Rollkuchen

Alright, before we get down to business, I must apologize. School and, well, school, have kept me very busy the last few weeks and I have not been able to blog as much as I would like. To all of my faithful followers, I am sorry. Please be patient with me as I am in the home stretch of finishing my degree! I have a good months worth of pictures from my kitchen and they will all make it here eventually.

Alright, enough of that...

Any good Mennonite like myself has grown up eating Rollkuchen and watermelon in the summers. It's one of those things that just has to happen and no summer is complete without it. My dad makes amazing Rollkuchen so I said to him, "Dad, let's make Rollkuchen together one day this summer so I can blog about it." Wouldn't you know it, a few weeks later we were doing just that. Now, the recipe for these Rollkuchen is a closely guarded secret in my family so alas, I will not be sharing the recipe. I will share the process and the fun that was had making these wonderful pieces of fried dough however.

First off, it is very important to sift all of the dry ingredients together so they are evenly disbursed and probably for other reasons which I don't know.

Once the dry ingredients were sifted, we added the wet ingredients and started mixing our dough.

There I am mixing it all up in my parent's kitchen. Eventually my dad took over as he knows how the dough is supposed to feel in your hands.

There's my dad kneading dough like a boss.
Once the dough is the right texture, it's my brother's job to roll it out to just the right thickness (yes, it's a family effort).

While my bro is rolling out the dough, my dad starts heating up his deep fryer. As that's heating up, my brother and I finished rolling out the dough and started cutting it into strips.

The first batch of dough ready to be fried.
I took them out to my dad (he has his deep fryer set up in the garage so the whole house doesn't smell like a fast food restaurant) and he carefully puts the strips of dough into the preheated oil.

There they are, all happy and frying away. Once the edges start to turn golden brown, that's when they're ready to be flipped.

First batch done and the next batch waiting in the wings.

And done. Look at those things. Just look at them. Golden pillows of airy, fried goodness. It's good to be a Mennonite. Be jealous.

Of course, you can't eat Rollkuchen without watermelon. It's a law of nature. Or something.

You also can't forget the brown sugar sauce. It's liquid crack. For real. The trick is to kind of squish the rollkuchen into the sauce so it gets in all the little air pockets on the inside. Double dipping is also allowed. In hindsight, this afternoon was a highlight of my summer. I think we have a new family tradition??

And that's it for today's blog entry. I promise I will share an actual recipe next time, I just had to blog about rollkuchen. It's in my blood.

xoxo

A

Strawberry Greek Yogurt Cake

And here is part 2 of my Sunday adventure in the kitchen. This recipe I cannot take credit for. I found it on Pinterest and here is the link: http://aspicyperspective.com/2010/05/farmstand-fresh.html
Oh. My. Word. This cake is reedonkulous. Seriously. I don't throw around made up adjectives willy-nilly so you know I'm being serious. And oh my was it easy! I'm not going to go into crazy detail with this one as you can follow the recipe exactly by using the URL above.

I mixed all of the dry and wet ingredients as instructed and I ended up with a fairly thick batter. The next time I make this cake I am going to use a slightly thinner Greek yogurt as I didn't end up with the "strawberry tears" that the author of the blog I got the recipe from referred to.

My cute little strawberries all dusted with flour.

Strawberries mixed into the cake batter. Make sure to ever so lightly fold the strawberries into the cake batter as you don't want to crush the strawberries.
I don't remember where exactly I learned this but as far as I know it's very important to grease your bundt pan very well. Maybe that's because of it's shape? Anyway, I did exactly that.

There she is all smoothed out and ready to go in the oven (yes, this cake is a female. Obviously).

And here she is after spending some quality time in the oven. I love that golden brown colour. I think I'll paint my whole house that colour.

Skip to cake completely cooled and iced. Since this cake was so large I wanted to take it and share it with my family but my husband had a greedy moment and would not let her leave the house. That must mean it was good.

Also, I realized this weekend that I actually have some fans!! I'm shameless when mentioning my blog to my friends/family. When I started talking about it to a couple of my girlfriends this weekend one finished naming it before I could and said "I'm on there all the time!" Well, hmm. That's great! I'm glad I have some faithful readers! As such, I will try and blog a little bit more for my faithful following.

xoxo

- A

BBQ Ribs, cheesy, garlic Mashed potatoes, Corn on the Cob 

Sundays are probably my favorite days to cook a huge meal. I try not to plan much on Sundays, usually because I reserve those for my cooking days in which I take my time and make up my own recipes. Sigh, I just love Sundays. Also, if I make a big meal on a Sunday I will ALWAYS make a dessert (which I will focus on in my next post).
On this particular Sunday I wanted to make a good old fashioned barbecued dinner. Ribs, crazy good mashed potatoes and corn on the cob (also done on the bbq). Not much better than that. These recipes today are all courtesy of yours truly! Sundays really are the best. So here goes...

BBQ Ribs

Approx 2 full racks of ribs (I don't know what the weight of the ribs were but they were one of those long racks you can get at Costco that come in a pack of two. They are approximately two "full" racks).

Okay, fine, here's just a picture for reference instead of me just rambling on and on trying to explain to you how big they are.
I made a rub for the ribs consisting of approx:
1/4 cup brown sugar
1/8 cup white sugar
1 T oregano
1 t cumin
1/2 t cayenne pepper
1 t paprika
1 t smoked chipotle powder
1 t black pepper
1/2 t salt
1 t garlic powder
... and I think that's it.
I rubbed that in pretty good so that the meat could have a really nice smoky flavor. I put a little bit of water at the bottom of a 9 x 13 baking dish and baked the ribs at 350 degrees for about an hour.

While those were in the oven I started making my mashed potatoes. I used a whole bag of those small red potatoes with the skins still on. I cut them in half and boiled them until I could poke a fork through them easily.

Aww, how cute. My Grandma would have referred to these as potatoes with their jackets still on.
Anyway, once these were done I added about 1/4 cup of sour cream, 1/2 cup of cheddar cheese, an entire bulb of roasted garlic (cut off the top of the bulb, drizzle with olive oil and bake for 20 mins at about 350 or until the garlic is nice and soft), some salt and pepper, maybe some butter and/or milk? I can't remember exactly as I'm writing this post a few weeks after I made it and I never write my recipes down. The texture was chunky but still moist. Dry mashed potatoes are, just, no.

Once the ribs came out of the oven, we (when I say "we" I'm referring to my husband and I) put them on the bbq and basted the crap out of them with some garlic and onion bbq sauce. They don't go on very long as they're already cooked, just long enough to get a nice char on the outside.

Our corn cobs also went on the bbq and I cannot take credit for that as my husband cooked them and they turned out fabulous.

So this picture looks a little overexposed (is that the right word?) but I think it shows clearly the nice char that was achieved on these ribs. And no, I didn't eat all of that in one sitting. It sure made a tasty lunch for work the next day!

This picture shows the potatoes and the corn a smidge better - as you've probably gathered for yourself. I also love mashed potatoes in any form/texture. These were pretty chunky but I also like them whipped completely smooth or fried into little croquettes (we had potato croquettes for our anniversary dinner and they were AMAAAAAzing).
Okay, and now while I'm on a roll, part two featuring a strawberry greek yogurt bundt cake is up next!

- A