White buns.

Ingredients:

5 cups white all-purpose flour

2 tablespoons yeast (or 2 x 7g pkts)

2 tablespoons sugar

1 teaspoon salt

2 cups warm-hot water

1/4 cup cooking oil

Put the yeast, sugar and water into the bowl. Mix it up. Wait a few minutes for your yeast to get all foamy.

Add the oil, then add 4 cups of flour and the salt. Mix it like you want it to be bread. Add the rest of the flour until your dough is not sticky. Knead it for about 5 minutes.

Now put your nice, smooth bread dough back in the lightly oiled bowl.
Cover your bread dough with a damp tea towel, and let it rise for about half an hour. If you are me, occasionally check your dough while cackling that 'it lives'.
Punch down your dough and divide it into pieces. You could make loaves, I made buns. Put it on (or in) the pan and let it rise again.
Cook at about 400F until they are nice and brown, like below.
My one complaint about this dough was that it was a little sweet for my tastes- I wouldn't want to put jam on it. :(

Split Pea with Ham Soup. (Because without the ham, it just tastes like pea.)

Ingredients:

2 cups split peas

12 cups water

Ham bone (I used a ham hock because it has more flavour)

1 onion

3 stalks celery

2 carrots

Soak the peas in water overnight.

Cut up and add the rest.

Simmer for 4-5 hours.

Season with salt and pepper (if you are into those sorts of things).

Candy Bouquet

What you will need:
Candy.
A vase.
Wire
Wireclippers
Straws
Tape

Twist lengths of wire around the candy you are using as flowers. If you are like me, you will get lazy part way through this, and switch to taping candy onto straws, as they make very good stems and hurt your fingers less. You will also be less likely to stab your fingers with the straws.
Feed to your roommate for her birthday. Be prepared for the inevitable diabetic coma.

Cola, Mustard and Brown Sugar Glazed Ham

You will need:
Coke. About 1/2 cup.
1/3 cup Brown Sugar
1-2 tablespoons of Dijon Mustard
1-2 cloves of garlic
a small pre-cooked ham

Pre-heat the oven to 350 degrees.

Crush the garlic into a bowl. Add the brown sugar and mustard.

Add the coke, and mix until the sugar is (mostly) dissolved.


Pour the sugar/garlic/coke mixture into the pan with the ham. I like to slice the top of my ham so that the glaze soaks in more.
Cover the ham in tinfoil, and put it in the oven. Take the tinfoil off partway through cooking so that the glaze thickens. Baste whenever you feel like it. I usually do it every 15 or so minutes.

Now while you are baking the ham, and cleaning the kitchen if you are anything like me (I managed to spill sugar all over the floor). You may begin to think to yourself "My, what ought I do with all the rest of that tasty cola?" I have a serving suggestion for that too.
Now that you have cleaned up, and basted a few times it is probably time to take the ham out of the oven. My ham took about an hour. Your cooking time may vary according to ham-size. Let it sit for a few, before you carve it, just so all the juice settles back into the meat.

I suggest eating the ham with a nice baked potato, and maybe some veggies.
Leftover ham can be used in recipes like Split Pea with Ham Soup.

Only-Technically-A-Fruitcake Cake

1 cup peeled, chopped apples
1 cup chopped dried fruit*
1 tsp baking soda
1 cup boiling water
½ cup butter or margarine
1 cup white sugar
1 egg
1 tsp vanilla
1 ½ cups all-purpose flour
½ tsp salt
¼ cup butter (you can use margarine, but it isn't nearly as good)
½ cup brown sugar
¼ cup milk
1 cup unsweetened shredded coconut
*Note: almost any dried fruit you can think of goes well here. I believe the original recipe called for dates or raisins, but I have used almost every dried fruit I could find.

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.


Combine apples, dried fruit, boiling water and baking soda in a bowl of some sort. This will henceforth be called the 'fruit mixture'

Cream the 1/2 cup of butter and white sugar; add egg and vanilla. This is now to be called the 'creamy sugary mixture'.

Mix flour and salt together then alternate adding the flour mixture and the fruit mixture to the creamy sugary mixture.

Pour into a lightly greased 8x8 inch pan. Bake for 50 minutes.

Put the 1/4 cup butter, brown sugar, milk and shredded coconut in a saucepan and cook over low heat until the butter and sugar melt.

Pull the cake out of the oven for a moment, and spread the mixture from the saucepan on top of the cake.

Return the cake to the oven until the topping is all brown and yummy looking. Putting the cake under the broiler works incredibly well in this situation.

Cool, and eat. I suggest you eat it with milk, or the lactose-free milk-substitute of your choice.

Banana Bread/Muffins with Cranberries and Awesome

What you need:
1 ½ cups mashed banana (As bananas ripen they get more flavour. This is good, as long as your bananas haven't gone bad.)
2 eggs
2 ½ cups flour (whole wheat or all-purpose)
1 ¼ cups brown sugar
2/3 cup plain unsweetened applesauce
1/3 cup corn oil
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 standard sized bag of frozen whole cranberries, partly thawed.

Pre-heat the oven to 350 degrees.

Combine all ingredients in a bowl- I usually start with the wet ones, and add the baking soda last as (unless you sift the baking soda and salt into the flour) this is most likely to provide an even distribution of baking soda. Good cooks sift their dry ingredients together. I am a lazy cook, not a good one.

Pour the batter into your baking receptacle of choice. I used silicone bake ware for the first time on this one, and it turned out quite well. I doubled the recipe so I managed to make 1 regular loaf of banana bread, 12 regular sized muffins, and about 20 mini-muffins. The full sized loaf took about an hour, but check frequently as only you know your oven.

When a toothpick, or knife, or chopstick comes out clean your bread is done.

Remove it from the oven. Let it cool a little while before carefully extracting it from the pan and letting it cool on a rack.

I should tell you that it has to cool completely before you can even contemplate cutting into the bread, or eating the muffins, but that would make me a hypocrite. And they are awfully good warm with butter on them.