Puff the Magic Pastry, Part 2

It is the middle of April but still snowing to beat the band. And raining. And flooding!

Yesterday for the first time I can remember, and we are talking years, the Latin Mass was called off at St. Anthony's. A monsignor was coming in from the country and he could not make it.

So my brother George and I and my niece and nephew Barbara and Georgie and I all piled into the Georgemobile and went to the 11 a.m. Mass at St. Louis. It is not Latin but they have a wonderful choir. And the church is so gorgeous. That is it up above. I took that picture after Mass.

Two of our friends from St. Anthony's joined us at St. Louis. It was funny in a way, our Mass getting canceled. Facebook was alive and jumping with everyone from the congregation trying to figure out what to do. And all the while it never stopped snowing or sleeting or whatever it was doing, this glop falling down from the sky.

When I opened the door at midnight last night it was still falling!

But anyway. The important thing is, when the going gets tough, the tough get baking. Back at my house after church, Barbara and I made cream puffs.

I have always wanted to try making these and since I had just made puff pastry for the first time, it seemed like a great idea. Barbara agreed although for a little while it was a kind of tough decision between cream puffs and the lemon meringue cupcakes in Martha Stewart's cupcake book.

We used the recipe out of my old Betty Crocker cookbook. When the puffs came out of the oven we both gasped with delight.

They were beautiful!

Then we did what Betty Crocker said and cut off the tops, put in this cream filling...

... and closed them back up again. We made the cream filling too. It is kind of a Bavarian cream and it is a whole separate story.

The finished product. All we needed was a white bakery box!

What an adventure. Is there anything more fun than baking?

They even looked good after we started to eat them.

Betty Crocker and me

One more day of sugary desserts and then we return to the workweek and normal matters. Not to mention normal diet.

Remember the 1967 Betty Crocker Hostess Cookbook? It is the bomb! The diet bomb that is. Well, all I mean is I had a lot of fun with it yesterday.

First I made Cranberry Muffins.  Then I got into the yeast sweet bread thing. This is new for me. I got the dough together for Swedish Tea Ring and then for Cheese Triangles.

The Swedish Tea Ring had a hilarious retro picture that went with it. Today I see it is also in the bigger Betty Crocker cookbook. That one had how-to pictures with it I could have used while working out of the Hostess cookbook. Oh well, it makes it more exciting when you do not know what you are doing.

Here is Betty Crocker's Swedish Tea Ring. Oh, look, it is on a recipe card, too!

Mine bore so little resemblance to the picture in the cookbook that I did not bother with the maraschino cherries. For some reason the system is not letting me grab the picture out of my phone but trust me, it looked nothing like that. The dough would make only a fat ring, not a skinny ring, is what it comes down to. So there was not this big hole in the middle the way there is in the Betty Crocker pic.

No matter, it looked damn good with all the frosting I slathered all over it. And at the church coffee hour it was Gone in 60 Seconds.

The Cheese Triangles too went over big. That is a more obscure Betty Crocker recipe. They have something going around now that uses Bisquick but this is not that. They are little foldovers. The Mixmaster whipped up the cream cheese filling.

I was able to find a picture of this effort o' mine. I had messaged it to my friend Lizzie. She was busy making these great egg casseroles, kind of like crustless quiches.

Got to love that beat-up tray! One of these days, you know, someone will explain to me what makes this fun. But it is! You can bake and write, is one thing I love. While the dough is rising and while it is in the oven you may play the piano or type, as the case may be.

A perfect weekend!