CSID-Friendly Blueberry Syrup

DISCLAIMER: This recipe is intended to be a sucrose-free recipe.
This syrup is NOT low calorie or sugar-free.
Please use caution when adding a new food to a special or restricted diet.
What works for my family may not work for yours.

There isn't really much backstory to this recipe. Yesterday the boys woke up and wanted waffles for breakfast and I didn't have any other plans so I said okay. I must have been dreaming about IHOP or something, because I suddenly was taken with the idea of making a blueberry syrup to go along with their waffles. So I plugged in my waffle iron and got to work.

Heavenly Dinner Rolls

I have a thing for breads. My wife says I have a gift for them, in fact. It is true that I love to bake bread, and have been doing so for a long time.

At first, I followed recipes found in books and online. These worked pretty well, and I learned a lot about baking from the experience. Then, when I was serving a LDS mission in Switzerland, I found Betty Bossi's Brot und Brotgerichte, and discovered that one can use a standard bread recipe and technique to make lots of different types of bread. I also learned the basics of the science of bread baking—namely that you can substitute ingredients as long as you somehow make up the difference.

Then, while working for Lofthouse, I was able to take a series of online classes from the American Institute of Baking, called "The Science of Baking." As part of this course I learned about bakers' percentage, which changed how I view baking forever. In short, bakers' percentage, unlike formula percentage, sets all ingredients as a percent of the total weight of flour. Why is this so life-changing? Well, it means that you can easily change the amount of one ingredient without having to recalculate every other ingredient. I always use this technique when I am writing a recipe.

This recipe started as a desire to make a really, really rich and delicious dinner roll to accompany some baked potato soup. I wanted something that was airy yet filling, sweet and rich yet chewy, and full of delicious flavor. The secret to achieving all of this is in the technique, the ingredients, and some patience. And without further ado, let's dive into the recipe for the best dinner rolls you will ever have.

Easy Dinner Rolls

A while back I posted about the versatility of a single bread dough. In the entire post I was going on about how a single bread recipe is easily modified to fit almost any application. I think I gave about 8 different ways the "master recipe" could be used.

Anyway, one of those applications was for dinner rolls. It had been a while since I wrote the recipe for those, and I have been wanting to make it again. Well, Sunday I got the perfect opportunity. My sister-in-law had done a roast in the Crock-Pot, and mentioned about 2 hours before dinner that she wished that she had asked me to make bread, because bread pairs well with roast. Enter the dinner rolls. I knew they wouldn't have tons of time to rise, but they would have enough.

Pasta Salad

Let me tell you a story. Once upon a time while my wife and I were still at college, we were invited to a large potluck event at our church ward. In the weeks prior, we committed to bringing some type of salad, and didn't remember until the day of the potluck. As you can imagine, once we realized this we were frantic to figure out what type of salad we could bring without having to go to the grocery store to get things.

Our apartment was completely devoid of any type of green for a typical lettuce-based salad, but we did have a couple half boxes of pasta. So pasta salad it was. I called my parents and asked if they had any suggestions, which they did not, other than looking online. I didn't know who else I could ask, so an online search it was.

We decided that we wanted to do something a little different, that people would not have had often. Needless to say, after an hour of searching we didn't find any one recipe we liked, so we decided to improvise with what we had at home.

The following pasta salad is deliciously fresh tasting, and tastes amazing. It has become one of our new recipe standards for barbecues and family parties.

Cheesy Garlic Biscuits

Did you know, the word biscuit is derived from a French word meaning "twice-baked." Those original biscuits were more like hardtack or Zwieback, and could last for very extended periods of time without going stale. Then again, they probably wouldn't taste very good when fresh, so the point was moot.

These biscuits, on the other hand, are soft and delicious, and make a perfect accompaniment to soup.