Cooking Adventures

I've been doing some cooking this past weekend. Experimenting with new things I've been wanting to try for awhile.

I made these fruit snack things using this recipe. I made some with lemon juice and then some with cranberry pomegranate juice which I poured over top to layer them. I was super easy and fast. I think you could use less gelatin and be fine, they are really gummy and rubbery almost. I'm pretty confident that these would choke a small child very easily unless you used less gelatin so that they were more chewy. They try to pop out from between your teeth when you bite down. I would put in a picture I took, but they look really gross. The second layer was very foamy so it's opaque and pinkish, it looks like strips of spam with gelatin on one side. However, if you don't let their looks fool you, they taste quite good, just as good as any from the store and way healthier. By just as good I mean way less sweet, but all the better for it.

Then I also made some yogurt...that was a long and arduous undertaking. My guess is that it's not so bad once you know what you're doing, but it didn't exactly work as expected. It was a bit of a near-disaster actually. I don't really know what went wrong or how edible it really is, but I'll keep trying and hopefully figure it out someday. 

I made these spice cookies. I used 1/2 c. coconut oil and 1/2 c. butter, we didn't have molasses so I put in a dash of extra sucanat, and we ran out of cinnamon, so I put about 2 tsp. cinnamon and then 2 tsp. of cardamon to make up for the rest, and I added raisins. They are spicy! So strong. My mom and I really like them, but the rest of the family didn't care for them. Oh, and I didn't roll them out or anything time consuming like that. Thumbs up overall. 

I made crackers too, using Alton Brown's recipe. I used some sunflower seeds and flax seeds in addition to the sesame and poppy. I also didn't use all purpose flour because if you came to our house and asked where the flour was we'd say 'we have no flour here.' (to be read a la King Theoden) I ground part white wheat and part Ezekiel mix which is a mixture of grains and beans and stuff. They got a bit burnt around the edges where it was thinner and smelled like burnt popcorn. They are really hard and taste like they have no salt in them plain. With cheese they taste like your average cracker. I like having all the seeds in there. 

Now I'm hungry...