Food Follies – Page 26 – Cooking, Baking, Recipes, Food, Desserts

Mmmmm Cake

I decided to bake my first cake from scratch last night. I did a search online for a recipe that matched my ingredients on hand and came up with Elizabeth’s Extreme Choclate Lover’s Cake

I had always heard that making cakes from scratch was difficult, but I found this reamarkably easy, except for being a little dish intensive. It took three bowls to make the mixture, one for the melted chocolate (I used the microwave), one for the brown sugar and liquid ingredients, and one for the flour, baking soda and salt.

I didn’t have any sour cream, so I substituted milk, and since milk isn’t as dense I cut back on some of the water. I thought the batter tasted a little dusky, so I added a little confectioner’s sugar and a little cocoa powder as well. My final result was a slightly thicker batter than the recipe described, but it baked nicely and rose like crazy.

We didn’t have any Baker’s chocolate to make the frosting, so Kristen made a light buttercream frosting with the remains of the cocoa powder.

The resulting cake was delicious. It has a lot more body and flavor than any of the cake mix cakes, and was far more rich than any of the supermarket/bakery cakes we get around here.

So now I will be delving deeply into the world of hommade cakes. I’ve always been a cake lover so I suppose this was inevitable. Soon I will be filling the recipe list with Bundts, Pounds, Marbles and Crumbs. Remember, you’ve been warned. 🙂

Garlic!

I decided to make some pasta sauce today, only to discover that our onions had turned into some sort of alien creature. After chasing the beast out of the house with a broom, I decided that I would make the sauce anyway using some extra garlic to fill the void.

I went a little overboard though, possibly because we picked up a jar of pre-chopped garlic last week, so I didn’t have to go through the work of chopping it myself. All I know was, this was one powerfully garlicky sauce. It cleared both mine and Kristen’s sinuses while eating it.

It was a good sauce though, and I think it will make an excellent pizza sauce. As soon as we go to town again (25 miles away) I’m going to get some mozzarella cheese so I can find out. In the meantime, all the vampire bats have fled the area, and the dogs keep turning away from me when I talk to them.

Busy Busy Busy

(I used the wisk image to the left because it made me think of being busy – LOL.) We’ve actually been doing some good cooking and eating lately, but we’ve been missing the step where we take a moment to sit down and write about it for some reason. For instance, I made another lasagna the other day, with homemade noodles, and it came out terrific. In fact, we’re still eating the leftovers, which are just as good as the original, of course. And we’ve been baking bread, and learning what effect ‘tired’ yeast has on it. And John made a delicious chicken concoction, which he keeps meaning to write up. See?

Also, we learned that our turtles (that we recently acquired from John’s brother who couldn’t keep them anymore) LOVE meat, despite the fact that a lot of turtle experts say that they become more vegetable oriented as they get older. (Maybe nine isn’t ‘old’ to them?) Even cuter… they will take the food from our hands, in a gentle but still ‘turtle darting their neck out’ sort of way. We’ve given them chicken, tuna (which made a mess in their water – maybe we’ll try a more chunk and less shredded kind next time), and hamburger.

Also, our black lab seems to like the raw pasta dough. She always lays under the table when I make it and then looks all hopeful if it appears I’ve got a bit left over – go figure.

Anyway, we’ll get back to posting more fully again soon, I’m sure. Thanks for checking in!

COOKIES!

Have I ever mentioned that Kristen makes the best Chocolate Chip Cookies in the world?

Recently she made a batch of Chocolate Chocolate Chip (mmm chocolate). What I love about this recipe is that the cookies remain soft, unlike other recipes I’ve tried which turn to rocks after a few hours. The secret ingredient is a box of pudding mix, which keeps the cookies soft and so rich. Just thinking of them brings out my inner Cookie Monster.

Wine and Fish Crackers

John was making a homemade tomato sauce a few days ago and decided to open a bottle of zinfandel to add a bit of wine to the sauce. The sauce came out excellent, and tonight we decided to actually try the wine directly, with a few ‘sea creature’ cheesy crackers. Tres classy, no? The wine: Ravenswood Vintners Blend, 2002 California Zinfandel. It certainly lives up to the saying on the label, “No wimpy wines” – no kidding! It’s really potent and ‘throaty’ if you can glean our meaning. The kind of wine that warms your fingers and toes before you finish half of the first glass. The taste itself is pleasant and tangy, but disappears quickly, leaving you with more of a powerful aftereffect than with a taste on your tongue. (And the tri-raven Celtic logo on the front is a plus too.)

Egg Braid Bread

I found a recipe for Egg Braid Bread on the side of a bag of Safeway brand flour. It looked interesting, so I thought I’d give it a try. The recipe called for water, milk and eggs to be mixed with the yeast, and then adding the flour.

It came together well, and I kneaded it the full ten minutes as reccomended. The most difficult part was getting braiding lessons from Kristen, even after she demonstrated by braiding her hair, I still needed her guidance with the bread.

When the bread was warm it was good, but not great, which is why I’m not yet sharing the recipe. I liked the taste and consistency, it had a nice spring to it which I really enjoyed.

The next day the bread seemed rather dry as if the moisture had escaped during the night. Our friend Tom who gave us that delicious loaf of bread from a few weeks ago, sprays his dough with water before putting it in the oven. I’m going to try this method next time since all our breads always seem a little floury on the outside.

Chicken Stir Fry

We made a chicken stir fry the other night. Nothing really fancy, just chicken, onions, peppers, broccoli, carrots, and Nappa Cabbage. I marinated the chicken in a bottle of marinade I had gotten from the local Dollar store.

When it comes to stir fry, I like my vegetables to be fully cooked. I slice my carrots into thin strips and cut the broccoli down to crowns. I also peel the outside of the broccoli stems and include them as well. I start the broccoli, carrots, onions and peppers first, cooking them for about ten minutes before adding the meat. The cabbage gets added last, since that takes only a few minutes.

This procedure actually got me into trouble at the last place I worked. The management there insisted that the vegetables had to look bright and colorful, which essentially means raw. I also couldn’t add any soy sauce to the stir fry because it would darken the veggies as well. One of the cooks who had worked there for ten years had actually said to me: “If you make it look good, their imaginations will fill in the rest.”

Yeah well, I prefer the taste of my food to speak for itself.

Another Reason to Love Tillamook!

“Dairy farmers whose cows provide milk for the second largest producer of chunk cheese in the nation (Tillamook) voted Monday to ban a Monsanto Co. hormone on schedule, rejecting pressure from the chemical company…. Rick North, spokesman for Oregon Physicians for Social Responsibility, called the Tillamook ban a victory for consumers. ‘They’re not only doing the right thing, they’re doing the smart thing,’ North said of the co-op vote. ‘This should be great for their business.'” (full article)

This is terrific news, IMO. Tillamook already has some of the best cheese we’ve yet tasted on the west coast, and now it’s going to get even better! Mmmm… cheese….

Scallops Fettuccine Alfredo

For a slight change of pace tonight (we’re still hooked on homemade pasta) we decided to make Scallops Alfredo.

Alfredo sauce is one of the most simple sauces to make, but it requires good ingredients to work properly. Heavy cream, butter, fresh parmesan cheese and garlic are the basic ingredients, and if you substitute any of them for something cheaper, the sauce will suffer.

Tonight’s sauce seemed to come out too thin and salty at first. The Parmesan cheese I bought tasted very salty, but somehow between the addition of the scallops and the fettuccine, the sauce came out just right.

A Gift of Bread

Yesterday one of our bestest friends gifted us with a loaf of his homemade bread – we barely made it home with the thing intact – it was perfect! It had a thick, shiny, golden brown crust that gave your teeth a workout when chewing, a delicious flavor, the inside was thick and tasty, but tender as well. It even had the fancy schmancy diagonal slots across the top! I speak in past tense, although we do have a bit of it left, but it’s not going to last very much longer!