Penney’s Palate

Here it goes, my first Daring Bakers Challenge:

All was going well until the cake was in the oven for 45 minutes (the suggested baking time stated in the recipe). It was still very jiggly and far from “slightly golden”. 10 more minutes of baking and it was still jiggly and not even slightly golden. 10 more minutes, it seemed to be getting firmer, but no signs of goldenness. Five more minutes and it was slightly golden and firm. DONE. So that was a total of 70 minutes of baking. 25 minutes more than the recipe stated. I double checked the temperature of my oven, and the temperature that it was supposed to be set at. The temperatures matched.

Once the cheesecake was room temperature, I put it in the fridge to stay overnight. The next day when I began to scoop them out, I got my scale ready to measure the 2 oz rounds specified in the recipe. 2 oz. of cheesecake was A LOT bigger than I was expecting. I was thinking bite size, golf ball size, maybe even walnut size… Not the case. I switched from a small spoon to an ice cream scooper and forged on, measuring my 2 oz. cheesecake rounds. The cheesecake wasn’t very firm, so it was impossible to shape into round balls. Instead I got deformed round balls that were far from smooth. More like globs. I even tried to refrigerate the cheesecake blobs before shaping them, but that didn’t work. Next, I had to clean out our freezer to make room for 3 pans of cheesecake globs.

After a few hours of freezer time, it was time for the final part: CHOCOLATE! I had 1 pound of bittersweet chocolate and about a pound of semi-sweet and milk chocolate combined. I started with the bittersweet chocolate, and quickly ran out about 2/3 of the way through coating all of the balls. Coating wasn’t that hard, but the coating seemed thick, and trying to dip them in any kind of topping wasn’t easy because the melted chocolate fell into the dippings and then I had a big mess. I later realized (later meaning a week after making these) that I forgot to add the shortening to the chocolate. If I had done this, it probably wouldn’t have been so thick!

None of that matters though, because they were DEEEELICIOUS. They were well received at our wine tasting, and gobbled up when I took them into work the following day. They were very rich, but oh so oh so oh so good.

Cheesecake Pops
From Sticky, Chewy, Messy, Gooey by Jill O’Connor

Ingredients
Five 8-ounce packages of cream cheese at room temperature.
2 cups of sugar
¼ cup of AP flour
¼ teaspoon of salt
5 large eggs
2 large egg yolks
2 teaspoons of vanilla extract
¼ cup of heavy cream
Boiling water
Thirty to forty lollipop sticks
1 pound chocolate for dipping and decorating
2 tablespoons vegetable shortening

Preparation
Preheat the oven to 325F degrees.

Position oven rack in the middle of the oven and preheat to 325 degrees F. Set some water to boil.

In a large bowl, beat together the cream cheese, sugar, flour, and salt until smooth. If using a mixer, mix on low speed. Add the whole eggs and the egg yolks, one at a time, beating well (but still at low speed) after each addition. Beat in the vanilla and cream.

Grease a 10-inch cake pan (not a springform pan), and pour the batter into the cake pan. Place the pan in a larger roasting pan. Fill the roasting pan with the boiling water until it reaches halfway up the sides of the cake pan. Bake until the cheesecake is firm and slightly golden on top, 35 to 45 minutes (Note: mine took 70 minutes to bake).

Remove the cheesecake from the water bath and cool to room temperature. Cover the cheesecake with plastic wrap and refrigerate until very cold, at least 3 hours or up to overnight. When the cheesecake is cold and very firm, scoop the cheesecake into 2-ounce balls and place on a parchment paper-lined baking sheet. Carefully insert a lollipop stick into each cheesecake ball. Freeze the cheesecake pops, uncovered, until very hard, at least 1 – 2 hours.

When the cheesecake pops are frozen and ready for dipping, prepare the chocolate. In the top of a double boiler, set over simmering water, or in a heatproof bowl set over a pot of simmering water, heat half the chocolate and half the shortening, stirring often, until chocolate is melted and chocolate and shortening are combined. Stir until completely smooth. Do not heat the chocolate too much or your chocolate will lose it’s shine after it has dried. Save the rest of the chocolate and shortening for later dipping, or use another type of chocolate for variety.

Quickly dip a frozen cheesecake pop in the melted chocolate, swirling quickly to coat it completely. Shake off any excess into the melted chocolate. If you like, you can now roll the pops quickly in optional decorations. You can also drizzle them with a contrasting color of melted chocolate (dark chocolate drizzled over milk chocolate or white chocolate over dark chocolate, etc.) Place the pop on a clean parchment paper-lined baking sheet to set. Repeat with remaining pops, melting more chocolate and shortening (or confectionary chocolate pieces) as needed.

Refrigerate the pops for up to 24 hours, until ready to serve.

Tommy and I played host to Rachel and Mike and Tommy’s parents last weekend (Rachel and Mike on Friday night, Tommy’s parents on Saturday and Sunday night). I wanted to have a nice breakfast on Saturday morning, but I didn’t want to spend a lot of time in the kitchen either. I remember reading a blog post about coffee cake recently. I read through the recipe and realized that if I didn’t want to spend all morning in the kitchen, I would need to make this coffee cake the night before (it has to cook for an hour and then sit for at least 30 minutes before eating).

This was fairly easy to make and tasted great. It tasted like good coffee cake with a little strawberry jam in it. Tasty tasty. Rachel, Mike, Tommy and I only ate half of the cake on Saturday morning, so we ate it for breakfast again on Sunday morning with Tommy’s parent. After sitting on the counter, covered, for a day, it was still deeeelicious.

Strawberry Jam Coffee Cake

Crumb Topping
1/4 cup brown sugar
1/4 cup sugar
1 tsp cinnamon
pinch salt
1 cup plus 2 tablespoons all-purpose flour
1/3 cup butter, melted

In a medium bowl, stir together dry topping ingredients until combined, then stir in melted butter until damp crumbs are formed and the mixture sticks together into chunks when you squeeze it between your fingers. Set aside.

Cake
1 cup sugar
1/2 cup butter, softened
1 tsp vanilla extract
2 large eggs
2 cups all-purpose flour
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1 cup sour cream
1/2 cup strawberry jam or preserves

Preheat oven to 350F and line a 9-in square pan (I used an 8 X 11-inch glass dish) with parchment paper. Lightly grease and set aside. In a large bowl, cream together sugar and butter until light and fluffy. Beat in vanilla, followed by the eggs, adding them one at a time until mixture is smooth.

In a medium bowl, whisk together flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt. Add to sugar mixture, alternating with sour cream in two or three additions, until well blended. Spread evenly into prepared pan.

Stir jam in a small bowl until smooth and drop by spoonfuls onto the cake batter. Gently swirl through with a knife. Top with crumb mixture, clumping it by squeezing it between your fingers while you work and spreading it into as even a layer as possible. Bake for 40-50 minutes or until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean (mine ended up baking for 70 minutes, at which point the middle still didn’t seem finished, but I took it out anyway because the crumb topping was beginning to burn. When I cut into it the next morning, it was perfect.) Cool on a wire rack for at least 30 minutes before slicing.

My applesauce consumption has gone up considerably from 0 a day to 1 a day for the past month or so. I like eating a little something sweet after I eat lunch at work… I quit yogurt cold turkey because I got tired of it, and promptly made the switch to applesauce. One day I am not going to want applesauce, but before that day comes, I thought that I would like to try to make my own. It can’t be that hard right? It has always seemed like a mystery to me, so now we can all unravel the mystery together.

I picked 3 different recipes that I felt represented 3 different ways to make applesauce. Feel free not to use them. I will post my applesauce adventure on March 23rd. To my surprise, all of these recipes seem very simple (I was thinking that applesauce took hours and hours of hovering over a stove). I’m guessing that apple selection is critical to good applesauce.

Microwave Method
Few ingredients with a little sugar for a sweetener
Exotic

As I was browsing the “Quick and Easy” section of Epicurious I came across this recipe. I thought to my self: “What, no way. This sounds like what I had at Fez (Le Club Fez, a local French/Moroccan restaurant). But this looks way too easy. Oh okay, I’ll try it, but I’m sure it is going to turn out bland and whatever else. There is no way that it is THIS easy to make this dish.” I think that it was in the quick and easy section because even though it has to cook for a few hours, there is only about 15 minutes of preparation before hand. I adjusted it based on the fact that the store only had Lamb legs instead of Lamb shoulder. And I didn’t have any ras-el-hanout, so I found this recipe. I have a “smidgen” measuring spoon, which is slightly smaller than 1/8 tsp, so I used that as my base and added the appropriate proportions of each ingredient. I also left out each ingredient that was already included in the lamb recipe, as I didn’t want to double up on any of the spices.

The result was good. So so good.

Ingredients
2 teaspoons ras-el-hanout
2 teaspoons salt
3/4 teaspoon black pepper
3/4 teaspoon ground ginger
1/4 teaspoon crumbled saffron threads
3 cups water
2 lb boneless lamb leg, cut into 1-inch cubes
1 medium onion, finely diced
2 garlic cloves, finely chopped
1 (3-inch) cinnamon stick
1/4 cup unsalted butter, cut into pieces
1 1/4 cups raisins
1 1/4 cups whole blanched almonds
1/4 cup honey
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon

Preparation
Whisk together ras-el-hanout, salt, pepper, ginger, saffron, and 1 cup water in a 5-quart heavy pot. Stir in lamb, remaining 2 cups water, onion, garlic, cinnamon sticks, and butter and simmer, covered, until lamb is just tender, 1 1/2 hours.

Stir in raisins, almonds, honey, and ground cinnamon and simmer, covered, about 30 minutes more. Uncover pot and cook over moderately high heat, stirring occasionally, until stew is slightly thickened, about 15 minutes more.

Serve over couscous

Girl Scout season is here! I told myself that I would try my best not to buy any cookies. Because they’re expensive and I eat a lot of them. I decided to try and make my favorite cookie instead. They turned out surprisingly good (both in looks and taste). Even though they took about 4 hours to make, from start to finish, I enjoyed making them. I didn’t have much going on Saturday afternoon, so it was a fun way to spend the day. Eating them is fun too. If I made these again, I would improve on the caramel spreading process for sure. This was the hardest part, and the cause of 8 broken cookies. It took me so long to spread the caramel/cocunut topping on, so it kept getting hard, and I would have to heat it up in the microwave to soften it up again. By the time I got to the last handful of cookies, the caramel didn’t even want to soften up even when heated. So that was that. Those cookies aren’t as caramely and are a bit on the chewy side, but still extremely edible and delicious.

Samoas

Ingredients
The cookie:
1 cup butter, soft
1/2 cup sugar
2 cups all purpose flour
1/4 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
up to 2 tbsp milk

The caramel mixture:
3 cups shredded coconut (sweetened)
12-oz chewy caramels
1/4 tsp salt
3 tbsp milk

The chocolate:
8 oz. dark or semisweet chocolate

Preparation
The cookie:
Preheat oven to 350F. In a large mixing bowl, cream together butter and sugar. Mix in flour, baking powder and salt at a low speed, followed by the vanilla and milk, adding in the milk as needed to make the dough come together without being sticky (it’s possible you might not need to add milk at all). The dough should come together into a soft, not-too-sticky ball. Add in a bit of extra flour if your dough is very sticky.

Roll the dough (working in two or three batches) out to about 1/4-inch thickness (or slightly less) and use a 1 1/2-inch cookie cutter to make rounds. Place on a parchment lined baking sheet and use a knife (I used an apple corer), to cut a smaller center hole. Repeat with remaining dough.

Bake cookies for 10-12 minutes, until bottoms are lightly browned and cookies are set. Cool for a few minutes on the baking sheet then transfer to a wire rack to cool completely.

The topping:
Preheat oven to 300. Spread coconut evenly on a parchment-lined baking sheet (preferably one with sides) and toast 20 minutes, stirring every 5 minutes, until coconut is golden. Cool on baking sheet, stirring occasionally. Set aside.

Unwrap the caramels and place in a glass bowl with milk and salt. Place bowl on a pot of boiling water and stir caramel mixture until melted. When smooth, remove from heat and fold in toasted coconut with a spatula. Using the spatula, spread topping on cooled cookies, using about 2-3 tsp per cookie. Reheat caramel for a few seconds in the microwave if it gets too firm to work with.

The chocolate:
While topping sets up, melt chocolate in another glass bowl over a pot of boiling water. Dip the base of each cookie into the chocolate and place on a clean piece of parchment paper. Transfer all remaining chocolate (or melt a bit of additional chocolate, if necessary) into a piping bag or a ziplock bag with the corner snipped off and drizzle finished cookies with chocolate.
Let chocolate set completely before trying to eat (this takes a few hours, unfortunately). Fortunately for Tommy and I, we left for dinner just after I finished making these, so we didn’t have to be tortured by watching the chocolate get solidified. I had them as a second dessert when we got home from dinner.

The process improvement that I would make next time is with how the caramel topping is applied to the cookie. I would leave the caramel in the glass bowl over some simmering water (so that the caramel stays soft the entire time). I would then dip the cookie in the caramel, then dip it in the coconut. I think that this would save a lot of time too. The only thing you would have to be careful about is that the caramel is very hot when it is at this stage, so you might get a few burned fingertips if you’re not careful about dipping the cookies.

I bought a box of the REAL girl scout cookies on my way home from the store today (this is the ONLY box I am going to buy this year). I was shocked that I had to pay $3.50 for only 15 cookies! My cookies are bigger but the caramel is a bit harder than the REAL cookies. That’s probably because there are a bazillion preservatives in the REAL cookie’s caramel. Oh yeah, and I got about 45 cookies out of the deal, AND they’re bigger. So take that girl scouts!

For the Roasted Chicken Challenge, Tommy and I started off with a 2.91 pound chicken from somewhere in Piedmont, NC. We decided to do the dry brine as Melanie’s recipe stated. We kept it in the refrigerator for about 7 hours before taking it out. Like Brian’s, it had turned a pinkish color. It looked kind of gross in my opinion, but I forged ahead. We oiled, sugared and peppered the outsides, and added some aromatics to the insides. The aromatics consisted of 1 shallot, 1/4 of a Gala Apple, 1 cinnamon stick, twig of rosemary and a twig of sage. It was baked breast side down for 25 minutes, then breast side up for about 20 minutes (we used our thermometer inserted in the thigh to tell us when the bird was done, which was 175 degrees later).

The end result was a very moist and flavorful chicken. Neither Tommy nor I are big fans of eating small birds from the bone, it just seems like so much effort for so little meat. But it was delicious, and WORLDS better than the rotisserie chickens you can buy from supermarket. I think that the type of chicken that we bought (free range chicken) contributed to its goodness and tastiness. Tommy also made a gravy with the drippings. MMMMMM tasty gravy it was. With only 2.91 pounds of chicken, there wasn’t much left, only about a cup of shredded chicken. We made Paninis with it a week later, which was the wrong choice. It would have been much better used in some chicken salad maybe.

One thing happened with the chicken that seemed a little odd. Tommy and I weren’t really sure of the exact location on the thigh to put the thermometer. We didn’t have much luck with thermometer placement when cooking our two Thanksgiving turkeys, so we weren’t sure how much faith to put in this thermometer placement. We were convinced that our chicken was done when it took about 20 minutes (with breast side up) to reach the 175 degrees. We were even happier when we began carving the chicken and saw that it seemed to be done. However, after turning the chicken around to start on the other side, it was revealed that the thigh piece was not done on the second side. Everything else seemed to be done. So we continued with the carving and threw in the un-finished thigh and remaining carcas back in the oven for 10 minutes, and began eating.

I would roast a chicken again. It was pretty easy but a little time consuming since you have to plan out when to brine it and when to be available when it is done brining. Next time I would be interested in roasting it in a pan with lots of vegetables like Will and Maggie suggested. I like roasted vegetables, and just thinking of the flavor that the vegetables will absorb makes me hungry even when I am full.

I was a little sick this week, so Wednesday I stayed home from work and rested up a bit. Since I was sick, of course I wanted soup. I don’t care for canned soup, and Tommy wasn’t available to make soup for me, so I picked an easy soup recipe that didn’t require much preparation. I browsed through my classic Italian cookbook and found a recipe for Lentil Soup. Having had lentils for the first time only last month and loving them, I decided that this soup was definitely the one. It is somewhere between a soup and an entrée though, because it has a lot of pasta in it. In the end, the pasta absorbs all of the liquid, making it not very soupy at all. But still very tasty, and a good hearty soup for someone feeling a bit under the weather. You can also adjust the liquid portion as well. The recipe called for 9 cups of chicken stock, but I felt that would be a little too strong for my tastes, so I used only 7 cups of stock and 2 cups of water. The lentils are very flavorful, so I think that you could even reduce the amount of chicken stock used even more. It depends on what your tastes are I suppose. I ate this for lunch, and then when Tommy came home, we made Paninis and had a bowl of the lentil soup with our Paninis. The original recipe calls for brown lentils, but I already had French green lentils, so that is what I used. I am anxious to use other lentils for cooking with to see how much of a difference each colored lentil is.

Lentil Soup

Ingredients
1 cup dried lentils (brown or green)
6 tbsp olive oil
1 medium onion, diced
2 celery stalks
2 small carrots
7 cups chicken stock
2 cups water
1 sage leaf, chopped (or 1/8 tsp dried sage)
1 sprig fresh thyme (or 1/4 tsp dried thyme)
Salt and Pepper
2 1/2 cups small pasta (I used this mini-bow tie pasta, Orzo would work as well. Ditalini or Pastina would work best if you can find it where you live)

Preparation
Put lentils in a bowl and cover with cold water, soak for 2 hours. After lentils are done soaking, heat the oil in large pot. Add the onion and cook until it softens. Add the celery and carrots and cook for 5 more minutes. Add the lentils, chicken stock, water, and herbs. Bring the soup to a boil, then cook over moderate heat (a low boil) for 1 hour. Add salt and pepper if needed. Stir in the pasta and cook until the pasta is done (this is where most of the liquid in the soup will begin to disappear. Eat.

Our refrigerator was getting low on lunch-time leftovers, so last night I made a pan of baked ziti. Instead of my regular recipe, I chose to change it up a bit. I remember reading over a lasagna-style baked ziti in one of my recent Food & Wine magazines, so after a quick search, I had found what I had stored away in my distant memory. Of course, I made some modifications to the recipe based on what Tommy and I like in a baked ziti dish. It turned out to be a nice creamy alternative to the strictly tomato-based ziti that I have made in the past. The creaminess comes from a bechamel (which was pretty plain, I should add more cheese next time, and maybe some salt?).

Lasagna-Style Baked Ziti

Ingredients
3/4 lb ziti
2 tbsp olive oil
1 small to medium yellow onion, diced
1 lb hot Italian Sausage
14 oz. can diced tomatoes
1 tbsp tomato paste
1 tsp. dried marjoram
2 tbsp parsley, chopped
Salt and Pepper
1/4 cup butter
1/3 cup AP flour
2 cups whole milk
1 egg yolk
1 cup freshly grated Parmigiano Reggiano

Preparation
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees and start a large pot of water on the stove (for the pasta). In a large skillet heat the olive oil, then add the onion and cook over medium heat until the onions are soft (about 4 minutes). Add the sausage and cook for 10 minutes or until beginning to brown (break up the clumps as it cooks). Remove from the heat and add the diced tomatoes, tomato paste, marjoram, parsley, salt and pepper.

Once the sausage is added to the skillet, add the pasta to the boiling water (use cooking time on box), and start the bechamel: In a saucepan, melt the butter. Add the flour and cook over medium heat for 2 minutes, whisking constantly. Whisk in the milk (it helps if the milk has been warmed instead of being cold) and cook over medium-high heat until the sauce is very thick and boiling, whisking constantly (about 5-7 minutes). Remove from the heat and whisk in the egg yolk and cheese (and salt if needed). Stir all but 3/4 cup of the bechamel into the sausage/tomato mixture. Stir in the pasta to this mixture.

Pour the mixture (pasta, bechamel, sausage/tomato mixture) into an appropriately sized casserole dish (I used an 8.5 X 11 inch dish). Then spread the remaining bechamel over the top. Bake in the oven for 30 minutes. After 30 minutes, preheat the broiler and broil the pasta for about 2 minutes, until the top has browned and is bubbly. Let rest 5-10 minutes before serving.

Today I made Amy’s Pulled Pork. Like all crock pot meals, it was easy. Pork, onion, garlic, bbq sauce, turn crock pot on, walk away. I took Amy’s recommendation to use a bbq sauce that I liked. That was a slight problem because I don’t really know what kind of bbq sauce I like. I decided just to browse Harris Teeter’s bbq sauce section and was very excited to find a Peppery Vinegar Eastern Carolina BBQ Sauce. I was very excited. Very, very excited.

It turned out pretty good. It wasn’t quite what you could get at Old Time, or Smithfields, but under the current circumstances of living in SC where they only make mustard-based bbq, it was a pretty good substitute. We ate it with corn on the cob and some corn bread. I’m not good at making cornbread, so I can’t write anything good about it. At least it was edible. I am looking forward to having the leftover bbq on a hamburger bun with some coleslaw tomorrow for lunch. Thanks Amy!

Today I made Amy’s Pulled Pork. Like all crock pot meals, it was easy. Pork, onion, garlic, bbq sauce, turn crock pot on, walk away. I took Amy’s recommendation to use a bbq sauce that I liked. That was a slight problem because I don’t really know what kind of bbq sauce I like. I decided just to browse Harris Teeter’s bbq sauce section and was very excited to find a Peppery Vinegar Eastern Carolina BBQ Sauce. I was very excited. Very, very excited.

It turned out pretty good. It wasn’t quite what you could get at Old Time, or Smithfields, but under the current circumstances of living in SC where they only make mustard-based bbq, it was a pretty good substitute. We ate it with corn on the cob and some corn bread. I’m not good at making cornbread, so I can’t write anything good about it. At least it was edible. I am looking forward to having the leftover bbq on a hamburger bun with some coleslaw tomorrow for lunch. Thanks Amy!