Showing posts with label homestead. Show all posts

Sunday, March 22, 2015

Homemade Brown Sugar

Blue Turtle Sunday, March 22, 2015 No comments

A couple of weeks ago I was making pancake syrup for some really sweet college kids and realized that I didn't have enough brown sugar to make as much as I wanted them to have. I went ahead and gave them partial bottles and promised them a refill once their bottles were empty. In the meantime I started thinking...there has to be a way to make brown sugar from home.

After a few minutes of searching Pinterest I found a recipe from Martha Stewart's website. I decided to give it a try since I was making a sweet potato souffle that afternoon and needed brown sugar for the topping.

The steps were super simple (check out the recipe for exact amounts):

1. You basically take white sugar

2. Pour in molasses

3. Mix until well combined and you have awesome brown sugar!

Here's a photo of the souffle topping where I used the homemade brown sugar (brown sugar, pecans, flour & butter).

Toodles!

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Monday, August 25, 2014

Homemade Pasta!

Blue Turtle Monday, August 25, 2014 No comments

I bought a pasta roller many months ago with the grand intention of making homemade pasta. Couple that with my growing desire to know what is in my family's food and you've got the perfect storm for actually getting my butt in gear and making it from scratch!

Let me say, the recipe that I ended up using couldn't have been easier! I used the one from one of my favorite books "Make the Bread, Buy the Butter". This book helps families decide whether its worth the time (and money) to make certain things from scratch. It really is a fun read that gives you the recipes and instructions to make many of your family's favorites in the comfort of your own kitchen.

On to the recipe...when you get the flour and eggs mixed up it will look sort of craggy, but this is perfectly fine. Before I started rolling out the dough I cut the big ball into four equal pieces. After I rolled the dough through the first two settings I cut the sheets in half width-wise so that I could actually manage them.

I learned the hard way that its best to continue to dust the pasta sheets with flour so that they don't stick and to go ahead and cut each sheet as you go (I ended up re-rolling a couple of the sheets because they got stuck to each other).

I'm really happy with the way it turned out. The pasta only took two minutes to cook (literally) when I put it in the boiling, salted water. The pasta came out super silky and luscious!

I hope you will take a leap and try your hand at homemade pasta or any of the other recipes in the book. The only drawback will be the fact that your family will want homemade pasta all the time! In the words of my eight year old, "Homemade is always best"! Toodles!