Pie Stone a 12" Round Marble Pastry Board

This is the bee's knees.  I have wanted a 12" round marble piece to roll my pie dough on for some time.

 This is perfect.


Click on this
Wayfair Byzantine-Marble-Round-Board-in-Champagne

Place this thick, round, marble stone in the cooler overnight and you are ready for rolling out the perfect pie dough for a typical Pyrex glass pie dish. The cold stone will keep your butter from melting. Roll out the bottom crust and trim off excess using the stone as a guide, place in pie dish then trim to the edge to the pie dish. Put the trimmed dough under the top crust dough and roll out past the edge of the stone. Trim using the stone as a guide to make a perfect 12" round top pie crust. Lay on pie then tuck the top under the bottom.  Best pie tool ever.

Japanese Fruit Cake

Here is my version of Japanese Fruit cake.  It is a simplified version of the following recipe from my Grandmother's recipe box.  She got it from the local newspaper when wood stoves were still common.  I made a single layer using a 10"X10" pan but the original recipe is to make four short layers.  Do a google on images

Original Japanese Fruit Cake

Taken from the small town paper during the wood stove days

Prepare four 9” pans                                         

1 cup butter

2 cups sugar

4 eggs

3 cups flour

1 cup sweet milk

1 teaspoon vanilla

3 teaspoons baking powder

1/2 pound (unshelled weight)English walnuts

1/2 pound (unshelled weight)Pecans

1/2 pound (unshelled weight)Brasil nuts

1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon

1/2 teaspoon ground cloves

1 cup white raisins (opt)

Mix nuts, spices  and a little bit of flour together set aside.

Cream butter, and sugar.  Separate the yolk from the whites. Add Yolks. Sift flour, baking powder together.  Alternate flour mixture and milk into creamed ingredients.  Add vanilla.  Fold in nuts and spices.  Fold in egg whites 

Cook at moderately hot oven in 4 layers for 25 - 35 minutes.

Filling

1 whole coconut grated

1 whole orange grated

1 whole lemon grated

1 big can pineapple

2 cups sugar

3 teaspoons cornstarch or flour

mix and cook until stiff but not very long.

Ribs

I built this pit especially for ribs and barbecue chicken.  I burn the winter prunnings from my apple and peach orchard.

I Q mostly spare ribs because they have such a wonderful flavor.

The rub recipe I use Is one Walmart had on their website.

 

Walmart Dry Rub

1/4cup dark brown sugar

4tsp. garlic salt

4tsp. chili powder

2tsp. salt

1tsp. black pepper

1/2tsp. celery salt

1/4tsp. red pepper

1/4tsp. cinnamon

1/4tsp. white pepper

Pizza American Style

The weather has turned cool and that means homemade pizza.  A really good flour like King Arthur bread flour and an  overnight rise in the fridge is the key to a great tasting pizza.  For final shaping I have a mix I keep that is equal parts flour, cornmeal and semolina.

Fall in the South

Satsumas, are just coming into season.  This one I picked this morning.  They are much like Clementines but much larger.  Even though

they are a citrus, they have a very narrow growing window in the South they can reach best flavor.  The optimum location is just far enough north that they are not damaged by a heavy freeze.  Too far South and it is too warm to develop that wonderful sweet flavor.  They are mostly seedless but some of pollination comes from my Meyer Lemon tree so those Satsumas can have seeds.

Danish Braid

I have been working on a Danish dough recipe that would be easy for the average person to work with whether they have a mixer or not.  It is also important for the recipe to of a size that the average, home baker can work with in a timely manor.  I have a change I want to try then I will post the recipe.

Size wise I wanted the recipe to fit a pound of butter that comes in four sticks.  This gives a recipe that is large enough to make quite a few pastry items so you can store them in your freezer.

Danish Dough by Romina Rasmussen was my starting point.  She is quite well published and owner of
Les Madeleines in Salt lake city.  The changes I made were to accommodate an overnight cooler rise and a change to allow proper baked color without using an egg wash albeit you do lose the shine.  If you wanted to use Chief Rasmussen as is it is perfect without any changes.

http://www.les-madeleines.com/chef.html

I do take a single batch dough and make it two different laminated doughs.  This gives the home baker a size that is easy to work with as well as limits handling time which can detrimental to laminated dough.

Notice too the larger amounts of Cardamon which is balanced with a lemon zest.

Confederate Rose

I always thought the origin of the name Confederate Rose came from the flower color cycle.  It starts white representing the glory of the Confederate states rise then, it turns blood red, then dies.

These flowers are quite large. Maybe 6" across.