The Smells in My Kitchen

[VelvetElvis]

Meaniehead.

[Noodle]

We didn't make the roasted poblano and corn soup last night, so we're making it tonight. My house smells of roasted pepper. mmmmm

[VelvetElvis]

What did you make last night?

[Petra456]

Right now my kitchen smells like chocolate chip cookies! It's finally cool enough outside to comfortable bake! Croissants on Thursday/Friday.

[Noodle]

Last night we were out car shopping later than planned so we ended up getting fast food. Nothing too fancy.

Tonight on the other hand.... Wowza! we had this soup with a few minor variations. She didn't puree it because she was feeling lazy, and we added the esquite corn from the other night so as to get rid of all the grilled corn we had. It was heavy on the corn, but oh man was it good. We topped it with cilantro and queso fresco.

As a side dish we had Tostones. Which are twice fried plantains with garlic salt. We topped them with the queso fresco as well and it was great. Angie had a lot of fun pounding the crap out of the plantains before frying them the second time. I am soo stuffed.

[VelvetElvis]

Sizzling flesh. No really, I burned my leg.

[Luet]

Burned plastic from the microwave, burned corn kernels and rice from the herbal wrap. Very, very bad. And I already felt nauseated. Boo!

[steph]

Sounds sad, Nomi.

My house smells like beef stew. I finally found some stew meat on sale, so I simmered 2 stockpots full of stew for 7 hours today. Stocking up my freezer!

[Taalcon]

Quickie Microwaved Nachos. Oh yeah.

[Petra456]

*curious about Kelly's decorating final*

[VelvetElvis]

[Mich]

My kitchen smells like actual cooking stuff! Well, like Worcestershire sauce, which I associate with real cooking.

Even though it's pretty much just Chex mix with some extra ingredients that claim they make it taste like Gardetto's...

[Young Val]

My final cake! I passed!

Overall, I am not very happy with the design; it's kind of a haphazard mess. Also, roses are HARD.





My best rose (the others are craaaaaazy):







Drop flowers!



The second course, Gumpaste & Fondant, starts Monday!

[starlooker]

Lovely, Kelly. I like the roses, but the drop flowers look like something I could actually learn to do

Keep us updated on the next class.

[Petra456]

Roses look hard, but yours look awesome!

[steph]

Yay for passing! It's an awesome cake.

[VelvetElvis]

I assume these are the ones from fb, so HOORAY! They look so pretty.

[Petra456]

So, it's been a productive day in the kitchen for me. I currently have two batches of croissants in the fridge. Batch one isn't really rising as much as batch two. Batch two is like the Incredible Hulk of dough. I'm kinda worried about my first batch.

Then, I decided to make apple fritters for the first time tonight. They're amazing <3

[locke]

I had panko crusted tilapia and sauteed spinach for supper.

[Young Val]

Yay apple fritters! Yay croissants! I don't know about the non-rising one. I wonder why that happened. Did you make two batches separately or make one double batch and split the dough in half?

[Petra456]

The apple fritters turned out awesome, I kinda wished they were a little sweeter, but when I mixed them with the powdered sugar they were just right.

I made two seperate batches of dough, one right after the other. I thought maybe I added too much flour to the first one because it just seemed impossibly sticky. This morning I got up and still went ahead and proffed them anyways in the oven. They really rose in there and taste great. The second batch is in my freezer. I'm glad I didn't just give up on the first batch, they turned out great anyways. I have pictures that I SWEAR i'm going to get on here soon.

[VelvetElvis]

Hurry and post!

[Luet]

Do you have to fry apple fritters? I love apple fritters and would love to try making them but frying scares the crap out of me. This is after a terrible fried dough incident when I was ten (unsupervised boiling oil, not a good idea) that resulted in a horrible burn.

[Petra456]

Alright, finally took pictures of croissants. This is the first that I was worried about because they weren't rising as much as I wanted. The other batch is in my freezer.

I love my mixer:


A TON of butter!


Lu loves butter:


Hulking dough:


My little army of yum:


He's the prettiest:


I'm sad, the only picture I got after they were baked is horribly blurry. Oh well, here it is too:


I didn't take any pictures of the fritters, but yes, I fried them. They're actually the first dough i've tried to fry. There was only one scary moment where a ton of apple juice boiled out which caused a lot of splattering, but other then that it was pretty easy. Took a while to get the oil to the right temp (I don't have a thermometer, so I had to guess and keep adjusting).

[Syphon the Sun]

Do you have to fry apple fritters?

You can bake them, too. They may come out a little different, but they're still delicious.

[VelvetElvis]

You could skillet fry them instead of deep-frying them.

[Young Val]

My muffins won first place in a Cranberry Festival baking contest!!!!

[starlooker]

CONGRATULATIONS!!!

[VelvetElvis]

We knew you could do it!

[Noodle]

Congrats!!!

[Gravity Defier]

Congrats, Kelly. :)

[Luet]

I want some award winning muffins!

[steph]

Homemade pizza tonight, and an extra one in the freezer. It was quite tasty, although I'm still searching for the perfect crust recipe. One that has good flavor, is moist, chewy and just the right amount of crunch.

Maybe this should go into complete randomness, but you kitchen people will appreciate it the most. Brian discovered today that a group of bakers is called a tabernacle. A gaggle of geese, a tabernacle of bakers.

[Young Val]

The imaginary bakery that I will never actually own is now called Tabernacle.

[steph]

The imaginary bakery that I will never actually own is now called Tabernacle.