Thanksgiving 2011

I had a gigantic plan to document every aspect of our MASSIVE Thanksgiving dinner but about two Gin and Tonics into the cooking I lost all concentration and didn't take any more photos. But I'll fill you in with writing!

Thanksgiving has become a bit of a tradition for me and Rob in the UK. Every year we cook a massive dinner and invite our friends and Rob's family over. But because it's not a public holiday here we have to celebrate on the Saturday after, it doesn't feel the same as having it on a Thursday (with a short week and super long weekend) but it's starting to create it's own feeling of tradition for me here.

This year we had our biggest Thanksgiving in the UK ever (last year we had nearly 30 at my parents in the US). This year we crammed 15 of our closest friends and family into our extremely tiny flat and drank and ate all evening. I even went all out on decorations with special table settings, balloons, and proper decorations.

Napkins and tablecloth were sent all
the way from my mom in the US!

Fantastic cheesy fan turkey from a specialty shop in the UK

Another treat from my mom!

Our celebration started long before the decorations went up though. We had three vegetarians coming to dinner and Rob and I had never made a vegetarian gravy before. We didn't want to just wing it on the day for fear it would be awful. In order to make sure everything was perfect we decided to test several (six to be exact) different vegetarian gravies the night before.

We ended up with a very thick red wine reduction gravy with a seasoning made up of onion, sage, thyme, and a hint of tarragon. I wasn't looking forward to tasting so many meatless gravies but I'm completely converted now. All six of these gravies were delicious and would rival any meat gravy! Hopefully Rob will share his recipe on here soon.

So after the decorations were ordered and the veggie gravy decided we got to work on the main event... the turkey!

We normally brine the turkey but we were talked out of it by our butcher who felt that it would taint the integrity of his fantastic free-range organic happy turkeys. It wasn't as moist as a brined turkey but it was good and I slathered it with so much butter that I'm sure I tainted it anyway. 

We cooked the bird in an oven bag which gave it an amazing colour. Unfortunately I don't have a finished photo but here is one of it going in the oven! Just imaging it 5 hours later and beautiful and brown!

We had the usual sides: stuffing, mashed potatoes, beans, cranberry sauce, sweet potato casserole, etc., again imagine that they all looked perfect, cause the did! 

However, we had one new edition this year... THE FRUIT TURKEY! I found this on Pinterest and thought 'I can do that' and I did! It's a twist on a fruit salad/kebab that looks like a turkey. I served it as an appetizer and it really stole the show. My boss even tweeted it! 

From the front....

from the side.

And it is as easy as it looks, just fruit and toothpicks (and cheese cubes, if you want). It was really quite impressive and has now become a tradition at the Scott-Clark family Thanksgiving table!

Finally, the desserts - pumpkin and apple pies topped with american flags. I carried them proudly to the table while everyone drunkenly sang the US national anthem!  Both pies were big hits and we are seriously lacking pies in the leftovers! 

Rob's apple pie

After everyone was stuffed and people could barely move we broke up into teams and Rob lead a pub quiz while I heckled and DJed. Our friends and family fought a close battle but a team made up of Rob's parents and two of our friends won as a power team called 'The Kermits' (brilliant name)! It was a very competitive crowd so I'm not sure if the loss might have ruined Thanksgiving for some but me.. I enjoyed it!

So all in all it was a very happy Thanksgiving. I am truly thankful for all of my friends and family who came to celebrate with us, what a wonderful year! Now we just have to work our way through the mounds of leftovers we're on day four and still have at least two pounds of turkey left over!

Oatmeal, walnut, and chocolate chunk cookies

I originally made these cookies about a year ago and they were very well received. Rob tore through them in a weekend and my work devoured them even quicker. They are very delicious and I feel very lucky that I found this recipe as I was just typing ingredients I happened to have into Google and this came up so I tried it thinking 'well at least I'll get rid of these ingredients' - little did I know that they would become Rob's absolute favorite cookie and almost mine as well (though Girl Scout Thin Mints will always be favorite).

The one thing I will say is keep them small... when you try to go too big they don't cook through and these are the type of cookies you want cooked in the middle, not too much, but definitely not gooey.

Oatmeal, walnut, and chocolate chunk cookies
makes 42 cookies

250g butter, softened
200g light brown soft sugar
75g caster sugar
2 eggs
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
150g flour
1/2 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
1 teaspoon salt
260g porridge oats
125g chopped walnuts
175g chocolate chips

Preheat the oven to 170C / Gas mark 3.

In a large bowl, cream together the butter, brown sugar and caster sugar until smooth. Beat in eggs one at a time, then stir in vanilla. Combine the flour, bicarb and salt; stir into the creamed mixture until just blended.

Mix in the oats, walnuts and chocolate chips. Drop by heaping spoonfuls onto ungreased baking trays.

Bake for 12 minutes in the preheated oven. Allow cookies to cool on baking tray for 5 minutes before transferring to a wire rack to cool completely.

An experiment in clay

Yesterday I mentioned that I started a Ceramics class well here is my first creation...

Don't mind the dirty work surface
that I photographed this on!

To be clear... this is the first time I had ever used what was call 'slip decorating glazes' they are under glazes that require you to bisque fire first. Then I did a clear over glaze which ended up way too think and resulted in a bit of a cloudy look. I'm not totally happy with it, but hey, it's a first attempt.

Now I'm working on a tear-drop sculpture, hopefully it will turn out a bit better. Watch this space for updates!

Some Savoury Snacks!

It's been a while, but Rob and I have been very busy and there just hasn't been much time to update. Also, what we've been busy on is a bit of secret and I don't want to post anything until everything is finalised (and no, we're not having a baby)!

Anyway, though I haven't been updating, I have been baking quite a bit! I felt I have been on a massive sugar high and thought it was time to start trying to bake something savoury. I first made delicious Cheesy Cornbread muffins which were delicious straight out of the oven but were very dry and tough the next day. I suggest making these but only serving them directly from the oven and avoiding leftovers as you'll probably end up trashing them.

Then I decided I'd try my had at what I call Truly Homemade Garlic Bread. I call it 'Truly Homemade' because when I was looking online for recipes and would search 'homemade garlic bread' they were all recipes for spreading garlic butter onto store-bought baguettes!! I wanted something a bit more authentic and I really struggled to find a recipe so I had to improvise and I made my own up. It was DELICIOUS!!! I decided to bake them in the round so you could pull them apart into tiny moist and flavour-packed garlic rolls which went great with Spaghetti Bolognese (I'll post my recipe for this later)!

After my savoury bonaza I got right back into the sugar bag and whipped up 60 or so chocolate cupcakes for my work colleagues and about 80 delicious walnut and oatmeal chocolate chunk cookies (see later post for recipe and pictures), Rob's all time favourite treat that I bake.

Here are the recipes:

Cheesy Cornbread Muffins
makes 12 muffins

1 cup of self-raising flour
1 cup of cornmeal
6 tablespoons of sugar
4 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
1 cup milk
¼ cup vegetable oil
2 eggs, slightly beaten
½ cup shredded cheddar cheese plus extra for sprinkling

Heat the oven to 200C (425F). 

Grease (not oil) either, an 8 or 9-inch square pan, or a regular sized muffin tray.

In a medium bowl, combine the flour, cornmeal, sugar, baking powder and salt. I found that a whisk was particularly helpful for this. Stir in the remaining ingredients by hand (again, the whisk is very helpful to get the mixture to combine properly), until just smooth. 

Pour the batter into the pan or muffin tray and sprinkle the tops with the remaining cheese.

Bake for 20-30 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted in the centre comes out clean.Serve fresh from the oven.


Truly Homemade Garlic Bread
makes 2 9-inch round tins of rolls

2 ½ cups self-raising flour
2 tbsp dry active yeast
1 tbsp caster sugar
warm (not hot) water
½ cup butter
¼ cup finely chopped basil
salt
pepper
olive oil

In a large mixing bowl, combine the flour, yeast, sugar and a pinch of salt. Drizzle a little olive oil on top. Slowly add water and mix together with your hands until a sticky but not too wet dough is formed.

Cover the bowl with a clean towel and leave it in a warm place to rise for an hour. The dough should rise to at least double its size.

Once the dough has risen, pre-heat an oven to 350F and generously oil two round 9-inch tins.

Melt the butter and stir in the basil then add salt and pepper to taste.

Knock back you dough and knead vigorously. Rob has great kneading tips on his post for pizza. Then divide the dough into 24 equal pieces.

Taking one piece at a time, individually knead and form into a ball. Dip the ball into the melted butter mixture and place in the pan to rise. Once you have kneaded each piece and filled the pans, cover the pans with clean cloth and let rise for another 15-20 minutes, until nearly doubled in size.

Drizzle any remaining butter mixture on top of the rolls and bake in the oven for 20-25 minutes or until golden brown on top. Serve warm and enjoy!

Plans, clay, and a damn good TV show!

So, despite my being quite silent on the 'blogosphere' I have been quite busy where it matters. Rob and I are wrapping things up for the end of year by planning our trip to the US in December, scheduling dinner parties with friends and of course planning our gigantic annual Thanksgiving Dinner!

I've started to take a ceramics course every Thursday night near where I work and hopefully I am going to take home my first finished piece tonight, I'm sure I'll post several pictures of my masterpieces in the future.I used to love ceramics in high school and this has reminded me just how fun it is! I really enjoy working with clay and getting dirty once a week.  Before I started blogging and baking I didn't have much of a creative outlet and this has allowed me to express myself in other ways and it gets me out of work-mode and house-mode once a week. It's been both therapeutic and fun.

While I've been playing with clay, Rob's been playing computer games and hurting his ankle every Monday at football <rolls her eyes>. In between these activities and our culinary experiences we became thoroughly addicted to a TV show from Denmark called The Killing or Forbrydelsen. Sad to say, I think this is the real reason for the gap in posts.

We started the first Sunday in November and were completely finished will all 20hours worth of episodes within 5 days! It was a marathon but it was amazing! I don't want to tell you too much but it's a murder mystery that leaves you hanging at the end of every episode and you just can't stop watching. There is a US version but we heard the the original, though subtitled, was much better than the remake (as per usual). I highly recommend it for people who liked The Wire and anything that has to do with forensic investigation. Watch it, but be warned, you might have to put your life on hold to finish it.

Halloween whoopie pies!!!!

I used to love whoopie pies when I was little and on of my earliest memories is of eating them when my mom would take me to Soergels Orchard near Pittsburgh were I lived until I was six. Two years ago my grandmother died and I went back to Pittsburgh for the funeral (the first time in over 15 years) and had another Soergels woopie pie. I've been hoping to have one just as good ever since. On Saturday I attempted these and they were PERFECT. Exactly what I wanted.

Whoopie pies have also been popping up all over London for about a year now. I've tried a few but they never satisfy me. They don't taste like the Soergel's ones I love so much... these do! I'm not cutting and pasting the recipe in case I mess it up. If you follow it you won't be disappointed.

Though here are a few tips:

• The dough is thick, very very thick, so much so I thought I was going to break my hand mixer! 
• When they come out of the oven they start to feel hard but once you sandwich them and let them set they soften and are absolutely perfect. 
• I died the frosting orange with food colouring for Halloween (again), I promise this is the last time you'll see orange frosting... until next Halloween. 

I'm going to make the mint variation for Christmas for sure. I'm thinking red velvet with green frosting?! Out of all the recipes I've shared this has been my favourite, please try it and let me know what you think.