Tammy's Recipes

I hope you're all ready for Tammy's Recipes: Breads Edition. I know, I know... wrong time of year to be baking bread every day. I should have ordered my grain mill last Fall. ;)

Today I tried to make hot dog buns. I can't stand hot dog buns from the store, but Joshua likes having that perfectly shaped bun for hot dogs instead of wrapping a slice of bread around it.

We made the dough for our homemade wheat bread. By the way, when you're in any sort of a hurry, it's best to NOT use flour from the refrigerator or freezer. Yeah, I knew that but somehow forgot... until the dough was taking three times as long to rise. At least we didn't forget the yeast, which was my first thought!

Finally it was time to shape my hot dog buns. I already knew not to make them too tall, after my experience with hamburger buns that were like round balls and twice as thick as they should have been when they came out of the oven.

My hot dog buns didn't come out too tall, but they were too big all around. Like a hot dog bun meant to hold two hot dogs.

Or a sub bun.

Oh well, they tasted great! But for future reference: bread dough for one large loaf of bread will make 6 sub buns or 12 hot dog buns. ;)

I know I mentioned that we weren't doing a garden this year, but that got changed. :)

It started with a request that we remove our compost pile. (Long story!) We certainly didn't want to give up composting, and since the landlord didn't care what we did, we moved our compost pile into a bin (aka garbage can). By the way, the bin was almost full after we moved our pile, but it has now sunk to 2/3 or 3/4 full and there are pumpkin plants growing inside... :)

Moving our compost pile, along with some brush, left a bare spot of dark rich dirt in our yard. Garden time!! :)

In years past, we have helped my parents with their garden in return for some of the produce. This year, with three little children to take along, and the price of gas, I wasn't going to try to go over there to do a garden.

So, we decided we'd have our own little garden. And the learning process began... ;) (read more)

We made this two-layer chocolate cake for dessert to serve to our guests today. We had grand plans of making a beautiful chocolate cake with a layer of cream filling, covered in fluffy homemade frosting.

We don't have any cake pans (aside from our springform pans, which are all different sizes!), so we put the batter on a jelly roll pan, planning to cut the cake in half and stack it up after it was cool.

The jelly roll pan buckled while baking, so the cake came out very not-level. That might have been workable enough, if Eliyahu (2) hadn't decided to pick in the cake as it was cooling on the counter. Cakes with holes in them tend to fall apart when being moved.

Our filling didn't turn out (new recipe we were trying), but the frosting did. We stacked and frostened the cakes as best we could.

When our guests arrived, we informed them that we had a disaster to serve for dessert, and told them of the many things that had gone wrong with our lovely cake.

After we ate, Joshua put the cake on the table to be cut. Our (kind) guests suppressed their laughter, and one even remarked, "It doesn't look bad!"

Joshua and I were rolling with laughter at that comment/compliment, so she added "Well, I mean... after how you described it, I was expecting something a lot worse!"

It did taste good. I think we're going to give up on two-layer cakes until we get some better pans. Our last two-layer cake (a few weeks ago) was made in our springform pans and looked almost as laughable -- though it tasted fabulous. (Recipe coming later today if I have time!!)

Coarse ground kosher salt doesn't really go very well in oatmeal cookies.

Don't ask me what I was thinking! (If only iodized table salt didn't contain sodium silicoaluminate.)

The cookies aren't a complete disaster. Every few bites, there's a blast of salt, but we won't let that stop us from eating them... :)

Joshua made this banana cream pie, but it didn't go so well for us. We followed the recipe exactly.

This is more what it looked like. Banana cream disaster. ;) And we tried to take out a piece very carefully for a picture. :)

Neither of us thought that the cinnamon in the pudding part was the right flavor for a banana cream pie. The pudding was nice and thick, but after being mixed with whipping cream, it just wouldn't hold its shape, even after being refrigerated overnight. The bananas turned black -- though I don't suppose there's a way around that, when you're using real bananas instead of artificial banana-flavored pudding.

I'm not sure what all we plan to do differently next time. Banana cream pie isn't really my favorite pie, anyway -- which explains why Joshua did 95% of the work of making this one... :)

These "french toast sandwiches" were somewhat of an experiment, at least for me. I started out with this recipe called "stuffed french toast". I didn't have cinnamon raisin bread, so I just used (homemade) whole wheat bread. I didn't have "cream cheese spread" (whatever that is!) so I just softened some regular cream cheese. We don't eat ham, so I used turkey pastrami. :) And pouring syrup over the top of the sandwich didn't sound good to me, so I skipped that part.

The sandwiches were good, but not great. I don't think we would have liked them any better if they had been made like the recipe said, though! It just sounds so sweet, and we don't do well with that much sugar in our main dish... even if it's breakfast.

Well, it was a nice change of pace, even just for one meal. :)

This is the Perfect Apple Pie I made last week, which didn't turn out so perfectly because the apples never got soft. Everything was fine, except for the crunchy apples, and somehow crunchy apples ruins the taste, in my opinion.

Next time? I'm not buying Granny Smith apples from Aldi for the pie. Besides the persistent crunch, the apples were small and starting to go bad in the centers. I had to use all of 6 pounds of apples for my three pies, and the pies weren't even very full. That's a lot of peeling and coreing... and probably at least partly why the pies ended up being so time-consuming.

There's a disaster in progress, in my oven. I'm making a cake, and the recipe said I could use a 9x13 sheet pan. I thought the pan looked rather full, but I wasn't expecting it to run over. (The recipe actually said to put two stacked cookie sheets under the pan.)

After 45 minutes (the supposed baking time), the cake was very jiggly, and starting to run over. I put a bigger cookie sheet in the oven to catch the drips, but not soon enough to stop what was already on the oven floor... and which is filling our house with a lovely... burnt smell. Good thing it's a cool day outside and I already had the windows open! :)

I put a piece of foil loosely on top, since the top of the cake was getting rather dark, and I'm going to keep baking and checking until the cake tests done. I have a feeling I'm in for a real disaster-treat, but I'm not pulling an under-cooked cake out of the oven -- which is a sign of giving up early. You never know what could happen.

Plus, there's a whole cup of honey in this cake. The worst disasters are the expensive ones!! At least this cake was easy to mix up, and Yehoshua had a blast helping me make it. :)

A few weeks ago, I posted a link to Meredith's quick and easy fruit cobbler recipe. She made it look so easy and yummy!

 I actually did make the cobbler not too long after my post, but something didn't go right, because it was a disaster. (And for your reference, numerous people commented over at her recipe saying how fabulous it tasted! So this is truly "Tammy's Disaster" and not "Meredith's Mistake"!)

For starters, the recipe called for an 8x10 or 8x8 dish. I don't have an 8x10, but I do have an 8x8. I have very frequently taken recipes that called for an 8x8 dish, doubled the recipe, and made it in a 9x13 dish... with great success. (Joshua says... it's 117 sq. in. versus 128 sq. in.)

Anyway, I thought I'd do that with this recipe, too. After all, it was going to be so fabulously yummy, I'd save myself even more work by just doubling it to begin with, right? :)

So I melted two sticks of butter. That looked like a lot, but hey, this wasn't supposed to be health food. ;) I melted the butter in the dish like the recipe said, which meant I put the dish in the oven as it was pre-heating. The dish got rather hot by the time the butter was melted, so when I poured the batter on top, it started cooking a little at the sides. But maybe this was supposed to happen?

I sprinkled about 4 cups of fruit on top. (The recipe said at least two cups but up to four cups of berries, and I was doubling the recipe. So I guess I used the minimum amount.) My fruit was a juicy mixture of cherries and mulberries (a combination that makes delicious pie, by the way!).

The dish didn't look too full, but as it baked, it got very full. It started to run over a little, but the edges got dark and formed sort of a crust that held everything in.

I was glad I hadn't used any more fruit than I did, and I was also realizing that the suggestion of an 8x10-inch dish was probably more accurate than the 8x8. Or else the 5.5 square inches I was missing (per recipe) were really important to the cleanliness of my oven.

"Bake 40 minutes." Unfortunately, at 40 minutes, the entire middle section of my cobbler looked like pancake batter that had sat for a few hours. Bubbly and wet, and most certainly NOT cooked. I set the timer again and again, and continued checking for doneness.

I put a piece of foil loosely on top, because the edges were getting too dark. I think I baked the cobbler for about 90 minutes before deciding it was finally done.

Sadly, the edges were really too dark to be very enjoyable, and the part that wasn't so dark was soggy with grease. We decided that maybe the butter should be cut in half for the recipe (it tasted THAT greasy to us!) and certainly, I had used the wrong size of pan.

Does anyone know what else I could have done wrong?!

I seem to have lost the link to whoever shared this recipe for quinoa on their blog. That's okay, though, because we didn't like it.

I will admit that it's partly my own fault... my black beans were undercooked, and I didn't have fresh lime juice (I used bottled lemon juice instead). I'm also pretty sure (now) that I don't care for a lot of cumin and chili powder on black beans, corn, or quinoa.

My quinoa was getting pretty old, too. I'd had it it my cupboard since we moved to Ohio, about 3 years ago. At least now I know how to cook it! Have you ever bought something and then felt too intimidated to use it? This happens to me especially when something was purchased from a bulk foods store, and lacks the fancy labeling and instructions... :)

I especially enjoyed this post by Crystal about housekeeping through difficult seasons. I wish I could chalk up my lack of energy to being pregnant, but I'll still be taking her advice to heart. :)

A number of people asked for more details about my "once a week cooking" day last week. I'm hoping to have more on this in the future, since last week was basically a flop... and I've been too exhausted this week to do much of anything... but read more for a few photos and an account of my pathetic cooking day! :)

Okay, these weren't really a disaster. These homemade bagels are really delicious! But I thought you might enjoy seeing a picture of my first bagel-making experience. I didn't follow the directions about a 2-inch hole in the middle, and when the bagels came out of the oven, they were like big round balls. :)

Joshua and I made these homemade blintzes a few weeks ago. Neither of us had made blintzes before, and I had never even eaten one before, so I was a little clueless about what they were like.

We used a recipe from a cookbook, and the batter was a thin, flour-y, unleavened batter. It got rubbery as it cooked. The sweet cottage cheese and egg filling didn't fully cook inside. When we tried to roll the blintzes after putting the filling inside, they cracked.

They tasted good enough to eat, but not good enough to make again, that's for sure!! I wonder what we did wrong...??

Are any of you skilled at making blintzes? Tell me your secrets! :)

I somehow lost my previous photos of my homemade wheat bread. I can only find one, small, cropped photo of the bread, and that just won't do. So all these weeks, the thing that was keeping me from sharing my wheat bread recipe was the fact that I needed some pictures.

That's easy enough to remedy. I made bread... but it was a night when we were having guests, and by the time I had it sliced, it was time to eat. By the time we had eaten, there wasn't much left to photograph.

So, I made the recipe yet again. This time, before I could even get one picture, my little baby got up to the table and stuck his fingers in the loaf! I turned around when he started saying "Ahhh! Ohhhh!! Ooooohhh!!!!"

So I sliced up the rest of the loaf and took pictures of those other slices. ;) Recipe coming tomorrow... I hope! :)

These cookies look harmless enough, but trust me -- they were as hard as rocks!

This was a new recipe I had tried, and I was congratulating myself on following the directions so accurately (the only thing I changed was adding whole wheat flour instead of white flour).

I should have gotten a clue when I tried forming the cookies into balls, and I had to press the "dough" (more like crumbles) together as hard as I could, or else it fell apart.

A little water or milk, perhaps? Well, leave it to me to actually follow directions even when red flags pop up -- but hand me a tried-and-true perfectly-good recipe and I'll find something to change!!

P.S. I guess I'm not the only one who has cooking disasters -- check out Bethany's awesome chocolate mud cake here! Hmn... tired mommy, trying to do five things at once? Sounds familiar! I'm blogging through my nap time yet again! ;)

Here is a cheesecake that Joshua made last week. It was a vanilla cheesecake, similar to this basic cheesecake recipe (for those curious).

Due to various factors (forgetting to grease the sides of the pan, allowing the cheesecake to completely cool in the pan, etc.), the cheesecake ended up with some huge cracks in it. I don't think I've ever seen such a disastrous-looking cheesecake before!!

The good news is that we smothered the top of the cheesecake with some super-flavorful homemade cherry pie filling/topping. I used some of my canned sour cherries. The addition of red food coloring would have made the topping even more attractive, but we knew our guests would rather eat a dark topping than a bright one, if it meant adding food coloring. :)

When the cheesecake was cut, the cracks still weren't even really noticeable. It tasted great! :)

This morning, I really got busy in the kitchen. I hadn't washed the dishes last night, so I tackled those first, with the help of Eliyahu. I got a chicken in the oven and started some homemade roll dough in the bread machine. For once, I had actually completely followed the recipe for the rolls, which was a recipe given to me at my bridal shower that I'd saved and never made. (Read more...)

I tried a new recipe today. It called for sweet potatoes cut into wedges and tossed with oil and seasonings before being baked.

They looked yummy. They tasted awful! They were soggy, too. I got a nice photo though. :D

We're out of cheese.  Those of you who peruse my weekly menus and the recipe archives on this website might realise how much my kitchen depends on cheese. I don't think I've ever run out of cheese before.

I normally find cheese on sale at Kroger for $1 per 8-ounce block. This sale comes every couple months (or used to) and I purchase a large amount, which is usually plenty to last until the next really good sale. (This is the main reason we can afford to cook with so much cheese!)

But sales are fewer these past few months, and our cheese consumption hasn't decreased. I've found myself purchasing a pound or two each week at Aldi's (which is excellent cheese, just slightly higher than the sale price I like).

We've been doing our grocery shopping on Sundays. I dislike grocery shopping. It takes so long, and by the time I'm back home, the children are famished and there's so much to do, always all at once. Which thing should I do first? Do I put away the frozen foods, start making lunch, change Eliyahu's diaper, nurse Eliyahu, or use the restroom? Hmn.

Last Sunday, we shortened our weekly shopping trip by skipping Aldi and just going to one store. I figured I would just go to Aldi this week. I could last two weeks between Aldi trips.

I forgot that this week, Sunday was Christmas Eve. We may be out of cheese, but we're not going to any store on Christmas Eve, cheese or no cheese. We're also not (obviously) going grocery shopping on Christmas Day, since everything is closed. And we're not even desperate enough to go shopping the Day After Christmas.

Have I mentioned that we dislike shopping and we dislike traffic? :) So, waiting we are.

Now, other news...

For those interested in a photo of the Easy Saltine Cracker Candy I made, the recipe is now up! :) I made half with nuts and half without, but somehow only got photos of the part without nuts. Oh well; there will definitely be a next time for this recipe! :)

I heard a peep from Eliyahu, and it's getting closer to my bedtime. I think I'll close for the evening. :) Tomorrow is clean-the-house day, and maybe I'll even get some photos of my recent organization efforts! :)

You know you're a mom when you're re-sizing your (supposedly) professional-looking photographs of food you've made, and you're cropping out things like sippy cups and pudgy little fingers.