Tartlets? Tartlets.

My apologies for the belated post, folks. Thanksgiving and my work schedule has kept me a little busier than intended. But the good news is that Thanksgiving happened. And that means all the essential Thanksgiving staples happened too. Speaking of tradition..

A couple of years ago, around the holidays I was thumbing through my mother's recipe catalog and found this awesome recipe for pecan tartlets. Since then, I've made them every year for any special occasion (I absolutely love pecan pie). What's great about these is that they're small so you don't have to feel bad about committing to an entire slice of pie if you've overeaten but still want something sweet, or if you tend to do what my family does and eat one of every kind of dessert available (we like our sweets).

the crust:

you will need..

1 stick of butter
1 brick of cream cheese
1 cup of flour

what to do: cream together your three ingredients and then portion them into a nonstick mini muffin pan. Whenever I make them, I always have a little bit of dough left over, so if you do too then no big deal, and if you don't then that's fantastic too (just keep it in mind when forming the crusts). gently press the dough into the muffin form as evenly as possible creating a little basket for the filling. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat.

The filling:

you will need..

1 egg (beaten)
1/2 teaspoon of vanilla
3/4 cup brown sugar
a dash of salt
1/4 cup melted butter
1/2 a cup of chopped pecans (I always add a little bit more..)

mix together all of your ingredients and spoon into the dough cups you made. Bake at 350 degrees for about 30 minutes until the crust browns and turn them out of the pan while they're still warm.

Everything is better with gruyere.

Ok, maybe not everything, but most things bread related are better with gruyere. Honestly, I don't know why so many people bother with cheddar. Not to dis cheddar or anything... The point is cheese. Cheese is just good. And when you add it to things that are already good, they just get better. Pancakes for instance. Pancakes are good. Add some ricotta: your pancakes are now awesome. The same basic principle applies to waffles. Waffles are good. Gruyere waffles are even better.

So for this, I took a recipe titled "everyday waffles" from an ordinary cookbook (Better Homes and Gardens...) and then added a cup or so of shredded gruyere (so simple, right?).

ingredients:
1 3/4 cups flour
3 teaspoons baking powder
2 eggs
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 1/4 cups milk
1/2 cup oil or shortening (be real. use butter.)
1- 1 1/2 cups shredded gruyere

You can really put as much cheese in these as you want to. As long as you have a non-stick waffle maker, I am confident that you will have absolutely no problem. Anyway, for these you'll want to sift together the dry ingredients (flour, baking powder, salt) and in a separate bowl beat the eggs well, add the milk, melted butter or oil and then slowly add the dry ingredients to the wet ingredients. I always add the cheese after everything else is well mixed together. Then bake in a hot waffle iron. This recipe makes around 8 waffles.

Beer Bread

I'm not really sure whats gotten into me this week. It must be the change in the weather: it's getting colder, the rainy season has obviously started...it must be November. And with November comes Thanksgiving. The one (or two) days out of the year where it's totally okay to overeat a bunch of heavy, starchy foods. Awesome. So I had this intense need to make some sort of rye bread. I looked up a few different recipes which either didn't suit my time limitations(admittedly, I did procrastinate this week..) or didn't posses all of the qualities I was interested in for this week's project. So I sort of made the Frankenstein of Rye bread... but that's okay because it has beer in it.


ingredients:

1 teaspoon molasses
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon caraway seeds
1 teaspoon fennel seeds
1 tablespoon cocoa powder
2 tablespoons oil
4 tablespoons milk
1 cup of stout or porter(I used chocolate stout. I mean, hey, why not)
1 3/4 teaspoon dry active yeast

about 1 1/2 cups rye flour
about 1/2 cup barley flour
the rest should be white flour (up to 3 cups but probably more like 2)

Start by activating your yeast with 2/3 cup of warm water. Let it sit for 10-15 minutes until frothy. In the mean time, measure out your dry ingredients (flours, caraway, fennel, cocoa powder, and salt).

Heat 1 cup of stout (or porter) in a saucepan with the heat on medium to low. Once warm, add the stout to the yeast and then add the molasses, oil, and milk. Add the dry ingredients gradually, mixing well (add as much white flour as needed to get to a good consistency. The dough I made was slightly sticky, but not runny at all).

Knead the dough for about 10 minutes until smooth and elastic. Return to bowl, cover and set in a warm place to rise for about an hour and a half or until doubled in size.

Punch down your dough and knead it again. Form it into a loaf (or blob, totally up to you), cover and let it rise again until doubled.

Bake in a preheated oven at about 400 degrees. My oven runs warm, so I had it set to 350, but it was probably near 375... Let it bake until the crust is dark brown, should sound hollow when tapped. Mine took about 25 minutes to bake (but your bake time may vary..)

enjoy your Frankenstein Beer Bread!

the bread I made was loosely based on a recipe for Black Bread found in The Bread Book by Sara Lewis