Category Archives: YUMMY

Bake a Cake Inside an Orange Peel for a Tasty Campfire Treat…

Posted on by

0

from Lifehacker by Alan Henry

Bake a Cake Inside an Orange Peel for a Tasty Campfire Treat Want a delicious campfire dessert? Once you’ve enjoyed the tasty insides of an orange, fill it with chocolate cake batter or your favorite mix, wrap it up in foil, and then place the package on the smoldering coals of your fire. In about a half-hour, you’ll have a delicious single-serving cake, ready to eat.

Just slice an orange off at the top, and hollow out the pulp on the inside (don’t waste it!) and fill the bottom about three-quarters the way with the batter. Wrap it up and make sure it’s resting on a spot of your campfire that’s away from any direct, intense flames so it can cook slowly. After about a half-hour, you’ll have a tasty treat.

The approach here is similar to the egg in an orange method we’ve covered before, but has the side benefit that the taste of orange actually goes well with chocolate cake.

Chocolate Cake Baked in an Orange | CHOW via BoingBoing

Squirmy Jelly Worms…

Posted on by

0

304964_455300721169540_1455157131_n[2]

Ingredients::
2 packs (3 oz) Raspberry jello
1 pkg unflavored gelatin (for extra firmness)
3/4 cup whipping cream
3 cups boiling water
…

15 drops green food coloring
100 flexible straws (or enough to fill your container)
Tall container (1 quart or 1 liter carton of milk)
Directions::
Combine gelatin in bowl and add boiling water.
Let it cool to lukewarm and then add the whipping cream and 15 drops green food coloring.
Gather your straws (don’t forget to flex them out) and put them in the container. It’s important that the straws have a tight fit so the jello stays in the straws. For this reason, a 1 liter carton may be better; you will probably get longer worms since there is a tighter fit. If you have a bigger container, a rubber band around the straws is helpful. Or you could just add more straws to fill the container.
Add the gelatin mixture to the straw-filled container and let it set until firm.

There are multiple ways you can remove the worms from the straws. You can roll a rolling pin over the straws and squeeze them out or you can hold the straws over warm water. The worms will slip right out.
Recipe as seen Instructables.

From Imperfect Homemaking: How to Make Never-Fail Oven Fries…

Posted on by

0

 

As part of our Year of Less we aren’t eating out for an entire year. (The Rules state that we may go to a restaurant if invited as part of a social occasion. Note to all of my real-life friends: please for the love of all that is slathered in special secret sauces, please hold your next birthday at a restaurant. Please….)

Anyways, sometimes a girl just needs some french fries, ya know? Some really good crispy on the outside but soft on the inside and just a tiny bit too salty french fries. Here’s how I get my fry fix without leaving home.

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees. Slice your potatoes into strips. I really like red potatoes for this, but any potato you have on hand will work.

Now this is the secret to really good oven fries: Drizzle the potatoes with both olive oil and melted butter. I’ve tried them with just oil, and just butter, but it’s the combination that makes them so super awesomely good. Trust me on this.

Sprinkle them with a coarse salt like kosher salt or sea salt. Use a fair bit of salt. Potatoes need salt.

Now stir all your butter and oil and salt and potatoes so that the potatoes are evenly coated. Grease a cookie sheet with a tiny bit of olive oil and lay your potatoes out on the cookie sheets. A little bit of overlap is okay, but try to have only one layer of potatoes so that they can crisp up nice. You might need two cookie sheets.

And I know that some of you are going to think to yourself “the potatoes are greased, so I don’t need oil on the pan” but you really do, because if you don’t oil the pan all your delicious crispy edges will end up stuck to the pan instead of your french fry. I always regret it if I don’t take a moment to grease the pan.

Bake the fries at 400 degrees, turning and flipping and shaking them a bit every 5 minutes until they are golden brown on the outside and soft inside. This will normally take a total of about 20-30 minutes.

Taste (when they aren’t mouth-burningly hot anymore) to make sure they have enough salt, and serve. Enjoy!

Please let me know if you try these. I would love to know what you think!


And thanks so much for visiting The Complete Guide to Imperfect Homemaking! Please take a moment to “like” me on facebook or follow me on Twitter!

Calibrate Your Cooking Thermometer for the Most Accurate Readings …

Posted on by

0

from Lifehacker by Alan Henry

Calibrate Your Cooking Thermometer for the Most Accurate Readings Most of us have meat or cooking thermometers we use around the kitchen, but how often have you thought about calibrating it to make sure the readings are correct? Most cooking thermometers—even digital ones—tend to drift with time and repeated use. Thankfully, it’s easy to recalibrate them and guarantee accurate readings.

The folks over at The LA Times’ Daily Dish have a step-by-step on how to calibrate both dial (instant-read) and digital thermometers. Dial thermometers naturally require the most attention, and need to be calibrated either in freezing (32 degrees F/0 degrees C) or boiling water (212 degrees F/100 degrees C) before their first use, and then again every month or so, and especially any time the thermometer has been dropped or jostled. They can be recalibrated by using a wrench to hold the hex bolt behind the dial and then turning the dial until the correct temperature is registered.

Digital thermometers on the other hand should be tested every six months or so against freezing or boiling water to make sure they’re still accurate too—if they’re not, most digital thermometers have a reset button and that’ll do the trick. If not, just replace the batteries—that could be the problem.

I’d never thought about recalibrating my kitchen thermometers, but I’ll give it a try, even if it’s just to check if the read is off by more than a few degrees. Two or three degrees won’t hurt, but more than five or ten could be a problem. Have you ever had to recalibrate a cooking thermometer, or do you think it’s much ado about nothing? Sound off in the discussions below.

Test Kitchen Tips: Calibrating Your Thermometer | Daily Dish

DIY Cream Cheese …

Posted on by

0

from Lifehacker by David Galloway

DIY Cream CheeseIf you’re into making some of your own foods and love cream cheese you can make your own without any special equipment, starter cultures, or hard-to-find ingredients. All you really need is half and half, heavy whipping cream, a touch of buttermilk, and salt.

This recipe comes from culinary weblog The How-To Baker, who also has instructions for making your own bagels to go along with the cream cheese. The only bad news about making cream cheese is that it will take five days from the start until you’re spreading it on a bagel and that if you use ultra-pasteurized half and half and cream it may not separate into curds and whey very well, so look out for non-ultra pasteurized equivalents.

What you’re doing is pouring your half and half and whipping cream in a saucepan, bringing that to 90 degrees Fahrenheit, and pouring the mixture into a sanitized mixing bowl. Over the next few days you’ll be taking it out every 12 hours to drain any liquid out and let the curd firm up. Full step-by-step instructions and measurement amounts can be found at the source link below.

Once the cream cheese is ready it’ll store in your refrigerator for up to two weeks.

Homemade Cream Cheese without a Starter Culture | The How-To Baker

From Jaime at Raising Up Rubies: diy Bisquick … ♥

Posted on by

0

i’ve been thinking more and more about all the cleaning supplies i use
and all the preservatives in all of the food we eat
and i’ve been making changes a little at a time

i started making my own laundry detergent last year
and i will never go back to Tide
(no offense Tide)
the cost is 1-2 pennies a load
(!!)
and the ingredients are simple … it’s nice to know that we can have everyday products
without all the chemicals and other things
our bodies we’re probably never made to put up with :)

i’ve started a few dryer balls with my sister-in-law
our project was interrupted a few times so we’re only half done
but i’ll let you know how they turn out
next on my list is fabric softener
:)

after church sunday i started to make pancakes, then realizing i was out of Bisquick
thought it was the perfect opportunity to take a peek at all the recipes to make your own
that have been floating around pinterest
i looked at three different ones and kinda mixed ‘em all together…
with some of my own how-to

divide all ingredients in half
mix one half of the recipe at a time in an electric mixer
… starting with the first half
mix dry ingredients together in the mixer until well blended
add 1 cup of the shortening and mix again until incorporated
(scraping the paddle as needed)
about 2-3 minutes

that’s it!
i figured the ingredients cost me $2-3
which made the equivalent to 2 large boxes of the real stuff
each box cost somewhere between $4-5 at Wegmans