Easter Rolls

I haven't posted in so long, I don't know if it is even worth it. But for Easter I volunteered to take rolls for our family gathering and dinner. After searching the internet, I found a recipe that looked to be what I wanted. They looked good and easy. I love that combination!

I found the recipe on CookingClassy.com. They were very easy, although I made them a little smaller and did 20 per pan rather than 15.

I didn't get a photo, so you will have to go to Cookingclassy.com and see hers.

If you need a good and easy roll recipe, I highly recommend these.

One-Hour Dinner Rolls

Prep Time: 20 minutes

Cook Time: 15 minutes

Total Time: 1 hour

Yield: 15 rolls

Ingredients

• 3 3/4 - 4 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
• 1/4 cup granulated sugar
• 1 Tbsp rapid rise yeast
• 1 1/2 tsp salt
• 3/4 cup cool water
• 2/3 cup milk
• 4 Tbsp unsalted butter, diced into 1 Tbsp pieces, plus more for tops
• 1 1/2 tsp lemon juice

Directions

• Preheat oven to 180 degrees. In the bowl of an electric stand mixer whisk together 4 cups flour, sugar, yeast and salt.
• To a medium bowl add water, milk and butter and heat in microwave on HIGH power until it reaches 115 degrees on a thermometer, about 1 minute 15 seconds. Stir to partially melt butter (you just want to make sure it's softened through).
• Pour milk mixture into dry mixture in bowl of electric stand mixer along with lemon juice. Set mixer with a hook attachment then set mixer on low speed and gradually increase to medium-low, knead about 3 - 4 minutes until smooth and elastic while adding additional flour as necessary (dough should be lightly sticky but manageable).
• Cover bowl tightly with plastic wrap and rest 5 minutes. Meanwhile butter a 13 by 9-inch baking dish.
• Drop dough onto a lightly floured surface. Shape into an evenly level square, about 9 by 9-inches. Cut into 16 equal portions (don't have to be exact). Shape dough into 15 balls, while using excess dough from the 16th portion to add to smaller rounds as needed, and place shaped dough portions into prepared baking dish.
• Dampen hands with water and brush tops of dough with the water (just so they don't dry while rising in oven). Transfer to oven, close oven and turn oven off, allow rolls to rise 20 minutes (don't open oven door). Remove from oven and preheat oven to 375 degrees (this should take about 5 minutes, so just allow rolls to rest on counter while oven preheats).
• Bake in preheated oven 14 - 16 minutes until tops are golden brown. Remove from oven and run the top of a stick of butter along tops of rolls just to coat. Serve warm. Store in an airtight container (I recommend rewarming cool rolls in microwave for best results.
• Recipe source: Cooking Classy 

Yummy Breadsticks (Revisited)

This was originally posted in August of 2009 when I started making bread sticks for my kid's swim team dinners. For the last 5 years they have become a staple at these team dinners during swim season and any other school pot luck function. They get eaten so fast that if you are late to the dinner, you don't get any. It took the coach 4 years before he ever had the opportunity to taste them, and that is because I sent a small container specifically for him.


These bread sticks are a favorite at my house, (at at Swim Team dinners, and band potlucks) and they are fairly simple. I have to do a double (or quadruple) batch every time just so no one feels like they didn't get enough. I guess the best thing is when I make these, I have to make less of everything else :-).

The recipe was given to me by a friend, and they are a welcome addition to any Italian meal.

2 Tbsp sugar

1 1/2 cups warm water

1 Tbsp yeast

3 1/2 cups flour

1 tsp. salt

6 Tbsp butter or margarine

garlic powder, dried parsley, Parmesan cheese

Preheat oven to 400 degrees F.

Mix warm water, sugar and yeast in  mixing bowl (I use my Bosch mixer but can be done by hand or in a Kitchen Aid).  Add the flour, and knead for 5-8 minutes or so with the dough hook. The dough is soft, but it shouldn't be sticky, add more flour in small amounts if needed. Knead well between additions. Let rise until double (when I am in a hurry I also just let it rise for 5 to 10 minutes).  

Place butter in 9x13 baking dish and melt in preheated oven, watch carefully so it doesn't burn. Roll into a rectangle on to lightly floured surface. Cut into strips ( I use my pizza cutter and I cut the strips in half to make them shorter, to have "more" bread sticks for everyone to eat.) Twist each strip of dough by folding in half and wrapping around itself. Dip in butter and arrange in the hot baking dish. After all are in the dish, sprinkle on desired toppings. I use garlic powder, and dried parsley all the time, occasionally I add Parmesan cheese, onion powder, and Italian seasoning. 

 Bake at 400 degrees for 20 minutes, or until golden brown on the bottom. 

Starting Again

Ian is now gone to school, and this year he is in an apartment and has to cook for himself. So he is asking for recipes. I had started a cookbook for him at one point, but inadvertently erased the file during some computer repairing. (Lesson learned, and hopefully not to be repeated.)

I am going to start typing up the recipes again, but figured I would begin to post some here. There won't be pictures at this point because I am just entering them and not cooking them. I may add photos later, but maybe not.

I love to make pancakes from scratch. I don't really care for biscuit mix pancakes. And it is so easy to make them from scratch.

Pancakes

2 cups flour (can use all white, or whole wheat, or combination of the two)

1/2 cup sugar (can reduce it to 1/4th cup if desired)

1 teaspoon salt

4 1/2 teaspoons baking powder ( I get aluminum free baking powder, otherwise there is a slight bitter taste in my opinion)

1 1/2 to 2 cups milk

1/4 cup canola oil (or melted butter)

2 eggs

Preheat griddle.
 In a large bowl, Mix the dry ingredients together (can add powdered milk to make 2 cups if you want).  Add milk, and oil and eggs, then stir.  Cook on warm griddle just until bubbles appearing in the center of the pancake don't close, or close slowly. Flip with spatula, and cook until steam stops coming off the pancake.

Syurp

1 cup water 

2 cups sugar 

1 teaspoon maple flavoing

1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

Bring water to boil. Add stir in sugar until dissolved. Simmer for 3 minutes. Add Maple flavoring.

Easy Tortilla Pizza

It has been so long since I have posted that I don't know that I remember how.

Last night for dinner I decided to make Pizza, but I didn't feel like making dough. So I grabbed the flour tortilllas off the counter and used them.  I really wish I had gotten a picture, but I didn't. I decided to post the "recipe" anyway.

Tortilla Pizza

1 can Tomato Paste
Spices to taste ( I used Italian seasoning, onion powder, garlic powder, salt and pepper)
1 tomato paste can of  Water
Flour Tortillas (at least one per person)
Pizza Toppings. (we used bell peppers, red onion, tomatoes, pepperoni, ham, pineapple, green chile, and cheese)

Preheat oven to 400 degrees F.  If you desire put pizza stone in as you preheat the oven.
Mix tomato paste with water. (Of course you can use your pizza sauce or spaghetti sauce of choice. This is just what I had on hand.)Add spices to taste.  Spread 1 to 2 Tablespoons of sauce on a flour tortilla, add cheese and toppings of choice.  Place pizza on the preheated pizza stone for about 3 to 5 minutes. When cheese is melted and tortilla is crisp around the edges, pull out. Cut with pizza cutter and serve.  

For a extra crispy crust, place pizza directly on oven rack. (Careful to not dump the toppings... I can warn you from experience that they burn well on the bottom of the oven) I used a wire mesh splatter screen as a paddle to slide the pizza's in and out. Also a long spatula works well.  Bake for 3 to 5 minutes.  Take out, cut and serve.

Not a fancy recipe, but quick and easy for everyone to make their own.

Enjoy!

Spice Oatmeal Cookies

I love cake mix cookies. They are fast and easy, and I can throw them together before the kids go to school to put in their lunches.  I usually make chocolate using a devil's food cake mix. That for sure is my favorite. But I have also used yellow cake mix with chocolate chips, or even strawberry cake mix for something different. 

Last Christmas I needed cookies for something, I don't remember what, so I used a spice cake mix.

Here is a picture of the ingredients (minus the chocolate chips because I forgot to put them out for the picture).

You really can't get any easier than this. You mix it all together and bake them. YUM.  I was going to post this a long time ago, but somehow it didn't happen! I guess it is better late than never.

I love easy. You can jazz up your cake mix cookies anyway you want. The possibilities are endless.

Spice Oatmeal Cookies

1 Spice Cake Mix
1/3 c. vegetable oil*
2 eggs
3/4 c. oatmeal - can add more or less depending on how moist the dough is
1 c. chocolate chips

Mix all ingredients together. Can add a little milk or water if it is too dry, but I wouldn't add too much. Bake on a greased cookie sheet for 10 minutes at 350 degrees.

*Another thing you can do is to puree some cooked white beans and replace the oil with 1/3 c white bean puree. Then you have cookies with no additional fat, and more protein. It is amazing that you don't taste the beans, but you don't. It just increases the nutritional value of the cookie, and who can't justify eating one extra cookie because there is no fat!

10 Minute Strawberry Refrigerator Jam

This is a recipe I got from my friend Margaret at a Relief Society homemaking meeting a long time ago. I hadn't ever tried it. The other day another friend asked about stawberry jam, and I remembered this recipe. I got some strawberries yesterday and decided I would try the jam before my kids inhaled all the berries.

Oh man! This is good stuff. I like being able to make a small amount.  I really don't want to do a large batch and have to find freezer space, or can them.  So this is perfect. It made just a little more than 1 pint.

Here is a picture of 2 cups of strawberries, hulled, washed and sliced.

The next step is to mash them well. I used my potato masher.  Worked well and the kids fought over who got to help.

Here is a picture of the pectin and sugar. My pectin was a little past the best use by date (only by 5 years) so I wasn't exactly sure it would gel up correctly, but is worked beautifully.

Look are Erin's beautiful hands mixing in the sugar and pectin.  Mix it well and then put in the microwave on high for 4 to 5 minutes.  Watch it!  I took it out at about 4 minutes 10 seconds because it was getting ready to boil over, and who wants to clean out the microwave?

Here is the mixture after cooking the first time. It does get foamy and that is normal. I stirred it, but don't know if that is necessary.  Cook again for 5 minutes on the 6 power setting of your microwave. It was fun watching it cook this time. My kids were all glued to the microwave. At 6 power my microwave cooks for about 10 seconds and then rests for 6 seconds or so. When it would be in the cook phase, the jam would boil and come right to the top of the bowl, and then it would drop as the cook feature turned off. The kids thought this was great to see, each cook cycle it would get closer to the top of the bowl.  I think it ended just perfectly. One more cook cycle and I think it would have overflowed.  Again you might want to watch just in case.

Here is the finished jam in the jars. As you can see it made one full pint jar with just a little more. That is probably a function of how closely you measure the berries. I measured before slicing, so maybe I had a little too many strawberries, but the taste wasn't affected if there were more than 2 cups.

It is runny when it just comes out of the microwave, but it thickened up as it cooled in the refrigerator.   It was good runny too. I had just made bread, and so we enjoyed the partially full jar right away on fresh bread. YUMMY!  I will definitely do this again.  We may even have to try peaches or plums or apricots. I think it would work. I will let you know.

YUM!

Microwave (10 minute) Strawberry Refrigerator Jam 

2 cups (1 pint) Strawberries, washed and hulled

1 1/2 cup Sugar

2 teaspoons powdered fruit pectin

Slice strawberries into a 2 quart bowl. Mash well. Stir in sugar and pectin thoroughly.  Microwave 4-5 minutes on HIGH, or until mixture comes to a full rolling boil.

Reduce setting. Microwave 5 minutes on '6' power setting.  It will thicken as it cools. Pour into glasses, or jars. Cover with plastic wrap (or lid).  Store in refrigerator. For a thicker jam add an extra teaspoon of pectin.   (from the kitchen of Margaret Aragon)

Fun Blog Find

I don't really remember what blog I followed to find this link, but I am glad I did. The authors are all mothers of large families, and this week their blogs focus on how they feed them. Their blogs are Raising Olives, Smockity Frocks, The Common Roomand Life in a Shoe.



I think I can learn a lot from their posts on menu planning, budgeting and cooking. I really liked the post on one of them, I think it was The Common Room, but I couldn't find the direct link, that talked about picky eaters. It is required that they try some of everything offered, even if it is microscopic. Then they can eat more of what they like and who knows their tastes may change. She made a comment that really made me think. She said that being picky is a form of ingratitude for the person who made the food. I never thought of it this way, but I do agree.

Now to apply the great new things I learn (well really the great old things I am being reminded of in some instances).

I hope to post a new recipe soon.

One of their recent posts was on Cooking for a Crowd.  The recipes are great. Follow the link from this blog to the other four to fully benefit form the recipes posted.