Food for Thought (and Discussion)

[Scarlet_Trefoil]

And aren't cucumber sandwiches kind of like the British equivalent of the BLT?...do they have mayo? Please say no...

Actually, they did have mayo, but I used yogurt instead, since I have an allergy to eggs, which are in mayo. I think it was probably better with yogurt instead, anyway!

Mayo? That's something I have not heard of in conjunction with cucumber sandwiches. Of course, I'm not exactly up on British cuisine, but I have only had cucumber sandwiches with either butter or cream cheese as the spread. Naturally, I prefer the cream cheese.

Starkat, your cake is giving me a strange hankering for a pecan pie. My favorite ever pecan pie recipe is from friends in Texas.

~Scarlet

[Pattertwigs Pal]

I love baking, cooking, cake decorating, and cookie decorating. Here are some of my past creations.

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I used mini bunt pans for the two halves of the pumpkins and cinnamon sticks for the stems. The pumpkins themselves are made out of pumpkin bread. The frosting was kind of melting. I think that was because I used reduced sugar frosting (I like to reduce calories when ever possible) and I might have used food coloring instead of frosting coloring.

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The trees are decorated with red hots and fruit flavored red hot like things (I'm sure they have another name).

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I used a chocolate chip recipe for this cookie but substituted Holiday morsels (non-chocolate! I don't like chocolate. ). It ended up looking like a face although I didn't do anything to encourage it.

I'm amazed at what some of you can do with shaping cakes. I can never get the frosting to stay on the sides of the cake I have cut, so I have to rely on getting shaped pans.

[Horse_Lover]

Those tree cookies are ADORABLE Pattertwigs!!!

[LucyTheValiant]

Those tree cookies are ADORABLE Pattertwigs!!!

I would have to agree, they are really nice.

I would post pics of what kind of cakes ive decorated, but sadly I havent decorated any cakes yet.

[IloveFauns]

[color=indigo]I made Lemon Cupcakes today, they're for our church's dinner tomorrow. But I made a couple to taste, got to make sure they're good. And they are delicious, IMHO.

I used a vanilla cupcake recipe and used lemon bakery emulsion in place of vanilla extract. I got the recipe from http://www.joyofbaking.com.

Those cakes look very nice(a page back). I have decorated a few cakes. All of them were just plain though. easy to do.

[SnowAngel]

Thanks, ILF.

Today, I made sugar cookie dough(the roll-out kind). I won't bake them until tomorrow afternoon as the dough has to chill overnight.

I also made the frosting. I'm going to color it: red, yellow, brown, and blue(not all together, of course ). I'm going to take pictures after I frost them and I will post some of them. My younger siblings and I have all of the cookie cutters pick out: a moose, a bear, an Alaska shape, and a football, among others.

SnowAngel

[SnowAngel]

I did it! Hooah! It's always lots of fun to make sugar cookies, but it's also a lot of work (about 3 hours, including cleanup ). It's so much fun to be able to do almost anything you want to when decorating the cookies (especially tasting!).

Okay, I promised pictures and here they are.

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In the above picture, the really small cookie with the blue frosting is a footprint.

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I made football cookies because the Chiefs beat the Redskins for their first win this season. Hooah!

SnowAngel

[Shadowlander]

I found a CS Lewis quote that I found to be quite fitting for this thread:

“He that but looketh on a plate of ham and eggs to lust after it hath already committed breakfast with it in his heart”

Amen, brother.

[SnowAngel]

Cool quote, Shadowlander.

I haven't been baking lately. But Scarlet made cupcakes several weeks ago and had them in the freezer. We ate them last week with my mocha cream cheese frosting-type-stuff. Here's a picture.

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Yesterday, one of my sisters made vanilla ice cream, for which I made fudge sauce topping. Mummm!

SnowAngel

[Shadowlander]

No pastry action here, but I did buy 3 stacks of deli coldcuts from the store the other day. A pound of pastrami, another of roast beef, and the last of corned beef. And come tomorrow for lunch I'm gonna heat up some pastrami in a skillet, melt some provolone on top of it, and dump it all on some rye bread. And I've got some sauerkraut in the fridge so I'm also thinking of making a corned beef reuben later in the week. My wife sneers at food of this kind, so that makes more for me!

[Glenstorm the Great]

do you do all the cooking Shadowlander?

I bake and cook alot. When my mom was pregnant with my baby brother I did most of the cooking since I am the oldest, and I still kinda do. I bake alot to, especially lately because I've been on a wheat/dairy free diet and I have to make stuff I can't eat (most wheat/dairy free stuff from the store tastes disgusting! Especially rice bread, they even tell you on the bag to toast or microwave it before eating it's so stiff!)

[Benjamin]

I just made bread yesterday! It was Yummy! I love bread fresh out of the oven steaming and then you put some butter and honey on it YUM!

[aslansothername]

I love to cook and bake. My specialty for baking is my Chocolate marble cheese cake (I'll post some pics when I make it at Christmas), and for a meal i love to make my Ranch cheddar chicken with a toss salad and fresh green beans. But I thought that I would share a recipe with you all. It's a recipe that every Narnia lover needs to have!!!! what is it?

SHOW SPOILER

Turkish Delight

2 cups Granulated sugar
1 lemon, juiced and strained
1 Orange, juced and strained, and the peel cut into strips
4 Tablespoons Unflavored powdered gelatin
2 Tablespoons Confectioner's sugar
1 Tablespoon Cornstarch
1 1/4 cups Water


Dissolve the granulated sugar in half of the water over medium heart. Add the strips of lemon and orange juices, and orange peel. Bring the mixture to a boil and simmer for 15 minutes. Soak the gelatin in the mixture for 5 to 10 minutes. Strain the mixture into a shallow pan and let it set for 24 hours.
Cut the candy into 1-inch squares. Sift the confectioner's sugar and cornstarch together in a shallow dish. Roll the pieces of candy in the mixture. Store the squares in boxes with more confectioner's sugar and cornstarch between each layer. Refrigerate.

[SnowAngel]

So, here's my latest baking - Spritz Cookies! My sisters and I got a cookie press for Christmas a couple years back and that is my "secret" to quick, cute spritz cookies. It really speeds the whole process up, and leaves me more time for the fun part: tea parties! Little sibs and I had quite a nice tea yesterday with the fresh cookies. The espresso cup certainly isn't up to C. S. Lewis' standard, but hey, it was available!

Tea with almond spritz cookie.

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SnowAngel

[Horse_Lover]

[quote=SnowAngel]So, here's my latest baking - Spritz Cookies![/quote]

I LOVE spritz cookies!! They are one of my holiday faves.! My mom has a cookie press too and it seems like we ALWAYS make those.

[Shadowlander]

Do you do all the cooking Shadowlander?

Pretty much. My wife is interested in learning to cook but when the time comes she'd really just rather eat. That leaves it up to me to do the cooking, but I lack a ton of experience in making stuff from scratch, so our fridge is typically packed with frozen pizzas, burritos, Steak-Ums, hamburgers, hot dogs, Stouffer's frozen family dinners, fish sticks, and occasionally a pair of steaks if it's a good pay week. About 3 weeks ago I made my first ever successful batch of French toast...my first foray into it years ago was an unmitigated disaster! So I was pretty proud of this.

I can do breakfast just fine...scrambled eggs, bacon, sausage links, corned beef hash, grits (sometimes with cheese, sometimes with just butter, salt, and pepper...breakfast just isn't breakfast without some grits!) and if I'm feeling froggy some hash browns. I'd love to try and tackle biscuits and gravy, but while I think I might be able to swing it with the biscuits I'm leary about the gravy...gravy is tough. If you foul up you can ruin the whole batch.