spent all my pecans on flour

had some leftover pecans from the pecan pie, so ran a few experiments. the bread is a rosemary, cranberry, and toasted pecan sour dough. the biscotti is the same ingredients in cookie form, but in half of them i substituted chocolate chips for the cranberries because i lacked enough of this dried fruit.

turkey shmurkey...

i look forward to the pie on thanksgiving. so thats what i made. a pecan using a filling that was corn syrup free. i was going to make another version of pecan, a bit of an experiment, adding crispy cooked bacon pieces to the pie, but considered my fellow veggie diner and left that for another day. there was also some concern about an overabundance of pecan, so i mustered up a replacement using some quince i had waiting in the crisper. from this the quince pear pie with toasted pecan strudel topping was born.

at diner there was more then enough pies. my friend lindsey brought homemade sage ice cream, which actually went quite well with the quince pear. everything was delicious! even the savory dishes were dynamite.

tart and it's many faces

so, we finished up our pies this weekend, a couple of cream pies. i didn't photograph these cause i forgot my camera saturday. anyway they didn't look to be my most photogenic subjects, so no loss.

i did however get some snaps of the tarts i put together today. pictured is a almond tart w/ pears. looks like the radioactive sign, but this is the traditional presentation and i haven't began to glow green, so no connection to be seen yet. the two little ones are sweet custard and apple. the stylistic one, a result of trying to clean up bad pipping technique, is a lemon curd. we still have a few other varieties that will finish up with after thanksgiving. then its on to basic breads.

bread update!

so this is pretty nerdy, but i just cut into the bread and checkout that cell structure, there is a nice variation throughout. looks like the loaf just had on a bad face, but at its core was mostly content.

whole wheat antidepressant

it baked ok, but based off the weather around here today i would have to say this loaf has a severe case of seasonal affective disorder. i was having problems scoring the top

at least it didn't come out like yesterdays project. the kitchen is kind of cold so i set the dough to proof on the stove top to get heat from the oven as it warmed up. found out our stove top gets a little too much heat. when i came back to check up on the breads progress i found a gooey have baked mess. oh well, c'est la vie.

you can't hide from pie

more pies today and another adventures bike trek home. maybe a pie delivery service isn't out of the question.

pictured is a blackberry, pumpkin, and pecan pie. oh, yum!

taken a trip with pie

at school this weekend we're focused on all things pie. today we made quiche and apple pie. i had to transport my pie by bike. the journey went surprisingly well, but i don't anticipate a future delivery service spawning from the endeavor.

little tid bit i learned today, pre-baking the pie filling helps avoid shrinking of the apples and sogginess of the bottom crust. brilliant! and after my ride i guess it can be safely said that it also makes for greater durability.

close to sour

baked some hearth bread at home today. been working with this sourdough starter for a while and i think i'm finally getting the knack of it.

grease bath

we did a whole lot of frying this weekend. i left on sunday feeling slightly perfumed in oil. although i don't foresee being a proactive fryer of foods it was fun trying it out. unfortunately some of these items were not able to be documented due to their poor shelf life, so the cannoli and fritters are missing from this set. the crepes kept, but were a poor photo subject when not dressed up

along with the fried foods are a pound cake, scones (fig walnut), muffins, beignets (a fried eclair dough) and biscuits. i think the muffin and biscuits could have been better, but this is just the beginning.

i forgot to mention we made strudel as a group. kind of a neat process, which if i had cleaner hands i would have tried to snap a few shots of. oh, and sorry for what i believe is less then perfect picture quality. i need to work out a better system for documenting.

enjoy!

test cookie

this is the start of a documentation of my experiences in the kitchen, both during school and at home.

this first photo is from last weekend. we were checked off on our execution of a variety of cookies. i also tossed the butter braid (lower left) into the picture to spice things up. most of the cookies were done with a partner. the bread i braided myself. pretty easy once shown the method.

more to come.