Sweet Potato Fries

If you live around Chandler, Arizona, and you haven't been to Joe's Farm Grill yet, shame on you. Even Guy Fieri's been there and he doesn't live anywhere near us. Our family is a big fan of this retro outdoor diner as well as the owner's original restaurant, Joe's Real BBQ. My favorite menu item at the Grill is the sweet potato fries. I'm sure this isn't how they make them at Joe's, but it's a simple way to get a tasty, healthy side dish on the table for dinner. Kids (and adults) love them.

Baked Sweet Potato Fries
2 peeled sweet potatoes, cut into fry shape
olive oil
kosher salt

In mixing bowl, coat potatoes in oil. Spread on foil-lined baking sheet. Sprinkle salt as desired. Bake for 45 minutes at 400.

Raw sweet potatoes are extremely difficult to cut. Be sure you have a sharp, quality knife like the Wusthof Classic Ikon 8" Chef's Knife before you start cutting. You've been warned.

The Great Granola Bar Debacle of 2008

Maybe you're thinking these granola bars look pretty and delicious (which they are) and you're wondering why I count them among my baking failures. Read on. And sadly yes, the 2008 designation is necessary as my first attempt at making granola bars last summer was truly for the birds. Let's start there. I followed Alton Brown's recipe exactly as he wrote it...a little too exactly perhaps. Did you know that you can buy raw sunflower seeds unshelled? Well, I didn't and that's why I ended up making suet instead. I tried again using the correct kind of sunflower seeds, but the bars weren't sticking together so it was basically just granola. Good tasting, but not what I was looking for.

Moving on to this year, I found this granola bar recipe the other day. She outlines every step and makes a note of using waxed paper to press the granola into the pan so that it all sticks together. When I read that, I thought I found the answer to my problem, but here's what happened:

Thus began The Great Granola Bar Debacle of 2008. I'm keeping this recipe because it really is tasty, but my advice is to generously spray the waxed paper with cooking spray. I saved the batch but it took about 45 minutes of combing the top, bottom and sides very carefully to make sure every little piece of waxed paper was removed.

By Popular Demand

Okay 'popular' may be pushing it, but some of you asked for some recipes, so here they are.

For my birthday, my mother-in-law gave me some Easter cookie cutters from Williams-Sonoma. I used the sugar cookie recipe on the box for the pink frosted cookies in the post below. The butter and cream cheese make this cookie very rich and their shelf life is pretty short. They're great for a day or two but after that they get pretty hard. What I'm trying to say is don't make them all at once unless you need a lot of cookies right away. I'm a cookie person and I can't eat more than one a day. I made these cookies at Easter, froze half of the dough and then used it last week. I just let the dough thaw in the refrigerator for about two days. They tasted the same as they did at Easter.

Williams-Sonoma Easter Sugar Cookies
5 c all-purpose flour
1 t salt
2 c unsalted butter (Yes, a whole pound!)
6 oz cream cheese
2 c sugar
2 egg yolks
2 t vanilla extract

Have all the ingredients at room temperature. Sift together flour and salt. Set aside. In the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the flat beater, beat the butter on medium speed for 1 minute. Add the cream cheese and continue beating until smooth, about 2 minutes. Add the sugar, increase the speed to medium-high and beat until fluffy and pale yellow, about 3 minuts. Add the egg yolks and vanilla and beat until combined, about 30 seconds.

Reduce the speed to low and add the flour mixture in 3 additions, beating in each addition before adding more. Beat just until combined, stopping the mixer occasionally to scrape down the sides of the bowl.

Turn the dough out onto a floured surface. Using floured hands, form the dough into a smooth mound ad divide into 2 equal portions. Shape each into a disk and wrap separately with plastic wrap. Refrigerate for at least 3 hours or up to 2 days.

Line several baking sheets with parchment paper. Remove 1 dough disk at a time from the refrigerator and let stand for 10 minutes. Place the dough on a clean, floured work surface and roll out to 1/4 inch thickness. Cut out with cookie cutters and place on prepared baking sheets. Refrigerate the cookies until firm, 20 to 30 minutes. Bake at 350 until lightly golden on the edges, 16 to 18 minutes. Transfer cookies to wire racks and let cool completely, then decorate as desired with royal icing. Makes about 32 cookies.


This is the Royal Icing recipe that I used. You're going to have to tweak it a bit to get the right consistency. The outline should be a little stiffer than the filling.

Royal Icing
2 c powdered sugar
4 t meringue powder (egg white powder)
1 t vanilla
1/4 c water

Whisk all together. Add more powdered sugar to thicken the icing. Add corn syrup to make it thinner.


And for those who wanted a good salsa recipe to go with their homemade tortilla chips, here's one from a friend with whom I used to work. It's her family's recipe that's been handed down from generation to generation and they make it for every family get-together. It's loaded with cilantro and I love it!

Homemade Salsa
4 green onions
2 cans stewed tomatoes
1 lemon
3 jalapenos
fresh cilantro
fresh oregano
salt
garlic powder

Mix all in a food processor. The last four ingredients you add to your liking. Just another excuse to taste-test your salsa.

A Weekend of Failures

Just in case you guys were beginning to think that I share only my baking success stories, I'm going to tell you about my weekend. I followed one recipe and performed one culinary experiment. Both were failures. More on the recipe later. Here are the details of the experiment (which has nothing to do with baking, by the way).

Have you heard of Pinkberry? No? Well, it is the hottest craze in frozen yogurt these days! While their stores keep to the upscale neighborhoods within California and New York, several copycats are trying to cash in on the trendy, tart and tangy frozen concoction--which is good news for the rest of us who don't live anywhere near a Pinkberry. Even a little yogurt shop here in Chandler has a version of this yogurt (in which I may or may not indulge every Thursday evening after Mommy Boot Camp). Basically, it tastes like plain yogurt, frozen. I mean, if you have an ice cream maker and 32 ounces of plain yogurt, how hard can it be, right?

Well, the results of this experiment were less than stellar. After my yogurt was freezing for about thirty minutes, I snuck a taste. It wasn't terrible, but it certainly wasn't Pinkberry. I added a quarter cup of sugar and it was closer, but it was nothing remarkable and, really, nothing more than very cold plain yogurt with sugar. Then I stuck it in the freezer and a couple hours later I enjoyed a tasty cup of shaved yogurt. It was frozen solid and the best I could do was shave it out with the ice cream scoop. Maybe one of those new soft serve ice cream makers would do the trick, but that appliance is a little too specialized for a spot in my kitchen. Pinkberry does list the ingredients on their website, but who has guar gum and propylene glycol esters in their pantry? Don't try this one at home, kids.

Sugar Cookies

I made these frosted sugar cookies for MOMS Club game night last night. This was the first time I tried to outline and flood with icing. It didn't work the way I thought it would. Am I really supposed to spread the thinner icing around with a toothpick? I thought flooding would just flood the whole top of the cookie and the outline would act as a dam. It took a bit longer than I had planned, but overall I was happy with the result.

Food Network

Anyone who really knows me knows that I am a Food Network junkie. It all started innocently enough. I turned on the TV one afternoon while the kids were napping, flipped through some channels and stopped when I saw these unbelievable, over-the-top wedding cakes. It was an episode of Food Network Challenge; I was just amazed so I watched the rest of the show. Then Paula's Home Cooking came on and I fell in love with Paula Deen on the spot. I started to watch Paula's show each afternoon, and one day, I stuck around after it ended and watched Everyday Italian with Giada De Laurentiis. Then, 30-Minute Meals with Rachael Ray. Every time I watched a new show, I was hooked. My husband and I even started watching Food Network together in the evenings.

Our absolute favorite show is Good Eats. Alton Brown is not only a genius in the kitchen (he can seriously make anything at home), but also in the lab (he knows all that scientific food stuff), in the classroom (he really paid attention in history class), behind the camera (the way this show is filmed is like no other), and infront of the camera (he's just really, really entertaining). If unfamiliar, click here and watch any of the short videos on his culinary expertise, although if I may, I recommend "Origins of Egg Nog." On a holiday trip to Atlanta to visit family, we went to Harry's Farmers Market in Marietta, Georgia, for no other reason than to hopefully bump into Alton Brown. We didn't, but it was still exciting.

Anyway, I really like Food Network and I think a lot of you do, too. You know my favorite Food Network personality and I'd like to know yours so please participate in the poll on the right. It's all for fun.

And if you haven't watched Food Network at all, you really should give it a try. To borrow one of their slogans, "It's way more than cooking."

See? I let my kids in the kitchen.

Yesterday I was cleaning up the breakfast dishes and the kids were coloring at the table. I finished the dishes and, since the kids were developing their creative sides, I decided to further my efforts by wiping down the cabinets. They needed it. Well, Mommy standing on a chair apparently looked a lot more fun than coloring, so pretty soon everyone had a rag and we were all hard at work.

Christmas in July

So the kids and I were shopping at Super Target last week and I picked up an impulse buy--Krusteaz Gingerbread Cake & Cookie Mix. It was on the clearance rack (Gee, I wonder why?) and since it wasn't past its expiration, I bought it. Elizabeth and I made the cookies this weekend. Maybe I was more relaxed because it's July and I didn't care how these gingerbread people came out. Or maybe Elizabeth's more mature than she was last week. In any case, we had a lot of fun together. She decorated a tray of her own and man did she have fun with that pastry bag!

P.S. I was telling my friend Jennifer about our gingerbread people and she said, "Did you dress them up in bathing suits for summer?" What a cute idea! Next time.

DIY

Now, I would never encourage you to bake your own sandwich bread, graham crackers or Triscuits. If you go through those items as fast as we do, there's something to be said for convenience. On the other hand, some grocery items are easy, delicious, and kind of fun to do yourself. My latest addiction is baked tortilla chips. I was strolling through Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market (a new grocery store in the Phoenix area and my favorite place to food shop) a few months ago and they had 36 mini corn tortillas for $.32. I'm not a big fan of corn tortillas; I think they're rubbery and coarse and I prefer flour any day. But, I love bargains, so I bought them thinking maybe I could bake them into chips. Best 32 cents I ever spent.

Here's the recipe. Sure it's easier to pick up a bag of chips, and I still do, but when I have a few extra minutes I take the time to do it myself. There's nothing like salsa on freshly baked chips.

(In addition to salsa, my family loves hummus on tortilla chips. I tried making my own hummus and the consistency was all wrong. It was like that paste you used in kindergarten. If you have a good classic hummus recipe, share it with me please!)

Kitchen Tools

I'm a pretty simple person. I don't ask for much. When my birthday and Christmas roll around and my husband asks what I want, I always say, "Oh you don't need to get me anything." He says the same thing, by the way, but we never really mean it. Neither of us tells the other what we want and I'm not sure why. So, I think I'm going to alert him to the fact that I have an online cart at Williams-Sonoma and encourage him to start a cart at a few of his favorite places to shop. That way, we can surprise each other with items from our 'registries.'

Because this blog is all about baking, I'll share with you some of the items in my cart that I'm hoping he'll surprise me with someday:

I don't have separate cookie sheets and sheet pans, but I'd like to. My sheets are coated in a non-stick finish, which is great for easy release but, unfortunately, also great at over-browning the bottoms of cookies. Plus, I'm tired of having to set my oven at 25 degrees less than what is stated in the recipe. These Commercial-Quality Cookie Sheets are exactly what I need.

I don't make cheesecakes, and I shy away from any recipe that uses a springform pan because of a mess of an experience I had years ago using a cheap springform pan. Ina Garten uses this pan so I think that I need to, too.

My favorite kitchen tool by far is my KitchenAid Stand Mixer. There are all kinds of attachments for these things, but the one I think I'd really use is the citrus juicer because we have grapefruit and lemon trees in our backyard. And when our orange tree grows up and starts producing, we'll easily sip freshly squeezed orange juice all winter long.

I love these Silicone Spatulas. I have plain white rubber scrapers (as my endearing middle school home-economics teacher called them among giggles from a class full of pre-teens), but wouldn't it be more fun to have an entire set in your favorite color?

However you pronounce them...

scones are tasty. According to one London student's survey, when 66% of people say 'scone' it rhymes with con. For the rest of us it rhymes with cone. No matter. Both pronunciations are acceptable.

These blueberry scones turned out great but probably would have been better if I had used whole milk instead of skim. Also, gently kneading in fresh blueberries isn't as easy as it sounds. Next time, I'll freeze them for a bit to toughen them up because mine were smashing all over. And be sure to use good butter.

Blueberry Scones
4 c all-purpose flour
6 T sugar
4 1/2 t baking powder
1/2 t salt
1/2 c plus 2 T cold butter
2 eggs
3/4 c cold milk
1 1/2 c fresh blueberries

Combine flour, sugar, baking powder and salt. Cut in butter until mixture resembles coarse crumbs. In separate bowl, whisk eggs and milk. Add to well in dry ingredients and mix until just moistened. Turn onto a lightly floured surface; gently knead in blueberries.

Divide dough in half and pat each portion into an 8-inch circle. Cut each into 8 wedges. Place on greased baking sheet. Brush with milk. Bake at 375 for 15-20 minutes or until tops are golden brown. Serve warm. Yield: 16 scones

Kids in the Kitchen

I admit it. Every time I get the Williams-Sonoma catalog I want to whisk (pardon the pun) the kids into the kitchen, bake beautifully decorated cookies together and create loving memories for us all to treasure forever. Why, I ask you? Why do I do this to us? Oh sure. The first 30 seconds are great. The kids are filled with the anticipation of sugary treats and I'm enthusiatic about the whole project. Then, suddenly, things turn sour. I'm shouting what only amounts to meaningless one-word commands like, "Wait!" or "Gently!" or "Careful!" while flour is spilling over the mixing bowl, Matthew is trying to taste baking powder and Elizabeth is saying, "I wanna do it!"

What happened? Our loving memories aren't so loving anymore. Now they'll just remember the time we tried to make cookies and Mommy got mad. Okay, maybe I am jumping the gun a bit. They are 4 and 1 and the girl in the above picture is probably 6 or 7, right? There's probably plenty of time to create memories in the kitchen so I'll keep trying.

For now, though, unless my husband is home and can keep an eye on them, I'll let them make their own creations out of playdough at the kitchen table when I bake or make dinner. Incidentally, that's what ended up happening yesterday. When I finished cleaning up my mess, I had to go clean up their mess. But at least we have happy memories!

I'm like MacGyver!

Okay, so I didn't save anyone's life with a toothpick or anything, but last night, my husband walked past the fruit bowl and made a comment about the extremely ripe bananas it contained. This banana bread is for him! He'll be surprised when he gets home (unless he's reading this at work). Isn't it gratifying to take something worthless and turn it into something so satisfying? When I married into this family, his grandmother shared her secret recipe with me so I can't tell you what's in it. Just kidding. She's happy that so many people love her banana bread, and I'm happy to spread the joy. Thanks, Granny!

Fluffy Banana Bread
1/2 cup room temperature butter
1 c sugar
2 eggs
1 t vanilla
1 1/3 c flour
1 t baking soda
1/2 t salt
1/2 c sour cream
1 c mashed bananas (about two)

Cream butter, sugar, eggs and vanilla. Combine flour, soda, and salt and add mixture to the wet ingredients. Beat until combined. Fold in sour cream and bananas. Pour into three greased small loaf pans and bake at 350 for about 35 minutes. You can also make one 9x5 loaf pan and bake it for almost an hour. Allow bread to cool ten minutes before removing from pans. Cool completely on wire rack.

Magic Cookie Bars

Have you made these yet? I saw Paula Deen make a version of this bar cookie on her show and thought it sounded so good and so easy. Apparently, they're quite popular. I even saw a box mix from Ghirardelli/Eagle Brand in the baking aisle of Super Target. Don't buy it! You probably have everything you need in your pantry. The most difficult step of this recipe is crushing the graham crackers, and if you have a food processor that obviously saves a lot of time. Although the recipe calls for chocolate chips, nuts and coconut, you can easily substitute any toppings you'd like. My favorite is semi-sweet chocolate chips, white chocolate chips, pecans and coconut. They almost taste like Girl Scout Samoa cookies.

An Apple Muffin a Day...

Even though I love to bake, it doesn't mean I'm not health-conscious. Although our family loves to eat our share of treats, we do eat pretty healthy. The fact that we make our own treats and avoid all the fillers and preservatives of store-bought items makes me feel better and, sometimes, a little less guilty. These Apple Muffins by Ellie Krieger are the perfect balance of nutrition and treat. They honestly taste great. The cinnamon/pecan/brown sugar topping really makes the muffin so don't skip it. You can make full-size muffins or mini muffins like we did. The kids and I had two every day this week after swimming lessons and they really hit the spot. The recipe makes about 36 mini muffins so freeze them, pop them in the microwave for a few seconds, and enjoy a hot-out-of-the-oven snack.

I bake. I swear!

With all the kids' activities going on this summer, I haven't had too much time to bake. Plus, it's over 100 degrees out so I'm not too anxious to make my house any hotter. So, for a little while, I'll post some of my masterpieces from the past just to feel like I'm up and running.

Last summer, I had a notion to participate in the Great American Bake Sale. It was fun even if it was a lot of work. I got to bake and bake and bake without having to eat and eat and eat. In hind sight, I might have gotten a little carried away with the baking, but we raised over $600 for Share Our Strength so it was all worth it.

The Beginning

At the risk of appearing like a Harriet to Jennifer's Emma, I'm starting my own blog. It's not that I want to be as cool as her, because really, how can I be? And I'm not looking to make millions on this or to become famous. So why am I doing this? Well, to be honest, it all started about a year ago. A mom in our MOMS Club had her website (hey, I didn't even know what a blog was!) listed in her email signature and I clicked on it. It was filled with family photos, slideshows, and videos. The next time I saw her I told her how impressive her site was and she talked me into setting up one for myself. Yes, that was a year ago and now I'm finally making my first post. A belated thank you to Laura for setting me up.

Anyway, my blog isn't going to have family photos, slideshows or videos. Call me paranoid, but I just don't trust this internet thing enough for that...yet. Plus, my extended family wasn't that excited about seeing us and the kids in a blog.

Family: Will we be able to order pictures from it?
Me: No.
Family: Are you still going to put pictures on Ofoto?
Me: Yeah, I guess so.

It all started to sound like double the work. I don't need more work but I wanted a blog because I already thought of the perfect name for it. (For those with no idea, more on that later.) So, I'm dedicating this space to my all-time favorite hobby--baking. I can still have a blog, but it won't be about anything important so it doesn't matter if I don't get around to posting anything for a while. Inspired by another blogger who is a little more famous, wealthier, and seems to have a lot more time to devote to baking (but I have been told our mothers look a lot a like--which, I suppose, is a "good thing"), I will post recipes and photos of my creations. My camera, my kitchen and my recipes are not fancy schmancy; if these goods can be baked by me, they can be baked by anyone. This is baking for the everywoman.