Teaching How to Cook Pancakes

My boy has been telling me that he wants to learn how to cook. Since I think it's a vital skill, I want to encourage it. So today we cooked pancakes together. 

When teaching a child, it's important to be safe and patient. It's also important to have your child gain a sense of accomplishment, so he'll continue. So today we started with pancakes from a mix and sausages. 

Our favorite brand is Krusteaz. Yes, I know pancakes from scratch are much better. But today the goal was to teach. 

Billy mixed the Krusteaz and water. The important thing here is teaching how to read a measuring cup. I took my eyes off him for a second, and realized, almost too late, that I had to teach the difference between 2/3 of a cup and 2 cups. 

Billy wanted to add cinnamon and sugar. I thought it a good idea to encourage creativity. So I let him add some to the mix. 

Another important lesson to learn early is that high heat does not necessarily mean cooking faster. In fact, quite the opposite, it usually mean burned on the outside and not done on the inside. 

Billy poured the batter into the pan. I taught how to tell when it's done. Then, I let him try to flip it over. This is when patience is real important. 

Another important lesson is that while heat and fire are to be respected, so long as you are careful, it is not to be feared completely. This is where it's important to stand near you child, to encourage to get close enough to the stove to actually cook, but close enough to act quickly if necessary. 

All in all a fun morning. Maybe next time I'll teach him the clean-up. 

Apple Crisp

Today, I wanted to do something with apples.  Billy had been complaining that the apples in the fridge weren't crunchy enough, so I figured I would just bake them up.  When I was looking for a recipe, I wasn't completely happy with any single recipe.  So, I tried doing a combination.

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees.

Filling:  10 apples, 1 cup of brown sugar, 2 teaspoons of butter, 1 teaspoon of cinnamon, a dash of nutmeg, a dash of pumpkin spice, a dash of salt.

I started with 10 gala apples.  First I peeled them.

Then, I cored them, and cut them into thin slices.

I placed the apples in a 9 x 9 glass pyrex pan, and mixed in the sugar, butter, cinnamon, nutmeg, salt and pumpkin spice.

Topping:

1 cup of all-purpose flour, 1/2 cup white sugar, 1 teaspoon of baking powder, 1 egg, 1 teaspoon butter, 1 teaspoon cinnamon and a dash of salt.

Mix the dry ingredients together.  Then, mix in the egg and butter.  Mix until crumbly.  Then, spread on top of the apples.

Cook for 45 minutes.

The apple filling was good.  In fact, the filling alone can be served as a side dish for dinner.  This was the basis of the side dish I brought to my church's Thanksgiving feast last year.

In all honesty, the topping was a little dry.  It could be addressed by vanilla ice cream or whipped cream.  Or, on my second helping, I noticed the wonderful juices on the bottom of the pan.  I scooped that up and poured it over the topping.  That was better.  You could also add oats to the topping.

Fishtown Butter Cake

One of the things I remember growing up in Fishtown, a neighborhood in Philadelphia, was the number of good bakeries that were nearby.  One of my family's favorites was Claus' on Girard Avenue.  Sadly, Claus' is now closed.  But, another good bakery, Stocks, is still up and running on Lehigh Avenue.  You can find the location of Stock's at this link.

Saturday mornings were great.  Sometimes my dad would go to Claus' to get their world famous butter cake.  Living outside of Philly now, good butter cake has been hard to find.  Fortunately, my brother-in-law and two of my aunts provided me with recipes so I could make good Fishtown butter cake at home.

The finished product is pictured above (with homemade mac & cheese in the background - but that is for another day).

Butter cake has two main components:  the crust and the filling.  Be sure to preheat the oven to 350 degrees.

For the crust, you need 1 box of yellow cake mix, 1 egg and 1 stick of butter.  Mix the ingredients together, and press into a 9x13 pan.  Do not grease the pan!

For the filling, you need 1 8 oz block of Philadelphia cream cheese, a 1 pound bag of 10x confectioner's sugar, 2 eggs, 1 teaspoon of vanilla, and half a stick of butter, melted.  Combine using a mixer on low.  Then beat on medium for 2 minutes.

Pour the filling into the crust, and bake for 30 minutes.  I used a glass pyrex pan, so I let it bake for 35 minutes.

The finished product is very sweet and very addictive.

Gingerbread Houses

I mentioned gingerbread houses yesterday. I thought I would post photos of the kids making their houses.

In all honesty, the gingerbread itself was from a kit. My friend made the frosting/glue. Her recipe is similar to the one found here:  http://m.foodnetwork.com/recipes/7008

No Yeast Pizza

Coming home from making ginger bread houses today, the kids told me that they wanted pizza.  I suggested pizza on bread in the toaster oven.  But the kids wanted to make their own pizza dough.  I had Judy look up pizza dough recipes, but they all called for yeast.  Since I didn't think we had yeast, I asked her to look for no yeast pizza dough.  We decided to go with the recipe we found at cooks.com. 

The recipe is fairly simple.  2 1/2 cups of flour, 2 3/4 teaspoons of baking powder, 1 teaspoon of salt, 1 teaspoon of oil and 3/4 cup to 1 cup of warm water.  Oven preheated to 400 degrees.

Judy mixed the dry ingredients, as I put water in the tea pot.  Didn't let the water get too hot.  Just warm.  We added the water and oil to the dry ingredients, and kneaded away.

Billy wanted sausage on his pizza.  So, I took a package of Johnson's sausages and cooked them up.  Four minutes on each side at medium heat.  Once finished, Judy sliced the sausage into pieces.

We took two glass Pyrex pans.  I wasn't sure if the dough would stick, so to be safe, I sprayed the pans with Pam.  We divided the dough in two, and formed a thin crust on each pan.  The dough was crumbly and hard to spread.  We added a little bit more warm water to try to make it more cohesive.

Billy let me put the sauce on his pizza.  We used Francesca Rinaldi original formula tomato sauce.  I was generous.  Billy wanted mozzarella cheese, but we were out.  With a choice between sharp cheddar and Mexican blend, Billy chose the sharp cheddar.  He spread the sliced cheese on his pizza and then added the sausage pieces.

Judy put the sauce on her own pizza.  She only put on a thin layer of sauce.  For cheese, she chose the Mexican blend.  Then she put the sausage pieces on.

The recipe called for 15 to 20 minutes of baking.  Since I wash using a glass pan, I chose 17 minutes.  Judy's pan was on the bottom, and cooked faster.  I let Billy's pizza stay in for another 3 minutes.

We let the pizzas cool, then cut and ate.  The kids seemed to like them.

I thought the pizzas were a little bit doughy.  Maybe next time, I'll try spreading the crust thinner.  Nonetheless, a nice experiment, and one we'll likely repeat.