Bakestravaganza!

I can't stop baking and cooking things. It is starting to get out of hand. This obsession started ages ago when I first started reading food blogs even though I know nothing about cooking. Finally, I have gained the courage/stopped being lazy and started making things that I think sound good.

Coffee cup for scale.. I guess

Most recently I decided that I wanted to make some kind of crackers, and had remembered seeing a really simple cheese cracker recipe on thekitchn.com not too long ago. I tracked the recipe down and managed to make a batch of these puppies with my really (really) sub-par food processor. I followed the recipe pretty much as is, no significant changes. However, I did run out of time to bake them the day I made the dough. Then was super busy for the next 3 days. The dough ended up chilling for 3 days in the fridge before I finally had time to roll them out, cut them up, and bake them. Luckily, their lengthy chill didn't effect them. They tasted great. I baked them Thursday evening and the photo above shows all that is left.

Earlier this week I also decided I wanted to make some fancy, but easy, snack to take to women's night at Climbmax. I chose an great recipe from Dorie Greenspan's blog for mustard batons. They were so delicious I didn't get a picture of them. So here is the picture from Dorie Greenspan's site:

photo from Dorie Greenspan

I did make a small change to the recipe. Greenspan calls for an eggwash on the top of the pastry to give it a nice shine and to make the sesame or poppy seeds stick. But Cameron is allergic to eggs, so I didn't want to use them. Instead, I brushed the tops of the pastry with butter. It didn't give the batons a nice sheen, but the seeds stuck and the top was nice and brown. 

This was a super easy recipe, since it uses frozen puff pastry and like 2 other ingredients. However, it has inspired me! Inspired me to learn how to make real puff pastry, that is... should be awesome!

In other food related news, I recently acquired a crock-pot. I have been slow cooking up a storm... a very slow storm... yikes, cheesy. But really, I made my first pot roast and pork with cabbage and apples. Tonight there is a split pea soup in the crock-pot.... and it smells so good!