Category Archives: Other sources

Coconut Fudge Brownies Updated. Again.

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Although I haven’t been doing much baking or cooking these last few weeks, I did find time to give the coconut fudge brownie gluten-free experiment another couple of tries.

If you remember, the last experiment had me replacing all of the flour with almond meal. While these brownies were to die for warm, they were pretty greasy cold. So for my next try, I decided to try using different kinds of flours. I’ve been seeing bags of coconut flour in the store. These brownies have a theme going, so what the heck. I used roughly one part almond meal to three parts coconut flour (I say roughly, because I forgot to write the exact amounts down. I know. Bad blogger.)

Anyway, these brownies bombed. The coconut flour soaked up all the available liquid and made the brownies pretty dry. In addition, they had a very chalky, gritty texture from the flour. Bryan and I each took one bite and threw the rest away.

A few days later, I was reading one of my favorite gluten-free blogs where Shauna was talking about using teff flour in her brownies. The next day, I came home from the store with my own bag of teff flour.

For my next batch of brownies, I used the same ratio of teff flour to almond meal. These brownies weren’t greasy. They were just the tiniest bit gritty, but not overwhelmingly so. Still, they tasted kind of flat. These brownies didn’t go straight into the trashcan like the coconut flour brownies did, but they did linger in the fridge for almost a week before we finished them. Usually, that’s a sign that we don’t love something.

I’d like to give Shauna’s brownies a shot, as well as a couple more gluten-free brownie recipes that I’ve seen lately. We’ll see how motivated I am in the next few weeks.

Cooking Doldrums, Part 2

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Super Chunky Granola from Cook’s Illustrated, March/April 2012. Even though I thought I had found my perfect granola, I couldn’t pass this recipe up without at least giving it a shot. And I’m glad I did, because it has become my new favorite. I’ve been making a batch of this almost every week for the past month.

As far as granola recipes go, this one is standard. You mix rolled oats and nuts in brown sugar, vegetable oil and vanilla extract. The mixture is spread out on a cookie sheet and baked until golden brown. The secret here, I think, is in the proportion of liquids to solids, as well as in the fact that you don’t stir the granola as it is baking. What you end up with is a solid sheet of granola that isn’t greasy or too sweet. The granola is easy to break up into chunks.

I’ve melded this recipe with my previous favorite. I sub in a cup of unsweetened coconut flakes for a cup of the oatmeal. I also add a tablespoon of cinnamon and whatever nuts (besides almonds) that I happen to have around, usually pumpkin seeds and cashews.

The Best Cinnamon Swirl Bread also from Cook’s Illustrated, March/April 2012. I didn’t actually make this recipe, only the technique it describes to create a gorgeously swirled cinnamon bread that doesn’t gap. I used my go-to, multi-grain sourdough bread that is full of seeds and nuts. I could easily eat a whole loaf by myself.

And finally . . .

Preserved Lemons from various websites. Back in February, I found myself with an abundance of lemons. I’ve been reading about preserving them in salt, so I decided to give it a try. Two months later and I’m ready to use them. Unfortunately, I don’t know what to make with them, so any suggestions would be appreciated. They are fantastically salty and bitter, unless you cut away the pith. Actually, to be honest, I have no idea if this is how they are supposed to taste or not.

Cooking Doldrums, Part 1

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I’ve been feeling uninspired by my current cookbooks and am thinking it may be time to move on to something new. Until I decide, I thought I’d show you what I have been cooking/baking from.

Cuban Black Beans and Rice from Cook’s Illustrated, March/April 2011 issue. I’ve had this recipe bookmarked for more than a year, but the issue got shoved to the bottom of my to-try recipes. I forgot about it until just a few weeks ago when Bryan mentioned that he’d like to try a black bean/rice dish. Thank god he said something, because this dish was spectacular.

You cook dried black beans with half of a green bell pepper, half  of an onion and garlic. The vegetables infuse the beans and the cooking liquid with tons of flavor. When the beans are tender, you drain them, saving the liquid and throwing away the veggies. Next you take more garlic, green bell pepper and onion, chop them up fine and saute them in bacon grease until they have softened. The black beans, their cooking liquid and rice is stirred into the pot and the whole thing bakes until the rice has absorbed all the liquid and is tender.

If you think black beans and rice is boring, you have to try this recipe. My mouth is watering just thinking about how good it was.

Whole Wheat Sandwich Bread also from Cook’s Illustrated, March/April 2011 issue. I was intrigued by this recipe because the whole point was to pack as much whole wheat flavor into the bread as possible without making it coarse and dry.

The recipe starts off by having you soak wheat germ in milk overnight. At the same time, you make a preferment (or biga or starter) with most of the flour, water and yeast and let it sit overnight to develop flavor. The next day, you mix up the soaked wheat germ, the preferment, honey, butter, salt and vegetable oil into a smooth dough, let it rise, punch it down, let it rise again, punch it down, form it into loaves, let those loaves rise and then bake the bread.

The recipe delivers on what it promises. You end up with two loaves of bread, packed with whole wheat flavor, that are light and tender, perfect for toast or sandwiches. I found it boring. I wanted nuts or seeds, something to interrupt the softness of the bread. I also wanted a sourdough tang.

Coconut Fudge Brownies Updated

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I took another shot at making these brownies as gluten-free as possible. This time around, I reduced the flour to a quarter of the total and made the rest up in almond meal. Unfortunately, this version was quite greasy; I think I’ve hit the limit as to how much I can reduce the flour. This version’s flavor was good, still dense, extremely moist and chocolatey. The almond flavor was quite pronounced, but that was a good thing.

I took a small bite of the brownies while they were still warm, and I just about died because it was so good. They were almost like a molten lava cake, but with a little more chew thanks to all the coconut in them. I may have said this once or twice, but if you served the brownies warm, over ice cream, you’d have a hit. Knowing that I’d never be able to cut the brownies while they were warm, or even at room temperature, I stuck them in the fridge until they were cold. This is where I started seeing some of the greasiness.

At this point, I could try reducing the coconut oil and/or butter and leave the flour to almond meal ratio the same, but I think I might try using some other flours, either rice flour or coconut flour, and taking the ratio back up to half flour and half almond meal.

Stay tuned.

A Sourdough Bonanza!

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I proudly present . . .

The sourdough bagels from Baker’s Notes. And it only took me four weeks. What a journey. First I had to start a sourdough starter, then I had to learn how not to kill it and finally, I had to learn how to bake with it. Today, I am the proud parent of three (yes, you heard that right), three sourdough starters. I have my white one, my whole wheat one and my rye one. I haven’t baked with the rye starter, yet. Mostly, that guy has been hanging out in the fridge as a sort of backup starter (in case I killed the other two). The white and whole wheat starters are nicely sour and starting to be hefty enough to leaven bread. Like these bagels! Which were, by the way, totally worth the wait. They had a chewy crust and a dense, holey interior, perfect for catching melted butter or cream cheese.

I also found a new favorite bread:

The bread on the left is a multi-grain bread made with my whole wheat starter. I got the recipe here. I made a few changes, such as leaving out the potato flour and making my own mixture of seeds (sesame seeds, poppy seeds, sunflower seeds and fax seeds) and using honey instead of sugar. I’ll be playing with the recipe again next weekend, and if I’m satisfied with it, I’ll post my version.

The bread on the left is another go at the English muffin bread that I made last week. Every time I make this bread, it comes out better than the time before.

And finally, I made these:

The best waffles I have ever had, sourdough or not. Here’s the recipe I used. The waffles were crispy on the outside, and tender on the inside. Best of all, they stayed slightly crispy even as they soaked up maple syrup. I ate way too many of them.

For now, I’ve put the starters in the fridge to wait for the weekend. I’m sorta carbed out and craving meat. Or ice cream, which is fortunate, because I’ve got a new ice cream recipe from Jeni’s Splended Ice Creams at Home currently churning away in the kitchen.

Thanks for sticking with me on this sourdough detour.

Nectarine Ice Cream

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Currently cooking out of Jeni’s Splendid Ice Creams at Home by Jeni Britton Bauer

This is actually about two separate recipes, neither of which are from Jeni’s Splendid Ice Cream at Homes. Confused? Let me back up a bit.

Bryan and I have a tradition that every year around Labor Day, we drive 10 hours south to my parent’s house, spend a few days oohing and ahhing over nieces and nephew, baking up a storm and gorging on peaches and nectarines. Then we drive 10 hours back north with several boxes of peaches and nectarines, and I spend the next few days frantically freezing, jamming and baking before the fruit goes bad.

I grew up on Utah’s “Fruitway,” a stretch of the Wasatch Front famed for its roadside fruitstands. Every summer I picked raspberries, peaches, tomatoes and cherries and then helped sell them at one of the fruitstands. I loved having such an abundance of fresh fruit, especially the peaches. As much as I tout my chocolate addiction, peaches are one of my favorite foods. I can, and will, eat them until I get sick. Fortunately, my dad owns several acres of peach and nectarine trees, and he lets me have as many as I want.

This year I came back with five boxes and peaches and one box of nectarines. As of the last count, I’ve made 16 peach/nectarine galettes (a free-form pie) and a couple of peach crumble bars, all of which are frozen, waiting to be baked. I made something like 15 jars of peach freezer jam (runny, of course), and I’ve frozen six one-gallon Ziploc bags full of unsweetened sliced peaches. Finally, we made some peach shrub (remember this post?). We will not run out of peaches this year.

Along with all of that, we’ve been eating fresh peaches and yogurt for breakfast, peaches and nectarines for snacks and sliced peaches for dessert.

Back to the reason for this post. With all these peaches and nectarines, I had to try to adapt one of Bauer’s recipes into a peach and/or nectarine ice cream. The nectarines had to be used first, so nectarine ice cream it was.

I simply took Bauer’s ice cream recipe base and added a nectarine puree (except for a roasted strawberry and buttermilk ice cream, she doesn’t have many fruit ice cream recipes, so I kind of winged it). The ice cream is made the same way as all the other ice creams in the book: you boil milk, cream and sugar, add in a cornstarch slurry, boil, whisk in cream cheese, add nectarine puree, chill and churn.

Frankly, I was disappointed in this ice cream. Although it turned out a beautiful, pale yellow, the nectarine flavor is so washed out and faint, that you can’t really identify it. That glorious, sweet/tart nectarine flavor got lost somewhere. This ice cream froze up harder than the other ones I’ve made from this book. My gut feeling is that the extra water from the nectarines watered down the flavor and made the ice cream freeze harder. I suspect that’s why Bauer roasts her strawberries, to concentrate the flavor and evaporate excess water. If I had any extra nectarines left, I’d give this a try. Unfortunately, they are gone. I plan to make a peach ice cream using some of the peaches I’ve frozen,though, so it will be interesting to see what happens. If I run into the same problem, I’ll consider roasting the peaches first.

Onto the other part of this post, that nectarine cake up there. I remembered reading about this cake here, but at the time, the nectarines in the store were sad, hard little blobs. Flash forward two years, and I’m sitting on a half of a box of nectarines that are ripening too fast for me to keep up. A little butter and sugar here, with some eggs and flour there, and I had the little black dresses of cakes. It took me all of 10 minutes to make, but tasted great. You can dress this cake up with whipped cream or ice cream, or simply sprinkle powdered sugar on it. It tasted just as good on the second day. If you don’t have nectarines, I think just about any fruit will work, except maybe apples or pears, unless you sliced them very thinly.

Toasted Coconut Ice Cream

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Currently cooking out of Jeni’s Splendid Ice Creams at Home by Jeni Britton Bauer

Remember this ice cream from Pure Scoop? Ever since I started make ice creams out of Jeni’s Splendid Ice Creams at Home, I’ve wanted to try this flavor. Bauer doesn’t include a recipe for coconut ice cream, so I used David Lebovitz’s technique with Bauer’s ice cream base. The result was a huge success.

I started  out by seeping about a cup and a half of toasted coconut in the milk/cream part of Bauer’s recipes. After a couple of hours, I strained the liquid, pressing on the soaked coconut to get as much of the liquid out as possible. Then I followed Bauer’s formula of boiling the milk and cream with sugar, salt and corn syrup, then adding a cornstarch slurry and, finally, whisking in some cream cheese. Chill and churn.

This was so very good. When you first see it, you think its going to be vanilla. Surprise! Instead you get a light coconut flavor accented by just a touch of cream cheese. The texture was perfectly smooth. I loved the ivory color of this ice cream; it seemed very elegant.

Shrubs

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No, it’s not a bush (obviously). A shrub is a vinegar and fruit syrup, sometimes known as drinking vinegar. Sounds weird, doesn’t it. So weird that I just had to try it.

You begin your shrubbery by mashing together equal parts fruit and sugar. The sugar draws out the juice from the fruit and sweetens it. You let the fruit sit for at least a day (I usually go several days, cause I get lazy or busy or both), then strain out the solids. I usually have a solid layer of sugar at the bottom of my jar at this point. I just give it good stir before straining it. Once you’ve strained your fruit, you add vinegar. How much? Well, it all depends on how vinegary you want your shrub to be. Most recipes I’ve seen call for equal amounts fruit and vinegar. I tried that ratio, but the resulting shrub was, uh, cough, cough, a little too strong for me.

Bryan, on the other hand, was drinking it like water.

I’m finding that about 1 part vinegar to three or four parts fruit works well for me. I get the vinegary tang, but not the vinegary burn, and the fruit flavor comes through nicely.

What kind of vinegar? Whatever you want. Again, most recipes call for apple cider vinegar, but I’ve seen white wine vinegar recipes as well as sherry vinegar recipes. Just not balsamic vinegar.

Once you’ve added the vinegar, let the shrub sit for a couple of days. This will mellow out the vinegar. Kind of. What next? Well, if you are like Bryan, you drink it straight. If you’d like your taste buds to not go into shock, like me, you mix the shrub with sparkling water or lemon-lime soda for a refreshing drink. Or, you make a vinaigrette with it. Or you sprinkle it on grilled chicken. Or on a pasta salad. I’m sure there are other uses, but that’s what I’ve done with it so far. Keep the shrub refrigerated, and it should last for a couple of months. More, probably, if you use more vinegar.

I’ve made a cherry shrub, a raspberry shrub and a strawberry shrub. I have big plans for a peach shrub and maybe a plum shrub. The strawberry shrub has been my favorite so far for drinking, but the cherry shrub was really good on the chicken and pasta salad. I’m on the fence with the raspberry shrub because I used more vinegar (almost equal amounts vinegar to fruit) and I can’t get past the vinegar smell. It tastes okay, but the smell kills me. I’m hoping that as I let it sit, it mellows. Alot.

If you do an internet search for “fruit shrubs” or “drinking vinegar,” you’ll find lots of other recipes. I first saw them here and here. There are even some shrubs where you cook the fruit, sugar and vinegar. I haven’t tried those. I was lazy, so if you try, tell me how it worked.

 

 

My version of Gianduja-Stracciatella Gelato

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I’m down to my last pound of hazelnuts, so I’m being careful about how and where I use them. I don’t want to reorder more so soon; I might become known as the Crazy Idaho Hazelnut Lady.

Anyway, I decided that a revamping of The Perfect Scoop’s Gianduja-Stracciatella Gelato was worth using some of those precious nuts. As I said in my review of the original recipe, I loved the flavor but thought it was a bit rich and heavy. I took a basic gelato recipe from here and adapted it using some of Lebovitz’s techniques. The two recipes were very close, the main difference being the proportion of milk to cream. Lebovitz uses more cream; the other recipe uses more milk. I also cut down the amount of sugar as the milk chocolate adds its own sweetness. Finally, I took the liberty of adding some chopped hazelnuts for a little texture. This ice cream was light and flavorful. It was substantial, but didn’t leave that coating in your mouth like really rich (read cream-heavy) ice creams sometimes do. Recipe after the jump.

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Vegetable Beef Soup

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I am lucky to have several friends who are fantastic cooks and don’t mind sharing recipes with me. One, Missy, makes the most heavenly red beans and rice. And gumbo.

Did I mention that she grew up down south?

A few weeks ago, Missy gave me some soup to try. It was thick with vegetables and sweet, almost like there was sugar in it. And there was just enough meat in it to satisfy Bryan who thinks a meal without meat is not complete. Missy graciously agreed to send me the recipe, and it has quickly become one of my favorite soups.

I didn’t make too many changes to the original recipe; mostly I just increased the amount of vegetables in it. I also found that a handful of pearl barley or small pasta shapes isn’t a bad thing at all. Recipe after the jump.

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