Bases Loaded Baked Potato Soup (nice job SF Giants)

Monday night is aquafit night with the girls and sometimes, especially in the winter it is difficult to warm up after being in the water.  I  had found a couple of recipes for baked potato soup and for potato chowder, which all looked delicious but I felt like I wanted a cross between the two of them.  I searched for some other recipes and decided to experiment tonight with a few different ideas I had been toying with.  I wanted a creamy soup but without the cream (so I could use more bacon!).  But I also didn't was to use milk (or cream) as I have a tendency to just curdle milk when I cook with it. (No, I'm not too picky...am I)

I basically wanted all of the yummy goodness of a fully loaded baked potato in a soup format that I could heat up quickly when I got back from the pool. What follows here is my melding of ideas from other recipes...the very creamy and delectable:

Bases Loaded Baked Potato Soup
Printable version

• 3 large baking potatoes, baked, peeled, and mashed
• 6 strips of bacon
• 1 litre veggie stock
• ¼ to 1/3  cup flour (depends on desired thickness of soup)
• ½ large onion, diced small
• ¾ cup Shredded cheddar cheese (some is for the soup and some is for the garnish)
• ½ cup sour cream
• ½ cup frozen corn kernals
• 1 bunch Green onions, chopped (some is for the soup and some is for the garnish)
• Salt and pepper

In a large pot fry until golden:

• 6 strips bacon, chopped

Remove cooked bacon leaving the bacon fat in the pot.  Save the bacon to garnish the soup.

Add to the pot:

• the diced onion
• pinch of salt and pepper

Cook the onion until translucent and add;

•  ¼ to 1/3 cup flour to the pot and stir to cook the flour (like making a roux).

(I found that I had to add a tablespoon of olive oil to get all of the flour coated)

Cook the flour to a minute or two to get rid of any raw flour taste and add:

•  1 litre (4 cups) veggie stock (make sure you stir or wisk the stock into the roux to avoid any lumps of flour.  The mixture may get thick.  If it gets too thick add more stock.

Mash in:

• cooked, peeled potatoes.

Continue to cook until potatoes are heated through and stir in:

• ½ cup shredded cheddar cheese
• ½ cup sour cream.  (you can add more if you want more if you'd like)

 Stir until cheese is melted and sour cream is stirred in.Add to the pot:

• 1/2 cup frozen corn
• 1/2 of the green onions, chopped

At this point, taste for seasonings to see if you want more salt and pepper.
Once the corn has thawed and the soup is a nice bubbly mass of hot potatoey goodness, you can eat!

Ladle into bowls and garnish with a dollop of sour cream and a sprinkling of cheddar, green onions, and bacon.

Soooo goooood.....

Good Ole Canadian Maple Syrupy Goodness in Cookie Format

The other day my Dad came home from a road trip out East and brought back a lovely bottle of pure maple syrup.  I was so excited to receive this lovely gift as I had been going on about getting back to the farmers' market to buy some before the end of October and the market closes for the winter.  You see, here on the prairies, there really isn't too much produce left at the farmers' markets by the end of October.  At this point market purchases include the last of the honey, maple syrup, preserves and canned/jarred items, baking, some storage (root) veggies, and handicrafts.  Now don't get me wrong, it is still a great place to go and make local purchases but as we await the snowfall, there just isn't too much left in the way of fresh produce.

I was looking for the perfect thing to make with my big ole bottle o maple syrupy goodness and low and behold one of the wonderful bloggers on Foodbuzz made a post about these Maple Cream Cookies she made.  She had gotten the recipe from another blogger who in turn found it in a Bon Appetit magazine from   December 2005.  And now I want to pass it on because this recipe was delectable!!  I give many thanks to her for posting this one as it got rave reviews came from everyone in the Little Kitchen.
I am somewhat ashamed (as a Canadian) to admit I do not have a maple leaf shaped cookie cutter in my kitchen.  I will have to pick one up in the very near future.  I went with the good old circle biscuit cutter as we all wanted to try these cookies so darn badly!

Regular readers are aware of my penchant for doubling recipes...If you're going to mess up the kitchen, make it worth your while. I did double the amounts given here so I could make plenty but I actually only rolled out part of this batch tonight and it yeilded a good 4 dozen sandwich cookies with 2 disks of dough still in the fridge to roll out tomorrow.

Maple Cream Cookies

In a bowl combine:

• 2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
• 2 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/4 teaspoon salt

In the bowl of your mixer cream together:

• 1 cup butter, room temperature
• 1 cup sugar
• 1/2 cup brown sugar

Add and continue mixing until well mixed:

• 1 large egg
• 2 teaspoons maple extract

Add the flour mixture and mix well.

Form the dough into a couple of disks, wrap in plastice wrap and chill for an hour.

Dust your counter with flour and roll the dough out to desired thickness.  I like crisp cookies so I rolled the dough out fairly thin.
Bake at 375 degrees F for 8 to 10 minutes.  The amount of time baking in the oven can very depending on the oven and on your desired crispiness.  Check after 8 minutes to see how far along they are.

While the cookies are cooling, mix up the wonderful maple filling!
In the bowl of your mixer, cream together:

• 4 tablespoon butter, room temperature
• 1 cup confectioners sugar
• 2 tablespoon maple syrup

 Mix until you get a nice spreadable consistency.
Spread a small amount of filling on the back of  a cookie and sandwich another cookie on top!

Crantastically speaking it was an Experiment

Today I was rooting through the fridge looking for what I had (and tossing a couple of items that needed to go) and I found a couple of bags of fresh cranberries.  Thinking back to my plums and peaches recipes I wanted to try doing the same sort of thing with these cranberries.  It took some tweaking to get the sauce tasting right. The first time I asked Hubby to taste it, it was still quite tart.  The amounts I am giving in this recipe are approximate as I did have to constantly taste and add some sweetner and flavourings.  I was quite happy with the end product but then I found myself wondering 'what am I going to do with this cranberry sauce.  I wonder if I can make muffins?'

Before I knew it I was adapting my favourite banana bread substituting the cranberry sauce for the mashed bananas.  Although the muffins did not rise quite a well as I had wanted the results were quite tasty.  The boys both liked them.  I may have to play with the amount of baking soda and perhaps add some baking powder. I think next time I would definitely make the sauce sweeter and add some white chocolate chips and nuts to the muffins.
After the muffins had fully cooled and we tasted them again, they were even better than I had thought.  I also felt like they needed a little something else so I mixed up a glaze to top them with.

 

Cranberry sauce 

•   2 pkgs fresh cranberries 
• ½ cup brown sugar 
• ¼ cup honey
• 1/2 cup sugar
• 1/4 cup maple syrup
• Juice of one orange
• Zest of one orange
• 2 cinnamon sticks or 1 tsp ground cinnamon

Rinse and sort through the cranberries

Place cranberries in a pot on medium heat with the other ingredients

As the cranberries start to pop and the juices bubble, use a masher to crush the cranberries

Taste as you go so you can adjust the seasonings and the sweetness to suit your tastes.

Cranberry muffins

In a bowl, mix together: 

• 2 cups flour
•  1 tsp salt
• 2 tsp baking soda

In the bowl of the stand mixer combine:

  

• 1/3 cup canola oil
•  1 ¼ cups sugar

Mix well with the paddle attachment and add:

•  2 eggs

Continue mixing until well combined and add:

• 1 ½ cups cranberry sauce

Keep mixing until the cranberry sauce is well incorporated.

Add the flour mixture and mix until just combined.

Stir in with a wooden spoon some nuts of your choice and some white chocolate chips.

Spoon into a lined muffin tin to 2/3 full and bake in a 350 degree F oven for 20 minutes or until fully baked.

To make the glaze mix together:

• Fresh squeezed orange juice
• icing sugar

Play with the amounts until you get the consitency you want to spoon on top of the muffins.

It's a small, small World Series Pretzel Rolls

Things are tense at my house!  With the Mets not even in any of the playoffs, Hubby is now rooting for the Rangers and my son is rooting for the Giants...the cheap shots, slight bickering, and show boating has begun.  I honestly wasn't too happy with the Buh bye Yankees pretzels I had made the other night.  They just didn't have the texture I wanted.  I think I had the water/baking soda bath too hot.  Oh well, live and learn.

The other night I joined foodbuzz and have been making new food blogging friends, pouring over countless recipes and ideas, and basically marvelling at the wonderous photos other foodies have posted.  I am in awe!!  I found a recipe that I just had to try for Pretzel Rolls.   They were a hit!  Easy to put together and baked up nice and pretzel brown!  I doubled the recipe and made them in 3 ounce portions instead of 2 ounce portions but they are amazing! 

 

Pretzel Rolls

Printable version

For the rolls:

•    3 cups warm water 
•   4 ½ tsp dry active yeast
• 4 tsp sugar 
• 9 cups all purpose flour 
• 4 tsp salt, kosher 
• ½ cup melted coconut oil (or melted butter)

For the poaching:

• 1 large pot boiling water
• ¼ cup baking soda

For brushing the tops:

• 1 egg, beaten 
• 1 tsp water

For sprinkling:

• Coarse salt

Directions:

In the bowl of your stand mixer, or in a large bowl, mix

•  3 cups warm water 
• 4 ½ tsp yeast 
• 4 tsp sugar

 Let this get all foamy and fun loving.

 

Add:

• ½ cup melted coconut oil (or melted butter) 
• 4 tsp salt 
• 9 cups flour

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Mix with the dough hook (or a wooden spoon) until a nice elastic dough forms.  This might take about 5 minutes.  The dough comes together so nicely to form a soft, slightly sticky dough.

Cover with a tea towel and set in a warm spot to rise for an hour.

Meanwhile back in the Little Kitchen:

Line 2 baking sheets with parchment or with silicone liners.

Put a large pot of water on the stove, but don’t turn it on yet...just getting ready.

When the timer beeps, or when the dough has doubled its size, punch it down and turn it out onto the counter, which you have sprinkled with flour.

Measure out even pieces of dough.  I like to measure out 3 oz portions with my scale and get 22 rolls from this recipe.

Form each piece into a ball and place on the baking sheet leaving some room between each roll.

Cover with a tea towel and let rise for 30 minutes.

Preheat the oven to 425 F and turn your pot of water on to boil.

When the water is boiling, slowly add the ¼ cup baking soda to the pot....SLOWLY...it will bubble, foam, and spill over if you dump it all in at once.  Lower the heat to a simmer.

Poach the rolls a couple at a time for 30seconds, gently turn them over and continue poaching for another 30 seconds.

Remove from the pot, drain, and transfer back to the baking sheets.

Brush the tops with the egg wash and sprinkle with the coarse salt.

Using a sharp knife, cut an x (or a t) into the top of each roll.

Bake for 15 to 20 minutes until a nice dark golden brown.

As a side note, today was an accident free day!! Yesterday's wake up call has been answered.

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Friendly Neighbourhood Reminder: Be Careful Out There....More Confessions From a Little Kitchen

Those of us who spend a lot of time in the kitchen sometimes get a little careless.  It is so easy for us to think that just because we have done something a million times it will all work out.  We seem to test fate too often then get burned....literally!!  Tonight while making sweet potatoe fries, I burned three fingers on one hand in the oil in the pan then proceeded to burn the back of my other hand while attempting to turn the fries over!!!  The term dumbass comes to mind.  What was I thinking?  To be quite frank, I wasn't.  I became too careless and nonchalant and bad things happened.  To make things worse, Hubby was standing right there telling me to be careful and ask me what the hell I was thinking.....I was such a dumbass tonight!  Hubby sweetly pointed out that I do seem to hurt myself quite a bit in the kitchen....and he is only referring to the injuries he actually knows about!
One memory that pops into mind is when I purchased my first real professional knife!!  I cut myself just in front of the sales clerk right after she took it out of the display case!  If I recall I had three cuts by the time I made the purchase....I still use and love that knife.  We now know how to respect each other!
Tonight's post is dedicated to safety....just a friendly neighbourhood reminder to look after ourselves and our loved ones in the kitchen.

• When adding items to a preheated, oil filled pan OR needing to flip the contents of a pan in the oven: Remove the pan from the oven and place on a safe place on the counter, then do your work.  Tonight I burned my hand on the top of a 400degree oven trying to flip the sweet potatoe fries over while the pan was still in the oven!!!!
• Turn the handles of your pans towards the middle of the stove so they are not hanging over the edge.  This way no one will knock the handles and the hot pot off the stove or onto themselves.
• Keep a box of baking soda on hand to douse flames.  (an extinguisher for the kitchen is also recomended)
• Keep your counter clear of clutter and put things in their storage spots as soon as they are cleaned and you aren't using them.  In my little kitchen I have a bad habit of stacking things on the side to 'put away later'....the other day I killed my glass blender jar when my elbow knocked it off the counter.  It crashed to floor and exloded into a million pieces....of course I was in my bare feet.  My son kindly brought me a pair of shoes so I could get on with the clean up....no blood shed that day but now I need a new blender!

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  Blendy the blender is sadly missed...because I am a dumb ass

  
  

  
  

• Tie long hair back....not only for the sake of cleanliness but when I was in middle school and in woodshop, they showed a safety video of a girl with long hair using a lathe.....enough said.
• Always use the safety grip when using your mandoline....Yes I am guilty of using the mandoline 'just to get the vegetable to the a certain point, then I will use the safety'....Yes there was blood and yes, it was mine and yes, it was the tip of my finger....yes, I am a dumbass... 

So tonight I have established that I have dumbass tendencies in the kitchen...I have learned from my mistakes tonight but I am sure I will get careless again.  Thanks for reading and be careful out there!

As I go along, I will post more safety tips...Please feel free to add any confessions of you own or safety tips.