Amish Friendship Bread

I know it's been awhile since I've posted anything. It's been a crazy few weeks since Spring Break, with Rob and I travelling almost every weekend to visit friends and it's been so hot I've not felt like baking. I did manage to make some Amish Friendship Bread though and I loved this recipe. So easy, especially for me as I have no experience at all in cooking bread. It takes between 5 and 10 days to make the battter as you have to wait for it to ferment and grow. Somehow instead of about 4 cups of batter I ended up with 7. I froze all of them except for 3 which I finished and baked off then gave out to friends and family. Everyone loved it and my future nephew has been begging me and my future-mother-in-law for the recipe.

Ingredients for the Starter:
1 (.25 ounce) package of yeast
1/4 c warm water
1 c ap flour
1 c white sugar
1 c milk

Dissolve the yeast in the warm water and allow to stand for 10 minutes.
Mix all ingredients in 2 quart container (Do not use any metal utensils or containers!).
Loosely cover and let sit at room temperature (Do not refrigerate!)
Day 1-5: Mash the starter once per day, otherwise allow to sit on the counter.
Day 6: Add 1 c flour, 1 c sugar, and 1 c of milk. Mash the starter.
Day 7-9: Mash the starter once per day.
Day 10: Pour into large bowl. Add 1 1/2 c flour, 1 1/2 c sugar, and 1 1/2 c milk. Measure out 4 different starters (approx 1 c each) into 4 gallon-sized ziploc bags with the date written on them. Keep one bag and give away the other 3 to friends.

To Bake the Bread
Ingredients:
3 eggs
1 c oil
1/2 c cold milk
1 c sugar
2 t cinnamon
1/2 t vanilla
1 1/2 t baking powder
1/2 t baking soda
1 1/2 t salt
2 c flour
2 small boxes instant pudding

Preheat oven to 325 degrees and grease two large loaf pans. Dust pans with mixture of 1/4 c sugar and 3/4 t cinnamon.
Mix all ingredients together with 1 to 1 1/2 c starter.
Pour batter into pans, filling less than 1/2 full. Sprinkle with second mixture of 1/4 c sugar and 3/4 t cinnamon. Bake 1 hour. Allow to cool for 10 minutes.

Bubbling along nicely...

...and the delicious bread! Soft after several weeks of sitting in a plastic bag!

Strawberry Bread

This recipe was fairly easy. I'm pretty new to baking bread, so even this was a bit of a stretch for me. I'm also working on a batch of Amish Friendship Bread at the moment, too. Anyway, this bread was very good and after making it, I realized that it's basically banana nut bread with strawberries substituted for the bananas.

Ingredients:
2 c fresh strawberries, 1 c sliced and 1 c pureed
1.5 c + 1 T ap flour
1 c sugar
1/2 t cinnamon
1/2 t salt
1/2 t baking soda
1/4 c olive oil
2 eggs, beaten
1 T vanilla extract
1/2 c + 2 T chopped pecans

1. Preheat oven to 350F. Spray 9x5 loaf pan with nonstick spray or butter and flour.
2. Place sliced and pureed strawberries in medium-sized bowl. Sprinkle lightly with sugar and set aside while preparing bread mixture. I poured all of the sugar in so that the strawberry juice would coat every bit of it.
3. Combine flour, cinnamon, salt, and baking soda in large bowl. Blend oil and eggs into strawberries. Add strawberry mixture to flour mixture, blending until dry ingredients are moistened. Stir in pecans and pour into pans.
4. Bake for 45 to 50 minutes or until knife inserted comes out clean. Let cool in pan on wire rack for 10 minutes then turn out and finish cooling directly on racks.

Soo good!

Strawberry Rhubarb Crisp

This recipe was borrowed from my fiance. It was very easy to make and I'd do it again in a heartbeat. Although, next time I might use a smaller pan so that it's thicker and less spread out.


Ingredients:
1 c sugar
3 T ap flour
4 c sliced strawberries
4 c diced rhubarb
1.5 c ap flour
1 c packed brown sugar
1 c butter
1 c rolled oats

1. Preheat the oven to 350F.
2. In a large bowl, mix sugar, 3 T flour, strawberries, and rhubarb. Place the mixture in 9x13 baking dish.
3. Mix flour, brown sugar, butter, and oats until crumbly. Crumble on top of rhubarb and strawberry mixture.
4. Bake 45 minutes or until crisp and lightly browned.

Delicious!

Strawberry Mousse

I modified the recipe that I used for banana mousse to make this one. It didn't turn out quite right as it got overwhipped. Unfortunately, the strawberries were too wet and it never tightened up as it should have. Anyway, if I was doing it again I would have concentrated it a bit more and tried to cut out as much liquid as possible. The only real difference between the strawberry and the banana mousse would be subbing out 5-6 strawberries and concentrating them a little longer.

Chicken Spinach & Alfredo Sauce Pizza

Next, I made Alton Brown's pizza dough with a few slight modifications. First, I halved the recipe to make one small pizza (enough for a pie pan). Then, I subbed out a flavored olive oil, roasted pepper to be exact. The taste wasn't very noticable in the final product, but the crust was definitely slightly orange colored.

Dough Ingredients (after being halved):
1 T sugar
1/2 T salt I used iodized salt instead of kosher. This may have slightly diminished the rise of my dough, but my dough wasn't nearly as salty tasting as a lot of people's dough that have tried this recipe.
1/2 T olive oil
3/8 c warm water
1 c bread flour
1/2 t instant yeast
1 t olive oil
olive oil, for the pizza crust
flour, for dusting the pizza peel I didn't actually need any as I used a nonstick pie pan.

Pizza Sauce:

1 stick butter

1 c heavy cream

1/2 c italian blended cheese

approx 2 T chopped cilantro

salt and pepper to taste

Pizza Toppings:

1 broiled chicken breast, covered with salt, olive oil and pepper before cooking, sliced

5 large leaves spinach, chiffonade

1 c italian blended cheese

1. Place the sugar, salt, olive oil, water, 1/2 c of flour, yeast and the other 1/2 c of flour into a bowl and mix.
2. Next, knead the dough for 15 minutes. Pull off a small piece of dough and gently stretch it. Hold it up to the light and if you can see the light through it without it tearing, it has passed the window pane test. If you cannot do this then knead the dough for an additional 5 to 10 minutes.
3. Roll the pizza dough into a ball on the counter then place into a stainless steel or glass bowl and coat with olive oil. Cover with plastic wrap and place in the fridge for 18 to 24 hours.
4. Flatten the dough into a disk on a countertop then fold the dough into a bowl.
5. Wet hands barely with water and rub them onto the countertop to dampen the surface. Roll the dough on the surface until it tightens then cover with a tea towel and allow to rest for 30 minutes.
6. Place the pizza stone or tile onto the bottom rack of your oven and begin heating your oven to 500F. Alternatively, you can bake the pizza inside of a pie pan as I did. Simply stretch the dough to fit inside of the pie pan and allow to rest as you start cooking everything to go on top.
7. Cook the chicken breast in the broiler and allow it to rest for a few minutes before slicing it.
8. To make the sauce: melt the butter in a pot then add in the heavy cream and allow to heat up. Gently melt in the cheese and spread onto the pizza crust. Any leftover sauce can be used in pasta.
9. Spread the cheese out across the pizza then place the chicken however you would like onto the pizza. Sprinkle on the spinach and top with a little bit of cheese.
10. Bake in 500F oven for 20 minutes or until the crust is golden and the cheese is melted and bubbly.

Spreading the pizza sauce...

...finishing up the pizza...

...and the final product!

Strawberry Gelato

Well, I did it. I went out and bought half a flat of strawberries...let's just say that we're nearly sick of them now. The very first thing I made was strawberry gelato. Besides the crystals being a little too big which made it a bit thick, it turned out very good. Next time though, I will use a coarse strainer rather than a fine strainer so that most of the seeds will be left in it and the skin won't be. I found the recipe on this site.

Ingredients:

1 lb fresh strawberries, quartered

1.5 c granulated sugar

1.5 c cold whipping cream

1.5 c cold water

dash of lemon juice if the berries aren't "bright" enough

1. Put all ingredients in blender and blend until smooth.
2. Strain if you'd like.
3. Freeze in an ice cream maker or pour into a metal reusable pie pan (careful as it will be very full) and place in freezer. Check on it every 15-30 minutes and stir to smooth out and break up crystals. If you don't do this it will be thick and very very hard.

My huge container of strawberries lol

The very full pie pan.

Scraping it again...almost done...

Yummy!

Banana Mousse

I had this banana just laying on the counter and I've been trying to decide what to make with it because for some reason I just didn't feel like eating it. So, I wandered around the web looking for a recipe that needed just one banana and wasn't too complicated. After much fruitless (no pun intended) searching I finally found this one. It turned out great! I'm wondering now if I could do the same thing with strawberries (I've had them on my mind for a while too as I have some in the fridge and they're only $3 a flat at the store).

Ingredients:

1 banana

1/3 c of heavy cream

1/4 c of sugar

2 pistachio nuts

1 T of lemon juice I used juice from one of the plastic lemons you get in the produce section as I didn't have a lemon on hand.

1. Peel the banana, scraping off any fibrous threads and push through a sieve. This takes some time, but don't skimp on it. Add the sugar and the lemon juice then cook, stirring constantly until it begins to boil. Remove from the stove and chill.
2. Beat the cream until stiff peaks form.
3. Fold the chilled banana and cream together then fill two glasses. I had some shot glasses on hand and simply used those instead.
4. Blanch the nuts and remove their skins. (Boil water then drop the nuts in for about 20 seconds and remove from heat when you put them in. Strain, and run cold water over them then remove their skins and dry gently)
5. Chop the blanched nuts and sprinkle them over the glasses.

Getting ready...

...and done!