Starting the Day off Right/Homemade Granola

When I was younger, my mornings consisted of waking up, getting dressed, brushing my teeth and then sitting down to breakfast with my family. This was something I usually looked forward to, even if waking up early for school was always somewhat of a challenge. When these early wake ups got the best of me and I walked into the kitchen scowling and cranky, my mother would look at me and say "Frenchie, let's start over."

This set off a chain of events, first I would get annoyed that my mom was so weird, gawd. Then, eventually, like so many kids I did what I was told. I would walk out of the kitchen and walk back in with an exaggerated fake smile pasted to my face and my mother would look at me and say, with a shining smile, "Good Morning Frenchie, it is so nice to see you today." Despite all my huffing and puffing, I always ended up with a real smile on my face, and to this day those are the mornings I remember best.

Daring Bakers/Puff Pastry Vols-au-Vent

I would like to welcome everyone to the new TBD. Since our last challenge I have revamped the look and feel of my blog and I really hope you all like it; I would like to send a shout out to Ellie from Rainy Day Templates for all her help. Ellie's templates are beautiful and affordable and she could not be nicer and more efficient, for all of you looking for a blog facelift, I highly recommend you check out her site. What better time to reveal my blog's new look than during a Daring Baker's challenge?

The September 2009 Daring Bakers' challenge was hosted by Steph of A Whisk and a Spoon. She chose the French treat, Vols-au-Vent based on the Puff Pastry recipe by Michel Richard from the cookbook Baking With Julia by Dorie Greenspan.

I was so excited when I found out that we would be making our own puff pastry this month, it is one of my favorite ingredients and I am so happy that I finally learned how to make it myself. I feel like I have always heard horror stories about puff pastry, all the turns, the rolling, the arm pain and so on. The truth is, it was pretty manageable and I found it was all about enjoying the process. Steph require that we make Vols-au-Vent, which is not the first thing that I would think to do with homemade puff pastry. This requirement definitely left me a bit stumped, I spent hours thinking and brainstorming about what to do with it, and in the end I was unsatisfied with all my ideas.

Welcoming the Fall/Apple Buttermilk Bread Pudding

For better or for worse, it seems that fall is officially here. Fall, that bittersweet time of year when courageous souls are still wearing shorts and flip flops, holding on to the fading thoughts of summer and pushing out the thoughts of impending midterms and another winter to come. Luckily, it is during this uncertain time of year that apples come back in season, timed perfectly with the need for ultimate comfort foods.

I am not sure I will ever understand why apples make the most comforting of foods, instead I just embrace the rich smell of cinnamon that swirls around my apartment when I cook them, their crisp sweet-tartness and the buttery sweet goodness that usually encases them. My love for this fruit is endless and I always have some on hand either as a snack or as an ingredient for both sweet and savory dishes.

Cultures/Challah Bread

I guess I should be starting off this post by telling all of you that I am not actually Jewish, but sometimes I think I am. Actually, I went to a small all-girls Catholic school. Once in university, I found myself surrounded by a lot of wonderful Jewish friends, so my appreciation for the religion as well as for the classic foods grew tremendously. That, and the fact that I am from New York City where Jewish food reigns, means that for me it is comfort food, well some of it (sorry gefilte fish, I am just not ready to try you yet). This weekend while many of my friends were home for Rosh Hashanah, I decided to honor the holiday by trying my hand at Challah Bread.

I am notoriously (kinda) awful at bread making, I never knead enough or correctly, the bread always comes out as a heavy brick, and so I usually choose to accept my weakness and buy bread. Well, not anymore. Today, I realized that bread making is more or less a cinch, now that I am out of my Milanese pseudo-kitchen and have a decent counter to knead on.