This is a recipe review, which means this is a recipe that I did not personally come up with, but that I tried out and am giving my opinion on how the recipe turned out. For legal reasons I cannot post these recipes, but I can tell you where you can get them yourself.

A couple months ago, I found some root beer concentrate at Walmart. I thought it might be good for making candy or naturally homemade root beer. I did a search for some ideas other people have had and came across one that was unexpected – root beer cookies. Never did I imagine combining the flavor of root beer and cookies. After reading all the positive reviews people gave the recipe I decided to give it a try myself. Here are my notes on the recipe:

Click here to get the full recipe and instructions.

1. The recipe makes 4 dozen cookies. I didn’t want to make that big of commitment my first time out, so I made a half batch, but just dividing all the ingredients in half.

2. Be careful you use the right amount of root beer concentrate or extract the recipe calls for. The amount the recipe calls for is right on and if you overdo, the flavor will be too overwhelming.

3. The recipe says to use a disher for scooping the cookies. I think that is a great idea. When baking cookies it’s best to have them all the same size, so that you don’t end up with one cookie that is raw in the center, and another that is burnt.

4. Make sure when you are adding the flour, to do it slowly, in increments so that you don’t end up with flour all over your kitchen.

5. I baked my cookies on a Silpat, so removal and clean up was a snap.

6. This was my first time making a frosting, and it was pretty easy to make. Just take your time and get the right consistency you want.

These cookies were great. The root beer flavor was not too overwhelming. When you take a bite you get that nice feeling of the soft cookie in your mouth and then the root beer flavor hits you and it’s like “wow that was surprising”. Everyone I gave one too loved them. And everyone I gave one too also thought they would taste bad.

Click here to get the full recipe and instructions.

Recipe Grade: A-

One of the most popular foods for snacking is the cracker. But it is not one of the most popular foods to make at home. Most people never even think about making their own crackers. And if you have been one of those people, I got you thinking about it now. I will show you that with good recipes and the right kitchen tools, you can make your own flat delights.

The hardest part of cracker making is getting your dough thin enough. Most recipes call for a thickness of 1/8 to 1/16 of an inch. So you will need a rolling pin. I recommend a french rolling pin as this give you greater control than ones that have handles built in. If you have one, you could also use a pasta maker. For starters, I think the french rolling pin would do just fine.

 
Next, you will need a pizza cutter to cut your dough into bite sized crackers. I recommend the pizza cutter made by Zyliss as it gives you the best control (getting the idea that control is important). The pizza cutters that has long handle don’t work as well as you are putting the most force at the top of the handle, not right above the blade like you do with the Zyliss model.

Next your going to need something to bake your crackers on. Any sheet pan lined with parchment paper or a slipat will do. I recommend using a slipat because in the long run you will save money on having to buy more and more parchment paper. The crackers can be easily removed from the slipat and the slipat can be used again immediately for the next batch.

The last thing you will need is a rack to cool your crackers on. The best option is a cooling rack with a grid design. Without the grid, your cracker may just fall through the cooling rack (problem I had until I got a grid style rack).

 
Now that you have the tools you need, you need some good recipes. I created one for honey cornbread crackers. For more recipes, check out The King Arthur Flour company’s website and search for “crackers”. Or you could check out their recipes in their “All-Purpose Baking Cookbook”.

 
A couple last tips for cracker making:
1. When a recipe calls for baking powder, use aluminum-free baking powder. The aluminum that is in most baking powders will throw off the taste of your crackers.
2. Watch your crackers careful. Don’t just trust what the recipe says about how long they need to cook. Crackers go from being done to overdone very quickly.
3. Make sure you store your crackers in a zip top bag or a well sealed container. Without the preservatives that are in store bought crackers, this crackers won’t last as long, so they need to be sealed well.

I challenge you to impress your friends and family at the next get together with your own homemade crackers. They will thank you!

It’s easy to see from my blog that I am a huge Alton Brown fan. So as a huge Alton Brown fan, I cook a lot of his recipes. I decided today to list some of my favorite recipes that I have tried with great success. Clicking on the title of the recipe will take you to the Food Network page containing that recipe.

1. Chicken Kiev

Here is a chicken dish you can use to really impress your dinner guests. The tarragon infused butter is what really makes this chicken. This recipe isn’t as easy as some of the others, but once you get the hang of it, it’s not bad to prepare. I always cook mine in an electric skillet.

2. Slow Cooker Pepper Pork Chops

This recipe showed me how well pepper and pork go together. This is from an episode on peppercorns and this recipe really shows off their power and place as the main spice to a dish. The pork comes out so tender you don’t need a knife. This is because you cook it for a while in a slow cooker. I love cooking some fried apples as a side dish with this one.

3. Chocolate Pudding

This is Alton Brown’s verison of an instant pudding. You start with a powdered mix that you make yourself. All then you need to add is your dairy and a little vanilla extract (I use peppermint extract once, delicious!). Be warned this is a very rich pudding, so a little goes a long way.

4. Oven Roasted Broccoli

This is a unique take on broccoli. Oven roasted with panko bread crumbs and garlic give the broccoli a new flavor. I prepared this for someone who normally doesn’t like broccoli and even she went back for seconds! It’s full of vitamins as you are not boiling them all out.

5. Soft Pretzels

This is might be the recipe I use the most (in fact as I write this my dough is rising). Never waste your money on mall pretzels or frozen ones again. Once you get the hang of the recipe they are easy to make. I bake mine on a sheet pan lined with a slipat. The only thing I do differently than Alton is use bread flour because I buy it in big 25 pound bags from Sam’s Club.

Are you tired of the same ordinary pizza pie? If you haven’t tried them before bagels are an excellent way to deliver sauce, cheese, and toppings to your mouth. When I make my pizza bagels I use bagels that I made myself (click here for the recipe for homemade bagels). Once you have your bagels ready, slice them in half (so each bagel makes two pizza bagels!). Then you will need the following

Grated Mozzarella cheese (fresh is best)
Tomato sauce
Toppings of your choice (I go for pepperoni)
Your sliced bagels

Preheat your oven to 450 degrees. Place the above ingredients on your bagels in any order you want in and how much you want. It’s customization great! You can’t get that with frozen pizza bagels. Place your bagels onto a sheet pan lined with either parchment or a Slipat. Bake for about 7-10 minutes. All you are looking to do is heat the bagel, sauce, and toppings as well as melt the cheese. Let your pizza bagels cool for a couple minutes before eating.

You can also freeze them for later use. Just place them into a good plastic ziptop bag and into the freezer. When you wish to eat them, just warm them back up again in the oven. They are great to have on hand when you need a quick lunch, dinner, or snack.

The bagel a chewy round piece of bread with a whole in the middle. The bagel has become one of the most popular forms of bread in this country. But how many people make their own, or have even thought about it? Bagels are not the hard to make, and when you make them yourself you customize anyway you want and you will save some serious dough ($$$$).

Ingredients

2 teaspoons instant dry yeast

1 1/2 tablespoons sugar

1 1/4 cups water

3 3/4 cups bread flour

1 1/2 teaspoons kosher salt

Pour 1/2 cup of the water in a large mixing bowl.  Add the sugar and salt. Sprinkle the yeast on top of the water and let it proof for 5-10 minutes (this helps to make sure that your yeast is still alive and kicking).

Add the flour and the rest of the water. Mix until the dough comes together. Add more water if the dough is dry and not sticky. Knead the dough until it is smooth and comes away from the side of the bowl. Cover the bowl and let the dough rise for 1 hour.

Preheat your oven to 450 degrees.

Remove the dough from the bowl onto a floured surface. Let is rest for 10 minutes. Divide the dough into 8 pieces (a kitchen scale helps with this, so that you get equal pieces). Roll each piece into a ball. Slightly flatten the ball and use your pointer finger to form a hole in the center.

Fill a large pot with water and bring it to a boil. Then place each bagel in the water for 30 seconds, then flip and boil for another 30 seconds. If you skip this step your bagels will not have the chewiness that bagels are known for.

Place your bagels on a sheet pan lined with parchment or a Slipat. Bake them for 10-15 minutes until golden brown on top. I always check mine after 5 minutes to see how they are progressing.

Notes

Feel free to add different flavorings to your bagels. Add cinnamon and raisins when you are knead the dough for cinnamon raisin bagels. You could had herbs, onion powder, garlic powder, maybe even cocoa powder. The sky is truly the limit. You may have to experiment a few times to get the flavors just right (like how many raisins do I add). Be sure to do all your additions in the kneading phase, you don’t want to do this after the dough has already risen.

I was at Target a couple weeks back and saw that Nestle had come out with a new bag of morsels for the holiday season. This bag contained some dark chocolate chips and some mint chips. I immediately thought these needed to go into some cookies, so I made some by adapting Alton Brown’s “The Chewy Cookie” from an episode of Good Eats. His recipe is actually adapted from the classic Nestle Tollhouse chocolate chip cookie recipe.

Ingredients

2 sticks unsalted butter

2 1/2 cups bread flour

1/4 cup cocoa powder (dutch-processed if you can get it)

1 teaspoon kosher salt

1 teaspoon baking soda

1/4 cup white granulated sugar

1 1/4 cups brown sugar

1 egg

1 egg yolk

2 tablespoons milk

1 1/2 teaspoons of extract (either all vanilla, all mint, or all peppermint or some combination of them that equal 1 1/2 teaspoons)

1 bag of Nestle Dark Chocolate & Mint morsels

Preheat your oven to 375 degrees.

Combine the flour, salt, and baking soda into a medium sized bowl and put aside. Melt the butter and pour it into a large bowl or the mixer bowl from your stand mixer. Add both of the sugars and cream them into the butter. Then add both the egg and the egg yolk, the milk, and whatever extract you chose. Mix well to evenly distribute. Then add the flour and cocoa powder slowly while the mixer is going so it doesn’t go flying everywhere. Then stir in the dark chocolate & mint chips. Place the dough in the fridge for at least a half hour. Allowing the dough to chill will harden the fat (butter) so that the cookies won’t spread as much in the oven. If you want your cookies to spread more than just skip this step.

Scoop the cookies onto a baking sheet with parchment paper on it, or a Slipat. I can usually fit about 6 cookies per sheet. In my oven I bake them for about 10-12 minutes. It’s a good idea to check the cookies after 5 minutes to gauge how long you should cook them. Since this cookies are dark already because of the cocoa it will be more of a challenge to tell when they are done. I always give some time for the first batch to cool to be sure I baked them the right amount of time (if not I adjust accordingly from then on). I typically get about 18 good-sized cookies out of this recipe. Enjoy!

I tried out a new bread recipe this week. My goal was to make a bread worthy of a sandwhich. But instead I ended up with a flat topped wonder. The bread still had a good taste, but the texture was no longer good pair with my deli ham. So what does one do with the entire loaf. I decided to turn it into garlic bread and here is how I did it.

Instructions

Set your oven to broil and move the rack close to the broilers. Cut your bread into slices and place them on your favorite sheet pan (I use a slipat on my mine). Brush them with melted butter. Then top them with either garlic powder or try rubbing them with garlic cloves. You may also want to add freshly grated paramean cheese or some dried herbs like oregano. Place them in the oven and carefully watch them until they are golden and brown toast, shouldn’t take more than 5 minutes.

So the next time your loaf doesn’t come out right, don’t throw it away, make something out of it. Garlic bread would be a good choice!

This is part of a series of posts on tools that have made my life in the kitchen easier and more productive.

My friend got me a Slipat for Christmas back in 2008. And it was a very good choice for a gift for me. I never would have gotten it myself. I wouldn’t have wanted to fork over the $20 for a mat to bake on ($20 is a lot of money in a single income home with a young child to spend on a non-esstential kitchen item). I have found the Slipat to be one of my most commonly used kitchen items. It’s save me from having to spend more money on parchment paper for baking. I also use to roll out doughs or just a place to rest some dough while I lube up a bowl. And I find them to be very easy to clean, much more so than the cheap $1 silicone mat I bought at the dollar spot at Target. I am sure I have saved enough money since I got the thing in not buying parchment paper than the Slipat costs. So if your like me and don’t want to spend extra money on “fancy” kitchen items, I recommend you find somewhere in your budget to pick one of these up, especially if you bake at least once a week.