Turning 21...

My 21st birthday was just over a week ago, and despite opposition from friends, I didn't want to celebrate in the usual 21st way. (Yeah, I realize that I'm not a normal college student). Anyways, since I've started the habit of baking something new for my birthday each year, I compromised and used alcohol in my birthday dessert. Plus, creme de menthe squares seem twice as fitting for my birthday as I often paired chocolate and mint for my birthday cakes growing up.

Creme de Menthe Squares
adapted from: http://www.christmas-cookies.com/recipes/recipe4.creme-de-menthe-squares.html

1 1/4 cups butter or margarine
1/2 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
3 1/2 cups powdered sugar -- sifted
1 egg, beaten *
1 teaspoon vanilla
2 cups graham cracker crumbs
1/2 cup creme de menthe
1 1/2 cups semi-sweet chocolate chips

Base Layer: In a sauce pan, combine 1/2 cup of the butter and the cocoa powder. Heat and stir until well blended. Remove from heat; add 1/2 cup of the powdered sugar, the egg and vanilla. Stir in graham cracker crumbs. After mixing thoroughly, press into bottom of an ungreased 13x9x2" baking pan. Bake at 350F for 8 minutes.

Middle Layer: Melt another 1/2 cup of the butter. In small bowl, combine the melted butter and creme de menthe. Gradually beat in the remaining 3 cups powdered sugar until smooth. Spread evenly over the chocolate layer. Chill 1 hour.

Top Layer: In small sauce pan combine the remaining 1/4 cup butter and chocolate chips. Cook and stir over low heat until melted. Spread over middle layer. Chill for 1 to 2 more hours. Cut into small squares. May be stored in refrigerator.

Foodgawker Obsession: Macarons

In summer 2008, I began to notice Parisian macarons all over the internet. Foodgawker supplied me with gorgeous photos but also tales of how finicky these cookies could be. Still, I decided that I wanted a decadent challenge for my last birthday and attempted a batch of macarons. They ended up with feet, just like they were supposed to! I enjoyed them but didn't make another batch for almost a year.

This weekend, we had Monday off of school, and snow was continuously falling outside, so I decided that spending a whole day baking was a good plan, and remaking macarons sounded like a great idea. I decided to make some plain ones again, but also experimented with some chocolate ones. Both were filled with chocolate ganache.

I must admit that I was lazier this time around. I didn't worry too much about piping them into nice circles, and nearly had a fiasco when the parchment slide off one tray and flipped upside down as I was placing it in the oven. Miraculously, only some of the macarons were messed up and all of them stuck to the parchment paper. Despite all of my carelessness, they formed feet, looked cute, and most importantly, tasted delicious. (The day after I had baked them, I walked into my room and one of my roommates greeted by saying, "Hi! Can I welcome you back to the room by asking if I can have another macaron?" I took that as meaning they're the most delicious thing I've baked all term.)

*Notes: Although I was careless on some things, I do have a couple of suggestions of things not to slide on. First, the eggs work better if they are a few days old and left to sit at room temperature for at least one night. (Or at least, so I'm told. I've never tried with fresh egg whites.) Second, coffee grinders work marvelously for grinding almonds into flour. I buy sliced almonds and then borrow a coffee grinder from a friend. I also tried a food processor but could not get the almonds fine enough.


Macarons (adapted from http://www.seriouseats.com/recipes/2007/10/how-to-make-macarons-recipe.html)

4 egg whites
2 ¼ c powdered sugar
1 ¼ cup almonds
2.5 Tb. Granulated sugar
Pinch of salt
2.5 Tb. Cocoa powder

1. Prepare sheets and parchment. You may choose to trace circles on the parchment to help with piping.
2. Sift almonds and powdered sugar together.
3. Whip egg whites with salt on medium speed until foamy. Increase to high and gradually add sugar. Whip until stiff peaks form.
4. Split the egg whites in two. Fold egg whites in one bowl and half of the almond mixture together carefully. At the desired consistency, soft peaks should dissolve to flat surface.
5. Pipe batter onto parchment. Tap underside of baking sheet to remove air bubbles.
6. In the other bowl, fold in the rest of the almond mixture plus the cocoa powder.
7. Let dry for at least an hour so that the crust will form and you’ll get feet.
8. Bake between 325-350F with the oven door ajar for 10 to 11 minutes. Remember to rotate sheet halfway through.
9. Let cool to room temp. Pair the macarons based on shape and size. Then, prepare ganache and sandwich the macarons.

Ganache
1. Boil 1 cup cream in saucepan and ½ stick soften butter.
2. Stir cream into 8 oz. chocolate. Let cool for a couple of minutes.
3. Add butter in 2 additions always working from center out.
(As you may guess, this ganache recipe makes way more than you need. However, truffles are always a good option.)

Muffins this healthy sounding should definitely taste this good

This afternoon's 30 minute lie-down turned into a 3 hour nap. I made it to my evening church group, but was no where near hungry for dinner.

On my walk to my apartment from the parking lot, I called Vicki. It's a school night, so I wasn't sure if she could talk. "Yeah. I'm making muffins, so I can talk while they're cooking."

Muffins! It's been a long time since I've made you. And the bread I was going to bake today didn't happen. If I get the dishes washed, then I can bake muffins!

I turned to Jane Brody's sugarless blueberry muffins. I didn't have enough white flour, so that got changed. Vicki's a vegan, and while she's not going to eat this batch, I decided to veganize them. And then I went a little bit crazy with the blueberries. The muffins are so much better than I remember them.

I've eaten 4 big ones and 1 small one so far. That counts as dinner, right?

Sarah's New Favorite Blueberry Muffins

3/4 cups white flour
1 cup wheat flour
1 Tablespoon baking powder
.25 teaspoon cinnammon
.25 teaspoon nutmeg
5 Tablespoons applesauce
1/4 cup vegetable oil
3/4 cup orange juice
~ 1 teaspoon lemon zest (I zest all my lemons and freeze it for when I need it. Really does add to this recipe, though they'd still be good without it.)
1 pint blueberries

Preheat the oven to 400ºF. I skipped this step. Then as I was spooning out the batter I realized the oven wasn't on yet. The chemistry of muffins is such that they should go straight from mixing to oven, so be better than I was.

Add in the wet ingredients.

Fold in the blueberries. Supposedly they're supposed to be tossed with flour. Whatever. I just used frozen ones and it worked.

Spoon into treated muffin tins. (Treated. You know, greased. Or lined. Or whatever you do so they don't stick like crazy. Cause that's what they'll do otherwise.)

Pop in the oven to bake for 20 to 25 minutes.

Serve hot.

Makes: 1 dozen baby muffins + 9 big muffins. At least today it did.
Mix the dry ingredients.

Mora-Manzana Thanksgiving

For Thanksgiving, we headed up to Rumi Loma, since that’s where we have an oven. It was a marvelous day, and we split up cooking dinner. Coral made a green bean casserole. Then, Elizabeth made mashed potatoes with a mushroom gravy. Alex was put in charge of stuffing. Tim and Jesse worked together to make macaroni and cheese. (I must admit that I was sad that it was creamy mac-and-cheese. In my opinion, that’s just blasphemy.) Then, I was in charge of baking a pie. Since we lacked both pumpkin and pecans, I decided that apple was the best option. However, that seemed a bit boring so I added in mora (blackberries).

Mora-Manzana Pie

3 cups sliced apple

2 cups blackberries

2 Tbsp. lemon juice

2 Tbsp. flour

½ cup sugar

½ tsp cinnamon

¼ tsp nutmeg

2 Tbsp. browned butter

First, prepare your choice of crust. Then, mix all of the ingredients except for the butter. Layer the mixture into the crust. Next, pour the butter over the pie. Finally, lay the top crust on top. (I suggest lattice.) Then, bake until done, and eat.

C is for Cookies

Last week would've been a good week for me to be at Dacie's. Alas, I'm grown up now and have to buy my own ingredients.

I was running out of ingredients right and left. Led to some amazing Mint Double Chocolate cookies when Lauren came over though. They're like thin mints. Only not dry. And with nuts. And I just ate four of them.

Mint Double Chocolate Cookies

inspired by Dorie's Best Chocolate Chip Cookies

1.25 cups flour

.75 cups coca powder

1 teaspoon salt I know it's a lot, but it's actually an advisable amount

.75 teaspoon baking soda

2 sticks butter led to greasy cookies, next time I'll use 1.5 sticks and then 1 if that'll work later

1 cup sugar

.66 cups light brown sugar

1 teaspoon mint extract

2 eggs

12 ounces chocolate chips

1 cup chopped nuts. I used walnuts this time, just crumbled them in my hands. Pecans would be delicious too.

Preheat oven to 375º.

Mix the flour, salt, and baking soda.

Cream in butter and then sugars.

Mix in mint extract and eggs.

Fold in chocolate and nuts.

Bake for 10 to 12 minutes. Allow to cool a bit before you eat them. They're too fragile when they first come out of the oven. Have milk on hand for dunking.

Makes about 2 dozen good sized cookies. The dough freezes well. The four cookies I ate today, popped from the plate where I froze them last week.

Pastries make a good lunch

I'm loving kale. It's my green veggie to learn this year.

I'm less than convined that what I've made is Jamaican. Kale just doesn't scream Carribean to me. But I want to record what I did so I might be able to do something similar in the future.

Kale Patties

I'd accidently opened a can of white beans and needed to use them. A search on Foodgawker turned up Jamaican Style Curried Kale and White Bean ‘Patties’ and with my newly discovered interest in kale I couldn't not try them. So I went to the grocery store.


Now I like my new grocery store. It's half the size of my reservation grocery store (and that one was small) but it's in a multi-ethnic neighborhood and stocks all sorts of amazing things. I can get pastries from 3 different world regions, but I couldn't find puff pastry. So I looked around the internet and found this recipe to use for crust.


Whatever it is, it's good. The baked ones are great to take to school for lunch and I'm trying freezing them in the pre-baked stage to see how that works. Because who doesn't love a good homemade frozen dinner? 


So now then. My modified recipe.

Filling

1 bunch kale 
Salt
1 can white Beans

½ Tbsp vegetable oil

Pinches of crushed red pepper
1 tsp minced or grated garlic
1 tsp minced or grated ginger
1/2 Tbsp to 1 Tbsp curry powder
1/8 tsp turmeric




Blanch the kale. (Bring a large enough pot of water to a boil. Add a pinch of salt to the water if you like. The original uses a teaspoon of vinegar to help the kale stay bright green. Your choice there. While the water is heating, chop up the kale. Once the water boils, drop the kale in, let it cook for a minute, maybe less. Then drain and wash the kale in cold water to stop the cooking.)


Meanwhile drain and wash the beans.


Find a skillet large enough to hold everything and heat up the oil. Cook the crushed red pepper, ginger, garlic for ~30 seconds. Then add the curry and tumeric. Stir everything for a couple of seconds then add the beans and kale. Mix it all up. Turn off the stove. Now's a good time to turn on the oven. Preheat to 400º.


Got it?


Crust


2 cups wheat flour
2 cups white flour
1 Tablespoon curry powder
1/2 cup butter
1/2 cup oil
2/3 cup water


Mix the dry ingredients.
Cut in the butter.
Stir in the oil and water to make a nice dough.


And putting it together


You're going to take small balls of the crust. Roll them out into pretty circles. Fill them. Close them. Bake them. All that jazz.
One method: form the crust into a log and then cut it into 20 pieces.
Or just make balls the size of a small scoop of icecream. (Ping pong ball size? Larger than a walnut, smaller than a tennis ball.)
It's pretty if you brush the top of the patties with a beaten egg. Just seems like I then waste the rest of the egg.
Anyway, bake at 400º for 20 minutes or so. Serve piping hot.


Enjoy!





Based on a couple of recipes.

When Life Gives You Sliced Lemons...

About a month ago, mom came home from a church function with a huge container of leftover sliced lemons. She knew that I loved lemons and wondered if I could use them to bake anything. The problem was that they were sliced. Can't really juice them. Can't really zest them. (At least not without cutting up my fingers.) Luckily, like any good Kitchen Window reader, I remembered preserved lemons from NPR. This weekend, the lemons were ready, but I still had to figure out what to do with them.

Preserved lemons are pretty versatile and can simply be added to a number of dishes. However, I wanted to try a recipe that actually called for them. After looking for preserved lemon recipes, I very quickly learned that a Moroccan tagine was the way to go.

Many tagines are either chicken or lamb based. Although I am not vegetarian and not averse to cooking with meat, I don't really enjoy cooking meat, so I wanted something different. However, the vegetarian options I found didn't look quite like what I wanted. So despite having never tried a tagine before, I combined 3 or 4 recipes to come up with a combination that sounded good to me. This is roughly that recipe.

*Note: There may be no salt in the recipe, but it turns out quite salty because of the salt in the lemons.

Red Potato Tagine

1.75 pounds red skin potatoes
1 small onion grated and squeezed dry
1/3 cup grated tomato
1/3 large onion thinly sliced
3/4 red pepper sliced
1 tsp paprika
1/2 tsp cayenne
1 tsp cumin
1/2 tsp tumeric
1/2 tsp cinnamon
2 gloves garlic
1 tsp ginger
1 preserved lemon (I wasn't sure what that meant. I used about the equivalent of 1/2 a whole lemon)
2 Tbsp parsley
1 Tbsp cilantro

1. Boil the potatoes for 3 minutes. Then, pour out the water. Thickly slice the potatoes into a bowl of cool water.
2. Saute the grated onion in olive oil in a 2 quart saucepan for 3 minutes.
3. Add tomato and spices, and cook for 2 minutes.
4. Add potatoes, onion, and red pepper and cook for 2 more minutes. Mix everything together well.
5. Pour in 1 3/4 cup water. Bring to a boil. Then, cover and bring down to a low simmer. Simmer for 15 minutes.
6. Add parsley, cilantro, and preserved lemon. (To use the preserved lemon: Remove from jar. Rinse with cold water. Coarsely chop. It will be quite soft and salty.) Cover again and simmer for 25 more minutes.
7. You may uncover and boil a bit more to remove some of the excess water.