Mardi Gras Love (A King Cake Recipe)

Hello hello!
Posting two days in a row... so refreshing!

I hope you're in the mood to step into the kitchen again.

'Cause it's time to make a king cake to celebrate life, family, love and laughter before we enter in the wonderfully solemn and forming season of Lent.

My mom has an AMAZING, DELICIOUS recipe for king cake.  Really, it trumps this one.  But (here is where I appeal to your weakness ridiculously crazy life) mine is WAY WAY WAY more simple.

49-ers style! This is the "pretty" side - not where the ends meet.
The Ravens king cake, as that's who we were rooting for, was eaten, eaten, eaten! (excuse the sippy cup and dirty pot and other...stuff...)

It's really not "mine." It's courtesy of a recipe my friend Amy, who I WISH kept a blog, but doesn't, so I just crash her house on melt-down days and we let our girls run amuck, printed out for me.

So, giving credit where credit is due.

Bread recipe from: remedialeating.com (I have never even visited the site.  But you can't ask me to try another yeast bread recipe.) Its called "Our Everyday Half & Half Loaf" (no actual dairy half & half involved.)

Ok, so usually I'm pic heavy but you're only get three with this post.  And none are helpful.  Just pretty.

Here we go!

*please, do me a favor.  stop and clean your counter with hot soapy water or vinegar.  you don't want to knead dough on yesterday's spaghetti meat sauce splatters.

To Bake the Bread:

• dry measuring cups
• measuring spoons
• wooden spoon (or plastic/silicone spatula, but wood is best)
• large mixing bowl
• four-cup liquid measuring cup
• all purpose flour (six and 1/3 cups)
• salt (four teaspoons)
• yeast (four teaspoons)
• olive oil (four tablespoons)
• sugar (two tablespoons)
• warmish-hotish water (just fill the kettle (need at least three cups heated) and put it on med-high now. Yes, really. Before you even read through this recipe for the first time, which you should ALWAYS, ALWAYS do

Kettle on?

Ok.)

To Make the Spice and Sugar Spread:

• small bowl
• spatula
• softened/room temperature butter (at least four tablespoons)
• granulated sugar (one cup)
• cinnamon (two tablespoons)
• nutmeg (just a pinch)
• allspice (just a dash)

Stir the sugar and spices together.  Spread on top of butter-smeared dough.

To Make the Icing (as per Momma's recipe):

• sifter
• whisk
• small bowl
• powdered sugar (one cup, sifted)
• milk (two or three tablespoons

Whisk together the cup of powdered sugar and two tablespoons of milk.

To Make the Sugar for Sprinkling:
*mix/add colors into ziploc bags before adding the sugar

• red food coloring (gah! chokes me to type that)
• yellow food coloring (gasp!!!!)
• blue food coloring 
• green food coloring (or be hard-core and make your own green. way cooler.)
• granulated sugar (1/4 cup per ziploc bag)
• three ziploc bags

Ready for the second rise, after being rolled, wiggled, stretched, cinnamoned, sugared, formed, and braided!

So first put your

• two tablespoons of sugar (or honey) into your 4-cup liquid measuring glass. 
• Add four tablespoons of olive oil (or butter or coconut oil). 
• Pour the hot water (good thing you heated it already!) into the 4-cup glass, BUT only fill to the 2 1/2 cup mark. 
• Give it a good stir. Make sure oil and, most especially, sugar are melted.

Now,

• measure 6 1/3 cups of flour into a large mixing bowl. 
• Add four teaspoons of salt 
• and four teaspoons of yeast. 
• Stir.
• Slowly and intermittently pour the liquid mixture into the dry mixture. Stir, pour, stir pour, until it is blended. Do not not not over mix. You shouldn't be thinking cookie dough. Think biscuits. The less handling the lighter the dough.

Then,

• flour your clean countertop, and 
• dump the dough. Knead until supple. My dough starts off nice, gets tough and then becomes supple. It takes about seven minutes of kneading.
• Place into an oiled/buttered bowl for the first rise (cover with a clean cloth). Give it at least 90 minutes.

Make Spice and Sugar Spread!

• Once dough is doubled in size and/or a finger poke leaves an imprint, then punch that mound down!
• Divide into three equal pieces.
• Gently roll into roughly three inch wide by 24 (at least 20) inches long.  If they are resistant, you can hold them by one end and do a little dough-wiggle-stretch dance. but be gentle!  
• Smear with softened butter. 
• Sprinkle, nah, heavily coat buttered dough with spice and sugar mix.

Now,

• roll the dough from left to right, as in, roll the long strips of dough so that they are about an inch or two wide but still about 24 inches long.
• Pinch pinch pinch the seams.
• seams facing down, braid your dough.
• Carefully form braided dough into a circle. Tuck and pinch and just do what ya gotta do to get the ends to get along together nicely.

Second rise done, time for some oven action!

Take a breath,

• set the dough in a warm spot to rise a second time. 
• Wait at least an hour. 
• heat your oven to 350F/176C

Make the Icing!

After the second rise,

• pop that cake into the oven and allow to bake at least 45 minutes, but the better (and maybe longer) indicator is to wait for the dough to turn a bit golden. Watch closely after 45 minutes. You don't want a tough cake.

Color your Sprinkling Sugar!

Once out of the oven,

• let cool 10 minutes

After 10 minutes,

• drizzle the icing you whisked-up and 
• sprinkle with your colored sugars!

Take a photo! Cut a slice! Breathe in a bit of Heaven...and then taste and enjoy!

Happy Mardi Gras celebrating! I hope that you are blessed with a full meal and that your Lent is awesome!

Make a Roux! Pictures too!

How's about some kitchen action?!
Note: This post was written early December, before wedding, Christmas, and New Year and birthday exctiement began.  Excuse my recent whinning on this blog.  Contentment (obviously) is a good virtue for me to strive for...and I'm beginning to feel the stirrings of it, or really the settling, peacefulness that contentment brings.  And a small change has occurred since early December: Jonah sits on his own, so the Bumbo has been stowed away. Yippee!

So here is How to Make a Roux*!

I'm here on the sofa with a belly of dark chocolate and a glass of wine by my side.  It's WAY too late for me to be up and Tyler is on retreat so I'm single parenting all weekend (three cheers to all of you single parents).  Which means: I NEED SLEEP.  But I seriously need some time to do what I want, when I want without precious little people up in my grill.  I love you my sweet babies, but you are babies, thus you are needy, and thus I digress.

Ok.  Gosh.  I am so selfish.  Did you catch that "what I want, when I want."  Lord help me!  Help me to embrace selflessness!

In the meantime, how about cooking up a roux? Oh but you aren't cooking a gumbo? No worries! You could do an etoufee instead!  But really, it's gumbo weather my friends!

But this is about roux.  Homemade roux.  Thank you Kary for revolutionizing the life of modern-day Cajun folk, but this girl has never, repeat, never bought roux and for that I raise my glass of wine and take a sip.

Delicious.

So this is really how my momma taught me.  No lie.  I have pics!  Here we go!

This is a roux for four servings.

Stuff you need:

• Butter (or oil, but do butter, its just so delicious) 1/2 stick

• Flour 1/2 cup

• Diced onions one large/two small

• Diced bell pepper one (i also use a sweet variety found at our famer's market 3/$1 and those work great)

• Diced celery one stalk

Onions, bell peppers and celery are the trinity of Cajun cooking.  I buy low when the price is best (thanks Auntie Leila) and dice and freeze.  I much rather pay 70 cents for a celery bunch than $1.19! I much rather pay 99 cents for three pounds of onions than 75 cents a pound! You get my drift!

• 1/2 cup measuring cup

• 1/4 teaspoon

• 1/2 teaspoon

• 1 teaspoon

• Pot (preferably cast iron, but hey, whatever is in that cabinet is perfect!)

• Spatula or Roux Spoon (no lie, they make these, but I'm content with my little wooden spatula that I was given freeeeeeeeee!)

• Salt

• Black Pepper (fresh cracked if possible - watch the grocery stores grinders go on sale now and again!)

• Cayenne Pepper

• OR a Cajun/Creole seasoning blend rather than seasoning with individuals

First you put your super cute baby in a comfy spot with something to gnaw on.  Thank you Lamaze toy.

Second, melt half a stick of butter over low heat and then add 1/2 cup of flour.  Start browning over medium-high (but more medium than high) heat and at this point get ready to focus.

Third, keep stirring!  Again, you cannot leave this unless someone is playing in poop, running in the road, or otherwise severely in danger.  So do this at naptime, if you can, and if not turn that TV on for a quick program or give your kiddo(s) a bucket of water and some stirring and scooping supplies.  It's for the sake of getting supper on the table!

Fourth, this is where an etoufee roux is FINISHED browning (it has reached peanut butter brown).  If you are making a gumbo, just keep on stirring.  It's about to get crazy-intense.  Make sure the kiddos are occupied!  Pull out popsicles (what? its still 70 and 80 degrees F here!), Cheerios, Goldfish and let them get their munch on!

Fifth, the roux is browning ridiculously fast.  Your fire alarm might (mine always does) go off, and that's mostly (hopefully) a good sign that you are getting some good browning!  My roux came out a bit darker (as you will see) but I had to stop photographing at this point for fear of burning (AH! don't!) my roux.

As soon as your roux is the color of Nutella (sorry for all the spread explanations, just trying to get you a tasty spread! hahaha!) dump in your onions to cool the roux and turn it to low-ish medium.  I add a smidgen of water (like the amount in the teapot when you think it is empty but you dump it to make sure and like about a tablespoon comes out, that much).  Stir.

Onions stirred into roux - looking yummy!

After adding onions and water, add bell peppers and stir.

Add celery to complete the Cajun cooking trinity.  Apparently, the France-French trinity (miripoix) is onions, celery and carrots (this knowledge a courtesy of Auntie Leila; click this sentence to visit her roux making). What a neat difference! Somewhere between here and there the carrots were swapped for bell peppers.  
Stir.

Finally time to season your roux.  I don't have amounts.  I usually wing it, but I estimate: a teaspoon of salt, a half teaspoon of cracked black pepper and a fourth teaspoon of cayenne pepper. Stir.  Overall this is your first round of seasoning.  As you cook the etoufee and gumbo you do lots of taste-testing!

Viola! There you go! A roux!  Now you can freeze or refrigerate it for later use.  I would use within two or three days after being in the refrigerator and within six months of being in the freezer.  Or keep on cooking to make an etoufee or gumbo!

*Different people in different places and even in our city may make their roux differently, but this is how I learned!

Tomorrow I will be posting a kingcake recipe that is a blending of my mom's recipe and my own.  
Come back! You've gotta try this before Ash Wednesday!!!

 So this is Jonah sitting...but then he fell backwards pretty pronto-ific!

And after we wiped tears we settled him with his Boppy pillow and all was well!