Crumb cakes and quickbreads

I could have sworn I posted these two cakes, but apparently I didn't because the photos were still in my "to post" folder. So here goes:

The cake above, a raspberry sour cream crumb cake, is a really excellent and rather large crumb cake from the Williams Sonoma cookbook Muffins. It is dense, moist, great with coffee (or tea if you prefer), and has a crumb layer on top. What is really special about this cake are the fresh raspberries nestled between the cake batter and the crumble layer. The sour cream makes the cake moist, tender, and ever so slightly tangy. I'm all for substituting fat free yogurt for sour cream, but I'd hesitate to do it here--it does alter the texture and flavor slightly and I'm not sure it would be for the better in this case. On the same line, use full fat sour cream; the fat is what makes the cake tender and without oil or butter this cake is light enough already.

Tomato Chickpea Dip

Since I just posted my Thai food, I figured I'd keep on the savory roll and post this. It's from ages ago, so I don't really have much to say, but here goes:

This is sort of like hummus, but fresher. It's lighter tasting but still somehow thicker than traditional hummus; I think the fresh tomatos make that possible. It's great with the fresh pita--light and healthy--but I wouldn't say no to having tortilla or pita chips with this. Alright, that's all I've got for you. I promise I'll be back with desserts and slightly more comprehensive posts soon!

Asian Cuisine

Have I mentioned that from time to time at work I teach cooking classes? Well I do! And I'm meant to be doing some Asian cooking (using premade sauces, thank goodness--I can make a soufle that doesn't fall, but don't ask me to make a curry sauce from scratch!)

Quinoa with Cranberries and Pecans

I like quinoa. It's delicious, with its slightly nutty flavor. The texture is good. And it happens to be a berry (or something of that nature) and therefore fits almost any dietary requirements. Also, I can never get non boil in a bag rice to come out properly, but I've never had a problem with quinoa. Finally, I find it more versatile than other grains. It works nicely with basil, a bit of lemon zest, and pine nuts; or black olives with a bit of crumbled feta; or as a base for grilled vegetables and falafel. But it can also be more on the sweet side, as with this recipe. In this case, all I did was toss in dried cranberries and toasted, chopped pecan after the quinoa was cooked. It makes a great side for a protein like turkey--perhaps a healthy addition to Thanksgiving dinner?--or, cold, a hearty addition to a baby spinach salad.

I feel as though I rambled through this a bit, apologies--I'm tired but determined to get this posted!

Pomtini

Just before the holidays my mom and I bought a beautiful bar for the living room. Neither of us are drinkers, but we thought it would be fun (and we needed a better place to store our glassware). Since we have a bar, I figured I needed to learn to make proper mixed drinks. I'm starting slow--it's been 4 or so months and we are still on our first bottles of gin and vodka (and we haven't even opened the rum.)

So anyway, these are pomegranate martinis--or pomtinis. They are a vodka martini with all natural pomegranate juice and a bit of powdered sugar, all shaken (not stirred). I rimmed the glass with a mixture of clear and red sanding sugars held on by a touch of lemon juice (run a wedge of lemon around the rim of the glass, then dip in a saucer of sugar). Fun!

Red Velvet Bundt Cake

I cannot stand bright red red velvet cakes. Originally the reddish color came from the reaction of vinegar with cocoa powder. Now most recipes have tweaked the ingredients to make a richer, moister cake, as I understand it. This means that a bit of food coloring does need to be added. I use the tiniest bit--just to make sure it's clearly red velvet, but not so much as to dye your mouth.

Because this was a Bundt cake, I wanted a glaze rather than a frosting. This ended up somewhere in between; pourable but still thick. It was cream cheese, warmed, and mixed with a bit of heavy cream, plenty of powdered sugar, and a dash of vanilla extract. Yum!

Strawberry, White Chocolate, Pistachio Scones

These were delicious. I used a basic scone recipe and snazzed it up with white chocolate and pistachios. But I decided that, as much as I like the combination of pistachios and white chocolate, it wasn't quite flavorful enough. I happened to have some delicious dried strawberries, so I chopped them up and tossed them in. The tangyness of the dried berries complemented the sweet white chocolate and the nutty goodness of the pistachios perfectly.

Rice Crispy S'more Scones

These scones come by way of the Alice's Tea Cup cookbook. Their recipe is for rice crispy treat scones. I know that sounds a bit odd, but the cookbook acknowledges it and swears that they are good. Well right off the bat, I decided that they would be better with chocolate--a rice crispy treat crossed with a s'more crossed with a scone. All I did was toss in some mini chocolate chips at the end, other than that it was Alice's recipe. And the cookbook was right; they are great scones. The Rice Krispies give the scones a light and slightly crispy texture but they don't add too much crunch. The mini marshmallows get melted and the ones on the edges get caramelized in the oven giving the whole thing a sweet, gooey texture. The scone itself was tender and sweet, but not overly sweet. The chocolate, of course, was delicious with the marshmallows and the scone as a whole. Probably not my favorite scone, but it's up there near the top!

Baked Lemon Tart with Really Easy Tart Crust~With Recipe

I prefer a lemon curd tart to a baked lemon tart, but every once in a while I like to mix things up. This recipe seemed worth trying. The filling was very lemon-y with a surprisingly creamy texture for a baked tart--sort of like lemon curd but lighter and a bit tangier.

Simple Chocolate Truffles

These chocolate truffles are so simple to make. They are a relatively thick ganache, chilled and rolled into balls. The balls are then rolled in various toppings without the traditional double layer of tempered chocolate applied first. This makes them much easier to make. Of course it also makes them significantly more delicate and prone to melting/smushing, but when you really want truffles it can be worth the tradeoff.

The truffles are rolled in various toppings, as I said above. Some were rolled in cacao powder, to give the appearance of a traditional truffle. Others were rolled in cinnamon sugar (these were my friend Sophie's favorite). I also rolled a few in some of the (very strong by now) bourbon sugar from the bourbon balls I made at Christmas. Those are all pictured above. I also made, but did not photograph, some cacao ones with a few flakes of pink Himalayan sea salt on top (perfect color scheme for Valentine's Day, hint hint). They were my favorite, although the bourbon sugar ones were a close second.

Mexican Food

I like Mexican food. It's fun and much of it is surprisingly healthy. Plus, as it turns out, it's much easier to make than I'd anticipated. I got to try out a couple Mexican recipes from Tyler Florance's new book, From the Test Kitchen, for work.

 

Peppermint Chocolate Bundt

Just because it's after Christmas doesn't mean I can't still use peppermint. I like peppermint! This moist bundt was nicely minty but not as richly chocolaty as the deep color indicates; it's made with high quality cocoa, you see, rather than melted chocolate, so it looks chocolaty but could be richer. That's why I made a nice chocolate glaze to kick up the flavor a bit. Then I just sprinkled on some crunched up candy canes. Yum!

Brownies with Citrus Salad

I tried the brownie recipe from Thomas Keller's Ad Hoc. It's not the simplest brownie recipe, but it's well worth the extra effort. They were perfect. Richly chocolaty, tender, fudgy but still extraordinarily light. Oh gosh.

Individual Apple Bread Puddings

After the success of the waffle and chocolate-hazelnut ice cream, I decided to have fun and make another plated dessert at home. I had slightly stale sourdough bread and some lovely but somewhat bruised apples so I made bread pudding! I made each mini pudding in a well buttered ramekin so I could turn them out onto plates a bit like a baked Charlotte.

I topped the warm bread puddings with vanilla-yogurt cream, apple caramel sauce, and some crushed oat and walnut "nougatine". I put quotes around nougatine because typically it's made of slivered almonds coated in caramel; this is a granola-y version. This breakfast-y but still very dessert-y plated dessert was delicious and, perhaps, a bit whimsical (beiWng breakfast inspired and all that)!

Caramelized Waffles and Chocolate-Hazelnut Ice Cream

I bought myself a small Breville waffle maker for the holidays. It's a great waffle maker! So great that I have made far too many waffles. So I froze some. To heat them up I coated them with cinnamon sugar and fried them. They got all nice and caramelized and toasty warm. I served them with homemade ice cream.

The ice cream was amazing. It's a creamy chocolate and sour cream ice cream base (from the New York Times food section) with some toasted hazelnuts and a dash of Frangelico added in for good measure. I didn't add much liqueur because it can interfere with the freezing point of the ice cream, but with Frangelico on top of the hazelnuts, a little went a long way. This was, hands down, the best batch of ice cream I've ever made, and I've made some good ones. I think it was the sour cream. You couldn't taste it at all (which was good, sour cream would have been all wrong with the hazelnuts) but it made the texture unbeatable.

Plated all together, the warm, crisp waffles and the cold, creamy ice cream were just perfect! (Happy New Year, by the way.)

Gingerbread House

I always have high hopes for making an elaborate gingerbread house from scratch. I never actually do it. So this year I used a kit from Williams-Sonoma. It's a really good kit. Yes, the pieces are a bit clunkier than homemade pieces, but it's so much easier to unwrap them than it is to bake them. The pieces are printed with door and window outlines as well as the loop-y pattern on the roof. While I don't like that because it cramps my creativity, it also does keep me from going crazy with it and messing it up (or having that blank page freeze like when you start writing a paper) so that's probably for the best.

Mint Chip Meringues, Black Forest Cookies, and Sugar Cookies

My mom loves meringues and always asks me to make them. For some reason, I really don't enjoy making them, though. Probably the time and care that goes into them isn't offset by it being interesting for me to make. But I'll give it to her, they really are delicious--and homemade ones are so much better than store-bought.

Bourbon Balls and Gingersnaps

Both of these recipes come by way of "Baked Occassions," the Baked Brooklyn boys' newest cookbook. I love all their cookbooks and I hadn't had a chance to use this one yet. It's up to their usual high standard. (But it's more fun--it's organized by holiday. For example they, apparently, celebrate the Ides of March with Blood Orange Tiramisu. See? Fun!)

I digress.

Christmas Cookies, 2014

As usual Christmas in my house means an extraordinary amount of baking. This year, seeing as I am still breaking in the kitchen, I only made five cookies. And no cakes or chocolates. Since that was the case, I really tried to go nuts with the cookies. I'll talk about each varity in other posts, but here's a summary: gingersnaps, decorated sugar cookies, bourbon balls, mint chip meringues, and Black Forest cookies.

I thought those worked nicely together for gift boxes: one very chewy (the Black Forest cookies), one sort of chewy (the gingersnaps), two crumbly (the bourbon balls and the sugar cookies), and one crunchy and chewy at once (the meringues). Or put another way: one chocolate, one mint and chocolate, one spicy, one boozey, and one "plain"--I think you can figure out which is which yourself. Most importantly, I think they looked lovely in a gift box, what with the colors of the decorated sugar cookies and the meringues and the variegated brown hues of the other cookies. I'd be happy getting that as a gift!

Gluten-Free Battenberg Cake

I mentioned this a while ago. I told my cousin that, as her birthday present, I'd make her a birthday cake (it's so difficult to find good gluten free cakes that are fit for a birthday). Any cake you want, I said. She asked for the one type of cake I'd never even heard of: a Battenberg cake. Apparently it's a very common feature at afternoon tea. After some research I discovered that it's a less almond-y, checkerboard version of an Italian (or rather Italian-American) tricolor cake. They are traditionally pink and white, filled with a thin layer of apricot jam, and covered with untinted marzipan that is scored in a diamond pattern.