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(Photo courtesy of Just Jared.)

I am not above admitting that Easy Mac is sometimes necessary. After all, if you truly have only ten minutes with which to make and eat dinner, it’s better to eat Easy Mac than nothing at all. But if you have even five more spare minutes, you can make something tastier, healthier, and all-around better.

That’s right—I’m talking about homemade mac and cheese.

It doesn’t get any easier than this, folks:

INGREDIENTS

• cheese of your choice (I like a mix of cheddar and parmesan)

• milk

• flour

• pasta (any kind words, but elbow macaroni is nice for nostalgia’s sake)

1.    Boil the pasta until it’s done. Drain. (Time: 10-12 minutes.)

2.    While the pasta is boiling, mix together ½ cup of milk and 1 tablespoon of flour for each serving of mac and cheese. (Time: 1 minute.)

3.    Put the pasta in a bowl or back in the pot. Stir in the milk-flour mixture, and cook on low heat until bubbly. (Time: 1 minute.)

4.    Turn off the heat, and stir in the cheese. (Time: 30 seconds.)

5.    Eat.

That’s it! Fast, easy, delicious—I don’t ever want to hear any more excuses for eating something that looks nuclear when you can make this instead.

[photo from i.timeinc.net]

The solution? The same delicious, chocolaty goodness in portable cookie form: BROWNIE BOMBS.

What You’ll Need:

10 oz. semi-sweet chocolate chips

3 tablespoons unsalted butter

3 eggs

1 cup sugar

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1 cup All Purpose Flour

1/4 teaspoon baking powder

1/4 teaspoon salt

Optional: 2 oz. toffee or peanut butter morsels ( if you choose to add these, reduce your choco chip amount to 8 oz.)

What to do:

1. Melt butter and 8 oz. of chocolate in microwave safe bowl.

2. Stir together until blended into smooth, pudding-like consistency

3. In a separate bowl, beat eggs and sugar together

4. Stir into chocolate mixture until completely combined and smooth.

5. Slowly add flour, Vanilla, salt and Baking Powder, stirring continuously

6. Fold remaining chocolate chips or Peanut Butter or Toffee Morsels

7. Place bowl of mixture in freezer.

8. Pre-heat oven to 325 degrees

9. Cover a baking sheet with parchment liner

10. When the oven is pre-heated, remove your dough from the freezer.

11. Scoop spoonfuls of dough onto the cookie sheet, allowing space for them to spread while baking.

12. Bake for 9-13 minutes

13. Remove from oven, let cool for 10 minutes.

MMMM! Pour yourself a glass of milk and revel in your domesticity, because you have just successfully kicked Betty Crocker’s ass!

Because there is nothing more annoying than having to run to the grocery store and leave your raw cookie batter sitting on the counter, I took the liberty of putting together a handy-dandy substitution cheat sheet of things you can use when you find yourself without the genuine article.

For self-rising flour, substitute flour with baking powder and salt. Self-rising flour is really just a fancy name for flour that already has baking powder and salt added, so you can cheat the system by adding those things yourself. For each cup of flour, just throw in 1 ½ tsp baking powder and about ½ tsp salt.

For cream/half-and-half, substitute milk. Keep in mind that this will only work sometimes. Milk is a lot thinner than cream and has a lot less fat (added health bonus), but that also means that it doesn’t behave the same way. For a recipe in which you’re mixing everything together anyway (quiche), it will work fine, but it’s not going to get you anywhere if you pour it in a bowl and try to whip it into real fluffy cream. If you don’t have regular milk, try using buttermilk, yogurt, or sour cream.

For eggs, substitute bananas, yogurt, or applesauce. Mmmmm… you won’t even realize the eggs aren’t there, and you’ll get a nice bit of extra flavor and texture with any of these substitutions. If you’re making something savory rather than sweet, try substituting some oil mixed with a little bit of flour.

For a thickener like cornstarch, substitute flour or tapioca. Tapioca might give kind of a funky texture to whatever you’re brewing up, but it will be great in something like a pie or a cobbler. For a casserole or another non-sweet dish, flour will work like a charm.

If you’re searching for a specific ingredient and you really don’t want to go to the store, try Googling it. There are a lot of cooks and bakers out there, and chances are, somebody has already done the work for you so that you can enjoy your delicious dish without ever having to leave the kitchen.

[Image courtesy of chickspeak.com.]

What the heck is the difference between all those flours?

Well, I’m here to tell you. Flour 101, here we go!

All-purpose: As you might gather from its rather clever name, all-purpose flour can be used for pretty much anything and everything. People on gluten-free diets can’t have it, but if you don’t have to worry about that, you can use all-purpose for baking, cooking, bread-making… whatever. It’s all good.

Wheat: Wheat flour is like all-purpose’s healthier and less versatile cousin. It has fiber and protein that all-purpose doesn’t have, but it can be a pain to bake with because it tends to produce very dense items. In many recipes, it’s OK to sub up to 1/3 the total amount of all-purpose flour with wheat flour.

White whole-wheat. Now this is good stuff. White whole-wheat flour has all the nutrition of wheat flour with the lightness of all-purpose. I wouldn’t use it to replace the full amount of all-purpose in any recipe, but you should be able to sub in at least half the amount. These delicious muffins use entirely wheat flour, and white whole-wheat gives them a nice, fluffy texture.

Self-rising. Using self-rising flour is a little bit like using yeast for pastries and other sweet things. The idea is that the flour has leavening agents already mixed into it, so your baked goods will be high as the sky when you take them out of the oven instead of falling flat and being mushy in the middle. To make self-rising flour yourself, just add 1 ½ teaspoons of baking powder and ¼ tsp salt to 1 cup of regular flour.

Bread. Bread flour has a lot of gluten, more gluten than all-purpose, so that your bread will stay strong and keep its shape while baking. On the negative side, you probably don’t want to use it for anything except making bread, so if you don’t make a lot of bread, this flour might not be worth your while.

Rye. Rye flour has a low gluten content and is good for making sourdoughs and breads like pumpernickel or, gasp, rye.

Corn, rice, or nut. These flours aren’t widely used, but they are great for people with gluten-free diets.

Cake flour. Cake flour is as soft as a pillow and very light. It’s primarily used for making cakes (who would have guessed?) and soft, cake-like cookies. A lot of gluten tends to make things tougher, so cake flour has just a little bit of gluten to guarantee a light texture for baked goods.

And one product plug: Flour is kind of a generic cooking substance, so you won’t find a ton of variation across brands. But King Arthur is, in my opinion, the best, and they have a wide variety of excellent flours to choose from.

[photo from cookbookcatchall.blogspot.com] 

To me, these little breads are almost like magic. You roll them flat as pancakes, then they puff up and fill with air. How does it happen? I have no idea, but I’m glad it does.

For two pita pockets, you’ll need ½ cup flour (all-purpose or wheat works), 1 teaspoon sugar, ¼ teaspoon rapid-rise yeast, and 2 tablespoons water.

In a small bowl, mix the flour, sugar, yeast, and water. The water should be around room temperature—just make sure it’s not way too hot or too cold. It’s OK if the dough hardly comes together—you’re going to knead it, and it will absorb more flour when you do that.

In the bowl or on a flat work surface, knead the dough for about 5 minutes. You may need to add more flour as you go along to keep the dough from getting too sticky. When you’re finished, shape the dough into a ball, and put it back in the bowl.

Cover the bowl with plastic wrap, and set it in a warm place to rise for 2 hours. The oven with the pilot light turned on works well. After those 2 hours, the dough should have expanded. It will look flatter, puffier, and maybe a little darker.

Preheat the oven to 500. Separate the dough into two balls, and sprinkle a little flour onto a flat surface. Roll out each ball into a flat pancake shape, somewhere between 1/8” and ¼” thick.

Here’s the tricky part. When you have your two pancake shapes, place them directly onto the oven grids. The oven will be incredibly hot, so BE CAREFUL! Use hot pads if you’re clumsy or if you think you might drop the flattened pieces of dough.

Shut the oven, and bake the breads for 5 minutes. When they’re done—no joke—they will have puffed up to about 2 inches in height. Awesome—and delicious!

The problem is, making fresh bread usually requires fooling around with yeast. I don’t have anything against yeast, but it’s temperamental. If the water you mix it with is too cold, it won’t ferment. If it’s too hot, the yeast will die. I don’t have time to screw around with that stuff! That’s why this bread recipe is great… if you can get water to room temperature, then you virtually can’t screw it up.

For one loaf starter, you need a cup of water, 2 cups of flour, and ¼ teaspoon yeast (rapid-rise yeast is best). Then, for the bread, you need an additional ¼ cup water, 1 cup flour, 1 ½ teaspoons yeast (again, rapid-rise is best), 1 teaspoon salt, and 2 tablespoons olive oil (optional). If you want to brush something nice over the top so the bread is shiny, you need more olive oil or 1 egg white.

To begin, mix the starter ingredients together. The water should be at a cool room temperature. Once you’ve combined the ingredients and mixed them so that all the flour is absorbed, put plastic wrap over the bowl you mixed them in, and let the starter rest overnight or for 12-16 hours. The dough should rise dramatically and look somewhat bubbly when it’s done.

After the starter has risen, mix it with the ¼ cup water. Make sure it’s combined and smooth. It will reduce back down to its previous size, but that’s okay. Add the cup of flour, the 1 ½ teaspoons yeast, the salt, and the olive oil if you’re using it. Knead the bread on a floured surface for 5-6 minutes until it feels smooth. You may need to add more flour as you go along.

When you’re done, grease the bowl the starter was in, turn to coat the dough with the grease (or oil, or butter, or whatever), cover it with plastic wrap again, and let it rise for 1 ½-4 hours. (That’s why this bread is great—you can totally conform it to your schedule!)

Once it’s risen, it will look all puffy again. Gently take it out of the bowl and set it onto a baking sheet that’s been greased or coated with aluminum foil or waxed paper. Mold it into the loaf shape you want (round, rodlike, braided, whatever)…

… then cover it with plastic wrap and let it rise for another 1 ½-4 hours. It should look the same, but puffier.

Near the end of the rising, preheat the oven to 425. If you want to coat the bread with something so that it looks shiny on top, beat an egg white well in a bowl and use a pastry brush to coat the loaf with the egg white. You can also brush olive oil on top. When you’re finished coating it, bake that sucker for 30-35 minutes. When it’s beautiful and golden brown, it’s done and ready to eat!