Rosemary Box

Deck garden season has arrived. I found a collection of $2 terra cotta pots at the Salvation Army (yeah!), along with this little wooden crate. I didn't weatherize it, and expect it will last only a season. But with some holes drilled in the bottom it makes for a nice little rosemary planter.

Homemade Yogurt

Homemade yogurt. Here's why: 

I like tangy plain yogurt of the variety sold at my local co-op. 

I can't possibly re-use all of of the plastic yogurt containers that are piling up in my cupboard.

The containers aren't recyclable. Guilt, guilt, guilt.

Yogurt in bulk. What could be better?

I've made 3 or 4 batches of this with varying results. The most important secrets seem to be the use of milk solids and incubation time. Thanks to the assistance of not one but two yogurt gurus, I have a darn good recipe.

1 quart milk

1 packet starter culture (or 1 Tbsp live active culture yogurt)

1/2 c. non-fat dried milk powder

Heat milk in a double boiler (don't let it boil). When it reaches 100 degrees scoop out 1/2 c. and put it in a separate bowl with the starter culture. Set aside. Note that temps above 120 degrees will kill the culturing bacteria.

Add powdered milk to warm milk and continue heating until it reaches 180 degrees. Hold temp at 180 degrees for about 20 mins and then quickly bring the temp down to 116 degrees. In the winter this can be done by placing the milk pan in the snow, or just use a sink full of ice water. The temp will drop surprisingly quickly so watch it.

Add the 116-degree milk to the starter culture until you have about 1 1/2 c. Then add the starter to the milk. This split process might give the culture a chance to acclimate to the new temp.

Put the milk into a sealed container. Ideally you'll culture it at a constant 100-110 degrees. Without a yogurt incubator, you can warm your oven and leave the oven light on. You can put it in a cooler and wrap a big blanket around it. I tried monitoring a crock pot, intermittently turning the heat on and off. Skip this - unless you have nothing better to do that watch yogurt incubate for 7 hours. 

I put the milk in a jar and into a styrofoam cooler. Ideal incubation time is 7 1/2 hours. 5 hours will make it sweet but not solid. At 9 hours it starts to get a little sour. This still might taste good with middle eastern dishes, for example. I tried Doogh, a savory Persian yogurt drink, for the first time last weekend and immediately thought of homemade yogurt.

After incubation, put to yogurt in the fridge right away and chill for a day. The yogurt will firm up more as it cools. My yogurt has tended toward a thinner consistency, likely because I incubate below 100 degrees. But it's tasty and is great in smoothies. 

* Recipe thanks to Jamin Johnson's decades-long yogurt experimentation. Additional tips from Lauren Dee. 

Baby Monster Onesie

I bought a book called Sukie Iron-Ons, which looked cool, but my first iron-on attempt failed to yield a satisfactory result. Instead of wasting the bad onesie, I gave it some felt baby monsters instead.

Cable Hat

This pattern started as something more complicated: alternating ribs and cables (I actually needed help with the math to figure out the sizing). After seeing the thickness of my ribs, I went with all cable ribs.  I doubled-stranded Frog Tree Alpaca yarn, which everyone at the yarn store insisted I'd "just love." Turns out, it's the tiniest bit itchy - perhaps because, after all that math, it's one rib too tight. But I still like it. I can't figure out why my casting on seems to scallop at the end, but it makes for a nice effect with this hat.

Photo courtesy Benjamin Pofahl, who would like to share that he's just about had it with his lipomas.

Whale Onesie

Pattern inspired from the Japanese embroidery book (book purchase inspired by Sharon). I've finally added a onesie tag because, well, we keep making them. As Elana says, "When friends reproduce, I produce. Baby onesies."

Lemon Curd

This recipe from Fine Cooking kind of rocks. Worth trying on crepes too.

Baby booties

These are called 1-hour baby booties. The pattern can be found in Stitch and Bitch Nation. They really only take about an hour. But the straps take about another hour each. Maybe I labored too long attaching them. Tonight I hosted my own Stitch & Bitch, which was responsible for my finally finishing the straps and buttons.

I'm pretty sure there's a reason babies don't wear booties. I'm pretty sure the booties will fall off as soon as the baby moves its legs. My stitch & bitch comrades assured me that it's enough for the booties to look nice in the gift box and displayed in the baby's room.

Bacon Dessert

First there was haut-chocolat with bacon. It was good. Then there were pig lickers. They were only slightly less good. Sometimes I wonder if bacon desserts are to my generation what Jell-o was to the 1960s: "the vehicle for subversive and rebellious expression." 

I have joined the cause. Today I made Love Me Tender Peanut Butter Bacon and Banana Cookies. 

And they were good.

Cook the bacon until it's nice and crispy. For more banana flavor, I substituted 1/4 c. mashed banana for 1/4 c. of the peanut butter. On my next batch I won't bother turning the bacon into a praline. Just use chopped crispy bacon. And I mean cook 1/2 lb. of bacon, chop it up and add it to the cookie dough.

This post does not reflect the views or preferences of all Craft It Up staff and management. 

Sunday Afternoon Earrings

Clothing exchanges have taken Minneapolis by storm and they are fabulous. They involve women I like, brunch, purging unwanted items from my closet, and coming home with free clothes. This is why I love them. Today I scored several items including two necklaces, one of which I shortened to a more flattering length. I made some earrings with the leftover beads.

Panettone

December's Gourmet magazine featured a recipe for panettone that, despite being altogether too complicated, I found to be very seductive. I'll include the link as soon as it's published online. Note to self #1: Read the whole recipe before starting, including the part about the recipe taking 2 days start to finish. Note to self #2: If a recipe requires making phone calls to find more than 2 of the ingredients, abort! This recipe required locating: real vanilla beans (not hard and my new favorite way to use vanilla); panettone molds (slightly harder to find); and candied citron (surprisingly difficult - ending with my picking a fight with an employee at a local upscale grocery. I mean come on, try being helpful.)

Note to self #3: A recipe that calls for "heavy duty stand mixer fitted with paddle attachment" needs such a mixer. My puny handheld mixer nearly blew its motor.
This was my favorite part of the recipe: the upside down cooling process. 
The ingredients weren't the right temperature. The dough didn't mix as well as it should have, nor did it rise as much as it should have. The citron was for Grandma's gelatinous fruitcake instead of the delicious citrusy citron that is my favorite part of panettone. I baked it too close to the heat source in my 1960s gas oven, hardening the bottom 10% of the loaf... but the thing turned out pretty darn well.

And then I borrowed a big Kitchen Aid mixer to try... a second loaf. 

This stuff makes delicious french toast too. We tried it with cream cheese mixed with cherry preserves or cream cheese with marmalade. Now that is the way to eat french toast.