Cream Cheese Chocolate Chip Cookies

Hi, y’all.  🙂

Before I get going today I have to use this space for some family memories. Non fam y’all might wanna scroll. 🙂

Sorry if this blows the margins.  Tonight these 4 ladies are all together again up in Heaven.  Mema’s sister aka Papa Bear’s Aunt and Godmother passed away this week. 🙁  Her name was Lillie Mae and she was a super sweet lady.  That’s a picture of a scrapbook page I made. It’s pics of the 4 sisters and their Mom thru the years.  You can’t really see it without having a big view but to pick out LM all you have to do is look for the one person who was smiling in literally every single one of the pictures. 🙂 That’s how I remember her. Always smiling.  She was a ceramicist…is that a word?…ya know…she had kiln and made ceramic stuff.  When I was 3rd / 4th grade-ish she gave me two molds…one was a teddy bear and one was a miniature bowl and pitcher set.  I would pour / paint them and she would fire them for me.  I would put them in Meme’s beauty shop and her clients would buy them.  Pappy matched all the money I made that summer and I bought my first designer purse.  Yes I had a designer purse in 4th grade.  She also made these little ceramic Christmas trees and gave all 3 of us (Mama B, Sister B and myself) each one.  I went around to their trees and took out enough of the red and green lights so I could have an all red and green tree.  It’s had its inside power source changed many times but I still have it. 🙂  Anyway she was just a cool lady and will be missed by those who knew and loved her.  Good healing thoughts go out to her immediate family and caregiver L…and super good thoughts to B and AR her daughter and granddaughter.  They lived in the same town as her and put in the day to day time with her. I know it’s one of the hardest things in the world…being the one who watches parent / grandparent slowly leave…your heart breaking a little more every day but still getting up and doing it again the next day.  Y’all did her right and good.  🙂

Ok let’s lighten this up a little bit…

While I had the family story scrapbook out the rest of the fam was looking at it too and…

…do y’all see that lower right hand corner?  That’s 2 pics of King George.  They were like “is that George Strait?”  Uhm duh he’s my imaginary fam. 😉   Seriously that’s been in the book for 13 years and y’all just noticed it?  Also if you’re blacked out in these pics it’s just for the blog I didn’t black you out in the actual book.

Have y’all seen these?  Gluten free. Women owned. I don’t know how the Girl Scouts haven’t had this pulled.  These are so close to Thin Mint’s it’s crazy. I found them at Cracker Barrel.

Look at that stretch. 🙂

Made some hotdog buns with gfJules flour.

 🙂

Now to the title of this post…

4 oz Cream Cheese, 1 stick plus 2 tbsp butter, 1 cup of sugar. I did half white half brown.

1 egg.

Vanilla.

2 cups (270g) gfJules flour, 1/2 tsp salt, 1/2 tsp baking powder, pinch of baking soda, 1 bag chocolate chips.

Mixed, portioned and into icebox overnight.

Baked at 350* for 12 minutes in the convection oven.

This dough was so0000 good.  And the cookies baked up and tasted good too but they are very soft.  As a household we like cookies that hold up to cookies and milk. These do not.  But taste wise the cream cheese really does take chocolate chip cookies to another level.  It was totally worth it for the dough alone and I’d definitely make up a small batch again if I had leftover cream cheese. 🙂

That’s all for now.  See y’all soon. 🙂

 

 

Orange Rolls

Hi, y’all. 🙂

Happy hump day. 🙂

Sorry for the absence last week.  I’m dealing with fatigue and the usual autoimmune stuff.  Plus I’m working on a little project of sorts and it’s taking up most of my focus right now.

Since I didn’t post last week I didn’t get to say this then but RIP, Merle. 🙁  I’m so thankful to have been able to see him in concert in the late 80’s…and even more thankful for having grown up in a household full of his (and all his friend’s) music. Thanks for that, Mama B and Papa Bear.  🙂

Can y’all believe I didn’t bake anything at all last week?

That’s already changed this week though. 🙂  It’ll be at the end of the post.

 🙂

Making my first pot of bone broth tonight.  I’ll let y’all know how it turns out.

This week’s TV?  Finished up Bosch on Amazon Prime.  Didn’t enjoy the second season nearly as much as the first but still recommend them both.

This week’s fashion WHAT?  That’s a dress not two separate pieces.

 😉

Ok so remember last month or so when I told y’all I’d let you know how freezing a batch of gfJules dough worked?  Well I tried the dough yesterday.  First I took it from the freezer and put it in the icebox to thaw overnight.

Then…rising tip? Put it in a bowl and then in a Ziploc.  Then put in the bathroom after a shower.  Close the door and let it rise.  Before somebody emails about putting food in the bathroom.  It’s in a zipped Ziploc…that was zipped up in the kitchen…before moving into the steamy bathroom.

I decided to try Pioneer Woman’s Orange rolls with the batch of frozen dough made from gfJules flour.

Orange marmalade, butter, brown sugar.  I had less dough than her recipe so I just eye balled my amounts.

I didn’t get any pics after rolling and before baking. Sorry.

But these are the only pics that are really necessary. 🙂  The dough rolled beautifully.  It held up to baking.  And as you can see was crazy moist.  Is there anything this flour can’t do? If there is I don’t wanna know about it.  🙂

Now…I will add that while the dough was great I didn’t care for the orange aspect of the roll.  She does say in her recipe that the marmalade is bitter and it most definitely was.

Really I just wanted to know if it was possible to freeze yeast dough made with the gfJules flour.  It is and I was very impressed.

Ok that’s all for today.  See y’all soon. 🙂

 

Cakes and Rolls

Hey, y’all. 🙂

Happy Friday. 🙂

I’m just gonna jump in here as nothing really interesting has happened since we last met.

Easter was great.

Made my first cake with the gfjules flour stash. I was aiming for a turquoise velvet cake but got green grass velvet instead. I was pretty sad at first but the taste and texture was without question the best gluten – free cake I’ve ever had.  I just used my regular red velvet cake recipe subbing gfjules for the flour and turquoise dye for the red.  Thanks, gfjules.  🙂

I’m always calling out the bad cops but today I’ve got a good one.  Earlier this week I had to go file some business papers in a location I’d never been.  It was in an older part of town where the streets were one way.  I had no idea how to get out and I saw a cop parked in an old abandoned parking lot so I pulled in and asked him how to get out.  He told me and then was like I’ll lead you out unless I get a call.  So he lead me all the way out. Thank you for that, good cop.  🙂

So I know I’m always all rah – rah Texas / Tejas but this story and other stories like it about women being forced to give birth to dead babies make me so ashamed to tell people I’m from Texas.  All I imagine that poor woman heard was ‘hey y’all just go on home and start picking out caskets.  Come on back when you’ve finally got death inside you.’  Vomit.  I wish there was a way for these women to legally go after every single law – maker who voted for these laws for emotional distress or whatever else they could come up with.

A stick of butter, 1 tsp worcestershire sauce, garlic powder, onion powder, salt, pepper.

These went so fast I didn’t get a clean straight out of oven pic.

So this is no doubt another thing I’m a little late to the party with but have y’all seen / made those Kings Hawaiian ham rolls?  Ovs I can’t have the real rolls so I made up a gluten – free batch.

I used Chefs Step technique of rising the dough then completely covering the pan with foil and baking.  Then storing the cooked rolls for a day or two before using.

Then you make your ham / cheese sliders and brush on the sauce and bake for about 15 minutes.

I can’t even put into words how good these were.

2016-03-29 22.55.25

The rolls in the first pics above where rolled by hand.  These in this picture I just rolled out the whole batch of dough to an inch thick and then cut out ‘rolls’ with round cookie cutters.  Visually they looked so much better this way.

Either way though the inside was phenomenal.  Can y’all believe that’s gluten – free?

Ok that’s all for today.  Have a good weekend and I’ll see you soon. 🙂

 

Crab Cakes

Hey, y’all.

Happy Easter Weekend. 🙂

We’re doing a really low-key Easter.  I’m the cook / baker in the fam and I’m just not up for a lot of work.  We were going to go out but then I got sick (possibly glutened) earlier in the week so now we’re doing a low-key meal at home.  I am making a couple of things so hopefully they’ll be blog worthy and I’ll share next week.

Let’s see…what’s happened this week?

Bought a new hibiscus…one with the twisty stalk thing.

What? I think even I in my epic sewing failure could make this for the cost of a few sheets.

😉

We didn’t watch anything good or bad this week so I don’t have any docu thoughts.

Have y’all seen these Sweet Cream Soda at Sonic?  I made the terrible mistake of ordering one and it was the grossest thing I’ve tasted in a good while.  I’m not even sure what they’re supposed to taste like but this one is root beer and I mean look at that…it’s definitely not root beer color.  It was like a tiny little bit of root beer plus some extra carbonated water plus a dash of cream.  The overwhelming taste was carbonated water.  Yuck.

These are from last week but I made some mini banana muffins using a bag of gfjules muffin mix.  They look kind of lumpy.  That’s because I left some of the banana chunky. I highly recommend doing that.  🙂  (not huge chunks…just not all mashed up and smooth)

Ok so remember last week when I made biscuits into bread crumbs?  Well that was to make some crab cakes for Lent Friday.

Regular bread crumbs, chopped celery and butter.  Softened celery in butter then added 1 cup bread crumbs and tossed them around to mix and coat.

1 lb Crab Meat

1 cup regular style gluten – free Bread Crumbs

Celery

2 tbsp Mayo

1 tbsp Dijon

1 Egg

Seasonings…I used regular salt / pepper / onion / garlic powder in some and then Cajun seasoning in the rest.

All mixed up by hand.

Portioned out.  I used an ice cream scoop to keep them all pretty much the same size.  I ended up with 16 total.

Breading station.  I did flour, egg then the panko style biscuit crumbs.

Breaded and ready to fry.

Finished.

Served with salt crusted baked potatoes (and those who don’t have to drink their veg had some kind of broccoli mixed veg concoction).  These were excellent. Even the crab hater in the group ate one.  🙂  As you can see the panko style crumbs crisped up perfectly.  They were super crunchy on the outside and then soft and crab-y on the inside.

I made a dipping sauce of equal parts mayo and sour cream plus some crab boil (the kind in the little bag not the box).  That Zatarain’s Crab Boil makes the best Cajun seasoning and a little goes a long way. This is how I tested it out to get my ratios…just a little bit on a plate at a time before mixing up a bigger batch.

That’s all for this week.

Happy Easter if you celebrate or happy weekend if you don’t. 🙂

I’ll see you soon.  🙂

 

 

 

 

Biscuits and Crumbs

Hey, y’all. 🙂

Happy Friday.

Me lately. 🙁

Did y’all have a good spring break?

Did some baking this week.  It’s never a good sign when you get all your dry ingredients measured out and then something falls off a shelf and into said dry ingredients bowl sending flour all over the place. That recipe turned out awful.

 😉

Got my new Hill merch. I feel the need to clarify that I’m not channeling Meme and planning to wear it with that stripedey skirt under it 😉 I just forgot to crop it out. Anyway the first time I washed it the color on that one spot of the logo washed completely off.  I didn’t think they’d do anything since I’d already washed it but I sent them the pic and they’re sending me another one.

Got another load of gfjules flour. 🙂

This week’s human garbage? Joe Osborn. Watched this docu about The Carpenters.  I have some younger readers so The Carpenters were a big deal brother / sister duo in the 70’s and early 80’s…before the sister, Karen died of anorexia.  This docu was filmed in 1997 and is horrible picture quality but is the story of their career.  This Joe @ss__ was talking about the first time he heard Karen sing in the studio after she’d played the trumped and he said “forget the trumpet this chubby girl can sing”.  OK so it’s the late 60’s and he’s an @ss__ that’s one thing but again this was filmed in the late 90’s and 14 years after the women he’s talking about STARVED herself to DEATH to look thin.  Seriously you’re such garbage you can’t even fake acting like a decent human being for the docu?

🙂

Now about that baking…

2 cups gfjules flour, 3 tsp baking powder, 1/2 tsp salt, 2 tbsp sugar, 4 tbsp chunked up cold butter.

1 cup buttermilk.

Mixed up. Should look messy.

Pressed together in Saran and into the icebox overnight.

Rolled and folded 4 times til the butter is all incorporated and the dough is silky smooth. No cool rest between rolls and folds.  I only did the finger press thing to show how soft the dough is.

Back into the icebox for several hours.

Then I rolled it out and made the flakiest layered biscuits.  It was a dream to work with.  I used one for a little cheeseburger slider.  Everyone else ate theirs breakfast style.  Then…

I took the rest of them and made panko style bread crumbs…they’re in the bag on the left.  The bag on the right is regular crumbs made from old bread.

I needed some bread crumbs for a recipe I’ll post next week and I had the idea of making layer style biscuits so I could separate the layers, dry them, then get a thicker crumb when pulsed.  I remembered one of my Meme’s biscuit recipes and tried it out gluten – free.  Loved it.  I also made a batch for the freezer where I didn’t do all the rolling.  I just grated the butter into the flour, mixed it all up then rolled out a little piece of dough for a tester to see how it would taste. It was delish too…but of course had no layers…and a lot less work.  I’ll try to remember to post pics whenever I bake the freezer dough.

Ok that’s all for today. Y’all have a great weekend and I’ll see you soon. 🙂