Random Update... Sorry No Baking Involved

I just had to share this with the world. I have some of the best people in my life and this week my favorite is my Miss Jackieleene!

My birthday is coming up in a little over two weeks and I have already received the bestest surprise B-day gift! I came home today after work to this waiting for me:

Not already open, I did that. I was too excited to think of taking a picture before I tore into it! 

Now I love any kind of real mail. One of the reasons that Christmas time is my favorite is because you get more real mail from all your friends and family than any other time of year. My momma knows this and still sends me fun random stuff in the mail from time to time. But packages! That's true excitement. Just ask Justin I had to clear the floor and put it right in the middle of the living room to open it. Eeeeeeeee!

It was from my lovely Jackie. My cousin, best friend, old roommate, maid of honor, soul sister... we have literally known each other since birth so the list could go on and on! She is back in Ohio and it has been since last October since I have seen her. (Mind you at the time she was a wee bit over 5 months preggers and has obviously since brought one of the tiniest lovelies into the world, whom I have yet to be able to meet... sooo yeah, I miss her.) 

And she is awesome. 

This is what was inside:

Have you been reading my blog? Cause she obviously has. A brand spanking new pizza stone! I love it, thank you Jackie oh so much! But it's so clean and pretty and new... I'm going to make it messy I just know it... but what to break it in with???  Hmmmmm... I will keep you posted! In the mean time I love it! 

                                  

yay! 

Oh and kinda big PS to all of you. Thank you so much for actually reading and commenting! Kinda crazy how people know people and all kinda stay in a loop. It's awesome to read about everyone else's adventures in creating and finding out that so many people I know are out there doing so much! I have added a few links on the side of friends family and others who are doing some pretty cool stuff. Some of whom you can buy from too! Check em out! 

And while I'm at it, in response, the savory muffins are on my mind... its brewing don't worry. 

I did look in to etsy at the time, and it would have been a good route to go, but I just decided once and for all the cookie company thing is not for me. If anything, one day I will start painting again, or throwing, or screen printing or just creating in general (anything non-perishable), and then I will for sure talk to you some more about that one! 

But don't let my apparently negative and scary take on the cookie business turn you off of it!! I think I did that to someone here in Portland already... and thats not what I mean. It wasn't for me. But obviously everyone is different, and the art via cookie sounds like a really cool and fun idea. If you want more specifics let me know, and I will try to not get too scary. 

And lastly I think the older I get the more I learn that my (our, to some of you out there) family is kinda screwed up in a lot of different ways and while we are huge and all over the place, we really should know each other better. Lets get on that! (by the way I can't stand Kristen Stewart as Bella and therefore am in complete denial that I look anything like her, though yes I have been told that before)

Pumpkin Birthday Cake WITH Cream Cheese Icing

I love cookies, pies, oooey gooey brownies, but I gotta say I have never been a real big fan of cake. I don't know why. I think it's my extreme love of chocolate, nothing competes. But this cake is AWESOME! It's really really good AND super easy to make!

A coworker gave me this recipe and I had to give it a shot, becasue it was so easy and because you don't really get that many opportunities to use pumpkin on any given day. A friend of mine happens to really like pumpkin things, and was also having a Birthday (he's old!), so it was a perfect opportunity to give this one a shot.

2 cups Flour

2 tsp Cinnamon

1 tsp Baking Powder

2 tsp baking soda

1/2 tsp salt

2 cups oil (mmhmmm thats why its so moist and yummy!)

4 eggs

2 cups canned pumpkin

1/2 tsp pumpkin pie spice

Side note: I hate nutmeg, so I leave out the pumpkin pie spice and bump up the cinnamon to 3 tsp.

Mix all ingredients, pour into two greased and floured cake pans, and bake at 350 for 35-40 mins.

See?! I told you it was easy!

But the frosting is what makes it!

8 oz (room temp really really helps) cream cheese

1/4 lb butter (again rm. temp is much easier)

1 tsp vanilla

1/2 box of powerdered sugar (I have never in my whole life bought or even seen powdered sugar in a box, so I had no idea what that meant... I just added by the 1/2 cup until it tasted good, just go for it!)

Mix all ingredients and beat the crapola out of it with a hand mixer. It will get really nice and fluffy, and ohhhhhh sooooooo gooooood!

It was pretty darn awesome. 

Gooey Sticky Buns / Cinnamon Rolls / Pecan Rolls... you get the picture

On a weekly basis I get together with a group of friends who kindly welcome the chance to be my ginueapigs for new recipes. This weeks food theme was brefass.... (for those of you that don’t know, that’s breakfast in Jacxie speak).  So the natural baked good to go with that was Cinnamon Rolls/Sticky Buns/ Pecan Rolls... or whatever you wanna call them. I prefer Gooey Sticky Goodness!

So, I found three different recipes that I combined into one, to cut down on confusion, and having three different recipes flying around on your counter as you are baking like I did I will just combine them on here for you!

Dough:
2 Packages Active Dry Yeast
½ cup warm water (roughly 110 ˚ see note on pizza dough entry)
½ cup milk
½ cup sugar
1 tsp salt
½ cup crisco
2 large eggs beaten
4 ½ cups flour

Gooey-ness:
1 cup better
1 cup firmly packed brown sugar
1 cup chopped pecans

Insides:
4 tbs butter
1 cup sugar
4 tsps cinnamon

Dissolve yeast in warm water in a large bowl and set aside. Heat milk, sugar, salt and crisco in a small saucepan to 115 ̊ Do not boil, boiling would kill the yeast and or scramble the eggs... eeew. Slowly stir milk mixture and beaten eggs into yeast mixture. Beat in 2 cups of flour to begin, then stir in as much of the remaining flour to make a soft dough. Turn onto a floured surface, KNEAD for 5 minutes slowly adding more flour to prevent sticking. (Knead being in all caps because if you mistakenly wedge your dough... it won’t raise like it is supposed to and while the end product will be good, they won’t be nearly as big and fluffy and soft as they are meant to be). Form dough into a ball and place into a large greased bowl, turn the dough to coat, cover with a damp cloth, and put in a warm place to raise for an hour and a half (SHOULD double in size if knead your dough in the proper way... sorry I can’t give tips on this as I am still trying to learn it myself.)

Melt ½ cup of butter in each of two 13x9x2 inch pans. Stir in half of brown sugar and pecans into each or add pecans to just one so your super picky husband will eat at least half of them. My husband has something against nuts... so one batch was with pecans and the other without. Obviously, the one with was better, he may never know what he is missing out on.

In separate bowl mix 1 cup sugar and cinnamon. After dough has risen, punch down and divide in half. Roll half of dough out to 15x13in rectangle, spread with 2 tbsp butter, and sprinkle liberally with half of cinnamon sugar. (For the pecan pan, I also chopped some extra pecans and sprinkled them inside, this made the next step of slicing a little more challenging, but the end product was that much more nutty!) Roll dough from long side, seal seam and slice into roughly 15 – 1in rolls. Place slices on top of brown sugar mixture in pans. Repeat with second half of dough. Cover again with damp cloth and put in a warm place to rise for 30 minutes... (again they are supposed to double in size making for super fluffy rolls) Mine did not rise AT ALL at this point...)

Heat oven to 375˚ Bake 25-30 minutes. Be careful and keep an eye on them when you are nearing the end of that time allotment. As I am sure you can see in my picture the bottom left corner of the pan on the right was left a little too long and all that gooey brown sugar burns pretty easily! (Again I hate my electric oven and its hot spots). Invert pans into wax paper lined trays (or pretty serving platters) leave pans in place for 5 minutes before serving. Remove pans and serve warm.

As these were traveling to a friend house I did not follow that last step. I think it would be awesome for presentations sake, but instead once I got to her house I just threw them back in the oven for 10 minutes to make them all gooey again. They weren’t as pretty, and we had to kinda swirl them around in the gooeyness in the pan to get a good amount on em, but they were mmm mmmm good!

See all the space in between the rolls? Yeah, if I knew how to properly knead dough, the rolls would have risen enough to touch and fill up the pans... One day I will try them again.

After I have perfected my kneading skills, to see if I can make fluffy rolls, instead of little hard rolls.

Home Made Pizza Goodness

We will just start right off with the recipe for this one! 

Thin Pizza Crust

Preheat Oven (and pizza stone if you have one) to 475˚

¼ Dry Yeast Packet
¾ c. Warm water (110˚ warm enough to bring the yeast to life, but not so hot that it kills it)
¼ tsp sugar
1 ¾ cup flour
½ tsp salt

Dissolve yeast and sugar in warm water and allow to rest for eight minutes (or while you do the next step). In a separate bowl combine flour and salt. Pour yeast mixture over flour and mix well with a wooden spoon. Turn onto a heavily floured surface and knead for two minutes.

Side note here: Having an art/ceramics background I have found it really hard to teach myself the difference between kneading; as in bread, where you are trying to work air INTO the dough and wedging: as in clay, where you are trying to get all possible air OUT of the clay. Luckily for me this recipe is for thin and crispy crust and it’s not really meant to rise that much, so not really an issue here... the real problem came when I was making the cinnamon rolls... but that’s a later post.

Using a floured rolling pin roll out dough, if you are really good, you can stretch one batch out enough to make two really thin pizzas.

Sadly this was my last time getting to use my wonderful and very well loved pizza stone. It was awesome; however, I am accident prone and managed to shatter it with this very pizza. If you are luckier than me and still have one, use it! Put it in the oven and allow it to preheat with your oven, it helps bake the dough on both sides and make it that much more crispy. If you don’t have a stone any pizza pan and or cookie sheet works too. I like to sprinkle coarse salt and corn meal on the pizza stone before putting the dough down, it gives it a little more flavor. Plus, for those of us beyond the delivery area of any Cassano’s Pizza Places, it’s a nice substitute for their salty salty crusts.

For this particular pizza I knew we were going with feta and chicken so I came up with a white sauce out of what we had in the kitchen at the time. Sauté a few cloves of minced garlic in some butter (which at the end of Kurio Cookies I had roughly 9 lbs of real sweet cream butter, so from here on out, I say butter you assume I mean REAL butter). Add about a half cup of milk and melt about a half block of cream cheese into it. Salt and pepper to taste. It will thicken up, if you want it thinner add more milk.

Oh and before topping I usually bake the crust for about 5 minutes or until it just starts to get a little color on it.

For toppings this time I grilled two chicken breasts and cubed em. Spread the sauce, add the chicken, sliced mushrooms, crumbled feta, diced green peppers and red onions... on half if you are sharing it with a picky eater like I do, or whatever else you want (obviously).

Before Baking

I rarely time things like this... so bake until the cheese starts to get nice and golden brown on the top.

Most important lesson from this baking experience: turn off your burners when you are done using them. Yet another reason why I hate having an electric stove, if you leave the burner on there is no visible flame to remind you. And then when you have forgotten to turn your burner off and you pull your beautiful yummy looking pizza out of the oven on your awesomely loved pizza stone and sit it on the still ON burner... your awesomely loved pizza stone (with a very loud and scary POP) breaks into three shards. It was a sad day. And I am getting a little better at remembering to turn the burners off. But the pizza did make it a little better.

yummmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm