PW’s Apple Dumplings, sugar coma pending…

These babies are good. Don’t let the use of Mountain Dew fool you into thinking they’ll turn out weird – they’re awesome. They are not Mountain Dew dumplings, they’re Mountain Dew-laced apple dumplings of sugared, buttered deliciousness.

I went out after martial arts and bought what I needed to to make the dumplings: crescent roll dough and Mountain Dew. Everything else I had at home already. However, in my quest I ran into some lumps along the way. The only crescent roll dough they had was reduced fat, but I figured it wouldn’t make a difference once I got all those dumplings situated in their butter-sugar-pop bath. Plus, I donated to breast cancer research – can’t go wrong there. The other problem was that Murphy’s law once again popped up in the case of Mountain Dew. There wasn’t a single case of cans to be seen. Apparently the Wal-Mart on our side of the county doesn’t carry baby cans of Pepsi products (but it does carry baby cans of Canada Dry and RC, who knew?), and the 12-packs were gone. All of them. So I had to settle for the 6-pack of 24-oz. bottles. And this when I’m trying not to drink pop except in rare and exceptional cases. Great. And of course, Breyer’s natural vanilla.

I could’ve gone to Kroger right down the road. I probably should have; I bet they had baby cans of Mountain Dew. But I was already at Wal-Mart. And I had other things in my cart. So I went ahead and bought my things and went home.

I only bought one can of crescent roll dough. Dammit. Oops. I’d have to make do – Wal-Mart is 20-30 minutes from my apartment. I wasn’t going back. I cut the apples with my handy little apple corer-slicer and got everything ready to make dumplings. I had twice as many apples as crescent slices, so I doubled the apples:crescent ratio. Two slices to a triangle, in the pan.

Now, why it didn’t occur to me that if I had only one can of crescent dough, then I should have to halve the recipe… I don’t know. I guess I was so excited for the prospect of these dumplings. I even wondered why my dumplings didn’t look as packed as in the photo in Ree’s recipe, but I went ahead and melted butter, mixed in sugar and vanilla and poured it all over the dumplings, followed by Mountain Dew. It looked good even then. I snubbed the cinnamon because I am obviously a dingbat and stuck the pan in the oven.

When it came out, the dumplings were swimming in buttered-sugared-carbonated goodness. They smelled extraordinary. I served up a dumpling and ice cream apiece for 354 and I. They definitely got the Man Stamp of Approval, and I didn’t think they were none too bad myself. (The double negatives of the South… they kill me.) After a ’special’ supper of pasta that 354 brought home after his extra shift – caprino e pinoli penne for me, and ricotta-spinach ravioli in arrabbiata from Mirko, oh goodness, if you’re in Athens or Watkinsville, go eat there soon – we just couldn’t eat anything else. So the remaining dumplings got packed up for storage, and the butter bath got poured into a pint Mason jar. I couldn’t waste it! So now I have to figure out what to do with all this clarified, supersweet, Mountain Dew-spiced butter… something will come of it, and I’m sure it will be good. Meantime, the dumplings are just as good reheated and eaten later, as with many things, the flavors marry better after a day or so.

Ree’s full recipe and step-by-step (with photos) instructions are here, along with a printable recipe version. I think these would be a kick at Thanksgiving this year (or any year) and I highly recommend you try them. As in, tonight. Or as soon as possible. I’m serious.

Next, apple cinnamon bran muffins, for a healthy and tasty breakfast!

An abundance of apples.

Or: ‘What to Do With All Those Skinned Granny Smiths From Packing Your OBG Box(es)’

Honestly, it’s worse than egg whites left over from a mass making of crème brûlée, which my only options are meringues (calf slobbers!) or macarons (do not want). I have 3-4 skinned, sizable Granny Smiths sitting naked and cold in my fridge. What do I do with them?

My first answer (to myself) would be pie. Not because I like pie, or cobbler, really, but because that’s the first thing I think of when I think of tart apples. Grammy used to make a mean cobbler… but I only ate one or two bites, mostly out of politeness at holidays, because I’m not a pie/cobbler fan.

What about apple cinnamon muffins? Ooh… the simplicity of muffins. The ease of making them… and eating them. I could add some nutmeg, some turbinado, some ground flax for peace of mind, or use oats and bran flour if I felt like being especially health-conscious. I need a break from my regularly scheduled oatmeal for breakfast.

Oatmeal, wait a minute… what if I diced up those pretty Grannies and made dried apple cubes? Or slices? I could make my own apple chips! I always liked it when Mom did apple chips at home, and fruit leather… I could borrow 354’s dehydrator (it’s been used all of twice since he bought it in August) and do it.

Wait… that picture up there is Ree’s, from PW Cooks! Do you know what post it’s from, specifically? It makes all folks mouths water… Apple Dumplings.

Look at that and tell me that it wouldn’t be worth the weight gain to eat some of that in the cold, curled up on the couch in your pjs!

What would you recommend doing with skinned apples?

Pictures borrowed from Ree Drummond at The Pioneer Woman Cooks, solely for drool-inducing purposes.

Operation Baking GALS, Round 4 Recap

As you probably know at this point, I participated in Round 4 of Operation Baking GALS. Our team was hosted by Cat of The Cat’s Pajamas and she did an awesome job! Team Cat’s Pajamas hosted Cat’s brother Daniel, a Marine serving on the 26th MEU. I sent over the shortbread and the snickerdoodles you see in the previous two posts, as well as two kinds of beef jerky, some instant tea and drink mixes, baby wipes and trail mix. I wanted to bake up some chocolate chip cookies (Daniel’s favorite) but I didn’t have time. Murphy’s Law, the whole week turned into one big hurry and mess, and I just couldn’t muster up the time to make another batch of cookies. Sadly, in my rush, I also forgot to pack the card I had prepared for Daniel and his buddies – sad!

I’d never shipped anything international, or flatrate, before. Luckily, I live in a small town with a small town post office. Mr. Kelley (the man behind the counter) helped me with everything that Cat didn’t tell me, and we had boxes on the way in no time. Mr. Kelley is a Navy veteran currently in the Reserves, and was more than pleased to help me send some goodies to the men and women overseas. I’ll have to bring him some Christmas treats when Round 5 rolls around.

Cat did a post-up over at her blog – hop over there and check out what everyone else sent to the unit!

Snickerdoodles, a cookie I never really knew.

It’s true – snickerdoodles were never really a family favorite on either side. We were always the chocolate chip, white chocolate macadamia (Dad) or a sugar cookie (Mom) type. My poppa (Mom’s dad) liked them, but for some reason, we never really made them.

After making these little beauties, I’m not really sure why we never made them. Buttery, abominably simple sugar cookies, rolled in cinnamon and more sugar, then baked to fragrant crinkly vaguely caramelized deliciousness? What the hell were we thinking?! If I don’t make these again for the sheer hip-widening tasty enjoyment of them, I’ll surely make them again just for the way they make the house smell!

I used the recipe from Martha Stewart’s Cookies, which I don’t own, but I snitched it from Kristin at Our Kitchen Sink. Look at those puffy crinkly little packages of goodness! Thank you, Kristin, for posting the recipe so I could use it. They turned out perfectly!

(Rest of the entry under the cut…)

Shortbread, or why I rely so much on the Joy of Cooking.

After my previous shortbread fiasco, I was going to try a recipe I found for Scottish shortbread on About.com. Not normally where I would go to find good recipes, but I was desperate. My most ‘reliable’ cookbook at the moment is Barbara Tropp’s The Modern Art of Chinese Cooking – not exactly a hub of baking perfection in this situation.

But then one evening, 354 and I ended up in Barnes & Noble, and I got a wild hair. I went to the cookbooks (after a fruitless search for decent dog training books) and found a copy of my favorite fallback instruction manual. I sat in the aisle and recorded an annotated version recipe for shortbread on the back of a business card, the only piece of paper I had available to me at the time. I felt guilty at the time, like I was shoplifting at the bookstore and that an employee would come up behind me at any moment and ask me politely but firmly to leave the store. Thankfully, none did, and I made a test batch of shortbread that very evening.

I’m so glad that I shoplifted this recipe. The shortbread was everything I hoped it would be. The annotated recipe is below, with notes to explain what you should be looking for. What can I say – I was in a rush to escape the wrath of B&N employees. Those bookstore folks, they can get pretty testy.

Twitter!

I just (literally) joined Twitter – and I have no idea what I’m doing. Ha! Basically the only thing I’ve learned so far is that it’s very much like updating one’s Facebook status… and as a college student, I’m well-acquainted with Facebook. The rest I will inevitably discover just as I have with every other technological anomaly I’ve encountered, with lots of clicking and ‘ooh, what does this do?’

In any case, if you would like to follow me, my username is wanderluck.

Now, back to check on my monster batch of shortbread and to start the dough for snickerdoodles. Yum!

Questing for the right shortbread.

I grew up with one type of shortbread at one time in the season. ‘Daddy Bob,’ patriarch of my mom’s best friend’s family, made shortbread every Christmas season. It was buttery, super rich and sweet. It flaked just right in your mouth, but it was cakey, too. There was nothing to it, but the recipe is still a secret. It makes me think of Christmas at home every time I think about it.

So for Operation: Baking GALS I wanted to send a part of home over to the Marines on a float, but I had no recipe from Daddy Bob. I would have to make my own. Generally, I’d go to the Joy of Cooking, my catch-all resource, but it’s at Momma’s and that’s two hours away and she’s sick. So I had to search. Would you believe the amount of shortbread recipes there are on the Internet, with no accompanying pictures? Unbelievable.

I decided to try the perfect shortbread recipe from bread & honey. It looked like the right thing. It really did. And in the right context, probably with smaller pans (shortbread tarts, anyone?), it would probably have worked. Not in this case. Don’t get me wrong – it was good shortbread. But good shortbread for something other than just plain shortbread. More like a short dough type shortbread, which I nonetheless love. It was fall-apart flaky and melt-in-your-mouth, naturally. It was good. But it was also a little too dry for my taste, and a little too flaky to hold up in transit.

Given, I did double the recipe, and I didn’t have any rosewater, so I had to add plain water – much more than I thought I’d need, as in a whole teaspoon (as opposed to the half teaspoon I should’ve needed). The dough came out lovely, though, and it kneaded quite well. It was elastic and smooth and it pressed down well, held its shape in the pan. It even cooked pretty, the way I think shortbread should come out looking – golden around the edges and bottom, but barely cooked (to the eye) on top. It came out nicely, I was proud, and it cut cleanly. But it just wasn’t what I was looking for this time around. I am planning on using it for a pie of some sort for an early Thanksgiving get-together next week, though, so thank you, Summer and Alice!

Instead, I’m going to try a Scottish shortbread recipe I found off About.com that is purportedly from Joy of Cooking. For some reason, just reading it made me feel like it was the right recipe, so I’m going to try another test batch and see what happens. Ever had a hunch like that? Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t… I’ve learned to trust myself when it comes to this, though, so hopefully my hunch is on the mark. I’ll definitely let you know what comes of it!

p.s. I also promise that eventually, I will stop changing my blog layout and just stick to one. I swear. Eventually.

Veteran’s Day 2008.

“All gave some, but some gave all.”

Thank a veteran today for the freedoms you enjoy. Every day is a veteran’s day – if you don’t believe that, ask a mother who has lost her child, or a husband who has lost his wife, in the name of combat for service to this country – but this day is the one we choose to recognize their sacrifices in the US. Ignore the sales in the retail stores and see today for what it is.

I have a post started for shortbread (part of my OBG box, which will be shipped late, sad to say), but for now, this is the only thing that matters today.

If you live in the US – VOTE TODAY.

I’ll get back to the important subject of food in a bit, but first:

I voted early this year, and was intensely proud to do my American duty as a citizen. I won’t say that I don’t care who you vote for, because I do and to say otherwise would be obviously false – everyone cares who you vote for, no matter what they say – but get out there and vote. As my sensei, a 22-year Army SF veteran, told us after class last night, there are people around the world that die trying to vote, while many Americans often take this responsibility for granted. We are the change that keeps getting tossed around in this election: not the parties and certainly not the candidates. Us. The citizenry. The people of the free republic of the United States of America.

I’m praying for all of us. I’m hoping, as I’m sure we all are, that things turn out for the best of the country, however it may end. I’m hoping that everyone can be as civil after the votes are finally counted as they were this morning in Marietta as they waited in line for polling places to open.

Now get off your duff and vote.