TWD - Irish Sodie Bread

Alright it's actually soda bread, Irish Soda Bread. But since I'm from the south, we sometimes refer to fizzy drinks as sodie....so this is sodie bread. To be perfectly honest, I actually call fizzy drinks pop. Which confuses everyone around here because they more often refer to fizzy drinks as coke.

Waiter: "What would you like to drink?"

Southerner: "You know, I'll take some coke. What do you have?"

Waiter: "We've got Pepsi, Dr. Pepper, Mt. Dew and RC Cola."

Southerner: "I'll take sweet tea instead."


You know, I wonder how this bread would taste with a little sodie in it? Maybe a nice grape Fanta... 3/22/2012 CORRECTION - Do Not, I repeat do not make this with grape Fanta. That would be gross and I do not want to be responsible for grossness.

For this recipe I kept it old school, really old school. I stuck to the Irish roots of this staple and changed nothing. I even considered making my own sour milk*. But then I forgot what day it was and didn't make this until today, Tuesday. The Tuesday that we are supposed to post this bread. I had to use store bought buttermilk powder instead of authentico** soured milk. I did remember in my vast researching of this recipe (I do this with all recipes, I have to know everything about it and then I promptly forget) there was a story of an Irish gal making her daily soda bread and how she was late in making her bread because she forgot to sour the milk and had to send a carrier pigeon to the milk farmer and see if he had any soured milk to spare. The milk farmer kindly replied and told her that he did, but if she'd been a smart lassie she could have just added a little vinegar to her fresh milk and voila buttermilk!

If you have made it this far into the post you will realize that that story might have been a false hood and that I didn't really have anything exceptional to write. The lassie part, not the sodie part. The sodie part is true; very, very true.

Thank you and happy sodie bread!


Our hosts for this week are: http://myculinarymission.blogspot.com/2012/03/twd-irish-soda-bread.html and http://chocolatemoosey.blogspot.com/



* the difference between buttermilk and sour milk:  http://www.ehow.com/facts_5818094_difference-between-buttermilk-sour-milk.html

And I wasn't going to really churn my own butter and make buttermilk. I was just kidding. But if you are interested in making butter and buttermilk, check this out:  http://www.instructables.com/id/How-To-Make-Butter-and-Buttermilk/

**authentico is a word I just made up. Please use it. 3/22/2012 UPDATE - I just found out that I did not make this word up. I am sad now.

My oh Meyer Lemon Tart

My oh my, this tart was nice. With Meyer lemons needing to be used in my ice box, this was an of course! I've done a few lemon tart/pies, but still hadn't really settled on a lemon filling that I would call my "go to".

I'm not sure this one is either, but it certainly fits the bill on this rainy day. Spring is springing around and the clocks are doing there thing, so it's time for us to think bright, shiny thoughts and I think sampling this pie might do it.

I suggest you do it too.

The pie consists of a lemon pudding from Tartine Bakery in San Francisco. I didn't make any alterations at all so I'm just going to link to the original. They have a nice step by step of the processes. (Although sometimes I just want to get to the recipe.)

http://food52.com/blog/2980_tartine_bakerys_lemon_cream

Just a note about this recipe, the directions say to cook the lemon mixture until it reaches 180 degrees, I could never get over 160 degrees, but the pudding was coating my whisk and eggs are safe at 145 degrees. So I was happy with that.

The crust comes from a fig tart over at the Nourished Kitchen. I was looking for something a little different and this seem to work, you'll have to scroll down to the bottom to find the crust recipe. This recipe called for the crust to be cooked for 35 minutes, but at 15, my edges were brown and the bottom was firm.

http://nourishedkitchen.com/fresh-fig-tart-almond-crust/

If you decide to make the fig and yogurt tart, save me a piece.

Thanks.


3/15/2012 UPDATE! I submitted this recipe (with appropriate credits) to instructables.com and it became one of the editors pick's!!!!  http://www.instructables.com/tag/type-id/category-food/

TWD - Rugelach

Sometimes instructions are hard to follow. Like "only one sample per person please" or "dry clean only". I might have a hard time following these and quite frankly they are hard to follow. I'm pretty sure I'm not the only one and if I am then just call me rule breaker!

I'm not really a rule breaker. It makes me uncomfortable breaking any rules. One time my husband called me uptight in regards to my strict rule following, I got so upset that I went in the kitchen and broke all the dishes on the back patio. I just picked up a whole stack of plates and dropped them on the concrete, next I grabbed the bowls and finally the dessert plates. This set of dishes could serve twenty-four. Twenty-four plates, twenty-four bowls, twenty-four cups, twenty-four saucers and twenty-four dessert plates. And that didn't count our everyday dishes.

Well a couple of things came out of that episode: 1) I opened up a bit to being a little flexible about life and 2) I got a new set of dishes ;)

I tried to follow the instructions with this recipe too, I read it, re-read it and then read it again. But I just could not. Some of it was because I didn't want to, the other was because no matter how much I read the instructions I got confused.

I didn't want to make lekvar and didn't even know if I could find it around here (although after googling it, I thought I was stepping out and being clever by using apple butter... apparently apple butter is a type of lekvar). So I thought, "ohhh, instead of lekvar I'll be clever and use apple butter, that'll make it even more amazing with the walnuts and dried fruit" and then while grocery shopping for the ingredients I made another change, "ohhh, I'll be cheap and use these toffee bits that are a 1/4 of the price of these walnuts, that'll make it even more amazing with the apple butter and forget dried fruit!"

That was the bit where I didn't want to follow the instructions. This next is about how I got confused and couldn't follow the instructions.

So how hard is it to spread a required amount of cinnamon/sugar mixture on the rolled out dough? Apparently very hard. Since I had made the change earlier and choose to go with only toffee and no walnuts or dried fruit I didn't need to mix any of the sugar with the fruit and nuts. So when I was trying to figure out how much cinnamon/sugar to spread on I kept coming up with a lot. I mean when I was spreading this over my apple butter, it just kept pouring and pouring. I was like this is got to be too much. Well upon reading the instructions for the 42nd time I realized that some of the mixture was to be used after the rolls had been rolled.

Well after chilling, waiting and baking this is what happened after non instruction following:

I call these sweet, gooey mess-bombs.

They tasted good, the toffee melted down to a very sticky substance. And even though they might not have been the prettiest, my tasters didn't turn away in disgust.

I do have two more roles in the fridge, I will have to be clever and figure out a way to bake them so that they don't explode. Maybe I can find some instructions ;)



If you want to know what they are supposed to look like, check out this week's host http://mybakingheart.com/ and http://www.theurban-hiker.com/