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Wednesday, January 4, 2012

Chestnuts Roasting...

In my toaster oven...
It's been that time of year: the time to cook, bake, eat, sleep, stress, laugh, and generally stare out the window to watch cold air blow upon the carefully hung Christmas lights, now is terrible but beautiful disarray. I love Christmas time and the holidays and I can't say I feel any rush to go back to school.

I've been baking and cooking like mad but just too busy or conversely relaxed to bother blogging any of it. Sorry!
But here are some of my less recent creations. Yesterday I did whip up a cornmeal brioche from The Bread Bible - slightly too dense but wonderful toasting bread, as I had intended it to be - and perhaps the best whole wheat sandwich loaf I've ever made. Not to pat my own back - I'm much too busy holding that two-fisted sammy.
I also experimented with making Seitan and a good stand in for mac and cheese from Healthy Happy Vegan Life that actually really hit the spot, tossed with some Green Beans, Chard, and Zucchini.
Cookies and Sourdough galore, below are the few actual pictures I did take - sorry! I'll pick up better blogging later into the new year. Only so much time for so many resolutions at once.

Apple-Pear Gingerbread Upside-down Cake
A great end to a wonderful Hanukkah dinner with friends
I even made un petit gâteau for home use...Pumpkin Sherry Quick Bread
Great for, well any time... The Brandy I subbed does bake off but really brings out the spices. Thank you again Bread Bible!
Batch two and just as good as the original!

There was, by the way, Chestnut stuffing on the Christmas table, but here's my contribution to that meal. I did bake up some Challah from a wonderful recipe I'll have to share once I get it down. Here, however was my personal pride and joy:
Pumpkin-Chocolate Yule
The Snowflakes and green sugar were just right considering I forgot the marzipan Fungi...
The Recipe came from inspiration off of Joy the Baker. The sponge cake itself was a rich pumpkin, the filling a Neufchatel-unsweetened chocolate mixture, sweetened with a bit of Agave Nectar. The frosting is a rich Chocolate-Pumpkin butter-cream of simple softened butter, heaping tablespoons (2) of cocoa powder, a splash of soy milk, powdered sugar, and a few tablespoons of pumpkin butter.
Never has a dessert been so rich. It was enjoyed if not to blame for a worse case of Tryptophan-Coma than is commonly witnessed.

Enjoi! I promise I'll bring some more soon!

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