May 5th, 2011

Strawberry Apple Sauce

I had some strawberries to use up, so I tossed them on the stove to cook down along with an apple. It made for a naturally sweet sauce to toss on oatmeal or eat as a snack. Yum!

April 9th, 2011

Snap pea, goat cheese and leek shredded pasta

I'm kicking off my spring meals with some green-inspired dishes. Dinner consisted of shredded sprouted-grain lasagna sheets tossed with fresh, steamed snap peas, fresh parsley, sauteed baby bok choy, sauteed shallots and goat cheese.

April 3rd, 2011

Strawberries

Homemade Strawberry Syrup

Homemade Strawberry Syrup

My favorite place for recipes and inspiration these days is thekitchn.com. I've mentioned this a few times before. A couple of weeks ago, they posted a fabulously inspiring recipe on strawberry milk. Apparently, the author had been using store-bought strawberry milk for a recipe and ended up addicted. However, store bought strawberry milk is loaded with unsavory things like corn syrup and artificial flavors. She thought that she could not only make it healthier, but tastier, but making her own strawberry syrup. And why not?

The recipe is pretty much the same steps that you use to make strawberry jam. Strawberries + Water + Sugar + Heat. Except that in the end you separate the syrup from the fruit with a sieve. Which actually gives you syrup for the milk AND preserves to spread on biscuits or to mix into your oatmeal, yogurt or top your blintzes with!

This was use a cup or two of fresh strawberries, but the original post used frozen strawberries successfully.

April 2nd, 2011

Leek Tart

I had intended to create a delicious lunch dish, high in protein and nutritious with greens. However, I made one vital mistake: premade pie crust. I had one of those frozen pillsbury roll-out pie crusts in the fridge, that in my laziness, I decided to use as a base. Holy freaking cow. It has so much fat and so much sodium, you'd think I just decided to eat 3 pounds of salted butter instead.

Healthy tip: Never under any circumstance use Pillsbury Pie Crusts.

The contents were fine. I use all egg whites, sauteed leeks, lots of fresh chopped dill, and give it a dusting of Parmesan. It was really that simple. In any case, it was like buttery insanely good due to the pie crust and I pretty much destroyed my diet eating the whole thing over the course of two days.

March 31st, 2011

Perfectly poached in water and vinegar

On a roll with my cooking, I was inspired by The Sharper Your Knife, The Less You Cry this week and immediately felt the need to conquer the perfect poached egg. There is a lot to know about poaching an egg that I never dreamed possible. Or rather, cooking eggs in general. The egg has rapidly become the most important part of my cooking and baking over the past few months. You can do everything and anything with it. It's like butter. It's special. The magic ingredient.

So I pulled out The Art of Simple Food by Alice Waters and turned to page 142 for her instructions on poaching an egg. Water, vinegar and understanding of when to remove the egg. The thing about the egg is that it continues to cook even after you remove it from the heat. For example, the key to scrambled eggs is to gently and patiently whisk/stir until its nearly opaque, but not cooked through. As in, you wouldn't want to eat it just yet as parts are a bit slippery, but given another couple of minutes, it will be moist, fluffy and perfect. So you take it off, and those last couple of minutes are done away from the heat.

The poached eggs seems to be similar. The fresher the egg, the easier the poaching, the more snug the egg ball. The water is kept at a quiet rolling boil. As it cooks you roll the egg with a slotted spoon to center the yolk, while also preventing it from sticking to the bottom of the pan. By the time the egg whites have all turned opaque, the yolk is still soft and runny - which in my opinion is perfect. The result is a delicious flavorful poached egg - the vinegar drawing out the hint of flavor without being vinegary.

February 7th, 2011

Mango Mousse and Chocolate-Espresso Cake

The second birthday of the week inspired a new level of cake-making. My very first mousse cake. Mango mousse at that. I've been in love with the mango mousse from the Whole Foods bakery for several years now. It's technically made off-site at a local bakery, but I forget the precise name.

In any case, I went looking for a simple mango cake recipe. Then I realized that I didn't have the beautiful acetate wraps to hole it in place. I did some shopping over the weekend, but couldn't find anything locally. I considered using a clear cellophane used to wrap books or gift baskets, but decided against it in the end. Instead, I went in search of a recipe that was a little sturdier - and fell upon this Mango Mousse and Chocolate-Espresso Cake at the blog Desserts For Breakfasts. The sturdy bottom layer made from a rich mocha topped by a fluffy mango mousse and finished with a sweet espresso jelly, all wrapped and held together in a thin bark of bittersweet chocolate.

The original recipe is designed for 6 small cakes, but I made a 9 inch single cake instead. I was able to bake the cake part in a single pan as a result rather than deal with a baking tray. This made the thin chocolate wrap harder to handle in the end (an extra set of hands would be a lot easier), but I got it on and it turned out brilliantly.

The only bad part of the cake, was the cake-part itself - the chocolate cake was really dense. Again, a density issue with these from-scratch cakes. I was told that it was texturally appealing when eaten in combination with the mango mousse and espresso jelly, however. In the future, I will cut out the cake part altogether though and just make a solid mousse-and-jelly cake. Or do a layered mousse cake with maybe passion fruit, mango and vanilla cream. Yum.

February 6th, 2011

Espresso syrup

I spent the day making more cake. Another multilayered, multi-step baked good that took hours to complete.

This particular shot is the espresso syrup that I used to between the chocolate cake layer and the mango mousse. It was probably the easier part to make out of the entire cake.

February 4th, 2011

Coconut Cream Layer Cake

I have been on a baking binge this winter and the birthdays of coworkers has finally given me a safe outlet. I was chatting with one of the technicians about the project manager who only wears Hawaiian shirts (he's from Hawaii), and mentioned that he was wearing a new shirt today. Last year we came up with this awesome plan to have everyone wear Hawaiian shirts for the day in honor of his birthday. So when the PM walked into the lab, the technician naturally remembered to ask when his birthday was. "Tomorrow."

Woah. We had no time! So we immediately send out an e-mail to everyone to get them in on the last-minute Hawaiian shirt-wearing theme. Then began to plan our Hawaiian-themed party. Really this just involved someone maybe picking up some leis and me agreeing to make a cake. So I went with coconut, since I love coconut.

I chose Alton Brown's Coconut Cake by way of this really delicious baking blog. It would be one of my first traditional cakes from scratch. What I mean by traditional is that I really love cake mix with added pudding. I will jazz up the mix, go to down on shapes and frosting - but the base cake is never my own creation when it comes to fluffy, cakey cake. This is kind of a daunting recipe. Four layers, filling, 7-minute frosting, and 5 different types of coconut products.

I managed to get the four layers baked, filling, frosted and topped, following instructions to the t, but mine really wasn't quite as lovely looking as the recipe blog photos. I used pre-separated egg whites for the batter, which immediately fell after I reached stiff peaks. So they weren't as fluffy as they were supposed to be. this resulted in a more dense, drier cake. However, the coconut water-soak saved the day to make it ultra moist. The 7-minute frosting was also less fluffy than it was supposed to be, which I'm sure was a temperature thing that I didn't notice. You can tell that its sort of glassy.

Overall everyone loved the cake - its richly sweet with every kind of coconut you can think of - coconut cream, coconut water, coconut milk, coconut extract, coconut shavings. I ended up cracking a coconut on my front stoop in like 20 degree weather with a hammer because I having issues cracking indoors. A man was walking by with his Pomeranian who really, really wanted some coconut. It was an odd scene between us.

This image was captured last minute on the travel tray right before we cut into it. Poor lighting. I would like a prettier cake holder with a 9-inch base rather than 8 inch, but this old Tupperware one that my mom gave me has the most secure handle/locking mechanism on the market. The new ones are all really sketch.

January 24th, 2011

Sewing kit
January 23rd, 2011

I made banana cream pie for the Pie Party at work. It was amazingly delicious in my opinion. Light and mild. Made from Dorie Greenspan's recipe - with her sweet tart dough crust and freshly whipped cream.

January 2nd, 2011

January 2nd, 2011

It took me 5 days to complete this Spanikopita, not intentionally. It began with the vegetable prep and some phyllo dough thawing. Various components were cooked and left to set. Eventually the ingredients were combined and folded into a beautiful little triangular packets. Then frozen. And lastly, wrapped in plastic for easy individual servings.

The recipe is somewhat nontraditional, and yet phenomenal. Of course, this would be the case, since the great David Lebovitz was the inspiration. Taking his suggestion on additional seasonings I added paprika, chopped sun-dried tomatoes and fresh garlic. Due to a shortage of feta cheese, I substituted a half cup of ricotta - which worked well to bind the spinach into a creamy, rich filling.

The most sinful part of this recipe was the sheer quantity of butter used between each lay of phyllo and before every fold of the packet. Best if enjoyed with a light salad and some olives.