After you pull the tray out of the oven, let it rest a minute or two and carefully wrap the melted cheese around a cold bowl. Lift it off as soon as it hardens.

After you remove it, prepare your salad. For the salad dressing, you can use any bottled dressing of your choice or make your own dressing. I personally love the real deal, so I make my own dressing.

• 1 medium garlic clove
• 1 1/2 teaspoons anchovy paste or 2 flat anchovies
• 1/3 cup grated Parmesan cheese
• 1 teaspoon Worcestershire sauce
• 3 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
• 1 pinch salt
• 1/2 teaspoon freshly ground pepper
• 1 teaspoon Dijon mustard
• 1 teaspoon capers
• 1 large egg
• 1/3 cup virgin olive oil
• 2 medium heads of romaine lettuce — outer leaves removed
• Croutons
• Chicken, shrimp, etc., for topping, as desired
   

Crush the garlic. If you are using flat anchovies out of a can, mince one or two to make 1 1/2 teaspoons worth. Grate the Parmesan cheese. It’s always better to grate it yourself if you have the opportunity.

Mix the Worcestershire sauce, lemon juice, garlic, salt & pepper, anchovies, cheese, mustard, and capers in a bowl. Crack egg and add to these ingredients. Whisk until smooth.

Slowly add the oil in a steady stream while constantly whisking until smooth. Reason: if you add the oil too quickly, the dressing will separate and will not emulsify.

Toss the dressing with the torn lettuce and croutons. Right before serving, fill your cheese bowls with the lettuce and top with shrimp, chicken, beef, etc., as desired.

Note: If you’re on a gluten-free diet, you can leave croutons off of your salad. You can add pork, shrimp, beef, chicken, or whatever you like. For mine I used shrimp. I found the dressing recipe online via Google. Enjoy! 

I was looking for something fun to do at work and decided to make these. The recipe for the crust is:

2 cups flour
1 teaspoon salt
1/4 cup white sugar
8 ounces cold butter
1/4 cup ICE COLD water

Mix the flour, salt, sugar, and butter in a mixer or a food processor. Mix till little balls about the size of peas form, then add the water and mix till a dough forms, wrap in plastic, and chill for 1 hour.

After the dough chills, roll out on a lightly-floured board till about 1/8 inch thick. Cut rounds, or cut squares if you choose. I did not have a round cutter, so I pulled a lid off of a jar of spice and used that.

How big you make them will determine how much filling you put in them. I put about 2 tablespoons of filling in them. That was a little too much. Put a little egg wash around the entire rim of dough, then, put lemon curd, or your choice of filling, in the middle, and pull one end over and seal by pressing down with your finger or a fork.

After you fold them over, brush lightly with egg wash, and dust with white sugar.

The recipe for the lemon curd I used:

2 large eggs
8 large egg yolks
1 1/8 cup white sugar
3/4 cup lemon juice
2 ounces of cold unsalted butter

Mix everything but the butter; cook over a double boiler till it hits a temp of 165 degrees F. Make sure you stir the curd to keep it from jelling into a mass of cooked eggs. After you remove it from the heat, strain and mix in cold butter, then put over ice bath till chilled.   Once you’re done, put the empanadas in the oven at 350 degrees F and bake till golden brown, 20-25 minutes. After you remove them from the oven, whip some heavy cream with a little sugar till stiff. Then, mix in a little lemon curd, put in a piping bag or paper cone bag with a number 5 piping tip. Stick the tip in the side wherever a small crack is, and pipe in some lemon cream, you can feel right before they break before putting in too much cream. I will leave it up to you to decide how much cream to make. It depends on how many, and how big, you make the empanadas. You can make them as big as calzones if you want.

As far as both recipes go, I honestly do not remember where I got them from, I own about 50 cookbooks and have worked in 3 states over 22 years - I picked them up along the way somewhere.

I think every serious baker should challenge him-/herself to messing with the formulas. If you’re looking to challenge yourself or to improve your skills, you should do this. With an understanding of how the basic ingredients work in a recipe, you can do some tweaking to customize flavors and textures. Here, I mention every change I made to the recipe, and the outcome. I hope I inspire you to tweak some recipes of your own.

Lemon Poppy Seed Muffins 

The original recipe has been broken down for home use.

1 pound (4 sticks) margarine
2 cups white sugar
1 cup (about 4 large) eggs
3/4 teaspoon salt
3/4 teaspoon baking powder
2 teaspoons baking soda
8 cups all-purpose flour
20 ounces sour cream

Cream the margarine and sugar, about 5 minutes; slowly pour in the eggs till well mixed in.

Mix all the dry ingredients - salt, baking powder, baking soda, and flour.
Add half the dry ingredients.  Mix till just blended in.  Add half the sour cream, mix till just blended in, then add the rest of the dry ingredients. Then, add the rest of the sour cream.

Variation 1 

Now the first change I made was replacing the margarine with real butter. I hate margarine, but that is what the bakery chooses to use. Then, I added 1/4 cup of lemon juice, and omitted the sour cream completely. I made lemon curd and added that in place of the sour cream. Then, I added 2 and 1/2 ounces of poppy seeds.

I added the lemon juice, in part, to add more lemon flavor but also because the poppy seeds would dry out the muffins even more otherwise. I wanted to add lemon zest but had no zester to zest the lemons with. Make sure you toast the poppy seeds. Toast at 325 degrees till they smell fragrant, about 10 to 15 minutes.

This muffin was okay, about like all the rest I have tried - nothing too special.

Variation 2 

My next change was to replace the butter completely with oil, increase the lemon juice to 1/2 a cup, and bump up the amount of lemon curd. Now, the muffin was getting someplace. It was lemony and moist, but it was also a tad oily.

Variation 3 

Here is the next version, and this is the recipe we’re going with for now, because everyone loved it so much.

1 1/4 cup oil
4 ounces butter, softened
3 cups white sugar
1 1/4 cups (5 large) eggs
3/4 cup lemon juice
3/4 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon plus 1/4 teaspoon baking powder
1 tablespoon baking soda
6 cups all-purpose flour
1 1/2 pounds lemon curd (recipe follows)
3 1/2 ounces poppy seeds
Zest of 2 lemons

Lemon Curd: 

2  large eggs
8  yolks
1 1/8 cups  white sugar
3/4 cup lemon juice
2 ounces unsalted butter

For lemon curd: Mix everything except butter and put over double boiler; cook over medium heat.

Cook till the temperature hits at least 165 degrees F but does not go above 180 degrees F (or the mixture will break).
Remove from heat and stir in butter until melted. Then, put over ice bath till cold; store covered in fridge till ready to use.

Future Variations 

Even though these muffins were a success with everyone, I still plan to tweak them more. I plan to try adding some brown sugar, no more than 1/4 cup. I do not want the muffins to get too dark or lose the lemon flavor. I plan to decrease the butter, but only by half, so the muffins are moister, yet not oily. Then, I plan to melt the butter. This will avoid the creaming process, and will make the muffin a little denser. After that, I will go with the one I decide to be the best. Have fun tweaking formulas! 

This version is cut down for home use, but even at that it still will make about 10 to 12 I figure, depending on how big you choose to make them (we use a number 10 scoop).

For the cookie part you can either use your own oatmeal cookie recipe or you can use mine. I do not put raisins in mine because they are not in the Little Debbie cakes. But you can add them if you choose to.

Oatmeal Cookies
1 pound soft butter
13 ounces white sugar
14 ounces brown sugar
3/4 cup whole eggs
1 1/2 teaspoons almond extract
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 pound plus 1 1/2 ounces flour
14 ounces oats, quick or regular, both are fine

Cream butter and sugars. After creaming for about 5 minutes on slow to medium speed, slowly add in eggs in about 3 batches, then add extract. Mix soda and powder into flour and add all at once; mix just until moist and add in the oats. Mix until everything is mixed in and no longer dry.

If you choose not to use a number 10 scoop then use spoon or scoop of your choice. Space about 2 inches apart on parchment-lined baking sheet, bake at 325 degrees for about 20 to 25 minutes till golden. Let cool at room temp till firm enough to remove from pan.

For the filling you will need,
8 ounces soft butter
6 oz shortening
4 ounces margarine
1 pound 4 ounces powder sugar

1 tablespoon butter
4 ounces marshmallows

Blend the butter, shortening, margarine in mixer till blended; add powder sugar and mix till mixed in.

On the stove over low to medium heat, melt the 1 tablespoon butter with marshmallows and mix till marshmallows are almost melted, remove from heat. Let cool till body temp - don’t let them get cold or it is to hard to mix into the above butter-sugar mix. Dont use too hot or you will have a melted mess.

After the marshmallow is cool, mix into the butter mix and then scoop with the same size scoop you use for the cookies, and put one cookie on top of another and you have an Oatmeal Shemp.

By the way, we named them Shemps because the host who requested these looks like Shemp from the 3 Stooges.

If you don’t have a springform pan (we do not have springform pans at the restaurant), you can use the pan that you baked the cake in. However, this makes the process a little harder. You will need to run a knife around the cake to unmold it if you use a regular cake pan. Be careful that the knife doesn’t slip and cut into the cake. Don’t cover the cake with ganache until after you unmold it. It will not look as clean as if you used a springform pan, but it will still be delicious.

You can use your favorite chocolate cake recipe for this. Also, feel free to change things up. Try using a white cake filled with pastry cream, keep it chocolate with cream but add sliced fruit, or drizzle some caramel over the ganache and sprinkle with nuts. The possibilities are endless. Enjoy!

Anyway, what many novice bakers do not realize is that toasting nuts before using them in a recipe really brings out their flavor. It also helps extend their shelf life because raw nuts can spoil relatively quickly at room temperature.

In the picture you can see coconut, almonds, and pecans. You can tell the difference between the raw versus the toasted.

Here are some ways to think about how to choose whether to keep the nuts raw versus toasting them, if your recipe does not specify.

Let’s say you are making muffins. Many people use raw nuts in their muffins batters. I suggest roasting the nuts first, then letting them cool and tossing them into the muffin batter or cake batter or whatever dough you are working with. An exception to this is nuts used to decorate the surface of a baked good. If you make muffins, for example, and you toss a few nuts on top of each muffin before baking, leave them raw, otherwise they will burn.

Let’s say you’re making a drop or bar cookie. I suggest using toasted nuts, as they will have a nuttier flavor. If you are making a coconut cake, you can use raw flaked coconut, since that is pretty much what everyone will expect - snow-white curls of coconut. However, if you want to try something different, you can toast the coconut for a really nice dark color plus added flavor.

To toast the nuts, spread them out on a sheet pan and put them in a preheated oven at 350 degrees F for about 10 to 15 minutes, or until desired color, stirring once. 

I like to eat mine cold with fresh raspberries and milk. Enjoy!

Camp Granola

5 cups oatmeal (either quick or old fashioned will work)
1 cup coconut
1 cup brown sugar
2 tablespoons cinnamon
1 teaspoon salt
3/4 cup canola oil
3 tablespoons real vanilla

Preheat oven to 300 degrees. Combine all ingredients in a large mixing bowl. Bake on a flat cookie sheet for about 1 hour at 300 degrees, stirring every 15 minutes. Let cool completely and store in an airtight container.

I was planning to throw it all in a pot and slow-cook it, but decided to use the oven instead. I bought little hand-size flour tortillas to eat with it. You can use any sauce you choose, homemade or store bought. I made my own; recipe follows.

Pulled Meat for Tacos

3 pounds boneless country pork ribs*
2 pounds boneless, skinless chicken thighs
1.5 to 2 pounds beef**

Taco Sauce:

3 (7.5-ounce cans) chipotle sauce
1/2 cup honey
1 cup catsup
1 tablespoon garlic
1 tablespoon cumin
1 tablespoon brown sugar
1 tablespoon salt
1 package taco seasoning

Preheat the oven to 300 degrees F. 

Throw the pork, chicken, and beef into a roasting pan and season with salt, pepper, garlic powder, and cumin.

Leave dry, do not add any liquid at all. Cover with a tight fighting lid or tin foil.

Cook at 300 degrees for about 4 hours, then remove from oven. Drain off the fat and shred the meat with two forks. 

Mix all sauce ingredients in a bowl. Then, pour the sauce over the meat and toss till coated; cover the pot and put back in the oven till heated through.

I tossed the flour tortillas over an open flame on my gas stove to heat. Serve these tacos with your favorite sides, like lettuce, cheese, sour cream, etc.

*Make sure the pork and beef has the fat on it, nothing real lean or it will be really dry. If boneless ribs are not around, any fatty piece of pork will work.

**I would use skirt steak. That, in my book, would be the best. Next to that, I would choose rib eye. I know it seems like a waste of good meat, but it has great flavor. On the downside, rib eye is pretty expensive, so I went with chuck steak. It has some fat and good, meaty flavor.

If one of these meats is something you or your family do not eat, you can leave it out.

I was applying for a job once, and during the interview, I was handed a recipe to read over and then asked if there were any mistakes in it, and if so, what they were. I told them what I thought and handed back the recipe. They never did tell me if anything was wrong or not, so I do not know what, if anything, was wrong.

I am going to give you a recipe to read. It is a recipe for pancake batter from a restaurant where I formerly worked. Here is what I’d like everyone to do: Read the recipe and see if you can find any errors in it. Drop me a comment with your answer. If you believe there is something wrong, then you need to say what you think it is. If you think it is correct the way it is, then say, “I see nothing wrong with it.” On the other hand, if you really do not know, then simply say, “I do not know.”

Now, to make this even more fun, let me add this: this is a real recipe that is used at the restaurant even to this day. It is posted on the wall for everyone to follow, so maybe it is correct and maybe not.

Pancake Flour Mix
Single —————— Double
Weekday batch ————– Weekend batch
8 cups flour —————— 16 cups
8 cups cake flour ————– 16 cups
6T. sugar ————– 3/4 cup
4.5 T baking powder————– 9T.
Pinch of Salt ————– 1tsp.
3T. Baking Soda ————– 6T.

Blend all Ingredients until completely mixed.

Pancake Batter
(1 Batch)

18 eggs
2 cartons buttermilk (1/2 gallon size)
16 cups flour
1 lb melted butterMix eggs first…add buttermilk and milk
again…add flour and mix till all wet.

Do Not Overmix…add melted butter.

Please share your thoughts about this.

I will post the answer in about a week; I want to give people time to read and think about it. Till then, read your recipes carefully!