Valentines Treats

I made these yummy mini-brownies for my students.  I used a box brownie mix, don't judge me.  One tablespoon of batter is the perfect amount for the mini-cupcake size.  The frosting is butter cream and the hearts are cinnamon flavored gummy candy.  A little food coloring and some random sprinkles mixed in made these little valentines a lot of fun.  I gave my kids goofy spiderman cards to go along with the brownies.  

Janet's New Hat

Janet sporting her new hat.

I made this fun hat for my friend Janet.  I promised to make her a hat last winter.  Sometimes you can't put a time frame on knitting projects.  I bought the hat kit from my friend Rhonda.  She sells her kits and yarn at the Wilson Collective Wilson Collective FB Page .  The pattern is called "Family of Stripey Hats" by Churchmouse Yarns & Teas.  

The hat kit had exactly the right amount of yarn for the hat.  I used every inch of the yarn!  It was a very fun project to knit with the soft hand-dyed wool.  The blue yarn was dyed with indigo.  I knit the hat on size 7 double point needles, even though my gauge was a tiny bit off.  I wanted the green to be the main color by Janet's face because she really likes teal.  Rhonda suggested putting the slate colored stripe between the wide bands of blue and green to help make the colors pop.  She was so right about the effect.  For the pom pom I used all the rest of the yarn to make a combination pom pom of all three colors.

German chocolate cake

I decided to make a German Chocolate Cake for my mother-in-laws birthday celebration.  She really enjoys nuts, so this seemed like a nice choice for her.  I used the recipe from The Joy of Cooking for the cake.  I learned from the recipe that the cake is not from Germany, but is actually named after the chocolate company who invented it.  I love making a three layer cake.  Something wonderful happens when there are two layers of frosting inside the cake.  Let's face it, I really like the frosting part of all cakes, and this delicious cake was no exception.  I think she enjoyed the cake and the recognition of her special day, even if it was several days early.

A few candles made the cake very festive.

Super bowl food

Sporting my Pats jersey while making the pizza!

This year we decided to have homemade pizza for the Super Bowl.  Even though this a semi-regular meal in our house,I decided it was blog-worthy on this special occasion.  I make the dough from scratch using high gluten bread flower.  (Sorry to all of you gluten-free folks out there.)  The recipe comes from my favorite bread book called  The Bread Baker's Apprecntice:  Mastering the Art of Extraordinary Bread by Peter Reinhart.  link to book on amazon  I knead the dough with my Kitchen-aid mixer with the dough hook  for about 5 minutes, then I let it rest on the counter (covered in plastic wrap) for about two hours.  I like to roll it out most of the way with my rolling pin because it makes the crust more even.  I pick it up and stretch it over my fists just enough to make it fit into the pan.  I spray the pan with cooking spray and coat it lightly with corn meal to prevent the pizza from sticking.  (All of these are Peter's instructions in the book, I follow them as written and they work!)

The kids like to have sausage and pepperoni on their pizza.  Brian and I  like the "adult" pizza that has onions and green peppers thinly sliced on our mandolin, and kalamata olives, along with the sausage and pepperoni.  For sauce, we use Brian's homemade pasta sauce that we freeze in small batches for pizza night. We keep the cheese and meats in the freezer too, so we can have homemade pizza without a special trip to the grocery store.  This pizza was a great start to an exciting game!  Go Pats!

The "adult" pizza with onion, green peppers, black olives, sausage, and pepperoni.

I use the rolling pin to roll it out most of the way, then I stretch with my hands to fit the pan.

A gorgeous ball of pizza dough, well rested!

Three pizzas weren't  quite enough food, good thing Josh brought sushi too!