Five Ingredient Pancakes

It’s Wednesday & you’re probably reading this while multi-tasking with some sort of electronic device & a tooth brush if you’re reading this when it posts at 7am.  Most mornings I find it a battle between blow drying my hair or eating breakfast. Usually the hair wins only because it’s so cold out lately I really don’t want icicles forming on my head - but who cares we should all be eating breakfast.  If you have about 10 minutes in the morning - maybe you wash & dry your hair the night before (note to self) - you can make these pancakes. You only need 5 ingredients to make them (plus whatever syrup or jam you want to slather on top) & about 7 minutes to make them. Truth be told, I made them on a Sunday but I would make them again on a week day. Plus, this recipe yields four fluffy pancakes - two for me & two for you - so it’s perfect if you have a smaller household - if you have more mouths just double the quantities.

When I have extra time, on the weekends, I make these pancakes or these ones & sometimes these crepes.

What’s your favorite pancake recipe?

The Perfect Pie Crust

When I was a little girl I helped my mom make lots of pie crusts. She was no fool, she'd put me to work. Before I knew it I was making several batches of piecrust that my mom would freeze & use later (no doubt when I wasn't available to make them!). I can't blame her & actually I thank her for showing me that it really isn't that difficult & makes a world of difference when you're actually eating the pie.  In a pinch I've definitely used the store bought dough but if I have the time I make this pie crust.

I found Giada's recipe for pie crust in her crostata with dried apricots & taleggio that I've made a couple of times but what I really love is the crust!!! So I use this recipe for most pies that I make since first finding the recipe. What I really liked about this recipe is that it doesn't call for crisco. Exactly, what is crisco? That white goopy stuff that you can keep in your pantry probably forever without it going bad. Yeah not exactly what I want hanging around in my body.  This recipe calls for marscapone cheese - hello cheese! can't go wrong with that!  Marscapone cheese is kind of like a buttery Italian cream cheese. It's a delicious fatty spread & is leaps & bounds more yummy than crisco in my book. 




PS: Happy Birthday to one of my favorite ladies ever, SUZIE! Love & miss you ;) Cheers to a fabulous day & year! xx

Fresh Pasta

Fresh pasta sounds fancy well it sure tastes that way and it's definitely worth making if you have the time. I'm not going to lie it's time consumptive for sure but the more you do it the easier it is and you can actually build speed doing it.  It's just a little bit more than a handful of steps but you can do it! I strongly suggest a Kitchen Aid Mixer plus the pasta attachment - it will give you days back on your life!

While the pasta takes a while to make it only takes 2-3 minutes to cook since it's so thin, so you can pretend to save time there.

Ingredients:

• 4 eggs
• 3 3/4 cups flour 
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 3-4 tablespoons of water

 

Make it!

1. Mix eggs, flour and salt together.
2.  Add enough water to make the dough start to stick together but not too wet. I actually think it works better if it's a bit on the drier more crumbly side. If you add to much water, no worries, just add more flour.
3. Knead the dough together so that it forms a rough ball shape. Let the dough rest for about 30 minutes.
4. Tear small pieces of dough off and roll it between your hands or on a cutting board to form a pasta worm.  Run it between the flat plates of your pasta attachment starting with the smallest number (setting 1 or 2). Run it through several times on settings 2, 4, 6 and 7 until you reach desired thickness.
5. Hang your pasta sheet a pasta rack. Work through the rest of your dough until it is all flat sheets of pasta.
6. Change the attachment to the fettucini or spaghetti attachment and run flat sheets of pasta through this - one time only.
7. Hang pasta to dry or if you don't have a rack toss the fresh strips with plenty of flour so it doesn't stick together.