Summer Baking Challenge Week 7: Pizza Pretzels and Spaghetti Sauce

Ah, pizza pretzels. Such a memory from my childhood. When I was really little, my dad would buy a pack of pizza pretzels from Costco as a treat. We loved them so much. This is my first attempt at reliving my childhood memories and it tasted pretty good, though, it didn't taste the same.
I found the recipe from Jean Pierre's Company's Coming Breads cook book and I adjusted it to my taste and health. I prefer whole wheat breads to white.

So here it is:

Pizza Pretzels

Pretzels:
1 Tsp Brown Sugar
1/4 cup Warm Water
1 x 1/4 oz. Active Dry Yeast

1 1/2 cup Warm Water
4 1/2 cups Whole Wheat Flour
1/2 tsp Salt

Topping:
Spaghetti Sauce
Italian Seasoning
Grated Cheese 

Stir sugar into first amount of warm water in small bowl. Sprinkle yeast over top. Let it stand for 10 minutes. Stir to dissolve yeast.

Combine second amount of warm water, flour and salt in a large bowl. Add yeast mixture. Add a bit more flour if needed so dough isn't too sticky. Turn it out onto floured surface. Knead 8 to 10 minutes until smooth and elastic (like elasta girl from The Incredibles). Place in greased bowl, turning once to grease the top. Cover with tea towel. Let stand in the oven with light on and door closed about 45 minutes until doubled in bulk. Punch dough down. Roll into log. Mark off 12 portions. Cut. Roll each portion into 1 1/2-inch thick rope.  Shape each rope into pretzel on greased baking sheets.

Brush on spaghetti sauce onto pretzels. You can choose how saucy and rich you want it. Sprinkle each pretzel with a bit of Italian seasoning or any other spice that catches your fancy. Bake in the oven at 450 degrees F for 8 minutes and then take them out and sprinkle with as much cheese as you so desire. I like lots of cheese, personally. 

Put the pretzels back in the oven for 7-8 more minutes until the cheese it at your desired crispy/stringiness. Let them cool on a rack unless you want to burn your tongue when biting into it. Bon appetite! Oh and shut off your oven and clean up! Unless of course you want a fire in your house. :D

Makes: 12 Pretty Pretzels

If you happen to have no spaghetti sauce, don't worry! Here is a good recipe for one that I found while googling. :D

Spaghetti Sauce

1 (15 ounce) can of Tomato Sauce
1 (6 ounce) can of Tomato Paste
1 Tbsp Ground Oregano
1 1/2 tsp Dried Minced Garlic
1 tsp Ground Paprika

In a medium bowl, Mix together tomato sauce and tomato paste until smooth. Stir in oregano, garlic and paprika.

It's done! That simple! Yay! Just so you know, this recipe makes a lot more than you need so make sure you're having spaghetti or something for your next meal. Enjoy!!

Summer Baking Challenge Week 6: Ice Cream Cake

Ice Cream Cake

So I made my very first ice cream cake with my sister. It turned out rather well I think. It was a bit too sweet for my taste but that's ice cream for you! So here is the recipe! er assembling instructions.

Two small buckets of ice cream (they can be two different flavors if you want to be adventurous)
Chocolate chippits 
Graham crumbs
Cream (any type should work really. I used coffee cream)
Coolwhip

 Thaw out one of the buckets of ice cream so that it's soft serve yumminess and then squish it into a 10-inch springform pan (or anything close to 10 inches) and stuff it back in the freezer. Once it is frozen solid, it is time for the yummy chocolate middle. Melt a bunch of chocolate chips in a little sauce pan with a little pour of cream, 1/4 cup is around the amount I poured of cream with about 1 1/2 cups of chocolate chippits. After it is melted, add enough graham crumbs to the texture that you like. About 1/2-3/4 cup should be about right.
After that is all mixed together, pour it on top of the first layer of ice cream and then stuff it back into the freezer. While it is freezing, you could take out the other bucket of ice cream to thaw out. While you are waiting for both occurrences to take place, relax, take a nap or go browsing on Pinterest. Pinterest tends to make time disappear and you'll be ready for the next step in no time at all!
Ok, so your chocolate middle has frozen and your last tub of ice cream is thawed and ready to go! Squish the thawed out ice cream into your springform pan and stuff back into the freezer. So now you just wait until that is done freezing again and thaw your coolwhip while you are waiting. 

This is the point with mine that it kind of looked sloppy with so I leave this part up to your discretion. What I had done was kind of microwaved the coolwhip because I didn't wait to thaw it. Maybe it was because of sheer impatience or maybe I didn't think of it. either way, I don't remember. So after I microwaved it, I added some icing sugar to sweeten it but it ended up liquefying on me like the crazy sauce that it is. We still used it and used it as a glaze of sorts. That looked nice but then we tried to make pretty fluffy decorations on it and that just made it look sloppy. So don't do what I did. Google ice cream cake topping or something. You might have better luck than I did in that area. :p

Here is my end product:

We made up for the sloppiness by putting on crushed homemade peanut butter cups. All in all, it was very tasty. :) An almost success.