one bowl chocolate loafcake

Hello, world!  Long time no update this blog.  But then, long time no cooking.  I moved across the country this summer, and for a few months I was in a situation where I was sharing a very small apartment with too many people.  Plus, and it kills me to even think about this, I had to leave most of my kitchen behind.  Actually ... pretty much all of it.  I won't lie, I died a little.

We have some more space now, though, and I finally was able to fill some cabinets with baking goods and get some things in the oven.  I wanted to do a chocolate cake, but my standard recipe is complex and I forgot I don't actually have cake pans yet.  So I turned to my list of "some day" recipes, and I found smitten kitchen's "everyday chocolate cake" right at the top.  One bowl, loaf pan?  Perfect!

one bowl chocolate loafcake
1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, softened
1 cup firmly packed light brown sugar
1/2 cup white sugar
1 large egg, at room temperature
1 cup buttermilk
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
3/4 cup alkalized cocoa powder
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt

Oven to 325; prepare a 9x5 loaf pan.

Cream butter, add sugars, then egg, then buttermilk & vanilla.  Sift in flour, cocoa, baking soda, baking powder, salt; stir.

Now, I baked mine for 60 minutes and it got a little crunchy around the edges.  It isn't burned, per se, but it is overcooked.  (Some buttercream frosting made it all better.)  Your mileage may vary; I seem to be having some trouble getting used to this new oven.  Not that it's a bad oven.  on the contrary I think it might be the first good oven I've worked with in ages.  We'll see.  Basically just keep an eye peeled; if you know from cake you shouldn't have any trouble.

by request: MEAT CUPS

I was talking to my sister on the phone and I mentioned that I was making meat cups. As is generally the reaction, she immediately demanded the recipe, so I am posting it here for her:

1. Sautée ground meat (I use turkey, most like beef).
2. Take some Pillsbury Grands dough. Tear the dough in half height-wise (so each biscuit would now be two of equal diameter just not as tall). Put said dough in muffin cups.
3. Put meat in muffin cups.
4. Bake 10-12 minutes on 350 (or according to biscuit instructions).

It's that easy. Now the trick is combining flavors. Yesterday I seasoned the meat with teriyaki as I cooked, then stirred in horseradish mustard, mozzarella cheese, and maple syrup. In the past I've had good luck with garlic and cheddar. The source of the recipe (my friend Becky) always makes them with some nice sweet barbecue sauce. Go with your heart.

Just make sure you eat them warm, or nuke them. Once they get cold I really don't enjoy the texture of the rolls.

Also, when talking about them, you must always stress the long "e" sound. "mEEt cups." Emphasize it like you're some sort of villain discussing his evil plan. That's just how it is, capisce?

Inception Cookies

Some time ago, a friend of mine linked to a post about Oreo-stuffed chocolate chip cookies. Which I thought was interesting. Then she referred to them as "Inception cookies" and I knew I had to make them.

The recipe is below, but I'm going to say right up front that I wasn't hugely impressed. They were awesome as an oddity, and everybody loved the idea, but they wound up being really dry.

On the other hand, they were delightful when they were still warm. So, thought one, use them for microwaving & covering with sundae stuff. Thought two, dip them in fudge shortly after they've cooled to seal in the moisture.

Of course, WE NEED TO GO DEEPER. The aforementioned friend wants to peel one cookie side off two Oreos, slap the creme/cookie remainders around a Thin Mint, then cover that in chocolate chip and dip the result in fudge. I'm having a hard time saying no, of course.

(And yes, I actually did print out that photo of Xzibit and write "Yo dawg I heard you like cookies so I put some cookie in your cookie so you can snack while you snack" on it, to put out with the cookies. Reactions were mixed.)

At any rate:

Inception Cookies

2 sticks (1 cup) softened butter
3/4 cup packed light brown sugar
1 cup granulated sugar
2 large eggs
1 tablespoon pure vanilla
3 1/2 cups flour
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon baking soda
12 oz bag mini chocolate chips
1 pkg. Double-Stuff Oreo cookies

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Cream butter, sugar. Add eggs and vanilla.

In a separate bowl mix the flour, salt and baking soda. Add to wet, alternating with chocolate chips, until barely combined.

Add teaspoon of dough to each side of Oreo, seal along sides. Try to keep them as small as possible. These things get HUGE if you let them get out of control. Here's a picture for perspective:

(If you were not aware, my fist is very large.)

Cookie sheet, parchment paper, you know. Bake until golden brown. These took close to 17 minutes in my oven; your results may vary wildly, because that seems excessive. Let 'em cool for a bit before putting on a wire rack.

Makes about 2 dozen.

baked ice cream cake

So, I found my way to this entry on Omnomicon recently, discussing a method of making cake with a box of mix, three eggs, a cup of water, and two cups of ice cream. I found this very intriguing, and I decided to try it. It's goofily easy, as you would imagine--combine ingredients, 350 for 45 in a bundt pan, enjoy.

And oh. My. Yes.

The final product reminds me of a cakey pudding, or perhaps a puddingy sort of cake. It also kind of reminds me of jellied cranberry sauce, only chocolate and bready instead of ... cranberry and ... the metaphor breaks down, but seeing the partitioned ring of cake quiver when I slice in to it really sells it.

We did a chocolate fudge mix with "Forbidden Chocolate" flavor ice cream, and the result is a damn fine bit of chocolate. We also bought some nice light strawberry frosting, but frankly it doesn't need to be frosted. Next time I'm going to try a chocolate cake with a mint chocolate chip ice cream; Silver wants to try Butterfinger.

So. Healthy? No. Classy? Not really. Delicious? Oh yes. Oh my, yes.

Click through to the original for some excellently illustrative pictures as well as a very well-written food blog. You know. If you're in to that sort of thing.

holy crap, quiche doesn't suck

I've never liked quiche. But then, I only just started liking eggs. About a week ago, I started craving quiche for no apparent reason. So I found this recipe. Of course I had to screw with it, so here's what I settled on.

4 eggs
2 cups half-and-half cream
1/8 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon black pepper
1/8 teaspoon cumin
4 ounces shredded cheddar cheese
2 ounces shredded Swiss cheese
1/2 lb ground turkey
broccoli ("some")
onion ("a bit")
1 (9 inch) unbaked pie shell

Preheat to 425. Brown the meat. Saute the onion & broccoli. In a bowl, mix eggs, cream, spices, and cheeses. Add meat + veggies. Pour in to pie shell. Cook 15 minutes, reduce heat to 350, cook another 25 minutes. Filling should set.

This turned out to be really, really good. I plan to make it again soon.

bootleg helper

So as we settle in to our new home and try to watch our food expenses and obsess about things like college grades, I'm inclined to remember my broke-ass days of yore, when I could barely manage to boil water and ate SpaghettiOs uncooked straight out of the can. Well, okay, I still do that, but the point is I don't think it's a meal.

Anyway, through the rose tinted glasses that let me view those memories without rupturing blood vessels, I fondly remember how Hamburger Helper would seem like a veritable home-cooked feast. I have no desire whatsoever to eat that filth, but when a recipe from the 'cheapcooking' Yahoo Group came across my inbox, I decided to try it. My end product differed greatly from what the recipe was intended to create, but it was still fairly tasty.

First, I sliced five strips of bacon into bite sized bits and sauteed them. When they were almost done I added chopped carrots, celery, onion, and tomato. This I cooked until the carrots were done, at which point I added ground turkey, and cooked until that was done, then added a lot of paprika, stirred thoroughly, then added ziti and filled the skillet with water. When the ziti was edible, I pronounced it done.

On the whole, it wasn't terrible. The original recipe called for "several inches of water", which would have required a dramatically different bit of cookware (oops!), and created something much more soup-like. This is also one of the rare circumstances where I should have used ground beef instead of turkey, because the flavor would have saturated much better. Still, I dubbed it 'Bootleg Helper'. On the whole it was reasonably food-like and highly nostalgic.

quickie curry

I went to a church sale recently and recovered a stack of cookbooks so tall I could barely carry them to the car. One of them, and perhaps the one that amuses me the most, is The Busy People's Cookbook, published in 1971. The premise is simple - you're busy, so these recipes all take less than 30 minutes. Many of them call for things like frozen vegetables, and call for them in quantities like 'one bag'.

Tacky though this may seem, I am a very busy person, and so I thought it might be useful to see if some of these produce anything resembling edible food. Accordingly, I've marked several recipes for experimentation, and last night I tried one called "Hurry Curry". I made a few changes to it, and here's the recipe I wound up with.

2 cups rice of choice
1 large chicken breast
2 tablespoons butter
1/2 cup chopped onion
1 tablespoon minced garlic
1 can cream of mushroom soup
1/4 cup coconut milk
1 cup sour cream
1&1/2 teaspoons curry powder

Start the rice on one burner. Cube the chicken and fire it up in a small skillet with your choice of lubricant.

In a large skillet, melt the butter, then saute the onions and garlic. Add the soup and coconut milk (I added a bit more than 1/4 cup of the latter just because), stir thoroughly. Then add the sour cream and the curry. I used red curry for this, although to be fair I would have preferred yellow. (Sadly red was all I could find while shopping this weekend, and I was in a hurry.) Stir this mix until it's smooth.

Your chicken should by this time be fully cooked, and if it's floating in fluids or oil or whatever else is in the skillet, you should drain that off. Put the chicken in the main skillet and let it cook for a bit - don't let it boil, but heat it through, as they say. At this point you're probably done, but I wound up forgetting the rice until the last minute, so I kept it simmering for a good fifteen minutes longer than I felt was necessary, then continued to let it sit in the skillet for a while after. I think this was actually a good choice, because it tasted dramatically better after that than when I was first ready to declare it done - your mileage may vary.

I was a little dubious about this, to be honest - I'm not much for sour cream, and the coconut milk was complete improv on my part - but the results are pretty awesome. I will say that as looks go, it's not the most appetizing dish I've ever prepared, but some minor presentation with a vegetable counteracted that easily, and it was quite tasty both immediately and left over. The process took a while longer than the book promised, but I did my own chicken prep instead of buying pre-cooked giblets (being lazy but not that lazy). Still the whole thing took less than an hour, and I probably could have made it an even 30 if I'd rushed.