A Homemade Christmas 2011, part 1: Vanilla Extract

This post is part one of four in my Homemade Christmas 2011 series. I hope to add to this series next year with new craft projects.

Part 2: Lavender Aromatherapy Eye Pillows
Part 3: It's a Cookie Decorating Party!
Part 4: Aromatherapy Body Butters & Scrubs

meow!

I love baking! (You're visiting my baking blog, so that's no big surprise, right?) However, I also love dabbling in lots of other creative activities. I took ceramics classes for many years, made my own dipped candles, taught myself how to knit and am always kicking around a few ideas for writing a novel. This Christmas I decided I wanted to make (most of) the presents my husband and I would give at the holidays.

As I've gotten older, I feel like I need less and less "stuff" around the house and so - while I still love to spoil my nieces and nephew - I thought it would be fun to give homemade gifts this year. Now I just needed a plan...What could I make and who would like what?!

First up? Homemade vanilla extract. I knew the extract would need a while to "set up" so I actually started this project last summer. I had made homemade vanilla extract once before, about 20 years ago, when visiting one of my aunts so I knew the basic gist of it (add vanilla beans to vodka and let sit) but wanted more details. I like to gather lots of information whenever I'm trying something new...so off to google I went! There are lots of other people blogging about making vanilla extract but The Italian Dish was the best make-your-own-extract blog post I found. The photos on that site are wonderful and the blog is really well laid out. Her recommendations for buying the vanilla beans and the bottles were also excellent. Both were of great quality but also very inexpensive!

For vanilla beans, visit Beanilla. I bought the Bourbon vanilla beans, but they sell eight(!) different varieties. I got the 1/2 pound pack which was less than $30. This is an amazing value! For comparison, Beanilla sells a single vanilla bean for $1.25...in a grocery store you'd usually pay about $9.00 for 2 beans and the difference in quality is like night and day. My Beanilla beans were soft, pliable and smelled absolutely incredible. Grocery store vanilla beans are often hard and dry and stuck on that bent in half position when you take them out of the bottle. I highly recommend Beanilla for all your vanilla bean needs.

my fresh, delicious vanilla beans. One went straight into my bag of sugar!

The other great recommendation from the Italian Dish was for Specialty Bottle (which you'll see also came in very handy for part four of this Homemade Christmas series). I love wrapping presents and presenting things in pretty and fun packaging, so this site was another fantastic find. For my vanilla extract I used both tall, square bottles (8.5 oz) and short, round bottles (4 oz). The bottles were so cheap too - $1.38 each for the tall ones and .67 cents for the short ones...such a bargain (cap was included)!

my adorable glass bottles, all ready to be filled

All I needed now was the vodka and I was ready to get started. This was such an easy project and when finished, the bottles looked really impressive (quite professional too). Next year I'd like to try some flavored oils: herbs, hot peppers, garlic...yum!

I'm definitely going to need a funnel for this part!

I counted out my vanilla beans then ran the tip of a paring knife down the length of each bean to split them. For each of the tall bottles I used 3 beans; for the small bottles I used 2 beans, cut in half (split them first before cutting).

that was easy!

so cute all lined up together

the short ones...

...and the tall

I put them back in the delivery box (which had cardboard divider sleeves) for storage and then put them away in my pantry. Every couple of weeks I'd pull them out and gently turn the boxes upside-down a couple of times to mix the extract. Six months later...voila, real, homemade vanilla extract. Exciting!

They turned out a gorgeous, rich amber color with a few little vanilla seeds resting on the bottom of the bottles. Gorgeous! And, the smell of the extract was just incredible. Words don't really suffice to convey the fragrant, sweet, floral scent. Heavenly, really.

To finish, I simply typed up some labels (rotating the font sideways), added a border and printed. I thought a rectangle shape would be more elegant than the label's normal rounded corners so I finished by trimming the label around the border's edge. For the wrapping "paper" I wanted something that went with the "to be used in the kitchen" theme so I used several layers of cheese cloth and secured it with a ribbon.

very impressive!

The front of each label says:

homemade
VANILLA EXTRACT

2011


The back of each label says:

This vanilla extract has been steeping for 6 months. It contains vodka and bourbon vanilla beans. Bourbon beans have a creamy, sweet, smooth and mellow flavor.

When your bottle runs low, simply add more unflavored vodka and you will never run out of delicious vanilla extract.

Merry Christmas

Bye for now...

Homemade Pizzas: Mushroom & Eggplant-Pepperoni

Who doesn't love pizza? Pizza is one of my favorite foods and it's perfect in so many ways. It's warm and comforting and yet still delicious served cold the next day and the toppings are endless. How many foods fit that description?! And, as a cheese lover, I don't think I could turn down something covered in melted cheese.

One of my favorite local pizza places is Za Restaurant in Arlington, MA. They have really unique combinations on the menu, or you can just order whatever toppings you like. My favorite pizza combo is onions, mushrooms, garlic and bacon. Delicious!

I realized a couple of months back that I should try to make my own pizza. It seemed like it would be a fun stay-at-home date night or great for a party. I made my first two pies by buying the frozen pizza dough from Whole Foods and adding the tomato sauce, cheese and toppings, but that wasn't really as satisfying as doing it all myself. So, after searching around on google, I settled on this basic pizza dough recipe on an Italian cooking site. I tried to mix the dough on my counter-top and wow, what hilarity ensued when I added the water to my little flour well. I felt like I was on an episode of I Love Lucy! Next time I'll mix the dough in a bowl.

Here is the ingredient list (the linked-to site above includes a video if you need a walkthrough). The dough was very easy (and fun!) to pull together but was a little bland so next time I think I'll add a bit of honey to give it a little more depth.

1 tablespoon active dry yeast
1 1/2 cups warm water
3 1/2 cups (500 g) flour
1 tablespoon extra-virgin olive oil
pinch of salt
[my change for next time: replace 1 T of water with honey]

yeast is proofed, and a small well is made in the flour

after a bit of panic I was able to corral the
water-yeast mixture back to my flour pile and mixed up my dough

oiled, scored and into a bowl to rise

nice!

"punched" down and turned out onto my bench

then divided into thirds and rolled out into pizza shape.
I froze one third to use another time and made up two pizzas

At this point I kind of diverged from the directions and just baked it on a sheet pan. I didn't worry about using a special pizza pan or pizza stone...and? Came out perfectly!

the first pizza was eggplant and pepperoni

the eggplant was a little dry (next time I'll cook it first) but overall, it was great

molto bene!

next up: mushroom

look at all that yummy cheese...

delizioso!

Bye for now...

Avid Baker's Challenge: Nut-Crusted Chocolate-Banana Swirl Cake

My Avid Baker's Challenge club is beginning a new book for 2012, The Weekend Baker by Abby Dodge. And (exciting!), the author herself is getting us started with our first recipe, Nut-Crusted Chocolate-Banana Swirl Cake on page 288.

The new book is really interesting because it details the recipes in stages so you can get started one day and finish everything a day or two later. I can see this coming in very handy around the holidays! It's not something I've done much of before, but I'm looking forward to experimenting with baking in stages.

The Nut-Crusted Chocolate-Banana Swirl Cake (half of which is sitting patiently on my counter-top, waiting for me to eat it) is delicious! The finished cake has a dense crumb but isn't heavy and the bananas keep the cake really moist. Plus, bananas equals healthy, right? Right! The banana flavor is really only obvious in the vanilla swirls of the cake while the chocolate swirls taste pretty much like pure chocolate so it's a nice combination of the two flavors. And even my husband - who doesn't like banana bread - declared this cake to be fantastic and has already polished of several slices.

The only bundt pan I have is this Nordic Ware Heritage bundt pan and I was a little concerned with trying to press my ground nuts into all the small crevices, so I chose instead to make 2 loaf cakes instead of 1 bundt cake. It was easy peasy to butter and nut the plain pans and I think the loaf shape - wrapped in some clear cellophane and a pretty ribbon - would be great for gifting. With the change in pan shape, I had to bake the cakes for an additional 15 minutes (until an inserted toothpick came out with a few crumbs).

The other change I made was to follow our ABC leader Hanaâ's suggestion of creaming the butter and sugar before adding the banana (I also squished up the banana first). I got a little nervous when adding the banana - as the batter seemed to separate - but all was well in the end. Overall I was very pleased with our first Weekend Baker cake and I can't wait for next month's Glazed Cinnamon Rolls! I'm curious to see how they'll compare to my Overnight Cinnamon Buns (which I loved) from last year's ABC book, Baking for All Occasions by Flo Braker.

mise en place

my two loaf pans, generously buttered and "nutted"

hmmm...getting nervous here as the batter separated
when the bananas were added

half the finished batter is separated and the melted chocolate is mixed in

spoonfuls of the vanilla/banana and chocolate batters are marbled together

the finished loaves...the whole house smelled delightful

I couldn't wait for it to cool...

moist, tender...and delicious!

Bye for now...

Avid Baker's Challenge: Frangipane Ripple Chocolate Pound Cake

Flo Braker's Baking for All Occasions was the 2011 Avid Baker's Challenge book and I wrapped up my participation with the October selection...the delicious Frangipane Ripple Chocolate Pound Cake (page 335).

This cake was a real adventure to make because I also decided to make the almond paste - from scratch - which goes into the frangipane. Now, full disclosure, I have never been a fan of almond flavored baked goods...plain almonds? Great! Chocolate covered almonds? Yum! But marzipan? No thanks! But last year I got my first inkling that maybe, just maybe, it's actually almond extract flavoring that I don't like and/or I had just been served some really bad marzipan as a child. My perhaps-almonds-are-not-so-bad revelation happened in one of my CSCA baking classes last winter when we made a pear-frangipane tart and, while the pear was mushy and flavorless, the frangipane was amazing. Ditto in another class when we made croissants and (to my utter shock and disbelief) the almond croissants were my favorite! I was still not totally convinced though, to the point that when I made a Swedish Pear and Almond Cream Cake for the HCB ring last June, I omitted the almond cream. I know now that was a big mistake.

I decided that for this cake I was going to go all in - including the almond paste - no substitutions allowed. The ABC's fearless leader, Hanaâ, recommended a great almond paste recipe from imafoodblog.com. And not only was the almond paste very easy to make, it was so incredibly yummy that I ate the leftover 2 ounces on its own over the next couple of days! It was so rich and delicious that a small pinch felt like a big treat.

Another great example that only good things can come from being adventurous in the kitchen.

mise en place for the almond paste

and, voila, homemade almond paste...so delicious!

additional ingredients for the frangipane

my frangipane, ready to go

mise en place for the chocolate cake

butter and sugar, creamed for 4-5 minutes

the finished batter

laying down the second layer of the frangipane

and...topped with the rest of the batter

done! It smelled divine.

I love this bundt pan...makes the prettiest crusty-edges

here's my frangipane "ripple"

looks beautiful when sliced

and tastes delicious when eaten!

We're moving on to a new book for the Avid Baker's Challenge 2012 - The Weekend Baker by Abby Dodge - and the first recipe was chosen for us from the author herself! Can't wait to get baking.

Bye for now...

Happy New Year!

2012 fireworks over Boston, MA
photo from firstnight.org

Happy 2012. It's really hard to believe a new year is here. I remember so clearly how the world freaked out about Y2K and now it's more than a decade later. Time goes by so fast. I'm not much into new year's resolutions, but I will put it on record that I'm planning to spend this year doing a couple of things I've been procrastinating on for far too long...getting fit, eating healthier and traveling more (including a trip to Japan).

I'll also be kicking off the new year by jumping back into blogging. The end of last year was a very busy one for me but things have calmed down a bit and I'm looking forward to sharing more of my kitchen adventures with you! My camera memory card is completely full, so I've got lots to post, including some other craft projects I've been getting into, including homemade vanilla extract, lavender eye pillows (sewn by hand!) and homemade body butters and scrubs. I decided to make almost all of our Christmas presents this year and really enjoyed both the making and giving of everything.

Bye for now...