Roundup

This is a quick recap of items I baked but didn't get a chance to blog about.

1. Strawberry Clafouti - Fail
I had strawberries and needed to make something for lunch at church.  It looked great right after it was cooked, but once transported, it was ugly. Will have to try again with Cherries (what the recipe calls for).



2. Round Scone - Fail

Not sure if it's the fact that I tried to bake these early in the morning with two kids crying for my attention, but they were hard.  The taste was so so, but I didn't like that they didn't flake up like I wanted.  What saved the day was the strawberry jelly that I had made after picking twelve pounds of strawberries from the orchard.

 

 

3. Semi Homemade Graduation Cupcake - Success

I wanted to make something unique for my nephew's graduation and came upon a recipe from "Cake Mix Magic" magazine that called for using cake mix to make these cupcakes.  Getting the colors to match his schools' was a bit hard since I had never played with coloring, but it was fun to see how they turned out.  Everyone loved them. I would definitely make them again.

 

 

 

4. Semi Homemade Strawberry Shortcake - Success

Yes I know two successes from cake mix, but it was so easy to work with.  I didn't have my camera, so the phone did the job. Picture does this cake no justice. It was topped with homemade whip cream and fresh picked strawberries. Can you tell it's strawberry season? LOL

Strawberry Scones

Tonight I decided to use some of the many strawberries we purchased on sale.  I wanted scones for breakfast, so adding strawberries was only natural.

I love the simplicity of this recipe and how quick it was for me to make, however, I hated the wetness of it.  I'm not sure if I over mixed it or not but it looks really good.  It only called for three tablespoon of sugar, I thought that was good because it will offset the sugar from the strawberries.  What I forgot was, the strawberries are not that sweet. SO the scones have a bit of a tart taste to them.

Hubby and his ever funny comments, walked into the kitchen and said "my those are some big scones, I'm sure the green giant will be happy if he was here. Oh Oh Oh, she hooked me up!" LOL! Got to love him.

They do look big huh?

What I didn't tell him was that I had already cut them, but was still baking in a circle.

SOOOO good!

I'm back and eating pizzas!!!!!

I feel like it’s being an eternity since I’ve been on here.  Life has gotten busy, and I have slacked off a bit on the baking, but I hope to pick it up again soon.  I started baking not only because of some dream of making the perfect bread, but also for health and economical reasons.  My family has a better selection for breakfast and it saves us money.

In the process, we’ve designated Fridays as “pizza night”.  This past Friday was really busy and with two very tired kids, I opted out of making pizzas.  We decided to do it on Sunday instead. 

What a great dinner that was, it gave me time to search the web for easy yeast recipe and I didn’t feel rushed to make it and have the kids in bed at a reasonable time.

I decided to use the recipe that comes on the back of the Fleishmann’s pizza dough yeast packet.

 

Ann Kroeger’s recipe was great! I did one cup wheat/white, the mixture was easy to make by hand and the dough was nice and fluffy.  I set the oven at 375 and cooked for 10-15 mins.  I think next time; I’ll set the oven at a higher temp and cook for the same amount of time.  It wasn’t brown enough to hubby’s liking, and I ha v e to agree that it could have gone a little longer/higher.

 

 

The last time I used the packet instruction, it had a bland taste. I was wondering why until I realized that I forgot to add salt to the mixture.  I’m not sure if that’s a rookie mistake or if I was just rushing.  This time around, I decided to make a basil crust, I added maybe two tablespoon of dried basil to the mix AND I did not forget to add the salt.

The result was great, the crust was nice and soft the basil g  e it extra flavor. I wonder how it will work if I used fresh basil?  Again, I should have left this to cook a while longer, but the cheese was bubbling so much, I thought it would burn.

 Yummmmm

Oh and both make great leftovers. Since both didn’t cook till super brown, warming them up in the oven provides another day’s dinner. Add salad and viola!!