Making mayo

I did a glorious thing for the first time in my life today. I made mayonnaise. It was one of the most delicious things I’ve ever tasted.

And you know what? It was so freaking easy!

I deliberately don’t keep mayo in the house because I would slather it on everything possible and gain a million pounds. But today I wanted a tuna salad sandwich on toast, and you can’t have a good tuna salad in my opinion without mayo. And since I don’t keep the fattening stuff in the house, I busted out the KitchenAid and made my own.

I used the recipe in Dorie Greenspan’s “Around my French Table” cookbook. She advised that the whole process would take about 10 minutes, and she’s right. It’s very quick if you have a stand mixer, but a hand mixer would work well if you’ve got a kitchen buddy to man it. Easy peesy.

Here’s the her recipe, with my instructions and tweaks, for you to try on your own. It doesn’t make much mayo, maybe a 1/2 cup, which is good because Greenspan says it will only keep for a day or two. Toss a few tablespoons of it with some tuna and sweet pickle relish and you’ve got yourself some awesome tuna salad.

Warning: Homemade mayo uses a raw egg. Since I have my own chickens and know my hens are healthy, eating a raw egg doesn’t bother me. Also, this mayo is not white, but a smooth butter yellow.

Homemade mayo:

• One large egg yolk, room temperature
• 2 tsp. freshly squeezed lemon juice or wine vinegar (I used the lemon juice)
• 1/4 tsp. Dijon mustard (I used spicy brown mustard)
• dash of salt
• 1/2 to 1 cup oil, room temperature (I used a 1/2 cup of olive oil because I like the flavor of olive oil mayo, but any kind will do)

Put everything but the oil in a stand mixer bowl and mix on a slow speed until combined. Add the olive oil in slowly by teaspoon, adding the next only when the previous oil was blended in with the yolk mixture. Greenspan advises to take your time with this and add the oil as slowly as possible. She wrote “drop by drop” in her instructions for the pace. When about a 1/4 cup of the oil is used, you can add it a little faster.

Greenspan said to use up to 1 cup of oil until the mayo reaches your desired state, but use at least a 1/2 cup. The 1/2 cup of oil made a nice thick mayo for me, so I stopped there.

When all of your oil has been mixed with the yolk and has the consistency of mayo, take a taste. I prefer my mayo a little tangy, so I added between a 1/2 and 1 tsp. of white vinegar. I also added just a pinch more salt and a pinch of pepper. Delish!

Do you make any of your own condiments at home? Have you tried homemade mayo?

Baking with lard (aka my latest crazy idea)

In my quest to cook what I call “real” food, or food that has ingredients that I can actually pronounce, I’ve decided to try baking with lard instead of vegetable shortening for recipes that call for such.

“Wait, what?!” You may be thinking. “That’s disgusting!”

Hear me out. I used to share those sentiments too until I made biscuits with lard and did research on lard’s history. (Those biscuits were freakin’ fantastic!)  Although if you’re a vegan/vegetarian I can understand your disgust.

Let’s start with the background first. It all started for me I found an article on NPR’s Planet Money titled “Who Killed Lard?” According to the article, Crisco, a brand of vegetable shortening sold here in the States, was invented by a chemist for Procter & Gamble in the early 1900s. The company had extra cottonseed oil on its hands because it was used to make candles, which were becoming less popular due to light bulbs. They needed a way to use the extra oil, so Crisco was born with a good marketing campaign. Basically, in my opinion, this brand of shortening was born as a business move, not for healthy food.

That was the bomb drop for me.

I picked up Grit magazine’s cookbook “Lard: The Lost Art of Cooking with Your Grandmother’s Secret Ingredient” from my library to do some additional research. If you’re a Mother Earth News/Living subscriber like I am, you may have seen it advertised in those publications.

Here’s something I didn’t know that I learned from the book: Compared to butter, lard has less saturated fat. NPR also published another article comparing lard, vegetable oils and vegetable shortening titled “Lard is Back in the Larder, but Hold the Health Claims” that I found informative as well.

The biggest issue for me is that vegetable shortening is made with partially hydrogenated oils, while lard is just lard (if purchased from a butcher/farmer, not the typically hydrogenated lard found on store shelves). I am not a nutrionist and I will never claim to be one, but I believe partially hydrogenated oils are bad for health.

That is just a brief overview of what I’ve found, but it was enough to convince me purchase a small bucket of lard at an Amish bulk food store that was processed by a local butcher. I’ve also been in contact with my local farmer’s market co-op to get lard from pasture-raised local hogs to render myself. Buying local is important to me too, so this is a kill-two-birds-with-one-stone project for me.

Now, on to the baking results. I’ve made biscuits and brownies with my lard so far. The difference in the texture and taste of these products were immediately noticeable before I even started baking! The brownie batter was a smooth as velvet when I mixed it, and they were chewy and moist with a crisp outer edge when done. They did not taste greasy or like pork. My parents and sister, who I gave a brownie to before spilling the beans on their ingredients, did not notice a porky taste and loved them. As for the biscuits, good gravy, were they delicious. They were flaky, savory and so soft!

I also would like to clarify that I will not be using lard on a daily basis. I only used shortening when baking pie, biscuits, and cookies, so maybe once or twice a month if it’s not a holiday month. I rarely fry things, and if I do I tend to use olive or canola oils. Olive oil is my oil of choice for greasing a skillet or pan.

I’m curious to hear your thoughts on this subject. Do you, or would you, use lard? Why or why not?

The vanilla extract experiment, part three

Back in September, I married vanilla beans and bourbon and waited for them to become my homemade vanilla extract.

Now that the minimum of two months has passed, I can finally share an update on how it all turned out. One word – fantastic.

The best way to describe the difference between my homemade extract and store-bought is that the store-bought version now tastes old and stale to me. The homemade version is so much more fragrant and sweet, in my opinion. This is totally worth making!

I started to use it around Thanksgiving to make Bakerella’s pumpkin pie bites. I deemed that it wasn’t quite strong enough yet, so I left it sit until it was time for the Christmas baking-palooza.

I tested it first in pancakes, discovered the extract was amazing, and used it for my Christmas pièce de résistance – pecan cups. They were a hit.

Let me give you a little bit of background on my mother’s recipe for pecan cups (you may call them pecan tassies). My mother has to make these every year for Christmas or the relatives won’t let her in the door. My husband dropped at Thanksgiving to his dad that I have a wicked pecan cup recipe, so I was conned into making them for Christmas and had enough for both families.

When my family gathered all together for the holiday, there were two versions of the same pecan cup recipe. The only differences between mine and my mother’s were my homemade vanilla and my homemade brown sugar. I don’t know which ingredient switch did the trick, but they tasted completely different in a totally delicious way. My husband and father-in-law loved them.

Moral of the post – you have to make this stuff!

Christmas on the Cheap: Mix it up

Last post of my Christmas on the Cheap series. Anyone else feeling the mad Christmas rush yet?

If you don’t have time to bake or make sweets for gifts, this is the next best thing – gifting baking mixes! It’s still homemade goodness, just without the cooking time. I would call that a win.

Making giftable baking mixes is beyond easy. Take the dry ingredients for any recipe, place in a container with an attached card for cooking instructions, finish with a ribbon. Boom. Done.

What I like about making baking mixes is that you can customize the ingredients for the person. If you have a gluten-free friend/relative, you can adapt a mix for that person. Someone watching salt or sugar? You can fix that too.

I made a chocolate chip pancake mix to give as a gift this year. I used my regular pancake recipe and left out the milk, egg and oil. I used the holiday Ziploc containers that are out this year, tied it with a pretty red ribbon, and printed out the recipe on cardstock using Microsoft Publisher. I used fancy scrapbooking edging scissors to cut out the card.

You can place your mixes in plastic bags, Mason jars, plastic containers, etc. If you have time, glass spaghetti jars with their lids painted in festive colors work well too (and you’re recycling!).

Mixes don’t have to be limited to baking either. Maybe you have a secret spice mixture you like to use for grilling. Maybe you’d like give homemade scouring powder or dishwasher detergent. Maybe you grow your own herbs and have a killer blend for tea. Maybe you’re a gardener and have a formula for homemade, chemical-free bug repellent. There are a lot of possibilities with this.

Here are a few recipes I’ve posted that you can use for your mixes, and I’ll link a few other handy ones as well. Just leave out the wet/perishable ingredients like milk, oil and eggs and you’ve got yourself a gift!

From me:

Chocolate banana bread

Caramel apple granola bars

Pumpkin pancakes

Strawberry bread

From other, smarter people:

Homemade Bisquick mix from Food.com

Pioneer Woman’s Knock you Naked Brownies

Simple Vegan Chocolate Cake from Joy the Baker

Gluten-free blueberry muffins from Gluten-Free Girl

Christmas on the Cheap: Just dip it in chocolate

Last year I did a series of posts called Christmas on the Cheap that featured a few do-it-yourself gifts that didn’t cost a load of cash. I’m late with this series this year, so I’ll be posting just a few ideas that are not only cheap, but quick! Keep checking back through this week for more ideas.

If you’re not a skilled candy maker, melting chocolate is your friend. You can dip all kinds of foods in it for Christmas treats or make your own chocolate candies.

I purchased 3-4 pounds of dark melting chocolate and another 3 pounds of white melting chocolate this year to make peppermint bark and coconut haystacks (or clusters, if you prefer). I bought it at a bulk foods store and probably paid $20 total. That may sound like a lot, but I made one 9-by-13 cookie sheet of peppermint bark, two dozen coconut haystacks that are the size of cookies (whoops) and still have a little left over. I haven’t divided it all up yet, but I’ll easily have enough candy for 12 or more people. That’s where the cost factor is beneficial.

I make my peppermint bark with dark chocolate on the bottom and white chocolate on top. The white chocolate is mixed with crushed up peppermint candies and sprinkled with more candy on top. Sometimes I mix a little mint extract into the chocolate as well, but you don’t have to. Since I’m one of those weirdo cooks that just eyeball this kind of thing, here’s a similar recipe from Food.com. This recipe melts the chocolate in the oven, but I use a double boiler and melt it on the stove.

To make the coconut haystacks, melt the chocolate using a double boiler and stir in your desired amount of sweetened coconut flakes. Scoop by teaspoon onto a cookie sheet lined with wax paper and put in the fridge to cool and set up. Or, if coconut is not a favorite in your family, use peanuts or crushed up pretzels.

Other tasty chocolate-dipped treats include Oreos, graham crackers, pretzel rods (then cover in festive sprinkles!) or dried fruit.

Missed last year’s posts? Here they are:

Easy sweets

Hot cocoa mix

DIY gifts for bird lovers

Uses for cards