Dutch Babies

Dutch Babies are a family favorite... I pretty much grew up with these. My mother's recipe says:

Victor Manca of Manca's Restaurant in Seattle created this menu specialty, a version of a big German-style pancake. His recipe was for little oven pancakes so his family called them Dutch Babies. Now many people know all types of oven pancakes as Dutch Babies, even when they are made bigger.

The idea is to put the batter into a pre-warmed pan coated with melted butter. It then puffs up into a soft and fluffy pancake that can be topped with all kinds of goodies.

Dutch Babies for breakfast!

Fudge Brownie recipe

1/2 cup butter (or margarine)
4 ounces unsweetened chocolate (baking chocolate)

2 cups sugar
1 1/2 teaspoon vanilla
Cinnamon to taste (or other flavors)

4 eggs

1 cup all-purpose flour
1 cup nuts or chocolate chips

Starting ingredients, except for the butter...

Weekend Accomplishments and Linkdump

We've been treading water here at Stepford House, trying to get ourselves ahead of the game but usually failing. Right now we see a possible end in sight, with the last exterminator visit being Hallowe'en morning. By November 1st, we should be moving into the next phase of our lives here: clean-up.

Still, lots to try to get done each weekend, and this one was no exception. We started with the usual Saturday shop, only we also hit the dollar store and Bi-Mart to get some extras. I got a few bucks worth of Hallowe'en decorations, including ping-pong eyeballs for Inkwell to play with. Anyway, once we got home it was time to get the yard mowed down into its winter state. We rolled up the hoses, mowed the grass and tumbleweed low, and put everything away, hopefully until spring.

After that, we didn't do much yesterday. Physical labor takes a lot out of me, even if it's as trivial as mowing the yard.

Today I put up my "Don't Forget to Vote" flag and my Hallowe'en flag in the front windows. Makes our house look a little more occupied than without them. I've also been flying the Norwegian flag quite a bit, but it needs to be retired and replaced because I've flown it enough that it's getting ragged.

I also baked some pumpkin cookies today, just because I wanted to bake something. That was fun, but the cookies are a little bland. More pumpkin pie spice next time! I'll be wrapping those up to have for breakfast and the like over the next week or so.

I've also been on Facebook a fair bit, and I post most of my stuff there. I was getting WAY too political, so I told myself I couldn't post about something unless it hit 9 or 10 on my 0-to-10-outrage-o-meter. Some stuff did get through.

It's kind of sad that my linkdumps are now done mostly on Facebook. So I'm going to link to a handful of stuff I've already posted to Facebook, but still think is important or interesting enough to share.

Girl puts on a headscarf, is surprised at just how much different she is treated at the local mall.

A difficult story I wrote for work. I first learned about the attack on Tuesday morning when I looked through the county sheriff's report. I went out there Thursday morning to do the story so we could just let people know the cost of allowing dogs to run loose.

The Salt Lake Tribune endorses Obama. "Politicians routinely tailor their words to suit an audience. Romney, though, is shameless, lavishing vastly diverse audiences with words, any words, they would trade their votes to hear."

Even Ben Stein recognizes that taxes on the rich need to be raised. It's about time he started talking sense.

The 20 Coolest Stop-Motion Monsters. A decent list. I'm not sure it's got all the "coolest" ones, but these are pretty darn good, yeah.

Doctor Who: P.S. - Series 7 2012 - BBC One. For all Doctor Who fans, but only watch if you've already seen The Angels Take Manhattan. Seriously. But if you *have* seen that episode, this is a must-watch.

How many times do I have to say it? It's not that Aquaman can talk to fish that's so cool, it's that he can survive without extra equipment underwater indefinitely. And go to depths humans can only dream about. THAT'S what's cool about Aquaman's powers.

A child nearly dies because someone else didn't vaccinate their own child. People who don't vaccinate their children should be held liable for any child near them that gets a vaccine-preventable disease.

Lynnae's Orange Biscuits

This is the recipe as it was printed in the Daily Sun News of Sunnyside, WA on Wednesday, Dec. 28, 2011. It was printed at the end of a column about responses that reporters get, written in response to a request for the recipe. The column was not published on the website of the newspaper.

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Lynnae's Orange Biscuits

1/2 cup butter or margarine
1-1/2 cup orange juice
1-1/2 cup sugar
2 teaspoons grated orange peel
4 cups flour
6 teaspoons baking powder
1 scant teaspoon salt
7 to 8 generous tablespoons shortening
1 1/2 cups milk

Combine butter, orange juice, sugar and orange peel in saucepan. Cook and stir overmedium heat until sugar is dissolved. Pour into 9x13 baking pan.

Combine flour, baking powder and salt; cut in shortening until finely incorporated. Add milk, stir until dough follows fork. Knead on lightly floured board until dough holds together, being careful not to over handle the dough, roll about 1/4 inch thick. Brush with soft butter, sprinkle with sugar and cinnamon. Roll as for jelly roll. Cut into slices, place cut side down in orange juice/sugar mixture in pan. Bake at 450 degrees for 20 to 25 minutes or until golden brown on top.

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For the record, I haven't received any response to that column yet. We'll have to see if it happens. However, I did go ahead and make the recipe today for my brunch. Since Eric isn't here at the moment, I halved the recipe. It came out excellent. It feels a little like blasphemy, because mom usually made more than one batch and halving it ... wow.


Orange Biscuits are best served fresh out of the oven with a side of eggs and sausage. They are best on Christmas Day, served after presents have been opened. To serve, scoop up one or more of the biscuits with a large spoon and turn them over onto a plate, so the orange sauce is on top. Use the spoon to capture more orange sauce in the bottom of the pan and dribble it over the biscuits.

In the unlikely event you have leftovers, store them covered in the fridge until somebody eats them. They can be heated for about a minute in a microwave oven to get back much of their glory.

See this post for the story on how my mother came up with the recipe. If you make these, PLEASE let me know. I want to hear what you think. For me and my family it is not only an excellent breakfast, it's a cherished tradition. But I love to hear other opinions.

Why I'm Not Posting

I keep meaning to write posts, and I keep delaying. The main reason is that I'm busy working, and once I get home I'm not really all that inclined to do more writing.

The secondary reason is that I'm still getting the hang of being an actual journalist, and I don't want to mess up and write something I really ought not to be writing about here. At the moment I don't think many people who read my work in the newspaper are aware that I also have a blog, but I'm sure that will change if I do anything stupid.

So why don't I talk about my Christmas... that's a fairly safe topic.

Christmas Day
Eric and I got up lazily when we felt like it on Christmas morning. We attended church together, and once home we made orange biscuits using my mother's recipe. And yes, it was a "we" effort. Eric made the sauce, then helped me roll up the biscuits. The orange biscuits were REALLY good, and there's a story about them I'm going to tell as soon as I'm done with the main Christmas day events.

After our late breakfast/brunch, we opened presents. We did not get presents for each other, but both sets of our parents sent a package, so we opened those. From my in-laws I got a few months supply of my dark chocolate and some other very nice gifts. From my mother (and sister, I gather) I got a flying shark. We watched the second half of Gone With the Wind, which I had never seen before. And that was about it.

Orange Biscuits
Now, a few days before Christmas I wrote a column in the editorial pages about what Christmas means to me, and mentioned (twice) the scratch-made orange biscuits that my mom used to make. The column was printed on Wednesday, and on Thursday I got a call from a person VERY interested in the recipe for the orange biscuits. So I contacted mom, asked her permission to print it, and wrote up a column on responses I'd gotten to my writing since coming to work for the newspaper. Mom promised to send me an updated version of the recipe that included changes she just automatically makes when she makes them herself, but forgot to write into the recipe.

So I got the updated recipe before Christmas and decided that before I print it, I ought to at least make it again for myself... and it was delicious. I told Mom so, and she told me how the recipe came about. I may end up using it for a future column, but I don't think so. So I guess I'll write that little tale here for everyone to enjoy.

Mom said she was working at the hospital when she turned 16, and there was an older lady who worked in the kitchen who made the pastries and such, and had her own corner of the kitchen. Mom said the woman's orange biscuits were a favorite, and when she made them she wouldn't allow anyone in her corner, jealously guarding her secret recipe. But the biscuits, oh, they went fast when they were put out. So mom did some experimenting. She started with a fairly standard cinnamon roll recipe for the biscuits, and worked on the sauce, altering it and adding to it and trying to get the balance just right. Eventually she came up with the recipe that had her children scrambling for the stuff every Christmas morning, and remembering the dish with awe and happiness.

Flying Shark
Whew. Now, on to the flying shark. I mentioned on this blog that I wanted one a few months ago, and my mom came through with flying... er... sharks. I was tickled, but not really sure what to do with the thing. I mean, a flying shark!

So yesterday after I got off work, Eric and I went down to the grocery store and got it filled with helium. The folks at the store weren't sure how much to charge, because it's a tad larger than the typical 18 inch mylar balloon. So they charged me $5, which I felt was reasonable, and I went home with the very light and amusing shark which Eric dubbed "Bruce".

Once home, I attached the various bits and bobs to the thing that make it fly properly. It was a bit of a job, and I messed up some of it. But overall I didn't do too bad. The quality of the equipment seems really flimsy, but it was made to be very light so it can fly, and I think it's not all that bad. Ask me again once it has run out of helium and I have to refill it. Once I was done I used the remote to chase Eric around the house, although he didn't really run. Bruce is fairly ineffective, bumping up against people instead of gripping and shredding with his painted-on jaws.

The shark seemed heavy enough to stay put, as it wasn't really floating above the couch. When we went upstairs to bed, the shark was downstairs, sitting on the back of the couch looking very calm and collected.

In the morning I got up and opened the door to our bedroom and screeched a little, slamming the door. Eric asked what was happening, and I opened the door again to see Bruce the shark floating at eye level right outside our upstairs bedroom. I couldn't really think of Eric pulling that particular trick on me, and besides, Bruce was floating, so it was fairly clear he'd gotten up there on his own.

When I posted about the event on Facebook, Garret posted this link to a similar story with a less happy ending.

Shark at Work
This morning I decided that I couldn't possibly take Bruce to work, and didn't. I did tell my flying shark story to my office mate, and she was a little amused and more bemused. At lunchtime I debated, but not for long. I couldn't take Bruce in my car, so I took Eric's car back to work with Bruce in the back seat.

Once at work I spotted one of the gals in the ad department in the parking lot and enlisted her help in getting the flying shark safely into the building. It really does not like being outside in the wind. It feels very much like it's going to blow away no matter how hard you hold onto it. She got me into the press room, which is the large part of the building where the printing press is set up. It was running off today's paper when we got in, and I let the shark go immediately and used the remote to make it swim around the air in the large room. It was very neat, as there was plenty of room to maneuver in there. The folks of the press room were amused at Bruce, and then we took him down the hall.

Word got ahead of me, so the ladies in the front office weren't at all surprised to see the floating shark, but we hid Bruce around a corner and waited for the other ad gal to walk down a corridor before the shark swam out at her and startled her good. No one else was really surprised until my editor came back from lunch, then my office mate and I managed to get him while his back was turned. I was afraid for the health of the shark for a bit there, but the editor returned it in one piece.

I also managed to startle one of the other reporters, and got the publisher making jokes about land sharks for some time. I overheard the ad lady I surprised telling someone on the phone that "one of the reporters is attacking people with her pet shark!" I was warned not to leave Bruce in the office overnight, as other balloons had moved around enough to trigger the alarm. Which was fine with me, I had no intention of leaving him there, but at least I had a bit of fun.

The editor suggested I take the shark to the senior center tomorrow, since I'm headed over there for a story. Hmmmm....

Anyway, that's my tales for the moment. I'll endeavor to write more regularly now, if I can just get my willpower working again.

More Baking Adventures!

The Golden Age cookies were run past my panel of experts (the boys next door) who declared them to be "yummy" and "good" and "will you make more?" So I think that recipe will stay in my book. But, as I'd given away much of those cookies, I needed to make more cookies to keep hubby-Eric and I happy (we generally each have cookies with lunch). So I pulled out the recipe for peanut butter cookies and gave it a go.

I used the Classic Peanut Butter Cookies recipe over at Baking Bites, and after I got my first pan in the oven I remembered how my mom used to make these and resorted to that method instead. The dough was the same, but the fork trick is to roll the cookie in sugar before dropping on the pan and then the fork won't stick. The water will work, but I think I prefer the sugar-rolled cookies by a smidgen.

So, here's the recipe in case the link is down. I plan to run these cookies by my tasting committee one of these days, but maybe I'll keep the first batch for just us.

Classic Peanut Butter Cookies

1 1/4 cups all purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup butter, slightly softened*
1/2 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup white sugar
1 egg
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/2 cup peanut butter (smooth or crunchy)*

Preheat oven to 350F. Line your baking sheets with parchment paper.

Sift together flour, baking soda and salt.
In a large bowl, cream together butter and sugars.
Beat in egg.
Add vanilla and peanut butter and beat well.
Add in dry ingredients and beat on low speed until combined.

Roll rounded spoonfuls of dough in sugar and mark grids on the top of the cookie with a fork. (Alternately, put ball of dough on pan and mark with a fork dipped in either sugar or water to keep it from sticking to the dough.)

Bake for 11-12 minutes, until just beginning to brown on the edges.
Cool on wire rack. Makes between three and four dozen depending on the size of your dough balls (snerk, my batch made 45 cookies exactly).

*The cookie will be brittle/crumbly if you use processed (regular) peanut butter, so add an extra tablespoon of butter unless you are using a natural peanut butter.

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And, just in case you didn't want to transcribe the cookie recipe from my Golden Age Cookies post:

Golden Age Cookies

1/2 cup butter, or other shortening
3/4 cup white sugar
1 egg
1 1/3 cups flour
1/2 teaspoon soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon vanilla
2 Curtiss 5c Baby Ruth Bars, cut in small pieces

Cream butter and sugar until smooth.
Beat in egg.
Stir in other ingredients.
Chill and drop by half teaspoonful on greased cookie sheet.
Bake in a moderately hot oven (375 F) for 10-12 minutes.
Makes 75 cookies.

Golden Age Cookies

While looking at a Golden Age All-American Comic, I noticed this ad, and found that I wanted to try out my new baking prowess with a very old recipe printed in a comic book.

So when we went shopping, I picked up a jumbo Baby Ruth bar and some more sugar, and yesterday I mixed up a batch of these things. Because the ad recipe says to chill the dough, I left it overnight and baked up the cookies today.

The results were... mixed. The cookies themselves were wonderful sugar cookies that I managed to get to an almost perfect crispness. The Baby Ruth pieces weren't quite enough, though. I should have gotten two regular bars like the husband suggested instead of a single jumbo. Maybe next time, if I do a next time.

Anyway, here's a few of the best examples of the result.


The not as best examples included lots of cookies where the candy bits caramelized and made messy blobs of candy. Some of them even ended up with holes in the cookies where the caramel blobbed out. The cookies themselves tasted fine, but I didn't get a lot of chocolate.

Misc for the Day

What's Laura up to? Not a lot. I finished the 2000 piece puzzle that my sister gave me:

I can't tell you exactly how long it took, but I worked on it quite awhile. I only had one spot in the house to do it, since my puzzle board was too small to handle it, so it was in the way. Almost as soon as I finished it I had to pack it up again. I either need to get a much larger puzzle board or stick with smaller puzzles.

I've been trying a lot of recipes, lately. Mostly baking at the moment. I've got a killer fudge brownie recipe that I make and Eric and I use as the base for our desserts for a couple of weeks after. I also tried a brown sugar chocolate chip cookie that didn't quite work out correctly, though I chowed down through my "mistakes" quickly and gained a pound or so while I was at it. Most recently I made Cheesecake Cookies (recipe here) and they turned out ok:


Not pretty to look at, but they taste good. I've been using this recipe analysis tool to figure out the calories of the stuff I'm making. That way I can keep up with my calorie count while I'm baking all this stuff that's bad for me.

Cake-in-a-Mug Experiment (#1)

After lunch today, I rounded up the ingredients for Chocolate Cake in a Mug and made sure I had everything. Then I pulled out a trusty KBTC mug, the largest in our regular use collection, and got started.

First I sprayed the mug with the cooking spray, then measured out four tablespoons of flour. Then I got the cocoa mix out and measured out nine tablespoons of that. Whew, thats a lot of gunk in the mug! I wasn't sure it was all going to fit, really. I stirred it up good, like the directions said, but as it turned out not quite good enough.


Next came the wet ingredients. I added the egg and stirred a little to get a gluey, clumpy mess. Then 3 tablespoons of veggie oil and 3 tablespoons of water. After a bit of heavy stirring, it got to looking (and tasting) a little like real cake mix. Not perfect, mind, but better than I was expecting.


Feeling very uncertain, I popped it in the microwave for the 3 minutes of cooking. After about a minute, I could smell the "cake" baking. After another ten seconds, part of the cake popped above the rim of the mug and looked around.


When I got it out of the microwave, the top came off into the bowl just fine, but most of the cake remained stuck in the mug. I had to use a knife to loosen it from the sides and pull it out. When it fully emerged, I discovered that I hadn't mixed up the flour at the bottom, along the edge of the mug, well enough.


Still, it smelled a lot like cake. So I sat down to munch it. VERY HOT! It takes a minute to cool down. Give it a minute. But after it cooled a little, I was very pleasantly surprised. It tastes like chocolate cake. Not the best ever chocolate cake, but certainly better than I was expecting from 3 minutes in a microwave. It's nicely moist, I bet a little Hershey's Syrup would make it even better.

Total cooking utensils used: one measuring spoon, one mixing spoon, one knife, one mug, and one bowl to eat it from. Total prep time: maybe 2 minutes. Total cooking time: 3 minutes. Result: very passable chocolate cake that has a lot of potential if you use higher quality cocoa or add some pizzazz (chocolate chips are suggested on the wiki).

Conclusion: I'll be trying this again, watching for the mistakes I made the first time. I thought I'd mixed it well enough, clearly I need to work on that. Clean up is also a concern, but I got the mug soaking as soon as I took the cake out, so I hope it won't be difficult. I'm looking forward to trying for variants. I wonder if grating some dark chocolate into the mix would work? Hmmmmm....mmmmmmmm!