It's been an eventful few days here since I last posted. Having work done to your house is never an easy thing and it's making me crazy because my house looks like one of those houses in the show "Hoarders". Okay, so not every room is to that extreme but the rooms that are, or are almost to that extreme, are really making me shake my head at how anyone can live like that all the time and to those extents...wow!
So, what we live in is a Campanelli ranch. There's loads of them in this city and in some of the surrounding towns. It's on a slab so that means no basement and there's not attic either. To top it off, they're small so there's very little storage. We were lucky, the one we found had already had some work done on it to convert half of the garage into a nice sized dining room. That other half of our garage is our only storage and I'm grateful they did not convert that to yet another room.
What else is a bit quirky is that the boiler unit is in the kitchen (along with the washing machine, mind you). It's underneath a rather retro looking cover and it's noisy and makes a lot of dust. We have long wanted to move it out of the kitchen but had never really looked into it. In the last month or two, we were considering remodeling the kitchen and because of this, we felt it was the time to look into it. We did look into it and we put a 50% deposit down on the work to move the boiler but the we decided that the kitchen was going to cost too much at this time. Sure, it will cost too much when we do want to do it at another time but we want to get some of the nuisance work done a little bit at a time so when we do the kitchen, it's not so very overwhelming. So, because we had already paid a deposit on the boiler we went ahead and got that work done as a start to what we eventually want to do with the kitchen.
Last Thursday and Friday they worked...Friday they were here until 7:30 even. They are coming back tomorrow afternoon as well to finish it. Meanwhile, all the stuff that was in my garage is in my house...my very small house that is comfortably full when there is not all the garage stuff in it. My dining room is like a maze...paths between boxes and boxes of who knows what. I have a corner in my living room that is full of the excess food that I had stored out in the garage that was duplicates of what I had un my cupboards already and I also have a bunch of Rock Band and Guitar Hero gear on the other side of the living room. The bedrooms and cat's room/office are full as well. I have managed to keep the kitchen no more cluttered than it usually is and for that I am grateful...it means I can still do my laundry and cook with out too much aggravation!
What I did manage to cook this weekend were two things. First off, Simon slept over at a friend's house on Saturday nite so I made him some caramel brownie cups to takeover. I have done this before with mini peanut butter cups but was inspired to try them with Rolo's when I walked by a bag that was whispering, "buy me" as I passed it by. Candy does that to me ALL the time. I thought, if I buy them I can have a few and bake with the rest. I listened to that bag of Rolos and bought it.
What you do is...it's so simple it's not even really a recipe:
~1 box brownie mix (the size for a9x13 size pan)
~1 bag of Rolo's or mini Reese's peanut butter cups
See...that's it...not much to it at all. You prepare the brownie mix as directed on the package and preheat the oven as directed. I was lucky enough to find some inexpensive mini muffin tin paper cups recently...if you don't have any of these, just spray the tins well. Plop some of the batter in each cup them push a candy piece into each one. Bake for about 10-15 minutes or until they start to look done. You can't really test them for doneness with a candy being in the middle so you have to just keep an eye on them and use your best judgement about pulling them out when the look done. In my opinion, an underbaked brownie is a good thing so I'm okay with it if I get them out a bit too early.
The Rolo's were good in these. However, overall I do like the peanut butter cups better. The Rolo ones were best when they were out of the oven long enough to cool so that you could handle them but warm enough so that the caramel was still gooey. Oh my...it was wonderful! As they completely cooled, the Rolo's firmed right back up. I don't like the peanut butter cup ones right out of the oven but room temp...so very wonderful. They are both good...don't get me wrong, but they only stay just warm enough for so long and are room temp for much longer of a time so the peanut butter wins out with me! (Unless of course I were feeling incredibly gluttonous and ate ALL the caramel ones at the right temp while they were still gooey!) I was going to frost these as well with either caramel or chocolate frosting but I ran out of time and oomph.
Saturday night Keith was busy getting insulation up in the garage. Now that the boiler is out there we do need to take steps to make sure that none of the pipes freeze. There was really nothing I could do to help so I went ahead and made bagels.
Here is the recipe:
Michele's Bagels
These are from my friend Michele with whom I have reconnected...or should I say connected with on Facebook. We went to high school together but hardly knew each other then. We became Facebook friends and have found that we have many, many things in common...including baking! I hope you'll visit her blog often after looking at her bagels. She's always creating something and I know I look forward to seeing what it is she's up to on her blog and hope you will too!
Seeing the pictures of Michele's bagels inspired me. I have tried to make bagels in the past and while they were not inedible, they were not as bagel-ish as I would have like them to be. Michele's were lovely to look at and she has said how much her and her husband enjoy them so I knew they were just as good as they looked.
I set out to do this and found that I really enjoyed the whole process of making these. I like things that take a lot of steps...I like to see the progress as you complete each step. With the bagels there was not a lot of down time and when there was, it was only 10 minutes or so at a time and there was plenty to do to get ready for the next step so you were always doing something.
I had, what I consider, a great success with this recipe. I had a few that looked like they had shrunk and I'm not quite sure what I did wrong with those ones, but the majority of them were indeed bagels and they were bagel-y! They looked like bagels, they tasted like bagels, they had the consistency and texture of bagels. They were so very good...I am so excited that I now have a great bagel recipe. It will be a great thing to play with as the winter looms and I am more in the mood to do things like this. You can add just about anything you want so there's lots to explore. For this batch I did a couple things to them. I topped a few with sesame seeds and to a couple, I topped them with some shredded asiago cheese. I have long loved Au Bon Pain's asiago cheese bagels so I just had to try this out. For the rest of the batch, I lef them plain. All of them were great in their own way. I would like to do a cinnamon swirl one at some point, I would also like to try some with a topping similar to the one Michele mentions in her blog and, I would love to do a chocolate chip one...Finagle A Bagel has the most wonderful chocolate chip bagels and I think I can give it a whirl now that I have a great base recipe. Thanks again to Michele for sharing this!!
Happy baking til next time!
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Fantastic Jen! Are they not good or what? My friend Sandy asked me where I originally got the recipe. Well I was flipping through my trusty Betty Crocker cookbook one day and found one, but the original recipe called for...get this...1/4 C of sugar! Ugh NO!...and no salt. So I thought well that will not do at all! lol Honey was the way to go because even when you make them plain, you can taste the tiniest hint and if someone didn't know, they would wonder what that was. So I use organic raw honey. Only 1T. and 1 tsp kosher salt. Much better! I'm so glad you enjoyed making them and you actually loved them! The first time I made them I was a little worried that I wouldn't be able to stop eating them. Then I decided to freeze them before I got myself into big trouble. Good idea, it works! :)
ReplyDeleteMichele...they are GOOD!!! I really think it will become a recipe that gets made a lot here.
ReplyDeleteSo, I have to comment on the Betty Crocker cookbook. I feel like everytime I'm say, "me too" that you are going to think I am lying about it!!! I smiled when I read about you flipping through your "trusty Betty Crocker coobook" because I have one as well. My mom gave it to me when I left home...a long story as to why she didn't want it...and that's the book I started cooking with. It's from 1987 and looks like it too. The cover falls off, the pages are stained with splatters and spills...it's a wreck! But, I still pull it out when I need a very basic recipe.
As far as how you tweaked Betty's bagel recipe..yeah, the sugar seemed like a lot. I don't mind a sweet bagel but if you are using savory toppings, it is probably best to stick with less sweet. They honey is good in it...I agree with that. I do not like honey so much for toast and the like but do like to use it in cooking. I put it in my tomato sauce and it always adds a nice layer of flavor.
We could not stop eating them the nite I made them but since it was the first time, I didn't worry too much about it. I ate one of the shrunken ones, made a sandwich for a late dinner with another one and then could not help myself and ate yet another one before the nite was over with. There were 2 left in the freezer come Monday...I made Simon a breakfast sandwich with 1 and later on in the day we split the last one in half and savored it till the next time I make them!
I'm so glad you liked them!
ReplyDeleteThat is so funny about your cookbook Jen! I believe you every time you tell me something relating to what I've said...really! So no worries. ;)
If you have never had raw honey, it is nothing like any honey you have ever had. It's unheated which means it is very mellow and light in color. Also, usually at the top, is a very thin layer of bees wax that...when you look into it...has these tiny bits from all of the flowers. You eat all of this. It's very good for you...and it tastes almost, like, flowery. Kind of how a very mild violet would taste. At first when my friend introduced it to me, I said that I didn't like honey at all. She told me to just try the smallest amount, plain, on a spoon. It was so good that when I bought a small jar of it, I ate most of the jar (over a long period of time) with a spoon. hahaha! It was the most incredible honey I have ever had. I then bought twelve jars to give out in my Christmas baskets one year and now my family makes me get more for them when they run out. My favorite place to get it is at the "Honey Gardens Apiaries" http://www.honeygardens.com/honey.htm It is a bit pricey, but worth every penny! I would rather go without it than use other than raw honey from now on. It's that good! :)