Homemade Butter Cream Frosting in 5 Minutes or Less!

So I think it's safe to assume…. cupcakes might just be the most tempting thing of life, don't you agree?! I can't seem to keep myself away from them no matter how hard I try. Even with the whole gluten sensitivity thing - I JUST CAN'T FIGHT IT sometimes! 

So you want to bake cupcakes at home… you buy the cake mix and frosting from the store, add a few ingredients from the refrigerator and poof! Homemade cupcakes - I THINK NOT! Did you ever stop and read what is in the frosting?? High Maltose Corn Syrup and a bunch of other preservative ingredients! Now I know you are like "well I buy it because its easy and quick" but let me tell you sister (or brother) the real thing can be made in a pinch and with ingredients you probably already have in your home! 

So today my friends, is the day…. the day to promise yourself to never, ever (ever!) buy store bought frosting again and simply whip up a batch of your own in 5 minutes or less!  Here we go!

You will need:

1 stick of butter (room temp)
4 1/2 cups of confectioners sugar (I didn't say it was healthy!)
1 1/2 tsp vanilla
5 tbsp milk (or cream but I use milk)

To make:

Take a mixing bowl and add the room temp stick of butter. I usually cut the butter into cubes because it is easier to work with. Use either a hand or stand mixer and whip the butter until it is nice and smooth then add the confectioners sugar, vanilla, and milk and mix with mixer until very smooth and creamy.  If you are thinking to yourself "Damn I wish she made a chocolate version" well I'm allergic to chocolate (criminal, I know) so I usually don't make things I intend to eat with chocolate, but if you want chocolate, I'd substitute 1/4 cup of the confectioners sugar with 1/4 cup of cocoa!

And that my friends is how you made butter cream and I promise you, its way better than the store bought stuff you used to use! Quick and easy, isn't it?!

Comment below if you give this a try or have questions related to the recipe!

Happy Valentine's Day and enjoy!
Danielle

No need to Knead….Bread

Growing up as a child, I was no stranger to delicious bread - not the white bread you buy in the grocery store (does that even count as bread?!) but either homemade bread made by my mother or bread from one of the many Italian bakeries near my home. I joke about it now, as an adult, but it's a true story…I barely had grocery store-bought bread, seriously! Anyhow, I attribute my long-time love affair with bread to what I was exposed to as a child. Oddly enough, as an adult I developed a bad relationship with gluten (i'm super sensitive to it) but that doesn't always stop me from eating (or drinking) some on occasion. 

So as some of you may know, this Fall, I took a class at Midsummer Farm in Warwick, NY where I learned about growing herbs, using them in everyday life, and how to make homemade products and recipes with them. Although there are no herbs in the bread recipe I will be sharing today, Barbara (the instructor of the class and my idol) made this recipe (from NY Times) to accompany a delicious lunch that was based around the different herbs in that day's coursework.  Since it was beyond amazing (yes, I had a small piece) I decided to share it with you as I was preparing it to eat with my chicken soup recipe, shared in last week's post. 

If you were (or are) intimidated by the very though of making homemade bread, don't be…this is one hell-of-a way to get started. It's super easy, absolutely scrumptious, and requires 4 simple ingredients! The beauty of this recipe is that, unlike other bread recipes that require long periods of kneading the dough, this one is a "no-knead" dough! However, the only downfall of it is the fact that you have to start it the day before you want to eat it - but thats okay because the actually "hands on" portion of the recipe is less than an hour including cooking time!

Here goes!

You will need:

• a Dutch oven (ceramic, Pyrex, or cast iron). They recommend 6 qt but mine was a 2 qt and  was perfect.
• mixing bowl and wooden spoon
• plastic wrap
• 2 cotton tea towels (any cotton towel will do as long as it is NOT terry cloth)
• 3 cups all purpose flour (and more for dusting… a lot of dusting)
• 1/4 tsp active yeast 
• 1 1/4 tsp salt
• 1 5/8 cups water (i'll get into this dumb measurement later on)

To make:

Take the flour, yeast, and salt and mix it together in a bowl so that all ingredients are well combined. On the package of yeast, they talk some nonsense about dissolving it in water first - hogwash! There is no need to do this for this recipe. 

Next you want to add the 1 5/8 cups of water.

I mean come on… 5/8 cup… who does that?! I was looking, perplexed, at all of the measuring devices in the house, just praying that one would have a 5/8 cup mark on it and you know what - the lights were on but nobody was home! Using my college degree(s), I used a mathematical formula, from memory, and figured out that 5/8 of a cup is actually 1/2 cup plus 2 tbsp! Ok maybe I stretched the truth a little…ok, I flat out lied! I did not do any math to figure this out (what do I look like, Einstein) I used this measurement converter that is a life saver! 

So at this point you should have this going on in your mixing bowl.

And now we stir… and stir… until you "form some sort of paste" (F.r.i.e.n.d.s. reference, I couldn't help myself). No, but really - it gets thick and sticky! Make sure that everything is mixed well and there are no dry bits lingering about the bowl. Once it is mixed well you successfully made your dough (in a sense) and you will want to cover it with plastic wrap like this.

Now comes the long part… waiting 18 hours, yes I said 18 hours, for it to do its magic. While the dough is "working" you want to keep it in a warm location (at about 70 degrees). Since my kitchen is downstairs and we lower the heat during the night, I brought the dough to bed with me... well not really to bed but in my bedroom where it was at least 70 degrees throughout the night. As the dough is doing it's thang… you will get this wonderful yeasty aroma if you get close to it and take a whiff!  

So after 18 hours, remove the plastic wrap and check out your dough. It should be bubbly and filled with nice little air pockets like this. 

Sorta resembles the inside of a loaf of bread, doesn't it?! 

Now you are going to need to get out your cotton tea towels. In our house we use a dough board instead of rolling dough out on our counter or kitchen table- you can do whatever you are used to.  Flour the work surface with just enough flour so that the super-sticky dough does not stick.

Now dust your hands with flour (ok maybe its more like coating them really, really, really well) so that you can work with the dough.  WARNING: it's like glue! Start by pulling the dough away from the sides of the bowl and forming it into a blobby ball, of sorts. Then plop it (literally it will make a "plop" sound) onto the work surface and dust it with flour like this.

Kind of work it into some sort of round object, as best you can… it is going to try to move into its own shape so just go with it. Once you have a decent dusting of flour on it, it should not be so sticky any more. 

You are going to want to fold the dough over itself once (like folding it in half) and then fold it again in the opposite direction like this.

Pay attention to the seams - they actually serve a purpose believe it or not! They are important in the next few steps.

Move the dough to the side and take one of the cotton towels. Lay it flat on the work surface and give that a nice dusting of flour, not too much and not too little (we are doing a lot of flour dusting, this I know). Pick up your dough and put it seam side down onto the cotton towel. In the picture below, I am pointing to what the seam-side looks like incase you have no idea what I am talking about.  You should have a pretty, smooth-topped ball of dough like this. 

Now, lightly dust the smooth side of the dough ball with flour and cover with the other cotton tea towel.  Leave it sit for 2 more hours.

About 30 minutes before the two hours is up, you will want to preheat your oven to 450 degrees and put your Dutch oven, and lid, in the oven to warm up (yes, I know it is empty but just go with it). Make sure to put an oven rack at mid-height since thats where we want to bake this little baby.

After two hours is up, remove the top towel. Take your finger and give your dough a little poke with your finger… it should leave a mark if it is ready.  If the dough quickly springs back, leave it for another half hour and check back with another poke.  Mine was just perfect at the two hour mark. See the picture below.

Remove your Dutch oven from the oven and be careful not to burn yourself… I'm not speaking for experience or anything like that, and place it on a pot holder next to your work surface.  Slip you hand underneath the the tea towel and under your dough ball. Gently, flip your dough ball into the hot Dutch oven so that the towel (seam side) is up. Slowly pull the tea towel off of the dough ball like this.

It may be a little hard to see in the picture, but my seam side is now facing up.  This will make a beautiful ridge in your final loaf. I promise, it will look as though it was bought at a real shee-shee bakery.  Dust (yes, again) the top of the dough with a little more flour (this is the last time I will say this, PROMISE). If your dough is looking a bit on the wonky side (in shape that is), give the Dutch oven a shimmy-shake to even things out a bit. Mine was off kilter but I kind of wanted that, homemade, rustic kind of look.

Put the lid onto the Dutch oven and put it in the oven, on the middle rack, for 30 minutes.

After 30 minutes of baking, your loaf (now we will call it a loaf instead of dough ball) will be a very, very light golden color. Take the lid off (careful not to burn yourself again, ahem!), and bake for 15 more minutes. In the pictures below, the top picture is the golden color you are looking for after 30 minutes.  Keep an eye on the loaf during the last 15 minutes because this little guy will turn brown quickly while the lid is off!!

Once you have a nicely browned loaf, remove it from the oven. Take pot holders and lift the loaf out of the Dutch oven and place it onto a wire rack to cool. The beauty of this loaf is the fact that it literally does not stick, whatsoever, to the Dutch oven… I was amazed when I realized I didn't need a spatula to unstick it from the bottom! 

And that's it! When you are ready to eat, give it a slicing and enjoy! You can spread some butter on it, dip it in herb-infused olive oil (future post), or any other way you would typically enjoy a really crusty loaf of bread. 

We ate ours warm, practically right out of the oven, and let me tell you… it is hard to stop yourself from eating the whole darn thing (yourself).

It may seem like "oh my gosh, she thinks this is easy!?!" but I tell you… it really is super easy.  There truly is no comparison of store bought bread compared to the homemade thing!

Give it a try and let me know how it went in the comments below!

I intend on making this loaf again and incorporating some herbs, or maybe some kalamata olives (olive bread is my all time favorite).  When I do, I will be sure to post about it.

Enjoy!
Danielle

Apricot Danish Cookies

As far back as I can remember, and probably even before I was born, my mother used to make a ton (okay maybe not a ton but is sure was a lot) of cookies for the holiday season. Although they are all delicious, the apricot Danish cookies are by far mine and my husband's favorite. This holiday season, we traveled up to New England to my husband's home town for the new year and figured it would be a nice treat to bake some of these cookies while we were there for his friends and family. One batch turned into two batches, then three, then four, then five, and before we knew it… we made SIX batches! Thankfully, these are probably one of the easiest, from scratch, cookies you could possibly make… only 5 ingredients!! Although we always make these in our house for the holidays, you can certainly make them any time of the year because they are THAT GOOD! Also, in my house growing up, we only ever made them with apricot jam; however, while making them this past week, we ran out of apricot jam on the last batch and had to use strawberry jam! So not to worry, if you aren't much of a apricot lover like we are, you can try substituting with other flavored jams… just make sure they are thick!  Nothing tastes better than some homemade, from scratch cookies just out of the oven.  If you want to make your own little pieces of heaven, follow the recipe below!

To make a single batch (approx. 18 cookies) - 

You will need:

1 stick of butter
4 oz cream cheese
1 1/8 cup of flour
1 egg (beaten)
apricot jam (other other jam flavor if you wish)

To make:

Take out your butter and cream cheese from the refrigerator and let it warm to room temperature.  This is really, really important so make sure you leave it out long enough in advance or you will hate yourself later. When possible, use organic but i'll get into why in another post.

Anyway, back to the cookies… now is a good time to pre-heat your oven to 350F.  In a large mixing bowl, add the SOFTENED butter and cream cheese and mix together with either a stand or hand mixer.  You will probably be like "what the heck did she make me do?" because all of the cream cheese and butter will end up in the beaters. No big deal… this is what is supposed to happen… just take your spatula and push it out of the beaters, back into the bowl. Next pour in the flour and mix with your mixer… again, you are going to think you are doing something wrong, and if you are thinking this… you are definitely doing it right.  You should mix the flour into the cream cheese and butter for about 1 minute or until it looks popcorn-ish (it looks that way to me at least) like this.

Looks like popcorn right?? Ok now comes the messy part… forming this mess into a beautiful dough ball… mix it together with your hands like this.

It should look like this once fully formed - what a beauty!

Next you are going to cut the dough ball in half because it is easier to work with and roll it out on a well floured work surface to about 1/8"- 1/4" in thickness, trim the edges to form a large square, and then cut the dough to make 2" x 2" squares like this.

Now comes time for filling.  There is really no exact science here… put about a dime size-ish amount of jam in the center of the square. If your eye-ball measuring isn't so good, just adjust the amount of jam on each square like I did in the picture below. Once you add the jam you are going to turn the square so that it is in the shape of a diamond, and fold the two opposite corners to the center, one over the other, and press the seam down with the tip of a butter knife.. do not press too hard tough, just enough to seal the tip of the dough down!

Fill all of the squares and repeat the process, until all of the dough has been used. Place the cookies on a baking sheet and lightly brush, ONLY the seam, with the beaten egg.  This will make sure that the seam doesn't open when they are baking in the oven! Space them about 1" apart like this. 

Now, place them in the oven and cook for approximately 20 minutes or until the bottoms are a very light golden brown.

They are done when they look like this.

Now, remove them from the baking sheet with a spatula and place them on cooling racks until the are cooled completely… Trust me - biting into hot jam isn't a pleasant experience!

That's it.. your cookies are done and you can now enjoy these delicious, homemade, from scratch, cookies that take only about 35 minutes from start to finish. 

Enjoy!

- Danielle