Pepper Paints

Thursday’s Recipe … A Bread Wreath

The basic dough recipe makes 4 loaves

It is a sweet  and tasty dough

In a large bowl mix the following together:

2 cups luke warm water

1 1/2 T yeast

3 eggs

1/2 cup honey

1/3 cup melted butter or oil

Add:

6 cups all purpose flour

1 cup whole wheat flour

Cover loosely and let rise about 2 hrs

At this point divide dough into 4 balls—freeze (up to 1 month) or refrigerate (up to 5 days) unused portions

Cloak dough and form a ball. Poke hole in center with thumbs and stretch about an 8 inch circle in center

Place on parchment on cookie sheet, cover loosely about 25 mins.

Heat oven to 350

With scissors, cut slightly angled, horizontal cuts almost all the way through the bread. Spread pieces out. You can brush the top with an egg wash and sprinkle with sesame or poppy seeds.

Bake about 35 minutes.

I have three more loaves I turn into tasty bread wreaths —- I might just use them to impress my family and friends with on my Thanksgiving table!!

This was yet another idea/recipe from Family Fun!

Thursday’s Recipe … Mini Stuffed Leaf Pies

You start with pie crust for these and because I don’t make pie crust I bought some from the refrigerated section of my grocery. That right there makes this recipe a little easier to tackle!

Roll out pie crust on a floured surface. You have to roll these rather thin.  Use leaf shape cutters to cut out leaf pairs.

Fill one side of your leaves with any of the following: chocolate chips, marshmallows, peanut butter, nuts, cream cheese and jam or a combination of any of these.

Brush the edges of the leaves that hold the stuffing with an egg wash (1 egg scrambled with 1 teaspoon of water). Put matching leaf cover on top and pinch the edges together–like a pie crust.

Brush the egg wash on the tops of each mini pie and sprinkle with colored sugar and regular sugar.

Bake at 375 degrees for about 12 minutes or until edges are brown.

It  is hard to tell what is hiding inside each little pie so if some little people … I am not naming names…. have an issue with some of the contents of the leaves you may want to use certain shapes for certain inards …. or risk most of the little pies either torn in half or left with bites taken out of them to see if they picked the right one! Or maybe that’s just my picky family.

Candy Experiments

Last year I pulled a page out of Family Fun all about Halloween candy experiments. And this year I book marked a page from Mothering Magazine and another link a friend posted on facebook. Low and behold—they are all from the same website …. Candy Experiments.

My kids trick or treated twice this year, so to say we have lots of candy is an understatement!! They went through their stash and donated all sorts of goodies in the name of science.

We tried several experiments from the website. The most exciting being floating M’s and S’s.

Put some M & M’s in a glass jar and some skittles in another.

Add water and watch……..

Floating M’s and S’s!!

We made some sculptures with the sticky candy

We also tried color separation (chromatography) by adding m&m’s to a few drops of water and then dipping a coffee filter in. We waited until some of the color was absorbed and you could see the colors separate.

Did you know that laffy taffy floats?

We did a lot of mixing, soaking and poking.

And we still have lots of donated candy to play with tomorrow!

Thursday’s Recipe – Witches Brew (homemade rootbeer + dry ice)

oooooohhhhhh

Growing up my family had many traditions…things we we looked forward to doing over and over again. It is the same with my kids now.

Halloween included—most years. This started when Jake was 4. He had a Halloween party for several of his preschool friends and it sort of became an annual thing for us. But  because now we always travel in October, it is hard to fit in our family Halloween party every year. We always manage a night of pumpkin carving and seed roasting and some years we include a few games and surprises!

This year we had a few of our traditional games we play:

Bobbing for apples

Catching a doughnut on a string

GHOST (bingo)

But this year we added something new!

Dry ice and homemade root beer. I found this idea in The Hungry Scientist. They don’t call it witches brew–they call it Uber-Bubbly Root Beer –I had to make it a little more festive! They have a recipe for lemonade too. As well as a good scientific explanation of what is happening.

1 gallon of hot water and a bucket or pitcher to put it in–note glass or plastic bottles can break from the stress of extreme temp changes–so no shaking or using irreplaceable containers. That’s why we used the popcorn bucket!

2 cups sugar

2 Tbs root beer extract (ours came from The Winemakers Shop up the street)

1 to 2 lbs dry ice (we got our at Grater’s Ice Cream)

Add sugar to the hot water and stir to dissolve. Add the root beer extract—stir

Using a long handled wooden spoon–to avoid frostbite- stir in 1 to 2 lbs of dry ice —–oooooooohhhhhhhh and prepare to be amazed!!

A thick cloud of water vapor will form over the bucket

You will need to stir it every once in a while to keep it from freezing

The majority of the fog will stop after about 15 minutes and then you can drink it!

If you dare!

Success!! It tasted good!

************** This was super fun and a little dangerous! So SAFETY DISCLAIMER INCLUDED!!!! *************************

Don’t touch the dry ice with your bare hands–watch your eyes if you chip it up—-don’t eat or drink any dry ice even if it is a small chip!! These are just a few good ideas—I am sure this doesn’t cover all the mishaps that could happen–Don’t say I didn’t warn you–be careful!

Or 50 slaps by the bloody hand!

Apple Pie Playdough

Did you know that your sense of smell is supposed to be your strongest memory? Brut reminds me of my Dad, the smell of a fire outside reminds me of camping. I love the scents of different seasons. As soon as I smell a  coconut or Tropical combo I am immediately taken to summer and scents of sun tan lotion and the smell of pine reminds me of Christmas. The smells of Fall are strong…. apple, cinnamon, pumpkin. These smells are comforting to me and give me a warm, homey feeling.

We made a couple batches of seasonal playdough. Spiked with the scents of Autumn…Apple Cinnamon and Vanilla

Autumn Scented Playdough

1 cup flour
1 cup water
1 tablespoon oil
1 tablespoon powdered alum
1/2 cup salt
2 tablespoons vanilla
food coloring

Mix all dry ingredients. Add oil and water and food coloring. Cook over medium heat, stirring constantly until reaching the consistency of mashed potatoes. Remove from heat add the vanilla.  Knead the playdough.

For the apple cinnamon batch of playdough we added red food coloring and cinnamon and cloves.

For the vanilla batch we added a few drops of yellow food coloring.

Keep this in a covered container in the fridge.

Thursday’s Recipe …. Double Chocolate Zucchini Cake

Here is yet another recipe for summer’s zucchini bounty! This is a super light and moist cake. Forgive the poor photo–I barely had the chance to take a picture they ate the cake so fast!

3/4 cup oil

1 1/4 cups sugar

2 eggs

1 t vanilla

2 cups grated zucchini (or more )

1/2 cup sour milk or buttermilk (I used some of my homemade yogurt)

3 T cocoa powder

1/2 t baking powder

1 t baking soda

1/2 t cinnamon

1/2 t cloves

2 1/2 cups of flour

as many chocolate chips as you want

I also I have been known to add some cayenne pepper to this chocolaty cake! Goes great with the other spices and chocolate.

Heat the oven to 350  Grease a 9×13 pan  Mix all ingredients and bake 30-35 minutes

Thursday’s Recipe …. Countertop Sour Pickles

My kitchen has been smelling like a deli this week! It brings back fond memories of the years I spent hanging out at Bernie’s!

I shared on my twitter and face book about how great my countertop pickles tasted and was then asked by so many people for the recipe–So here it is!

I belong to an organic produce co-op. One of the other members spoke of her counter top pickles and was also asked by many of us for the recipe. She referred us to Wild Fermentation.  I linked to this website back when I made fermented carrots and sauerkraut.

Basically this is what I did–Because these were not just picked out of my garden -I soaked my cucumbers in cold water in the fridge for a few hours to crisp them up. I had regular old large cucumbers not pickling ones so I cut them in half and then quartered them. I dissolved 1 Tablespoon of salt for each cup of water. I think I did 8 cups of water for the 3 large cucumbers I had. I did not have a large enough jar so I used the inner crock from one of my crock pots. Perfect!!

After stirring and stirring to dissolve the salt I gently crushed several heads of garlic-say 4 or 5 with the back of a spoon-just to crack them open and threw those in the water with a small handful of peppercorns , 4 heads of flowering dill and a small handful of fresh dill and 2 freshly washed oak leaves from the big tree. The oak , grape, sour cherry or horseradish leaves are to help keep the crunch.

I mixed all of that around and placed a plate on the top to keep the cucumbers submersed in the brine.

I then put the lid on very loosely–leaving it slightly cracked open on one side.

The next morning I noticed a few bubbles–IT”S  ALIVE!!! Then there was a film that I scraped off over the next couple of days-then we tasted on day 2–delicious!!  Actually we ate several!

It has been really hot here so the fermenting went quickly! I left them 1 more day and then moved them into jars (that I have been saving from our Bubbies pickles) and put them in the fridge to slow down the process.M more were eaten this morning as I moved them into the jars–lucky I ordered several more pounds of cucumbers this week!

We might need to add some Rubens to the menu!!