Bread Bowls

This recipe is from last week, when it was colder and not 80° like it is right now. Stupid weather. I wanted Panera so badly, but there isn't one anywhere around us. So, I decided to make my own bread bowls to put some soup in. I used this recipe and adjusted it to make 4 servings.

Ingredients:

1 package active dry yeast

1 & 1/4 c warm water

1 tsp honey

1 tsp salt

1 tbsp vegetable oil

3 & 1/2 cups flour

1 egg

1 tsp water

Directions:
1. Put the yeast, honey and warm water in a bowl. Let sit for 10 minutes until it is creamy and foamy.

Before and After

 2. Add the salt, oil and 2 cups of flour to the bowl. Add in the remaining flour 1/2 cup at a time, mixing well.
3. When the dough has come together, put the mixer on high and let in knead for 6 minutes.

This is what it should look like once done.

4. Lightly oil the bowl and dough.

All lubed up.

5.Cover the bowl with a damp cloth and let rise for about 40 minutes.

6. After the dough has doubled in size, take it out and divide into 4 equal portions. Shape them into round loaves and place them on lightly greased baking sheets. Cover with the damp cloth and let rise again for about 35 minutes.

7. Preheat oven to 400°.
8. Beat together egg and water to make an egg wash. Brush the loaves with the wash.
9. Bake the loaves for 15 minutes. Brush with egg wash again and put back in the oven to bake for 10-15 more minutes until golden brown.

Before the second egg wash

10. Take out and cool on wire racks.

All yummy and brown!

11. To make bowls, cut off the tops of loaves and scoop out the middle to create a bowl shape. 

Next time, I will probably just make two larger bowls, because the bowls were pretty small and didn't hold a lot of soup. They were very tasty though, and fairly easy to make. I will definitely be making this recipe again, and would recommend it for an easy bread bowl. 

I made a broccoli-cheddar soup to put in the bread bowls, and I used this recipe, which was amazing. I don't really even like broccoli-cheddar soup, but this one was tasty. The bread bowl worked perfectly and were a great addition to the soup. Overall, an excellent dinner.

Italian Layer Bake

I have a thing for sandwiches. And that thing is that I really like them. I could eat Jimmy John's every day for a week and be very happy with my life. I liked this recipe because it was super easy, and kind of sandwich-y while still feeling like a dinner meal. I used different meats and didn't include the egg layer, because it sounded kind of gross to me.

Ingredients:

1 (8-ounce) container refrigerated crescent rolls

1/4 lb each of:

  Sliced deli turkey

  Sliced deli pepperoni

  Sliced deli genoa salami

  Sliced Provolone cheese

Peperoncini peppers

1 egg, beaten

Directions:

1.Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.

2. Open the crescent roll dough and unroll. Lay 1/2 of the dough in the bottom of and 8x8 inch pan, making sure it connects.

3. Layer the turkey, pepperoni, salami, cheese, and peppers.

I only put the peppers on half because Chris doesn't like it so spicy.

4. Place the other 1/2 of the dough over the layers.Brush the beaten egg over the top of the dough.

5. Cover the pan with tin foil and bake for 20 minutes. Remove foil, and bake an additional 20 to 22 minutes, or until golden and heated through.

6. Let cool 15 to 20 minutes then cut and serve.

Like I said, super easy. I didn't use ham in my recipe, because I don't like ham, but you can use almost  any combination of meats in this. The peperoncini peppers added some nice bite. Some tomatoes would probably be delicious as well. I paired this with a greek salad, and it was a very tasty dinner.

So many yummy layers!

Halloween Door Decoration

I love decorating for the holidays, and Halloween is one of my favorites. I just love the spooky atmosphere. I decided I wanted to make something to hang on my door to make it a little more festive and to cover up the No-Smoking sign that's on it. I originally wanted a wreath, but I found this super cool styrofoam grave at the Dollar Tree in town and knew it could be amazing with just a little more decoration.

Here's what I started with:

The spider on the grave wasn't very distinct, and the whole thing was just kind of plain.

Supplies:

Styrofoam grave

Black fabric roses

Glitter

Gray, white and black paint

Ribbon to hang with

I bought the grave, set of black roses and some glitter paint to do this project. The rest of the paint and the ribbon I already had.

First, I painted the whole grave gray. I just went over it with a foam brush and tried to keep the coat from looking too even.

Next, I painted in all of the spiders black to make them pop a little more. Look at all the new spiders that you couldn't even tell were there before!

Then I went over the spider web in a white pearly paint.

While I waited for the paint to dry, I took the roses and spiders off of the stem and painted the edges with glitter glue. The plastic spiders I completely covered in glitter to make them fancy.

I also went back over the spider web with glitter glue to make it sparkly as well.

Sparkles!

I also went back through and touched up any spots where the paint looked bad.

Fully painted

I added some rhinestone eyes, because I found them in my craft drawer and hot glued on the flowers and hanging ribbon. The roses are on the left, and the flowers on the right are two sets of leaves on top of each other with a rhinestone in the middle.

And it's done! I'm really happy with how it turned out, and it looks great hanging on my door. It's amazing what a little paint can do!

Pumpkin Chip Muffins

I wanted to make pumpkin muffins because it's fall now. Yay! I love this season. I've pretty much become obsessed with pumpkin things, and I've already watched The Nightmare Before Christmas twice. Just this week I bought pumpkin spice bagels, pumpkin spice cream cheese and pumpkin pie yogurt. Obsessed. I found a lot of recipes for pumpkin chocolate chip muffins, but thought white chocolate chips would be better, so I decided to try both. I used this recipe for my base, and then divided it into two and made half with white chocolate chips and half with regular chocolate chips.

Ingredients:

1 2/3 cup flour

1 cup sugar

1 tsp nutmeg

1/2 tsp cloves

1 & 1/2 tsp cinnamon

1 tsp baking soda

1/4 tsp baking powder

1/4 tsp salt

1 cup chocolate chips (1/2 semi-sweet, 1/2 white)

2 large eggs

1 cup canned solid-pack pumpkin

1/2 cup unsalted butter,  melted

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 350ºF. Grease 12 muffin tins or use paper liners.

2. Mix together eggs, pumpkin and butter in a large bowl.

3. Combine dry ingredients (flour, sugar, spices, baking soda, baking powder and salt) and then add to the wet ingredients. Be careful to not overmix.

4. Add in your chocolate chips. This was where I divided the batter and added the chocolate chips, 1/2 cup each.

5. Fill each muffin tin about 2/3 full.

6. Bake for 20 to 25 minutes until toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.

I definitely liked the white chocolate chip/pumpkin combo the best. Regular chocolate chips tasted fine, but the white chocolate kind of reminded me of cool whip on top of pumpkin pie. This recipe was not my favorite muffin recipe though. The muffins were a little dense, but I've never made pumpkin muffins before and they might all be dense, so I will probably try some more recipes soon!

Pear Crisp

I always buy fruit thinking that I'll eat it, and then forget that I have it until it's almost bad. That's what prompted this recipe, because I bought 4 pears, ate one for lunch and then they got lost on my kitchen table behind the other groceries. I found them this morning, kind of mushy and almost bad, and decided to bake something with them. I found a recipe for a pear crisp online, and modified it to use with my three pears.

Ingredients:

3 pears

1 small lemon

1/4 cup granulated sugar

1 & 1/2 tsp cornstarch

1 & 1/2 tsp ground cinnamon

3/4 tsp nutmeg

1/4 cup flour

1/4 cup packed brown sugar

1 & 1/2 tbsp chilled butter, cut into small pieces 

1/4 cup regular oats

I used salted butter because I accidentally bought it instead of unsalted. If you use unsalted butter, add 1/4 tsp salt in with the flour mixture in step 5.

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 375°.

2. Cut up pears however you prefer. I diced them, but you could also slice them and arrange them all fancy.

3. Mix the juice of one lemon in with the pear pieces and toss to coat.

4. Combine granulated sugar, cornstarch, 1 tsp cinnamon and 1/2 tsp nutmeg and add to the pear pieces.

5. Combine flour, 1/2 tsp cinnamon, 1/4 tsp nutmeg, brown sugar and oats. Add the chilled butter and mix until it is a course texture. I don't have a food processor, so the easiest way for me to do this is with my hands. You can also use a fork and do it that way as well.

6. Put pear pieces into a baking dish and sprinkle the flour topping over it.

7. Bake for 40 minutes until the pears are bubbly and soft.

8. Serve with vanilla ice cream, of course.

I think there was a little too much topping for the small amount of pears I had, so I would probably cut everything down by a bit. That makes for awkward measurements though. A little less that 1/4 cup is not very precise. Just eyeball it and hope it turns out ok. That's pretty much what I did for this recipe, so as long as you keep the proportions mostly similar, it should turn out fine! 

Glazed Spice Muffins

These muffins came from this recipe and were supposed to be "Glazed Doughnut Muffins". They sounded delicious, and I was way too lazy to actually go get donuts Sunday morning, so I thought muffins would be the perfect solution. That title was incredibly misleading. What I ended up with were very tasty Glazed Spice Muffins that in no way resembled any sort of doughnut I've ever had. Talk about a disappointment. However, these are still quite good, as long as you aren't expecting doughnut flavor. I'm not bitter or anything.

 Ingredients:

For the Muffins:
1/4 cup butter
1/4 cup vegetable oil
1/2 cup granulated sugar
1/3 cup brown sugar
2 large eggs
1 + 1/2 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp baking soda
3/4 tsp ground nutmeg
1 tsp cinnamon
3/4 tsp salt
1 tsp vanilla extract
2 2/3 cups all-purpose flour
1 cup milk

For the Glaze:
3 tbsp melted butter
1 cup confectioners sugar
3/4 tsp vanilla
2 tbsp hot water

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 425° F and grease 12 muffin cups. I use non-stick spray and spray all up inside the cups, and then rub it in with a paper towel so that there's not little grease puddles in the bottom of the cups.

2. Combine butter, sugars and vegetable oil until smooth. For some reason, when I make muffins, I like to use the hand mixer instead of my stand mixer. I think it's easier to get the consistency right when you do it by hand.

3. Beat in eggs one at a time.

With eggs!

 4. Add in baking powder, baking soda, nutmeg, cinnamon, salt and vanilla and mix it all together.

5. Add in the flour and milk, but not all at once. Alternate between flour and milk, beginning and ending with the flour. I did 1 cup flour, 1/2 cup milk, 1 cup flour, 1/2 cup milk and then the final 2/3 cup flour.

Top left: First cup flour. Top right: 1/2 cup milk. Bottom left: 2nd cup flour. Bottom right: The rest of the milk

Final batter after the last of the flour was added.

6. Scoop the batter into the cups. The easiest way to do this is with an ice-cream scoop. All of the muffins will turn out the same size, which is important when baking them.

7. Bake for 15-17 minutes until a toothpick inserted into the middle comes out clean.

8. While the muffins are cooling, mix up your glaze. To do that, you just put all the ingredients together in a bowl:

And mix:

Super easy.

9. After the muffins are cooled, dip them in the glaze. I put mine on a wire rack, so that the extra glaze would drip off onto the paper towel and not my table.

To dip the muffins, I just turned them upside down and swirled them in the glaze. The glaze then melted down the sides a little bit and settled into all the crack in the muffins. They turned out really pretty.

All glazed up

And that's it! Once I got over the fact that they weren't doughnutty at all, these muffins were actually quite tasty. The glaze hardens up after awhile and makes a nice crust on top of the muffins, while the inside is nice and chewy. They make a wonderful breakfast on a fall morning.

Yummy!