Today, on the French Chef! Episode 79: Brioche

The title pretty much sums it up. Today I made Julia Child's brioche. And it was good. I bought a reprint of her French Chef cookbook, originally published in 1963. I don't usually buy new books, but it was only $7 and it's Julia, you can't say no to Julia.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Just thought I'd show you what I made for my Thanksgiving. I told my mother to leave me in charge of bread. I made crescent rolls, Italian bread and honey wheat rolls. And since I just made sugar cookies for the baby shower, I decided to make Thanksgiving cookies too! Enjoy the day!

Sugar cookies

Decorated sugar cookies are kind of my specialty. I've been making them for most holidays the past few years. And I admit, I'm more into the decorating than the cookie itself. I usually buy sugar cookie mix to save myself a step in the process. But now that I have my mixer and I've been into baking these past few months, I decided I can't cheat anymore and need to make the cookies from scratch, which means finding a recipe to use.

I went to King Arthur Flour and Martha. I'm sure their recipes are good enough, but I didn't want to use either for some reason. I turned to one of my vintage books, Betty Crocker's 1963 Cooky Book. She has two recipes on p. 18, Ethel's sugar cookies and Mary's sugar cookies. Ethel's used granulated sugar, which I'm used to, and Mary's used confectioner's sugar, which I had never used in a cookie recipe before. I would have gone with Ethel, but the former owner of my book had annotated some of the recipes in this book, noting which recipes she liked, and those she didn't. She gave Mary's cookies a "good" beside the recipe. I'll trust her I guess.

Happy Birthday Jiaozi

Tomorrow is my dog's birthday. I know, I'm way too obsessed with my dogs. As if celebrating their birthdays wasn't enough, I also bake them treats for the occasion. Last month, for Siena's birthday, I made a dog biscuit recipe I found online. The girls loved them... until the next day when Siena got sick. I made a dumb mistake, I totally forgot that Siena's tummy cannot handle gluten. I promised her that on Jiaozi's birthday, I would make something gluten free so that she could enjoy them without getting sick.

Healthy muffins

Last week, Ron had his yearly appointment with his cardiologist (he has atrial fibrillation). I went with him for this appointment, I like hearing things straight from the horse's mouth. One of the things Ron needs to work on, his weight. Both of us have been pretty lax in our diets lately (for many reasons) and it's time to get back on track. So no more sweet granola bars for breakfast, I'm making muffins. High fiber, low calorie muffins. I call them "colon blow muffins." Oh how I love classic SNL. Anyways, I started with this apple muffin recipe from KAF, but I've changed it so much, I think I can call it my own recipe. And even though I cut down the sugars by more than half, these muffins still have enough sweetness. Here we go.

Vanilla update

Last month, I began the process of making my own vanilla extract as Christmas presents for my friends. Well, it's been a month, and since then I decided that the three cups I started out with were not going to be enough, so I bought another bottle of vodka, and more vanilla beans. This time, I bought the beans on Amazon, which gave me 7 beans for $7.95. And it was free shipping and they arrived at my house in three days! Since I didn't have another large Bell jar for the extract, I simply added the beans to the vodka bottle. This second batch was made about two weeks ago. But you'll notice that the color of the vodkas are very similar. I think that they will be ready for Christmas, and now I just have to buy the bottles to put them in!

Homemade crescent rolls!

It's the time of year when you start thinking about certain foods. For me, I love crescent rolls. And I really only have them at thanksgiving. Once in a great while, I will buy a package and make a baked brie. Mmmm, baked brie. Anyways, I was flipping through another of my vintage cookbooks last weekend, this time Betty Crocker's Picture Cook Book from 1950. There was a recipe for homemade crescent rolls. Wow. Obviously homemade will be better than store bought, right? Well, before we get to the rolls, take a look inside this book.