Break

Well, kids, it has been nigh a month since my last post. It really hasn’t been that exciting of a month, just busy busy, fraught with car problems, espresso classes, and enough cubicle drudgery to make my little soul dry up like a dehydrated strawberry*.

I have been baking though, attempting one new recipe a week and some weeks multiple versions of the same glorious thing.

So:

1) For V-day, I made Whisk Kid’s one-bowl chocolate cupcakes (the recipe she borrowed from Martha). She topped them with pistachios and a bright pink rose, while I wanted a more romantic take and so on top of a generous layer of chocolate ganache, I added a piece of strawberry (see- they’re on the brain!) and a light sprinkling of sea-salt. Yum!



I made them again a week later, and just to note- if the salt does not go on when the ganache is warm and gooey, it will just stick to the strawberry, causing none of the saltiness to mingle with the chocolate and creating a very awkward first bite.

2) This past week I have been feeling lazy, tired, at the end of my patience and physical ability to keep going at this pace. I work too much. I don’t get enough sleep. Blah blah blah… But I’ve made a little mental promise that on my nights off, I will expand my culinary catalogue and bake something new. So Sunday night I made a quick run to QFC for some pumpkin, chocolate chips, and eggs, and threw these muffins together. I emptied the package of chopped walnuts left over from Monday’s dinner party cake, so a little more than what was called for. I could not decide whether to use white or semisweet chocolate chips, and voila- there is such a thing as chocolate chips made with both!



Pumpkin-Chip Muffins (from here.)

1 2/3 cup all-purpose flour
1 cup sugar
1 tsp ground cinnamon
1/2 tsp ground ginger**
1/2 tsp ground cloves**
1 tsp ground nutmeg**
1 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt

2 eggs
1 cup pumpkin
4 oz unsalted butter, melted

6 oz chocolate chips (whichever kind you prefer)
1/2 cup of walnuts

Preheat oven to- you guessed it- 350 F.

Mix all dry ingredients (flour, salt, sugar, spices, baking soda, baking powder) together and set aside.

In a bowl, or in your stand mixer bowl, combine together eggs, pumpkin and melted butter. When mixed, add chocolate chips and walnuts.

Keep mixer running and add dry ingredients. Mix just until all the dry ingredients are integrated- you don’t need to thoroughly combine.

Pour batter into oiled/buttered muffin tins or paper muffin cups (I did not have on hand). I ended up with 13 muffins, so a full tray and one extra on a second tray that got infiltrated by my current ant problem before it reached the oven.

Muffins will cook for 15-20 minutes. After letting them cool for a few minutes in the pan, pop onto a cooling rack and don’t even try to resist eating them while they’re still warm and gooey.


*After one particularly wretched office day in which the life of Dilbert seemed a better alternative to my own, I wrote a cathartic little poem about my discomfort with Current Job. The only line even remotely salvageable was the strawberry line, and solely because it is such an entertaining mental picture.

** I did not have all of these spices on hand, shame on me. However, I did have Trader Joe’s Pumpkin Pie spice blend in my cabinet, which consists of all these and then some, so I substituted 2 tsp of this for the nutmeg, ginger, and cloves. And it worked out just fine.

Marillen Buttermilk Cake

Back in November (although it seems so much further away than that), my dad and I returned to Austria. We’d been there the year before as well, traipsing from one café to the next, marking our journey in the pastries we consumed. One of my favorite things about Austria was the frequency of dense cakes and flaky tartlettes topped with thick slices of sweet tangy baby apricots- or marillen, in Austrian German.

This last visit, by a stroke of amazing luck while wandering around Vienna in early evening, we found a Kris Kringle market nestled on a corner. Not necessarily hungry, but unable to pass up the goodness, we used tiny pronged forks to spear fat slivers of roasted potatoes (with a wicked garlic sauce), and bought two squares of a marillen cake that looked highly promising. Oh. My. Word. By far the best sweets of the trip, this cake was unbelievably good. So much so, that before departing for Dublin the next day, we swung back by the market to buy two more squares for breakfast.

That said, today is my dad’s birthday. He is far away on the opposite coast, but if he were here, I would make him my adaptation of this simple buttermilk cake recipe because it reminds me of the time spent in Vienna, shoveling mindblowingly tasty marillen cake into our mouths.

I first attempted this cake on Saturday morning, with blueberries and bing cherries substituted for the raspberries used in the original. I’m not going to lie, the cake was really good- but the sweetness of the berries on top of the sweetness of the cake made me think this could be improved. I’m sure that’s the beauty of the tart fresh raspberries in the original recipe. Thinking wistfully about how much time will pass before my next Europe trip, I decided to attempt some cakey goodness of my own.

So yesterday, I bought 5 plump little marillen, slicing them into ¼ inch-wide strips to lay on top of the cake batter I threw together in oh, about 5 minutes. I didn’t use the lemon zest, mostly because I’d neglected to buy a lemon, though it turned out the cake didn’t need it. I poured the batter into two tiny cute spring-form pans, arranged the marillen slices on top in a pretty little flower, and sprinkled a light dusting of white sugar on top. There, said I, is a good-looking cake.

Well. I won’t talk about the fact that my tired brain way WAY underestimated the expansion of the batter as it baked. I also won’t talk about hastily shoving a cookie sheet underneath my volcanic spring-form pans as gooey batter gurgled over and down the sides, and cemented onto my oven rack. Finally, I will not further indulge your mocking by telling you that I watched my delicately positioned marillen slices all descend into the depths of the batter like a sinking ship, before resigning myself to ugly ugly little cakes.

I did not feel the need to document my mess with a photograph.

However, once the cakes were pried out of the crusty cake pans and let cool on the rack for a bit, I pulled off a little piece to taste, and was so blissfully happy with the results. The soft fuzzy little fruit, though now on the bottom of the cake, gave the perfect amount of sour to balance out the dense sweetness of the cake itself. Half of the first cake was gone last night before it even had the chance to cool all the way, and if I hadn’t given the other cake away, it would probably have been devoured for breakfast.

Marillen Buttermilk Cake (adapted from Gourmet)

Preheat oven at 350. Generously butter and flour 9-inch cake pan. This cake wants to stick to that cake pan like nobody's business.

Start with
1 cup all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt

Whisk together dry ingredients in a bowl. Set aside.

Split, pit, and cut 3 apricots into 1/4 inch slices. Set aside.

In mixture, put
1/2 stick unsalted butter, softened
2/3 cup sugar

Beat softened butter and sugar for about 2 minutes, until pale yellow-white and fluffy.

Then add
1/2 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
1/2 teaspoon finely grated lemon zest (optional)

And then add
1 large egg

Beat until all wet ingredients are combined.

Switching off, and while mixer is running on low, add slowly to your wet ingredients
1/2 cup well-shaken buttermilk
plus your dry ingredient mixture.

When batter ingredients are combined, scrape the sides of the bowl, mix for a few seconds more to get that last bit of flour into the batter. Then transfer to 1 9-inch cake pan, smoothing batter flat with a spatula.

Scatter, position, or gracefully design apricots on top. I'm not sure if the sinking was due to the overflowing batter, so yours might do better at staying on top.

Sprinkle a good pinch of granulated white sugar over the top of the cake.

Bake at 350 for approximately 20 minutes. BUT- keep an eye on this guy. Depending on your oven, it may cook way faster than this.

Let cool for about 10 minutes in the cake pan before transferring to cooling rack.

Roasted Root Veggies and Cous Cous

Well, if money is the root of all evil. than the lack of money should be straight-up-bliss, right? It doesn't feel like it, exactly, but it does encourage a certain creativity with food. You look in your sad fridge, and think "well. what can I do with all this..." I had half a butternut squash, some zucchini, a yellow squash, and 5 yukon gold potatoes growing eyes in the corner next to the microwave. Okay, says I, I shall roast the lot of them.

My mom first showed me the easy way to prep roasted veggies, and it's still the way I do it today. Please forgive my lack of "measuring"- this is another cooking tendency inherited from my parents, and so I continue to season randomly, supplementing my meals with spices and such until it looks sufficient.

I cut all of my vegetables down to half-inch cubes, and put them in a plastic produce bag. I then poured in enough olive oil to liberally coat the cubes, followed by a smaller coating of balsamic vinegar. After that, I chopped some fresh sage and italian parsely (left over from the butternut squash soup earlier in the week), also shaking in dried basil, dried oregano, salt, pepper and a good tablespoon or two of honey. Shake the bag up well to mix up all the ingredients, then put into fridge for at least a half hour to allow the flavors to soak into the veggies.

Preheat oven to 350. I really cook everything at 350 degrees because it's the temperature my easy-bake oven seems to prefer.

Spread out veggie and herb mixture onto a cookie sheet, one with a lip to hold in the oil as they cook. Bake for about half an hour to 45 minutes, periodically turning the vegetables with a spatula to prevent blackening on just one side. They're done when the edges are a dark brown and the potatoes and squash are soft on the inside.

Instead of accompaning these yummy veggies with pasta or rice, I made up some israeli cous cous. This is the BIG cous cous, little round fat pearls that cook up so tasty. I boiled 2 cups chicken broth and 1 cup water (or you could use 3 cups low-sodium chicken broth- I just didn't want it too salty so I used both). Once boiling, I threw in 1 1/2 cups of cous cous, brought it back up to a boil, and then down to a simmer on medium-low heat for about 10 minutes, or until cous cous is fully cooked and soft in the center.

And do I need to tell you how good this is, with a blanket of warm cous cous underneath the roasted veggies. AND, may I add, the butternut squash, when cooked up this way, caramelizes on the outside, leaving the inside tender and nutty and ohhhh so sweet.

Mmmm...

Walnut Orange Cake

So, long weekend, I know you are meant to celebrate a great man that did incredible things for our country. I am not downplaying his effect or importance to our history. But this weekend I am also celebrating having time to do two things: 1) sleep, and 2) cook.

Earlier today, whilst sipping my coffee, I flipped through Bon Appetit magazines I had on hand, and circled a number of interesting-looking recipes. There were two I decided on for today- a butternut squash soup, and a walnut orange cake. I thought I would make both and whichever ended up better, I'd post.

Well... the soup was good, all things considered, but Husband and I both thought it needed a mysterious "something". So, by process of elimination (and because it was actually really good), you get cake!



Walnut Orange Cake (Original Recipe from Bon Appetit, Oct '07)

4 large eggs
1 1/2 cups sugar
1 1/2 cups walnuts
1 cup flour
1 tablespoon baking powder
1/2 cup orange juice
1 tablespoon orange zest
1/2 cup olive oil

Preheat oven at 350 degrees F.

Roughly chop walnuts, and then in food processer, grind until fine (stop before powdery). In mixing bowl, combine together walnuts, flour, and baking powder and set aside.

Using stand mixer, beat eggs until fluffy (about 2 mins). While contining to mix, slowly add sugar and continue to beat another 3-4 minutes. Egg/sugar mixture will lighten in color and thicken.

Slowly integrate walnut/dry ingredient mixture into batter. Add orange juice, zest, and olive oil and mix until blended. Coat cake pan(s) with butter (or olive oil, if you are happy with the lack of butter in this cake and want to continue) and flour, then pour in batter.

The article suggested a 9-inch springform pan. I however used two standard loaf pans instead, as one cake would be covered in orange mascarpone frosting and topped with birthday candles, and the other eaten almost immediately out of the oven. I topped the non-birthday cake one with a small dusting of powdered sugar.

UPDATE:
Now having made this cake on three separate occassions (can't get enough of this one!), here are a few cooking time tips. It took about twenty minutes to cook the two loaf pans, and about 35, 40 minutes for the cake in an 9 x 2 cake pan. It might have just been my oven as well, but the outsides got mighty burnt before the inside cooked all the way through when I tried it in the cakepan yesterday.

Also, this recipe works pretty nicely as well if one uses half orange and half lemon instead of all orange.

Poppyseeds and Paranoia

There is a certain delicious validation in baking something lovely. You know, that small twinge of "win!" after a swoony first bite that makes you want to fist-pump the air. Yet when your audience bites into whatever culinary offering you have presented, there is always (for me at least) that tiiiny moment before they say anything where you are thinking the worst things, "why am I serving this? there's too much/not enough sugar/salt/butter. they're going to hate it and then politely tell me otherwise while trying to subtly slip that bite back into their napkin..."

I brought this cake with me to Workplace today, and had it out for our morning meeting. One person besides myself went for it initially. And then nothing. They all productively barrelled through the agenda and the majority of my cake went uneaten. WHAT DID I DO WRONG? It was so pretty, so inviting... see?



Don't you just want a little slice of that with your coffee?

So I left the meeting with my cake, ate another pity piece of it myself, and then set it on the lunchtable with a post-it encouraging the group to assist in its disappearance. And you know- it didn't last very long then, and by lunch there was a slim heel of the loaf left on a plate dotted with powdered sugar and crumbs. I stopped obsessing over my failure/success when my boss came charging down the cubicle hallway to claim the last piece.

All that to say, this cake is all sorts of lovely. It was simple to make, and delicious in its flavors. She originally made it in a 10" tube pan, but as I didn't have one and couldn't bum one off my best friend, I elected to make two smaller cakes in standard loaf pans. These cakes will not rise much, and end up squat, dense cakes lousy with butter (you do the math- two sticks of butter, split between two loaf pans). There is juuust enough lemon zest to give a slight citrus flavor, but in my opinion, the crackliness of the poppyseeds is the best part of this cake.

One last note: In the comments on smittenkitchen's post, someone recommended soaking the poppy seeds in warm milk for 2 hours before adding them to the cake. It apparently makes all the difference in bringing out the nuttiness and the crunch when you bite in. I elected to go for it- I had time, I had milk. I did not, however, think this through all the way, and at the end of my soaking time, had to haphazardly strain my seeds through a coffee filter. It was not at all ideal, and we lost some seeds along the way. Because I'd never made this cake before, I'm not sure if it made a difference, but the cake itself was so bloody good that I'd probably do it exactly the same next time.

Wha-oh

Tonight I'm cooking something very uninteresting, something not at all very inspirational. And while it is a tribute to the wonder of Trader Joe's, there is not much creativity to it. It's just so easy though, and for that i'm glad. By Thursday, my creativity is nill.

So instead, just a simple suggestion. Go here and listen to "While You Were Sleeping". There is no Sandra Bullock, no Bill Pullman, and I promise it is lovely.

Rainy Day Soup

I don’t know of any more fitting way for Seattle to kick-off its entrance into the new year than to present our first Monday back with unending depressing showers and bleak grey skies. It is near impossible to drag oneself out of bed, even more impossible to drag oneself into the office, and then when I get home from soul-killing boredom at work, the last thing I want to do is cook an elaborate and lengthy sort of meal. I want comfort food, man. And not too many dirty dishes when I’m done with it.

That said, there is little better than soup and bread on these days. I have as many variations to my rainy day soup as one can think of, as it is largely composed of the same tomato stock base and whatever not-too-sad vegetables I have in my pantry, fridge, or freezer.



Tonight's soup ended up, well, less soup with quinoa, and more quinoa with soup. Yet was still mighty tasty and met with great approval with Husband. Note that when I make soup, I MAKE SOUP, so if you want less than 4 solid quarts, halve or quarter the recipe.

1/2 yellow onion
2 cloves of garlic
1 1/2 zucchini (small-medium)
1 1/2 yellow squash
1 tbl olive oil (for cooking onion and zucchini in pot)
32 oz chicken stock (a whole box, basically)**
4 cups water**
1 can tomato paste
approx. 2 tsp dried basil
approx. 2 tsp dried oregano
2 dried bay leaves
2 cups quinoa, rinsed

Finely chop onion, and smash garlic using a garlic press. Heat olive oil on medium-high in a 5 quart pot, and once heated, add onions and garlic to pan. While onion softens, cut yellow squash and zucchini into coins, then cut into halves or quarters to make 1/2 inch pieces. Add to pan and cook until slightly softened.

Pour in chicken broth, water, and can of tomato paste. Stir until tomato paste mixes into broth. Add basil, oregano, salt, pepper to taste- my measurements are approximate. I generally just add the basil etc a little at a time and taste along the way. Add bay leaves.

**If you do not have that much chicken stock on hand, or are a vegetarian, I have made this soup with just water and tomato paste in a pinch, and vegetable stock. If the stock adds too much salt to your soup, you can add less stock, and more water. It's really very flexible.



Now, quinoa is tricky in that two cups dried quinoa to 4 quarts liquid seems pretty reasonable. However, when the soup is left to simmer, that quinoa cooks up nice and soft, and my soup ended up thick with quinoa grain. So my suggestion is to only put a cup in. Add this after herbs and such, and let the soup simmer on medium for about a 20 minutes to a half-hour, or until quinoa is cooked. The broth will darken to a deeper red, and thicken up.

While I waited for the soup to finish cooking, I whipped up a batch of these to dip in the soup. ('Member I mentioned bread? Oh yes.) They are light and fluffy and buttery. I made them with whole milk instead of heavy cream, and they still turned out great (see comments, she suggests not to substitute milk for the cream, but in a pinch it works).

BTW, this soup reheats wonderfully for a next day lunch. So when you wake up to yet another gross Seattle morning tomorrow, at least you have something to look forward to...