Martha Monday: Cheese Straws

Pru selected our Martha Monday project this week.  And these cheese straws were a perfect pick for the Memorial Day picnic I went to.  They were really easy since store-bought puff pastry was the main ingredient.  And they were fun because there were three different flavors.

But, back to the puff pastry.  Definitely seek out the Dufour brand of puff pastry if you can.  It's made with all butter and is superior to Pepperidge Farms brand in so many ways.  Most of all because you don't get that weird coating in your mouth after you eat it.

As for the cheese straws themselves . . . I admit that I struggled a bit with shaping them.  I thought the directions cut them a bit thin.  So, I made them shorter and fatter.  I ended up with about 30 cheese straws total.  The cayenne pepper flavor was the most popular.  It was nice to have something with a bit of kick to it.  So, thanks Pru for a great Memorial Monday pick!

P.S.  See that napkin in the basket?  I sewed that! Oh yeah!

Martha Monday: Pinwheels

Pinwheels!

What better toy to have as we embark on the carefree days of summer?  You can buy these for a buck or two at the store.  OR you can make them!

Martha Stewart gives easy directions to make spectacular twirling whirligigs.  Cut two sheets of decorative paper into five inch squares.  Paste together.  Dry.  Draw diagonal lines from corner to corner.  Make a three-inch cut along each line.  Fold every other point toward the center.  Glue.  Affix to a clothespin (or wooden dowel) with a map tack.

My pinwheel came together just right except it wouldn't spin.  It needed a bit more space to move around the tack.  So, I took a metal skewer (You could use any thin sharp tool.) and poked a pretty large hole so it would spin.  And spin it did!

Adam loved it.  

A Tale of Two Tarts

Megan's Cookin' picked out our Martha Monday recipe . . . this strawberry tart touted as a Mother's Day treat.  It looked like a winner except for the filling.  I just couldn't bring myself to believe that cream cheese and sugar alone would make a good tart filling.  I hemmed and hawed.  My instinct was to make the tart but to use Julia Child's pastry cream as the filling.  I knew that would work.  But it just didn't feel like the true Martha Monday spirit to not try the recipe as it was.  What to do?  MAKE TWO TARTS OF COURSE!!!!

My neighbor suggested that I put the two tarts to the test.  And she volunteered to be one of the many tasters!  So, I set to work.  For both I used Martha's tart crust recipe, already a favorite of mine and used in this tart as well!  And I used the strawberries and currant jelly.

One got a cream cheese filling . . .

And one got a pastry cream filling . . .

And who won?  Martha?  Julia?

Julia was the winner in this contest.  Not everyone was a fan of cream cheese in general.  A few liked how its tang contrasted with the sweet berries.  But most loved the lush creaminess of the pastry cream with the juicy berries.  Martha's cream cheese tart won marks for its sturdiness.  It can be made ahead and refrigerated with no problem.  Julia's pastry cream tart, while tastier, should really be made right before serving so the crust doesn't get soggy.  So, there's the tale of two tarts.  If you want to make Martha's, head on over here.  If you want to use Julia's pastry cream for the filling use the recipe below.  You won't be disappointed!

Pastry Cream
from Mastering the Art of French Cooking by Julia Child, Louisette Bertholle, and Simone Beck


Ingredients:
1 cup sugar
5 egg yolks
1/2 cup flour
2 cups boiling milk
1 tablespoon butter
5 teaspoons vanilla extract

Directions:
1.  Place the egg yolks in the bowl of a stand mixer.  With the wire whip, gradually beat the sugar into the egg yolks.  Beat for about 2 to 3 minutes until the mixture is pale yellow, thick, and forms a slowly dissolving ribbon on the surface of the mixture when the whisk is pulled away.
2.  Add the flour and beat until combined.
3.  Beating the yolk mixture, slowly pour in the boiling milk in a thin stream.
4.  Pour mixture into a saucepan over medium high heat.  Whisk constantly.  As sauce comes to a boil it will get lumpy but will smooth out as you beat it.  When the mixture reaches a boil, beat it over low heat for 2 to 3 minutes to cook the flour.  Be very careful not to scorch the custard on the bottom of the pan.  (I always have a bit of browned custard stuck to the bottom of my pan and no one has complained yet.)
5.  Remove from heat and beat in the butter and vanilla.  Pour into a clean bowl.  Cover with plastic wrap, placing the wrap directly onto the surface of the custard to prevent a skin from forming.  Chill.  Pastry cream may be refrigerated up to a week or may be kept frozen.

Print Recipe

Martha Monday: Cinnamon-Bun Bites

Oh Martha!  What have you done to me!?!?  These cinnamon-bun bites are irresistible!  I thought donut holes were delicious.  These are far superior and far more addictive.

Let me be clear.  If you have ever had, made, eaten, heard of monkey bread, this is it.  Only better.  The dough is rich.  It's full of eggs and butter.  And then each little sphere of dough gets a butter bath and enrobed with cinnamon sugar.  Once baked, it's like a bunch of little cinnamon donuts all clinging together.  Some are crunchy from being toasted by the oven.  Some are soft and pillowy when you dig down into the middle.  Plus there is a glaze.  It's got butter in it too.  Yum.

Thankfully I made a few minor changes to Martha's recipe.  First, I halved it.  I knew I'd eat the whole 8-10 servings if I made the whole thing so I made half the recipe.  Then, instead of making one big hunk of bites, I made smaller single serving portions in my cute little Emile Henry pie dishes.  Finally, the other change I made was simply out of necessity.  I ran out of all-purpose flour so I substituted in a cup of whole wheat flour.  And, finally, one more note.  Make sure you stand-mixer motor is in prime condition. Kneading this dough made my stand mixer motor get very heated.  I was a bit afraid it was going to start smoking.  And since it's about twenty years old, I wouldn't have been surprised.  But this dough requires a lot of kneading and a lot of power so make sure your machine is up to the task.  Just saying.

Thanks, Brette, for a great Martha Monday pick!  And you.  Yes YOU!  If you feel like joining our little club head on over here and sign up.  You don't have to participate every single Monday.  But if you like trying out some of Martha Stewart's crazy and not-so-crazy ideas, this just might be the thing for you!

Martha Monday: Rosemary Bread

This week's challenge was to make this Rosemary Bread featured on Martha Stewart's website.  I was excited to make some homemade bread.  You may remember there have been a few homemade bread recipes made on this site.  Flatbread.  Apple Challah.  Dutch Crunch.  Sourdough.  And since I have a Kitchen-Aid stand-mixer which does ALL the kneading for me, this recipe wasn't too hard to accomplish.

It was kind of strange that it took so much olive oil though.  FIVE whole tablespoons for only 2 and 1/2 cups of flour!  Other than that, nothing seemed to set off alarm bells as I worked through the recipe.

My two loaves came out of the oven glowing with golden warmth and exuding a rosemary scent.  I couldn't wait to dig in!  And dig in, we did.  We ate it warm with a toasted garlic dipping oil.  Hmmm.  The bread was really soft and really soaked up the oil.  So, we switched to butter.  Better.  The boys and I polished off a whole loaf.  Not bad.

BUT . . . the next morning I served it with eggs.  Easy over.  So we could dip our toasted rosemary fingers into the runny sunny yolk.  Ugh.  The bread was awful.  It had such a strange texture.  More like pound cake.  It just wasn't right at all.  Could it have been that great amount of olive oil in the recipe?  I wonder.

Anyway, don't mess with this recipe.  Find a better one.  Somewhere.  Anywhere.