Christmas Eve pano

December 24, 2009

Christmas Eve was a nice winter day - it was a nice temperature although kind of a dull and overcast day.

Making mini black and whites

When I was preparing to make the biscotti, I decided I wanted to make a festive cookie, but something that's a little different from the usual Christmas fare. I found a recipe for a minature version of something called "black and whites", the description read: This is a miniature version of a New York favorite — a cakey cookie with sweet half-moons of vanilla and chocolate icing. The usual version are 2 1/2 inches or larger in diameter, which is why these cookies are called "mini".

This is the mixer doing all the hard work, mixing the ingredients up. After I mixed it all up, I realized that I forgot to put in the baking soda - oops! So I kept the mixer going and sprinkled the baking soda in so it would get mixed in well.

After you bake the cookies, you turn them over and ice the bottoms, which is flat so the icing doesn't slide off.

These are the cookies after I iced them. I wasn't able to do a very good job icing the cookies because the icing was a bit too thick. The instructions said to ice the cookies with an offset spatula - I didn't have one of those so I just used a spoon. Maybe the offset spatula would have made it easier to ice them, I don't know.

This was the photo of the cookies that accompanied the recipe. They look way way nicer than my version - they are rounder (even though I used the freezer bag as a pastry bag trick to 'pipe' out the cookie mixture on the tray) and the icing is much smoother and more even.

Overall, I would have to give this recipe a D because it is so very very time consuming and the result isn't that esthetically appealing. I don't plan on making this recipe again.

Edit: You can find the recipe for these cookies at epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/Mini-Black-and-White-Cookies-233293

Making Parmesan and Black Pepper Biscotti

So I decided to try a new recipe... Parmesan and Black Pepper Biscotti. Comments on the recipe suggested that adding some chopped fresh rosemary was a nice addition. So this is what I set out to do.

First, the parmesan. The recipe suggested using the King of Cheeses - Parmigiano Reggiano. I never cared much for the usual Parmesan cheeses, like the bland grated Parmesan that Kraft pushes, but Parmigiano Regginao is very different - it is delightful, with a nice sharp taste. The downside is that this is an expensive cheese, $39/kg at most grocery stores but can be purchased at a big box store for $29/kg and is sometimes even on sale (like when I purchased it).

Once you have the grated Parmesan cheese, you add the coarsely ground black peppercorns to the flour and baking powder and mix it in. I used Freda's coffee grinder for grinding spices once before, but it's not recommended to do that if you're grinding pepper. So I found a coffee grinder to grind the peppercorns, it cost me just over $7, so now I don't need to worry about contaminating the coffee grinder with other flavours.

The recipe didn't call for rosemary, but commenters on the recipe suggested it. So I chopped up some fresh rosemary and mixed it into the flour mixture. Then I mixed the butter in with the flour.

The next step was to whisk the eggs with the milk, and then add it to the flour mixture, stirring it with a fork to make a soft dough. I thought this would be hard to do, but it was quite easy.


The next step is to form the dough into four "logs" on ungreased cookie sheets. Biscotti normally calls for putting it on parchment paper, so I was going to do that but, as luck would have it, there was only a short piece left for one cookie sheet. Then you whisk up the last egg and brush that on top of the logs, and then sprinkle the remaining parmesan cheese and black pepper on top.

The logs are baked in a 350 oven for about 30 minutes. Take them out of the oven and let them cool for 10 minutes, and then cut the logs diagonally and put them back on the cookie sheet for the second baking for 35-45 minutes at 300, turning them over once.

This is the biscotti after the second baking, and when they are cooling on the rack.

I've never been a big fan of biscotti, because they are usually so hard even after dunking into your coffee. Traditionally, biscotti is made with almonds, so that's another reason that I haven't been a big fan of them. Unlike the dessert-type of biscotti, these savoury biscotti have a slightly crumbly texture and, I have to say, are truly wonderful and were a hit with everyone who tried them.

The recipe wasn't difficult to make and it turned out quite well and it was not difficult to make them look very esthetically appealing.

Overall, I would give this recipe an A+ for ease of making and also for the results. Yummy!

You can find the recipe at epicurious.com: www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/Parmesan-Black-Pepper-Biscotti-236698

Fixed already!!!

I just posted about the Ooops! that I did when cleaning paint off the cupboard door. The cabinet maker came on Friday to pick up the door, resprayed it, and returned it today to reinstall it. Wow - that was quick and there is no remaining sign of the Ooops which is really awesome.

A mixed bag...

Pano - Dec 18, 2009
I seem to have been on a roll this week, making lots of blog updates and panorama photos, and baking too. So this blog entry is more of the same. Tawny was enjoying the scenery on Friday when we took our (short) walk - it was quite cold (-26C overnight) but the wind made it quite miserable. We were walking with the wind on the way out, but when we turned to face the wind when turned around to head home. It was so cold that we ended up running the last 500 feet home. Thank goodness I had on the really nice thick tocque that my mum knitted for me a few years ago. That is my favourite tocque for very cold or inclement weather because it is long enough that I can pull it right down over my ears.

Uh-oh.... When I was baking a few days ago, I had the cupboard door above the fridge open, and then I opened the pantry door. That ended up leaving a scraping of paint on the cupboard door. So I thought I would use the Magic Eraser to get the paint off the door. Wow - that worked really well I thought, after I finished with the Magic Eraser. Then the next day I noticed that it left a dull patch on the door - Uh Oh!!! The cabinet guy came today to pick up the door to respray it, to restore the finish to the even lustre.

And finally, to cap off this blog post, I decided to make another batch of the molasses crinkles (that I made the other day). But this time, instead of the molasses, I put in some of the left over syrup from the candied ginger that I made. I made a double batch which is why the bowl is so full here. I am happy to report that these cookies (and I am calling the ginger crinkles, because there is no molasses in them) passed the Freda taste test!!

Lucky coyote!!!

Imagine you are a coyote. Imagine you are a coyote running across a highway in Colorado, and get hit by a van going 75 mph. Now imagine spending eight hours wedged behind the bumper of that Honda, traveling 600 miles and ending up in California, and surviving with a few scrapes and scratches. I think that is the definition of LUCKY!!

You can read the full story at http://www.snopes.com/photos/animals/luckycoyote.asp.

Window replacement #5

This is Jeff, who came to replace the window pane with Andrew (not shown). This window has been a real pain, literally, as this is the fourth replacement (fifth piece of glass).

Because the window was cracked, the seal was broken. This meant the window was essentially a single pane unit. As a result, the condensation on the inside of the glass froze, and of course this meant any water in the drainage channels in the window froze as well. The bottom piece of moulding that holds the glass in was frozen to the frame, and unfortunately broke when Jeff was trying to remove it. You can see all the ice that they scraped off the bottom of the window frame in preparation for installing the replacement glass.

This is the window after the new pane was installed. No cracks yet - cross your fingers! I asked Steve (the owner of the window company) what would be different this time, so that the window would break again. He said that Fenergic, the window manufacturer, said to put a bead of silicone on the glass. To me, that just doesn't make sense because there must be something that is putting pressure on the glass and causing it to fail. That was also Steve's idea, because he asked Jeff to take a look at anything that might potentially be causing the glass failure.

When Jeff was cleaning out the ice, he noticed that there was a very small nub of plastic sticking out at each of the bottom corners. That little bit would have only been protruding about 1, or maybe 2m mm. Since added pressure could cause the glass to fail, Jeff got out his knife and shaved the pieces off. This photo is a macro zoom of the tiny particles of plastic shaved off the bottom corners of the frame. For comparison, you can see a couple of Taz hairs in the photo also :). Hopefully that will be it and there won't be any more glass failures...

Candied ginger - day 6

Yes, I know what you are thinking - why is there a day 6 for this 5 day recipe? Well, I think I covered that yesterday when I said I didn't read the recipe properly.

The ginger was too sticky yesterday , when I put it on the racks, to do anything with it. I left it overnight and today I used two forks to separate the large chunks of ginger into small chunks, or maybe I should just say smaller chunks. It was too difficult with the stickiness of the syrup on the ginger to separate the chunks into individual pieces. This part was quite time consuming, because of the stickiness.

This is what the ginger looked like after I coated the pieces in granulated sugar and put it into a container. I fear the ginger will all congeal into a giant block, as the sugar gets absorbed into the syrup...

Assessment of the ginger: From a taste perspective, I think my first attempt at the recipe was a success, because the ginger is nice and tasty with some good heat in it. From an aesthetic perspective, I don't think I did so well because the ginger is all stuck together in clumps, and not in nice individual pieces like when my mum makes it. Also, the syrup is so very thick - even thicker than molasses - so I am yet not sure what I can use it for.

We are finally receiving the benefit (haha!!) of the extreme cold weather that plagued western Canada over the past week. It was -20C and is supposed to get to -24C overnight. This means that our outdoor freezer (nature's freezer) is having no problem preserving some of the excess soup that I made last week. Here's a photo showing our outdoor freezer. Haha.

Taz feels the cold a lot more than Tawny, partly because he has less insulation (fat) on his body, and partly because he doesn't have a thick fur coat like Tawny does. Freda covered him up when she let him in this evening, and he looked so cute all covered in a towel!

Candied Ginger - day 5

Okay, so I'm thinking that I didn't read the recipe properly yesterday. Or else I did something wrong, like overcooking the ginger. The ginger and syrup was one big lump of stuff, so it would have taken a month of Sundays to "drain the ginger". So I reheated the saucepan a bit, and added a little bit of water to thin the syrup.

Once the syrup was thin enough to actually remove the ginger and lemon, I followed the directions and set out the bits of ginger and lemon on a rack. The bits of ginger were actually more like clumps of ginger... I tasted a piece and it was deliciously hot!

Yesterday I said I didn't think I had 5 cups of anything, although the recipe said it makes 5 cups. I poured the syrup into a measuring cup and I got almost exactly two cups. It is very sweet and quite gingery. I took this photo after the syrup had cooled to room temperature, so you can can see how thick it is.. :)

Canton Candied Ginger
Day 5:

• Drain the ginger from day 4 cooking.
• Reserve the syrup for sauces or gingerbread.
• Put the ginger on a rack over a tray.
• Leave uncovered overnight.
• The next day, (day 5), roll the ginger in granulated sugar.
• Store in tightly covered glass jars.

Rereading this section, it now seems that I should have drained the ginger at the end of day 4. Oh well, will have to see how it turns out.

Candied Ginger - day 4

This is day 4 of the recipe for making Canton Candied Ginger.

Canton Candied Ginger
Day 4:

• Bring to a boil and cook.
• When the mixture drops heavily from the side of the spoon, and ginger is translucent, pour into sterile wide mouthed jars. Seal.
• Makes 5 cups.

Wow - I must have done something wrong because I definitely don't have 5 cups of anything. Maybe I didn't have enough ginger to start with, I don't know. Also, the mixture kept bubbling up like this when it was cooking today. I was stirring it constantly and it was like this for the entire time. I think I may have overcooked it somewhat, maybe...