Tuesday, October 30, 2012

Out of the Kitchen Tuesday #3

Ok, so I'm not good at consistency, and it's been a while since my last Out of the Kitchen post. I have all of these ideas and no time! I finally got to do something crafty over the weekend. On Saturday I spent the day in West Marin with my duder and got to work on a craft project while he did some work for one of his clients. I love spending time in West Marin! Especially getting up for early morning walks in all the natural beauty there.


On my walk this last Saturday, I took Moose to see some sheep. He was both cautious and curious, but the sheep all came out to see him. They came right up to the fence, but Moose kept a pretty safe distance. He's truly a weenie.

After a super tasty breakfast at The Station House, we headed over to Kris's client, me with craft bag in hand. I got to peacefully work on this button headband while Moose slept on the floor next to me. 

I've had this idea in my head for a quite a while, and I've been collecting buttons for it for a couple of months. I was so excited to finally work on it! I love anything with buttons.

I sewed the buttons onto a piece of elastic, after several rearrangements to find the grouping that I liked best. 

Sewing buttons is extremely relaxing, I find. Even though I did break one of my needles in the process and stabbed my thumb pretty good. 

Then I trimmed up the elastic on the back so that there were no bits hanging out behind the buttons. 

The next step was a simple hot gluing to a plain headband! Voila! 

I love it! I can't wait to make more in different colors! If you see any good vintage buttons for sale, I would be stoked if you linked me to them :)

Yay crafts!



Friday, October 26, 2012

No More Mint Brussels :( But WAIT!

So this isn't exactly recent news, but Pepperidge Farm, I have a bone to pick with you. You discontinued my favorite cookie of all time! The classic MINT Brussel! They've been gone for a couple of years now, but I'm still upset about it. The crunchy, crispy, minty, chocolaty goodness will never make my mouth happy again. Or will it??




I've been selling my Butterscotch Oatmeal Crisps on Etsy for a while now, they are crispy and light and awesome. BUT the other day, as I was severely missing Mint Brussels, I thought I just might be able to come close to them using a modified version of my Oatmeal Crisps. I fiddled around in the kitchen for a bit, and came up with this...

The mixture when it's all combined before baking

I used a teaspoon to drop small amounts onto parchment paper

After baking for about 7 minutes



Tartlet Mint Brussels

Cookie:
1/2 cup browned salted butter
1/2 cup light corn syrup
2/3 cup muscovado or dark brown sugar
1 cup old-fashioned oats 
1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 Madagascar vanilla bean or 1 tsp vanilla bean paste
1 tsp baking powder

Chocolate filling:
1/4 cup heavy cream
1 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips
mint extract to taste

Cookie Directions:
1. Preheat oven to 375
2. Brown the butter. Because everything is better when the butter is browned. Real talk.
3. Add in honey and sugar and get it all melty-like. You want the sugar to be dissolved.
4. Bring the mixture to a boil, then remove from heat.
5. Mix in oats, flour, baking powder, and vanilla
6. Drop small balls of the mixture onto a cookie sheet, about a teaspoon worth. They will spread so don't put them too close together.
7. Bake for about 6 - 8 minutes or until cookies begin to brown
8. Let cookies cool completely before you add the filling and sandwich them.

Filling Directions:
Heat cream until simmering, then pour over chocolate chips and stir until it all melts together. Add in drops of the extract until it's as minty as you want it to be. It doesn't take much, so be careful! Then put some in the middle of two cookies and you're done! TASTY!

They aren't exactly the same, but they are close enough to make me extremely happy. And I'll probably continue to tinker with the recipe, but I'm on the track. I love you Mint Brussels, welcome back to my life.



Thursday, October 11, 2012

New Things! New Things!

Hello all! I apologize for my posts tapering down again, but there's been lots going on! A) I've had a lot of orders lately, which is AWESOME! Thank you to everyone who has been ordering from my Etsy Shop, and I hope you've enjoyed your treats! B) My day job has been quite overwhelming and frenetic of late. And finally C) I've been working on some NEW things for a very special order, which I will hopefully be writing more about soon. Intrigue!

I just wanted to talk about a couple of the new things that I've made lately, and about some things that will hopefully be available soon in my shop. SO! Obviously the name of the bakery insinuates that there might be some small tarts for sale... I have definitely failed on that front so far. But, do not worry, my little muffin heads! I have been working on some tartlet-ey things lately and have (I feel) perfected a recipe for Turtle Tarts! Behold!

Not only are they SOOOOO GOOOOOD, they are so pretty! I have to say, I am particularly proud of this photo too. I am not the best photographer, as I'm sure you all have noticed, but I think this picture is really pretty and tasty looking. BIG SMILE! Hopefully I will add these, as well as some other tartlet type items to my shop in the near future. Huzzah!

I also have been working with some Autumn produce for this special order, and came up with some really beautiful plum galettes and fig & honey galettes. Check out this picture of the fig & honey!

I would like to put some more galettes up in my Etsy Shop, but I'm having a bit of trouble figuring out appropriate packing/shipping methods for those. So for now, they will only be for local special orders. 

Anyhoo, those are a small tidbit of the things I've been working on in the Tartlet kitchen! I hope to share more with you soon!


Monday, October 1, 2012

Bacon Shortbread!

As you may have seen, I've had Whole Wheat Shortbread up in my Etsy shop for a bit now. It's really good, but I've been trying to think of what I can do to spice it up a little. Give it a little twist. Since everyone is nuts about bacon (including me), I thought I might try adding it to my shortbread! I've always wanted to try incorporating bacon into a baked good. Who doesn't love that salty/sweet combo? I'm a huge sucker for it.



I used my regular recipe for the Whole Wheat Shortbread (using King Arthur White Whole Wheat, it's truly awesome). I then made a good amount of bacon in the oven, to get it nice and crispy. Crumbling bacon is a seriously difficult task. Not because it doesn't crumble easily, but because you want to eat all of the bacon! My kitchen was so full of bacon smell, it took the will power of a thousand will powers, not to gobble it all up (I may have set aside a couple of pieces for eating, shhh...). So after I crumbled it all up, I tossed it with a bit of brown sugar, then sprinkled the mixture over the pan of uncooked shortbread, and baked it like normal.



My house smelled sooooo good! Bacon smell? Plus. Baking shortbread smell? Double plus. Of course shortbread takes forever to bake AND then I had to wait for it to cool before I could try it. But it was worth the wait! Super delicious! Sweet and salty and cookie-ey and bacon-ey! Why did I wait so long to try bakin with bacon?!


Want to try some? Bacon Shortbread is now up for sale on my Etsy Page!

Happy Monday everyone!