Pan de Muertos

Day of the Dead Bread!

Recipe from All Recipes.com:

http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/pan-de-muertos-mexican-bread-of-the-dead/detail.aspx

Ingredients

• 1/4 cup margarine
• 1/4 cup milk
• 1/4 cup warm water (110 degrees F/45 degrees C)
• 3 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 1/4 teaspoons active dry yeast
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 2 teaspoons anise seed
• 1/4 cup white sugar
• 2 eggs, beaten
• 2 teaspoons orange zest
• 1/4 cup white sugar
• 1/4 cup orange juice
• 1 tablespoon orange zest
• 2 tablespoons white sugar

Directions

1. Heat the milk and the butter together in a medium saucepan, until the butter melts. Remove from the heat and add them warm water. The mixture should be around 110 degrees F (43 degrees C).
2. In a large bowl combine 1 cup of the flour, yeast, salt, anise seed and 1/4 cup of the sugar. Beat in the warm milk mixture then add the eggs and orange zest and beat until well combined. Stir in 1/2 cup of flour and continue adding more flour until the dough is soft.
3. Turn the dough out onto a lightly floured surface and knead until smooth and elastic.
4. Place the dough into a lightly greased bowl cover with plastic wrap and let rise in a warm place until doubled in size. This will take about 1 to 2 hours. Punch the dough down and shape it into a large round loaf with a round knob on top. Place dough onto a baking sheet, loosely cover with plastic wrap and let rise in a warm place for about 1 hour or until just about doubled in size.
5. Bake in a preheated 350 degrees F (175 degrees C) oven for about 35 to 45 minutes. Remove from oven let cool slightly then brush with glaze.
6. To make glaze: In a small saucepan combine the 1/4 cup sugar, orange juice and orange zest. Bring to a boil over medium heat and boil for 2 minutes. Brush over top of bread while still warm. Sprinkle glazed bread with white sugar.

This recipe was fairly easy.  I thought that the bread came out a bit over done on the outside and burnt on the bottom, but people who tried it said they liked it!  I will admit that the inner bread was pretty good and that the sugar/orange glaze on the outside made up for the somewhat crispy exterior.



sugar skulls

http://mexicanfood.about.com/od/sweetsanddesserts/ht/candyskulls.htm

Ingredients

2 1/2 cups sugar

1 egg white from an extra large egg, or 2 from small eggs

1 teaspoons light corn syrup

1 teaspoon vanilla

Cornstarch, for handling dough



1. Sift sugar into a large mixing bowl.
   
2. In another bowl, mix the egg whites, corn syrup and vanilla.
3. Slowly pour the liquid into the powdered sugar. Mix with your hands until a sandy dough forms.
4. Form dough into a ball. At this point you can continue or you can refrigerate dough for later use.
5. Lightly dust surface with cornstarch as well as your hands. Pinch off a heaping tablespoon of dough and shape it into a skull.

I had this soft plastic skull ice cube tray, so I wanted to test it out and see if I could make candy skulls using this as a mold.

Here are some of my skulls.  The smaller ones are the ones I made with the plastic ice mold.  I didn't think that they turned out that great so I molded some larger skulls by hand..

We decorated the skulls with black sugar icing...

feliz dia de los muertos!

Skull Sugar Cookies

This is my mother's recipe! Personally, I don't think any of the other sugar cookies I have tried come close to these.  Maybe it's because I grew up with these cookies, but I think that they are the best! :)

Easy Cutout Cookies

1 package (16 ounces) golden pound cake mix

1/3 cup margarine, softened

1 teaspoon almond extract

1 egg

Heat oven to 375. Mix half the cake mix (dry), the margarine, almond extract and egg in large bowl until smooth. Stir in remaining cake mix.

Divide dough into halves. Roll each out 1/8 inch thick on lightly floured board. Cut into desired shapes. Place on ungreased cookie sheet.

Bake until edges are light brown, 6-8 minutes. Cool slightly before removing from cookie sheet. Cool completely

The two secret ingredients: Pound Cake Mix and Almond Extract

Cut outs ready to go into the oven:

Cookies decorated by myself and some helpers ;)

Now for a preview of the San Diego Natural History Museum's newest exhibition, Skulls!

Some bird skulls...

Turtle Skulls

One of my personal favorite animals, the Anteater!

Giraffe Skull

Alligator Skull

Rhino and other horned creatures..

That's just a preview of the 200 skulls in the new exhibit!

My favorite cookie, created by Molly Muffinz:

Curried Butternut Squash Soup

Recipe from:

http://www.foodierelations.com/2011/04/curried-roasted-butternut-squash-and.html

Ingredients

• 1 butternut squash
• 2 apples
• 1 onion, diced
• 1 garlic clove, smashed
• 1 bay leaf
• 2 tbsp curry powder
• 1 tsp cayenne pepper powder (or more to taste)
• 6 cups water
• 1 tbsp olive oil
• 1 tbsp salt
• 1 tsp pepper
• 1 tbsp apple cider vinegar
• 1/4 cup plain non-fat yogurt

*I also added some ground coriander

First you roast the squash and apples.

Brush them with some oil and then sprinkle with salt and pepper.

Maybe my oven wasn't hot enough because the squash and apples didn't look as roasted as I had expected.

I even left the squash in the oven for an additional 20 minutes!

Onion and lots of spices are added into the soup.

Cook soup on the stove top.

Then puree the soup to desired consistency.

Sweet Potato Upsidedown Cake

I was first impressed by this dessert when my mom made it one night when I was over for dinner  at the Manthei homestead.  She said that my sister had picked out the recipe, and she made it with some skepticism, but the end result was not only visually stunning, it was amazingly delicious! It was so good I wanted to make it again, soon after, in order to feature it here on the The Hungry Oryx, and to share it with my coworkers at the museum.

My mom got the recipe from the October issue of Oprah's magazine.  I found the recipe online as well:

http://www.oprah.com/food/Sweet-Potato-Upside-Down-Cake-Recipe

The first step is creating a  caramel syrup.  Basically you boil sugar and water without stirring, and then you add in butter.

You pour the syrup into a 9" cake pan, and then you layer the thin slices of sweet potato.

Then you mix together the cake, which included rye flour, regular flour, one egg, yogurt, baking soda, vanilla, and other spices.  You put the cake batter on top of the sweet potatoes and then bake at 350 for about 50 minutes.

You let the cake cool for about five minutes and then you can flip it out onto a plate.

I think that when my mom made it, it came out better looking!

Also I forgot to add butter into the cake batter, but the cake still tasted OK with out it!



Strawberry Basil Scones

Strawberry Basil Scones...need I say more??

I used the recipe from this blog:
http://traceysculinaryadventures.blogspot.com/2009/08/strawberry-scones.html
And then added some chopped basil to the mix for that little extra something ;)

Strawberry Scones

from Confessions of a Tart (as seen on The Food Librarian)

1 cup strawberries (or other fruit)

3 tablespoons granulated sugar

2 cups all-purpose flour

2 teaspoons baking powder

1/4 teaspoon salt

6 tablespoons butter, in cubes, slightly softened

2/3 cup half-and-half or cream or cold buttermilk

Topping:

1 tablespoon sugar

Preheat oven to 400 F. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper.

If using larger fruit, cut into bite-sized pieces. Sprinkle fruit with 1/2 tablespoon sugar; set aside. Be sure to make the pieces small, or they tend to fall out of the dough. They'll still be plenty prominent in your finished scones.

Combine remaining sugar with flour, baking powder and salt. Add butter to the mixture and cut in using a pastry cutter or 2 knives. Stir in fruit; then add cream/half-and-half/buttermilk all at once. Use rubber spatula to gently stir dough until it holds together.

Turn onto a lightly floured surface and knead a few times to incorporate dry ingredients. Be gentle so you don't break up the berries and don't overwork the dough. Sprinkle dough with flour if it gets sticky.

Press (pat) the dough into a circle 3/4 inch thick. If any berries peek out, push them into dough. Cut circle into 6-8 wedges, then transfer wedges to the cookie sheet, leaving at least 1/2 inch of space between them. Bake 15 minutes.

Sprinkle with sugar and bake 5-10 more minutes or until the tops are beginning to brown and spring back when you push them. (The sprinkling of sugar over the top for the last few minutes of baking creates a simple, sparkly topping.)

Yields 6-8 scones.

Strawberries, Basil and Sugar

Dry ingredients and strawberries ready to be combined in perfect harmony..

.

Presliced and Ready to go into the oven.

(I didn't have any parchment paper around, but these didn't stick to the pan.)

Scones fresh out of the oven!

Carnitas

This was my first time ever making carnitas and it turned out AMAZING!

A lot of the recipes I looked at used a slow cooker or dutch oven to cook the meat, but since I have neither of those items I decided to go with this recipe where you first boil the meat for a few hours and then crisp it in the oven for about 20 minutes:

http://www.cdkitchen.com/recipes/recs/718/Chipotle-Carnitas118108.shtml

7 pounds pork butt
1 1/2 quart chicken broth
1 large onion, quartered
1 tablespoon ground cumin
1 tablespoon chopped cilantro
2 teaspoons oregano
4 canned chipotle chilies en adobo
2 tablespoons adobo sauce from canned chilies
2 bay leaves
water
salt

(* I also added in an orange quartered and 5 or 6 whole cloves of garlic.)

Cut pork butt in large chunks. Add remainder of ingredients and enough water to cover the pork. Cover the pan and bring to boil on high heat. Reduce heat and simmer until meat pulls apart easily with fork (2-3 hours).

Remove pork from broth with slotted spoon and place in a baking pan. Let stand until cool.
Bake pork, uncovered in a 450 degrees F oven until lightly browned and sizzling (about 20 minutes).

I thought this would be a perfect opportunity to use my bird bowls :)

All the fixin's guacamole, cilantro, salsa, onion, limes..

Warming up the tortillas.

Dinner is served!

Delicious!