"Homemade" news and stories

I'm often surprised to realize that many of the groceries I buy can be simply made at home. I tend to presume that cottage cheese just grows on supermarket shelves, for example, or that making vanilla requires complex machinery. So while it may be more convenient to throw these items into your cart than to cultivate them in your own kitchen, try making any of these eight treats at home the next time you're feeling bold.

1. Homemade cottage cheese from Serious Eats
2. Homemade vanilla extract from Simply Recipes
3. Homemade peanut butter cups from Baking Bites
4. Homemade girl scout cookies, also from Baking Bites
5. Homemade yogurt from 101 Cookbooks
6. Homemade soy milk from Just Hungry
7. Homemade butter from The Wednesday Chef
8. Homemade soda from Mother Earth News

Make something special at home? Share the recipe!

I tend to divide kitchen appliances into three tiers in my head. There's the top tier, the ones you can't live without, that every kitchen should have (toaster oven, crock pot and blender leap to mind). Then comes the second tier, the ones that aren't vital, but do make cooking easier and more fun (stand mixer, waffle iron and indoor grill, for instance). Then there are the ones that are rarely necessary, but are appealing nonetheless. In this category, I group things like ice cream makers, bread machines and fondue pots.

I discovered another third tier appliance recently, and while it's not one that I think I'd use much, I can see how it would be fun and useful (provided you're a fan of nut butters). That's right, I'm speaking of the Peanut Butter Machine. It has a blessedly small foot print and whips up freshly ground nut butter at the flick of a switch. I can see how this would be great if you had access to large amounts of nuts or you had health concerns that precluded you from ingesting manufactured peanut, almond or cashew butter.

[via Josh Spear]

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Marisa wrote about yogurt making about a month ago. I would like to re-visit the subject from an extremely frugal angle. With wild fruits coming into season (like mulberries), yogurt is a great way to serve nature's sweet bounty.

I can remember trying yogurt for the first time as a kid. Most of the brands had a distinctive sour taste, and fruit on the bottom. They came in 8-ounce containers, and sold for anywhere from 25 to 50 cents a cup. Now, with prices double that or more, and the cups shrinking to 6 or even 4 ounces (who can eat 4 ounces of yogurt and call it a satisfying experience?), I decided to re-visit the old fashioned way of getting yogurt. MAKING IT YOURSELF!

This isn't just for frugality. I really enjoy making things at home that most people buy prepared. Some of the things we purchase without questioning whether or not they could be created right in our kitchens are actually quite easy to make. Yogurt is one of them, and requires very little in the way of equipment.

There are yogurt makers that you can purchase. I have to tell you though that they are really not necessary. The only piece of equipment you might need to buy is a kitchen thermometer. You will need a thermometer that can read as high as 100 degrees Celsius (212 Fahrenheit) and as low as 50 degrees Celsius (122 Fahrenheit). For your first batch only, you need starter. A tablespoon of good plain yogurt works fine as long as it has active cultures (check the label). After your first batch you just need to conserve some yogurt each time to use as starter for your next batch.

Why buy an extra spice when you probably have everything on hand to make your own.

Who doesn't love an Oreo? Each one comes with two chocolate cookies, happily connected with a nice dollop of vanilla cream. There is no part of that equation that is bad (I'm talking strictly about taste here, let's ignore for the moment that they aren't exactly health food items). However, it is my belief that something that is made in your own kitchen is always going to be better than something consumed out of a cellophane package and baked who-knows-how-many months ago, which is why, I decided to try making homemade Oreo-style cookies last weekend.

I spotted the recipe on Smitten Kitchen many moons ago (back in the days when Deb was simply The Smitten) and it's stayed with me ever since, a reminder that there were Oreo heights I had not yet experienced. An opportunity arrived in the form of a dinner party and so I spent Friday night making the cookies for Saturday assembly.

It's a quick, buttery dough that comes together easily. I found that the best way to make sure to get fairly uniform rounds was to form the flat cookie on the palm of my hand before place it gently on a Silpat-lined cookie sheet. Assembly was also easy as the filling (butter, vegetable shortening, powdered sugar and vanilla) whipped together like a dream. The only hitch I experienced was that the zip top bag I was using as a piping bag kept unzipping.

The cookies were delicious the day of assembly, but I discovered that they actually improve over a couple of days resting time, developing the exact soft-crunch consistency of the traditional Oreo cookie. I think my arteries are insisting that I wait some time, but I will definitely make these again.

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