Fat and Crafty.com

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Tomorrow morning Miss Dreamingcrow and I will be off to the Urban Craft Uprising. As in the past I’m hoping to arrive early enough that we get goodie bags, and that we have some time to chatter before the doors open.
This time it sounds like there are some great Craft Demos that will be happening.
I hope to attend the one by Tonia Davenport of “The Art of Plexi Class”
and Susan Beal of “Button it Up”

I go to these fairs looking for innovation, looking for whats new and exciting. I do indulge in a little snark over the uninspired and the overpriced, but overall I appreciate the opportunity the fair allows. It’s a step up from the average craft fair even if I think some of the vendors are redundant. Ultimately i have to applaud them for getting up and sharing their craft, I’ve thought about it but never put in the effort.

Anyone else going to the Urban Craft Uprising this weekend? Any Vendors you think I shouldn’t miss?

The July Daring Bakers’ challenge was hosted by Nicole at Sweet Tooth. She chose Chocolate Covered Marshmallow Cookies and Milan Cookies from pastry chef Gale Gand of the Food Network.

This was my first Daring Bakers challenge, and I’ll admit my first thought was “marshmallows? in this weather?” Heck the heat here has made baking unpleasant. But I forged on. I started with the cookie dough for the marshmallow cookies, then while that chilled I made the milans.

What struck me was the I can recognize by the process and ingredients what kind of a product I should end up with or even associate the item i am making with another item. Like recognizing that the cheese puffs I made the other night are really cream puffs with cheddar.

As I worked with the milans it was pretty clear that it was a tuile batter, with a ganache in the middle. Despite using my cookie gun to control the amount of batter I put out. I still ended up with a variety of shapes and sizes on the cookies. Some was my own experimentation. Some was working with a pan that was too hot. Some was just because it was too warm in general.

So I had small cookies and big cookies and milano shaped cookies, and round cookies. In the end? They were ok. A little sticky, and a little orangey from the reviews I got. Next time I’ll make them when its cooler, less humid and with mint ganache filling. I’ll happily revisit this recipe

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I was more apprehensive about the marshmallows. I was sure that the humidity would be the death of them, and everything seemed to conspire against this recipe. First, I waited 5 days before using the dough instead of the 3 allotted by the recipe. Second I could find neither my thermometer for candy, nor my rolling pin. I pushed on though.

The one fatal flaw was that I portioned out the dough based on what the recipe said. 2 dozen cookies. Well this gave me fat fat cookie bases for the marshmallow. The marshmallow that sat too long, then was too firm to sit on the cookie nicely. I melted it onto the cookies a bit, but in the end found it drizzly.
The last step dipping in chocolate and waiting for it to dry seemed overly optimistic in our 90 degree heat. But in the end?

They were good enough to eat. (And the marshmallow recipe is good enough to revisit, when its a little less humid.)

Recipes can be found below the cut.

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When Wolfsilveroak posted on the LiveJournal Food Porn community that she had joined the “The Daring Bakers” . Turns out the Daring Bakers is part of the Daring Kitchen. It’s a monthly challenge for bakers and cooks. The host chooses a recipe, we all then cook it, take pictures and report on the results.

I thought about waiting and just cooking along. However, without incentive it became pretty clear that I wasn’t going to follow along. So I signed up. Tomorrow you’ll get to see my first reveal, and I have to say I had a lot of fun playing along. Then around the 14th, you’ll see my first Daring Cooks challenge.

While immersed in my gaming class last quarter I spent a lot of time thinking about games in general. Board games, card games, video games and so on. It occurred to me that I could create a board game, with a little study in design I could make one of my stories interactive. Well today I found a resource that will make it easier. Game Crafter. It’s an on demand print/publishing system for games. Everything from boards and cards , to packaging with play money and basic game tokens.

Isn’t that cool? What kind of game would you make?

Can someone in the area let me know what they got in their CSA box this week? I’m doing a meal planing class next Saturday and need to prep my material!

I made pancakes this morning. Making pancakes on a day off is no big deal, what is a big deal is that it was all from scratch and I made only enough for me.

I’d seen this cookbook at Third Place books in Shoreline, “Ratio: The Simple Codes Behind the Craft of Everyday Cooking” by Micheal Ruhlman. The concept was easy, cooking, no matter what you re making breaks down in simple ratios. Once you learn the ratio the sky is the limit to what you can make.

What attracted me was the idea that i could make small batches of biscuits, cookies, crepes or even pancakes. So I checked it out from the library and this morning i decided I needed pancakes.

The basic ratio is 2 parts liquid : 2 parts flour: 1/2 part fat : 1 part egg. (he put butter in for the fat, but i think other fats might work. With the addition of a whole grain cereal mix, some sugar, baking powder, vanilla and frozen blueberries you have:

Deb’s Blueberry Grain Cakes

(note everything is weighed out )
4 ounces buttermilk
1 egg (equals 2 ounces)
1/4 tsp of vanilla
1/2 ounce melted butter
2 ounces 7 grain cereal mix
2 ounces flour
pinch of salt
1 tsp baking powder
1 tablespoon sugar
frozen blueberries

1. mix liquid ingredients, adding a
2. grind 7 grain mix (or use oat flour) . Mix with other dry ingredients.
3. Stir dry into wet, add a handful of frozen blueberries.
4. Cook and eat. If you put to many blueberries in like I did you won’t need syrup.

The cookbook says you can go as high as 25% of another grain in the pancake. I went 50% and had no issue. I wonder if I could go higher.

I think my next step will be converting this into a whole grain muffin for breakfasts.