Monthly Archives: July 2010

Apricot Carrot Cake

Posted on by
2

Currently baking out of Sky High, Irresistible Triple-Layer Cakes by Alisa Huntsman and Peter Wynn

I’m calling this cake “Everything but the Kitchen Sink Carrot Cake.” It was a train wreck in cake form.

This carrot cake had a little bit of everything in it, and I do mean everything. Besides the carrot, there’s dried apricots, honey, walnut oil, ginger, pineapple, coconut and orange marmalade. All wrapped up in a cream cheese frosting. All good-tasting things. And yet, still a train wreck.

I’m not sure where the cake went wrong. There is nothing unusual about the mixing directions. Besides using a flavored oil instead of something more neutral, there aren’t any really strange ingredients. I think there was just too much stuff in the cakes and not enough batter to suspend it all. The cakes themselves are very fragile and sticky, and it was a bit of a battle to get the parchment off and get them stacked.

The frosting is okay, there just wasn’t nearly enough of it to fill and frost a 9-inch, 3-layer cake.

And speaking of that flavored oil? The author calls for walnut oil instead of using walnuts. She says you get a subtle walnut flavor without the nutty texture. One bottle of $10 walnut oil later, I couldn’t taste nuts at all.

Peanut Butter Balls

Posted on by
2

Currently baking out of Great Cookies by Carole Walter

I’m a nut snob. No lowly little peanuts for me! Give me almonds or cashews. So why did I pick this recipe? A peanut butter cookie that is filled with a peanut butter filling and rolled in chopped peanuts? One little hyphenated word.

No-bake.

That’s right, this is a no-bake cookie. With summer’s heat beating at the windows, any excuse to make cookies without turning on the oven is welcome.

These little guys start out with a filling of peanut butter, powdered sugar, graham crackers and butter. The filling is formed into balls, dipped in melted semisweet chocolate and rolled in chopped peanuts. They are as easy as it sounds. Unfortunately, they didn’t taste as good as they sounded.

Although I halved the recipe (who needs 50 of these just sitting around the house, begging to be eaten?), I ended up using the full amount of peanut butter to get them to taste like peanut butter. I thought there was way too much sugar in the filling and will cut it down dramatically next time. Also, the filling was kind of dry. In the end, I thought these were just okay.

Chocolate Cake with Almond Cream Filling, Bittersweet Frosting and Apricot Preserves

Posted on by
4

Currently baking out of Sky High, Irresistible Triple-Layer Cakes by Alisa Huntsman and Peter Wynne

I wish this cake had tasted as good as it looked. As I was reading through the ingredient list, I started imaging how the cake would taste. A dense, moist chocolate cake filled with a smooth, luscious cream that tasted faintly of sweet almonds, all wrapped up in soft bittersweet chocolate frosting.

Well, I got part of it right.

The chocolate cake is a winner. Although the ingredient list is long, it results in a very moist, tender crumb that was dense enough to hold up as a layer cake. The recipe calls for both unsweetened chocolate and cocoa powder. On the liquid side, strong coffee, honey and buttermilk give it a real depth of flavor. The cakes baked up fairly evenly, only needing a little bit of trimming.

The almond cream, on the other hand, was not so successful. Thanks to 2 teaspoons of almond extract, the filling tasted harshly of almond booze. The cream was thick and smooth, but I just couldn’t get past the taste.

The frosting, sigh. There were no soft swirls of bittersweet goodness here. The frosting is made of bittersweet chocolate, cream and butter. Warm and at room temperature, the frosting was fine. But it hardened up quickly and became almost shell-like, especially straight out of the fridge. Allowing the cake to sit at room temperature before serving would help this. Also, I think this cake benefits from a thinner coat of frosting.

To finish off the cake, a thin layer of apricot preserves is spread across the top. I had no problem with this part, and in fact, thought the tartness of the preserves balanced everything quick nicely.

I will say that other people who tried the cake liked it. It just wasn’t what I imagined.

Skillet Chicken Tikka Masala

Posted on by
1

Currently cooking from The Best Simple Recipes from America’s Test Kitchen

Here’s another fast, easy recipe from “the best cookbook I’ve ever bought” that delivers on flavor without a huge amount of work. It doesn’t look all that appetizing, but it is good.

You start out by browning chunks of chicken breast. Next, you cook an onion until soft, then stir in garam masala (an Indian spice mix), garlic, ginger and diced tomatoes. To finish the dish, a bit of cream is stirred into the skillet, along with the chicken, and the whole thing simmers for about 5 minutes.

Tasted by itself, this dish was almost too gingery, but it calmed down when eaten with rice. The chicken was very moist and flavorful, and leftovers were just as good.

Glazed Lemon-Pine Nut Biscotti

Posted on by
2

Currently baking out of Great Cookies by Carole Walter

I’m a latecomer to biscotti. I used to turn up my nose at it, because I thought it was only edible if you dunked it. And I’m not a dunker. Of anything. So when I tried my first biscotti, and it was very edible without any dunking, I started looking around at biscotti recipes.

Turns out that not only are biscotti good on their own, they are very, very easy to make. Like this lemon-pine nut version from Great Cookies. And if you don’t like your biscotti dry and crunchy, you simply don’t need to bake it as long during the second baking period!

This recipe starts out by having you toast pine nuts. And Oh. My. God. are pine nuts expensive. I bought just over a cup and it cost me nearly $20. These just might be the most expensive cookies I’ve ever made. Next time, I think the pine nuts will become a garnish.

Anyway, after toasting pine nuts, you beat lemon zest, sugar and butter together, then add vanilla, an egg, an egg yolk and the dry ingredients, which include flour, baking powder, cardamom and salt. At the end, most of the cooled pine nuts are stirred into the dough which is patted out into a log on a cookie sheet. The log of dough is brushed with an egg white, and the rest of the pine nuts are sprinkled on top.

The dough gets baked for 18 to 20 minutes, then sliced and baked again until the cookies are toasted and crunchy. To finish off the biscotti, a glaze of powdered sugar, lemon juice, lemon zest and corn syrup is drizzled over the top of the warm cookies.

I really liked these biscotti. As I was slicing them for the second baking, I kept nibbling on the ends. I didn’t think they could get any better, but after glazing them, I couldn’t keep my hands off them. They are very lemony, especially with the glaze, but that sharpness goes so well with the mellow pine nuts. I think this dough would make a wonderful scooped cookie if you didn’t want to bother with a double baking.

And that cardamom! I’ve had a jar of powdered cardamom in my cupboard for some time. It smelled like musty sawdust, so I decided to buy a new jar for this recipe. Wow, my old jar must have been ancient, because I never knew how fragrant cardamom was. In this recipe, the cardamom adds a mysterious floral taste. It is hard to identify, but it definitely kicks up the flavor.

Now, if I could just find a source of cheap pine nuts . . .

Wild Blueberry (Huckleberry) Jam

Posted on by
3

From Mes Confitures by Christine Ferber

Every so often, I’ll pick up this book and thumb through the pages, reading titles. Then I put it back on the shelf and go bake some cookies. Or a cake. I started feeling a little guilty about neglecting it, so when I ended up with a gallon of frozen huckleberries, I decided to give jam making another go with the idea that I’d follow the recipe exactly. Even if it meant using the full amount of sugar called for and cooking the bejeezus out of the fruit.

It was very hard pouring cup after cup of sugar into those berries. I might have cried a bit.

The recipe calls for 3 3/4 cup sugar to 2 1/4 pounds of berries, with the juice of one lemon thrown in. Then you cook the berries until they’ve thickened up enough to hold their shape when placed on a frozen plate. This took me about 40 minutes. Then I spooned the hot jam into jars and let them cool. Because I don’t process my preserves, I usually keep one jar in the fridge and freeze the rest.

The finished jam set beautifully (hooray!). It is a deep, deep reddish purple, nearly black, and quite chunky. The jam is very sweet, but the natural tartness of the huckleberries still comes through.

Maple-Walnut Cake

Posted on by
2

Currently baking out of Sky High, Irresistible Triple-Layer Cakes by Alisa Huntsman and Peter Wynne

I couldn’t wrap my head around the flavors of this cake. I know what maple syrup tastes like, and I know what walnuts taste like. But I couldn’t quite figure out how they would taste together in cake form. I think that the fact that there was no chocolate in this cake was throwing me off.

This cake intrigued me from the moment I read the title. It has a different method of mixing the cake, plus, it has a cream cheese frosting, and I’m a sucker for cream cheese frostings. You start out by toasting walnuts and then finely chopping them. The nuts get combined with flour, brown sugar, cinnamon, baking soda and salt. Then you add butter and maple syrup and cream the whole thing until it is light and fluffy. In the final step before baking, a couple of eggs and milk are mixed into the batter.

I had to make cakes twice. The first time, I was right to be worried about the amount of leavening; there was too much for the amount of flour used in the batter. The cakes fell badly and were so tender they cracked as I tried to get them out of the pans and take off the parchment paper on the bottoms. The second time I made the cakes, I decreased the baking soda by almost half. I also increased the amount of walnuts and didn’t chop them too finely. These cakes came out just fine.

Next up was the maple cream frosting. Cream cheese and maple syrup? Count me in. Two sticks of butter and melted and boiled with 2/3 cup of maple syrup. Once this syrup has cooled, you add it to cream cheese that has been whipped with powdered sugar. ALOT of powdered sugar. I suspected that this was going to be a very soft frosting, and boy was it. It kept sliding down the cake to puddle at the bottom. After sitting in the fridge overnight, it finally firmed up, but it was a mess to work with. It was also too sweet. Six cups of powdered sugar to 12 ounces of cream cheese? Next time, I’ll increase the cream cheese to 16 ounces, decrease the sugar by at least half and try beating the butter into the cream cheese and adding the maple syrup to that.

In the finished cake, the flavor was very rich and sweet. It really needs the cream cheese frosting to temper that sweetness. The maple syrup and brown sugar give the cake a caramelly flavor that goes really well with the walnuts. The cake reminded me of carrot cake without the carrots. I really liked using the maple syrup as a sweetener and want to experiement with it.

Chipotle-Grilled Pork Tacos

Posted on by
1

Currently cooking from The Best Simple Recipes from America’s Test Kitchen

See? I told you I’d be back.

If this book has taught me anything, it is that I kind of like coleslaw. Nominally, this post is about pork tenderloins, halved and slathered with a mayo-pineapple juice-chipotle chiles-garlic sauce and grilled. But I really want to talk about the coleslaw that is included in the recipe. It was good. No. It was fantastic.

You take a bag of coleslaw mix, add in pineapple chunks and mix it all together with some of the mayo mixture from above. The recipe tells you to top the now-sliced pork tenderloin with this slaw and use a warmed corn tortilla to deliver it to your mouth. Okay, if you really want to bother with corn tortillas. If you don’t, may I humbly suggest that you place a heaping scoop of slaw on your plate and top that with the pork? Either way (and I tried both, several times), you won’t be disappointed.

The mayo mixture is sweet and tangy from the pineapple juice and a little spicy from the chipotle chiles (it is easy to adjust the heat here-just add more or less of the chiles). The pork is tender and smoky from the grill, while the coleslaw adds a nice crunch with the unexpected, but very nice, sweetness of the pineapple. My only complaint, and it is a very minor one, was that my mayo mixture was very thin and didn’t really stay on the pork (it mostly ran off and caused flare-ups on the grill). I might add more mayo next time (or less pineapple juice) to keep it thicker.