#nerd cooking

Carrot Stew from Breath of the Wild

"This simple stew sat simmering for a long time to bring out the sweetness of the carrots."

As always, the recipe is under the cut! Enjoy. 

(Please note - this makes a large pot of soup! Feel free to cut the recipe in half.)

-MJ & K

I followed everything as close as possible but results were...off. The only changes I made was to try raspberries in addition to blueberries, and I used the klah mixture I made previously instead of straight cinnamon.

The dough took some time to come together. Maybe I should soften the butter next time. It was also very dry. The book said not to over mix but I had trouble getting it to ball properly without putting some force into it. Maybe that's my own limited experience talking.

As you can see, the raspberries gave a lot of juice when mixed with the sweetener. The the juices leaked over the sides of the base and spilled out when I tried capping the pies.

Also, I ran into trouble capping them although this is probably due to my inexpensive rolling the dough and the size of my baking sheet preventing me from making the pies big enough. The dough recipe itself seemed a little small for what the book recommended I make. I'll have to try again and make more dough.

I sealed what pies I could with the beaten egg and cut the tops. Then baked them for about 23 minutes.

As you can see, the pies did not seal properly. Again, I blame my own inexperience for that. My usual baking skills never involved anything more than "add egg, water, and oil" so this was a trip.

Taste wise they were quite palatable although a fork was required due to the juices.. The crust was thicker than intended and didn't crumble like I expected but baked well. The blueberry ones tasted good but the raspberry was very tart even with the sweetener. Next time, I think straight cinnamon will give them more the spice taste I'm looking for. The klah mix gave it some nice body and aftertaste but I think a lighter flavoring would suit it better.

And that's that. I definitely want to try this again. It was fun to try actually baking something from scratch even if the results weren't that pretty. I know I have a long way to go but as long as I'm stuck at home, why not?

If any bakery inclined folks have some tips on how I can improve, please let me know.

Made some Pi Day Sugar cookies. This recipe guided me:

1) Penzey’s Air-Dried Shallots are the bees’ knees. Seriously, just amazing.