Happy Holidayzzz

I made these for my Aunts this year for Christmas since they loved the white chocolate cranberry cookies I made last year but thought they were too much work. The picture doesn't show the colors too well, but it made a pretty package!

White Chocolate Cranberry Cookies (from allrecipes.com)
In the jar:
1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 cup packed brown sugar
1/4 cup white sugar
1/2 tsp baking soda
3/4 cup white chocolate chips
1 cup dried cranberries

On the card, I wrote out instructions to mix together 1 egg, 1 tbsp of brandy (optional, add extra vanilla otherwise), 1/2 tsp vanilla, and 1/2 cup of butter, softened. Take out all the ingredients from the jar and mix in a separate bowl. Combine wet ingredients to the dry and mix well. Drop heaping spoonfuls onto baking sheet 2 inches apart and bake at 375 degrees for 8-10 minutes or until lightly brown. Let cool on wire racks. Enjoy!

Bread Success (Pretty Much!)!

I impulsively bought a block of wet compressed yeast from Rainbow Grocery yesterday and had to do something with it.This is my first western-style bread, using Mark Bittman/Jim Lahey's no-knead dutch oven recipe (http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/08/dining/081mrex.html?_r=1).

Although the recipe calls for instant yeast, the internet tells me 0.6 oz of wet yeast is equivalent to 2.25 tsp of instant. The block I bought was 0.5 lb, roughly 8 ounces, so I said what the hell, I'll chip a small piece from the corner off and see how it goes. The recipe requires so little work and just a lot of time waiting around for stuff to grow. It was pretty successful, although my dough seemed a bit more amorphous than it should, and the bread didn't rise as much as I'd hoped (see photo). The inside is still very light and airy, the crust is crackling and beautiful, and the taste is divine- salty, and yeasty; I'd say better than most of the loaves sold in bakeries (gasp!). In the future I will play around with different amounts of the compressed yeast and different room temperatures to see if I can achieve a more normal looking dough and higher rise.

P.S. delicious with mimolette cheese at 10pm