I’m not Jewish. I grew up an Irish Catholic. However, I have many Jewish friends, and one Jewish special someone. So, I made a Passover dessert this week using matzo. I’m informed that once Passover is over, Jewish people are so sick of matzo that they won’t look at until the next year, but I actually kind of like it. I mean, it’s just crackers, they’re simple, they’re tasty, and they make an easy base for things like:
CHOCOLATE CARAMEL MATZO!
First, make the caramel. Caramel is basically just dairy products and brown sugar melted together to make some gooey deliciousness.
Take about half a stick of butter, a cup and a half of brown sugar, and 3/4 cup milk and put them in a heavy saucepan. While stirring, bring them to a boil. Once they’re boiling, cover, and cook for 3-4 minutes. Uncover, cook for a minute or two more (watch it so it doesn’t burn), take off heat. Spread over the matzo, let cool.
Once the caramel is cool, melt some dark chocolate chips (use high quality) with some milk, so it’s spreadable. Spread this on top of the caramel.
I sprinkled some coarse sea salt on top. I LOVE salty chocolate, but be careful not to use too much. A little goes a long way. This is a fairly new taste to me, and I love to contrast. Delicious.
Allow to cool, and bon apetit! Easy, few ingredients, Kosher, delish. For those who celebrate, enjoy the rest of your Passover, for those who don’t, enjoy some chocolate-caramely matzo anyway! I’d like to think that food is the easiest (and tastiest) way to bridge cultures.
Speaking of, this image of a bloody confectionary lamb is from my new favorite website, Cake Wrecks: http://www.cakewrecks.blogspot.com
They also have a book out, and the tag is “when professional cakes go horribly, hilariously wrong.” Now, I’m not pretending that I’m the best cake decorator there is. Far from it. But some of the stuff there… makes me laugh to the point of tears. I hope you enjoy as well! (Warning: may not be suitable for work).
When I was younger, I thought that my aunt’s stuffed mushrooms were the classiest foodstuff ever created. Seriously. While they are made with pretty pedestrian ingredients, these little guys are tasty, vegetarian and still quite classy. One of my favorite recipes of all times. So here it is for you:
- 1 package regular button mushrooms
- 15-20 Ritz Crackers
- 3 cloves of garlic
- 1 small onion (or ½ large)
- 2 tbs. olive oil or butter
- oregano, basil, salt, pepper (all to taste)
- 1 cup shredded parmesan cheese (my aunt recommends Sargento because it’s pretty salty… mmm, salty…)
1. Preheat the oven to 350. Get out a clean, ungreased baking sheet.
2. Wash the mushrooms. Remove the stems from the caps, reserve.
3. Crush up the Ritz crackers into small pieces, set aside.
4. In a food processor mince the onion, garlic and mushroom stems together. I love the food processor… I only have a little guy. I went to Amazing Savings to buy a new one, but they didn’t have one. They did however, give me plenty of sexual harassment. Why do I go to Amazing Savings?
5. In a skillet, heat the olive oil or butter, bring to medium heat. Add in the mushroom stem mix, and sauté until soft and it smells fragrant (about 10 minutes). Add in the spices to taste.
6. Add the mushroom stem mixture to the crushed Ritz crackers, combine. When it is cool, stuff this into the mushroom caps. Top with shredded cheese.
7. Bake the mushrooms on the ungreased sheet for about 20 minutes, when the cheese is melted and the mushrooms change color a little, serve warm.
So there you have it. A great little appetizer for a party. Or, if you’re like me, something to make on a weeknight when you need some cheering up and you want to feel classy. I recommend pairing a dry white wine.
Hey Everyone,
Sorry for not posting in a bit, things have been a little nuts for me. However, I’m back with a tasty quick bread recipe full of ingredients us Pretty Girls all seem very fond of – pumpkin and brown butter. I made mini-loaves, but you could also make a regular sized loaf, just increase the baking time.
Before they go in the oven
Here’s the recipe, from Martha Stewart Living:
(Makes eight 2 1/2-by-4-inch loaves (really little guys – really only 1 big loaf))
- 6 ounces (1 1/2 sticks) unsalted butter, plus more for pans
- 1/4 cup fresh sage, cut into thin strips, plus more, whole, for garnish
- 1 2/3 cups all-purpose flour, plus more for pans
- 2 teaspoons baking powder
- 1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
- 1/4 teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg
- 1/8 teaspoon ground cloves
- 1 teaspoon salt
- 1 cup solid-pack pumpkin (from one 15-ounce can)
- 1 cup packed light-brown sugar
- 2 large eggs
1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Butter and flour eight 2 1/2-by-4-inch loaf pans. Melt butter in a medium saucepan over medium-low heat. Add sage strips, and cook until butter turns golden brown, 5 to 8 minutes. Transfer mixture to a bowl, and let cool slightly.
2. Meanwhile, whisk together flour, baking powder, cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves, and salt.
3. Whisk together pumpkin, sugar, eggs, and browned butter with sage. Add flour mixture, and whisk until incorporated. Divide mixture evenly among 8 pans. Smooth tops gently using an offset spatula.
4. Place pans on a rimmed baking sheet, and bake until a tester inserted into centers comes out clean, about 30 minutes. Cool.
Finished Loaf
The pumpkin makes these nice and moist, and the sage adds an unexpected flavor. They’re really different from your average quickbread.
Also, here’s a picture of my kitty cat checking out the completed loaves. Aww.
Howdy all. So, tonight is the next edition of Pretty Girls Get Rediculous. While I’m sure there will be a few posts regarding this, we were asked to make up recipe cards for each other. In addition to the recipes for what I’m bringing (I want to wait to post about those until I have pictures), I also made up a card for my very favorite cake recipe. This is my bombshell. It is totally a special occasion cake, as it contains a LOT of fat and sugar (which I still contend is better than the nasty processed kind, but to be eaten in moderation, nonetheless).
It is a Caramel Cake with Caramel Frosting. That’s right, the delicious candy substance we all love, in cake form. I found the recipe in The Moosewood Restaurant New Classics Cookbook, and tweaked it a bit.
For the Cake:
- 2 ½ cups flour
- 2 tsp baking powder
- ¼ tsp salt
- 1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter
- 2 cups brown sugar
- 5 eggs
- ¾ cup milk (nonfat okay!)
- 2 tsp vanilla
1. Preheat the oven to 350. Line 2 9-inch round cake pans, or a sheet cake pan, with parchment.
2. I a bowl, sift the 1st 3 ingredients. In another bowl, cream together the butter and sugar. Add the eggs, one at a time, mixing after each. Stir together the milk and vanilla in a measuring cup. Alternate adding the milk mixture and the flour mixture to the creamed mixture create a smooth batter.
3. Divide the batter evenly in the 2 pans, bake for 30 – 35 minutes, cool completely.
For the Icing:
- 2 cups brown sugar
- 3 tbs unsalted butter
- 1 cup half and half (I use the Land O’Lakes non-fat kind, but I can’t tell you how they get it to be that way).
- 1 tsp vanilla
1. In a heavy, preferably non-stick saucepan, combine the sugar, butter and half and half. Bring to a rolling boil, stirring often. Cover and cook at medium-high heat for 3 minutes. Uncover and continue cooking until the caramel begins to thicken, about 4 minutes, being careful not to let it burn. Sometimes this can take a little longer than the recipe says, however. Just keep a close eye on it.
2. Add the vanilla and beat with an electric mixer on high until it gets thick and creamy – this takes a while, 10-15 minutes.
3. While the frosting is still warm, frost and fill the cake. Add some half-and-half if it gets too thick to spread.
I wish I had a picture, but I don’t because I’m at work and I haven’t made this in a while. It’s one of those high-maintenance-but-worth-it recipes, the frosting is particularly finicky. But, this is the one cake I make that I am sure will please all – it’s become famous in my family, and is asked for by many at various family functions.
Anyone else have any “famous” recipes to share? I’d love to see them!
Also, more posts on food I’m actually making for tonight coming later this week!
I like to bake. It’s sort of my thing. But, I also need to eat real food occasionally. And something great is when I can do both. I found a cookbook called “Mollie Katzen’s Vegetable Heaven” on sale recently, so it’s from the same person who wrote The Moosewood Cookbook, which is my favorite cookbook, and probably the most famous vegetarian cookbook of all time. So, I adapted her recipe for “French Picnic Tart,” or, as I like to call it, Dinner Pie.
First make a crust. Katzen uses a 10-inch springform tart pan, but I don’t have one so I used a standard 9 inch pie tin. First, mix together 1 1/2 cups of flour and 1 stick of butter, either with a pastry cutter or food processor/blender until it looks like a course meal. Then, add a little water, like 2 tablespoons, until it just sticks together. Full disclosure: I used a little too much water, so my crust was a teeny bit mushy. So really use the bare minimum. Mix it together some more, make it into a ball, and put it on a floured surface. Roll it out and press it into your pan. Put it into the fridge until you’re ready for it.
Then, make the filling. When you start, pre-heat the oven to 375. Take about a pound of small red potatoes (get real baby ones if you can) and put them in a saucepan, cover them with water, bring them to a boil, then cover them and cook them for about 12 minutes. While that’s happening, heat up a tablespoon or two of oil in a skillet under low heat. Put in a thinly sliced onion and some salt and cook it slowly – 10-15 minutes, stirring occasionally. When they’re done, just take them off the heat.
When the potatoes are done, rinse and drain. When you can touch them, slice them up.
Now you’re ready to start assembling the pie. On the first layer, add about a cup of a mild cheese (I used reduced fat swiss). Sprinkle it with some tasty spices, I put on sage and oregano.
Next, put the onions on top, spreading them out. Then, add the potatoes in an even(ish) layer. Last, add a layer of bell peppers topped with just a little more cheese.
Bake for about 40 minutes. I recommend putting the tin on a cookie sheet to make it more manageable.
This is super rich. It IS French after all. Put it’s tasty. It tastes good hot, warm or cold. Seriously. I recommend serving with a greensalad..
Enjoy some Dinner Pie!
So, I have some very unsurprising things to say as a prelude to this post. One, is that my beloved baking Grammy used to make me and my brother individual mini-pies with our initials on them whenever she made a big grown-up pie, because, as I have mentioned before, my Grammy is my hero. Secondly, as I’ve mentioned before, a few months ago, I made cookies on a first date. And, because truly this is the best romantic gesture I’ve ever made, we just celebrated our first Valentine’s Day together. So, for that, I decided to make individual heart-shaped pies to celebrate. I hear that in England, they have such a thing called hand-pies, but that they contain dry, ground beef inside, instead of delicious, sugary buttery fruit.
First, make the dough. Here’s the thing about dough. It is really difficult to make it so it’s not too dry or not too gooey. I personally prefer things to be a little gooier rather than a little drier, so I put in a little extra liquid. This also makes it just a little easier to manage.
You’ll need 2.5 cups of flour, 1 tsp salt, 2-3 tsp sugar, 2 sticks of (unsalted!) butter, cut up into little pieces, and about 2/3 cup milk (I recommend pouring it over ice).
Mix up the dry ingredients and butter, either using a food processor or pastry cutter, until it looks like a course meal. Add the milk and mix until it seems manageable. Shape into a disk and refrigerate for a while, at least an hour.
Then, make the filling. I’d recommend using firmer fruit, I used pear, but you could go for apple, too as a base, and I added in some blueberries. So, chop up about 2 cups worth of a firmer fruit (I used 3 pears), and then around 3/4 cup of something else… raspberries, strawberries, in my case, blueberries… whatever strikes your fancy/is in your kitchen/is on sale…
Toss the hard fruit in a tbs or so of lemon juice. Heat up about 2 tbs of butter (ps. I love butter), and put in the hard fruit, and gradually add 3-4 tbs of sugar, and cook about 5 minutes. At the end of cooking, add in some nutmeg. And perhaps cinnamon. Feel free to get a little more creative if that’s your thing… Allspice? Cloves? Boundless possibilities. Put this delicious, gooey fruit in a bowl and toss in the berries.
Preheat your oven to 350. Roll out the dough. If flakiness is super important to you, refrigerate the chilled dough for a while after you roll it out.
Cut the dough into desired shape. I did this the ghetto way. I got some card stock, made a heart in a roughly 4 inch shape, and traced it with a knife. I made 6 hearts. (Whatever you do, make an even number of shapes). On one half of these shapes, brush on beaten egg. Then, top that half of the shapes with your filling, try to equally distribute it. Then, carefully place the other dough shapes on top. Seal them together with a fork.
Put them on a parchment-lined baking sheet, and make for 35-40 minutes. If you want to be all fancy, and you can find it, sprinkle them with sanding sugar first.
These pies definitely contributed to a lovely Valentine’s Day, and I hope the first of many…
One day recently, I went into a local bakery/coffee shop to buy a latte. And on the counter, I saw something that nearly made me squeal: Nutella cookies. Why had I never thought of that? Nutella… the European chocolate-hazelnut spread that everyone loves and basically symbolizes decadence… delightfully held in a shortbread-sugar cookie shell. I resisted buying it that day, but vowed to make my own version… soon.
So I did. These are so easy to make, yet so delicious. First, make a simple no-chill sugar cookie dough:
Preheat oven to 350.
You will need 3 cups flour, 1 tsp baking soda, 1 tsp cream of tartar, 1/4 tsp salt (I prefer sea salt), 1 1/2 cups granulated sugar (I prefer cane sugar that’s minimally processed), 2 sticks of chilled unsalted butter, cut into slices, 2 eggs and 1 tsp vanilla.
Sift together the flour, baking soda, cream of tartar and salt in a bowl.
Put the sugar and butter in another bowl and cut with a pastry cutter until it looks like a coarse meal. Beat in the eggs and vanilla with a spoon. Add in the dry ingredients and blend with a spoon, and then get in there with your hands are knead it.
Wash your gooey, sugar cookie battered hands (I wouldn’t judge you if you licked your fingers first), and flour a surface and a rolling pin. Roll out the dough and cut equal amounts of a shape, one with a hole in the middle so it’s just an outline. I used snowflakes because my mom gave me these awesome snowflake cookie-cutters for Christmas, but you can use whatever you want (I suggest hearts for Valentine’s Day…). If you want to make your own shapes, draw it on card-stock, cut it out, and then place it on the dough and trace it with a knife.
Place the shapes onto parchment lined cookie sheets and bake for 12 to 15 minutes, until they just start to brown at the edges.
Allow them to cool, at least so you can handle them without burning yourself. Spread a layer of nutella onto the shape without the hole in the middle. Then sandwich the shape with the cut-out middle on top. If you have it in the house (for some reason I don’t) sift a little confectioner’s sugar on top.
Full disclosure, I bought fake Nutella, it was fair-trade chocolate-hazelnut spread. It tastes exactly the same, and the farmers who grew the cocoa and nuts were treated with some human dignity. I know it’s expensive, but I think it’s important to buy fair trade when it’s available. To learn more, go to http://www.fairtradefederation.org.
Anyway, the cookies were awesome! Totally delicious. Thanks, local bakery, for coming up with such a brilliant idea for me to steal!
Hey Everyone, time for an easy, healthy (well, ish) quick bread recipe. (reminder, quick breads are made without yeast, and hence don’t need to take a lot of time for rising). It seems to come up a lot, but New England traditions influence my baking quite a bit, and even though my home state of Massachusetts broke my heart a little recently (seriously, a Republican in Teddy’s seat? It’s not right), I still made some brown bread, a tradition started by the Pilgrims (who were also nuts). Brown bread is colored as such because it has molasses, also a key ingredient in Boston Baked Beans. In this recipe, adopted from Weight Watcher’s, I add blueberries (another New England specialty), and teach you how to make Poor Man’s Buttermilk, which is great for when you don’t have any available.
First, make the poor man’s buttermilk by adding 2 tsp to 1 tbs of vinegar to 1/2 cup of milk (low or non fat okay), and let it sit for a few minutes. This will slightly curdle the milk so it has that buttermilk tang. You can do this for any baking recipe where buttermilk isn’t the main ingredient (get real buttermilk for buttermilk pancakes or biscuits).
Preheat the oven to 375 and spray a loaf pan. In one bowl, mix together 1 1/4 cups whole wheat flour, 1 tsp baking powder, 1 tsp grated orange or lemon zest, 1/2 tsp baking soda, 1 tsp cinnamon and a pinch of salt. In another, combine the “buttermilk,” an egg, 3 tbs molasses, 2 tbs dark brown sugar, and I would recommend about 1 or 3 tbs honey. Add this and 1/2 to 3/4 cup blueberries to the dry mixture, stir to just combine.
Put it in the loaf pan, bake about 35 minutes.
Because this comes from weight watcher’s, it’s not all that sweet. The blueberries really help that, and add some moisture, which it needs because of the whole wheat flour. It makes a nice breakfast or snack, though it’s not truly a dessert, which brown bread really isn’t. The whole wheat flour makes it a little grainier than more traditional brown breads, but also much healthier. It’s a simple one to whip up quick, and to not cheat too much on your diet. If anyone’s doing WW, 1/12 of the loaf = about 1.5 points. (As I’ve mentioned before, I think, the weight watcher’s program has totally changed my life, I highly recommend it!)
Bread. The staff of life. Probably the most recognizable foodstuff in the Western world… is really, really time-consuming and a little finicky.
I decided to make some healthier, mixed-grain bread. I’m no Atkins diet believer, but I do think it’s best not to eat too much white flour and add in some other healthy grains.
Note: to make this recipe, you need a mixer with a dough hook or paddle attachment.
To make one loaf, first gently mix one packet active dry yeast, 1 teaspoon honey and 1/4 cup warm (not hot) water in a small bowl and set aside. Also, soak about 3 tablespoons of bulgur with 1/4 cup of water in a small bowl and set that aside. When the yeasty stuff looks foamy (roughly 5 minutes) place it into your mixing bowl. Add in 2 tablespoons melted butter, 3/4 cup warm water and about 1 1/2 tablespoons of honey. Then, add in 3/4 cups white flour and one cup whole wheat flour, and mix with your dough hook or paddle attachment on low speed until it’s smooth. Then, add in the bulgur, 1/4 cups rolled oats (just plain old oatmeal), 2 tablespoons of flaxseeds and 2 tablespoons of raw sunflower seeds, as well as another 3/4 cups white flour and 1 cup whole wheat flour. Mix until it forms a rough ball, coming away from the bowl.
Butter a large bowl and set aside. Flour a surface. Knead the dough for about 5 minutes. Shape into a ball, transfer to the buttered bowl, cover with plastic wrap, and put it in a warm place until it doubles in size (about an hour).
Butter a loaf pan. Punch down the dough (this is fun, you can pretend to be a boxer). Shape it into an 8 1/2 inch long (1/2 inch thick) rectangle. Fold over the two sides and make a seam, them put it seam side down into the loaf pan. Brush it with beaten egg whites or melted butter. You can also sprinkle more oats on top, which looks pretty. Put more plastic wrap over the loaf pan, and let it rise for another 45 minutes-hour. In the meantime, preheat to 450. When you’re ready to put the loaf in, drop the oven temp to 400. Bake 20 minutes, rotate the pan, and bake 20-25 more minutes.
Eat this write away, it goes stale fast. It is a LOT of work, but very tasty, especially toasted. I want to try it with some raisins or dried cranberries in it, I think that’d be awesome.
I love macaroons. Actually, I love what I have been informed are Jewish, as opposed to French, macaroons. French macaroons are these sandwich-type cookies:
I could take or leave this kind. They’re okay. The other macaroon cookies are popular at Passover because they can be made without flour, and have a history in the Jewish community, but they are also some of my favorite cookies. They can be made with ground nuts, but most often, with coconut. A lot of people don’t really like coconut, but I love it – it’s sweet, it’s moist, it has natural saturated fat, which is okay in small quantities and a lot better than animal-based saturated fats like butter. Mmm, butter.
Anyway, my coconut macaroon recipe makes them come out nice and moist, though, I should mention, has a little flour and is thus not Kosher for Passover (if anyone is interested, around Passover time I can try to amend these to make them flourless).
First, preheat to 325. Then, beat 2 egg whites and a tiny bit of salt with an electric mixture until soft peaks form. Slowly add in 1/3 cup sugar and beat for 1-2 minutes. Beat in 1 tsp vanilla. Add 6 ounces of shredded, sweetened coconut (I like Baker’s brand, which also originated walking distance from where I grew up), and 3 tablespoons flour. Mix thoroughly with a spoon or the electric mixer on very low speed.
I use my hands for this part (it’s easier), but make about two tablespoons of the mixture into a ball, and space these apart on a parchment lined sheet. Bake 18-20 minutes.
You could stop here. You’d have tasty macaroons. But I don’t like to stop. Once the cookies are cool, I melt up some chocolate, sometimes I add liquor, like Grand Marnier, if I’m so inclined. Then, I dip the cookies in the melted chocolate and let that thoroughly cool. When they’ve got chocolate, I’m pretty sure these are my favorite cookies of all time.
