Lemon Chess Pie

I know, it doesn't look like much:
But I was so delighted with my chocolate chess pie that when I had to make a spring dessert, my thoughts when straight to a lighter version.

The biggest surprise when I make pie seems to be that I make my own dough. Here is my biggest trick - wax paper. I've scrubbed a counter covered with flour and dough remnants before, and it isn't pretty. This makes the process easy:

For a chess pie or other custard pie, your filling it when when you pour it into your shell, so you have to pre-bake it. Here is the dough partway through baking. You can see the fork holes I poked in it to eliminate air bubbles:

When the dough was almost done, I took it out and brushed it with an egg wash, because my last chess pie had dough that seemed a tiny bit underdone, and this sealed the holes nicely:

Then, on to the filling: sugar, milk, butter, lemon juice and a LOT of lemon zest:

Pour straight into the crust and bake into the oven:

Carrot Cake Cupcakes

Easter: a time for chocolate bunnies, cadbury creme eggs and spring desserts:
I decided that I would make these carrot cake cupcakes to bring to a gathering because I wanted an easy Easter treat to serve to a crowd.

The recipe is a fairly basic quickbread style one, though with a bit less flour than average. The result is almost chewy and has a bit of a cookie feel to it. Here are the wet ingredients, dry ingredients, and a few essentials: grated carrot, nuts and raisins:

and a close up of the almost finished batter, a quick stir away from the finish:

Mix it all up and portion it out into cupcake tins:
and then beware: if you follow the linked recipe, the baking time and temperature has some inconsistencies. I agree with the reviewers of this recipe that the instructions must be for some sort of cake. Just lower the oven temperature and check these at about 20 minutes, and proceed cautiously.

Now, the part where everyone wants to lick the mixing bowl: frosting. This is a mixture of butter, cream cheese, vanilla and a little lemon juice, to which I added some of the confectioner's sugar to the right of the bowl. I like my frosting a little less sweet so I used less than the full pound:

Then I loaded the finished frosting onto my cupcakes!

Granola

Look, I could give you a granola recipe for every word in this post. But I won't. Some of those recipes are fancy, and the last one in particular is pretty easy. Once you've looked at a few of them and made a granola you like a few times, you won't need a recipe at all, unless you're interested in doing something particularly fancy.

So here is how it goes - mix up your dry ingredients - here, nuts, coconut, wheat germ and oats:

Add something sticky to hold it together, and some oil or butter for the baking and stir:

Bake until browned, and then let cool. If you're feeling naughty, this is the point at which you add chocolate chips:

Add milk, soymilk or yogurt, and EAT:

Marbled Rye Bread

Two doughs, one tasty bread. I had hoped for more contrast in color but the flavor made it worthwhile:

You start with two bowls filled with the same dry ingredients: flour, rye flour, caraway seeds, yeast and salt:

and to one bowl, in addition to water, molasses and a bit of shortening you add some color - I used cocoa powder dissolved in water:


After a short knead (rye flour can get gummy) and a few hours on the counter, here are the two doughs, complete with my handprints from turning them out of their bowls:

You can marble your loaves in a few ways. I elected to try cutting my doughs and clumping them together instead of spiraling:

Here are the loaves ready to go into the oven after a second rise in the pan. At this point, you could really smell the chocolate from the darker dough:

The sandwich ready result did not, however, prevent dessert from being had:

Gingerbread

This gingerbread recipe makes the deepest, darkest, least sweet gingerbread I've ever made. I suggest a large slice with coffee, and maybe some whipped cream (and sprinkles):
I used fresh ginger rather than the powdered stuff in the spice cabinet, and per the recipe suggestion, i mixed it in with my melted butter. Here it is along with the other wet ingredients:


The wet ingredients are added to the flour, leavening and spices in stages, and at some points it looks rather muddy:

But soon you have deep, dark batter to pour in your pan, and in just a half hour, delicious!

Old-Fashioned Oatmeal Bread

That's right, I made another loaf of oatmeal bread. It was time to construct some sandwiches, so I went back to King Arthur and found a variant on the last oatmeal bread recipe I made. This recipe has twice as much oatmeal, and a bit less molasses:
The result is a lighter, grainier loaf.

It starts, however, very similarly, with oats steeping in hot water. This time the oats steep alone:
Then the rest of the ingredients are added - although I didn't add any "dough enhancer"  or "lecithin."

Once these are mixed together you can really see how much grainier this dough is. Beware, though, past this point if you're reading along in the recipe - King Arthur includes instructions for manual and bread machine versions:


Here is the dough after kneading (by hand) for about 3 minutes. At this point you let the dough rest before continuing:
Here is the dough after the full kneading - much, much smoother:


After rising, I shaped the bread into a loaf and popped it into a loaf pan for the final rise:
And finally, before a half hour in the oven:

Soft Garlic Knots

All I needed to round out a dinner of lasagna was a good, garlic-laden hunk of bread. I haven't made many rolls, but this recipe for Soft Garlic Knots from King Arthur Flour looked about right:
The recipe calls for a mixture of flour, potato flour, yeast, dry milk, sugar, salt and another flavoring called "pizza dough flavor." Needless to say, I didn't quite have what I needed. After looking at some substitution options I used potato flakes in place of potato flour and a mixture of italian seasonings instead of the "pizza dough flavor." Here are the dry ingredients awaiting the addition of warm water and olive oil:


And ready to be kneaded:
Before a first rise you can see how much smoother the dough gets. This dough smelled great with all of the spice and olive oil, plus the regular smell of yeast at work:


Once the dough had risen, there was some slightly more complicated shaping before the second rise. The dough is split into 16 parts and then rolled into ropes...
Which are then tied into knots. Here is the dough half shaped and ready to rise:

After another hour the knots looked nice and puffy, and were ready to hit the oven:


And finally, brushed with melted butter, garlic and a little more spice, and dusted with freshly grated cheese:
Many thanks to Fritz for the photos featuring my hands at work as well as the shot of the risen dough before it went into the oven.