Saturday, June 19, 2010
We are proud to present recipes from the family coffers and Joe's culinarily twisted mind! Hmmm, is culinarily even a word?
Finally, the first of our recipes are up! Katy is sharing two recipes from her mom's recipe box. I am posting the cinnamon-raisin swirl bread recipe I wrote about in a recent blog. We're slowly getting it going!
This is the recipe that goes with the 'Channeling Your Inner Top Chef'. A bit late in posting, this recipe uses Sugar Twin (brown sugar substitute). Enjoy!
Cinnamon-Raisin Swirl Bread
This recipe is written for use with a stand mixer. We use a KitchenAid. Unfortunately, unlike my grandmothers, I don’t make bread kneading by hand. Unless, of course, I have a serious need for either doorstops or bricks.
Gather together
* 1/2 cup whole milk (substitute 2% if desired)
* 4 tablespoons (1/2 stick) unsalted butter, cut into pieces.
* 1 envelope of instant yeast (2 1/4 teaspoons)
* 1/2 cup warm water (about 110 degrees F)
* 1/3 cup sugar or Sugar Twin
* 2 large eggs
* 1 1/2 teaspoons salt
* 3 1/4 to 3 3/4 cups (16 1/4 to 18 3/4 ounces) unbleached all-purpose flour, divided, plus more for dusting the work surface
Sugar Cinnamon Filling
* 1/4 cup sugar or Sugar Twin
* 5 teaspoons ground cinnamon
* ½ cup raisins - optional
* Milk for brushing
Egg wash
* 1 egg and 1 tablespoon milk (or water)
Heat the milk and butter until the butter melts. Cool until warm (about 110 degrees F). I do this in the microwave, it’s quicker, but use a thermometer to double check the temp. Too hot and you’ll kill the yeast.
In the mixing bowl of your stand mixer sprinkle yeast over the warm water (if it’s cold, slightly warm the bowl in the oven or under hot water first). Fit the mixer with the paddle attachment.
Beat in the sugar and eggs and mix at low speed to blend.
Add the salt, warm milk and butter mixture and 2 cups of the flour. Mix at medium speed until blended.
Switch to the dough hook.
Add one and one-quarter cups more flour and knead at medium low speed. (Number 2 on a KitchenAid. If your stand mixer is different please check the manual for making bread). Add more flour sparingly if the dough sticks to the side of the bowl. Note: this could be as much as another half cup or more of flour and about four minutes or more mixing with the dough hook. When it pulls cleanly from the sides of the bowl the dough is ready.
Turn the dough onto a floured work surface and shape into a round.
Transfer the dough to a lightly oiled bowl (I spray the bottom and sides with cooking spray) then rotate the dough to oil all sides. Cover the bowl with plastic wrap (covered in cooking spray to prevent dough from sticking to wrap). Let the dough rise until doubled in size, about 2 hours.
Turn the dough onto a floured work surface making sure not to fold the dough. Let the dough rest about 10 minutes.
Grease the bottom and sides of a 9x5 loaf pan.
Mix the cinnamon and sugar in a small bowl.
Press the dough into a rectangle and with the short side facing you. Roll the dough with a rolling pin into a 18 inch by 8 inch rectangle-approximately. It’s not going to be perfectly rectangular, so don’t panic.
Brush the dough liberally with milk. Sprinkle the cinnamon-sugar mixture evenly over the dough, leaving about a one inch border on the far side. Sprinkle on the raisins. Starting at the side closest to you, snugly roll up the dough. Tuck in the dough gently with your fingertips to seal it as you’re shaping it. With the seam side up, pinch the ends of the dough together.
Place the loaf seam-side down in the prepared pan. If the loaf is larger lengthwise than the pan don’t be afraid to scrunch the dough from either side to make it fit. It may look like a drunken inch-worm, but that’s okay. Cover the top of the pan loosely with plastic wrap covered in cooking spray (I reuse the previous wrap) and set aside to rise until it’s an inch or more above the top of the pan. This could take from one-half hour to as long as an hour-and-a-half, depending on how warm your kitchen is and the season.
Pre-heat the oven to 350 degrees F. Make sure oven is at 350 for at least 15 minutes to prevent the temp from dropping drastically when you open the door and place in the bread.
Just as you’re about to put the bread into the oven whisk together the egg and the milk. Gently brush the top of the loaf with the egg mixture; place bread on a rack in the center of the oven. Squirt water inside the oven with four or five squeezes of a squirt bottle filled with water, the nozzle set to stream. We want to make steam! Quickly close the door. The water isn’t entirely necessary, but it helps create a crustier top.
Baking
Bake until the loaf is golden brown and sounds hollow if you were tap the top of the bread hard with your index finger or with your knuckles (about 35-40 minutes).
Remove the bread from the pan and cool it on its side on a wire rack until room temperature, at least 45 minutes. Katy and I lasted 15 minutes before we decided to cut into the loaf. Wait longer, if you can, as it makes cutting easier and tears the bread apart less.
Notes:
I baked this bread 5 minutes longer (40 minutes vs 35). Don’t be afraid to use the entire amount of sugar and cinnamon. It looks like a lot, but I think it’s just barely enough. The same applies when replacing the sugar with Sugar Twin. Feel free to add more raisins, if you’re a raisin kinda person, before rolling up and placing in bread pan.
This recipe is written for use with a stand mixer. We use a KitchenAid. Unfortunately, unlike my grandmothers, I don’t make bread kneading by hand. Unless, of course, I have a serious need for either doorstops or bricks.
Gather together
* 1/2 cup whole milk (substitute 2% if desired)
* 4 tablespoons (1/2 stick) unsalted butter, cut into pieces.
* 1 envelope of instant yeast (2 1/4 teaspoons)
* 1/2 cup warm water (about 110 degrees F)
* 1/3 cup sugar or Sugar Twin
* 2 large eggs
* 1 1/2 teaspoons salt
* 3 1/4 to 3 3/4 cups (16 1/4 to 18 3/4 ounces) unbleached all-purpose flour, divided, plus more for dusting the work surface
Sugar Cinnamon Filling
* 1/4 cup sugar or Sugar Twin
* 5 teaspoons ground cinnamon
* ½ cup raisins - optional
* Milk for brushing
Egg wash
* 1 egg and 1 tablespoon milk (or water)
Heat the milk and butter until the butter melts. Cool until warm (about 110 degrees F). I do this in the microwave, it’s quicker, but use a thermometer to double check the temp. Too hot and you’ll kill the yeast.
In the mixing bowl of your stand mixer sprinkle yeast over the warm water (if it’s cold, slightly warm the bowl in the oven or under hot water first). Fit the mixer with the paddle attachment.
Beat in the sugar and eggs and mix at low speed to blend.
Add the salt, warm milk and butter mixture and 2 cups of the flour. Mix at medium speed until blended.
Switch to the dough hook.
Add one and one-quarter cups more flour and knead at medium low speed. (Number 2 on a KitchenAid. If your stand mixer is different please check the manual for making bread). Add more flour sparingly if the dough sticks to the side of the bowl. Note: this could be as much as another half cup or more of flour and about four minutes or more mixing with the dough hook. When it pulls cleanly from the sides of the bowl the dough is ready.
Turn the dough onto a floured work surface and shape into a round.
Transfer the dough to a lightly oiled bowl (I spray the bottom and sides with cooking spray) then rotate the dough to oil all sides. Cover the bowl with plastic wrap (covered in cooking spray to prevent dough from sticking to wrap). Let the dough rise until doubled in size, about 2 hours.
Turn the dough onto a floured work surface making sure not to fold the dough. Let the dough rest about 10 minutes.
Grease the bottom and sides of a 9x5 loaf pan.
Mix the cinnamon and sugar in a small bowl.
Press the dough into a rectangle and with the short side facing you. Roll the dough with a rolling pin into a 18 inch by 8 inch rectangle-approximately. It’s not going to be perfectly rectangular, so don’t panic.
Brush the dough liberally with milk. Sprinkle the cinnamon-sugar mixture evenly over the dough, leaving about a one inch border on the far side. Sprinkle on the raisins. Starting at the side closest to you, snugly roll up the dough. Tuck in the dough gently with your fingertips to seal it as you’re shaping it. With the seam side up, pinch the ends of the dough together.
Place the loaf seam-side down in the prepared pan. If the loaf is larger lengthwise than the pan don’t be afraid to scrunch the dough from either side to make it fit. It may look like a drunken inch-worm, but that’s okay. Cover the top of the pan loosely with plastic wrap covered in cooking spray (I reuse the previous wrap) and set aside to rise until it’s an inch or more above the top of the pan. This could take from one-half hour to as long as an hour-and-a-half, depending on how warm your kitchen is and the season.
Pre-heat the oven to 350 degrees F. Make sure oven is at 350 for at least 15 minutes to prevent the temp from dropping drastically when you open the door and place in the bread.
Just as you’re about to put the bread into the oven whisk together the egg and the milk. Gently brush the top of the loaf with the egg mixture; place bread on a rack in the center of the oven. Squirt water inside the oven with four or five squeezes of a squirt bottle filled with water, the nozzle set to stream. We want to make steam! Quickly close the door. The water isn’t entirely necessary, but it helps create a crustier top.
Baking
Bake until the loaf is golden brown and sounds hollow if you were tap the top of the bread hard with your index finger or with your knuckles (about 35-40 minutes).
Remove the bread from the pan and cool it on its side on a wire rack until room temperature, at least 45 minutes. Katy and I lasted 15 minutes before we decided to cut into the loaf. Wait longer, if you can, as it makes cutting easier and tears the bread apart less.
Notes:
I baked this bread 5 minutes longer (40 minutes vs 35). Don’t be afraid to use the entire amount of sugar and cinnamon. It looks like a lot, but I think it’s just barely enough. The same applies when replacing the sugar with Sugar Twin. Feel free to add more raisins, if you’re a raisin kinda person, before rolling up and placing in bread pan.
Another recipe from the Manning Family recipe box
This is one of my Mom’s (Mary Faith Manning) favorite cake recipes. Easy and all ingredients are already in your house – plus I think she likes the yellow color.
Please note that cooking time and temperature may vary due to your stove.
LAZY DAISY CAKE
Preheat oven to 375º Bake for 30-35 minutes
Beat together
2 eggs
1 cup sugar
Add sifted ingredients
1 cup flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
Pinch of salt
1 teaspoon vanilla
Heat together
½ cup milk
2 tablespoons oleo
Add to the above mixture.
Pour in 8x8” greased and floured pan.
Allow to cool before frosting…enjoy
Please note that cooking time and temperature may vary due to your stove.
LAZY DAISY CAKE
Preheat oven to 375º Bake for 30-35 minutes
Beat together
2 eggs
1 cup sugar
Add sifted ingredients
1 cup flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
Pinch of salt
1 teaspoon vanilla
Heat together
½ cup milk
2 tablespoons oleo
Add to the above mixture.
Pour in 8x8” greased and floured pan.
Allow to cool before frosting…enjoy
From the recipe box of Mary Faith Manning (aka Katy's mom)
This is a recipe my Mom (Mary Faith Manning) received from a friend. It was one of my Father’s (Herb Manning) favorites. It is a custard type pie, but wait there’s more, it actually forms its own crust How cool is that?
Please note that cooking time and temperature may vary due to your stove.
IMPOSSIBLE PIE
Preheat oven to 350º Baking time: 40 minutes
Put all of the following ingredients in your blender
4 eggs
1 stick soft oleo
½ cup flour
¾ cup sugar
1 cup flaked coconut
1 teaspoon vanilla
2 cups milk
Pinch of salt
Turn blender on high speed and count to 10. Turn off and pour into greased 9” pie pan.
May be cut and served while warm…enjoy
Please note that cooking time and temperature may vary due to your stove.
IMPOSSIBLE PIE
Preheat oven to 350º Baking time: 40 minutes
Put all of the following ingredients in your blender
4 eggs
1 stick soft oleo
½ cup flour
¾ cup sugar
1 cup flaked coconut
1 teaspoon vanilla
2 cups milk
Pinch of salt
Turn blender on high speed and count to 10. Turn off and pour into greased 9” pie pan.
May be cut and served while warm…enjoy
Tuesday, June 8, 2010
Blah, Blah, Blah
Channeling Your Inner 'Top Chef'
Unless you’ve been dead, locked in a closet--or letting your brain turn to mush watching episodes of The Hills the last few years--you may have noticed that slapping together our daily bread has been elevated from the ordinary to almost super-star status.
There will be no more reheated leftovers or delivery pizza. Not if the executives of the latest addition to our cable and satellite line-ups have anything to say about it. It is time to rise above the hum-drum and into the stratosphere of do-it-yourself haute cuisine. That’s fancy-schmancy chef parlance for those of us McDonald’s-eating heathen-types.
The new channel, called Cooking Channel, fired up at the end of May. Targeted at a younger, more hip crowd, Cooking Channel aims to bring out the inner Top Chef in all of us. Kicking and screaming, if necessary.
Moms, dads or anyone whose idea of an elegant meal involves paper plates, frozen dinners and an unhealthy fascination with the family microwave need not apply.
Over the last decade (if not longer) cooking has come of age. No longer the playground of the rich and famous, what we once would have called “fancy” restaurants are popping up everywhere. Some within easy reach of the average Joe’s pocketbook, some not.
How provincial
Thanks to the likes of popular cooking personality Guy Fieri and his equally popular Food Network showcase Diner’s, Drive-ins and Dives down-home, regional cooking has been elevated to haute cuisine status as well. In a very provincial, affordable way, of course.
BBQ ribs, as a food group, have attained superstar status and it seems everyone has a favorite restaurant that serves them “just right”. Peasant food is all the rage. Pasties are next.
Want good bread, make your own. There’s a show for that.
Even I’m joining the fray by posting an easy cinnamon swirl bread recipe on this site. (To be up soon!) And trust me, baking bread is not my forte. For that reason alone, Julia is probably spinning in her grave.
The movement to reinvent cooking and give it back to the masses, is a good thing. Seeing it prepared on tv in easy to do steps makes it comfortable to accomplish at home for family and friends. Even if it’s only once a week. Gathering in the kitchen and sitting down together at the dinner table can only strengthen a family.
Proof is in the (family) pudding
It worked for my family. Even when the girls and I became older, moving from grade school to junior high, and junior high to high school (even spending summers home during our college years). Sure, we may have cultivated and hung out with a new “crew” outside our family dynamic but dinner at home was the focal point of our day.
In essence, we were forced to interact with one another. As Martha would say, “That’s a good thing!” The Schutte clan is a boisterous family. With the parents trading off as co-ring masters, my sisters and I unwittingly revealed the good, the bad and the scholastic while wolfing down homemade meatloaf or mom’s still secret spaghetti sauce over noodles.
Sharing food together has an uncanny way of making that happen.
Not every day is going to be a Food TV or a Cooking Channel day. Most days are going to be a challenge just getting out the door and on the way to work or school. Without freaking. Learning a new recipe from a tv show on a cooking network and presenting it to family and friends isn’t necessarily going to change that. But it might make it a little easier!
We could all use a break. Allez cuisine!
Unless you’ve been dead, locked in a closet--or letting your brain turn to mush watching episodes of The Hills the last few years--you may have noticed that slapping together our daily bread has been elevated from the ordinary to almost super-star status.
There will be no more reheated leftovers or delivery pizza. Not if the executives of the latest addition to our cable and satellite line-ups have anything to say about it. It is time to rise above the hum-drum and into the stratosphere of do-it-yourself haute cuisine. That’s fancy-schmancy chef parlance for those of us McDonald’s-eating heathen-types.
The new channel, called Cooking Channel, fired up at the end of May. Targeted at a younger, more hip crowd, Cooking Channel aims to bring out the inner Top Chef in all of us. Kicking and screaming, if necessary.
Moms, dads or anyone whose idea of an elegant meal involves paper plates, frozen dinners and an unhealthy fascination with the family microwave need not apply.
Over the last decade (if not longer) cooking has come of age. No longer the playground of the rich and famous, what we once would have called “fancy” restaurants are popping up everywhere. Some within easy reach of the average Joe’s pocketbook, some not.
How provincial
Thanks to the likes of popular cooking personality Guy Fieri and his equally popular Food Network showcase Diner’s, Drive-ins and Dives down-home, regional cooking has been elevated to haute cuisine status as well. In a very provincial, affordable way, of course.
BBQ ribs, as a food group, have attained superstar status and it seems everyone has a favorite restaurant that serves them “just right”. Peasant food is all the rage. Pasties are next.
Want good bread, make your own. There’s a show for that.
Even I’m joining the fray by posting an easy cinnamon swirl bread recipe on this site. (To be up soon!) And trust me, baking bread is not my forte. For that reason alone, Julia is probably spinning in her grave.
The movement to reinvent cooking and give it back to the masses, is a good thing. Seeing it prepared on tv in easy to do steps makes it comfortable to accomplish at home for family and friends. Even if it’s only once a week. Gathering in the kitchen and sitting down together at the dinner table can only strengthen a family.
Proof is in the (family) pudding
It worked for my family. Even when the girls and I became older, moving from grade school to junior high, and junior high to high school (even spending summers home during our college years). Sure, we may have cultivated and hung out with a new “crew” outside our family dynamic but dinner at home was the focal point of our day.
In essence, we were forced to interact with one another. As Martha would say, “That’s a good thing!” The Schutte clan is a boisterous family. With the parents trading off as co-ring masters, my sisters and I unwittingly revealed the good, the bad and the scholastic while wolfing down homemade meatloaf or mom’s still secret spaghetti sauce over noodles.
Sharing food together has an uncanny way of making that happen.
Not every day is going to be a Food TV or a Cooking Channel day. Most days are going to be a challenge just getting out the door and on the way to work or school. Without freaking. Learning a new recipe from a tv show on a cooking network and presenting it to family and friends isn’t necessarily going to change that. But it might make it a little easier!
We could all use a break. Allez cuisine!
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