"A Little Fermented Curd Will Do The Trick"

Whenever my mom has guests over she makes a cheese platter. Her cheese platters usually include a variety of cheeses, crackers and fruit. My favourite is when she puts prosciutto out with the cheese. Prosciutto is a dry-cured ham, sliced paper thin. If my mom has a cheese plate out, I will sneak into the living room and devour as much as I can. Let's face it, I LOVE cheese.

The Betty Crocker Cookbook has an interesting chapter on entertaining. The first section of this chapter is on the entertaining basics like, setting the dining table, setting a buffet table, creating a cheese tray and menus to celebrate (p. 259-260).

In honour of my mom who is a great entertainer (her dinner parties rock), I am learning about cheese and how to serve it. The information Betty Crocker gives is helpful. The book has pictures of different types of cheese and a description of many types.

What are the right cheeses to use when creating a cheese tray?

I already know that my favourite cheese is Brie. Brie is rich and buttery. It's soft and easy to spread on crackers or baguette. If it was up to me, I would just serve Brie but I know that I need to have a variety. So my mom and I went to the best little cheese shop in our hood. FIELD TRIP!!!

Charelli's Cheese Shop & Delicatessen 

Cheese

More cheese

Carmen Lassooij is the owner of Charelli's. I asked her to recommend some cheese that would be nice to put on a cheese tray. She recommended a variety of soft and hard cheese. First I got to taste test some of her selections. The first one that I tried was a mild, hard cheese. I loved that one. I did love the Brie however I discovered that I don't need it to be extra creamy. I think that I need to go back and try some more varieties of Brie. Carmen said that they had four types of Brie in her shop. 

Carmen gave me six different cheeses to try.

I selected four different cheeses for my cheese platter:
Humboldt Fog (goat)
Apricot Stilton (cow)
Mandog Sheep
Chateau de Bourgogne (my favourite)

Charelli's Cracker Selection

Carmen helped me select two types of crackers. I picked one type that will let the cheese do the talking. It is a crispy thin sesame cracker. I also picked a fig, olive cracker that compliments the cheeses that I selected. 

My Charelli's purchase

My cheese platter presentation. 

This is the platter that I've put together for my class. I hope they enjoy it. 

Thank you to Carmen from Charelli's Cheese shop and Delicatessen. If you love cheese like I do, you must visit a cheese shop near you. I also did a little research by watching the Monty Python Cheese Shop Sketch. 

Monty Python Cheese Shop Sketch

So I think that I'm ready to rate the Betty Crocker Cookbook. I'm finished reading it but I'm definitely not finished trying out some of the recipes. I give this book a 4 star out of 5. I think that the book has a lot of great information and pictures but I still needed to ask for help. I don't like the feel and the weight of the paper. The pages are very hard to turn. The recipes are basic which is great for a beginner cook like me. 

What's your favourite kind of cheese? If you were to put a cheese tray out for your favourite people, what would you chose? 

Mother's Day Buns

My Great Grandmother taught my mom how to make "Grandma buns". These were dinner rolls and cinnamon buns. So I though that in preparation for Mother's Day I would try the Caramel Sticky Rolls (p. 120-121). I had my very good friend SugarQueen, over to my house to tackle the recipe together. 

The dough. My Great Grandma did not have a Kitchen Aid.
She taught my mom how to make bread with her hands.

Kneading the dough was fun. We used our hands for this

Interview with SugarQueen:

Q: SugarQueen, how did you get your name?

A: I am the queen of all things sweet. I love sugar :)

Q: You have the same Betty Crocker Cookbook as me. What recipes have you tried so far?

A: I've tried the Peppermint Marshmallows (p.208) and the Cheese and Bacon-Stuffed Mushroom Caps (p. 61). They were really good. Zobo, you are missing out because you don't like mushrooms.

Q: It's a texture thing. I tried your Marshmallows though. Those were really minty. They would be good with hot chocolate. Making the Cinnamon Rolls with you was fun. Harder than it looks actually. Have you made yeast bread before?

A: No, but it's fun to try new things, especially when I bake.

Q: Do you have a recipe that you would like to try next?

A: I would really enjoy making the Vegetable Summer Rolls (p. 261) because they look easy and delicious.

Q: What do you think of the Betty Crocker Cookbook?

A: It shows you how to do stuff. It has great tips. My mom bought it for me so I could learn more complicated things in cooking.

Q: That was a very nice gift your mom gave you. What are you planning on doing for Mother's Day?

A: We don't have much planned because I think my mom would like to relax all day.

Q: Ya, mine too. Maybe we should serve our moms the cinnamon rolls for breakfast. What's your overall impression of the recipe we did together?

A: It was really fun although at some parts it was difficult, like rolling out the dough was hard and cutting the rolls with dental floss (because our hands were so greasy with butter).

Let it rise. We went for a walk to the beach.

The finished product. 

Happy Mother's Day Mom. 

Do you have a favourite recipe that has been shared with you by your mom or grandmother? Thank you SugarQueen, for baking with me. And thanks to our moms for encouraging us to learn new things. Happy Mother's Day.

Muffins or Cake-ins?

I recently started to watch the movie Julie & Julia.  I didn't finish because I fell asleep (not because I didn't like it). I decided to watch the movie to learn more about Julie, (the girl that blogged her way through a cookbook). I'm also learning about Julia Child who is way more interesting to me. 

Great movie. I highly recommend it. 

Funny, Julia and I both love food. 

On a side note, I did learn that Betty Crocker isn't a real person-DISAPPOINTED. 

Anyways, let's get to the muffins. A few days ago I made banana chocolate chip muffins. I used the blueberry muffin recipe, page 98-99. I omitted the blueberries and added in 3 ripe bananas. I also had to use brown sugar instead of granulated sugar. The best part was that I added close to a full bag of chocolate chips. 

My Muffins. Delicious!

One nice feature throughout this cookbook is a section called Learn With Betty. It shows what your food should look like and examples of what it shouldn't look like. Mine looked like the muffin shown in the middle.

Learn With Betty

Oops, I over mixed. But did they taste good? Yes. One day I ate four; one for breakfast, one for lunch, one for after school snack and one for dessert. I think they tasted like sweet cake. Why are they called muffins? I think they should be called cake-ins.

Thoughts? 

Next, should I make RED VELVET CAKE or CARAMEL STICKY ROLLS?

Take, these chicken wings and learn to fly again...

About two months ago, we were invited to our friends house for dinner. My friend's mom made us chicken wings as an appetizer which were really good. After that mom became obsessed with making the perfect red hot chicken wings. 

So it's fitting that the first recipe I attempted was from the appetizer chapter; Buffalo Chicken Wings, page 60. The recipe is different in two ways. It calls for the wings to be coated with flour and cooking them in the oven for 20 minutes. then the barbecue sauce was poured on and the wings were cooked for another 12 minutes. 

My mom (and my friend's mom), fries their wings first to crisp them up. Then they go in the oven to finish cooking. The wings are tossed in the sauce when they are done cooking. 

The Betty Crocker wings were not crispy. They we heavy on the sauce and a little...soft...it's the only word I can think of. 

My mom and sister didn't like Betty Crocker's wings. They said that they were too sweet and too much floury sauce. I liked them.

The barbecue sauce was made with cajun seasoning and ground cumin. 
I used Bull's Eye Bold Original. 
I did not use the red pepper sauce because I didn't know what that was.

As a side dish I made a Caesar Salad, page 454. It was really easy because I used store bought salad dressing. So I guess I didn't really make Betty's Caesar Salad.

Delicious, sweet and saucy chicken wings.

Do you have a favourite wing recipe that you would like to share? 

Muffins for my lunch kit are up next. See you then.

Betty Crocker, Here I Come!

Here I am bogging sphere. Some people call me Zobo. My mom calls me Zobi-1-kenobi. Here's to hoping that the force is with me as I start my first blog.

I have an assignment for my grade 6 Language Arts class. I have to read three different genres in less than three months and report on each book. The first book I read was A Mango Shaped Space by Wendy Mass. I did a visual project for the summary by creating a book trailer using iMovie. For my second book I have been reading the Betty Crocker Cookbook: 1500 recipes for the way you cook today. Yes I have been reading the cookbook. Before I share with you some of the recipes that I will be trying, I will start with the beginnings of a book summary for you. Here it goes.

The Cookbook

First Year of Publication: 1950. That was 63 years ago. I am reading the 11th edition.

Number of Pages: 687.

Main Characters: Me and Betty. I should probably find some more information on who Betty Crocker is or was (?).

Supporting Characters: Essential cooking tools such as, cutting boards, knives, pots, pans, and so on, Betty has a full chapter on equipment needed for the kitchen. Other supporting characters in this book study will be my mom (she will be financing this project) and the food (of corse). 

Describe the Setting of this Book (When, Where): The setting of this book study will take place in our kitchen. Mom says our kitchen is "cheap and cheerful". I say our kitchen is small but it gets the job done. I imagine another setting will be the grocery store. 

 Our corner store.

Describe the Main Conflict: The main conflict at this point is that I don't know how to make anything. Today I burnt popcorn. Actually, I am good with the toaster. My goal is to resolve this conflict by attempting some recipes. 

Describe Three or More Main Events: Stay tuned for this. 

I hope you come on this journey with me. To quote my mom's favourite cook, "Toujours bon appetite!"