New and Old Favorites

Don't these look amazing?!  Eric and I made these together - I made the baked apples and the cookie dough and Eric made the cookies :)

These are Snickerdoodle Thumbprints with Baked Apple Filling and they are as tasty as they look!!  All you do is bake apples with cinnamon until they start to soften, let them cool and add them to your favorite Snickerdoodle recipe (my 'old' favorite) by using your thumb to create a bowl shape.  Cook the cookies according to the recipe.  Even more exciting than having cookies is what I got to bake them in...my new oven (my 'new' favorite) :)

 

Sorry about the so/so pictures - the thing about trying to take a good picture of a shiny new object is that it is hard (at least for me).  I am so excited that we finally replaced the crappy range that we have been using (I was desperate to stop cooking outside in the middle of October so we bought the cheapest one we could find 3 years ago - at $300 you don't get much more than 'basic'). 

This range is a little more than 'basic' lol.  It's a Samsung Slide-In Electric Chef Collection Range with Flex Duo Oven.  It has 5 burners, which include a Fast Boil, Warming and Bridged options.  The oven is what really sold me - even though it is a single oven door there is an insert that you can use to create two different temperature areas so it has a double oven option!  It's also a convection oven - so I made all of my cookies at once and they all turned out just like the picture above - perfect!  The drawer below the oven is a warming drawer - not just the hold all your cookie sheets drawer, the window is really see-though when the lights are on so you don't have to open the door to check your food, and it came with a temperature guage that hooks up inside the oven and reads out on the control panel...I could seriously go on about this range all day :) 

Side note: Some of you know that this was not what was supposed to go here originally.  The plan was to have a real double oven and a seperate gas cooktop.  Unfortunately, due to some issues - that just wasn't going to happen anytime soon.  We were looking at around 3-5 years before we could even afford all of that.  I don't want to wait that long to have a completed kitchen.  So I compromised - to some it's a dirty word, but I think it is a reasonable thing to do.  I want to finish the kitchen (actually completely finish it) by the end of next year - which meant I had to re-evaluate what my priorites were.  While I know I would have loved the double oven/cooktop combo - I have never had it so it's not a great loss, and I am happy with my super cool range with the double oven option.  So now we can have countertops installed in a few months - instead of a few years :) 

So, back to the new range...I'm sure you can tell that there is quite a bit of space around the oven (for some reason you cannot get a 36" electric range - you can get gas ranges that size though grrr).  This actually turns out to be a good thing!  This gives me enough room to create pull outs on either side for utensils. 

Something like this - easy to reach and use! :) 

    

I'm still working on the plan for the cabinets, but hopefully I will have something to share soon!!

Have a great day!
Beth

Twice Glazed Pumpkin Scones

Our weather turned on us just at the end of August. So I pinned a bunch of soups and scones. Now it's warming back up and it sounds like it will stay that way throughout the weekend. I'm conflicted, I want fall recipes but pineapple or coconut sounds refreshing. I had planned for this scone so I went for it. I might just make a fruity drink for later this afternoon since it's getting hotter as well.

I have gained some confidence in my baking. I have read a wonderful new pie book and she gave some helpful tips on dough making that I applied to my scones. It worked really well.

I normally make my scones big, so with out thinking I did the same thing. The recipe I have has you roll them out, you get more pieces and there's more surface for the glazes. Oh darn I will need to make more now!

Turn your oven on at 400 degrees Fahrenheit and get out a half sheet pan.

2 cups all purpose flour
1/3 cup granulated sugar
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1 teaspoon baking powder
3/4 teaspoon ground cloves
1/2 teaspoon cloves
1/2 teaspoon nutmeg
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup butter, 1 stick, cold, cut up into cubes
1/2 cup pumpkin purée
3 tablespoon milk
1 egg, slightly beaten
2 teaspoon vanilla

In a big bowl, add flour, sugar, cinnamon, baking powder, cloves, nutmeg, baking soda, and salt, stir until combined. Add cubed butter and mix in with your hands or pastry blender until you have mostly small bits of butter. In a small bowl add, pumpkin, milk, egg and vanilla. Add pumpkin mixture to flour mixture and mix until a soft dough forms. Flour a work space and flour your hands. Knead the dough 3 to 4 times. Dived the dough into two pieces and shape each into a ball. Cut each in half and then half again, you should have 4 scones in each ball. Put scones onto baking sheet spacing them out evenly. Bake for 18-24 min. If you follow the other directions they cook a lot faster another reason to make them that way.

Glaze recipes

In a small bowl mix 1 cup powdered sugar and 3 tablespoon of milk adding more milk if it's not runny enough, you want a nice steady stream when you put a spoon in then pull it out.

In a small bowl mix 1 cup powdered sugar, 1/4 teaspoon cinnamon, 1/4 teaspoon cloves, and 2 tablespoon milk. I added more milk, in fact I added too much it was still delicious!

When the scones are done, I let them sit for about 10 minutes before adding the glaze.

I hope you enjoy them as much as I did!

Trying Something New

I am so excited that my tomatoes have started to ripen!!  I have been waiting to make my own spaghetti sauce since I planted them.  Now I just have to figure out how to store the ones that are almost ready, while I wait for the rest to catch up!  I am excited to make the sauce from fresh tomatoes instead of from a can or jar, but I'm also worried that Eric will tell me he doesn't want to eat any other kind from now on lol.  I don't have any family recipes (that I know of), so I searched online and thought I would give this one a try.  I am intrigued by the carrot and honey additions - guess we'll see how it goes.  Now I just have to figure out how many tomatoes I need...

Have a great night!!
Beth

Time for relaxation!

I'm off to get a massage here in a few moments. I haven't had one in quite awhile. I'm really looking forward to it. My wonderful husband suggested it. We have a huge build up of a prepaid membership and we need to start using them so that we can cancel that unneeded expense. Oh darn, right! I'm more than happy to help out. My son is starting up preschool here soon. I will have to plan some massages while he's at school too.

Just before I started writing my favorite frozen food delivery guy came and delivered my order. Luckily just in time for lunch. I love those little pot pies! I told him I will now be home on the delivery days so he needs to start coming by again. We were off going to so many different sessions I couldn't get any deliveries. It will be so nice being at home more. I have so many things I need to work on.

You will be able to look forward to more crafty ideas from me. I know I post a lot of recipes and I still have some recipe post's. I'm looking forward to also posting about home stuff, like organizing and cleaning recipes.

I hope you all have a wonderful day!

Lighting for the Kitchen

I am sure it is pretty obvious what we need to do to 'fix' the pendant lighting at the other end of the kitchen - it's about 12" off center.  Moving the light will be pretty easy (at least that is what Eric says), but first we need to find a new light - the gold and glass builder special just isn't doing anything for me!!  It's hard to visualize exactly what we want because the kitchen is only half built, but hopefully we will end up with something we love when it is all done.  If not, we can always replace it sometime down the road.  I have looked at hundreds of lights for this space over the last two years - I wish I was exaggerating - and I have seen a lot of lights that I thought would look good.  However, Eric and I have two very different ideas of what we like - especially when it comes to lighting!!  So now we are trying to change this light out in the very near future - and we have to make a decision we can both agree on :)

Here are the two we are deciding between:



 

Industrial Pendant from West Elm

This pendant light from West Elm is great.  It is simple, modern and comes at a great price.  The problem is it's only 11.5" wide - I am worried that it will look like a tiny light in a too-big area.  It's hard to tell from the picture, but the area with the shorter island is pretty big (I would say it is around 8'x10' and it has a sloped ceiling - the island will be around 36"x36").  So my thought is that it would look better if we either did a group of 3 lights hanging at different heights or 2 lights in line with the island - this will help increases the amount of area that the lights take up.



George Kovacs Families Collection

 This light is a little larger at 16" - I think we would only use one light and it will be fine.  It's a little more expensive, but still within my budget, and it is kind of a traditional shape with a little modern texture/look to it.

So now, we have to agree to stop looking and decide which one to get.  Who knows - we may end of with something completely different. Lol

Oh yeah, we also have to find light(s) for above the sink that will work with the larger

pendant light that we choose...guess I have more lights to look at :)

Have a great day!

Beth