Anadama Bread

Image by haleysuzanne via Flickr

This weekend as I was going through the new posts on the blogs that I read there was one that I found very intriguing. It was a recipe for an easy, dark bread.

The recipe was for Anadama bread, which is a traditional New England bread that's made of corn meal, molasses, and bread flour. The recipe has been around for many years and even has a myth as to how it got it's name to go along with it.

"A fisherman, angry with his wife, Anna, for serving him nothing but cornmeal and molasses, one day adds flour and yeast to his porridge and eats the resultant bread, while cursing, 'Anna, damn her.'"

The bread is extremely easy to make and requires no kneading at all! Mix it, put it in the pan, and then let it rise! How much more simple can it get? The result is a sweet, slightly dense bread that is very good warm from the oven, toasted the next day or even the day after that. I served mine the day after it was baked, warmed up in the oven with butter and homemade strawberry jam.

My sister and brother in law came over for brunch on Sunday and I thought that this was the perfect time to make this bread since it makes two loaves. And we'd definitely go through at least one of the them and the rest would make it to the office (which it did). My family and co-workers all loved the bread. This is one that I will make again and again.

The recipe that I used came from a great blog that I read daily, Simply Recipes. She has many great recipes as I've mentioned before.

Try this recipe and comment on what you thought about it! I'd love to know!

The Chocolate Chip Cookie Experiment - Part 2

This post is a bit overdue and for that I'm sorry. I went to the store and thought that I bought everything that I needed to make the cookies. And then I got home and started to gather my stuff and much to my surprise I didn't have flour! Well, that's a lie. I have cake flour, soy flour, and even bread flour but no all purpose flour. What the heck!! I always have flour. So, I had to go back to the store the next day.

After making these cookies I was amazed that they didn't totally flatten out while baking! And they tasted incredible! If you have no will power, love chocolate chip cookies, and are watching your weight these are NOT the cookies for you! These aren't the cookies for me because of the previous mentioned items... oh well! I ate them and I enjoyed them warm out of the oven and the next day (and the day after that).

I searched the internet for the recipe that Levian Bakery used to make their cookies. And of course it appears to be a well guarded secret because I couldn't find it anywhere. There were several recipes that tried to recreate them though. So I read through all the recipes, ingredients, the notes that the authors wrote on the recipe, and finally the comments from their readers. I pieced a few recipes together to make my own and the recipe is below.

Chocolate Chip Cookies

• 1 cup cold butter - cubed *
• 2 1/2 - 3 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 teaspoons baking powder
• 1/4 teaspoon baking soda
• 1 cup light brown sugar **
• 1/2 cup white sugar
• 1/2 cup dark brown sugar
• 2 large eggs, cold 
• 1 tsp vanilla
• 12 ounces semi-sweet chocolate chips - I used Ghiradelli Semi-Sweet

* I used salted butter. You can also use unsalted just add 1/4 tsp of salt.
** Ok.. I was out of light brown sugar too. I used 1 cup white & 1 cup dark sugar.

Preheat oven to 350 and make sure the rack is in the middle. If it's to close to the bottom of the oven the cookies will be way to dark on the bottom.

• Cream butter and sugar until light and fluffy and then add eggs one at a time, then vanilla and mix until well incorporated.
•  Add dry ingredients and mix till combined. Add chocolate chips.
• I used the medium scoop from Pampered Chef which is about 2oz twice to make about a 4oz cookie.
• Bake 10 - 15 min (up to 20 depending on how big your cookies are) and are lightly brown on the bottom.

Place on a rack to cool.

Now at this point we started eating the cookies as soon as they were cool enough to handle. They were thick, a bit crisp on the outside, and soft & gooey on the inside. My daughter and husband said they were the absolute best cookie I've ever made (I agree with them)!

They really were great cookies! Try them and let me know what you think.

Dinner & Dessert instead of Chocolate Chip Cookies

My plan today was to start on the chocolate chip cookies. So, I got the rest of the items I needed from the grocery store, came home, and started gathering the rest of the ingredients but I couldn't find the flour. I knew I had some but had no idea where in the world it went. Besides... who in the world would have used it besides me? Finally I found it. The bag had maybe 1 or 2 cups, if I was lucky, left in it. Not enough for cookies.

Instead I made dinner and dessert (which is in the oven... Yes, I know it's after 10pm and Andrew gets up at the crack of dawn).

Dinner was really good! Here's the basic recipe.

1 c Quinoa cooked in 2 c chicken stock
1 Red bell pepper chopped
1/2 English cucumber chopped
1/2 Onion - I used a sweet one. Use whatever you want
Shrimp

Dressed with olive oil & fresh squeezed lemon juice, salt, pepper, & garlic.
Garnished with sliced green onions

I think that you could add fresh herbs or other veggies if you wanted.

Now, dessert is a homemade peach cobbler via a Paula Deen recipe and I used baking mix instead of flour (why... b/c I'm out!). Let's hope that it turns out!

On a side note, the husband did not like dinner... to healthy, to many veggies, and he doesn't like lemon. Oh well, I can't win 'em all! I know that dessert will be a huge hit!

Chocolate Sugar Cookies

All I have to say is thank you Martha Stewart! This all started with the thought that sugar cookies sounded really good. A soft, light golden cookie.... and then I thought, "Everything tastes better with chocolate!". And so began my search for a chocolate sugar cookie recipe so I didn't have the create one on my own, because I was to tired to do that and I just really wanted cookies.
There were a few results that looked pretty good, but I didn't want to have to chill the dough or want a spicy cookie. Then I found the recipe from Martha Stewart for Giant Chocolate Sugar Cookies, and it's wonderful! I made mine smaller and was able to get about 2 dozen.
Now, I'm going to try adding different things to the recipe like peanut butter chips, chocolate chips, or maybe nuts. Who knows, but for now I'm just happy that I have cookies!