Gingerbread

  I was going to make a batch of gingerbread muffins yesterday but I found I didn't have enough cupcake liners so I poured the batter into a 9x13" cake pan. The batter appeared very liquid to me and transferring it to a cupcake pan seemed messy. But the cake baked well (though it took 50 minutes rather than the 28-30 minutes suggested for muffins).

The recipe is here.

 I'm mostly to blame for not checking my supplies ahead of time. I also didn't realize the recipe made 21 muffins rather than  the usual dozen. Reading the instructions was never at the top of my list. Live and learn.

 The cake rose beautifully ... nice and high and even  Tom said it was much more "airy"  than other gingerbreads he's eaten.

 I have to admit, too, that I just poured all the ingredients (except the  flour) together and mixed them with a spoon (followed with a whisk). I see no reason to make it more difficult than it needs to be.

 Gingerbread is great with whipped cream. And I'll also serve some slices with just a  dusting of powdered sugar. Icing would be another nice addition I may try in the future.

 Perfect seasonal timing.

Thanksgiving - 2023

  For Thanksgiving Tom and I stayed home (what else is new?) and we chose a few favorite foods to make our day special. I started with cranberry sauce on Monday which I knew I could make early. It needs some time in the refrigerator anyway.

 I just use the recipe on the Ocean Spray bag. I suppose it'd be easier to buy a can of either the sauce or the jellied form but this makes me feel like it's somehow fresher. I always pop a few cranberries in my mouth when I start  the recipe but they are bitter and almost unpalatable. With a cup of sugar that problem is quickly solved.

 Tom bought a vegetarian turkey roll which turned out to be quite good. It came with its own veggie gravy sealed in two plastic pouches. That was also entirely acceptable. Tom's not a vegetarian but he goes along with my wishes and we don't serve any meat at meals.

 Here's what  the turkey roll was:

 We buy Marie Callender's vegetarian pot pies regularly and they contain  Gardein "chicken" or "beef". It all tastes  about the same. This turkey roll was stuffed with brown  and white rice, cranberries  and kale. It also cost over $16 at Kroger but we have leftovers and it'll make another meal.

 

 Also Tom bought a pumpkin cheesecake for dessert. 

 I made a cornbread stuffing  from an Aldi boxed mix but I always sauté celery to make it closer to homemade. I added leftover farro. It's quite good and I figure I can't do better so why bother?

 Green bean casserole is a requirement for Thanksgiving and Tom  found a bag of fresh green beans at Aldi. This didn't make the usual-sized dish but it was more than we needed and we have  leftovers.

 When we were in Wyoming this past summer, Elise Buhler gave us potato starts (both white and sweet) and we planted them  when we got home in July. That's  too late but we still managed a small crop and the yams turned out to have an excellent taste. I candied them.

 Later in the day Tom completed Mom's cheeseball and we had that for a  snack last evening.

 Needless to say, we had too much  food. Our quiet Thanksgiving was soon over.

Cinnamon Bread

  I love homemade bread and I suppose I'd choose cinnamon over any variety I make. I start with a basic  white bread (recipe here) and then I add a stipe of butter, brown sugar and cinnamon before rolling it up for the second rise.

 The original recipe made no mention of ginger. I don't add any. If it enhances the yeast fermentation, just "proof" the yeast in the water, milk and sugar, slightly warmed in the microwave.

 Here's the dough when first made. I knead it for eight minutes.

 And after the first rise. Give it an hour in a warm place. I always put the bowl in the oven to which I've  added a little  heat (our kitchen is quite chilly in  the winter). But certainly don't warm it above a gentle  warmth. This will  ensure your rise is effective.

 I then cut the dough in half and roll each half into a rectangular strip. Then I add soft butter (actually margarine) with the back of a spoon and sprinkle light brown sugar and cinnamon atop this. Then I roll it up from the long end and pinch the ends slightly together to avoid any leakage as the loaves bake. I place them in oiled baking pans and let them rise another hour.

 

  And here's how they look after the second rise.

 Finally I bake them per instructions: 30 minutes  at 350°. Just perfect.

 It isn't necessary to dust the tops with flour but I like  the rustic effect.

 The bread is perfectly suited to making cinnamon loaves. They rise beautifully and make a very light, airy bread.

Thanksgiving Cactus Blooms

  It's a little uncanny to watch a plant come into bloom right on schedule. Without a calendar, Tom's Thanksgiving cactus is exploding into flower a few days before the holiday. How does it know? Probably the light levels signal  the time of year. And yet it is exceedingly accurate.

 But lets back up a bit ...

10/30/23

 I first noticed the small buds in late October.

11/09/23

11/14/23

 Last week the buds had expanded and were showing white petals.

11/18/23

11/18/23

 How do we know it's a Thanksgiving cactus?  Because of the pointy parts of the leaves. Read all about it here.

11/22/23

A Perfect Fall Evening

  A First Quarter moon hangs in the southern sky as the sun sets. We're out this evening even though it's chilly so that we can burn some limbs and paper trash.  Ohio only allows burning after 6 PM this time of year so we pretty much follow that guideline.

 The cell phone's camera brings the light level up almost to a daytime scene: blue skies show in the picture when  all I can see is a glowing black. Our dinner bell hangs silent. Was it to announce dinner or a fire?

 When Tom got home  at 6 PM we moved to the area where we keep the burn barrel and carry the last of our paper trash over. We recycle what we can, discard what we can't and burn everything that is paper.

The air has chilled to 39° as Tom starts the fire. The heat quickly envelopes us and we find  the evening much more comfortable. It is dead calm. There isn't much to burn so we don't linger long.

 We're just over a month from the shortest day of the year when the sun will have set by 5 PM. And on  that first day of winter, things will already point to spring. The days will lengthen, at first by a few seconds, then a minute, then a whole handful of minutes.

 But first snows await. Evenings will be spent inside for several months. It's time to hunker down.

Scratch Cake & Icing

  Why even bother writing about something this basic and simple? Because I want to remember where I got the recipe and what I did when I want to make it again.

 The cake recipe is here; the  frosting recipe is here.

 

 First, some notes on  the cake, I seldom mix ingredients as instructed. I just melted the  margarine and then added everything except the flour. That allows for easy mixing without an electric mixer. I use a soup spoon to incorporate everything to start and then I whisk it to really whip it up. Adding the flour requires a spoon again - at first - and then back to the whisk.

 I left the cake in the oven for the full 45 minutes. It was a little drier than I like so I'll just bake for it 40 minutes the next time.

 I made it in a 13x9" aluminum cake pan that I had lightly sprayed with olive oil.  Forget the flour, it's not necessary.

 Then to the frosting ...

 I used Hershey Dark Chocolate cocoa powder, the same as I use in the Coca-Cola cake. It gives the frosting a hearty, deep flavor. No sissy milk chocolate for us.

 There's plenty to cover the entire cake and it's soft enough to spread easily with the back of a soup spoon.

 When it cooled we had a first slice with chocolate-almond ice cream. Other than the cake being a bit dryer (and more dense) than I'd have preferred, it's an otherwise perfect and easy dessert to make.

No Knead Bread

  I'm not sure why a "no knead" bread piqued my interest since I truly enjoy kneading a traditional bread dough. But I suppose I wanted to see if it was actually any good and whether it was a time-saver.

 I used this  recipe at LoveBakesGoodCakes. It's similar to others on the web but it was their recipe that attracted me on a Facebook post. The comments all seemed positive.

I learned a good bit yesterday and I'll share it here. But I can already say the end result was delicious!

 This was Tom and my breakfast this morning: scrambled eggs whipped in a blender with a little Half & Half added. Tom always buys locally produced brown eggs and thinks the taste is superior. I know the bread was. And ever Parker, our miniature schnauzer, was standing on her hind legs asking for another taste.

 The recipe couldn't be more simple with just four ingredients: flour, salt, yeast and water. I used bread flour and traditional yeast (not the rapid rise type). I slightly warmed the water in our microwave so the yeast would quickly blossom.

 This produces a wet, sticky dough. I'll admit I added a bit more yeast than called for (a rounded half teaspoon with some extra yeast which was in my freezer bowl). Did I use a full teaspoon? I don't think so but it might have been close. And  I "proofed" the yeast in the water to which I added a teaspoon of sugar. 

 The instructions call for a 12-18 hour rise time. After just 5 hours my dough had risen so much (more than doubling) that I thought I ought to get it baked.

 I turned the dough out onto a floured baking cloth, added a dusting to the dough it so it could be better handled  and formed it into a ball. I placed it on parchment paper and in a 9" metal cake pan (1.5" deep).

 And while I heated the oven to a very hot 450°,  I let the dough rise about 45 minutes. It changed considerably from what is shown above. I dusted the top with  some flour.

 And  I didn't use a Dutch Oven as called for in the recipe because I don't have one. I placed a pan of water on the lowest shelf in the over and placed the bread on the rack above it. I baked it for the full 45 minutes.

 The end result was a beautifully-browned free-form loaf of bread. Below is a side view after it cooled a bit and was lifted out of the parchment paper.

 This recipe produces a bakery-style bread whose crust is a bit "tough" but it was exactly what I was hoping for. The taste is wonderful. It certainly took longer to make than my kneaded breads but the majority of the time is while it's rising and it's hands-off for the baker. It can be thrown together quickly and you can move on to other projects while the yeast does its thing.

 This is a recipe to keep. It'd be great with the addition of various herbs and I'd love it with sunflower seeds. So the experimentation will continue.

 

Color Season Bright This Year

  I figured our trees would be muted this year, what with the dry conditions of summer. Through September we were down over 10% (3") in annual rainfall. In fact the US Drought Monitor still has us in their D1 (Moderate Drought) category. I figured the trees would simply drop brown leaves.

 And that's what seemed to be happening earlier. But recently the color ramped up and we had a beautiful last-minute display of fall color.

10-22-23

10-22-23

10-26-23

10-26-23

10-29-23

10-29-23

 The tree above was supposed to be a Willow Oak. That's what Lowe's had it tagged several years ago and that's what is appeared to be when we first planted it. The leaves were thin and long. But deer browsed the bark and I thought it had been killed. I put a small fence around the trunk and the tree somehow survived. But it now appears to be a Pin Oak. What gives?  Was this some hybrid that everted to some other stock? How could that be?

 Today (10-30-23) we've had soaking rains for two days  and most of our trees have lost most of their leaves. So the color season comes to an end.