Tag: how-to (Page 2 of 4)
No Yeast Puff Pastry Dough (Faster Variant)
February 22nd, 2014 in Tips, Advices & How-to by Julia Volhina
Real puff pastry dough is taking a lot of time to make from scratch, most of the times it is easier to just buy it instead. Another alternative could be to try this easier and much faster variant.
Disclaimer first: this dough will probably not be a best choice for some fancy croissants or so, but it will work great for layered cakes, pies, sugar cookies, and such.
Either butter or margarine will work for this recipe, I used margarine. Make sure you don’t let ingredients and dough itself warm up, if you need to pause while making the dough, put it to the fridge to cool down.
Prepared dough can be used right away, or can be frozen for later use, make sure to use freezer bag.
How to Make Butter from Whipping Cream
October 26th, 2013 in Tips, Advices & How-to by Julia Volhina
Couple of years ago we discovered Snowville Creamery. This creamery is local to Columbus OH area and it produces milk, half-half and whipping cream amongst other dairy products. These are absolutely delicious but only come in a half-gallon cartons.
And if I can find something to do with a half-gallon of milk, whipping cream is absolutely other matter: it is not so easy to use all of it (not unless I plan to eat whipped cream every day for breakfast, lunch and dinner for couple days in a row) in time.
Did I mention that Snowville Creamery whipping cream is absolutely delicious? It would be an absolute shame to let it spoil. So when I buy a whole carton and I only need a cup or two of it for some recipe, I do butter from the rest.
By the way, if you can’t find Snowville Creamery products nearby, make sure you use 100% not homogenized whipping cream instead, with no extra ingredients in it (check the label!).
How to Make Vegetable Broth
September 28th, 2013 in Tips, Advices & How-to by Julia Volhina
Making vegetable broth isn’t such a hard thing to do: get bunch of roots and vegetables, stick them all in a pot and in about 1-1.5h you will get a vegetable broth to use for a soup or another dish which you know what it is made of (unlike a canned one).
Good thing about making vegetable broth yourself is that you can use vegetables left over from other dishes: stems from greens (parsley or dill), stem from white cabbage or stem and leaves from cauliflower, greens from leeks, etc – bits and pieces that you wouldn’t have any use for otherwise.
You can boil fresh vegetables just fine, however the method with roasting vegetables first produce more tasting and colorful broth. If you are looking to get more colorful broth keep inner clean brown layer of onion shell on, using more carrot will help too.
How to Prepare Homemade Bacon Crumbles
July 13th, 2013 in Tips, Advices & How-to by Julia Volhina
I have several recipes using bacon crumbles, so I decided to post step-by-step instructions on how to prepare these at home.
Process is not complicated, and will not take more than 15-20 mins along with cooling down.
How to Make Quark (Fresh Cheese) from Kefir
June 29th, 2013 in Tips, Advices & How-to by Julia Volhina
This is somewhat easier way to get quark (fresh cheese): it requires less time since you don’t need to sour milk and such, since kefir is used instead.
There is a trade off to that of course, the taste of quark will depend greatly on taste of kefir itself, as well as its fat content. So use good quality kefir to prepare quark.
Note: 2 quarts of low fat kefir will make you about a pound of quark.
How to Skin Avocado
July 2nd, 2011 in Tips, Advices & How-to by Julia Volhina
Ripe avocado pulp is very soft and their skin is dense and resembles a shell. And it is very easy to scoop pulp from the skin with a spoon if you are going to prepare avocado guacamole-like dip, salad dressing or milk shakes (yep, I was surprised too!), where avocados are mashed and it doesn’t really matter how you extracted pulp.
However if you need avocado in whole pieces for salad or sandwich, you will need remove pulp from the skin without damaging it.
So here are instructions how to do this easily.
How to Make Dumpling Dough with Milk and Egg
May 14th, 2011 in Tips, Advices & How-to by Julia Volhina
This recipe for dumpling dough uses milk, egg and a bit of oil. It suites good for fried dumplings, such as chebureki, for example (this recipe is coming up next saturday).
Another difference in this recipe is that milk is warmed up till boiling temperature when it is mixed with first batch of flour. This makes dough more elastic.
If you have a stand mixer with dough hook feel free to use it, otherwise you can also knead this dough by hands.