"The British are Coming!"

Have you ever watched a movie or went somewhere and they ate something and all you can think about is that item. It could be the most obscure thing like roasting duck or funnel cake. Something you have never seen in a grocery store or something that is on every shelf. No matter what the item you just fixate on it all week. Well, its been one of those weeks for me. I found a new cooking show and everything they made I wanted to eat. The only thing is it was a British show so when they said biscuits I think yum, with warm butter. Then all of a sudden they are making crackers. I am so sad but so intrigued I would never think of making my own crackers. It was that way for all the food they made on the show.

This week I tried my hand at making a sponge roll. They say sponge is hard to make and I took that as a challenge. You know what I found out, sponge is hard to make. Who ever "they are" the people that rate food. They are right my first try and it looked amazing, nice and light brown when I touch it, it sprang back. Then I did what they tell you to do, I flip it out right away so I can roll it. Guess what happens, it just starts oozing out the whole middle was still uncooked. So I get my trash can and just push it off the counter into the bin. That was a bad kitchen day for me. Have you ever had a bad kitchen day, well Thursday was my bad kitchen day nothing was working out for me. I think my trash can ended up with more food than my counter.

But you should never give up even if something doesn't work the first time. So Friday I get my cake tin out again and try the sponge cake once more. This time I let it cook a little longer and tried again, this time when I flipped it there was no oozing! It rolled real nice and tight.

While it cooled you get to make the filling. Usually the roll is filled with some sort of cream. But this time I made a raspberry cream cheese sauce. It was so creamy and smooth. Unlike most berries you want to make sure you sift the raspberry after they are melted down so you get all the seeds out. No one likes seeds in a cream sauce. Once the cake was cooled and the sauce was creamy enough I unrolled it and put a nice layer of the raspberry on it, then rolled it back up. I then dusted it with powdered sugar and garnished with whole raspberry. Not going to lie I was very proud of it. Which may sound all high and mighty, but if you think about it you all have a meal you have made and we're proud of the outcome. This was my meal or dessert.

Now that I'm on this British kick I am not sure what I will be bringing you next week. Though by tomorrow I might be on to something totally different. So until next week maybe you will surprise yourself and make something you have been fixated on.

I do love sandwiches

Last week was intense, maybe not for you which in that case you're a lucky duck but for all you readers out their last week was pretty brutal for me. Well, in case you were curious I haven't heard anything from the restaurant. Which I am still feeling good about because at least they were interested. The only downfall is they had amazing food and I would feel weird eating there for a while. My sister says awkward girl in trash can, ( make a peace sign and wrap your other hand around the bottom, it looks like legs coming out of a trash can) mean girl reference.

Anyway I'm still cooking, this week I was thinking about the question I asked you last week. A time you were nervous and excited for a meal. No, the first thing was not the night my husband proposed though we did have amazing food. It wasn't even the night we went on our first date. It was the first lunch we had together. But first let me back up and do a condensed version of how we met. Don't worry it all fits together I'm not turning into a romance writer on you. We met in collage in the dinning hall. I was with my roommate and him and a friend sat down with us. We talked for a good thirty minutes with him not speaking just eating sandwich after sandwich (he was vegan at the time and would eat about three sandwiches every meal, peanut butter and honey). Due to the sandwiches he was eating we all were talking about the best type of sandwich, I mentioned how I just started eating Nutella and I thought peanut butter Nutella was the best in a sandwich maker. It melts the ingredients and puts them in a sealed pocket which is so good. First words he spoke "here have you been all my life"? From there he did some dark pedaling and there was a fair amount of teasing. In the end  we decided I should make said sandwich for him. Which leads us to our first lunch.

This story is not as good. I made the sandwich and he ate a whole loaf worth excluding my two slices. Since then Nutella is a little inside romantic gesture whenever he gets it for me. I happen to have Nutella in the house this week and decided to make myself a sandwich. The only thing is we didn't have any bread, we did though have pita so it's practically the same thing. I added some toasted pecans which made it a grown up sandwich. Plus gave it a great crunch without making it too peanuty. This is my play on that wonderful sandwich that introduced me to my husband.

As for next week I hope to bring you something a little more challenging. Though even the most simple of meals can burning back the fondest of memories. Next week I'll try something new be adventurous, why don't you try too. Go to the store and find something you have never cooked with and see what you can make.



P.S. We had this sandwich at our wedding.

Food their whey

Lemon Curd Tart

This week started nauseating and I write today nauseous still. No, I'm not pregnant. I got a call at the beginning of the week from a restaurant wanting me to bring them a taster of my food. That was a first for me. For those of you who are not part of the food industry let me explain how this works.

Lemon curd

When someone is trying to sell a product they turn into a door to door sales man. They go to your place of buisness with the items they want you to buy. But unlike vacuum salesmen who advertise all the extra attachments, food reps advertise fresh products, less processed goods and they always leave behind a little something to eat.

Vegan options

Like your grandmother who always gives you a candy at the end of every visit, it's a little odd they just happen to have food in their bag but sometimes it's good candy so you don't mind. Like every salesman some are better then others as well as their products. So after I hung up my phone and put on my big girl pants, I got to work.

Tofu pecan cookies (flop)

Vegan puff pastry

There is a lot that goes into making a sample platter it is definitely a risk selling something this way. It makes sense why door to door salesmen have been slowly dying out. It's a lot of risk for little reward. First there is all the planning. I must have gone through a few dozen recipes before I decided on my final picks. I even tried a few that were a flop. I then got all my ingredients together which is money out of my pocket. Especially since this order was for vegan items.


 

chocolate and raspberry tart

 

fig and cherry jam swirls

Do you know how hard it is to make vegan    pastries? I do it means no eggs, no milk, and no   butter. Which is pretty much three of the main  ingredients in all pastries. After you have your recipe and your ingredients its time to bake. Twelve hours later you have your finished   product. Five desserts ready to be tasted, you then pick one or two of the best looking out of each batch and set off to your destination. Then its back to your sales pitch which takes a few minutes and your done. You walk out the door and even though you figure your done and the nausea will go away, it doesn't. You see, now you have to wait to see if you get a second phone call saying that they like your product and they want to order it.

butter cookie cone with hazelnut cream

So now I wait for that phone call. I think this is the only time I can say food has made me nauseous and it's not a bad thing. So I ask you has there ever been a meal you prepared that made you both nauseous and excited at the same time? Maybe a first date or a proposal. Lets think back on those moments and cook an old favorite in the coming week.

Willing to fail

Failures of 2015

 For my first blog post of 2016 I have decided to reflect on my failures. Not in a negative way, though technically failures are negative. At times you have to fail in order to succeed. Do I sound like a fortune cookie? As you read my failures you should reflect on your own and come to the same realization that I came to, which is for all my failures I have had SO many more successes.

Let's jump into these:

1. Bagels: I tried my hand at making my own bagels. Now to be fair they tasted like a bagel, they DID NOT look like a bagel. As you can see they look like a rolly polly. You know what I mean those little bugs that curl into a ball when scared. Just don't picture that when you eat them. Okay, back to the food so these bagels may not look the part but with a little more work I think they would look like a bagel. My failure was that I did not connect the ends correctly. I tried rolling the dough into a rope and then smooshing the ends together. I think it might be easier if I got a donut cookie cutter and used that instead.

2. Apple Pie Bites: Now these little guys have an expanding problem. I just realized I might have the same problem. The crust seemed to take over the pie. I am all for thick crust in a pie. I am sad when I eat pie and every bite doesn't have crust in it. This may be a little too much crust. On top of the crust invading the apple filling like it was an act of war, it has no form. If you borrow your grandmothers magnifying glass you can see that some of the crust is pinched. When the dough was raw I pinched all the edges. But crust will be crust and sometimes it just wants to be a hula hoop, smooth and round no pinching involved.

3. Turkey wrap: The name alone summons feelings of failure. I tried my hand at hummus. Tried being the word of the day. As first I was trying (theirs that try word again) to make a chick pea salad but it was, ehh. I cooked chick peas added raw red onion and then whipped in Greek yogurt with some other seasonings I can't remember. Well as you can tell just reading it makes me think of something they would serve at a hospital, healthy and void of flavor. So when you first don't succeed try making hummus. That is what I did. I took all of the "salad" and threw it in the blender. I added olive oil until it was creamier that before. Not creamy like hummus but not solid, which was the second problem. So now with a blender full of semi hummus I didn't know what to do with it. I did what any one would do and turned it into some sort of sandwich. I did a wrap since I had large tortillas on hand which brought me to the third issue. Everything is the same color. After one bite I tossed it. Giving up is sometimes the best option. It means getting to start over.

4. Lemon Raspberry bars: These little guys were bought and paid for. Which means I had to get them to work. Having never enjoyed lemon bars in my life its hard to know when its good. Lemon and raspberry have been paired together for ages and so I figure it should work. Which to be fair after a little finagling they did come together. The flavor was on point, it was the crust that failed. With lemon bars you are supposed to bake the crust first, which is like baking a square sugar cookie. Then when its almost cooked through add the liquid lemon raspberry topping. Then cook it all again till both are stiff. My problem occurred when I didn't cook my crust all the way through so when I added the liquid it just turned to mush. My husband advised me to throw it int the freezer to stiffen it up which worked (he is so smart). Once I was plating these little bite size lemon bars I noticed certain areas of the crust was not cooked still. What did I do, you ask? (I had made these for someone, to serve at a party the next morning). I did what any of you would do I took a butter knife and scraped all the raw crust off the bottom of the bar and prayed no one turned them over to realize some had no crust.

This brings me to my final failure of 2015.

5. Me: Don't shake your head and tell me I'm not a failure. Let me explain why I am putting myself in my failure pile. At the start of 2015 I was so gung ho about starting a business and catering my food to people in my area. At the end of 2015 I have ONE invoice to show for it. I, like a lot of people don't know how to sell a product. I can eat food and tell you how amazing it is but trying to convince you to eat my food is a lot harder than I thought it would be. So as the year ended I had convinced one person that my food was better than something they could grab at the local Costco. On the bright side I am still convinced my food is good its me that failed.

Looking back failures can come many different ways, it can be the ingredients or even the recipe and sometimes it can be you.

That smells great

Before I get into this week's topic I want to point out I changed my name. I am guessing you are all smart and realized that but I want to tell you why. I wasn't just bored and decided to change my name.  Like people do with hair styles, I didn't want to reinvent myself. I have been trying to start my own business for a while selling my food to family's or for parties. With that since my blog is the main source for people to see my work I figure I should make the name match what I call my little business. So Kortni's Kitchen is up and running. Okay know onto the main stuff.

Step 1

Step 2

Vanilla extract! I love vanilla I add it to everything. From waffle mix to every baked good I make. I love the smell when you open the bottle. I'm not sure if any of you have thought, this is so good I just want to drink it straight, I know I have. The real question is have any of you drank this amazing liquid straight? I know I haven't for one very good reason it taste Horrible (I've heard, please feel free to try a teaspoon and let me know). The thing about vanilla extract is you can't have it on its own for how good it smells it's not meant to be drunk. That might be why you tend to only need a dash of it in most recipes.

Step 3

Step 4

Well, this holiday season I decided I was going to try my hand at making it. I love it and with everything else I love, I always say its even better home made. So I looked up recipes and compared what people said. I ordered my vanilla beans and went to my local liquor store. Then I mixed the two ingredients together and hid them away in a dark cupboard. Every week I pulled it out and gave it a little shake to get the vanilla pods to release the loose middle. I did this for about six weeks and then I sealed the bottle to make it look fancy and wahla, vanilla extract. If you didn't catch the fact that you can make vanilla extract from vodka with a high alcohol percentage and vanilla beans then there it is. Which makes my previous statement of, don't drink it understandable. Now most stores sell artificial extract which is not alcohol but things that can do what alcohol does. But if you ever want to try your hand at something simple and don't mind shaking a bottle once a week I would say this is a good place to start.

Unless your under twenty-one and in that case stick to cookies.