I was blogging at Posterous but have decided to migrate here. Their recent change to mimic Google+ and Facebook is not really blog-worthy.
So, all of the posts today are old ones I'm moving over by hand. Posterous doesn't make it easy to leave - no export tool.
Thursday, November 24, 2011
King Arthur Amish Dinner Rolls
This is a tweaked version of the Amish Dinner Roll recipe from the King Arthur Flour Baker's Catalogue.
You can find the original recipe here http://www.kingarthurflour.com/recipes/amish-dinner-rolls-recipe
Ingredients
2 eggs
1/3 cup sugar
1 1/2 teaspoons salt
6 tablespoons butter
1 cup mashed potatoes
2 1/2 teaspoons instant yeast
3/4 cup potato water (water used to boil potatoes)
4 1/2 cups unbleached all-purpose flour
Instructions
Combine all of the ingredients in the bowl of your Kitchen-aid mixer. Mix the dough with a dough hook, knead for 8 minutes. Resist the urge to add more flour, the dough will be very sticky.
Remove the dough from the mixer bowl to a floured surface. Knead the dough by hand for a couple of minutes. The dough should now be smooth and shiny.
Place the dough in a lightly greased bowl, turn to coat, and cover with plastic wrap sprayed with Pam to prevent sticking. Allow dough to rise until doubled in bulk, about 90 minutes.
Dump the dough onto a floured surface. Knead a few times to work out bubbles. With a stainless steel dough scraper, divide the dough into 16 equal pieces. The next part is a bit complicated to explain. You need to roll the dough into smooth balls.
Dust your hands with flour. Place a piece of dough on the half curled finger tips of both hands with your palms facing up. Gently stretch the dough into a mushroom cap by pressing your thumbs down the side of the dough ball whilst pressing your fingers up. Pinch the bottom of the dough together to form a ball. Rotate the dough ball half a turn to the right or left, keeping the pinched end down. Repeat a few times, dusting your hands as needed. You should find the top and sides of the dough ball get smoother with each turn. If this is a bit complicated, you can always roll the dough ball in your hands but the resulting ball won't be as smooth.
Lightly grease a pan. For pull-apart-rolls, place the dough balls about half an inch apart on the pan. This will give you rolls with a nice brown top and bottom, and nice white sides where they touch. For stand-alone-rolls, place the dough balls about 2 inches apart. Cover the rolls with plastic wrap sprayed with Pam, and allow to rise for 1 1/2 to 2 hours, until they are quite puffy. The pull-apart-rolls with be touching each other.
Preheat an oven to 350 degrees. Bake the rolls on the center rack, for 15 minutes or until golden brown. Carefully slide the rolls onto a cooling rack, and brush them with melted butter if desired.
Nutritional Information
You can find the original recipe here http://www.kingarthurflour.com/recipes/amish-dinner-rolls-recipe
Ingredients
2 eggs1/3 cup sugar
1 1/2 teaspoons salt
6 tablespoons butter
1 cup mashed potatoes
2 1/2 teaspoons instant yeast
3/4 cup potato water (water used to boil potatoes)
4 1/2 cups unbleached all-purpose flour
Instructions
Combine all of the ingredients in the bowl of your Kitchen-aid mixer. Mix the dough with a dough hook, knead for 8 minutes. Resist the urge to add more flour, the dough will be very sticky.
Remove the dough from the mixer bowl to a floured surface. Knead the dough by hand for a couple of minutes. The dough should now be smooth and shiny.
Place the dough in a lightly greased bowl, turn to coat, and cover with plastic wrap sprayed with Pam to prevent sticking. Allow dough to rise until doubled in bulk, about 90 minutes.
Dump the dough onto a floured surface. Knead a few times to work out bubbles. With a stainless steel dough scraper, divide the dough into 16 equal pieces. The next part is a bit complicated to explain. You need to roll the dough into smooth balls.
Dust your hands with flour. Place a piece of dough on the half curled finger tips of both hands with your palms facing up. Gently stretch the dough into a mushroom cap by pressing your thumbs down the side of the dough ball whilst pressing your fingers up. Pinch the bottom of the dough together to form a ball. Rotate the dough ball half a turn to the right or left, keeping the pinched end down. Repeat a few times, dusting your hands as needed. You should find the top and sides of the dough ball get smoother with each turn. If this is a bit complicated, you can always roll the dough ball in your hands but the resulting ball won't be as smooth.
Lightly grease a pan. For pull-apart-rolls, place the dough balls about half an inch apart on the pan. This will give you rolls with a nice brown top and bottom, and nice white sides where they touch. For stand-alone-rolls, place the dough balls about 2 inches apart. Cover the rolls with plastic wrap sprayed with Pam, and allow to rise for 1 1/2 to 2 hours, until they are quite puffy. The pull-apart-rolls with be touching each other.
Preheat an oven to 350 degrees. Bake the rolls on the center rack, for 15 minutes or until golden brown. Carefully slide the rolls onto a cooling rack, and brush them with melted butter if desired.
Nutritional Information
per serving (1 roll = 74g)
200 calories
6 grams fat
5 grams protein
28 grams complex carbohydrates
4 grams sugar
1 gram dietary fiber
41 milligrams cholesterol
223 milligrams sodium
117 milligrams potassium
6 grams fat
5 grams protein
28 grams complex carbohydrates
4 grams sugar
1 gram dietary fiber
41 milligrams cholesterol
223 milligrams sodium
117 milligrams potassium
Wednesday, November 23, 2011
Vegan Pumpkin and Cranberry Muffins Recipe - Modified
My first attempt at Isa Chandra Moskowitz's Vegan Pumpkin Muffin didn't fare well. They were undercooked and dense. I was pretty sure the cranberries added too much moisture to the basic recipe.
A small adjustment (1/2 the soy milk) and an ingredient substitution (substitute 1/2 of the oil with apple sauce) gave better results. I think baking them longer helped too.
Here's the modified recipe.
Vegan Pumpkin and Cranberry Muffin
Ingredients
1 3/4 cups King Arthur all-purpose flour
1 1/4 cups sugar
1 tablespoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon ground or freshly grated nutmeg
1/2 teaspoon ground ginger
1/4 teaspoon ground allspice
1/8 teaspoon ground cloves
1 cup pureed pumpkin (not pie mix)
1/4 cup soy milk (reduced from original recipe's 1/2 cup)
1/4 cup vegetable oil (reduced from original recipe's 1/2 cup)
1 1/4 cups sugar
1 tablespoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon ground or freshly grated nutmeg
1/2 teaspoon ground ginger
1/4 teaspoon ground allspice
1/8 teaspoon ground cloves
1 cup pureed pumpkin (not pie mix)
1/4 cup soy milk (reduced from original recipe's 1/2 cup)
1/4 cup vegetable oil (reduced from original recipe's 1/2 cup)
1/4 cup natural apple sauce (to reduce original recipe's vegetable oil)
1 cup whole fresh cranberries
2 tablespoons maple syrup (original recipe is molasses)
2 tablespoons maple syrup (original recipe is molasses)
Directions
Preheat oven to 400°F. Use paper muffin liners or lightly grease a twelve-muffin tin.
Roughly chop the cranberries. I like larger chunks of cranberry in the muffin.
Preheat oven to 400°F. Use paper muffin liners or lightly grease a twelve-muffin tin.
Roughly chop the cranberries. I like larger chunks of cranberry in the muffin.
Sift together flour, sugar, baking powder, salt, and spices. In a separate bowl, whisk together pumpkin, soy milk, oil, apple sauce, chopped cranberries, and maple syrup. Mix together the wet and dry ingredients.
Evenly fill the muffin cups. Mine ended up about three-fourths full. Bake for 25 to 28 minutes, until a toothpick or knife inserted in the center comes out clean.
Evenly fill the muffin cups. Mine ended up about three-fourths full. Bake for 25 to 28 minutes, until a toothpick or knife inserted in the center comes out clean.
Nutritional Information
Per Muffin
Calories 193.6
Total Fat 2.9 g
Saturated Fat 1.8 g
Polyunsaturated Fat 0.1 g
Monounsaturated Fat 0.1 g
Cholesterol 0.0 mg
Sodium 175.8 mg
Potassium 93.4 mg
Total Carbohydrate 41.2 g
Dietary Fiber 1.8 g
Sugars 24.2 g
Protein 2.4 g
Tuesday, November 22, 2011
iOS App Development with PhoneGap and Spine Mobile: Example App
Alex MacCaw, the creator of Spine and author of O'Reilly's JavaScript Web Applications, has a simple example of a mobile contact application. We'll set this application up, add a little functionality, and eventually wrap it in PhoneGap as a iOS app for the iPhone.
There's an explanation on spinejs.com you can follow for a thorough explanation of the application.
Let's get it setup and running locally.
Let's get it setup and running locally.
- Download the app from github.com. My copy is under ~/Documents/spine.mobile.contacts/.
- Open a terminal and change to the spine.mobile.contacts directory.
$ cd ~/Documents/spine.mobile.contacts - Install the local npm modules
$ npm install . - Start the hem server
$ hem server - Browse to the application at http://localhost:9294/
You should now see this...
Go ahead and add a few contacts. HTML5 local storage is used to persist the data.
Now, let's add a way to delete contacts. Open contacts.coffee located in the ~/Documents/spine.mobile.contacts/app/controllers/ directory with a text editor. We want to add a delete button to the ContactsShow class. ContactsShow is the controller for the panel that displays an individual contact when you click on a contact in the list view.
The changes are pretty simple.
class ContactsShow extends Panel
className: 'contacts showView'
constructor: ->
super
Contact.bind 'change', @render
@active @change
@addButton('Back', @back)
# Delete button placed to the right with a callback
# to a delete function
@addButton('Delete', @delete).addClass('right')
render: =>
return unless @item
@html require('views/contacts/show')(@item)
change: (params) ->
@item = Contact.find(params.id)
@render()
# Delete callback function
# Confirm the delete, then navigate back to the list view
# If they change their mind, stay here
delete: (params) ->
if confirm('Are you sure?')
@item.destroy()
@navigate('/contacts', trans: 'left')
back: ->
@navigate('/contacts', trans: 'left')
Save your changes. There's no need to restart the hem server. Just reload the site in the browser, hem dynamically picks up the changes with each request.
Click on a contact, the item view displays with the delete button on the top right.
Click the delete button. You should see a confirmation dialog...
Click cancel and you'll see the item view. Click ok, the contact is deleted and the list view is redisplayed.
In my next blog post I'll finish wrapping the app in PhoneGap.
Sunday, November 20, 2011
Vegan Pumpkin Muffins
Lydia has been quietly and occasionally requesting I make some vegan muffins. She had some at a marching band function a few months ago and just loved them.
She couldn't tell me what kind they were exactly - just that they were "white and cake-y". She said they were in a book called "Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World" by Isa Chandra Moskowitz. I haven't picked up a copy of the book yet, and haven't found the white cake recipe anywhere online, but her Post Punk Kitchen website has a vegan pumpkin muffin recipe that sounded good.
You can find the recipe at http://www.theppk.com/2009/11/the-best-pumpkin-muffins/.
I tried making two batches. The first is the basic recipe. It turned out moist and looks pretty good. Sean had a hard time waiting for them to cool before devouring one. Lydia had more restraint, and thought they were a bit heavy but tasted good.
She couldn't tell me what kind they were exactly - just that they were "white and cake-y". She said they were in a book called "Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World" by Isa Chandra Moskowitz. I haven't picked up a copy of the book yet, and haven't found the white cake recipe anywhere online, but her Post Punk Kitchen website has a vegan pumpkin muffin recipe that sounded good.
You can find the recipe at http://www.theppk.com/2009/11/the-best-pumpkin-muffins/.
I tried making two batches. The first is the basic recipe. It turned out moist and looks pretty good. Sean had a hard time waiting for them to cool before devouring one. Lydia had more restraint, and thought they were a bit heavy but tasted good.
The second batch included chopped fresh cranberries. Unfortunately, I think I added too many. I should have also reduced the amount of soy milk to compensate for the added moisture. They are a bit dense and undercooked in the center. However, the added cranberries make them explode with flavor!
I love the cranberries in these so much I'm going to give it another go Wednesday while I'm waiting for my potato rolls to rise. I'll post a modified recipe when I get them right.
iOS App Development with PhoneGap and Spine Mobile: Setup
You need to setup your development environment.
Since I'm targeting iOS I'm obviously using a Mac with OSX Lion and Xcode 4.2. You can find help with installing Xcode at developer.apple.com. Done? Good.
Since I'm targeting iOS I'm obviously using a Mac with OSX Lion and Xcode 4.2. You can find help with installing Xcode at developer.apple.com. Done? Good.
Here's a summary of the setup. The various web sites have more details.
Install Homebrew
If you're familiar with Linux's apt-get you'll love Homebrew. Simplifies installation and update of the Unix-y bits and bytes for OS X. Homebrew installs to the user's local space so sudo isn't required.
If you're familiar with Linux's apt-get you'll love Homebrew. Simplifies installation and update of the Unix-y bits and bytes for OS X. Homebrew installs to the user's local space so sudo isn't required.
iOS App Development with PhoneGap and Spine Mobile: Introduction
A friend of mine recently asked me if I knew how to write iOS applications. She has an idea for an app (don't we all). Well, iOS development is something I've wanted to do since I picked up an iPod Touch a couple of years ago, I just haven't made the time to do it.
I recently started learning Node.js and the Spine MVC framework for HTML5 web application development. The last website I worked on was several years ago (ASP.Net 1.1) and I want to try something that's not in the Microsoft stack. I've done PHP in the past but didn't really want to try it again. Javascript is hot and CoffeeScript has a lot of bleeding-edge attention right now. Maybe I can get ahead of the curve.
Spine also has a mobile framework that supports HTML5 web sites targeting mobile devices. I finally got a on of the simple demo apps working this week. Pretty darn easy once the sample app and the current Spine framework were in sync.
Once I got that working I noticed a doc describing integration between Spine and PhoneGap. PhoneGap wraps your HTML5/JavaScript app into a mobile device native application with access to the device API. You can also deploy the application to multiple platforms. It's also open source. Sounds winning to me.
In future posts I will describe how to develop an iOS native application using PhoneGap, Spine Mobile, and CoffeeScript. Since the frameworks are constantly changing, I intend to keep an up to date working copy.
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