The Baking Goddess

pie crust horror story

tesskrovetz — Tue, 01 Nov 2011 15:20:15 +0000

i wish i had a photo of this monstrosity, i do.

but last week, a friend and i made this pumpkin pie (as should you, it is delicious). and i made my usual buttery pie crust. and pre-baked it.

and. it. died. oh man. did it ever. the butter rose up from the crust, settled in a gooey mass on the pie crust, and the crust itself shrank up and looked sad.

we had to use store-bought pie crust. SHAME.

anyone have any idea why this pie crust happened?

feeding my roommates

tesskrovetz — Fri, 22 Jul 2011 00:26:21 +0000

*tap tap* is this thing on?

erm. hi, food blog. i’m sorry i forgot you exist.

clearly this blog is no longer a baking blog, i’m considering turning into a general “i ate this, it was awesome” blog (name suggestions welcome) (oh also? the male roommate mentioned in this blog became the manfriend) (SCANDAL).

today’s post, my tentative foray back into this beautiful blog, is about making mussels in spicy red sauce (recipe here) for two of my roommates. this post will be heavy on photos (taken with my phone, so forgive the quality), and light on the instructions.

twelve gorgeous minced garlic cloves. i smelled like garlic for a few hours after this.

squished plum tomatoes in their juice. you totally get to get your hands dirty with this one.

onion! carrots! chopped.

bay leaves in olive oil

sauteed garlic in oil with bay leaves. this smells really, really good.

oregano. tons of it.

throwing in the onions and carrots.

if i could, i would bottle and sell the aroma of this deliciousness.

add in the tomatoes, let boil for ages and ages and ages.

set out bowls and wineglasses. forget to take photos of mussels in the sauce. oops.

delicious, boiling red sauce.

anyhow. there are no photos of the final result, but it is so easy to make! and so delicious. and mussels aren’t at all scary, so go make them. also, crazy cheap.

love

ohmygod WANT

tesskrovetz — Tue, 29 Mar 2011 19:03:23 +0000

thank you, internet for introducing me to the most awesome thing EVER (CLICK IF YOU LOVE KICTHEN TOYS).

loooooooook ma, i made this!

it’s a customized hobart mixer, and it ONLY costs like $2500 (no, that’s not a made-up number). holy mother, that is a lot of money.

but for a pink sparkly (!!!!) mixer with a cupcake on it? A CUPCAKE WITH A F*ING EYEPATCH?? worth it.

it’s so pretty. i want it.

love

how to brown butter

tesskrovetz — Thu, 17 Mar 2011 00:50:52 +0000

browned butter is a useful thing, y’all. it adds a nice nutty flavor to things – but a buttery kind of flavor, still. i made browned butter brownies with it a while bac (that post will be later on) and OHMYGOD yum. you will also find that lots of pasta recipes call for browned butter sauces of one type or another. i really want to try a browned butter sage sauce.

browning butter is relatively easy, but you do need to lurk by the oven stirring and staring.

this is one stick and two tablespoons of butter, i think. ish. chop it into equally sized slices – this ensures that the butter will melt evenly, which is crucial. turn the heat to medium.

you can see here that every pat of butter is melting at a pretty even rate – they’re sinking into melty goodness as one.

the butter will foam up, then the foam will clear. STIR STIR STIR. once the butter starts to turn a bit brown (this is the milkfat cooking up), you’ll see it start in the middle – like in the above photo. let the brown spread a little, then OFF THE HEAT OFF OFF OFF.

and voila! browned butter. if it goes much darker, you get beurre noire, which you can use, but not for anything you want to use browned butter for.

love

a call for apple crisp

tesskrovetz — Wed, 16 Mar 2011 19:16:08 +0000

my to-do list for this blog includes “bake apple crisp”, and i’m 97.2% sure i have a recipe from mama k at home….but i’m not TOTALLY sure. do you have a favorite apple crisp recipe? care to share? let me know – i want to use recipes that are tried and true!

love

a few terribly important things

tesskrovetz — Wed, 16 Mar 2011 01:49:52 +0000

ONE

pie. nom nom nom pie.

except, this is “pie, after three people demolished half of it”. originally, i promise you this was a grasshopper pie

sorry….

also, new blog! if you have any interest in following my rambling thoughts, please click on over to http://lifeoftess.wordpress.com/ and be amused, or alarmed, or bored, or whatever

love,

delicious, delicious cake

tesskrovetz — Fri, 11 Mar 2011 17:35:51 +0000

so, this looks like i ran over it with my car, right?

right.

it’s not PRETTY

but you know, whatever. i loved this cake

it wasn’t too sweet, so i put about seven pounds of frosting on it

i’m trying to find the recipe. somewhere on martha’s site. SOMEWHERE…

FOUND IT. be excited. here it is…the recipe!

so, yeah. nothing fancy, right? but it tastes divine, and here’s evidence, from like, five seconds after we started eating.

YARGH why is this photo not in my flickr stream? (so apparently i now do live blogging? sorry. i just have a lot of thoughts in my brain, soooooo today they all come out at once. deal.)

aaaaaaaaaand ta-da!

you know. i’m not REALLY live-blogging , because it’s like 9:30 in the morning, and i’m planning to set this to post around lunch or so. sorry. i lied.

okay. sorry. FOCUS. here’s the remains of the cake

yeah. we demolished that ish.

okay. go have a lovely day. if you know folks in japan and other areas affected by the earthquake/tsunami, know that i’m keeping y’all in the light.

love

dinner with friends

tesskrovetz — Fri, 11 Mar 2011 14:19:54 +0000

this happened, like, seventy years ago, i’m just LAZY

anyhoodle. a few billion weekends ago, the manfriend and i invited our friends a and k over for to nom some delicious food.

roasted pork loin with roasted potatoes and carrots. holy LORD this was so, so good.

there was a great deal of wine consumed, too.

ever wonder what pork loin looks like while it roasts in its own juices? WONDER NO MORE. also, look at the pretty carrots!

this is mostly a picture i took after i realized we did not have a picture of the loin after it was done cooking.

loin is a funny word. loin loin loin. loin.

sorry. i have not had coffee today and that appears to have adverse effects on my brain.

anyhow! next post of the day will be the cake i made.

love

thoughts on sandwich failure

tesskrovetz — Fri, 04 Mar 2011 18:36:59 +0000

so i’ve been trying to be really good and bring my lunch in every day instead of spending a kajillion dollars on sammiches (as delicious as they are, i am trying to have money for when i FINGERS CROSSED go to graduate school and am officially poor).

but today?

today is friday. and pay day. so i thought i would treat myself to a delicious sandwich from a local place WHICH* I SHALL NOT NAME because i really do love them.

i got a sandwich with brie and turkey and sliced apples on ciabatta bread. grilled. f’ing deliciousness. nom nom nom.

except. the brie was sliced too thick and so it was like a brie and turkey and sliced apples on ciabatta bread WITH brie-flavored grease. grilled. less nom, more sad.

sooooo yeah. now i’m grumpy. and it is sunny out. and my desk is all covered in paperwork and the air is ROARING because it will never ever get fixed

and i have ‘thriller’ stuck in my head for reasons beyond me. but the ‘thriller’ and ‘heads will roll’ mashup from glee has baffled my brain so much that it’s just stuck in a loop

i need more coffee

i have started having stress dreams about getting into school. great.

on the plus side, the ridiculously cute dog loves me the most because i freed her from the holly bush when she got alllllll tangled up in that last night and the neighbor was giving us the side-eye for, i dunno, making the dog sit in a bush? come on, dude. the dog smelled something good, and went into the greenery, and came back out having wrapped the leash ALLLLL up in the branches and she isn’t too bright sooooo i had to wrap a blanket around myself and go free her. we aren’t being mean to the dog. she just cannot find her way out of a paper bag.

and it’s the weekend, so i see the boy, and that is always good.

sigh.

love

*uh, can someone please tell me if that should be “WHO” or “WHICH”, since my brain is divided on what sounds better?

in lieu of an actual blog post, here is what i had for brunch

tesskrovetz — Sun, 27 Feb 2011 22:26:58 +0000

(french toast, fruit, ginger and something syrup, side of bacon, about 20 cups of coffee)