and now... all the photos I didn't shoot

I lost my camera for a few weeks (later found thankfully) and here's a quick list of what I made and ate:

Chewy Pretzel Bites. These taste pretty much like Wetzel's Pretzels. They take a bit of time to make, but it makes a LOT of pretzels. Eat the day you make them or else they turn into stale bits of dough, no good.

Chocolate Kettle Corn. I used my leftover popping corn to make this gluttonous snack. There's butter, sugar and chocolate. You can't go wrong. It's good and it's bad.

Breakfast Pizza. bacon + eggs??? So good! Didn't try the dessert pizza, but it looks drop dead delicious as well.

Victorian Sponge Cupcakes. Not quite as light as I expected, but a good simple cake with a jam filling.

YAY more PIZZA!

I've come a tiny bit closer to a good pizza recipe. This recipe comes from Saveur and was inspired by Pizzeria Mozza one of my favorite restaurants in LA. It was surprisingly easy to shape and there's a great accompanying recipe about how to shape a pizza. I ended up making 2 large (and way too doughy) pizzas, 1 of which was for lunch. There is just no good way to microwave this type of pizza, it gets doughy and chewy... egh. Next time I'll just make 1 pizza to eat right away.


I made my regular (marina with a lot of sliced garlic) and a potato rosemary "pizza." Not sure it counts as pizza when there's no cheese or sauce!

Pizza & Home made ricotta

Oh yes, it's pizza time. Again. The last time I made pizza it was a disaster and made me seriously doubt my (few) pizza making skills. My pizza love was piqued by buying a pizza stone and a peel. I've read that you can use an unglazed quarry stone instead of buying a pizza stone, but I'm still worry about using a non-food grade material for baking so I decided to spend the extra money and not worry about lead poisoning. This time I went with a recipe from Serious Eats for a NY style pizza.

I tried out a different dough stretching technique and I think it really helped. I think a longer resting time will really benefit the dough too. I used a mix of APF and corn meal to dust the peel, not sure if I like cornmeal on it. Many more ideas to test out and more dough recipes. For now, at least, I know I can make okay pizza.


I also had some extra whole milk so I decided to make some ricotta. Turns out it is crazy easy to make. But it doesn't make that much- that one recipe made only about 1/4 cup of ricotta. I wanted to have it on my pizza in lumps so I let it dry out overnight.

A pizza dough fail.

Yes, broccoli. It was about to go bad and I had to eat it.

Another pizza dough recipe. And this one was a big fail, I don't know why! Maybe my yeast was dead? But this dough did NOT want to be kneaded or be anything other than a chunk of cold, wet dough. I persevered and made one pizza, but I ended up trashing the other two balls of dough. It was sad day in pizza land.

Focaccia Pizza and Green Tea and Chocolate Marbled Cake

Just look at this magnificent pizza! It combines focaccia bread + pizza. I freaking love focaccia- this was awesome. It's still a thin crust pizza so it doesn't turn into a chicago deep dish, but enough bread so you get the focaccia feel in the crust- still chewy, crisp on the edges.


Okay now look at my new measuring spoons- aren't they awesome? They're skinny so they can fit into all sorts of spice jars. I got them from Sur La Table.

Okay now look at this awesome mixing bowl! I had to buy new stuff since I was using my old roommates baking equipment. This one is from Giada De Laurentiss' line for Target. I was debating between this plastic set and the stainless steel and decided I needed the larger bowl so I got these. I like that there's a little spout so it's easy to pour batter out and a rubber ring on the bottom so it doesn't slide everywhere. The only problem is when I need to melt chocolate or use it over a hot pot of water, but I can switch to the various glass bowls I have instead.

Anyways... I made green tea and chocolate swirled cupcakes. I like the way the loaf looks, but it's easier to hand out cupcakes. It's really good, but possibly too moist? I guess I like my cake a little dryer, but the 1 cup of yogurt really made these sticky/fudgey despite being cooked all the way through. They looked great though! Chocolate and green tea are a great combination.

Pepitas Brittle and another Pizza!

This is a failed attempt at pepitas brittle. I had to use leftover pepitas, so I thought I'd make brittle. I love peanut brittle! I'm not 100% sure what went wrong- I heated the sugar to the right temperature... there must've been some sugar on the side of the pan that didn't melt and it made the rest of the mixture crystallize. ): It tasted good though. I went overboard in protecting myself from hot bubbling sugar- I had oven mitts, aprons and towels on the side, ready just in case.

This is another version of the no-knead pizza dough. Sorry, no photos! I tried it and for some reason this one turned out better than the last version. No idea why or how, but I'm going to stick with this one for no-knead. Next up is to try a pizza dough recipe with cake flour, which is supposed to be the best stand in for 00 flour, which is what is traditionally used for pizza/pasta in Italy.

No-knead Pizza and Egg Salad

Oh yes, it's pizza again. I will never tire of pizza. Lately it's become a necessity, I eat it probably once a week because it's so cheap to make and if I plan ahead, it can be a relatively quick meal. A few entries ago I wrote about no-knead bread- this is no-knead pizza. I bought King Arthur Bread flour just for this recipe- I don't know exactly how bread flour + no kneading = good pizza, but it works. Not sure if this is my favorite yet- I still have about 4 more dough recipes to go through!


Egg salad- a summer must. Sad to say, but I couldn't remember exactly what goes into an egg salad! All I could remember was eggs + mayonnaise. I like mayonnaise in moderation so I was thankful for the reminder of mustard and the new-to-me idea of curry powder! Yum! I also used Veganniase because with all the butter/eggs/diary I eat, my heart could use some help. I love Vegannaise! I also added some celery because I like the crunch and some very thinly sliced red onion because I wanted some bite.

Double Tree Cookie and a Brussel Sprout Pizza

I had no idea Double Tree gave out cookies when you check in until Joanne told me and she says they're good, like one of the best (I don't remember their exact ranking...). I haven't had the chance to stay at a Double Tree yet, but I found this recipe online which is supposed to be the real thing. They were.... okay. I think I had too much stuff for the amount of dough- they were bit crumb-ly and dry. I really like the shredded oats though, I haven't seen/tasted that in a cookie before. Next time, I'm using 3/4 of the "stuff" and keeping the same amount of dough.





And another pizza- I am slightly obsessed with pizza right now (pizzas are the new burgers) and I really really want a brick oven in my backyard when I (if I ever) own my own home. This time it is a brussel sprout pizza. The original recipe is brussel sprouts and pancetta, but I substituted peas since this was on a veggie night. I really like brussel sprouts on pizza- the leaves are crisp and charred and soft when stuck half in, half out of the cheese.

Sausage ragu and polenta and whole wheat pizza

This was my first time eating and making polenta and ragu. I wasn't too excited about polenta when I started making it- it looks like sand in water for the first few minutes. Then it plumped up into a creamy mass, sort of how I imagine aligot to look like in person. I loooveeee polenta now and it's so easy to make and really really cheap! I have the standard corn meal from Ralphs and it tastes great. I use chicken stock and some milk to have some extra flavor. I also made some polenta triangles with leftover polenta (a later post...). By the way rouxbe.com is a great site for beginning cooks who really don't know how to cook or chop. Their videos are really helpful and even if you don't get the paid subscription you can still access a good part of their website.


Whole wheat pizza! Surprisingly still pretty tasty, but definitely only for a Neapolitan style pizza. The dough was pretty good, but not great. Once it's baked to a crisp, it doesn't really matter if you use whole wheat or all purpose flour (to me at least), but if you want to have some chew to your crust I would skip it. I made a standard cheese pizza and topped it with arugula, my new favorite salad staple.

Margherita Pizza

This pizza is so freaking good- I made it three days in a row! Thank you Ms Kapser! I'm glad I joined KPCC now- this recipe is amazing. It doesn't make Pizza Hut type dough- it's Neopolitan style, aka cracker thin crust. When Jojo and I were in Rome, our hostel was a block from an amazing delicious and cheap pizza shop. They had their pizzas laid out like this:

Huge rectangles of crunchy deliciousness. They sliced it according to how much you were willing to pay. I think it was 3 euros for a pretty big slice.


And this recipe is FAST. Make the dough and let it rest for an hour or so, then roll it out until it's very very thin. I sprayed Pam on the tray before hand and used a wine bottle since I don't have a rolling pin.

I used my favorite tomato sauce- Trader Joe's marinara. I use this in everything, even as the base for soups.

Add mozzarella cheese.


Add some julienned basil (save the rest for later), sliced raw garlic, tomatoes and some olive oil. I based the toppings off of one of my favorite pizzas at Palomino's, especially the thin slices of raw garlic. SO GOOD!

When it's done and the cheese is nice and brown, throw some more basil on top. I like the basil slightly fried on the pizza with the fresh basil on top.

The next few days I made it with artichoke and salami. I'm going to try and find a good recipe for a dough-y pizza now, with cornmeal on the bottom.

Pizza Bites

This recipe seemed like it'd go really fast, you're basically assembling mini calzones. I got the recipe here. Although the recipe looks like it makes a lot, I only made 12 from 1 pack of trader joe's herbed pizza dough. I also added julienned basil to the inside and outside of the pizza bites.


It was really easy to make and they turned out pretty well, BUT I would like to use a different dough. I'm not a big fan of the Trader Joe's herbed dough and I'm glad that I tripled the amount of garlic... mmmm These would be great for a party, easy finger food. I can already think of a bunch of different combinations- this will be a good go-to recipe for busy days.