I searched around for a while, but all of the cardamom ice cream recipes I found just didn’t seem quite right, so I just modified David Lebovitz vanilla ice cream recipe to make this. I’m really happy with the result. If you aren’t a hard core cardamom fan, (ie. you think it tastes like soap) then you could reduce the ground cardamom or leave it out completely. A few recipes I saw recommended 1/8 tsp ground cardamom. I love it though so I bumped it up to 1/4 tsp.

Tip:
You can mix by hand but I have a stirring attachment for my hand mixer and it really helped to mix the custard during the cooling phase:
http://www.amazon.com/KitchenAid-Mixer-Liquid-Blender-Attachment/dp/B0000DE0M5/

Warning:
Salty ice water can get really really cold. You could probably frost bite your fingies if you aren’t careful.

Most directions I’ve seen for grilling pizza involve throughing the dough directly onto the grill grates. While grill marks look cool, I find that burnt dough doesn’t taste very good. So I just use a baking stone. I actually use two, I have one that broke and then I put another one on top of that, I find that helps to distribute the heat a little better.

I also put the dough on parchment paper. It makes sliding the pizza onto the stone a lot easier. You can also roll out all of the dough before hand and stack them on top of each other with a piece of parchment in-between.

.25 oz. pkt. active dry yeast
1/4 tsp. granulated sugar
3/4 cup 110 degree water
1 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 tsp. salt

pizza sauce
shredded cheese (part skim mozzarella)
toppings

Dissolve yeast and sugar in water; allow to rest for 8 minutes.
Add in the flour and the salt.
Mix with hands or a wooden spoon until dough comes together.
Turn dough onto a floured surface and knead for 2 minutes.
Divide the dough into two or three equal pieces (depends on how big / thick you want the dough)
Dust a surface with flour and roll the dough out, ~12-14″ diameter circle, add more flour as needed to keep from sticking.
Place the dough on parchment paper.
Spread sauce over crust and top with cheese and desired toppings.
Bake at 500 degrees for 8-12 minutes, or until edges are golden.

Recipe

My Comments

This is another one of those things I remember from my childhood that I haven’t had since then. It’s basically a snow cone with cream instead of syrup. My sister had the idea that you could probably use a real vanilla bean instead of the vanilla extract but that would require simmering the half and half with the bean to extract the flavor and I was to impatient for that. Also note that I’m doing this because we just had a blizzard and there’s about 30 inches of snow in my front yard. Normally I wouldn’t classify the snow around Baltimore as edible, but in this case I think it’s OK.

My Comments

The only difference between this recipe and the one on epicurious is that I removed the peanuts, bumped up the amount of popcorn and I pop my corn in a bag.

I was really hoping this would taste like Fisher’s popcorn. It didn’t. It’s still good but it just isn’t the same. Back to the drawing board I guess.

My Comments

I looked at a few recipes before settling on this one. This is pretty much a straight rip off of Ina Garten’s recipe. I also tried Alton Browns recipe and from the stark similarity between the two I gleaned that granola bar recipes are pretty flexible, so I experimented a bit. As long as you have the right ratio of dry to wet ingredients, you can throw in anything you like. Some ideas that I tried were, flax seed (they have omega-3, a nice smokey nuttiness, and they add a nice crunch), sunflower seeds, dried apples, dried apricots, dried cherries, dried cranberries, raisins. Some things that I still want to try, macadamia nuts, chocolate, candied orange peel. One last note on why I like this version over Alton Browns, coconut. The shredded coconut adds another level of binding and a unique chewyness that Alton’s were lacking, so unless you hate coconut I’d leave it in there at the recommended ratio.

About a year ago I went biscotti crazy. I tried tons of different recipes looking for the perfect one. Believe me, there are a lot of biscotti recipes lurking on the internet. The biggest difference I have found is how soft the end product is. I’ve made ones that are so tender that they barely make it through the cutting stage and back onto the baking sheet and I’ve made ones that were tooth breaking hard. I think the harder they are the better they are for dipping, too soft and you end up with half a biscotti at the bottom of your coffee.

I really like this recipe because it’s right in the middle, soft like a cookie, but hard enough to hold up to the rigors of dunking in my tea. You could probably make them a little harder or softer by varying the time and heat of the second baking stage.

The base for this recipe is just Giada’s recipe and instead of pistachios and cranberries I added candied orange peel and and chocolate chips, along with a few minor tweaks.

Giada seems to think that these only last for 3 to 4 days. Personally I take a bunch with me to work and they hang out in my desk drawer for over a week sometimes two. I’m still here. My logic is that these are just cookies and cookies last forever right?

I linked to a candied orange peel recipe above. Candied orange peels are dead simple and taste great. I’ll try to write another post about them in the future. I didn’t really follow that recipe exactly because I only had two oranges. But I wholeheartedly agree that multiple boil and drain sessions are key.

The down side: I have to admit that after a few days the orange peels got really hard. If your aren’t going to eat them right away it might be worth experimenting with other candied orange peel recipes that leave you with a softer peel that might be less prone to drying out.

Since I hate whiskey this drink is definitely on the top of the hot alcoholic winter drinks list. It’s really easy to make and since the batter is just mainly butter it lasts a pretty long time in the fridge and even longer in the freezer.

For those coming in directly, here is a link to the recipe for the orange and chocolate biscotti in the background.

Here is a stop motion video of me shaping the buns from the previous post.

There has been a lot written about no knead bread at this point so I’m not really going to get into the history and details. I got the basic recipe here and it’s just the base recipe from this book, Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day: The Discovery That Revolutionizes Home Baking.

I have a lot of trouble baking bread. I don’t know if it’s some kind of bread A.D.D., but going through all of the steps to create a perfect traditional loaf of bread kind of has me stumped. After trying this recipe (I only did a half for my first two attempts) I’m a firm believer in this style of baking bread.

Just a few last thoughts, For the buns I removed slightly large than golf ball sized chunks and shaped them into little boules. The steam part might seem a little weird but it’s really what is going to produce the perfect crust. And let me reiterate, the steam part is dangerous, be careful. In the bread bible aka Bread Bakers Apprentice goes into a lot more detail about the whole steam process and they suggest opening the oven and spraying the sides of the oven at 30 second intervals to really get a lot of steam going.

Now what should you do with these fine buns? I did end up smearing some honey butter on one of them but my favorite was this little bacon sandwich.

Here is a video showing how to shape the bread

I didn’t followSandra Lee’s recipe that uses “beef sandwich slices” aka steak-umms aka beef spam. I decided that this one on epicurious was a little more legit.

I loosely followed the epicurious version. I didn’t blanch the scallions. I didn’t use flank steak, I used a crappy cheap cut that was already sliced and fairly mangled. I mangled it more with a wooden hammer too try to get an even 1/16″. I didn’t tie it up with a string, I just hoped that the searing would hold it in place and it did.

Overall the feeling that I get from this recipe is that it’s pretty open to interpretation. It’s really just marinaded meat wrapped around a vegetable. I saw a lot of recipes for where the meat is wrapped around asparagus and a few where mini-negimaki were made appetizer style. So I think this is a good basic recipe that will hopefully inspire some more clever uses of meat wrapped around vegetables, but please refrain from using steak-umms, it’s just wrong.