I am finishing up my last quarter at graduate school which is why my posting has been a little sparse these days. I will be done soon, and I will get back to posting multiple times a week. Until then, here is a look at my attempts to do homework.
Author: meteaandlucy
Flourless Chocolate Cake
I have been terribly busy with the end of my semester so I haven’t been cooking or posting as much as usual. The good news is that I am almost done. The bad news is that I still have about three weeks left of stress. So, here is a recipe that I made a while ago but was keeping for a rainy day.
Flourless Chocolate Cake is both incredibly easy and incredibly tasty. It looks good when guests come over too. You do need to make it over two days, so you need to plan ahead, but otherwise it is a breeze.
This recipe is slightly modified from the America’s Test Kitchen actually. I have made it a couple of times because Alec loves it, and it is often what he suggests for desserts. Feel free to dress it up with some whip cream or fresh berries. It is a real treat.
Ingredients:
8 eggs
1 pound bitter-sweet chocolate
2 sticks of butter
1/4 cup coffee (I use espresso)
Method:
The recipe says to melt the chocolate, butter, and espresso in the microwave until smooth. I found this to be a terrible method. I melted it in a double-boiler. If money weren’t an issue I would do this with really nice chocolate. However, I am not made of money here so I made it with regular old chocolate chips. It still tastes good. Let it cool slightly.
Meanwhile whip the eggs in an electric mixer until very light yellow and fluffy.
Mix the eggs into the chocolate–put about 1/3 of the eggs in at each time.
Try not to over mix the cake batter.
Once it is combined, put the chocolate mixture into a greased spring foam pan that has been wrapped in tin foil.
The cake is going to bake at 325 in a water bath. So put the spring foam pan into a larger pan and pour boiling water around. I find it easiest to put the pan into the oven before I pour in the water. The water should come up about an inch and a half around the pan.
Note: you should probably use a bigger pan for the water bath. I just don’t have one.
If you are using a 8″ pan bake for 22-25. If you are using a 9″ pan, bake for 18-21 minutes.
Once the cake is done baking, pull it out of the oven and let it cool to room temperature. Then put it in the fridge and let it cool overnight.
Then you can eat some for breakfast the next day! I am kidding, though I am occasionally known to eat dessert for breakfast.
Lucy and the Carrot
Lucy recently hit the developmental stage where she gets upset when we take things away from her. This is making life a little harder, especially because she wants everything I have.
Yesterday I felt like a carrot. So, I went and peeled one and sat down by Lucy. She grabbed it from me because that is what she does, and this is what followed…
She was quite excited about the carrot.
She was not going to let it go without a fight.
However I eventually did need to take it from her. As you can see she was not okay with that.
Then she tried to get it back.
When that didn’t work she decided to roll around angrily in her boppy.
Trying the sad look…At this point I took her outside to look at flowers in hopes she would forget about the carrot.
We found a dandelion which made her happy again.
Lime Basil Mini-Bundts
This Mother’s Day I got some pretty great presents. Two of these were a mini-bundt pans and a new bundt book. The mini bundts are so cute. They are supposed to be single serving, but they are a large single serving. They take about a cup of batter per mini-bundt, which actually makes good size cake.
The book I got is called Kiss My Bundt. It is a recipe book from a bakery in California that specializes in bundt cakes, which is a pretty funny idea. I like it because it has some bundt ideas I haven’t seen before, like the Basil Lime recipe I made yesterday. Luckily I had just bought a basil plant, so I was ready to go. Although Alec, my dad, and my brother were all skeptical, they were very good cakes. The flavor was not particularly basily or limey, but it was tasty nonetheless. I made some butter cream frosting to put on the top. The frosting would not have been necessary, but it made a nice addition. If you have only a big bundt pan (the 10-12 cup) you can still make this recipe–just bake it longer. I usually find that big bundts take about an hour, but start checking it at 45 minutes depending on your oven.
Basil-Lime Bundt
1/3 cup basil leaves without stems (I just grabbed a few big leaves off my plant. I don’t think this needs to be all that specific.)
1 1/4 cup milk
2 1/2 cups flour
2 1/2 teaspoons of baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
3/4 cup butter, room temp
1 3/4 cups sugar
3 eggs, room temp
1/2 teaspoon vanilla
1 tablespoon lime juice (I used a lot more–juice from 3 limes)
1 teaspoon lime oil or zest from 4 limes (I had zest from three limes because that is all I had.)
Chop the basil and put it in the milk. Let it sit for at least 10 minutes.
Sift the flour, baking powder, and salt together, set aside.
Cream the butter with an electric mixer until soft and smooth. Add in the sugar, mix well. Add in the eggs, mix well.
At this point, add in the lime zest, the juice, and the vanilla, and mix.
Beginning and ending with the flour, add 1/3 of the flour mixture in. Then 1/2 the milk mixture, then the flour, then the milk, then the flour, until all is mixed together.
Transfer the batter to the bundt pan(s) which have been prepared with Baker’s Joy.
Bake at 350. The book says to bake it for 18-22 minutes. I baked mine for about 30 and honestly I wish I would have left it in a little longer.
Let the cakes cool in their molds for 15 minutes. Pop them out and let them cool to room temp on cooling racks.
Meanwhile make the frosting…
3/4 cup butter, room temp
3 cups powdered sugar
1 teaspoon of vanilla
1-2 tablespoons milk
Cream the butter until soft and smooth. Slowly add in the sugar. Add vanilla, and enough milk to make it creamy and spreadable. I also threw in some lemon extract to give the frosting a little something extra, but it certainly is not necessary. It is easy as that. It is ready to spread on your mini-bundts.
Happy Mother’s Day, and happy bundt making!
Weird Recipes from Yesteryear: Prune Whip–not sure why we thought this could be good in the first place
I am starting to see why these weird recipes did not stand the test of time. For our second instalment of Weird Recipes from Yesteryear, we decided to make a dessert called Prune Whip. We actually thought it might be good, and I am not really sure why we did. It wasn’t. I did like it more than the Tomato Soup Cake, but Anna and Alec thought it was much worse.
I started to think about why these recipes are bad. I think it boils down to a lack of access to ingredients in the 1940s. Many of the recipes have prunes, dates, or canned pineapple. I think you can attribute this to the fact that fresh fruits and veggies were not as readily available in off seasons. In Minnesota where it is cold most of the time, our fresh fruit season is very short. Cooks would have had to make the best with dried and canned fruits.
Anna and I did go through the recipes after the prune disaster and found some other recipes that sound good, not just weird. We hope to give you a recipe worth eating in the next edition of Weird Recipes from Yesteryear. Until then, here is Prune Whip…
Ingredients:
2 cups cooked prunes
2 egg whites
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 cup chopped walnuts
Method:
We took about 1 1/2 cups of dried prunes and simmered them in water until they were nice and juicy. Once they had cooled some we chopped them. However, they didn’t so much chop as mush up.
Meanwhile, mix the egg whites until stiff.
Add in the sugar.
Okay, Lucy isn’t really putting in the sugar, but she was pretty interested in what was going on.
Fold in the chopped nuts and prunes.
Once mixed put the mixture in a pie shell that had been pre-baked. I made a butter pie crust and baked it for 375 for 30 minutes covered with tin foil and pie weights. This worked well. I used the pie shell I used in my key lime pie recipe if you are interested, but any pie shell would work.
Bake for 20 minutes.
It was not very good. As you can see from the photo below, none of us finished the dessert.
Asian Dinner Party: Spring Rolls, Steamed Dumplings, and Key Lime Pie
Yesterday we had our friends Caleb and Kara over for dinner. As you can see from the photo to your left, Lucy did not want me to spend my time making the meal. So I strapped her to me, which is not the easiest way to make a meal, and started cooking. Here I am making spring rolls, and she had finally fallen asleep. Despite having a baby strapped to me, it was a very fun evening. I had only met Kara a few times before so it was great to get to know her better.
For the dinner we made the yellow Thai curry that Alec and I like so much. Here is the link to that: https://meteaandlucy.com/2011/04/05/yellow-coconut-curry/
To accompany the main dish we made vegetarian spring rolls and pork steamed dumplings. To finish off the meal I meal I did a key lime pie. I have been making key lime pies for a number of years and slowly improving on it. I think I might have perfected it last night (not to sound too arrogant about my pie or anything).
To be honest, I made too much food like usual. You would not need to make all these things for a dinner. You could probably have a nice appetizer dinner with spring rolls and dumplings for example.
Spring Rolls:
This is a recipe you can easily modify according to taste.
Ingredients:
Spring Roll Wrappers (You can find these at Asian grocery stores or the ethnic food aisle at your grocery store. They are large, hard, translucent discs)
Warm water in a large dish
Thin rice noodles
Cilantro
Green onions (cut lengthwise)
Radishes (cut very thing)
Carrots (I use a peeler to cut carrot ribbons)
Avocado
Firm tofu (cut into long strips)
Method:
Take the hard wrappers and soak them in warm water until they are soft and flexible. It will take about 30 seconds to a minute depending on the water temp. Move the wrapper to a large cutting board and lay it flat. Put the fillings in the center of the wrapper:
To fold them up I do it like they roll burritos at Chipotle ( I am guessing most of you know what I am talking about here). So you take the bottom of the shell and bring it up over the filling, then fold the sides in, then roll it up. Make sure all the folds are nice and tight.
I served them with soy sauce and Sirachi sauce. You could serve them with any number of Asian sauces though.
Steamed Dumplings:
I had made these years ago when Alec and I were first dating. It is a recipe I modified from a Thai cookbook called Easy Thai (the recipes are not as easy as the name would imply).
Ingredients:
1/2 pound ground pork (cooked and slightly cooled)
1 egg
1 small can of water chestnuts
1 carrot
A sprig or so of cilantro
1 dried red hot chili (you could leave this out if you don’t want them to be spicy)
Salt and pepper to taste
Wonton wrappers
Method:
Take all the ingredients and put them in the food processor, and blend until nice and smooth.
Once it is blended you are ready to fill the wrappers. I put about 1 teaspoon of filling in the middle of each wrapper. I line the outside edges with water and then seal them up.
I don’t really have any advice on rolling them up because mine did not look all that great.
To cook them, fill a large pan with water and put a colinder in it. If you have a steamer, use that. I do not have a steamer and this worked fine. Put about 5 dumplings in at a time and cover. It will take a few minutes to cook them. You will be able to tell when they are done. The wrappers get kinda translucent looking. You can always eat one or two just to make sure though!
Key Lime Pie:
I really hyped this up, but it is good. I originally found a recipe online. Since then I have drastically changed it. I think the real trick is using a flour/butter crust instead of a graham cracker crust. I know this sounds weird because they are always made with graham cracker crusts, but I swear this is better.
The pie crust:
2 1/2 cups of all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon sugar
2 sticks of butter (cut into 16 pieces and put in the freezer for about 15 minutes)
1/3 cup very cold water with 3 tablespoons of sour cream or full fat yogurt mixed in–it really doesn’t matter which one
Method:
Put everything except the water mixture into the food processor and pulse until blended. Add the water mixture bit by bit until it is the right crust consistency.
Once it is mixed, divide into two. Shape into a 5 inch disc which will be about 1 inch thick. You only need one crust for this dessert, so put one in the fridge to cool and put the other in the freezer to keep for later (when you want to use it just take it out and thaw it in the fridge over night).
Roll it out and put it in a a glass pyrex pie plate. Here is an easy pie crust tip I got from Jaime Oliver. If you aren’t into rolling out pie crust, cut the dough into thin strips and press it into the pie plate. It works just fine. Cover the shell with greased tin foil and fill with pie weights. Bake at 375 for about 30 minutes.
While the pie crust is baking make the filling.
Filling Ingredients:
4 egg yolks
1/2 cup lime juice (I used to use key lime, but I can’t tell the difference between key and regular limes. Regular limes are much cheaper and it is much easier juicing big limes instead of all those little limes. Make sure you use fresh limes juice not any of that bottles stuff).
Zest of one or two limes depending on size
1 can of sweetened condensed milk
Whisk all the ingredients together until smooth.
Once the pie shell comes out of the oven, drop the oven temp to 325, fill the crust with the filling, and put it back into the oven. Bake for about 15 minutes.
Let the pie cool until room temp and then put in the fridge. When you are ready to eat top with whipped cream. I whip my own cream because it is really good. For a pie this size put about 1 cup of whipping cream and one tablespoon of white sugar. Whip until thick.
Easter Brunch: Egg Strata, French Toast Casserole, and a bunch of other stuff
I am going to start by saying that I did not get very good pictures of this brunch. I have never hosted a holiday before, and I was a little preoccupied by preparing it, so I kept forgetting to take pictures. I apologize for that. However, things did go well. I was not entirely sure what I wanted to make for brunch. Plus, we were headed to Easter Service so I needed stuff that I could make ahead of time. I decided on doing a breakfast casserole, an egg strata, deviled eggs, and a bundt cake. I also had coffee, tea, orange juice, and stuff to make Arnold Palmers (pretty much the best drink ever).
First the bundt cake. I made the lemon one I invented not too long ago. Here is the link to that recipe:
https://meteaandlucy.com/2011/04/12/lemon-bundt-cake/
This time I added one cup of milk to the recipe. It did change the consistency. This cake was much denser and more moist. However, it was lacking the nice crumble of the other. Both were good; I think I may leave the milk out in the future.
Next up is the French Toast Casserole. This recipe is from the newspaper a number of years ago.
Ingredients:
1 loaf cinnamon bread (with or without raisins depending on preference)
6 eggs
1 1/2 cups half and half
1 1/2 cups milk
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
5 teaspoons butter
1 cup nuts (walnuts or pecans)
Method:
Cut the loaf of bread into cubes. Take about 1 cup worth of the cubes and set aside. Put the rest of the cubes in a greased 9″ by 13″ Pyrex baking dish. Meanwhile mix the eggs, milks, and vanilla together. Pour the egg mixture over the bread making sure all the cubes are moist. Put the in the fridge overnight.
The next morning, melt the butter and add the set aside bread cubes and the nuts. Mix until all moist and sprinkle over the egg/bread mixture in the pan. Bake at 375 for about 45 minutes. Serve with syrup and strawberries (optional).
Ideas: I would have liked it to be a little sweater so I would not have had to add syrup in the end. I wonder if adding brown sugar to the egg mixture would have that desired effect. I also think it would be good if you added some apples to the dish. I might try that next fall when apples are in season again.
Egg Strata:
This one I made up, and it worked great. The above picture is the strata before it was baked. I don’t have a picture of it baked. Sigh. This is a dish that you can personalize easily.
Ingredients:
10 eggs
1 cup cheese
1 cup milk
about 1/3 of a baguette, cubed
vegetables (I used potatoes, onions, asparagus, red bell peppers)
sausage (optional though good)
salt and pepper to taste
Mix the eggs and milk together until well blended. Mix in the cheese and bread cubes. Make sure the bread all gets moist. Fold in the vegetables and sausage. I pre-cook the potatoes and the sausage, but I put everything else in raw. The vegetables end up cooked but still crisp that way. Pour the mixture into a greased 9″ by 13″ Pyrex casserole dish. Bake at 375 for 45 minutes. You can put a knife in the center and it will come out clean when the strata is done.
Note: I have made this pre-made this strata and let it sit overnight. I have also made it and baked it immediately. I honestly can’t tell much of a difference (sitting overnight might have a slight advantage, but it is slight). I would just do what is more convenient for you.
Finally here is a couple of funny picture of Lucy in her Easter dress:
An Italian Dinner Party: Bruschetta, Pizza, and Flourless Chocolate Cake
This past weekend we had our friends Katie and Richard over for dinner. At Alec’s suggestion we decided to do our homemade pizza–a big favorite of his in particular. For appetizers I made some bruschetta and olive tapenade. I thought the dinner turned out quite well. It is a nice way to do pizza because no one needs to agree. Every can just make their own half of a pizza. We all had a nice time, and I can’t wait to have them over again.
I am going to save the tapenade recipe for another post (I am keeping this short because the baby is sick, and I am a little short on time here because of it). Apparently it is actually French, though I usually eat it with either Italian or Middle Eastern food. We served the appetizers with a French bread that Alec made (he is good at making bread). However, feel free to serve this with any crusty white bread.
Bruschetta Recipe
This is not a very exact recipe. Please adjust the quantities according to your own tastes.
Ingredients:
4 tomatoes chopped
2 shallots chopped small
2 cloves garlic finely chopped or put through a garlic press
Basil, preferable fresh but dried is fine
a pinch or so of sugar
olive oil
balsamic vinegar
salt and pepper to taste
Mix everything together and let it marinade for a bit. I left mine for about an hour which worked just fine.
I served this with slices of fresh mozzarella.
The Pizza
Ingredients:
4 1/4 cups of bread flour (it must be bread flour otherwise it will not turn out)
1 yeast packet or 2 1/4 teaspoons yeast
1 1/2 teaspoons of salt
Put all this in a food processor and pulse a few times to mix.
Add 2 tablespoons of olive oil
Add 1 1/2 cups of warm-hot water
Run the food processor until it blends into a ball. Take it out of the processor, make sure it is in a ball shape. Put it in a greased bowl and it let it raise for about 2 hours.
This makes enough for two pizza dough crusts. Cut the dough in half and roll into rounds. The dough is ready for toppings at this point. You do not need to pre-bake anything.
Top the crust with your toppings of choice. Bake for 8-10 minutes at 500 degrees. It is best if you can do this on a pizza stone. This recipe is originally from the America’s Test Kitchen. I have made it so many times I just do it from memory so it is not exactly the same. You can also use this crust for a pretty good stromboli.
Weird Recipe of Yesteryear: Tomato Soup Cake, actually less gross than you would imagine
My friend Anna found a bunch of old recipes in a drawer she bought at a thrift shop a while back. A couple of the recipes were dated from 1940, so we are assuming most are from about that time. Many of the recipes are huge, enough servings to serve 100 people or more. Perhaps they are from a church kitchen? A number of the recipes are also weird. We are going to make a recipe from this collection probably once a month and post it on here. We decided to start with one of the strangest recipes in there: Tomato Soup Cake. The only problem was, it wasn’t so much a recipe as a list of ingredients. However, we have made enough cakes to guess how it went together. The big question was how long to bake it and what type of pan it should go in. We ended up doing a 9 inch round pan, and it baked for about 4o-45 minutes.
The end result was similar to pumpkin spice cake, but not as good. I am not sure if you could tell the difference if you didn’t know about the soup. After we had made it, I went online to see if other people made this cake (not sure why I didn’t try this before). I did find similar recipes, believe it or not. The recipe originates from 1925–it was an invention of the Campbell’s Soup Corporation, no surprise there. Campbell’s still has a modified recipe on their website! I think we probably should have made the cake in a loaf pan–that seems to be a more common way to make it. I was pleased to see that topping it with cream cheese frosting was also common, which we decided to do just looking at the ingredient list.
All in all it was a fun adventure. Will I start making this cake on a regular basis? No. It was not that good. It was better than I thought it would be though, and it would be a good conversation starter I suppose. Or maybe if there is a big run on pumpkin someday, and you really want a pumpkin spice cake, you can look this up and make it.
Ingredients:
1/4 pound shortening (we used butter instead, and it worked fine)
1 cup sugar
1 egg
1 can or tomato soup
1 teaspoon baking soda–put in the soup
2 cups flour
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon cloves
2 teaspoons baking powder
Method:
We started by creaming the butter until nice and fluffy. Add the sugar and mix well. Add the egg and mix well. Put in the tomato soup/baking soda combo.
Meanwhile we mixed all the dry ingredients together. Once the wet ingredients were well mixed.
Bake the cake at 350 degrees. The baking time will vary on your choice of pan. For a 9″ round bake for about 40 minutes. If you do a loaf pan, maybe try about an hour?
Now for the frosting:
The frosting was really good, and it made the cake better I think. Mix up 3 ounces of cream cheese (at room temp), half stick of butter (at room temp), 2 teaspoons of vanilla, and 2 cups of powdered sugar. Blend together until light and fluffy. I found this recipe from my Better Homes and Garden’s Baking book–a classic.
Once the cake has cooled, put on the frosting:
And finally, cut a slice and enjoy…
Lemon Bundt Cake
Most people may not think that a bundt pan is a necessary item for a kitchen. I would beg to differ. Of course there is the issue of me being a Minnesotan, and like all Minnesotans, I have a bizarre pride surrounding all things related to our state. Perhaps it is compensation for the fact that we live in a state that is cold 9 months out of the year, or maybe it really is just that great of a place to live. Either way, the bundt pan was invented by Nordic Ware right here in Minnesota for a group of German-Americans. The shape of the pan makes the cake look finished without frosting, and bundts are usually so rich on their own, they rarely need it anyway.
The following bundt recipe is my own invention. I wanted something lemon flavored. This is essentially a lemon pound cake in a bundt pan. It is moist and especially lemony because I use both zest and lemon extract in the recipe.
Ingredients:
Zest of 2 lemons (you can use more or less according to taste)
2 1/2 cups of sugar
1 1/4 cup butter (that is 2 and a half sticks, this is not a health cake)
5 eggs
2 1/2 cups of all-purpose flour
1 1/4 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon of salt
1 teaspoon almond extract (if you would rather use vanilla, add two teaspoons instead of the one almond)
2 teaspoons lemon extract
Method:
Preheat the oven to 325 degrees.
With your fingers, rub the zest into the sugar until it is moist and fragrant, set aside. Mix together the flour, baking powder, and salt, set aside. In a mixer, cream the butter until light and fluffy. Slowly add the sugar mixture. Add the eggs one at a time, make sure to beat well after each egg. Add in the extracts. While the mixer is running, slowly add the flour mixture.
Scoop the mixture into a prepared bundt pan. Use Baker’s Joy cooking spay on the pan. Something like Pam will not cut it–you will have a bundt that won’t come out of its pan. In fact, I love Baker’s Joy. I use it on all my pans–nothing sticks to that stuff, nothing.
Bake the bundt for 60-70 minutes. When done, take out of the oven and let it cool in the pan for about 15 minutes. Then it should slide right out.
The bundt is then ready to serve. It is good both warm or cold. It is good the next day too.
Here is a warning though: don’t eat too much at once. I have a bit of a stomach ache from eating half a bundt cake in less than 24 hours. One last thing, bundts are nice to give to people because they travel well. Perhaps some of you may one day get a bundt from me (and actually some of you already have).
Me Tea and Lucy 