Happy V-Day

Whether you celebrate Van Halen-tine's Day or Gal-entines Day, the 14th of February is either a dreaded or anticipated day. And there's no better choice for emotional eating than chocolate! Whether you're lonely, loved, empowered, romantic, bitter, cornball, Marxist, or materialist you probably should be stuffing your face with some pink M&Ms (or locally made truffles) right about now. At our casa, we have much love for Thomas Keller (or TK as he is affectionately known both here and everywhere). My parents gifted me with Ad Hoc at Home, a cookbook that is both the most useful cookbook I've ever owned and the most ridiculously cumbersome and unwieldy 10 pound book that takes up all my countertop or coffee table space. So as we work our way through TK's exhaustive tome on all things family friendly, the Boy focused in on the roast chicken and while all I could envision were the lush, lush, lush brownies. We took both TK challenges on in one night -- and to great success (though with a downright nocturnal dining time).

Here is the brownie recipe which is really quite easy and delightful, though way too cakey to fall under the traditional definition of a brownie. (I think increasing brown sugar would make it chewier, probably knock down the flour amount too). Best served with ice cream, because it is hella rich. A great lesson in changing up your usual style with TK's advice on combining melted and room temperature butter instead of using softened. And I can't overemphasize how happy the purchase of dutch press cocoa has made me. Worth seeking out, chocoholics! Gonna try out Alton Brown's chocolate syrup recipe using it as soon as we re-up on the granulated sugar. Till then -- brownie sundaes with cherries on top for me and the Boy until we die! Happy V-Day!

King Cake

Usually, I can't really post on a holiday-centric recipe until after said holiday has passed. But this time, the fortunes of fate allowed the Saints to be in the Super Bowl (and win the Super Bowl). So we (and everyone who enjoys cooking football-watching snacks) decided to a Cajun-centric assortment of munchies. Anything to sway the football gods away from Peyton's cement block head. And what did Indianapolis ever give us anyway? I can't make 8 versions of breaded pork.

We really maximized our commitment to New Orleans by having Zapp's potato chips (in various flavors including Crawtator -- my fav), Abita and Dixie beers, andouille po' boys with homemade remoulade, muffulettas, Cajun wings (hey, we're still in Upstate NY), shrimp etouffee, pralines and King Cake. Quite a lot of food, most of which I'm still eating for lunch almost a week later. I may post recipes on some of the rest later, but the killer is shrimp etouffee, which is a secret family recipe from Alabama (or at least John's recipe to which I don't have access). The one good secret-y part is that you have to make your own shrimp broth with the shells. Making your own ingredients is always the secret to making things better (or at least take a lot longer).

So, back to Le Roi. It comes from Emeril but not from the Food Network (his own that site is very different and does the fruit and nut filling rather than cream cheese). I was thrilled with the results chiefly because yeast + any dessert + me = 98% chance of plutonium-grade failure. So you can make a cake that rises twice and has to be shaped and stuffed with a filling and even make the icing and color your own sugar too! Because if I can do it, so can you. And maybe you can top me by actually finding a tiny plastic baby. If you can't, use a pecan half like I did. Of course, then you may run the risk of cutting right through the pecan-- thus making a king and queen of Mardi Gras from one cake. Better than dissecting an icon of the baby Jesus I suppose. If you're not in the loop as to how or why a plastic baby is a necessary ingredient for your Mardi Gras celebrations, I suggest you go here and New Orleansify yourself.

Laissez les bons temps rouler and all o' that.

Apple Pie

I know, I know. You missed me! Well ,'tis the season now, so I've gotta get on the ball with my food blogging. This one I made right before Halloween, but apple pie is appropriate for at least two months after that. So here you go.

I used the good old frozen pie crusts, mostly because I didn't make time to figure out whole pie crust bit (nor did I own a pie plate at the time). Pastry is one area where I am totally fine with cutting corners. Plus, I took one of the pies down to our buddies in Brooklyn, and so the fact that the pie came in an alumnium pan they could dispose of without having to ship it back to Rochester seemed make ready-made pie crusts the obvious solution! Of course in reality, I left a bunch of stuff at their apartment that had to be shipped back anyway, but let's not worry with that.

So you take a bunch of apples, Macouns here, probably 8 or so. I still believe in leaving the skin on, but of course the core doesn't party very well, so you want to remove it and the seeds. I don't slice these too finely either. I think apple pies should be hearty fare.

Take your apple slices and mix them with brown sugar and a little flour, until coated. Use your hands for that one. Add in cinnamon, nutmeg, all those fall spices. And just a little lemon juice. Since the hard part was already done in some bakery-factory somewhere, all you have to do is dump the apple mixture into that defrosted pie crust and bake it according to the crust maker's instructions. If you want to do the old Grandma-style double crust, you should have two crusts and the directions there. So you don't need me to hold your hand through that.

Myself, I went for a little streusel topping. First I cooked the apple pie for about half the time, topless, shall we say. During that time, I melted some butter, added oatmeal and brown sugar to it, and then took the pie out and spread it on top. It needs to just get toasty colored and it's good to go. You can cover your pie crust with foil if you have a problem with the crusts burning. I forgot that but my crusts didn't burn. As with everything cooking-related, it's all about the watchful eye...

Feliz Cumpleano, John!

I have been obsessed with the idea of chocolate stout cake for weeks. I can't seem to shake it out of my head -- not too chocolatey, and perfectly moist. And since today is John's birthday, I can't think of anyone who would appreciate beer in birthday cake form more.

This is a luscious photo from Annie's Eats recipe for Irish Car Bomb cupcakes. They've been on my to-do list for awhile. (And they still are, John, so don't expect to see them at your party tonight).

Chocolate stout cake with Bailey's ganache filling and frosting (probably should sneak some Jameson's in there to be perfectly legit). Talk about the right way to amp up the celebration factor!

Compost Cookies

Confession Time: For the past three weeks or so, the Boy and I keep buying break and bake chocolate chip cookies. I'm blaming him because if I was the culprit I would have been mixing all the ingredients together to make my own dough and eating that with the wooden spoon. Breaking and baking is a little too boring (unless your stove isn't working and you figure out that you can break and semi-saute in a pan or break and microwave). Anyway, it's a disturbingly bad habit we've found ourselves in, but it has done much to really elevate in my mind what is great about the chocolate chip cookie (coupled occasionally with Ben and Jerry's Fair Trade Vanilla ice cream).

So when I saw the compost cookie at Momofuku Milk Bar in NYC, all my cookielust got stirred up to full tilt. Sugar Plum says the cookie was dominated by butterscotch, which is a little sad. Because the thing has POTATO CHIPS in it. Genius! And pretzels, and coffee, and just awesomeness.

Since we're going to NYC for Halloween, this has just become the requisite sweet treat stop! I've just got to talk someone else into getting the Crack Pie (Brady? I know you're down for that!) and the Caramel Apple soft serve...

Fall Dinner

Sorry for the week-long blogvacay, but I had the swine flu, believe or not (the Boy chooses not to). Anyway, before I languished away on milkshakes and daytime television last week, I was feeling very flush with fall spirit. With all the crispness in the air, we hit the farmer's market and got to work in the kitchen. I made French Onion Soup, and the Boy grilled some pork tenderloin. For dessert, tarte aux pommes (apple tart).

The French Onion Soup was from our old Better Homes and Gardens cookbook. Pure nostalgia. Start with 3 large sweet onions, finely chopped. Then add 1/2 stick of butter. Let the onions sweat it out about 20 to 25 minutes, until transluscent. Add in around 4 cans of beef stock. And a few squirts of Worchestershire sauce. Around 1/4 tsp. Salt and pepper to taste. Let simmer, around 30 minutes or more.

Cut slices of a baguette, toast with shredded Gruyere (or Swiss) cheese atop. Then place "croutons" on the soup once poured into bowls or crocks. Add more cheese and broil the whole thing for a few minutes until cheese is melted and browned.

Once the soup and pork were ready, we headed out to the front porch. A little pinot noir, some sliced local Macoun apple, some Vermont sharp white cheddar, some baguette slices from Little Bakery, and the sliced pork. Quite a crudite platter. Then the soup, with toasted baguette slices acting as croutons for the Gruyere cheese. Very fall and very yum.

So yum, in fact, we didn't even make it to the apple tart. But now that I'm back to solid foods, I discovered the tart, when toasted a bit, drizzled with local raw honey and sprinkled with ground cinnamon, is a fantastic breakfast too.

Tarte Aux Pommes

2 large baking apples (like Macoun) cored, then very, very thinly sliced

1 sheet of frozen puff pastry (they usually come 2 to a box)

1/4 cup of butter

1/4 cup of brown sugar

Defrost the puff pastry and prepare according to the box directions (I know, I know, you can make your own pastry too). For mine, you just unrolled the pastry, let it defrost, pierced it all over with a fork, and let it sit in the fridge for 20 minutes or so.

Then you can cut the dough into a circle the size of your pie plate if you'd like. I just left mine as a sheet on a cookie sheet since it seemed like it wanted to tear and I wanted to make a big tart anyway (overzealous apple slicing). I placed the apple sliced decoratively on the pastry, then topped with little shavings of the cold butter and sprinkled the brown sugar. You can add your own spices too. Then cooked at 375 for 15 minutes or until the edges of pastry begin to brown. Very very simple and it retains the apple flavor unlike sugary, syrupy apple pies.

Cake Wrecks

I'm going to a wedding this weekend, so I hope I'm not garnering any bad karma for Choley when I post my new favorite blog: Cake Wrecks.

So. Painfully. Hilariable.

Here's a funny profile of the site's creator as well.

Hubby Hubby

Aww! Yay!

Roman Holiday Gelato

Post #150 goes to my all-time favorite: gelato. Prior to seeing Inglorious Basterds Friday night at the Little, we headed over to Roman Holiday Gelato for a treat. They have about 6 gelato flavors and another 6 sorbet flavors.

Now for the uneducated, gelato is denser than ice cream and usually doesn't have eggs (the French style of ice cream contains eggs). Gelato is supposed to have less butterfat than ice cream, but also less air. Conversely, frozen custard (like Abbott's) has less air than ice cream, but a higher percentage of butterfat. Sorbet is dairy-free and usually fruit flavored. Enough with the science...

I got the coconut gelato and the Boy got profiterole (which I believe actually had a profiterole inside the scoop). The coconut tasted very fresh and had a natural coconut flavor. I give Roman Holiday some enthusiastic thumbs up. And I once had one of those punch your visit cards to a gelateria in Florence, Italy and I went through the whole thing in just a few weeks. They were making different flavors daily depending on what was fresh, so it IS tooootalllly reasonable that I walked there nearly every day. No really! Anyway, thus I know "real Italian" gelato enough to know that Roman Holiday fits the bill (and has such cute decorations from the Audrey Hepburn/Gregory Peck movie of the same name). I wonder how often they change their flavors?

Sorry for the shaded picture but sometimes I feel a little creepy taking pictures of food inside the restaurant.

Ice Cream

Summertime has officially, finally come to Rochester in the past week. Mid-August seems appropriate, right? Also appropriate, a post about ice cream- everyone's favorite hot weather treat.

Since I still haven't had that Williams-Sonoma shopping spree (as I haven't won, or played, the lottery), so still no fancy ice cream maker. Instead I've been looking for easy ways to make ice cream at home instead of Abbott's or Ben and Jerry's. Something with just a few ingredients, that doesn't require cooking the eggs (French style) and a whole lot of waiting. David Lebovitz, author of The Perfect Scoop, is a great ice cream resource for anyone looking to make their own. I've been meaning to try his Easy Chocolate Ice Cream (picture here) since it doesn't require the maker.

But the "easiest" ice cream according to Dave still requires 5 ingredients (suspiciously, two are alcoholic). In the a/c free confines of our kitchen, even the simple tasks of boiling the milk and melting the chocolate prove to be too daunting.

And then today, the perfect solution appeared on The Kitchn: 1 Ingredient Ice Cream. Surprisingly, the ingredient is neither ice nor cream. Discuss. Ok, I won't make a big deal about the mystery ingredient: it's bananas. And so is the concept: B-A-N-A-N-A-S. You just freeze some ba -nah,nah,nahs until it's solid and pop it in the blender until it's creamy. More like cold baby food I guess, but it's worth a shot. The work to reward ratio here seems pretty favorable, especially if you amp it up with some peanut butter or chocolate chips or something.

And if you've found yourself to be to sweaty to even deal with having to wash the blender out (one of my least favorite activities) then maybe you should try out Icecreamists boutique ice cream. The British company is churning out (pun so intended) adventuous and somewhat shocking flavors like the Sex Pistol, which contains traces of Viagra. Eh, I think I'll try the Champagne Ice instead. Plans to come to NY are in the works, so...errr...get excited.

Chocolate Peanut Butter No Bake Cookies

I wanted to make some easy munchies to picnic with when we go to the Newport Folk Festival Saturday. The Boy is making his infamous Curry Chicken Salad, and we got some chips and trail mix to go with. Since I hadn't really dwelled on what to make until kinda late last night, and the summer temperatures made the prospect of baking cookies for 20 minutes in the oven a little less enticing than being mauled by tigers, I fell back on an old classic: the no bake cookie.

These were a staple at tailgates growing up. In fact, I've always just called them Flo's cookies, after our tailgate friend, and surrogate grandmother, who made them. Their ease is part of their brilliance, and a major contributing factor to my satisfaction. Anything that didn't need a massive shopping expedition to Wegmans, turning on the oven, or dirtying more than 4 dishes.

Chocolate Peanut Butter No Bake Cookies (I can't seem to find the same recipe I used just last night so this is an approximation from Exra Pound Cake, hands down my favorite blog name)
In a medium-to-large saucepan:
2 cups sugar
1/2 cup cocoa powder
1/2 cup milk
1 stick butter

Melt into boil on high heat. Watch, stirring continually, until the boil has lasted only 1 to 1 1/2 minutes. Then remove from heat (boiling longer will make them dry and crumbly).

Add in 3 cups oatmeal
1 1/2 cups peanut butter (which is pretty much the whole thing)
2 teaspoons of vanilla

Mix together, then plop tablespoon sized drop cookies on wax paper and let set until hardened. This may be difficult on a hot humid day, so place in the refrigerator if necessary.

Kevin's Vanilla Cupcakes

My favorite trainer ever, Kevin, who runs San Diego FitCamp, passed along this recipe for healthy, organic cupcakes that he swears are popular with his kids. I thought I would share it with you guys, though I haven't tried it yet (hence no pretty picture of this healthiness smothered in cream cheese frosting). But, I trust the man who made me do 150 lunges in a day.

Organic Pumpkin / Flaxseed Cupcakes

1 box of Dr. Oetker Organic Yellow Cake Mix (I just checked online & Wegmans has it)
1 cup of organic pumpkin puree
1/2 cup of water
2 tablespoons of vegetable oil
2 large organic eggs
1 large organic egg white
6 ounces of organic Greek or Whole-milk yogurt (I'm addicted to Stonyfield's Oikos unflavored greek yogurt)
3 scoops of Organic Cold-Milled Flaxseed
2 scoops of vanilla protein powder (Whey powder is better than soy protein powder)

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees and place paper baking cups in cupcake pan. Using an electric mixer, combine all ingredients and blend for 1-2 minutes. Pour the batter into the baking cups and bake until a toothpick inserted into the cupcake comes out clean, about 17-20 minutes.

170 calories, 8g protein, 30g carbs, 3g fiber & 5g fat

Birthday Cake Contestant

Contestant #2: Ferrero Rocher Cheesecake

Clumbsy Cookie posted this a few months ago and it certainly seems to be the new acme of deliciousness. Cheesecakes are my hands -down favorite kind of cakes, though making them tends to cause me the greatest amounts of stress. I'm not partial to this one's graham cracker crust (the boring yet popular standard), but at least there's cocoa powder mixed in. Ferrero Rochers and Baci are my two favorite Italian chocolates, and Nutella was a major staple of my diet whenever I visited Europe (and makes occasional, albeit dangerous, cameos in my cabinets here).

I fell off the hazelnut wagon a few years ago when I bought a huge bag of 'em at Trader Joe's and kind of OD'ed. The memory of hazelnut buter still makes me a little green. But I think this cake could revive my love for the hazelnut and send me spiraling into a birthday chocolate-Nutella-cheesecake dream state. My hippie party has suddenly gotten a little more psychedelic.

Whoopie Pies Part Tres

Can't believe I'm just now getting to my first post of the month. And it's a long overdue update on the ongoing trials and tribulations of me versus whoopie pies. It reminds me of that trial in Bleak House that outlasts the entire law firm... except the jury came back from sequestration this weekend and I won this lengthy trial!

Okay, enough Dickens references and legal jargon. On to the play by play. As all three of you regular readers know, I've been trying to make whoopie pies since before Easter. The Boy's dad is from Maine, where whoopie pies reign supreme, and recipes happened to popping up everywhere in the blogosphere this spring. I had no idea how long of a battle I was in for when I tried to dazzle the Boy's parents with my domestic abilities. I should have known baking would be my Achilles heel.... So Easter and Memorial Day were glorious fails (as you can see in previous posts), and I guess the silver lining is that I didn't actually kill myself with the last poisionous batch, and we've been seeing the parents regularly enough that I was able to square off once again.


This time I recruited The Boy (who mostly got in the way or lost the directions) and Brady-man to assist me in tangling with the chocolate devil. I even brought everything outside for our little cooking class, which followed Brady's famous Burlington Burgers and probably a few too many Labatts.

The boys took over the chocolate recipe, while I attempted the red velvet one. Both batters came out tasting just fine, despite a lack of vanilla for mine (you've got to be fast when you're in a cooking class showdown). Since batter was in abundance, we were able to finally figure out the infinitessimally small spoonfuls of batter required to make sandwich cookies. But not after several pans full of ginormous chocolate globs. After about four pans we finally realized the parchment paper wasn't doing us any favors, and left it off entirely. As usual, the last batch was really the only one that turned out perfectly. But I did notice the next day that the ones that had been stuck to the wax paper actually came off much more easily (except for the smaller scoops, which turned into thinner cookies that simply cracked when any attempt at peeling was made).

So since we survived the first step, which had been my failing in the last two rounds, I moved on to making the filling the next day. I decided to cut the giant chocolate whoopie pie cakes into smaller, more edible cookie shapes and then put the traditional powdered sugar icing in between. (Note: apparently Crisco is a very necessary ingredient in both the cookies and the filling. Despite my initial disinterest in buying it, when I did they finally turned out). I then added a few drops of blue food coloring to the remaining icing to put between my red velvet whoopie pies -- to make a patriotic version for the 4th.

Frankly I'm glad to be done with these things. To my credit, I just ate the scraps from making smaller chocolate ones, and they're still fresh and moist after a week. To my discredit, I will say they all got eaten, but mostly because the Boy has a lot of sugar-fiending young nieces.

Traditional Whoopie Pies
1 3/4 c. all-purpose flour
3/4 c. cocoa powder
1 1/2 tsp. baking soda
1/2 tsp. salt
1/2 c. Crisco
1/2 c. sugar
1/2 c. brown sugar
1 c. milk
1 egg
1 tsp. vanilla extract

Preheat oven to 375. Whisk together the dry ingredients. In a medium bowl, cream together Crisco and sugars, then add egg and continue beating. Add in milk and vanilla, then slowly add in dry ingredients. Scoop very very small (teaspoon sized scoops) of batter onto a greased cookie sheet. Cook 10-12 minutes, remove to a wire rack to let cool. Pipe frosting (recipe below) between two similarly shaped cookies when cooled.

Red Velvet Whoopie Pies:
1 1/3 c. all-purpose flour
2 tbs. cocoa powder
1 tsp. baking powder
1/4 tsp. baking soda
1/2 tsp. salt
1/4 cup Crisco
1 cup sugar
2 eggs
2 tbs. buttermilk (since it calls for vinegar anyway, I just used regular milk)
2 tsp. apple cider vinegar
2 tsp. vanilla extract (or maple syrup if you run out of vanilla like me)
1 tbs. red food coloring

Preheat at 375. Notice this makes much less than the previous batch. Mix together your dry ingredients. Then in a separate bowl, cream the butter into the sugar, add in eggs, and beat in the remaining wet ingedients. Then add dry to wet slowly. Drop batter in small batches onto greased cookie sheet. Cook 10 minutes, allow to cool on pan, then transfer to rack to finish cooling. Spread spoonfuls of frosting between two similarly-sized cookies

Basic Frosting:
Whip 1 1/2 c. of powdered sugar into 1 c. (or stick) of Crisco. Add 1/3 c. skim milk and 1 1/2 tsp. of vanilla (or maple syrup). Alter amounts to get the consistency desired (you want something substantial for frosting these cookies, but it can be thinner for icing cakes).

Crazy or Crazy-Awesome

This blog has the most amazing assortment of savory cupcakes I've ever seen. Whether with barbeque, pickles, salsa, or guacamole, they all look delicious (and they're vegan). This lady seriously has her game on.

I would give my left pinkie toe for one of these Thai spice potato chip cupcakes. Yum! If any of the Spicy Thai chips we're bringing to Bonnaroo make it back next week, I will definitely give these a shot.

Free Ice Cream Day

I've never been a fan of Friendly's, but everyone likes free stuff. Especially when the stuff is ice cream.

More Like Whoopsie Pies

Making Whoopie Pies is all the rage in the blogosphere. And since Whoopie Pies originated in Maine, the birthplace of the Boy's dad, I wanted to try to make some when the parents came for a visit. When they came around Easter I tried, but with disasterous results. I blamed it on not having a good mixer, on refusing to use shortening, on my general imprecision in baking.

Well, now that we're visiting them this weekend, I thought I would renew my efforts-- with this recipe. All I can say is that it wasn't the mixer, and I used shortening. I really have no idea. They look so perfect here.

Last time they spread into one blob-- so I spaced them even further apart. Still a blob (see below). So I made the tiniest drops of batter. They came out nicely rounded, but completely flattened and a little bitter-burnt tasting. Which caused quite a consternation because the batter tastes great. I am still consternated.

All advice from skilled bakers is welcome. I may try again tonight before we leave-- I have a suspicion that maybe I put too much baking soda in because it kind of tasted like that.

You may have won the first two battles, WPs, but the war has only just begun. Best out of 5? Better make it best out of 7, because I haven't even tried to make the filling yet.

Crazy or Crazy-Awesome?

Ketchup macarons?

Crazy or Crazy-Awesome?

Guacamole Ice Cream?

Crazy or Crazy-Awesome?

Pineapple Bacon Pound Cake?