Why-Not Wednesday

Before:

After:

Brimfield Antique Fair...September 2010

Stuff, antiques, junk...

Whatsits, gadgets, gizmos...

We decided to hit Brimfield for the 2nd time this year (look here for my blogpost about our trip in May), walked our feet off, bought some fun stuff and ate some great food!

Best. Sandwich. Ever.

Some tips? Wear walking shoes and be prepared to get dirty! Parking? Don't park at the first lot you see, keep driving, sit in traffic for a little bit (it always moves fast) and park in any of the lots right in the middle of the action.

We parked in J&J for the second time, and I really like it for its central location, relatively inexpensive fee ($6), and the fact that it puts you right smack dab into one of the best lots at Brimfield.

Something I didn't fully realize until we went this year is there are different 'shows', which are run by different promoters. What that means for you and me, is that there are different huge lots which technically all have different names...think of them as different named fields, each with hundreds of different dealers and booths to work your way through.

Can I just show you some cool pictures? I love taking pictures there, gorgeous stuff...all with its own history...

Rise and shine, time to head to Brimfield!

I love purple, especially purple bottles.

Seriously you can find anything here:

Lawn Ornaments...

Bugs...

Rar!

Seriously had so much fun. On our feet for about 7 hours! But look at all of our loot!

Final tally:

Many bracelets, 2 were bakelite, red and orange glass bangles, and old school plastic bangles. They are so cute with the right outfit.

Grape jello molds

Sherbet dishes (4 green, 2 pink, 1 yellow) Can't wait for new dishware for blog posts!

Kitchen curtains for my Mom

Refrigerator box (glassware for the fridge...glassware that takes the place of a piece of gladware!)

Ball jar

Brownie camera to play with ($10!)

A purple bottle (hard to see in my pic, but it's on the right hand side)

One booth was just FULL of lab glassware, think beakers, graduated cylinders, test tubes etc. The guy said he bought out an old MIT lab. It was fantastic. My husband bought some great glassware that he has a grand plan to display some mementos from our recent travels.

The grape placemats are my own :)

We were literally the last car in the lot!

I don't know about you, but we are definitely headed back for the May 2011 show! 

It is just fun, plain and simple. Wether you are looking for something in particular or looking for something fun to do, go for it! See you there next year!

Blackberry Sorbet

Every August growing up, I would walk the edges of nearby fields, picking blackberries, and watching over my shoulder for neighborhood dogs on the loose!  Those blackberries were sweet, huge, juicy and plentiful. I'd come home with a sherbet container full, and more than a few prickers.

Nowadays, I get my blackberries at Wilson's Farm or the local grocery store. Unfortunately, they're rarely as sweet and large as they used to be, but still fantastic. 

This year my eyes were bigger than my stomach and I was left with a lot of blackberries in my fridge before leaving town for a few days...hmmm...what to do? I also had some watermelon and a few kiwis that I also didn't want to go bad...time for 'Everything but the Kitchen Sink' sorbet! 

This came out so well, I urge you to try something similar with some leftover fruit from your labor day weekend festivities!

This sorbet tastes like late summer, and is full of wonderful blackberry flavor. The addition of some sugar, with the sweetness of the watermelon and kiwis, brings out the true blackberry flavor even if you have some pretty sour blackberries.  This fruits of summer sorbet combines the light, refreshing flavor of mid-summer watermelon, the sweet taste of kiwi (which has a strawberry and banana cross flavor to it), and of course the end of Summer blackberries. So good!

Blackberry Sorbet

1-2 cups blackberries (approximately, use what you have)

1-2 cups watermelon (again, approximately)

2 kiwis

Juice of 1 lime (I squeezed gently, didn't go too crazy with the lime juice)

2/3 cup sugar

2/3 cup water

1 Tbsp Coconut Rum *optional...helps with scoopability post freezing

Blend with a blender or handheld mixer

I started to strain out some of the seeds, and did so with a fine mesh strainer and a rubber spatula...but decided to just leave everything in there, because a lot of the flavor comes from that pulp.

 In the end, the seeds were not a big deal at all! So don't worry about it. They are so fine, it did not make a difference.

Blend, pour, freeze...

EAT! Enjoy! Happy Last Days of Summer!

Sugar Cookies with Royal Icing

I finally accomplished a long held goal, sugar cookies with royal icing! Yay! Not only did I make one batch, I made two batches, for two separate events, within a week of each other.

I am now on a sugar cookies sabbatical, at least for a couple more weeks!

My first attempt at these cookies was for a dear friend's baby shower.  She is having a little girl, and all I could think of was pink, pink, pink! I made large teddy bears, baby bottles and little pink feet with painted toes. My friend and I love to get pedicures together, so of course the cookies had to have a perfectly painted pedicure. (OK, 'perfectly' painted is quite an overstatement for my first attempt!)

I have been doing my research for cut-out sugar cookie recipes, royal icing, and getting inspiration from a few of my favorite blogs like Bake at 350, University of Cookie, and Cookies and Cups.  These ladies know how to bake a cookie! University of Cookie is a great resource started by Bridget of Bake at 350, and it is loaded with cute videos and helpful tips and tricks! Definitely go check it out if you are venturing into this oddly addictive venture.

My second attempt was for another dear friend's son's first birthday party, and they were a lot of fun to make.  The color theme for the party was red, yellow and blue, so I brought those into the cookies by using the paste food coloring in the little tubs which provide a much more vibrant color than water based or gel based food coloring.

Lesson Learned #1:

XX Sugar or Confectioner's Sugar sprinkled liberally on your work surface will make your cookie making experience a lot better, and easier!

Lesson Learned #2:

Cut out your cookies to the same thickness. This is done by either the rings you can put on a rolling pin which will roll out your dough to the same thickness, or if you have two strips of wood (clean wood!) the same thickness, roll out your dough in between these two strips, while using the strips of wood like rails to roll your rolling pin on.

Lesson Learned #3:

Make two batches of dough if you want to have a good amount for a gathering, and chill the dough for at least an hour.  I patted the batch of dough into a 6 x 7 inch rectangle, approximately, then wrapped it plastic wrap and put in the fridge.

OK, that was more than just one lesson.

Oh and sift your sugar for your icing!

There are seriously so many things I learned while making these cookies. 

The cookies themselves, pre-icing, came out great. I modified Bridget's sugar cookie recipe, and it worked well. 

I used vanilla and my secret weapon:

This flavoring gives the cookies an extra buttery, every so slightly citrusy flavor that all melds together for a very. tasty. cookie. 

 I did add 1/2 teaspoon of salt to one batch as I thought it might need it since I was using unsalted butter.  Turns out, it didn't make a difference at all.

I also used Bridget's recipe for royal icing. I used fresh lemon juice in the baby shower cookies, and pure vanilla extract for the birthday cookies. Both tasted great. 

So here's the bad news, large teddy bears take extra, extra long to dry! Just plan on a little extra time if flood icing a large cookie.  Another challenge I ran into was that some of the cookies, in both batches, had the flood royal icing get little holes or pock-marks, once completely dry. Talk about freaking out! In the end, I think it may have been due to the fact that when I thinned my royal icing, I did not thin it out gradually! Patience is apparently important with royal icing. I was able to embellish some of the cookies with piped icing...

In the end, each batch took a full three nights to complete. 

Night 1: Make dough and chill. Cut-out and bake.

Night 2: Make royal icing, outline cookies and flood ice cookies

Night 3: Do detailing of cookies, embellish etc. Let completely dry overnight if needed.

Phew!

Stonewall Kitchen's Vanilla Sandwich Cookies

It's hot out! It's sticky! Too lazy, hot and tired to make a snack from scratch? Too busy with work lately to do a lot of your own baking? (Umm, yes that would be me...) I won't tell, whip up a batch of Stonewall Kitchen's Vanilla Sandwich cookies and it will look like you slaved all morning!

"You made these cookies for us in this heat?! Oh what a doll you are dear!"

Recently at a Stonewall Kitchen store up in Portsmouth, NH, I bought a box of these that were on the clearance shelf, can't beat 75% off :).  I wanted to make something fun for visiting some family tomorrow so I thought these would be easy. They were, and I still was able to modify it as needed and I even learned something. 

Two bags were included in the box, one with the cookie mix, and one with the filling. You need a LOT of butter for these cookies... 8 and a half Tbsp for the cookies alone...that is one stick plus half a Tbsp of butter. Mmmm butter.

Notice anything about the shape of my cookies?

Before Baking:

After Baking:

Well, they didn't spread out at all, and they are more than a little misshapen! The directions just said to slight flatten a rounded teaspoon of dough. Ummm....yeah. Ok. So, the next batch, I decided to roll the dough in between my hands, and then flatten with a spoon. Can you tell the difference?

Lesson Learned #1: Use your noggin.

Next was making the filling, which was very easy. Dump in the bag of the filling into your mixer, add 1/4 softened butter and 1/4 vegetable shortening..i.e. good old Crisco.

Crisco still freaks me out a little, but in reality it has 50% less fat than butter....cool :) So wait are these low fat cookies!?! Uhhh, no, but it makes me feel a little better that they are slightly less fattening than they could be.

The directions basically just say to mix together the Butter, Crisco, and 'filling mix'...but without any sort of liquid, it wasn't doing much of anything except getting powdered chocolate all over my kitchen. I added about a Tbsp of milk and it mixed up perfectly.

Lesson Learned #2: See Lesson Learned #1

The only thing left to do is put the sandwiches together and try a few. Oh the things I do for baking.

P.S. I love my Pyrex dish I got at Brimfield!