Ingredients

• 3 cups old-fashioned rolled oats (not instant)
• 2 cups puffed grains (rice, wheat, millet, and/or kamut)
• 1 cup sliced almonds (optional; if not using, substitute with 1 cup oats or puffed grains)
• 4 tbsp butter
• 1/4 cup brown sugar
• 1/2 cup honey

Instructions

• Preheat oven to 300°F.
• Blend together oats, puffs, and almonds in a large bowl.
• Melt butter in a saucepan on medium-low.
• Add sugar and honey. Continue to heat until bubbly.
• Pour butter mixture over dry mixture and toss to coat with a spatula.
• Spread mixture on parchment or Silpat lined jelly roll pan.
• Bake 30-40 minutes or until golden brown.

• In a shallow, heatproof bowl (I use Corelle), initially melt about 3/4 of the chocolates (chips or chopped) in the microwave on high for just under a minute. Stir and reheat in bursts of about 20 seconds until all the chocolates have melted and is warm to the touch – just below your body temperature. You can use a candy thermometer but after many tries, you, too, will get a sense for what that temperature feels like. See the Callebaut site for detailed pictorial instructions.
• Seed the chocolate by adding the remaining 1/4 chocolates until melted. Heat for a few seconds in the microwave if needed. Tip: seed with high quality white chocolates, if available, as they generally contain a higher cocoa butter content and will ensure more beta crystals in your chocolate.
• Add about 1% (by weight) of cocoa butter and stir until melted. I.e., for 10 oz of chocolates, add about 0.1 oz of cocoa butter. To understand how cocoa butter helps, refer to Tempering with Mycryo® at the Callebaut or Cacao Barry site. Many professionals use Mycryo® – it’s one of their best kept secrets for achieving consistently well-tempered chocolates with the sought-after sheen and snap. It is sold in chef supply stores and it’s expensive. Guess what it is? 100% cocoa butter! The only difference is that it’s been cryogenically processed into a convenient-to-use powder form. For chocolates, you don’t need the powder form. Cocoa butter is solid at room temperature. Simply scrape what you need with a spoon and you get shaved cocoa butter that easily dissolves into your melted chocolate.

Below is a picture of two chocolate barks (with chopped nuts) made from the same batch. I poured out half the batch to make one bark (bottom), then added the cocoa butter to the remaining chocolate for the second bark (top). Ignoring the terrible picture, you can visually see the difference that adding cocoa butter significantly reduced the blooming effect.

Two more days until Valentine’s Day! Now that you know how to achieve tempered chocolates like the pros, surprise your loved one with homemade chocolate candy. I will be making a less sweet version of Hershey’s Symphony bar, my husband’s favorite.

Ingredients for one crust:

• 1 ¼ cups all-purpose unbleached flour
• 1 tbsp sugar
• ¼ tsp salt
• 1 stick of butter (equal to 4 oz or ½ cup)
• icy cold water

Method:

• In a cup with spout, fill with about ½ cup water and put in freezer.
• Cube butter and freeze for about 5 minutes.
• In stand mixer, combine flour, sugar, and salt.
• Add cold, butter cubes and mix with flat beater attachment until butter is coarsely incorporated. It’s okay to still have small chunks of butter.
• Slowly add icy water while keeping the mixer on, just until the dough comes together.
• Using a flexible pastry scraper, transfer dough to a lightly floured surface.
• Roll out with a lightly floured rolling pin to desired thickness, between 1/8 and 1/4 inches. I prefer the thinner crust. Use the rolling pin to aid in transferring the dough to the pie plate. You can use the dough right away or refrigerate for a few days or freeze for up to a month. To store, wrap in plastic wrap, using the plastic wrap to squeeze and flatten the dough into a disc. Try to minimally handle the dough with your hands as you want to keep the dough as cold as possible, yet pliable. It gets easier with practice!

Pictured above is an apple, pear, and cranberry ‘rustic’ tart I made as a pre-Thanksgiving treat. The recipe and ‘rustic’ idea is from Simple Recipes. It’s such a gorgeous and tasty tart that I’ll be making again and again! To get the same look, I still baked my tart in a standard round pie plate as opposed to their more ‘rustic’ method and just folded the edges over. It was easier to keep the filling from spilling over as I formed the pie.

• Roll out dough into an elongated rectangular-ish shape
• Lightly brush dough with olive oil
• Sprinkle first layer with shredded cheese
• Add other toppings; my favorite combination is sausage, bell peppers, mushrooms, onions, olives, and one or two slices of tomatoes without the juicy seed part. Do not add sauce as it will make the rolls soggy but instead, pack the marinara (or ranch) sauce on the side for dipping.
• Top off with another layer of cheese
• Fold and seal, leaving a small opening around the center for steam to escape
• Bake a few minutes longer as you would the pizzas, until the top crust is browning
• Let cool, then wrap in foil
• Keep refrigerated; the morning of, reheat in the microwave until very warm but not steaming hot and pack it in foil

And by the way, I created a new category – Lunchbox – for future blog posts like these.

Ingredients:

• 4 cps bread flour
• 1 tbsp salt
• 2 tsps sugar
• 1 tbsp yeast
• 2 tbsps olive oil
• 1 2⁄3 cups warm water

Directions:

• Mix all dry ingredients, sugar and yeast last, in stand mixer with dough hook.
• Add wet ingredients.
• Knead for a minute. Rest about 5 minutes.
• Knead for about 5 – 10 minutes until dough looks smooth.
• Oil bowl and dough and cover with hot, damp towel. Let rest at least 1 ½ hours.
• Preheat at 500° with pizza stone in oven for at least half hour before baking.
• Dust a wooden board with flour.
• Use a plastic dough scraper (or equivalent) to break off a small chunk of dough.
• Roll the dough out onto the flour dusted board. Or, stretch the dough with your hands, fingers, and gravity. There are so many ways to do this; experiment and use what’s easiest for you.
• Generously dust pizza peel with flour and cornmeal. Assemble pizza and ingredients on top.
• Slide on pizza stone and bake for about 10 minutes.

Pizza dough is very forgiving. It doesn’t have to rise for a full 1 &fract12; hours; it’s just a ballpark as temperature affects how quickly your dough will rise. You can also store the dough in the refrigerator to be used within a few days.

Also, if you feel the need to ‘proof’ yeast, then combine the sugar and yeast in a glass measuring cup. Add the warm water and wait about 5 minutes. If it’s bubbly, then add to the flour/salt mixture. But what I typically do is add the sugar and yeast last, on top and in the middle of the flour/salt mixture. Then, I pour the warm water over top and let sit for a minute. If it bubbles, then I add the oil and start mixing.

If using pizza sauce, brush crust with olive oil first and bake for about 5 minutes. I don’t do this as I like my pizzas thin and crispy but I usually serve the marinara or pizza sauce on the side. More details in a later post…

In preparation for the 4th of July, I thought I’d share my go-to frosting for almost all my cakes and cupcakes – whipped cream cheese frosting. I’ve been looking for a lighter, fluffier, and less sweet frosting than the typical buttercream and have finally found it. The original recipe came from allrecipes.com’s Whipped Cream Cream Cheese Frosting and I modified it based on reviewer suggestions to make it less sweet and more pipeable. For the 4th, I’ll be making a flag cake with strawberries and blueberries for the colors.

Ingredients

• 2 cups whipped cream
• 1 8-oz package of cream cheese
• 3/4 cups powdered sugar
• 1/2 cup cornstarch
• 1/8 tsp salt
• 1 tsp vanilla extract

Instructions

• Put KitchenAid mixer bowl in the freezer to chill several minutes.
• With handheld beater, pulse beat cream cheese to soften slightly.
• Take out the chilled mixer bowl, pour most of the whipping cream, reserving about 1 tbsp, and beat with wire whisk until stiff peak forms.
• Meanwhile, add powdered sugar, cornstarch, salt, vanilla extract, and the rest of the whipping cream to the cream cheese; beat until smooth.
• Add whipped cream little by little; use beater to incorporate but do not overmix.

Variations: substitute vanilla extract with lemon or any other flavored extract.

I don’t have a good in-focus picture of this frosting piped on a cupcake but you get the idea. It holds its shape well indoors but not in the Texas summer heat so if you pipe ahead, refrigerate until you’re ready to serve!

There are many contraptions to this simple experiment. In general, it involves suspending a weighted string or wooden skewer in a glass with the sugar solution. I like to use a short cocktail glass and toothpicks stuck in a piece of wire mesh screen. It’s less time consuming to set up and you can make several small sticks of rock candy per glass. You can find the wire mesh screen in rolls at Home Depot for under $8. Besides serving as a toothpick holder here, these mesh screens have many other uses such as lining the bottoms of your plant pots, repairing window screens, and patching wall holes. In other words, they are handy to have around the house and well worth the $8.

To make the sugar solution, start with:

• 1 part water
• 2 parts sugar

by volume. I.e., one cup water to two cups sugar.

Sugar crystals after one week.

• Heat the water in a saucepan until just boiling.
• Add the sugar and stir continuously until all the sugar is dissolved. Optionally dissolve extra sugar, a spoonful at a time. A well saturated sugar solution speeds up the crystal growth. If you add too much sugar and not all is dissolved, simple add a little bit of water at a time.
• Let cool a few minutes, occasionally stirring.
• Pour the mixture into clean, dry glass.
• Dip toothpicks in the sugar solution and roll them in sugar. Let dry. These tiny ‘seed’ crystals jump starts and accelerates the crystal growing process.
• Cover glass with prepared toothpick in mesh screen and wait.
• And wait and wait and wait. It will take at least a week for the crystals to grow to a good size.
• If you want to add food coloring or flavoring, add it after the first week when sizable crystals have formed. Otherwise, it will take much longer for the crystals to form. Let the crystals grow for at least another week.

At first, the kids were super excited and would check on the rock candy every day. By the second week after adding the color and flavor, they almost lost all interest after I told them they had to wait at least another week before they can eat it. But the longer they wait, the bigger the candy and well worth the wait!

Rock candy is just one of many experiments to show how crystals grow. Here are a few sites that explain the science behind it.

• Rock Candy Basics
• Grow Sugar Crystals
• Temperature Effect on Solubility and Supersaturated Solutions

If you’ve scoured the internet and various cooking books, you’ll notice that recipes for homemade dumpling skins all have the basic two ingredients, flour and water, but the proportions and technique vary greatly. They all work – dumpling skin dough is very forgiving. Using the right proportion and method, however, can make the process a lot easier and faster.

The ratio of flour to water for dumpling skin dough vary greatly ranging anywhere from 2:1 to 4:1 (or 66% to 80% flour by volume). Many recipes also call for hot or boiling water and letting the dough rest for at least 30 minutes. A soft, warm, well-rested, dough is easier to work with and roll out if you’re doing it all by hand. But who has the time? If you’ve been following my blog, you’ll know that my go-to appliance for almost anything dough related is my trusty KitchenAid stand mixer. Making dumpling skin is no exception. Here, I also use the pasta roller attachment. Let the appliance do all the hard work for you and make a cold, stiff dough instead with no resting time required.

Ingredients:

• 3 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 cup cool/cold water
• 1 tsp salt (optional)
• extra flour for dusting the dough
• cornstarch for dusting the finished dumpling skin.

Directions:

• In the mixer bowl, combine flour with salt, if using.
• Add cool/cold water.
• Using the dough hook, knead until the dough comes together and forms a nice ball, about 2 minutes.



• Remove the bowl and hook and attach the pasta roller.
• Cut off a small piece, shape into an oval, flatten and dust with flour on both sides.
• Feed the dough through the pasta roller, making at least 2 passes – the first pass on the thicker setting and the second pass on the thinner, final setting. The thickness is really a matter of preference. I usually do the first pass on setting ’2′ and the second pass on setting ’4′.



• On a flour dusted surface, cut circles using a 3 inch (again, a matter of preference) cutter. Reuse all leftover dough.



• Dust the dumpling skin in a bowl filled with cornstarch.
• Set aside or refrigerate (up to a couple of days) until ready to use.

When you are ready to make the jiao-zi, you can simply seal the filling with warm water – the cornstarch will hold it together. If you roll out your dough to a final thickness setting of ’4′ and use a 3 inch cutter, then this recipe yields about 100 dumpling skins.

How often do they fall on the same day??? As with every holiday, our family celebrates both occasions with food and lots of cooking on the days before and the day of. For Chinese New Year, I like to make homemade jiao-zi, Chinese dumplings (more on this on another post) and fortune cookies. This year, though, I put sweet Valentine notes as the fortunes. Here are the recipes and directions for making homemade fortune cookies.

Ingredients
• 2 cups whole wheat flour (white whole wheat, traditional, pastry, or any combination)
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 2 tbsp freshly grated parmesan
• 1 to 2 tsp dried rosemary, crumbled
• 1/2 tsp salt
• freshly ground black pepper to taste
• coarse sea salt to taste

Follow directions in basic cracker recipe, sprinkling sea salt to rolled out dough and gently pressing down with a rolling pin or by hand.