home made goat cheese

Even though I have made mozzarella at home, for some reason I thought the process for goat cheese would be different or more difficult. Turns out it is probably easier and with ingredients that don't involve a trip to a special market providing that you have a hook-up for goat milk or it is in your regular market. I followed Kiss my Spatula's recipe pretty much to the letter, except that I doubled it. doubled for no other reason than I purchased a half gallon of goat milk rather than a quart and we were not to apt to use it in coffee or over granola.

Draining cheese looking, well, sacky

We chopped up the green parts of a handful of scallions to add into the mix for some additional zing and color. To sample my freshly made cheese I went for dates with goat cheese wrapped with prosciutto. It was really hard not to make 14 of these and cram them into my gaping maw.

English Muffins

Look at the patient muffins chillin in their rings, aw.....

Months ago on a whim I purchased some english muffin rings in the hopes of making my very own nook and cranny filled muffins. Fast forward till a week ago and the rings were still sitting lonely in the cupboard. While prepping for the previously mentioned post-christmas brunch, I figured that it would be a nice time to test out the lonely rings. I used the recipe and directions that came with the rings and as you can see they turned out pretty fluffy and giant. I wish that I had taken a better side shot since they were seriously about 2 1/2 inches tall, at least! Our guests commented that they looked more like the "grands" style of refrigerator biscuits from the grocery store. They did taste great, but not the chewy-crunchy way that a traditional english muffin tend to be. I need to experiment with a couple of different recipes. The one that came with the rins produced a rather stiff dough and I had imagined that it would have been different with a looser more slack dough with less in the rings initially. Overall they were pretty good considering it was an early morning experiment.

"working with what you got" muffins

We found ourselves the hosts of a pot-luck brunch on the day after Christmas and since we had been traveling in the days before and would be traveling in the days after our few days at home I refused to make a special trip to the market for grub. I did however find time to hit a liquor store to procure the requisite bubbly for brunch, not to be a poor host, obviously. These blueberry cottage cheese muffins were a bit of an iron-chef-to-the-interwebs creation. I based the recipe on this one that I found here. These muffins were very well received by Lady Giblet of Ridiculous Food Society fame, and that makes them a winner in my book.