Monday, May 30, 2011

Garlic Cheese Herb Bread

First, buy a round loaf of bread.  Cut the bread horizontally and vertically, but don't cut all the way through the bottom. You want to be able to pull the pieces out. (Kind of like a blooming onion at Outback)
Take about 1/2 cup of pesto (which you can find in the spaghetti sauce aisle) and stuff all the cracks with it.

After you have stuffed the cracks with pesto, go back and fill all the cracks with mozzarella cheese.

Mix some melted butter and garlic salt together, and brush over the top of the bread.  Cook at 350 for 15-20 minutes.   mmmm...so delicious!

Wednesday, May 11, 2011

Mint Cookies!

I found a recipe for mint cookies online, and decided to try it out.  The original recipe is from squarebakery.blogspot.com.

You will need:
2 sticks of butter, melted
1/2 a cup of powdered sugar
3 teaspoons of peppermint oil, or 12 teaspoons of peppermint extract. (I only had 7...)
2 teaspoons of vanilla
2 1/4 cups of flour
A few drops of green food coloring (optional)

Combine the melted butter, powdered sugar, peppermint oil, vanilla, and food coloring in a medium sized bowl. 

Mix well. Make sure that there aren't any clumps of butter or powdered sugar. Then, stir in 2 1/4 cups of flour.  Mix well.


Drop teaspoonfuls of dough onto a greased cookie sheet. Cook at 400 degrees for 8-10 minutes.

Sprinkle with powdered sugar.  Enjoy!

Friday, May 6, 2011

Kolache

When I was in 5th grade, we had to do a project about the country our family immigrated from. We put different things from our culture into our presentation and had to write a short paper about the country we were from. Then, when we were all done with our presentations, we had Immigration Day. We all got matched up in couples so that we would be "married." I got stuck with Cameron, the shortest boy in our class (story of my life), and we all went through Ellis Island (which coincidentally looked a lot like our school cafeteria), and at the end we all got a cup of tapioca pudding, because apparently that's what immigrants eat.  Anyways, I did my report on Czechoslovakia, and my Nana came over and taught my sister and I how to make kolache.
According to my mom we both hated it and she had to throw almost all of them out, but my Nana also apparently used prune jelly. No wonder we didn't like them.  I had some strawberry/rhubarb jelly in the fridge that I was looking for something to do with, and remembered that I could make kolache!  My dad doesn't have my Nana's recipe anymore, but I found one on tasteofhome.com.

A couple tips before you start:
You will need arm muscles that are more functional than a wet noodle and
This is extremely time consuming.

You will need:
2 1/4oz packages of dry active yeast
1/2 cup of sugar, divided
5-6 cups of flour
1 teaspoon of salt
2 cups of warm milk (110 degrees)
4 egg yolks
1/4 cup of melted butter
1 beaten egg white
2 cups of canned fruit filling (I used jam.)

In small bowl, dissolve yeast and 1 tablespoon of sugar in warm milk, let stand for 10 minutes.
In large bowl, combine 2 cups of flour, remaining sugar, egg yolks (JUST THE YOLK!), salt, butter, and the milk/yeast mixture. Mix until smooth. Add enough flour to make a stiff dough. (I ended up using a little over 5 cups of flour.)

Place dough on a floured surface and knead for 10-15 minutes. Add additional flour if necessary, it shouldn't be sticky at all.  FYI, you will look at the clock when your arms get tired, and you will still have a long time to go.
Place dough in a greased bowl, then turn it over so that the top and the bottom of the dough are both greased. Cover with a kitchen towel and place in a warm place for one hour. I just put the bowl on the stove and turned the stovetop light on, and that seemed to be warm enough.
After an hour, punch the dough down, cover, and wait another hour. (I wasn't joking about this being time consuming.)
Once it has risen again, roll out until dough is 1/2 an inch thick.  Cut dough using the opening of a glass.
Place on greased cookie sheet and let rise another 45 minutes.  Then make indentations on each one with your thumb (make them deep!) and fill each indentation with fruit filling.  Cook at 350 degrees for 10-12 minutes.

I totally forgot to take pictures of this, but I did take one of the finished product ....
These are strawberry/rhubarb.  They are so delicious. There are 25 of them. If you are reading this, please come try one so I don't get fat.  I am a very, very happy Czech girl.