Let's Just List Off Some Good Things, Eh?

It's been a while since I've posted here. I've actually cooked and eaten a lot. . . but I've been a bit too busy to post. So I'm just going to list off some highlights.

1. The "Gourmet" Dinner for my sister:

I saw some really nice green beans in the store, so I decided to make Clotilde's Salade de Haricorts Verts, Noix De Pecan & Jambon Cru from the Chocolate and Zucchini book. I made about a third of her recipe for the two of us. It was pretty fabulous what with the rich, toasty walnuts and the salty, porky prosciutto I used. I didn't have any cider vinegar, so I subbed red wine vinegar. I think there were no ill effects from this, but sometimes I wonder about my palate. The combination of crisp-tender beans and rich accouterments made for one delicious salad. It's a great way to enjoy green beans.

For the main course, I served Marcella Hazan's Baked Sockeye Salmon with Bell Peppers and Capers, which I talked about previously here. The recipe is on Epicurious here. It's a delicious salmon recipe and worked well with the sockeye fillets I bought. The sides were some fresh, grainy bread and a roasted potimarron squash. The squash was a beauty:

It was actually grown in Edmonton in the Campus Community Garden. The flesh was really creamy and sweet. It was quite fabulous.

2. I'm a muffin making machine:

Well, not really. But, I did make these apple-cinnamon-pecan-oatmeal muffins. I used only whole wheat flour, which might have made them a little drier than usual. It was a variation on my blueberry muffin recipe with a chopped apple and a few tablespoons of toasted pecan in place of blueberries and some cinnamon rather than lemon zest. They were pretty decent.
I also made pumpkin muffins, which came out very moist and delicious, but I didn't take a picture. Imagine muffins that are orange through and through with the sweet taste of pumpkin. I used this recipe from Better Homes and Gardens. I was pretty keen to bake with pumpkin. Actually, I think I've been wanting to since last fall and winter. It seemed the perfect time at Canadian thanksgiving. I followed the recipe aside from substituting wheat flour for the buckwheat and using approximately 50-50 white and whole wheat flours. They were successful and relatively healthful recipe. I recommend trying the recipe for a tasty seasonal breakfast. My can of pumpkin was huge, so I also made a simple pumpkin soup one night and still have some leftover in the freezer, probably for a future batch of those tasty muffins.

3. Random bar cookie making:

Last Thursday, I baked some oatmeal-raisin bars during Grey's Anatomy. They are a tasty, buttery, not too sweet cookie. The recipe was in my Better Homes and Gardens New Cookbook and I can't find it on-line. I used whole-wheat flour for the cookies and made a half-batch in an 8-inch round pan. It's say they're good. I think they look good:
Basically, they have a butter, sugar, flour, and oatmeal base a bit like shortbread with raisin filling and more of the oat mixture crumbled on top.

Cookie Monster's Cookie Variations

I suppose there isn't much of a new story to this, since I've talked about this basic recipe before. Then again I did make some changes and take some pretty pictures, so I suppose it warrants a new post. For the food porn alone:There's nothing quite like looking at a tin of freshly baked cookies. These are oatmeal cookies, clearly and are based on Nick Malgieri's recipe that David Lebovitz blogged about. I've also blogged about them here. Anyways, like I said I made a couple of changes when I baked up the cookies for Robyn's barbecue.

I found my initial batch too sweet so this time I used 1/4 cup of granulated sugar instead of 1/2 cup. They still seemed sweet enough to me. I also used 1/2 cup whole wheat flour and 1/2 cup white all-purpose flour in place of 1 cup of white flour. I really don't think I could tell the difference with this, but I guess it made them even healthier. I also added a bunch of zest from an organic orange to the batter in the wet ingredients. This added a intriguing dimension to the cookies with orange flavour and fragrance that I really think goes well with raisins and oatmeal. It had my friends wondering just what that intriguing flavour element was. I baked the cookies for 9 minutes on an ungreased, non-stick cookie sheet and got a yield of 30 cookies.

The cookies were pretty popular and all the ones I brought to the barbecue got eaten. But, I saved a few for myself and for my sister, the zest-aholic to try. They're frozen now. I actually really enjoyed eating the previous batch straight out of the freezer. Is that weird? Nothing like a frozen cookie on a hot day, not that there are any of those left. (Hot days, not cookies.)

Here's a bonus close-up of one of these scrumptious soft, slightly chewy cookies:

Macaroons

My general approach to picking recipes for baking had long included avoiding anything that would require me to separate egg whites from yolks and especially anything calling for the magic of whipped egg whites or yeast for that matter. At school, I don't have an electric mixer so I avoid any recipe requiring whipping. But, at home with an electric mixer at the ready, I got gutsy. . . sort of. . . and it was time to conquer my fear of separating eggs.


I did so with a recipe from this very '80s cookbook:Many of my parents' cookbooks are "classic" like this. I decided to make the "french coconut macaroons." I prepared half the recipe due to a limited supply of coconut.

Here's how it went down:

I separated two eggs with my (clean) hands. (The yolks were remarkably reluctant to burst.)

I whipped the egg whites with a hand held electric mixer until (miraculously) stiff peaks formed. (I think they were stiff peaks, they didn't fall when I moved the beater. The whites whipped really easily, kind of like when I discovered that it's easy to whip whipping cream. That's why it's whipping cream, I guess.)

I added a half teaspoon of (my parents' artificial) vanilla extract. I beat it some more. I added 1/2 cup of icing sugar in several additions, beating well in between. I beat the whites some more until they were stiff and glossy.

I folded in a quarter cup of (whole-wheat) flour and a cup of coconut flakes.

I dropped 14 cookies onto a greased and floured cookie sheet and popped them in a 325 F oven. The recipe said to leave them 25 minutes or until lightly browned. Mine were brown after about 15 minutes and looked like this after I let them cool a little and lifted them off the sheet with a spatula.

These disappeared rather quickly as my family enjoyed their light, soft texture and coconutty flavour. I think they were pretty successful and the perfect way to conquer my fear of separating eggs. I still don't know if I could whip the whites by hand though. . . perhaps I will find out.

The Biscotti Process

I decided to make biscotti as a special gift for some very special people who I'm visiting starting tomorrow. I actually made them on Monday because biscotti, being dry by nature keep well in an airtight container. Actually, that's why I like them as an edible gift. They don't need to be consumed immediately.

I actually baked biscotti in December as a Christmas gift for friends. I used essentially the same recipe then as I did now, so I had a better idea of what I was doing and they turned out better than before. The recipe is Sarah Moulton's Raisin Almond Biscotti found here, be prepared to spend some time on it. (That's why it's a biscotti process.) I follow it pretty closely except I find that 3 eggs is inadequate to bring the dough together and 1 whole egg is too much eggwash.

Basically, my modifications to the recipe this time include:
-soaking the raisins in the juice of one orange (instead of Cointreau, which I'm sure is lovely, but. . . expensive).
-adding the zest of 1 orange with the eggs and vanilla for even more orange flavour
-using 4 large eggs instead of 3 to bring the dough together
-only using as much eggwash as seems necessary

These are my two just golden, shiny (eggwash!) biscotti logs after their first half hour bake in a 325 F oven:

It's important to shape the logs very square so the ends won't result in undersized cookies. I did a much better job cutting uniform slices this time for more beautiful slices. It's best to cut straight a cross, not on an angle. I think I made that mistake last time.

Slices reveal a pretty yellow tinge from the zest/egg combination:
After baking for 12 minutes on one side and 10 minutes on the other, the dry, golden brown biscotti are a beauty to behold:
To ensure the quality of my gift, I ate a couple of end pieces with a nice cup of Earl Grey tea (sorry coffee makes me sick). They were very crispy but softened nicely in the tea. The flavours of orange, raisin, and toasted almond went well together. Overall, these are great cookies for with hot beverages and relatively healthy with no butter or oil at all.

I actually ate many of the biscotti I made in December myself. A biscotti and a cup of (decaf) tea was a remarkably effective (and pleasurable) relaxation ritual before bed during the exam time.

Oatmeal Two Ways

I realize that the title of this post might not inspire much excitement. Oatmeal. . . ooh porridge, yawn. But really, there are variations in the preparation of oatmeal that are quite delicious and unique to oatmeal. I actually got the recipes and ideas for both these "dishes" if you will from other bloggers much better than myself.

First off, a yummy breakfast with a recipe from Chocolate and Zucchini. This is the post with the recipe that Clotilde calls Oatmeal Breakfast Clafoutis. Anyways, I of course do not follow it absolutely exactly. I always halve the recipe and make it in an 8 inch round cake pan. I also don't think of it as Clafoutis, which really has no meaning to me, but as Breakfast Cake. It's a cake I can eat copious amounts of for breakfast without feeling that I'm eating unhealthily.

This time I didn't use any dried fruit and put in a chopped banana and a chopped nectarine. I also didn't use nuts and only had about a cup of oatmeal left, so I put in some crushed bran flakes . . . a bit odd i know. The texture seemed right on the first few pieces with a nice crust on the edge that I quite like. However, either because there wasn't enough oatmeal or because of the fresh fruit mixed in, it was a bit mushy in places. This hasn't been a problem on previous occasions making this recipe. I also reduced the sugar a little bit as I don't like my food too sweet. Probably the main thing that kept my creation from being really good was that the nectarine was a dud, as was the other one I bought. It tasted like. . . nothing. It was a disappointment but not surprising. Anyways, I still like to have cake for breakfast, here's what it looked like fresh from the oven:
Next up, oatmeal cookies. I really like oatmeal cookies. There's just something about the oatmeal flavour in a cookie that's really comforting and delicious. In the past, I've made them with raisins or chocolate chips. Shockingly, raisins make better oatmeal cookies than chocolate chips, they just work perfectly with their sweet chewiness.

Anyways, I found the recipe for these on David Lebovitz's site. I'd never tried any of the recipes he posts, but he is all about dessert, so the cookie recipes he posts must be good. The recipe, from a cookbook by Nick Malgieri, is low fat with some apple sauce in the base, which intrigued me. I've had success with applesauce to moisten muffins, so why not cookies. I did not alter the recipe aside from using dark brown sugar in place of light brown sugar and cooking some of the cookies on an unlined, ungreased, new, nonstick cookie sheet (which caused no problems).

I don't have any electric beaters, so creaming the butter and sugar with a fork and a wooden spoon was a bit of work. But it was so worth it to create this luscious batter:
Even the cooking time for that batter given in the recipe was very accurate. (I often find recommended baking times for cookies are too long). This is what the finished product looked like:

If those don't look good to you, why?

Anyways, I sample a couple last night and they were quite good. I brought them to the Campus Community Garden this morning and people said they were quite good. (People were impressed that I made them. Hey, they're just cookies. But if you can impress people that way. . .) Nobody guessed that they were low fat either with their desirable chewy, moist texture. I also brought some to the Edmonton Gay Pride Parade this afternoon, which was a good time except when it poured rain. My friends quite liked them and almost fought over the last one I brought.

This recipe is a definite keeper. For the record, I got 31 cookies out of it, although the last 3 were rather large.

Sticking Things on Chocolate Cookies

Cookies are one of my favourite things to make. When I was in high school and living with my family, I used to make a batch pretty much every week. At home, we could go through forty, sixty or more cookies in the week. That's because my sister and dad were cookie fiends, plus I ate at least two a day. Since I am away at school, if I bake things, including cookies it seems like I have to eat them all. So, I don't make cookies that often. Except, in the last month I've made chocolate cookies twice for gatherings of friends. I reduced a recipe by a third to come up with this simple recipe:

1 egg
1/2 cup granulated sugar
1.5 ounces unsweetened chocolate
2.5
tablespoons cooking oil
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon
vanilla
2/3 cup all-purpose flour
extra granulated
sugar
toppings

Melt the chocolate in a medium microwave safe bowl, in the microwave. Mix egg, sugar, oil, baking powder, and vanilla into the chocolate until combined. Stir in the flour. Cover and chil dough for at least an hour. Roll dough into 1-inch balls. Roll balls in sugar to coat them. Place balls on an ungreased cookie sheet. Press "toppings" into the balls. Bake at 375 for 8-10 minutes. Tops will crack and edges should be set. Makes about 20 cookies.

I made a couple of variations on these cookies. First before Easter, I used one Cadbury MiniEgg on top of each cookie for Ryan's Shortbus viewing party. The cookies were like little nests made of chocolate. Who doesn't want a cute nest made of chocolate cookie? The cookies go well with The Star Spangled Banner. Most of you probably don't know what that means.

Oh, see how the eggs cracked? I think the chocolate is hatching. There might
be a chocolate monster coming soon or just delicious Cadbury's milk chocolate.

I decided to make these cookies again for Robyn's barbeque on the last day of
classes. It was after Easter and as good as out-of-season Easter candy is, I decided to go with M&Ms as a topping. These cookies were extremely popular--I saw Adam eating two at once—and quite delicious although I only got to eat one. These cookies are crisp on the outside, soft and chewy on the inside, and very chocolaty.

Speaking of out of season Easter candy, how much better do CremeEggs taste when they’re 50 cents? I actually eat much more Easter candy after Easter than before. For anyone else who loves CremeEggs, check out this GIANT one made by some crazy British people.