Feeling Domestic

I realize that it has been a long time since I posted. For some reason today, I'm all about posting again. The only common thread I can figure is that it is once again 62 degrees in our house after weeks of a very comfortable 68-72 range.

Anyhoo, moving on. What can make a person feel more like a domestic goddess than making her own apple butter and canning it?! Well, probably lots of things, and this is probably not impressive for most, but as far as I'm concerned, that is just the ticket!!

So I'd thought I'd share the process with you so that you too can feel the joy of doing the same.

Here you go. (I adapted my recipe from reading a bunch of other recipes). BTW, I'd recommend starting this before you go to bed on a Friday night and finishing it Saturday morning. It's hard to be patient. And your house will smell amazing when you wake up!

Domestic Goddess Crockpot Apple Butter

10 - 11 apples (or enough to fill a 4 qt crockpot to the brim when cored and chopped) I used galas.
2 T vanilla extract
1/2 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup white sugar
5 tsp cinnamon*
1/4 tsp nutmeg*
1/4 tsp salt

*adjust these spices as you'd like. I like a lot of cinnamon - I'll probably use more next time, but I'm not a huge fan of nutmeg.

1. Core and slice the apples. Don't worry about peeling. It's annoying and takes way to long. We'll deal with the peels later. Put sliced apples into food processor, and let the machine do all the work to chop them.

2. Fill crockpot to the brim with chopped apples.

3. Pour vanilla over apples.

4. Mix sugar and spices in a medium bowl. Pour mixture over apples and mix until well incorporated.

5. Cook on High for 1 hour. Then continue to cook on low for 11 - 12 more. Stir occasionally to break up the apples.

6. This is the part where you'll have to deal with the peels. Still it will be much quicker than peeling all those apples. Transfer apples to a blender and blend until smooth. Return to crockpot. I had to do 2 batches. Still, faster than peeling!

7. Cook for another 1.5 - 2 hours with the lid off until apple butter reduces to desired thickness.

See, wasn't that easy? Now the problem is going to be that you'll have all of this delicious apple butter that you cannot possibly eat before it goes bad. You can freeze it or can it. Or give it away immediately. I decided to try my hand at canning. We made 5 half-pint jars of apple butter. I won't outline the process because I am probably a poor example of how to can something considering we rigged up a rack and my pot was no where near big enough. But I will show you the pictures.

Rigged canning pot. Yes, that's the trivet we used as a rack. Yes, that water is only about 1/2 inch from the top of the pot, and yes, that will boil over.

My official canning funnel. Wonderful!

It was super easy to do and look at how pretty those jars of apple butter were! And look how excited Paul was!

I know you're off to try this! Let me know how it turns out!

Getting Creative

Today, the air is once again pretty frigid. Especially in the house. Luckily, I am obsessed with the fireplace. Once we do turn on the heat, having fires quickly becomes a waste of money, so I plan to enjoy them as much as possible in the meantime.

I just wanted to share quickly today's baking venture. I decided to make homemade cupcakes, but since Paul and I are cutting back on the sweets, I also decided to pass them off on the neighbors this afternoon. I had a limited amount of baking supplies on hand, but I found some recipes that worked well with what I had. These were actually super easy, so once you know you can make delicious devil's food cakes without a box mix, it's hard to go back. Enjoy!

Little Devil's Food Cakes (recipe from a food network kitchens cookbook)

Ingrediants
1 cup all-purpose flour (I used 1 cup + 2 T cake flour)  
6 tablespoons natural unsweetened cocoa
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
1 stick of butter, softened
1 cup of sugar
2 large eggs at room temperature (just realized I only used 1 large egg, and it was straight out of the fridge)
1 large egg yolk at room temperature (again, straight from the fridge)
1 teaspoon of pure (Dominican) vanilla extract (just kidding about the Dominican. Unless you have copious amounts of it, as I do.)
1/2 cup water

What to do
1. Preheat oven to 350. Line muffin tin with 12 papers. Whisk flour, cocoa powder, baking soda, baking powder, and salt in a medium bowl.
2. Beat butter with an electric mixer until smooth in a large bowl. Increase speed and gradually add the sugar. Beat until light and smooth. Reduce speed to medium low and add the whole eggs and yolk one at a time, incorporating each fully before adding the next. Beat in vanilla. Scrape down sides of bowl.
3. Bring water just to a boil. With mixer at a low speed, beat flour mixture into butter mixture in several additions. Drizzle in hot water and mix until a smooth batter forms. Divide batter among muffin cups - about 2/3 full for each. Bake until cakes spring back when pressed gently. It took mine 23 minutes. Cool in the tin on a rack for 10 minutes then remove and let cool completely.

Chocolate Cream Cheese Icing (adapted from cupcakeproject.com)

makes enough for 12 cupcakes
(also makes a mess if you're not careful)

Ingrediants
a little more than 1/8 cup of butter, room temp
3 ounces of cream cheese, room temp
2 cups of powdered sugar (it will be pretty stiff, so adjust as you please)
1/4 cup cocoa powder

What to do
1. Mix the cream cheese and butter on medium speed until well blended and smooth.
2. Gradually add in powdered sugar.
3. Mix in cocoa powder.
4. Lick the mixer.

After that...Voila! Now, I did eat just one, but only because I had to be sure they were as delicious as they looked before I hand them off to the neighbors.

Again, I really didn't find that these took much longer than using a box mix, and I had all of these little random supplies just waiting to be used. The tops of the cupcakes have a really nice crunch to them but the insides are completely soft and heavenly. Let me know how they turn out for you!

Now, I should probably hang out with Jillian for my daily punishment to account for all of the cupcake batter/icing/actual cupcake that I consumed during this process. I so love/hate her.

30 Minutes (okay 60 minute) Baguettes

Because of my current (and holding) lack of employment, I feel the need to be an awesome homemaker. This involves doing things like shining the kitchen floor (did it this week) and making awesome dinners. Tonight, the Riner household was super fortunate to have friends in town - the Acrees and my very own Hillbean are hanging out here this weekend. So for the occasion of meeting sweet baby Naomi Acree for the very first time, I decided we needed a killer dinner.

And it shall be chicken and dumplings. I even made my own stock. But the dumplings were bisquick (because you cannot possibly make better dumplings than bisquick dumplings).

But that's not even what this post is about. This post is about my second attempt at making bread...and not of the pumpkin or banana variety (which, if we're honest, is just calling cake "bread" so that we feel better about eating copious amounts of it).

Pinterest has become quite the problem - there are far too many delicious looking recipes that I think I can do. So I came across this pin today for "baguettes made in about 30 minutes using only 5 everyday ingredients."

Anytime something says it will take "about 30 minutes," you should translate that into "this will take you at least an hour if not more."

So I set out to make the 30 minutes baguettes.

Luckily, I had a package of yeast. So I did the whole yeast-in-warm-water-with-sugar-thing that is fairly standard. I have done this before (e.g. my first attempt at making bread several weeks ago), and I noticed this time that the yeast was not as frothy as maybe it should have been after the required resting time. Oh well. Carry on.

The next step is the tricky part. I remembered from my first attempt at bread making that you cannot trust a recipe when it comes to making dough. Oh the recipe may say 4 cups of flour, but it really means 6. Apparently it depends on a lot of factors including the temperature, humidity, the alignment of the stars, and how the Gamecocks are doing in football. Don't ask me how much flour I used for this dough - I stopped keeping track. Apparently it needs to be soft but not sticky. That is fairly subjective.

This is my dough. It was indeed sticky - which makes it very hard to clean off of the counter. I added more flour and let it rise for a about half an hour. It rose maybe .0003 of an inch. Unimpressed. I think this relates back to the whole non-frothy yeast thing.

Mallie was unimpressed.

I chose to move forward with the height-challenged dough, and turns out, I think it might make it. The next step is dividing the dough into four parts, making snakes with smaller sections of dough, and twisting them together. This was super fun. Maybe I should invest in some playdough.



Okay, this is the crazy part. When you put the twisty snakes into the oven, you put a dish of ice underneath of it. Apparently the steam makes the crust...well...crusty. Unfortunately, we have no ice maker and only two ice trays. So basically, we would get to enjoy our crusty bread with lukewarm beverages for the rest of the evening.



18 minutes later...TA-DA! So they don't look exactly like the original picture, but it tastes pretty darn good. I know what I would do differently next time...starting with maybe giving the yeast a talkin' to before we get started, but I think it was a fairly good second attempt at breadmaking. And I really think I could do it much more quickly next time. Should you wish to attempt such feats in 30 minutes or less, here is the link to the recipe: http://blogs.babble.com/family-kitchen/2011/02/21/crusty-baguettes-made-fresh-in-30-minutes/. Best of luck!