out very big, but a little too dense and flat in the end as the second rise didn't go as far. The crumb wasn't bad otherwise.
2. The bread was fairly bitter. That may be how wheat is supposed to be, but I was already disappointed in the density so this did not make me any happier.
I am considering trying this one again, adjusting my rise times, as #1 may have caused #2. I may also need to make a slightly firmer dough for the spreading vs rising on the 2nd rise.
Overall I'm not sure this recipe is really worth a second try for the bread itself, but I do think I will just for the learning.
SparkleFox's Rating 2/5
This one came from A Passion for Baking by Marcy Goldman.
No book rating yet, this is the only one I've tried. I will say, I have never seen a book so exacting in it's instructions of how whatever must be done "just so".
Last Week's Cooking
Bento Mania
H sent me a lot of bento stuff from Japan at my request, and I have fallen in love. The dangerous thing here is the amount of money I could (and have already) spent on supplies. I will make future posts about what tools I have and like, and what I've improvised. Anyways, you might notice that I start listing around Bento #6. I did not take photos of Bentos 1-5. However they weren't that interesting, and did not include recipes you won't see posted here for later ones.
You can check out the pictures of the bento goodies I got and some of the in-cooking progress at my flickr account. Anyways, here's the photos of bento #6, which was intended for lunch and 2 snacks for a long day at work.
Carrot Kinpira
Tip: Make as spicy or not spicy as you like by adjusting the pepper. Watch out for how oily it is though, it CAN stain your bento/lunchbox if you are not careful!
Starbuck's Passion Chocolate - 4/5
Ghanna Lotte Black Chocolate - 5/5
Dijon Sauce - 4/5
Recipe: Stone Ground Mustard (I use the german named kind), and a SMALL amount of light mayo (Hellman's).
Overall - 4/5.
If you think I packed too much food. You're 100% right. Not all of this was eaten, so 4/5 on the actual lunch for that.
Sparkle Fox's Rating 4/5
No recipies, this is a very simple bento that was leftovers from dinner last night. Cooking Cute has an onigiri tutorial if you don't know how to do that, google works as well. Don't know yet how to make the banana's not brown, but they were still tasty. Also still working out how to do eyes/whiskers etc out of nori. I have cutters for ham/cheese etc but they won't work. Debating a nori punch. If you know how that doesn't involve wayyy too much time with scissors, please let me know!
Tips: I used wax paper to hold the bananas away from juice, this worked very well and was a better use of space than the shaped side-dish cups I have. I see why the paper cups are popular.
Onigiri that is not nori-wrapped will break apart when re-heated when you try to eat it. That was fine in this case, but lesson learned.
That's all for now, next time more interesting stuff and recipes, promise. I'll be doing 1 lunch per post as well in the future.
Fun and Frustration
Catching up on all the bento entries will come shortly.
For now, a few thoughts on other things.
I will be linking all the recipes or sourcing them for everything here from here on out, regardless of the rating.
My other thought is, I need to find a good personal recipe organization system.
There are like 50 billion recipes online, all in different websites, not to mention the ones I make up, come across scraps of paper, or the over 120 cookbooks in our house (and they don't even span all the food types I like, there's nothing there for Korean, and nothing really printed after 2000 except for a handful so little fusion or new food).
This is driving me crazy because I have no way to search all of these at once, and no good way to organize them all, nor any way other than writing in the cookbooks themselves what I thought of them or what I changed. Which only solves it for the physical cookbooks, unless I start printing everything out on recipe cards (which I may do). But that wouldn't solve the searching bit, and even then most of the websites I know of don't have the greatest searches either. Admittedly once you've been cooking 20 years, you probably know just where to find your favorite recipe for most common things. I'll update here if I come up with a system that works.
No update on all the crafting projects, it's been a busy couple weeks and all, and not much cooking gone on.
Hayley's reminder list -
Post all the bento stuff in 1 big entry.
Write up about the wheat bread recipe and the cookie recipe.
Find an organization system!
Catching up all at once.
So, for anyone looking for the couple of posts that were here before, I've changed the nature of the blog. I dont intend to post about the things I originally thought I would. Instead I have decided to make this blog about the things I like to create. That includes at times artwork, knitting, coooking (learnign to rather) - my latest thing for bento boxes, and anything else that along those lines.
So to sort of catch up all at once.
I am currently working on the knitting needles - A harry potter scarf in raven claw colors for Panda. I'm 5% done with it at best and Need to get on it.
I am also currently working on a rug, on 2 knitting nancies (spools as some call them). One of them a store bought embellish knit for the smaller yarn, and one I made of clay and nails (photos to come), for the larger. I still have NO idea how i'm going to sew it together when I'm done, there's a methodology to it but it's only in one book i know of for like $30 on amazon. I may get it anyways. That and I'm not sure I'll actually finish this one, it's taking FOREVER by hand to do the I-cord.
I owe, lots of people lots of crafts, i'll come up with that later.
I'm also working on a meditation pillow, if i can ever figure out where to go with it (photos forthcoming). I'm good and stuck on it. I think i screwed up entirely. But it's a little late to back out now.
And, for the cooking, I recently made
Strawberry Muffins - (SparkleFox Rating - 3/5 stars.)
They came out not exactly the texture I'd really like in my muffins, I think next time I will try a different recipie. They still taste okay, but they are too moist on the outside and too dry overall.
Lemon Poppy Seed Pound Cake (SparkleFox Rating 4/5 stars)
This was a test run, I will be making it again for him but with sugar glaze. Very lemony, not really "my" preference, but he liked it, and it's his birthday in two weeks. The texture is fine, a little bit dry, but that is because of the container I put it in I think. Next time I will use a different one. I also think the sugar glaze will help.
FireWine Shot (SparkleFox Rating 4.5/5)
There was also an experiment with booze, to make a drink called Firewine. It's got nothign to do with wine and is entirely a reference to something from a Planescape game. It looks like this when it's done.
It consists of spicy ginger beer (get the good stuff, it's hard to find here though), Goldschlagger, redhots, and a cinnamon stick. It's actually very good, but it's very much a "boot to the head".
And there we go. Not exactly an intro, but, long enough for now. I'll get the rest up here later.
