The Homemade Challenge- Bagels

Okay. I'm NEVER going to buy bagels at the store again. I swear! OMG... they are soooo good homemade! Check these out!

Here is where I got the recipe and this recipe is perfect! If you would like a pictoral walkthough of the process, you have to go to Thibeault's Table. Ann's blog is great and has MANY great recipes. Otherwise, the recipe is now posted below.
Thibeault's Table <----------Click here! If you make them, let me know. I really want to hear how they turned out for you!





Bagels
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Source: Hors d'oeuvres Cook Book and notes from Thibeault's Table...

I have typed it exactly as the recipe is printed in the book. If you have a bread machine or Kitchenaide by all means use it to do most of the kneading. I always like to finish the kneading by hand. You can also make these into normal size bagels. I have used this recipe for over 20 years. I have tried other recipes but this is my favourite one.

2 cups warm water
2 packages active dry yeast
3 tablespoons sugar
1 tablespoon salt
about 5 3/4 cups all-purpose flour, unsifted
3 quarts water with 1 tablespoon of sugar
cornmeal
1 egg yolk beaten with 1 tablespoon water
about 2 tablespoons poppy or sesame seeds.

Stir together water and yeast in large bowl of electric mixer; let stand 5 minutes to soften yeast. Stir in the sugar and salt. Gradually mix in 4 cups of the flour and beat at medium speed for 5 minutes. With a spoon, stir in about 1 1/4 cups more flour to make a stiff dough. Turn out on a floured board and knead until smooth, elastic, and no longer sticky, (about 15 minutes); add more flour as needed to prevent sticking - dough should be firmer than for most other yeast breads. Place in a greased bowl, cover, and let rise in a warm place until almost doubled ( about 40 minutes to 1 hour).

Punch dough down and divide into thirds.

Set 2/3 of dough aside on a floured board; cover with clear plastic. Form remaining 1/3 dough in a log and cut into 16 equal pieces. To shape, knead each piece into small ball and poke thumbs through centre. With one thumb in hole (hole should be at least 1/2 inch) work fingers around perimeter, shaping ball into a small donut- like shape about 1 1/2 inches in diameter. Place bagels on a floured board or tray and let stand 20 minutes.

Bring water-sugar mixture to a boil in a 4 to 5 quart pan; adjust heat to keep it boiling gently. Lightly grease a baking sheet and sprinkle with cornmeal. Lift bagels carefully and drop into water (about 6 at a time) boil gently for 1 minute turning only once (30 seconds each side). Lift out with slotted spoon and drain very briefly on paper towels, and place on baking sheet. Brush with 1/3 of the egg yolk glaze, sprinkle with seeds and bake in a 400° oven for 20 minutes oruntil richly browned. cool on racks. Repeat with remaining 2/3 dough (you may need to punch it down before shaping,) working with 1/3 at a time. Makes 48 cocktail size bagels, or 12 to 18 larger bagels.

Tami

The Homemade Challenge - Butter and Cornbread

This week I've challenged myself to make some of the things at home that we generally buy at the store. It has been an interesting week so far. Being a stay-at-home-mom, I have the time to do these things, but other people may believe they don't because they work. You might be surprised! I couldn't believe how quickly these things whipped up and how quickly they disappeared from the dishes!

In order to find recipes that I wanted to make, I pulled out my old Cook's Illustrated Magazines. I just love them and reference them all the time. You really should pick one up if you haven't. They have them at WalMart now and although they seem thin and they don't have a lot of color photos, you will find them invaluable as a reference...even for a more experienced cook.... but especially for those just beginning. The best part is that they do experiments and try to figure out the best way to make the recipe turn out so that you don't have to! And there are tons of great tips.

Monday the kids and I sat down with the Cook's Mags and started looking through them. I let the kids pick something they would like to make (not necessarily something you would buy at the store). Surprisingly, V. chose frozen yogurt. I thought that was a great "something you would buy", so we chose to make that on Tuesday. We actually had all of the ingredients for chocolate and we decided that on Wednesday we'd make strawberry frozen yogurt since we could pick up the strawberries on Tuesday. Graham picked Gnocchi. I made that Monday night with some Tuscan Bean Soup and baked whole wheat bread. {Lots of stuff to blog about!}

Today (Wednesday) we chose to make homemade butter and buttermilk. I looked up a recipe to try on Epicurious.com. Since I would have buttermilk, I decided to get the other stuff to make cornbread and found that I actually had everything on-hand.

I'm going to post the recipes for the frozen yogurt later. I just made the butter, buttermilk and cornbread and while it is still in our tummies and on our tongues, I thought I'd post about that right now. Besides, it seems more interesting.

This is the recipe I used for the butter (Epicurious, April 2008)

Butter and Buttermilk

6 cups heavy cream, preferably organic (I used regular)
1/4 teaspoon fine sea salt (I didn't have fine sea salt, so I used regular tablesalt)

Special equipment: Special equipment: 5-quart stand mixer (or larger)

Transfer cream to bowl of 5-quart electric stand mixer fitted with whisk attachment. Tightly cover top of bowl and mixer with plastic wrap. Beat cream at moderately high speed until it holds soft peaks, 10 to 12 minutes. Increase speed to high and beat until mixture separates into thick, pale-yellow butter and thin, liquid buttermilk, about 5 minutes more.

Strain mixture through colander into large bowl. Using hands, vigorously knead butter in colander, squeezing out remaining buttermilk, until dense and creamy, about 5 minutes. Transfer butter to large bowl, reserving buttermilk. Using hands, knead salt into butter. Roll into logs and wrap in plastic wrap or transfer to airtight container and refrigerate. (Butter will keep up to 1 week refrigerated or 1 month frozen.) Strain buttermilk through fine-mesh sieve, then cover and refrigerate up to 1 week.

It was SOOO easy. I have never made it before and it was not a problem at all. Once the buttermilk and the butter separated, it did start splashing, but the splash guard you make out of plastic wrap, helps with this. So, make sure you do that step or you may have a mess on your hands. I took two pieces of plastic wrap and put one on each side of the whisk. Like this.

This is how it looked after about 10 minutes. You can tell the whipping cream is starting to clump and it doesn't look like whipped cream anymore.

After about 15 minutes (5 minutes at level 1o on the mixer)

It looks a little like scrambled eggs.

After 20 minutes of mixing the butter separated and stuck in the whisk (below) and the buttermilk started splashing. This is when you stop it.

Look how pretty that yellow butter is! And this is the buttermilk in my Grandmother's Tang pitcher. Plenty for several batches of pancakes or cornbread.

This is what it looked like before I squeezed the buttermilk out of it.

And here it is in a crock that I had on-hand, beside some maple syrup we used for the cornbread. YUM!

Now that I had fresh buttermilk, I wanted to make some cornbread. I pulled the recipe from Cook's and we made it up. The boys both ate seconds (which is rare for them. They are only- eat-when-you-are-hungry kids).

Click on the picture for a close-up of the recipe.

I used a 8-in round springform pan to make this and it worked out just fine. I also cooked it on convect at 400 degrees for about 20 minutes. It was done already, so be sure to check it after 18 minutes or so.

Very tasty with the fresh butter and real maple syrup!

Thursday we're going to make homemade pretzels. We buy those frozen ones for convenience, but how hard can it be? We'll see and I'm sure I'll blog about it. I'm not sure what Friday will bring, but I will be sure to give the details of the frozen yogurt tomorrow.

Tami

Look Who's Coming to the Spring Frolic!

Tomorrow is the cake walk at my son's school Spring Frolic. I made the cupcakes below for it. Didn't they turn out cute? There are also flower ones below. I've included the homemade fondant recipe below if you'd like to try them yourself.

The cast of characters:

Catty Caterpillar.... he's got large Wilton Confetti dots with smaller confetti on his back.

His antennae are made from pearlized jimmies and his eyes are tiny little non-parielles.

In order to get the decorations to stick to the fondant, I glued them on with corn syrup applied with a toothpick.

Sammy the Snake....

Sonny Snake

Teensy-Weensy Spider

Teensy-Weensy Spider Jr.

Ladabug

Auntie Ant

Draggie Dragonfly

A whole field of flowers to pollenate....

The Recipe

This recipe comes together really quickly! I really love it. It tastes a lot like candy corn if you can imagine that.

Marshmallow Rolled Buttercream

1 - 10.5 oz bag of mini marshmallows

1 Tbl of water

1 1/2 cups of light corn syrup

1 cup of shortening

Powdered sugar 4 to 6 lbs

In a large microwave safe bowl combine the entire bag of marshmallows, water, corn syrup and shortening. Microwave until melted, mixing every 30 seconds or so. Mix in a few cups of powdered sugar at a time in your stand mixer until it becomes thicker and starts to form a ball. Then pour this onto a pile of powdered sugar and begin to knead. It absorbs a lot of the powdered sugar. Once it is the consistency of fondant store it in a ziploc bag. I take out a handful at a time and mix in any colors that I want. A little color goes a long way. Roll out your dough and cut with a cookie cutter. Attach to your cupcake with a little corn syrup. You can dust it with luster dust or mist with water for a very shiny finish. Let dry uncovered overnight to help it set up. The surface will get hard but it stays soft inside.