I've been making homemade pizza for a long time. When I started, it was a sad kitchen experience consisting of Boboli crusts, Ragu sauce, bag cheese and pepperoni. I've evolved though...thank goodness.
Last year, I figured out how to make dough, which puts a Boboli to shame. Here's a link to the recipe I use. Scroll down and look where it says Pizza!
This year, I learned to make my own sauce. I went through a phase where I was convinced that Trader Joe's had the best pizza sauce, and they probably do if you have to stick with jar sauce. If you aren't committed to the jar, try this:
Pizza Sauce
1 large can whole roma tomatoes (I get whichever brand has an Italian-sounding name.)
1/4 of a white onion, chopped
1 T minced garlic (This came out of a jar, but if you like to mince your own, go for it. Maybe I'll get there one day.)
1 T oregano
salt & pepper to taste
1 t red pepper flakes
1 t olive oil
Heat olive oil in a pot, add onions, garlic, oregano, salt/pep, and pepper flakes. After 2-3 minutes, drain the tomatoes, and then throw them in the pot. With a knife, chop the tomatoes up as they cook. You could probably chop them before you put them in, but I just chop them up once they are in the pot. Keep the heat high and let it all come to a boil. Stir and mash around the tomatoes every so often until the liquid has cooked out and you have a chunky "sauce" to spread around on your pizza.
*You could probably use a can of diced tomatoes, but I like the whole ones best.
To make a margherita pizza, spread this sauce on your dough, top with pieces of fresh mozz. Bake at 500 for 10-12 minutes. After you take it out of the oven, top with fresh basil leaves until they wilt. Slice it up. Done and done.
Sunday, May 15, 2011
Cupcake Biz
Things have been rocking in terms of cupcake baking. In the last month, I've had several customers...the kind who pay me! I decided yesterday, though, that I should do a little more research on ingredients and the money I'm spending to see if I can actually turn a profit. I'm still working on that. My life revolves around words/letters, not numbers, so these types of real-world math problems take me days to solve. Not necessarily because I can't figure it out but because it brings back bad middle-school-math memories, and I feel like I'm getting a case of the hives.
I looked into a couple of other cupcake places, and it seems that $30/dozen is a trend. That seems high to me, but maybe that's just because I would never pay that much for cupcakes. I carried on about this yesterday, and Will reminded me that it's because I actually know how to/enjoy making cupcakes. If I didn't, I might drop $30/dozen. Hmmm. What do you think?
Here are a couple of the latest cakes:
Banana Split Cupcakes using this recipe.
Here's a rainbow cake.
These have been all over the blogosphere lately it seems. All you do is divide up some light-colored batter into separate bowls and add food coloring. Then, layer the colors in each cupcake cup. On the interweb, the colors look perfectly layered. I used a gel color rather than liquid. This could be why mine did not turn out in the layered fashion but instead with more of a tie-dyed effect. My colors were pink, yellow, green, blue, and purple. That's all I had and as close to ROYGBIV as I gould get. I used the same banana cupcake recipe from above, minus the fillings. They tasted great, and if you are around the age of six, you'd probably be impressed.
I looked into a couple of other cupcake places, and it seems that $30/dozen is a trend. That seems high to me, but maybe that's just because I would never pay that much for cupcakes. I carried on about this yesterday, and Will reminded me that it's because I actually know how to/enjoy making cupcakes. If I didn't, I might drop $30/dozen. Hmmm. What do you think?
Here are a couple of the latest cakes:
Banana Split Cupcakes using this recipe.
Here's a rainbow cake.
These have been all over the blogosphere lately it seems. All you do is divide up some light-colored batter into separate bowls and add food coloring. Then, layer the colors in each cupcake cup. On the interweb, the colors look perfectly layered. I used a gel color rather than liquid. This could be why mine did not turn out in the layered fashion but instead with more of a tie-dyed effect. My colors were pink, yellow, green, blue, and purple. That's all I had and as close to ROYGBIV as I gould get. I used the same banana cupcake recipe from above, minus the fillings. They tasted great, and if you are around the age of six, you'd probably be impressed.
This Weekend Was For
SO much fun stuff just for ME!
1. A visit to the farmer's market, which is a real upgrade considering that last summer I was shopping at the local flea market for produce because it was so cheap. The flea market is an experience. It's best to get in and get out, know which vendor has the best of everything you like, make a mad dash for their stand, throw your cash at them, and run. The farmer's market is new and clean. There are two significant problems with the farmer's market though: they don't seem to have 1. cilantro or 2. avocados. Don't they know that these two items are how I deal with summer?
Summer solution: G-U-A-C-A-M-O-L-E! Duh.
2. A visit to the local strawberry patch. Well, not really. I just went here and bought strawberries from the local place. It's cheating. I also cheated on my all-time favorite strawberry farm, Molly's Farm. They are still the best, but I was trying to not spend $40 in gas this weekend.
3. A hair cut! Enough said.
4. A visit with my cutie little niece, Riley.
Yes, I took this picture, and I'm not ashamed. She's so cute, and I need footage of her with me so I look cuter too.
5. A visit to the nail place to use this amazing polish I treated myself to this week.
My nails look icky in this pic. Thankfully my favorite nail tech fixed me up!
I got it all because it's called Master Plan, and I'm working on having one of those.
Yes, that's my trusty 5-star notebook in the background. It's where I keep notes about my Master Plan.
6. And to top it all off, I made muffins using this recipe and fresh blueberries from Will's garden. I also added in fresh strawberries, which weren't in the recipe. I recommend it. Tasty!
1. A visit to the farmer's market, which is a real upgrade considering that last summer I was shopping at the local flea market for produce because it was so cheap. The flea market is an experience. It's best to get in and get out, know which vendor has the best of everything you like, make a mad dash for their stand, throw your cash at them, and run. The farmer's market is new and clean. There are two significant problems with the farmer's market though: they don't seem to have 1. cilantro or 2. avocados. Don't they know that these two items are how I deal with summer?
Summer solution: G-U-A-C-A-M-O-L-E! Duh.
2. A visit to the local strawberry patch. Well, not really. I just went here and bought strawberries from the local place. It's cheating. I also cheated on my all-time favorite strawberry farm, Molly's Farm. They are still the best, but I was trying to not spend $40 in gas this weekend.
3. A hair cut! Enough said.
4. A visit with my cutie little niece, Riley.
Yes, I took this picture, and I'm not ashamed. She's so cute, and I need footage of her with me so I look cuter too.
5. A visit to the nail place to use this amazing polish I treated myself to this week.
My nails look icky in this pic. Thankfully my favorite nail tech fixed me up!
I got it all because it's called Master Plan, and I'm working on having one of those.
Yes, that's my trusty 5-star notebook in the background. It's where I keep notes about my Master Plan.
6. And to top it all off, I made muffins using this recipe and fresh blueberries from Will's garden. I also added in fresh strawberries, which weren't in the recipe. I recommend it. Tasty!
Monday, April 25, 2011
I Think It Worked
So maybe there is some truth to the lemon cupcake thing because this little one made her debut:
Madison Riley Hinton
Born April 23rd, 8 lbs, 19.75"
Cutest niece in the world!
Madison Riley Hinton
Born April 23rd, 8 lbs, 19.75"
Cutest niece in the world!
Thursday, April 21, 2011
When life gives you lemons, try to make a pregnant person go into labor!
Today because I'm on spring break, had some time on my hands, and since I love my sister, I made these labor-inducing lemon cupcakes to try to encourage my little niece/nephew to make her/his arrival ASAP!
I figured since Beth is about to go through labor (which I hear is a painful adventure), I would at least give her one more treat. Apparently in Detroit, 19 women who were past-due ate lemon drop cupcakes from a shop in town and went into labor. You can read that story here. My sis is technically not past-due since the real date is April 25th, but wouldn't it be great to have an Easter baby!? I'm working on it! (And if this works, I'm really going to call the local news station and tell them to put me on TV. Maybe.)
I figured out my own lemon cupcake recipe using a couple of different cupcake books, and this is what I came up with.
Bring-on-the-Labor Lemon Cupcakes
1 stick unsalted butter
1 cup sugar
2 eggs
1 1/2 cups all purpose flour
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp salt
1/2 cup milk
1 Tbs lemon zest
1 Tbs lemon juice
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
1/2 tsp lemon extract
Cream sugar and butter. Add eggs one at a time. In a separate bowl, mix flour, baking soda, and salt. Add dry ingredients to the batter, alternating with milk. Start and finish with the dry ingredients. Add zest, juice, and extracts. Bake 'em!
Bake at 325 for 20-22 minutes; makes a dozen regular cupcakes and 6 mini cupcakes.
Lemony Icing (Okay, I confess. I didn't actually measure anything when I made this icing, but this is my best guess. Just do this and then add more sugar if it's not thick enough.)
4 cups confectioners sugar
2 sticks of butter
1 1/2 Tbs lemon zest
1/2 cup lemon juice
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
1/2 tsp lemon extract (You can add more of this if you want it super lemony!)
Mix sugar and butter until smooth. Mix in everything else. (Complicated, huh?)
After you ice them, you should probably put some type of berry (I used blueberries) or SPRINKLES on top. Can't see it in my photo, but I did break out the yellow sprinkles. You could also put yellow food coloring in the icing.
And finally, new (to me) cupcake baking info that most people have probably thought of before, but just in case you haven't, I'll share:
1. Use a mini muffin tin to do something with extra batter. The little cakes are the best when you really don'twant need to eat a whole cupcake.
2. You can freeze cake batter and icing. Never knew this, but really, duh! Why hadn't I thought of that? Most times recipes make a dozen or more cupcakes. I usually only need a dozen because I'm usually taking them somewhere, and it can actually overwhelm people when you show up with two boxes of cupcakes. I've seen it happen. So make the batter, bake half, and put the other half in the freezer.
3. If you freeze batter or icing, put the batter/icing in a big ziploc to freeze. After you thaw it, snip the corner and just squeeze the goodness into the cupcake tin or directly onto cupcakes. Yep, that's easy!
I figured since Beth is about to go through labor (which I hear is a painful adventure), I would at least give her one more treat. Apparently in Detroit, 19 women who were past-due ate lemon drop cupcakes from a shop in town and went into labor. You can read that story here. My sis is technically not past-due since the real date is April 25th, but wouldn't it be great to have an Easter baby!? I'm working on it! (And if this works, I'm really going to call the local news station and tell them to put me on TV. Maybe.)
I figured out my own lemon cupcake recipe using a couple of different cupcake books, and this is what I came up with.
Bring-on-the-Labor Lemon Cupcakes
1 stick unsalted butter
1 cup sugar
2 eggs
1 1/2 cups all purpose flour
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp salt
1/2 cup milk
1 Tbs lemon zest
1 Tbs lemon juice
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
1/2 tsp lemon extract
Cream sugar and butter. Add eggs one at a time. In a separate bowl, mix flour, baking soda, and salt. Add dry ingredients to the batter, alternating with milk. Start and finish with the dry ingredients. Add zest, juice, and extracts. Bake 'em!
Bake at 325 for 20-22 minutes; makes a dozen regular cupcakes and 6 mini cupcakes.
Lemony Icing (Okay, I confess. I didn't actually measure anything when I made this icing, but this is my best guess. Just do this and then add more sugar if it's not thick enough.)
4 cups confectioners sugar
2 sticks of butter
1 1/2 Tbs lemon zest
1/2 cup lemon juice
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
1/2 tsp lemon extract (You can add more of this if you want it super lemony!)
Mix sugar and butter until smooth. Mix in everything else. (Complicated, huh?)
After you ice them, you should probably put some type of berry (I used blueberries) or SPRINKLES on top. Can't see it in my photo, but I did break out the yellow sprinkles. You could also put yellow food coloring in the icing.
And finally, new (to me) cupcake baking info that most people have probably thought of before, but just in case you haven't, I'll share:
1. Use a mini muffin tin to do something with extra batter. The little cakes are the best when you really don't
2. You can freeze cake batter and icing. Never knew this, but really, duh! Why hadn't I thought of that? Most times recipes make a dozen or more cupcakes. I usually only need a dozen because I'm usually taking them somewhere, and it can actually overwhelm people when you show up with two boxes of cupcakes. I've seen it happen. So make the batter, bake half, and put the other half in the freezer.
3. If you freeze batter or icing, put the batter/icing in a big ziploc to freeze. After you thaw it, snip the corner and just squeeze the goodness into the cupcake tin or directly onto cupcakes. Yep, that's easy!
Monday, April 18, 2011
Movie Weekend
Since sometime last fall and into January, we've been watching the Showtime series, The Tudors. We watched King Henry marry and get rid of all of those wives, and we liked it. But somewhere in season 4, we got stuck. I really thought that if I had to watch one more episode, I'd lose it. So, three DVDs of the series sat in the drawer of our entertainment center for over a month. Instead of continuing until the end, we watched nothing. Why we didn't just package those DVDs up and mail them back, I don't really know. Last week though, I finally got around to it. So this weekend was a movie weekend, just like old times!
I already mentioned It's Kind of a Funny Story. We also watched The Social Network, which everyone else in the universe has already seen. It was decent, I noticed myself having emotional reactions like thinking Zuckerburg was brilliant and geeky in a good way, then brilliant and geeky in a bad way, and back and forth and back and forth. Then the movie ended, and I convinced myself that I should come up with the next billion dollar idea. I'm planning on working on that later this week.
Last night, we watched Get Low. Apparently this movie came out in 2009. Where was I to have missed it two years ago? It was good! (I've got to work on my list of adjectives. I have a hard time summing up a movie with a word other than good or not-so-good.) Will looked over at me at one point while we were watching and said, "Why are you making that face!?" Then I realized I was making a face because I was having a reaction to the movie! Because it was "good" I guess. When I went to governor's school way back in high school, I remember one of our teachers telling us that if we could "upset the reader's expectations" then we'd written a decent piece. Her name was Cathy Smith Bowers, and I loved her. She was named poet laureate of NC in 2010. I never forgot that piece of writing advice, and now every time I read/view/hear something that is creative, if I catch myself having a reaction (even making crazy faces), I think about how the writer/screenwriter/artist/musician was successful because of that. Something else I remember about Bowers is that on the Friday of the week she was our writing teacher, we all wore our pajamas to class as a way of celebrating. I don't remember what we were celebrating. Maybe Bowers? I'm sure she felt honored that we showed up to her class with the pajamas we hadn't washed since we'd arrived 5 weeks earlier. Maybe we were celebrating that it was the last Friday of being locked (kind of literally since we didn't have cars)in the Furman University campus, which might seem lovely to some, but when I was 17, it was confusing.
Random governor's school memory aside: One night someone (I seriously can't remember if it was my boyfriend at the time or really some random friend) brought me Taco Bell. This was SO against the rules! If you are furrowing your brow and wondering why, I totally understand. I did the same thing back then when I wasn't allowed to have Taco Bell for 5 weeks. Anyway, I got busted with the Taco Bell and had to go in my room 30 minutes before curfew, which would have been 9:30 I guess, due to the fact that I'd taken the contraband Taco Bell and was caught happily eating it. I remember telling my hall counselor (don't you think she felt important being a governor's school counselor!?), "Okay, seriously. If your boyfriend brought you Taco Bell right now, you'd tell him to take it back? Eat it himself? I don't think so!" She agreed. Told me to eat the TB and go to my room, which I did. Being 17 is weird and filled with stupid ideas.
In addition to movie weekend, I also downloaded Tina Fey's new book, Bossypants. Add it to your list. It's a good one!
I already mentioned It's Kind of a Funny Story. We also watched The Social Network, which everyone else in the universe has already seen. It was decent, I noticed myself having emotional reactions like thinking Zuckerburg was brilliant and geeky in a good way, then brilliant and geeky in a bad way, and back and forth and back and forth. Then the movie ended, and I convinced myself that I should come up with the next billion dollar idea. I'm planning on working on that later this week.
Last night, we watched Get Low. Apparently this movie came out in 2009. Where was I to have missed it two years ago? It was good! (I've got to work on my list of adjectives. I have a hard time summing up a movie with a word other than good or not-so-good.) Will looked over at me at one point while we were watching and said, "Why are you making that face!?" Then I realized I was making a face because I was having a reaction to the movie! Because it was "good" I guess. When I went to governor's school way back in high school, I remember one of our teachers telling us that if we could "upset the reader's expectations" then we'd written a decent piece. Her name was Cathy Smith Bowers, and I loved her. She was named poet laureate of NC in 2010. I never forgot that piece of writing advice, and now every time I read/view/hear something that is creative, if I catch myself having a reaction (even making crazy faces), I think about how the writer/screenwriter/artist/musician was successful because of that. Something else I remember about Bowers is that on the Friday of the week she was our writing teacher, we all wore our pajamas to class as a way of celebrating. I don't remember what we were celebrating. Maybe Bowers? I'm sure she felt honored that we showed up to her class with the pajamas we hadn't washed since we'd arrived 5 weeks earlier. Maybe we were celebrating that it was the last Friday of being locked (kind of literally since we didn't have cars)in the Furman University campus, which might seem lovely to some, but when I was 17, it was confusing.
Random governor's school memory aside: One night someone (I seriously can't remember if it was my boyfriend at the time or really some random friend) brought me Taco Bell. This was SO against the rules! If you are furrowing your brow and wondering why, I totally understand. I did the same thing back then when I wasn't allowed to have Taco Bell for 5 weeks. Anyway, I got busted with the Taco Bell and had to go in my room 30 minutes before curfew, which would have been 9:30 I guess, due to the fact that I'd taken the contraband Taco Bell and was caught happily eating it. I remember telling my hall counselor (don't you think she felt important being a governor's school counselor!?), "Okay, seriously. If your boyfriend brought you Taco Bell right now, you'd tell him to take it back? Eat it himself? I don't think so!" She agreed. Told me to eat the TB and go to my room, which I did. Being 17 is weird and filled with stupid ideas.
In addition to movie weekend, I also downloaded Tina Fey's new book, Bossypants. Add it to your list. It's a good one!
Friday, April 15, 2011
Things to Consider
1. How much technology is too much? I'm currently sitting in my bed watching Tuesday's episode of Parenthood on my laptop while texting on my iPhone and blogging on my iPad. I might actually be addicted to being plugged in. So how much is too much? Currently I'm not being productive in terms of things I actually need to check off of my perpetual to do list, but I am being a super multi-tasker and that is definitely something to use as an excuse when I try to justify all of this. (there will be another iPad post coming with my thoughts in case any of the three people who read my blog are considering purchasing one)
2. You should watch the movie, It's Kind of a Funny Story. We watched it tonight, and it was good, like really really good. After it was over, Will said, "That was a really good movie." I told him I'd heard about it a couple of times but added it to the netflix queue right after Adam Durtiz recommended it on his Twitter. I guess technically, he tweeted it. Will's response: "blink, blink." Translation: he blinked at me. You have to know us to understand why this is funny.
3. Living in a bubble. I've realized in the last few weeks that some people live in a bubble. For example in Vegas two weeks ago, I lived in a bubble, the Aria bubble, but really I think it was just because the one time we went outdoors other than to the pool in the daytime, I was cranky from the late night before. But, I realized that since I was in that Aria bubble, other people live in bubbles too, most of them made up in their imaginations of what is really surrounding them rather than what is actually surrounding them. Enough about that for now. In the mean time, I'm going to get to work right away on creating my bubble world.
4. We got a new rabbit. I named her Sally.
5. Making life decisions, like whether or not to apply for certain jobs, while thinking about 2 more years of working on a doctorate (or God help me, 3 more years), and obsessing about other things that I can't write on my blog, while other people don't seem to be worrying about these things but just doing them or not doing them while still being carefree, overwhelms me. Those other people, they live in a bubble.
2. You should watch the movie, It's Kind of a Funny Story. We watched it tonight, and it was good, like really really good. After it was over, Will said, "That was a really good movie." I told him I'd heard about it a couple of times but added it to the netflix queue right after Adam Durtiz recommended it on his Twitter. I guess technically, he tweeted it. Will's response: "blink, blink." Translation: he blinked at me. You have to know us to understand why this is funny.
3. Living in a bubble. I've realized in the last few weeks that some people live in a bubble. For example in Vegas two weeks ago, I lived in a bubble, the Aria bubble, but really I think it was just because the one time we went outdoors other than to the pool in the daytime, I was cranky from the late night before. But, I realized that since I was in that Aria bubble, other people live in bubbles too, most of them made up in their imaginations of what is really surrounding them rather than what is actually surrounding them. Enough about that for now. In the mean time, I'm going to get to work right away on creating my bubble world.
4. We got a new rabbit. I named her Sally.
5. Making life decisions, like whether or not to apply for certain jobs, while thinking about 2 more years of working on a doctorate (or God help me, 3 more years), and obsessing about other things that I can't write on my blog, while other people don't seem to be worrying about these things but just doing them or not doing them while still being carefree, overwhelms me. Those other people, they live in a bubble.
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