Pintesting - German Glass Glitter Ornaments

So for this round of the Pintester Movement we've been instructed to make Christmas tree ornaments. Now I live alone. I have no kids. I rarely put up a Christmas tree (although I do have a lovely one I bought back in the early 90s from the Pick & Save in Fairbanks. I think it was $19.95.  I'll let you translate that into an appropriate level of "lovely." I think it is 4 feet tall.)  Anyway, I don't usually put up a tree because who will see it except me? So once I have made my lovely ornament (something about Christmas requires multiple uses of the word "lovely.") I'm going to try to send it to Jodee who blogs over at the Cheeseblarg for her first ever Christmas tree. Why? Because I love cheese. And honestly I don't need a lot of Christmas tree ornaments. Also, I wonder if I could compete with her cheese love. I think I could.

I opted for the German Glass Glitter ornaments for the combined reasons of glitter and theoretical ease of the project. Except I can't make projects easy. I must complicate them in some way. In this way I didn't re-read the instructions that would have let me just do scribble designs and I actually attempted to create designs of actual things. Also, I don't know what the hell German Glass Glitter is and so in the great tradition of the Pintester, I just used what I had which was normal glitter.

 

So here are the ingredients. The basic instructions do not mention mod podge and the big paint brush but since glitter is the herpes and I don't want it all over the place I theorize I will seal the glitter on the ornament with the mod podge.

 

I started out with making holly. Holly is so easy to draw with a pen. It should be easy to draw with glue. See the first dot. 

 

Look! Three little holly berries. They will begin to drool almost instantly. Don't use this much to make your holly berries.

 

 

Note the blob o' berries and the outline of the holly leaves. This is good, right?

 

Sprinkled the green and red glitter carefully onto the holly and berries. 

 Then I had to take a fine paint brush and dust off all the glitter because glitter sticks to the whole glass ornament whether or not there is glue on the ornament. 

 

I also tried a snowflake. It was easier by far.

 

 

I carefully sprinkled white/clear shiny glitter on the snowflake.

 

You can't really see the glitter, but it is there. I promise. I wouldn't lie about this. (Would I?) No, I probably wouldn't lie about that.  

So because I don't want glitter to eventually get everywhere I sealed the ornaments with mod podge. My theory is that it will seal in all the glitter.

 Luckily the mod podge dried clear. I was briefly worried about it. But it is shiny mod podge (modpodge mod podge modpodge mod podge say it a bunch and it loses all meaning) so it enhances the snowflake (in my opinion)

 

So I hung several to dry. I did stripes which was much easier. I also had a finer glitter I used on some ornaments. Also, if doing stripes or covering the whole thing with glitter, it is much easier to use the mod podge to coat everything than it is to use the regular glue. 

Pintester Movement- gluten-free chocolate brioche

For my latest post as part of the Pintester movement I'm making Gluten-Free Chocolate brioche found on The Culinary Life. I do not recall ever having gluten-full brioche let alone chocolate brioche but the picture looked delicious. Had I read the full recipe before I started I probably wouldn't have done it but, that makes it even better, right? (Good thing I had nothing else to do this Sunday afternoon)

For this test I decided to make gluten-free chocolate brioche. It just sounded delicious. It also requires about a million ingredients, many of which are expensive (xanthan gum is $14 for that little package). Oh and it also required oil which I didn't photograph and didn't need sugar which I did.

 

 

I sifted together the dry ingredients. This is a testament to my commitment to this project. I NEVER sift together dry ingredients. I did have a bit of a xanthan gum explosion which ended up getting it all over the place. Xanthan gum, when wet, is slimy. Seriously slimy. Kind of grossly slimy.  

 

Next added the wet ingredients to the dry ingredients. I really love my stand mixer.

 

 

Go mixer go!

 

Then it had to rest for 2 hours. This project took a lot of resting. Please try to not notice my khaki capri clad legs reflecting in the bowl. That made me giggle just now.

 

 

Next up - chopping chocolate. Yum chocolate. I love chocolate. That's the whole reason I wanted to do this. Chocolate. (I do have 5 toes even though this picture makes it look like I only have 4).

 

 

Using a new bigass kitchen knife I cut up the chocolate to put inside the buns. mmm... chocolate.

I had to buy a new bigass kitchen knife because one of my other ones broke. The blade flew out of the handle while I was using it.  

 

This is the rested dough. It is SUPER sticky. I thought I put down enough corn starch. I didn't. At least not in the center. I had too much in the edges. It seemed a difficult balance. But seriously it takes a lot of corn starch. Oh and here's where I remembered that the texture of corn starch freaks me out. Something about it. It's just so... weird. This part was difficult for me.

 

 

Rolling out the dough with my rolling pin coated in more cornstarch. This is nothing if not a seriously messy project.

 

 

You sprinkle the chocolate onto the rolled dough and then roll it into a log. Theoretically this is tightly done but it was seriously sticking to the counter so it probably isn't as tight as it could/should be.  

 

Once you cut the roll into 6 pieces you roll them into balls and put on the parchment and let them rest again for 45 minutes. This project took the whole afternoon. It is hardcore. Also I'm concerned about the quantity of cornstarch still all over the rolls. Plus they are HUGE. Seriously huge.  

 

Here's the finished product. I cut one open and ate it. It was DELICIOUS. Seriously. Delicious. I have no idea what gluten-full brioche tastes like but these are very good. Almost worth the 4 hours it took me to make SIX of these. (Wow that's not a good effort to result ratio is it?)  

Pintester Movement - Bisquick Chocolate Chip Cookies

Since I love the Pintester's blog, I have joined her Pintester Movement. This is my second Pintester Movement experiment. This task was to take a pin she's already done and do it myself. I opted for Bisquick chocolate chip cookies. She found the original post here on Plain Chicken's blog. Since I'm gluten-free I miss the old chocolate chip cookies I used to eat. I like them to be a little doughier because that's what I grew up with. GF cookies tend to be super crispy.

 

 

 

Here are the ingredients. The bottle of peppermint and green food coloring are not part of the ingredients. They were part of another experiment. So the ingredients are 1 egg, 1 stick butter, 1 c brown sugar, 2 tsp vanilla, 2 3/4ths c of Bisquick and 1 c chocolate chips. After I experimented with my peppermint chocolate chip cookies I decided that it needed more moisture so I added 1 egg white too.    

I creamed together the butter and sugar. I remember that from the olden days of cooking. I don't know why you cream things, you just do.

 

 Then added the egg and vanilla. I love vanilla. It smells so delicious.

 

 

Look! Gluten-Free Bisquick. I bought it at Kroger. I can buy it in the regular grocery store! I didn't have to go to Whole Foods or Sprouts or another health food store. It is ridiculously exciting.

 

I added in the requisite 2 3/4ths cup (the entire package of Bisquick for me) and mixed.

 

But it was dry y'all. Dry like the desert. It was not bonding together well which is why I opted to do 2 things. 1 I started mixing with my hands because I always feel like I can really get things well mixed with my hands and 2 added the extra egg white.

 

 

Now I knew I was bringing in these cookies for my coworkers that were stuck at work with me on the Friday after the 4th of July. Seriously. There are 9 people in my department and there were 4 of us stuck there on Friday. That just isn't right. So to be all patriotic and supportive and good "go to person" (that's the euphemism for in charge that my boss uses) I brought them cookies. Don't worry, they know I'm gluten free AND they knew this was a cooking experiment so they were well prepared.

 

I've totally digressed. To make these patriotic I decided to color them with a little food coloring. But I didn't mix them so well together that it made purple cookies, just read and blue swirled cookies.

 

 

 

Look! See the swirls? You might have to look closely.

 

 

Finished product! The instructions didn't require parchment paper but I like to use it because I'm lazy and it is so much easier to clean up if I use parchment paper.

 

I'm not sure how I felt about the cookies. They were super dry which is a GF issue. As a result of the super dry cookies they are very fragile and tend to fall apart easily. I think if I do this again maybe a full egg extra instead of just the white. Otherwise I liked that they were doughy and not super crispy. My coworkers loved them. They thought they were great and I was being silly. They're good like that. :)

 

Recipe:

1 egg

1 stick butter

 1 c brown sugar

 2 tsp vanilla

 2 3/4ths c of Bisquick 

1 c chocolate chips

 

Mix the ingredients altogether. Bake at 375 for 8 - 10 minutes. I did add an extra egg because they were just too dry for me but that could be a gluten free issue.