Staying in the Kitchen (in Spite of the Heat)

I was ambivalent about this week’s Tuesdays with Dorie assignment (Arborio Rice Pudding, selected by Isabelle at Les Gourmandises d'Isa).

Not because the recipe was complicated (it’s not – it’s very simple) or required special ingredients (it doesn’t – I had them all on hand). It’s not even because it required 20,000 hours of preparation (it doesn’t, unless you count the six hours of chilling, and I don’t).

No. The anxiety was there for a different reason.

Arborio rice.

Now, stay with me. Arborio rice = risotto. I like risotto, and I make it at home occasionally and am happy with the results, but only because I don’t have to share it with anyone other than the Golden Spouse, who loves me and is well-versed in handling those arcane situations in which I am unnaturally fragile.

Still not clear? You’re going to make me go there, aren’t you? The explanation for my deep-seated fear of risotto? Okay.

It’s because every time I make it – frantically stirring and obsessing over whether or not it’s absorbed enough of the liquid to add more – I hear Chef Gordon Ramsey screaming in my head. “What are you doing?! This is inedible!! Do it again!!”

Sometimes… he calls me a donkey. A stupid donkey.

GS knows this, and will occasionally come into the kitchen to pet me. It helps. He then assures me that although he likes my risotto, it would be okay with him if I never, ever put myself through that kind of abuse again. He’s a good man.

But I’m trying to redeem myself from my extended absence in October, and after missing the Kugelhopf (bless you!), I didn’t think I could miss another week.

So I persevered -- and it felt good. Really, really good. First-time-you-ride-your-bike-without-training-wheels good. First-time-you-go-off-to-college good. First-time-you-….. oh, but let’s not go there. (Hi, Mom!)

Except for.... well, we'll get to that.

I read the P&Q more closely this time, so I knew to extend the time on the stove to 45 minutes. Then I added a few magic Kelly-touches to ensure a successful outcome, which I will herein reveal because I am generous and non-territorial when it comes to sharing my cooking secrets. (You're welcome.)

While I was standing at the stove, staring at the sugared milk and willing it to boil, GS mentioned that we were going to have our first freeze that night.

(Simmer down, Northeasterners. Yes, we get into November before we get our first freeze. But remember, we also have mammoth mosquitos, rebel flags, and fried twinkies. And we overwhelmingly supported McCain/Palin and enacted the legal position that the only people worthy of adopting or fostering children are married heterosexuals. Our average temperature may sound enticing, but in other areas, we completely suck.)

My first thought was that it was time to switch from white wine to red and from rum to bourbon. My second thought was that there would be no more fresh-picked basil for a while. My third thought was something along the lines of, “There’s a smudge on the refrigerator. Cool.”

Eventually, it occurred to me that there were still about a dozen bright orange habaneros on the lone surviving plant in the garden that I should probably harvest. So I grabbed a bowl and went out to get them.

The disaster you are expecting did not occur. I did NOT come back in to discover the milk boiling over. I rinsed the habaneros, halved and seeded them, then put them on a cookie sheet to freeze.

Then I went to the bathroom. THAT is when the milk boiled over. (“Yes, Chef! I suck, Chef!”)

I wiped up the mess and added the parboiled rice, set a timer for 45 minutes, then settled onto the couch to commune with Facebook. About half an hour into the process, I rubbed my itchy nose and immediately realized that I had not washed my hands after cleaning and seeding the habaneros.

Oh. My. God.

Imagine the California wildfires overtaking your nostrils. I went to the bathroom to blow my nose, turning it into a flamethrower and singeing the cat. My nose was running like mad, so I kept blowing through the “this must be what it’s like to breathe in Hell” pain, thinking I would eventually expel all of the capsaicin. Then I rubbed my eye. (“You stupid donkey!”)

In between blowing flames out of my nose, pressing a cold washcloth against my eyes, and scrubbing my hands – the timer went off on the rice pudding.

I couldn’t see, I couldn’t breathe, but I stumbled into the kitchen and turned the burner off under the pudding, noting through the tears that it had thickened quite nicely.

I must have stirred in the vanilla and stuck it away in the refrigerator with a tidy plastic-wrap cover. I don’t remember doing it, but that’s where I found it the next morning – and it was delicious (although I don’t really know what the rice brings to the table in terms of the pudding experience as a whole).

There you have it. Maybe it was the milk boiling over in the early stages, maybe it was spending the last fifteen minutes of cooking in a distracted panic – but my rice pudding had the right consistency and tasted great, which I gather from the posts of my peers is a rare thing.

Too bad I can’t prove it. Needless to say, there were no pictures taken of the experience. They may have come in handy should we have to file my disability claim.

Return of the Prodigal Baker (TWD)

I'm about to tell you something that you, as a reader of this blog and probably several others, already know.

Technology ROCKS.

I don't know how I managed in the pre-Internet days. The days when you needed a stamp to send a letter. You had to wait until 5:00 to get the latest news. And you never would have discovered that the guy you had a crush on in junior high went on to perform in a nationally touring drag show under the highly Googleable stage name of Lola Puffybuns.

Back then, if I wanted to know how to pronounce something that I wasn't sure I had ever heard, I would've looked it up in a dictionary, stared at the phonetic spelling, and wished I had paid more attention when we were being taught what those squiggly lines and accents meant.

But not anymore! Thanks to Al Gore, I have the internets! And the internets have given me www.dictionary.com. And www.dictionary.com has given me this: an audio recording of someone saying "rugelach." (Turns out it does NOT sound like "arugula." My bad.)

I can now talk about this week's Tuesdays With Dorie treat, because I now know how to pronounce it. So feel free to give me a call -- I've been practicing (especially the throat-clearing at the finish).

This is a fantastic cookie that comes together much more easily than it would seem, given how fancy they look. The dough has no sugar, so it relies on the filling to give it the dessert quality - which means that you can control the sweetness and complexity by changing up the filling.

There were a few tense moments while rolling the dough when I thought I was about to tear it, but it held up in spite of my enthusiasm. I refrained from tossing it like a pizza crust after the Golden Spouse gave me a shockingly loud look of disapproval.

In my defense, loading the dough was a lot like loading a pizza before baking. Unfortunately, there were shiny things in the kitchen when I assembled the first batch, so I wasn't paying as much attention as I should have been -- and I inadvertently used too many of the chocolate chips, which left me short for the second batch. I liked them better without as much chocolate, so I thought I was on to something -- but then GS raved about the ones that were chocolate-heavy.

Something for everyone, I suppose.

One thing I know for sure -- a dozen tasty rugelach and a tall glass of cold milk ease the trauma of finding Lola's online portfolio.

(This week's recipe was selected by Piggy at Piggy's Cooking Journal -- read about her Rugelach experience and that of the other TWD bakers in the blogroll.)

Reductionist Baking: Mixing, Pouring, and Waiting (TWD)

This week's TWD is the Chocolate-Banded Ice Cream Torte, selected by Amy at Food, Family, and Fun. She calls it -- rightly so -- a "grown up ice cream cake." I call it -- also rightly so -- "an exercise in patience, perseverance, and hurrying through your photography so that the lights don't melt the product."

If you want to make this dessert, block off an entire afternoon and purchase the Season 1 DVD's of The Office. There's very little mixing involved, relatively speaking, but a lot of waiting around.

Here are the recipe Cliffs' Notes:

Mix, pour, wait. Spread, wait. Pour, wait. Spread. Curse because you didn't wait long enough and the chocolate isn't fully set (which is what caused the wave in the middle chocolate layer). Wait. Pour. Stick the thing in the back of the freezer for four hours (which is just fine because by now you're sick to death of it).

There you have it. Piece o' cake. Frozen cake.

This is a nice, elegant dessert, but I had a hell of a time serving it. Cutting a pretty slice was impossible. Cutting ANY slice was almost impossible -- mine was pretty hard (I had banished it to the freezer overnight.) I am convinced that the torte picture in the book was made in a special slice-shaped springform pan. I want one of those pans.

The Saint (my mom), who was the end-user of the torte, said it was a little easier after letting it sit out for a while, but then the chocolate layer slid around a bit.

To answer the question I know that someone will ask -- the Saint got the torte because I don't like chocolate desserts and the Golden Spouse doesn't like raspberry I am a wonderful, thoughtful, generous daughter.

(I don't know how the Golden Child feels about this dessert. And it really doesn't matter -- but he wants me to mention him in every post possible, so here he is. The Chocolate-Banded Ice Cream Torte, guest-starring the Golden Child.)

Another Tuesday, Another Baking Adventure

I am very tired. So let's make this quick.

I made the granola grabbers, selected as this week's Tuesdays With Dorie task by Michelle of Bad Girl Baking. I've never tried a cookie recipe that had this much STUFF in it. The Golden Spouse called them "Power Cookies."

They were pretty good right out of the oven -- if you like the texture of oatmeal cookies. I do -- but I know lots of heathens discerning people who don't. Mine were a little dry, which is contrary to some of the other posts I've already read by people whose cookies were moist. They were even drier the next day -- and crumbly, too.

And in spite of my VERY careful measuring, I only got 38 cookies out of the batch (instead of 40). I have no idea what I did wrong. The batch of dough came in at a convenient 40 ounces; I measured out 1 ounce cookies; I got 38 cookies. No idea where the extra dough went. (Oh wait... surely I didn't nibble away two cookies' worth of dough....)

I doubt that I'll make these again. It was a decent cookie, but not a mind-blowing, knock-your-socks-off, grab-the-headboard kind of cookie. If I'm going to bake, I want the earth to move - else what's a heaven for?

Next week: Chocolate Banded Ice Cream Torte. I'll let you in on a little secret: I made this one this past weekend, too. I'm going to be out of town next week and didn't want to miss an assignment.

That means that I had to make it before getting the usual P & Q hints from my fellow bakers -- and I rely heavily on those. (If anyone can tell me how to easily cut and serve this &^%$ dessert, I'll be forever grateful. I tried the hot knife trick -- FAIL.)

Be My Tim Gunn

I need your help.

I am painfully fashion-challenged, and I hate shopping. (Seriously -- if I have to go to a store to buy clothes, the Golden Spouse has to go with me so he can pick things out and hand them to me. Otherwise, I come perilously close to panic attacks.)

But I have also progressed professionally to the point where I can no longer get away with my standard wardrobe of linen pants, knit top, and Lands' End comfort mocs. (I call the look "slovenly-cute." GS thinks the "cute" part is a stretch.)

I'm getting better, but I have a real blind spot when it comes to shoes (as evidenced by the comfort mocs). That's where YOU come in.

I need a good pair of professional-looking shoes to wear with slacks. Tell me what to buy.

Of course it's not that simple. Here are the caveats:

1. Must be comfortable -- I travel a lot, so I need shoes that I can wear when I get on the 6:00 am flight that don't make me want to kill people when my day ends at 9:00 pm.
2. Must be versatile -- I don't think I'll ever be the 100-pairs-of-shoes gal. I need to be able to wear them with multiple outfits across as many seasons as possible.
3. Can't have heels that are too high -- in my bare feet, I am 6' tall. (No, I don't play basketball.) My primary client is 5'2". I don't want to tower over people any more than I already do. And the likelihood that I fall on my ass increases exponentially with the height of my heel because I am a huge klutz (which is why I don't play basketball).
   

Let's start with a good pair of brown shoes. Here's what I've come up with on my own. Tell me which pair you like and why -- or point me to even better ones:

Aspire
by Indigo by Clarks

Northern
by Unlisted

Madelyne
by Softspots

Think this through carefully, because your next assignment will be tougher. Oh, and I need to know SOON... got a flurry of trips coming up. So hop to it.

Thank you for your support.

Marbling, Schmarbling (TWD)

The Golden Child is in town this week, which certainly warrants taking some time off from work. However, since he is a teenager, there was no point in taking MORNINGS off, so I'm working half-days. This means that I have to cram a week's worth of meetings into 20 hours, which is making me tear my hair out.

So my TWD post this week is going to have to be a quickie.

This week's task was Black and White Banana Loaf, selected by Ashlee at A Year in the Kitchen. In theory, this is a tidy, elegant, coffee-cake type loaf with a beautiful marbled presentation. In practice -- not so much.

My marbling totally failed.

Ashlee had the same issues I had, but she persevered. She adjusted the recipe a bit and tried again, with beautiful results. I, on the other hand, slammed the book shut, poured up a double bourbon on the rocks, and spent the next hour mumbling passive-aggressive epithets about how baking isn't real cooking anyway. (This may help explain many, if not all, of the dating traumas in my pre-married life. At the very least, it gives you a new appreciation for what the Golden Spouse must endure and what a kindly soul he must be.)

Thanks to Ashlee, I know what to do differently with the next boyfriend loaf.

Honestly, though, I don't know that there will be a next loaf. I just wasn't that wild about it. Part of it is the chocolate thing (I don't like chocolate desserts), part of it was the texture (like a wet sponge). But the Golden Spouse said it best when he described it as a "dessert with an identity crisis" -- it didn't know whether it was a banana dessert with a complement of chocolate, or vice versa. It didn't balance well.

I bet Ashlee's balances well. I'm sure Ashlee's loaf is perfect. It's the Homecoming Queen of Black and White Loaves. Mine was the flute player loaf in the marching band who is also on the newspaper staff and in the math club, but is really a great loaf if you just take the time to get to know it.

Uh. Sorry.

Two side notes: There was one deviation from the recipe, of course. I didn't have dark rum -- so I added some molasses to gold rum and used that instead. It was fine. It is also now moot, since omitting the rum was one of the changes Ashlee made to her perfect loaf.

Second -- a lot of bloggers have lessened (or even eliminated) the nutmeg. I am horrified by this. I could never endorse such a practice. I love fresh nutmeg.



BONUS!! As promised, I did go back and try the Summer Fruit Galette, using Farmer's Market peaches, and it really was delicious. The custard makes all the difference in the world. For the jam layer, I used a fig spread that I made with figs from my very own tree, and the flavors paired beautifully.

My crust dough was a bit too wet, though, so folding the edges over was a gooey mess. I will definitely do this one again (but with drier dough next time). And Dorie's pie crust recipe continues to be a huge hit with the GS.

Next week: Dolores of Chronicles in Culinary Curiosity has selected Blueberry Sour Ice Cream. YAYAYAY!!!!! Too bad blueberry season has passed here... the first picking was amazing.

TWD: Failure to Launch

Today's Tuesdays With Dorie challenge was Cherry Rhubarb Cobbler, selected by Amanda at Like Sprinkles on a Cupcake.

Ahhh, rhubarb... how very southern. Rhubarb pie... rhubarb jam... frost on the rhubarb... how could any self-respecting Suth'n girl pass this one up?

By having an weekend that's already filled up with an overnight retreat, an art opening, and a cocktail party. That's how.

So yes, I bailed on the TWD assignment this week. In the interest of full disclosure, I wasn't looking forward to it and may not have attempted it anyway, even if there had been time. I'm just oddly intimidated by rhubarb. I've never tasted it -- but I can't get past the fact that it looks like red celery.

So instead -- I'll respond to my very first meme!

MacDuff of Jon and MacDuff in Boston tagged me last week. I immediately went out and bought a whole new wardrobe, because this clearly elevates my status in the blog world, and my apparel must reflect this change. I now blog in satin jammies instead of flannel. I would personally thank MacDuff, but I'm now too cool to correspond.

(That was a joke -- in all honestly, MacDuff's was one of the few TWD blogs for which I set up an RSS feed, even before I was tagged. It is consistently a real pleasure to read.)

Here are the rules. For those who have been following my TWD mishaps, you'll be relieved to know that I didn't follow these instructions to the letter, either.

1. Link to the person who "tagged" you. (see above)
2. Post the rules on your blog. (see..well, right here)
3. Write six random things about yourself. (see below)
4. Tag six people at the end of your post. (see note)
5. Let each person know that they've been tagged by leaving a comment on their blog. (see note)
6. Let the tagger know your entry is up. (will do as soon as this is posted. really)

NOTE: I have learned over the years to totally embrace my neuroses. It has served me better (and with fewer pharmaceuticals) than trying to actually fix them. One such neurosis is my pathological avoidance of "imposing" on other people -- which pairs well with the equally pathological perception that everything I do is an imposition. That's why I didn't tag anyone else. No, it doesn't make any sense, since I don't feel like my own tagging was an imposition, but that's another neurosis altogether. And if I carry this part of the post any further, I'm going to have to pay each of you the going hourly rate for therapy, so let's just move on.

The Six Random Things:

1. Every morning, I wake up with a random song in my head (this morning, it was Sting's "When You Love Someone, Set Them Free;" yesterday, it was Dusty Springfield's "Son of a Preacher Man"). It's only been in the past year or so that I've started to realize that it doesn't happen to everyone.
2. For my son's (the Golden Child's) eighteenth birthday, I took him to get a tattoo. He got the mitsudomoe (please don't make me define it, it was hard enough to spell it right) on his back between his shoulder blades. At the same time, I got two small Kanji characters on my left wrist that mean "pumpkin," which is what I called GC when he was a baby (and still).
3. If anything should ever happen to the Golden Spouse, I will become the Crazy Cat Lady of the neighborhood in two weeks flat. (For the record, though -- he brought home a rescued goldfish.)
4. The only reason I haven't used my Nintendo Wii Fit board in six weeks is that I know it will scold me for my absence, and I'm not emotionally prepared for that.
5. I travel with a small yellow rubber duck. I have pictures of him in lots of places, including Winter Park, CO, and Alcatraz.
6. I don't know how to make pictures appear side-by-side in blogger.
   

I know that my #6 is cheating, but considering how much I revealed in the note above, I figured you'd be looking for a respite.

In Which Chocolate is Melted, Divorce is Threatened, and I Ask My Dog How Many Fingers I'm Holding Up (TWD)

Pudding is not funny. Nor is it photogenic. You've been warned.

This week's Tuesdays With Dorie assignment is chocolate pudding. I don't really like chocolate desserts (please don't send me to Gitmo), but the Golden Spouse does, so this effort was really for him. It's a good thing, too -- he spent a good chunk of time cleaning the kitchen and threatened me with divorce if I didn't leave it exactly as I had found it. Distracting him with some chocolatey mouthjoy might make him overlook my half-assed counter-wiping.

I wish I had read the other bloggers' comments before getting started. If I had, I would have been prepared for the fact that my food processor isn't big enough to mix as much liquid as we had to deal with. I poured the mix in, switched it on, then turned back to the stove to check on the melting chocolate.

When the frothy liquid started leaking out and dripping off the counter, ever-alert Jack the Beaglador was there to lick it up.

I panicked a little bit. Chocolate is toxic to dogs. Sure, the mix didn't have a lot of chocolate in it at that point, and it was just cocoa powder, but I have no idea how much chocolate was too much. I got down in Jack's face, staring intently for any evidence that he was losing consciousness. I even waved my hand in front of his eyes: "How many fingers am I holding up?"

He looked at me like I had lost my mind, then went to lie down on his bed. (Here he is, with a newly-nicked houseshoe. SEE what I have to deal with?! Is it any wonder he's an undisciplined mess? How can you scold THIS FACE??!!)

The other problem I caused for myself was in the heating of the liquid once it was mixed. You're supposed to stir it constantly over medium heat while it thickened -- so I did. But it never got any thicker, and I certainly didn't see the little bubbles popping on the surface.

It turns out that I left out the "medium heat" part. I thought I was turning off the flame under the double boiler in which the chocolate was melting, but it was still on. Ergo...

Once I turned the heat back on under the pudding, it thickened and bubbled up nicely.

(Did I mention that I had to use semi-sweet chocolate instead of bittersweet? Yeah. I did. Because I can never seem to do anything the conventional way, at least not on the first try. Relax, I reduced the sugar and it was fine.)

I'd have to say that the end result was a resounding success -- I guess. I don't really like ...well, you know. GS loved it (and Jack wanted more).

I don't think it will make it to the menu for the Groggy Dog, though. This may be blasphemous to say -- but it was a lot of effort for very little payoff (i.e., not that much better than recipes that leave fewer implements to clean).


Forgot this part: This week's recipe was selected by Melissa of It's Melissa's Kitchen - check it out, she figured out how to make the pudding look pretty!

Next week: Cherry Rhubarb Cobbler.

(Uh. Whut?)

Tuesdays with Blueberries

I successfully completed my second Tuesdays with Dorie baking assignment. I'm two for two!! If only my commitment to regular exercise and getting enough sleep had lasted this long.

This week's recipe, selected by Amy of South in Your Mouth, was the double-crusted blueberry pie. I now love Amy. Amy is my new best friend, except without the regular communication, hanging out, knowing-each-others-last-names part of it.

I love pies -- I'm a Suth'n Gal, too, after all -- but I have a love-hate relationship with pie crusts. Specifically, I love Pillsbury and hate making them myself. The day Pillsbury started packaging their All-Ready Pie Crusts in rolls instead of folds -- I admit it, I cried. I'm not proud. It made it easier to pass the crusts off as homemade when I didn't have to explain the crease in the middle.

But I wasn't about to cheat in my TWD participation. Of course not! At least, not in Week Two! So I took on the crust, too.

Good Lord... the butter... I could have sculpted the Pieta with the amount of butter this recipe called for. But it rolled out like satin and tasted like cookie dough, so Dorie must be on to something.

In fact, after I assembled the pie and loaded it up into the oven, I decided to see just how similar to cookie dough it was.

As you may recall, my first TWD experiment (way back in the... well, last week) almost ended tragically when butter dripped from the lip-less pan onto the floor of my oven (okay, so it wasn't all that hazardous, it could have been). Having learned from that experience, not only did I put the pie on its own cookie sheet before sliding it into the oven, I put a bigger sheet on the lower rack just in case the blueberry juice got out of control.

After that, it made perfect sense to me (given the length of my attention span) to form the crust scraps into little disks, sprinkle them with cinnamon and sugar, and slip them onto that extra baking sheet to test the cookie theory.

You're all much more alert than I am, so you've undoubtedly already caught on to the flaw in this plan. As the "cookies" heated up, the butter seeped out.... the cookie sheet (same one as before) had no lip... yadda yadda yadda.

Fortunately, I caught on before the butter trickled off the pan, making me the next Darwin Award nominee.

Just LOOK at that crust. You can see the bits of butter.

Forty-five minutes later (I didn't need the entire hour the recipe recommended), I pulled the finished pie out of the oven and left it to cool. After the recommended thirty minutes, the pan still felt warm. Even after an hour, it was warmer than I would like, but darn it, I wanted some PIE.

The Golden Spouse came out of his Man Cave long enough to get the first piece, then quickly retreated lest he miss the shortstop spitting or the second baseman denying rumors of infidelity. He came back even before I got the second piece out -- to tell me how wonderful the crust was.

If GS is willing to separate himself from the Yankees-Red Sox game when they were tied 4 - 4 and about to head into extra innings just to tell me how much he likes the crust -- that's got to be a pretty special crust.

And it was. I'll never go back to Pillsbury. I've already broken up with them on their MySpace page -- I'm THAT serious.

The main thing I learned from this assignment was that nifty trick of adding a layer of breadcrumbs before pouring in the filling in order to keep the bottom crust from getting soggy. Several comments on the main site talked about substituting a sweeter crumbled cracker or cookie -- that made sense to me, especially since the only breadcrumbs I had were seasoned, so I added a layer of brown sugar instead.

Yep. You read that right. In my continuing subconscious effort to maintain my reputation as inept but enthusiastic, I layered brown sugar instead of the graham cracker crumbs I thought I was using. (They are both stored in vacuum-sealed mason jars. They look a lot alike. I was tired. There were shiny things off to the left.)

Fortunately, I discovered the mistake before pouring in the blueberries, so I was able to dump most of it out and get the layer of graham cracker crumbs in place. So there.

This pie is as tasty as it looks. It's quite a testament to Dorie's recipes that even *I* could pull this off.

I think this recipe would make it onto the menu of the Groggy Dog -- but we'll leave the pie crust cookies off.


Next week: Chocolate pudding!

It Isn't Really Baking Until the Smoke Alarm Goes Off

In our five years of marriage, the Golden Spouse has had to learn to smile through gritted teeth at many an eccentricity of mine, especially the one that involves impulsively launching myself (and my checkbook) into new activities but losing interest as soon as any real effort is required.

Because of this, "we" now have a room devoted to storing avocational debris: a glass grinder and dozens of sheets of art glass; a dress form (named Peg) that has been wearing a half-finished skirt for about a year; a Garmin GPS with a copy of "Geocaching for Dummies," etc.

Then there are the kitchen gadgets.

When I realized the tree in the backyard would bear fruit (figs), I bought a food dehydrator. At harvest time, though, the figs didn't just fall into bushels on their own, so the dehydrator was banished to a closet along with the yogurt maker, vacuum sealer, and electric marinator. (I was vindicated on this one, however -- when the Golden Spouse's iPhone went through the laundry, the dehydrator played a key role in our futile attempts to resuscitate.)

This week marks my first foray into the world of Tuesdays With Dorie, a community of bloggers who are methodically baking their way through Dorie Greenspan's baking Bible one recipe at a time.

My first assignment: Apple Cheddar Scones. A key ingredient in Apple Cheddar scones: dried apples.

Ta-da!! The dehydrator has been elevated from its lowly status as "yet another one of Kelly's silly impulse purchases" to "a critical implement in the arsenal of the power baker."

So now we're at the REAL point of this post -- the experience of baking the Apple Cheddar scones.

I started out with three challenges. First, the recipe calls for one large egg. I buy my eggs from the local Farmer's Market, and although they are by far the best-tasting eggs available, they are small -- so I used two.

Second -- I also buy my cheddar cheese locally. It's very soft -- so much so that when I shred it, it tends to clump together rather than showering delicately and evenly on whatever I'm adding it to. I solved this problem, though, by putting it in the freezer for a while before shredding it.

And last-- the dried apples (dried 'em myself with my own dehydrator) had the texture of apple chips. The recipe called for a "fine dice," but mine were more like a "dusty crumble." They TASTED good (take THAT, you gadget naysayers!) -- they just didn't seem to have the right texture for the recipe.

The texture of the apples didn't hurt the final product, though. The cheddar flavor was wonderfully subtle and balanced throughout, and the chewy bits of apple provided a nice little burst of flavor.

The extra egg made the dough a little too moist, so rather than getting scones with a smooth top (like the picture in the book), they had the rough finish of buttermilk biscuits (only with a little more spread to them). Also, they didn't rise much (my baking powder may be too old), so they had the density of foccacia.

Another factor that could have hurt the airy quality of the final product (and here's where the smoke alarm comes in) -- during the baking, some of the butter oozed out and dripped onto the floor of the oven, which - duh - created a lot of smoke. I had to take the scones out, wipe down the oven, then put them back in to finish cooking.

Even with these mishaps (and I will continue to call them "mishaps" rather then "errors of inexperience" because it's my blog and I can cry if I want to, stop judging me), the scones were really quite good. I added a pat of butter because it makes for a prettier picture -- but they were plenty buttery without it.



So here's what I'll do differently before adding these to the menu of the Groggy Dog (the imaginary bed and breakfast we pretend we're going to open in New England):

1. Use a pan with a lip to prevent kitchen fires and keep our insurance premiums down
2. Leave a bit more moisture in the apple pieces (and make them bigger)
3. Make sure my baking powder is fresh (although now that I think about it, the problem may really be the humidity since I've been having the same issues with my bread loaves)

One recipe down -- hundreds to go. Hopefully, upcoming baking activities will involve homemade yogurt, vacuum sealing, and intense marinating, so I can justify returning to my gadget-buying ways (I have my eye on a thumb-operated salt grinder).

NEXT WEEK: Double crusted blueberry pie!!! GS is excited about this one.