And now, for something...slightly different.

Okay, so this is another pumpkin recipe (yes, I am aware I have a bit of an obsession), but there is something different about this one.  It's SAVORY!  Pumpkin is, after all, a squash, something we usually consider to be more akin to vegetables and suited for dinner rather than dessert or breakfast.  So it's definitely time to pay tribute to how well pumpkin blends with savory fall flavors.

Pumpkin pasta sauce is something I discovered years ago when my half-roommate would always come over and we would cook for ourselves and my two full roommates.  I've always had an obsession with recipes.  From the time I was little, I loved looking through my mom's recipe box and dozens of cookbooks (okay, so maybe this is an inherited trait).  I believe I have mentioned before my current obsession with foodgawker.com.  But before I found that, my main point of obsession was epicurious.com.  I have hundreds of recipes saved on there to try, and hundreds more saved on my phone app.  It was great to have people to cook for and with to try out all these recipes.  This was one recipe I had saved, and though we followed the recipe for the most part, we also immediately modified it by adding asparagus and lamb shanks.  That definitely made for a decadent meal, but perhaps too much so.

Over time, I have tweaked it a bit more, to suit my tastes and available ingredients.  This is one of those beautiful recipes that can be treated as a blank canvas to make your own.  I've decided that my favorite way is to add bacon and sage to make it that much more fall-tasting. 

Pumpkin Pasta adapted from Epicurious

Ingredients

• 3 strips bacon
• 1 onion, finely diced
• 1 red bell pepper, finely diced
• 4 cloves of garlic, minced
• 1/2 cup pumpkin puree
• 1 cup chicken broth
• 2 tablespoons half and half
• 1/8 teaspoon nutmeg
• 1/8 teaspoon pepper
• 1/8 teaspoon sage
• 1/2 lb shaped pasta suitable for catching sauce (orecchietti, radiatori, fusilli, farfalle, etc.)

Dice bacon slices.  Saute in a large skillet over medium high heat until cooked but not crisp  Add the onion, bell pepper and garlic, and saute until onion is translucent.  Add pumpkin, chicken broth, half and half, and spices.  Simmer over medium low heat while you cook the pasta (at least 10 minutes).  Once the pasta is al dente, reserve some of the cooking water and drain.  Add to the sauce and toss, adding pasta water to thin if needed.

Apple: The Other Fall Flavor

Okay, with all the pumpkin love going on, I'm sure you're wondering if I'm even aware of that other versatile fruit that dominate fall recipes: apples. Let me assure you, I have not forgotten about those deliciously crispy, sweet and juicy treasures that are so abundant around this time of year, particularly here in New England, where apple picking is a required part of fall (one I seem to have missed out in four out of five Boston autumns...). I have nothing against apples, and certainly not against cooking with them. Apple pie bars, apple turnovers, apple muffins, apple cakes, apple bread, apple butter.... All favorite recipes. However, there are a few things that keep me from showing apples as much love as pumpkin.

Well, actually one thing, really, but several sub-reasons. Namely, I tend to be a lazy cook. I like to make things that involve ingredients I tend have on hand, and sadly, apples are not generally one of those ingredients. It takes a lot of apples to make most things, and as I walk to and from the grocery store, buying copious quantities of apples just to have on hand is not something that is generally going to happen. Even when I do think about doing so, the best apples for baking/cooking are all the ones I'm allergic to (namely, every kind except macintosh and gala). This means that if I buy proper apples, I have to actually bake with them. I can't just give up on finding time and eat them, because I kind of like keeping my throat un-swollen shut. Also, recipes usually require apples to be peeled. I HATE peeling apples. It's sticky and messy and just a bother all around.

So you see, it's not that I dislike apples. I just don't get around to cooking with them unless it is for a specific purpose But shockingly, as I was trying to choose a cake to make as part of my rainy day baking spree, I realized that *GASP* I have everything on hand to make my favorite apple cake ever! I quickly find the recipe (courtesy of Martha Stewart), and confirm that yes, yes I do have it all! 2 lbs apples? Check! Sour cream? Check! (Well, plain yogurt, but close enough). Vanilla beans? Check! Apple cider? Check!

Clearly, with such an amazing coincidence of events (time plus ingredients), I *had* to make this cake. I decided to forgo the brown sugar Swiss meringue butter cream (partly because of the insane amounts of butter, partly because of the 5 egg whites, and partly because I lacked that much brown sugar). Instead, I opted for a simple cream cheese frosting, to which I added a dose of cinnamon. Since I was a little short on powdered sugar, I found myself a little short on frosting, especially for such a tall cake. I thought about what to do for the extra filling, and decided that there must be something to be made from the additional apple cider. A quick search later, and I had my answer: Apple Cider Caramel. I think I may have just found a way to make my favorite cake even better...

Oh, and one final note. Of course, this was not as smooth an operation as I had hoped. Have you ever seen the Wilton Bake Even strips? I had recently bought some, and decided to try them out. They do indeed work wonderfully. My cake layers rose up nice and tall and even.....and continued to rise and spill over the sides nice and evenly. Oops. Thankfully, I managed to scrape it out of the oven mid-baking, so I did not set off my smoke detector. The recipe says to use two 8" pans, but seriously, use three.

Okay, enough chatter. Ready for the cake?  

Caramelized Apple Spice Cake from Martha Stewart

Ingredients 

• 2 1/2 sticks unsalted butter, room temperature 
• 1 vanilla bean 
• 2 pounds Granny Smith apples, peeled, cored, and grated (4 cups)
• 1/2 cup apple cider 
• 2 1/2 cups granulated sugar 
• 3 3/4 cups all-purpose flour, plus more for dusting 
• 2 1/2 teaspoons baking powder 
• 2 1/2 teaspoons baking soda 
• 1 teaspoon salt 
• 1 1/2 teaspoons ground cinnamon 
• 1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg 
• 1/4 teaspoon ground ginger 
• 1/4 cup packed dark-brown sugar 
• 4 large eggs, room temperature 
• 1/2 cup sour cream 
• 1 1/4 cups pecan halves (5 ounces), toasted dark and finely ground in a food processor [I subbed almond meal] 
• Brown Sugar Swiss Meringue Buttercream [or other frosting of your choice] 
• Apple Cider Caramel [optional, recipe below] 

Put 1/2 stick butter into a large nonstick skillet. Using the tip of a paring knife, scrape seeds from vanilla bean into skillet, and toss in pod. Cook over medium heat until butter is lightly browned, about 2 minutes. Stir in apples, cider, and 1 cup granulated sugar. Raise heat to medium-high, and cook, stirring occasionally, for 8 minutes. Reduce heat to low, and cook until apples are golden and translucent and liquid has evaporated, about 10 minutes [this took more like 20 for me]. Discard vanilla pod. Let cool.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Butter two three 8-by-2-inch round cake pans. Dust with flour, and tap out excess. Whisk together flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt, and spices. Reserve 1/4 cup flour mixture.

Beat remaining 2 sticks butter, remaining 1 1/2 cups granulated sugar, and the brown sugar with a mixer on medium-high speed until pale and fluffy, about 5 minutes. Reduce speed to medium, and add eggs, 1 at a time, beating well after each addition. Reduce speed to low. Beat in flour mixture in 2 batches, alternating with the sour cream and scraping bowl as needed. Add remaining 1/4 cup flour mixture to apple mixture, and toss. Fold in apple mixture and pecans.

Divide batter between prepared pans. Bake until tops are dark golden brown and a toothpick inserted into centers comes out clean, 55 to 65 minutes. Let cool for 30 minutes on a wire rack. Run a knife around edges of cakes to loosen. Unmold cakes, and let cool, right side up, on rack. Once cooled, split cake layers. Fill the split layers with apple cider caramel, and assemble with frosting of your choice.  

Apple Cider Caramel from Epicurious

Ingredients

• 2 1/2 cups apple cider [reduced from original 4 cups, per user review, and seemed to be a good call] 
• 1 vanilla bean, split lengthwise 
• 1/2 cup (packed) dark brown sugar 
• 1/4 cup (1/2 stick) unsalted butter 

Place cider in heavy large skillet. Scrape in seeds from vanilla bean; add bean. Boil cider mixture until reduced to 2 cups, about 15 minutes. Add sugar and butter. Cook until sauce thickens slightly and is reduced to 1 1/2 cups, stirring occasionally, about 6 minutes longer. [Took much longer, nearly 30 min]

More Pumpkin Love!

And the pumpkin kick continues...

This time, it's something I've been wanting to try for a while: Pumpkin Cinnamon Rolls.  Ever since I spotted the first recipe on Food Gawker, I have wanted to make these.  I love cinnamon rolls.  I love pumpkin.  This *must* be the perfect baked good!  And like any other delicious dish, everyone has a different twist.  As I sifted through my recipe options, I finally found a winner: Pumpkin Cinnamon Rolls from Miss in the Kitchen.  This recipe stood out for two reasons: 1) No rise time [yet they still puffed up beautifully!]; and 2) there is not only pumpkin in the bread, but it's also in the FILLING!  Double pumpkin = major win.  These were super simple and super tasty.  Definitely a keeper recipe!

Pumpkin Cinnamon Rolls from Miss in the Kitchen

Ingredients

for rolls:

Naked rolls - once they were iced, I dove right in before snapping a pic

• 1 cup warm water
• 2 tablespoons yeast
• 1/4 cup sugar
• 1/3 cup oil
• 1 egg
• 1/2 cup pumpkin puree
• 4 1/2 cups all purpose flour [I used 1 1/2 cups whole wheat flour, 2 cups all purpose]
• 1 teaspoon salt

for filling:

• 2 tablespoons butter, softened
• 2/3 cup pumpkin puree
• 2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
• 1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg
• 1/2 cup brown sugar
• 1/2 cup sugar

for icing:

• 4 oz cream cheese, softened
• 2 tablespoons butter, softened
• 1 1/2 cups powdered sugar
• 1 teaspoon vanilla
• 2 tablespoons milk

Preheat oven to 400 degrees.

In a large mixing bowl add warm water, yeast, sugar, and oil and stir together.  Allow to set for 3 to 5 minutes or until bubbles start to form.  Stir in egg and pumpkin.  Add 2 cups of flour and combine.  Add salt and 1 cup of flour.  Stir until a soft dough forms and starts to pull away from sides of bowl.  Add additional flour if needed.

Pour dough onto a floured surface and knead for 5 minutes, adding flour as needed until dough is soft and smooth but no longer sticky.  Allow dough to rest about 5 minutes.  Roll out to a rectangle shape about 12 x 15 inches.

In a medium size bowl mix butter and pumpkin puree together until smooth.  Stir in cinnamon and nutmeg. Spoon filling over dough and spread into a thin, even layer.  Sprinkle brown and white sugars evenly over dough.  Starting from a long side, carefully roll up dough, pinching the edges to seal.  Using a sharp knife cut into 1 1/2 inch slices.  Place into a greased baking dish [note: clearly my 9x13 was too big; perhaps a 9x9 or 10" round would work better].  Bake for 25 minutes or until rolls are cooked through and lightly browned.

Meanwhile, in a large bowl, mix cream cheese, butter and powdered sugar together.  Stir in vanilla and milk, mixing until smooth.  Pour over warm cinnamon rolls, gently spreading to cover the rolls.

Pumpkin Overtime!

So gray, rainy days = baking spree time for me.  And when said gray, rainy days occur in the fall, you can be assured there will be lots of warm, spicy, fall-like flavors involved.  Like pumpkin.  Lots of pumpkin.  As part of this particular baking spree, I made pumpkin granola bars, pumpkin pancakes (prior post), pumpkin cinnamon rolls (future post), and caramelized apple spice cake (another future post).  The only thing that stopped me from making pumpkin scones was the fact that I ran out of powdered sugar, and you cannot copycat the Starbucks' pumpkin scones without glaze.  Guess that will have to wait for a future spree....

Right now, lets talk about granola bars.  Super yummy.  I love granola bars (chewy, not crunchy).  It's like hand-held oatmeal that you can take with you.  They can come in whatever flavor combination can be imagined.  I have wanted to make my own for some time now, and today I finally decided it was a good time.  I found a recipe for Pumpkin Cranberry Chocolate Chip Granola Bars from Sweet Pea's Kitchen, which I decided to further tweak for my own preferences/ingredient availability.  They weren't quite right, but I think that may be due to the additional dry ingredients without addition wet ingredients to hold it together.  I'll tweak that for next time.

Pumpkin Granola Bars modified from Sweet Pea's Kitchen

Ingredients

• 3 1/4 cups old fashioned oats
• 1/2 teaspoon pumpkin pie spice
• 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
• 1/4 teaspoon nutmeg
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 3/4 cup brown sugar
• 1/2 cup pumpkin puree
• 1/4 cup applesauce
• 1/4 cup honey
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 3/4 cup mini chocolate chips
• 1/4 cup chopped dates
• 1/2 cup chopped cinnamon roasted almonds

Preheat oven to 350. Spray the bottom and sides of a 8-by-8-inch baking pan. Put a long piece of parchment paper in the bottom of the pan, letting the parchment extend up two sides of the pan and overhang slightly on both ends.

In a large bowl, combine oats, spices, and salt together. Set aside.

In a medium bowl, whisk together brown sugar, pumpkin, applesauce, honey, and vanilla extract. Pour mixture over oats and stir well, until combined. Stir in chocolate chips, nuts and dates.

Place the mixture into the prepared pan. Press mixture evenly into pan. Bake for 30-35 minutes or until golden brown. Remove from oven and let cool on a wire rack for 5 minutes. Remove from pan and transfer to a wire rack to cool completely, then cut into squares.

Or I suppose you could just eat it as one giant bar.

Not Quite Srevotfel

Srevotfel is about remaking left-overs and giving them new life as a tasty new dish.  So what would it be when you create something to save fresh ingredients that have, well, seen better days?  Rescue mission?  That doesn't sound right when we're talking about tasty food...  Well, whatever term is appropriate, I have discovered a great way to use up excessive tomatoes without much trouble.

Every Friday and Saturday in Boston, throughout the year, there is an outdoor produce market at Haymarket.  If you're willing to brave the crowds, you can get tons of fruits and veggies at insanely cheap prices (last trip, I ended up toting home about 20 pounds of assorted produce, from bell peppers to grapes to butternut squash, for a grand total of $16).  However, there's always a catch: these fruits and veggies are usually gasping their last breaths, so they need to be used ASAP.  They generally have just enough life to make it through the week (enough time to go stock up again at the next market).  So if you reach the end of the week and still have not used some stuff, it's time to find a rescue recipe.

This week, I found that I had about three pounds of plum tomatoes that were good today, but may not be in two more days.  Why I decided last weekend that I needed four pounds of tomatoes, I cannot tell you. I think it had something to do with the "2lbs for $1.50" sign.  Because you can never have too many tomatoes, right?  Really, I suppose not, because excess tomatoes can become a simple and delicious pasta sauce, and that is always something that you can keep on hand or in the freezer.

Usually when making pasta sauce entirely from scratch, you're supposed to peel the tomatoes.  Um, no thank you.  Lazy solution: roast them.  Based on a recipe I found once upon a time, if you roast tomatoes, you just have to puree them, skins and all.  Sounds perfect to me, and tastes even better.  Especially when I found a few red peppers to throw in as well.  Tomato sauce is something you're not really supposed to have a recipe for (at least in my opinion), so this is merely a guideline.  But it turned out so tasty, I wanted to remember how exactly I made it, so I thought I may as well share it here as well.

Roasted Tomato Sauce

Ingredients

• 3 lbs plum tomatoes
• 2 red bell peppers
• 1 medium onion
• 8 cloves garlic
• 2 tablespoons olive oil
• salt and pepper to taste
• 1/4 cup red wine
• 1/4 teaspoon red pepper flakes
• 1/2 teaspoon oregano
• 1/4 teaspoon thyme

Heat oven to 350.  Cut tomatoes in half, and cut the onion and peppers into a few large pieces.  Place the vegetables and the garlic in a 9x13 pan, drizzle with oil, season with salt and pepper, and toss to coat.  Roast until all vegetables are tender and beginning to brown.  This will take about an hour and a half.

Once the vegetables are roasted, allow them to cool enough to not injure yourself during the next step.  Puree the vegetables together in a food processor, blender, or immersion blender.  Pour into a saucepan, add remaining ingredients, and simmer for another 20-30 minutes to allow the flavors to meld.

Yields approximately 1 qt sauce.

Pumpkin time!

One of the greatest things about fall is the abundance of pumpkin in EVERYTHING! I love it! Pumpkin has become a standard part of my grocery shopping list... Can never have too much at this time of year. And here are two amazing (and semi-healthy) pumpkin recipes I have recently discovered!

Pumpkin Pancakes

Yum, yum, yum...and another yum if you top it with a spiced apple compote.

Ingredients

3 tablespoons butter, melted
3/4 cup pumpkin puree
1 egg, beaten
1 cup milk
1 1/4 cup whole wheat flour
1/4 cup white flour
1 tablespoon brown sugar
1 teaspoon cinnamon
2 1/2 teaspoons pumpkin pie spice
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt

Mix together wet ingredients in a large bowl. Mix dry ingredients in separate bowl. Add the dry ingredients to the wet, stirring just to combine. Heat pan over medium heat, spray with non-stick cooking spray, and cook pancakes about 3 minutes per side (this batter is a bit more dense, and needs a little more cooking time than regular pancakes).

To make spiced apple compote, melt 2 tablespoons of butter in a small saucepan over med-low heat. Add 2 chopped apples, 1 tablespoon brown sugar, 1/2 tablespoon pumpkin pie spice, and a dash of salt. Cook over med-low heat, until apples are soft. (Note: this only makes enough for half the pancakes).

Pumpkin Bread from Domestic Revolt

This delicious, moist loaf has no added fat and can easily be made with half whole wheat flour.  Also great with a sprinkling of chopped nuts over the top (I used hazelnuts).



Ingredients

1 3/4 cups flour
1 1/2 cups sugar
1 teaspoon baking soda
3/4 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons cinnamon
1 teaspoon nutmeg
1/2 teaspoon cloves
1/4 teaspoon ginger
1 15 ounce can pumpkin
2 eggs





Preheat oven to 325, and grease a 9x5 loaf pan.  In a large bowl, whisk together all the dry ingredients.

In a separate bowl, beat together the eggs, pumpkin, and water. Add this mixture to the dry ingredients and mix until just incorporated.

Pour into prepared pan and bake for 80 to 90 minutes or until it tests done with a toothpick.  Remove from the pan and cool on a wire rack. This bread tastes better the day after its baked once the spices have mingled a bit. 

File this one under "Can't Follow Directions? No problem!"

So as I'm thinking about how I'm going to write about this, I go back and forth between an excited "I did it!" and an eye-rolling "How did I manage to screw that up?" I suppose I'll start with excited, as it helps to explain what I'm talking about.

I have completed my very first Daring Cooks Challenge! Yes, I know, I signed up for that MONTHS ago... But I've been busy. I swear. Okay, and a bit lazy with the postings, but more about being busy (and misunderstanding when the challenge is presented, leading me to think I only had a two week window in which to complete it). But this month, I did it! And I was even SUCCESSFUL! You may be wondering why I'm so surprised/excited about being successful (after all, I'm not exactly modest about my cooking abilities), but more on that in a moment.

The challenge this month was presented by Shelley of C Mom Cook, who challenged us to make moo shu pork, complete with pancakes from scratch. The moo shu didn't sound so intimidating, but I was a bit worried about the pancakes. Especially when the challenger noted that when she asked two different Chinese restaurants, they said they simply buy the pancakes already prepared. I saw it akin to making your own paneer or puff pastry - yes, you can do it, but why bother when the pre-made is just as good? (Of course, this is not my stance on most foods, but there are a few exceptions as noted). But, it was part of the challenge, so I had to do it - and after all, trying something a bit out of your comfort zone is part of what these challenges are about! So I dove in and did it, and it turned out to be easier than I thought! The final result:

Okay, so where's the screw up? Well, I seem to have an issue with list making... I was reading the recipe and making my grocery list, and I managed to completely leave off two ingredients. And they happen to be two ingredients that she specifically noted that are key components to moo shu: cabbage and scallions. Total facepalm moment when I realized this. So...what to do? I really was not interested in walking back to the grocery store for a second time that day, especially as I was also working on some cookies at the time. I went through my veggie drawers: onions, potatoes, beets, carrots, cauliflower, spinach... I decided to go with the carrots. Really, they were about my only viable option. And of course, onions would have to stand in for the scallions. I also subbed chicken for the pork. Okay, so it wasn't a true moo shu pork, but it was still tasty! And so were the pancakes, even though I am occasionally shape-challenged (only a couple actually resembled round).

So how is it made? Well, the eggs are scrambled, the other ingredients are stir fried, and then it's all mixed together with some soy sauce, sake, and a drizzle of sesame oil. The pancakes are simply flour and water, with a small amount of oil. I halved the original recipe, as that made twice as many as needed for the moo shu. It was a firm dough, but not too tough to knead. I went with the rolling method of taking two pieces, each rolled into a small circle, brushing one with sesame oil before topping with the other, and then rolling out to the proper thinness. This allowed me to get them much thinner than I would have likely been comfortable doing with individual pieces. They still cooked quickly, and came apart without a problem. They were thin and chewy and perfect for wrapping up the moo shu. I cheated and used jarred plum sauce instead of making my own hoisin sauce, but this was primarily because I like my moo shu with plum sauce.

All in all, I was very pleased with my results for my first DC challenge. It was certainly not perfect, but it was delicious none the less. Especially with a small carafe of sake.

I'm already looking forward to next month's challenge!

Here are the recipes, as I adapted them:

Moo Shu Chicken
Serves 4

1 oz dried black mushrooms (shitake)
3 Eggs
4 T vegetable oil, divided
0.75 lb boneless, skinless chicken breast (originally 0.5 lb pork butt)
3.5 oz canned bamboo shoots
0.5 small onion (originally 2 scallions)
7 small carrots (originally 3 cups chopped Napa cabbage)
1 t salt
1 T soy sauce
2 t sake
Sesame oil
12 pancakes for serving

Soak the mushrooms in hot water for 10-15 minutes. Drain, and thinly slice, discarding tough stems. Slice bamboo and carrots into matchsticks. Finely chop onion. Thinly cut chicken into small pieces.

Lightly beat eggs with a pinch of salt. Heat 1 T oil in a large fry pan or wok over med-high heat. Cook eggs until just set, making sure not to make them too dry. Set aside.

Heat remaining oil. Add chicken, and cook about one minute, until it begins to change color. Add the carrots, onion, and bamboo. Stir fry another 2-3 minutes. Add the salt, soy sauce, and sake, mix well and continue to cook for another two minutes. Stir in the eggs, breaking them up in small pieces. Add a small drizzle of sesame oil and blend well. Serve with moo shu pancakes, hoisin sauce, plum sauce, and/or Chinese mustard.

Moo Shu Pancakes
Makes 12 pancakes

2 c flour
3/4 c boiling water
1/2 t vegetable oil
Sesame oil

Sift flour into a large bowl. Slowly add boiling water, stirring as you pour. Stir in oil. Mix well until a cohesive dough forms. Cover with a damp towel and let rest for 30 minutes.

Turn dough out onto lightly floured surface and knead for 6-8 minutes. Divide dough into two pieces, putting one back under the damp towel while you work. Divide the remaining piece into six equal pieces. Working with two pieces at a time, use a rolling pin to roll each into a 3 inch circle. Use a pastry brush to coat one circle with sesame oil, then top with the second circle. Roll the two pieces out together until quite thin, about a 6-8 inch circle. Repeat process with the remaining dough.

Heat an ungreased frying pan over high heat, then reduce to medium. Cook one pancake at a time, turning once, until light brown spots appear (this only takes about a minute per pancake). Once the pancake is cooked, carefully peel the two pancakes apart, being careful about steam trapped between them. Cover the cooked pancakes with a damp towel as you cook the remaining pancakes.

Pretty in Pink

Confession time:

1) I am the laziest food photographer ever to make the slightest attempt at chronicling a food blog. I barely remember to snap a quick shot with my iPhone before diving into my creations. I don't even have my proper camera here (it's sadly in Amanda's basement....I need to rectify that). Because many of the items I make are for me, I don't bother with pretty presentation. I suck at this. My apologies.

2) I LOVE risotto. I love the creamy goodness when there's really nothing to make it creamy but arborio rice. And I love that you can just stuff whatever vegetables you want into it. Not to mention the fact that you don't really need a recipe, just a basic jist of what's going on. Perfect for quick, no fuss comfort food.

3) I also love brightly and unusually colored food. I remember this one random episode of a cooking show that used to be on PBS when I was little, "The Frugal Gourmet". I would occasionally watch this with my mom when I was around 5 years old, and the only thing I can remember was this episode when he dyed foods blue, like mashed potatoes and spaghetti. I thought it was the coolest thing ever.

Due to #1, it's hard to tell that the above picture incorporates not just #2 but also #3 quite stunningly. That, my friends, is an amazingly delicious, amazingly gorgeous beet risotto. In real life, it is a deep, vibrant magenta. Just beautiful. It makes me want to add beets to everything to give it this color.

So why beet risotto? Well, because when I was at the grocery store last week, they had beautiful, large beets (instead of their usual puny, sickly looking ones), so I had to buy them. But, as you may recall, there is a moratorium on the oven until winter, so I couldn't roast them. So what do you do with raw beets? Well, you could add them to a salad, but I didn't have any other good salad fixings on hand (I have the worst schedule ever, so I'm wary about trying to keep short-lived veggies, like greens, on hand). You can also make them a salad on their own. But today was gray and long and kinda stressful, so that didn't sound comforting enough. Then I remembered I had half a box of arborio rice in the pantry, vegetable stock in the cupboard, and the liquor store is more or less on my way home. So after scanning several recipes, I decided to make this lovely dish. And it is amazingly delicious. Particularly with a glass of pinot grigio from the rest of that bottle. Just right for a comforting dinner to start two weeks of utter insanity. By adding the beets raw instead of roasted, they retain a fresh flavor rather than becoming sweet.

Beet Risotto
Please note, these amounts are my best approximation...I seem to have forgotten how to measure

2 Tablespoons olive oil
1 medium onion, chopped
3 cloves garlic, pressed
1 1/2 cup arborio rice
1/3 cup white wine
5 cups vegetable stock
1 Tablespoon rosemary
3 largish beets, shredded
1/4 teaspoon ground black pepper
1/4 cup crumbled blue cheese (or Parmesan)

Begin by warming the stock in a saucepan, leaving it to come to a bare simmer. Heat the oil in a 2 qt. pan over medium heat, then saute onion until translucent, 5-7 minutes. Add the garlic and saute another minute. Add the rice, stirring to coat with oil, and let cook another two minutes. Add wine, allowing to fully absorb, stirring occasionally. Add rosemary and one cup stock. Allow rice to fully absorb the stock, then add more, one cup at a time, allowing it to absorb in between. Once the last of the stock is nearly absorbed, stir in beets and season with pepper. Allow to cook another 2-3 minutes, just long enough to take the crunch off the beets. Stir in blue cheese.

Serves 4

Me and My Big Mouth...

A week or so ago, a friend mentioned she was craving Thin Mints. I, of course, mentioned that, hey, here's a recipe for homemade Thin Mints! Okay, so that's not the big mouth part. That came later, when our mutual friend asked if I wanted to join for the 4th, I said, "Sure! Then I can make the Thin Mints for her!" Yeah, that would be the "big mouth" moment...

Wait, me complaining about baking? What? Don't worry, I haven't had a complete personality flip. It's just that it's July. I live in Boston. Land of the old buildings. You know, those ones built before air conditioning, or even ceiling fans, were invented. And heaven forbid they ever install such a thing into a historic building.* So the thermometer is telling me that it's 87 degrees INSIDE. And I have to turn on the oven. For three pans of cookies. By the time the last cookie was coated in chocolate and in the fridge, I was on my second margarita and contemplating filling the bathtub with ice water. My friend is going to enjoy these cookies, whether she likes it or not. Did I mention this was all with a giant slice out of a finger on my right hand? I was even thinking about my lucky friends in Phoenix, in the 110+ heat, because at least they get air conditioning. No more volunteering to bake this summer. The oven is now banned from use for the rest of the summer. Perhaps partway into fall.

In the meantime, I ordered an ice cream maker. :D


*I use this term EXTREMELY loosely. Kind of like how people call the rusted out shell of a car sitting on cinder blocks in their front yard a "classic car".

Welcome to Arizona!

As I mentioned in my last post, I made a carrot cake for my friends who are now trucking their way cross country to the desert. Something the choose to do as we enter into the hottest part of summer. I suspect they might be masochists.

Anyway. Back to what's important. Carrot cake! Behold - the final product:

Isn't it cute? I don't mean to brag, but seriously, I was amazed I was able to create something that actually turned out better than the picture in my head. And it was so much fun to create! Here, how about a couple more shots:

I think my favorite element is the Red Sox cap. Because of it, Matt assured me that if he ever comes across a bleached steer skull while out in the desert, he will put a Sox hat on it and take a picture for me. Kind of hoping I get that email one of these days...

The cake is the same carrot cake I made a few posts ago, with cream cheese frosting. I then covered the cake in rolled fondant, and used more of the icing to glue on the walnut mountains and "sand" (crushed graham crackers). I also dyed some icing to paint the sun. All of the features (except for the sign - that's just paper) were made from marzipan and brushed with gold pearl dust, and then glued to the cake with royal icing (and in the case of the cacti, reinforced with toothpicks). It really makes me want to branch out even more and learn how to work with gum paste... Maybe for the next one!

Back at it!

Okay, so I don't have any fabulous creations to share at the moment. Not that I haven't been creating masterpieces. I've just been lazy about photographing and writing them up. Like the amazing S'more Cookie Bars I made the other day, or the awesome seafood salad (the recipe's term, not mine...more like a feast or an extravaganza or some other over-the-top-implying term) that I made last weekend. But I'm so unreasonably excited about what's coming up that I felt the need to share something! Major need for therapeutic baking has arisen, courtesy of the job so insane that it defies comprehension. Thankfully, going to a friend's birthday/going away party on Saturday. Cake time! Somewhat sadly, when I pressed her for some guidance on flavor (I was going a bit insane and was seriously contemplating three different forms of cake - traditional, cup, and pop - simply because I couldn't settle on one flavor), she chose carrot cake. Now mind you, I have an AMAZING recipe for carrot cake. It's truly delicious. But...I already know that. It's been done before.

Well, okay. She is, after all, the birthday girl. So how do I make it special? How do I make it stand out from the one I've made before? Well, first off, it won't have dog bones on it, as this time, it's for a human (which Amanda was actually rather shocked to learn, as the last two carrot cakes either of us have made were for a dog). Amanda was very sweet and helped me try to come up with ideas for decorating, without even getting annoyed as I continually rejected them for one reason or another. But really, some of them did sink in and percolate for the afternoon. As I was talking to my roommate (one of the two new fabulous roommates) about the cake, a picture began forming in my head. I decided to sketch it out (very roughly...drawing is clearly not my forte), and then decided that I was so excited to make it, that I couldn't help but start on some pieces of it tonight. So I did, with her help, and now I can't wait to make the whole thing and put it all together! This will definitely require pictures and a new post!

Oh, and as an aside, I'm thinking of joining the Daring Kitchen. It keeps popping up on Food Gawker, my current addiction/obsession. Sounds like a lot of fun! Only question: baking, cooking, or both?

Perfect Pancakes

I have discovered the perfect basic pancake recipe (granted, this isn't exactly an original discovery...I believe this is basically the recipe Amanda always uses, but hey, it was a new discovery to me). It's simple, quick, uses ingredients that are generally kept on hand, turns out amazingly fluffy, and the variations on it are endless.

Basic Pancakes
2 T butter, melted
1 C milk
1 egg
1 C flour
2 T sugar
2 t baking soda
1/2 t salt

Whisk together wet ingredients in a large bowl. Combine dry ingredients in a smaller bowl, then add to wet ingredients. Mix just to combine (do not over mix). Heat griddle over medium heat, lightly grease, and pour on 1/4 cup batter per pancake. When bubbles begin to form and break, flip over and cook for about another minute or two.

Easy as can be! And even more fun to expand on. You can sub out buttermilk for the the regular milk. You can add whatever extracts/spices suit your fancy (I've done vanilla, almond, maple and lemon extracts, and have added cinnamon, nutmeg and cardamom). You can add cocoa powder for chocolate pancakes or pureed pumpkin for pumpkin pancakes (approximately 1/4 cup on each [assuming you like super chocolatey pancakes, because really, who doesn't?], though pumpkin requires upping the flour by about another 1/4 cup...keep the same consistency). You can add whatever else you want (chocolate chips, bananas, blueberries, strawberries, poppy seeds, nuts, sprinkles, whatever!). These pancakes are a blank canvas, ready for your creativity!

As for toppings, don't be limited by plain old pancake syrup. Try heating your favorite jam with a little water to make a fruit syrup (raspberry jam + chocolate pancakes = AMAZING), cooking up some fruit into a compote, or making your own cinnamon syrup (combine 1 C sugar, dash of salt, 2 T flour, 1 t cinnamon, 2/3 C water, and 1/2 C evaporated milk in a small sauce pan; boil until thickened; add 2 T butter). Hmmm, I bet if you take out the cinnamon and milk, and add lemon extract and zest, you could make a pretty tasty lemon syrup, perfect for topping poppy seed pancakes... Get creative!

Easter Eggs

I love Easter eggs. I always have. They're so pretty and colorful. But after about a quarter of a century, there needs to be a way to mix it up a bit. Do something different. So this year, I was inspired by some various blog posts (via FoodGawker.com) to try what would prove to be one of the most time consuming, but ultimately impressive, Easter eggs ever: cake eggs!

You heard me right. Cake eggs. Real egg shells filled with cake. You crack open an egg, and find cake inside. In this case, funfetti cake. The process took most of the morning, and they didn't turn out quite as perfect as hoped, but hey, it was my first try.

To start the process, I began with dying my eggs. I wanted vibrant colors, so I let them sit in the dye for about 20 minutes.

I used a basic hot water/dye/splash of vinegar solution. As the eggs must be raw at this point, I didn't use too hot of water. I have to admit, the resulting colors were pretty stunning:

Then came the first challenge: emptying the eggs. I've heard there are special tools that can be used to snip off the tip of an egg shell for such projects such as this, but that's one obscure kitchen gadget I have yet to pick up. So it was all by hand. Following various tips I found online, I used a corkscrew to make a small hole in the tip of the egg, then carefully used my fingers to expand the hole to roughly the size of a pastry tip base. I then emptied the eggs, using my milk-frothing thermometer to coerce it out as needed. Use the eggs for whatever you need, but be sure to keep track of the numbers you need for the cake and separate those out.

After emptying the eggs, you need to soak them in cold salt water for 30 minutes. Not entirely clear on why, but everything said this. I'm presuming as a way to clean it up a bit more, since it will be used to bake cake in. This is where my plan first began running awry, and I'm not sure if there's a way around it. As I soaked my beautifully colored egg shells, I realized that all the yellow dye simply washed away. The yellow eggs became white, the orange reverted to pink, and the green faded to blue. Damn. Still lovely, but not quite the rainbow of color I was looking for. Oh well, moving on. Once the shells are soaked, you need to let them drain fully upside down while you make your cake batter and prep your pan.

I decided that funfetti cake would further add to the colorful fun of Easter eggs, so I used the same recipe as my last post. Really, you can use any cake recipe you'd like. Just be sure to scale it down! (Something I forgot to do...ended up with two additional layers of cake, which, due to laziness of not lining the bottom with parchment paper, are now bound for my first experiment at cake pops/bites...but that's another post). Since recipes make different sizes and the number of eggs you're insane enough to make may vary, it's going to be kind of guesstimating. For some reference, I made 25 eggs, and I needed to cut my recipe (which normally makes a three layer cake) to 1/3.

To get the egg shells to stand up for baking, the best way is to use a muffin tin and foil. I took a couple layers of foil (took a square, folded it in quarters) and kind of created a nest to support the egg shells. Once I had all my eggs in their foil nests, it was time to fill them. To accomplish this, you need a pastry bag with a plain tip. Fill the eggs roughly 2/3 full with batter. This is again a matter of guesstimation, as cake recipes vary. You want your cake to fully fill the shell when baked, but not overflow. My cake recipe rises so much that I should have aimed more for 1/2 full. This is what happened with them being too full:

Oops. (But it did give me a great idea for when these can be used outside of Easter: use brown eggs and red velvet cake, and you have mini-volcanoes!). This mess isn't the end of the eggs though. You just need to scrape off the excess cake (a paring knife can help with this), but it's hard to remove all cake residue and if you have dyed eggs, the cake will also take the dye with it.

The final product:

Seriously, how cute is this?

Funfetti-tastic!

You may be catching onto a pattern here... I like to make birthday cakes. Well, I like to make any cakes, really. But birthdays give me such a handy excuse to make a cake. This time, it's Amanda's. And her requested flavor of cake? Funfetti! So that's what I made (from scratch, of course).

The cake turned out beautifully. Three layers of fluffy white cake, sprinkled through with colorful dots.



The icing, however, turned out to be a debacle and a half. I found a recipe for Italian Meringue Buttercream, which I thought sounded amazing. I had made a Swiss Meringue Buttercream before that I absolutely loved, so I thought this would be perfect. Boy was I wrong. Everything was going along just fine, right up until I added the vanilla. Then my beautiful smooth icing began curdling right before my eyes. From vanilla! I was shocked. I was appalled. I wanted to cry. (I had been having a bad run with icing as it was before this...) I thought maybe, just maybe, it was because it was too warm (the end of summer, warm kitchen from baking the cake), so I thought I'd throw the bowl in the fridge overnight, then whip out the lumps in the morning. To my dismay, those curds were not going to smooth out, no matter how long I beat them. Even after consulting others, I still can't figure out what went wrong.

So now on to plan B: good old fashioned buttercream. But regular buttercream is rather yellow, due to the butter. This simply would not due for my perfect white cake that was supposed to have a perfect white frosting. So on to plan C: fake buttercream. Which required another trip to the store (without a car, so walking in the morning heat). Get there, gather my ingredients, get home...find that somehow, the cashier managed to leave out my butter extract. What?? How do you have buttercream frosting without butter flavoring?? As it was, I didn't have time to make it back to the store (nor did I have the patience) if I wanted to get a crumb coat set on the cake before icing it. So I had to make do with just the vanilla and almond. The result was indeed beautifully white, and tasted rather like Oreo-cooking filling. And even after all my frosting issues, the final product was, if I do say so myself, quite a cute little cake.



Oh, and what to do with all the leftover frosting that happens to taste like Oreo cream? Why, make (giant) homemade Oreos, of course!

Flavors of Fall

For B's boyfriend's birthday, I volunteered to make a cake (okay, so begged was more like it...have I mentioned I view baking as a form of therapy?). Surprisingly, it wasn't too hard to get my way. However, trying to settle on a cake was less than easy. He's a great guy, but one of the worst decision makers ever on certain topics. Coercion eventually got a "nothing too sweet" parameter from him. Finally, B and I managed to work through enough options to get him to actually choose something. (As I love to try new and interesting things, I have literally hundreds of cake recipes saved to try, so I really needed help in narrowing it down). The final verdict: Pumpkin Spice Cake with Orange Cream Cheese Frosting.



It was a perfectly spiced, not-too-sweet, slice of fall-flavored heaven. And the nuts were actually an amazing addition to the cake with both flavor and texture.



And of course, had to top it off with some hand-crafted marzipan pumpkins dusted with gold pearl dust! (And yes, those are flecks of orange zest you see in the frosting...yum!)

Portia Cureton Cookies

Or as I like to call them, Lady What's-Her-Face cookies (Amanda only had to tell me the proper name about a thousand times before I remembered). Amanda is the master (or I suppose that should be mistress?) of these delicious cookies. She takes the time to roll and cut out dozens of them, a chore that can take hours in the quantities we tend to make. (To be clear, I don't intentionally duck out on the work...she just always started these while I was still at school.) And then came the fun part: we break out the buttercream, sprinkles, and whatever else we think will be useful (which, if you're Andrew, includes red pepper flakes) and start decorating!

These cookies are made for holidays, so there are only so many holiday-themed shapes we have to work with. As you can see, we tend to get a little, um, creative after a while. Halloween wasn't too crazy:



As you can see, we were taking it quite seriously, everyone studiously decorating away.



Though in the end, we did have Mr. Potato Head and a hemorrhaging brain (hey, you can only make so many pumpkins before you try for something else).

St. Patrick's Day, however, was a different story....



Perhaps it was influenced by the beer bottle cookies, that we started getting creative quickly, or maybe just by that time in our 3L year, we were at a point of lunacy. Either way, we have Darby O'Gille (complete with pennies over his eyes), Conan O'Brian (or an Oompa Loompa, depending on who you ask), "No Man [gummybear] Is An Island", and the gummy bear representation of Envy...



...a bathroom door, disco dancers on a record, man drowning head-first in quicksand, a Chesire cat...



...Hannibal Lector, a ventriloquist, a mummy, a man drowning in water, a gummy bear sacrifice, and man-eating gummy bears.

Umm...yeah... Coincidentally, we've never been invited back since taking these to a party. I wonder why?

Snowman Army

(Okay, so in case no one's caught on, I'm catching up from months, and in some cases years, of prior creations, but since I have the pictures I thought I may as well)

Anyone remember the Calvin and Hobbes strips where they made the snowman army and house of snowman horrors?

Well, last Christmas, we decided to make our own snowman army (sans the macabre posing) out of rice krispy treats. Aren't they cute??



We just used standard rice krispy treat...stuff (mix? batter? edible modeling material?), which we found would tend to sink if stacked while warm, so we made the individual balls and "glued" them together with royal icing. We used the same royal icing for the eyes and mouth, and sculpted dyed marzipan into the little top hats and carrot noses. Fruit by the Foot was then cut into scarves. We definitely should have let them harden fully before assembling (and kept them away from the heater overnight), but we managed to keep them standing long enough for the party!

Strawberries and Cream

When B sent out info for her birthday party, she included a less than subtle hint that she would love a strawberry birthday cake if anyone felt so inspired to bake. As she knows just how much I look for any excuse to bake, I was quick to volunteer. Since I knew whatever cake I made would include lots of fresh strawberries, I decided to stay away from a traditionally iced (i.e., completely covered) cake, as we've previously learned just how much fresh strawberries can bleed through icing. The result:



Lovely and light and perfect after an afternoon barbeque. The only slight problem is that with all those layers of strawberries and whipped cream, cutting the cake made things slide a bit at the end. But still every bit as delicious as it looks!

Puppy Cakes!

So confession time: we're the kind of people who treat pets kind of like children. Particularly the chihuahuas. They have wardrobes. They have shoes. They have coats. They get birthday parties, complete with cakes made specially with them in mind - people cakes that have ingredients the pups like (cheese, carrots, apples, etc.) Yes, we are slightly insane.

When Claire turned one, she got a lovely carrot cake.



It has a cream cheese icing and decorated with marzipan carrots and dog bones which were hand sculpted. The bones were also dusted with gold colored pearl dust. I also subbed apple sauce for half the oil, cut the sugar by 1/2 cup, and omitted the raisins.

While the people enjoyed the cake, Claire thought we had all lost our minds:



(Admittedly, we probably had.)

Therapeutic Baking

We tend to view baking as not only a labor of love and a fun activity, but it can also serve as therapy when needed. October 30, 2010, was definitely a time we needed some baking therapy. Why? That was the day we were to receive the letters that would reveal our fate: our bar result letters (for those who do not know, we are both newly licensed attorneys). We had spent three years learning the law, three more months learning the law that we were to be tested on, and two eight hour days of testing. And this was the result of it all. So what to do when waiting on the mailman to deliver your fate? Why bake, of course! With a Halloween party the next night, we decided some "Charlie Brown and the Great Pumpkin" inspired cupcakes were just the thing.





We have pumpkins, pumpkin patches, Snoopy as the Red Baron, Woodstock, Lucy as a witch, Pig Pen as a dirty ghost, the dude with the hat (I forget who that is), Charlie Brown, and of course, Charlie Brown as a ghost with too many eye holes cut in his sheet.

It was quite the endeavor, requiring half a dozen shades of icing, various tools for outlining and drawing, and most of the day (which is good, as the postman chose that one day to be three hours later than usual), but we were pretty pleased with the results!

Srevotfel Creations

So here are two of our grand creations that exemplify the Srevotfel Pizza.

First up, the Chicken Meatball Srevotfel:



This was made on whole wheat crust and all cheese was reduced fat - going for a healthier version of Srevotfel! This pizza has homemade tomato sauce, slices of homemade chicken meatballs, mushrooms, mozzarella, and is topped with banana peppers. Totally delicious.

Also from that night, we have the Kielbasa Srevotfel:



Again with whole wheat crust and low fat cheese, this pizza has turkey kielbasa, potatoes, carrots, and whole grain mustard. It is topped with swiss cheese and parmesan and served with sauerkraut after it's baked. The sauerkraut really made the pizza. The potatoes, carrots, and kielbasa were originally boiled together with the sauerkraut. This was the winner of the night!