Pizza with the Super Peel

Making homemade pizza is a lot of fun.  If you haven't ever tried it, you should!

First you make the dough, knead it, let it rise, punch it down and roll it out.  Here is what I put in this crust:

• 2 cups of all-purpose flour
• 2/3 cup very warm water
• 1 Tbsp olive oil
• 1 tsp salt
• 1 tsp active dry yeast
• herbs and black pepper to taste

I got that recipe here and the author, S. John Ross, also provides step-by-step instructions to get it to the step shown in the next picture.  So why don't you pay Gourmand Bleu a visit and then come back when you are ready to roll.

Roll out the dough on something it won't stick to, like parchment paper.  Grab some pizza sauce, or if you are feeling fancy, make some yourself.  I was not feeling fancy.

Spread the sauce on the dough and assemble your toppings.

Add your toppings to your pizza.  Try not to drool.

As you can see, one half of this pizza has no cheese.  That half is for me, because I have a dairy allergy.  My husband, on the other hand, has cheese on his half.

Now here is something I am pretty excited about.  My parents got me a Super Peel to move dough around easily, and this is my first time trying it out.

So, you move the wooden peel under the dough, and the pastry cloth acts as a conveyor belt.  It is pretty slick.

All loaded up and ready for the oven!

Pizza is moved onto the preheated pizza stone, without dropping toppings everywhere or becoming horribly disfigured.  Success!

I do think I need more practice, to make it a smother process.  If you watch the videos on the link it works really easily.  Oh, and maybe I should clean my pizza stone, too.

Here is the finished pizza.  I put it on the pan after it came out of the oven.  Remember, it was baked directly on the pizza stone, and we didn't use cornmeal or anything to make it behave.

Ready to serve?

One final addition.  Tomatoes!

Served up for a tasty lunch.  Yum!

Enjoy!

Peanut Butter Balls

These delicious peanut butter candies are sure to be my downfall this Christmas season.  I made enough to share, and now I am snowed in, and they are disappearing fast, if you know what I mean.  If you would like to try them, you will have to make your own.

Ingredients:

• 2 cups sifted powdered sugar
• 1 cup creamy peanut butter
• 6 Tablespoons margarine
• semi-sweet chocolate chips
• parchment paper

Stir together the powdered sugar, peanut butter, and margarine until it is well mixed.

Shape the mixture into 1 inch balls (you may want to butter up your hands so they don't stick) and place them on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper.

Let balls stand for 20 minutes until dry, or better yet, put the whole tray in the freezer if there is room.

Melt the chocolate you will use for dipping.  I tried a make-shift "double boiler" approach:

But it isn't necessary.  If you are doing this with your kids, just pop a glass bowl of chocolate chips in the microwave, and call it good.  That way they aren't standing over hot steam.

Dip the balls into the chocolate to coat.  I used a metal skewer at first, and then gave that up and just dropped them in and fished them out with a spoon.  Whatever works for you, go for it.

Let the excess chocolate drip off, and place the chocolate covered ball back on the parchment paper.

Let stand until dry, and then store any extras tightly covered in a cool dry place.

Thanks to Debi for another easy Christmas candy recipe!

Enjoy!

Homemade Frosting

Remember this?


If you are thinking your cake looks a bit forlorn, like the one above, you probably haven't frosted it yet. Let's get to it.

Gather up:

• powdered sugar
• butter or margarine
• some milk-like liquid
• vanilla extract
• food coloring (optional)

Start with the wet ingredients. Don't use very much to start. You can always use more, but never less (and it doesn't take much)!


Add some powdered sugar. Use your hand mixer to mix it up until it looks spreadable but not too runny. This isn't rocket science. Don't stress exact amounts.

If you want your cake to look extra fun, add lots of crazy food coloring like I did:


Spread on your cake. Display...

...and then consume.

Enjoy!

Chocolate Cake

About a week ago, for a friend of mine's birthday, I made my first from-scratch cake. It actually happened quite by accident. I was walking through the kitchen, a few things fell into a bowl, and out of the oven popped a cake! (Okay - it wasn't that much of an accident. What really happened was...)

Bryan went into the kitchen to bake a cake. There was no box of cake mix to be found.

"Look again!" I insisted, standing on tip-toe.

"I can actually see above this shelf." said my 6"1' husband, "We don't have any."

"Oh."

The wheels of my brain are turning furiously. With his right foot in a cast, Bryan can't drive right now, and I loathe going to the store. I was also remembering that during my last 27 fling boogie when I dove into my recipe stash, I had kept a recipe for chocolate cake because I really wanted to try it. Well, what was I waiting for? Here was my chance to avoid the store and make a cake I could be proud of!

"I can make one."

"Oh, you mean from scratch?" he looked surprised.

"Yeah. If I can bake bread, I'm sure I can make a cake." Now he looked cautious. That settled it, stubbornness set in as if he had just said "No, I don't think you can make a cake" and I was now determined to do this.

(My husband was really trying to be a nice guy - I'd like to point out. He knows that I take it pretty hard when things go wrong in the kitchen - and we had four guests coming over for dinner that night. The same six of us who endured the bean fiasco, incidentally.)

So I headed for the cupboard and fished out the recipe a co-worker had given me nearly a year ago. (By the way, thanks Heather!)

Heather's Chocolate Cake

• 1 cup margarine, softened
• 2 1/2 cups sugar
• 4 eggs
• 1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract
• 2 3/4 cups all purpose flour
• 1 cup Dutch processed cocoa, sifted
• 2 teaspoons baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 2 cups HOT water

Let's get started!

In a mixing bowl, cream margarine and sugar.

Add the eggs,

one at a time, beating well after each addition. 

Beat on high speed until light and fluffy.  Stir in vanilla.

Combine dry ingredients;

add alternatively to the creamed mixture with the hot water.

I must add, at this point, that your batter is likely to look much runnier than this, because I got so caught up in taking blog pictures that I accidentally left out almost half of the water the recipe called for.  Oops!

Pour into three greased and floured 9-inch round baking pans (or one 13 x 9 x 2 inch pan)

(I only have two round pans, so I also made a batch of mini cup cakes.  They were super cute.)

Bake at 350 degrees for 25 minutes or until a toothpick inserted near the middle comes out clean. Cool on wire racks for 10 minutes

before removing from pan to cool completely.

After cakes are completely cool,

frost with desired frosting.  She suggests caramel frosting.  

Stay tuned to see what frosting I made instead... as well as the finished cake!

Pizza

Tonight's dinner was inspired by the lunch served in the cafeteria today: pizza. I went back to the site where I got my pizza recipe, pulled out a crust I had made from scratch earlier and frozen, and got cooking.


Things didn't go quite as planned when I got halfway through sauteing the onion and garlic to make the sauce and realized I didn't have any tomato paste on hand. Oops! Not to be deterred at this stage in the game, I grabbed a can of tomato sauce and proceeded to apply it liberally throughout the kitchen. (Well, that part was on accident... but after I got that wiped up and cooked off the extra liquid in the skillet...)

I preheated my oven to 450 degrees with my baking stone in there, and slid the now-finished pizza on top of it. You will notice from the picture below that only half of the pizza has cheese on it. Alas, I cannot do cheese due to my food alergies.


That is why I am so pleased to have fresh tomatoes to slice on top. Yum!


Now I need to go see how much of the kitchen I can get cleaned up before it is time to watch the season premier of Heroes with Bryan.

The Past at a Glance

When I got married a little over two years ago I had a very short list of foods I had any confidence in preparing. I laughed with the ladies in my Bible-study that I was still trying to master Rice-a-Roni... and it was true! ("Saute the vermicelli"? It's not working with all that water in there!)

Between my milk allergy and my husband's "discerning tastes" I had a limited amount of ingredients to work with. But no matter. I forged ahead and began to bake and cook things that I never thought I would. Breads came first. I figured if I could bake bread, then Rice-a-Roni should be a snap, right?

Check out Basic Bread by S. John Ross to make loaves of your own like this:




The Internet was my oyster, and recipes were its pearl. I bookmarked pages with easy, step-by-step instuctions. If they made it sound fool-proof, I was in. The best part was, whatever I made, it was the best I'd ever done. Soon I was growing my own sprouts and baking pizzas and bagels from scratch. (And of course, baking goodies for my husband, Bryan.)






Next I decided to try Square Foot Gardening and grow my own food. Bryan constructed containers and Dad financed the fancy soil mix. (Our golden retriever, Dioji, oversaw the operation.)




I was ecstatic as the first leaves poked through! And I learned valuable lessons, such as: you aren't supposed to let broccoli flower.



But despite my ignorance the harvest has been great! Potatoes, tomatoes, carrots, parsley, zucchini, peas, greenbeans, and Bryan's favorite: strawberries.



Most recently, with "back to school" upon me, I've turned my attention to healthy packed lunches for myself. The last two years I have brought mostly soup. First canned, and then homemade. But by the end of last year I was getting pretty tired of soup.

Enter: bento! An article in last week's Food Day caught my eye -- about the artistic packed lunches made by some Japanese women for their children and husbands.

After browsing numerous online bento galleries and blogs, I decided to creat a food blog of my own. This blog will contain pictures, comments, links and recipes. I'll start with my present bento craze -- and venture off into other food related topics as the whim strikes me.

Thanks for reading!