I fail at blogging, but I bring cookies!

In my attempt to keep blogging more often, I joined up with the Daring Bakers/Daring Cooks challenges.

And promptly, failed to blog in Oct with having participated in both challenges. Go team me! So, going with the better late than never theory, I made goodies in Oct, and I want to share them. Because they were tasty.

For the bakers challenge, we were to make French macaroons. I’d only had these a few times before, and never tried to make them, but luckily, I had everything I needed in the house already. Yes, I keep almond flour on hand. I’m weird like that. I debated for a while, what kind did I want to make… chocolate seemed like a good idea, but I was (yes, I’m about to say this) bored with chocolate. I wanted something different. Since it was Oct, and thus fall, I was starting to get more into that mood, and some rifling through my spice rack provided the answer:

Ginger macaroons, with pumpkin buttercream filling. Oh. My. God.

I finally buckled down to attempt these tasty little treats one night around 3am, and on the first try, I had feet! I rejoiced, there were FEET! ON MY COOKIES!! Lots of people said feet were hard to achieve on the first shot, but I managed, I was very happy about it too. I may have danced around the kitchen a little, 4:00 in the morning, in my pajamas. No one ever said I wasn’t a dork.

I did a lot of reading and research on making these cookies, to be honest, because there were some serious variations on how people’s were turning out, and even a bit on recipe itself. My recipe was a simple one, that I borrowed from Tartelette, who seems to really know her macaroons. Plus, I like weighing things in recipes like this:

Shells
90 gr egg whites (about 3)
30 gr granulated sugar
200 gr powdered sugar
110 gr almond flour
1/2 Tbs ground ginger

The egg whites: I did let them sit out on the counter overnight, covered, which I think helped. When I was ready to go with them, into my KitchenAid with the whisk attachment, and beaten until foamy, gradually added the granulated sugar, until I had a lovely meringue.

I ran the powdered sugar and almond flour through a sifter, got the little chunks of almond out of the flour, which probably also helped, as to not weigh down my batter. Combining these with the meringue, I hand-folded them as quickly as I could to incorporate (47 strokes was my magic number). Into a piping bag — ok, a ziplock bag with the tip cut off — and piped onto baking sheets lined with parchment. I left my cookies sitting on the counter for half an hour, then slipped them into the oven (at 280f) for 20 min. I didn’t have much trouble removing them from the parchment, luckily, when they were done, and most importantly, they had feet! Yes, I found this exciting at that hour.

My filling was pretty simple, a lovely pumpkin buttercream:

1 stick butter, room temp
1/3 cup pumpkin puree
1/2 tsp each cinnamon and nutmeg
1/4 tsp vanilla
1+ lb powdered sugar

Cream butter, pumpkin, spices and vanilla, then slowly add sugar until it forms the consistency you want, and no longer separates. I ended up with a bit of this left over (half or more of what I’d made), so keep that in mind. Filled the cookies with it, and then there was happy nommage. Very happy.

Daring Cooks challenge post to follow shortly, I need to actually eat some dinner here, I’m making myself hungry.

Of cupcakebobs, vampire kitties, and 1am trips to Walmart

Five types of cupcakes. Five frostings. Six hours in the kitchen. Four hour drive. Two days of crazy. One party. That sums up the couple days prior to, and the weekend itself.

It all started a few weeks ago with a phone call from the kitchenMage [mom] that my dad was planning a party. Fast forward to a week before the party, and he finally sends out invites. Yep, slacker! Mom and I get to talking, and she sends me a link to Cupcakes that Take the Cake’s post about cupcake kebobs. We could do that… but she’s swamped. I’m unemployed at the moment, which means too much time on my hands. She would make some (mango-ginger, dipped in chocolate) marshmallows, I would make the cupcakes. Simple enough task. Except we don’t do anything “simple” in this family.

Wednesday, I did my shopping in the morning for everything I needed for the mini-cupcakes. I informed my roommates that they were going to buy burgers for dinner, because I wasn’t letting them in the kitchen all night. And I camped out, for the rest of the afternoon, past evening and well into the night, baking. Knocked the temperature in my kitchen up to about 90f/32c at one point just from having the oven on for hours. As I was finished, around 11:30 that night, I packed up the cupcakes, and counted up 238 of the suckers. At the time the party attendance count was about 15 people. Luckily this turned out to be a little low, because way too many cupcakes for 15 people!

Packing up my car early on Thursday, I changed into semi-dressy clothes, because I was going to see RENT, before trekking down to evenTinierTown where my parents live. Adam Pascal and Anthony Rapp reprising their roles for the farewell tour sort of made seeing it a necessity. As I headed out of Seattle at 11pm, I couldn’t find an on-ramp to the freeway that wasn’t shut down due to construction. An extra fifteen minutes of driving around and I managed to finally be on my way, with the need to make one last stop before I got to my parents. For strawberries for the cupcakebobs. Except I wanted to get out of Seattle first. Which turned into a production, because nothing was open at that hour. There are no 24-hour grocery stores south of Seattle (perhaps there are some in Tacoma, but not off the freeway and close), all the way down the rest of the state apparently. Except for Walmart. Somewhere I never shop, but we needed strawberries.

Walmart is remodeling. It’s 1am. It’s pouring down rain. I’m in dressy clothes, ballet flats, and a purple leather jacket. My cell phone in one hand, talking to mom. Pawing through a ton of 1 pound clamshells of giant strawberries, trying to find some that weren’t twice the size of the cupcakes. I must’ve been a bit of a spectacle, everyone kept stopping to give me funny looks. Yeah, well, I felt the same about the girl in the white shortshorts, hot pink tank top that barely covered her breasts and didn’t cover anything else, and flip-flops who was also shopping there at that hour!

And as if I didn’t have an eventful-enough time, I have a lovely bite mark on my right wrist from the barn cat who lives across the street from my parents, who decided that being spooked meant trying to bite my hand off. I’ve been claiming I got bitten by a vampire, because at least it’s more amusing of a story.

All in all, it was a crazy weekend, but worth the trip down, for a party full of good food, good company, and good music. Even if celebrating the solstice around here means watching it rain while we’re all crowded inside. Cupcake recipes are below the cut…

Seafood soup… strange form of comfort food.

I’ve been working out this whole new diet thing, and it’s still causing problems, but it’s getting easier.

Today was gloomy, kind of cold, your typical day in western Washington, and I was having a serious craving for warm comfort food. I wanted mac & cheese — pasta’s off my diet list right now. I wanted mashed potatoes — I can’t have potatoes right now. So I had to improvise, and I stopped at the local co-op on my way home, because lucky for me, it’s a block from my office. Looking around, there was some scallops, and they looked pretty good. I snagged them, and some fresh cod, along with a few other things that didn’t end up in dinner tonight. There was shrimp at home in the freezer, and I plotted on the drive home what to do with these things.

Since it’s cold — 49 degrees when I drove past the temperature gauge that had read 93 on Saturday — and rainy, soup sounded heavenly. What I wouldn’t have given for a nice, fresh loaf of crusty bread to dip into the broth, but I’m not dwelling on what I can’t have these days.

Instead, I can have things like this wonderful, filling seafood soup.

This was simplistic, because it’s been a long day, and the art of cooking soup is often, for me, in the simple task, not the overly energetic efforts.

Soup, for me, reminds me of my dad, who is always talking about wanting to feed the world, and he’ll do it with soup. So whenever I make soup, it makes me smile, thinking he’d like that I was making it. Maybe I’ll freeze some of this the next time I make it, to take down to him.

Seafood, in all its various forms, is one of my all-time favourite food groups. I’m quite content to live off various types of seafood. In fact, I’ve had more fish this week than anything else, but how could I pass up fresh Copper River salmon, and exquisite, local-caught black cod? It’s something that comes with growing up in the Pacific Northwest, where seafood is abundant and fresh; we eat a lot of it. You can often tell someone is local by how they like their seafood, and their coffee. And when it’s cold, what better than to combine one of these loves with one of the simple pleasures of food, a lovely, hearty broth?

I did end up using a store-bought veggie broth rather than making my own, again for simplicity. Normally I make my stock, but tonight I bought some low-sodium, fat-free organic veggie broth to use as my soup base.

Chopping up a quarter cup of onion — stored in the fridge, so it was cold, and didn’t make me cry — and a clove of garlic, they were tossed into a heavy stockpot with a tablespoon of olive oil, to cook for a few minutes, until the onion was nice and tender. I added 1/4 cup of white wine, and let it cook down, as the smell started to permeate the house, making it feel homey, and the smell making me hungrier by the second.

Once the wine cooked down, four cups of broth were added, along with four tomatoes, chopped. Letting this simmer for a little while, I could go sit, check my email, relax a bit from the long day at work, and let the smell invade every corner of the house.

After about half an hour, I tossed a pound of scallops into the broth, and let them cook for about five minutes, stirring occasionally, already envisioning eating by the time I added the pound of cod, cut into one inch cubes. Another couple of minutes, and in went the shrimp to finish off cooking.

As I ladled a bowlful of this warm, sweet soup into one of my new bowls, I almost couldn’t wait to take a picture before I started eating.

It’s not mac and cheese or mashed potatoes, but while I’m in low-carb mode, this will find its way into rotation for those nights I need comfort food, I want something filling and hearty without a lot of filler…

It was perfect for a dark, stormy northwest night, curled up with a bowl of hot soup in my hand as I sat by the window and watched the rain fall down outside. These are the nights I love, and the reason I continue to live here, the place that more than anywhere else in the world, will always be home.

Blackberry balsamic = heaven… and cheesecake adventures, completed

While my friends from out of town were visiting, we took them on a small “tourist tour” of Seattle, and that of course included a stop at Pike Place Market. While there, trying not to spend all my money since I didn’t have a lot after a week of vacation, I discovered one of the booths has recently started selling Spenger products. They had samples of the vinegars and I immediately fell in love with the blackberry balsamic. If you pay attention to my blog, you’ll know, I love balsamic in all its forms — and I could have happily brought home the vintage, the raspberry, and the fig as well — the blackberry is exquisite. It’s this perfect blend of sweet and tang, that lends itself perfectly to anything from salmon to pancakes (both of which I’ve done this week). I highly recommend this particular flavour, if you like a balsamic you can experiment with in sweet and savory without having to do much to it. This morning, I made a Dutch Baby for breakfast, and topped it with some of the balsamic, slightly reduced, with some frozen strawberries tossed in as it heated, and mashed to mingle the flavours. It was heavenly.

To follow up on my previous cheesecake adventures post, here are the final results (please excuse the lighting; I was photographing in a hotel room. )

Christmas dessert

I like to cook ahead where I can, when I know there’ll be a lot of oven usage in a single day. So since tomorrow will be busy enough with making dinner, even just for two (E decided she wanted ham for dinner, I don’t do ham as previously discussed), it’s still a production. Mainly because I’m cooking and I like it that way!

So I did finally decide on dessert. I made a caramel-filled chocolate tart, only sadly I’m currently without a tart pan, so it ended in up a nice pie cake pan.

More pictures and recipe after the cut…

Holiday planning (otherwise known as insanity)

So, my roommates usually go “home” for Christmas (home being about 15 minutes away). I’ve joined them a couple of times, and found that it was not my cup of tea. I don’t do the religious side of Christmas, and I felt sort of an outsider. Except when I had to step in and save dinner for them last year, because their mom, who is not exactly skilled in the kitchen, bought an uncooked ham and thought for some reason it was cooked (!!) until she opened it up. Me to the rescue, a bunch of random cobbled-together ingredients later, their ham was in the oven and Christmas dinner was saved.

Except for the part where, I don’t eat ham, and everything else that was going into dinner was laden with fat and sugar and pre-packaged frightening ingredients. As I’ve also been actively losing weight for the past couple of years, this wasn’t my idea of an acceptable meal, and I begged out of it, coming home and preparing a much smaller, healthier feast for myself.

This year is different, however, because while the girls are going to their parents in the morning, they’ll both be home for dinner, since they have to work the next day and can’t/don’t want to stay late over there. Add in that one of them was very recently diagnosed with hypertension, and simply can’t eat her mother’s cooking… well, you get the idea.

So I’m gearing up to make a Christmas dinner that will fill all the various voids, be healthy, as low-sodium as humanly possible (so no brined turkey, sadly! I was going to use my mother’s oh-so-yummy brining technique from Thanksgiving too… *sigh*), and still tasty.

I’ve played with this amazing balsamic reduction lately that I may end up doing as a glaze on the turkey. It’s sort of a by-taste thing, but the gist of it:

1 cup good balsamic vinegar

1/4 cup honey, or maple syrup

1-2 tsp (to taste) ground ginger

(normally a pinch of salt, I’ll be leaving that out this time)

optional: a pinch of cayenne pepper (to taste)

Combine in a pot over medium-high heat, bring to a boil, turn heat down, let simmer and reduce. You’ll end up a with a nice, thick glaze that’s sweet and spicy and tastes amazing on poultry. Adjust all ingredient amounts depending on the size of the meat you’ll be covering.

(I also do a marinade of the above ingredients and some olive oil and whatever herbs are handy, obviously not reduced, that tastes divine on steak.)

I think I’ll end up grilling some sweet potatoes, and I’ll make a small pot of mashed potatoes for the roommate who isn’t on the low-sodium diet, since they are her favourite thing in the entire world. My secret to mashed potatoes is two-fold: First, the water I cook the potatoes in is half-water, half-chicken stock. And when I go to mash them, I melt the butter and combine it with heavy cream in a small saucepan, with pepper and any other seasonings I may be using that day, before pouring it onto the potatoes. They are, according to E, who is a mashed potato junkie, the best things ever.

I may make another pot of my cranberry-ginger chutney as well (recipe to follow later when I can find it again), because J absolutely loved it, and so did I.

Lots of veggies, cauliflower, broccoli — although I can’t eat it! *weeps* I’m actually allergic to broccoli, can you believe it?? And I LOVE it! — edamame… I think I’ll borrow my mother’s salad from Thanksgiving; spinach, fresh pomegranate seeds, goat cheese and red onion with a light vinaigrette of some form.

Dessert eludes me, but I’m sure I’ll think of something. I always do. There have been requests for pecan pie, and for my chocolate cookie/whipped cream/cherry concoction, but I don’t know. I’m feeling like I want to try something totally new this year. Something lighter than pecan pie, for sure, and not frozen like the layered cookie extravaganza.

Stay tuned, as I figure that one out, for more recipes, and for pictures!

Mise en place on the internet

We all have to start somewhere, right? So I’m joining the ranks of the food bloggers, how many of us are there now? Too many to keep proper track of, I’m sure. I hope I’ll find a niche and a home here. What better to start with but my recipe for a good blog:

Take one unpaid unprofessional chef.

Add a heaping cup of writing talent.

A pinch of sense of humour.

1 rounded tablespoon of snark.

2 teaspoons creativity.

Mix well. Set aside to fester mingle the flavours. Bake in the sunshine until it looks done; beware, poking may result in being bitten. Sprinkle with some sweetness, and sit back to enjoy with your favourite cup of tea or adult beverage, depending on the time of day. Best enjoyed with a dose of understanding and a lack of ego. When in doubt, get your hands dirty, and play!