Week 7: Crispy and Creamy Doughnuts

This was a very good week. I decided to make doughnuts. I remember growing up, I had an Aunt Rosie that lived with my grandma. She loved to make doughnuts. She was such a great cook and she always let me help do everything. She had a polio as a child and used crutches all her life..I remember her sitting at the kitchen table with flour all over the place, including her dress and sometimes on her face. I'd help cut them and we'd put them on a plate and grandma would drop them in the hot oil. We made a glaze from powdered sugar, butter and hot water and as soon as the oil drained we'd have to hurry and dip the hot doughnuts in the glaze. Now that was the best tasting doughnut ever. They would melt in your mouth. I searched several different websites and cookbooks for a good recipe. I believe I found a good one. It's made with yeast but it actually still had somewhat of a cake taste to it. That isn't bad. Many people like that type of a doughnut. Great tasting. Definitely a keeper and something I would make for a coffee shop. Hope it's one all of you will enjoy. It was a lot of work but worth every bit of it to me. Oh I also made some homeade salami. First try and it was great. Made about 2 pounds. Seasoned just right. I will probably put it in my cookbook too. I think if I served it at a coffee shop I'd serve it on a platter with some cheese, assorted crackers and grapes. One of my favorite snacks, or even as a meal. Have a great week everyone.

Week 6: Quiche

Hi friends. Here we are again. Before I get started with week 6 I must tell you that I worked on my fried pies again. I finally have a wonderful crust recipe that is very flaky and just yummy. I made blueberry fried pies. They were really good, so I'm pretty sure you are going to enjoy them. The recipe is actually very easy. There are so many varieties of quiche's. The first one I am going to make is a little different in that you don't use a regular pie crust. You use shredded hash browns. This will be a new recipe for me and I am super excited about trying it. I will be doing that tomorrow. Well, made quiche tonight. This was a totally new recipe. Instead of the typical flour pie crust I used shredded hash browns for the crust. Some sausage, cheese, eggs and spices. Turned out great! I also added some chopped onion to the hash browns and fried it in a little melted butter before putting it into the pie plate. This will definitely be a recipe that I will use in a coffee shop. Hope everyone has a great week.

Week 5: Homeade Pumpkin Butter and Crumpets

The house smelled wonderful today as I made a big pot of pumpkin butter. Pumpkin, apple cider, cloves, allspice, nutmeg, ginger and cinnamon and some sugar all cooking in a large pot and smelling fabulous! I canned this recipe. It made 12 1/2 pint jars. Easy recipe that will be shared with you at the end of these 52 weeks. Now it's time to make the crumpets. A crumpet is a savory sweet bread made with yeast and flour. It is mainly eaten in the United Kingdom and other nations of the Commonwealth. Crumpets are generally circular. They have a distinctive flat top with many small pores as a resilient, slightly spongy texture being very porous. I made crumpets this morning. It took about an hour to prepare before the actual cooking process. This was my first time to make crumpets and I must say they were very good. I did some looking and found the recipe on the Allrecipe site. It's the only one listed if you want to look it up. I will also be putting it in my cookbook at the end of my journey. When all was done, we had a crumpet with a big spoonful of pumpkin butter. It was so good. Definitely a keeper recipe. A great gift idea too. That's all for this week. Hmmmm....now to choose next weeks recipe.....Good day everyone.

Week 4: Halloween Week

Hi everyone....I am a week late in writing this one. It was a busy week and I struggled with what to make. So, I made two different things. It's fall and nothing smells better than pumpkin bread with all the spices. That was my first recipe. I actually made Pumpkin Ginger Bread. It had the usual spices but with an extra kick of ginger. I was really very good. Moist and I like making the small loaves. This recipe made a 5 loaves that were good sized. The second thing I made is a favorite for fall and especially Halloween. It's called Popcorn Cake and it is made similar to the famous rice krispie treat. Only difference is you use 2 bags of popped microwave light butter popcorn and you stir in 1 cup of M&M's and 1 cup of nuts. You can uses other combinations of hard shell candy or nuts or leave the nuts completely out. You dump it out from a 9x13 pan and after it sits a bit you cut it into squares. Absolutely delicious, especially if you like popcorn balls. I think these are even better. So that is my week number 4.