Sorry – no recipes to post today, though we are a big backlogged… we have a post on raspberry jam pending, as well as the raspberry cream cupcakes we made with said jam, and a few others I can’t think of right now. And there will be lots and lots in the weeks to come after we return from our much anticipated trip to Italy.
But for now, some news about other things happening at No. 71:
Mark this as another “Cari sees a recipe on a blog and sends it to Adam, who is instantly convinced they need to make it immediately.”
Oh man. This was a good one. It’s a pretty simple bread recipe and if you have a stand mixer and have over an hour before you’re looking to eat, it’s super easy. The melted cheese and chunks of garlic baked right into the bread were simply heavenly. I will say though that I probably should’ve mixed some of the chunks in by hand a bit – as I ended up with most of my cheese and garlic chunks on top and bottom of the bread – and the ones on the bottom stuck to the pan pretty badly, even with the oil coating. Ah well.
We planned a meal out of this bread, which included meatballs in a cheesy tomato sauce for dipping. A very cozy meal, which on day two became meatball sandwiches. MmmMm. Yes please.
A great big thank you King Arthur Flour’s blog for this one. We’ll ignore the fact that I don’t regularly buy King Arthur Flour, and recipes usually turn out just great with my cheap no-name flour.
The full recipe is here, and the blog post outlines a great method for turning leftovers into breadsticks – which I may do today. The only change to the recipe I made was using bread machine yeast instead of instant yeast – and it worked just fine. Oh, and I omitted the “pizza dough flavor” – whatever that is.
As Cari wrote in her post about our strawberry jam, we’re determined to make enough jam this summer to last us the year. We hadn’t considered cherry jam, but after visiting Niagara-on-the-Lake during the height of Ontario cherry season we decided the $8 2L basket of sour cherries was worth it.
Of course, we didn’t know how tart cherries would bode in jam form, but the 6 1/4 cups of sugar sure helped! This jam turned out very well, spreads easily on toast and is delicious.
Here’s the recipe:
Last fall, Adam and I created an apple day event with some friends. We ventured to an orchard for some pick-your-own apples, and returned home with a massive supply to create apple butter, apple preserves, and of course, apple pie. It was a great day.
Now that it’s officially summer (the 34°C temps outside tell me so), we invited some friends out to a pick-your-own strawberry farm, and followed it up by an afternoon of jam making. MmmMm, jam. Adam and I have a goal of making enough jam this summer to last us all year long.
We made two types of jam – one with no sugar using Pomona’s Pectin, and one standard “Old Fashioned” recipe, which used 5+ cups of sugar. Guess which one came out tastier?
I definitely want to try Pomona’s Pectin again – it allows for making jam with little or no sugar. That said, I think no sugar with these particular strawberries created a too tart jam. A bit too tart for me, at least, though it’s still a nice jam.
The sweet jam cooked for quite awhile, creating a bit of a caramelized flavour in the end, which was quite nice. Very sweet and yummy. Perfect for a morning slice of toast.
We also had one of Ms. Wat’s famous pies! Thanks, Emily!
Next: Raspberry Day!
Life at No. 71 