Posts Tagged ‘dough’

Hey! I’m alive.. just crazy busy with my relocation and whatnot. I’m staying here in Kansas City with my folks for a bit while I transition and of course, that means plenty of gentle nudgings and offhand mentions of how such-and-such dish sounds so good and oh wouldn’t it be nice to have this for dinner. In other words, being home is being my mom’s personal chef, and tonight she suggested quiche so I just happened to make it.

I know this is extremely similar to the goat cheese tart, but I’ve said before how I a) love breakfast for dinner and b) love the ease of dishes like this, especially when you use a prepared pie crust. And, well, I was going nuts not posting anything! So enjoy!

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I don’t know about you – but I am so over winter. The snow has been beautiful, the root veggies have been great, the sweaters comfortable, but I am dying for sunlight and sandals and summer produce!

Thankfully, spring is en route, and these lemon bars are a perfect transition into the season. Using good winter citrus and a buttery shortbread crust, but still getting that zing found in fresh fruit desserts, they toe the line perfectly between the seasons, as we are doing right now.

My special addition here is limoncello, a traditional Italian digestif made from steeping lemon zest in alcohol and then adding sugar. We used to make it in-house at Lidia’s but you can find it at any liquor store. However, if you’re trying to save money, just sub the limoncello with lemon juice and they’re still molto deliziosa.

Bright and sunny!

Such an odd measuring spoon, but I love it.

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This all started innocently enough. I had just seen “Crazy Heart” and after watching Jeff Bridges make “Bad Blake’s Legendary Biscuits,” I had a hankering I couldn’t ignore. So I turned to my usual goddess of southern cooking, Edna Lewis, and followed her recipe. Unfortunately… this happened:

Wah wah wahhhhhh. They don’t look too good do they? They tasted alright, but obviously they’re small, flat, and well, not very biscuit-y. Every recipe can’t be a winner, even from a trusted cook or source, but you can’t let it get you down. So, like with any challenge, I began to research and play with recipes. Butter vs. shortening, salt amounts, homemade baking powder vs. store-bought. And as always, altitude challenges. Finally, four rounds later, I made these gorgeous things today:

Victory! They taste even better than they look, too. I ended up using salted butter (just gave better flavor), homemade baking powder (from Edna), and just the right ratios to make sure they rose nice and proper here in the mountains. Nice crisp top and bottom, airy and moist on the inside, just begging to be slathered in more butter and strawberry jam.

Nice shaggy dough mess.

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Isn’t it funny how you can feel a food trend starting to build? Okay, maybe I’m one of those hyper-aware people and notice it more than most, but I can tell you one thing: monkey bread is so hot right now. I’ve seen it pop up more than a handful of times in the past month or so on the 30+ food blogs I read daily, most notably with a full-on expose from the LA Times, and I couldn’t be more excited!

I love monkey bread. Adore it. For those who haven’t encountered it, monkey bread is a sweet yeast-y pull-apart breakfast bread made in a bundt pan, covered in ooey-gooey cinnamon-sugar butter, and baked. You pull it apart (like a monkey? the name origin is debated) in sticky, awesome pieces and enjoy with coffee in the morning. Or hot chocolate. Or both. I first experienced monkey bread when I stayed with my friend’s grandparents in Tulsa, OK for a couple weeks when I was 12 or so. Meagan & Casey’s grandma would get up at a (no doubt) ungodly hour and almost every other day have hot monkey bread waiting for us when we woke up. It was such a treat I looked forward to every morning, and then would happily nibble on every evening when we would play Mexican train dominoes.

So when I read yet another blog entry about the scrumptious breakfast bread, I got a hankering I couldn’t ignore. And it only made sense to get the recipe for the original I fell in love with, which thankfully Meagan’s grandma was more than happy to share. Even better, the recipe uses pre-packaged dough and is so easy, you literally could whip this together in the morning, especially since she has the trick of putting it in a cold oven and cooking it as it heats up.  Sugary and sticky and warm and spicy, this is the ultimate breakfast pastry and would conquer any cinnamon roll any day of the week!

I firmly believe that everyone can cook. Sure, we all have varying degrees of difficulty we pursue and reach, but I don’t think there is some weird, innate quality which renders people unable to cook. Most of the time when I hear people grouse about failing to produce something in the kitchen, it involves being unable to follow instructions or read things carefully – not some curse which causes culinary failure.

I know personally, baking and desserts is the area I am still working on and attempting to better myself at. Savory cooking can be so much easier – you toss things in, taste for seasoning, add more of this, more of that. Baking and pastry is a science. With careful measuring, following of instructions, etc. Which is why I love this idea to death because it throws all of that out the window and is quite possibly the easiest dessert (and breakfast pastry!) I have ever made.

All you do is take puff pastry, thaw it, slice up an apple, toss it with lemon juice and brown sugar, lay it out, and bake it. That’s it!  Practically no measuring, no leaveners, no stand mixer or double boiler – seriously, anyone can make this dessert. (Trust me, try it – I have faith in you!)