• Mouthwatering Meyer Lemon and Ricotta Pancakes over at My Husband Cooks.
• Baking Bites (formerly Baking Sheet) reports that the FDA is considering changing the definition of chocolate, thereby lowering current standards. Perhaps they should concern themselves with more pressing issues, like contaminated food?
• A guide on How to Freeze Anything, via Slashfood.
• Becks and Posh’s hilarious Easter entry, revisited.
• **Updates**
• Freya orders a pig’s head, and details her Easter cooking.
• I discover a blog: An Italian in the US, and drool over the Torta Pasqualina. Yum.

Include alcohol, chocolate, macadamia nuts, avocado, coffee, tea, onions, raisins, and grapes. Much more here, and this list includes foods that you should not feed to cats.

Last Christmas, we bought some Sam Adams Light beer for dinner guests. Because Master Chow and I do not like beer, five bottles have been sitting in our basement since December. What to do?

Beth Hensperger and Beer Batter Bread, to the rescue. Master Chow loved this! The taste of the beer that you use really comes through, so pick one that you like. I added 1/4 teaspoon of cayenne to the batter, and even for me (I don’t like a lot of heat in food) that wasn’t quite enough, so you may want to eliminate it, increase it, or substitute other herbs. Dill and caraway might be a nice combination, or rosemary.

The bread is best the day it is baked, but I froze some and it was wonderful, toasted with butter, a few days later.

Beer Batter Bread

Adapted from Williams-Sonoma Collection: Bread

• 3 cups (15 oz./470 g) unbleached all-purpose flour

• 3 Tablespoons firmly packed light brown sugar

• 1 Tablespoon baking powder

• 1 teaspoon salt

• 1/4 teaspoon powdered cayenne pepper

• 1 bottle (12 fl. oz./ 375 ml) beer, unopened and at room temperature

• 4 Tablespoons unsalted butter, melted, plus extra for greasing the pan

Preheat the oven to 375 F, and grease a 9-by-5 inch loaf pan. Place a rimmed baking sheet in the oven, on the middle rack, while you prepare the batter.

In a large bowl, mix together the dry ingredients. Open the beer and add it all at once – it will foam up, so be sure to use a large bowl. Stir briskly just until ingredients are combined, about 2o strokes. The batter should be slightly lumpy and thick. Pour into loaf pan, and drizzle with the melted butter.

Place the loaf pan on the baking sheet in the oven. Bake about 35-40 minutes, or until the top is golden brown and crusty, and a cake tester inserted in the middle comes out clean. Let loaf rest about 5 minutes before turning out onto a cooling rack.

Enjoy with plenty of butter, or plain.

It had been a while since I baked with yeast – years, in fact. And I grew helping my mom mill her own wheat flour, and bake whole wheat loaves. Every Sunday, we had homemade pizza with tomato sauce canned from our own tomatoes. So, how can someone with that background develop a Fear of Yeast?

Stop baking with it for a while.

Needless to say, I was determined to get back on that horse. Inspired by Ivonne’s recent creation, I girded my loins and hit the kitchen this past weekend. Armed with Margaux Sky’s Beautiful Breads and Fabulous Fillings: The Best Sandwiches in America, I decided to bake some cinnamon rolls, which I’d never made before.

Both Ari, of Baking and Books, and Ivonne have used some of the book’s recipes, and warned that the amount of flour the recipes called for could be off. They were right. Another reason to love the culinary blogosphere – you get reports back from the trenches.

So, I started baking. I cleared off the kitchen counter. I set out my ingredients, and got to work. And then . . . I ran out of flour. No problem, I thought, I’ll just go down to the freezer and check my back stock. Among the rice flour, garbanzo flour, spelt flour, etc., I found . . . pastry flour. Which you don’t use to make bread.

What the heck, I thought, there are times to live dangerously, and this is one of those times. Never mind that my freshly bought yeast wasn’t bubbling, either. I ended up using 7 cups of all-purpose flour, and 4 cups of pastry flour.

I thoroughly enjoyed kneading the dough. Working dough by hand gives me a feeling of being connected to the earth. I think of women doing exactly the same thing, for thousands of years. It’s a zen experience. I kneaded for about 10 minutes instead of the 4 stated in the recipe, partly because I enjoyed it, but mostly because I was trying to develop as much gluten as possible in the pastry flour.

After I rolled up the dough (the wrong way, but it didn’t really matter in the end), I had an oddly shaped log, which I then cut up. I filled the muffin cups and put them in the refrigerator to rise overnight. The next morning, while they baked, I made the glaze, which I adjusted in terms of liquid and flavorings, otherwise I would have ended up with a thin, watery, and tasteless glaze.

Our thoughts? These were easy to make, and pretty tasty. Some of them were huge – 3 inches across! The insides were moist and fully cooked. On the downside, Master Chow and I both thought that the dough lacked depth of flavor. I don’t know if this was due to my pastry flour incident or not, but I’d like to make them again using the correct flour. And even though I used this cinnamon, they didn’t have a strong enough cinnamon flavor. My favorite part was the orange glaze I made for them, which had a nice, intense taste.

Would I make them again? Yes, but I’m going to continue my quest for the ultimate cinnamon roll. So many recipes, so little time! I’d better get cracking.

Oh, and yesterday, while I was digging through the freezer, guess what I found? A new, unopened bag of all-purpose King Arthur Flour. ARGH!

Cinnamon Rolls
Adapted from Beautiful Breads and Fabulous Fillings: The Best Sandwiches in America

Sweet Dough

• 1 Tablespoon yeast
• 2 cups warm water
• 1 cup warm milk
• 1 cup heavy cream
• 1 cup (2 sticks) of butter
• 1/2 cup sugar
• 4 eggs, beaten
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 12 cups all-purpose flour (Note – this is an approximation – stop at around 9 cups and feel the dough. Keep adding flour until the dough loses most of its stickiness but not all of it. Remember, you’re going to be adding more flour when you knead the dough. I used 11 cups of flour, total.)
• 1/8 teaspoon salt

Put the water and milk in large bowl. Dissolve the yeast in the mixture. Add the cream. Let stand until foamy. The recipe says about five minutes, but mine took almost 20. If you are using yeast well within the expiration date, don’t worry and be patient.

Generously grease a large bowl, and a muffin tin. Set the tin aside. Add the butter, sugar, eggs, and vanilla to the yeast mixture.

Slowly add the flour and salt to the wet ingredients (see Note above). Place the dough on a floured counter top and knead for 5 to 10 minutes.

Place the dough in the prepared bowl, cover with plastic wrap, and place in a warm, dry place to rise for about 1 hour. Rose Levy Berenbaum suggest letting dough rise in a cold oven (make sure the oven is off!) with only the interior light turned on, and this has worked well for me.

Punch dough down and separate into two portions. You will be using one portion to make the cinnamon rolls, and you can reserve the other in the refrigerator for later use.

Cinnamon Rolls

• 1 portion Sweet Dough
• 4 tablespoons all purpose flour
• 1 cup (2 sticks) of butter, melted
• 2 cups packed brown sugar
• 3 Tablespoons cinnamon

Icing

• 4 cups powdered sugar, sifted
• 2/3 cup half-and-half or cream, or any combination thereof
• 1/3 cup orange juice
• zest of one orange
• 4 drops of orange oil

Make sure your oven is empty (heh, heh, that’s another story). Place rack in middle of the oven and preheat oven to 375 F.

You will need a lot of room to roll out the dough. Sprinkle a counter top with flour, and roll out the dough into a rectangular shape. The dough should be slightly thicker than a sheet of paper, and the long side of the rectangle should be perpendicular to your body.

In a large bowl, combine the melted butter, brown sugar, and cinnamon. Mix well.

Spread the cinnamon mixture over the rolled out dough, and spread it to the edges.

The short side of the dough should be parallel to you. Tightly roll the dough away from you, forming a loaf. Fold the outer edges in as you roll, to hold the filling in.

Cut into 9-12 cinnamon rolls. Place them in the greased muffin cups. I had a couple midget rolls, so I put them in the middle cups so they would not burn before the larger ones finished cooking. Place the muffin tin on a baking sheet with an edge, like a jelly roll pan. This is essential, or you will have a big mess in your oven. The muffins rise a lot, and ooze everywhere.

Bake for 15-20 minutes – keep an eye on the rolls. Remove rolls immediately from tins and place on a plate.

While they are baking, you can make the glaze, which involves mixes together all the glaze ingredients. Add the half-and-half/cream and juice slowly to the powdered sugar, until the glaze reaches a consistency that you like. You may use less liquid than I did.

If you glaze the rolls immediately, they will absorb the mixture and just look shiny, so wait for them to cool a bit if you want a white, icing-like look. Enjoy!

Like most of us, I’ve been pretty busy (and tired) lately, so as usual, I’m catching up on all the news, and recipes I’d like to try.

• Over at Mark Ruhlman’s blog, guest blogger Bob del Grosso teaches us how NOT to make a tomato sauce
• Ivonne blogs about some incredible-looking Macadamia Nut Rolls with Orange Glaze that I have to try.
• Reminder – Chris has launched a Cooking to Combat Cancer event – due date is April 9.
• Heidi teaches us how to make pesto like an Italian grandmother (this is how my family made it, too)
• I love to visit Ari’s Baking and Books. Recipes to try: Empanada Pot Pie with Cream Cheese Crust, Caramelized Onion and Spinach Stuffed Pizza Pie. Yum.
• You can find Thai mini pancakes over at Appon’s Thai Food. They look good, and I love the pan!
• As a former member of the food service industry, I love reading Diary of a Food Whore. She links to Waiter Rant’s list of “50 Signs You Might Be An Asshole Customer.” Go ye and read of it!
• Again for those of you with furry friends, here is the most comprehensive list I’ve found that discloses the companies that have their dog and cat foods made by Menu Foods. The exact cause of the deaths is still unconfirmed, media reports to the contrary. More disturbing news, here (thanks to Beth for the recall info).**Update: for up-to-the minute news on the pet food recall, check out Pet Connection. Some more unnerving developments: the FDA suspects some tainted wheat gluten may have found its way into dry dog food, and the FDA cannot rule out contamination of human food.

Another Molly Stevens recipe. I’m just going to post some pictures from this one – the instructions went on for about three pages, even though the dish is not complicated at all. Trust me!

The greasy hands above are Master Chow’s, coming back for his second plateful of ribs. The sauce had a rich taste of porcini mushrooms. In fact, the scent and taste were so exciting, that little Gus, was walking around on his hind legs, sniffing the air! He was lucky enough to get a taste.

I decided to make this dish because I had been digging around in the freezer for a pot roast. I pulled out the package, only to discover a while later that it contained some rather fatty ribs. “Master Chow!” I said. “Did you buy these?”

“Yes,” he replied. “But you have to make them quick – I bought them for cheap because they were old.”

Ah. I see.

After they passed the sniff test, I turned to Molly Stevensyet again, as I had never before made ribs. I had fresh rosemary, and a copious supply of porcini mushrooms that I keep stashed. Had a bottle of wine, and other aromatics.

We were not disappointed. Next time, I will add more liquid during the braise so that there is more sauce to slurp.

1. Step one – prepare the marinade, which includes onion, wine, allspice, and peppercorns. I added some parsely.

2. After a 24 hour marinade, I dried off the ribs and broiled them quickly until browned.

3. Preparing the braising liquid – onions, tomatoes, wine, rosemary, porcinis, and a spice sachet.

4. Three hours later – ta da! Ribs! Master Chow ate them all! Cleaned the bones!