Tag: home cooking

My First Attempt to Make Alcohol Free Pretzel Bagels from The Cottagecore Baking Book

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Two years ago, I decided to try to make an non alcoholic version of the Everything Bagel Beer Pretzel Knots from The Cottagecore Baking Book. At that time, the book was full of recipes I wanted to learn how to make. Most, if not all, the recipes in the book are made from scratch the way I’m most familiar with. (Such as cinnamon rolls that have to go through three rises to create the perfect texture) Back then, I needed to learn how to make more recipes from scratch, so this book was a perfect book for me to try.

Today, The Cottagecore Baking Book has become one of my most favorite cook books. I have made cinnamon rolls, cakes, breads, and many other foods using it. Everything I make using the book requires time and effort, but the taste of the food is completely worth it!

Back when I purchased the book, I discovered a recipe for pretzel bagels. At that time, I needed to omit bagels from my diet due to certain ingredients used in commonly available in bagels sold in my area. I missed eating them, so I decided to use the pretzel bagel recipe to see if I can create my own bagels at home.

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Murder by Cheesecake’s St. Olaf’s Cheesecake Recipe Review

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Earlier this year, a new murder mystery novel was released. There are many murder mystery novels that get published every year, but this one was different. This one is called Murder by Cheesecake and is inspired by the TV series The Golden Girls.

I bought the novel after a suggestion from a friend of mine who just so happens to be a huge fan of The Golden Girls. Months after it was released, I’m still working my way through it (I started it a few weeks ago and I’ve been quite busy since then.) so I can’t write a review about it. So far I like it and it is written the same way the TV show would be.

Even though I’m still reading the book, there was something about the book I can review now: The St. Olaf’s Cheesecake Recipe.

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Discovering New Alternatives for Hard Apple Cider in Recipes

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Ever since I discovered I have food allergies, I have tried my best to adjust any recipe I use to avoid my allergies. Over the years I’ve become more adapted to recognizing recipes with ingredients I can’t use and how to still use the recipe anyway.

Last year, I decided to try make a new bagel recipe. It called for hard apple cider or beer for it. I don’t like to make recipes with beer in it because beer normally plays an important role in the recipe. In fact, the role is so important that I find it is hard to use the recipe with alternative ingredients.

Even though the recipe called for beer or hard apple cider (Both of which I am allergic to) I still decided to give it a try. I thought that if hard apple cider can be used instead of beer, then I could use another apple-based juice as it’s replacement. That’s when I began to learn about why apple juice isn’t a good substitute for beer or hard apple cider.

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Making Potato Rolls- How They Turned Out and Opinions of the Recipe

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In a previous post, I talked about how my mixer had died and that I purchased a replacement for it. The mixer problems forced me to reconsider posting about my baking progress for a while. Now that I have a new mixer and it works very well, I decided to start talking about some of the foods I made using it again.

While browsing my copy of The King Arthur Baking Company’s All-Purpose Baker’s Companion, I discovered a recipe called Amish Potato Rolls. It looked similar to an old and nearly completely lost potato bread recipe I grew up eating (And not liking very much because it was always over baked, dry, and the top of the buns were brunt.) I always thought the recipe was good, but the baking of it wasn’t. Since the original recipe was destroyed and can not be found anymore, I decided to give this new recipe a try and see if I liked it.

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5 Favorite Things I Cook from Scratch to Give as Gifts for Valentine’s Day

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Valentine’s Day is the time of the year to give someone a gift to show how much you love them. Making something to give is a great way to show how much you love someone. One of my favorite things to create as a Valentine’s Day gift is to cook something for someone!

Although I don’t enjoy cooking and baking all the time, it is my favorite way to create a gift someone will enjoy. Sometimes I can’t do this, but overall anything I create is well received. Since I am currently in the process of baking food for gifts, I wanted to list my top five things I cook (and bake) to give as gifts for Valentine’s Day.

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My New Mixer Problems and Buying Another New Mixer

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Last year, I talked about purchasing a new mixer. I did and, after almost a year of use, it broke. What happened is that I used it to make too many heavy doughs for bread, going over the mixer’s capabilities. So, I needed to get a new one.

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Update on My Baking Process: Mixer Problems, Bread Baking, and Deserts I Now Love

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It’s been a few months since I talked about baking bread in a post. I wanted to give a monthly update about how well I’m doing with my bread baking skills, but I ended up not.

In the mean time, things happened in my kitchen. One of those things was problems with my mixer. This was the main reason for my decision to not post updates. I was finally able to get a new one… over a month after I decided to stop using the old one! (I don’t know why it took so long to ship, but there it is) Instead, I decided to focus on baking deserts. I could make them with a hand mixer, which I had.

In order to get myself back to posting about my baking adventures, I decided to write a post about what happened. This way I can update everyone on what happened before I talk in depth about what I baked.

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Ordering More Groceries Online and Why I’m Doing It More Frequently

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Ever since 2022, I began to order more groceries online. Whenever I say this, people sometimes believe I am placing a pickup order at a local grocery store. Instead, I am purchasing more groceries online and having them shipped to my house.

To be honest, I don’t like doing this. For me, groceries need to be purchased in person. I want to see what I am actually purchasing before I pay money for them. I want to see what kind of quality they are, how beat up the boxes are, and how fresh the fruits and veggies are. If I can’t touch them or look at them in person, I’m not interested in purchasing them. This is why shopping for groceries online makes me so upset.

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Update on Baking Homemade Bread: The Good, The Bad, and The Tasty Mistakes

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A while ago, I talked about my intention to make bread from scratch as well as why I’m doing it in a post. Now that I have had some time to bake bread over and over again, I can honestly say that I love how my bread tastes! It isn’t like the store bought breads, but I still like my bread more. It is heavier and denser than the store bought bread. Even though this is natural for the type of bread I make, it does require me to cut thinner slices. I still haven’t master cutting the right size slice, so the bread is still larger than I want it to be.

Even though the problems I’m currently having with my bread isn’t a big deal, I’m still struggling mastering the recipe. My goal is to eventually become good enough at making the recipe that the only thing I need to review in the cookbook is the exact measurements for each ingredient. I still haven’t made it that far. Because of this, I have made many mistake loafs of bread.

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