Almond Cake

 I'm going to post this so I don't lose it.  And that's because I can tell already this is destined to become an Els Family Classic.  Sarah made it on the spur of the moment one night over Fathers Day weekend.  I didn't think much about it since I was full.  Then I tasted it the next day.  Wow!  It's unforgettable.  In both flavor and texture. When you don't want chocolate or fruit this is your Go To Dessert:

Ingredients:

Almond Cake mix (Sarah said there was only one choice available at Walmart)

package instant vanilla pudding mix

8 ounce package of sour cream

4 eggs 

3/4 cup water

3/4 cup oil

almond extract.....when I asked her how much she couldn't say.  I asked was an "Els measure" and she said yes....this means about a Tablespoon.  We tend to convert teaspoons into Tablespoons when it calls for flavorings. 

.........Then I think she just baked it however the cake mix box told her to. 

......... I see this more like a pound cake with maybe a powdered sugar and almond extract icing drizzled over it.  It's moist enough to not need a lot of icing.  More of a coffee cake type dessert.   

Bread

 

This bread is extremely easy and good. And I can’t take credit for it.  The only work I am doing here is the research of making sure that anybody can do it.  And, as the saying goes, if I can do it, so can you. The bonus you get with my blog is stories.

The Els family knows their bread.  Great Grandpa Els, father of four sons, all who went into the business, owned Els Bakery in Dallas.  He started out and failed at chicken ranching.  Nobody knows how or why he went into baking.  No one ever saw him bake bread or so much as lift a cup of flour.  With six kids he was more into management.  And he was a strict manager.  Family lore tells of the time he fired a gun at Uncle Willie.  But that's another story for another day. 

As you might imagine, as the Els sons grew up they moved to other towns.  Uncle Buddy moved to a bakery in Louisiana did very well for himself.  Willie went to Ft Worth, Buster to Tulsa.  Only Beaven's father, Baby to the family since he was the youngest stayed in Dallas and managed the original Els Bakery.  I grew up seeing it on the shelves of the grocery.  They were the only ones who baked the specialty breads:  Salt-free, Salt-rising, Sour Dough, French Bread, Parker House Rolls and Rye.  

But the Elses know our bread.  When visiting Uncle Buster we would start the meal with him picking up the loaf of bread and taking a slice of bread and tearing it to check for it's texture.  It reminded me so much of the way the pastor tears the bread at communion that it made the gesture almost sacred.  And to Buster the move was almost that special.  He was checking himself to see if the day's bread was up to his standards.  Were there too many holes or irregularities?  He knew his recipes and his dough.  He wanted to know his finished product.

I could go on when you came here for a recipe.  Let me get back to the story.

....................

Emily brought the idea home from her book club.  Except that she is honest enough to call it a wine and cake club.  Only at the end did they come up with a book title that they said, “Oh, yeah, we should read a book.” So they came up with a book to read so they could meet again a month later for more wine and cake.  These same friends got together for dinner and one served this bread and she brought home the recipe.  She may not be coming home with a lot of intellectual ideas but a lot of great calories well worth achieving.

And I have to admit that this recipe in various forms is available everywhere in cyberspace.  I found over five on YouTube and that’s just the Dutch over version.  You can branch off into a variety of shapes and flavors, including Foccacia, which is definitely next on my list. I'll put the link to the YouTube I watched at the end of this post.  Yes, it's cheating.  I prefer to call it extensive research.

Meanwhile, let’s get started.

To start with you really do need a Dutch Oven.  I think the heat retention of the cast iron is key to making the crust work.  Because if they say it once, they will say it 5,000 times this bread is crunchy on the outside and soft on the inside. Don't despair if you have one of those fancy enameled ones you bought for an arm and a leg-- inside that sucker it's cast iron. They just enameled outside to make it look pretty.  You can use your expensive Dutch oven.  

It just so happens that when Em showed up with this recipe my Dutch oven was sitting in the kitchen cabinet waiting for the next campfire.

Now, you will need the right ingredients.  The recipes and even the YouTubes will tell you that you can use All-Purpose flour but I’ve gotten serious enough about cooking by now (I make my own pasta noodles) that I keep bread flour in the cabinet.  Walmart sells it so it’s not that hard to get.  Walmart even delivers now so life doesn’t have to be that hard.

I also got some of that Instant Yeast in the jar.  That way I can cheat and add a little more yeast if I want and not be restricted to what they put in the little envelope.  I am also the kind of cook who regularly uses a tablespoon when the recipe calls for a teaspoon of vanilla. So, yeah, sometimes more is better.

Now, armed with the accoutrements, we can make this incredibly easy and sparse recipe—with ONLY FOUR INGREDIENTS:  Flour, yeast, salt and water.  Could it be any easier? AND there is NO KNEADING.

Assemble ingredients:

1 cup water

1 teaspoon yeast

2 1/2 cups bread flour

1 teaspoon salt

The main thing that makes this bread work is that you will pre-heat the cast iron Dutch oven.

**  Step one:  Mix it

Pour the water into a big bowl

Add the yeast and salt.  Add the flour gradually making sure it’s all incorporated

Cover the bowl and let sit for about three hours.  Yes, three hours. Forget about it. Go to the movies

**Step two: Pre-heat the oven to 450 degrees with the dutch oven and its lid inside for 30 minutes.  Don’t skip this step. Include the lid.  You are going to have an oven inside an oven.

**Step three: Work the Dough -  wet your fingers and gather the dough at the sides.  Gently pull the dough up at the sides, lift it up and fold it over to the center turning the dough a quarter turn.  Repeat this until you have lifted all the dough up and over.  This is a gentle form of kneading.  Wetting your fingers keeps the dough from sticking to your hands.  Lift the dough out of the bowl and onto a sheet of parchment paper.  With a bit of flour on it.  Transfer the dough onto the parchment paper.  Gently work the dough into a ball.  Pinch the sides and gather them onto the bottom of the ball, stretching the pinched parts onto the bottom of the ball so that the top of the ball is smooth.  Sprinkle the top of the ball with a little flour and smooth it with your fingers.  Cover this with a bowl turned upside down over the dough.

Step four** Bake It - after the over has pre-heated for 30 minutes pick up the parchment paper by the edges and transfer the dough into the Dutch oven and put it into the over.  With a sharp razor, cut an X into the top of the bread.  Place in over and bake for 20 minutes covered. After 20 minutes take the lid off the Dutch over and bake another 10 minutes uncovered.  Check for desired color.  You should be able to pick the bread up by the parchment paper and take it out of the Dutch oven.  Remove the paper and place it on a cooling rack.

 

One last tip:  Use a serrated knife to cut this bread.  And for goodness' sake don't press down when you are holding the bread.  Let the knife do the work.  Just hold the bread in place and let the serration of the knife grad hold of the bread once you get a start the knife will do its work.  At our house we've ended up cutting the loaf in half and cutting across the half to make smaller pieces.  It's just easier to manage.  

Now, as promised is the YouTube video of how to do this: 

https://img1.blogblog.com/img/video_object.png

https://youtu.be/zIYZhTjcKmE?si=icEtU9OyeS_N487_

 If the video doesn't work just look up Food Language on YouTube and look for the new perfect 4-ingredient bread.  It should be one of the first videos that pop up.  It's very popular. I'm not the only genius in America.  

Holiday Cooking

Of course I know better than to say I know more about cooking Thanksgiving than you do.  But I AM just sayin’ that I’ve cooked probably 80 holiday meals in the last forty or so years, if you add up all the Thanksgivings, Christmases and Easters then subtract the times we ate at Beaven’s parents' house.  For some reason I’ve always been the holiday meal sponsor but I’m not complaining because I absolutely love it.  It must appeal to both my love of control and food.  By cooking the meal I get both wishes.

Here is how I go about the big meal:

• Start at the finish:  get out all the serving and warming dishes first.  Put post-it notes to say what will go inside them.  Then work backwards: 
• This is where  everyone will sit
• This is where the food will sit while we eat  
• This is what I will keep it warm in,
• This is what I will cook it in…do I have enough burners or room in the oven?   
•  what do I need to buy?.. make a grocery list

The turkey is the bossiest food you can invite to the dinner.  It takes up the entire oven.  Plan on this and cook around it.  But:  you can also cover the turkey in foil and hold it an hour.  This gives you just enough time to cook the dressing and roasted vegetables.

Plan to put the rolls into the oven about the time you start calling everyone to the table.  It will take 10 minutes to get everyone seated.  Say the blessing and by the time you say “amen” the rolls will be ready. 

Other tips:

• Those big turkey roasting pans can be used to keep the dressing warm. 
• Mashed potatoes will stay perfect in a slow cooker set on low. 
• Put the gravy in a coffee carafe. It keeps it warm and you can even pour from it.
• Buy a new can of baking powder and sage every November.  You probably haven’t  used any since last year at this time and it’s out of date.

It’s too hot in November but by Christmastime you will be able to use the outside BBQ grill as an alternative refrigerator.  Remember to keep the lid on it or critters will eat your stuff.

I’ve got to go.  I let my day get away from me and the grands are about to descend and I realize I have no food in the house for any of the other days besides Thursday. 

I have an index on the blog for Thanksgiving food, including the turkey.  You’re on your own.

PS- be very careful what you put down the disposer.  It’s not used to potato peels or celery strings-- that sucker will stop up in a heartbeat and all the plumbers are out at their deer lease.

Home Brew Vanilla

Times are hard.  Who would ever think violence in Mexico could affect the quality of PTA cupcakes?

Last year's mission trip to build houses in Reynosa got cancelled because of the drug war violence.  This year's trip still is up in the air.  And these trips weren't just to build those houses.  Nosiree bob.  The trip also furnished me with a year's supply of cheap but great vanilla.  And now, dearhearts, I have officially run out of the good stuff.

Three years ago I took a cooking class here in the sticks where the average housewife does not make annual trips to Mexico nor can afford a gourmet shipment of Martha Stewart-grade vanilla.  She either settles for the stuff at Walmart or she makes her own.  The cooking teacher told me to go out and buy a pint of cheap vodka and throw in 3 or 4 vanilla beans.  This lady had won more than a few State Fair ribbons for her pies and cakes so I figure she knew what she was talking about.

She told us the vanilla would be ready in three months.  I wrote the date on the bottle and for a few months I would check it from time to time, unscrewing the bottle then sniff and swirl and sniff.  It just smelled  like vodka.  Which, if you have noticed, doesn't have much of a smell.

I went back to  using the Mexican stuff since I had it.  But tonight the bottle was enpty and things got desperate.  And there was a cake to ice.  I had no other option.  I prayed and opened the vodka vanilla.  To my happy surprise, three years later it is every bit as good as what I was buying in Mexico.

I remembered that the cooking teacher said I should give the bottle a little shake every single day.  But there is a huge "Out of Sight, Out of Mind" factor in my kitchen and I never tended to the brew.  So, I'm thinking it might not have taken three years to produce decent vanilla if I had been a smidge more attentive.

Get your vodka and beans.  It may take you some time but I've learned it will be worth it. At least until we can get the drug wars in Mexico to die down.