Sushi!

The inevitable has happened. I discovered sushi. I've always thought of raw meat when I've heard sushi mentioned (EW!). Recently I discovered that there exists a form of sushi that does not contain raw meat. I finally had to chance to try my hand and making sushi, and was pleasantly surprised at how delicious it was (unlike other family members who thought it was disgusting ::cough cough:: Jenn ::cough cough::) This is some good stuff! I look forward to experimenting further with the fillings in the future. This time, I just looked over some different recipes online and made my own version of sushi. It's all pretty simple, you just have to find a good method for the sushi rice and the rest is up to your creative genius.

I tossed together some veggies I had on hand (carrots, canned baby corn and parsley) in soy sauce the filling.

Aren't they lovely? Per request, I'll have to try rolling them "inside-out" sometime.

If you're worried no one will like them, then serve them alongside the most amazing chicken ever.

Truffles

I'm going to admit right off that I like making these more than eating them, but that's just me. It's not that they taste bad, it's just that they are simply that much fun to make!

I based mine off The Pioneer Woman's recipe.




You start out by pouring the chocolate into the top of a double broiler (I use a glass bowl on top of a pot of simmering water).



As you can tell, I used chips. (gasp!) Next time I'll have to try it with a bar...


The stars of the show.
Their side-kick, condensed milk.
They melt together to form a nice pile of glop - a.k.a the inside of your truffles.
Now would be a good time to test and make certain they taste right. Decide whether to proceed or just eat it all now.
Ah, yes...I almost forgot to add in the vanilla. Orange extract would probably work as well, but my sister wouldn't let me try it this time. What I did do is mix in some crushed candy canes. It added a nice, crunchy flavor. Sometime I'll have to try adding in some different flavors, like raspberry jam. Mmmmm.
After the filling has been refrigerated (or, in our case, popped in the freezer for 15 minutes. They were in a hurry.) until it is solid enough to roll into balls, you get to drown them in a bowl of melted chocolate (I used milk just to avoid going overboard with the dark chocolate).
It might be a good idea to keep your iPod in your pocket.
Unleash your creative juices and have fun decorating!
The one that's drizzled - that's me. ;-) This is what they look like after a few minute in the fridge.
This is another batch I made yesterday that hardened overnight in the fridge. I used a bag of mixed dark chocolate and mint pieces that were on sale. They came out surprisingly delicious!

Christmas Cinnamon Rolls

At long last, here is the much anticipated post of our annual tradition - Christmas cinnamon rolls! I don't have the recipe in front of me, so for now you shall have to content yourself with pictures.

Every good cook knows you have to start out with some awesome music.


Now on to the recipe. Let's start out with the dough:

Proofing the yeast.

Sprinkling the flour. Gotta love the action shots.

Pouring in the melted butter.

Adding the egg. Yup, camera in one hand, egg in the other. That takes talent.

Sugar. Probably the most you'll put in a single recipe all year through.

Nope, this isn't extra sugar. It's salt. But I'm assuming you knew that already, because you would've looked closely to see if you could tell.

Now mix, mix, mix that dough. This is the part that earns you muscle!

After it's all mixed up, you let it rise. This is what it looks like after rising is complete. Yeast dough - best fragrance ever.

Roll, roll, roll the dough, gently down the...oh, wait. Wrong lyrics.

Getting it to just the right thickness.



Lots of butter to make the sugar stick!

Time to mix up the cinnamon and sugar:

Cinnamon and brown sugar.

Sprinkling cinnamon and sugar.

Spreading it around - you wouldn't want any lonely dough!

Dissecting a cinnamon log.

I think this is where the roll part of cinnamon roll comes in.

Now is when you stick 'em in the fridge to rise overnight. In the morning, you pop them into the oven and they're done in fifteen minutes!

They're almost ready to be introduced to the love of their life...icing.

This is the part that makes a cinnamon roll a cinnamon roll, and not just cinnamon-sugar bread. Say hello to the slightly-orange-flavoured icing.

Mmmmmm.

Go ahead, rub it in.

Lots of sticky, light, sugary delights

There's a reason we only have these once a year.


And for fun, some cute pictures of one of my most adorable kitchen helpers!

Nope, you can't have her.

What a cutie!

The look of innocence. "Who, me? I didn't do anything!"

Lembas

You don't have to be a Tolkien fan to enjoy this light and flaky bread. It is so delicious, I wonder if maybe it is the actual elvish recipe after all. Actually, these are so good that you wouldn't want a small bit to fill your stomach - five or six would do much better.

For a recent dance party, I tripled (or perhaps quadripled) the recipe. It actually works quite well to mix these up the day before, and then cook them right before you plan to eat them. They taste a lot better slightly warm, fresh from the oven, lightly golden brown, no butter. ;-) My only tip would be to check the fridge temperature - apparantly our extra fridge gets a little too cold and the dough slightly froze! They still turned out quite well, though it pushed my cooking behind so where I still was working on baking them when the first guests arrived.

Just a slight warning to any cooks venturing to try this recipe - go ahead and plan on doubling it, for it is highly likely that about half of them will be gone before you can say "Rivendell". I won't say whether it would be due to the cook or cloaked travellers. ;-) Also, the recipe calls for squares, but if you are like me and either run out of time or weary of rolling out dough, I found that golf ball size pieces of dough, flattened out, worked quite well too.

Many thanks to Zachariah for directing me to this recipe, and ending my ignorance of the existance of such a recipe. The original site which listed the recipe I used appears to not be available at this moment, but I did find what appears to be the same recipe on the bottom of this site. Enjoy!

Lembas Bread

2 1/2 cups of flour
1 Tablespoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
8 Tablespoons cold butter
1/3 cup sugar
2/3 cup milk
1/2 teaspoon lemon extract

Preheat over to 425 degrees.

Mix flour, baking powder, and salt in a large bowl. Chop butter into mixture with a pastry cutter or knead in with your fingers until you get a crumbly mixture. Add sugar and mix. Add milk and lemon extract and stir with a fork until dough forms.

Roll the dough out about 1/2 inch thick. Cut out 3 inch squares and transfer to a cookie sheet. Criss-cross each square from corner to corner with a knife. Bake for about 12 minutes or until set and lightly golden. Makes 10 to 12.

Delightful Deviled Eggs

Start out by boiling some eggs. Feel free to arrange them any way you'd like. ;-) How you actually boil them is entirely up to you - everyone has their own method.

Cut your perfectly boiled eggs in half and admire their beautiful colors.

Apologize to the egg whites for stealing their sunshine.

This is what you're going to start out with...

...and this is what it'll look like when you're finished mashing those yolks. At least that's what we're hoping.

Here's an ingredient that'll make these deviled eggs unique. Grab the nearest red bell pepper and mince away to your heart's content.

Mustn't forget the chives! Snip away at a bunch of these.

Mix them in well. You wouldn't want any of the deviled eggs to miss out on their fair share of pepper and chives!

Why, yes...Jennifer will take a picture of anything and everything while I'm cooking.

You'll need plenty of dollops to get the mixture nice and creamy. Add just a spoonful or so at a time until you are getting close to the right consistency.

Don't forget the mustard!

Pepper and eggs. Can't have one without the other. Okay, maybe you can...but that's beside the point.

Mix, mix, mix...

You can't add pepper without putting in some salt!

Secret ingredient for a little "kick". Just a few dashes should do.

Fill up yer bag and pipe away! You could do this with simply a spoon, or even a Ziploc bag with the corner snipped off. But then you lose the artistic element, and you wouldn't want to do that, would you?

A few extra sprinkles of chives to top it off. And of course the necessary Paprika. I also snuck in a little Cajun spice to top it off.

The eggs look so much happier now.

You can make these the day ahead and put them in the fridge.

Jessica's Deviled Eggs:

12 Eggs

2T Red Bell Pepper, diced

2T chives, chopped

2t mustard

6-8T mayo

1t salt

1t black pepper

paprika

Boil the eggs. Peel and then slice in half. Scoop out the egg yolks and place them in a boil. Use a fork, spoon, or clean hands to finely crumble the yolks. Add the finely diced red bell pepper and chives. Mix well. Add the mayo, salt, and pepper. Mix and then taste to see what ingredients are lacking and add whatever you find lacking (a little at a time!). Fill your piping bag with the new and improved yolk mixture and pipe it back into the lonely egg whites. Sprinkle the paprika and any additional spices on top. Enjoy immediately, or rub a sheet of plastic wrap lightly with oil and place it on top. I wouldn't make these up more than a day in advance. If nothing else, they wouldn't last that long!