Wednesday Morning Baking

Made these adorable goldfish crackers from Smitten Kitchen this morning. They were easy and fun, as well as delicious. The only change I made to the recipe was white whole wheat flour instead of regular whole wheat. Mine do seem a bit puffier than the crackers in the SK photos. I'm wondering if this is due to our high altitude. Yeast breads rise crazy fast here and bake fast too. But I don't think there was anything in the crackers to make them rise. Hmmm...a little culinary mystery. At any rate, they were a hit with everyone. Next time I definitely need to make a double batch!

Wintery Math

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snow ice cream!

It snowed Thursday night and almost all day on Friday, giving us the opportunity to make snow ice cream. There are a gazillion recipes out there on the internet, and they are all basically the same. I used two different methods, one with cream (minus the vanilla pudding mix) and one with chilled sweetened condensed milk. I thought the ice cream with the condensed milk would be better, but neither the kids or I could taste a difference. Maybe a side by side test is in order for the next time it snows. One thing I found helpful, which neither website mentions, is to make sure the individual bowls for the ice cream have been chilled for a bit in the freezer before serving. This ice cream melts fast and the chilled bowls help slow it down a bit.

One of my clearest memories of the Thanksgivings spent at my Great-Grandmother's house in Eastern Washington as a child is making snow ice cream with my sisters and cousins. It was fun to do again!

Chocolate Pie For All

Happy National Pie Day! Okay, I'm not really that on top of things. Nor do I really care that much that it's National Pie Day, as much as I love pie. But I happened to see it mentioned on Facebook as I was preparing to write this post, and thought it was a mildy interesting coincidence.

Anyway, In summer of 2001 Pat and I discovered one of our favorite desserts in the May/June issue of Cook's Illustrated. Their chocolate cream pie became something we made for many, many special and not-so-special occasions. After Niamh was old enough to care if she was eating the same dessert as us or not we stopped making it very often because of the eggs. But then (!!!!) a week or so ago I saw a vanilla pudding post on Smitten Kitchen which led me over to her chocolate pudding and chocolate pudding pie recipes. Both eggless! I don't know why it never occurred to me that puddings can be made without eggs.

I made the pudding straight away, but waited until Pat returned from his latest business trip before making the pie. I ended up using the crust recipe from CI (slightly adapted), and the pudding from SK. The pie turned out really great, but Pat and I both agreed that it didn't seem quite as chocolate-y as the CI custard/pudding recipe. I think next time I'll add the chocolate according the the CI recipe.

All in all, thumbs up. It was the perfect addition to movie night on Friday. And we're thrilled to be able to make our favorite (one of, that is) dessert again!

clearly, not everyone was riveted by Astro Boy