Watermelon Bread Fancy sandwiches

Watermelon bread sandwiches were certainly a hit with the ladies at my recent High Tea Bridal shower for my daughter.  It also was a lot of fun to make and I was happy with the look of the bread along with the taste.

The recipe for the bread 

2 T dry traditional yeast  softened in about 1/2 c warm water

2 T white granulated sugar 
3 - 3 1/2 cups all-purpose flour 
1 cup milk 
1 egg 
2 tbsp  butter, softened

hand full of raisins

Since I always use traditional dry yeast, it needs to be softened first, or you'll have crunchy grains in the dough.

Mix yeast, sugar and about 1/2 c of lukewarm water, let yeast proof. 

Beat the egg, then add to warmed milk and melted butter.

Add egg mixture to yeast mixture

Mix in one cup of flour with spoon.

then another cup gradually until the dough starts to pull away from the sides.

The food color is then mixed in when about  2/3 of the flour is added as you want the dough wet and sticky but firm enough to be able to divide the dough. This way the dye can be mixed much easier into the mixture. 

The bread is divided into half and dyed pink. 

The other half is divided into half; one is left white, the other part dyed green for the rind. 

Raisins are added to the pink dough and more flour incorporated to form a soft dough.  Add a bit more flour to the other pieces of dough, knead, oil the dough, cover with saran wrap and let rest until dough doubles in size. 

Now the fun starts in shaping the watermelon.  

Punch down the pink dough.  Shape the pink into a smooth log shaped roll.  Check that the length of the roll fits a loaf pan.  

Roll out your white dough large enough to completely wrap around the pink dough, Brush the white dough and the pink log with milk.  Wrap the red log, making sure it is completely sealed so that the dough does not poke through.  One of my seams did burst, but still looked okay in the end. 

Repeat the same steps with the green colored dough. 

Pop the watermelon dough in a greased loaf pan. Let rise until dough doubles in size. 

Bake at 350 degrees for about 25 to 30 minutes. 

Let the bread rise in the pan, then on a rack until cool. 

Now the best part of trying a new recipe is the testers.

In figuring out the length of the roll to fit a loaf pan, there was pink dough left over as was some white dough when rolled out to fit the pink.  

The filling used was suggested by a friend who ran a Tea Shop in Carmen, Manitoba. 

8oz Cream Cheese was blended with a can of drained and dried crush pineapple in a food processor.

My friend, Nancy who was helping me prepare the sandwiches, suggested adding pickled ginger for an extra kick!

Borscht! Beet Soup, traditional to modernized

I came across this video Baba and Borscht, which I sent out to my cousins.  

Every Bit your Baba's Borshch;soup smackdown in Andrew

Edmonton Journal,  July 22, 2013

Here is the email that came from one of my cousin's, who my Mom thought her Mom was an incredible cook. These comments did not come readily from my Mom!

Well I start with the beets. They have to be sliced thin and then cut in strips that are very fine... cut again in half if too long. Next goes in the onion and minced garlic, potatoes cut in small cubes, carrots cut fairly fine cubes. fresh peas if in season, also string beans cut in small pieces, salt,  pepper, dill and of course water. If the veggies are " young & fresh" I sometimes add sweet cream just before they are fully cooked. In this case I may omit the vinegar which I like to add or sour salt. Some times I add cooked navy beans (garlic beans) when I need the protein on a meatless week Very basic. For Dhokabor borstch I add some meat stock and cabbage. How about you?

Making Borscht in my home!

Your cutting for the soup is very similar to Mom’s, but she always julienned the carrots and potatoes too, unless it was a spring borscht. I put that recipe into one of the Centennial  books, word for word from my Aunt Florence, Mom’s sister.  Mom’s soup was a work of art with all the matchstick veggies. I have not been able to get that good at chopping the veggies.  I laughed at Baba Magda's knife skills in the video! 

I did borscht in my home town, a couple of summers ago with all the chopping, but on the second day, I roughly chopped more vegetables, i.e. beets into the soup. That day, my cousin popped in at lunch and was offered some soup.  I haven't heard the end of how I chopped my veggies for Borscht.  Good grief!

When our cousin was here from Ukraine, our Swiss friends wanted us to bring Traditional Ukrainian Borscht to their Canada Day celebration party.  Our friend had run out and bought a bundle of beets with  lush leaves with tiny beets.  

What a production her borscht making was and I couldn't imagine my Mom having much time left for anything else using all the steps she did!  Her brother does it the same way, so it must be the way they do it in their village.  They first make a meat stock with pork roast and a whole onion which they throw away after this step. Then they grate all their vegetables and fry them.  The funny thing was that she said she couldn’t make it as there was not enough beets, she had thrown away the beet greens and had three small golf ball sized beets sitting on the counter.  They do not use the beet greens, as was also mentioned in Olia's video. Interesting! I liked the taste of this soup the best with the beet greens.  Vernon said the second day serving of this soup was like mush as the grated vegetables had cook down.

I like my borscht to have a dark colour, so I parboil my beets, then julienned them and add the beets near the end.  I do add white vinegar and cream at the very end.  Fresh garden dill is lovely and very different tasting from the store bought dill.  Bill loves this soup, and wanted this at our wedding, which I vetoed!  He also likes fresh peas from the garden in his soup.  However, these are only available in the spring. 

Meatless Borscht Soup

An interesting video was done on making borscht by Olia Hercules, an upcoming Chef with roots in Ukraine, who now  lives in London!

Oila talks about a Zeleney or Green Borscht.. The interesting thing is that she used a duck for stock for this soup along with a whole onion and bay leaves.  This was brought to boil and simmer until the meat was tender about 2 1/2 hours.  I had never seen a whole onion used in soup making as usually my Mom would chop the onion, my cousin from Ukraine did the same and then threw it out! The soup was strained and the meat removed to be shredded when cool. 

Grated carrots and finely diced onions were sautéed in the duck fat that was skimmed from the broth.  Once the carrots and onions were caramelized, this was also added to the broth along with diced potatoes to cook for 15 minutes until the potatoes were tender. 

To serve, Olia modernized the presentation of this soup by added the shredded duck at the bottom of the bowl, then chopped fresh herbs such as sorrel.  Interesting she talked about her Mom not calling a soup "borscht" if it did not have beets. Oila did mentioned that although they did not use beet stems or leaves in the soups in Ukraine, she did here.  This had surprised me greatly when my cousin in Ukraine also threw out the lush green leaves, something I had grown up eating on the farm in Canada.  The hot broth would cook the greens when poured over the freshly chopped beets and herbs.  Oila garnished the soup with chopped green onions, chopped hard boiled duck eggs and sour cream.

Olia's soup was also served pampusky with a garlic oil.

The recipe for green borscht is almost word for word that Olia used, but this site does not give her credit for the recipe.  The above picture of green Borscht was pulled from this site.


Green Borscht was never made by my Mom and I am not sure what Sorrel taste like! 

   

  

Popover Success

Popovers were my next challenge for the Bridal Shower.  A couple of weeks ago,  I had used Noble Pig's recipe for Pepperoni puff muffin and was not pleased with the height of the mini's popovers plus her recipe did not fill 2 trays of mini muffins.  I also realized as I made this recipe that this was a Popover recipe

This recipe added pepperoni and grated cheese. The pepperoni puffs are served with a tomato pizza sauce

Just One Cookbook's recipe prompted me to research this recipe further and look at some other recipes.  In my research, I found that the secret seems to having everything room temperature.  Nami heats her milk, uses baking powder and lets her mixture set for an hour before baking in a preheated oven. Others use melted butter and warm the eggs by dropping the eggs into hot tap water for 10 minutes.

Armed with this knowledge, I warmed all my ingredients, as it makes sense to have everything at room temperature so it can puff right away in the very hot oven.  Others heat their pan with oil before filling, but this is messy and the mini trays cool down while being filled with the mixture.


I was pleased with how the popovers puffed up, especially with the third pan had to wait to be baked.

Sponge Cake for Petit Fours!

I have been planning a Bridal Shower for my daughter.  Yes, some may think this is inappropriate for the mother of the bride to plan a shower for her daughter.  My mother planned one for me in my home town.  She had put an open invite in the local paper, the Maple Leaf and then prepared an awesome lunch along with all her home baking dainties.  My fiancé was told to not tell me as it was a surprise for me.  My dear husband who can not tell a lie, just went along with what I wanted to do, so that he would not blow the surprise.  We arrived late with a storm developing to see white tablecloths flapping in the wind with everyone inside.  My Mom had converted the backyard to a beautiful setting with circular picnic tables covered with white tablecloths and vases filled with lavender Lilacs.   Inside the house was packed as I was greeted by those that had known me all my life, included some of my elementary school teachers.  How flattering that was!

I think of this beautiful shower as I plan one for my daughter.
I enjoy the planning aspect as I look through my cookbook collection and surf the net for the last couple of weeks.
My list has enlarged as I look for recipes I can freeze. My theme will be a modern version of High Tea celebrated with Bubbly and Strawberries in Hats, Pearls, Gloves and Lace.

I have studied some of the videos on making Petit Fours as I want to do a sponge cake version.  I have made a sponge cake a couple of times but was not pleased with the volume or height of the cake. I made a chocolate jelly roll stuffed with strawberries and whipping cream for my husband's birthday, a Canadian Living recipe.

As I looked at the videos, memories of my Mom came to mind as she made jelly rolls filled with lemon filling often on the farm.  I imagine the ready supply of eggs was the reason for the sponge cake, but also her skill in making this beautiful full jelly roll!  I remember her delicately transferring the cake to a dusted tea towel with icing sugar and rolling the cake to rest.

I studied two sponge cake recipes, the recipes were similar using 6 eggs, one cup of flour and sugar each with added vanilla extract.  One recipe separated the eggs, where as the other used the whole egg.. The eggs needed to be at room temperature and the secret seemed to be beat the egg mixture for 5 minutes.  The eggs can be soaked in hot tap water so that they are room temperature before using

Folding in the stiffen egg whites in to the egg yolk mixture carefully so the mixture does not deflate.

I decided to separate the egg and whip the egg white first, then whipped the egg yolk until fluffy and a lemon color.  This step my Mom always did.

Not being a baker, this made two extra steps of gradually folding in the yolk mixture into the whipped egg whites. then  folding in the flour into the mixture.  Mom would fold this in with very strong folds using a spatula.  I must say I was nervous doing this but the mixture did not deflate before spreading the batter into the prepared cookie sheet or as my Mom called it the jelly roll pan.

The cake cooked quicker than the suggested20 minutes, I took it out in 15 minutes.

The next step was to cut it in thirds, layer with two different jams that had been strained to get rid of the seeds or rind.

I cut the strips into thirds but the pieces could have been smaller yet.

The chocolate glaze was done twice as the first time I added cream to the mixture as it was too thick and when heated it did separate.  I did remake the chocolate glaze, but still found the mixture was too thick and did not pour easily, needed to be spread with a knife, so thicker than I would have liked.  The recipe was looking for a glaze but as in the picture below the glaze was more an icing.. Perhaps using icing sugar and adding lemon juice to make a glaze that is thick, yet pourable would have achieved the desired look. 

Basic Sponge Cake recipe

6  eggs
1 cup flour
1 cup of powdered sugar
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
baking sheet,non stick spray, parchment

• Preheat the oven to 375 F 
• Prepare cookie sheet or jelly roll pan, spray and line with parchment paper.
• Separate the egg whites from egg yolks
• Beat the egg whites with a mixer or whisk the whites until fluffy and stiff
• Sift  flour, baking powder and salt together
•  Add the sugar and butter (optional) to the yolks, whisk until thick and creamy
• Fold egg yolk mixture into stiffen egg whites.
• Fold flour using 1//3 c each time until well mixed.
• Do not overmix
•  Spread this mixture evenly 
• Bake it in the oven for 22 to 25 min until done

Yakisoba, Japanese street food

Yakisoba is a classic Japanese Street Food that makes for a quick supper using up leftovers and vegetables that are readily available.

First cook your noodles, drain and toss in tablespoon of oil to prevent them sticking together.

I used Traditional Shirataki white yam noodle substitute which has 0 calories and Hungry Girl Approved.

 Fry in olive oil, thinly sliced cabbage and julienned cut carrots with thinly sliced onions until cooked.
I also added sliced cooked pork loin to the vegetables

Mix 1-2  tablespoon of Ketchup, 1 T Worcestershire sauce and 1 T of Oyster sauce in a small bowl, then add to vegetables

Toss in the noodles and heat until everything is hot!

Garnish with thin slices of Nori, pickled ginger and hot sauce.

This couldn't be any easier and so delicious! My thought was as I plated the noodles, how do they serve this dish on the street of Japan?

Spicy Curried Coconut Peanut Soup with Seafood

While in Halifax last week, Peanut soup was the "Soup of the Day" in two restaurants.  In fact one of the servers rolled his eyes on mentioning this special, which got my curiosity up even more.

Today being a rainy day and the need for soup, I decided to research this recipe and make it as although I need to make a run for groceries before the long weekend, I did have makings for this soup.

I started by sautéing a chopped onion with a couple of chopped cloves of garlic in olive oil in a stock/soup pot.  I added a tablespoon of hot curry powder and a teaspoon of cumin to the hot oil.  I then added chopped carrots, about a half a tin of diced tomatoes, grated ginger, peanut butter and then covered everything in water, brought it to boil then reduced the heat to simmer.

On checking my cupboard I found I did not have a tin of coconut milk, so leaving this pot on simmer (not suggested), I quickly drove to a store in my neighbourhood, but had to drive further for coconut milk.  Yes, there were a few panic calls to my husband who thought I was phoning my

self to find my cell phone! Oh dear, I have to stop doing this!  On returning home, thankfully everything was fine.  I pulsed the mixture with a hand blender.  On tasting the mixture, it was thick and full of flavor, but since I had run out for the coconut milk, I added it in.  One of my pet peeves with coconut milk is that it seems to lose it's flavor once it is cooked!   Now the soup was too thin, which I thickened with cornstarch and water.   I think I would just use more carrots next time then I would not need to thicken it.

I did added shrimp and fish to the soup after it was blended.   I simmer the soup until the seafood was cooked.

Garnishing the soup with Plantain chips and peanuts was certainly welcomed by my husband.

Egg in Scone, Breakfast on the run!

Once again, I am on a mission, to find a way to cook soft runny yolk inside a muffin or scone! My husband makes awesome scones, he follows his recipe exactly and the results are amazing.  To get my husband to make scones other than ham and cheese has been a challenge!  For his batter, he precisely chops and measures very accurately 1 cup of ham and the same for cheese.

 I had seen a recipe for breakfast muffin with an egg in side the muffin, but after the 10th step, I thought this recipe was not for me, plus the yolk was cooked not runny!

A  couple of weeks ago, I saw a recipe for egg in the biscuit, again the egg yolk was cooked.

No matter, how many ways I've seen posted  about how to peel egg shell, this seems to be such a challenge nowadays. Every Easter, I try different methods and different eggs and all seem to result in badly peeled eggs!

Egg in a Cheese and Ham Scone 

Last week when my husband was making scones for Sunday Brunch, I convinced him to experiment with making two egg in biscuits.  I quickly soft boiled the eggs as is suggested by others, only to find myself resorting to using a spoon to dig out the egg out of the shell and deciding to pouch  the eggs for the next test.

This Sunday, my husband decided that we should add sausage patties to the biscuit along with the egg.

Adding the bottom layer to the muffin tin

Husband rolling out the dough

His recipe for Scones made 6 large muffins.   To four of the muffins, I added pre-cooked breakfast patties that I had made and 4 minute pouched eggs. Two of the scones, had uncooked breakfast patty and an uncooked egg.

Pouched eggs

Sausage Patties

Using my large muffin tin, I formed a bottom shell with  the dough, add the patties on the bottom and then the egg and a top of dough.

Breakfast Patties

Apply the top!

The main task is to make sure that the dough can be sealed.

The raw egg did leak out and in fact in one of the scones the yolk actually pop out!

I was surprised that in spite of the very hot oven and cooking time of 15 minutes the eggs that had not been cooked had a runny yolk. I also was pleased that my house did not reck of burned egg!

Breakfast Scones 

The meat and the egg were cooked perfectly

The above picture is of the pre-cooked egg and meat.

The next challenge is to better encase the uncooked egg!