Pound Cake

Pound Cake - made November 6, 2010 from Little Cakes by Susan Waggoner (Book #8)

This is a nice, basic vanilla pound cake recipe.  If you need to use up some milk or need a quick cake for a tea or snack, this is a good recipe to use.  As mentioned, I whipped up this pound cake while I had the crispy fried chicken in the oven.  This is from Little Cakes so I felt it was appropriate to make them in little loaf pans.  When I moved, I retired my old mini loaf pans as their nonstick coating was wearing off and my cakes were sticking inside and coming apart when I tried taking them out.  I treated myself to a new set of mini loaf pans from my shopping lifeblood – I mean Amazon – made by Chicago Metallic and tried them out with this cake.  Wow, when they say nonstick, they mean nonstick.  I didn’t even have to run a spatula around these cakes when they came out of the oven.  I just turned the pan over and the pound cake came sliding out, intact.  Gotta love that.

Because this is a pound cake, the texture is dense.  If you’re looking for light, this isn’t it.  But it’s got a good vanilla flavor.  Whenever I make vanilla pound cakes, I usually double the amount of vanilla extract by adding an equal amount of vanilla bean paste as vanilla extract.  Just a personal preference.  While this cake is good, I have to give the nod still to the Best Vanilla Pound Cake recipe by Lisa Yockelson.  That’s still my favorite vanilla pound cake – it’s got more butter flavor.

1 1/3 cups all-purpose flour

¼ teaspoon baking powder, slightly rounded

Pinch of salt

¼ teaspoon vanilla extract

1/3 cup milk

2/3 cup unsalted butter, at room temperature

1 cup sugar

2 large eggs

Two 5 ¾ x 3 ¼” loaf pans or one standard 9 x 5 “ or 8 ¼ x 4 ¼” loaf pan, greased and floured

1.        Measure the flour, baking powder, and salt into a bowl.  Stir to combine and set aside.

2.       Add the vanilla to the milk and set aside.

3.       Cream the butter until very light.  Add the sugar gradually, beating continuously.  (I creamed the butter in my Kitchen Aid mixer until it was soft, about 2-3 minutes, scraping the sides of the bowl a few times.)

4.       Add the eggs one at a time, mixing just until completely blended.

5.       Add one-third of the dry ingredients to the butter-egg mixture, then half the milk, beating after each addition just until combined.  Repeat with the next third of dry ingredients, the rest of the milk and the remainder of the dry ingredients, beating after each.

6.       Pour into prepared pans and bake at 325˚F, about 35 minutes for small loaves, 45 to 55 minutes for larger loaf.  Don’t be alarmed if your golden brown crust splits to reveal a strip of yellow cake – this is desirable in pound cakes.

Crispy Fried Chicken

Crispy Fried Chicken - made November 6, 2010 from Modern Classic Book 1 by Donna Hay (Book #7)

Of the 200+ cookbooks I own, maybe less than 10 are non-dessert books.  This is one of them.  I like Donna Hay’s cookbooks as they’re pretty simple and streamlined.  Not a lot of fuss and the few recipes I’ve tried from her cookbooks have pretty much all turned out.  When you’re cooking-impaired like me, that’s a big deal.   Despite my efforts, I can’t live on cookies and brownies and leftovers from Mom all the time.  Once in awhile I do the adult thing and cook my own food.

 

Fried chicken is one of those things I enjoy eating but it seems easier to get a bucket of chicken from the Colonel or Popeye’s and let someone else do the work instead of making it from scratch myself.  But, thanks to my baking (or cooking) challenge to use all of my cookbooks at least once, I decided to try this recipe from Donna Hay’s Modern Classics Book 1.  The recipe was simple enough – soak chicken in buttermilk overnight, bread it, fry it, bake it.  I could do that.  Two things I varied from the recipe: 1) I couldn’t find Chinese five-spice powder at the grocery store but I did have allspice from previous cooking attempts so I made the substitution.  And 2) for the life of me, I also couldn’t find whole cut-up chicken and actually starting with a whole chicken and cutting it up myself was WAY too advanced for me.  Fortunately, Costco caters to people like me and sell packages of chicken drumsticks so that’s what I used because drumsticks are the best when it comes to fried chicken. 

 

This was pretty easy to make.  I didn’t fry the drumsticks for very long for no other reason than I got impatient hovering over the stove, frying the darn things.  Plus I figured I was going to bake them anyway and that should finish cooking them, right?  I ended up baking them for 30 minutes which is the time it took me to put together a pound cake (next post) and I took them out because I didn’t want my pound cake batter to sit, unbaked, for too long.  The drumsticks turned out fairly well – they were juicy and the coating, while not as crisp as I imagined, was still pretty good.  The nice thing about making oven-fried chicken this way is the oil from the frying dripped off into the baking pan so it was good to think I wasn’t eating as much oil as I normally would had I gone the KFC route.  However, do spray the wire rack you bake the chicken on as they did stick a bit and left some of the coating on them.  I did line the baking pan itself with foil so that helped immensely with cleanup.  The breading/batter didn’t have a lot of flavor and I ended up putting some of the bigger pieces of chicken back into the oven after the pound cake came out as they were still a little pink but overall, this was good enough.  I wouldn’t quite rate it company-ready and would just chalk it up to one of the foods I can make without poisoning myself.

3 ¼ lb whole chicken, cut into 8 pieces

2 cups buttermilk

Peanut oil for deep frying

Flour coating

1 ¼ cups all-purpose flour

1 teaspoon sea salt

½ teaspoon ground chili

½ teaspoon cracked black pepper

1 ½ teaspoons Chinese five-spice powder

1.        Place the chicken pieces in a bowl and pour over the buttermilk.  Cover and refrigerate for 4 hours or overnight. (I left it overnight.)

2.       To make the flour coating, mix the flour, salt, chili, pepper and Chinese five-spice in a bowl (allspice can be substituted).  Remove the chicken from the buttermilk and shake off any excess.  Toss each chicken piece in the flour coating and set aside.

3.       Preheat the oven to 350˚F.  Heat the oil in a deep saucepan over medium-high heat.  When hot, add the chicken pieces a few at a time and cook for 6-8 minutes or until a deep golden color.  As they are cooked, place the chicken pieces on a wire rack in a baking tray.

4.       When all the chicken is fried, place the tray in the oven and bake for 5-10 minutes or until the chicken is cooked through.  I left mine in for 30 minutes to cook the chicken well.  Otherwise, fry it longer and bake it less.

Serves 4

Mocha Chocolate Chips

Mocha Chocolate Chips - made November 3, 2010 from Baking with Julia by Julia Child (book #6)

I have high expectations of any recipe from Julia Child.  I'm sorry to say this recipe didn't live up to them.  I omitted the apricots because a) I don't believe in fruit in cookies, b) I don't like apricots and c) I wanted to make these as a coffee-flavored chocolate chip cookie.

When you strip this recipe down to its core, it's another version of the chocolate chip cookie with the addition of coffee for the "mocha" flavor.  So I made it like I do any chocolate chip cookie: mix up the dough, portion into dough balls, and put in the freezer overnight.  Then I baked them, this time using the convection setting on my new oven.  I was so excited for that convection oven, envisioning the demise of flat, thin cookies.  Because I'm baking with a convec, right?  Well, maybe not.  Turns out even a convection oven won't counter the spread of a cookie if the ingredients are such that the cookies are going to spread regardless of what you do.  Freezing the dough beforehand and baking in a convection oven didn't prevent these from spreading as thin as if I'd baked them without chilling and in a normal oven.  Disappointing.

Despite their appearance, their taste is pretty good, especially if you like coffee or mocha flavors.  One of my coworkers raved about these, loved them and went back for seconds (or thirds).  Another one, not knowing I had made them when I put the cookies out in our communal kitchen, wasn't so complementary.  While I was in the kitchen, she peered at the plate of flat cookies, made a somewhat derogatory comment about their appearance and wondered aloud if someone had tried "microwaving" the cookies.  Sigh.  You have to have a thick skin here.  I could make a comment about not judging a book by its cover (she hadn't eaten any but other people who had liked them) but in reality, appearance does matter when it comes to the food we eat.  We want things to look appetizing - that's part of the dining experience.  I'm more about taste than appearance when it comes to food but I also know presentation and appearance matters.  I may or may not try to tinker with these cookies to make them look better next time.  Although, for the record, I didn't think they looked that bad.  Just flat.

2 cups unbleached all-purpose flour

2 to 3 tablespoons instant coffee powder (according to your taste)

1 teaspoon baking soda

1 teaspoon salt

2 sticks (8 ounces) unsalted butter, cut into chunks

¾ cup granulated sugar

¾ cup (packed) dark brown sugar

2 large eggs

1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

1 pound chocolate (bittersweet, milk, or white, or a combination), cut into larger than chocolate chip sized chunks

½ pound plump, moist apricots, coarsely chopped (optional)

1.        Whisk the flour, coffee powder, baking soda and salt together in a medium bowl to blend; set aside.

2.       Put the butter in the bowl of a mixer fitting with the paddle attachment and beat at medium speed until the butter lightens in color.  Add the granulated sugar and beat for about 30 seconds, just to blend.  Add the brown sugar and beat for another 30 seconds.  Add the eggs one at a time, beating for a minute after each addition.  The mixture should be light and fluffy; if necessary, beat 1 more minute.  Add the vanilla and beat until blended.

3.       Turn the mixer speed down to low and add the dry ingredients, mixing only until they are incorporated.  Remove the bowl from the mixer and clean the paddle and the sides of the bowl with a rubber spatula.  Add the chocolate chunks and the apricots, if you are using them, and stir them with the spatula to distribute equally.

4.       Chilling the dough: Wrap the dough in plastic and chill for several hours or overnight, to firm.  I portioned into dough balls and put in ziploc freezer bags to freeze overnight.

5.       Baking the cookies: Position the racks to divide the oven into thirds and preheat the oven to 350˚F.  Line two heavy-duty baking sheets with parchment paper.

6.       Drop the dough balls onto the lined sheets, leaving at least 2 inches of space between each dough ball so that the cookies have room to spread.  Bake for 10 to 12 minutes, rotating the pans front to back and top to bottom halfway through the baking period, until the center is just baked – they’ll still be soft to the touch.  Use a wide metal spatula to transfer the cookies to cooling racks to cool to room temperature.  Repeat with the remaining dough.

7.       Storing: Wrapped in plastic bags or in tins, the cookies will keep at room temperature for 2 days.  They can be frozen for up to a month and should be thawed at room temperature.  Note: I never freeze baked cookies.  Just bake only as much as you need and keep the cookie dough in the freezer until you need to bake more.

Linguine with Shrimp Scampi

Linguine with Shrimp Scampi - made November 1, 2010 from The Barefoot Contessa Family Style by Ina Garten (book #5)

I love shrimp scampi although I don't have it that often because of the high fat and caloric content.  Most scampis have way too much butter for me.  I'm too used to thinking of butter on bread or in baked goods to really enjoy it as a savory.  I don't dip lobster in butter either.  However, I did end up liking this recipe from Ina Garten of Barefoot Contessa fame.  This recipe was easy to make, a boon for someone like me who doesn't cook often or well.  Just make sure you have your mise en place ready as it puts together very quickly.  I substituted a lb of angel hair pasta for the 1 1/2 lbs of linguine and I'm glad I did.  This doesn't make a lot of "sauce", even for 1 lb of pasta so I can imagine it'd be more dry for 1 1/2 lbs.  However, what sauce there was tasted great.  More lemon and garlic than butter.  It's not so much a traditional sauce like an alfredo or a marinara sauce but it's just enough to flavor the noodles.  The lemon/garlic flavor combination was excellent. 

Vegetable oil

Kosher salt

1 ½ pounds linguine (I used 1 lb of angel hair pasta)

6 tablespoons (¾ stick) unsalted butter

5 tablespoons good olive oil

3 tablespoons minced garlic (9 cloves)

2 pounds large shrimp (about 32 shrimp), peeled and deveined

½ teaspoon freshly ground black pepper

¾ cup chopped fresh parsley

Grated zest of 1 lemon

½ cup freshly squeezed lemon juice (4 lemons)

½ lemon, thinly sliced in half-rounds

¼ teaspoon hot red pepper flakes

1.        Drizzle some oil in a large pot of boiling salted water, add 1 tablespoon of salt and the pasta, and cook for 7 to 10 minutes, or according to the directions on the package.

2.       Meanwhile, in another large (12-inch), heavy-bottomed pan, melt the butter and olive oil over medium-low heat.  Add the garlic.  Saute for 1 minute.  Be careful, the garlic burns easily!  (I didn't saute until brown, just soft.)  Add the shrimp, 1 tablespoon of salt and the pepper and sauté until the shrimp have just turned pink, about 5 minutes, stirring often. (You can also use pre-cooked shrimp, just heat through but don't keep on the heat for too long as they're already cooked.)  Remove from the heat, add the parsley, lemon zest, lemon juice, lemon slices and red pepper flakes.  Toss to combine.

3.       When the pasta is done, drain the cooked linguine and then put it back in the pot.  Immediately add the shrimp and sauce, toss well, and serve.

Serves 6

Spiced Pumpkin Cookie Cakes

Spiced Pumpkin Cookies Cakes - made October 31, 2010 from the Sweet Melissa Baking Book by Melissa Murphy (book #4)

I was so busy with moving that I barely noticed October was ending and Halloween was upon me before I knew it.  I moved to a new development that isn’t completely built out or even fully occupied yet so there was a distinct lack of trick or treaters in my neighborhood.  Which was just as well since I only had time to buy one bag of chocolate and even that I forgot at my parents’ house.  But my concession to Halloween was to try out this recipe for Spiced Pumpkin Cookie Cakes.  I was a little skeptical when I read the directions about piping the batter because that automatically means it’s going to be a soft batter.  And sure enough it was, almost the consistency of cake batter.  Which worried me that the cookies would spread into lakes of flat, thin cookies.  Fortunately, my new kitchen has a convection oven so I gambled that they would bake in the convection setting before they spread too much.

I was therefore pleasantly surprised that the cookies didn’t really spread and instead baked in almost the same size and shape I dropped them into (using two spoons as I didn’t want to bother with piping anything).  They did flatten a bit but only enough to round out into more even shapes than my plopping of cookie dough/batter onto the cookie sheet.  These have the texture of little pumpkin cakes, rather than “cookies”.  Think whoopie pies but the pumpkin cake version.  Someday I’ll have to make the traditional whoopie pies of chocolate cake cookies with vanilla filling.  In the meantime, these were a great substitute.  I loved the pumpkin cakes, the molasses was just the right touch and the cream cheese filling complemented the cookies very well.  And this is from someone who normally doesn’t like cream cheese.  

The only thing I would caution is to not underbake these.  I had them in the convection setting for 10-12 minutes but another minute or two wouldn’t have hurt.  Once they cool, they’re really moist and the tops get a little sticky, especially if they’re not baked long enough.  I wouldn’t advocate overbaking them either but these won’t set like traditional cookies when underbaked.  Instead they’ll just be mushy cakes if you don’t bake them long enough.  These make for an awesome fall dessert or afternoon snack.  One recipe made for a little more than 18 sandwich cookies with a (to me) generous amount of filling.  Another winning recipe from the Sweet Melissa Baking Book.

For the cookie cakes

½ cup firmly packed light brown sugar

½ cup granulated sugar

8 tablespoons (1 stick) unsalted butter, at room temperature

¼ cup molasses

1 large egg

1 cup pumpkin puree, fresh or canned

2 cups all-purpose flour

1 teaspoon baking soda

1 ½ teaspoons ground cinnamon

½ teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg

¾ teaspoon kosher salt

½ cup whole milk

Confectioners’ sugar, for dusting

For the cream cheese filling

6 tablespoons unsalted butter, softened

6 tablespoons cream cheese, softened

¾ cup confectioners’ sugar

¾ teaspoons freshly grated orange zest (about ½ orange)

½ teaspoon pure vanilla extract

1.        Position a rack in the center of your oven.  Preheat the oven to 350˚F.  Line a cookie sheet with parchment paper.

2.       To make the cookie cakes: In the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, mix together the brown and white sugars on low speed to get rid of any lumps.  Add the butter, and beat together until light and fluffy, 1 to 1 ½ minutes.  Add the molasses and egg, and mix to combine.  Scrape down the sides of the bowl.  Add the pumpkin puree and mix to combine.

3.       In a separate bowl, whisk together the flour, baking soda, cinnamon, nutmeg and salt.

4.       Add the flour mixture to the pumpkin mixture in three batches, alternating with the milk. Mix well after each addition.  Scrape down the sides of the bowl.  Blend thoroughly, but do not overbeat.

5.      Drop the dough by rounded teaspoonfuls onto the prepared cookie sheet.  Bake for 12 to 15 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted into the center of one of the cookies comes out clean.  Remove to a wire rack to cool completely before filling.  Do not underbake.

6.       To make the filling: In the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, combine the butter, cream cheese, confectioners’ sugar, zest and vanilla.  Start mixing on low speed and then continue on medium speed until just fluffy and smooth, 2 to 3 minutes.  Do not overbeat.

7.       To complete the cookie cakes: Turn half of the cookies upside down onto a freshly lined cookie sheet.

8.       Using a pastry bag fitted with a ¼-inch round pastry tip (Ateco #801 or use a resealable plastic bag with a corner cut off or a teaspoon), pipe or place about 1 teaspoon of filling onto each upside-down cookie cake.  Place the remaining cookie cake halves (right side up!) on top.  I skipped the pastry bag and just spread with a small spatula.  Be careful though as the cookies have the texture of cake and might fall apart if not handled gently.

9.       Refrigerate briefly until set, 15 to 20 minutes.  Dust with confectioners’ sugar before serving.

Keep the cookie cakes refrigerated in an airtight container for up to 4 days.

Cooked Fruit Apple Pie

Cooked Fruit Apple Pie - made October 30, 2010 from Pie by Ken Haedrich (book #3)

I rarely make pies.  Outside of culinary school, I don’t think I’ve made more than a couple of pies on my own.  Partly because most of what I bake I take into work and pies are harder to serve to random people stopping by our communal kitchen on my work floor.  But mostly because I had built up pie making in my head as something hard to do and I chicken out and make cookies or brownies instead.  I’ve had a couple of unsuccessful attempts at pie crust and it was sufficiently discouraging for me to keep pie-making on the back burner.  I’ve read all the tips and tricks about making a successful pie crust: start with well-chilled ingredients, handle the dough as little as possible, use all shortening for the flakiest crust,  all butter for the most flavorful crust and half butter/half shortening for a good compromise of flavor and flakiness.  I even have a baking book devoted solely to PIE and also have the aforementioned 3 pie tins but I have yet to add pies to my normal baking repertoire.  Don’t ask me why I’m so sufficiently prepared with these things to bake pies with when I hardly ever do.  I’m just a baking hoarder.

But part of this baking challenge is about using what I already have and that includes both cookbooks and baking implements.  Tackling a pie seemed like a good way to use both.  My favorite pie is hands-down the all-American apple pie.  I rarely eat any other kind of pie so that was a natural choice to make.  I cracked open my Pie cookbook since it seemed like a baking book devoted solely to pies would be good for a pie novice like me.  Once I got over being overwhelmed by all the different choices of crusts and fillings, I found the directions pretty straight-forward so I forged ahead.  I chose the Basic Flaky Pie Pastry recipe (basic = good when you’re a novice) and the Cooked Fruit Apple Pie filling recipe.  I was tempted to make the Caramel Pecan Apple pie recipe but since I felt I just had my training wheels on with pie-making, I didn’t want to overreach on this first effort.  Walk before you run.

Let me just say the directions were not only easy to follow but were true to their word – my pie crust actually turned out really well!  The dough was easy to handle and it came out with the right amount of flakiness and flavor that I was hoping for.  Wow.  I did chill the mixing bowl, rolling pin, water, butter and shortening beforehand and after I mixed the dough, I chilled that too.  Ironically, it was my filling that I wasn’t too wild about.  I was so concerned about the crust that I hadn’t given much thought to the filling.  I used half Golden Delicious apples and half Granny Smith since I was used to baking with Granny Smiths for apple cobblers.  Mistake.  The recipe tips even say NOT to use any other apples but Golden Delicious since they won’t hold up as well in the cooking stage.  He was right and I was wrong.  The Granny Smiths got too soft and mushy while the Golden Delicious was still firm, almost too firm, but I couldn’t cook them much longer without turning the grannies into applesauce.  The filling was also a bit bland – next time I’d add a little more lemon juice and cinnamon.  The recipe doesn’t say to brush with egg wash but after 10-15 minutes of baking time, the crust was browning but didn’t look like it was on its way to a beautiful brown color so I cracked open an egg, whisked it and brushed it over the top crust.  After that it browned beautifully golden.

Overall I was pretty pleased with this pie.  I mean, Marie Callendar’s and Bakers Square have nothing to fear from me or anything but I know how to make it better for next time and I feel sufficiently confident that a good pie crust is doable with the right recipe.  This baking excursion showed me that making pies isn’t hard, it’s just time consuming given the amount of chilling that needs to take place.  I’d still only make pies on a weekend or when I have a day off since this isn’t something I can whip up one night after work.  Ken Haedrich does suggest you can always make up batches of pie dough ahead of time, portion them out into crust sizes, put them in the freezer and just take them out to thaw when you need them.  I’ll have to try that since I know this won’t be the last time I’m going to make apple pie.  Have to give those pie tins more of a workout.

 

NOTE: My notes and what I did differently to the recipe as highlighted in blue within the recipe.

Basic Flaky Pie Pastry

For a single crust

1 ½ cups all-purpose flour

1 tablespoon sugar

½ teaspoon salt

¼ cup (½ stick) cold unsalted butter, cut into ¼” pieces

¼ cup cold vegetable shortening, cut into pieces

¼ cup cold water

For a double crust

3 cups all-purpose flour

1 tablespoon sugar

1 teaspoon salt

½ cup (1 stick) cold unsalted butter, cut into ¼” pieces

½ cup cold vegetable shortening, cut into pieces

½ cup cold water

1.        (I chilled all ingredients and baking implements thoroughly first) To make by hand: Combine the flour, sugar and salt in a large bowl.  Toss well, by hand, to mix.  Scatter the butter over the dry ingredients and toss to mix.  Using 2 knives, cut or rub the butter into the flour until it is broken into pieces the size of small peas.  Add the shortening and continue to cut until all of the fat is cut into small pieces.  Sprinkle half of the water over the mixture.  Toss well with a fork to dampen the mixture.  Add the remaining water, 1 ½ to 2 tablespoons at a time, and continue to toss and mix, pulling the mixture up from the bottom of the bowl on the upstroke and gentle pressing down on the downstroke.  Dough made by hand often needs a bit more water.  If necessary, add water 1 or 2 teaspoons at a time until the pastry can be packed.

2.       Using your hands, pack the pastry into a ball (or 2 balls if you are making a double crust).  If you’re making a double crust, make one ball slightly larger than the other; this will be your bottom crust.  Knead each ball once or twice, then flatten the balls into ¾” thick disks on a floured work surface.  Wrap the disks in plastic and refrigerate for at least an hour or overnight before rolling.

 

Cooked-Fruit Apple Pie

1 recipe Basic Flaky Pie Pastry, Double Crust, refrigerated

Filling

2 tablespoons unsalted butter

8 cups peeled, cored, and thickly sliced (about 1/3-inch thick) Golden Delicious apples (do not substitute other apples)

½ cup sugar

1 tablespoon cornstarch

2 teaspoons fresh lemon juice (additional teaspoon wouldn't hurt)

½ cup dark raisins (optional)

¼ teaspoon ground cinnamon (can use up to 1/2 teaspoon if desired)

1.        If you haven’t already, prepare the pastry and refrigerate until firm enough to roll, about 1 hour.

2.       On a sheet of lightly floured waxed paper, roll the larger portion of the pastry into a 12-inch circle with a floured rolling pin.  Invert the pastry over a 9-inch standard pie pan, center and peel off the paper.  Gently tuck the pastry into the pan, without stretching it, and let the overhang drape over the edge.  Place in the refrigerator for 15 minutes.  It's okay if you see lumps of butter and/or shortening in the dough.

3.       Melt the butter in a very large skillet over medium-high heat.  Add the apples and cool, stirring very often, for 3 to 4 minutes.  Add most of the sugar, reserving a tablespoon or two, and continue to cook, still stirring often, for 2 to 3 minutes.  As the apples cool, mix the remaining sugar with the cornstarch.  Stir this mixture into the apples and cook for another minute.  The apples should have shrunk by now but they should still have some of their crunch.  Transfer the apples to a large, shallow casserole.  Stir in the lemon juice, raisins and cinnamon.  Spread the filling evenly in the casserole and let cool thoroughly.  Preheat the oven to 400˚F when it’s almost there.

4.       Turn the cooked filling into the chilled pie shell and smooth the top with your hands.  Roll the other half of the pastry into a 10-inch circle on a sheet of lightly floured waxed paper.  Moisten the outer edge of the pie shell with a pastry brush.  Invert the top pastry over the filling, center and peel off the paper.  Press the top and bottom pastries together along the dampened edge.  Using the back of a butter knife, trim the pastry flush with the edge of the pan.  With the back of a fork, press the tines all along the edge to seal.  Poke several steam vents in the top of the pie with the fork.  Brush with egg wash (1 lightly whisked egg - it's okay if you don't use all the egg, just make sure you cover the top).

5.       Place the pie on the center oven rack and bake until nicely browned, 40 to 45 minutes.  Rotate the pie 180˚ halfway through the baking, so that the part that faced the back of the oven now faces forward.  You should not experience any trouble with the pie bubbling over, but just in case, slide a large aluminum foil-lined baking sheet onto the rack below. My pie bubbled over very slightly so I advise either baking on a cookie sheet or putting sheets of aluminum foil on the lower oven rack.

6.       Transfer the pie to a wire rack and let cool for at least 30 minutes before serving.

Are you a "someday" person?

I moved last week so this blog has been quiet since first I was too busy moving and packing to bake, then I was busy moving and (still) unpacking to bake.  And now that I have some breathing room to bake, I still don't have internet connection at my new place so I can't post or upload pictures from my computer.  I'm currently borrowing an internet-connected computer somewhere else just to post this.  But no matter - I've started baking in my new kitchen and will update my blog accordingly once I finally get connected.

In the meantime, some random thoughts.  It took me literally all summer to pack up my old house.  I've had the detritus of my life in boxes in my garage for weeks, even months.  It actually wasn't so bad to pack things although I did keep finding stuff I didn't remember I had and in some cases, didn't even remember buying.  That's a bad sign that I have too much stuff.  It got worse when I moved and began unpacking.  Yikes.  No one person should have all this.  I moved to a bigger home and yet it seemed like as I unpacked box after box that I would fill this home just as much as my old home.  That's not my goal or my intention.  The easy answer is to get rid of some of this stuff, right?  Most people would be smart enough to get rid of things before they had to move it and I did do some of that.  But I got to a point in my packing where I couldn't declutter, decide what to donate and pack all at the same time so I copped out and just packed it all, hauled it all and am now unpacking it all.

My problem with having and keeping all this stuff is I think I will use it "someday".  That's probably a classic hoarder mentality.  You don't want to get rid of it because you might need it "someday".  But for so much of our stuff, someday never really comes.  Or if it does come, you still only need it very rarely and the amount of time you use it is excessively disproportionate to the amount of time you spent storing it and lugging it from place to place.  In the spirit of this blog, my classic example is all my baking stuff. Not just the 200+ cookbooks that I've already owned up to and have been trying to keep a reign on.  I'm talking about all my baking pans and baking implements/gadgets.  I knew I had a tad too many when I was labeling box after box "baking pans" and the boxes kept stacking up.  It really hit me when I started unpacking those boxes and had to put them in some semblance of order in my new kitchen.  At first it was overwhelming.  I had moved from a small kitchen to one that was literally double its size with more cabinets than I've ever had in my life.  Yet at first it looked like I wasn't going to have enough room?  That's when I knew I had hit the ridiculous point.

In a way, it was amusing to go through them all - at one point I must've gone through a specialty pan phase because I realized I had multiple "bundt" pans in special shapes and sizes.  They looked like they would make pretty cakes in the shape of wreaths, santas, and snowflakes but I'd only used them a few times, enough to realize what a pain in the butt they are to clean.  All those nooks and crannies you could only get at with a small toothbrush.  File those under the "life is short" category - I've got better things to do than to use those pans when I could make the same-tasting cakes in easy-to-clean pans, frost them and everyone's happy.  Those went into the Goodwill pile.  I also have every size baking pan imaginable.  Of the common 8" square and round cake pans, I have multiples of those too.  Because you never know when they'll wear out, right?  Except I take really good care of my pans and buy the good quality stuff so they haven't worn out yet.  I also have multiple pie pans of the same size.  That wouldn't be so bad....except I rarely make pies.  How did I end up with 3 pie pans?  I don't know.  I think two of them must've been a gift.  I think.  I even have a pretty shortbread pan that, when properly used, would bake "tiles" of pretty-patterned shortbread.  Really pretty.  Except when I do make shortbread, I never use that pan.  That went into the Goodwill pile too.

And let's not even start on my ramekin collection.  "Someday" I'm going to have a bunch of people over and serve them creme brulee, apple cobbler (in apple-shaped ramekins), molten chocolate cake, puddings, trifles, and every other individual-sized dessert you can think of.  Because I've got the ramekins for all of them.

I did end up taking a carload of stuff to Goodwill a couple of days ago.  It wasn't all kitchen stuff but it was a decent attempt to get rid of my someday mentality.  Since someday never comes or comes but rarely, I'm not going to live my present holding onto stuff for the future.  Life goes by too fast for that.

Chewy Jumbo Chocolate Chip Cookies

Chewy Jumbo Chocolate Chip Cookies - made October 22, 2010 from Land O Lakes Cookies (book #2)

Who doesn’t like chocolate chip cookies?  Okay, there might be some people who don’t but let’s pretend that’s in another universe and not in the one I inhabit.  It isn’t just about the taste and texture of an excellent chocolate chip cookie with crisp edges, chewy middles and melt-y chocolate chips.  It’s about the memories they invoke.  I've met many people whose early baking efforts started with following the recipe on the back of the Nestle Tollhouse chocolate chip package. 

For many people, there are a lot of good memories that come with chocolate chip cookies.  My funniest one from childhood wasn’t actually from my baking efforts but from my sister’s.  Anyone remember a product called Mrs. Good Cookie?  They were frozen cookie dough sold in “sheets” but already portioned into individual cookie sizes and all you had to do was break them apart, put them on a cookie sheet and bake them.  Sounds simple enough, right?  Unless you’re my sister and talking on the phone to her best friend after she put the cookies in the oven and let them bake…and bake…and bake.   A sheet pan full of burned cookies later, Mrs. Good Cookie wasn’t that good.  To this day, I tease my sister that while she's a good cook, she can’t even bake slice ‘n bake cookies.  Or rather, she can bake them, she just doesn’t remember to take them out of the oven, haha.

Despite having 2 go-to recipes that I really like, I always love trying new recipes for chocolate chip cookies.  Every new recipe is like a flag waving in front of me shrieking, “Try me! Try me!”  I can’t resist.  This one is from book #2 - the Land O Lakes Cookies cookbook.  Mine has a different cover than the amazon image posted but I hope it’s similar or just a different edition since mine is currently packed and I can’t get to it to take a picture.  The only thing better than a chocolate chip cookie is a BIG chocolate chip cookie.  You can’t make just any recipe be a big cookie simply by making the dough ball bigger when you bake it.  The dough has to be firm enough to hold the larger shape and not spread out all over your pan when you bake it.  Because the point of making a BIG cookie is to have it be thick.

I had typed up this recipe awhile back so it’s been sitting in my “Still to be made” folder on the computer.  Since I couldn’t access the actual cookbook, I did wonder if I had copied the recipe correctly when I typed it up.  For one thing, it doesn’t list any salt.  For another, that seemed like a lot of combined flour and cake flour and made me wonder if the cookies would be dry.  But, no guts, no glory so I went ahead and made the recipe anyway.  I did add a couple of pinches of salt though, just in case.  My ice cream scoop isn’t large enough to make really big dough balls so I made them the old-fashioned way – with 2 spoons.  Scoop a large amount of cookie dough onto one spoon and use the other to shape into (roughly) a round ball, working the dough back and forth between spoons until you get a sphere.  I froze them first (as always).  Lo and behold, they did make thick cookies!  Take these out when the edges are golden brown but the middles still look underdone.  They'll keep baking on the hot cookie sheet after you take them out of the oven plus you don't want dry, overbaked cookies.  These had great texture (crisp edges, chewy middles).  I could've wished for a bit more flavor though.  I think that's where it needs a little salt.  And a tad more sugar.  But that would impact the texture.  All in all, this is a good "bake sale" cookie - they make a nice size and look good when wrapped plus they're not too fragile.

One tip: when you make chocolate chip cookies, do you run out of chips towards the end of the dough and by the last cookie dough ball, there are only 1 or 2 chips left?  So that last cookie when you bake it is unbroken flatness with maybe 1 chip sticking out?  That’s simple enough to fix.  Just hold back a handful of chips from the bag and add them when you’re down to making the last few cookies.  Sounds obvious but I’d baked dozens of chocolate chip cookies before it occurred to me to do that.  Duh.  Now my cookies uniformly have the same (copious) amount of chips.  Oh and the other thing I changed in this recipe is I added more chocolate chips than the 12 ounces the recipe calls for.  With this much dough and if you’re really going for “jumbo” cookies, you need lots of chips.  I almost doubled the amount.  Go big or go home.

3 ¼ cups all-purpose flour

1 cup cake flour

1 teaspoon baking powder

1 teaspoon baking soda

1 ¼ cups sugar

1 ¼ cups firmly packed brown sugar

1 ½ cups butter, softened

2 eggs

1 tablespoon vanilla

1 (12-ounce) package (2 cups) semisweet real chocolate chips or chunks

1.       Heat oven to 375˚F.  In medium bowl combine flour, cake flour, baking powder and baking soda; set aside.  In large mixer bowl combine sugar, brown sugar and butter.  Beat at medium speed, scraping bowl often, until creamy (2 to 3 minutes).  Add eggs and vanilla.  Continue beating, scraping bowl often until well mixed (1 minute).  Reduce speed to low.  Continue beating, gradually adding flour mixture, until well mixed (2 to 3 minutes).  By hand, stir in chocolate chips. 

2.      Drop dough by ¼ cupfuls 2 inches apart onto cookie sheets.  Bake for 10 to 14 minutes or until light golden brown.  (DO NOT OVERBAKE.)  Let stand 1 to 2 minutes; remove from cookie sheets. 

Yield: 26 jumbo cookies

Marble Molasses Pound Cake

Marble Molasses Pound Cake - made October 20, 2010 from Southern Cakes (book #1)

My work dinner last night was unexpectedly canceled so I ended up with some baking time after all.  So I decided to start my baking challenge.  As mentioned earlier, I have a plethora of baking books, many of which are barely used or haven’t been used at all (yet).  And like a magpie amongst shiny objects, I continue to want to acquire more.  To curb this acquisitive disposition, I’m challenging myself to make at least one recipe from every single cookbook I own today before I can buy another one.  That “one” being Lisa Yockelson’s Bakingstyle book being released in August 2011.  I have over 200 baking books/cookbooks as of last count.  It might be more as I might’ve stopped counting once I reached 200 since it’s hard to be in denial when you actually have facts.  So that means I need to make over 200 recipes between now and August – eek.  Technically I can give myself longer since I don’t have to buy Bakingstyle right when it comes out.  But I want to.  So I’ll do my best to get there.

While I’ve already posted recipes from the books I’ve already used, I’m resetting to zero as of now.  That means even if I’ve already baked from a book, I still need to try a different recipe from it.  This isn’t about just using the books I’ve never baked from before but also utilizing more of the ones I’ve already used.  Otherwise it’d be too easy and by definition, a “challenge” shouldn’t be too easy.

This book has produced some good cake recipes.  I figured this would be a safe one to try and I needed it for a meeting today.  I’m not a big fan of molasses.  I don’t dislike it but I think a little of it goes a long way in terms of flavoring.  Marbling it with the rest of the cake seemed like a good way to go.  The main thing that surprised me with this cake is there’s no vanilla extract for flavoring.  I’m not sure why but if I ever make it again, I’d probably add a couple of teaspoons.  It couldn’t hurt.  The marbling of the molasses batter with the rest of the cake worked really well if you want that molasses flavoring without having it be too overwhelming.  The only thing I didn’t like was the texture of the cake had a dry mouthfeel.  Normally that would speak to overbaking but I took it out when the toothpick test just passed the raw batter stage.  It could be I used a smidge too much flour.  The recipe calls for 2 cups of sifted flour.  In my time-crunch, I didn’t sift the flour but just undercut the amount I used by a couple of tablespoons (old baker’s trick).  Maybe I should’ve used even less.  All in all, a decent cake but with the seemingly good choices in the rest of the cookbook, I don’t know if I’d make this one again.  The Brown Sugar Pound Cake recipe is better and has a better mouthfeel.

Marble Molasses Pound Cake

2 cups sifted all-purpose flour

2 teaspoons baking powder

¼ teaspoon salt

½ cup (1 stick) butter, softened

1 cup sugar

2 eggs, beaten

2/3 cup milk

3 tablespoons molasses or pure cane syrup

1 teaspoon ground cinnamon

½ teaspoon ground nutmeg

½ teaspoon ground cloves

1.       Heat the oven to 350˚F.  Generously grease a 9 x 5-inch loaf pan, line the bottom of the pan with waxed or parchment paper, and flour the pan.

2.      Combine the flour, baking powder, and salt in a medium bowl, and stir with a fork to mix well.

3.       In a large bowl, beat the butter with a mixer at high speed until light and fluffy.  Add the sugar and beat to combine the ingredients well.  Add the beaten eggs and continue mixing until the mixture is light, fluffy and smooth, 1 to 2 minutes.  Stop several times to scrape down the bowl.

4.      Add about a third of the flour mixture, and then about half of the milk, beating at low speed after each addition just long enough to make the flour or the milk disappear into the batter.  Mix in another third of the flour, the rest of the milk, and then the last of the flour in the same way.

5.      Scoop out about a third of the batter into a medium bowl, and add the molasses, cinnamon, nutmeg, and ground cloves.  Stir with a wooden spoon or fork to mix everything into the batter well.

6.      Quickly add both batters to the pan, a few tablespoonfuls at a time, alternating between the plain and spiced batters.  Run a table knife through the batter in a figure-eight pattern to swirl the batters together.  Bake at 350˚F for about 1 hour, until the cake is golden brown and springs back when touched lightly at the center, and until a wooden skewer inserted in the center comes out clean.

7.      Cool the cake in the pan on a wire rack or a folded kitchen towel for about 10 minutes.  Use a table knife to loosen the cake from the sides of the pan.  Then turn out the cake onto a wire rack or a plate, remove the paper carefully and cool completely, top side up.

Pumpkin Bread

Pumpkin Bread - first made September 23, 2007 from Martha Stewart's Baking Handbook

I haven’t had time to bake as much since I’m getting down to the wire in terms of packing, moving, taking care of the myriad details of switching households, and re-listing my house for sale with a new realtor.  Not to mention I have a day job where we’re in the busiest time of the year and I go into work while it’s still dark and come home when it’s dark.  Yeah, not a lot of baking therapy happening for me just out of sheer time crunch.  So, for now, I will make do with posting some recipes I’ve made before but haven’t written up yet.  My baking challenge will have to wait a little while longer.

Last year around this time, I had blogged about how I hadn’t really liked pumpkin since my only frame of reference was pumpkin pie – which to this day I still don’t like.  But I realized later that it wasn’t the taste of pumpkin that I didn’t like but the texture and occasional over-spicing of pumpkin baked goods that I objected to.  Once I got over my mental block about pumpkin, I started experimenting with different recipes for pumpkin breads.  I tried recipes from Buttercup Bakes at Home, Mary Engelbreit's Sweet Treats Dessert Cookbook and a recipe from Martha Stewart.   So far, Martha wins the battle.  Her recipe for pumpkin bread is easy to make and the result is a yummy bread with a soft, moist texture, just what you want in a quick bread.  These do well packed in lunches or for picnics or teas.  Careful not to underbake (or overbake) it though.  I underbaked mine slightly and while the taste was still good, the bottom part of the loaf was the slightest bit dense and heavy, a sure sign the bread hadn’t baked long enough.  If you look closely at the picture, you can tell how the bottom part of the loaf looks compressed compared to the rest of it.  

I love the smell of pumpkin bread baking in the oven in the fall.  It invokes just general well-being and coziness at being indoors on a cool day.  I don’t live in an area that gets marked seasonal changes and I’m sure my New England friends would laugh at the West Coast version of autumn which is general hot Indian summers interspersed with cooler days that aren’t quite crisp enough to be cold.  Followed by a smattering of rain here and there, just enough to get your car dirty and provide a little relief to your summer-parched-brown lawn.  But still, when fall and genuinely cooler weather roll around, I like making pumpkin bread to get into the proper mindset of the season.

Unsalted butter, room temperature, for pans
3 cups all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
2 teaspoons baking soda
2 ½ teaspoons ground cinnamon
½ teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg
¼ teaspoon ground allspice
¼ teaspoon salt
2 cups canned pumpkin puree
1 cup granulated sugar
1 cup packed dark brown sugar
4 large eggs
¼ cup vegetable oil
1⅔ cups buttermilk

1. Preheat the oven to 350˚F. Coat two 8½ -by-4½-inch loaf pans with butter; set aside. In a large bowl, whisk together the flour, baking powder, baking soda, cinnamon, nutmeg, allspice and salt; set mixture aside.
2. In the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, combine the pumpkin purée and both sugars; mix on medium speed until well combined, 2 to 3 minutes. Add the eggs and oil; mix until incorporated, about 2 minutes, scraping down the sides of the bowl. With mixer on low, add the flour mixture in two batches, alternating with the buttermilk and beginning and ending with the flour, until just combined.
3. Divide batter evenly between prepared pans; smooth the tops with an offset spatula. Place the pans on a baking sheet. Bake, rotating pans halfway through, until a cake tester inserted in the centers come out clean, 55 to 60 minutes. Transfer pans to a wire rack to cool 10 minutes. Remove loaves from pans and cool completely. Bread can be kept at room temperature, wrapped in plastic, for up to 4 days.