How to have an oven fire, but not burn the house down and still have pizza

So the other evening, Dan is out and I am making pizza with the kids. It occurs to me at about 4:30 when I am starting supper, that while I have not taken out any meat to thaw and have not made pizza dough, I still have about a 1/2 batch of Boule dough in the fridge from Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day. I quickly search the pizza chapter to see which recipe is to be used for pizza. To my delight, Boule dough (the master recipe) was on the list! Even better, it does not require any further rising or resting or anything. Just preheat the oven and stone and slide the pizza on! Sweet. I have all the ingredients for pizza (we don't require meat on our pizza: just sauce, fresh basil and cheese), so I am ready to go. I need to make up my mom's pizza sauce recipe (it's got wonderful flavor) and shred the cheese. So I heat up the oven and Zoe and I begin to play with the wet dough.



The recipe requires the oven to be very hot... 550 degrees, if yours goes that high (mine does). So I heat it up and turn on the exhaust fan, as the book suggests. It's getting smokier, but since that what the book warns of, I make sure the windows are open and the exhaust is on high and don't worry about it too much. It is only when I open the oven, after about 5 minutes, to check that the pizza is browning evenly that I notice some flames at the back of the oven, where some of the cornmeal has been moved off the baking stone and erupted in flame as it has hit the element. Quickly, I close the oven, and like any 21st century mom, run to my computer and quickly type "oven fire" in my Google search engine. I follow this link and read these instructions.

I am torn. (2) Turn off the oven? But I want pizza. And more importantly: my. kids. want. pizza. I knew we weren't at step 3 just yet, we shouldn't have to leave the house. One quick aside: If you have followed step 3, how are you supposed to follow step 4? I mean, yeah, you can grab your cell phone and call 9-1-1, but how do you know you cannot put out the fire if you have left the house immediately? Silly eHow.

So, here are my new and improved instructions:

How to have an oven fire, but not burn the house down and still have pizza
by Teddi Taylor

Step 1 Notice flames in oven.
Step 2 Close the oven door to cut off oxygen supply.
Step 3 Turn off the oven. Turn on exhaust fan if you have not already done so.
Step 4 Do not leave the house immediately. Open windows instead.
Step 5 Wait about 3-5 times longer than cooking time called for in recipe.
Step 6 Remove pizza from oven.
Step 7 Allow pizza to cool.
Step 8 Eat pizza.
Step 9 Clean out oven when it has completely cooled.

My Mom's Pizza Sauce Recipe

1 5 oz can tomato paste
1 14 oz can tomato sauce
1 5 oz can water
1 Tbsp brown sugar
2 shakes cayenne pepper
1/2 tsp black pepper
1/2 tsp thyme
1 tsp garlic powder
2 Tbsp oregano
1 tsp basil
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp onion salt

Mix together and spread on your favorite crust.

Hamburger & French Fries Cake

Today is Simon's 2nd birthday. We had a party for him. Instead of making a cake, I made a bunch of hamburgers and french fries, since he's such a fast food loving kid (not really). I got the idea from this post from Bakerella.

Okay, so we didn't forgo cake altogether! It's a brownie cupcake hamburger and sugar cookie french fries! So fun and so tasty (though I found the hamburger to be a little too sweet for my taste).

Duncan Hines yellow cake cupcakes, made a little on the short side. I got 35 cupcakes out of one mix.


Orangey-yellow marshmallow fondant... perfect processed cheese colour!


Tomato red marshmallow fondant for ripe red tomatoes.


Vanilla pudding... mayonnaise.

Brownies.... for the hamburger patties. To stretch my batter a bit, I added 1/2 cup of homemade applesauce instead of increasing the butter, and increased the dry ingredients by 1/3 except the sugar (I figured 3 cups was quite enough). Instead of cracking and falling like they usually do, they were even and fluffy, a little more cake-y, but tasty and beautiful looking.

The "cheese" rolled out and cut for hamburgers. I used a ruler (to make them square) and a pizza cutter and did my best to cut in straight lines. But it didn't matter that much.

The "tomatoes" rolled and cut. I used a biscuit cutter for these and the brownie "hamburgers."

All the ingredients ready for assembly. The bowl is full of the brownies. I squished each one of them before assembling. They were too tall otherwise. The squishing made them a little less perfectly round, which added to the authentic look.

"Ketchup" "Mustard" and Coconut "Lettuce"

Hamburgers assembed.

Dan taste-testing.


Hamburgers and fries assembled for our friends at the Legislature Grounds.

Me and Simon with his hamburger and french fries.


Delicious! And totally fun!

My Child, the Art Prodigy

Okay, so here is the picture my daughter drew today of her friend R (the large one) and R's little brother T. I'm not sure where her very good friend (who is somewhat of a slapstick comedian, which endears himself to Zoe) K is (he is the older brother of R & T), why he didn't make it into this picture, but she did draw a picture of him last night, so maybe that explains that.

I particularly enjoy the zig-zag bodies, meaning something like, "there's a whole lot of something going on in there" as well as the long beautiful eyelashes on her friend. Also, it is very clear that T is the little brother (even though he is really not that much smaller than her friend in real life).

...

oh and while writing this post, Dan found this other drawing she was just working on


I asked Zoe who the people in this picture were... And there's K, right there! The other two are Zoe and R. It's obvious who's who, right? Obviously the two with the long beautiful eyelashes are Zoe and R, but K doesn't have eyelashes (though in reality he has quite long eyelashes). And that scribble at the end of K's arm? That's his transformer (I think she just made that up at the last minute when I asked her, because she did an awful lot of humming and hawing about it.)

Shirt Dress

I found this great tutorial and got excited to make up a dress for Zoe. She loves dresses, especially casual dresses that she can put on and take off herself.

So, Dan had this shirt that he had for a long time and he didn't wear anymore, and he offered it up to be made into a dress.


I bought this pattern because I didn't really trust my pattern making abilities and I didn't have a simple dress pattern that would work for this project.

I just read the tutorial and then did my own thing, not because it wasn't any good, but because I had a dress pattern to go by, so I basically just used the shirt as fabric and made the dress as the instructions were written. Although I made a couple of small changes because (1) I couldn't figure out the instructions for the ruffle around the neckline. And (2) I didn't want a gathered neckline, like the pattern was calling for; I wanted an elastic neckline. Thankfully the pattern worked fine to fold it over and draw some elastic through. I also messed with the sleeves a little bit, too, doing the same thing to them as I did to the neckline. The pattern calls for all sorts of complicated bias tape. It just doesn't need it. Elastic works again.

The end result?

Isn't that super cute? I love the final product!

And since I had a leftover sleeve, I whipped up this cute headband from this tutorial. I followed it almost exactly, except that I made it a little wider than her original measurements, like she suggested at the end.


I'll try to get a picture of her in it tomorrow.

ETA: I've posted the second shirt dress with matching headband (modeled, too!) on my craft blog: Craft Evangelist.

Grown up cake

I mostly have the opportunity to make cakes for kids, which I enjoy, but this time I got the chance to make a cake for a friend's 40th birthday party. It was a fun chance to take on a challenge. I made a 12 x 12 chocolate cake from scratch, thick and moist, with chocolate pudding between the layers. It was the biggest cake I've ever made, I think.

Here's the result.

This is actually a quilting design I found. Can you imagine quilting that?

Basket weave on the side

Amy Quarry giveaway

Just a little heads up if you have kids and like cute handmade stuff. Amy Quarry is having a giveaway for any two items from her shop. I've been reading her blog for a few months now. She's from Quesnel, BC. I always like to see Canadian artists/crafters on the interweb. She does some pretty super-cute upcycled stuff. I especially like the sweater pants she makes for kids. Visit her Etsy shop or her blog to take a look at the stuff and enter the giveaway.

A Different Kind of Cake Decorating

I was going to make an easy chicken curry for supper last night, but I made that plan before I knew that Dan was going to be working during the supper hour. The kids don't really care for the curry, but Dan really likes it, so it's good to make it when he's home to enjoy it. Also, even though it's a pretty easy dish, it seems like a waste to make it just for myself when the kids won't really eat much of it. Besides, when I got home, Zoe requested pancakes for supper. How easy is that? And why not?

I gave them a bunch of peppers to snack on while they waited for supper, so at least they had some vitamins and I made some pancakes and sausages for supper.

And I thought I'd change it up a bit:

Smiley pancakes!

I actually got this idea from an online photo album by one of my friends. She was travelling internationally and she found the coolest shaped pancakes somewhere. Always up for a challenge, I thought I'd give it a go. Here's how I did it.

I grabbed my turkey baster...


Carefully drew the design on the hot pan...

Let it cook for about 30 seconds before filling in the rest of the pancake with the turkey baster or a spoon.


Let it cook until there are little bubbles appearing in the batter that you just filled in, another 30 seconds or so and then flip it over and resume cooking like a regular pancake (roughly another 30 seconds).


Then I did some heart shapes (Zoe loves hearts)...




A flower shape...


A bird shape...


And my masterpiece, eaten cold by my husband when he came home from work:

In case you can't tell, it's an apple.