Kitchen Chaos

One of the hardest parts for me of our recent camping trip was planning the meals. It sounds simple until the realization that everything going with the meal needs to be packed. For instance, if pancakes sound good then you need all the ingredients for the pancakes plus whatever toppings (syrup, fruit, whatever) that everyone will want. It is easy to say that Friday we will cook hamburgers but to think of everything that everyone is going to want on the hamburger as well as what sides can make it more difficult. All in all though, I think we were all satisfied with the camping menu. As a special surprise, we made donuts while camping. When I was a kid, my dad would make donuts out of canned biscuits that were shaped and then deep fried and rolled in a cinnamon sugar mixture. Yum. Since we are gluten-free, those canned biscuits are out and I hoped I could find something to taste equivalent. What I ended up doing is taking a cinnamon roll Chebe mix and making donut balls with i...

The meringue is the persnickety part of the whole thing. Or at least the most persnickety. If you missed part one click right here Next comes the buttercream but it isn't the sugary sweet stuff on the store cakes. Ok. If I am honest it is still plenty rich though. This is with the white chocolate but you get the idea Using a double boiler you melt 6 ounces of semisweet chocolate and 2 ounces of unsweetened chocolate. If you have never done a double boiler, you place a bowl over a saucepan with an inch or two of boiling water but be sure the bowl doesn't touch the water. I like covering the bowl with cling wrap to be sure that no water droplets get in the chocolate so it doesn't seize. It will take about 8 minutes. You then remove that bowl from the heat and put on one with 8 ounces of white chocolate and let it melt for 8 minutes. The dark chocolate will need stirring to make it look melted and then after the while chocolate is done, you stir it as well. While t...