Icing Technique

   

This shows the type of flower and scalloped edging I'm going to use on the cake.

I'm making a birthday cake for my friend's birthday party this weekend.  I've made plenty of cakes before, even a few fancy looking ones (the anniversary cake comes to mind), but I've always avoided using icing to decorate the cake.  This is for two reasons: 1) I often run short on time and don't decorate at all or 2) it seems so intimidating...I mean seriously, you make a whole cake, frost it nicely and then start squeezing complex, colored decorations all over it, if you mess up it could ruin the look of the cake.  But I've decided to plan in advance so as not to run out of time and get over my fears and actually decorate this cake like a birthday cake should be decorated--with shell borders and lots of buttercream flowers.  

In an attempt to get over my fear of decorating a cake with icing (rather than sticking a marzipan flower on top or just using a fun frosting technique to make it look pretty without fiddling too much) I bought a few tubes of ready to use decorating icing.  The brand of icing I get (Wilton) can be used with my nice metal icing tips attached, so they are perfect to use for practice.  Plus, no fussing over making icing and no cleaning up pastry bags.  Here are my attempts at icing decorations.  You'll notice I have not tried to make those beautiful, large, icing roses that are a staple of store bought birthday cakes.  This is not because I have something against them, but because they are quite difficult (and I thought I was starting out with enough for now) and because I don't have any flower nails (what you make the flower on before you transfer it to the cake. 

Hopefully, I'll be able to do this as well on the cake (in a nice design of course).  Oh, by the way, I have yet to determine if I will write on the cake, my inclination is not to, because I don't have the best handwriting with a pen and I'm not terribly steady with the icing writing tip yet.  

The flower in the center is meant to be a pansy...I think it's recognizable as such!

Iced Sugar Cookies

   

I made these over the summer, before I went to Oxford (in other words, back when I was barely posting.)  I'm posting them today because I will not be baking.  I'm sick...or more likely the lactose-free frozen yogurt at school is not made with lactaid-type milk as I'd thought but actually soy-based.  I'm soy intolerant (rather like many people are lactose intolerant) so eating soy makes me ill, rather like I have the flu.  Either way, it doesn't matter, I'm not in the mood to bake (and if it is the flu, I don't want to get people sick.)  Well this was certainly an appetizing discussion!

Anyway, I made these more to practice my icing technique than because I wanted to make sugar cookies.  The cookies were very good, don't get me wrong.  They were from Martha Stewart's Cookies and they were really nice, although a little finicky to work with.  The icing was just a basic powdered sugar and water royal icing.  I used a thin icing tip with the icing still somewhat thick to draw a circular outline on the cookies.  Then I thinned the icing and used a larger tip to pipe some onto the cookie (this is called flood work, I believe).  I used an offset spatula to spread it into a thin layer.  I shouldn't have had to do that, I don't think, but I'm pretty sure I didn't thin it enough because I was a little nervous about making it too runny.  Ah well, they still looked smooth and shiny, like they are meant to.  Plus, they still tasted delicious, so really who cares that the icing was slightly imperfect looking!

Triple Chocolate Brownies, con't

    

Look how dark and moist the center is.  And you can actually see the lovely chunks of white chocolate!

Here's the photo of the triple chocolate brownies.   They look pretty good and they taste even better than they look!

For good measure, let me tell you how I've been serving them.  Well, serving is an overstatement because I've eaten a lot of them out of the pan.  They are incredible plain!  However, they also work nicely with vanilla frozen yogurt (or ice cream, I'd imagine).  Better yet, last night and tonight I had them with cut up strawberries and coffee frozen yogurt (I do the fat-free Stonyfield Farm frozen yogurt, but I'm sure any other brand--or perhaps smooth, plain, coffee ice cream--would work well too).  It is an incredible combination.

Triple Chocolate Brownies

As I mentioned last night, I made what may just be the best brownies ever.  They are the Snow-Flecked Brownies from the cookbook Nigella Feasts, with a slight alteration to make them the Triple Chocolate Brownies from the cooking show Nigella Feasts.

They are amazing!  The batter has a rather obscene amount of butter and bittersweet chocolate in it.  Mix in sugar, a half a dozen eggs, vanilla, flour and the other two chocolates (semi-sweet and white chocolate chips).  Simple and delicious.  By the way, I'm not a white chocolate fan, but I have to say, I love it in these.  It adds a wonderful sweet almost vanilla-y flavor.  Yum.

What is incredible is that the brownies aren't so much fudgy as they are squidgy (yes, I know that isn't a real word, but it works so well here).  The texture is great, the taste is superb.  Honestly, they really are the best brownies ever.  That said the Roland Mesnier ones still might be my favorite because they are not quite as addictive and are healthier (both lower cal and much lower cholesterol).  But this is brownies we are talking about, so health is not really not what I'm aiming for!

P.S. I'll post a photo soon, but I don't like the ones I took last night and I haven't taken more yet today.

Breaking News!

I may have just found a new favorite brownie recipe!  Details to follow.

Mexican Hot Chocolate Brownies

  

These are so named because I flavored my favorite chocolate brownies (the Roland Mesnier ones) with the same spices that are used to flavor Mexican hot chocolate.  They are very good!  I really like spicing things up (no pun intended) by adding different flavors to recipes I use frequently.  It's fun for me to experiment and it makes a nice change from the usual.

The Mesnier brownies I used are cocoa-y and not too sweet, so I thought it would be a perfect recipe to use as a base to make these.  I really did only use the recipe as a starting point and altered it quite a bit.  I left out the nuts, chocolate chips, and ganache topping.  I added cinnamon, chili powder, cardamom and nutmeg to get the Mexican hot chocolate flavor.  I'm still working out the exact amounts of spice (I think it was a little too much cinnamon and not quite enough chili powder), but once I finalize them, I'll post them.

I made these Mexican hot chocolate brownies the same night I made the flourless chocolate brownies that were meant to go to my class.  These went instead.  From the look of things, a few people didn't like them (probably the spice was too much) but many people liked them (judging by the fact that they took seconds and then told me how much they liked them).  My family and friends liked them as well, but they always like what I bake!

Good news and bad news

  
As the title suggests, I have some good news and some bad news.  The good news is, the oven repair man just came and knows exactly what is wrong with the oven and can fix it.  The bad news it, he has to order the part and it will take a week to get it.  I will continue to bake with a malfunctioning oven, but I might be doing less, so I apologize in advance for that.

For anyone who is interested, the large solid state computer chip array (at least I think that's what the man called it!) in the oven is going haywire.  Unfortunately that is the part that controls how hot the oven gets, tells me when it is preheated and works the oven timer.  This explains all the problems I've been having with it!  So next Friday he will come back and replace the part and the oven will be as good as new!  I can't wait.  Until then, I'll cope.

Flourless Chocolate Brownies, con't

I was not content just to give up on my flourless brownies and relegate them to eat-out-of-the-pan-with-a-fork status.    So, I spread out the cooked fudgy brownie crumble in the pan and put it in the fridge for the whole day.  They now actually have have formed a coherent fudgy brownie.  And they are very, very good!

I'm very happy with them plain, but they are amazing with vanilla frozen yogurt (or ice cream) and berries. Yum, yum!

Flourless Chocolate Brownies

I regret to say that these were somewhat of a disaster.  They were simple to make and taste incredible, but never, for lack of a better word, coalesced into brownies.  Instead they remained a somewhat fudgy but unfortunately crumbly mixture.  I don't mind the fudgy-ness, but the crumbly-ness is problematic because it is preventing me from cutting the brownies into proper bars.

I have a feeling that the problem is not the recipe, and not even how I executed it, but actually is my oven.  You see, it has decided not to work properly.  I preheated it to the relatively low temperature the recipe called for and thought everything was fine.  When I checked the brownies five minutes before the time they should have been done they were completely raw.  So I turned up the oven a bit.  That's when I noticed the problem.  It continued to say it was preheated.  Well, just to see what was going on, I turned it all the way to 450* and it still said it was preheated.  If it actually was preheated to that temperature, the brownies would have been burnt not raw.  Consequently, I have to assume something is wrong with the oven's thermometer.  And since the brownies took almost double the cooking time to firm up on top, I'm assuming that the oven is also running quite cool (something I've been suspecting for a while).  I think this caused the brownies to come out odd and rather un-brownie like.  Once my oven is fixed I'll have to try these again, I'd imagine they will be quite good (especially since they taste good now)!

Luckily the edges firmed up enough to salvage a few brownies.  Normally, this wouldn't be such a priority.  You see, I have no objection to eating this not-so-much-a-brownie out of the pan with a fork (or, since I want to feed it to my mom and pops as well, scooped out of the pan onto a plate before being devoured).  However, I made these because I was hoping to bring them to my class tomorrow and my teacher cannot eat gluten so I wanted these to work.  I couldn't save enough to feed the class, but I did get enough proper bars out of it to give to my professor.

As for the class, I sacrificed the freshly baked Mexican Chocolate Brownies I made for myself (I'll post them tomorrow).  They are currently sitting in a tin ready to be transported and eaten.  It is quite sad, really.  I'd planned on freezing them for myself so I'd have brownies in the house again (I'm out of my favorite chocolate brownies).  But I suppose it will all be worth it when I see how happy they make classmates (hopefully).  Plus, I can always make another batch.  Actually, this may be good, I'm thinking of trying to create an Orange Chocolate Brownie, this will give me the perfect excuse to get right on that!

Chocolate Chip Muffins, con't

  
As promised, here is more about the chocolate chip muffins I posted last night.  They are moist but still springy.  They have a lovely, slightly tangy, buttermilk flavor, which is great in muffins in general, but an especially nice compliment to the chocolate.   Speaking of, there are plenty of chocolate chips in the muffins, which is a huge plus in my book.  I can't think of anything else to say, so I'll leave it at this, they are really, really good chocolate chip muffins!

Chocolate Chip Muffins

  

The muffins from Cafe Fiorello inspired me to make my chocolate chip muffins.  (When I say my muffins, I mean the muffins I make from the Williams Sonoma Muffins Cookbook, but you know what I mean!)

Unfortunately, I don't get out of classes until quite late on Mondays so it's now very late and I'm exhausted so you'll have to forgive me for not writing more about these muffins tonight.  You'll have to get by with just this short blurb and a photo until sometime tomorrow (or later today, technically).  Sorry about that!

Breakfast Pastries

  

Last night, when I was leaving Cafe Fiorello they gave me a brown bag of breakfast pastries.  Apparently they had had too many at breakfast and didn't want them to go to waste.  So guess what I had for breakfast this morning?

The goodie bag contained chocolate chip muffins, sticky buns, and what I'm pretty sure was banana nut bread.  The chocolate chip muffins were very nice, but not quite as good as mine (if I do say so myself).  I haven't made mine since I started this blog, so I'll have to make them soon and post them.  The major downside for me was that they didn't have enough chocolate.  Plus I do think the crumb was a little too fine and dry.  The problem could have been that they were a day old, but if I remember correctly mine didn't get stale that quickly.

The sticky buns were definitely stale, but still amazing.  They appeared to be made from croissant dough rolled into a palmier shape.  Then it was coated in some sweet sticky glaze.  It was not gooey, sticky and dense like a normal sticky bun and I don't think it was ever meant to be.  I think that is a good thing by the way, as I'm not a huge fan of traditional sticky buns.  The reason I say it was stale is that the texture was clearly that of a stale croissant rather than of a fresh one; in other words it was somewhat crisp rather than moist and tender.  But that really didn't make it bad, just different.

The banana nut bread was surprisingly good.  I say 'surprisingly' because I don't really like bananas.  The reason this was so good is that it wasn't very banana-y at all.  I think it may have been banana and something else, perhaps pumpkin (which would account for the color and the richness of the flavor).  Though I really could be wrong, I don't really know banana well enough to say for certain that it wasn't just banana and spices that made it such a nice flavor.  It contained large amounts of walnuts, always a plus.  It also had golden raisins dotted throughout, which I think was a very nice touch.

This really was an amazing treat!

My Favorite Cheesecake

   

No, unfortunately it isn't a cheesecake that I make.  It is the cheesecake at Cafe Fiorello in NYC.

As you may have gathered, I didn't bake tonight.  We decided to go out to break our fast and we split a very large slice of this amazing cheesecake, so I thought it would be a good idea to hold off on baking.  In lieu of telling you about the muffins that I have yet to make, I figured I'd tell you about the dessert I ate instead.

As I mentioned, this is darn good cheesecake.  It is creamy and moist but still dense (in a good, cheesecake-y way).  It is sweet but not sickeningly so.  It is topped with fresh strawberries that are lightly coated in a nice glaze (not like the thick red glazes that are typical on cheesecakes with berries) and fresh, unsweetened whipped cream.  Finally, they pour hot chocolate sauce over it at the table.  And they aren't stingy with the sauce, in fact the plate was entirely flooded, with the sauce which was also drizzled on top of the cake.  Oh my god it is good!!!

Plum Coffee Cake Muffins

 

These were really incredible muffins from Martha Stewart's Baking Handbook.  I actually made them at the end of last school year.  I know, I know, I had the blog then, I should have posted them in May when I made them, but I didn't.  Sorry.

I'm posting them today for two reasons.  First, I just couldn't bake today since Yom Kippur started at sundown and I really couldn't have fresh baked goods in the house while I fasted.  Second, I'm pretty sure I'm going to bake a nectarine version of them after I break the fast tomorrow night.  We'll see about that though...I need to use up the nectarines and it does sound nice, but I may need chocolate...

Anyway, as I said, these were really incredible muffins.  They had a dense, moist, coffee cake-y texture.  They tasted wonderful as well, though I don't think I can describe it very well, it has been quite some time since I ate them.  The cinnamon sugar on top was very nice; it tasted good and added a slight crispness to the top.  Yum!

I was very impressed with the muffin to fruit ratio, as well as how well distributed the chunks of plum remained.  The trick, according to Martha, is to fill the muffin cup half way, put the plums on, and then top them with the rest of the dough.  I'm not sure if that is the only way of achieving the effect, but it sure is a good way.

I'll leave you with what my professor said about these muffins, "you get an A+ in baking."  Need I say more?

More Chocolate Shortbread

Here are the other chocolate shortbread cookies that I promised when I posted my much more recent attempt at chocolate shortbread.

These were really good cookies, not great shortbread.  The problem with them may have been my oven which was malfunctioning when I made these and running 50 degrees cool. (Well maybe not 50, but it has been running quite cool). While this wasn't bothering me too much making most cakes and cookies, I could just increase the time and fiddle with the oven temp a bit, it was not good here.  You see shortbread needs to be sufficiently dried out which means they need a higher heat than my oven was capable of (note: not a high heat, just higher than it could do) if they are to be dried throughout without getting burnt.  Another objection I had (and this was the recipe’s fault) is the cookies were far too thin in my opinion.  I prefer a thickish shortbread cookie.  Also, I do like shortbread with sugar topping on it, but that really isn't what makes shortbread shortbread (and the lack of it is not what made these not shortbread.)  But all that said, they were still great as cookies.  They were buttery and coco-y (not terribly chocolate-y though, which isn’t a complaint, just a clarification).  The texture was still crumbly around the edges, but the center was a little soft still (could have been my oven, could have been the recipe...hard to tell!), which was really nice even if it did disqualify them from being shortbread in my book.

Chocolate Shortbread, con't

Here's the photo of the chocolate shortbread that I promised.  By the way, they were quite a hit with my family and friends (and their families)!

Chocolate Shortbread

  
I love shortbread and I love chocolate, but I have had trouble finding a good chocolate shortbread recipe.  The best I have been able to do is dip plain shortbread in chocolate, but that just isn't the same.  Well, I may have solved my problem.  These are incredible chocolate shortbread cookies!  They are from Martha Stewart's Baking Handbook.  These are very nice as far as shortbread cookies go.  They are a good thickness, a good texture (perhaps a little softer and less crumbly in the middle than I would like, but that may be the recipe or may be that my oven is acting up...again!), and they have lots of sugar on top.  In other words, they, to me, fit the specs the ideal shortbread cookie.  But what about the taste?  (After all, to be good they can't just have the right texture, they must also have the right taste.) Well, to put it briefly, the taste is very nice.  To be a little more verbose about it: they are buttery, chocolaty, a bit cinnamon-y, and sugary (not that they are sweet, I'm just talking about the sugar on top).

What is wonderful about these is that they use unsweetened cocoa (which keeps them from getting too sweet), cinnamon (which gives a nice dimension to the flavors and, as I've said before, I love cinnamon), and superfine sugar (which makes the texture smoother) in the dough.  Also good, the granulated sugar on top is sprinkled on just after they are sliced (which is right when the cookies come out of the oven) so it looks perfectly white and sparkly, but still stays on.

P.S. I'll post a picture tomorrow, I promise.  It's a bit late now and I have class tomorrow morning, so I don't really think it's the best time to be fiddling with uploading photos to my computer and then to the blog.

P.S.S. Tomorrow (or sometime later this week) I'll post an old batch of chocolate shortbread cookies I made well before I started this blog.  It wasn't nearly as good as far as shortbread goes, but I did quite like them as just a cookie!

I didn't bake today...

Sorry!  I had class until 8 and I am tired so I'm not baking anything tonight.  I could post something I made before I started this blog, but instead I wanted to tell you about a dessert I ate, instead.

I was at Whole Foods and, as it turns out, the store I was at sells scoops of gelato and sorbet.  I tasted the pear sorbet, and I have to say it is really good.  But as good as it was, I decided against having it and went for the blackberry cabernet sorbet instead.  It was amazing!  It had a definite taste of cabernet, which was quite nice indeed, but still was blackberry-y.  It wasn't too sweet, but it wasn't tart either.  And the best part was the texture, it was smooth and creamy but still slightly icy (in a good way).  I highly recommend it!

Chocolate Cheerio Rochers

  

I got the idea of these from the FCI blog post about Jacques Torres, which mentioned that he made chocolate covered cheerios.  That sounded really good, so I tried it out.

I admit mine don't look perfect, probably because it was the left over chocolate from dipping the macaroons and I had to reheat it twice.  They were incredibly easy to make.  All I did was mixed plain cheerios with bittersweet chocolate so that the chocolate coated the cereal and spooned clumps of the mixture onto parchment paper.  I let them harden and voila!  They might not look beautiful, but they sure tasted amazing!

Chocolate Chip Cookie Cupcakes

  

Aren't the different colored muffin papers fun?!

Right before I went to Oxford a friend of mine (Sophie, who made the apple pie with me) bought me the Martha Stewart Cupcakes cookbook.  Unfortunately, I haven't gotten the chance to use it until now.  And let me say, it is a good cookbook!

I made the Chocolate Chunk Cookie Cupcakes.  I've called them Chocolate Chip Cookie Cupcakes because I was running a bit late today and I didn't really have time to chop up bars of chocolate, so I just used chocolate chips.  They are really, really good!  I think the name is a slight misnomer though.  They don't really resemble cookies or cupcakes or muffins, for that matter; they are sort-of a conglomeration of the three.  They have a similar taste to chocolate chip cookies (though less brown sugary), a similar texture to cupcakes (light, moist and slightly spongy, in a good way), and resemble muffins in that they aren't iced (but are much, much lighter and are made of a cake batter not a quick bread batter).  Whatever you call them they are very good!  My only complaint is that they are not nearly chocolaty enough...next time I will have to increase the amount of chocolate chips.  

By the way, the recipe makes 24 normal sized muffins.  But I made them mini sized so I got 48 minis and 3 normals (I ran out of mini muffin tins).  I personally like the two-bite nature of mini muffins, plus they are a perfect size to give away, which my friends who I'm surprising with these tomorrow will be happy about! 

Coconut Macaroons, con't

     

   
Here is the photo of the macaroons that I promised.  They really do taste as good as they look!  (Maybe even better than they look, because the photo came out a little grainy when I uploaded it.)  The coconut didn't get too hardened but it also wasn't too mushy.  My favorite part (and others agree with me about this) is that I use bittersweet chocolate instead of semisweet.  This keeps them from getting that sickeningly sweet taste that many macaroons get.

Coconut Macaroons

If you've seen Julie and Julia you may remember the part towards the beginning when Julie says (and I'm paraphrasing quite a bit) that it is so comforting to her that no matter how bad your day has been you can go home and make a chocolate cream pie and know that when you add this to that it will thicken, every time.  I get that feeling.  I had a blah day.  Not a bad one, but it was my last first day of classes (I started my senior year), and it just felt, well, blah.  As my mom said, I seem ennui.

So I came home and made coconut macaroons dipped in chocolate and everything seemed so much better.  Macaroons are very simple to make.  All you do is mix together coconut, egg whites, sugar and vanilla, form the sticky mixture into little mounds and bake until golden.  (By the way, the recipe came by way of Martha Stewart's Cookies.)  It isn't hard, but it is fun and very satisfying.  I did want to do a little more than just that, so I melted some bittersweet chocolate and dipped the bottoms of the macaroons in it and then drizzled some of the leftover chocolate on top.  They look very nice!  You'll have to take my word on that for now, because it is late and I don't feel like taking a picture, downloading and then uploading my photo right now.  I'll post it tomorrow (or I guess that would really be later today).  I'll also let you know how they taste...you see the chocolate has to harden and, mainly because it is so late, I'm exercising remarkable self restraint and not eating one tonight.  If they taste half as good as they look they'll be good, so I can't wait!

Waffles with Chocolate Chips and Strawberries

 

Ok, I admit it, this isn't really baking.  But you see it was my first day back to classes, so I was too tired to bake but I was in the mood for sweets and chocolate.  So, I made waffles (from Stonewall Kitchen plain pancake mix) and topped each layer with bittersweet chocolate chips and slices of strawberries.  What is great about this, is the chocolate chips melt from the heat of the waffles...that way, I don't need syrup (I do sometimes use it anyway, but not tonight...because I was out).  The mix by the way is a little pricy (as pancake mixes go) but it is well worth it.  The waffles are sweet and fluffy but still crisp on the outside.  Some of the crispness may be a tribute to my lovely heart shaped waffle maker, which is very good.

By the way, whatever mix I use, I use only egg whites instead of whole eggs.  And I usually substitute olive oil for vegetable oil; if I don't it's because I've left out the oil all together.  I find this makes the pancakes (or in this case, waffles) fluffier.

Iced Butter Cookies

  

Aren't they pretty?

One of my mom's colleagues was having an office baby shower a few months ago and I made these cookies for it.  As you might have guessed from the color of the icing it was a boy!

These cookies were really fun to make and really good to eat.  The cookies are from Nigella Lawson's How to be a Domestic Goddess.  I believe she calls them 'butter cut-out cookies'.  They are sort-of sugar cookies, but a bit less sugary and a bit more buttery (always good).  They weren't too crisp (not that they were soggy, but they were soft-ish), perhaps because I made them a little on the thick side or perhaps that is just how the recipe is.  I really like that.

I made a really simple icing of powdered sugar with a little vanilla extract, food coloring.  Then I mixed in water until it got to a spreadable consistency.  I just piped it onto the cookies using a plastic bag with the corner cut off (I didn't want to bother with a proper icing bag).  The icing was sweet and sort of creamy even after it hardened on the outside.  Hardened isn't really the right word, but if you have ever used any kind of icing before you will know what I mean about the outside forming a thin, hardened (still not quite the right word) layer.  

Battle Fig, con't

Here are the last two courses of Battle Fig:

Third Course: Chocolate-Fig Crostini with Blue Goat Cheese.

I cut thin brown bread into rounds (I might have used baguette, but I was trying to be healthy) and toasted it in the oven.  Once it was nice and crisp I spread a thin layer of the chocolate-fig spread on it, topped that with a small piece of amazing blue goat cheese, and finally put a half of a small and really delicious dried fig on top.  This was more savory than sweet, by the way.  Whatever you want to call it, wow they were good!

Fourth Course: Baked Figs with Greek Frozen Yogurt.
I made these baked figs based loosely on a recipe from Nigella Lawson's Forever Summer.  I quartered the figs, but didn't cut them all the way through.  Then I put each fig in one of the indentations in a muffin tin.  I filled each with about half way up with a sugar water mixture (of water, sugar, orange zest and lots of cinnamon) and put them under the broiler for about 4 minutes (it probably should have been less, but my broiler runs very cool).  I topped each fig with a very small ball of my greek frozen yogurt (I give the recipe here).  I would have topped that with slivered pistachios but I didn't have any and perhaps a drizzle of honey, but I figured that was unnecessary when this had been such a healthy meal.  It really didn't feel like it was missing something without that anyway, because it was still darn yummy.

Battle Fig

I love watching Iron Chef.  A few years ago I decided that it would be fun to do my own, at home version of Iron Chef.  I don't actually compete against anyone and I certainly don't finish in 1 hour.  But I do make an entire meal using a secret ingredient that my mom picks out.  Yesterday was Battle Fig.  We got fresh black and brown mission figs, really nice dried figs, plain fig spread and chocolate-fig spread. With this, I made a four course dinner using figs in every course.

I realize that this doesn't technically qualify as baking and, as such, shouldn't be on my blog.  But that's the great think about it being my blog, I can put this on it if I want to.  Anyway, I figure it is still cooking, which is pretty close.

First Course: Arugula, Parmesan and Fresh Black Fig Salad with a Fig Balsamic Vinaigrette. 

For this I just sprinkled small chunks of fresh parm over arugula and put a quartered fig on top.  I made the vinaigrette by whisking together some of the plain fig spread, dijon mustard, balsamic vinegar and good extra virgin olive oil.  It was a very nice salad.

Second Course:  Steak with a Fig and Red Wine Reduction Sauce and Fig Mashed Potatoes.

First I soaked halved brown figs in a nice pinot noir (because that's what we had).  Then I took out two of the nicer looking halves to grill later.  I lightly mashed up the remaining halves with a fork and put them (with the wine) in a sauce pan over a medium heat.  After it came to a boil I let it simmer for a minute or two.  Then I took out the figs, added some cornstarch and let the wine boil down until it thickened a little.  Meanwhile I had the steak cooking on a le creuset grill pan.  I made a baked potato and peeled it.  I scraped the pulp out of the mashed up figs and mashed it up with the potato.  I used an ice cream scoop to serve neat mounds of the fig-potato mash.  Strained the red wine reduction (to get rid of the fig seeds) and I served it on the steak, which was cooked and had very nice grill marks by that point.  Then I quickly grilled the two fig halves cut side down and put one next to the steak. YUM!

The third and fourth courses were more dessert-y so I will post them in a separate (and more relevant to my blog) entry later today.

My Favorite Chocolate Brownies

These are the bestest brownies ever!  Seriously.  They are from Roland Mesnier's cookbook Dessert University.  What I like about them is that you can make them cake-y or fudge-y.  I personally lean towards the latter, but I have to say with these, either way is excellent.  I did tweak the recipe slightly: I use chocolate chips instead of nuts, because I don't like nutty brownies as much.  Sometimes I do leave out the chocolate chips (and nuts) altogether.  I know this sounds silly, but it does make them marginally lower calorie so I can eat them without feeling too guilty.

What is particularly great about these brownies is they freeze really well.  I cut them into small squares and wrap them in foil or plastic wrap.  They keep for ages (I have yet to figure out how long...I eat all of them well before they have time to go bad!)  I usually eat them frozen, they taste amazing like that and the texture is really nice, but they defrost quickly and nicely, too.

Oh, by the way, Roland Mesnier's recipe calls for a chocolate glaze on top of the brownies, which I have never done, but which sounds absolutely amazing.  I'll let you know if I try it.

Ice Cream Bombe

A slice, so you can see all the layers (which are, from top to bottom: raspberry sorbet, lemon sorbet, strawberry sorbet, chocolate ice cream, raspberry swirl ice cream.) 

This was really good, but I do think I can do better.  I knew the technique, but I didn't have a recipe so I winged it.  I think I made it too many thin layers, I should have done fewer thicker ones.  This is more an aesthetic choice than a taste one, but I do think it might be nice with fewer flavors.  Also, the center two layers didn't quite work flavor-wise.  You see I was trying to make it a sorbet bombe, but I ran out so I used ice cream for the last two layers.  It still tasted good (one might even say great), but it didn't look as nice and it was a little odd having the contrast of the very different flavors and texture in the center.  In future I'll have make this again keeping in mind the lessons I learnt this time around.  Maybe I'll even use homemade ice cream...eh, probably not...it seems like far too much work to make three or four types of ice cream (and probably double batches for the outer layer or two).  Either way, I'm sure it'll be excellent.

The outside of the bombe.  Doesn't it look snazzy?!

Chocolate Bread Pudding

  

Wow this is good!  It is from Ghirardelli's cookbook.  I usually don't like cookbooks put out by brands, but I have to say this is a great one.  I've liked everything I've made from it (I don't believe I've posted anything else from it because I baked it before I started this blog...but I'll post them at some point).

Anyway, this was really good and very simple to make.  It just involves making a chocolate, egg and milk mixture and soaking bread (I used a baguette) in it until the liquid is mainly soaked up.  Transfer it to a large baking dish and bake.  That's it.  Very easy.  And very, very yummy.  It gets nice and gooey (but not too runny) and just a little chewy on the inside with a nice crispy crust on top, which is just how bread pudding should be (in my opinion).  This recipe calls for raisins and chocolate chips to be mixed in with the bread when you add it to the liquid.  I know raisins are traditionally put in bread pudding, however I've never been a fan.  So I substituted dried cranberries for the raisins.  It was such an improvement in my book.  The cranberries hold up to the soaking and the heat much better than raisins so they don't get that puffy, soft texture that raisins get in baked goods.  Plus, I really like combination of cranberries and chocolate.  Oh and by the way, the chocolate chips mixed in are excellent.  They get all melty and make everything that much more chocolate-y!

I will warn you, it is a little dangerous: my mom and I ate almost the entire 9x13in pan of it!

Middle Eastern Rice Pudding

 

When I was in England this summer (with my friend Adriana who you may remember was one of the judges on the Great Blueberry Muffin Showdown), we stayed a few nights with my cousins.  We were very happy to be in a kitchen again, so we decided to make dinner and dessert as a thank you for letting us stay with them.  My cousin Alex cannot eat gluten and I didn't have any of my cookbooks with me, so I had somewhat limited options.  I settled on rice pudding.  As Alex is also diabetic, I figured I should make it sugar free, so I needed to make sure it was still flavorful.  I made a basic stove top rice pudding with arborio rice (also used for risotto) and skim milk.  I added orange zest (in large strips), whole cinnamon sticks and cardamom pods to the milk before I started cooking the pudding to flavor it without using sugar.

Making rice pudding is actually more similar to making oatmeal than risotto.  Unlike risotto you don't have to stir constantly and you add all the liquid at once.  But, that said, it is more finicky than oatmeal and does involve more stirring and more cooking time.  Anyway, while I prepared the pudding, Adriana shelled the pistachios and chopped them.

I fished out almost all of the cardamom (I missed a few, oops!) and all of the cinnamon and orange.  We then topped the pudding with the chopped pistachios, fresh cinnamon sticks, some powdered cinnamon and absolutely amazing dates from Harrods.

It was really delicious and the mixture of flavors was complex but still subtle enough that no single flavor overwhelmed the others.  And, I have to say I really didn't miss the sugar at all!