Vanilla Sugar--What Is It, and How Do I Use It?

Ahh, vanilla beans...the pod that keeps on giving.  It's been a few weeks since I posted that I am using the leftover vanilla beans from my extract to make vanilla sugar, something that has been floating around the culinary internet universe for a while now.  Alton Brown has even posted a "recipe" for it on the Food Network website.  If it's made it onto Good Eats, then it's definitely worth exploring, in my opinion!  It's absorbed some of the vanilla bean flavor, and is now ready to use.

So what is it?  It's pretty much what the name implies: white sugar infused with vanilla bean flavoring goodness.  How do you make it?  Easily!  I took the clean jar that I steeped my extract in, and once it was completely dry, I added three cups of white sugar while dropping in my vanilla bean pieces intermittently.  I dropped in one and a half beans total.  I screwed the cap on and shook it, and lo and behold, began to see caviar specks amongst the sugar crystals.  I opened the jar and inhaled, and it smelled like sweet heaven and sugar.  Oh, so good.  One thing I've noticed, though, is that the beans still have moisture in them, despite the fact that I let them sit out and air dry for several days before adding them to the sugar, and this has caused the sugar to clump together.  I've spread the sugar out on a tray to hopefully evaporate the moisture in the sugar, and then I will store it in a container without the beans.

You can use this in place of adding vanilla extract to your recipe, or you can leave the vanilla in and use it as you would regular sugar.  Why not sprinkle a little on your corn flakes in the morning?  Or in your coffee or tea?  Or try it as a substitute for sugar in my French toast casserole recipe:

Ingredients:
½ loaf of Texas toast, torn into pieces
4 eggs
1 cup half-and-half
1/2 cup milk
3 tablespoons vanilla sugar
2 teaspoons vanilla
1 tablespoon cinnamon
1 teaspoon nutmeg
1 stick butter (unsalted is preferred)
1/2 cup brown sugar
1 cup pecans (optional, we didn’t use)

Directions: Spray a 9x13 baking dish with non-stick cooking spray (don't skip this step--we learned that the hard way).  Spread the bread pieces evenly in the pan, then mix together in a separate bowl the eggs, half and half, milk, sugar, vanilla, cinnamon, and nutmeg.  You could add more spices, or additional spices, if you would like here.  Pour this mixture over the bread, and toss the bread to coat the pieces.  Cover with plastic wrap or aluminum foil and allow to sit in your refrigerator overnight.

In the morning, melt the butter, then mix in the brown sugar.  Pour this evenly over the bread mixture, and then bake at 350 degrees for 30 minutes, or until the bread is golden brown on top.  You can also sprinkle more spices over the casserole before baking it for a little extra deliciousness.

Nasty-I Mean Namaste-Gluten-Free Pizza Crust-Fail

Namaste Gluten-Free Pizza Crust

I purchased this in the gluten-free section at our local grocery store.  I had originally grabbed a box of King Arthur GF bread and pizza mix, but that mix was only going to make one pizza, and the Namaste brand said it made two 14" pizza crusts, and for less money.  Score!  I tossed that one into the cart and left King Arthur on the shelf in its place.  Well, I wish I'd opted for the King Arthur brand, because this was not good.  Not good at all.  Strike one.

I got the mix out of the pantry for dinner.  I also had a bag of Pamela's pizza crust in my pantry, but I was starting dinner late, and Pamela's required a few hours of rise time, whereas the Namaste was mix and bake, with no rise time.  Great!  Strike two.

I read the instructions on the bag.  Mix 1 1/2 C water and 1 tsp of oil into the mix with an electric mixer for three minutes.  I wondered about the mix when the instructions said, "mix will look like cake batter".  Cake batter pizza crust??  Strike three.  I should have stopped here.  I kept going anyway.  I was hungry.

The instructions said to spread the mix onto a greased pan, making sure that the batter was at least 14" wide and no thicker than 1/4".  So I did that.  Then, bake it at 450 degrees for 20 minutes on the lowest rack in the oven.  So I did that.  While it was baking, I began working on getting the toppings together, and then I looked into the oven to see what was happening with the crust.

It was starting to bubble up in various places.  Not just small dough bubbles--there was a huuuge bubble on one corner.  How do you put toppings on a huge bubble?

View through the oven door.  Super bubbles!

When baking time was over, I pulled it out of the oven.  It was a sickly pale, with no browning whatsoever.  The instructions said that to achieve a crispier crust, flip it over on the pan before adding toppings.  With a bit of muscle, I was able to flip it over, but it stuck to the pan and made a big hole on one side of the crust.  Oh well...added the toppings anyway.  Then I stuck it back in the oven.

Pizza crust as it looked right out of the oven

Pizza crust after flipping

After another 15 minutes to let the toppings heat up and cheese melt, it was time to eat.  It didn't look bad, and smelled okay, but it tasted pretty bad.  It was gummy in the middle, but the edges were super-crispy, like a cracker.  It was bland, despite the fact that there were Italian spices in the mix.  We ate some out of duty, and then couldn't handle it anymore.  My husband even threw a Stouffer's French bread pizza in the oven, since he was still hungry.  I wasn't really hungry after I threw mine away.  Pizza night was a sad affair with this mix.  My score: 0.5 out of 5 stars.  Half a star because it was easy prep, but that's the only good point I can come up with.  You get what you pay for, I guess!

Life Happens

My Husband's Birthday
This week, we celebrated my husband's 30th birthday.  Hard to believe he's finally joining me in the thirties!  We went out to dinner at our favorite restaurant to celebrate, and I got some balloons, a bag of Cool Ranch Doritos, and a can of Pibb for decoration.  If you knew my husband, you would understand the Doritos and Pibb, so for those who don't: the Doritos are in honor of sticking to good eating habits for six months now, and the Pibb is in celebration of his vow to not drink any Pibb (his favorite pop) from the beginning of the year to his birthday--six and a half months, a big commitment for him.  He got to enjoy some old favorites on his birthday!   We were up to visit my family over the weekend, and while we were up there, we celebrated his birthday with a golf-themed ice cream cake from Baskin Robbins.  We had a few days of birthday celebration for him, but he left for a business trip the day after his birthday.  :(

An Owl for My Sister:

Crescent Roll Pockets

So, at work today, I was trying to figure out what I was going to do with the half of the can of crescent rolls that I would have left over after I made a pot pie for dinner.  Then I had an idea.  I decided to try making them into chocolate-stuffed and cinnamon-sugar-stuffed pockets!  Below are the steps and recipe for the creation I call "Crescent Roll Pockets":

First, create four rectangles from pinching the seams together of each set of triangles, like in the picture above.

Pat the rectangle out and make it more uniform in shape, if necessary.  For the picture above, I sprinkled about a teaspoon of cinnamon on the dough, then roughly 1-2 tablespoons of semi-sweet chocolate chips.

For this crescent pocket, I decided to try and make it cinnamon-sugary.  I spread butter over the dough, then mixed 1/2 tablespoon of cinnamon and 1 tablespoon of lightly-packed brown sugar in a bowl, then spread it over the butter.  You can certainly experiment and create whatever flavors you want!  Just be sure to leave an edge around the dough for sealing.

To fold the dough, follow the steps in the pictures above, and when you've folded all of the sides in, pinch the seams together on the top to seal and keep the stuffings in.  Bake them in a preheated 375 degree oven for about 15 minutes or until they are golden brown, then remove them from the oven and let them cool for about 10 minutes.

 While the pastries are cooling, make the glaze: 1/4 to 1/2 cup of powdered sugar, 1 to 2 tablespoons of milk, and about 1/4 teaspoon of vanilla extract.  Mix all together in a small bowl, adding milk a little at a time until you get your desired consistency for the glaze.

When the pockets are cooled, drizzle the glaze over the top.  Then, grab a fork and enjoy!  You're welcome.

A Loss in the Family
I mentioned earlier that we were up to visit with family over the past weekend.  The reason was because my uncle, my mother's brother, passed away from an illness.  It was a sad time, for obvious reasons.  He was always a good uncle to us, and he was always nice to us.  I have many good memories of him, and he was a neat man.  He liked to dabble in all sorts of hobbies: he tried growing crops, he did canning, he created barbecue sauce, he brewed his own raspberry wine, he restored antique telephones, he sold Christmas trees, and just generally seemed to enjoy life.  He seemed to succeed in anything he tried to do!  He even gave us one of his phones a few years ago, and it's been a prized possession of ours ever since.  Now, it's something that will always remind us of him every time we see it hanging on the wall in the kitchen. My husband didn't know him extremely well, but he always enjoyed the times that we were able to visit with my uncle.  Please pray for my uncle's children, grandchildren, my mom, and my mom's other brother, who are still grieving, but are glad for the time they were able to spend with him on earth.

Sad Garden

Sad, sad, sad.  It's certainly struggling under the severe conditions that seem to have settled over this part of the country.  While I water whenever I can, it doesn't seem to help that much.  There's such a difference in the plants when it rains, as opposed to a good soaking from the hose.  Though I would love to have a rain barrel, and not have to use chemically-treated city water in the garden, a rain barrel does no good if there has been no rain!  Everything is still alive, but it seems that the hot sun beating down all day just makes them so droopy.  It's cloudy now, and there is rain in the area, so here's hoping for a good soaking from mother nature!

A blossom on my pumpkin plant

My heirloom chocolate cherry tomato plant--hoping to keep some of the seeds and do it again next year

Rain's a-comin'!

I feel like some days are a real struggle.  Life is hard, even though we have all of these incredible conveniences today.  The world is not a friendly or nice place, so we take comfort and refuge with family and friends that we love.  And that's not a bad thing; we are meant to have relationships with the people around us.  But are we building the kind of relationship that we need to have with the One who created us?  He loves us more than we can imagine!  He will give us strength to endure each day, each hour, each trying minute of our lives.  The trials and grief, along with the joys of life, all work to mold us into the person that He wants us to become.  "Therefore we do not lose heart, but though our outer man is decaying, yet our inner man is being renewed day by day. For momentary, light affliction is producing for us an eternal weight of glory far beyond all comparison, while we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen; for the things which are seen are temporal, but the things which are not seen are eternal." 2 Corinthians 4:16-18.

The Most Incredible Confection Ever...You've Been Warned!

With the temperatures as cold as they are outside right now, I am busy indoors on my day off, cleaning and baking.  Earlier this week, I heard a recipe for a Milky Way Cake on a morning radio talk show that I always listen to.  They mentioned the ingredients but didn't go into detail regarding how to make it, so later on I did a little research and found the recipe that they had talked about: Charlie Manuel's Milky Way Cake!  (For those of you who don't follow baseball teams, and that includes me, he is a player for the Phillies.)  It is published in a cookbook that they released last year to raise money for charities called "From Our Home to Yours: A Collection of Phillies Recipes", so obviously I can't take any credit for this recipe, but I am sharing it on my recipe blog for any of you who would like to try it (while at the same time making your house smell like Willy Wonka's Chocolate Factory--the old one, not the new one).  I'm also adding it to the bottom of this post.

This is what dreams are made of.

I started by melting the candy bars and butter together in the microwave, which probably took a minute to a minute and a half.  (I must stop at this point and say that I've never had a Milky Way candy bar to my recollection.  It looks like a Snickers without the nuts.  I am sad to say that I didn't really develop a taste for Snickers until a few years ago, and I am going to have to make up for that in the years to come.  That being said, I believe that I will like Milky Way candy bars.)  While those were melting, I began beating the cake mix together.  May I just say that melting candy bars and butter together smells awesome? An interesting thought: I think that if you wanted, you could melt the butter completely and melt the candy bars most of the way, and leave small chunks to find in the cake after it's baked.  Okay.  After the cake mix was ready, I added the melted mixture and vigorously folded it into the batter.  It took a few minutes before it was completely incorporated, but it is worth it.  I poured it into the bundt pan (its first use ever) and put it in the oven.  (A tip for those not used to baking: be sure to beat the cake mix according to the directions, timing each level.  For instance, if it says "beat on low for 30 seconds", do exactly that.  Your cakes will come out with just the right amount of air and make them light and fluffy.)

My house smells like heaven right now.

I haven't done much baking since I started working again, but that will all have to change with the discovery of this recipe.  My next blog:  How To Lose Unwanted Candy Bar Cake Pounds.

The cake baked for at least ten or fifteen minutes longer than the package directed.  Different ovens will bake at different temps, but be aware that with the addition of extra ingredients comes extra baking time.  But it is out of the oven now, and it is teasing me as it cools by sending tantalizing aromas throughout the house from the general kitchen area. 

I couldn't wait until it cooled completely to take it out of the bundt pan.  Make sure you let it cool completely before removing it from the bundt pan.  It didn't come out clean, but it tastes delicious!  I mean, come on--candy bars in cake form??  How can it not be good?  Now, it's great plain, but if you need the extra oomph, try sprinkling powdered sugar over top, or frost it with chocolate frosting (my favorite recipe follows at the bottom).

Well, there you go.  This is an awesome cake, best to make when there are a lot of people to eat it with you.  I'm not even going to share calorie details, so don't ask.  Just know, the more calories, the better it tastes!

Charlie Manuel Milky Way Cake

Wow.  Very good.  Does not keep well though, so you should just eat it right away.

Ingredients:

1 box yellow cake mix

1 stick unsalted butter

6 regular-sized Milky Way bars, cut into 1" squares

Directions:

Preheat oven according to package directions for bundt cake pan.

Using a microwave, melt the butter and candy bars together, stirring occasionally.  Mix well.

Prepare cake mix according to the package directions, then stir in Milky Way mixture.

Bake as directed on cake mix package.

(Note: I had to add an extra ten minutes or so to the package bake times)

Hershey's Perfectly Chocolatey Chocolate Frosting
1 stick (1/2 C) unsalted butter (I don’t recommend using margarine)
2/3 C Hershey cocoa
3 C powdered sugar
1/3 C milk
1 tsp vanilla extract

Melt butter.  Stir in cocoa.  Alternately add powdered sugar and milk, beating on medium speed to desired spreading consistency.  Add more milk, if needed.  Stir in vanilla.  Makes about two cups frosting.