Parker House Rolls via Pioneer Woman

Our family holidays tend to revolve around food, which is super original of us, obviously.  This Christmas, we went to the country and had what I suppose you would call lunch, which for me consisted of eating my weight in crab balls and sampling everything else, including deer bologna (which according to my cousin, you aren't a real man unless you have some deer bologna in the fridge).  Then we came home for some crab chowder and these parker house rolls I found on PW's website.  The rolls were amazing, which tends to be the case when there is a stick of butter in the rolls themselves, and then you dip them in melted butter before baking and then for good measure slather a bit more on before eating.  They were so good I made them a week later for our traditional New Year's day turkey dinner (which strongly resembles a Thanksgiving turkey dinner only a smidge smaller).  Here is a link to the recipe on PW's site "Parker House Rolls"

You start out by scalding the milk and melting the butter and dissolving the sugar all together in a large pot, I use a dutch oven.  Then you let it hang out and cool down a bit, while you do something productive, like watch an episode of 30 Rock.

Once the milk has cooled some, stir in the yeast and most of the flour, then cover and let it rise for an hour (which is where the dutch oven complete with lid comes in handy, no fiddling around with saran wrap which never does what I want it to).  Next stir in the rest of the dry ingredients, after which you knead for a couple minutes, and then let it rest/rise for another half an hour.  At this point you could pop it in the fridge instead of letting it rise and then either bake the rolls several hours later (as in make the dough in the morning and then bake them in the evening) or the next day.

After the dough has risen, either on the counter or in the fridge, roll it out to about half an inch thick.  I find it is easier to roll when it is chilled, and the more I work with it, the harder it gets to cut out neat little rounds, in fact at the very end I smooshed the rest of the dough into a blob, tried to flatten it out and then dunked it in the butter, sort of folded it and ended up with a misshapen monster roll that became known as Austin's roll, which if I am not mistaken, he quite enjoyed.  Anyways, back to the point, roll out the dough, cut out circles, dunk them in melted butter and then fold in half and pop them on a cookie sheet.

Let the butter soaked rolls rise once more and then bake until golden.  Just see if you can resist eating one right out of the oven.

Parker House Rolls from The Pioneer Woman

2 cups milk

1 stick butter

1/2 cup sugar

2 1/4 teaspoons active dry yeast

4 cups flour

1/2 teaspoon (heaping) baking powder

1/2 teaspoon (scant) baking soda

1 tablespoon (heaping) salt

1/2 cup additional flour

2/3 stick additional butter

Combine milk, a stick of butter and sugar in a dutch oven, bring to a simmer, but don't boil it, then turn it off and let it cool to lukewarm, about 30 min.

Stir in the yeast and four cups of flour.  Cover and let rise an hour.  Then stir in the additional flour, salt, baking soda and powder.  Turn out onto a floured surface and knead for about 10 min.  Cover with a tea towel and let rise for 30 more minutes, or pop in the fridge and let rise overnight or for several hours at least.

Preheat oven to 400, and melt the rest of the butter.  Roll dough out to about 1/2 inch thick and cut out rounds.  Dunk each round in melted butter, fold and place on a cookie sheet to rise for another 30 min.  Bake for 15 min. 

Tomato Soup

I didn't used to like tomato soup, then I started using it for dipping purposes when I had grilled cheese, but now I have moved up and like it all on its own.  This particular tomato soup is one of my favorites, as it has heavy cream and booze in it as well as 6 tablespoons of butter, where is the bad in that I ask you? (Of course, feel free to ignore that question if you are say, a cardiologist or some other sort of person who is well versed in the effects of heavy cream, butter and booze on your insides)  Anyways, the nice thing about this soup is that it uses canned tomatoes and a bottle of tomato juice, the sort of things that you have in the pantry so it's easy but it tastes like you were slaving away over it all day.  Granted you do have to chop up an onion and let it cook in the butter until it is nice and soft, as Alice Waters taught me there is no rushing that step in making soup unless you want terrible things to happen and pot of soup that is no good.  Otherwise, it's a matter of opening various containers and dumping them in the pot.  This is a Pioneer Woman recipe, and can be found here.  

Start with an onion, chopped.

Then saute it in the butter until it is nice and soft.

Next you add the rest of the ingredients, except the sherry and cream (and the fresh herbs if you are using them, I tend not to and just sprinkle some dried basil and parsley in whenever I remember about them).  Now all you do is simmer it together.  If you are making it ahead of time this is the point where you should stop and stick it in the fridge until about half an hour before you want to eat it, then you simply reheat it and carry on with the recipe.

Take you hot (or reheated) soup and turn off the heat.  Pour in the sherry and cream...

....stir it all together and you are done.  The recipe is here, make it the next cold, snowy day and you wont regret it.

Potato Leek Pizza

This is yet another Pioneer Woman recipe (I just realized it is only in her cookbook, not her website so I can't link you to it, but I can link you to the recipe for the dough), so I may have a slight obsession, but everything she makes is just so good. Potato pizza is one of those trendy things (keep in mind I am basing this solely on extensive viewing of food network and foodgawker, I have no idea what the actual trends in the world may be, I pretty much only go to restaurants for happy hour because I heart half price appetizers and am poor) that probably wont pop up on any happy hour menus around here for awhile, so I had to take matters into my own hands. Boy was I glad I did, it is delicious. Of course the fact that it has 3 different kinds of cheese, bacon and leeks on it as well as the potatoes doesn't hurt. It is surprisingly filling, and the potatoes combined with the cheese give the pizza a sort of deconstructed creamy white sauce kind of effect, which is quite tasty.

Start with the bacon. I hate to fry bacon so I always bake it, just lay it on a cooling rack on a cookie sheet and bake at 350 until it reaches the desired crispiness (I like it really crispy).

Next start on the leeks, I am always a bit obsessive when I clean leeks but I feel it is justified because have you seen the crap that comes out of them?

Once the leeks have been completely cleaned, saute them in the bacon pan (since I didn't fry my bacon I just scooped some grease out from the cookie sheet and cooked them in that).

Now it's time to start the assembly process. I used PW's pizza dough recipe, but use whatever dough you like, I would have used Trader Joe's dough but I didn't want to drive all the way over there and we didn't have any at home.

First layer on the potatoes. I used my mandolin on the thinnest setting, if I didn't have that I have no idea what I would have done, as my knife skills are basically nonexistent. Also, PW calls for 5 potatoes, I only used one large one on this pizza, but as you can see it covered the whole thing.

Next put the fresh mozzarella. You must use fresh, it makes it so lovely and creamy. It doesn't look like much but it will ooze out and with everything else you put on this thing it is plenty.

Now top the cheese with the bacony leeks, they add such a nice mild oniony flavor.

Finish it off with the bacon crumbles, goat cheese and some parmesan.

Bake until the crust is golden and the cheese is melted.

Guest Blogger Tracie: Tres Leches Cake

As promised, here is the second recipe from guest blogger Tracie, I however cannot vouch for the tastiness of this cake as she did not share any with me, but I am sure it was good, it is Pioneer Woman's after all, and as we all know I am quite fond of just about every recipe she has ever written.

The second thing we made while waiting for the other dough to rise was Pioneer Woman’s Tres Leche Cake. I love Pioneer Woman. Maybe a little bit too much, and maybe I also have daydreams about marrying a cowboy. Not her cowboy, just *a* cowboy[Emma: me too, me too]. PW’s recipe is here found here. Tres leche cake tastes like milk, sweetened milk, but there is a distinct milk taste. So if you don’t like milk (*cough cough* Emma *cough cough*)[Emma: milk is gross, and this may in fact be why Tracie didn't share this cake with me...] this cake might not be for you. The cake itself is light and airy, but the milk you pour over it adds some weight and makes it seriously moist. It’s both light and heavy and, most importantly, tasty.

I did the necessary greasing of a 9 x 13 pan , but the cake still stuck a tiny bit so I recommend going the grease and parchment paper route, just to ensure it doesn’t stick.

There are quite a few photos missing from this baking escapade, as some of our friends came over and distracted my photographer[Emma: I am a social butterfly, what can I say?].

Basically though, you:

Mix together flour, salt, and baking powder.

Separate the eggs.

Beat ¾ cup sugar and the egg yolks on high until they turn a light, pale, yellow. Then add the vanilla and milk.

Pour the wet ingredients into the flour mixture and combine gently

Beat the egg whites with the rest of the sugar on high (in a clean, dry bowl) until they reach hard peaks, but make sure not to over beat them and let them get dry

Then fold the egg whites into the batter until just combined. I winged this a bit. I think you are supposed to do that thing where you add a bit of the mix to the egg whites and combine that before you add all the egg white into the rest of the mix. I also, maybe got a bit distracted by *someone* talking to me and stirred more than I should have. But it was fine anyway.

Pour it into the greased (and parchmented) pan, making sure the batter is evenly spread.

Bake for 35-45 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean.

Then turn the cake out onto a rimmed dish (or in my case a jelly roll pan) and allow it to cool. This also takes place after Em had left and I was taking photos. I’m not sure why there is that dented in bit. And I’m not here to assign blame.

Once it is cool, use a fork to poke holes in the cake. I poked a lot of holes, but I suppose you can do as many as you like.

Then combine heavy cream, sweetened condensed milk, and evaporated milk.

And stir to mix them all together. It makes about three cups of milk but you only need to use two to get the cake properly saturated.

Then pour the milk over your cake slowly, making sure to get the edges (I poked a bunch of holes around the edges to make sure it would hold the milk).

Let the cake absorb the milk for at least half an hour before you ice it. Icing it? Frost it? I just made a simple whipped cream to icing it. One cup of heavy cream and 1.5 teaspoons of sugar, beat together on high in an electric mixer. Sorry there are no photos of this step either. But I trust you can imagine it as well as I can illustrate it.

Then icing the cake. I don’t think PW covered the edges of her cake. But I covered mine because I like it that way.

My mom asked for a rustic, swirly, look on the top. I didn’t really comply because I like smooth cakes [Emma: does this remind anyone else of Martha Stewart? Just a little? I once saw her snatch a craft away from someone for not glittering it properly]. It ended up somewhere in the middle.

And then you cut a piece and eat it! I suppose you could top it with something, PW uses maraschino cherries, but I think they are gross so I left the cake plain. And it was just as good.

The end

Thank you for your time and patience, and extensive use of your imagination[Emma: And thank you Tracie for being my very first (and most likely only) guest blogger!].

Pioneer Woman's Chocolate Cupcakes

I love the Pioneer Woman, (for those of you who don't know who she is, she was a city girl who fell in love with a real, live cowboy and now she lives on a ranch with Marlboro Man and their four kids, blogs about it and has a cookbook) all of her recipes are delicious and what we call 'cowboy food' which is short for 'the most decidedly NOT low cal food of the sort that cowboys eat due to the extremely demanding physical nature of their work.' These cupcakes are no exception. In fact, I ended up making full size cupcakes as well as mini ones for a 'healthy' option; the idea being that instead of having a big cupcake you eat a mini one or two and are satisfied, in practice the mini ones were excellent snacks in between big ones. Being healthy is overrated anyways.

Start by mixing together your dry ingredients.

Next mix together the buttermilk, eggs, baking soda and vanilla. Note the old pyrex measuring cup, it is now in pieces in some landfill due to an unfortunate accident and we haven't been able to find a replacement, so tragic.

Then melt the butter and add the cocoa powder and water, to make a sort of hot buttered cocoa, not that you would want to drink it, what with the two sticks of butter in there.

Add the chocolate mixture to the flour mixture and stir it up, at this point it looks kind of like a lovely brownie batter.

Next add the buttermilk mixture and stir it up, but don't mix the hell out of it, you wouldn't want your cupcakes to get tough.

Then, spoon the batter into your prepared muffin tin. I have been having troubles with my muffin tins lately and should have probably put those paper liners in them instead of living on the edge and just greasing them. I paid for that mistake when I couldn't get them out of the pans and nearly had a mini breakdown (I ended up popping the pieces from the worst cupcakes into these silicone muffin molds my lovely cousin gave me, and the cake was so moist and lovely it sort of smushed back together). Anyways, drop a hershey kiss in the center of each one before you pop them in the oven, don't press down in it, just let it sink on its own.

Bake and then let cool. Once cool, you can frost them with the delicious ganache, I am sorry there are no pictures of the ganache being made, I was far too busy taste testing it to make sure it was just right and forgot. You will just have to make them and see for yourself. The recipe can be found here.