One of my favorite pizza dough recipes

This is just one of three favorite pizza doughs that come to mind and yes, we eat a lot of homemade pizza around here. It makes us happy. Well, most of us anyway. Apparently when you're two little appeals to your very limited palate. Said the mother who is trying EXTRA hard to not be the mom who cooks two dinner every night.

This pizza dough is pretty easy and I think could be made ahead and frozen if you're that ambitious.

The cool thing about this dough is that you bake it in a pizza pan on a heated pizza stone. You add a generous layer of oil to the pan and then the heat of the stone almost fries the dough right in the pan and it gets all brown and crispy and delicious.

This recipe was ever-so-slightly adapted from Top Secret Restaurant Recipes 3.

Pizza Hut Pan Pizza
(don't judge until you've tried please!)
(no wait, judge away, I already know how delicious it is ;-)

3 C. bread flour (yes, it needs to be bread flour)
1 Tbsp sugar
1 1/2 tsp active dry yeast (I use the instant yeast from the jar that says good for bread machines)
1 1/4 tsp salt

Mix all these ingredients in a large mixing bowl (I use my stand mixer) and then add:
1 1/3 C. warm water - NOT hot, directions on the yeast said 80 degrees was optimal

You can mix with the paddle and then switch to the dough hook or just go for it with the dough hook like I do. I mixed it for 3 -4 minutes after it came together in a ball. Then tuck into a ball and place into a greased bowl, covered with plastic wrap, to rise. I actually set the covered bowl in the microwave with the door close to hold in the heat because our kitchen has proven chilly for rising dough.

Let rise 2-3 hours.

I use a large (14") deep dish pan from Kitchen Kapers or you could make two smaller pizza using 9" cake pans. (I think this pan from Sur La Table seems like mine). Place a pizza stone on the bottom rack of the oven and preheat to 500 degrees. GENEROUSLY grease your pan(s) and spread your dough in, then top with whatever floats your boat. This was BBQ sauce, mozzarella and grated smoked gouda. With one quarter left sauce-less for you-know-who. Bake for 10-12 minutes and if you've done it right (and I know you will!) the crust will slide around in the pan when it's done and be oh so easy to get out. Mmmmm.

Even sauce-less and called cheese bread instead of pizza she still didn't eat it. But you already knew that didn't you?

:-)

Two awesome recipes (NOT to eat)

Because I know this looks really appetizing. Ha!

But seriously if you have little people at your house this is an amazing (cheap and easy) home made play doh recipe. We are in LOVE with play doh around here and this makes a monster sized ball big enough to thoroughly delight your little person.

I left this batch white (plain, it wasn't truly white-white but more of a beige floury color) and kneaded in plain old glitter as it cooled to make "snow play doh" for snowman day at school yesterday.

My tester hard at work at home.

The Most Awesome Play Dough

2 Tbsp oil (I used canola)
1 C water
(food coloring if desired)

1 C flour
1/2 tsp salt (not kosher)
2 tsp cream of tartar

Heat the oil in your pot until it's warm and shimmery. Remove from heat and add water (and food coloring if you want it).

Mix in all other ingredients. Return to low heat and cook until stirring constantly until mixture thickens/gets firm. Original recipe said 4-5 minutes I think mine took barely 3 so just watch it. Remove from heat and set on plate/waxed paper/cutting board to cool.

I kneaded the glitter in once it cooled (you could probably mix in food coloring the same way). This keeps in a ziploc bag (or other air tight container) indefinitely. Seriously, the first batch I made several weeks ago looks freakishly the exact same - smooth, no smell, no mold - weird but great. I made three batch for school it made 8 generous portions. I made them all at once which worked fine but my shoulder was sore from stirring that giant blob all at once. Just warning you.

Now on to the MIRACLE cream.

Seriously. I am not a gusher or a hugger really or a OOH THIS IS SOOO GREAT kind of girl. Was an art student not a cheerleader. You get the idea. So you can believe my honesty when I say, BEST LOTION EVER.

EVER people.

This comes from an art teacher who has tried many, many lotions for driest dry skin cracked from clay and constantly washing paint brushes. My feet also get cracked and sand-papery in the winter (sorry if that's TMI) and nothing seemed to help them either. Enter the miracle lotion (as it shall now be called).

You take the 3 ingredients you see in the first photo - 16oz (or 15.5 - whatever is close) bottle of baby lotion, 8oz (7.5 oz) vaseline and a 4oz tub of vitamin E cream and you whip (with an electric mixer) all of them together and you get 2 tubs about this size of the most good-smelling, best working lotion. My hands don't hurt, my feet are noticeably smoother and my art teacher BFF says her clay cracked hands are on the mend! I think you could use generic brands for all these and still get great results. I found the vitamin E cream in a 2-pack at Walmart with the lotions, I did have to try a couple of stores before I found it. LOVE THIS LOTION. Thanks to Pinterest (of course) for both these recipes.

We've made it through 2 whole weeks of daddy being gone, just 1 more to go - YAY! Absence does indeed make the heart grow fonder and I don't know which of us will be happier to see him home next weekend :-)

Hope everyone has a great weekend and if you're in the Atlanta area please feel free to come join us tomorrow morning 9AM till noon at Whipstitch for the Atlanta Modern Sewing Guild meeting! Japanese craft books is our topic this month and I can't wait to get get my sew on - and a HUGE thanks to Nanny (Grandma) for the H sitting!

Oreo Brownies

Pinterest is a funny thing because you pin things based on their appearances, literally judging the book by it's cover every time. So then when you go actually look at what you pinned sometimes you aren't getting exactly what you expected.

That was the case with the Oreo brownies I pinned a while back - they look delicious but they were a bit fussier than I was looking for on a day when the kid was politely refusing to nap (no THANK YOU mommy - as if that makes it better. geez.).



So before you think all I cook (ok, bake) around here is sweets, let me tell you that this was a baking request and when you've been invited to dinner on a school night by wonderful friends who know how hard it is to entertain a 2 year old by yourself for many days, you bake.

So this was the version of Oreo Brownies that I was looking for but couldn't find. Necessity is the mother of invention right?

So I lined my 9x13 pan with foil, greased it and layered 20 double stuff oreos in it.

Then I mixed up a box of brownie mix (that's right, I'm a dedicated baker like that) and poured right over those brownies. Actually I spooned it over them so they wouldn't slide all around. Then I baked them for about 30 minutes and cooled them.

Then, and this is where the magic happens folks, I made from scratch cream cheese frosting to put on top. You could put this frosting on almost anything and people would love it. LOVE. It.

BEST cream cheese frosting:
1 8oz. block cream cheese, softened
1 stick butter, softened
4 C powdered sugar
1 tsp. vanilla

Mix until smooth - if it's too thick add a little splash of milk to thin it out a little. That's it. I know it seems like not enough to be magical but trust me on this. It is magical. Spread on top of cooled brownies.

So then my pint sized helper sprinkled the chopped oreos on top and we headed off for dinner and playing.

I could have taken a better, more "professional" looking photo but honestly we were much too busy shoving these in our mouths while the kids weren't looking to do much of anything else ;-)

Good times!

Rain, rain...

We've had a gray, rainy, stormy weekend around these parts but we would have been inside anyway, fighting off the colds we both caught last week.

Everyone said her first year at school she'd catch everything and boy they weren't kidding. Nothing serious (thankfully) but after a while the perpetual nose drip and cough gets old. This weekend we were a little punier than even a "normal" cold. And daddy is still gone for two more weeks.


I have a renewed respect for people who single parent all the time. I know how lucky I am to be able to stay home right now and on the hard days I'm extra thankful to not have to worry about getting her to daycare and being at work by 7AM. If that was what needed to happen in order for me to be a parent I would have done it without a second thought, she's worth it. But I'm glad we don't have to right now.

Especially on the rainy days.

Gourmet pretzel wannabes

Don't be fooled by these unassuming looking pretzels - they are sassy and delicious! And if you make a batch while your husband is out of the country you may very well eat them all yourself -- be careful, you won't realize you're addicted until it's waaaaay too late.

My mom produced this recipe that I emailed her in oh 2005 (!) when apparently I was on a mission to reproduce those pricey gourmet pretzels at home. I mean those little bags can get REALLY expensive. For pretzels. So anyway, these are quite spicy but you can always cut back on the pepper if you don't like as much heat.

Spicy Gourmet-ish Pretzels

1 package ranch dressing mix
1 1/2 tsp. lemon pepper
1 1/2 tsp. garlic salt (you could also substitute onion or celery salt)
1 tsp. cayenne pepper (yep, a whole tsp. - but use less if you like. I've also substituted a tsp. of aleppo pepper and they were not as spicy but still tasty)
3/4 C. vegetable oil

Mix all this in a large ziploc bag. Then add a 15oz (ish) bag of pretzels. Smoosh the bag around to coat the pretzels. Turn it over a couple of times. I made mine at bedtime and let them sit over night - turning them over a few times before I went to sleep. In the morning - delicious, zippy pretzels. My bag had a layer of the coating stuck to it to I just scraped that off with a spatula when I took the pretzels out.

So. So. Good.

Happy Friday!

Well we've survived our first full week of Daddy being gone, only two more to go (which feels like an eternity right about now). H has had some sad moments (mostly when she's already tired) but the miracle of facetime has made us feel MUCH better :-) Talking to someone via a live video still seems like Jetsons technology to me when I stop and think about it. I love it!

So I've been trying to squeeze in a few "fun for mom" moments this week - you know they come during nap time of after bedtime - but I have found some, that's the important thing. So check me out, I made a light box! Nutty looking right? But it took about 30 minutes and mostly stuff I already had around the house - easy, peasy.

Look at how much better those colors look - LOVE this project! The down side was that I made it from a too-small box - that's why it's too bright at the top. The good news is that it's pretty easy to find a bigger box and whip up another one. Oh and the first one can always be recycled - bonus points!

I think on the next one I'm also going to line it with white fabric - I just smacked some white paper in this one to see how it would look and I hate seeing the seem at the bottom corner - ugh. One continuous sheet of fabric or paper will take care of that! So I'm definitely going to make a bigger one and keep around for photographing small projects, I found the directions (via Pinterest) on the (never home) maker blog.

In other news I think I'm finally going to break down and learn to knit - I know how to crochet pretty well but I've resisted learning to knit for years. I figured the last thing I needed was another set of projects to distract me but I've been seeing so many lovely cowls around blogland lately that I think I'm going to give in. Knitting here I come!

I'll leave you with a peek at what Miss H is working on this morning: she grabbed a new pad of post-it notes from our "junk" drawer and a pencil (I've already learned that the scissors and permanent markers had to go live somewhere else) and is busy putting an H on each and every sheet of paper. Oh and she'll get to them all - she is nothing if not thorough.

Two seems to be all about making your mark :-)

Happy Friday!

Tasty Tuesday : Buckeye Bars

If you're from the states you're probably familiar with those yummy little chocolate covered peanut butter balls that show up around the holidays - story has it that they originated in Ohio, the Buckeye state, hence the name. They're delicious but fairly time consuming to make and knowing Miss H's LOVE of play-doh and squishing it into a zillion teeny tiny pieces I haven't had the time or courage to make them lately. But then I came across this recipe in a cookbook around Christmas and the light bulb went off - these I could actually pull off! Sadly, as soon as my husband goes out of town my (already weak) will to cook dinner disappears almost entirely and I end up making and eating something like this for dinner. The worst part? I'm not even sorry!




Buckeye Bars

(from Better Homes and Gardens Very Merry Cookies)



one 19.5 ounce brownie mix
2 eggs
1/3 C. oil (I used Canola)
1 C. chopped peanuts (I used salted dry roasted)

1 14 ounce can sweetened condensed milk
1/2 C peanut butter


Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Line a 9x13 pan with foil and lightly grease the foil (or spray with cooking oil like PAM or Baker's Joy).

Combine brownie mix, eggs and oil in a large bowl - mix well with electric mixer. Stir in peanuts. Spread 1/2 of the brownie mixture in your prepared pan. (I think I ended up using more like 2/3 of the mixture in the bottom of the pan because it was tricky to spread - still turned out fine).

In a separate bowl whisk together peanut butter and sweetened condensed milk. Pour over brownie mixture in pan.

Take spoonful (or pinches) of the remaining dough and flatten, then place on top of peanut butter mixture in pan.

Bake for 25 - 30 minutes (top should be set and edges lightly brown). Cool in pan completely. Use foil to lift out and cut into bars. Store between layers of waxed paper in airtight container.

These are very rich, so small sized bars are probably your friend. They may also make a delicious breakfast a la Bill Cosby - chocolate cake? Cake has eggs, milk, flour..sure, have cake! And then I hear the song in my head, "Dad is great, give us the chocolate cake..." but I digress. Teehee. Hope your Tuesday treats you well!