So I’ve been a wee bit stressed lately, and when I’m stressed I cook. My mom can’t eat when she’s upset and I have the opposite problem. Also since Justin was gone for so long I went into cooking for one mode which is sear a meat and make a veg. Not really interesting at all. So since his return coincided with the holidays I used it as an excuse to go on a recipe FRENZY. Since Thanksgiving I’ve probably tried 12 or more recipes. Some I caught on film and some I didn’t since they had to be tasted right away. However I did add a list with links to the side panel if any of these make you want to try them.
First and most importantly I have a photo of the Birthday cake I made for myself last week. Inside was a pretty awesome carrot cake with cream cheese frosting. It’s the Cooks Illustrated recipe and I have to say I thought the flavor, texture and moistness of the cake was spot on. However I always make a less sweet frosting . I just don’t care for so sweet my teeth ache, but because I cut back on the sugar the texture of the frosting was a little loose.
It looks so much better under a 50mm lens...
Next up we have some pizza I made using a different and much better dough recipe. I also used some leftover amatriciana sauce I had from the night before. It was super tasty I thought. I loved the texture of the dough but next time I’m going to add a bit more salt I think. Or let it rise longer since I felt it needed to develop a bit more flavor. Also I did modify it to use some olive oil in the dough.
Justin's Pizza
I have also been experimenting with cooking via Sous Vide. It’s essentially boil in a bag cooking but you don’t boil it. You cook the food at the temp you want it to be at the end. This prohibits over cooking, and you don’t get that sort of bullseye effect in meat. There is a big fancy small appliance for it now that I covet but it is a bit pricey so I’ve been using a more uhh ghetto arrangement. It does however work and the experiment was some of the best steak I’ve ever had.
See no ring of grey!
For Christmas my Inlaws were kind enough to get me this awesome Ice Cream maker.
Lovely maker of deliciousness.
I’ve only made two recipes though so far one of which is Vanilla and the other was a candied bacon ice cream. Both of them were from David Lebovitz and were fantastic. On the vanilla one although I did double the recipe I did not double the amount of eggs but it was sill good just not quite as custardy as it would have been but that was totally my fault since I ran out of eggs. The candied bacon was shockingly good, although I did not expect that candying the bacon would be quite so messy. Next up is Coffee since I don’t like it and I need to start my post holiday diet.
Look at those flecks...
My final photo is of Challah. I finally found a good recipe. However even though it was good I felt it needed a touch more sugar or honey. Next time I’ll try that. There are only few food things I want to conquer from my jewish heritage and pass on to Elke and this is one of them.
Best bread ever.
Daring Bakers January 2010 Challenge
The January 2010 Daring Bakers’ challenge was hosted by Lauren of Celiac Teen. Lauren chose Gluten-Free Graham Wafers and Nanaimo Bars as the challenge for the month. The sources she based her recipe on are 101 Cookbooks and www.nanaimo.ca
So for the first month of belonging to the Daring Bakers, this was my challenge. Interestingly enough I actually had made non gluten-free graham crackers from that recipe a few weeks ago and had them sitting in my freezer since I wasn’t quite sure what to do with them. Initially they were going to be dipped in chocolate for my grandfather but I had problems with the recipe. It was quite possibly the hardest dough I have ever worked with. It was so soft and it stuck to everything. I also sort of misread the instructions. However although they were sort of ugly and overdone they did taste right so I sort of figured at some point I’d use them in a crust. When I read the challenge I had every intention of making the recipe again and conquering it. Although I dismissed the idea of gluten free since I don’t know anyone who avoids gluten and the pocket book is a little lean this month to be buying all sorts of flours I probably wouldn’t use again. That’s assuming I could even find them without going to nashvegas. Anyway then I realized I had mistaken the dates of the daring cooks and bakers reveal dates. So suddenly I had a day to get it all done and I have an eight month old so…..I decided that since I had already tried the recipe and had to results I would just reuse them. It was appealing since soon I’m going back to my more usual lower carb dieting and it would get them out of my freezer. So into the food processor they went…
Crumbs that I wish I had left bigger
Then I added them to the butter and cocoa. I used a mixture of nestle I’m trying to use up because somehow I ended up with 3 tins of the stuff and the Valrohna I got on my last trip to whole foods. Except of course Elke was awake and I got a bit distracted so somehow I forgot to add the egg. So I started over and decided to just make a double batch.
Butter and Cocoa oh My
Now when I read the recipe I realized I would have to change the bottom layer. I can’t stand coconut. I don’t coconut milk in a thai curry but actual coconut no thanks. Also I’m not a huge fan of peanuts so I decided to just use the crackers. Now I should have gone with a bigger crumb on the crackers if I was going to do that but they were tasty anyway.
The First Layer
Now at this point we have to cover a few steps without pics because I made them over the course of the day when I could snatch a few minutes and I sort of forgot to take any more pics. I read about the middle layer and realized it was essentially oreo filing so I decided we’d had enough of that since I made those a couple of times over the holidays. Now I love mint and so does my husband so since I had finally managed to track down peppermint extract (seriously ever store in town was completely out for like a month over the holidays) I decided to go with that and since I wanted to make sure people knew it was mint I tinted it green. Then I proceded to the top layer. I didn’t have quite enough semi-sweet to cover I used the rest of the milk chocolate I’d bought to dip my graham crackers into. It made a really nice ganache layer…not too sweet but not bitter.
Choco Mint Nanaimo Bars
I really liked the end result however they were so incredibly rich if I make them again I’m going to find a way to stiffen the middle layer without using quite as much sugar.