“Anyone who tries to make brownies without butter should be arrested.”
Tag: baking
Is the Expensive Vanilla REALLY Worth It??
The other day I was poking my way around Ina’s website and I realized that she uses vanilla that costs around $33 for 4 fluid ounces. It’s from Madagascar and I’m sure it’s excellent.
But….
Is it REALLY worth that much money? How does it compare to the McCormick one that I buy and use?
I know she wants us to use the BEST ingredients, but I can’t bring myself to spend more than a tank of gas on vanilla extract. To me, it doesn’t really seem worth it. After all, you use so very little in each recipe. In fact, I remember one day I made chocolate chip cookies (not Ina’s, Tollhouse actually) and I forgot to add the vanilla to that recipe and I couldn’t even tell the different.
So really, it doesn’t seem necessary to spend that much money on something that usually gets overpowered by other flavors.
However, there may be a time when I have some extra cash that I’d be willing to buy it. After all, four ounces will last for quite a bit of time if you’re just using a teaspoon or two here and there.
Luckily it’s also sold at the Williams-Sonoma I went to last week, so I can get it easier.
But for now, I’ll stick to the McCormick brand and pretend that I can justify spending all that money on dark brown vodka.
Trip to Williams-Sonoma
If you have been reading this blog since the beginning, you’ll know that I am in the process of making spreadsheets featuring all of Ina’s recipes. As I continue to go through each of the cookbooks, I am noticing some themes.
The first is that there is a lot more lamb recipes than I originally thought. But that topic will be discussed in a future post.
Another commonality I’ve noticed is that Ina loves to make tarts! There seems to be a handful of recipes that end up in a tart pan per cookbook. Most of these are desserts, but some are appetizers (Ina refers to them as “starters”). So, it quickly became clear to me that I needed yet another piece of cookware (bakeware?….).
I needed a tart pan!
And since it will be used quite often it seems, I decided I should just bite the bullet and purchase a good-quality one. So, I made the trip to Williams-Sonoma on Friday morning. It had been at least a year since I’ve walked into one and I’ve never been to the one I went to today before.
I found the staff very helpful and polite and with the global pandemic the store and employees were taking the necessary precautions set forth by my state’s governor. So, I was impressed.
Anyway…I digress.
I soon found the tart pan (11-inch with a false bottom) but then ended up purchasing two other things. One is a paddle for my stand mixer that had the scraper built into it.
I’ve been going back and forth on getting this item for a while and when I made the peanut butter and jelly bars earlier in the week, it suddenly became a necessity to have. Hopefully it’ll prove useful and helpful….or at least allow my batters to be better mixed.
I also purchased a candy thermometer which will probably have very minimal usage in my life, even as I cook my way through the Barefoot Contessa cookbooks. But I still wanted one because I’ve always wanted on and now I have one.
So after spending more than $80, I left Williams-Sonoma ready to tackle what seems like a full 10% of Ina’s recipes. When one will actually be made? Hopefully sometime this weekend.
I’ve noticed that I really like making her dessert recipes for some reason. I’m not sure if it’s because they are sweet and “bad for you” or if it’s just because they are a bit easier than most of her recipes. Perhaps I should institute a rule for myself…maybe every fourth recipe will be a dessert one?
Lots of think about….
Recipe #2 – Peanut Butter & Jelly Bars
Ina’s Peanut Butter and Jelly Bars from Barefoot Contessa At Home
Last night, on a whim I felt that I was in the mood to bake. So, naturally, I chose an Ina recipe. I figured since it was late and a weeknight it would be best and easiest to bake something from the “Dessert” sections of the cookbooks. I thumbed through each of the 11 books I currently own, narrowed it down to three top choices then picked from those three.
And the Peanut Butter & Jelly Bars won….mainly due to the fact that I needed a limited number of ingredients from the grocery store.
After heading to the local Big Y, standing in line for almost 10 minutes while the elderly woman in front of me took her sweet time loading her groceries on the cashier’s conveyor belt, I started baking.
Everything was going well until I got to the part where I had to add the flour. Ina calls for 3 cups of flour for this recipe. I had the flour, but it was a new bag so the flour was more compact than usual and I think I added probably an extra tablespoon or two just because the flour was too packed in the cups.
This recipe looks easy, but peanut butter is hard to handle and I learned that cleaning up anything that had peanut butter in it can be challenging! Also, due to the my inclination that the mixture had too much flour, the dough itself was hard to spread.
It was more annoying than hard to make these. But after they baked and cool, I was impressed! They were so sweet and delicious and I doubt they will last very long in the house.
Disclaimer: I am not a photographer by any means. And I only have an iPhone 8 as a camera, so please bare with me on the sub-par photos.
Cheers!
Cooking and Food Thoughts
There are days when I love my job. And by “my job,” I mean my day job. I work with the public. But it’s not always bad. If I’m kept busy, it’s great and the time goes by quickly. If I’m not too busy, then the days begin to drag and my thoughts start to wander.
And that’s what’s been happening lately. My thoughts are beginning to wander throughout the day. Those wandering thoughts are often related to this project and to be honest, I couldn’t be happier with that. Some of the thoughts deal with “What am I going to make next?” “When can I buy [insert item?” “Should I spend enough money to fill my gas tank on vanilla extract or just use the one in the grocery store?
I end up having so many thoughts that I’m actually surprised when it’s time to go home.
Does anyone else wish their day job was food-blogging related? Sometimes I do.
Ina & Raspberries
In order to help me keep track of recipes and so that I can get a sense of what I would need to purchase equipment-wise, I have begun the process of making a list of off the recipes by book. One of the things that I have noticed, even after only completing three of her cookbooks, is that Ina must LOVE raspberries!
It seems like there are at least 10 different recipes calling for them among these three books. There may even be more than 10, I didn’t really count. I just noticed the word “raspberry” kept popping up in the titles.
I guess those recipes will have to wait till summer to be made.
