Challah! 9 points

This was my first real bread recipe ever. I've made loaves from the frozen dough you buy at the store, but I usually manage to botch one out of the three of those. I was really nervous to attempt making dough in my Kitchen Aid mixer. I'm realizing that this must be why people spend zillions of dollars on them. I loved it before this, but now? Whoa. Big crush. Huge. In eight minutes my mixer managed to do a minimum of thirty "by-hand" minutes. Considering I made this during nap time, I was impressed!  I had a beautiful ball of dough.

I let my dough rise, and it took forever. It must have been chillier in my house than I thought.

Eventually, I turned my oven on to 170° and then turned it off and placed my bowl of dough inside the oven. This helped my dough to rise beautifully. Maybe too beautifully. In a panic, I made a fatal error. I didn't do the second rise because I thought I had let it rise too much in the first place.  I rolled it out, braided it, and got ready to bake.

Oops. Although my bread looks beautiful, it isn't the right texture for challah. Honestly, I only know what it should taste like because I used to stop at Einstein Bros. Bagels like, 4 times/week on my way to work before I changed routes and became a Starbucks junkie. I don't love bagels, so I always ordered my egg and cheese breakfast sandwich on the challah bread. I'm pretty sure it's supposed to be light, fluffy and just slightly chewy. My challah is dense and heavy. Luckily, it still tastes really good and makes great toast!

Here's why I give this recipe 9 points despite the fact that my actual loaf is closer to a 5 pointer.

1) I loved the book's cheater method for creating the super-fancy braid. My bread looks awesome, and anyone who doesn't read this post will think I know what I'm doing.
2) The ingredients weren't crazy, so I am totally willing to make this again.  I don't feel bad for ruining it, because it's not like I threw away $15 on ingredients. This makes it a "safe" recipe. I can keep trying until I get it right. And maybe once I am successful, I will be able to transfer my new skills over to more complicated loaves.
3) As we've discussed, I'm not HUGE on sweets, but who doesn't need bread? Ok, maybe not people on GF diets. We go through a lot of bread in my house what with having a daycare where PBJs rule the universe. In addition, both Mr. Ginger and The Dude love their simple carbs. Sometimes The Dude just wanders through the house signing/saying, "bread" over and over. He doesn't even need anything on the bread. Just bread.

My first attempt at from scratch bread was not exactly a roaring success but it was good. I learned from my mistakes and next time I will be more patient with my dough. If you think you might need to finally start using your Stand Mixer to it's full potential, check out the original recipe from this week's Bake 52 hostess, Jenn at Zolly Zoo in the Kitchen and challah back at me to let me know how it goes.  (Sorry, I couldn't resist.)

This week's blooper:

My first rope died a slow painful death.

7 Layer Bars 10 points

Guess what? 7 Layer Bars are a dream. They are everything good. If we could find a way to add some cheese to these bad boys, I'm pretty sure the Earth would stop rotating. Aunt Mint made these yesterday while I did some grocery shopping and all-around errand running. I asked her to guest post, but she declined. We invited "The Boy" over for dinner and served these for desert with just a touch of red wine for the boys and champers for the girls. Divine. Heavenly. Superb. Toffee, chocolate, more chocolate, coconut, sweetened condensed milk, rice krispies and graham crackers. Oh. And butter. Mmmm..... Since I cheated and didn't actually make them, I can only say that she burned the coconut three times, refused to use a foil sling based on the term alone, and that we only used one can(actually a squeeze bottle from Trader Joe's)of sweetened condensed milk. After reading posts from the other Bake 52ers, the jury seems to be split as to whether the bars are better with one or two cans of the milk. For us, the drier option was perfect. There's a serious wet bread phobia around our house. *Try to visualize me crossing my fingers that nobody picks bread pudding as her recipe.*  If you can't swing by my house to help me get rid of these things and save some calories, I highly recommend you bake them yourself. Check out Ms. Jesse's blog post for the entire recipe.

Light New York Cheesecake 8 points (plus apology)

Dear Light New York Cheesecake from Week 4, I am sorry. Call me Perez Hilton. I was immature. I shouldn't have taken my poorly timed baking out on you. It's not your fault I puked cheesecake. I took said cheesecake to Harajuku Mommy's house a few days after making it. I told them not to feel obligated about eating it, since I was sure it was terrible. They ate it. The whole thing. Every bite. In under 12 hours. They claim it is the best cheesecake they have ever eaten and that it is no way detectably light. So, once again, I'm sorry Light New York Cheesecake. Rumor has it you're pretty awesome. Love, Liz