Hi guys,
I know that I’m Bakezilla and I’m supposed to tell you all about lovely baked goods… BUT, it’s the summer. And, it’s been a really HOT summer. So, even die-hard bakers like me have been forced to turn off the oven and look for foods that are a little more weather appropriate.
… Like, this tasty chilled tomato soup. I wouldn’t call it a gazpacho, it’s got more of an Italian/French feel. What I can tell you, is that my beau and I came across this, made it, and ate it, we both decided it was awesome.
# 2 1/4 cups tomato juice
# 1 1/3 cups finely chopped tomatoes (about 11 ounces)
# 1/2 cup (generous) finely chopped roasted red bell peppers from jar
# 2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
# 1 tablespoon red wine vinegar
# 1 tablespoon prepared white horseradish
# 1 garlic clove, pressed
# Generous dash of hot pepper sauce
# Fine sea salt
# 4 1/3-inch-thick rounds soft fresh goat cheese
# 6 grape tomatoes, cut in half
# 2 tablespoons thinly sliced fresh basil
Combine first 8 ingredients in large bowl; whisk to blend. Season soup to taste with sea salt and freshly ground black pepper. Cover and refrigerate until well chilled and flavors blend, at least 2 hours. DO AHEAD: Can be made 6 hours ahead. Keep chilled.
Ladle soup into 4 bowls. Top each with 1 goat cheese round and 3 grape tomato halves. Sprinkle with freshly ground black pepper and basil.
Hi All-
Summer, it seems, is too busy a season for all of us pretty girls. But, fear not, dear readers, Bakezilla’s back. This frosting was for my birthday cake a few weeks ago, and while the cake was good, it was the frosting that was a real star. I wish I had layered more on, because this recipe, adapted from Shirley Corriher’s Lucious, Creamy Chocolate Icing, makes a TON. And it’s awesome. Really, really awesome.
You will need:
-12 oz milk chocolate chips
-9 oz semisweet chocolate chips
- 2 tbs brown sugar
-pinch salt
-1/2 tsp almond extract
-3 tbs light corn syrup (I promise that this isn’t the high fructose stuff that’s so bad for you found in processed food…)
-1 1/2 cups sour cream
1. Melt the chocolate most of the way, either in the microwave on 50% power or on the stovetop over medium heat. When it’s almost all the way melted, take it off the heat and stir until smooth. Don’t burn it – burned chocolate smells almost as bad as burned hair. A kitchen mistake every baker knows.
2. In a mixing bowl, stir together the sugar, salt, almond and corn syrup. Stir in the sour cream with one or two strokes. Add the melted chocolate, beat on low until very smooth. If it’s too runny, let it sit for 30-60 minutes.
Before frosting, make a soaking solution for the cake. I had never used this technique before, but this really enhances your frosting and cake’s flavors. To do so: mix together 1 cup of hot water with 1 cup of sugar until the sugar dissolves. Add in 2 tbs rum or liqueur of your choice (I like Grand Mariner). Drizzle 3-4 tbs of this over each layer of your cake before frosting it. The hot water evaporates all of the alcohol, so not to worry serving this to those who cannot have any.
To make the frosting more chocolatey, play with the quantities/types of chocolate – use dark, or use more semi-sweet and less milk. You could also use bars of chocolate chopped into little bits, but chocolate companies are making chips much more high quality than they used to (there are more options than Tollhouse! I promise!), so I think there’s no shame in using them.
As the summer hits New York City, and I experience its heat, its humidity so thick it’s hard to breathe, its sleepy days and frenetic nights, I’m brought to a far away place where I spent a summer now six years ago. El Salvador, a tiny Central American country where the heat never breaks, and life moves painfully slowly and so fast you can’t keep up all at once.
I’ve had a long time to reflect on my time there. Most time in El Salvador, including mine there, is spent outdoors. Their national song, a poetic description of the Salvadoran people’s dignity, courage and strength in the face of brutal repression and a horrible war begins with “the Salvadoran people have the sky for a hat,” meaning that they are always outside, retreating only inside to sleep. The family I lived with for those three intense months, like most Salvadoran families, had no formal kitchen. They had a large sink, called a pila, outside under a tree, where all washing (and I mean to say I washed my dishes, my clothing and stood there nude at night and washed myself) takes place. They had a small gas range and a refrigerator also outside, protected by a porch. Like most Salvadoran families, they had no oven, and bought most of their food already prepared from street vendors, cooking only on the occasional Sunday after church. This is a place where it is always too hot to cook.
I think about this now, when my computer’s weather monitor says it’s 99 degrees, and I too eat mostly food that’s already prepared, or that requires no cooking and certainly no baking. The only baked good I ever ate there was a sweet and savory cheese bread known there as “quesadilla,” not to be confused with the more popular Mexican version. No one taught me to make it, as it is made there only in restaurant kitchens and not private homes. I’ve made it here several times, substituting Parmesan for Salvadoran cheese, which is remarkably similar but somehow different all at once.
Here is a Salvadoran Quesadilla recipe, taken from epicurious.com, for days I want to remember El Salvador, but it thankfully isn’t too hot to cook:
- 1 3/4 cups sifted cake flour (not self-rising; sift before measuring)
- 1 teaspoon baking powder
- 1/4 teaspoon salt
- 1 stick unsalted butter, softened
- 3/4 cup sugar
- 2 large eggs at room temperature 30 minutes
- 3 tablespoons sour cream
- 1/2 ounces finely grated parmesan
- 1/2 cup whole milk
- 1 teaspoon sesame seeds (optional), not toasted
They say to use a 9×5 inch loaf pan, however, I’ve only ever seen this made in round cake pans.
Preheat oven to 400°F with rack in middle. Line bottom and sides of pan with parchment paper.
Whisk together flour, baking powder, and salt. Beat butter and sugar in another bowl with an electric mixer at medium-high speed until pale, about 1 minute. Beat in eggs, sour cream, and cheese.
Reduce speed to low and mix in milk. Add flour mixture and mix until just combined.
Transfer batter to pan and smooth top. Sprinkle with sesame seeds (if using). Bake until a wooden pick or skewer inserted into center of cake comes out clean, 30 to 40 minutes.
Cool to warm in pan, 20 to 30 minutes. Turn cake out onto a rack. Serve cake slightly warm or at room temperature.
One of the greatest things about food is that it lets you travel without leaving home. Traveling to far away places might not happen every day, but eating their cuisines can. In that vein, today I bring you a cookie recipe from either side of the Aegean.
Lemon-Polenta Cookies:
* 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
* 3/4 cup polenta (yellow cornmeal)
* pinch of salt
* 1 stick unsalted butter, softened
* 1/2 cup sugar
* 1/2 tablespoon lemon zest, (1 lemon)
* 1 large egg
* 1/2 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
Pre-heat to 350. Whisk together the dry ingredients, set aside. Cream the butter, sugar and lemon zest until light and fluffy. Add in the egg, the the vanilla. Slowly add in the dry mixture.
Place the batter into a pastry bag with a large star tip. Pipe 2-3 inch S-Shapes onto parchment lined cookie sheets, spaced at least 1/2 an inch apart. Bake for 15-18 minutes.
My cookies came out flatter than the recipe’s picture, but they were wonderfully moist and stayed for several days.
Kourambiethes (Greek Powdered Sugar Cookies)
*2 sticks of butter, creamed until fluffy
*1 egg yolk
*2 (or more) cups flour
*1/2 tsp baking powder
*3 tsp liquor (brandy or whisky work well)
*1 tsp vanilla
*1/2 cup chopped almonds
Preheat to 350. Add 1/2 cup powdered sugar to the butter and beat well. Beat in the egg yolk, vanilla and liquor. Add the almonds and enough flour so that the dough stops sticking to the side of the bowl.
Shape the cookies into small crescents, place them on a parchment lined baking sheet, and bake for 15 minutes or so. Let cool for about 5 minutes.
Transfer to a clean surface, placing the very close together. Dust with confectioner’s sugar, using a mesh sieve. Let cool completely.
Sometimes I wonder if I’ve gone crackers. I mean, don’t we all? Well, I don’t have an answer to that question, but I did make some crackers and an eggplant spread to go with them recently. Making food probably helps keep me sane, so I make crackers and not go crackers.
Herbed Whole-Wheat Flatbread:
Ingredients:
a cup of warm water
one packet active dry yeast
1 1/2 cups all purpose flour
1 1/2 cups whole wheat flour
4 tbs olive oil
Coarse salt
1 tsp sugar
1 egg
Fresh herbs (your choice)
1. Place water in a mixing bowl and sprinkle yeast in. Allow to stand for about 5 minutes. Stir in flours, oil, 2 tsp salt, sugar. Stir until it forms a dough.
2. Turn the dough out onto a floured surface, knead 2-3 minutes. Lightly oil a large bowl, put the dough in it, cover it, and allow the dough to rise for an hour. While you’re waiting, chop up some fresh herbs in any combination you’d like, I used oregano and rosemary for mine. You’ll need about 3/4 of a cup total.
3. Preheat the oven to 350. In a small bowl, mix the egg with a tablespoon of water and set aside. Put parchment on a baking sheet. Divide the dough into 16 equal pieces. Roll out the pieces into long, thin crackers and put them on the sheet (do this as quickly as possible, the dough continues to rise). Brush the crackers with the egg wash, and sprinkle on some salt (not too much! a pinch will do), and herbs onto the crackers.
4. Bake about 20 minutes, allow to cool.
Caponata (Italian Eggplant Spread)
This is a tasty, healthy spread to top your crackers.
Ingredients:
2 medium eggplants
2 tbs red wine or cider vinegar
1 tbs sugar
1 cup chopped cilantro
2/3 cup chopped roasted red peppers (jarred = okay)
1/4 cup rinsed capers
1. Preheat the oven to 350. Cut the eggplants in half and put them on a parchment lined baking sheet. Roast for 45 minutes – 1 hour, allowing them to get soft and their bitter juices to leak out. Let cool until you can touch them without hurting yourself.
2. Scoop the flesh out of the eggplants, throw away the skins. Add vinegar, sugar, a dash of salt and pepper and stir. Allow to cool.
3. Put in the remaining ingredients. Place the caponata in the fridge for at least an hour.
This spread will stay for several days in the fridge, and can be eaten cold or room temperature.
Happy Memorial Day everyone! I hope you all enjoyed a nice long weekend. I sure did.
This lovely summer weekend, I saw a cake much like this at a local bakery:
A hamburger! Totally cute, right? Okay, also a little gross-looking. But it reminded me of my first foray into cooking/baking, a 4-H project back in the 4th grade (for which I got a blue ribbon, thank-you-very-much). I don’t have kids, but when I do, this fun little project is something I would totally do with them… and if you do, please feel free to make them with yours! They’re very easy and kid-friendly, and while they’re not exactly for foodies, they’d be fun for a summer bbq, too.
Hamburger Cookies!
You will need:
A box of Nilla Wafers
A box of Thin Mints (if you can’t get the Girl Scout kind, Keebler makes a decent substitute).
Sweetened Coconut
Food Coloring
Frosting (in 4th grade, I used canned, these days, I’d probably use a simple home-made butter cream)
sanding sugar
First, put the coconut in a bowl and mix with green food coloring. This is the “lettuce” for your burgers.
As a kid, I liked to also dye the frosting red so it would be “ketchup,” but you can also leave it white and say it’s “mayonnaise.” Your call.
Spread frosting on a Nilla Wafer. Stick a Thin Mint on top. Spread more frosting on the Thin mint. Put on some coconut. Top with another frosting-spreaded Nilla Wafer. You can put sanding sugar on top for “sesame seeds.”
The finished product looks something like this:
Silly? Yes. Using lots of pre-packaged, pre-processed ingredients? Check. A great introduction into baking for children? I think so. They can do it all themselves, because there’s no oven or sharp knives, and they’re actually really cute. And while I’m a grown-up and a food blogger, I’d be happy to eat one of these today.
Who doesn’t love pie? Nobody. Pie rocks.
Pie crust is tough to make. Here’s how I like to make mine:
(This makes A LOT of crust. Enough for basically two pies. You can put any leftovers in the fridge or add more sugar and turn them into cookies).
3 3/4 cups flour
1 1/2 tsp salt
3-4 tsp sugar (or more, if you want)
3 sticks of butter, cold and in small pieces (hells yeah)
1 cup ice cold milk (some people like water, but I love me my dairy. Nonfat is fine).
Process everything except the milk together, either in a food processor or with a pastry cutter, until it looks like a coarse meal. Slowly add the milk, until it holds together. Shape it into a disc, place in plastic wrap, refrigerate at least a couple hours.
While you’re refrigerating, make your filling. I used strawberries and pears in the one pictured, because I wanted strawberry rhubarb but I couldn’t get any rhubarb. Pears are the tofu of pie filling, they’ll absorb whatever flavors are around them. Chop up the fruit into little pieces, saute in butter and sugar, and any spices you’d like (cinnamon, nutmeg…). Set aside.
Preheat the oven to 350. Take out the dough and put it on a floured surface. Roll out about half of it for one pie. Only roll it once. Don’t keep touching it up, it will make it less and less flaky. Put it in your pie tin, cut the hanging over edges with kitchen shears or a knife.
Put in your filling. To make a lattice pie, roll out more dough and cut into strips, either using kitchen shears, a knife or a pastry roller. Arrange it in a criss-crossed pattern on top of the pie, sticking it to the edges of the crust. You can also cut shapes with a cookie cutter and arrange them on your pie.
You can make a nice glaze by whisking up an egg yolk and a little heaving cream and brushing it on top. Sprinkle some sugar on. Pretty.
Bake for 75-90 minutes. Take out of the oven.
Strawberries are really juicy when baked. I drained the pie into the sink, seriously. This really helps. Peaches are similarly juicy. With these sorts of fruits, don’t entirely cover the pie with crust, so you can drain it.
Sometimes, you have a reason to go balls out. Well, not literally, but figuratively. You have an occasion to make your fanciest, richest, unhealthiest dish to celebrate a special occasion. I had an opportunity on Friday, which was the last day of my internship, and I wanted to say “Thank You” to everybody there, who were super friendly and welcoming to me, but going balls out.
So I made an incredible pound cake, and a strawberry-pear pie. I’m going to post about the cake today, and the pie later, for you guys to wait with baited breath. The director of the clinic, a brilliant psychiatrist and genuine foodie, stated that this was “one of the best cakes I’ve ever tasted.” So don’t just take it from me, this cake is delicious.
Why? It’s called a pound cake because the recipe calls for AN ENTIRE POUND OF BUTTER. Yup. That is what makes it so incredibly tasty. And something to eat in SMALL PORTIONS.
This is from Shirley Corriher’s BakeWise. You will need:
-a 12-cup (large) Bundt pan, greased and floured
-1 pound (4 sticks) of softened butter, unsalted
-2 3/4 cups of sugar (I like brown, but white is also fine)
-1 tbs vanilla extract (use real. Always. Imitation vanilla extract is horrid).
-Half a dozen eggs. Try to get them to room temp if possible, but cold is also okay.
-2 3/4 cups flour (I use unbleached, but any all-purpose flour is fine).
-Half cup heavy (whipping) cream
- 2 cups berries, fresh or frozen. I used blueberries, but raspberries, strawberries, cherries, blackberries, or any other berries or combination thereof would be tasty too.
Preheat the oven to 350. Place the cream in a medium bowl and put it in the freezer as you start.
Start by beating the butter to soften. Cream in the sugar. Then beat in the vanilla. Then, slowly beat in the eggs one by one. Then, add in the flour in 3 or 4 small batches, beat until just combined.
Take the cream out of the freezer. On high speed, whip it until it forms soft peaks (that’s exactly what it sounds like, it will look kind of like gentle hills in your bowl).
Fold the whipped cream into the batter. Don’t just add in the cream. Whipping it truly makes this cake have an incredible texture. It lightens it up, while it is still an incredibly moist cake. Fold in the berries. Spoon the batter into the greased, floured bundt pan.
The recipe said to bake it for 50-60 minutes, but mine took about 80 minutes. Test it with a butter knife or cake tester, it’s done when it comes out clean.
Not only does the clinic director think this cake is great, so does my cross-eyed, intellectually challenged cat:
Cookies are awesome. You know why? They’re the quickest, most whip-up-able baked good around. Cakes and pies and bread require some degree of pre-planning, and often grocery shopping, as well as precise, exact measurements. Cookies can often be made with whatever you have in the house.
Like these, peanut butter chocolate chip cookies. I made a quick, small batch of these the other weekend.
I used:
1/2 a stick of butter
1 cup flour
1/2 cup sugar
1/3 cup peanut butter (I had crunchy in the house, but smooth might even be preferable)
1 tsp baking powder
a pinch of salt
1 egg
1/2 (maybe a bit more) cup dark chocolate chips
Preheat the oven to 350. Put some parchment on a baking sheet.
Mix all the ingredients except the chocolate chips with an electric mixer. Then, mix in the chips with a spoon (you don’t want to destroy them with the power of the mixer).
I made fairly big, hearty cookies. So, I spooned about 3-4 tbs for each cookie onto the sheet, and flattened it down a little. Then I baked them for 10 minutes, until they just started to brown.
Peanut butter adds extra taste and moisture the plain old chocolate chip cookies, making these special. The important thing here is that with so few ingredients, use high quality chocolate. It really makes the difference.
A chocolate free variation would be to use a little more peanut butter, make smaller cookies, and press down with a criss-crossed fork design. Classic American peanut butter cookies. Another option that I’m dying to test out is to substitute nutella for peanut butter in those. I will let you know the results of that experiment when I do it. I suspect delicious, mostly because it involves nutella.
In case I didn’t share this before, for the past 16 months, I have been in an intensive master’s program. Anyone who’s been to graduate school knows that it truly kicks one’s ass. It has been well worthwhile, but exhausting, busy, stressful and just really, really intense.
Today is my last day of class. All of my papers are handed in. I graduate 2 weeks from tomorrow. And, I have promised myself that it’s time to catch up on some things I find enjoyable and that have nothing to do with my area of study. The first thing on my list: get to know Julia Child, the French Chef.
I know everyone loves Julia Child, but I am a bit too young to have watched the original PBS show, and was still in school when Julie and Julia came out. But, last month, I went to Washington DC and toured her kitchen at the Smithsonian Museum of American History. It was a thing of beauty. She had every kitchen tool imaginable, but it wasn’t a sterile chef’s kitchen. It was painted a beautiful blue-green, it had playful pictures everywhere, and magnets on the fridge. She was more than a chef, but a real person, who loved her home, and made it comfortable.
Next, I picked up a copy of her book, “My Life in France.” Wow. She tells the story of how she lived in France at the beginning of her marriage, and fell in love with French food, French wine, and French people. She discovered herself there, and realized her passion for cooking, and her dream of bringing the art and soul and most of all, joy, in cooking to Americans. It’s speckled with descriptions of the things she prepared and ate, and stories of her loving, fun relationship with her husband, her sheer humanity, her exuberance and insight. To be honest, a lot of the food itself isn’t all that appetizing to me (e.g. “little fish en lorgnette (a pretty dish in which the fish’s backbone is cut out, the body is rolled up to the head, and the whole is deep-fried in boiling fat)”). It’s her curiosity, her happiness, her honesty, and her exploration of a new culinary world that’s inspiring. Her lessons about cooking, about love, and life, and her propensity to look at the world with excitement are what makes her so incredible. And, the fact that she helped introduce America to a new way (the French way) of cooking and enjoying food (with wine! what a concept!) makes her a role model for me. I may never aspire to be a professional chef, but I hope to cook with the same devotion as Julia Child did forever.
Who else are some of your food heroes? Who inspires you?
