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Fit for a polar bear

Posted on 27 February, 2018 8:34 pm by Jennifer Comment

Today is, among many other things, National Strawberry Day, National Polar Bear Day, and yet another National Pancake Day (there are so very many of them!). However, I decided I really didn’t want to do yet more pancakes or pancake-type items for this challenge, plus I do not like berries (no, I am not kidding, yes, I have tried all of them many times and I don’t like *any* of them), and we live in the wrong place for polar bears. Luckily today is also National Kahlua Day. So I decided to celebrate that by making some ice cream. Because when *isn’t* it a good time for ice cream?

Years and years ago, Ben & Jerry’s brought out a Dublin Mudslide ice cream, which had a delicious mix of Kahlua, Irish Cream, and chocolate all swirled inside, much like the drink by the same name. I loved it, but as is often the case, they eventually stopped carrying it, and also there are no more Ben & Jerry’s stores anywhere near us, so even if they brought it back, there’s no way for me to know. So I haven’t had that in a very long time.

However, that was before I picked my challenge for this Thingadailies month. I asked Google what it could do for me, and Google very nicely supplied this recipe. Conveniently, we have both Kahlua and Irish Cream in the fridge (the remains of the single batch of each that I make every winter), so this morning I whipped some heavy cream in the stand mixer, and then folded in some sweetened condensed milk, and some chopped up chocolate, and a couple tablespoons each of the Kahlua and the Irish Cream. Then that got poured into a container and stashed in the freezer, because this is a no-churn recipe.

Ice cream is good, but it’s even better if it’s alongside something else. Plus I still had some Kahlua and some Irish Cream that needed using up. So I cast out my question to the internets, and lo, the Googles, they did offer back this recipe. And thus it was that I made both ice cream and cake for the occasion.

The ice cream is a bit on the sweet side – I think if i were to make this again, I’d use a bittersweet chocolate to help counteract that. The cake, however, is delicious and moist. Trust the recipe – I know the batter looks super thin after you stir in the Kahlua, but it totally works. Also I may or may not have used Irish Cream instead of the milk in order to use that all up. And also we may or may not have had this for dinner instead of the not-very-exciting leftover clam chowder from yesterday as planned.

Making a thing a day for Thingadailies.



From the briny deep

Posted on 26 February, 2018 9:45 pm by Jennifer 2 Comments

There aren’t any food-related Days to celebrate today, although today *is* Tell a Fairy Tale day, so maybe gather around with your nearest and dearest and read them something from the Grimm brothers. Meanwhile, I still have a can of clams to use up, so today we’re doing what I intended to do yesterday, which is to tackle Clam Chowder Day.

Apparently there are different versions of clam chowder out there – red and white – but the only kind I’ve ever had is the white kind, so that’s what I made. I used this recipe, because it seemed pretty straightforward.

It’s pretty simple to throw together. You cook bacon, onion, and celery in a little bit of butter until the vegetables are soft, and then you stir in all the rest of the ingredients and simmer until the potatoes are tender.

Because it’s Monday, which means I have rehearsal in the evening, I actually put this together this morning, and then reheated it for dinner. I think that was a wise, move, as the potatoes helped to thicken up the soup as it sat. Also I added a dash of half and half, because I felt like it needed a bit of extra ‘oomph’.

Could I make this bowl of chowder look any *less* exciting?

We ate them with some faintly-tuna-flavored ‘crackers‘ sprinkled on top (because the cats seriously aren’t interested, so we might as well use them up somehow. Eh, they’re not oyster crackers, but they worked the same, so it was fine.

Making a thing a day for Thingadailies.



Circular

Posted on 18 February, 2018 2:28 pm by Jennifer Comment

Today is Pluto Day, which left me a bit stumped as to what to do for it (I mean, besides play this a few times).

But then I remembered that earlier this month there was a food day I didn’t actually celebrate, and also, thanks to the Tim Tams, I now own a key ingredient, so today we are celebrating Bagel and Lox Day (which was February 9th), except without the lox because neither of us is a fan.

I have tried bagels a couple times before, with minimal success. In theory, they should not be difficult, because it’s really just a fairly basic yeast dough, only you boil it for a bit prior to baking it. But previous attempts have turned out sad, flat discs that only resembled bagels in color, but not much else.

However, King Arthur Flour has a recipe and over the past few years I’ve learned that if I want to try baking something new, I should check on their website first, since pretty much every one of their recipes I’ve tried has turned out delicious. This particular recipe calls for, you guessed it, malt powder. Gosh, what a lovely coincidence!

The dough is pretty straightforward. I mixed it up and stuck it into my usual winter proofing space (microwave, after heating up a couple of those rice-filled heating pads, so that the interior, once the door is closed, stays at a nice, cozy temperature that yeast really likes). The recipe calls for cutting the dough into 12-16 pieces, but I actually did 24, because we wanted slightly smaller bagels. Forming the bagels is kind of fun, because basically you stab a hole in the middle of the dough ball and then spin it around on your finger to open it up.

Next, the rings get a short water bath in a mix of boiling water, malt powder, and sugar. This is what gives bagels their characteristic chewy outer skin. And finally, once they’re boiled, they go into the oven, and a short time later, you have bagels!

Unlike previous attempts, these turned out fantastic. They are chewy on the outside and soft in the middle, just like they should be. Some of them did turn out a little flatter than they should have been, but that was totally my fault – pro tip, don’t boil your dough rings until right before you are ready to stick them in the oven, or else they’ll start to deflate!

I’ll definitely be adding this to the regular bread-making rotation, and malt powder is now going to be a pantry staple. Yum!

Making a thing a day for Thingadailies.



Dark

Posted on 16 February, 2018 9:10 pm by Jennifer 2 Comments

Today is National Tim Tam Day. Apparently these are a really big deal in other countries, but here in America they aren’t a grocery store staple like Oreos, so most of us have never had them. I, myself, am not entirely sure if I have ever tried an actual Tim Tam, although from pictures, I know it’s some kind of cookie that’s covered in chocolate. But will that stop me from trying to *make* them from scratch? No! No it will not!

I found this recipe, which seemed like a good one to follow. Basically you make a chocolate cookie dough, and you freeze that for a bit, and then cut it up and bake it and then set those aside to cool.

Yes, I know, Tim Tam purists, these are square and store-bought Tim Tams are rectangles, but the square cutter was a lot easier than trying to measure and cut these all by hand.

While the cookies are cooling, you mix up the filling, which is made with chocolate and malt powder. I would like to note, for the record, that I went out and bought malt powder specifically for this recipe. It’s not an ingredient that’s part of my normal repertoire.

Once the filling’s all mixed up and fluffy, then you assemble the cookies by putting a big dollop of filling on top of one cookie and put another cookie on top of that. Then you melt up a big bowl of chocolate and dip the cookies until they’re completely covered. Then those get chilled in the fridge until the chocolate sets, and poof, you have Tim Tams, or some vague approximation thereof.

Verdict: It’s….an awful lot of chocolate in one bite (dare I even say too much chocolate), and it’s a bit time consuming for what ultimately ends up only about a dozen cookies. Not sure it’s worth making them again, although if I did, I’d try a different filling (perhaps a lovely salted caramel instead? Or peanut butter?), and also find a way to make the chocolate coating a *lot* thinner.

Making a thing a day for Thingadailies.



It’s the thought that counts

Posted on 14 February, 2018 8:29 pm by Jennifer Comment

Today is Valentine’s Day, if you’re the type that celebrates it. Richard and I decided early on in our relationship that we weren’t really into it (this encapsulates our thoughts on the matter perfectly), but well, we now live with someone who’s a bit of a romantic at heart (or at least, he was), so we knew we had to make at least some attempt. And it is traditional to gift chocolates on Valentine’s Day…..

…so it’s convenient that today is also Cream Filled Chocolate Day (seriously, who comes up with these things??). Of course, we don’t actually own any candy molds. But we *do* own a small selection of strange and unusual silicon molds for ice and/or cake, so those would have to do.

Making candies is fairly straightforward. You melt some chocolate, pour it into your mold, then pour it *out* again, making sure all the sides are well coated. Then you stick that into the fridge to chill, while you make your fillings.

Richard wanted peanut butter. I wanted something that satisfied the ‘cream-filled’ part of the equation. Plus there was still some ganache left from Saturday that I wanted to try to use up. I found this recipe after a quick search of the internets (you can find pretty much *anything* on the internets!), so we were both set.

And what molds did we pick to use? Why, brains, of course!

They’re a little big for chocolate candies, and also I suspect we didn’t let them chill long enough to account for the size, which is why one of the coffee cream ones had a catastrophic blow-out as I was unmolding it.

I attempted to do a layering effect with the peanut butter ones, but I’m not sure how successful that was. Also, the chocolate ganache kind of melted with the coffee cream.

But the intended recipient was thrilled, even if they didn’t turn out perfectly.

Verdict: I thought they were a bit too sweet, but Richard loved them. Might try making candies again, at some distant future time, but only if I have much smaller molds, and some different filling options.

Making a thing a day for Thingadailies.



Twofer

Posted on 13 February, 2018 9:28 pm by Jennifer Comment

There weren’t any food-related National Days for yesterday. I suppose I could have made one up, but Mondays are notoriously busy for me, what with work and rehearsal, so I decided I’d just skip it instead. Ah well. Today sort of makes up for it, though, because you’re getting two Things instead of just one!

First, today is Shrove Tuesday, which is apparently when Episcopalians eat pancakes for some reason. I hadn’t included this in my plan for the month, but when Richard, who happens to be an Episcopalian, informed me, I shrugged and said, sure, let’s do pancakes for breakfast, twist my arm. So I made an oven pancake, which is basically just a slightly eggier pancake batter, that’s cooked all at once in a skillet in the oven. The result is a slightly puffed ‘pan cake’, that you can then just slice up and serve with whatever toppings you are in the mood for.

We had ours with some of my home canned apple butter, and a dollop of whipped cream, since that seemed appropriate somehow.

More importantly, though, today is Tortellini Day. I admit there was a small part of me that initially pondered just buying tortellini at the store and having my Thing be the recipe that incorporated it. But making fresh pasta has been on my list of of things to do for a while, and Tortellini Day happened to fall on a night when neither of us had anything planned. So tonight, we made tortellini. From scratch.

We have a pasta roller, but it hadn’t ever been used and needed to be washed, so instead I just rolled the dough out by hand on the kitchen island. Once the dough was rolled as thin as I could get it (not quite as thin as if I was making strudel, but thin enough), I used my largest ring cutter to cut out circles, and then put a small dollop of filling (a mix of cheese and herbs) in the center of each.

Next they get folded over and shaped. The majority went onto a sheet pan to be dried and then frozen for later, because if one is going to go through the process of making pasta from scratch, one ought to make enough for more than a single meal.

But the first set got tossed immediately into some boiling water. Five minutes later, they were cooked, and shockingly, not a single one unfolded, or otherwise sprung a leak in the water.

We had them with a simple herb butter sauce, and a side of steamed broccoli, and they were quite tasty. The entire process took far less time than I had feared (even with having to roll the dough out by hand), and was far easier than I had anticipated. So I think it’s safe to say we’ll be making fresh pasta again in the very near future.

Making a thing a day for Thingadailies.



Roly-poly

Posted on 10 February, 2018 3:07 pm by Jennifer Comment

Today is National Cream Cheese Brownie Day, but I’m not actually going to talk about that, because there won’t be any of those in this house. Not that I have any issues with Cream Cheese Brownies – they are quite tasty – but because today was this month’s #BakingSisters day, so instead of doing the National Day thing, we made mini Swiss rolls.

Originally we were going to use this recipe, which was used in a Technical Bake in the most recent season of Great British Bake Off, but then I went a-Googling, and found some other options, and so instead, I used the cake from this recipe, and the filling and ganache from this one. I do love peppermint and the thought of peppermint cream inside tiny little chocolate cakes sounded delightful but that was going to end up as an awful lot of peppermint for the weekend (spoilers!), so I went with peanut butter instead.

My pastry-chef-by-training sister recommended that a sponge would be a better option than the cake we’re more familiar with in America, so we started with that. You mix eggs and sugar over a double boiler until the sugar is dissolved, and then decant that into a mixer and whip until it’s pale yellow and fluffy. Then you carefully fold in a mix of flour, cocoa, and salt, and also some melted butter.

I was *so* careful when folding (I’ve seen enough people on GBBO fold too quickly and lose all their volume) but my batter still shrunk a lot by the time I was done, so maybe I didn’t get the egg and sugar mix whipped enough to start with. Who knows!

Next you spread the batter out into prepared sheet pans (covered with parchment paper and then greased and sprinkled with cocoa powder). Here is mine.

It looks kind of sad. My sisters was a much lighter color and filled her sheet to the rim, so clearly one of us had a misstep, and considering which of us has had prior training, I’m guessing it was me!

Then it goes into the oven and bakes for 6 minutes, and as soon as it’s out, you immediately dump it out of the pan onto a clean kitchen towel that’s been sprinkled with cocoa powder. Hah. My sister was frantically warning me ‘cut the corners!’ so the cake wouldn’t stick to the pan, but, uh, see above for why that was not remotely an issue for my cake.

After it’s onto the dish towel, you roll it up right away, apparently so that the cake then has the ‘memory’ of the roll once it’s cooled. Which sounds really really weird to say but totally works.

While that cooled on the counter, then we made the fillings. My sister made two fillings – one peanut butter and one caramel, but I stuck with just the peanut butter filling, which is really just peanut butter buttercream. It is, by the way, insanely delicious and I was a Very Loving Wife when I let Richard lick the whisk attachment after I was done instead of keeping it all to myself, even though I was VERY VERY tempted.

So once the cake is cooled, then you unroll it, *carefully*, and fill it. Because we were making tiny rolls, we first cut the cake into quarters, and then filled each one individually and rolled those up. I did not, for some bizarre reason, take a picture of them pre-rolled, but here they are, after being rolled up, and before going into the freezer to chill.

I am quite pleased to report that there was minimal cracking on any of my rolls! I know this is an issue because every time there is a rolled cake challenge on GBBO, someone has a massive cracking failure, so hooray for the lack thereof! Also, if some pieces fell off the ends, well quality control is important and the cake tasted quite fine.

After the cakes were chilled enough that the filling was firm inside, then we cut them into pieces.

Aren’t they pretty? I totally didn’t make sure to turn them all so that the nicer side face the camera, nope, not at all.

The final step was ganache, so we heated up cream (or in my case half and half, because that’s what I had in the fridge) and poured that over chocolate and corn syrup, and whisked that together until it was smooth and lovely, and then poured it over the little cakes.

The recipe called for dunking each cake individually but that seemed like a lot of hassle, and I was worried there would end up being too much chocolate and the peanut butter flavor would be lost. So instead I just spooned it over the tops of mine, so the pretty swirls were still visible (well, except for a few drips), and then sprinkled them with chopped peanuts.

Also when one is the baker and there are trimmings and leftover filling and ganache, one *has* to do more quality testing. For..um..science. Many yummy noises were made on both sides of the camera. So many.

Here we are with our finished rolls! This is from my sister’s side of things, because I had to use both hands to hold up my tray, and she was thus the only one with an available hand to work the camera.

And how, you might ask, do they taste?

SO VERY AMAZING. The peanut butter filling is very light and fluffy and really helps counteract the dark chocolate of the ganache and the cake. Five stars, would totally make again some day when I have lots of hours to spare and don’t mind turning the kitchen into a cocoa-powder-coated disaster zone again.

Making a thing a day for Thingadailies.



If the moon hits your eye

Posted on 9 February, 2018 8:36 pm by Jennifer Comment

Today is National Pizza Day, which is a lovely thing to happen on any day, because pizza encompasses two of the basic food groups (bread and cheese).

I’ve made pizza a bazillion times over the years, because as much as I love delivery pizza (especially if they have a garlic sauce), there is something special about making it yourself.

Pizza dough itself is pretty simple – it’s just flour, water, yeast, salt, and olive oil. I guess you can stir in other stuff if you want, but I’d rather do all my extras on the top, instead of burying them in the dough. It should be a soft dough, but not sticky (if you do it by weight, you’ll likely get a perfect dough every time; if you do it by volume, like most American recipes call for, you’ll likely have to make adjustments to the amount of water and/or flour you use, each time you make it). I always make mine in the morning and stash the bowl in the fridge, so it rises slowly over the day.

I’m a pizza purist – plain cheese pizza is always going to be my favorite – but I also do like other toppings from time to time. I’ve got a pizza stone, which is a lovely way to bake your pie because it provides the best amount of heat to really cook the bottom through, but I also have tiny little individual-sized pizza pans for when there’s a crowd over and we need to get a whole pile of pizzas set up quickly, or if we’re making up a batch to keep in the freezer for lunches or quick dinners later in the week.

I also make my own sauces, because I can (and often am able to end up using my own canned tomato sauce to start with). I prefer a minimal amount of sauce if it’s red, because otherwise the acidity of the tomatoes starts to really take over (and also that way the cheese can really shine, because let’s face it, pizza is a really good excuse to eat more cheese. Mmm. Cheese.)

Tonight, since it was just the two of us, we decided to use the pizza stone instead of the tiny little pans, so the pizzas look a bit rustic. I decided to do one with garlic sauce (make a roux, add garlic and cream or milk, cook until thick)…

…and one with red sauce (which got a little overcooked, oops, because we weren’t paying attention).

Both are topped with exactly the same thing – mozzarella, a sprinkling of cheddar, and some turkey sausage crumbles we had leftover in the freezer. And both were quite, quite delicious.

Also, it turns out leftover orange/peach frozen yogurt goes shockingly well with molasses bars. In case you were wondering.

Making a thing a day for Thingadailies.



Treacly

Posted on 8 February, 2018 9:01 pm by Jennifer 1 Comment

Happy Molasses Bar Day!

I am very excited about this because I love the combination of molasses and all the dark, sweet spices that usually go along with it, and prior to this little challenge I had never even *heard* of molasses bars, so this is a brand new (to me) recipe. Is it a regional thing? I don’t know! Who cares! Let’s make some molasses bars and then eat every single one of them in one sitting!

A quick search of the internets finds a variety of things called ‘molasses bars’ so I am not actually sure if the one I made is the ‘true’ molasses bar, or if there is such a thing as a ‘true’ molasses bar, but I digress. Basically this comes together like a stiff cookie dough – the sort that is usually rolled out and cut out with cookie cutters, except that for these, you grease and flour a cookie sheet (did they provide a size for this? No, they did not, which is a bit frustrating as cookie sheets come in a wide range of sizes) and then you press the dough into the cookie sheet (this will be messy! Use lots of flour) and then you bake what is essentially a ginormous soft molasses cookie. The recipe calls for raisins, but as previously discussed on this site, raisins are Not Food, and thus, I ignored that ingredient, because why sully such a delicious morsel with those grape abominations? Why?

Here they are in all their molassesy glory.

Verdict: Absolutely delightful. I am saving this recipe and will definitely be making them again. Like most things made with molasses and those spices, they need time to sit, so the flavors come through, and are thus likely to be much tastier the day after, than fresh from the oven (although fresh from the oven is also quite delicious). Also one batch makes a bunch, so it’s convenient that Richard’s writers group met at our house tonight, so that the bars could be distributed among a larger group of people and thus were not left to sit on the counter to tempt me.

Making a thing a day for Thingadailies.



Frozen

Posted on 6 February, 2018 9:22 pm by Jennifer Comment

Today is Frozen Yogurt Day. I hope you all celebrated appropriately.

Me, I forgot to check the calendar this morning and had a small panic when I remembered that today was a day that would require an ice cream maker, and that means the ice cream maker base had to be frozen, and oops, it was still sitting on the counter.

Luckily Google came to my rescue (all hail our robot overlords) with this recipe that requires no ice cream maker at all. Richard swung by the grocery store on the way home to pick up the necessary ingredients (frozen peaches) and after dinner tonight we broke out the food processor and gave it a whirl (ha, see what I did there).

You start with frozen peaches, yogurt, sugar, and lemon juice.

Then you blend the peaches and the sugar until they’re mostly combined, and add in the other two ingredients. It sounds pretty simple. Except that when we tasted it, the sugar didn’t really dissolve so it was kind of weirdly grainy, and there wasn’t much of any flavor at all.

Inspiration struck. I tossed in about a teaspoon of orange extract (doesn’t everyone have that in their cupboard?), added a little more sugar and a dash of vanilla as well, and then blended it like crazy and stuffed it into the freezer to sit and think about what it had done, and also in the hope that this would give everything a chance to meld.

And hey, what do you know, it worked!

Half an hour in the freezer and the sugar had all dissolved into the rest of the mixture, and the orange flavor came through. Still can’t taste peach at all, but no matter, the orange made it perfectly yummy, and we both agreed we might be willing to make this again.

Making a thing a day for Thingadailies.




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