All I want for Christmas is a Clean Kitchen

Christmas if flying up on me and for all of the one of you that have been keeping up, I have done a bazillion cooking jobs for parties. Well, after having a vomitous maximus stomach virus, I decided to sanitize everything in the house. I MUST CLEAN ALL THE THINGS!

This brings me to the fact that I HATE dishes. Dirty dishes are gross. So gross in fact, that even though I am over the vomiting phase of this disease, I might have catastrophic vomit relapse because of having to do these dishes. Currently, I am stuck with a counter-full of dishes and only me to do them.

One of these days my children will be dish washing masters...

*vom*

Christmas Parties and Other Cooking Fiascos

I have been to no less than 6 million Christmas parties in the past week. This brough a montage of culinary defeats. Although, I must say, parties are like the office when it comes to the dumping grounds of my latest defeat. In some ways this is good: you can peddle off almost anything on a drunk. There is also some bad: i.e. the drunk tells you how awful it is.

Thankfully, I did not experience this with the latest recipe to give me an "aspic" whoopin':
Marbled Chocolate Cookie Bark.

The recipe sounds impossibly easy: melt white chocolate, melt dark chocolate, break up 10 oreos, mix 1/2 in each flavor. Mix 2T of peanut butter in the white chocolate for some odd reason. Then pour on a cookie sheet and swirl with a knife. Easy enough right? Wrong.

White chocolate is my nemesis. Well, one of them aside from the kolache. I can never get that stuff to melt without burning and forming a crust.

The recipe says, "microwave in 30 second intervals, stir". Ummm... 30 seconds in my microwave = crusty caramelized white chocolate brick.

Maybe the oven would be better. It all started out alright, but I looked away for a nano second too long and BAM! Crusty. WTF!

I accidently microwaved the oreos with the chocolate. I burned the hell out of the oreos and stank up the entire kitchen. So, I said, "the hell with it" as I normally do and mixed everything together. What came out was a reasonably ok snack. Neato side effect was that the final product had a mocha-ish flavor. Most of the bark got eaten, but it took some peddling.

BREAKING NEWS:
Just got a text: "Did you take the candy home?"
I must have a fan!

Mac & Cheese

Today, I am admitting defeat in the culinary world. Tonight's meal will consist of mac and cheese.

A 5 of 10

Soooooo Jon beared the latest batch. Knowing the fact that he judges his kolaches very harshly, he gave it a 5 of 10 woth a encouarging "this is the best batch yet."

I will get you my pretty...

A Solid "B" Effort

The bread machine kolaches weren't a total bust. They really didn't move at the office. I blame three birthday parties that produced enough store bought confections to make people bypass on anything homemade. I was forced to bring about a dozen back home.

Taste: They were a little yeastie. They have an internal texture that is close to right but they aren't as sweet as they are suppoed to be either.

Jon agreed to try one when he gets home. We will see if he yacks all over the place.

Missed Steps and Other Disasters

You know you have read a new recipe like 9 million times to make sure that you didn't miss anything? Well, I did just that and I still missed something. Apparently, you are supposed to let kolaches rise again after you fill them. Missed that step somewhere.

Although they came out looking pretty...sort of...they don't have the right texture. The right texture is soft, spongy, almost a bready cake. Sadly, they didn't come out like that. These kind of have a shell, like a yeast roll, with a bread middle. Thank God these were bound for the office in the first place so Jon won't have to endure another disappointment.

Maybe I'll return the machine after the weekend and get one more try in...

Anticipation

So the bread machine kolaches are in the oven. The rosemary loaf looks somewhat appetizing. Now I just have to wait the 10 minutes for the kolaches to cook. Keep your fingers crossed.

The rosemary loaf turned out better than expected. It's a little on the squat side but yummy nonetheless. I may have to invest in one of the machines.

Timer's going off on the kolaches! They don't look ready yet. I put them back in.

Bread Machine Mistakes and Other Lessons Learned

Bread dough left on any surface past 5 minutes first turns into a sticky goo, then into a rock so hard that it will cut your hands. You need a chisel to get it off the counter. Picture this: Inside the bread machine there are cakes of hardened lava. Cleaning this mess would have to wait until I got home from work.

The next morning rolls around, I drag my hungover ass into work. I

I drag home and start making the kolache rolls.

Before I started cleaning, I formed the walnut sized dough balls. Why? Because if these kolaches were like the others, it would take about 10 years to rise for the 2nd time. So I get my balls formed.

I wait the obligatory 2 hours.

The balls are actually moving along more nicely than I dare to hope. I almost did a smarty pants dance, but I restrained myself lest the kolache karma take over and disaster ensued.

I got smart this time and made them in disposable trays so that I don't have to spend 10 years cleaning my pans. I popped the kolaches in the oven and hoped for the best.
Then came cleaning the bread machine. GROSS! Never again would I leave a bread machine unattended!! If it were mine, I might have thrown it out to save the trouble. (Or at least rock, paper, scissored Jon for the chore of cleaning it.) Being that I HAD to return it, I scrubbed away and remove Mt. Vesuvius from the interior.

As I excavated, I wondered how the machine did on non-Herculean breads. I decided to start a rosemary loaf while waiting for the kolaches to bake. We'll see how that goes.

Recipe #2, Getting 21st Century on it

Recipe: "Mom's Bread Machine Kolaches"
 c/o Marilyn Tucker of Cedar Rapids, Iowa.

Yea so maybe I wimped out, but I wanted to make some kolache for a Czech girl's baby shower in my office. She was excited about the last batch, sorta. (Only because she hadn't had a real kolache in years.) She couldn't help but point out that they weren't as fluffy as they should be, and they were not poppy seed. Thanks Angel, enjoy your free breakfast.

In preparation, I asked around the office if anyone had bread machine. (I do not.)  In fact, I have never seen nor used a bread machine in my life. Jon's mom said that bread-machine kolaches are no good. We shall see about that!

So, quite by accident I emailed a lady with the same last name as my coworker in the next cube if she had a bread machine I could borrow. I get an email back that says, "Ummm... I don't have one, but Brenda in Building 5 has one she will let you borrow."

Now let me get one thing clear: I don't know the person I accidentally emailed, and I don't know Brenda in Building 5. However, I am now in possession of said bread machine. (Which by the way Brenda won in a benefit and had never used/nor knew how to advise on its use.)
So after a little Googling I have the dough going in the machine. It has an hour left unitl it is ready, so I decided to go out to dinner with a friend and pull it out when I got back.

....

Well, one too many margaritas later, I drag ass home and "OH SHIT!"

The dough has risen so much that is squeezed against the bread machine window and flopped over the sides of the bread bucket. What a mess! I dumped the dough into a well greased bowl, cover it, and stick in the fridge per recipe.

Have you ever tried to clean a bread machine while being drunk? Well, me neither. I gave it a cursory wipe and passed out in bed.

Czech Recipe #1...wins and losses

Jon was right. I was disappointed, but that is jumping ahead a little.

Recipe #1: "Kolaches"
c/o Helen Horak Nemec near Czech Village in Cedar Rapids, Iowa.
Recipe yields 6 dozen. (Really? I mean who needs 6 dozen in one sitting?)

This recipe sounded as unassuming as every other recipe in the book, so why not give it a shot? I was able to make 3 pans worth: two large jelly roll pans, and square cake pan. My logic was that the kolaches would be forced to rise up the sides of the pan and up against each other. (This is a rule my grandfather had taught me in order to make good, puffy biscuits.)

Results: Minor success. The kolaches in the square pan did fluff up some. (Not the 2 inches they are supposed to be, but a modest 1/2 an inch.) Thankfully, they were not pancakes or bricks.

I hung my head in shame and took them to the office the next day. My poor co-workers.
Thanks for nothing Helen Horak Nemec near Czech Village in Cedar Rapids, Iowa.