Homemade Vanilla - So Easy!

If you've never made homemade vanilla, you really need to do it. It's so super easy. I made several batches last Christmas as gifts. I first had some when my daughter made them for Christmas about ten years ago. When it comes to flavoring your baking, it doesn't get better than that! If you plan to give some as gifts, you'll want to make it about three months before giving because the flavors need to mingle for that amount of time. How you make it:

Get yourself some glass jars (got mine from Amazon)

A bottle of liquor. I chose bourban, but any will work.

One vanilla bean for every one ounce of liquor.

Slice your vanilla beans down the length and put them in the glass jars. Pour liquor to fill. Set them to the side and give them a nice and vigorous shake every other day. That's it!

They really make great gifts especially if you're going for a baking theme.

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Let's Talk About Cheese and Other Fresh Ingredients!

I'm not a great chef by any means. I can however, make up some really yummy meals, and am known to make a mean Brownie M&M Trifle.

Let's face it, if you have a good recipe, and can measure properly, you can cook. What separates the good cooks from the "creative" and perhaps "exceptional" cooks, is your choice of ingredients, accuracy in measuring, and not being afraid to experiment. To this day, I don't think I have ever followed a recipe exactly. We'll get into more of those things later, but today we are going to focus on fresh and high quality ingredients.

I learned years ago that you can't use margarine in baking because butter is just so much better tasting. Along with that little tidbit, I won't use imitation vanilla anymore. My daughter made me the real stuff for Christmas one year, and since then, that's all I'll use. The same goes for apple sauce. There is absolutely no comparison between canned apple sauce and freshly made apple sauce.

Now, onto my most recent discovery...cheese! I'm a busy girl these days. Between running my business and my busy everyday life, sometimes it's too easy to cut corners to save time. Last night I made our favorite Mexican casserole (recipe will come soon) only to discover, I only had about half the amount of cheese that was needed for this recipe. Fortunately, I always have brick cheese in the fridge because we love our cheese. I decided to shred the other half from the brick myself. It took less than two minutes with a hand grater. Two minutes!!! It also took less time than that to wash the grater.

The first thing I noticed was the look of it. The cheese that I shredded was so fresh and soft looking. When I put the shredded cheese next to it, I couldn't help but notice the "powdered stuff" that was covering it. I'm sure it's perfectly safe to eat but, ewwww! After researching, I discovered that this was an additive to prevent the cheese from clumping in the package. It's on all shredded cheeses. I also noticed the feel of the cheese. My freshly shredded cheese was soft, and moist, while the bagged cheese was hard and very dry. 

It was clear that the look and feel was like day and night. What about taste? Well, I'm sure you can imagine that difference. I did a little taste test before and after baking. Yep, no comparison! The freshly shredded cheese was delicious and yummy, while the bagged cheese was dry and hard, just as it looked and felt. As for the finished product, wow! So rich and delicious! That would be the freshly shredded part, not the bagged.

So, if you want to do some experimenting, the first place I would start is to do away with the convenience or cheaper items, and go with pure and fresh. You won't be disappointed.

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Kitchen Tip - Freezing Liquids

I can't tell you how many times we have thrown away milk. There are only two of us in the house, and the only time we ever use it is when we need it for pancakes, in a recipe, or someone comes over and uses it in their coffee. Even if we only buy a quart or half gallon, we throw most of it away. Then something dawned on me, milk freezes very well! I got out my silicone cupcake cups, placed them on a couple plates, poured the milk into them, and froze them. Each cup holds 1/2 cup of milk. After they were frozen, just a few hours later, I removed them from the silicone cups and put them in a ziplock bag for use later. Since they are frozen in half cup servings, it's easy to grab what I need next time I want pancakes or oatmeal. You can thaw them out the day before, or in the microwave when you need them.

I've been doing this for years with our leftover gravy, pizza sauce, spaghetti sauce, and all kinds of sauces. The silicone doesn't absorb odors and they clean up so easily.

Here's a tip: The cheaper silicone cups are easiest to remove from the frozen milk because they are thinner. Just peels right off!

Clipart image from "Country Kitchen" available at Etsy.

Homemade Pizza Crust

Nothing makes a pizza like a homemade pizza crust! I've been making them for years but tonight was the first time I made one for a long time and I had to ask myself why I waited so long? The nice thing about making your own, besides the awesome taste, is that everyone can have their pizza any way they want it. I'm sharing with you the recipe I have used for years. I'm not one for kneading the dough, but if you have a Kitchen Aid or other heavy-dudy stand mixer, let it do the work for you. This recipe will make two large pizzas, or 6 to 8 individual pizzas. If you like a super thick crust, it will make one very large thick crust pizza.

Also, I like to make the full recipe, then divide the dough into 6 or 8 pieces (after the rising process) and freeze. Just let them come to room temperature on their own before using. Works great!

PIZZA CRUST

2 1/4 teaspoons active dry yeast

1/2 teaspoon brown sugar

1 1/2 cups warm water (110 degrees F/45 degrees C)

1 teaspoon salt

2 tablespoons olive oil

3 1/3 cups all-purpose flour

In a large bowl, dissolve the yeast and brown sugar in the water, and let sit for 10 minutes.

Stir the salt and oil into the yeast solution. Mix in 2 1/2 cups of the flour. Turn dough out onto a clean, well floured surface, and knead in more flour until the dough is no longer sticky. Knead about 5 to 10 minutes.

If using a stand mixer like I do, I gradually add all the flour. Sometimes I add a little more if the dough is too sticky. I let the mixer knead it for (with a dough hook) about 5 minutes.

Place the dough into a well oiled bowl, and cover with a cloth. Let the dough rise until double; this should take about 1 hour. Punch down the dough, and form two balls. Allow the dough to relax for a minute before rolling out. Use for your favorite pizza recipe.

Preheat oven to 425 degrees F (220 degrees C). If you are baking the dough on a pizza stone, you may place your toppings on the dough, and bake immediately. If you are baking your pizza in a pan, lightly oil the pan, and let the dough rise for 15 or 20 minutes before topping and baking it.

Bake pizza in preheated oven, until the cheese and crust are golden brown, about 15 to 20 minutes.

NOTE: The pizza shown in the picture is my low-fat favorite. I use reduced fat ranch dressing for the sauce. I then top it with broccoli (slightly cooked), tomato pieces, and reduced fat mozzarella cheese.

Make Your Own Instant Mixes

 Brian and I love our banana nut muffins! While I watch the fat and calories, he's more into watching the salt and sugar. They really don't take very long when making them from scratch but when you are a busy person, you want to make them even faster! Especially when you want to throw in a batch so you can have one before leaving the house for work at 6:45 a.m.

I've thrown the dry ingredients together many times the night before so it would be quicker in the morning. I recently got this idea to make up several Ziplock bags of the dry ingredients, mark them, and store them in an air-tight container. This has worked so well! I always have ripened bananas in the freezer. I just put them in the microwave for a couple minutes on a very low (about 20%) power. Simply add the moist ingredients, and they can be thrown together in about 5 minutes, and cleanup is next to nothing.

This will also works well with cookie recipes, brownie recipes, and quick bread recipes. Between making up the bags and cleaning the mess, it took less than 45 minutes to make up four bags of his, and four bags of mine.

I recently posted my low-fat banana chocolate chip muffin recipe here at my blog. The link is here if you missed it.

If anyone is diabetic or has a loved one that is, I'll share the sugar free banana chocolate chip muffin recipe in the near future. Just let me know in the comments.

Silicone Bakeware

Have you tried any of the silicone bakeware yet? Since it first came out I've been playing a little with it. Some I found that I love, others lasted about a month in my kitchen before I got rid of it.

I've discovered that I wasn't fond of the type that you actually bake in. I tried several varieties of these and although they cooked evenly and nothing got stuck, I didn't like the way they didn't come clean. I could never get the gunked on cooking spray off. I tossed them.

What I do love are the utensils! My personal favorite is the little spatula. It's only about 7 inches long but I use it for everything that I can spread or scrape for small places. The little brush is handy as well. The whisk, I'm not a fan of, but Brian likes it for making his pudding. I prefer my nice, top quality chef's whisk that is made from stainless steel. The little heart shaped muffin cups are super handy. They are great for saving broth, sauces, frosting, and gravies that I can't use up before they go bad. I just pour the above into them, freeze, then remove, and bag. The individual muffin cups are fine to bake in because they clean up  nicely.

Have you tried any of them? Do you have any favorites?

Kitchen Tips - Sauces & Gravies

One of our favorite things to eat are individual pizzas. The reason I say "individual" is because I like my pizza with low fat ranch dressing, broccoli, tomatoes, and mozzarella, while hubby likes his with pizza sauce, sausage, and mozzarella. If you don't take advantage of your freezer, you will be wasting a lot of food! I do go through my salad dressing soon enough because I eat a lot of salads, use it for dipping veggies, pizzas, etc. But Brian can't possibly eat a whole can of pizza sauce in a safe amount of time eating a small pizza here and there. So I take full advantage of my freezer.

After I open the can and put sauce on his pizza. I simply drop the sauce by spoonfuls onto waxed paper (parchment paper will work too), pop it in the freezer, bag after frozen, and use one or two as I need them. I also have pre-cooked sausage, pre-made crusts, and frozen broccoli in there ready to go.

I always have the pre-made grocery store crusts on hand but if I have some time (usually in winter) I'll make up a big batch of pizza dough, let it rise once, then divide it into individual sized portions and put each in a plastic baggie, and then freeze in one large bag. That's the best! They take very little time to thaw.

I've also found that those silicone cupcake cups are wonderful for freezing small portions of gravy (Brian likes it occasionally, I don't), broth, tomato soup, sauces and anything else you might otherwise waste. Like the pizza sauce, just pop them out once frozen and throw in one big bag.

Dinner Made Easy

Made another one of my favorites today. Not sure what to call them but they are delicious, quick, and super easy. I just sliced a couple pieces of a hardy bread into 3/4" slices (I used a roasted garlic), spread some Ranch dressing on top (I used the reduced-fat), top with some diced tomato pieces, cooked broccoli (yep, frozen), and top with cheese.  I baked them in a preheated 435° oven for 8 to 12 minutes, depending on your oven and what you actually top them with.

So delicious!

Ultra Easy Pizza

It doesn't get any easier than this! Normally I make up a big batch of pizza crusts and freeze the dough (after its first rising) in individual servings in little baggies. But I didn't really feel like making up a batch of dough because I'm in my creative busy streak. So I discovered the already made dough at the grocery store. You get three in a package (individual size) and they freeze very well. You can top them with anything you like but I made mine nice and healthy! I used low fat Ranch dressing as the sauce, topped it with fresh diced Roma tomatoes, broccoli (cooked), and topped it off with low-fat mozzarella cheese. Absolutely Yummy!!!!