Charms/Tags at International Art & Soul

Our theme this fortnight at the International Art & Soul Challenge is to add a Charm or Tag. I made a gift bag for my neighbor. It's filled with cauliflower brownies & the recipe is on the tag.

I cut the bag from a glittered Recollections paper on my Cameo using a Silhouette design. The brads are from my stash; they're actually silver, but I colored them with a yellow marker. I hung a little cupcake pan charm from the gold closure string. The tag, including the sentiment and message section, is made with papers from the same Recollections paper pack as the bag.

Cauliflower Chocolate Brownie Recipe
(based on http://chocolatecoveredkatie.com/2012/06/18/cauliflower-chocolate-cake)
[my notes are in brackets]

Ingredients:

1. 1 Cup flour [Bob’s gluten free]
2. ½ tsp baking soda
3. ½ tsp salt
4. 1 tsp baking powder
5. 2 Cups riced, uncooked cauliflower [pre-riced cauliflower + broccoli from Giant Food]
6. Mint (optional) [Chocolate Mint from my neighbor's garden)
7. 1 Tbsp vanilla extract
1 Cup milk + as needed [fat & lactose-free]
8. ¼ Cup unsweetened cocoa powder
9. ⅓ Cup sugar of choice [brown]
10. ¼ Cup additional sugar [granulated]
11. 
¾ Cup mini chocolate chips [Nestle Tollhouse GF]

Directions:
Preheat oven to 350F, and grease pan.
Combine first 4 dry ingredients in a bowl, mix very well and let rest. 

Blend the cauliflower with the vanilla & mint in a food processor, adding the milk until there are NO lumps whatsoever. 

Slowly incorporate flour mixture, sugars & cocoa until just combined, then add the chocolate chips. Bake 30 minutes. [The original recipe makes one 8x8 sheet cake, but I used a silicone brownie bite pan.]

Inspiration/Challenges:
Everybody-Art-Challenge #411: Little Present
Simon Says Stamp Wednesday Challenge: Anything Goes

Thank you for visiting! Hope you'll join us at International Art & Soul,

Pilin' on the Chewy

The theme this fortnight at Pile It On is Use something that starts with the first letter of your first name. My name starts with a "C" which actually has a ton of possibilities, so I really piled on the Cs!

With the new Star Wars movie coming out, I imagine that many people are catching up on the other movies at home. I thought this would be a cute present for such a cinematic occasion. I made a Coffee Sleeve treat holder featuring Chewbacca, filled with peanut butter cookies. I made the sentiment with the colors chartreuse and cyan.

I had lots of fun previewing the new Stars Wars-inspired images via the great DT projects for the new release Blog Hop at Sassy Studio Designs. I was the lucky Grand Prize Winner, winning all seven new images! I couldn't wait to use their cute Chewbacca image. I colored it with Copics and covered it with 2 colors of Teddybear Flowersoft. The coffee sleeve is inked with black, silver, and copper inks.

Chunky Peanut butter & Chocolate Chewy Cookies
Basically, you make these delicious 3-ingredient Peanut butter Cookies, but with extra-chunky peanut butter. I've made these with smooth peanut butter and egg replacements work well. The only trick is to bake them just so that the edges brown, then let them rest out of the oven on the pan for a few more minutes until you can remove them; they will be soft when you take them out. I usually bake them at 350F for about 10-15 minutes & then leave them out for 10-15 minutes. Easy-peasy!

For the batch pictured, I mixed half of the batter with powdered chocolate to create a two-tone cookie similar to Chewbacca's furry coloring.

Inspiration/Challenges:
Connie Can Crop #42: Beary Sweet (Bear and/or Something Sweet)
Decorate to Celebrate #1: Anything 3D goes
Naughty or Nice Challenge #23: Let's Get Silly
Pile It On: Your First Initial
Sassy Thursdays: Anything Goes (+ SSD image)


Update: This was the winner at Decorate to Celebrate!

Thank you for visiting & inspiring my crafting! Hope you'll join us at Pile It On,

Love you with Cherry Cake on the side

We picked up red and yellow cherries at the Waverly Farmers Market, and I used some to make one of my favorite cakes from Smitten Kitchen. You can use whatever fruit you want, as long as you drain any excess liquid. I'm pretty sure I spent more time pitting the cherries than making this card! For me, pitting cherries is a huge sign of devotion. So I figured I'd make a card for my husband (and for a few challenges, why not‽) to go along with the cake:

I used half wheat flour and half brown sugar, so it's not a particularly sweet cake, but we can always add something sweet, like ice cream! The heart-punch cherries are coated with Glossy Accents with little rope stems. I copper-embossed the heart brad.

Inspiration:
Mojo Monday #197: Square Sketch
Craft Your Passion #64: Seeing Red
Stampin' Dymonz Scrap Shack Off the Page Group: Polymer Clay
Divas by Design #5: Punches

Tutorials:
Polymer Clay Mosaic Tiles at Art Bliss

Stamps: Cling Cupcake XL by Stampendous, sentiment by Hampden Art
Paper: Recollections (metallic, plain, kraft), glittered Core'dinations
Tools: HP printer & ink, Marvy heat tool, Fiskars papercutter, Recollections heart & border punches
Other: ZipDry glue, ZING embossing powder (thank you Dymonz!), Versamark ink, Sakura GellyRoll pens, brad from stash, Glossy Accents, Sculpey polymer clay, stash craft rope
Copics: YG67, R37, R59

"Cornbread, Cupcake?" "No Muffin, polenta."

We had some yummy pounded steaks in the freezer, and I wanted to make a simple side to go with them. So, I thought to myself, how can I incorporate cupcakes into this situation? The answer was obvious: cornbread.

I'm a bit more confident when it comes to corn flour, as I've wrestled with it more than the rice flour. When I say confident, I'm confident that I don't know how to make polenta. I've tried a couple of times, but the most memorable of those ended in a kind of soufflé-explosion mess.

I have, however, made buns with half white and half corn flour (like I did with whole wheat for the chocolate cupcakes), and I remember that really letting the corn flour dissolve in the warm water helped. So this time, instead of mixing the dry ingredients and then adding the wet, I mixed the flour with the warm water and let it set while I added everything else.

I'm still not sure how important the sugar is in the chemical process for this particular recipe, so I'm still adding some white sugar; that's usually what I do with yeast breads. Next time I make these, I think I'll halve the sugar amount and only use Splenda and see what happens.

By now you may be thinking, Chocolate cornbread cupcakes? Really? Of course not (this time). I decided to throw caution in the gutter and simply omitted the cocoa powder from the original recipe. The end result didn't seem to miss the extra mass. We're referring to them as polenta muffins around the house, because it's well the closest I'll ever get to actually making polenta. All it needs is a little red sauce.

Cornbread Cupcakes
Ingredients:
dry: 1/2 cup + 1 TB white flour | 1/2 cup + 1 TB yellow corn flour | 1/2 cup sugar | 1/2 cup sugar substitute (Splenda) | 1 tsp baking soda | 1/2 tsp salt
wet: 1 cup warm water | 1 TB chopped dill | 1/3 cup vegetable oil | 1 tsp distilled red wine vinegar
Mix dry ingredients with a fork. Add wet ingredients, except vinegar, and blend completely.
Add vinegar and immediately spoon batter into an ungreased cupcake pan, filling each section about halfway.
Bake at 350°for 30 minutes.

Notice that I used red wine vinegar, which added a tiny tang. Cider vinegar would be perfect for this recipe. They were a bit sweeter than I'd like, but honestly they tasted pretty Southern. They'd be incredible with mint instead of dill. Sweet tea, anyone?

Whey too many cupcakes

With a fridge full of cupcakes, the idea of ginger cupcakes was floated, and I just had to make more. I didn't feel like doing all the work for some of the more scrumptious ginger cupcake recipes I found, so I figured I'd just adjust the original vegan chocolate cupcake recipe.

Of course, I couldn't deal with just using water, so I whipped up a quick batch of cheese just for the whey. I can always count on a rich base if I replace water with whey...and I wasn't disappointed. I usually use 2 cups milk with 2 TB vinegar for quick fixes like this one.

I also took the opportunity to halve the recipe and test it in my mini-cupcake pans. Perfect! Although I guess it goes without saying that these aren't even vegetarian, what with the whey...

Mini-batch Chocolate/Ginger Cupcakes
Ingredients:
dry: 1/2 cup + 1 TB flour | 1/2 cup sugar | 2 TB unsweetened cocoa powder | 1 tsp ginger | 1 tsp pumpkin pie spice | 1/2 tsp baking soda | 1/4 tsp salt
wet: 1/2 cup warm whey | 1/2 tsp vanilla extract | 2 TB + 2 tsp vegetable oil
1/2 tsp distilled white vinegar
Mix dry ingredients with a fork. Add wet ingredients, except vinegar, and blend completely.
Add vinegar and immediately spoon batter into an ungreased cupcake pan, filling each section about halfway.
Bake at 350° for 20 minutes. Cool completely, and use a knife to loosen the sides. They should fall right out. Silicon pans make this even easier!

These came out so great that I made another half-batch with chopped mint in place of the spices, and using only rice flour. I have such high hopes for rice flour, but it tends to have only contempt for me. The flour didn't dissolve very well (one problem was that the liquid was room temp, not warm), making the end result a little gritty. Oh, and I forgot I was making a half-batch when I added the coca powder, so I really can't blame the rice flour for the heavy little buggers we ended up with.

The Incredible, Edible, Vegan Cupcake

So the other day, also our first really hot day of the year, I really wanted to make cupcakes, but had no milk or eggs. These are the only days when I want to bake. So I went Googling for vegan recipes, which sounds like much less of a workout than it was. Amazing how many recipes included butter. I had butter in the fridge, but if you're going to do something, you might as well do it with an undeserved sense of self-righteousness.

I finally found a base recipe that could actually be considered vegan, and didn't include any soy-based products or juice, which I didn't have, at Instructables.com, compared it to a similar cupcake recipe, and voile I could make cheap, yummy, fairly-guilt-free treats. Did I mention my husband was busy working 30 hours straight at the time? I was really betting on some awesome cupcakes.

This isn't the end of my tale of cupcakeness, but I'll pause to share the recipe I used for my first batch. Please note that this is just my version of tried-and-true recipes created by very talented chefs whom you should look up and support by buying their cookbooks. Anyhoo:

Chocolate Cupcakes Ingredients:
dry: 1/2 cup + 1 TB white flour | 1/2 cup + 1 TB whole wheat flour | 1 cup sugar | 1/3 cup unsweetened cocoa powder | 1 tsp baking soda | 1/2 tsp salt
wet: 1 cup warm water | 1 tsp vanilla extract | 1/3 cup vegetable oil
1 tsp distilled white vinegar
Mix dry ingredients with a fork. Add wet ingredients, except vinegar, and blend completely.
Add vinegar and immediately spoon batter into an ungreased cupcake pan, filling each section about halfway.
Bake at 350° for 20 minutes. Cool completely, and use a knife to loosen the sides. They should fall right out. Silicon pans make this even easier!

The first batch of cupcakes was a huge hit. They were incredibly moist, light, and not nearly as oily as my previous egg-free baking attempts. Note that in the recipe above it says not to grease the pan: I found that there's enough oil in the recipe that you don't need any more.

Enjoy your cupcakes and I'll be back soon with more cupcake tales...of...interest...!

Old Salt, without the faded tattoos

It's day two of RC2-Feta, which has been soaking politely in the fridge for two days, so plans for dinner include a nice salad with feta! Before I rinsed it, J tried it out. I like the thyme, he said. It's a little softer than I expect feta to be.
So I wasn't worried. This stuff was been overly wet this entire time (partly due to the use of 2% milk, I've theorized), and it was only going to get wetter. I rinsed the cheese maybe 5 times before I tried it for myself.
Oh. My. Have you ever opened your mouth while swimming in the ocean? That taste dissipated long before this one will. Seriously, I've tasted olive brine less salty than this cheese. I had the feeling that J's eyes were saying more than his mouth, but I hadn't realized that was I just spontaneously dehydrated.
I can't remember when I laughed so hard. I just stood over it, watching the cheese blobs bob in the strainer, and laughed and laughed. I'm a little disappointed, but I still made cheese and that makes me happy. Feta-1 is soaking in plain water in the fridge, but I'm thinking we'll just move on. I'm thinking mozzarella next.

RC2WR2, another win for science

So I ended up with so much whey from RC2WR1 that I wanted to see if it had a RC2WR2 in it. If you like the smell of warming cheese water (which I do) then this experiment was a win. If you were hoping for more cheese (which I was, despite everything all research has indicated), then science won. I won't say that I failed, because that is negative thinking.
Basically, no cheese was created or collected, so I ended up with the same amount of ricotta whey that I started with. But I hope I didn't make the whey into something completely different, like lemon blob water. At least it's in a different jar now.

Rennet Cheese #2's Whey Ricotta #1 (aka RC2WR1)

Why-o-why did I choose a lemonade bottle to store the whey in?! We're the only people in the city sniffing our lemonade. It's like a prank I played on myself, and the eager scrawl of "WHEY!" in Sharpie on the side isn't adding any class to the situation. So I'd better try this whey-ricotta thing.
The Junket rennet came with instructions on how to make whey-ricotta, but it basically entails letting the whey sit in a pot overnight. I've just watched a pot sit for like days, thank-you-very-much, so that doesn't sound very exciting.
As I recently explained to Mom, I just don't agree with the Doctor. I'm going to do it the way I always do it!
Happily, before I proceeded with my usual china-shop care, I revisited the whey-ty page I mentioned earlier, Fias Co Farm. Sounds like our kind of place, right? The post I've linked to explains the science behind this whole process, so please take the time to check it out.
For my purposes, her whey-ricotta recipe was perfect for RC2WR1. Since the recipe doesn't require a set amount of whey, and only suggests the use a small amount of vinegar, this seemed like a great, fun, quick way to use off the whey.
I let it sit out at room temperature (I ended up with about 5½ cups from the cheese...there was probably a total of 8 cups at one point, but what can I say? the rest got awhey from me) while I washed the big pot for the ten-millionth time this week and sterilized it by boiling a small amount of water for five minutes. Why not?
I do have plain vinegar in the house, but I'm thinking it's at least three years old by now (just like Allen! oh dear I think we had it at the old place, so it may be more like Walt's age...) so I had a lemon (and it's strainer) at the ready.
It took about seven minutes for the whey to reach 200 degrees...it was admittedly awesome to watch it "cream up." It's a small miracle, like witnessing egg whites whip, but your arm doesn't hurt. I did end up adding about 1 Tb of lemon juice, just because. I think it helped. It strained beautifully, but RC2WR1 is an it-bit at an 1/8 of a cup (at best!).

A life that's so sublime, palace of the brine

Rennet cheese #2 is officially Feta cheese #1! Except for a little bit that I saved to crumble on something. Pretty sturdy stuff; looks just like the real thing! Now we just have to wait for the feta to pickle for a couple of days.
The brine was 2.5 cups water and about 5 Tbs of salt (per the good Dr.'s recipe), plus the English thyme I added. Now everytime I open the fridge I sing to myself, Pickle away, little dudes! Pickle away!
That worked for the carrots.

No whey!

As Lao-Tse supposedly said, "The more you know, the less you understand." I'm thinking he meant that in the best possible way; and I'm also coming to it as a person who is satisfied with fairly superficial scientific knowledge. But I continue to be increasingly struck by simple chemistry and biology.
A yard speckled with dandelions is a salad-in-the-making; cheese by-product (whey) is a bit of a miracle liquid; anything that can be classified as a fruit will at least feed something, even if you don't want to eat it. For example, I've officially given up on trying to harvest our black walnuts, happy to feed the squirrels.
And I haven't picked the dandelions because no amount of scrubbing will take away the image of the dogs peeing on them.
But I'm not satisfied with just using whey for watering our precious plants or feeding our pig-puppies. Whey from rennet cheese can be used to make ricotta (I can't wait! And then can I can cook with that whey!), but otherwise it can replace water for lemonade (which we haven't tried, but correctly-drained whey does look like lemonade, which is why it's mean to store it in an empty lemonade bottle) or broth in rice or potato risotto (when I made the former I poached chicken in the whey and used the resulting broth for the rice and shredded the chicken for enchiladas the next night), etc.
Using it to cook with (as in deglazing) adds a sort of creaminess, I mean the -ness without the cream. You just have to try it!

The farmer's granddaughter's queso fresco

Rennet cheese #2 is resting peacefully in the fridge and I've finally rinsed the milk smell out of the kitchen, so this seems like the perfect time to share the simple, no-rennet cheese that started all this (referred to here loosely as "ricotta" or "queso fresco" or, to an even looser extent, "paneer").
I live in house full of reference books and have the endless wisdom of the Internet at my fingertips, but being me I went in for simplicity. If you get the cheese bug (the good kind, not that really awful kind) you might want to do the kind of exhaustive research I did. I also recommend the good Dr.'s site and this whey-ty page.
Here's the basic recipe, blogged with enviable skill by Little House in the Suburbs (check it out).

• ½ gallon / 8 cups milk (whole or 2%)
• ¼ cup lemon juice (pretty much one lemon) or plain vinegar (I think freshly squeezing a lemon is much more romantic, but whatever)

(I have a sinking feeling that the last couple of batches of our cheese have been made with 4 cups milk and ¼ cup lemon juice...can't remember if I found that in a recipe somewhere or if it was my own confusion, but it worked out pretty well! Always check your work!)
Just bring milk to a boil (around 180-200 degrees F), stirring occasionally to break up the film that forms. The first time I did this, I heated the milk very slowly. Now I just pump up the heat and watch it. Happens fast!
Add lemon juice and stir (with a wooden spoon if possible). It will curdle (ah-hah! linguistic moment!) and I like to leave the heat on just for a moment to get the temperature back up. Turn off of the heat, stir some more, and then...
Go back in time and set up a colander, covered with more cheesecloth than you think you'll need, over a large bowl (to catch the whey). We found cheesecloth at Giant and Williams & Sonoma. I've also seen that you can use any cotton item, as long as it's well-washed (maybe boiled) and not treated with any product (you don't want Bounce cheese). Slowly pour the curded milk into the colander. If you luck out and get large curds, use a slotted spoon to remove the big pieces first, then pour in the rest.
I found that goat milk (ultra-pasteurized) didn't strain very quickly. Let it sit in the colander for up to a few hours, until it isn't liquidy anymore. This step is similar to draining the rennet cheese. The goat-cheese tastes really authentic; we've found goat milk at Trader Joe's and Fresh Market.
Once the cheese is fairly thick, fold up the sides of the cloth so that you have a little package of cheese; tie a string around the top of the cloth, making a ball, and hang it over the sink for a few hours. As long as you can suspend and drain the ball somehow, you can store it anywhere, including the fridge.
Put the whey in a clean jar and refrigerate for later use (which I'll be posting on shortly).
You should now be experiencing what I (and only I) like to call "cheese-phoria": a sublime feeling that you have just sweet-talked nature. Oh, and just think of all the things you can stuff cheese into.

Is it live or is it Memorex?

The second night of rennet cheese #2's life will be spent in a cheese press. The good doctor recommended a tin can, but as I was rummaging through the pantry for a big enough can, J suggested the little heart-shaped bunt pans we bought for Valentine's Day some years ago. Perfect! They come with a built-in top to press down on.
However, once I got to the point of actually putting the curds into the mold I knew I had too much unwieldy stuff to fit easily into the little pan. So I looked around again for something larger...
See, you need a medium-sized, smooth-sided, open-ended container to serve as the press. You put something on the top to press it down. And then I found it: The top of an old blank-CD carousel. You know the ones. I cut off the plastic top (it was made of pretty sturdy plastic let me tell you) and voila! I bet it's one of the more interesting stories of CD packaging.
And then I found that I didn't have as much loose change as I thought...which was what I'd planned to use as the weight. The heaviest object I could find was the brass camphor holder we got in Bangalore. As always, Ganesh comes to the rescue!

Day two of Rennet Cheese #2: so far, so curd!

So around 10 this morning I tested our rennet cheese #2, a mixture of heated milk, live yogurt and rennet, which had been sitting overnight. I could really feel the curd; it kind of had the consistency of yogurt pie, the kind you add gelatin to. I was able to slice it, but the curds kind of fell apart. Then I was supposed to mix it by hand for 15 minutes, and by the end of that the curds were really small, like when I make ricotta (well, at least when I make ricotta; some stuff I've read indicates I should get larger curds).In the top-left picture, you can see some curds left in the pot. It kind of looks like thick yogurt right now. I actually ended up twice-draining the whey; in these photos you can see how milky the whey is, but once I re-strained the whey itself it looks like we're getting a good clear liquid. From which I'll make ricotta! So excited!
But first I need to let the cheese drain for a couple more hours before I can put it into the cheese-molds. We'll certainly get plenty of product; the bottom-right photo shows the mock-colander (actually the potato ricer) I had to fashion because my other colander wouldn't hold all the cheese!

Rennet tablet shout-out

So I knew this cheese-making thing would be worth it once I saw the box the rennet tablets come in. It's so adorable you can't stand it. Really classic.

Apparently, Junket rennet tablets have been around forever and has its own little advertising legacy.
There's a very comprehensive recipe booklet included (great example of one-color printing, too!) with regular-guy instructions by one Dr. David Fankhauser. Being a doctor, he realizes that if I'm making my own cheese in 2009 then I probably can't afford a fancy cheese-press and so suggested a tin-can version. Wait till you see what we've decided to use! Best yet, most of the recipes don't require a 6-month resting period. So we're starting with feta, which only takes four days.
My only complaint is that all the recipes require half a tablet. Why not just make the tablets smaller? Or is there a camera in the box so that the Junket people can laugh at my sending half a tablet across the kitchen counter under my knife? I bet it was pretty funny, though.

What the heck is rennet anyway?

This is an excellent question, and in the interest of blissful ignorance I've chosen to believe it's a magic cheese-making pill that comes packed in foil in a little box.

After a couple of great batches of ricotta, I wanted to make some other cheeses but all the recipes I could find required (at the very least) something called a rennet tablet. So the next time we were at our local Giant I asked about it; You can make your own cheese? Ask Trader Joe's, they said.
So the next time we were at our local Trader Joe's we asked again. They said, Nobody bought it. Try Whole Foods.
So at this point I called Whole Foods. The woman I eventually reached immediately knew what I wanted and also had this answer: No, we certainly don't carry anything like that. Try Wegman's.
And, can you believe it, the guy at Wegman's said, Why yes. In Aisle 15B.
By this time I had read several rennet cheese recipes and was beginning to wonder at the wisdom of storing cheese for 6 months (which seemed to be the usual resting time for hard cheese) in my lovely yet life-prone kitchen.
Happily, as we were shopping on this cool July 4th morning, we were completely detoured from our way home by a parade in Towson. So we ended up on the highway and J said, I think I know of a Wegman's around here.
Long story slightly longer, I actually remembered the aisle number three weeks after calling and found the VERY LAST box of rennet they had, hidden with the gelatins. And only an investment of $1.67 for 8 tablets, cheaper than the milk!
And so began this newest saga.
I now have a fresh gallon of 2% milk, some live & active yogurt, and brand-new cheesecloth. Off to rennet cheese #2!

good-night, sweet rennet cheese #1

At this point in today I had planned to post photos of the progress of our very first rennet cheese (which was to become feta), but unfortunately we lost it to the ages. Several things conspired in the abandonment of this first experiment:

1. I halved the recipe. Never a good idea for these sorts of things, but I do it every freakin time.
2. The splitting of the rennet tablet into fourths was not exactly mathematical.
3. Some of the milk I used had pretty much embraced yogurt-dom before it sat overnight.

But we won't give up! Let me tell you, however, that the taste of the sour cheese is not one I will forget. Ick.

The Cheese-y History

I first became interested in making my own cheese while watching foodnetwork. We still had last year's crop of Thai chili peppers and a whole new season about to burst forth, and I was on the look-out for different ways to use them (they pack quite a punch). That led me to a chili risotto...and somehow, due to whey I believe, I ended up looking for easy cheese recipes online.
Milk? Lemon? Cheesecloth? I have those, I said (outloud, strangely, since I was alone), and next thing we know I've made "cottage cheese" or, as I prefer to call it, "ricotta." We then realized that this simple cheese is even more special when made with our fresh herbs.
In that spirit, here are some pics of the plants that started it all:
There's Thai basil (the purple stuff), cilantro, and a couple of cherry tomato trees in there too. And the leafy guy in the middle is zephyr squash — look for posts on that as summer progresses!