Yep, you read that correctly. Once printed, this recipe was 18 pages long! It had 13 steps and took 12 hours for me to produce the two lovely loaves you see above. At first, I thought our hostesses (hostessi?), Mary and Sara, had lost their minds. However, what's not to like about trying something challenging on for size - particularly if it's a Julia Child recipe!! I didn't join the Daring Bakers for nothin'!  read more »

What products do you need to bake bread? When baking breads, there are a few kitchen products that will ease the process and help produce superior breads. Some baking equipment such as mixers, dough raising bowls and baking stones aren’t completely necessary, however they can be very nice to have around. So what bread baking equipment do you need to bake breads?  read more »

Here we are, the sun is shining, the birds are singing, and it's Tuesday, and yet another Tuesdays With Dorie Challenge day!!! One of my most favourite days of the week, and the day I, along with umpteen other dedicated bakers, get to show you all what I have done with this week's Dorie challenge. We're some 200 plus strong now, and growing at an alarming rate, and we're all baking and eating our way through the most delicious baking book ever written, Baking, From my home to yours, by the best selling cookery book author, Dorie Greenspan. This week's challenge, Peanut Butter Torte on pages 282-283, as chosen by Elizabeth of Ugg Smell Food . I could hardly wait to get stuck in to this one for several reasons, the main one being I love peanut butter in any way, shape or form. Life just wouldn't be worth living if there was not a big jar of Skippy in the cupboard, or two or three! It looked to be a fairly easy recipe to execute and I had all the ingredients to make it without sending Todd to the store. (What it is about men and grocery stores?????  read more »

Cooking for Real with Sunny Anderson Real Comfort, Real Good Spicy Macaroni and Cheese Pan Fried Meatloaf in Tricolor Peppers Shake Shots I liked Sunnys first show, which I saw some time ago, but not her timeslot . Sunday mornings are not my first choice for food tv . But I saved a bunch of Sunnys shows and I like the menu on this one one dish in particular I thought was very clever. Sunnys doing comfort food. She starts with her mothers spicy mac and cheese. She adds 2 cups of elbow pasta to boiling salted water. She goes on the meatloaf.  read more »

These are the most amazing, gluttonous chocolate brownies in the History of Ever. And I mean that. You know you are in trouble when you lick the spoon, and then use the spoon to lick the bowl, and you end up needing a tall glass of milk. Trouble that starts with T, that rhymes with B, and you get holy-crap, the best brownies ever! Di, of Di's Kitchen Notebook , chose for our TwD gustatory pleasure Dorie 's French Chocolate Brownies. I don't know what makes them French, but I don't care. These are that good that I don't care about anything other than eating them. Short-sighted, maybe. But make these yourself and you'll understand. I would almost suggest you NOT make these, they are that dangerous. That, and I don't really want to share the world's chocolate resources with you - I want them all to myself so I can make these every day. Well, not every day. My doctor would probably kick my ass. With 12 tablespoons of butter per pan, I would swiftly turn into a solid. My plan is ruined. I shall come up with another. World domination can come about another way: Dorie for President. You heard me right. When we go to the polls this November and are given the opportunity to write-in our candidates, rather than vote for Mickey Mouse or Ronald McDonald, we should all vote Dorie into office. She would sooth the leaders of the world, not just with her famous World Peace cookies, but with these brownies. She could fight to lower food prices around the world and lead us all into a Chocolate Age of Happiness. Who's with me?  read more »

We women have a lot to learn about simplifying our lives. We have to decide what is important and then move along at a pace that is comfortable for us. We have to develop the maturity to stop trying to prove something. We have to learn to be content with what we are. ~Marjorie Pay Hinckley Sometimes I think women are their own worst enemies. Men think that we go to all the trouble of wearing makeup, dressing nicely, having our hair done etc. for them, but really, truth be known . . . its mostly for the benefit of other women. We just cannot stand the thought of another woman looking at us and thinking silently to herself, or out loud to a friend . . . My goodness did you see that?  read more »

Today's recipe: A cupcake adaptation of a Cook's Illustrated recipe for carrot cake. Light crumb, lightly spiced. Excellent cream cheese frosting. People, as if we need one more reason to share our very best recipes, it's this: should we lose a recipe, we can call to ask, "By chance, did I give you my carrot cake recipe?" and then sigh with relief when hearing, "Yeah!  read more »

FOR TODAY, OCTOBER 20, 2008 ...

Outside My Window...
The wind is just a howling. It started yesterday. This will really bring the leaves off of the trees now. They will be looking quite bare after this I expect. We really have had a fairly nice autumn, much nicer weather wise than the summer was.

I am thinking...
About my friend Margaret. She is leaving to go on a trip to Egypt today. I hope that she has a lovely and a safe time. I think she's very brave. I have long wanted to go there and to the Holy Land. It must be exciting to see the Pyramids and walk on the Sahara Desert and see and do all those things I've only ever seen pictures of in books. I can't wait to hear about everything she saw and did when she gets back!  read more »

Have you ever seen or tried those crisp cinnamon twists at the market? We used to buy them years ago, but they got pretty expensive and we stopped buying them. Those were the first thing that popped into our minds when we took a bite of these Cinnamon Sticks I made for the Weekly Wednesday Treat Day.  read more »

FOR TODAY August 25th, s008 . . .

Outside My Window . . .
It's still very dark, the sun is just beginning to raise it's head above the horizon, or at least the light is. I still can't tell if it will be sunny or not. The weather machine, which sits on our kitchen window sill has a great big sun on it, so . . . maybe we'll get lucky!

I am thinking . . .
About the wonderful conversation I had with my mom yesterday afternoon. It's hard to believe she is 76 now. Her voice is still so lively and vibrant on the telephone, but I know if I were to see her today, I'd notice that she seemed much older and more frail than she did the last time I saw her. That's the way it was the last time I was home to Nova Scotia, which was two summers ago . . . it suddenly hit me how tiny she was and she looked so much older . . . she hasn't been very well this year. She caught the shingles, for the second time, and it has really affected her. She had it on her head and in one eye and down one side of her face this time and is still suffering with it. It sure takes a long time to go away! I try to call her every second week and my, oh my, we talk for ages and it's hard to hang up at the end of it, as I could just talk to her for hours, it's so much fun. I wish I could call her every day . . .  read more »