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By Amber, on May 26, 2011, at 8:00 pm When Mark and I were in Honolulu last June with friends, we had one especially spectacular dinner at BLT Steak. It was one of those occasions where you order way more appetizers and sides than you know you’ll need, just because it all sounds so good. Imagine our surprise when the waiter brought out the bread course, which consisted of popovers the size of footballs! Well, maybe Nerf footballs. But trust me, they were huge.
BLT brings the popovers out with a little card that tells you exactly how to make them, and enough people have fallen in love with those popovers that you can easily find the recipe online. I do have a popover pan, but you can make them in a muffin tin if necessary. They won’t be quite as enormous, but that means you can eat more, right?
The pan was a gift last Christmas, but I put off making them because I was sort of nervous about it. I have read that you have to follow the recipe just so, and I was afraid to do something wrong and end up with unpoppedovers. Finally, my craving for popovers was too great to deny, and I decided I was going for it. I halved the recipe, which turned out to be a good call because apparently my pan is not quite as enormous as BLT’s.
If you have never had a popover, they are airy, eggy, and super-moist. BLT adds gruyere to theirs, which is delicious, but they are just as good plain. We used parmesan on some of them, but it doesn’t melt like gruyere, so it flakes off and is a little messier.
I couldn’t fit all of the batter in my pan at once, so I stored the remainder in the refrigerator overnight and let it come to room temperature the next day while dinner was reheating. I don’t think you’d want to try using it cold, since part of the instructions are to heat the pan before you add the batter, but at least I’ve proven to myself that popovers aren’t nearly the fuss they appear to be! We don’t eat a lot of bread these days, but I think we may be eating a lot more of these…
Happy Memorial Day weekend! I will be poolside, so posting will resume on Tuesday. Be safe, have fun, and eat something delicious!
By Amber, on March 31, 2011, at 10:54 pm Lard is one of those retro ingredients that supposedly made everything taste incredible back in the day. These days most recipes use vegetable shortening where lard would have been used (vegetable shortening is scary!), so you have to hunt down fresh lard and possibly render it yourself. Were our ancestors more deserving of delicious food than we are? I think not. I decided to take a shortcut and order some rendered lard online to find out what the fuss is all about. And since I was going to have to get it shipped all the way from Minnesota, I decided I might as well buy enough to fill their smallest box. Presenting eight pounds of rendered leaf lard:
I stuck the larger piece in the freezer, put the smaller in the fridge, and immediately set about determining what I’d cook first. Something called ‘lard cake‘ seemed an obvious choice, and something for which I already had the ingredients. I got the condensed milk out first. We have a bunch of this because Mark uses it to make Vietnamese coffee.
Did you know that you can make caramel by boiling a can of condensed milk? I’ve never tried it, but apparently someone did and then decided they’d bought more than they needed:
Or maybe it got stuck on a truck in the Texas heat, who knows. I moved on to another can, which was normal.
Next, the unveiling of the lard:
I wanted to smell and taste it. Smelled maybe just the faintest bit porky, definitely an animal type of smell but not an unpleasant one, and tasted the same. I cut chunks of it and packed them into a measuring cup, then processed the batter normally.
At this point, I must admit I got nervous. The batter looked completely normal, but it smelled like lard. Was this going to be any good? Were we going to be eating pork cake? But, lo! The lard smell gave way to delicious cake smell as it baked. Thank goodness.
Okay, so something weird did happen that I can’t explain, but I don’t think it’s the lard’s fault. I baked it for 45 minutes, which is longer than the recipe calls for, and sliced a piece. Hmm, very moist. Mark likes his baked goods undercooked, so I decided to live with it — until I sliced a second piece, which was not so much undercooked as it was batter. Back into the oven, which had mostly cooled down, for another 45 minutes, after which it was perfect. So does this cake take 45 minutes, 90 minutes, or something in-between? I don’t know what to tell you. But I can tell you it was moist, dense, and delicious, even after we ate half and went out to dinner a couple nights in a row, leaving the other half on the counter and coming back to it almost a week after it was baked.
And the surprise caramel? We found a use for that:
It was so good, it could only be serendipity.
If you have any ideas for what I should make next with lard, I’d love to hear them!
By Amber, on December 26, 2010, at 10:00 pm …is not another cake ball how-to. Everyone is making these. People have devoted entire businesses to selling them (though I think most of those people call them ‘cake truffles’). So let’s just meditate together on the greatness of them, instead.
I like to use a devil’s food mix and a dark chocolate frosting (yes! I buy preprocessed ingredients for these, and I love it!) for the balls themselves. The first time I made them I just melted 12 oz of Scharffen Berger 70% and 65% together for the coating. I can’t be bothered to temper chocolate, because I hate multiple steps and because I have a refrigerator where I am happy to keep the finished balls for the duration of their very temporary existence. But the problem was that I ran out of chocolate. So this time I used the ganache recipe that I use to top chocolate cheesecake — 6 oz of 70% chocolate, 1 tbsp sugar, and 3/4 cup heavy cream — and doubled it. I had more than enough.
They remind me of doughnut holes at the uncoated stage. It takes ALL of my willpower not to just start popping them in my mouth…
…especially given how frustrating I find the coating process. I am going to come up with something better than what I’ve tried so far, or I am just going to start eating them as-is. Directly from the bowl, with a giant spoon. It’s win-win, as I see it.
What’s your favorite cake ball flavor combination? I might consider breaking out of my triple-chocolate rut.
By Amber, on December 19, 2010, at 10:38 pm Today was delicious! It started with pomegranate:
And progressed to chocolate:
After breakfast I took my photo for MAC Me Over (did you enter?) and then did a whole lot of Christmas baking. Today was cheesecake day. I learned that making two cheesecakes in the mixer at once is not advisable — I’m a little surprised that my beater blade survived 64 oz of cream cheese at once, but it did! I have some other treats to make, but there weren’t enough hours today.
Of course, I got plenty of help from the Pea. When I’m cooking and she goes missing, I usually know where to look for her:
I don’t know what is so fun about getting trapped in small, dark spaces, but I guess we all need hobbies.
By Amber, on December 7, 2010, at 10:03 pm After my last cheesecake experiment, I was eager to play around some more with the recipe. My parents bought us a few more ramekins for Thanksgiving, because I wanted to serve molten cakes in them and my sister also wanted to serve the five gallons of soup she made for five people in them (we ended up talking her into bowls; our small bowls are a dainty 23 oz). With Thanksgiving come and gone, I thought why not fill all of those ramekins with cheesecake?
This time I made the cream cheese/sugar/egg base and added a tablespoon of vanilla before dividing it in half. The bottom half got the usual chocolate treatment, and the upper half got 3/4 cup mini chocolate chips (mini because the ramekins are only 8 oz). I spooned 2 tablespoons of the crust mixture into each ramekin and baked them for 5 minutes to set:
Next I spooned a glob of the chocolate layer into each and leveled it. Even though I had ‘set’ the crust, it still wanted to pull up a little, so I found the best way was to press the back of a spoon gently on the top and rotate the ramekin to spread the batter.
Then I added the top layer. This one was a lot easier to spread — it was thinner, so it was self-spreading to a degree.
Here’s where the recipe needs a little tweaking: I used 2 tbsp crust in each because I wanted it thick, and that filled 8 ramekins. But the filling was enough for 11 ramekins. On top of that, I only had 10 clean and empty. So I made the 11th in a jumbo silicone baking cup and called it my test cake. I call that ‘baker’s privilege’!
I baked them for 25 minutes at 350, which was just right. The test cake went into the freezer for about 30 minutes to set up before I ate it — if you’re in a rush to serve them, try that and you should be good. Otherwise, just stick them in the fridge and you’ve got dessert for a week:
As much as I love a giant slice of cake, there is something satisfying about finishing a container of something, and a portion like a ramekin is a good way to keep yourself in check during the gluttony of the holiday season…if you can resist eating more than one at a time.
By Amber, on October 28, 2010, at 10:56 pm Halloween season calls for something dark, delicious, and maybe a little creepy:
I have made this chocolate cheesecake many times with great success, and I was itching to play with the recipe a little. What I did was blend the non-chocolate ingredients of the filling, divide it in half, flavor the halves separately, and then layer them over the crust. I used just over two tablespoons of organic matcha, smelling and tasting as I went. Once it baked, the sugar sort of overpowered the matcha, so next time I’ll try at least three. I’d almost rather go too bitter than come up short again because the chocolate should balance it. That’s my theory, anyway.
The chocolate wafers in the crust recipe, by the way, are these. If you’ve never used them, they’re often found in the ice cream section, with the cones and sauces. I bought a package and somebody ate most of them, leaving me less than I needed for the cheesecake. Our grocery store hasn’t gotten a new delivery of these wafers in weeks, so I scraped and crushed some Oreos to substitute. Let me tell you: maybe don’t do that. It tastes delicious, but there was some unusual dripping out of the bottom of the springform pan that I use for cheesecake, making a smoky mess in the bottom of the oven. I’m just glad it didn’t drip into the homemade mac & cheese that I was cooking below!
The sugar skull is by Wilton and came in a pack of a dozen. They looked so cute all around the perimeter of the cake, but I was too impatient with the ganache and it came out a little ugly, so no photo. Maybe next year!
By Amber, on October 26, 2010, at 10:00 pm Last week there was a question about whether one of our speakers would be speaking this week. I volunteered to take her place and give my first speech, but then toward the end of the week it looked like she was back on, so I didn’t work on what I had written at all. Well, at the eleventh hour today, it was determined that I would speak after all! I made some quick edits and practiced all the way home from work, in front of the cat, and then all the way to the meeting. And guess what?
Taking a chance paid off! Except my speech was about being an introvert, and now the other members don’t believe I am one. I told them I only ‘turn it on’ for interviews and presentations!
Confession: I sort of bribed the jury.
The green ones are ginger-lime, from this recipe. The white ones are pumpkin with cream cheese frosting, from here. I highly recommend both.
I didn’t really do this to bribe the jury — I didn’t even think I would be speaking when I made these! The truth is that I went a little crazy in the Halloween/baking section at Michael’s last month, which pretty much meant I would be baking a whole lot of cupcakes and mini-cupcakes for Halloween. Tomorrow night I will frost the ones that I’m dropping off at the kennel on Thursday. The staff there is awesome and I like to treat them once in a while.
Who is on your ‘treat’ list this year? What about tricks?
By Amber, on 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.
By Amber, on 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!
By Amber, on 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.
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