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.

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.

Christmas cookies

It's funny how you can be inspired to do something you had no intention of doing. Such was the case when I saw the Christmas cookies made by a friend's sister - I'll call her 'M' - and before long I was baking simple sugar cookies.

The brown edges aren't as noticeable once the cookies are decorated.

These cookies were to go to a seniors' gathering that evening and since I was behind time, I was most grateful that M let me use her designs. I marvelled at the perfect little dots on her cookies. How did she do that? So I was pretty pleased when my dots turned out looking like tiny green peas on my tree cookies. The runny green icing was more unruly for drawing lines, however. Maybe it mattered that I just mixed icing sugar with skim milk instead of making royal icing.

Who would have thought of turning circular cookies into snowflakes? I wouldn't have. This is a copy of M's design and layout except that her snowflake patterns are perfectly symmetrical and her cookies were more tidily arranged. But I was in a mad rush at this point.

The designs for the little people were taken from an internet picture. They were supposed to have faces but I couldn't manage that sort of detail. A hunt for new decorating tips is probably in my future.

I had planned to do some decorating with chocolate on the shortbread cookies scattered around the outside of the platter and arrange everything nicer, but if I didn't hurry, my cookies would have shown up when everyone had gone home! Slap, slap, slap, down went the cookies, a big sheet of Christmas-design cellophane was wrapped overtop, and whoosh out the door it went.

Regardless of the imperfections, I think it looked quite festive. And actually, it was fun.

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.

Cookie decorating... fun?

In Glenn's watercolour classes he always talked about 'the three variables' - that being: the amount of water in the brush, the amount of paint in the brush, and the wetness of the paper. I was thinking about this while decorating sugar cookies this Thanksgiving weekend because the ratio of liquid to icing sugar is key. The surface of the cookie isn't a factor as it stays the same (dry), unless icing is being layered onto icing.

Enough time lapses between my decorating efforts for me to forget that it's not so easy. I am not even sure it's fun! But one shouldn't expect great results with little effort.

I got a pack of four food colours from the grocery store and pondered which ones to mix to get autumn leaf colours. Red and yellow for orange. I could get brown by mixing red, yellow and blue. Then I went to a decorating store to see what they had and the saleslady said, "The best way to get brown is to start with chocolate." Ha! Of course. Boy, did I feel silly. She said black could be added for a darker brown.

The results weren't as elegant as I'd hoped but I think the cookies look fairly festive.

My favourite cookie was this maple leaf, while Glenn's was the moon. You can see that I wasn't very good at staying within the lines, but I'm just in cookie-decorating kindergarten. :-)

Girard Gourmet in La Jolla

Wednesday September 30, 2009

We found a little bakery / coffee shop just down the street from our hotel. It stayed open until 7:00 pm. You never knew what cookie designs would show up in their window.