In true Canadian fashion, it rained all day long, but we’d read the forecast so we were prepared! No rain was going to get between us and our rotisserie experiment! We grabbed the outdoor umbrella and positioned it above the motor so it wouldn’t get wet. It served a double purpose, offering the BBQ master (ie. Phill) some protection from the elements when he was outside to check on the turkey (which was often).

I didn’t brine the turkey but I did give it a dry rub using a range of spices (chili, celery salt, onion powder, paprika, pepper) and let it sit in the fridge for a couple hours so the flavours could sink in. I also chopped up an onion and some garlic to fill the cavity, but that turned out to be a silly idea because as the turkey spun on the rotisserie, they fell out one at a time. I had trussed it but obviously not tight enough.

When the BBQ was preheated to about 375 degrees, we put the turkey on the rotisserie spit and tried to make sure it was as even as possible. You didn’t want it to be lopsided or it might burn the motor out trying to turn it, or it might cook unevenly. It took us a few tries – and a couple arguments – but we finally got it on there. (Don’t laugh at my trussing job – this was my first time and I didn’t want wings flopping about!)

We raced outside into the rain and quickly fitted the end of the spit into the motor. It was surprising how much heat was lost with the lid open for just a few minutes. This was concerning because that would affect the cooking time and I was sort of relying on using the time as a good indication of whether or not the turkey was done. We’d put it on earlier rather than later, just in case, so if it needed to cook for longer that was okay. I was just paranoid about drying it out!

The turkey cooked at about 375 degrees for about 1hr 20mins and when we pulled it off, it was perfect, which was a relief, especially considering how much we’d babysat it, checking it was still turning and hadn’t caught fire. It wasn’t dry at all and the skin was crispy and the meat juicy – so delicious! Not bad for a first attempt!

And the best part? Leftovers! So on that note, I believe it’s dinner time!

__________________________
Thank you for subscribing! This post is from A Byootaful Life and is copyrighted © 2011.

This chicken katsu curry was from the food court near my work. We’ve found it hard to find katsu curry in Vancouver (obviously we must be looking in the wrong places!) but this one is really good. If I’m having a tough day at work, I just head over and grab one of these. I’m not a huge fan of the salad that comes with it, but the portion of rice, chicken and curry is more than enough, so I’m always too full for salad anyway!

We love katsu curry so much I’ve tried making it at home. It’s incredibly easy, with the help of Japanese curry blocks. All you do is add them to water and heat until thickened, just like gravy. I usually buy the ready-crumbed chicken schnitzels from the deli department but you could easily make your own. Serve with rice, easy peasy! Here’s my home attempt:

Delicious (and very filling!). You can add chopped carrots or potato to the curry and I normally throw a chopped onion in there too. Now I’m craving katsu curry…

I can’t for the life of me remember where I had this burger but oh my goodness, I know why I took a photo of it – how absolutely delicious does it look?! And the chips are so crispy and golden – YUM! The burger looks like grilled chicken and bacon with salad and of course that sunny side up egg. I’ll also bet you that, straight after taking this photo, I picked up a chip and prodded the egg yolk until it burst – mmmmmmmmm.

Now this was an amazing meal I had when we visited a winery with a couple of our friends. This was my first ever taste of pork belly and oh wow, why did I wait so long? It was deliciously sinful on a bed of sweet potato puree. The generous topping of crackling was the icing on the cake and the meltingly delicate slices of apple added a whole new dimension. And if this wasn’t good enough, it was finished off with a to-die-for dessert…

… of creme brulee with roasted marshmallows and vanilla bean ice-cream. This dessert might not look like much but it was amazing! The creme brulee was perfect, with a hard layer of caramelised sugar that shattered when struck with the spoon. The marshmallows worked well with the custard and the ice-cream was home-made and ultra creamy. The portion was perfect too – not too big, not too small, especially after my pork belly main.

Ahhh, memories! It’s been nice looking back at some of my favourite meals and remembering where I was and who I was with when I experienced them. Do you photograph your food? I think it’s becoming more and more popular, even if you don’t run a food blog, it’s a nice reminder of great dining experiences!

__________________________
Thank you for subscribing! This post is from A Byootaful Life and is copyrighted © 2011.

Behold:

A turducken, for those who might not know, is a deboned chicken… stuffed inside a deboned duck… stuffed inside a  deboned turkey. Sounds delicious, right? There’s also stuffing inside to fill the gaps – this one had three different stuffings, one for each bird.  It’s just like three different roast dinners in one meaty package! As you can see from the picture above, this one was a pretty big beast – it was about 12kgs (about 26lbs) and would feed approximately 30 people. There were eleven of us there, so the hosts were prepared for plenty of turducken toasted sandwiches for the next few days.

Our friends got up at 6am on Christmas day to put the turducken in the oven. It was going to take about twelve hours to cook, so they needed an early start. They seasoned it with some olive oil, salt and pepper and some herbs before wrapping it in alfoil and popping it into the oven. They basted it as it cooked and then removed the foil for the last little bit to let it brown on top. And oh my goodness, here is the finished result:

Sorry for the bad quality photo, it was hastily snapped on Phill’s iPhone as camera flashes went off everywhere. The turducken smelled amazing and looked perfect! It was allowed to rest for about thirty minutes while the gravy was prepared. I’m pretty sure they used drippings from the pan, mixed with gravy powder. The side dishes were prepared by friends – we brought potato bake and nibblies, there was also a really tasty pumpkin and spinach salad, potato salad (with sultanas and apple), roast potato and sweet potato, and a selection of breads.

And then everything was ready and the moment of truth was here… time to carve the turducken!

The image above is a still from a video we took – unfortunately I’m having some problems uploading the video, but you can still make out the layers of the meat, interspaced with stuffing. The turducken had been cut in half, then the two halves pulled away from each other to show the insides. Yum!

The turducken was really delicious! You could taste the difference in the meats and they were all really moist and tender. The stuffing was tasty too. It’s a bit messy when it’s carved because, well there’s nothing holding the meat together. I believe some butchers use “meat glue” to hold it together but this one was glue-less. It was all okay though, because once it was on your plate and smothered in gravy, who cares if it’s in one pretty piece or not?

The only downside was that there was quite a lot of soggy skin in amongst the meat, because the chicken and duck hadn’t been skinned before being stuffed inside each other and of course, the skin couldn’t crisp up if it was inside. I’m not a huge fan of the soggy skin taste or texture, so I left those bits to one side. I’m not sure if you’d have much luck stuffing the birds if they were skinless – I guess because it’s been deboned it needs that skin to hold it all together, otherwise you’re just left with a pile of meat.

All in all, the turducken was a big success and we went home nursing extremely full tummies.

What did you have for Christmas dinner? Did you go the traditional turkey or something completely different? Whatever you had, I hope it was delicious!

__________________________
Thank you for subscribing! This post is from A Byootaful Life and is copyrighted © 2011.

Anyway… Phill and I hadn’t been able to find a good pizza crust over here yet. They are either too soggy or waaaay too crunchy. We were starting to get desperate when we spotted this in the fridge section of the supermarket…

…we figured why not? and grabbed a couple. We’ve had the croissants by the same brand before and they turned out pretty tasty, so we were hoping the pizza dough would follow suit. Tonight was the night to find out – I opened the fridge, spotted the dough and suggested pizza for dinner. The fact that I was feeling completely lazy was no factor in my decision. Honest.

The first step was to figure out how to open the tubes. I was about to reach for a can opener when Phill pointed out a little flap that you pull to unravel the tube. I pulled it and hey presto, the whole thing exploded.

I’ll admit I let out a little scream when it POPPED because I wasn’t expecting it at all. Okay, so after I stopped prodding the exploded bit, I pulled out the dough (which curiously smelled a bit like play-doh) I popped it on a lightly oiled tray and started to push down on it. Phill rolled his eyes, grabbed the dough and started to unravel it.

Ahhh, perhaps I should have read the instructions.

I spread the dough with my fingers until we had a round pizza base and a rectangle pizza base, then baked them in the oven at 400F for 8 minutes, while I prepared the toppings. We went pretty basic this time, just using what we had on hand: tomatoes (for me), mushrooms, ham, bacon, green capsicum and cheese. The round base had tomato sauce (just plain because I forgot to buy Italian herbs) and the other had garlic BBQ sauce (omg soooo good!). The oven beeped and it was time to add the toppings… yeah baby!

Mmmm cheesy. I am so obsessed with the cheese over here – you can get multicoloured cheese! White and orange! So weird but soooo tasty. I know this is probably not the right kind of cheese for pizza, but it’s what we had in the fridge.

We baked the pizzas for another 12 minutes (a little longer than the instructions called for because we felt it wasn’t quite “done” enough) and pulled them out and OMG they smelled delicious and looked amazing!

Oh wait, I’ve got a better picture… did someone say “food porn”?

The base was really good. It was light and fluffy and crispy on the bottom. The crusts were very crispy (which could have been because we left it in that little longer) but they weren’t too crispy. The pizza slices held their shape, even with the extra juices from the bacon and the tomato. I love tomato on a pizza but it releases so much juice it’s crazy. I was very surprised that the base didn’t turn soggy because of it – which of course made me love this base even more.

I’m so glad I’ve found a pizza dough I like! The best bit is I can keep it in the fridge for ages, so it’s always ready when that pizza craving hits. And no, I didn’t get compensated for this, I had to buy my own dough, with my own dough. Heh.

I think there’s a couple slices left over, so I’m just going to pop into the kitchen…

__________________________
Thank you for subscribing! This post is from A Byootaful Life and is copyrighted © 2011.

Here’s my plate:

Nom nom nom!

If it looks a little packed on, as if I went along and grabbed everything I laid my hungry little eyes on, then, well, yes, you’d be correct! It smelled soooo good and we were so hungry by the time dinner was served, we chowed down quickly. The turkey was so moist and delicious – we’d never seen such a big bird before. It was like a chicken on steroids!

To help our bulging bellies settle, we went to play a few games of pool. Surprisingly, I did pretty well. At one point I got four balls in in a row! Couldn’t believe it! Then it went all downhill (perhaps the wine was finally kicking in?), so we headed back to their apartment for dessert. Yes, we were stuffed from dinner, but there’s always room for dessert!

Upon arriving back to the apartment, we quickly said hello to Harry the Hamster, who had been sleeping in his little home all day. Earlier, I had put some cucumber in his cage to try to lure him out, but I stupidly turned my back for a couple minutes and when I looked back, the cucumber had disappeared and Harry was still nowhere to be seen. I should have known – this is coming from someone who has owned about ten mice!

Phill and I had brought a chocolate swirl pumpkin pie I’d bought at Granville Island on Sunday.

Sadly, while it looked delicious, it didn’t taste very nice. It was really pumpkiny and really wet, and I just couldn’t stomach it. We’d tried pumpkin pie previously and found it quite nice, so it’s not that I don’t like pumpkin pie, I just didn’t like this one. I was so disappointed because it looked great!

Never fear, we didn’t lose out on dessert because our friend had also prepared a pavlova!

Doesn’t it look gourmet?

It was her third attempt at pavlova, after having issues with it sticking to the alfoil. This attempt she used parchment paper (that stuff is truly amazing) and had it all decorated and ready to go with strawberries, cream and freshly grated chocolate. Yum!

Mmmmm pavlova…

We also had cute little harvest cookies to munch on throughout the night. Let’s just say we were very satisfied and full as we rolled into the taxi to take us home!

It was a really wonderful night spent with good friends and good food.

I wonder if they are having turkey sandwiches for dinner tonight?

__________________________
Thank you for subscribing! This post is from A Byootaful Life and is copyrighted © 2011.

Doesn’t that look like fun? Or maybe I just get too excited about things…

Anyway, once in the city, we walked a few blocks to the Farmer’s Market on Pike Street, which we had heard a lot about. We had heard of a thing called a “gum wall”, a bronze pig which worked like a massive piggybank (apparently she receives thousands of dollars in donations every year!) and fish throwing, where the men working at the fish market would throw a fish at you and you had to catch it (eep!).

First off, we saw the bronze pig. Lots of people were having their photos taken with it – it’s a pretty famous pig apparently!

Right behind the pig is a very busy fish market, with signs everywhere depicting them tossing fish, so I figured this was it. We hung around for a while, hoping for a fish to be thrown around, but the most throwing we saw was when a customer bought a fish and the man working the front of the stall threw it back to the men behind the counter. After a while, it seemed it wasn’t going to happen, so we left in the hopes of finding the gum wall.

Down the stairs and around the corner, we found it in all it’s disgusting glory:

Behold the gum wall. It stretches a fair distance down the alleyway, a wall completely covered in chewing gum. It reaches about halfway up the wall (as high as most people could reach, I suppose!) and is absolutely disgusting… but sort of pretty at the same time. The first thing I noticed (other than the wall itself) was the faint peppermint smell that lingered in the alley.

I think the wall was started when people queueing down the alley to see a show began sticking their gum to the wall. I guess it’s just grown over time – there are literally thousands of bits of gum on that wall, plus other things that aren’t gum like playing cards, notes and money. I liked the way the gum dripped over the edge of the window sills, as it was icicles or something.

Oh and of course I had to take a close-up, just for the ick factor:

You’re welcome.

As strange as it sounds after seeing such a gross thing, we were both pretty hungry so we went off in search of food. Instead of getting lunch however, we saw something else that looked absolutely amazing – a Tiger Striped Caramel Toffee Apple from Rock Mountain Chocolate Factory – YUM!

*drooling*

They cut it for us and we sat down to try it… and it was AMAZING. The caramel was almost nutty – it had a really deep flavour that I loved and it wasn’t just the usual caramel flavour, it was something more. The apple was crisp and tart and offset the sweet caramel perfectly. While I loved it, Phill wasn’t too sure about the combination, which was fine by me since I’d get more! (hehe)

Can I admit that I knew this photo was a little blurry? I focused on Phill’s hand instead of the apple, dammit! But I was soooo hungry and it looked sooo good that I previewed the picture and decided it was good enough! You can see the apple, then the layer of nutty caramel, then the buttery tiger stripe, which is drizzled with more caramel chocolate. Perfect ratio of apple to sweetness!

After our feast (we managed every slice except one, which I wrapped up in paper and kept in my handbag for later) we were ready for some underground exploring! We headed to Pioneer Square to join an Underground Tour of Seattle. I didn’t know that the Seattle we see today is actually built above the original Seattle and that there are still underground tunnels and pathways today that we can walk through.

We got there just in time to join the 2pm tour (CA$15 each). The tour kicked off with a 20-minute sit-down history lesson delivered by perhaps the funniest woman in Seattle. It was really interesting and helped us to understand how Seattle came to be higher today, as well as Seattle’s history with sinking foundations, bad plumbing and one massive fire that cleaned out the whole town. Then we split into three tour groups of about 20 in each group and went with our own guides to begin the tour.

It was pretty surreal to walk along paths, past buildings that used to be at street level, now far below Seattle. Our tour guide told us that certain parts of the tour passed through places where supernatural activity had been reported (in fact, Ghost Hunters had actually filmed an episode in the underground tunnels of Seattle during their Season 3) so when I got this shot…

… I thought I might have captured something supernatural! But then I realised that the shadow was in front of the wood, which meant it wasn’t a shadowy figure in the back of the room, but rather my finger covering the flash.

Damn. It still made my heart lurch though!

I’d highly recommend the Underground Tour if you’re in Seattle. It’s so informative and so interesting, and the guides are hilarious! Oh, and we did the tour in our thongs (such bogans!) so it’s pretty easy to get around. After the tour (which ends up back at the starting spot in Pioneer Square) we got a pizza and headed back to the hotel for an early night, because the next morning we’d be up nice and early to catch our train to… Vancouver!

__________________________
Thank you for subscribing! This post is from A Byootaful Life and is copyrighted © 2011.

———–

I have been to Yum Cha exactly once before and that was when I was much younger, with my parents. I remember being in awe of the massive red gates that signified the entrance to the Chinatown and even more impressed with the numerous ducks hanging in the windows of the shops. I remember thinking they looked delicious but at the same time, how long had they been hanging there? Always the pessimist, I am.

Yesterday Phill, a friend and I went to Yum Cha for lunch. We had driven past a new restaraunt the other day and made a mental note to visit. We didn’t realise that we’d be visiting on the final day of their “Grand Opening Special” which apparently meant each dish was cheaper than normal, so excellent timing for us. We had to wait five minutes for a table because it was absolutely packed to the brim, but that’s normally a good sign, right?

We were shown to a table in a corner which was good because I was eager to try out my new camera. I didn’t particularly want to draw too much attention to myself because, well, I’m still pretty awkward at using it and I’d need a bit of time to achieve good shots. I’ve been playing around with the manual settings for the aperture and shutter speed (which was made much easier to understand thanks to this series of posts by The Pioneer Woman) and I am loving the results (even if I do say so myself!).

It didn’t take long for a few ladies to wheel their carts over and start offering us food. We were so hungry I think our eyes were bigger than our stomachs and we started accepting most of what they offered. We weren’t brave enough to try the chicken feet though – maybe next time…

These deep fried prawn parcels were absolutely delicious! I expected them to be greasy (they sort of look like they should be) but they weren’t – they were really light and crispy. The prawn filling wasn’t too heavy either. I commented to Phill that it might not be prawn in it, but more that seafood-extender type filling, because it didn’t have a strong taste. On a side note, notice the burry background and the focused food? Oh yeah…

Mmmm pork ribs! These were really delicate and had a bit of a kick to them (I didn’t notice the chili until I ate a piece that had some stuck on it). The only hard bit was separating the pork because it seemed to come in a few big chunks and it was a little difficult since the pork was quite slippery and we aren’t pro-chopstick users!

I’m 90% sure these were crab – they were definitely not pork, but I also thought they didn’t taste like prawns. I could be wrong. They had a strange texture, almost oily, which surprised me because I thought they were steamed. Maybe what I was confusing for oil was only moisture from the steaming? I loved the crispy bits on the top and bottom.

I didn’t actually try the sang choy bow but it looked really good. This one gave me the hardest time with the camera though, because the camera kept focusing on the bit of the lettuce closest to me and fuzzed out everything else. I know it’s due to the user, not the camera, but I finally figured it out and got a shot in focus. It was a big relief for me and my friend, because then she could actually eat it!

I was trying to be a good friend by taking quick photos and then putting the camera away. I know some food bloggers spend a while photographing the food before anyone is allowed to eat and I’d just feel terrible about that. I love food and I find it hard to wait, but it’s always worth it when you see the photos afterwards and the food is memoralised on film. If you’re a food photographer, what do you do? Make everyone wait or be a photo ninja, snapping away here and there but ensuring there’s plenty of time for eating?

Ahh, good ol’ spring rolls, the staple of any Chinese meal! These were just so-so, nothing fancy but still delicious. They went great with a sweet and sour sauce and were really crispy. I think we’d been lucky to get a fresh set, since a fresh tray had just arrived to restock the trolley while we were choosing our food.

I love dumplings with a passion. Anything that’s crunchy on one side and steamed on the other is just delicious. In fact, I practically lived on dumplings when we were in Japan. These were quite large and filling, with a pork centre and I found that I could really only eat one or two before I was too full from pork overload!

These were quite strange and I didn’t like them, which surprised me since I love potato. They had a potato filling with what tasted like bacon. Perhaps it was the texture? I’m not a fan of gnocchi either, even though that’s mostly potato too. Strange.

These were so strange – they have a pork filling in a bready bun, but with a sticky sweet glaze over the top. They were really delicious, but I wasn’t sure if they were meant for dessert because of the sweetness. I thought the lady with the trolley would have mentioned if it was meant to be a dessert plate, but she didn’t so I assume it’s not? Either way, they were pretty tasty!

In all, it was a really nice lunch and I left feeling very full, even though *technically* I hadn’t eaten that much. I wonder if it’s because of all the different things I tried, rather than just eating one thing.

So how did I go with my new camera? I’m slowly figuring things out but it’s going to take a while before I’m more confident and happy with my pictures. Already the difference between my old camera and my new camera is amazing – the definition in the photos and the versitility of the camera and its lenses is just WOW – now I just have to learn how to use it properly!

__________________________
Thank you for subscribing! This post is from A Byootaful Life and is copyrighted © 2011.

So while winter is cold and miserable, it’s the perfect weather for homemade soup.

I don’t often make soup but I was feeling confident one grocery shop, so when I spied some bacon hocks in the deli department I knew I wanted to get one and make a hock soup. I was originally looking for a ham hock but I’ve read that they’re quite similar, so I figured a bacon hock would be fine. I picked up some carrots, celery and an onion to go with it. I wanted to try leek but frankly, it was just too expensive to justify. Damn, because leeks are delicious.

The veggies were chopped up and put in my favourite pot. It’s small but really fat, which means it holds much more than you’d think. I use it to make pasta and big pots of mince and stews – it’s my comfort pot! I cooked the veggies until they were a bit soft and then added two litres of vegetable stock. It was at this point that I realised my pot isn’t as big as I thought – the stock almost reached the top of the pot and I was concerned when I added the hock it might overflow!

(Sorry about the terrible quality photos – I didn’t realise they were a bit blurry until after I saw them on the computer)

I added some soup mix I’d soaked for an hour in some hot water, covered with alfoil to keep the heat in. It looked really healthy and I’d never cooked with a soup mix before so it was a bit intimidating. The instructions on the soup mix packet were rather fussy and required hours of preperation, so I figured I’d just simmer the soup for longer if my pre-soaking time wasn’t adequate.

I just love that photo – you can see all the healthy peas and beans and lentils and stuff. You know, stuff we don’t normally eat! Once I’d trimmed the fat from the hock, it went into the soup. It took half an hour to bring it to the boil  because the pot was so full(!!) and then I let it simmer for about three and a half hours all up. It started to smell deliciously wonderful and I was soooo hungry, I just wanted to eat it but I knew it would take a long time to cook through the soup mix and the veggies, and there’s nothing worse than hard bits in soup (unless it’s bacon, of course!).

Once it had simmered for what seemed like a lifetime, I pulled the hock out and cut off all the meat I could find. (I seemed to forget that a hock taken straight out of boiling water would be hot and burned my fingers). There wasn’t that much meat on it – perhaps that’s where a ham hock and bacon hock differs? If I was going to do this again, I’d probably put two hocks in there. The meat was really pink, which made Phill think it might not be cooked but it had been simmering for three hours – it was definitely cooked.

It tasted really good – I was quite impressed with it. The veggies were melty but still held their shape and the soup mix had swollen up and really helped to give the soup a bit of body. The weirdest thing was seeing the peas in there – they started off as dried peas and now they were plump little green balls – weeeeeird!

There’s no recipe because I didn’t follow one – I just chucked everything in and let it simmer until it was done.

What’s your favourite soup? I’d have to say pumpkin!

__________________________
Thank you for subscribing! This post is from A Byootaful Life and is copyrighted © 2011.

This year, I decided to do a Simpsons-themed cake. Phill is a huge Simpsons fan and I normally buy him a Simpsons gag gift, just a little something Simpsons-related as a sort of tradition. This year, there was no Simpsons gift, so I figured, why not do a cake? I searched the internet for some inspiration and found this:

This cake was made by Meg of megscakes and I was absolutely blown away by her amazing skills! I decided to use this as my inspiration and I’d see how close I could get (HA, not very close!). I knew I wouldn’t be able to create something as professional as Meg’s but I’d at least use the characters as inspiration.

My first hurdle was the black fondant. I decided to buy ready-made icing and colour it myself, but I know black is a difficult colour to make and I hadn’t left myself enough time to buy some online. I spent a few hours racing around the local shopping centre trying all the bakeries and kitchen shops to no avail and alas, I decided last-minute that Snowball II would have to be sacrificed. The frame also went. I didn’t want to over-do the icing so I decided to just make the characters and stick them onto a chocolate buttercream, so they’d be easily peeled off if people didn’t like the taste.

It took me a good four hours (!!!) just to do the Simpsons characters. This didn’t include making and baking the cake, making the chocolate buttercream and getting the cake to the point of being ready for the characters to go on.

I basically tore off bits of icing, dyed it and then shaped it to mimic Meg’s characters. I used grease-proof paper which I found stopped the icing from sticking and kept a knob of butter nearby to keep my hands greased. Of course, I had forgotten to buy gloves so by the end of it all my hands had turned a funny shade of red/green/blue/yellow, but that came out after a few rounds of hand-washing.  I didn’t take a lot of photos during the character creation process (because my hands were so dirty), but here is the end result:

Vanilla cake with chocolate buttercream icing, with Simpsons characters made out of coloured icing. I was actually quite happy with the end result. The only thing that really bugged me was the length of Lisa’s neck. I had originally prepared all the characters on some grease-proof paper and was happy with the size, proportion and colours but once transferred to the cake (the point of no return!) I realised Lisa’s neck was huuuuuge! I wasn’t sure how that slipped by me, but oh well, I decided to leave it because I didn’t want to make a mess trying to fix it.

There were little creases and dints everywhere, but overall I was pretty happy. You should have seen how tall Marge’s hair started off as – once I’d got all the characters together, I realised it was pretty massively out of proportion, so I trimmed it off. There were a few (polite) comments from party-goers that they resembled the Simpsons cast from when they appeared on the Tracy Ullman show and I smiled and said that was what I was going for (ha).

I think my favourite character turned out to be Santa’s Little Helper, with his turned-up nose and sticking-out tongue and crazy eyes. I wish I’d been able to figure out the black icing for Snowball II because she’s slightly crazy too and her fangs would have been cool to make. Maggie turned out ok too (I was worried her dummy would look like a crazy red zit on her face or something but I think it’s passable). The hardest part of the characters would probably be her bow. Every time I prodded the sides in, it pushed the middle out – I couldn’t make it small and keep it proportional – it took forever, but I was happy with the end result.

So what do you think? I’m no whizz in the kitchen, but it was a really fun way to spend the majority of the day. When Phill came home and saw it, his eyes lit up and he was so excited – and that made all the stress worth it! Now to start planning next year’s cake…

__________________________
Thank you for subscribing! This post is from A Byootaful Life and is copyrighted © 2011.

I found a simple recipe on Best Recipes that claimed to be “super easy” and, since there wasn’t going to be any practice runs, I needed something fool-proof. I must admit, I cheated a little. I had a lot of stuff to do before lunch and I had a bread maker in the cupboard so, instead of doing everything manually by hand, then allowing it to rise, I decided to throw all the ingredients in the bread maker and let it do it instead.

In goes flour, yeast, caster sugar and salt, then oil and water. Select the “dough” setting, press start… and walk away.

From memory I think it took about one hour fifteen minutes all up. It plays a nice little tune when it’s ready, just like the washing machine does. Ha, that reminds me of yesterday when I was outside taking the clothes off the line and I heard the neighbour’s washing machine finish. It beeped an alarm, like a truck reversing. I remember thinking how much nicer my little tune was. Puddy has even memorised the tune – as soon as she hears it, she comes running into the laundry because she enjoys flopping around in the sun as I hang out the clothes.

Anyway, here’s the finished dough:

Please ignore my creepy fingers. Let’s just say lighting isn’t my strong point.

The dough was nice and warm and a little strechy. I lightly floured the bench, tore the dough in two and rolled out two pizza bases. The amount of dough was perfect for two thin bases, but if you like your pizza bases a little thicker, you might want to make more. I think the recipe creater uses this amount of dough for one pizza, so I guess it just depends on your personal taste.

The speckles in the dough is some sort of herb – I can’t remember! We added it right at the beginning when we put all the ingredients in the bread maker. You can see the dough was quite thin in places, but we didn’t have a problem with it tearing or anything like that – in fact, it probably made it more crispy.

Toppings went on: tomato pizza sauce, mushrooms, cheese, red and green capsicum, mini pepperoni and some shredded shoulder ham (a old favourite from my childhood) and we popped it in the oven at about 200 degrees celcius for about 15 minutes. Keep an eye on it, once it’s golden brown it’s ready.

It was absolutely delicious! The darker bits around the crust aren’t burnt – I think we just managed to get the pizza sauce all over the place and it was cooked on. To get a crispy crust, you need to cook it for a little longer than a store-bought crust because then the pastry is cooked through and you don’t get that doughy taste.

We’ll definitely be making this dough the next time we have pizza and I think we might experiment with different herbs and seasonings – some basil or rosemary would be nice in the dough.

SUPER EASY PIZZA DOUGH
from Best Recipes

Ingredients:

2 cups plain flour
1 x 8g sachet dry yeast
1 teaspoon caster sugar
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 tablespoons olive oil
3/4 cup warm water

Method:

1. Combine dry ingredients in large mixing bowl and add oil or water. (If using bread maker,  now select dough setting and leave it to do it’s own thing. If not using bread maker, continue to step 2)
2. Mix to a soft dough.
3. Knead on a floured surface until soft and pliable.
4. Return to the mixing bowl and cover with cling wrap and leave in a warm spot for 30 minutes. The dough should double in size.
5. When it has risen, “punch” the dough once to remove air bubbles.
6. Remove from bowl and knead gently for 1 minute.
7. Roll the dough out to desired size and add favourite toppings.

Note: This is where the recipe ends. As for cooking, I just went off previous pizza recipes and guessed 200 degrees celcius for about 15 minutes. It depends on your oven, you just want it hot so the base fully cooks and goes crispy. Some people have suggested adding some oil to the pan before cooking – this helps the base crisp up.

Mmmm, now I’m craving pizza for dinner!

__________________________
Thank you for subscribing! This post is from A Byootaful Life and is copyrighted © 2011.