Curios, Crackers, and Coiffures

The other day, I made a few adjustments to Astreja's recipe for cheese crackers, which is really more like cheese shortbread. My version, as I recall:

1 cup whole wheat flour
1/2 cup butter
1 cup grated cheese of choice (mine was half gouda, half old cheddar)
A bit of dried rosemary and caraway
1 clove garlic, minced very fine
A smidge of extra butter

Toss the first three ingredients into a large bowl.

Grind up the dried herbs in a mortar and toast them in a dry skillet over medium heat until they've turned a darker shade and become quite fragrant. Toss them in on the flour. Melt the bit of extra butter in the skillet and fry the garlic until it's all browned and crisp, then grind it into paste in the mortar and add it to the bowl.

Mix everything together with your hands. It's going to take a fair bit of kneading to mix it and get it to hold together.

Form the dough into a few balls and roll them out into 1.5" logs, flattening the ends. I tend to do this on sheets of waxed paper, which I then use to wrap the logs. Refrigerate for at least an hour to facilitate easy cutting (though you can certainly leave them in longer, as I did--think icebox cookies).

Pre-heat the oven to 425F. It should be ready by the time you're done slicing the crackers.

Slice them about 1/4" thick and place on a baking sheet covered in parchment paper. Do give them a bit of breathing room; they will expand a bit. Bake for about ten minutes, or until they've browned a bit on the bottom.

And now for something completely inedible:

More of the glass beads I used in Elke's necklace. This one is also quite long.

Messing about with wire.

You have no idea how hard it is to refrain from adding stone beads to this, even though I know it's done.

In the space of roughly an hour, I turned a hideous belt from the thrift shop into this, which I am quite fond of.

And lastly, I decided to spend some quality time with two boxes of hair dye again.

Honeytarts

Sounds like an affectionate form of address, but no.

I have a raging adoration for the scent of honey (and the taste, when the sweetness is muted), so when I came across a recipe billing itself 'honey tarts', I went rifling through the freezer in search of tart shells.

These are identical in texture to buttertarts (they're both custards on amphetamines, after all), with a delicate honey flavour. They do not, however, contain any butter or anything of the sort. What follows is a recipe that filled 8 standard-size tart shells; double it for a more reasonable-sized batch. The original recipe included a tiny bit of salt, but I didn't bother.

1 egg
1/8 cup white sugar
1/4 cup honey
A splash of vanilla

Mix the above together in a bowl before adding...

1/3 cup broken pecans

...and mixing them in. Spoon into tart shells and bake at 375F for 14-16 minutes. If the filling acts liquidy when the tart is wiggled, it's not done yet.

Something tells me they'd do just as well with sliced almonds in place of the pecans.


And on an unrelated note, here's a necklace I made as a late birthday present for the lovely Ravenskar.

And the season takes hold, part the fourth

For the record, Weldbond (or perhaps lesser varieties of white glue) mixed with cornstarch makes a better air-dry clay than... well, air-dry clay. At least for my purposes.

What I ended up with was a pliable, faintly sticky putty with a pretty short working time, but long enough for me to mold it onto long press-on nails and work in a scallop pattern, one at a time. It held its shape perfectly, adhered to the nails all by itself, shrank a teeny bit, and dried to a rock-hard and very smooth plasticky finish. It also weighs less than clay and I suspect it will be far less fragile. I made little horns out of some of the leftovers.

Also, it made me pancakes this morning.*

Now, I just have to see how well it takes a coat of acrylic paint.


*This may or may not be a lie.

CAEK!

I've lost the original source of this recipe; I tripped over a link to it via comments on Ursula Vernon's blog a few months back and have since mutilated it slightly to suit my tastes.

It results in enough cake for one or two persons, depending on how hungry they are and whether or not PMS is involved. It is very dense and eggy in texture, not overly sweet. What I really like, though, is that it can be made in less than ten minutes, cooking included.

4 tablespoons flour
4 tablespoons sugar
2 tablespoons cocoa
1 egg
3 tablespoons milk
3 tablespoons oil (though I've also used melted margarine with great success)
A dash of salt (if you so desire)
A wee bit of vanilla

Mix the dry ingredients. Add the egg, milk, oil, and vanilla and mix well. Pour into a lightly oiled mug and microwave for 2.5 to 3 minutes. There, you have cake.

Standard knife blade/toothpick tests for doneness work just fine while you're trying to nail the exact time down. Be aware that the mug will be obscenely hot. This actually makes it doubly useful for those suffering from cramps, as it makes for an excellent warming pad.

If melting a substitute for oil, do it in the mug itself. Just swirl it around the cup to coat it a few times before adding it to the batter, and you've saved yourself the trouble of greasing the mug.

I'm presently out of vanilla. I tried a bit of almond extract in its place, but it wasn't quite my thing. A few dry frozen raspberries mixed in to this evening's batch went well, and a palmful of chocolate chips would surely be a nice variant.