Cinnamon Soft Pretzels and Oh, Some Life Changes.

I know, it's been forever.   It's a good thing my livelihood doesn't depend on writing new posts and updating my blog.  There hasn't been tons going on in the kitchen because there's been a lot of this going on....

I really hate packing.  This hasn't been the everyday run-of-the-mill packing either, this time around it's involved selling furniture, booking storage and donating as much as possible--all still part of the "simplify" new years resolution.     And oh yeah, I gave notice last month and bought a one way ticket to Italy.

At the end of July, I'm heading to NY for a week and then it's off to Italy to study some Italian language and history and get a refresher on Renaissance art history. The former Liberal Arts major in me sings "hallelujah."  I'm signed up for a couple of months of intensive total immersion Italian lessons but the biggest plan is to not have any plans--you know, just live a little dolce vita for a bit.  Tranquilo. 

I bought a one-way ticket but I know I have to come back.  The biggest deterrent to this whole adventure was not the part where I quit a stable job that paid the mortgage, but rather thinking about leaving this one....

Finding an acceptable option for Brooklyn was really tough.  Really, really ridiculously tough.  I considered taking her because even with a full ticket, it was cheaper than boarding but smush face dogs aren't very welcome by the airlines.   I talked to quite a few people and long term boarding facilities before finally finding some great people to care for her.  I knew I'd stay home before I'd let her be kenneled for long periods of time each day so it had to be an in-home option with someone who likes loves dogs,  iand very importantly, someone who would definitely give me my dog back when I came back.  You'd think that would be a given but I swear I talked to a woman who was a self-declared "BT Addict" and got the sense I'd never see Brooklyn again if I went with her.   Just like everything else in the planning of this trip, it all eventually worked out.   I do feel so guilty though and already miss this peanut if that's possible.  

So between finding boarding and scheduling everything from movers to cleaners and running a bazillion and one errands, cooking has gone by the wayside.  That is of course except when I come across an abundance of ingredients that I feel guilty about throwing out...like a half-full 25lb bag of flour.  Yikes.  

Luckily, pretzels are one of the easiest doughs to make and when covered with cinnamon sugar are seriously one of the best things ever.  This is the same recipe I posted last year for the pretzel dogs(the same recipe that everyone's posted really).  Pretzel dough is just that flexible. 

Rolling this dough into balls makes some pretty awesome pretzel rolls as well. 

Cinnamon Soft Pretzels

Ingredients:

1.5 c warm  water (about 110-115ºF)
1 tbsp sugar
2 teaspoons sea salt
2 1/4 tsp active dry yeast
4.5 c all-purpose flour
4 tbsp melted unsalted butter
12 cups water
2/3 cup baking soda
1 stick of melted butter

1/2 cup sugar 

2 tsp cinnamon

Canola oil for greasing bowl

Directions:

1. In the bowl of a stand mixer with hook attachment, combine the water, sugar and kosher salt. Sprinkle the yeast on top and allow it to sit for 5 minutes.
2. Add flour and melted butter to the mixer bowl and mix on low until the ingredients are combined.
3. Increase the speed to medium and knead until the dough is smooth and pulls away from the side of the bowl, 6-7 minutes.  Remove and roll into ball.
4. Grease  bowl, add dough and turn, ensuring oil covers all surface of dough.  Cover bowl with towel and let dough rise in bowl until double in size (about 1 hour depending upon temp)
5. Remove the dough from the bowl. Clean the bowl and then grease it with vegetable oil.
6. Fill large stockpot halfway with water and bring to a rolling boil. Add baking soda. The boiling baking soda water can make quite a mess--definitely stick with a big pot filled halfway full if you can. 
7. Preheat oven to 450 and line two sheet trays with parchment paper.
8. Remove dough and place on work surface.   Divide it into 12 equal pieces. 
9. Roll out each piece of dough into an 18- to 20-inch rope. Fold each rope in half, twisting the two pieces around one another and pressing the ends together. Twist the bottom end around the top, feeding it through the top hole and pressing to secure. 
10. Return the twists to the cookie sheet.
11. One by one, carefully place each twist into the boiling water for 30 seconds. Remove each twist from the water using a large slotted spoon or spatula(s) and return it to the cookie sheet. 
12. Bake the twists until golden brown in color, 12 to 14 minutes, rotating the pans (between racks and turning to rotate pans) halfway through, then remove the twists from the oven and allow them to cool for 5 minutes before topping.
13. Mix together 1/2 cup sugar and 2 tsp cinnamon.  
14. Melt butter and lightly brush the top of each pretzel.  
15. Hold over sugar bowl and liberally sprinkle cinnamon sugar over the top of each pretzel.  Serve warm.

For pretzel rolls, shape dough into balls and let rise for 30 minutes before adding to boiling baking soda water.  Pretzel rolls will bake for 15-20 minutes depending upon size. 

Guinness Chocolate Cake with Baileys Frosting

Chocolate cake is not my friend.  Really, it's cakes in general--I find them all rather temperamental, moody little things that throw a fit and refuse to come out right if I mis-measure by even a quarter of a teaspoon.  

Actually, strike that.  I have measured and followed a recipe exactly, sifting when sifting is required, counting hand strokes for mixing (really) and carefully making the high altitude adjustments and I still don't have a chocolate cake recipe that I adore except my favorite chocolate ganache cake which starts with a box mix.  

Recently, I embarked on a journey to find the PERFECT homemade chocolate cake recipe.  I started with a recipe for Chocolate Heaven cake from the Back in the Day Bakery.  Five star bakery in Savannah, five star cookbook, and rave reviews for this cake, I was sure I'd finally found the go-to cake recipe.  

Cake flour, eggs and sour cream and room temp and unsweetened chocolate bars...you would think this recipe is on it's way to the winners list. 

I always give myself a pat on the back when I use more than one pan for a cake. 

And then an extra pat on the back when I pull out a pastry bag and pipe anything.  Piping is sometimes fun, sometimes annoying.

Alas, I was able to screw up a cake recipe that everyone else seems to be able to nail.  My version was dense, not chocolatey enough, and well, dense.  Maybe the problem is that I expect cakes to be fluffy.

Chocolate cake number two was a Pinterest recipe that was touted to be the world's best sour cream chocolate cake.  

Surely cream cheese buttercream (yes both) chocolate frosting is the secret to perfect chocolate cake.  

Or not.  This cake was a  lot fluffier but that frosting was killer sweet and there definitely wasn't enough chocolate in the cake or the frosting.  It was more like a "kind-of chocolate" cake.  

I should have mentioned that the chocolate cake by which I gauge all other cakes is Cheesecake Factory's Chocolate Tower Truffle cake which is probably more truffle than cake.  

Strike two. 

After all of the effort of the two prior chocolate cakes, I went back to one of my standards--Nigella's Guinness chocolate cake.  I would categorize this as an overall fantastic cake rather than a fantastic chocolate cake.

Best part is that it's super simple and made right in the saucepan.

I know I posted this recipe 4 years ago when I made it into Irish Car Bomb cupcakes, but while not the perfect truffle-like chocolate cake, it's a pretty delicious cake....definitely a keeper recipe for when you want to throw together something super quick and easy.

Only one saucepan and  one baking pan to clean up.

Chocolate Guinness Cake
Adapted from Nigella Lawson Feast

1 cup Guinness stout
1 stick unsalted butter, sliced
¾ cup unsweetened cocoa powder
1.5 cups sugar
¾ cup sour cream
2 eggs
2 tsp vanilla extract
2 cups all-purpose flour
2.5 teaspoons baking soda

Baileys frosting
-8 ounce cream cheese
-1 cup confectioners’ sugar
½ cup Baileys

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Butter a 9-inch springform pan and line bottom with parchment paper.
2. Pour Guinness into a large saucepan, add butter and heat until melted. Whisk in cocoa powder and sugar. In a small bowl, beat sour cream with eggs and vanilla and then pour into brown, buttery, beery mixture and finally whisk in flour and baking soda.
3. Pour cake batter into greased and line pan and bake for 45 minutes to an hour. Leave to cool completely in the pan on a cooling rack.
4. When cake is cold, gently peel off parchment paper and transfer to a platter or cake stand.
5. Place cream cheese and confectioners’ sugar in a mixing bowl, and whip with an electric beater, until smooth
6. Add cream and beat again until you have a spreadable consistency.
7. Ice top of cake, starting at middle and fanning out, so that it resembles the frothy top of the famous pint.

Chocolate Strawberry Leibniz S'mores

S'mores are one of those great outdoors requirements and seemingly universal loves.  I don't like them.  For some reason, I spent a lot of my life hiding this fact....do you have any idea what stigma disliking s'mores can cast upon a child? I hid it for a long time.  Sure, I'd accept s'mores but when no one was looking, I'd throw them in the fire.  

As an adult I finally came to accept that it was okay to not like Hershey's milk chocolate or graham crackers.  I would willingly forgo all chocolate before eating milk chocolate.   You can throw Nutella in that category too to understand the pressure I feel with my apparently weird dislikes.  I however, learned to embrace my uniqueness and stood my ground when s'mores pushers tried to get me to cave.  Nope, just ooey, gooey roasted marshmallows for me. 

Recently the bazillion different s'mores ideas on Pinterest alone made me realize that there could be more to s'mores than graham crackers and Hershey's chocolate.  Interesting. 

 I think after a bit of experimenting, I now like s'mores.  Of course anything probably tastes pretty good after a long morning of this...

I really do love snowshoeing, I just forgot how much I disliked walking uphill.  A couple celebrating their 50th anniversary passed me going up the trail.  True enough.  As I gasped for air and cursed altitude, this sweet little couple breezed past me with smiles on their face.  Smiling while hiking uphill at altitude...funny right?  There is a special Colorado type that has evolved to live without requiring oxygen but I am not one them.

The views were all worth it though and there was still a good bit of snow up at 10,000 feet. 

 After all that uphill walking torture, s'mores in front of a roaring fire were actually quite awesome.

When I realized you could mix up the s'more's layers (duh right?), I grabbed my favorite Leibniz cookies.  Have you had these?  The Dark Choco Leibniz are absolutely my favorite cookie in the whole big wide world.  The chocolate is dark without being bitter and paired with the biscuit makes the perfectly not-too-sweet cookie.  Heaven will be full of Choco Leibniz.   The plain Leibniz cookies made a great graham cracker replacement.

See how perfect Choco Leibniz are? I think it's all about the chocolate to cookie ratio.

  They don't even need marshmallows.  

But I did give them a try with marshmallows...I think they need two marshmallows because that's a lot of chocolate.  

Since the chocolate seemed a bit much for s'mores, I  moved on to the plain Leibniz cookies, added just one square of dark chocolate, marshmallows and sliced strawberries.  I'm not sure if it qualifies as a s'more but dark chocolate and strawberries can never be wrong.  And when s'mores pushers come at me next time, I'll feel prepared with my new knowledge that Leibniz make great s'mores.  

I would never throw this s'more in the fire.  

Pie Iron Croque Madame

I didn't really go camping, but I believe that anytime there's a fire and the great outdoors involved, a pie iron is justified.  There's just something about cooking dinner over hot coals and a open flame that's just so very Laura Ingalls Wilder and we never get enough Laura. 

Our weekend in the mountains was a fantastic little getaway.  It started off with a bit of a freak gasoline fight accident (Zoolander anyone?).  While filling up the tank during a little Denver spring snowstorm extraordinaire, I heard the gas pump click signaling the tank was full, and then watched the gas come flying out of the tank.  It took me a good bit of time and many gallons of flying gas while I was flinging the pump around (Zoolander, seriously) to figure out how to manually force it to stop.  Needless to say, the drive up was a smelly nightmare but it only got better after that.  

This isn't the cabin I stayed at but every time I drive by I kind of want to stop and go inside. That's the sometimes elusive Longs Peak behind the cloud.

Someone at work asked if I was snowshoeing into a cabin.  Ha, ha.  HA. I knew I wasn't traveling light but even I was a little surprised at my ability to fill up my cargo area.  Yes, I love my Lands End monogrammed canvas totes and storage totes.  Life feels more organized when there's a specific tote for everything...no packing and unpacking...just grab the tote you need.  They also make crazy sturdy market bags for those of us who would choose to load up one extra-almost-impossible-to-carry-heavy large bag over making multiple trips from the car to the house with the groceries.  I like the Lands End one a bit more than the LL Bean version because there are pockets galore inside of the LE totes.  

In my defense here, some of this is food, firewood and snow clothes.  Snow clothes, boots and snowshoes take up a lot of room.  

And oh yeah, there might be a pie iron somewhere in here.  I have the sturdy cast iron ones and the lightweight Coleman aluminum ones.  While the cast iron ones feel better and are higher quality, I often grab the Coleman ones.  You need lightweight when you take a 4 day weekend with as much stuff as I packed up. 

The Coleman pie irons are a perfect weight for sandwiches or something that cooks up pretty quickly.  

I probably don't need to really explain how to make these little Croque Madames, but you just butter the bread, lay it buttered side out, top with gruyere (the absolute best cheese in the world), sliced ham, another slice of gruyere and then another slice of buttered bread, butter side out. Close and clamp the pie iron and cut all around to remove overhanging bread. I like to use bigger bread here so there is overhang to crimp together and cut off. 

When the sandwich is all toasty brown and the cheese melted through, you just top it with a fried egg.  Or if you prefer your croques to be monsieur's instead of madames, and you camp with béchamel sauce, well Mazel Tov.  Top that sandwich with some béchamel.

If you've never had a Croque Madame, it's not dissimilar to some Eggs Benedict minus the hollandaise.  And poached egg.  And with the addition of cheese.  So really the same at all, but yummy nonetheless.   While it's not as schmance as a Croque Madame served in Paris cafe by a fantastically chic waiter, it's not so bad served up with a cappuccino and eaten in the clean cool mountain air.

This was one of my favorite spots of the trip.  Why are adirondack chairs on cabin decks so darned comfortable?  It was the perfect spot for a little quiet time in the morning, and to unwind with a book after a day of hiking and snowshoeing.

And with this view?  Seriously, PERFECT. 

This one didn't find it as relaxing as she was on full lookout for her nemesis.  

They were all around us.  The elk were indeed terrified of my little 18 lb terror. 

No Knead Potato Bread and a Life Off-Grid

Anyone who knows me knows I love hyperbole.  The more ridiculous I can make something sound, the more I appreciate it.  Like me saying I'm going off-grid.

Off-grid usually means self-sustaining, hunting types who don't have electricity running to their homes...i.e off the power grid.   That sounds pretty cool, but in my case, off-grid means a long weekend in the mtns in a cabin without wifi or TV but full electricity and amenities. It means a car full of groceries I hunted at the grocery store and firewood that someone that is not me chopped.

Bread doesn't fit into the above at all but I'm all about lean efficiency.  One post, two topics.  This second topic is pretty spectacular if you're not on the wheat belly or wheat brain or wheat whatever diet.  

I am not.  I love bread.

And of course, I love no knead bread baked up in the cast iron pan.  This one is yet another variation of the recipe I've posted many times except that the star of this loaf is mashed potatoes.  Bread and mashed potatoes--happy post indeed. 

The core no knead recipe calls for a wet dough and letting it sit overnight.  This one looks a bit wetter than the other doughs, but that's what makes it so perfectly moist on the inside while still maintaing that thick, chewy artisan crust.

I still can't believe that 5 minutes of measuring and stirring results in a loaf like this. 

The potato really just adds moistness so you could even serve this up with jam.  The inside texture and crumb was so fantastic that this version definitely climbs up the ladder of favorites in the no knead category.

No Knead Sourdough Bread

Ingredients
1.5 cup ultra mashed potatoes (no lumps)
3 1/4 cups flour
2 teaspoons sea salt
1 cup water
2.5 tsps yeast

Instructions

1. Spoon mashed potatoes into a bowl with flour, salt, yeast and water. Mix with wooden spoon until combined. 
2. Cover bowl with plastic wrap and set aside for 12-16 hours or overnight. 
3. Heat oven to 450 degrees. When the oven has reached 450 degrees place a cast iron pot with a lid in the oven and heat the pot for 25 minutes. 
4. While the oven and pan is preheating, dump dough onto a heavily floured surface and shape into a ball. The dough will be sticky--keep flouring your hands and rolling dough in flour while forming ball. Cover with plastic wrap and let rest until pan is ready. 
5. Remove hot pan from the oven and carefully drop dough into ungreased pan. 
6. Cover and return to oven for 30 minutes. 
7. After 30 minutes remove the lid and bake an additional 10-15 minutes or until golden brown. 
8. Remove bread from oven and place on a cooling rack. Let cool before slicing