First of all Glorious Grits is a book with some awesome photography. I wasn’t expecting the images to be as dramatic and beautiful as they are, after all…we are talking grits here.

(That is the chair in my bedroom where I curl up next to the fireplace and read)

But that wasn’t the only surprise.

The recipes are things I would actually cook! In fact, they are a combination of unique variations on well known comfort foods and completely new ideas (at least to me).

Some of the recipes that caught my eye were:

• Cornbread Pudding with Whiskey Sauce
• Lime Chess Pie with Coconut Cornmeal Crust
• Panko and Cornmeal Fried Okra
• Grits Alfredo
• Breakfast Shrimp and Grits (a southern classic!)
• Creamy Grits with Ham and Red Eye Gravy

The book is yellow! It is a happy book to look at, cheerful, sunny, and definitely worthy of getting up for. I will be sharing a recipe from it soon…I sort of have a recipe log jam happening right now.

Interspersed on the pages are tips, ideas, and snippets of history that keep it from being another how to manual.

The only thing I did not like…and it is a personal thing…is that the recipes are all to serve 4. I realize most families are 4 or less these days but I get tired of multiplying and creating fractions to create meals for 8 or 10 or 12. Glorious Grits is a great addition to your shelves or a gift for your favorite foodie.

Grits are comfort food. This is a comfort cookbook, one you can easily pick up just to read, or look at the photography. I liked it a lot. Hardback with book cover, and it seems to be well made. I have an issue with books that fall apart in the first month of use! Find it on Amazon or Barnes and Noble.

image:marye audet

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The bread in the image above is Kalamata Black Olive Bread

In order to get those awesome artisan breads and pizza crusts you have to have a pizza baking stone of some type in your oven.

Why?

Simply because the baking stone makes for a far superior crust. It is the only way to get the crust right.

Personally, I have plans to construct an outdoor, brick bread oven..oh yeah I do! Probably not this summer but definitely by next summer…mmmm. They are not that hard to do as long as you are careful and use fire proof brick. But I digress…

If you are a serious bread or pizza maker then eventually you are going to want to try baking on these stones. They are expensive! Most of the time they are made for pizza and they are round, which does not work great if you are trying to bake 3 loaves of bread.

You can also run to your nearest Home Depot or Lowes and pick up unglazed quarry tiles. They are very inexpensive and they are square so you can cover an entire rack, or both racks for that matter, with them. I have heard of some concern about lead in them but the lead would be contained in the glaze and these are UNglazed. I do suggest before you use them that you buy a lead test kit and check one of them if you are concerned. The tiles, depending on size, are less the $2 each.

Before you use the tiles wash them with either plain water of a baking soda solution. You are going to cover all but a couple of inches of your rack with the tiles and then you can just leave them in there.Before baking your bread you will preheat the oven to like 450 or so with the tiles in, slide the bread onto the heated tiles (no pans) and bake as usual. Obviously if you are making regular loaves in glass pans, or casseroles in ceramic dishes, you need to take the tiles out first.

Below are some examples of stones I found on Amazon. It was the easiest way to get images for you to look at. As you can see they are very expensive, although they are graded for food so you would not have to have even the slightest concern for lead.

Once you start using them and get used to it you will probably not go back to bread loaves made in a pan again…Nope. You will be making bread in baguettes, boules, and cloche. You will be like a mad scientist creating bubbling vats of sourdough…I am telling ya, it’s addictive!

Image:Marye Audet

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Image:(c) MaryeAudet 2006

Assembling your cake is really the scary part but it shouldn’t be. It is a lot easier than it looks. It is really important, though, to go slow, and measure carefully. You don’t have time to cut corners or save time at this point!

You will need:

• cakes, baked and iced, on cake bases (either plastic or cardboard)
• 1/4 inch dowel rods OR 1/2 inh if your layers are bigger than 12″ or very tall and heavy
• pillars
• cake separator plates
• something to cut the dowels
• a pen

If you are transporting the cake you will need to assemble it at the reception area. Take along a couple of bags of icing in your icing colors and the decorating tips. Usually you will need to repair a scallop or two, or some piping when you assemble the cakes. Better to be safe than sorry.

1. Bake, fill, and ice each layer. Place the cakes on base plates. Some bakeries use cardboard, I prefer the plastic base plates that Wilton has, they are sturdier. Your bottom cake should be on a base that is cut from plywood. Cover the plywood with foil, then smear some frosting centered on the foil to hold the cake to it. Put the cake carefully on top. If you haven’t put a doily over the foil now is the time to add a ruffle or whatever you plan on using to cover the foil, if you wish. Each tier must be on a cake circle, plastic or cardboard.
2. Using the cake pan that you baked the next size layer in, mark where the next layer will sit. Place the pan in the center of your frosted cake, rim side down. Make sure it is centered. When you pick it up you should have a circle the size of your next layer marked in the icing.
3. Use 1/4 inch dowel rods. Push the rod through the base cake layer. Mark the level of the cake and remove the dowel. Now, cut the dowel just beneath the mark you made. The dowel should be as even with the cake top as possible. You now need to cut 6 more of the same size rods and push them into the cake at even intervals around your marking.
4. Continue each layer in this way until you get to the smallest layer. You will not need dowel rods in it, except it is a good idea to stick one through the center just to hold the layers together. If you have used cardboard to separate the layers you can stick one dowel all the way the stacked layers. If you have used the plastic, of course, you can’t do that.
5. If you are going to use pillars to separate some of the tiers you will need to place a plastic separator on the top of the layer that is going to hold the pillars, over the dowels. Press down firmly but gently. There are small pegs that stick up that will stabilize the pillars. Place the pillars on the pegs, and then place the tier on top carefully. Do not transport it this way!!
6. Here is a video that shows the basic assembly. They use a dowel all the way through the stacks.

Review:

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Post from: Baking Delights

Anyway, with the lack of time we all experience I thought that you might be interested in my 10 picks for the top foodie sites on the internet. These are the sites that i find myself heading toward over and over again.

1.All Recipes – This site is brilliant in my opinion. The recipes are easy to find, they have normal ingredients and they are rated by users. Add to that the comments on the recipes that people can make and it is easy to see if something is going to work for you or not. I love it.
2. Epicurious- Home of Bon Appetit and Gourmet Magazines. Awesome five star recipes, the stuff you want when you are cooking for someone you want to impress. They also have a rating system but it isn’t as good as All Recipes.
3. Group Recipes This is a cool site because besides recipes it provides a way to hook up and socialize with other food freaks and have your food rated. There are some incredible cooks there.
4.Chocolate Chipped, Food Porn For Chocolate Lovers I love this. Chocolate, chocolate and more chocolate. Yeah it’s food porn. Yeah I am addicted. So what?
5.Food Reference Is it about food? Then it is here. For example from today’s trivia section:DID YOU KNOW? Food Trivia
Mortadella is the original bologna – a very large smoked sausage (usually pork) from Bologna, Italy, studded with cubes of pork fat, peppercorns and/or pistachios and/or green olives. American bologna (boloney) is a very poor imitation.
Mortadella probably dates back to the 15th century, and the original recipes included myrtle, ‘mortella’ in Italian, hence the name.
6.Food Styling This is awesome. It has helped me alot with learning to plate, photograph, and style food for my blogs. And it is just great to look at. I am having trouble choosing and because the first site has photography but not instruction I am adding this How To Photograph Food, sort of a two for one deal, here at Baking Delights! Lots of tips and hints here too.
7.Chef Shop -Need some candied rose petals? what about Madagascar vanilla? What ever you need you can find here!
8 Chef Depot -If you can’t find it here it may not exist!
9. Star Chefs Cookbooks, recipes, interviews..awesome!
10.Wilton- I learned to make cakes with Wilton, and because of them I was able to create a beautiful wedding cake for my daughter. This is the cakers’ place to be! Great forums, awesome inspiration and information!

There are really so many places that are awesome, so many talented bloggers..but when you need something specific these are the pages to head for!

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This is the description from, Cooking.com

Sassafras Kids’ Mini Fairy Princess Magic Kit:
Sassafras mini kits are an offshoot of their deluxe boxed baking kits and include the necessities to create delicious cookies.

Kit includes:

Now, this is Kyrie. She is 4. As you can imagine, being the youngest of 8 means that you get lots of attention. Kyrie Grace believes, without a doubt that she is a princess.

Is that a match made in heaven, or what? I mean look at her, you can see that she lives for fairy dust sprinkles, can’t you? The cookie mix turns PINK for goodness sake! This is from a company called sassafras kids. They have a ton of other really cute kids cookery things, from pizza kits to cookie kits. I could not resist this one, and wanted to share. I was thinking it would be perfect to make those cookies for tea parties !

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This concerned me, because anyone will tell you, I am an eco-freak. Actually, I am an eco-freak from long lines of eco freaks, my ancestors were all pretty much farmers and were into organics way before it was cool. But I digress.

I n my eco- freakiness I decided to do some research to see what I could find out. After all, my readers support me! If I am going to recommend something to you I don’t want it to be something that will kill you off. Here is what I found out. From Debra Lynn Dadd: I tried to find some information on the health effects of silicone rubber, but it was not listed in any of the toxic chemical databases I use.

I went to the Dow Corning website (who makes over 700 different silicone rubbers) and looked at a random sample of their MSDSs. The ones I read listed no hazardous materials or health effects, or needed first aid measures. All descriptions I read of silicone rubber describe it as chemically inert and stable, so it is unlikely to react with or leach into food, nor outgas vapors. MSDSs also note that silicone is not toxic to aquatic or soil organisms, it is not hazardous waste, and while it is not biodegradable, it can be recycled after a lifetime of use.

Some years back there was a question about the safety of silicone used in breast implants. Whether or not the health problems experienced by some women with breast implants were associated with the implants has been very controversial. I found an article from the year 2000 on a leading website on breast cancer and related women’s issues that states “A large study conducted by researchers from the National Cancer Institute (NCI) finds no correlation between silicone-filled breast implants and breast cancer risk.”

The prolonged inhalation of crystalline silica dust is associated with silicosis, but there is no silica dust exposure from the use of silicone kitchenware.
O.k…That sounds good!
I read through the description of it on free patents online and saw nothing that would indicate a health risk.
Basically everything I did read, and there was not a lot specifically dealing with this, maintained that all chemicals were inert and did not pose health risks.
I read a ton of bloggers that loved using them, found out that they are not always perfectly nonstick, and that sometimes the bake time can be longer ..Other than that, go for it!
I try to keep in mind that we live lives in a precarious balance. Is it better to use plastic bags that never biodegrade? Paper than use up valuable resources? Canvas that you have to research to make sure they were not made by children in foreign sweatshops? Living is very complicated these days if you give any thought to it. Sometimes we have to research a subject, admit that the research may be flawed, and follow our conscience in the matter.
I prefer to use reusable items. These are. I prefer not to use bleached and dyed paper. These are not. I love the ease with which they clean up, the fact that I always have them available and the fact that after using them for a month or so I have recouped my investment. For me these are a good thing and a product I will continue to use.
I hope this information is helpful to you.

Post from: Baking Delights

  And yeah, it’s cheaper.

The wheat that I like best is a hard white hi protien berry.  The flour is lighter than the traditional hard red, has a more delicate flavor and the higher protien gives the dough more elasticity so it is easier to work with than the red. Locally, I have my natural foods store special order it for me by the 25lb or 50 lb bag…25 lbs is about $8.50..The preground whole wheat flour, not even organic, is selling for over $3 for 5 lbs…so you can see that it is cost effective.

  Wheat berries store longer..almost indefinitely. Add a few bay leaves to the storage container and the wheat will stay bug free. 

  O.k…so now you are convinced. What do you need?

 You need to look for a good wheat grinder. You are probably going to want an electric one because it takes for ever to hand mill enough wheat for a loaf of bread.  I like mine alot, although it does sound like a Boeing 747 taking off.

 Next you need a supply for wheat. There are severl different types of wheat berries. “soft” refers to a wheatberry without much gluten and these are best for cake and pastry baking. “Hard” refers to what is normally used for bread. Decide if it is important to you to pay the extra for organic or not. Expect to pay around $10 or so for a 25 lb bag.

These are what the wheatberries look like. You can actually cook them and use them like barley in their whole grain state..they are very good.

  Besure to check the berries over carefully before putting them int he grinder. Once in awhile they will have a litle stone in them and it will really mess up the grinding burrs.  Choose the size grind and start your engine!

  It is messy. In nice weather we gind outside most often to keep the fine flour dust from settling on everything. It takes about 10 minutes of grinding to grind 5 lbs of flour..

 and there it is..fresh, whole wheat flour. Full of vitamins, but most of all ,  full of flavor.

  With a mill you can also grind various types of dry beans, soy beans to make soy flour (necessary for homemade tofu..that is fun to make!), oat groats for oat flour and nearly any other nonoily type of seed or bean you can think of.

  I will be at a doctors appointment tomorrow so wont be checking email or comments.  Have an awesome Monday!

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Post from: Baking Delights

This is a Wilton cake leveler that I’m using here. The cake is halfway between soft and crusty, so it does take the teeniest bit of work for that wire to get into the cake and start cutting. However, I’m pretty happy with it. I’ve been thinking of upgrading to the “professional” (read “more expensive”cake leveler for years, but after reading the reviews at Amazon, I think I’ll just stick with this cheaper one. I find that I switch back and forth — old method with knife (and toothpicks if necessary) and this cake leveler. Both has its uses and I just go with whatever I think best at the moment. I will disagree with the reviewer at Amazon that says you only end up with 1-inch layers — you can go much smaller than that. One trick is to put the cake on a surface, like a flat plate or tile, so that it’s raised, and your wire can be adjusted to whichever thickness you like. You have to be patient with it and learn its quirks, though, so don’t expect instant perfect results. And yes, there will still be times when you just decide the knife will do a much better job.

I say, the best product would be one that combines the two principles — a knife edge to do the clean job that only a knife can do, AND something to hold it sideways to keep it level. I hope there are inventors that get to read this and do something about it:D. The only problem with such a product, of course, is storage. But then again, there are ways around that — a) the knife blade should swivel so you can lock it into position so you can lay it flat in a drawer and b) have a case for it. Hey! I think I’ll invent this one myself, with a bit of help from mechanical-engineer hubby. And if you ever see this product floating around the shelves at your local baking equipment shop, remember, you saw it here first!

Amazon’s got 3 different ones — one from Scandia, and two from Wilton.

Post from: Baking Delights