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August 19, 2010, at 10:00 pm
I recently came across this recipe and decided to give it a shot with what I had on hand. My first attempt was much less fancy, but it tasted spectacular. The two things I like best about this concept are 1) how easily you can customize it to your tastes or a guest’s tastes, and 2) how little you need in the way of ingredients. If you wanted to get really gourmet, you would need hardly any of each ingredient that you used — this is a great way to get rid of the little bits of this and that in your fridge. This is all I used to make four frittatas for Mark and me to share:
As you can see, I used silicone muffin cups instead of a muffin pan, because I wanted to make sure everything fit. I think it would have been a challenge in a standard muffin pan. For each frittata I used one piece of thick-cut hickory bacon, one egg, one half of a thick slice of cheese (chopped), and one half of a sausage patty (also chopped). (Confession: those aren’t real sausage patties, they’re Morningstar Farms breakfast patties. They are so awesome that they can be forgiven for not being real meat.)
I curled the bacon around the inside of the cups and filled in with my cheese and sausage pieces:
 I beat the eggs individually and poured one over each cup of ingredients, then baked the cups at 350F for 30 minutes. If you end up with a little egg white at the top, the whites will look shiny and you may think they’re not done, but if you see the surrounding ingredients start to brown up, take them out.
 They puff up beautifully as they bake. Just give them a minute to rest and gently loosen the bacon from the sides with a fork, then pop them onto a plate. You may lose a little bit of fat from the bacon if you don’t spray the cups, but it won’t be much.
 These little protein bombs were a lot more filling than they looked. After two I don’t think I could have eaten anything else (except dessert — I always have room for dessert). Try it your way!
August 17, 2010, at 10:00 pm
Sweet Pea is already a criminal. Mark said he would be proud if it weren’t for that girl that she mauled.
Wait, let me back up. We took her to our vet yesterday for a wellness checkup, spay confirmation, and rabies vaccine. I picked the absolute worst appointment time, as we happened to be there when Angry Cat’s cousin was in an exam room, and another client was leaving with a fairly unhappy cat. So even though Sweet Pea should have been primed for the Worst Vet Visit Ever, she was pretty compliant when it was her turn. She got some blood drawn and received an x-ray of her hips because she limps slightly (turns out she is missing the ball and socket connection in her right hip and the associated femur is shortened! Could be from surgery or a birth abnormality).
Before administering the rabies and distemper vaccines, the vet attempted to shave a small spot on Sweet Pea’s belly so she could find the spay scar to be sure. Unfortunately the clippers turned our sweet little kitty into a tornado of teeth, and the vet tech was on the business end. Since the rabies vaccine was still in the syringe and we have no prior vaccination paperwork for the cat, the vet is legally required to hold her for ten days for observation. *facepalm*
We left the vet’s office somewhat in shock, without our shiny new cat. So I did the only thing I could under the circumstances — I baked a cake.
This is adapted from Warren Brown’s chocolate pound cake from his CakeLove book.
Dry ingredients:
- 2 cups all-purpose flour
- 1/2 cup unsweetened cocoa powder (as always, I used Double-Dutch Dark Cocoa)
- 2 tbsp turbinado sugar
- 1 tsp potato starch
- 1/4 tsp vanilla powder
- 1/4 tsp baking soda
- 3/4 tsp salt
- 1/2 tsp espresso powder (just a hint of coffee flavor can ruin a dessert for me; you will not taste coffee in this cake)
Liquid ingredients:
- 4 oz sour cream
- 3/4 cup + 4 tbsp whole milk
- 1 tsp vanilla extract
Creaming ingredients:
- 8 oz (2 sticks) unsalted butter, room temperature
- 3 cups granulated sugar
- 4 large eggs
- 3 tbsp heavy cream
Preheat the oven to 350F, with the rack in the middle. Whisk the dry ingredients together in one bowl and the liquid ingredients in another. In your mixer, cream the butter and sugar, then add the eggs (individually, fully incorporating each one) and the cream at low speed.
Starting and ending with the dry ingredients, add the dry and liquid ingredients alternately in 3-5 additions each. Work quickly and don’t wait for everything to be fully mixed between additions. Stop the mixer and make sure everything on the sides and in the bottom is churned up, then mix at medium speed for about 20 seconds so the batter becomes uniform.
Pour into a greased 12-cup Bundt pan, level with a spatula, and bake for 50-60 minutes until the center no longer jiggles and a toothpick or skewer comes out cleanish. (When the cake cools, it will have the typical poundcake crust on the outside, and the inside will be super-dense and moist.)
What’s a cake without frosting? So I made some cream cheese frosting and served it on the side. (I actually bought the cream cheese and mascarpone when we went to Whole Foods a few days ago for chorizo and had to occupy ourselves while they made a batch for us. Nice strategy, Whole Foods — we bought a LOT more than chorizo!) This recipe comes from Joy of Baking:
Ingredients:
- 1 1/2 cups heavy whipping cream
- 8 oz cream cheese, room temperature
- 8 oz mascarpone cheese, room temperature
- 3/4 tsp vanilla extract
- 1 cup powdered sugar
Combine the cheeses until smooth. Add the vanilla and powdered sugar, mix until smooth. In a separate bowl, whip the cream until stiff peaks form. Gently add the whipped cream to the cheese blend in several additions, then refrigerate for an hour or two if it needs to set up.
The verdict? Overwhelming approval. Duh. This should last us a few more days, and then I will bake something else to distract us from the remaining six days of the kitty-shaped hole in our life.
August 8, 2010, at 9:59 pm
These are an old favorite of mine (stolen from Quaker), from when I lived in NJ and used a hand-me-down hand mixer to satisfy my need for baked goods. They take no more than 15 minutes of prep time (10 if you’re in a hurry). I used to make them at least twice a month (it’s a miracle that I didn’t burn out the motor in the hand mixer) and a 9×13 pan never lasted long. A coworker in NJ called them ‘hobbit bars.’ They are so dense and delicious that they could potentially eliminate the need for chocolate chip cookies. Yeah, they’re that good — especially warm.
Ingredients:
- 1 cup (2 sticks) butter
- 1 cup packed brown sugar
- 1/2 cup white sugar
- 2 eggs
- 2 tbsp milk
- 2 tsp vanilla
- 1 3/4 cup flour
- 1 tsp baking soda
- 1/2 tsp salt
- 2 1/2 cups uncooked oats (any kind but I like old-fashioned)
- 2 cups semi-sweet chocolate chips
- 1 cup nuts (optional — I never put these in!)
Heat oven to 375F. Cream butter and sugars. Add eggs, milk, vanilla; beat well. Add combined flour, baking soda, salt; mix well. Add oats, chocolate chips, nuts.
Spread in ungreased 9×13 pan, bake 30-35 minutes (err on the side of under-done, or they may become too chewy).
Around here, we like to eat them for dessert, and then again for breakfast. It’s okay because they have oats in them!
August 5, 2010, at 10:00 pm
If there is anything I love as much as cake, it’s doughnuts, which are breakfast cake. A good muffin is sort of like cake, too, so a cake-like muffin that tastes like breakfast cake is…well, I’ve lost that train of logic, but it sounds awesome, right? I think the King Arthur people actually tapped directly into my brain to come up with this recipe.
The fun part is dipping them in melted butter and cinnamon sugar. I made a 2:1 sugar to cinnamon blend, which was strong but really good. We also found that they went well with the last bit of leftover lime glaze that had been abandoned in the back of the fridge (yes, it kept that long! 10 seconds in the microwave and it was like new).
As always, I tested one as soon as they were done. It was so fluffy and delicious that I had to try another just to make sure the first wasn’t a fluke.
Nope, not a fluke. Give these a try for breakfast this weekend! A muffin is a perfectly legitimate, grown-up breakfast food — you can tell yourself that you’re not really eating doughnuts OR cake. Your secret is safe with me.
August 1, 2010, at 10:00 pm
I recently ran across this recipe on a friend’s blog and knew I had to try it! It assembles pretty quickly, and then you can set it aside to bake whenever you’re ready.
If you are like me and tend to keep a lot of baking basics (flour, butter, eggs, etc.) on hand, you’ll probably only need to buy graham crackers, marshmallow fluff, and chocolate. I went generic on the first two and bought Ghirardelli semi-sweet baking pastilles instead of Hershey bars. I actually bought two tubs of fluff (7 oz each) and needed only one, so I ended up with enough ingredients for two batches at a total of $7.40 plus the minimal value of the staples I had on hand. The bars were so good that we only got two nights out of an 8×8 pan, but that’s still pretty inexpensive.
 I really had to work to get half of the dough spread out across the entire pan. It wouldn’t hurt to double the dough if you like thick cookies — the end product was much thinner than I expected.
When I got to this point I realized why the original recipe calls for Hershey bars — spreading the fluff is a challenge! Remarkably, with a little care almost all of my chocolates stayed where I had pressed them gently into the dough, but next time I think I’ll flip the middle layers and just sprinkle semi-sweet or dark chips across the fluff.
 This is another reason it would be good to increase the dough recipe — unless you are a master dough-handler, you are just not going to make this pretty. It’s so soft that it’s very difficult to work with in pieces of any size, though you could try refrigerating it first if you’re more patient than I am. After I took that photo, I filled in the cracks a little more with what was left over, so when it came out of the oven it looked like this:
 It smells wonderful baking, and the consistency reminded me of s’mores Pop Tarts. I’m looking forward to trying a variation on this recipe with the leftover crackers, chocolate, and fluff. We microwaved our leftover pieces the second night, but first I took a bite of mine while it was still cold from the fridge, and I have to say it was pretty awesome that way, too.
July 11, 2010, at 10:00 pm
Anyone can enjoy this smoothie, but the squeamish may not want to know how I made it.
One of the nice things about smoothies is that you can use them to hide overripe fruit or lots of other produce that is starting to go south. When I pulled out all the ingredients for this one, the strawberries were starting to get moldy and some of them were a little mushy. I cut off a few of the mushiest spots, pulled off the worst-looking leaves, and gently rubbed the mold away as I rinsed them. Obviously you may not want to do this if you have mold allergies, and definitely not if the mold has been growing a while, but I knew these were recent so I took a chance and suffered no ill effects. Use your judgment.
I recently made a smoothie with ice for the first time in a while, and I was disappointed at how the addition of ice seemed to blunt the flavor of the fruit, so this time I went back to blending my fresh stuff and then adding frozen fruit. It came out perfectly, and it really was that red!
So here’s what was in it: a quarter of a papaya with skin, a thick slice of pineapple (core included), a banana, a ton of strawberries, a handful of fresh blueberries, a couple handfuls of mixed frozen fruit and frozen blueberries, and a splash of milk. It’s generally the same stuff I always use, but much heavier on the strawberries than usual because I wanted to use them up before they got worse.
By the way, happy birthday to Mark! We celebrated Saturday night at El Meson, a Cuban-Spanish-Mexican restaurant that is one of our favorites, but our brunch plans today were thwarted when we realized Beaver’s would be packed with World Cup watchers. Oh well!
July 8, 2010, at 10:00 pm
Our love affair with brown butter began with the brown butter ice cream at Beaver’s. Where had brown butter been all my life?
So I made financiers. Delicious! I need more brown butter in my life. I think about this often (I really do!). I knew it was only a matter of time before I would have to master brown butter ice cream. One of our favorite waiters at Beaver’s assured us that they make it by ‘just pouring the brown butter in.’ Though I would love to believe it is that easy, this sounded unlikely, so I looked at recipes and they were all a little daunting. I delayed until one day I could no longer not try to make brown butter ice cream.
When I make something, it’s usually because I want to eat it as soon as possible, ice cream being the sort-of exception since it needs to harden, though you could eat it right away if you wanted to. So when I look at a recipe and see that I have to do this:
and this:
and this:
and this:
and this:
and then I STILL have to refrigerate it before I can get to this:
…well, that typically I don’t even read that far before I’m on to the next recipe. But did I mention how much we love brown butter? I was expecting big things. I was going to be a hero in my house! No longer would we be denied brown butter ice cream on Mondays when Beaver’s is closed!
Now, the ice cream was delicious. Possibly one of the most delicious I have made, and the texture was perfect. But it did not taste like brown butter, not even a little. It didn’t even taste like unbrown butter, just sugar and cream. I’m not sure what happened. I browned the butter very cautiously and pushed it as far as I was comfortable doing without burning it. I immediately tasted a little and it tasted correct, so what gives? The recipe said something about straining, which I didn’t do because most of the flavor in brown butter comes from the solids. I would say, “Oh, I’ll just double the butter next time,” but I have read too many tales of brown butter ice cream gone awry because someone didn’t account correctly for the extra fat the butter was adding.
I am not giving up, however. This obsession demands no less than persistence (unless the ice cream shop up the street starts offering brown butter, in which case I will declare victory and keep a dozen pints in the freezer at all times). Next time I’ll probably take a page from this and attempt to get browned solids from heavy cream. Anyone have any other ideas about what I might do differently?
July 4, 2010, at 10:00 pm
Happy Independence Day! Today I am declaring temporary independence from editing my Hawaii photos, and sharing something delicious instead. I do that every time I take a trip somewhere — I shoot hundreds of photos and then come home and burn out a fraction of the way through the resizing/editing process. It has taught me to be more selective about determining what I like enough to edit, but I still have to categorize and go through all of them in the first place! Thank goodness for digital.
The recipe for this summery cake was delivered to my inbox a few weeks ago via the King Arthur newsletter — the source of most of my favorite baked goods recipes. If your sweet tooth runs your life like mine does, you really should subscribe. Occasionally there is a recipe for something savory, but you can just delete those emails and nobody will have to know!
This cake is inspired by the lime rickey, a cousin of the mojito. I think you could dress it up any number of ways and end up with something amazing. King Arthur suggested a raspberry sauce, but I’m not a fan of fruit with my dessert (wait, isn’t lime a fruit? Don’t worry, I didn’t use any limes. The recipe gives you the option of using lime oil, which unlike limes, I already had). I considered a ginger glaze, but I feel like I always do ginger with lime, so this time I decided to keep it simple.
I opted to use a bundt pan instead of the recommended 9×13 because it always makes me happy to see something pretty on my cake plate. Plan on about 45 minutes of cooking time if you go this route. And instead of the glaze they recommend, I whipped the following until it was uniform and stiff:
- 4 tbsp (1/2 stick) unsalted butter, melted
- 2 tbsp milk
- 1/4 tsp lime oil
- 2 cups confectioner’s sugar
I love the crunch of sparkling sugar on top of baked goods, so I mixed half a cup with lime oil as recommended and sprinkled it on the glaze. I had maybe half a cup of glaze and half of the sparkling sugar left when I decided the cake was frosted enough.
So how did the cake turn out? We both had seconds on the first night and Mark declared it one of his favorite recipes yet. He says that about almost everything (except for the one time I made a cake with Crisco that had gone bad, whoops), but this really is a very good cake. I was a little worried that it would be too candy-like with the lime glaze, and it is very sweet, but not overpowering.
Even if you are a purist who insists on zesting actual limes, this simple cake would be a great last-minute treat that you could whip up and serve with about an hour’s notice. It’s pretty moist, so I think you could even skip the glaze and whip some heavy cream. See what you think!
June 1, 2010, at 10:00 pm
Homemade ice cream is best in months with three or more letters in their name. Our first batch of the summer is honey rosemary with a citrus twist. Rosemary is one of my favorite flavors and this ice cream tastes nice and light on a hot day.
You’ll need:
- 2 cups heavy cream
- 1 cup milk (whole preferred but use whatever you have)
- 1/2 cup honey
- 1/2 cup sugar
- 4 eggs
- a couple shakes of salt
- 2 large sprigs of rosemary
- 1/8 tsp Fiori di Silicia (this is where the citrus flavor comes from)
I usually prefer no-heat ice cream recipes because I’m lazy, but this one is worth the extra effort. Heat the cream, milk, honey, 1/4 cup sugar, salt, and Fiori di Sicilia, stirring over low heat until warm and completely mixed. Add the rosemary, cover, and steep for 30 minutes — you can do this off the heat to be safe, or you can do this as low as your stove will go if you like a strong rosemary flavor. I let it go without heat for the first half and then add it back in for the last 10-15 minutes.
Chill the mixture after it’s done. Don’t be impatient/rushed and not let it cool completely, or it won’t get cold enough in the ice cream maker for enough ice crystals to form. You won’t get enough nucleation once it goes into the freezer, and you will have to wait much longer for it to harden. Er, or so I hear.
When the liquid mixture is done chilling, whip the eggs and gradually whip in the remaining 1/4 cup of sugar, then whip in the cream mixture and follow your ice cream maker’s directions (we use the ice cream attachment for our KitchenAid mixer and transfer the ice cream into two chilled Zak Designs pint containers).
Some people add the eggs when they’re heating the initial mixture, but you have to be cautious not to get it too hot. You can also omit the eggs entirely, which I did the first time I made this, but eggs will give you a smoother ice cream and will make it melt just a little more slowly. Homemade ice cream melts so darn fast anyway that I’ll take any advantage I can get.
What’s your favorite homemade flavor?
May 16, 2010, at 10:00 pm
I seldom make chocolate chip cookies because they never live up to my fantasy — moist and THICK. A cookie can’t be too thick. So I was hoping that the recipe by Wendy Gaynor of Ruby et Violette would be the cookies of my dreams.
Recipe!
They were delicious and moist, and (Mom, stop reading) I licked every bit of dough from the beater (I told you not to read that. I promise I did not get salmonella!), but they did flatten out more than I’d hoped — especially the ones that had to bake directly on the pan because I ran out of parchment, oops. Also, I skipped the step where you refrigerate the dough because chocolate chip cookies are comfort food, and I am not interested in waiting OVERNIGHT for comfort food. Seriously, who has that kind of self-control? But maybe it would have kept them thicker, guess I need to try again to be sure. Oh, and the recipe is supposed to yield 36-72 cookies, but in this house, it yields closer to two dozen. I’m sure that had nothing to do with it. :)
The blog where I first stumbled across this recipe suggested that four cups of chocolate chunks were too many and I scoffed — does not the fact that two bags of Whole Foods’ dark chocolate chunks contain four cups plus just enough for a snack while they bake indicate that four is perfect? — but I have to admit that I agree. If you regard the cookie as merely a vehicle for chocolate, then four will work for you, but if you want to enjoy the cookie as well, scale back.
Anyone have a recipe that might work better for me, even if I cheat on some of the steps?
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