Ways to use basil?

Blogging out of baking order again and this isn't even a baking post but a call for savory recipes that use basil.  My basil plants are thriving, thriving and doing more thriving.  Not that I don't love making pesto out of them but at some point I will be pesto'd out.  Last night I harvested some basil, chopped it up and added it to the topping of a whole wheat pizza.  Yum.

Tonight I harvested some more basil and did a quick stir fry with shrimp.  There isn't even a recipe for this - I just browned some minced garlic in a little olive oil, stir fried with shrimp and basil, added a little egg for scramble and brown rice plus a dash of soy sauce - voila, dinner.  That's about the level of my fledgling cooking skills so if you have any recipes for easy, preferably protein-focused dishes that use up basil, please share!

On another note entirely, I finally figured out how to make brown rice in my rice cooker.  Like any good Asian, I own a rice cooker.  It makes perfect white rice.  But whenever I've tried making brown rice in it, the brown rice is always still hard little pebbles of grain when the rice cooker says it's "done" and turns itself off.  A trick my mom taught me is to soak the brown rice for several hours first then cook it in the rice cooker, 2 to 1 (2 parts water to 1 part brown rice).  I tried it and it worked perfectly.  Brown rice is healthier, has more fiber and you get full on a lesser amount than with white rice.  I may never eat white rice again.

Chocolate Revel Bars

Chocolate Revel Bars - made June 7, 2011 from Better Homes and Gardens Cookies (book #124)

Welcome to any new followers and thank you for all the comments on the various posts.  I may not be able to reply to all of them or follow everyone's blog but I do read all the comments and check out as many blogs as I can.

This is some kind of specially printed book as one half of it is an "Any Day Treats" cookie book and the other half, turned upside down and printed as the back half is a "Christmastime Treats" book.  This recipe is from the Any Day cookie book half.

This is another one of those crowd pleaser type recipes where it has a little something for everyone - oats, chocolate, nuts - and is made similar to the peanut butter fudge bars.  I have to admit though I was a little off my groove when making this one - I deliberately used a 9 x 13 pan instead of the larger pan the recipe specified but I discovered too late that I was low on semisweet chocolate chips so I supplemented my meager stash with Lindt and Valrhona semisweet chocolate bars.  Which would've been fine but instead of 1 1/2 cups or approximately 9 ounces of chocolate chips, I ended up using 12 ounces of chocolate, thinking I needed 2 cups instead of 1 1/2 cups.  Oh well, there's no such thing as too much chocolate, right?  Second inadvertent mistake is because I had these in the oven while I was working out, I didn't check on them until my workout was nearly done and by then, the bars looked a little too done.  Oops.  Clearly I need to get better at multi-tasking after a workday.

But fortunately they survived my haphazard baking (in)attention and they weren't burnt or dry.  However, I would only classify these as just "okay".  Similar to how the peanut butter fudge bars were made, this has some of the cookie dough as a bottom crust, covered with a chocolate layer then topped with bits of the rest of the cookie dough.  Good in theory but in taste - just okay.  There's nothing wrong with it and most people would probably like it but bear in mind I'm very picky about my dessert calories.  Desserts should be more than just okay.  To make these better, I recommend adding a teaspoon of cinnamon to the oatmeal batter to liven up the flavor and possibly substituting a caramel or dulce de layer for the chocolate layer so you get more of a brown sugar/caramel oatmeal bar.  Otherwise, save yourself the calories.

Tops are a bit too brown

1 cup butter, softened

2 ½ cups all-purpose flour

2 cups packed brown sugar

2 eggs

2 teaspoons vanilla

1 teaspoon baking soda

3 cups quick-cooking rolled oats

1 ½ cups semisweet chocolate pieces

1 14-ounce can (1 ¼ cups) sweetened condensed milk

2 tablespoons butter

½ cup chopped walnuts or pecans

2 teaspoons vanilla

1.     In a very large mixing bowl, beat the 1 cup butter with an electric mixer on medium to high speed about 30 seconds or till softened.  Add about half of the flour to the butter.  Then add the brown sugar, eggs, 2 teaspoons vanilla, and baking soda.  Beat till thoroughly combined, scraping the sides of the bowl occasionally.  Beat in the remaining flour.  Stir in the rolled oats.  Set the oat mixture aside.

2.     For filling, in a medium saucepan, heat chocolate pieces, sweetened condensed milk, and the 2 tablespoons butter over low heat till chocolate is just melted, stirring occasionally.  Remove from heat.  Stir in the walnuts or pecan and 2 teaspoons vanilla.

3.     For crust, press two-thirds (about 3 1/3 cups) of the oat mixture into the bottom of an ungreased 15 x 10 x 1-inch baking pan.  Spread the chocolate mixture over crust.  Drop the remaining oat mixture by rounded teaspoons on top of chocolate layer.

4.     Bake in a 350˚F oven about 25 minutes or till the top is lightly browned.  (Chocolate mixture will still look moist.)  Cool in pan on a wire rack.  Cut into bars.  Makes 60.

Golly Polly's Doodles

Golly Polly's Doodles - made June 11, 2011 from I'm Dreaming of a Chocolate Christmas by Marcel Desaulniers (book #123)

When eaten warm, the peanut butter center is molten

I'm blogging out of baking order to post this today because tomorrow, June 12, is National Peanut Butter Cookie Day!  Now the traditional peanut butter cookie we all know and love is the one with the cross hatches, sometimes sprinkled with sugar, and sometimes made with creamy peanut butter or crunchy peanut butter.  My personal favorite is made with chocolate chips because, heretical as this might be to peanut butter purists, I mostly like peanut butter only when it's paired with chocolate.  So I'm going with this peanut butter-flavored chocolate cookie with a dollop of peanut butter filling inside.  This may not be your grandma's peanut butter cookie but hey, we all have to honor cookies our own way.

The chocolate cookie dough was very easy to work with and shape around the filling.  It wasn't too sticky or too dry/crumbly but just right.  I ended up only getting 15 filling balls instead of 17 and even then, I ended with too much chocolate cookie dough.  You might want to double the filling recipe if you want to make these cookies as is.  I ended up getting creative and used the remaining dough to wrap around Hershey Kisses, chunks of Snickers and whole Oreo cookies, just to see how they'd turn out.  If you bake with kids, this is a good recipe to make with them and have them choose different "fillings" to put inside the cookie.  Once it's all wrapped around whatever filling you decide, it's hard to tell what's inside and part of the fun after baking them is discovering which one you got.

Note that the recipe says to bake these for only 6 minutes so don't take your eye off of them or they'll be overdone.  I was a little skeptical about baking them for such little time but it turned out to be perfect, at least in my oven.  The chocolate cookie was soft and when eaten warm, the peanut butter filling was molten.  This was like eating an upscale version of a peanut butter cup in cookie form.  The key is using a rich dark cocoa for the chocolate cookie dough so you get a deep dark chocolate flavor that's complemented by the sweeter peanut butter filling.

An upscale version of a Reese's peanut butter cup in cookie form

Doodle Dough

1 ½ cups all-purpose flour

½ cup unsweetened cocoa powder

½ teaspoon baking powder

½ teaspoon salt

8 tablespoons (1 stick) unsalted butter, cut into 1-tablespoon pieces and softened

¾ cup granulated sugar

¼ cup creamy peanut butter

1 large egg

1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

Doodle Filling

¼ cup creamy peanut butter

¼ cup confectioners’ sugar

1.     Preheat the oven to 375⁰F.  Line a baking sheet with parchment paper.

2.     In a sifter, combine the flour, cocoa, baking powder, and salt.  Sift onto a large piece of parchment or wax paper.

3.     Place the softened butter, ½ cup of the granulated sugar, and the ¼ cup peanut butter in the bowl of a stand electric mixer fitted with a paddle.  Mix on low for 1 minute, then on medium for 1 minute more.  Stop and scrape down the sides of the bowl and the paddle.  Mix on medium-high for 1 minute.  Scrape down again.

4.     Add the egg and vanilla and beat on medium for 30 seconds; scrape down again once they have been incorporated, about 30 seconds.  Remove the bowl from the mixer and use a rubber spatula or your hands to finish mixing the ingredients until thoroughly combined.  Chill the dough in the refrigerator while making the filling.  (Do not keep the dough in the refrigerator for more than 20 minutes; otherwise  the dough will be difficult to form into the desired shape.)

5.     Make the doodle filling: Place the ¼ cup peanut butter and the confectioners’ sugar in a clean bowl of a stand electric mixer, then beat on medium for 10 seconds.  Remove the bowl from the mixer, and use a rubber spatula to finish mixing until the ingredients are thoroughly combined.  Portion 17 level teaspoons of the filling onto a piece of parchment or wax paper.  Roll each portion into a smooth, round ball.

6.     Using 1 heaping tablespoon, portion 17 pieces of dough.  Roll each portion of dough into a smooth round ball, then flatten each ball in the palm of your hand into a 3-inch-diameter circle.  Using your thumb, make a small indentation, then fold the dough around the filling and roll it into a smooth, round ball.  Roll the balls in the  remaining ¼ cup granulated sugar to coat.

7.     Place the Doodles on the prepared baking sheet about 1 inch apart widthwise and 2 inches apart lengthwise.  Bake on the center rack of the preheated oven for 6 minutes, until barely firm.  (Overbaking will cause these cookies to become hard.)  Remove the cookies from the oven and transfer to a wire rack to cool to room temperature.  Store in a tightly sealed plastic container.



 

Yay, the search box is working again!

I take back all my mutterings against you, Google.  Until something else breaks.... :)

Another Pesto recipe

Pesto - made June 5, 2011 from The Art of Simple Food by Alice Waters (book #122)

I write up these posts ahead of time on the weekend when I have more time and publish them during the week when I have less time.  So I'm a little late in thanking Susan at My Mother's Apron Strings for this beautiful apron I won in her May giveaway.  I received it in the mail this past Monday and the pictures don't do it justice on how beautifully made this is.  Thanks, Susan, for the work of art!  You do wonderful work.

Now for this recipe....

I'm trying out another pesto recipe because my basil plants are growing even faster than the weeds in my garden.  Most of the recipes seem pretty similar.  This one calls for pounding the ingredients with a mortar and pestle but I have neither so I cheated and used the food processor.  I also substituted chicken broth for half the olive oil again.  I like pesto but am mindful of how high-calorie it is.

I have to confess I kind of messed up this recipe.  First it only called for 1 garlic clove but I like garlic so I put in 2 cloves.  Uh, that made it a little too garlicky.  Then, although I had all my ingredients out for my mise en place, somehow I missed adding the parmesan cheese so I had to add it in at the very end after I'd already added the pesto to the pasta and shrimp.  Sigh.  In general though, even my messing up aside, I think I like the CIA recipe for pesto better.  This one was a bit too liquid-y.  The flavor of the fresh basil came through better in the CIA recipe.  Probably because I didn't over-garlic that one, ha!

1 cup basil, lightly packed

1 garlic clove, peeled

Salt

¼ cup pine nuts, lightly toasted

¼ cup grated Parmesan cheese

½ cup extra-virgin olive oil

1.     In a mortar and pestle, pound garlic and salt to a paste.  Add pine nuts and continue to pound.  Add parmesan cheese.

2.     Transfer mixture to a bowl.  Coarsely chop the basil leaves and put them in the mortar.  Pound the leaves to a paste.  Return the pounded pine nut mixture to the mortar.  Pound the leaves and pine nut mixture together.  Continue pounding and gradually pour in the olive oil.  Taste for salt and adjust if necessary.

Coconut Kisses

Coconut Kisses - made June 5, 2011 from Rose's Christmas Cookies by Rose Levy Berenbaum (book #121)

The original recipe in this book is called Mom's Coconut Kisses, presumably to signify Rose Levy Berenbaum's mom.  I remember getting this cookbook after I got the Cake Bible, another book I've had great success with for excellent cake recipes.  Rose Levy Berenbaum gives directions for extracting the coconut from a real coconut and admonishes would-be bakers not to substitute packaged coconut for this recipe.  Alas, I have no inclination to track down real coconuts, roast them and pry out the coconut meat from them.  I'm sure doing so would make a far superior cookie and I've wanted to make this cookie for years but have been put off because of the whole find-real-coconuts thing.  So I've finally decided to just make the recipe and make the forbidden substitution just to try it out.

I only made a half recipe just for something quick to throw together.  After baking, I pressed a Hershey Kiss on top for a few of them like you'd do for a peanut butter blossom.  Nothing beats that coconut and chocolate combination.  After trying one, I have to admit Rose Levy Berenbaum was right - this would likely have been much better with fresh coconut.  Not that it was bad and I love coconut but since there are so few ingredients, the cookie is largely dependent on the quality of the coconut.  The packaged coconut was just okay so the cookie was just okay.  Someday I'm going to have to try it with the real thing or at least really fresh coconut meat that might be sold at an Asian grocery store.  Oh and her directions say to bake at 400 degrees but that browned the coconut really quickly, in under 10 minutes so I'd try it at 350 to give it more time to bake without the coconut burning at the edges.

3 ½ cups coconut, freshly shredded

9.75 ounces sweetened condensed milk

2 tablespoons cornstarch

1 teaspoon lemon juice

1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

Pinch of salt

1.      Preheat the oven to 400⁰F. (I recommend 350 degrees instead)

2.      In a medium bowl, using a wooden spoon, mix all the ingredients together until well blended, but do not add all of the milk until you check the consistency.  The mixture should be moist and hold together.  If necessary, add up to 2 extra tablespoons of the condensed milk.

3.      Use a rounded cookie scoop, or a scant tablespoon and your fingers, to form 1-inch round mounds of the mixture about 1 ½ inches high.  Place about 1 ½ inches apart on the prepared baking sheet.

4.      Bake for 15 to 20 minutes or until most of the cookie’s surface is light golden.  There will still be white spots.  For even baking, rotate the cookie sheets from top to bottom and front to back halfway through the baking period.

5.       Use a small, angled metal spatula or pancake turner to transfer the cookies to wire racks to cool completely.

Peanut Butter Fudge Bars

Peanut Butter Fudge Bars - made June 5, 2011 from Cake Mix Cookies by Camilla V. Saulsbury (book #120)

This is the type of baking book that if you wanted to bake with kids or you're a novice baker and want to make simple things without a lot of fuss, there are a lot of recipes in here that would be up your alley.  I must've gone through a use-cake-mix-as-an-ingredient phase as I have several baking books with this theme.  Which is a little baffling since I don't normally like cake mix flavor unless the other ingredients can overcome it and make it taste like something more than a box mix.  But the recipes aren't bad and their simplicity can't be beat.  I always recommend this type of baking book for people with kids who like to help them bake or are starting out in the kitchen since there's nothing easier than using a cake mix as a base.  If you find the right recipe, you're not sacrificing much on taste (says the baking snob).  Paired with measuring cups or spoons or little aprons for tykes plus a boxed mix itself to get them started, these make good gifts for busy parents and/or newbie bakers.

This recipe was super easy to put together.  Strain the cake mix first to get rid of any lumps then follow the directions.  The peanut butter batter was more like a stiff cookie dough batter than a cake batter but it wasn't crumbly.  I did "crumble" the topping by pinching off bits of the batter and dropping them randomly over the top.  The topping bits didn't spread out but stayed how I crumbled them.  I also added some chopped up Hershey kisses on top for additional texture and chocolate.  Overall, this was pretty good and didn't taste like cake mix. The peanut butter and chocolate combo help with the disguise.  This is like eating a soft peanut butter cookie with a layer of chocolate in the middle.  I'm glad I added the Hershey kisses and could've probably added even more.  If you're a peanut butter lover, feel free to add peanut butter chips.  There's no going wrong here.

1 18.25-ounce package yellow cake mix

1 cup creamy peanut butter

2 large eggs

½ cup vegetable oil

2 cups semisweet chocolate chips

1 14-ounce can sweetened condensed milk

2 tablespoons butter

2 teaspoons vanilla extract

1.   Preheat the oven to 350⁰F.  Position oven rack in middle of oven.  Spray the bottom only of a 13 x 9-inch metal baking pan with nonstick cooking spray (I line with foil then spray).

2.   In a large bowl place the cake mix, peanut butter, eggs and oil.  Blend 1-2 minutes with an electric mixer set on low speed until well blended.  Reserve 1 ½ cups of the mixture.  Press remaining mixture into bottom of prepared pan; set pan and reserved mixture aside.

3.   Meanwhile, in a heavy saucepan set over low heat, melt the chocolate chips with the condensed milk and butter, stirring until blended and smooth.  Remove from heat and stir in vanilla extract; pour over crust.  Sprinkle with remaining crumb mixture.

4.   Bake 20-25 minutes or until golden brown and topping is firm to the tough.  Transfer to wire rack and cool completely; cut into bars.

Snicker-ized Brownies

Harley's Brownies - made June 4, 2011 from The Mitford Cookbook & Kitchen Reader by Jan Karon (book #119)

You might notice that I'm participating in more link parties as evidenced by the button at the bottom of some posts that'll take you to the link parties.  Link parties are something I've only just discovered this year and it's been nice to be invited to join, find new foodie blogs and get exposed to so many different recipes and vice versa.  I know it's common in the blogosphere to link the same post to many different link parties but I'm an anomaly in that I try not to do that if I can help it.  Many of them have the same audience and I figure people will get sick of seeing the same thing from me on each of them.  I try to link only 1 or 2 link parties to the same post and instead find different recipes to link.  So if you ask me to link a particular post to your link party and I link something else, I'm not willfully ignoring you but chances are I've either already linked it elsewhere or plan to.  It's just a quirk.  Now on to this recipe....

I love Jan Karon's Mitford books about Father Tim, an aging Episcopalian priest, and his hometown friends in Mitford.  My favorite line from the very first book in the series, At Home in Mitford, is Father Tim's first thought upon waking was, "Father, make me a blessing to someone today...."  What a great way to frame your day and get yourself out of bed.

Food plays an important role in Mitford books and the Mitford Cookbook is a compilation of recipes of the food mentioned in the books as well as excerpts from the books themselves.  If you've read the series, it's a nice walk down memory lane to revisit the books.  Perhaps the most famous dessert in the series is Esther's Marmalade Cake.  In one instance, it even sent Father Tim into a diabetic collapse.  I always thought Esther's Marmalade Cake sounded delicious and toyed with the idea of making it (yes, the recipe is in this book).  However, although I like orange cake, I don't care for marmalade and that's what comprises the top layer or frosting in the recipe.  So I went with this brownie recipe instead (Harley is a character in the books in case you were wondering) as I needed brownies for giving away and I also wanted to try some chocolate from the Philippines.  My dad's cousin, Tita Aline, was there late last year and brought this back and her husband Allan was kind enough to send me some to try in baking.  At first I wasn't sure if it was a dark bittersweet chocolate or unsweetened chocolate but after sampling it, I decided to treat it as an unsweetened chocolate since it was pretty bitter when eaten "straight".

I didn't beat the egg mixture as long as 10 minutes but seeing that in the directions made me suspect this brownie would have a crust and a more delicate crumb than most brownies since beating it that much will incorporate a lot of air into it.  The crust forms because beating eggs for that long causes them to form a meringue-like top.  I omitted the nuts and chocolate chunks.  Instead, I "snicker-ized" these brownies, meaning about 5-10 minutes before they were done baking, I scattered chopped-up Snickers on top of them and let them bake until they melted into gooey madness over the top of the brownies.  Just for something different.

These brownies came out pretty well.  The brownie itself is a bit fragile with a delicate crumb so I'm glad I put the Snickers on top and not in the brownie itself.  I think any add-ins in the brownie itself would've been too much of a contrast and/or the brownie would've been too delicate to hold anything sturdy like nuts or even chocolate chips.  On top was just fine.  I made these and sent some home with my niece to share with her sister over the weekend - got a call from the kids later and this got a thumbs up as the favorite in the batch of 4 things I'd baked for them.

4 ounces unsweetened chocolate, coarsely chopped

¾ cup unsalted butter, cut into small pieces

4 large eggs, at room temperature

¼ teaspoon salt

2 cups granulated sugar

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1 cup White Lily all-purpose flour (my area doesn't sell White Lily so I used Gold Medal)

1 ½ cups mini Hershey’s Chocolate Kisses or chocolate chunks

1 cup chopped pecans

1.       Preheat the oven to 350⁰F.  Coat a 9 x 13-inch pan with nonstick cooking spray and set aside. 

2.       Place the unsweetened chocolate and butter in a microwave-safe bowl and microwave at medium powder for 5 to 8 minutes (or melt in the top of a double boiler over gently simmering water).  Stir and let cool completely.

3.       In the bowl of an electric mixer, beat the eggs, salt, sugar and vanilla on medium speed until light and creamy, about 10 minutes.  Add the cooled chocolate.

4.       Stir in the flour with a wooden spoon until just combined.  Add the Kisses and pecans and stir until just combined.  Pour the batter into the pan, smooth out evenly and bake for 25 to 30 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out with moist crumbs.  Cool completely before cutting into squares.

Search box not working

We interrupt all the baking posts for a public service whine that the search box for my blog isn't working!  When I input a search term which I often do when I need to link back to a recipe I've already posted, the search results return...nothing.  It was working a few days ago so I don't know what's going on.  If it is or isn't working for you, please let me know.  And if you know of a fix, please let me know that too.

I find it ironic that blogger is a Google (the SEARCH company) product and the search box isn't working.  I tried searching their help forum and find it spectacularly unhelpful.  I also couldn't find where I can log an issue or ticket with blogger/Google to notify them of the problem.  Their help link just refers me to the help forum and all the discussions on the subject are closed with no seeming fix.  Help! [/whine]

Orange Pound Cake

Orange Pound Cake - made May 30, 2011 from A Passion for Desserts by Emily Luchetti (book #118)

Just a thin layer of glaze adds a nice touch

Since I went back to work, I'm still baking only on weekends so far and I made this cake last weekend on Memorial Day.  I haven't quite adjusted to getting in a baking mood once I get home from work, especially since I'm getting back into the groove of working out in the morning before work and, when I'm motivated enough, doing a second workout after work.  Which doesn't leave much time or energy to bake too.  So for now, I'll load up on the baking on the weekends and dole out the blog posts during the week.

This baking book is responsible for the Pumpkin Upside Down Cake that I now make as part of our Thanksgiving desserts almost every year.  It was the recipe and the cake that made me realize I actually do like pumpkin (as long as it's not in a pie) and in the right recipe, I even like cranberries.  I don't use this book often enough as some of the recipes seem a bit too fancy but I should probably get over that because I suspect there are many more potential favorites in here that I could discover.

There are much fancier recipes in this book and this one actually comes with a Grape Compote but I elected to go for simplicity and left it out.  I'm still on an orange kick since I have a few more oranges to use up from my mom's orange tree.  I also added the glaze from the Orange Velvet Cake to dress this up a bit and add more orange flavor.  As you can see, I baked in this a Bundt pan, not a loaf pan.  Once I had it mixed up, there was too much batter for even a large loaf pan so I poured it into a Bundt pan.

This is a nice basic pound cake with a perfect pound cake texture.  If you like orange cake, it's a good version for a pound cake.  I liked it with the glaze I spread over it.  I spread the glaze while the pound cake was still slightly warm so that it melted a bit over and into the cake before it set.  Yum.  This is also perfect for summer picnics and barbecues not to mention sending in care packages.  If you're sending it somewhere warm, it's best to leave off the glaze or it'll just melt in transit.

Note the nice pound-cakey texture

1 ¾ cups all-purpose flour

1 ½ teaspoons baking powder

½ teaspoon salt

6 ounces (12 tablespoons) unsalted butter, softened

1 2/3 cups sugar

Grated peel of 2 oranges

4 large eggs

¾ cup sour cream

One 9 x 5 x 3 inch loaf pan, buttered and floured

1.     Preheat the oven to 350˚F.

2.     Sift together the flour, baking powder, and salt.

3.     Using an electric mixer, beat the butter, sugar and orange peel on medium-high speed until light and fluffy, about 2 minutes with a stand mixer.  Add the eggs one at a time, beating well after each addition.  On low speed, stir in the sour cream and then the dry ingredients.

4.     Spread the batter into the prepared pan.  Bake until a skewer inserted in the middle comes out clean, about 60 minutes.

5.     Let the cake cool in the pan for 15 minutes.  Run a small knife along the inside edge of the pan to loosen it.  Invert the cake onto a wire rack and remove the pan.  Let cool completely.