The next weekend offerings

 

On this first day of the new year, I hope all of you are having a pleasant and relaxing day.

This coming weekend we have yellow snack cake and triple chocolate chunk cookies available for ordering.  And on the following weekend, Swedish oatmeal cookies and whipped balsamic vinaigrette dip.

This week my plans for cooking also include a savory corn and tomato pie (the one on the ordering website), vanilla macarons (to make up for the batch that was lost last month), and brioche which I am considering using a specific toasted sandwich.  For my savory pie, I always make the crust dough in a food processor, a method which works very well.

I had to order a new food processor, though, since I damaged the plastic bowl of my existing one.  I have had this processor for a long time, many years, and I've wanted an excuse to get a new one for a while.  The old one worked fine but it had too many small nooks and crannies that were challenging to clean.  That wasn't enough to convince myself to discard it before now, but now that the bowl has been damaged (I suppose I should say "dropped" rather than "damaged" -- resulting in a large crack that is not reparable), I have no choice since the bowl by itself is no longer available to get as a replacement part from the manufacturer.   So a new one is on order.  That means I have to make my pie dough in my mini-food processor since the new one won't arrive in time.  We'll see how it goes.

Having the right equipment is very beneficial.  Can things be made with not-so-appropriate equipment?  Of course.  There are some things that I specifically make by hand without any equipment because a particular muffin, for example, comes out better.  But some things are much easier and much more consistently of high quality when the right machine is used.  And for my favorite and most reliable pie crust, I use my food processor to blend in frozen butter chunks and then following with frozen shortening chunks, all blended into the flour, using a specific number of pulses for each blending. 

It's a method I have used for a long time and it's extremely reliable.  So I am temporarily lamenting the loss of my trusty food processor which I know so well from years of use.  However, I have thoroughly researched the new one, and my vetting process is usually quite good, so I expect to rapidly forget about the old one once this processor is in use.

That's all for now.  Have a great day, everyone!