btw, a little something

I'm sure if anyone's read this blog yet they've noticed that little swag bucks widget thing. Swag bucks is a on-line prize thingey that from what I get, gives you a tool bar to work with, use as your main search engine (even if you just search for google) and gives you swag bucks as a reward. Sounds sorta stupid so far, eh? Well, fear not. These swag bucks you get can be put towards decent stuff, the best that i've found so far being a 5 dollar amazon (.com or .ca) gift card for 450. Which if you play it right, you can earn in a week or two. I've already got 2 of these gift cards, and I couldn't even do the big one which was signing up for netflix (i already have it) which nets you 1000 sbs, which is two 5$ cards. So, if you can handle adding one more step towards your search results, occasionally doing a survey, or signing up for something decent (i can't recommend netflix enough, it's awesome and I've been a paying customer for half a year now) sign up for swag bucks. Here, if you wanna be super nice you can use this link.

Delicious double whammy

So, I've been bad. Well, lazy really. I haven't written anything for the blog in a long while and I felt bad..bad enough to give not one but TWO awesome recipes. So without further adieu, I give you Rolo Brownies and Reese Peanut Butter mini cheesecakes.

Now, these brownies we're making, they're exceptional. They're the talk of bake sales, I've sold them in restaurants. They're ridiculously fudgy and the rolo's inside take on this brittle caramel chewyness the likes of which I had never seen before. The outer crust of these brownies are always a little overdone, but those are the pieces you save for ice cream sundaes.

                                                                                

2 cups white sugar

1 1/2 cups brown sugar

2 cups melted and cooled butter

1 1/2 tsp. vanilla

6 eggs, lightly beaten

2 cups all purpose flour

1 1/3 cup cocoa (sifted)

3/8 tsp. baking soda

1/2 tsp. salt
2 packs Rolos (or mini rolos would be best)

Now home made brownies are so simple, other than the measuring this recipe doesn't take anytime (especially if you have a hand blender) Set your oven to 350, and either line your pan with parchment paper or rub it down with butter and shake some flour on it.

Mix your butter and sugars together, it'll look sorta sandy but that's all part of it. Now, make sure your butter is cooled, you're adding the eggs and vanilla in next and you don't want any scrambled eggs floating around in this. Work your eggs in slowly, you don't want to mix in too much air. This'll cause your brownies to rise and they won't be those dense chewy ones that you want. Blend in your dry ingredients a little at a time, i tend to fold because it's a little less messy. Fold in rolos and then pour that batter. If you like to lick the bowl, go for it, I almost prefer the batter to the brownie.

These suckers bake for around 40 minutes. I check with the tip of a knife in the middle. If it comes away clean, I'm good. Also, remember it'll keep cooking for awhile once you take it out of the oven.

Next up, Reeses Peanut Butter mini cheese cakes.

I've had a lot of people be wowed by these, and to be fair they look like a lot of work. Key word, look like. I can turn out a batch of these in about an hour, give or take. You gotta wait for some things to freeze, or to cool, or to heat, but you don't have to actively be there.

I'm gonna list the ingredients in order of preparation.

1 cup peanut butter

2 cups powdered sugar

6pc. semisweet  baker's chocolate, melted

2 pks. cream cheese

1 tsp. vanilla

1/3 cup and 1tbsp sugar

2 eggs

3 tbsps flour

2 cups graham cracker crust

4 tbsps butter

1/3 crushed peanuts ( I forgot to add these, but it's soo good. it makes the crust taste like a peanut butter cookie.)

1 bag dark chocolate chips

1/3 cup cream ( scalded)

Start off by mixing the peanut butter and sugar together. You'll need to get a flat tray, cutting board, whatever, and layer some plastic wrap over it. Roughly spread out your peanut butter mix and cover with more saran wrap. Use a rolling pin to flatten it out, you want it about 1 cm. thick. Throw it in the freezer.

Whenever I make cheese cake I try to remember to take out my cream cheese as early as possible. The worst is waiting for your mixer to work through rock hard cream cheese because you forgot. Even just 20 minutes on top of a warm oven can help. Speaking of ovens, preset yours to 375.

I melted my chocolate in a double boiler (a heat safe bowl sitting over a pot with boiling water, no touching!) and threw in about half a pack of philly into the mix.  This helps when it comes time to mix all that chocolate into the cream cheese, which you are now about to do. I tend to do this by hand because I soften my cream cheese first. Once all the chocolate is incorporated, add in the sugar. I personally don't put a ton of sugar in my cheese cake, and this one has so much going on.  After that add in your eggs and flour. Now you're good! The crust should be pretty self explanatory, I don't use melted butter I use soft butter and just knead it into the crumb.

Set up your trays with the cute little muffin cups, and add about a tbsp of crust to each. I used my

 pestle with a little saran wrap over it to press the crust down, but you could also use a small ladle or a shot glass. Hopefully you have a piping bag, coz this is gonna make it super easy. Fill that sucker and just carefully pipe cheese cake batter in up to half of the cup. Otherwise, use a spoon and be careful coz it's gonna get messy. These guys go in the oven for 15 minutes, but you'll know for certain. They'll be firm (not hard and not sticky) to the touch. Put 'em in the fridge to cool.

Now, take out your frozen peanut butter. You could be doing this days before you actually make these. The peanut butter lasts indefinitely in the freezer. Now comes the hardest part..cutting out the little circles. I don't have any cookie cutters. I know, I know, I'm a terrible baker.  If I'm ever a grandma the granchillins will have to deal with hand shaped cookies only. But you need to be fast with the peanut butter so I got inventive. I had to use a little shot measurer from a bartending kit the boyfriend got for christmas last year. Ahwell, any port in a storm. Make sure you dip this in powdered sugar, it'll help out in the long run. I found it easiest to press the shape in, but not all the way. After I reached under the plastic wrap and just popped out the circles. After that it's just a matter of putting 'em on top of your little cheese cakes.

I forgot to mention, while all this is going on you could have your cream heating for your ganache to go on top. I did it the other way first, with the chocolate in the bowl over the simmering water but murphy dictated that some of that water should get into my fancy dark chocolate and cause the entire thing to seize up. JOY! So instead, got some no name dark chocolate, and poured hot cream on it. Let this sit for a minute, then mix it up! From there carefully pour it over top, or drizzle, or whatever you wanna do! I like to give 'em a solid top, it helps with the layered appearance at the end.

Here's that tasty pic again, for posterity. And for giggles, here's the cute baby dove that was chilling on my balcony through all this.

Millionaire Shortbread and Fireworks.

This week I wanted to do something simple but awesome, something from when I was a kid. I remember taking a bunch of trips to England when I was a little, and one of the things that sticks out in my mind is my Grandma showing me how to make this dessert bar. It's shortbread, rich caramel and chocolate. Ridiculously good.  I'll start with the three different groups of ingredients.
Shortbread Layer

2 sticks of butter, I froze these and then grated it with a cheese grater.
2 cups all purpose flour
2/3 cups sugar
1/2 tsp salt

Caramel Layer
2 cans condensed milk
2 tbsps butter

Chocolate Ganache
2 1/2 bars of decent chocolate ( I went to shoppers drugmart and found two bars of dark chocolate that was on sale for 1.99 each. I then threw in some semi-sweet baking chocolate I had lying around )
1/3 cup scalded cream (or a bit more, it's up to you. Less cream will give your chocolate a harder break, while more will add pliability to it)

To start, you'll need to preheat your oven to 350 ° and get your baking tins ready. This is a pretty big recipe so you'll need two 8 inch pans, or whatever you have lying around. You could do it in a larger casserole dish if you wanted to. Take the wrapper off of your butter and use it to grease up the inside of the dishes. Then you just sprinkle some flour into your dish, moving it around, trying to coat all the butter. Tapping the back of the pan helps aswell.

Mixing the shortbread is fairly easy. You can either cut up your butter into tiny chunks, mix all your dry ingredients, throw it all in a food processor and buzz till it looks like peas OR, if you're sorta poor like me and don't have a fancy food processor you can freeze and grate the butter into your dry ingedients and mix it like you would a pie crust ; rubbing it between your palms to flake it into the dough.

 I got mine to a bread crumb stage and then divided it between the two pans. Then, it's just a matter of smoothing it out and pressing it down. I used this giant spatula I have (coated in flour first) to make it all nice and smooth.


 These puppies need atleast 20-25 minutes in the oven before they're ready. You'll start to notice a golden brown edge and it'll smell delicious.


Set your cookies aside and get started on some tasty (faux) caramel. This stuff is rich, sorta chewy and very sweet. I put two cans of condensed milk and the butter into a thick bottomed pot and slowly brought it up to a light boil.  It looked like creamy lava.

The secret to this is to stir the everloving crap out of it. Don't let it burn, it'll suck to clean and you'll be sad. You're going to be doing this for awhile, so maybe throw on the television. I watched an episode of Community and it was hilarious. I've found that the best way to know when it's ready is to keep one of the lids from the condensed milk to make a colour comparison with. I kept on staring this bubbling mess I had on the stove, trying to figure out if it was done or not. If you keep the lid then you'll know when it's done. It'll be a few shades darker, like a light amber. The caramel will also pull away from the sides as an almost solid mass. Once you like the colour, go ahead and pour it over your two giant shortbread cookies, smoothing it out with a rubber spatula. Set these in the fridge to cool while you make ganache.

This part is criminally easy for how good it tastes. And you can use it for so many things. Chocolate covered strawberries, a cracked cheesecake topping, the possibilities are endless. Heat up your cream until just before boiling (scald) and break up your chocolate into a small bowl. Pour hot cream over chocolate, and let it sit for a little while. The cream melts the chocolate and it's just a matter of mixing it together to smooth it out. Work the cookies one at a time, using a small offset spatula to smooth out the chocolate. I did a little design in mine, but no one spends a long time looking at these, it you're smelling what I'm stepping it.

Afterwards you throw 'em in the fridge for another 20 minutes or so cut them into shapes and enjoy!

Ginger was upset that we didn't do anything dog-related this week so we took her to the local Bocci ball (i'unno) court so she could have a runaround in the tall grass.

She had a grand old time up until all the fireworks started going off and scraring the crap outta her, so we headed home to watch them from the balcony while she hid.

Happy (belated) Victoria's Day!

So I've been thinking about how to go about managing this blog.  I wanted to do mainly baking related posts, but that's really only going to be once a week, and that seems a little ghost towny. Ideally, posting all the time would be cool, but I end up working all the time. I guess maybe, I can fill the time in between by talking about myself a little bit more. I'm a little egotistical, but I try to pass it off as just strongly believing in myself. I feel like I'm sorta kick-ass, I'm pretty darn good at what I do. I've been cooking for a living for at least ten years at this point and have learned a whole bunch about technique from this. I can teach you how to use a knife, how to anchor your cutting board, tons of little things that make me a better cook that you are. But I want to help. I can be patient, show you again and again how that little flick of the wrist, that tiny flourish, will make your radish rose, (or whatever) look as awesome as mine. I think what I might do is just share some general cooking stuff, but try to focus on the baking. Speaking of, this week I'm going ot be making a tasty bar of some sort. I need to figure out what first.

Pulled Pork and Dog Biscuits! not together of course.

Seeing as this is my first actual food related post I wanted to start things off with a bang! So I present to you, pulled pork my way.

2 pork tenderloins (I'd prefer shoulder but this is all I could find at the store) cleaned of excess fat and silverskin then cubed
2 shallots - sliced
1 onion - sliced
1 tbsp garlic - chopped
2 sm. hot peppers - chopped (the smaller the pepper the bigger the bite)
3 cups chicken stock
1 tbsp paprika
1 tbsp cumin
1 tbsp chili powder

a whole lotta time.

To start off I got all my veggies chopped up. Remember to wash your hands after cutting the hot pepper. Touching your eyes, lips, anything sensitive is a big no no if you forget. Trust me on this one, milk wont help you flush out your eyes.

I didn't show the peppers being cut, just make sure to remove the stem and pith (white stuff). Keep the seeds in if you need extra spice, I used two little ones and gave 'em a rough chop. Next, move on to the pork. If you look closely you'll see that there's a shiny thick looking layer over some of the meat. This is called silverskin.  You can't really digest it or chew through it so you might as well just cut it out. Using a long thin blade (a boning knife if you have it) slide the tip under a small section and pull the knife under it, with the blade slightly angled up. This will ensure that you lose as little meat as possible. Now you just go back and remove the other side. Keep this up until your pork is a uniform pink color. Then cube.

Once all your meat is cut, get your large sautee pan ready with some oil. You want to make sure your pan is hot to get a good sear on the meat. Another little tip to a good sear is make sure your meat is dry! Too much moisture causes steam, not browning. Steam has no taste while brown bits are delicious.

Once all your pork is seared off you can remove it and put it into whatever you're going to be braising in. I kept the sautee pan hot and just dumped all the veggies in there. I sweat them for a bit, added the garlic (never add your garlic too early, it might burn. Get other things cooked down a little more first, then bang it in.) After all of that cooked together for maybe..5 minutes I added in my chicken stock. While waiting for my braising liquid to come to a boil I threw a bunch of spice at my pork and let it sit around for a bit.

Next you put the two together and throw it in the oven in a tightly lidded casserole dish. I had this in for about three hours and 300. Once that happens you remove the pork from the braising liquid and shred it all. I put the braising liquid back on the stove, reduced it by half (maybe a bit more) and started adding ketchup (about 2 tbsp), honey (another 3tbsps) and a little dollop of store bought bbq sauce to round it out. Once my sauce thickened a little I put the pork back in an began to feast.

                       Next up... Dog Biscuits! Honey Dog cookies to be exact.

This ones real easy
1 1/4 cups whole wheat flour
1 1/2 cups porridge oats
2 tsps baking powder
2 tbsp butter ( I used margarine (i know i know) instead. It worked just fine)
2 tbsps honey
2 eggs
2/5 cup (100 ml) milk
flour for dusting.

This was super super easy and ginger loved the hell outta them. She was watching me the entire time.

Mix all your dry ingredients together, then flake in the margarine. Have you ever made pie crust? It's the same thing as that. Use your palms to rub the butter/marg. into the flour and oats, try not to melt it all. Afterwards add all the wet ingredients in. Mix together loosely, it'll be super sticky. Dust your tray with a bit more flour and roll into little balls. This makes about..30 or so little cookies, and is great if your dog has friends (mine doesn't, she's a bit of an ass) Your oven needs to be on at 400 degreets and these babies are going in for 15-20 minutes. These need to sit in the oven for an extra two hours after it's been turned off so they can dry out. However, it's totally worth it.

Intro to the Baking Dog.

Hey. I'm Emily. I'm a 25 year old girl who loves baking and loves her dog. There's alot of other stuff to me aswell, but those two are bigguns. As any dog owner, I believe that my dog is the best dog. She can be a douche bag sometimes, but more often then not she's just awesome. And she loves to bake. Rather, she loves to get up in my business while I bake.  When she's not shadowing my every movement she loves mischief.

This is Ginger. I've got no clue as to what she is, other than awesome. She talks alot and enjoys serenading me as I cook.

This is her on a good day, actually letting me work and not eating cupcakes off the counter. Those however, are not my legs. That would be Mike, my boyfriend.

That's it for now. The next post is going to be all about..cookies! Not human ones tho, puppy cookies. Well..I guess you could eat them, but they're probably gonna be meat flavored.