Monthly Archives: July 2009

Bacon-Wrapped Shrimp

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Currently cooking from Tasty by Roy Finamore

Two things I learned while making this dish:

1. Bacon and shrimp are both very slippery and resist staying wrapped together, even when skewered.

2. Bacon is flammable.

Did you notice that there’s no picture accompanying this post? That’s because I was too busy trying to put out the fire to take pictures. Who knew that dripping bacon grease plus grill would equal leaping flames? Okay, in some logical part of my brain, I probably knew that that might happen, but in my eagerness to try this, I ignored those warnings.

This recipe starts out by wrapping a piece of bacon around an extra-large shrimp and skewering them together. The skewers are then brushed with a mixture of ketchup, maple syrup and soy sauce (or fish sauce) and grilled. In Tasty, there is a beautiful shot of perfectly grilled shrimp surrounded by a crispy piece of bacon. I’m going to make myself feel better and believe that they totally doctored that photo.

Bryan and I were able to scavenge a few of the less burnt shrimp. The combination of the salty and sweet was really nice. Look for a repeat of this recipe soon. With pictures, hopefully.

Bell Pepper Frittata

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bell_pepper_frittataCurrently cooking from Tasty by Roy Finamore

After the excesses of my last cookbook, I wanted something a little more waistline friendly. Tasty, by Roy Finamore, is more of an all-purpose cookbook. While there are some desserts in it, there are also lots of salads, soups and side dishes.

The dish first in the lineup is a bell pepper frittata. A frittata is sort of  like an omlet, except it is started on the stovetop and finished in the oven. Frittatas are quick and lend themselves to all sorts of variations. In addition, frittatas are generally good warm or cold.

This frittata starts out by sauteing slices of bell pepper until slightly browned. I happened to have part of an onion sitting in my fridge, so I added that to the bell pepper. Once the pepper is soft and browned, you add a mixture of milk, pecorino cheese and eggs. Once the eggs are slightly set, the whole dish goes into the oven so the eggs finish cooking.

This frittata was good, but wet. See, I hate eggs that are even the slightest bit undercooked. I like my eggs cooked so they are only slightly less chewy than rubber. The peppers in the frittata are wet, and they made the eggs kind of, well, wet. A minor thing, I know, but it was enough to make me not want to eat more than a few bites. The flavor was good, I just didn’t like the texture.

Raspberry Buttermilk Cake Recipe

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raspberry_buttermilk_cake3This is the perfect little cake. It is quick and easy to make with ingredients that are probably sitting in your kitchen right now. There are no fancy mixing methods, no expensive, hard-to-find ingredients and no decadent frostings. Not too sweet or heavy, this cake is perfect for breakfast or as an afternoon snack. You can use just about any fruit you have on hand, fresh or frozen.

The original recipe appeared in the June 2009 Gourmet magazine. I ran across a variation here. I’ve made the cake twice. The first time I followed the original recipe and used fresh blueberries. That cake was okay. The second time I made several adjustments and used frozen raspberries. That cake was fantastic.

In my version, I cut down on the sugar from 2/3 cup to 1/2 cup. I also cut down on the leavening quite a bit. My version of the recipe is after the jump.

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Banana Chocolate Chip Cake

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banana_cakeCurrently baking from Great Coffee Cakes, Sticky Buns, Muffins & More by Carole Walter

What does one do when the intended last recipe from this book fails miserably and there’s a pile of overripe bananas sitting on the counter? Try one last recipe that hopefully includes a lot of bananas!

banana_cake2This basic cake starts out by creaming butter and sugar, then adding eggs. In the meantime, a couple of bananas are pureed in the food processor, strained and mixed with sour cream. Does it surprise you that I skipped the straining part? My bananas looked smooth enough, and I don’t think it hurt the finished product. Anyway, you alternately add the dry and wet ingredients to the batter and then stir in some miniature chocolate chips. The cake gets baked in a bundt pan for about an hour.

I had no problems with this recipe. In fact, it didn’t even stick to my sorely scratched, nonstick bundt pan. The cake was tender with just the right amount of chocolate and banana flavor. It quickly became a breakfast favorite with some guests I had staying at the house.

So that’s it for Great Coffee Cakes, Sticky Buns, Muffins & More. I have mixed feelings about this book. There were a couple of really good recipes, such as the lemon pound cake and the rustic walnut horns, but most of them were just so-so. I haven’t baked much out of Walter’s other books, but I do have her cookie cookbook that will probably show up here sooner or later.

Black Raspberry Jam Squares

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Currently baking from Great Coffee Cakes, Sticky Buns, Muffins & More by Carole Walter

You know how when you make a recipe and it doesn’t turn out right and you can’t figure out if you did something wrong or if it is the recipe’s fault? Well, that’s what’s going on here. I’m pretty sure I followed the recipe closely, but one bite of these squares was enough; they were promptly thrown in the trash. I didn’t even bother to take pictures.

At first glance, these squares looked promisingly different. The recipe starts off with a shortbread crust that is spread with black raspberry jam. The squares are then topped with a cinnamon meringue studded with walnuts and baked until the meringue is firm.

I had no problems putting the squares together, and they smelled pretty good while baking. But the shortbread crust turned out chalky and gritty, and the jam overwhelmed everything. Even the meringue had its share of problems, including an unappetizing wet texture underneath a hard crust.

This was supposed to be my last recipe out of this book, but I just can’t end it on such a dismal note. That and I have a pile of very ripe bananas sitting on my counter that either have to be used or thrown away. So one Banana Chocolate Chip Cake coming up . . .

Rustic Cinnamon Walnut Horns

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walnut_horns3Currently baking from Great Coffee Cakes, Sticky Buns, Muffins & More by Carole Walter

I’m not sure what to classify these as. Are they cookies? Mini cakes? The lazy person’s croissants? Whatever you want to call them, they are fantastic! Warm from the oven, they are soft and pillowy and full of cinnamony goodness. The walnuts give the horns a nice crunch without overwhelming the other flavors.

You start off by making a batch of the yeasted simple sweet dough. Once the dough has rested overnight in the refrigerator, you roll the dough in chopped walnuts and cinnamon sugar and then roll them out into a square. The dough is then cut into triangles, brushed with an egg wash, sprinkled with more cinnamon sugar and walnuts, and finally rolled into croissant shapes and baked.

There’s something about this yeasted sweet dough that goes well with cinnamon and nuts. I suspect that any nut would work well here. Once you get the yeasted sweet dough made, these are a snap to assemble, but they are even easier to eat.

Dimpled Sugar Cake

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dimple_sugar_cake3Currently baking from Great Coffee Cakes, Sticky Buns, Muffins & More by Carole Walter

My first try at Walter’s yeasted simple sweet dough didn’t go well (remember that blueberry pizza?), but I felt like I should give it another go since I wasn’t sure why it didn’t work before. So I whipped up another batch and used half of it to make this easy cake.

Once you’ve rested the dough overnight in the refrigerator, you gently knead in some plumped raisins. Normally, I’d substitute cranberries for the raisins, but I was out, so raisins it was. The dough is pressed into a baking dish and left to rise. Right before baking, you “dimple” the dough with your fingertips. The holes are filled with butter and brown sugar, and cinnamon sugar is sprinkled over the whole thing. As the cake bakes, the butter, brown sugar and cinnamon sugar melt and form a slight crust.

And how was the cake? Much better than I thought it would be and definitely better than the blueberry pizza. Even with the raisins, I really liked the cake, especially warm from the oven. There is something about this dough that goes so well with cinnamon.

Cinnamon Pull-Apart Biscuits

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cinnamon_pullapartsCurrently baking from Great Coffee Cakes, Sticky Buns, Muffins & More by Carole Walter.

I’ve tried this recipe twice. The first time was while vacationing with my family. I made these sweet biscuits one morning for breakfast, and before I could even blink, the entire pan was gone. The only evidence left were the sad little piles of pecans that everybody had picked out.

(If I had known that so many people hated nuts, I wouldn’t have even added them. Personally, I LIKED the pecans and thought they added a nice little crunch.)

My major complaint, at that time, was that the biscuits didn’t really rise. That’s the story of my life when it comes to biscuits. So my second attempt was focused on getting the biscuits to go up, not out. I also increased the amount of cinnamon sugar that was sprinkled onto the dough because I thought they weren’t cinnamony enough. The above picture was from my first batch. I didn’t get pictures of the second batch, but they looked sort of like the biscuits had attempted to vomit out their insides.

In other words, they weren’t pretty. They were mighty tasty, just not pretty. Tall, fluffy biscuits, it seems, are just not going to be part of my repertoire.

These were buttermilk-based biscuits that are rolled out, brushed with melted butter and sprinkled with cinnamon sugar. The dough is folded like a letter before being cut into rounds. The rounds of dough are brushed with more melted butter and sprinkled with cinnamon sugar and then baked. I’d image that just about any biscuit recipe could be used here. I really liked the idea of this recipe and plan to experiment with it some more.

Blueberry Pizza

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blueberry_pizzaCurrently baking from Great Coffee Cakes, Sticky Buns, Muffins & More by Carole Walter.

Sorry for the pictures. I made this cake while vacationing with my family, and I was eager to cut into it, so the picture taking took a backseat.

I really, really wanted to like this recipe. It is unique and lends itself to all sorts of variations. For example, the original recipe calls for blueberries, but I used a mixture of blueberries, raspberries and sweet cherries. Just about any fruit would work here, as long as it isn’t too wet.

The “pizza” part of this recipe is a yeasted sweet dough that contains approximately 20 pounds of butter. Okay, so maybe not 20 pounds, but a lot of butter. You get the idea. The dough is left in the refrigerator overnight, so the butter firms up and the dough is manageable.

The next day, the dough is rolled out, left to rise slightly, topped with vanilla pastry cream, fruit, and streusel, and baked, like a pizza. While most of the people who tried the pizza liked it, I didn’t. There wasn’t any textural contrast between the topping and the dough; it was all very soft. Making sure the streusel is crisp would have helped here, but the oven I was working with kept burning the bottoms of things before the tops ever got done. Stupid oven.

Anyway, I’m filing this idea away. I think there are some really great possibilities here.

Chocolate Chocolate Streusel Squares

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Choc_streusel_squaresCurrently baking from Great Coffee Cakes, Sticky Buns, Muffins & More by Carole Walter.

My next cookbook is going to have to be a diet cookbook. Or a cookbook of vegetables only. Ugh. Two bites of this cake pretty much sent me over the edge. It is rich, heavy and very, very chocolatey. Don’t even try to eat it without milk. Consider yourself warned.

This is a chocolate sour cream cake topped with a chocolate streusel. Did I mention there was some chocolate in it? I actually found the streusel to be over the top and ended up picking most of it off on the square I ate. I actually think the toasted coconut streusel (from the pineapple squares recipe) would be a much better choice here. The combination of the chocolate streusel and the chocolate cake was just too much for me.

On to the cake. It is an easy recipe to whip up; no complaints there. The cake batter starts out by melting butter and unsweetened chocolate together. Then, granulated sugar, dark brown sugar, and vanilla are slowly added to whipped eggs, along with the butter/chocolate mixture. The dry ingredients (flour, cocoa powder, etc) are added alternately with sour cream. The batter is topped off with the streusel and the whole thing bakes for about 30 minutes.

The finished cake does have a heavy tang from the sour cream, which some people may not like. Cutting down the sour cream or replacing some of it with yogurt could help. Some of my tasters thought the cake was a little dry, but that’s likely because I might have overcooked it. Some of my tasters also thought they were eating brownies, but that’s a whole other story.