Recipe for Rich White Dinner Rolls with Thyme

My husband's family were getting together for a holiday dinner and I was asked to bring dinner rolls. I knew immediately I had to make my favourite rolls from the book Canada's Best Bread Machine Baking Recipes. My personal touch? Adding some chopped fresh thyme. I only used the breadmaker for the dough so you can make this recipe without a breadmaker. Just proof the yeast in some warm (not hot) water with a little sugar. Add it to the milk, making sure it is warm (not hot). Then add to the dry ingredients and knead for at least 7 minutes. For those with a breadmaker add the following to the loaf pan in this order:

1 1/3 cup of milk warmed in microwave but not hot!
1 1/4 tsp salt
2 tbsp sugar
2 tbsp softened butter
3 1/4 cup flour
1 1/4 tsp bread machine yeast

Select dough cycle. Now it has been really dry here lately so I had to add some warm water into the dough to help bring it together, I even added a little oil. You have to check on the dough to make sure it is all coming together. When the breadmaker beeps for the "add delicates" cycle, add the thyme.



Because the get together was in the early afternoon, I had to make the dough the night before. I have had my dough make a break for it before, oozing out of the container I put it in, so this time I put it in a bowl with a tight lid, greasing the sides and the dough. 



Here is the dough the following morning, safely contained! Perfect...



I rolled out the dough and cut into 12 portions.



I nestled them together in a springform pan, covered and let rise for 35 minutes in my microwave with a glass of hot water since my house was quite chilly.



I brushed on some melted butter and baked in a 375F oven. After 20 minutes it was starting to get golden but I had to keep it in a little longer. You do not want to over bake these rolls so it is finicky, you have to keep an eye on them to make sure they are baked through without getting too dark.



This is how we normally eat them and my husband says that they are the closest thing to his dad's rolls he has ever had. My father-in-law's family used to have a candy, ice cream shop and bakery and he used to make the best rolls in the world so this is the highest praise I can get. These buns were a huge hit at the family party. We love them so much I just to make another batch the next day for me and my husband. This time my house was really warm, I decided to experiment by rolling them into balls and they rose a little longer ending up making a huge batch of rolls:



Beautiful! I think I will make them this way from now on. So soft, melt-in-your-mouth... once you have these you will never buy store-bought rolls again. I certainly haven't! Yes, time consuming but so very worth the effort. For me, these are perfection! I hope you try making them, they are one of my favourite things to make in the whole world. Enjoy!

Memories of rice pudding in a dark kitchen

We were a little late getting our decorative lights up in our windows this year but once they were up, there was no opening our blinds to get natural light into our living room so my pretty foodie pictures have been non-existent during the holidays from this point forward. The day I made this rice pudding was also one of those seriously dark and dreary days so this is not my most eye-catching post AND it is filled with lots of errors on my part. This is when the holiday meltdown in my kitchen really began to pick up speed.

My first and, until recently, my last encounter with rice pudding was not positive. I am not a fan of rice in general so the idea of making pudding out of it seemed totally bizarre to me. My friend got some at our favourite restaurant in Toronto many years ago and I asked her if it tasted anything like rice. She said, no, not at all. I tasted it: bloated sweet rice. Blech!!! Since then I have not been tempted to taste it again until I saw this recipe in Food Network Magazine for Orange-Cinnamon Rice Pudding. I knew that if there was a recipe out there that would make me change my mind, this was it.



In a medium sauce pan I brought the water with orange peel, salt and butter to a boil. Then I added one cup of arborio rice until the water was mostly absorbed



This took longer than the 15 minutes in the recipe. I kept thinking to myself, just one cup of rice? Really? Did not seem like a lot but I just continued to follow the recipe.



First road block: I did not have whole milk. Fine, I can still do this. I needed four cups so I used three cups skim milk and added one cup of light cream to the sauce pan, along with two cinnamon sticks and some vanilla bean paste but you can just use vanilla.



I warmed it up on the stove and then added the cooked arborio rice mixture. You are supposed to simmer on low heat for 15 minutes until liquid is mostly absorbed. No way mine was done in 15 minutes. I had to keep simmering and simmering it.



This is where I hit the big snag. I totally did not see that this recipe called for mascarpone cheese. How I could miss it? I have no idea. I really thought I had read this recipe over from start to finish!

I have never bought mascarpone before and had no idea if my grocery store even carried it and it was too dark and rainy a day for me to leave the house plus I had the pudding on the stove... I had to come up with something else. So? I combined some sour cream, cream cheese and whipping cream in my mini chopper. Boy, did it not come together. It was lumpy and terrible looking!



The rice just did not seem to want to absorb any more liquid but there seemed to be so much left. I had no idea when to stop cooking the rice. From the recipe it was impossible to tell what it was supposed to look like. I couldn't bother anymore and stirred in my mascarpone cheese fakeout, hoping the heat of the pudding would melt everything together. I mean, it is rice pudding, the texture is already going to be weird.



Then I added some clementine zest after removing the cinnamon sticks and orange peel.



I let the pudding come to room temperature and then put it in the fridge to chill. We had a great discussion on my Facebook page about rice pudding and I found out that a lot of people eat it warm! Not me, I wanted to taste is like I did all those years ago. Thankfully the fake mascarpone mixture did melt into the pudding and after sitting in the fridge, it did firm up and look more like what I remembered.

I braced myself for the odd texture and went past it straight to the flavour... quite delicious. Yes, I could still taste the rice (I braced myself for that too) but with the orange and cinnamon? It was quite delicate and lovely. Considering I had to get really creative with this recipe, I bet it is even better if you make this properly. Creamy, luscious, fresh scent and flavour thanks to the clementine... I shocked myself by actually liking it! This recipe makes a ton of pudding though. That one cup of rice made way more than my husband and I could eat. This is one of those dessert I just want a few spoonfuls of and here I was stuck with a giant mixing bowl of it.

If you have a big family that loves rice pudding, I highly recommend making this particular one but do it the right way, buy whole milk and mascarpone cheese!

Recipe Review: Canadian Living's Really Good Rum Balls

These are my version of Canadian Living's Really Good Rum Balls which I wanted to add to my plate of holiday goodies for my friends because one of my friends tries to avoid carbs. Most rum balls are made with cookies but these ones are made with ground almonds bumping up the protein and bringing down the carb count.



So I cheated a bit when I made these. The recipe calls for 3 oz of bittersweet chocolate, grated. I tried but with my shoulder injury and hand pain, I just could not to it. I coarsely chopped the chocolate and put it in a food processor with the ground almonds, chocolate and icing sugar.



I pulsed in the rum and vanilla. I used a pale rum because I did not have dark.



Oh dear, very grainy and not just because of the nuts. I was afraid that was going to happen. I put the bowl of grainy goo in the microwave on 50% power for 20 seconds. Then I took it out and stirred to combine. I did this around five times and it saved the day! I chilled until firm.



I set up the "rolling station" by getting out the chocolate mixture and two small bowls, one containing more rum and the other the essential chocolate sprinkles. I had this mixture made ahead of time when I realized I had no chocolate sprinkles and it sat in the fridge for days until I was able to get out and get some. I wanted them to really look like traditional rum balls. I created a small ball of chocolate and rolled it in the rum and then the sprinkles. They can get too wet so make sure to add new sprinkles as you go.



I gave them some time to dry out and then added them as the last treat to my Christmas plate for my friends:



So here is my sweet holiday bounty this year: holiday hazelnut cookies, lemon sunshine thumbprint cookies, Latvian piragi, orange chocolate truffles and fudgy pinwheel cookies. I think I did pretty darn well and included a lot of variety of flavours and kinds of treats this year. The rum balls were pretty fantastic (not to mention strong!). Very chocolatey with fabulous nutty texture and chocolate sprinkles crunchy, I give them four out of five wooden spoons. 

I hope everyone had a delicious and fabulous holiday this year! May we have many foodie successes in 2011.

Recipe Review: Taste of Home's Fudgy Pinwheel Cookies

Before I hit the wall of baking, I continued my treat-making odyssey to share with my friends for Christmas. I have never made a pinwheel cookie before so I took on Taste of Home's Fudgy Pinwheel Cookies recipe. I used pecans instead of walnuts and I toasted them ahead of time so they were not super raw, my hubby has a hard time with super-raw nuts. Other than that, I stuck very close to the recipe.



This recipe begins pretty traditionally with creaming butter and brown sugar together, then adding an egg yolk and some vanilla.



You sift together some flour, salt and baking powder into the creamy butter mixture. Bring together. This is where it gets tricky. You need to roll out the dough into a 12" x 10" rectangle between pieces of waxed paper. I used parchment and thought it was all good.



Put on a baking sheet and chill in the fridge for 30 minutes.



To make the filling melt chocolate and shortening together which I did in a makeshift double boiler but the recipe says to do so in the microwave in a microwave-safe bowl. I have had chocolate seize that way so melt the chocolate whichever way you prefer. Stir in the nuts, some condensed milk and vanilla.



Spread mixture over the now-chilled dough. Tightly roll up in jelly-roll style along the long side. This is where things got screwed up. There was a slight seam on the bottom of my parchment that pinched the dough and it kept ripping. Not easy to roll up at all! I managed to patch it back together and wrap in plastic wrap to chill in the fridge for a few hours.



Make sure to slice in exactly 1/4" slices. Any thinner and they will burn. Any thicker they will not bake through.



See, the ones at the front look fine but the ones at the back? Burned!



These cookies are what my mom would call "a pig" to make, LOL. Are they worth it? They are delicious but seriously, I would only make these once a year. They are super sweet which goes great with the nutty chocolate filling. They are also a crunchy cookie so not my style at all, I prefer soft cookies. They were so sweet my husband could eat only just one. Now that is sweet!

A lot of work and time go into them so if they are someone's favourite cookie in the world, I would make them for their birthday but as a regular treat? No way! I give these cookies three and a half out of five wooden spoons. 

New Year's Day Dinner at The Keg

My husband had to work New Year's Eve which was such a bummer but we had a fantastic belated New Year's celebration with our friends in downtown Halifax on Market Street at The Keg the next day. There were only a handful of restaurants to choose from, most of them were closed and downtown Halifax looked abandoned on New Year's Day.

When we were trying to choose a place to go to, I was just drawn to spending the evening at The Keg. Then my friend Jen reminded me that when we were house hunting three years ago after moving to the east coast, we went to The Keg together on New Year's Day. It was settled! And this time we had even more fabulous friends to dine with.



We showed up and waited in line outside the restaurant around 3:45 pm. After the doors opened at 4 pm we did have to wait a few moments because we had a party of seven but we were soon whisked away into a dark cozy corner and brought the appetizers that come with our meal. I got the Caesar and it was perfect. Perfectly dressed and look at all that Parm!



I ordered the Sirloin Oscar which is essentially a sirloin slathered in Bernaise sauce and covered in seafood with some asparagus. I got the twice-baked potato which needed a sauce so my friend Kelly was kind enough to share some of her sour cream with me. This was a delicious meal but some of my scallops were not cooked through. Still, steak and seafood with Bernaise? Oh yes, this is exactly the kind of meal I wanted at The Keg.



For dessert, I got the Chocolate Fudge Sweet Temptation. No way I could eat a big dessert after all that food so this miniature dessert was perfect! I also got The Keg's Attitude decaf dessert coffee which, thankfully, truly was decaf. No migraines followed and talk about decadent...



My husband got the cherry cheesecake for dessert, his favourite that truly tastes like Christmas time to him. Any restaurant that makes my husband's tummy happy, makes me happy. Especially when it means we might eat out more often.

I really needed to recharge my foodie batteries. When you make your own food all the time, you can get uninspired and depleted. That is where I have been and getting out feasting with my friends was just what I needed.

Three years ago we went to The Keg on a dark and snowy night and this year it was quite warm in comparison with no snow. Instead of walking to a hotel we drove home to our house twinkling with Christmas lights.

Once again, the perfect evening out without paying inflated New Year's Eve prices. I give this dining experience five out of five wooden spoons.