Categories
baking cookies

Momofuku Cornflake, marshmallow, chocolate chip cookies

A while ago, I was told about this amazing place in New York City called Momofuku. They have a few locations, one of which being a Milk bar. It’s not your regular bar where you order beer or cocktails, instead, you order things like milk and cookies! This sounds very intriguing to me and the next time i go to NYC, i’ll definitely check the place out.

That being said, the one who told me about this place was Mary, who loves it. We don’t live anywhere near New York, so for her birthday, which was this week, so I decided to try and bring her the taste of Momofuku cornflake, marshmallow, and chocolate chip cookies. I found a recipe here, and followed it (almost to the letter).

delicous cookies

I’m not usually a person that follows directions to the smallest detail, I’m more of a ‘Meh, that’s close enough’ person. Not with these cookies though, I’d highly recommend following the directions explicitly! Otherwise you’ll get cookies that are runny, oozy, and totally not edible. My biggest recommendation would be, when the instructions say golf ball sized portions, they mean golf ball sized, not baseball, or tennis ball, or softball sized. I made that mistake once and the cookies came out in one big sheet that i had to cut apart with a knife! Not the end result i was expecting to say the least.

preparing the mix

Also, if you have one, use a mixer. I don’t have one so i had to beat the dough by hand with a spoon. That was not fun, especially with cold butter, which this recipe uses 2 full sticks of! But i was able to make it by putting some elbow grease into it and making sure that everything mixed well.

golf ball sized means golf ball sized

On a  personal note, I’d lay off the salt after you put the marshmallows on. The recipe says you can sprinkle salt over the cookies before you put them in the oven, but i found that there’s a fine line between just the right amount and too much. So i’d opt for the safer, no salt option 😛

The final batches came out great, and Mary loved them which is the most important part of this story 🙂

Categories
bread friendship bread

Amish Friendship Bread

A friend of mine gave me a starter batch last week. So that means my new post will be about that. This bread is quite different than what I typically make because it comes out more like a pound cake than actual bread. It also takes a lot longer to prep than to actually make; 10 days prep versus 1 hour cook time. I think the next time i make this, i’ll experiment a little bit, perhaps adding in some walnuts or chunks of banana? Here’s the basic instructions I followed, once i got my starter batch.

Amish Friendship Bread

First some quick notes. I’m not really sure why they say not to use a metal spoon or mixing bowl, but I hypothesize it has something to do with metals contaminating something. Or it might just be tradition. If you know, please let me know!

  • Do not use any type of metal spoon or bowl for mixing
  • Do not refrigerate
  • If air gets in the bad, let it out (bag will expand after about 5 or 6 days)
  • It is normal for the batter to rise, bubble and ferment

Day 1 – Do nothing (This is the day you receive the batter. Mark the date if not already on the bag)
Day 2 – Mush the bag
Day 3 – Mush the bag
Day 4 – Mush the bag
Day 5 – Mush the bag
Day 6 – The Feeding! Add to the bag: 1 cup flour, 1 cup sugar and 1 cup milk. Mush the bag
Day 7 – Mush the bag
Day 8 – Mush the bag
Day 9 – Mush the bag
Day 10 – Follow the instructions below:

  1. Preheat your oven to 325 degrees
  2. Pour entire contents of the bag ina NON-METAL bowl
  3. Give it a snack! Add 1 ½ cups flour, 1 ½ cups sugar, 1 ½ cups milk and mix well.
  4. Measure out 4 separate batters of 1 cup each into 4 1 gallon ziplock bags (these will be the new “starters”)
  5. To the remaining batter in the bowl add the following and mix well:
    1. 3 eggs
    2. 2 cups of flour
    3. 1 Large box of instant vanilla pudding
    4. 1 cup of sugar
    5. 1 cup of oil OR ½ cup oil and ½ cup of applesause
    6. ½ cup of milk
    7. 2 teaspoons cinnamon
    8. 1 ½ teaspoons baking powder
    9. ½ teaspoon vanilla
    10. ½ teaspoon baking soda
    11. ½ teaspoon salt
    12. Create an additional mixture of ½ cup sugar and 1 ½ teaspoons cinnamon
    13. Grease 2 loaf pans and dust with half of the sugar cinnamon mixture
    14. Pour the batter evenly in the 2 pans and sprinkle the rest of the sugar cinnamon mix over the top of both loaves
    15. Bake for 1 hour. Allow the bread to cool until it is loose from the pan (about 10 minutes). Turn the bread out and serve warm or cooled.

If you keep one of the starters for yourself, you will be baking every 10 days.
Pass the other 3 starters to friends along with a copy of this recipe. Be sure to tell your friend which day the bag is on when presented to them (dating the bag helps).

Categories
beer bread bread

Liquid-bread bread

Many people call beer, liquid bread. It makes sense since both bread and beer share some ingredients, namely yeast. So as my second adventure into bread making, I thought I’d follow a friend’s recommendation and make a Brown Ale Bread. The recipe itself is called Nut Brown Ale Bread, but I didn’t have any Nut Brown handy, and living in a dry county, i didn’t feel like running across the county line to get it. So instead i busted out some Turbodog — the page said this would work as well.

Learning from my past experience with making bread, I had recently gone out and gotten myself a better spatula, a bigger mixing bowl, some bread loaf pans, and a thermometer. I was ready to tackle this delicious challenge! This bread didn’t take nearly as long as the one before it. Within an hour I had made the dough, put it in the bread pans, tossed them in the oven, and had made some really good bread! The results were awesome!

Brown Ale Beer Bread
Categories
bread free form

Before you experiment; follow the tutorials

I’ve always loved bread, real bread — you know the stuff. And I’ve always wanted to be able to make my own, so from time to time my roommate and I would attempt to make our own bread, but would end up with something that resembled thick pancakes rather than bread loaves. This happened until I found a book, Beard on Bread, in a small hole-in-the-wall book store. I browsed through it and realized I’d hit the jackpot! I bought the book and took it home.

A few weeks later, during a weekend when I wasn’t too busy with other projects or video games, I decided to make my first actual real loaf of bread. I set out to get all the ingredients, but i had no idea what to get! I looked through the book trying to find something that didn’t look too hard, yet sounded enticing. I settled for a Broiled Free Form Loaf. I made my list and headed out to the store. I quickly learned that while Wal-Mart has a lot of stuff, when you’re looking for variety in choice in a specific category, there’s not much to choose from. I got the ingredients, having to find alternatives for things like unbleached flour (went with bleached instead).

I made it home and began to get out all my tools. Mixing bowl, check; cleared off workspace, check; bread knife, check; pizza/cookie sheet thing, check. I began with proofing the yeast in a measuring cup and mixing the dry ingredients together in the mixing bowl. After the yeast had proofed, i mixed the dry mix with the yeast and began mixing the dough with my hands, adding in the oil and buttermilk, soon it was very tough and barely sticking to the sides of the mixing bowl. From there i moved to the cleared (and now floured) work space and started kneading the dough. I have to say, kneading dough is a lot tougher than I originally anticipated! After kneading the dough and letting it rise, punching it down, kneading it some more and letting it rise, and then punching it down again and kneading it one last time, and finally letting it rise again, I placed the dough on the cookie sheet glazed it with some sort of egg concoction and put it in the oven.

After 20 minutes I switched the oven from broil to bake and let the bread bake for another 25 minutes. After it was golden brown it looked like this:

It was delicious 😀