French Onion Soup - homemade... om nom nom!

Let me start off this post by saying how much my family LOVES French Onion soup! We have a few diners around here that make it SPOT ON and many that are just.... well... yuck!

About 5-7 years ago my mom bought a brand new oven thinking that it had a broiler... it did NOT! She was so bummed that she couldn't make our favorite French Onion soup. Just this Christmas she treated herself to an awesome broiler/toaster oven that set off this wonderful French Onion soup adventure.

We searched for about a week for the perfect (from what we could tell by reading) recipe. I stumbled upon a Food Network recipe from Melissa d'Arabian (10 dollar dinners). We tweaked it a bit as far as the onions go and some of the spices and the cheese. This is the original recipe in the link HERE.

Here is our tweaked recipe (and this is a doubled version of the one linked above since we are in a household of 4 and we knew we wanted to eat MANY MANY leftovers!)...

4 Tablespoons butter
1 large sweet red/purple onion thinly sliced
1 large white spanish onion thinly sliced
5 small yellow onions thinly sliced
salt and pepper (we used fine sea salt and freshly ground black pepper)
1 cup dry red wine (we chose Explorador Cabernet Sauvignon)
2 Teaspoons flour
2 Tablespoons freshly chopped Thyme (we were short so we subbed the rest with dry and it was still yummy)
2 bay leaves
2 Teaspoons lemon juice
4 cups beef stock
4 cups chicken stock
1 baguette sliced 1-inch thick rounds and toasted until hard
Mozzarella cheese
Provalone cheese

In a Dutch oven, melt the butter over medium heat. Add sliced onions, sprinkle with salt, cover and cook until carmelized (took about 1 1/2-2 hrs). Turn the heat up and sprinkle the onions with the flour. Stir and cook for another 2 minutes. Deglaze the pan with the red wine. Add thyme, bay leaves, lemon juice and stock and simmer for about 10 minutes. Add more salt and pepper to taste. Ladle soup into crocks and place a single toasted baguette slice in each crock (I like to push the baguette so it's almost submerged in soup) sprinkle shredded mozzarella over the baguette slice and top the crocks with sliced provalone cheese. Broil for about 3-4 minutes. EAT ENJOY!

This turned out amazing amazing amazing! The 3 different onions in the soup made all the difference and you could most definitely taste the spices just right. I will ALWAYS make this recipe for French Onion from now on! My family is hooked!

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!!!

Casandra

Yummy Moist Banana Bread

Every month I like to bake some banana bread for the household, everyone loves it and I get to use up the leftover bananas that have turned brown and no one ever wants to eat.

This is my FAVORITE banana bread recipe that is nice and moist and does NOT require sour cream (we hardly ever... well never... really have that in the house). I found it on cooks.com a few years ago and have tweaked the recipe a tiny bit until I got it just right. The finished product can also be frozen (see my post on preparing baked goods for freezing).

The recipe calls for...
1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter - not margarine
3 mashed bananas (medium size and overripe brown)
2 large eggs - separated (keep yolks and whites separate)
1 cup fine sugar
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
1/2 tsp lemon juice (I use fresh squeezed but bottled is just fine)
1 tsp baking soda
1 1/2 tbsp hot water
1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour

Grease a 9 x 5 x 3 inch loaf pan (I like to use glass Pyrex loaf pans standard size greased with shortening) and set aside.
Preheat oven to 350°F

Cream together butter and sugar. Add egg yolks, banana, vanilla, lemon juice and baking soda, mix until combined. Stir in flour. Beat egg whites until stiff and making peaks, fold into batter until blended in. Mix in  hot water. Pour into the greased loaf pan and place on center rack of the oven letting it bake about 45-50  minutes or until the center is cooked (I always test with a fork or a toothpick stuck through the middle, when it comes out clean... it's done). Remove from the oven and let it sit for about 10 minutes or until the sides of the dish are warm to cool.
My family usually finishes off a loaf of banana bread within minutes of it finished cooling, so I never need to remove from the pan to store it. If your family is not as gluttonous as mine, just turn upside down on a wire rack and tap or knock on the bottom all over and lift the pan slowly to remove it. Store in a bread keeper or in tightly wrapped aluminum foil.




Casandra

Freezing what you baked... and then thawing...

After much trial and error I have finally worked out the science of freezing and thawing pies, cakes, and breads.

First off, not all baked goods can or should be frozen... they just don't seem to taste right after thawing, as if they just lost their flavor and all the goodness within. The ones that can, can be frozen for up to a month and will start to lose SOME flavor after about 2-3 weeks. In my house, the only time I ever find myself freezing anything is before the holidays so that I can bake ahead of time and thaw the night before the festivities.

Freezing pies and bread, etc...

Once the baked goods have cooled completely, wrap in 2 layers of plastic wrap, next wrap in 1-2 layers of aluminum foil (if you are just freezing them for a few days - 1 week you should only need 1 layer of aluminum foil, any longer I suggest 2 to keep in that freshness). Freeze on a flat surface away from meats, or at least on a separate shelf.

When you are ready to thaw out the baked goods remove the foil and plastic wrap, and place in the fridge for about 6-8 hours to thaw. If you let them thaw on a counter at room temperature they will condensate and all that water will soak up into your crust and make it extremely soggy... yuck!

This worked out perfectly on Thanksgiving this 2012. My boyfriend, daughter, and I had 4 dinners to go to between both or our families and I made 2 pies to keep at home (they were devoured within a day), 1 for my mother to take for her co-workers, 1 for the boyfriend to take for his co-workers, and 1 for each of the dinners we had to go to, those 4 are the ones that I had to freeze. The night before Thanksgiving, I cleared a poop ton of space in our fridge and thawed them in there overnight. Everyone RAVED about how delicious and fresh they were (little did they know, they had been prepared a week earlier and frozen right after cooling).

HOPE THIS HELPS!


Casandra

Welcome to my little slice of... FOOD BLOG!

What can I say here, I LOVE TO BAKE AND COOK! I have felt this way as long as I can remember (and as much as I insisted I would never bake again, or at least for a few months, after the 2 day long constant baking session for Holiday cookies... here I still am... baking away).

One thing I have found (thanks mostly to a very awesome boyfriend with an incredible appetite, and a family willing to try just about any food or baked good once) is that I don't need to go out and buy majority of my ingredients, I can make them from scratch more than half of the time! Matter of fact, I make my own peanut butter and chocolate chips, whipped cream, pie crusts, and some day hope to get into canning my own veggies and fruits for preserves. I also happen to have a VERY curious 16 month old daughter that loves to help me whenever I am baking or cooking, and what I love even more about her learning to help, is that I remember learning how to do this when I was a little older than her at my great grammy's house. I find it great to be able to pass this on to her.

I figured I would start off with a few little basic from scratch ingredient recipes that are often used in many holiday recipes this time of year.

One Ingredient I found pop up in almost 90% of my holiday baking this year was, Buttermilk (which is basically a soured milk). This is by far the easiest from scratch ingredient. Instead of buying a carton of Buttermilk from the store, just take a cup of Whole Milk and add a Tablespoon (Tbsp) of fresh lemon juice OR white vinegar. Stir once, and let sit for a few minutes to curdle (it will look like chunky runny milk, which looks and sounds completely disgusting, but holy hell does it make a delicious addition to a fluffy cookie or cake).

Another I found was for chips... you know, chocolate chips or peanut butter chips. All you need is vanilla extract (pure or imitation), milk, powdered/confectioners sugar, and peanut butter. To make 1 tray worth with each chip about 1/4" to 1/2" in size, the recipe is as follows...
4 tsp powdered/confectioners sugar
1 tbsp milk
2 tbsp peanut butter (smooth)
1/2 tsp vanilla extract

stir these together until a creamy smooth consistency and spoon into a piping bag or zip lock bag (if using a zip lock bag once spooned in, cut a very tiny tip off the bottom corner and twist the opposite side around to create a homemade piping bag), start piping out round dots and pull up from the center to get that signature peak on the top. Freeze the trays for about 30 minutes and then they are ready to use!

Lastly is my favorite recipe and I use it for a lot of cupcakes or cakes, even gingerbread. Whipped cream and cream cheese frosting/filling! This is absolutely DELICIOUS. (Recipe Girl actually has an awesome recipe VERY similar to this one but she uses 4oz cream cheese and 8oz Marscipone cheese, YUMMY!) The recipe is as follows...
2 cups heavy whipping cream
1/3 cup fine sugar
12oz soft cream cheese

I suggest using an electric mixer for this frosting/filling (I personally use a KitchenAid stand mixer, I am in love with it, it's my other child.... can you tell it makes me happy?!), start off by whipping the heavy whipping cream on medium until the consistency is noticably thicker and then turn that baby higher and let it go (this whole process takes about 10 minutes or so) until you see peaks forming and continuing to stick upright. Add in your sugar and mix until combined, then add in your cream cheese and mix until smooth and peaking. I use this on red velvet cake, banana bread as a spread, cake cookies, gingerbread, snickerdoodles, you name it! Or you could always freeze it and eat it like ice cream (evil laugh!! mwahaha).


Hopefully you find these helpful in your cooking and baking adventures and I'll always have more to update!

Casandra