Homemade Tomato Sauce

Homemade Tomato Sauce - made April 15, 2011 from Cooking for One by Mark Erickson, CMC and Lisa Erickson (book #89)

You have to know me really well to understand what an epic accomplishment this was for me.  I've already alluded to the fact that I don't really cook. It's usually a major undertaking for me, at least in my head.  I also don't like most vegetables.  I can count on the fingers of one hand the veggies I normally eat and I can only count that many if you let me include french fries (for the people who say potatoes are not a vegetable but a starch....I can't hear you).  Add to that, when I do cook, I reach for the most convenient things to make.  Pasta is one of them as even I can boil water and noodles at the same time.  When it comes to sauce, the easiest thing for me to do is reach for a jar of pasta sauce or those dry spaghetti mixes where you add tomato sauce and water plus some ground beef and call it sauce.  My friend Emily tells me her Italian grandmother would roll over in her grave at what I do.  She even offered to come over one day and teach me how to make real pasta sauce.  Thanks, Em.

That's my lead in to say even some of us old dogs can be taught new tricks.  It started when a friend sent me this cookbook and asked if I would do a book review of it.  It was written by two graduates from the Culinary Institute of America and she wanted my take on it as a CIA grad myself, albeit my certification was from the Baking & Pastry Arts program and I had nothing to do with the "hot side" and I only did 8 months for the certificate, not 2 years for the AA degree.  Plus, I'm just not much of a cook.  But I'm willing to try anything once and agreed to take a stab at it.  The recipe I chose called for homemade tomato sauce as the base and the recipe for that was also in the book.  Honestly, you can't know how much I just wanted to buy a can of Del Monte and be done with that part of it.  But that seemed like cheating and I had promised to break out of my non-cooking comfort zone so I went for making tomato sauce from scratch.

The "before" pic of the tomatoes before roasting

I bought the tomatoes from Trader Joe's as well as all the other ingredients one day and made the recipe the next day (it's already a "production" when I have to spread it out to more than a day).  When Emily found out what I was doing, she instructed me to call her on her cell phone in case I ran into any problems.  That's more context setting for you on how cooking-challenged I am.  This whole lead-in is going to be anti-climactic though because I have to tell you....it was the easiest thing in the world.  Wash the stuff, cut it up, roast in the oven for an hour and fifteen minutes, stir every now and then, take out, let cool, then puree in the food processor.  Who knew making tomato sauce was so easy??  What the heck did I find so intimidating about it?  I can make real tomato sauce from honest-to-goodness tomatoes!  Woot!  I was on a culinary high.  Real chefs can laugh at me but that's fine.  It is laughable.

Someday, this will hopefully yield tomatoes

Two major lessons I learned:
1) real tomato sauce isn't as red as the Del Monte and Hunt canned versions or jarred Ragu version.  It's a sad statement that I wondered if anything was "wrong" with my tomato sauce that it wasn't as red as the processed version.  Then I realized my tomato sauce was pretty much the color of the tomatoes I started with because I didn't add any red dye or other artificial ingredients.  That's how it's supposed to look before it gets interfered with for mass production.  Just like real mac and cheese with real cheddar cheese isn't supposed to be the color of Cheetos.  Who knew?

2) I really need to stop building up stuff in my head as "too hard" or "I can't do it".  I can't believe I spent so much time thinking about this when, once I actually did it, there was nothing to it.  Nike got it right with their slogan: Just Do It.  I would also add, "it ain't that hard".

I was on such a high from the whole making-tomato-sauce-is-so-easy that the next day, I went to Home Depot and bought some tomato plants.  Yep.  I'm going to try growing my own tomatoes so I can keep making my own tomato sauce.  If you've been reading my blog, you also know that's another epic moment.  The non-gardener and non-veggie eater is going to grow a vegetable.  Yeah, I know tomatoes are technically/scientifically a fruit but don't kill my buzz.  Tomatoes go in the veggie category for me.  I don't eat whole tomatoes as is but I do like tomato-based pasta sauces and that's what I'm growing them for.  I also bought and planted some basil - pesto sauce in my future.....

Sweet Basil - pesto sauce in the making

2 lbs cored and quartered tomatoes

½ onion, peeled and sliced (about 4 ozs)

2 garlic cloves, peeled and coarsely chopped

2 tablespoons olive oil

4 basil leaves, optional

Salt and freshly ground pepper, as needed

Pinch of sugar, optional

1.      Preheat the oven to 350⁰F.  Toss the tomatoes, onion, garlic and olive oil together in an 8 x 13” roasting pan.  Roast, uncovered, for 1 hour, stirring occasionally to break up the tomatoes.  Add the basil leaves, if using.  Roast for another 15 minutes.  Remove from the oven and cool to room temperature.  Some of the vegetables will be browned in spots, which adds a nice, rich flavor.

2.      Pass the vegetables through a food mill or process them in a food processor until pureed, then strain through a medium sieve, pressing on the solids, to remove the skin and seeds.  Season to taste with salt and pepper and a pinch of sugar if the sauce seems too acidic.

3.      Heat the sauce over low heat and combine with cooked pasta, or store the sauce in jars in the refrigerator for up to 1 week or in freezer containers for up to 6 months.

Honey Whole Wheat Biscuits

Honey Whole Wheat Biscuits - made April 16, 2011 from Whole Grain Baking by King Arthur Flour (book #88)

I wanted to make some kind of bread to go with a pasta dish I was making for some friends and although you normally don't have biscuits to go with a dinner entree, these were faster to make than the whole wheat dinner rolls recipe I was initially looking at so I went with this instead.  It was also another potential Easter brunch option that I wanted to try out.  Besides, whether it's a biscuit or a dinner roll doesn't matter as much as eating it warm with melting butter, right?

As with most biscuit recipes, this was pretty easy to put together.  Combine all the dry ingredients in one bowl and all the wet ingredients in another then mix the two together all at once.  Roll out, cut into rounds and bake.  Also like with all (or most) biscuits, these are best eaten warm, preferably-to-me, spread with butter.  I wouldn't necessarily call them flaky, not in the way a Pillsbury biscuit from a can is flaky but it's still pretty good, especially when the outside/top is crunchy and the inside is warm and chewy. The honey gives it an added sweetness and the whole wheat flour gives it some robustness.

2 ½ cups (10 ounces) whole wheat flour, traditional or white whole wheat

½ cup (2 1/8 ounces) unbleached bread flour

2 ½ teaspoons baking powder

½ teaspoon baking soda

¾ teaspoon salt

½ cup (1 stick, 4 ounces) cold unsalted butter

1 large egg

¾ cup (6 ounces) buttermilk, plus more for brushing

3 tablespoons (2 ¼ ounces) honey

1.      Preheat the oven to 400⁰F.  Lightly grease a baking sheet or line it with parchment paper.

2.      Whisk together the flours, baking powder, baking soda and salt in a large mixing bowl.  With a fork, two knives, a pastry cutter or food processor, cut in the butter until the mixture resembles coarse crumbs.  Whisk together the egg, buttermilk and honey in a small bowl or large measuring cup.  Add, all at once, to the flour mixture, and blend lightly and quickly with a fork until the mixture is evenly moistened.

3.      Turn the dough out onto a floured work surface, and using a bench knife or dough scraper, fold the dough over on itself three or four times until it comes together.

4.      Pat the dough out (or roll very lightly with a rolling pin) until it’s ¾” thick.  Cut the dough into squares or rounds with a 2” biscuit cutter, and transfer the biscuits to the prepared baking sheet.  Stack the scraps on top of each other, fold them as you did for the original dough, and pat out and cut again.

5.      Brush the tops of the biscuits with buttermilk, if desired.

6.      Bake until the tops are golden brown, 20 to 22 minutes.  Remove from the oven and serve warm, or cool on a rack.

Coconut Pound Cake

Coconut Pound Cake - made April 15, 2011 from The Lady & Sons Just Desserts by Paula Deen (book #87)

I'm still trolling for recipes that use up milk and/or buttermilk and that inevitably leads me to cakes.  I love coconut, especially in my favorite recipe for coconut cake.  So I figured I would love coconut pound cake as well and wanted to try this recipe.  I think I've only tried one recipe from this cookbook.  Not that it doesn't have a lot of good-looking recipes in it because it does.  But sometimes Paula Deen's recipes scare me on a caloric level.  I love her accent and listening to her on her show but I shudder when I see the amount of butter that goes into some of her cooking and baking.  I love butter but it doesn't love me back....

There probably aren't enough workouts I can do in a day that would offset a piece of one of Paula's creations.  Which is why it's important to make those empty calories count with your taste buds. I walked 11 miles the same day I made this cake so I had a fighting chance that I burned enough calories to try a taste test piece, lol.  The  rest is going into the freezer in slices to be later distributed to friends and family.

Fortunately this recipe didn't have more than the usual amount of butter a cake might have.  Although the addition of shortening isn't typical.  The only alteration I made to this recipe is I substituted vanilla extract for the coconut extract.  Much as I love coconut, I don't like coconut extract.  It tastes too artificial.  I also added an extra handful of coconut to the batter to make up for not using the coconut extract and because I love coconut.  This made a little too much batter for my Bundt cake pan so I also baked some in a small Bundt pan.

I really liked this cake.  It's slightly more dense than a layer cake so it's the perfect texture for a pound cake without being too dense as it also had some "fluff" to it.  I loved the flavor and chewiness of the coconut in it.  The only thing I didn't like is it didn't come out cleanly and intact from my Bundt pan but that's more a problem with the pan than the cake itself.  It's time for me to get a new (and really) nonstick Bundt pan.  Bottom line: this was well worth the 11-mile walk to consume the taste test piece.  Heck, I'd walk another 11 miles for a second piece.

¾ cup shortening

1 cup (2 sticks) butter, softened

3 cups sugar

5 eggs

3 cups all-purpose flour

½ teaspoon salt

½ teaspoon baking powder

1 cup milk

2 teaspoons coconut extract

1 3.5-ounce can flaked, sweetened coconut

1.     Preheat oven to 325˚F.  Grease and flour a 10-inch Bundt pan.

2.     Using an electric mixer, cream shortening, butter, and sugar together.  Add eggs one at a time, beating well after each addition.  Sift together flour, salt and baking powder, and add alternately with milk to shortening mixture, beginning and ending with flour.  Add coconut extract and stir in coconut.  Pour into prepared pan and bake for 1 hour and 25 minutes or until done.  Cool for 10 minutes; invert onto cake plan.

Serves 16 to 20

Cornmeal Griddle Cakes

Cornmeal Griddle Cakes - made April 15, 2011 from Baked Explorations by Matt Lewis and Renato Poliafito

Since I'm not even halfway through all my baking books for my baking challenge, you'd think the last thing I need is a new baking book, right?  I've been checking out other foodie blogs and a few made mention of this baking book along with posting some scrumptious looking pictures of what they'd made from it.  Plus they all raved about this book.  So it becomes yet one more baking book I want to have as (of course) my inner Gollum says, "Oooh, shiny object!"  Bald-headed beast.  Fortunately, my local library came to my rescue and I was able to borrow this book instead of buying it.

A first run through of the book suggests I may want to eventually add it to my collection (shut up, Gollum) as it contains some mouth-watering recipes that look awesome to make.  But for now, I'm okay with having it in my greedy possession only for the next 3 weeks.  Of all the recipes in this book, surprisingly, I chose to try a relatively humble one for Cornmeal Griddle Cakes.  It's not a recipe I see everyday and, more importantly, it calls for more of the buttermilk I need to use up shortly.  I was also thinking, with Easter Sunday a little over a week away, it seems to call for exploration of brunch options.  Nothing like springtime brunch on Easter Sunday.  Not to mention I love breakfast for dinner which is what I had when I made these.

The term "griddle cakes" always reminds me of Little House on the Prairie and Ma frying them on an iron spider over hot coals while Pa set up camp and Laura and Mary played in the prairie grass.  Can you tell I loved reading those books when I was a kid and practically had them memorized?  As an adult, I replaced my worn, well-thumbed, dog-eared paperback versions of the books with more durable hardbacks.  And I admit to rereading them every once in awhile.

In any case, those griddle cakes just sounded delicious.  This version is probably a far cry from Caroline Ingalls' though.  For one thing, they were lighter and fluffier than I expected from something that had cornmeal in it.  Probably from the chemical leavening which she wouldn't have had.  They also weren't very sweet (which may be more true to the Little House version).  These are pretty much pancakes.  They were fairly good although I think they're optimally served hot with melting butter slathered over them or with warm syrup if you want something more sweet.  I only had one but wrapped the rest up individually and deposited them in my freezer for future breakfasts, lunches and dinners.  Cook them long enough for the top to get crunchy and try to make them small if you do serve them for a brunch so your guests don't get too full from 1 griddle cake.

1 ¼ cups all-purpose flour

½ teaspoon salt

1 tablespoon baking powder

½ teaspoon baking soda

1 cup yellow cornmeal

2 tablespoons firmly packed light brown sugar

2 eggs

1 cup buttermilk

2 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted

4 to 6 tablespoons unsalted butter for the skillet

1.    In a medium bowl, sift together the flour, salt, baking powder and baking soda.  Set aside.

2.    Bring 1 ½ cups water to a boil.  Place the cornmeal in a large bowl.  Stirring continuously, slowly pour the boiling water over the cornmeal.  Keep stirring until the mixture has cooled to lukewarm, almost to room temperature.  Add the brown sugar and stir until combined.

3.    In a medium bowl, whisk the eggs until pale yellow.  Add the buttermilk and whisk until blended.  Add the flour mixture, alternating with the buttermilk mixture, to the cornmeal in three parts (beginning and ending with the flour mixture), stirring after each addition until just combined.  Stir in the melted butter.

4.    Heat a skillet or griddle pan over medium-low heat.

5.    Add 1 or 2 tablespoons butter to the skillet and make sure it coats the surface.  Drop griddle cakes in ¼-cup batches into the skillet (they will spread – do not crowd the pan).  Cook until the bottoms are medium-brown, about 3 minutes, and the tops are bubbly, then flip the griddle cakes over and cook the other side for about 2 minutes and serve immediately.  Continue cooking and serving until all the batter is gone.  Serve with generous amounts of sweet butter.

Krispies

Krispies - made April 14, 2011 from Mrs. Fields' Cookie Book by Debbi Fields (book #86)

I remember when this book first came out.  I was still crazy about Mrs. Fields' cookies and obsessed with baking cookies just like hers.  None of the chocolate chip cookie recipes I tried even came close to staying thick like hers did.  I even wanted to work part-time at a Mrs. Fields' Cookies in high school just so I could learn how they make those cookies.  Except I found out the workers don't really know the actual recipe.  Everything is pre-bagged and measured out and they just mix everything together and bake it.  Plus my parents would only let me do tutoring jobs and occasional baby-sitting after school during the school year so that nothing would take away from my studies.  During the summer, I worked at office temp jobs because they paid more than being a cookie baker at the mall.  So I never did find out how the cookies were made.

So imagine my excitement back in the day when this cookie book was finally published.  Of course the first recipe I tried out of it was the chocolate chip cookie recipe, fully expecting to be able to make cookies like Mrs. Fields.  Unfortunately I was disappointed.  My cookies still spread!  The taste was good but they didn't have the thickness or texture of a Mrs. Fields' cookie and were almost nothing like the mall cookies.  I tried a few more recipes from this book and had some success with some of the recipes, notably the lemon sandwich cookies, but still, that perfect chocolate chip cookie eluded me.  I kept this cookie book out of sentimental value and haven't baked from it in years.  This time around, I decided to try the Krispies recipe.  Looks like a typical cookie recipe in the book but it has the advantage of using up some of my Rice Krispie cereal that I still had on hand from experimenting with the brownie recipes.  I didn't have any Nestle Crunch Bars to chop up for the cookie dough so I increased the amount of rice krispies to 1 1/2 cups and chopped up a plain milk chocolate bar to add.  Also, past experience with Mrs. Fields' cookie recipes taught me that the cookies spread so I substituted 1/4 cup of shortening for 1/4 cup of the butter to minimize that.  Do NOT overbake these cookies.  In fact, better to underbake them.  I didn't bake them as long as the recipe called for but just long enough for the edges to get a little color and the middles to lose the doughy look, maybe 13-15 minutes.

I'm not entirely sure how I feel about these cookies.  I think they turned out the way they were supposed to.  The Rice Krispies gave them a nice little crunch and the cookies stayed nicely puffy and thick.  But they seemed kind of ordinary.  Like chocolate chip cookies with Rice Krispies in them.  Which is, I guess, exactly what they are so I'm not sure why I expected anything different.  I think I still expect more from Mrs. Fields, at least something amazing.  This was good but I don't know that I would call them amazing.  Although I acknowledge I have high standards for sweets so most people roll their eyes when I call something "okay" because they think better of it than I do.  So take my assessment with a grain of salt.  It's a nice little cookie if you want something a bit different from the norm or, if you want a little crunch to your cookie but don't like nuts in them, the Rice Krispies are a perfect addition.  For regular chocolate chip cookies, I think I'll stick with Alton Brown's recipe, the browned butter version.

2 cups all-purpose flour

¼ teaspoon salt

½ teaspoon baking soda

½ cup dark brown sugar, packed

½ cup white sugar

¾ cup salted butter, softened (I used 1/2 cup butter and 1/4 cup shortening)

1 large egg

2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract

1 cup crispy rice cereal

1 ½ cups (8 ounces) crispy rice chocolate bar, coarsely chopped

1.    Preheat oven to 300⁰F.

2.    In a medium bowl, combine flour, salt and soda.  Mix well with a wire whisk and set aside.

3.    In a large bowl, blend sugars with an electric mixer on medium speed.  Add butter and mix to form a grainy paste.  Scrape down sides of bowl, then add egg and vanilla.  Beat at medium speed until light and fluffy.

4.    Add flour mixture, rice cereal and chocolate chunks.  Blend at low speed just until combined.  Do not overmix.

5.    Drop by rounded tablespoons onto ungreased cookie sheets, 2 inches apart.  Bake for 22-24 minutes.  Immediately transfer cookies with a spatula to a cool, flat surface.

Apple Cinnamon Bites

Apple Cinnamon Bites - made April 14, 2011 from Cindy's Everyday Insanity's blog

Another recipe and blog I found from Sweets for a Saturday (although I can't remember exactly which one since there are so many yummy-looking recipes linked up there each week and I ended up just bookmarking this one).  I loved how these looked on Cindy's blog post - almost like sugared doughnut holes.  I was in Berkeley earlier this week with one of my nieces and her classmate and after we hit Blondie's Pizza for an early lunch, we stopped at Kingpin Doughnuts which has been in business at the same spot even back when I went to Cal.  I was too full from the pizza to get anything from Kingpin but the two teenagers I was with got a glazed doughnut and some kind of fritter, both of which looked delicious but neither of which I had the room or the metabolism for.  So naturally I've been wanting a doughnut ever since.  Or something that looks like a doughnut and/or is covered in sugar like a doughnut would be.  This will do.

The cool thing is these are baked so that makes them instantly more healthy than being deep-fried.  (Never mind the butter, flour, sugar - hey, it's got apple in it.)  They don't use a lot of milk but the recipe still calls for milk and I had milk to use up so it was a good time to kill two birds with one stone - try a cool-looking recipe and use some a little more milk before its expiration date.  There was enough batter to make 24 mini muffins plus some extra for a small ramekin.  I didn't bake these for very long, maybe 10-11 minutes?  I'm terrible about timing things since I mostly go by look and the toothpick test.

OMG.  These are fabulous.  It's like eating a snickerdoodle in muffin form.  I couldn't really taste the apple though - this was more like a little cinnamon snickerdoodle muffin.  But overall they're quite good (yes, I'm using the plural since I had more than 1 mini muffin - oink) and would be great to serve at a brunch or an afternoon tea.  I wouldn't consider them in the doughnut category at all but rather, they really are mini muffins.  I worked out before I made these and now I'll probably have to do another workout to offset the taste test pieces I just consumed.  But they're worth it.  Thanks for the recipe, Cindy!  (Click on the title to go to the recipe on Cindy's blog.)

Chicken Vesuvio

Chicken Vesuvio - made April 13, 2011 from Cover and Bake by the Editors of Cooks' Illustrated (book #85)

No, your eyes aren't deceiving you - this is a "real food" blog entry.  In case it isn't obvious, I've had so much sugar lately that if I cut myself, I wouldn't be surprised if C&H came pouring out of my veins instead of plasma.  Even limiting myself to taste test pieces from everything I make is still a lot of sugar.  So I'm mixing it up with an actual cooking recipe to prove I do eat something besides sugar.  Cover and Bake is yet another recipe book I've had for years and to my memory, have rarely used.  Yeah, I do that a lot.  Hence my baking/cooking challenge.  I probably bought it during one of my "I'm going to learn how to cook even if it kills me" spells.

Cooking is always a production for me.  Whereas I can whip up cupcakes, cakes, brownies, and cookie dough in a blink of an eye, when it comes to cooking, I have to plot and plan far, far ahead.  Chances are I never have the ingredients I need so that involves a trip (or two...or three) to the grocery store.  It involves thawing stuff because I'll be all fired up to cook something, buy the protein ingredient, then the urge to cook passes and I throw the stuff in the freezer until I feel like tackling the recipe.  Honestly, you wouldn't think it'd be so hard but I have a mental block when it comes to cooking.  If it can't be microwaved and eaten as is, chances are I don't really eat it.  I do make some attempts to cook every once in awhile though and this is another one of those sporadic efforts.

Before I saw this recipe, I'd never heard of Chicken Vesuvio.  According to the editors of Cooks' Illustrated, it's popular in Chicago's Italian restaurants and refers to chicken and potato wedges baked in a sauce of garlic, white wine and herbs.  Sounds easy enough to do and, more importantly, had ingredients I would actually eat and not take (too many) liberties in leaving out, thereby changing the recipe drastically from what the cookbook authors intended.  Okay, yeah, I do that too.  This time around though, the most drastic thing I did was use only half the chicken and potatoes called for in the recipe while making a full recipe of the sauce.  No particular reason why other than I'd rather err on the side of too much sauce instead of too little.

Turns out I'm glad I did make a full recipe of the sauce because between reducing it and baking the reduction in the oven, the sauce almost dried up.  If I had only made a half recipe, I think the dish would've been bone dry.  As it was, it was pretty tasty to my simple taste buds used to Lean Cuisine meals and pasta sauce from a jar.  I did reduce the oven temp to 400 degrees once I put the chicken in with the potatoes though as I didn't want the outside of the chicken to burn while the inside wasn't cooked yet.  It's not gourmet food by a long shot but it was a nice little chicken and potato dish that was just my cooking speed.

3 tablespoons olive oil

Salt and ground black pepper

2 pounds red potatoes, scrubbed and cut into ¾-inch wedges

4 split, bone-in, skin-on chicken breasts, (about 10-12 ounces each), trimmed

5 medium garlic cloves, minced or pressed through a garlic press

2 teaspoons minced fresh thyme leaves

2 tablespoons chopped fresh oregano

1 cup dry white wine

1 cup low-sodium chicken broth

1 lemon, cut into wedges

1.     Adjust an oven rack to the lowest position and heat the oven to 475⁰F.  Grease a 9 x 13” baking dish with 2 teaspoons of the oil then sprinkle the dish evenly with ½ teaspoon salt and ¼ teaspoon pepper.  Toss the potatoes with 1 tablespoon oil.  Arrange the potatoes in the baking dish in a single layer, with a cut side flush against the bottom of the pan.  Lean any extra potato wedges up against the sides of the pan.  Roast until the potatoes are just beginning to brown, about 30 minutes.  Do not stir the potatoes.

2.    Meanwhile, heat 1 teaspoon of oil in a 12” skillet over medium-high heat until smoking.  Dry the chicken thoroughly with paper towels, then season generously with salt and pepper.  Carefully lay the chicken breasts, skin-side down, in the skillet and cook to a deep golden color, about 5 minutes.  Transfer the chicken to a plate.

3.    Pour off any fat left in the skillet.  Add the remaining 1 tablespoon oil to the skillet and return to medium heat until shimmering.  Add the garlic, thyme, and oregano; cook, stirring often until golden and fragrant, about 2 minutes.  Add the wine and broth and bring to a simmer, scraping any browned bits off the bottom of the pan.  Simmer until reduced by half, about 10 minutes.  Season with salt and pepper to taste.

4.    Pour half of the sauce evenly over the potatoes.  Lay the chicken, skin-side up, on top of the potatoes.  Roast until the juices run clear when the chicken is cut with a paring knife, or the thickest part of the breast registers 160 degrees on an instant-read thermometer, about 30 minutes.  Transfer the chicken to a platter and allow to rest for 5 minutes.  Use a metal spatula to release and transfer the potatoes to the platter.  Serve immediately, passing the extra sauce and lemon wedges separately.

Red Velvet Cupcakes with a "well" of cream cheese filling

Debbie's Dazzling Red Velvet Cake - made April 13, 2011 from Chocolate from the Cake Mix Doctor by Anne Byrn (book #84)

I'm trying to beat the clock again on some buttermilk that's got an expiration date for this week so that's determining what I make right now.  Anything that uses up milk and/or buttermilk or both is a plus.  I haven't done a red velvet in awhile so I pounced on this easy recipe.  Cake mix was on sale for $1 at Target and after having seen a similar box on the shelves of a grocery store in Australia for 5 times that amount, I can't help but feel grateful that food is still comparatively cheap in the US.  Even if I'm not a believer in a box mix.  So don't ask me why I have several recipe books that base almost all of their recipes on box mixes.  What can I say, I went through an insane acquisitive period in my not-so-distant youth.

The pinnacle of red velvet cupcakes to me is the one from Sprinkles.  It was the first cupcake I'd ever tried from there and what they seemed to be most well-known for.  It's not to everyone's taste but I happen to like it, 550 calories and all.  I even like their frosting for it even though I'm not a frosting person and I don't happen to like the frosting on all of their cupcakes.  But I do on their red velvet cupcake.

The original recipe for this was supposed to be a red velvet cake frosted with cream cheese frosting but I decided to make it into cupcakes for easier distribution. I also wanted to see if I could make a "well" in the center of the cupcake that would house a dollop of cream cheese batter with mini chocolate chips instead of frosting it.  The risk was the batter wouldn't hold a dollop of anything and it'd be a cream cheese center instead of a well but I was in the mood to experiment so I went for it.  The only thing is I didn't think an actual cream cheese frosting would bake well in the cupcake so I made it more like the cream cheese batter that gets swirled through a brownie.  I used the cream cheese filling recipe from the Double Fudge Cream Cheese Brownies instead of the cream cheese frosting recipe below.

When using a box cake mix, always sift or strain the cake mix first to get rid of any lumps.  Anne Byrn's recipe directions call for combining all the ingredients at once and mixing.  I find if I do that mixing together all the dry ingredients and all the wet ingredients at once sometimes produces more lumps and I have to spend more time mixing to smooth out the batter.  So what I do is combine all the dry ingredients first then add the butter, mix a bit to form a paste then add the eggs, mix then slowly add the buttermilk.  I add the red food coloring right after the eggs and before the buttermilk to gauge the color before all of the wet ingredients are incorporated.  I don't like pink velvet cupcakes so I was prepared to add more red food coloring if the batter wasn't a sufficiently impressive red color at the end.  Fortunately, I didn't have to.

As you can see from the picture, the "well" concept didn't work out.  Ideally, the dollop of cream cheese filling would've remained intact in the middle of each cupcake top.  It didn't turn out  that way.  Instead, the cream cheese filling sank into the cupcake and the cupcake rose, baking up around it.  It's not quite a center filling but more like a swirl on top hinting at the filling in the middle.  When I tried a cupcake, I also saw that  the cream cheese had sunk to the bottom so it wasn't even a center filling.  That's likely because the weight of the cupcake batter wasn't dense enough to hold the cream cheese well.  Oh well....

In taste, the cupcakes were pretty good, at least for something with a box mix base.  The texture was light and cakey like we traditionally like our cakes to be and they were moist.  Sprinkles has no competition to worry about here though.  Since the well experiment didn't work, I think they would've been better without  the cream cheese filling but that's me.  Next time, I'm better off trying to make more of a frosting-type center that's sweeter and lighter rather than a filling recipe and see if that does any better.

Cake

1 package (18.25 ounces) white cake mix with pudding

1 cup buttermilk

8 tablespoons (1 stick) butter, melted

2 tablespoons unsweetened cocoa powder

3 large eggs

2 bottles (1 ounce each) red food coloring

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Cream Cheese Frosting

1 package (8 ounces) cream cheese, at room temperature

8 tablespoons (1 stick) butter, at room temperature

3 ¾ cups confectioners’ sugar, sifted, plus additional if needed

2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract

1.    Place a rack in the center of the oven and preheat the oven to 350⁰F.  Generously grease two 9-inch round cake pans with nonstick cooking spray, then dust with flour.  Shake out the excess flour.  Set the pans aside.

2.    Place the cake mix, buttermilk, melted butter, cocoa powder, eggs, red food coloring and vanilla in a large mixing bowl.  Blend with an electric mixer on low speed for 1 minute.  Stop the machine and scrape down the sides of the bowl with a rubber spatula.  Increase the mixer speed to medium and beat 2 minutes more, scraping down the sides again if needed.  The batter should look well combined.  Divide the batter evenly between the prepared pans, smoothing it out with the rubber spatula.  Place the pans in the oven side by side.

3.    Bake the cakes until they spring back when lightly pressed with your finger, 28 to 30 minutes.  Remove the pans from the oven and place them on wire racks to cool for 10 minutes.  Run a dinner knife around the edge of each layer and invert each onto a rack, then invert again onto another rack so that the cakes are right side up.  Allow to cool completely, 30 minutes more.

4.    Meanwhile, prepare the Cream Cheese Frosting.  Place the cream cheese and butter in a large mixing bowl.  Blend with an electric mixer on low speed until combined, 30 seconds.  Add the confectioners’ sugar, a little at a time, blending with the mixer on low speed, until the sugar is well incorporated, 1 minute.  Add more sugar as needed to make the frosting spreadable.  Add the vanilla, then increase the mixer speed to medium and blend until the frosting is fluffy, 1 minute more.

5.    Place one cake layer, right side up, on a serving platter.  Spread the top with frosting.  Place the second layer, right side up, on top of the first layer and frost the top and sides of the cake with clean, smooth strokes.

Store this cake, tightly wrapped or covered, at room temperature for up to 3 days.

Diane's Double Chocolate Sheet Cake

Diane's Double Chocolate Sheet Cake - made April 9, 2011 from the Doughmakers Cookbook by Bette LaPlante and Diane Cuvelier (book #83)

If you think I have a one-track mind when I'm baking for bake sales, you'd be right.  Brownies and sheet cakes are the easiest things to make when I don't have a lot of time or notice, they're easy to package up, they freeze well so they can be brought out to thaw right before sale time and they're generally crowd pleasers. I was out of town the 2 days before the bake sale so I had to come up with quick and easy recipes to bake that would keep when I dropped them off at Christine's before I left.   I've had this recipe in my "Still Need to Make" for the longest time now so I'm glad I finally got a chance to make it.

This called for baking in a big pan so I cut it to 2/3 of the recipe below and baked it in a 9 x 13 pan instead.  Fortunately, most of the proportions were easy to take 2/3 of, although I did have to eyeball the buttermilk.

Of the three things I made for this last bake sale, I have to say I liked this sheet cake the best.  It's cakey but also fudgy and moist and surprisingly, I liked the touch of cinnamon flavor against the chocolate.  Although this looks similar in appearance to Les Brownies, the texture and even the taste is different.  Still chocolate goodness but this is definitely a cake rather than a brownie.  I liked the cake itself as much as I liked the German Chocolate Cake I made last week.  It's not as fragile but definitely just as good.

Cake

3 cups flour

3 cups sugar

1 ½ teaspoons salt

¾ pound (3 sticks) butter

6 tablespoons unsweetened cocoa

1 ½ cups water

1/3 cup buttermilk

1 ½ teaspoons baking soda

1 ½ teaspoons vanilla extract

1 ½ teaspoons cinnamon

3 eggs, beaten

Icing

4 tablespoons unsweetened cocoa

1/3 pound butter

9 tablespoons milk

5 cups confectioners’ sugar

1 ½ teaspoons vanilla extract

1 ½ cups chopped pecans

1.     Preheat the oven to 350˚F.  Grease a 13 x 18-inch sheet cake pan with solid vegetable shortening and lightly flour.

2.    In a large mixing bowl, thoroughly whisk together the flour, sugar and salt.  In a heavy saucepan over medium heat, bring the butter, cocoa, and water to a boil, stirring frequently and pour this over the sugar-flour mixture.  Add the buttermilk, baking soda, vanilla, cinnamon and eggs.  Mix well and pour into the prepared pan.  Bake for 30 minutes.

3.    To make the icing: In a heavy saucepan over medium heat, bring the cocoa, butter and milk to a rapid boil.  Remove from the heat, add the confectioners’ sugar, vanilla, and pecans and beat until smooth.  Spread the icing over the hot cake.

4.    Allow the cake to cool slightly, then cut into 3-inch pieces.

Les Brownies

Les Brownies - made April 9, 2011 from A Passion for Chocolate by Maurice and Jean-Jacques Bernachon with the American translation by Rose Levy Berenbaum (book #82)

Maurice and Jean-Jacques Bernachon are father and son chocolatiers in Lyon, France.  According to their cookbook, they were instructed in the artesanal tradition of making chocolates by hand and published this cookbook to share their recipes.  Rose Levy Berenbaum, author of The Cake Bible and, in my mind, the undisputed goddess of cakes, translated and adapted their cookbook for the American kitchen.  There are much more complicated recipes in this book but I homed in on the brownie one, partly because I didn't have much time to bake stuff for the bake sale and partly because I just love trying out brownie recipes.

This is another one of those brownies where it's critical to use the best quality chocolate you can.  It's not a terribly dark chocolate brownie since it starts with bittersweet chocolate.  I used a 62% bittersweet chocolate but if you like your brownies to have more of a dark chocolate flavor, go up to the 90% that Valrhona or Lindt sell or something similar.   Again, I frosted it for the bake sale but this could stand on its own without frosting.

5 ounces bittersweet chocolate, coarsely chopped

6 tablespoons butter

1 ¼ cups sifted all-purpose flour (or 5 ounces)

½ teaspoon baking powder

½ teaspoon salt

¾ cup + 2 tablespoons superfine sugar

2 extra-large eggs

1 scant cup walnuts (optional)

One 8 x 8” baking pan, lined with foil and lightly sprayed with nonstick cooking spray

1.    Preheat the oven to 350⁰F.

2.    Melt the butter and chocolate in the top of a double boiler set over hot water, stirring to keep the chocolate from burning.  Cool to lukewarm.

3.    In a small bowl, whisk together the flour, baking powder and salt.

4.    Gradually add the sugar, eggs, and then the flour mixture to the chocolate.  Mix until well incorporated.  Stir in nuts if using.

5.    Scrape the batter into the prepared pan and bake for 30 to 35 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out almost clean.  The brownies should still be slightly moist in the center.

Linked to Sweet Tooth Friday