WHO MAKES HOME MADE BREAD, COOKIES, HARD ROOLS ECT. ???

[deerminator]

Plus, you have to like a guy that shows you verying ways of making beef jerky, including laying it out on cheap furnance filters that you strap on to a box fan with bungee cords. Or builds a smoker out of a hot plate with a circular cake pan on top inside a terracotta pot and lid. He just stuck a weber grill grate inside the latter to smoke the meat on.

[delcecchi]

I liked the smoker made out of a cardboard box....

[delcecchi]

To those folks who have kitchen aide mixers, Amazon has the grinder attachment for $33 and the sausage stuffer for 7. List for the FGA is 64.99, which is pretty fictitious but going rate seems close to 50.

[Agent Andy]

I have been making bread for years and have been getting good at it. A year ago while in Canada fishing on Lower Manitou the owner of the resort brought us a loaf of fresh bread. I got the recipe and tried to make it and it didn't get as soft as hers, it came out kind of heavy. My next trip she asked about the flour I used. It turns out she uses Canadian flour made by Rogers. I stopped on the way back in Ft. Francis and bought some. t made a world of difference. My suggestion is to try this flour.

[reinhard1]

thanks for the tip. could you make the recipe available to us here? thanks. good luck.

[reinhard1]

PINEAPPLE POUND CAKE

1 cup butter, softened

1/2 vegetable shortening

3 cups granulated sugar

5 eggs

3 cups all purpose flour

1/2 tsp baking powder

1 cup milk

1 cup candied pineapple [about 8 ounces]

1/2 cup chopped walnuts

1 tsp vanilla extract

Glaze:

1/2 cup pineapple jam or preserves

2 tbls lemon juice

for the cake, preheat oven to 325 degrees. in a large bowl, cream butter, shortening, and sugar until fluffy. add eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition. in a medium bowl, sift together flour and baking powder. add dry ingredients alternately with milk to creamed mixture. stir in pineapple, walnuts, and vanilla. spoon batter into a greased and floured 10 inch tube pan. bake 1 hour 35 min to 1 hour 40 min or until a toothpick inserted in center of cake comes out clean. cool in pan 10 min remove from pan and cool completely on a wire rack.

for glaze, combine jam and lemon juice in a small saucepan. stirring constantly, cook over low heat until jam melts. spread over top of cake. allow glaze to cool completely. store in an airtight container. good luck.

[Agent Andy]

I will post tomarrow 12/23.

[fishinchicks]

For the first time ever, I made caramels last night. Someone should have warned me this would be a three hour project...I was up until 1:30 am stirring stirring stirring.

I am so disappointed. They are way too hard. The recipe said to cook to the hard ball stage, which is what I did. Any other caramel makers care to share their tips?

[reinhard1]

well i have never made caramels. i found this recipe. it said this took about an hour. so maby you can look at this one and see if they did anything different than you did. hope it helps some.

1 cup butter

1 pound light brown sugar

1 14 oz can sweetened condensed milk

1 cup light corn syrup

1 pinch of salt

1 1/2 tsp vanilla extract

in a heavy bottomed saucepan over medium heat, combine the butter, brown sugar, sweetened condensed milk, corn syrup and salt. bring to a boil, stirring constantly. heat to between 234 and 240 deg or until a small amount of syrup dropped into cold water forms a soft ball that flattens when removed from the water and placed on a flat surface. cook for 2 min at that tem. remove from the heat and stir in vanilla. meanwhile, butter a 9by13 in baking pan. when the caramel is ready, pour into the buttered pan. allow to cool completely at room temp. remove from the pan and cut into squares using scissors. wrap individual pieces in waxed paper or celophane. good luck.

[fishinchicks]

Thanks, reinhard.

I looked at other recipes online, and they all said firm ball stage (240-245 degrees). So, apparently when the recipe I received was written down from their mom's recipe, they put the wrong end stage (hardball).

Betty Crocker's HSOforum said their caramels with a similar ingredient list takes 20 minutes to prepare, and 2 hours 55 minutes of cooking time.

I'll give these another go around Valentine's day, and see if I have better luck. Too much going on right now to try them again this week. (Hosting a family for supper tonight, then hosting hubby's family from the 26th - 28th and my family from the 29th to the 2nd. We leave the 2nd for Hawaii...uff da!)

[reinhard1]

have a great trip to the islands, this is a busy time of year for sure. have a blessed Christmas. good luck.

[Agent Andy]

Bread recipe

4 cups luke warm water, mix with 3 packages of yeast in large bowl.

Mix 8 cups flour, 3/4 cup sugar and 3 tbls salt. Add to yeast water.

Add 4 tbls lemon juice & 3&1/2 cups warm water, mix well.

Add 1/3 cup crisco to flour mixture (I beat with mixer before adding anything else).

Add 9 cups flour. you may have to add more flour till it feels right.

Knead for about 10 minutes. let reise to twice the size. Punch down and rise again. Separate into 5 grease pans and poke holes with a fork(about 8 pokes).Let rise

Bake 375 for 25 mts. After about 15 mts check. If you want the crust softer you may wish to cover the loaves with foil.

Good luck.

As I mentioned, you can't beat Canadian flour.

[reinhard1]

thanks Andy, we all appreciate the recipe. i will check on the Canadian flour brand you mentioned. good luck.

[Agent Andy]

My cousins wife makes donuts and fries in lard like the old days. I mentioned that I can't eat them because of a low fat diet. She has boiling water on the stove and quickly dunks them in boiling water to rinse the grease off. Try it, it works and the donuts taste the same and are better for you.

She will have an inch of grease in the water when she is done.

[delcecchi]

Hard ball stage is like hard candy. You want soft ball.

You need to find the right recipe. Sorry I can't help with that.

You shouldn't have been stirring however. Most caramel recipes I see say to not stir since it leads to crystallization.

[reinhard1]

never thought of that. do the donuts and fries loose their texture at all? i'm assuming it is a quick dunk in the water? thanks good luck.

[fishinchicks]

del - the recipes I have seen today (when I was searching for exactly what went wrong) all call for constant stirring. I even calibrated my candy thermometer today. I think it would have gone better had I been more awake.

Here is the recipe I used. The caramels are delicious, just a little hard. (I changed the recipe to the correct stage on the candy thermometer.)

3 pints of cream

4 cups sugar

2 cups light Karo syrup

1 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon vanilla

Mix sugar, Karo syrup, salt and 1 pint of the cream together in a heavy pan. Slowly cook on medium low, stirring continuously, to the softball stage on the thermometer. Add a 2nd pint of cream and cook again to the softball stage. Add the 3rd pint of cream and cook to the firmball stage. Remember to stir continuously especially near the end. When it hits firmball stage, remove from heat and add the vanilla.

Lay a sheet of tin foil in a pan - her mom uses an old pan that is a little bigger than a 9x13 but smaller than a jellyroll pan. She puts butter on the foil and then pours the mixture in. She cools the caramels and cuts and wraps them in cut up pieces of wax paper.

[delcecchi]

That is interesting, I wonder where the carmelization takes place. The recipes I have seen called for starting with sugar and cooking it until it changes color, then adding the cream and cooking to the appropriate stage.

I have made Caramel by boiling an unopened can of eagle brand type sweetened condensed milk for like 3 hours. As long as it stays submerged it won't blow up.

Your recipe works so that is the important thing. Learn something every day.

[Agent Andy]

Just a quick dunk in boiling water, no loss of flavor. I should point out that theae are the old fashion type cake donuts, not raised.

[fishinchicks]

That is interesting, I wonder where the carmelization takes place. The recipes I have seen called for starting with sugar and cooking it until it changes color, then adding the cream and cooking to the appropriate stage.

You're right - that type of caramel you wouldn't stir. The addition of the Karo Syrup is the difference, I believe. I seem to remember Alton Brown explaining the science of it...now I want to search that out.

[delcecchi]

Corn syrup is a different sugar than cane/beet sugar which is sucrose. So the crystallization is more difficult due to the mixture of molecules.

If you are really interested in this stuff Harold McGee has written a couple of books that you might like. Also shirley o. corriher has a couple of books "cookwise" and a new one, "bakewise" that I like. She used to be on alton brown's tv show Good Eats sometimes.

[fishinchicks]

Ooh! Thanks for the book recommendations. I love cookbooks, especially ones dedicated to one style of eats.

[delcecchi]

The harold mcGee books aren't cookbooks. More food science. But the cookwise/bakewise are great.

[fishinchicks]

I have Alton Brown's "Gear", and Christopher Kimball's "The Kitchen Detective". Neither of these are typical cookbooks, but more the science behind good cooking. I read these types of books like some read novels.

[reinhard1]

talking about good books my wife bought me something that has helped me be more creative. the book is called "The Flavor Bible" by Karen Page and Andrew Dorneburg. it's a guide on spices, tastes, what spices go with what foods and other spices. it is more like a textbook and goes into food in depth. large hardcover book of about 380 pages. the posts above made me dig it out of my shelf and i'm keeping it handy, to start digging into it again. good luck.