Silverthyme

A CookBook Recipes & Other Stuff or How to Keep the Kids from Developing Beriberi After They've Moved Away From Home

Saturday, April 08, 2006

Batter Stuff


Basic Batter


1 cup of milk

2 eggs

1 cup of flour

1 tbsp oil/butter, melted and cooled

pinch of salt


This batter is better if the eggs are at room temperature (I don't know why I said this, I never wait for the eggs to warm up).

Break the eggs into a bowl, add milk and beat - use a whisk as you want to incorporate as much air as possible.

Add the flour, salt and oild and beat some more - it should look like cream.


Popovers



These are incredibly good when eaten hot with a little butter - I've never met anyone who doesn't like popovers, but I've met lots who never heard of them.

Preheat oven to 425F - this is important!

Grease about 6 custard cups ( these are those little glass cups you used to make cinnamon and sugar in - although you can use other things, if possible something deeper than it is wide. If it turns out, which it prolly will that you really like popovers, then get a proper popover pan.)

Pour the batter into the pans, don't fill them too full, remember they are supposed to pop!

Bake for about 10 minutes, and then lower the temperature to 375F. Do Not open the oven until they have been cooking for at least 30 minutes or they might fall.

At 30 minutes they should be done - all popped and brown.

Note to self:
1 tsp melted butter in each cup - heat in oven for 4 mins before filling

I've been making these with 3 eggs recently and I like them better!!


Ok, also added 1 tsp salt and 1 tsp sugar!


Pancakes

Using the same batter as for the popovers, except add about a tsp of baking powder - make pancakes. You can figure out how to do this all by yourself ...

Things you can add to pancakes:

Blueberries

A little wheatgerm or whole wheat flour

Apples

Raisins

or whatever you like.

Waffles


Same old batter again, but add another tbsp of oil. Make sure you regrease the waffle iron after each batch - use butter it tastes better. You can add a bit of sugar to increase browning, but it isn't really needed.

I added 1 tablespoon sugar, 2 tablespoons oil, 1/4 tsp salt, 1
tablespoon baking powder

Monday, April 03, 2006

Blueberry Muffins

1/4 cup butter

1/3 cup sugar

1 egg

1/2 cup milk

1 1/2 cups flour

1 tblsp baking powder

1/2 cup blueberries (frozen are ok & are cheaper)



These are kinda pretty much stolen from Fannie Farmer's book (http://www.bartleby.com/87/) - which isn't a bad place to steal from. They are much better than those cupcakelike things you can buy. However, don't be beguiled by children who inveigle you into baking them in order to impress you with their ability to consume food with "things" in them ... and then take two bites and leave you with 5.5 muffins containing over 1k calories total.

Cream the butter ( see note below)

Add sugar; then beat in the egg

Mix flour with baking powder

Alternately add milk and flour
(this means add a little milk, then a little flour, then a bit more milk, then a bit more flour....)

Add Blueberries or not - "Things" are always optional

Do not overbeat muffins! It will make them pointy-headed. (see Note 2 below)

Grease muffin pan and put batter in pan

Bake in preheated 350F oven for about 20/25 minutes

Note 1: Apparenty, due to a sudden rise in illiteracy, cook books are dumbing down their vocabularies. See the following from a recent article in the Washington Post:

"At Kraft Foods, recipes never include words like "dredge" and "sauté." Betty Crocker recipes avoid "braise" and "truss." Land O' Lakes has all but banned "fold" and "cream" from its cooking instructions. And Pillsbury carefully sidesteps "simmer" and "sear."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/03/17/AR2006031701969.html

You won't have that problem here - if you don't know what I'm talking about - starve for all I care, I'm not catering to illiterates.

Note 2: This has to do with gluten formation - too much beating increases gluten and you get tough muffins. This is also why there is bread flour for bread and cake flour for cakes - more gluten for bread and less for cakes. Muffins are tricky because they fall some where inbetween.
If you want to be technical and know all about gluten read this:
http://www.baking911.com/howto/how_baking_works.htm Posted by Picasa

Sunday, April 02, 2006

Meatballs & Meatloaf

Someone pointed out that I didn't give any instructions for the meatballs in the Meatball Soup recipe - that was because meatballs have their own recipe and here it is:

These are placed together because they are Identical. It is merely the form that changes, not the ingredients - unless you choose to vary them and add a bit more to the meatloaf (just don’t ever do what someone I know did and throw in a can of Veg*all! It is Meatloaf, not a Casserole - not to mention that Veg*all is a despicable excuse for a vegetable.)

1 – 1.5 lbs. Ground beef (should be chuck – any meat with too little fat will be dry)

2 eggs

1 cup Progresso Italian dry breadcrumbs (Progresso is best, if you use something else, add a grated clove of garlic)

Mix all this stuff together & shape as you please for whatever you’re making.

For Meatballs: Fry in a little olive oil til brown – then cover – so they won’t get all hard. If you like you can pour off the fat and add some tomato sauce – keep the heat fairly low. By the time you finish boiling water and cooking pasta, the meatballs should be done.

For Swedish Meatballs: I don’t make these very often, but you should’ve figured out (afterall, cooking is supposed to be creative! I would have to live to be 500 if I had to spell out every possible variation of everything) that they are the same, except use plain, rather than Italian seasoned breadcrumbs.

For Meatloaf: Put in an oven preheated to 350F & bake for one hour – if you like you could put some ketchup or tomato sauce or barbecue sauce on top before baking.


Note to Self: Why do meatballs seem to prefer to assume a pyramidal shape as opposed to staying round? There must be some physics involved that I'm not aware of ... Posted by Picasa