Easy Kolaches

Unusually cold weather is headed our way and it makes me want to bake. I thought I'd share a great recipe for kolaches or pigs in the blanket. The bread is just a tad sweet and also makes great dinner rolls. You just layer seven ingredients into a stand mixer and go from there.

I gave these for Christmas gifts to a couple of friends, packing a dozen into a cute little brown box. And I let St. Wayne take several dozen to work. But I have to tell you, it's hard to turn loose of these little jewels because they make a great, quick breakfast when you're on the run and they're really handy and delicious to have on hand when we have houseguests.

My favorite thing is to bake these with someone as a group effort. This recipe came from my friend Jan in Dripping Spring, Texas. She came down and stayed a few days last fall and brought all the ingredients to make four batches. We made every kind imaginable that day and we were pooped! But there were enough in my freezer to last a long while. And I must tell you, you'll make a mess. Flour everywhere! But there's something theraputic about sitting around the table making these with your friends or family. Even St. Wayne helps me wrap the sausages because he knows he'll be rewarded in the end with a freezer full of his favorite breakfast snacks.

It's not a quick thing because it makes a lot of dough...it's a time-consuming endeavor, but so worth the effort.

Let me know what you think of these...just remember to keep your hands coated with flour because the dough is very sticky! Enjoy!

Kolaches

3 cups evaporated milk, heated

1-1/2 sticks butter, melted

3/4 cup sugar

1 Tablespoon salt (yes, that's not a typo)

3 egg yolks

7 cups flour

3 Tablespoons dry yeast

(I put the evaporated milk and butter in a large glass measuring cup and microwave for 3 minutes to heat the milk and melt the butter all in one step)

Place ingredients in a stand mixer in the order listed above. Mix slowly with a dough hook and then scrape down the sides. Mix on medium speed for ten minutes.

Cover the dough in the bowl with a towel and let rise in a warm, draft-free place for one hour.

Flour hands well as the dough is very sticky. (I keep a small bowl of flour nearby and dip my hands each time I tear a portion of the dough.) Tear small portions (about the size of a golf ball) of the dough and stretch and shape into balls, and place on a pan sprayed with Baker's Joy or lined with parchment. Allow about an inch between for rising (it's okay if they touch when risen). Make a cavity using your thumb or the bottom of a small shot glass for the fruit or cheese fillings. Spoon fruit pie filling or one of the cheese mixtures below into cavity and top with crumb topping. For pigs in the blanket, wrap sausages. (I use Ekrich "original," fully-cooked, sausages.) Let rise again while oven preheats. Bake 20-25 minutes at 375 degrees.

Yields about 4-5 dozen, depending on size.

Crumb Topping

1/2 cup sugar

1/2 cup flour

3-4 Tablespoons butter

Cream Cheese Topping

16 ounces cream cheese, softened

3/4 cup sugar

1 egg, beaten

1/8 teaspoon salt

2 teaspoons vanilla

Cheese Topping

24 ounces cottage cheese

1/2 cup sugar

1/4 cup dry tapioca

Concerns for Twenty-Ten

I'm just a little uneasy about the coming new year. I just found out L.L. Bean no longer sells my favorite jeans, Paul Mitchell has quit making my hair product, and Merle Norman has discontinued my favorite shade of lipstick. It's just too much to take all at once. I'm worried...

I Hope You Enjoyed Your Holidays This Much...

Where did December go? I'm so embarrassed that I never posted at all. I had "post on blog" on every list I made, so I can't figure out what happened.

This photo is of the top of my tv cabinet and these little santas greeted me every morning during Christmas with a chorus of "Hey Judi...we love you this much!"

And on some mornings they'd say, "Hey Judi, if you don't quit eating those Christmas cookies, you're going to be this wide!"

I do love them up there. They make me smile. The photo really doesn't do them justice. They're too cute.

But now they're up in the rafters of the garage where the rest of Christmas is...safe and sound for another year. If you're still interested...I will be posting again soon.

Places Everyone!

Okay...it's almost Thanksgiving. Today is my favorite day of the year. I spend all day in the kitchen getting ready for tomorrow and I get my table set.

This is the first time in about five years that I've had the meal here at our house. Being a banker, my daughter-in-law usually has to work the Friday after, so we travel to Houston to have dinner with them. Last year St. Wayne and I took off on a roadtrip to Memphis and had Thanksgiving dinner at the Peabody Hotel with the ducks. It was lots of fun, lots of money, and lots of people we didn't know. My favorite part of the whole meal? Duck shaped butter pats! Everything was quite elegant and delicious with a vast array of choices.

But now we're back to casual at home. My favorite place in all the world. We'll have nine around the table tomorrow. Here it is all set and ready to go. I had a difficult decision with the placecards. Here were my choices. I ended up going with the leaves because I figured I could do the punched flatware any time. Leaves are for fall. At least that's what they tell us. We don't have fall leaves down here in South Texas...just wind-blown palm fronds. We have seen fall leaves on our travels and crave them and would love to live somewhere we could enjoy that. But for now we'll just punch them out of gold and copper metal sheets and pretend we picked them up from the yard. The fun part about the punched flatware is you have left over punches of spoons, forks, and knives for confetti. It's the cutest punch ever and by All Night Media. I've had it forever, but you might be able to find one.

Whereever you are this year...enjoy yourself and your loved ones. Happy Thanksgiving!

A Fabricfic Idea with Drop Cloths

I recently discovered inexpensive drop cloths in the paint department of Wal-Mart. They cost a whoppin' $8.97 and you get 9'x6' with every side hemmed. That's a lot of fabric and the best part is it looks like linen or hopsacking...nubby and textured in a natural, neutral color. I've made a ton of pillows and several table runners from one package.

The first thing you have to do is find pillow forms and cut the drop cloth the same shape plus two inches. So if your pillow form is 12"x12", you cut a square 14"x14" for the front and then cut two pieces of the hemmed edge 14"x8.5" for the back. Then match the right sides together, overlapping the back two pieces so that when it's sewn together, you can easily slip the pillow form in. Or you could just cut two 14"x14" pieces for the front and the back, sew all sides together leaving 6 inches, turn it right side out, cram the form inside the 6 inch slit, and then handstitch the opening. But I'm always looking for a quick shortcut, so I prefer to not handstitch.

Before I sew anything together, I iron a design on the front square. I'm going to include some copyright-free designs I copied from an art book I have, so feel free to save them and use them. I use Avery's t-shirt transfer sheets and they easily print on my inkjet printer.

Here are a few pictures of my pillows and table runner. I traced around a dinner plate to pencil the sewing line for the rounded ends on the table runner, but you can design the ends any way you like. Experiment with this idea and see just how much time you piddle away!

Bee Happy in the Kitchen

Copies of Debby Brock's cookbook "Bee Happy in the Kitchen" were sold Saturday during Move Over, Martha! and the profit of each book went to Habitat for Humanity. We sold quite a few cookbooks. It has come to our attention that some of the books were misprinted. The pages are out of order or missing.

If you bought one of these books, please check it. If there's a problem, email me and Debby will see to it you get you a new book.

My email address is invitickles@stx.rr.com

We apologize for any inconvenience...but the printer is working on this little problem.

Still Floating

Move Over, Martha! has come and gone and we're all still standing. You haven't heard much out of me in the past few weeks because every thought has been consumed with this event. Brides were put off, dinners were uncooked, a husband was neglected, everything got pushed aside until after November 14.

It all started when our family got involved with Habitat for Humanity in 2007 and we wanted to do more. So I sent out an email to the ten members of my "tennis group" asking for their help in presenting Move Over, Martha! and they all responded with a resounding "Yes, I'll help!" And this amazing event was born.

It takes a $65 ticket to get in the door and then we sell raffle tickets for fabulous door prizes donated by local retailers and then we have a live auction. The generosity of the ladies in that audience is overwhelming. The women who attend really open their hearts and their checkbooks.

Presenting this event takes a lot of time and energy...and my friends that help generously give of their time, talent, and money. The feeling afterwards makes it all worthwhile. Saturday night after all the dust settled, my heart felt twice its normal size. If I could only bottle that feeling and sell it, we'd not need another fundraiser. I could be personally responsible for supporting Habitat for Humanity!

This year, we had four homeowners who attended and they really seemed to enjoy themselves. They and their families are now living in and paying for their own homes. They put in 500+ hours of "sweat equity" helping build homes for other families before qualifying for their own. I love that they were there. It's incredible when you can see and meet the folks who benefit most from the effort put forth on behalf of Habitat for Humanity.

To those of you who bought a ticket and joined us Saturday...Thank You for your support of this worthy cause. And if you didn't make it this year, put it on your calendar for next year. The second Saturday of November...and we'll see you then!