This is a park I pass all the time. It looks like a lake. There’s also a section that’s for pets and the water was so high it washed all the chairs and toys up against a fence.
Good thoughts for everybody suffering from all the floods in the area.
Since we last met…
Well first…
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Ok now that we’ve gotten that out of the way…
Do y’all remember how much I’ve raved about the InstaPot?
I used the InstaPot to make a batch of pintos. This was another pressure cooker hit. Perfect soft creamy beans in about and hour (and a half if you add in the prep time and the time it takes for the pot to pressure up and then down at that end.)
Memorial Day eats.
Celiac smores. 🙂 I mean really? What’s the point of the graham cracker anyway? 😉
Albuquerque’s pot fell off and broke. Pioneer Woman coffee mug to the rescue. This particular mug couldn’t match my kitchen more if it tried.
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Now about that blueberry treat. 🙂
Do y’all have some summer fruit you’ve been trying to figure out how to use up?
Meet your solution. 🙂
1 cup softened butter. 1 1/4 cup sugar. Beaten for about 4 minutes.
Add vanilla. 2 eggs. 8oz soft cream cheese.
Beat til smooth.
Add 3 cups flour. I used gfjules of course but this is just a regular recipe and I didn’t adjust anything at all. Just swapped out the flour. 1 heaping tsp baking powder. 1 heaping tsp baking soda. 1/4 cup plus 3 tbsp milk. Beat til combined.
Spread half of mixture into a 9 X 13 pan.
Cover with 1 – 2 cups blueberries.
Top with rest of batter. It’s kind of thick. Spray your spatula with some Pam to help it spread more easily.
Pour 6 tbsp melted butter over batter. THEN (I didn’t get a pic of this but) mix together 3/4 cup sugar, 1/4 cup flour and cinnamon to taste. Then sprinkle it over the butter. Spread it around so the sugar / flour mixture soaks up the butter but do it gently so it doesn’t start mixing into the batter. You want it to remain it’s own layer so it bakes up kind crispy on top.
Bake at 350* for 35 – 45 minutes. It took 35 minutes in my convection oven.
This is a kinda step-y recipe but trust me it’s worth the work. 🙂
The whole thing was good but the cake part? I already have plans to try it as something completely different. I’ll share if it turns out. 🙂
I haven’t forgotten about this space. I just figure nobody wants to hear about pain after pain and health issue after issue all the time.
Plus I told y’all a while back I’m working on a project right now and it’s taking up so much of my focus. I’m actually having a lot of fun with it and will probably share here at some point but it’s too early right now.
🙂
So…I’ve cooked a few thing since the last time we met.
Now this first thing will probably freak some of y’all out so just move on to the next one. 😉
So a few years ago I was watching Chopped on the Food network and if you’re not familiar with that show they give the contestants all kinds of weird ingredients and they have to turn it into something good. On this one episode they gave them puffy Cheetos and one of the contestants used them as ‘fish stick’ breading. I’d always wanted to try that.
A couple weeks ago I had 2 mahi fillets left over and a couple handfuls of Cheetos left in a bag and decided it was sign and to give it a try.
Again I know this freaking some of y’all out but I have to say…I’m gonna do this again. It was pretty good. 🙂
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Next up…
Posting this one just to say Barilla is without question the best gluten – free pasta I’ve had. Even the non-celiacs in the house are eating this with zero complaints. What I love the most about this brand is that it doesn’t break down in the boiling water or become one big sticky clumpy mess. I’ve tried spaghetti, elbow and penne. They all held up perfectly.
We wouldn’t need bathroom laws if all these intollerant, hateful, @ssholes would stop raising equally intollerant, hateful @sshole kids.
On the same topic…human garbage for this week’s post = did y’all read this story about the human garbage in Dallas who followed the born and living life as her FEMALE birth gender lesbian into the women’s restroom just because she didn’t look / wasn’t dressed like a girl?
I truly hope there’s a special place in hell for all y’all coming out of the woodwork in support of these hate fueled bills.
On a side note…I pixied my hair the other day. I hope none of these @ssholes mistake me for a non-female.
On second thought…bring it on. I’ve been needing some Gucci retail therapy and trust me…you’ll be buying when I get done with you. 😉
More cooking…
Y’all remember how I ordered a bunch of gfJules mixes a while back? Well Papa B loves the muffins. He asked me if I’d make him a batch and I didn’t have any bananas or blueberries or apple sauce (all options for the recipe she includes with the mix) so I pureed up this can of Caramel Apple pie filling and used the required amount it in place of apple sauce. It worked perfectly.
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Ok this is the main baking I want to share today…
Dry ingredients.
Liquid ingredients.
Mix dry and wet til combined. Then throw in butter and ‘knead’ for 5 minutes.
It’ll look like this.
Divide. Cover and rise til doubled.
Bake and eat. 🙂
If you followed the old blog or know me in real life you know one of my favorite homemade breads ever is Water Roux bread. I’d made it so many times pre-celiac and then made it several times gluten – free with Cup4Cup. It was one of the few things I hadn’t tried yet with gfJules. Well that changed last week. I used my regular recipe just using gfJules in place of flour and I also added some of that gluten – free dough enhancer I wrote about last time.
The verdict?
This is the best gluten – free bread ever. Period. Period. 😉
If you have gfJules flour try this. You won’t be sorry. 🙂 Even though I don’t normally put full recipes on here I’m actually going to stick the recipe at the end of this post…after the music. Seriously. Try it. 🙂
Ok that’s all for today. Hope y’all are doing well / have a great week and I’ll see you soon. 🙂
Water Roux Bread
for the roux:
6 oz Milk
1 1/2 oz Flour
Combine the milk and flour and cook over low to medium heat til it’s pudding consistency. Let it cool to about 100*.
While it’s cooling measure the rest of the dry ingredients into mixing bowl.
6 oz Milk
16 oz Flour
2 tbsp Sugar
1 1/2 tsp Yeast
1 1/2 tsp Salt
4 tbsp Soft Butter
Heat up the remaining milk.
Then add it plus roux to dry ingredients.
Mix to combine. It’ll look messy and way too thick. DON’T try to ‘fix’ it by adding liquid.
Trust me. Trust the process. 🙂
Now throw your softened butter into the bowl and start ‘kneading’ til smooth. 5 minutes.
Portion dough into pans and let rise til doubled.
When they’re ready to bake place them in a COLD oven.
Close the door and turn the oven to 350* and bake til brown and sounds hollow when tapped on bottom.
It took these small loaves about 30 minutes in my convection oven.
Full loaves take a good hour. I don’t have great luck with full loaves of gluten – free bread so I usually do smaller loaves.
It’s been a little while 🙁 so I’m just gonna jump in here.
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So I did a little cooking this week.
Up first was some gluten – free dough / bread I needed for garlic toast. Of course I used gfjules flour and I tried out this Authentic Foods gluten – free dough enhancer. I’ve only used it once but based on these results I’m a big fan. Normally for my kitchen conditions I need to bake gluten – free bread in a pan for the support. I did this loaf free form and it held up better than ever. It has ginger as an ingredient and I was a little worried you’d be able to taste it but this had no added taste at all.
Next up…
Individual shrimp lasagna. I used Heartland gluten – free lasagna noodles.
And this was the best thing I’ve made in ages. I did most of it with an alfredo based sauce but I also did some with a rosa style sauce…alfredo sauce with a tiny bit of tomato sauce mixed in. I used the bread to make garlic toast to go along with this meal.
While I was making the lasagna I decided to make a small pan of something I’d seen floating around for a while and always wanted to try but didn’t want to waste the ingredients on a full pan incase it was gross…bubble up.
I held back enough dough to make 7 little balls. Put a small layer of rosa sauce in the bottom of the pan. Scattered the dough balls.
Topped with shrimp.
Then more rosa sauce.
Then baked at 350* for about 30 minutes then topped with mozz and baked til bubble-y. We all agreed this is a keeper and well worth the ingredients for a full pan. I was worried about the dough being weird when baked this way but it was perfect. The bottoms were kinda crispy while the tops absorbed the sauce and were really soft and delish. The original recipe calls for spaghetti sauce and that’s how I’ll make the next pan.
Way to go, y’all.
This made me smile. The couple got married and their wedding party dressed in rainbow suits. 🙂
I don’t have much else to share this week so I’ll close with this…
Happy Mother’s Day to the best Mom a girl and her sister could have. 🙂 You’re the very best of the best and I love you. 🙂
We’re doing Mother’s day today and I made a treat I hope to share next week. Fingers crossed it turned out blog worthy. 🙂
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.
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. 🙂
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.
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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.
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