Red Velvet Valentines Pancakes

I was in the mood for something sweet over the weekend, and with it being close to Valentine's Day, my pinterest was flooded with red velvet everything. I looovee fresh pancakes on the weekends so making red velvet pancakes seemed like a no brainer. Here's the recipe I used (although I ran out of food coloring, so they weren't as red as I would have liked them)

Red Velvet Pancakes
2 cups all purpose flour
2 tbsp baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
2 tbsp sugar

2 tbsp unsweetened cocoa powder
2 egg, beaten
1 1/2 cups buttermilk
4 tablespoon butter, melted
2 tbsp red food coloring

Optional:

Cream Cheese Glaze
4 oz cream cheese, softened
1.5 cup powdered sugar
3-4 tablespoons milk
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
powdered sugar for garnish

1. Combine all the dry ingredients in a medium bowl and mix well. Add wet ingredients and mix until just combined.

2. Preheat a large fry pan over low-medium heat. Drop 1/2 cup portions of batter onto the fry pan and cook until bubbles rise to the top of the cooking pancake. Flip and cooked until pancakes have risen slightly and are cooked through.
3. Garnish with glaze/whipped cream/ powdered sugar and serve.

Enjoy!

Southern Pecan Pie

I usually like to make a pecan pie each year around Thanksgiving since they taste soo much better homemade. Since I didn't have much time for baking this past year with boards right around the corner, I decided to make some for dessert last night.

Southern Pecan Pie

1 piecrust, homemade or frozen
1 cup light corn syrup
1 cup packed light brown sugar
1/2 teaspoon salt
5 1/3 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
3 large eggs
2 1/2 cups toasted pecan halves


1. Preheat oven to 350 F. Cook pie crust for 10 minutes then remove from oven (leave oven on). While piecrust is baking, combine corn syrup, brown sugar, salt, vanilla extract, and butter in a medium bowl. Beat eggs and add to mixture.

2. Finely chop 1/2 cup of toasted pecans and line the bottom of the cooled piecrust with them. Rough chop 1 cup of pecans and add to the wet ingredients. Reserve 1 cup of pecans for decorative top.

3. Pour wet ingredients into the pie crust over the finely chopped pecans.





4. Add whole pecan halves in a decorative pattern starting with the outer row. For each row I like to put the fatter end of the nut towards the outside of the pie so they fit a little better.





5. Bake for 40-50 minutes until a sharp knife inserted into the pie comes out clean. Cool completely before serving.




I like to serve my pecan pie with vanilla bean ice cream and whipped cream, but this pie is so good to almost don't need it.

Hope you enjoyed!

Crusty Homemade Artisan Bread

This recipe is super simple and a great way to get into bread making if you've never done it before or have trepidations about kneading dough. Each time I've made it I've gotten a crusty, flaky, delicious artisan loaf that goes great with anything from breakfast in the morning to a nice bowl of hot soup.

Here's the recipe and directions to make this great bread.

No Knead Crusty Bread- takes approx 9 hours including rising and baking time
3 cups flour

1 1/4 tsp salt
3/4 tsp active dry yeast
1 1/2 cups warm water
A dutch oven or heavy baking casserole dish with lid

1. Combine all dry ingredients and mix. Add warm water and mix well. Dough will appear shaggy and that's normal.

Dough after just mixing together

2. Spray top with cooking spray and flip over in he mixing bowl. Spray the bottom of the dough and cover bowl with plastic wrap. Cover the bowl with a towel and set in a warm corner of the kitchen to rise for 6-8 hours.

Dough after rising 6 hours

3. Remove dough from mixing bowl and fold over and press together a few times until it comes together and forms a ball. (Dough will feel pretty loose at first but with a couple folds will feel more like a normal dough). Place ball back into mixing bowl, cover with plastic wrap and allow to rise for another hour.

Ball of dough that has just been formed

Ball of dough after rising an additional hour

4. 20 minutes before the hour of rising is up, place a Dutch oven or heavy casserole dish in the oven and preheat to 450 F.

5. Once oven is preheated roughly shape the dough into a ball by stretching the top of the dough and pulling it up under it's self. A great video of how to do this can be found here. Drop the taunt ball into the dish/Dutch oven and cover with the lid. Bake for 30 minutes. Remove the lid and bake for an additional 15 minutes or until the top of the bread is golden brown.

6. Remove the bread from the oven and allow to cool in the dish for a couple of minutes. Remove from the dish and wrap in a kitchen towel. Slice and serve once mostly cool.

Toasted, this crusty, homemade bread would also go great with my mussels in white wine recipe instead of using a store bought baguette.

Enjoy!

Coconut Panna Cotta

I looooooovvveeee panna cotta. Make it coconut flavored and I'm in heaven. This is another dessert I had never made before but it was super easy and came out great.

Coconut Panna Cotta- total time 5.5 hours including chilling
1 2/3 cups coconut milk
1 1/4 cups whole milk

3/4 cup sugar
1/2 cup hot water
1 tablespoon gelatine
10 strawberries cored and cubed

1/4 cup sugar

1/4 tsp vanilla extract

1. Combine coconut milk, whole milk, and 3/4 cup sugar in a pot over medium heat. Stir until sugar dissolves and be sure not to allow mixture to boil. Remove from heat after sugar is dissolved.

2. Sprinkle gelatin over hot water and whisk until well combined. Add to coconut mixture and mix well. Pour into 4-5 1/2 cup ramekins.

3. Refrigerate for 5 hours until set. 30 minutes before serving combine 1/4 cup sugar, strawberries, and vanilla extract in a small bowl.

To serve, top with macerated strawberries and whipped cream. Enjoy!

Vanilla Sprinkle French Macarons

This post has been a long time coming. I've been wanting to write it forever but couldn't muster up the energy and courage to do it. These cookies are not easy to perfect. If you are a perfectionist like me when it comes to baking, they will give you headaches and make you want to cry. That said, if you can accept that you will have delicious cookies that may not look perfect every single time you make them, they are definitely a cookie you should try. 

I first started making macarons last fall after paying $2.97 for a single cookie. I knew I was decent at baking and figured I could figure out how to make them. I read, I researched, I googled and youtubed, and after all of that I found out they were difficult but not impossible to make. My entire first batch exploded save for two lone shells. I sought out different recipes, some called for all the ingredients to be weighed, others using measuring cups. The frustrating part was that I had success and failures with both. There would be weeks when my shells came out right and others where I couldn't make a single cookie, even when using the same recipe. I felt so overwhelmed that I was almost ready to quit making them when I found the right recipe just at the right time.

Knock on wood, each time I've made this recipe I've had pretty little feet and smooth tops on every shell. It doesn't call for weighing ingredients but as long as your consistent with your measuring methods, it shouldn't be a problem.

So here's the recipe I've been using, no scale required.

Vanilla French Macarons- total recipe time 1-2 days *

1 3/4 cup powdered sugar**

1 cup almond flour**

3 large egg whites, room temperature

1/4 tsp cream of tartar

pinch of salt

1/4 cup sugar

1/2 tsp vanilla extract

* Completed cookies take 1 day to mature and be perfect to eat, overbaked shells take 2 days

* *Fluff with a spoon before delicately scooping out and placing in measuring cups making sure to level off with the flat edge of a butter knife

Vanilla Buttercream:

1 stick of butter, softened

1 1/4 cup powder sugar

1/2 tsp vanilla extract

1 tsp milk

Additional things you will need: 3 baking sheets, parchment paper, 12" piping bag, 1/2" piping tip, decorative sprinkles

1.  Combine powdered sugar and almond flour. Sift and discard any pieces too large to pass through sieve (approximately 1-2 TBSP). Set aside.

2. Combine egg whites, cream of tartar, and pinch of salt in the metal bowl of an electric stand mixer fitted with a whisk attachment (a clean, metal bowl is necessary for producing a nice meringue, it keeps the egg whites cool and gives them more volume). Beat the egg whites on speed 6 until frothy (a minute or two). Bump up the speed to 8 and slowly add granulated sugar. Whip until a firm meringue forms an additional 5 minutes (approximately 8 minutes from turning the mixer on). The meringue should clump together on the interior of the whisk attachment as shown below.

3. Add the almond-powder sugar mixture to the meringue and begin folding together by swiping along the bottom edge of the bowl with a flexible spatula and pressing back down firmly on center of the path that was drawn in the batter. Add the vanilla extract. 

The motion of the folding will be like drawing a letter 'p' using the edge of the bowl for the straight part of the letter and folding back over on itself for the loop of the p. Mix until batter flows like lava off the edge of the spatula in a ribbon-like fashion (takes approximately 1-2 minutes depending on how hard you are deflating the batter). The whole purpose of the folding the batter is to deflate it and get rid of the air, so no need to be gentle.

4. Fit a 12" piping bag with a 1/2" round piping tip and twist the tip-end to prevent batter from leaking out. Place bag tip first into a large drinking glass and fold bag over edge of the cup to make for easy batter transfer. 

Piping bag fitted with tip before I twisted the tip to close it off

5. Pipe quarter size circles onto a parchment lined baking sheet (if the first couple of piped shells have peaks that do not flatten out, the batter is not mixed enough. Squeeze batter back into bowl and fold a few more times until consistency is right and pipe again). Slam baking sheet on the counter top to release any air bubbles to prevent shells from exploding. Add any decorative sprinkles to half of the shells now and allow to rest for 30 minutes or until tops are no longer tacky to the touch (can take up to an hour depending on humidity). Preheat oven to 290 F.

6. Place a second baking sheet underneath the first tray of macaron shells and bake for 22 minutes. Repeat with other sheets of shells. During the first 4-6 minutes the foot of the macaron will begin to form, this is the most nerve wracking part. You can check for doneness by trying to remove a shell from the parchment paper. If it comes away clean, they're done. It's better to over bake then under bake macarons, as the latter can't be fixed later. Allow shells to cool on baking sheets.

7. While shells are cooling mix together the butter, powder sugar, milk, and vanilla extract for the buttercream icing.

8. After shells have cooled, remove from parchment paper and match up like sized shells, sprinkles for the top and plain shells for the bottom. Pipe a quarter size swirl of buttercream on one of the paired shells and top with its match.

9. Place macarons in an airtight container and allow to mature for 1-2 days. It's horrible to wait, I know, but the buttercream softens the shell and everything melds together during this time. It's especially necessary if the shells are over baked, as the buttercream will take away the bite of a overly crisp shell.

Here are two great websites for macaron troubleshooting that really helped me out when I started baking them. They use different recipes with different ingredients but are really great sources if you run into a problem.

Food Nouveau

Not So Humble Pie

Give it a try and let me know how it goes! Enjoy!

Click here for some pictures of my past macaron projects

Be sure to follow me on instagram @rocky092 for more macaron, cookie, and baking posts

Equestrian Photography

A while back my friend Michelle and I took a trip to Saugerties, NY to go a Hits on the Hudson horse show to visit some friends. While there we were able to take some pictures of the action at the horse show, and while they're not new, they're as close as I'm able to get to a horse while on rotations.

These were taken over a year ago so please forgive me if I don't remember each name of the pairs listed below.

Emily and Zander

Emily and Kampieon

Mclain Ward

Sara and Palancar

Emily and Kampeion

Lillie Keenan and Pumped Up Kicks

Be sure to check out her facebook page here for the rest of the collection as well as some other really great pictures.

Enjoy!

Emily and Zander

Cranberry and Golden Raisin Scones

This morning I was craving some homemade baked goods for breakfast. I saw someone making scones on TV a couple of weeks ago and since I've never made them before, I thought I'd give them a try.

Cranberry and Golden Raisin Scones
2 cups all-purpose flour
1/3 cup sugar
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
8 tablespoons unsalted butter, frozen
1/3 cup dried cranberries
1/4 cup golden raisins
1/2 cup sour cream
1 large egg


1. Combine dry ingredients in a medium bowl.

2. Using a large grater, grate strands of frozen butter and combine with a fork until mixture is corse and crumbly.

3. Add cranberries and raisins and mix well. Combine sour cream and egg, and add to dry mixture.

4. Combine with clean hands until dough comes together (will still feel a little crumbly).

5. On a floured work surface press dough out into a large rectangle. Cut into thirds across the short side of the rectangle and then again across each smaller square forming large triangles.

6. Transfer to parchment line baking sheet and bake for 15-17 minutes or until golden brown. Cool on baking sheets for 5 minutes.

These really hit the spot, especially with a little butter right after they've cooled a little. I also paired mine with a mimosa using leftover sparkling wine from our trip to Napa

Enjoy!

Day Trip to Alcatraz Island and Tour of the Prison

View of Alcatraz prison on approach to the island

Before we headed to Napa Valley, last week's adventure in California started with a stay in San Francisco. With one of Nick's favorite movies being The Rock, one of the sights we knew we had to see was Alcatraz Prison. The history of the island is pretty fascinating, going from military fortress guarding the bay during the gold rush to federal penitentiary holding some of the most notorious criminals of the twentieth century.

The signs posted on the approach and landing dock give a nod towards the history of the island, but it's now one of the nations top visited national parks. The island was once home to military personnel and their families who sought to make it more civilized. Because of this, Alcatraz is host to many gardens, some of which were tended to by prisoners. The island is also full of different architectural styles which changed not only through the generations, but through ownership of the island. From Spanish revival to stark prison, the various buildings and their architecture is what gives the island its character.

Exposed rock of Alcatraz island

Not the be outdone by the rest of the island, there was some beauty to be found in the industrial feel of the prison in addition to it's history.

Alcatraz prison watchtower

Shuffleboard court in Alcatraz prison recreation yard

After exploring the island for most of the morning, we took the ferry back to San Francisco to have lunch in Fishermans Wharf followed by a short walk back to our hotel.

Hope you enjoyed the little bit of Alcatraz I was able to bring back!