Interlude - Peach upside-down cake

Here is a cake worth making (from the Taste Of Home website), and it's not difficult. 

Ingredients

• 3/4 cup butter, softened, divided
• 1/2 cup packed brown sugar
• 2 cups sliced peeled fresh peaches
• 3/4 cup sugar
• 1 egg
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1-1/4 cups all-purpose flour
• 1-1/4 teaspoons baking powder
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 cup milk

Directions

• Melt 1/4 cup butter; pour into an ungreased 9-in. round baking pan. Sprinkle with brown sugar. Arrange peach slices in single layer over sugar. * Sometimes I cook the brown sugar and butter together on the stovetop first, but I'm not sure that it makes much difference.
• In a large bowl, cream sugar and remaining butter until light and fluffy. Beat in egg and vanilla. Combine the flour, baking powder and salt; add to creamed mixture alternately with milk, beating well after each addition. Spoon over peaches.
• Bake at 350° for 45-50 minutes or until a toothpick inserted near the center comes out clean. Cool for 10 minutes before inverting onto a serving plate. Serve warm. Yield: 8 servings.

Interlude - Recent adventures in baking

Sweet potato buttermilk cornbread

It seems odd to use certain vegetables in baking. Surprisingly, the sweet potato works by making the cornbread less dry. (One fair-sized sweet potato ought to do it.) I would make this again. Recipe here: http://www.pauladeen.com/recipes/recipe_view/sweet_potato_buttermilk_cornbread/

Devil Dogs

I might not go to the trouble of making these again, except for the icing, which is like whipped cream but it holds up better. Has flour in it, of all things. Recipe here: http://thepioneerwoman.com/cooking/2011/02/devil-dogs/

Icing ingredients

• 5 Tablespoons Flour
• 1 cup Milk
• 1 teaspoon Vanilla
• 1 cup Butter
• 1 cup Granulated Sugar (not Powdered Sugar)

In a small saucepan, whisk flour into milk and heat, stirring constantly until it thickens. It should be very thick, thicker than cake mix, more like a brownie mix. Remove from heat and let it cool to room temperature. (If in a hurry, place the saucepan over ice in the sink for about 10 minutes or so until the mixture cools.) It must be completely cool before you use it in the next step. Stir in vanilla.

While the mixture is cooling, cream the butter and sugar together until light and fluffy. You don't want any sugar graininess left. Then add the completely cooled milk/flour/vanilla mixture and beat the living daylights out of it. If it looks separated, you haven't beaten it enough! Beat it until it all combines and resembles whipped cream.

Jam filled Valentine's cookies 

Even using unsalted butter, I found these cookies WAY too salty. Either I goofed or the amount of salt should be cut in half. Recipe here: http://foodrepublik.com/pomegranate-jam-hearts/

Jam Hearts

2 cups flour

1/2 tsp salt (maybe try 1/4 tsp)
1 cup unsalted butter at room temperature
3/4 cup confectioner’s sugar
1 1/2 tsp vanilla
1/2 tsp almond extract
6 tbsp pomegranate jelly - I used strawberry jam instead

Sift the flour and salt and set aside. Combine butter and sugar and beat with a wooden spoon until smooth. Add vanilla and almond extracts and stir till well blended. Add dry ingredients and mix until dough comes together.

Divide dough in half and gather each half into a ball. Flatten into disks, wrap in plastic, and place in fridge for about 40 minutes.

Preheat oven to 325 F.

Take out one ball of dough at a time. On a lightly floured surface, roll dough out to a little less than 1/4 inch thick (can be done between two sheets of plastic). Loosen dough from surface using a spatula. Using a heart shaped 2 1/2 inch cookie cutter, cut out 24 hearts. In 12 of the hearts, cut out a small heart-shaped hole using a 1 inch cutter. Place on parchment lined cookie sheets.

Bake one sheet at a time on the middle rack until edges are light brown, about 12-15 minutes. After 5 minutes, transfer to a wire rack and let cool completely. Spread about a teaspoon of jam on the 12 hole-less cookies. Sift the cutout cookies with confectioner’s sugar (I decorated with icing instead). Place the cutout cookies on top of the jam to make 12 jam cookie sandwiches.



Rice pudding

Thanks to my Greek neighbour who gave me some of her delicious rice pudding, I discovered that I now love the stuff. Out of two recipes so far, I like this one best:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UXs3eq68ZjE

I cut the recipe in half and made a couple of changes. It makes the amount shown above, in a medium sized pot.
 
Half recipe
3/4 cup long grain rice - I did not use long grain rice; used 'Italian style' instead
2 cups water
3 cups milk, preferably at room temperature
1 cup sugar - I reduced to 3/4 of a cup
1 egg
1/2 tablespoon vanilla
dash cinnamon

Boil rice in water (then reduce heat) until water is gone. Stir constantly and don't scrape bottom of pot. Add milk and cook on low until thick. Add sugar, stir and cook. Once it looks done, cook for 5 minutes longer. Beat eggs, vanilla, and cinnamon. Add mixture to rice very slowly, a bit at a time (so egg doesn't become lumpy), and cook 'til thoroughly blended. Put in bowl and sprinkle with cinnamon.

Mmm-mm - carrot muffins

Glenn and I think these are one of the better muffins I've ever made. I found the recipe for Super Moist 3 Bowl not-too-sweet-Carrot Cake/Muffins on the internet, but made half the amount. The half-recipe made 8 muffins.

CARROT MUFFINS

Use 3 medium bowls to mix. I used a spoon for mixing all muffin ingredients.

Preheat oven to 150° C, the recipe says. Since I wasn't sure what that converted to in Fahrenheit, I used 350° F. It should have been about 300° F but 350° worked fine.

Ingredients for half recipe

In bowl ONE mix:

1 1/2 cups finely grated carrots

3/4 cup chopped pecans (I prefer pecans over walnuts)

1/2 cup of raisins (I soak them a bit first)

In bowl TWO mix:

1 cup all purpose flour

1 teaspoon baking soda

1/2 teaspoon salt

1/2 teaspoon or so ground cinnamon (recipe calls for 1 1/4 teaspoon but I erred on the side of caution)

In bowl THREE mix:

3/4 cup of sugar

1/2 + 1/8 cup oil (they use olive oil; I used canola - I might try a bit less next time)

Then add:

2 large eggs, one at a time, mixing for about 30 seconds each

1/2 teaspoon of vanilla (recipe doesn’t actually say when to add vanilla so I put it in here)

Now add flour mixture from bowl TWO to oil mixture in bowl THREE. Stir until blended.

Finally add carrot mixture from bowl ONE into this and mix until blended (though it’s probably important not to over mix).

Divide the batter into the muffin tins, or pour into a cake pan if you'd rather make a cake. I use paper muffin cups in the muffin tin rather than greasing and flouring the pan.

Bake muffins until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean. Mine took about 25 minutes at 350° F.

Cool muffins in the pans for at least 15 minutes. Turn out onto racks and cool. (I was eating one 5 minutes after it came out of the oven.) If you want, you can add a cream cheese icing. I'll look up the recipe for that later, but believe it was a beaten mixture of 1/4 cup cream cheese, 1 or 2 tablespoons softened butter, 1/2 teaspoon vanilla and a cup or more of icing sugar. Next time I'll try half the amount.

Putting less batter in the cup seemed to result in the nicer shaped muffin on the right. Or maybe it was because that batch of dough was refrigerated as the first batch baked.

Easter cookies

Easter was another excuse to have fun with cookie decorating. I got most of the design ideas off the internet. Again I used 'the best rolled sugar cookie' recipe from allrecipes.com because people seem to like these cookies (and again I ran out of time and had to rush the job). As for icing, I didn't make royal icing. Raw egg whites don't appeal to me and no meringue powder was on hand so I just mixed icing sugar with skim milk and added a tiny amount of almond extract.

Most of the cookies went to neighbours and I packaged up a few for dear ol' Dad.

3 bundt cakes

Somewhere along the way in life I lost my bundt pan. This Christmas my sister got me a new one in a nice, smaller 6-cup size.

1. Chocolate crown cake

This recipe was on the pan's packaging. The trouble with baking is that I'm often grossed out by the ingredients - but maybe it's just the recipes I choose. A whopping cup of white sugar seems like a lot. So does half a cup of butter. I cut the sugar down by a quarter and wonder if I could have got away with half. This recipe also uses chocolate syrup.

I was pleased that my first effort came out of the pan intact.

Oh dear! My so-called drizzle icing was way too thick. Inside, the cake looks like a marble cake. The taste and texture were fine but it was still quite sweet.

I found the next two recipes on the internet.

2. Key lime cake

Not surprisingly, this cake contains lime juice and rind. If I didn't know, I would have thought it was lemon. This recipe was similar to the first, with the same amount of sugar and butter. Again I cut down the sugar.

Light and fluffy, this cake was my favourite of the three.

3. Chocolate & coffee cake

Just when I began to think that bundt recipes were similar, like muffin recipes usually are, along comes this one which was constructed quite differently. It was supposed to have instant espresso granules but I couldn't find any so used coffee instead.

This batter was runnier and the cake is shorter than the other two. There was nothing wrong with this cake, but my favourite part was the coffee flavoured icing.

I learned that drizzling icing is not as easy as I thought.

More adventures in baking

Chocolate coconut mounds

Top-centre and middle row - I saw these made on TV and got caught up in how quick and easy the recipe looked. The mounds were supposed to be either dipped in or drizzled with chocolate (bittersweet to counteract the intense sweetness) but I left the three across the middle plain. Once made, I was too horrified by all sugar to want to eat them!

Christmas shortbread

Top-outside and bottom row - I've never made terrific shortbread but this recipe from Butchart Gardens has 'a touch of rice flour' so I thought it was worth a shot. Theirs are better than mine (I may have overbaked - they're supposed to be all white), and I'd rather have them presented on a platter than have to see firsthand how much butter is involved. And anyway, does anyone make better shortbread than my friend's mother "D"? I don't think so.

Enough of what I don't want to eat. Now let's go on to what I do...

Oat bran muffins

Since I'm trying to get more fibre in my diet, a favourite recipe at the moment is for oat bran muffins. They may not be the best muffins in the world, but with enough raisins, blueberries or cranberries probably most would be edible. I like the fact that there is not as much fat or sugar as with some recipes - this uses applesauce. There is the added bonus of happy childhood memories while mixing the batter because it reminds me of the warm mash I used to mix up for the chickens! Yes, they are rather 'rustic' muffins. I use half the ingredients and make just six muffins at a time.

Italian bread

Glenn's and my favourite bread right now is this easy-to-make Italian bread. Only four ingredients are in this recipe - flour, water, yeast and salt. No loaf pans needed. There is a whole tablespoon of salt, which might be what makes it so tasty. It is especially good warm with peanut butter. Or cold. Or toasted. I haven't quite got the hang of avoiding air holes in this bread.

A new cook book

Glenn bought me one of Nigella Lawson's cook books. Since her banana bread recipe is the only one I've found that works for me, hopes were high for these recipes. I've tried three so far.

Chicken and Cashew Nut Curry

Little green chillies are too hot (euw - horrible!) for us so I used only a tiny amount. I left out the cilantro and garlic because we don't like them and the cardamom pods because the store didn't have any. Otherwise I followed the recipe. Into the frying pan went the onions, ginger, turmeric, cumin, coriander, coconut milk, etc. It looked like an omelette (inset photo).

Lessons: Green beans and cashews always seem to work well together. I hate cumin. We liked this dish except for the spices.

Ricotta Hotcakes

They just sound good. And what fortune - here is another chance to use peanut oil, which we'd bought for the last recipe. More than a cup of ricotta cheese to 3/4 of a cup of flour seems like a lot of ricotta but I guess that's normal. Even though the electric pan was on the highest setting, these took ages to cook and then they were doughy inside. Yuck.

Lesson: I still can't make pancakes. I obviously didn't spend much time on the photo - these went into the garbage can in short order.

Lemon Cupcakes

Simple recipe using self-rising flour. The cupcakes were more dense than usual types. Perhaps they could have used a little less time in the oven. I know the mint leaves don't really go but jellied lemon halves were supposed to decorate the tops. If only I could have found some in a grocery store.

Lesson: My favourite part is the icing, which was just icing sugar and lemon juice.

Like many cook books, some of the recipes have unusual ingredients. Where on earth can I find sumac and za'atar?

Interlude - recent baking

Left: My basic white bread has been turning out better than ever lately. If only I knew why.
Right: Light wheat rolls are the first thing I've ever made using whole wheat flour that turned out okay. Thanks 'S' for the recipe.

This recipe for buttermilk bread came from the Pillsbury cookbook. For some reason it's made with two pieces of rolled dough placed side by side in the pan. I named this 'bum bread' because of its appearance while baking in the oven. Quite good - the inside remains soft and chewy even when a slice is toasted.

Another recipe from the Pillsbury book - Quick Sourdough French Bread made with sour cream and a surprising ingredient - a bit of ginger. Glenn doesn't like sourdough bread but he likes this, especially the crust.

Blueberries were on sale so I decided to make two types of lemon blueberry muffins.

Left: with yogurt.

Right: with buttermilk, a bit more sugar, and crushed as well as whole blueberries. And the winner by a nose is, oddly, the lousier looking ones on the right. They're slightly sweeter and we like the crust on them best. But both kinds are good.

Sticks & loaves

Grissini... sort of... maybe

Following in my friend's footsteps, I decided to try making grissini. I made 3 variations: plain, parmesan, and rosemary & parmesan. This was the first time I've ever used fresh rosemary - sad but true.

Instead of elegant, tall sticks, I wound up with short, stocky ones. So the exercise was not entirely successful. They tasted alright... but I don't care for breadsticks anyway.

Italian bread

I fared better with the Italian bread. Only four ingredients - flour, yeast, water and salt. No added fat! My first result is shown above.

And this was my second. The second batch had a less crispy crust for some reason. I found that putting the bread in plastic bags softens the crust, which must be why baguettes are kept in paper bags. We liked this bread very much, although I have to say, the regular white bread gives off more of that wonderful fresh-baked bread smell.

The $34 pan of Nanaimo bars

That's about what it cost in ingredients I didn't have handy.

I'd never made Nanaimo bars before and probably won't again - this was just a baking exercise. The amount of fat and sugar in these bars is revolting. The centre is pretty much butter and icing sugar, which is why I normally scrape out that part. I'd better enjoy them though - they cost a fortune.

Here's an interesting bit of trivia. According to a Wikipedia article, the Nanaimo bar originated in Ladysmith, which is south of Nanaimo.

Stacked Applesauce Cake

When work is driving you crazy, what better thing to do than... bake a cake. This applesauce cake recipe with cinnamon whipped cream filling was on the internet.

I don't have three round pans so had to use square. The inset in the photo below shows how the cake is supposed to look.

My cakes tend to be on the dry side so I was a little worried that these shallow layers might be more so. But no, not at all. The applesauce apparently keeps it from getting dry. There is a nice spicy flavour, like a pumpkin cake. I think cutting the recipe down by a third and making only two layers would be just fine and most of the whipping cream could be omitted too. Pretty good cake.

Raisin Bread

I wonder what causes a loaf to sink and wrinkle on the top. This was my first attempt at a regular loaf of raisin bread (as opposed to a rolled type) and it tastes just like the real stuff... especially good with peanut butter.

In the search for bread as good as Mom's

As a beginner bread maker I have only made white bread from one recipe. This week I tried one from the back of the Rogers flour bag. It differs from my usual recipe in that it uses honey & oil rather than sugar & shortening, slightly less yeast, and the ingredients are mixed together differently. Instructions were to let the dough rest 20 minutes after dividing in half; I prefer 10 minutes. Ha, already I have preferences.

Verdict: it stuck to the pans in places, the texture might be slightly finer but it tastes pretty much the same as my usual bread.