10.29.07
Posted in Cake, Chocolate, Dessert, Foodblog Events at 8:30 am by julie
Well, fellow Daring Bakers, it seems we can do anything at all if we put our minds to it, even inspire the Boston Red Sox to their second World Series sweep in 4 years! The collective power of hundreds of Bostini Cream Pies baked over the course of the month was no match for my solitary, yet tasty, rocky road tart on Saturday. For those of you who haven’t been in on it, the Boston-related dessert I mentioned yesterday was indeed this month’s Daring Bakers challenge: the Bostini Cream Pie.
Because I saved this challenge for the end of the month, on a weekend when we already had 75% of a decadent brownie tart already in the fridge, I decided to cut the recipe in half. This was no minor feat, as you’ll see if you take a gander at the original recipe: odd measurements all over the place! I also decided, as allowed, to make a substitution for the orange juice and zest that flavors the chiffon cake element. In their place, I decided to use coconut milk with a bit of desiccated coconut and a touch of coconut extract for oomph. We’re not fans of the chocolate-citrus combo, but chocolate-coconut is another animal altogether.
I was a little worried about my chiffon cakes because of the abovementioned reduction and substitution. I’ve also never had as much trouble separating eggs as I did for this recipe: several of the yolks broke, and I kept having to fish little wisps of it out of my whites. As a result, my whites didn’t whip up quite as much as I might have liked, and the batter seemed kind of runny and flat. I dripped it into a muffin mold and several small ramekins, and crossed my fingers.
As you can see, I needn’t have worried. My little cakes puffed up nicely and browned just slightly on top, though the ramekins, being larger, did need several extra minutes to bake. They came out tender and moist, with a light coconut scent.
Next, I tackled the custard. Since I’ve had quite a few custards separate on me, I was more than a little nervous about this one, but it gave me absolutely no problems, other than trying to figure out appropriate vessels in which to pour it. I did use vanilla extract added at the end, rather than a bean; but to my credit, it was Sonoma Syrup Co. Vanilla Crush, so I still had those appealing little flecks of bean.
Once everything else was ready to go, the chocolate sauce was the work of a minute. I toasted some coconut for a garnish and put everything together. We dug in during the 9th inning of Game 4, and it was a more-than-fitting way to celebrate the Red Sox victory. As rich as this dessert was, it seemed very light, and we both really enjoyed it. The coconut flavoring in the cake was to our tastes, and if I may say so, I thought my toasted coconut garnish added much-needed textural crunch in an otherwise pillowy-soft dessert.
Thanks so much to Mary of Alpineberry for choosing such a delicious—and very aptly timed—baking challenge. You can find the recipe for this fine dessert at her blog here. And be sure to check out the 200-odd other Daring Bakers’ versions of this dessert on our blogroll: I wasn’t very creative with my presentation, but from the previews I’ve seen, there were some spectacularly beautiful Bostinis made this month!
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10.28.07
Posted in Chocolate, Dessert, Pies & Tarts at 9:59 pm by julie
I grew up in the Denver area, and Jeremy grew up mostly in the Boston area, so you can imagine that we were excited to see the Red Sox play the Colorado Rockies in the World Series this year. Since we were rooting for both teams, I decided to make Rockies- and Red Sox-related desserts for us to eat during the games. I started last night with a rocky road brownie tart, in hopes, I admit, of boosting the Rockies out of their slump. It didn’t quite work, as is now clear—at least they got several runs during the 5th inning while we were eating our slices of tart.
The tart, if you’ll pardon the obvious baseball pun, was a home run. I used a thawed disk of chocolate shortbread crust that was leftover from the August Daring Bakers Challenge. It resuscitated nicely, and saved me some time in the kitchen. The tart filling was basically just a loose brownie batter, made with organic Green and Black’s 72% dark baking chocolates supplemented with some semisweet chocolate chips. It was a little hard to tell when baking was done, even though the batter puffed up beautifully. The rounded top also made it difficult to keep the mini-marshmallows in place on top of it; I ended up having to place individual marshmallows around the edges to prevent them from rolling off willy-nilly. Finally, the broiler in my oven totally sucks: it took over 10 minutes to brown the marshmallows, and that is just pitiful. If your broiler actually works, it should only take a minute or two. Sorry, Rockies… there’s always next year.
Rocky Road Brownie Tart
1/3 recipe of chocolate shortbread crust (recipe here)
1/2 C unsalted butter, cut into chunks
4 oz bittersweet chocolate, chopped
2 oz semisweet chocolate, chopped
1 1/2 C sugar
3 large eggs
2 tsp vanilla extract
1/8 tsp salt
3/4 C all purpose flour
1/2 C chopped walnuts, toasted, plus more for topping
Mini-marshmallows
Preheat oven to 325F. Press or pat crust into a 10″ tart pan; dock with a fork. Cover with parchment and fill with pie weights or beans. Blind bake for 15 minutes and allow to cool while making the filling.
Stir butter and chocolates in medium saucepan over low heat until melted; cool slightly. Beat sugar, eggs, vanilla and salt in medium bowl until fluffy, about 4 minutes. Whisk in chocolate mixture, then mix in flour and nuts. Pour batter into crust. Bake until filling puffs around edges and tester inserted into center comes out with very moist crumbs attached, about 35 minutes.
Top tart with a single layer of mini-marshmallows and sprinkle with walnuts. Return to oven and broil for several minutes, until marshmallows are puffed and golden brown. (Watch carefully to make sure they don’t burn.) Transfer to rack and cool completely, or as long as you can stand to wait.
Sources: Adapted from the Daring Bakers August 2007 Challenge, and Epicurious.
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10.27.07
Posted in Breakfast, Fruits at 10:13 am by julie
My birthday was last weekend. For the occasion, I had hoped to bake the pumpkin butterscotch cake made so beautifully by Peabody back in August. I had all the ingredients at hand, but alas, no time. We spent the whole weekend at a lovely beach house in Lincoln City, with my brother-in-law and his family. There was absolutely no cooking, just visits to the Newport Aquarium, baseball playoffs on television, several walks on the beach, and lots of energetic playing with 4 kids, 2 ferrets, and a very happy Shepherd puppy.
When we came back home, we stopped by Konditorei for a few slices of creamy cheesecake (chocolate hazelnut for me, pumpkin for Jeremy). That totally made up for the lack of birthday pastries, but I still had to use up my buttermilk. We decided on an easy breakfast-for-dinner meal last night, and I made a batch of buttermilk waffles with warm sauteed apples.
These waffles, from Cooks Illustrated, came out incredibly fluffy, so much that they threatened to pop my waffle maker open during cooking. My only quibble was the addition of the melted butter to the buttermilk. My buttermilk was straight from the fridge, and the warm butter instantly solidified into clumps when I tried to mix the two together. Either bring your buttermilk to room temp and cool the melted butter, or if you’re lazy like me, just add the butter to the batter after combining the wet and dry ingredients, but before folding in the egg whites. The batter is thick, and seemed to benefit from tempering with a small spoonful of whipped egg white before attempting to fold in the rest. We got two full-sized waffles and a dinky one from this recipe, so you may want to double it. I’ve noted my slight adjustments in the recipe below.
Buttermilk Waffles with Maple Cinnamon Apples
1 egg, separated
1 C flour
1 tsp cornmeal
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1 C buttermilk
1 T butter, melted
Heat waffle iron. Whisk dry ingredients together in a medium bowl. Whisk yolk with buttermilk in a measuring cup. In a small bowl, beat egg white until it holds a stiff peak. Add liquid ingredients to dry ingredients while gently mixing with a rubber spatula; mix in melted butter last. Toward end of mixing, use a folding motion to incorporate ingredients; temper batter with a spoonful of egg white, then very gently fold remaining egg white into batter. Spread appropriate amount of batter onto waffle iron. Following manufacturer’s instructions, cook waffle until golden brown, 2 to 5 minutes. Serve immediately. Serve hot on a warm plate, topped with maple cinnamon apples. Makes 2-3 waffles.
Source: Cooks Illustrated, via Astray Recipes
Maple Cinnamon Apples
2 T unsalted butter
3 large Golden Delicious or Jonacrisp apples, peeled, cored, cut into 1/2″-thick slices
1 T plus 1/2 C pure maple syrup
1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
Melt butter in large nonstick skillet over medium-high heat. Add apples and 1 tablespoon maple syrup; sauté until apples are tender, about 5 minutes. Mix in remaining 1/2 cup maple syrup and cinnamon.
Source: Epicurious
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10.26.07
Posted in Dinner, Meats, Sausage at 9:26 am by julie
I’ve neglected the blog for far too long, but to be honest, not much of note has made its way out of our kitchen of late. The most notable entries would include beef goulash with dumplings (made with leftover roast beef), pork loin braised in milk, and some saucepan mac and cheese with prosciutto, peas, white and yellow cheddar, and some garlicky toasted bread crumbs on top. I guess there were some pretty spectacular bittersweet brownies from Dorie Greenspan’s Baking: From My Home to Yours
, but we ate those almost before there was time to photograph them.
This is the sort of homey meal that sounds good to me this time of year. And it doesn’t hurt that I had everything on hand already in the house. I’ve made this recipe several times before, but it’s been a few years, I think. I pulled the kielbasa from the freezer to thaw without thinking about the extra hours’ boiling time, and since it was already after 6pm, I decided to skip that step. (I’m actually not sure what it is supposed to accomplish, other than perhaps defatting the meat a bit.) My sausage was light turkey kielbasa, and we didn’t notice any difference in taste or texture from the skipped step.
Sweet Polish Sausage
2 lb kielbasa, cut into 1″ chunks
1/3 C Worcestershire sauce
1 T lemon juice
1 medium onion, chopped
1/2 C brown sugar
dash of hot sauce
2/3 C water
Place sausage in a saucepan with water to cover. Simmer on low for 1 hour. Drain and set aside. Preheat the oven to 350F. In the same pan, mix Worcestershire sauce, lemon juice, onion, sugar, hot sauce and water. Bring to a boil, stirring. Place sausage in baking dish and cover with sauce. Bake for 1 hour, then serve with mashed potatoes.
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10.08.07
Posted in Bread, Breakfast, Foodblog Events at 11:22 am by julie
Before moving on to the top secret October challenge for the Daring Bakers, I had to make one more batch of cinnamon rolls, and I know they won’t be my last. In this particular case, though, I had offered to bring treats for a staff meeting the Friday before the challenge was posted, knowing I would be able to bring fresh cinnamon rolls and sticky buns. Because the meeting was postponed until the 5th, I ended up making a fresh double-batch of cinnamon rolls Thursday night. No longer under the constrictions of the Daring Bakers guidelines, I made a few slight tweaks here and there, and thought I would document the differences between my first batch of rolls and these.
As I mentioned above, I made a double-batch of the dough. I got it started at lunch-time so that it could rise over the course of the afternoon, but that meant a bit of time constraint in the preparation as well. I didn’t bother heating the buttermilk this time, but otherwise used all the same ingredients in the dough, and mixed it in my stand mixer until it came time to switch to the dough hook. I don’t have a huge mixer, and it quickly became clear that the amount of dough was going to overwhelm the hook, so I had to pull it all out and knead by hand. I added quite a bit of additional flour as I was kneading to prevent stickiness, and recruited Jeremy for some muscle. By the time we were through, I had a dough that felt similar to the first, if a bit less silky, and which windowpaned only with a bit of tearing; the original dough was ultra-smooth and pliable, windowpaning without even threatening to tear. I separated the dough equally into two bowls, got the dishwasher running, and left for the afternoon.
When I returned, the dough had risen very little. I did some proofing in the oven (and then on top of the oven, as I had a sirloin tip roast waiting for its turn), and by the time I was satisfied with the rise, the dough was nicely warm under my hands. I proceeded to try and roll out one ball into a rectangle, and found that it was much more difficult to do this time around. I think the overnight rise of the first batch allowed the gluten in it to relax completely, and it rolled out with absolutely no problem. This second batch kept snapping back, and my rectangles were more small and misshapen than I had anticipated, not to mention full of air bubbles that got in the way. I started getting anxious that I would overwork the dough and make my rolls tough, so eventually I gave up and spread on the filling.
This time around I adjusted the filling, because the rolls weren’t as gooey as I could have hoped. I just softened up some butter and spread it on with a spatula before sprinkling on my cinnamon-sugar. The sugar mixture ended up as part granulated white and part organic sucanat, because I ran out of the former. I pinwheeled the dough without too many problems, and lost less filling to the counter-top, a result of the butter’s adhering properties. At the same time, the rolls didn’t seal themselves shut as well as the first batch, which I chalk up to the butter as well. I arranged 15 slices on a silpat for their second rise, and tucked the last 6 into a glass casserole in the fridge for Jeremy on Saturday morning.
When the roast beef was done and the oven had cooled back down to a reasonable proofing temp, I popped the tray back in to facilitate the rise, which again seemed to take longer this time around. Eventually I was satisfied and baked off the rolls. They were nice and fluffy out of the oven, if not quite as large as my first batch. I rubbed their tops with a bit more butter, let them cool a bit, and packed them away. In the morning I made up some glaze (vanilla instead of lemon extract this time, for Jeremy) and drizzled the rolls thoroughly, hoping to impart a greater goo factor to them because they stiffened up quite a bit overnight. They went over well at work, and were nearly all eaten up, but when I sampled one, it was definitely on the dry side and consequently not as decadent as last weekend’s batch. A visit to the microwave made a vast improvement.
I think the biggest difference was in the kneading. My stand mixer, despite its mellowdramatic suicide attempts, did a much better job of kneading the dough than my husband and I could. I think all of my difficulties and the resulting texture flowed from that source, though warming the buttermilk may indeed have affected the dough’s initial rise as well. I’ll stick a little closer to my original method of making these rolls when I make them next, but I might play around with increasing the percentage of sucanat in the filling, because I think it added a complexity of flavor to the rolls. Now if I could only persuade myself to get up early enough in the morning to have fresh cinnamon rolls ready before lunchtime…
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10.05.07
Posted in Beef, Dinner, Meats, Sides, Veggies at 9:32 pm by julie
I haven’t done much in the way of cooking this week. After baking off my sticky buns on Sunday, we made a trip up to Ikea to get a bookcase, and on the way back home, we were involved in a 6-car wreck on I-205. My husband wrote more about it on our main blog, but everyone walked away safely. Our brand new Prius, however, was all mangled and won’t be fixed for another month.
Nearly a week later, we’re still feeling the effects of the accident in our sore necks, backs, and shoulders. I’ve had headaches most of the week as well, so cooking has been kept to a minimum. We made a trip to Costco the day before the accident, though, and had a halibut fillet and a big sirloin tip roast in the fridge that couldn’t wait too long for attention.
On Tuesday, I gathered my wits and put together a tasty and fairly simple dinner: roasted halibut with a walnut-panko crust and penne dressed with an arugula pesto sauce. The halibut recipe was a quick one from Epicurious; my only adjustment was to adhere the crumb topping with a smear of whole-grain mustard instead of butter. Our halibut pieces also took quite a bit longer to cook through than called for, as at 8 minutes they registered an internal temperature of about 55 degrees. You know it isn’t a good sign when your supposedly-cooked meat still registers lower than room temperature coming out of a 400-degree oven. We ended up reducing the oven to 375F and letting it go for another 10 minutes or so, until the meat was about 140F inside, and that was just right for our palates.
The pasta was just penne tossed with a walnut-arugula pesto from Elise at Simply Recipes. Because the fish took longer to cook than anticipated, I ended up adding a splash of cream to the pasta to keep it from drying out, and although it was a little cold in the end, it tasted very good and complemented the fish nicely.
We also had in the fridge a round tip roast weighing in at over 5 pounds, so that was our dinner on Thursday night. I think I might need to work on educating Jeremy about what meals constitute a little too much time and effort for a weeknight. This meal would probably go as a holiday dinner for some people, or at the very least a Sunday supper. I kept things as simple as I could, but we still didn’t eat before 9pm.
The roast was stuffed with slices of garlic and drizzled with Worcestershire sauce. I also added a cup or so of beef broth to the bottom of the roasting pan for added moisture. I was generally following this recipe, but my roast was much larger than the one called for, so it took quite a bit longer to register 150F. While it cooked, I worked on another batch of cinnamon rolls (more on that next time) and took on the mashers and Brussels sprouts. The sprouts recipe is worth mentioning because it is one of my favorite ways to eat them. It is on the fiddly side because you have to disassemble every single sprout, but the flavor is fantastic, and of course it cooks nice and evenly too.
Skillet Brussel Sprouts
Lidia suggests serving these with a lemon sauce, but we’ve never bothered making it because we love these sprouts just as they are, all nutty and garlicky.
1-1/2 pounds fresh, firm Brussels sprouts
3 T extra-virgin olive oil
4 plump garlic cloves, peeling and sliced (about 3 T)
1/4 tsp red pepper flakes
1/4 tsp salt
Rinse and drain the sprouts. Working over a big bowl with a sharp paring knife, cut off (and discard) a 1/4-inch or so of the base of each sprout, freeing the outer leaves. Now stick the point of the knife into what’s left of the base and slice out the tiny core, in one cone-shaped piece — just as you would cut out the bigger core of a cabbage or cauliflower. This loosens the inner leaves. Slice the small core in slivers and drop them in the bowl.
Begin peeling off the outermost leaves: discard only wilted or blemished leaves; drop all the fresh dark green leaves, even thick ones, into the bowl. Keep peeling off the leaves until you reach the tiny ones that can’t be pulled apart. Cut this bundle in slivers and drop them into the bowl. When all are done you will have a large fluffy pile of leaves.
Put the oil and the garlic in the skillet and set over medium heat. Let the garlic cook and caramelize lightly for 4 minutes or so, shaking the pan now and then.
Dump in the sprout leaves, shake the pan to spread them out, then sprinkle the salt and pepper flakes all over.
Cover the skillet and let the leaves cook and wilt for 4 to 5 minutes, giving the pan an occasional shake, then uncover and turn them well with a big spoon or tongs. The leaves should be sizzling but not browning — lower the heat if necessary — then cover again.
Cook another 4 to 5 minutes until the leaves are soft, greatly reduced in volume but still green and glistening. Serve the Brussels sprouts hot right from the skillet or turn them onto a warm platter.
Source: Lidia’s Family Table, by Lidia Bastianich
Update 10/6/07: We used some of the leftover beef to make Philly-style cheesesteak sandwiches for dinner. Jeremy went and got me some green bell peppers, provolone and hoagie buns to make them, sweet man. I caramelized some peppers and onions in my cast iron skillet, and then warmed up some very thinly sliced slabs of beef in the same pan. A very good use of leftovers, especially since I frequently find leftover meat unpalatable.
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