Inside My Kitchen

Wow, or maybe I’m just super sleep deprived since Jacob woke up THREE times last night (thanks, Jake).

Nic had a recipe not long ago for Chewy Cheesecake Cookies. They looked too good to this cheesecake lover to just print out the recipe and stick in “the file”. You can follow the link to the recipe.

After reading the comments, I decided to try the original recipe along with several of the suggested alterations. I baked 1/3 of them as directed, to 1/3 of them, I added lemon juice (had no zest as suggested), and rolled 1/3 of them in sugar before baking.

The originals were fantastic. They’re a soft, delicate cookie that’s very pretty. The 1/3 I added lemon juice to were yummy, also. At first, I took a bite and couldn’t detect the lemon, but it came through nicely after I’d chewed for a bit. Something about the lemon detracted a bit from the cheesecake flavor. I think it tasted more like a sugar cookie - and hey! there’s some lemon here, too. I wouldn’t suggest covering the cookies in sugar. They didn’t come out as pretty at all, and I wouldn’t say they were fantastic. It wasn’t bad, I just won’t mess up a good thing and try it again.

These were so easy, didn’t take too long and reminded me of Wetzels. Yipee!

This recipe came from the book knead, by Carol Tennant, and is retyped exactly how it appears in the book. A book review will soon follow.

Pretzels
3 cups all purpose flour
1 cup strong white bread flour
2 1/2 tsp instant yeast
2 T soft light brown sugar
1 heaped tsp salt, 2 T kosher sea salt - divided
1 1/2 cups warm water
2 T baking soda
vegetable oil, an oil mister is preferable

This makes 12 large, soft pretzels. Eat them on the day they are baked.

1. Mix together the flours, yeast sugar and 1 heaped tsp salt in a large mixing bowl. Add the water and mix to a soft dough. Knead for about 5 minutes until smooth and elastic. Shape into a neat ball and put into an oiled bowl. Lightly oil the surface of the dough and cover the bowl with plastic wrap. Leave to rise 1 hour, or until doubled in bulk.

2. Cover 2 large cookie sheets with waxed paper and set aside. Preheat the oven to 450.

3. Cut the dough into 12 equal pieces. Take the first piece and roll it using the palms of your hands into a long thin rope, about as thin as a pencil. Shape into a pretzel by crossing over the ends, twisting them, then folding them up over the loop. Set aside on a floured surface. Shape all the pretzels.

4. Mix the baking soda with about 2 cups hand-hot water until dissolved. Dip the pretzels, one at a time, into the solution then transfer to the prepared cookie sheets, leaving them well-spaced. Sprinkle with the kosher salt. Leave to rise, 15-20 minutes until just puffed up. Bake 8-10 minutes until golden. Serve warm or cold.

Like I said, easy and delicious. BUT, let me emphasize what it said above - eat them on the day they are baked. Within 24 hours, the pretzels looked liked wrinkled nastiness and got tough instead of soft and chewy.

Other stuff:
*Read all the directions first, carefully - I actually re-wrote the part of the recipe. In the original, she lists salt twice, and in direction #1, just says “salt” not which salt she was talking about.
*With half the pretzels, I brushed with melted butter, then sprinkled generously with cinnamon sugar instead of using the kosher salt. They were good, but not as much of the sugar mix stuck as I was hoping would. They weren’t whatcha buy in the store, but not bad.
*Rolling the pretzels takes work. A lot of work. It’s a very elastic dough, and I had to use a lot of pressure while rolling between my hands to get them thin enough. I had tired arms!

A lot of simple situations at my house turn into full fledged experiences. And so it was with the kiwi jam.

Most of the recipes I found were pretty similar. The one I used went a little something like this:

3 cups chopped kiwi fruit
1 packet powdered pectin
1 cup unsweetened pineapple juice
4 cups granulated sugar

Combine kiwi, pectin and pineapple juice in a large pot. Bring to a boil, stirring constantly. Add sugar, stirring until dissolved. Return to a rolling boil. Boil 1 minute, stirring constantly. Remove from heat. Ladle into hot jars, leaving 1/4″ head space. Adjust lids. Process 10 minutes in boiling water canner.

Yields 8 jelly jars or 4 half-pints.

Simple enough, right? It would be, unless your stove top burner had something on it left over from the previous cooking encounter. It would be simple enough, unless that something on the burner would not quit smoking. The recipe would have been simple enough, if both smoke alarms in my house did not keep beeping at a kajillion decibels each. And, oh yea, Jacob the wonder kid was sitting at the table absolutely distraught at the loud sounds, which doesn’t make too much sense since he makes enough loud sounds of his own.

So, my point is this: I’m pretty sure that recipe would’ve worked just fine, IF I was able to stick to the boiling/stirring/boiling/stirring instructions. Instead, I was running around the house with a stool and a towel and a screwdriver trying to swat away the smoke from one smoke alarm with the towel, then running back to the other to try to unscrew it from the ceiling to make it Shut! Up! so I can get back to the dang JAM! And running back. And forth. And back. And you probably get the idea by now.

Here’s how the jam turned out: it’s delicious, but it doesn’t have the emerald color I was hoping it would. Also, it didn’t gel correctly. We have a very thick syrup type consistency in a bunch of jars.

Serving suggestion: use the jam to top cream cheese covered wheat thins. Absolutely delicious. My friend suggested pouring the jam over filo-covered, baked brie. That sounds pretty darn yummy, as well.

Bottom line: the husband loved it, I loved it, and next time we make it (I will definately make it again) I’ll probably make sure the oven burners are clean first.