Wintery Cabbage Soup
I love cabbage and I attribute that to my Polishness (it’s a common ingredient). We aren’t really known for our cuisine, but there is an element of simplicity in the creation and ingredients, perhaps that’s another reason why I love cabbage soup.
Stews and soups are awesome because it’s doofus-proof. You can’t go wrong with bringing all your favorite ingredients to a boil. I like to throw in some cayenne pepper to heat it up so I defrost myself even more.
It’s January, I’m trying to get fit so a pool of nutrients to eat tickles my fancy. Oddly, I would never share my soups (or recipes) with anyone because I cater them so much to my palate, that I’m not even sure if it’s edible or gross to others.
Anyone ever read Alone in the Kitchen with an Eggplant? I loved that book. It made me feel better for my weird culinary concoctions I eat alone huddled over the kitchen sink pondering my day’s plan. I know you eat something odd in the privacy of your home.
Cinnamon Chocolate Chip Streusel Cake
I had no intentions of posting this cake. My office was moving to a new location and I wanted to bring something in on packing day. I made this on a whim because I had all the ingredients, yet the positive response from co-workers was so immense, I felt I had to post the recipe for safekeeping.
I even had a woman (who is a fantastic baker herself) tell me it’s the best streusel cake she ever had. We now swap recipes, how fun! Funny how the least expected things in life turn out to be the best in life. I was even paranoid it was under-baked. Now I’ll add this to my favorites, very quick to make too.
1 ½ cups butter
1 ½ cups sugar
3 eggs
1 ½ tsp vanilla
1 ¼ cups sour cream
2 ½ cups flour
2 tsp baking powder
½ tsp baking soda
½ tsp salt
Streusel Middle
1/2 cup light brown sugar
1 cup flour
3 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp salt
6 tbsp butter
1 cup chopped walnuts
1 1/2 cup chocolate chips
Mix dry ingredients in one bowl. Wet ingredients to be mixed in separate bowl and then folded into dry ingredients. Pour half into a bunt pan or angel food pan that is greased. Sprinkle 2/3 of the streusel mix followed by topping off with remaining batter. Sprinkle remaining streusel mix on top. Bake in a 350 degree oven for 50-60 minutes. After cake is cooled drizzle with glaze. I made it with the leftover sour cream, powdered sugar and a squirt of lemon juice. Not sure of the exact ratio, just eye balled it.
Melissa’s Pumpkin Biscotti
Happy New Year!! Welcome 2012! When mailing out my Christmas cookie packages I enclosed these Pumpkin Biscotti.
Funny thing, these were my favorite in the box (had trouble not engulfing myself). Yet they were only cookies of the bunch that no one raved about.
I am beginning to notice most people like the basic cookies (sugar cookies, oatmeal raisin and chocolate chip). Not that biscotti is fancy by any means. It’s a super hard Italian cookie that is meant to dunk into tea and coffee (in Latin means ‘twice-baked’ which adds to its crisp).
I think when given a selection, it’s more inherit to opt for the sweeter softer things in life, this must apply to cookies too.
Next time I make these I will increase the amount of pumpkin puree and double of spices. I think it gets lost in all the hoopla of density. Recipe with these ingredients increased is below.
3 ½ cups of flour
1 ½ cups of brown sugar
2 tsp baking powder
½ tsp salt
2 tbsp pumpkin pie spice
1 cup of canned pumpkin puree
2 eggs (beaten)
1 tbsp vanilla
2 tbsp butter
1 cup of nut (I used walnuts this time)
Melt butter in a skillet over medium heat and lightly toast nuts (slightly brown). Set aside and bring to room temperature. Combine dry ingredients in a bowl and set aside. In separate bowl, whisk together pumpkin, eggs, and vanilla. Slowly add this mix into the dry ingredients. Once full mixed, knead in toasted nuts. Divide the dough into 3 logs that are about 12-15” long and place on cookie sheet. Bake 25 minutes at 350 degrees and cool for 15 minutes. Cut logs into diagonal slices at ½ thick with serrated knife and place back in 300-degree oven for 15 minute. Dip half or drizzle in chocolate after cooled if that tickles your pickle.
Ty’s Gingerbread Cookies
Merry Christmas everyone! I hope everyone is enjoying the festivities. I am in New York right now exhausted from working at the bakery. During my massive cookie mailing the other week I also made gingerbread cookies (it’s a staple for Christmas, duh!).
I learned after a few trial and errors that I really do not like a lot of molasses. It’s a very potent ingredient that I personally think overpowers the cookie. I have made gingerbread-honey cookies with NO molasses, but they aren’t gingerbready enough. I learned the best solution is to take any recipe and do a 2:1 ratio of honey to molasses.
This is the recipe I used from Simply Recipes, but instead of the ½ cup of molasses, I used 1/2 cup of honey and 1/4 cup of molasses. Actually… I will be honest, I just eye-balled it and tried it as I went. It might have even been a little more of equal parts. I am not sure it makes too much of a difference.
Either way, these seem to have a good shelf life so it was good for shipping. I suppose mailing him gingerbread makes it a birthmas, oh well.
I hope you have a very merry Christmas and a wonderful new year! I can only hope 2012 can provide much needed happiness and page turning for most of us.
Casey’s Gun Cookies & Random Christmas Cookies
Last weekend my kitchen blew up with baking. I decided to spend all of Sunday baking a ton of cookies to ship for Christmas. Hello friends in NY, FL, CA, and NV! That’s right, my kitchen took a beating. Flour and sugar EVERYWHERE! But it’s the holidays, you deserve it!
Casey recently informed me that he received his license to sell firearms. He owns a knife shop in Florida. Need ammo? Knife? Camo? Talk to Casey. To celebrate, I attempted to make sugar cookies that sort of look like guns. I freehand cut out with a knife ( terrible idea), so they didn’t keep shape. But it would have taken too long for a cookie cutter to be delivered (plus, when will I ever use a gun cutter again?!). I don’t know anything about guns or styles, so I just made designs up. He probably laughed at how inaccurate and off they look, but then again he knows this is a foreign world to me.
I attempted to make pfeffernüsse, which were good, but not really what I was going for. The recipe I tried was very peppery, so I didn’t mail them since I wasn’t 100% pleased. If anyone has a good recipe, PLEASE e-mail it my way, those are my favorite holiday cookies.
I’ve gotten much better at shipping cookies. It helps to have extra storage space, I just throw every box I receive into my pantry. It makes it much easier to locate the perfect sized box when needed.
I hope they maintained their freshness by the time they got to everyone; but then again the boxes whiffed of gingerbread when I dropped them off, so I am fairly certain they are ok. Biggest problem is that I don’t always wait for the hard icing to dry on my sugar cookies. I seriously need to learn patience.
Have a terrific holiday season! Full of gluttony, loved ones, cookies and laughs.
Rick’s Gingerbread Chevelle
Last year I made this gingerbread replica of a 1969 Chevelle. I grew up and still love to draw (charcoal especially), but technical drawing was never my forte (buildings, cars, linear things), this made me worried about the proportions looking off. Since this needed to be unmistakable for a Chevelle, the safest bet was to downsize the proportions of the real life-size car. I joined a Chevrolet Chevelle message board and asked the experts (I know, I was shocked myself that such a thing existed).
I did the math, drew and cut out stencils from cardboard paper to be able to cut out of the dough. The bumpers were 3 pieces (since they go around the sizes). This would would eventually look like one uniform piece after it was painted with royal icing. I realized a big problem is the hood of his car, it has that bump for the engine (I’m not car savvy, excuse my non-technical terms) and also the sizes are not completely flat (slight curvature to them).
To fix this, I made molds with wooden dowels that were covered and shaped with tin-foil. The dough was rolled out on top. I was worried it would stick to the dough, but it was surprising easy to remove.
Confession: I actually made it twice. The first time I didn’t account for all the puffing up that gingerbread does, which resulted in some of the pieces to not fit properly. I had to scale down some of the top pieces the second time around so it would be a smoother and seamless puzzle. After the pieces were baked, I crushed up Jolly Ranchers in the windows and put it back into the oven for a minute or two to melt into a single piece of “glass”.
I made brownie for the inside to have something to stabilize and keep the car together. I thought it would be super cool to mold seats out of the brownie, but the Jolly Rancher glass was so thick you couldn’t see inside, so this was a lost effort.
After it was all baked and assembled the details were piped with royal icing and later painted with silver (which looks bleak and dull in this pictures, but did look metallic in person). I learned how to paint with luster dust and vodka here. It gave it a great metallic shimmer that is completely edible. The headlights and stoplights were gum drops. The license plate is gum paste that was dried with edible marker to write his name.
Overall it was a success, but I would do some things different if I were to do it again (perhaps practice piping a bit more). I kept it at the bakery where I work part-time to store for a few days and did get customers suggesting to make their husband’s cars/trucks in gingerbread. My biggest regret was not taking pictures of it (these are all from a camera phone).
Michael’s Multi-layer Rice Crispy Treat Cake
I live in Georgia. My sister and husband moved to Connecticut. That’s weird because we lived in the same apartment building for three years. I always made him ridiculous cakes for his birthday. But now I’m 900 miles away, what’s a sister-in-law to do?!
Easy. Make a multi-layer rice crispy cake. He turned 30, so it needed to be big and special. I felt like such a creep going into the supermarket to only buy tons of butter, marshmallows and cereal. Too bad my coupons only discounted me $1.
Everyone knows how to make rice crispy treats. It’s as basic as boiling water. Melt 3 tablespoons of butter, a bag of marshmallows and 6 cups of rice crispy treats.
Want to get funky? Add food coloring. Hello blue!
Want to get chocolaty? Mike loves chocolate. Use Cocoa Crispies instead. I also added some chocolate chips to the melted marshmallow mix.
When building layers the treats need to be firm, so it might be a good idea to let them sit in the fridge for a bit. Unfortunately I didn’t have enough pans, so I had to chill in intervals.
Use melted chocolate chips or marshmallows as glue and stack the layers. Then you have a two-foot tower ready for mailing.
Oh yea and line the layers with some sort of chocolate KIX cereal. Or write out his age on the top. Whatever tickles your pickle. Then mail. Mike said it withstood the trip up. Wonderful!!!
Happy 30th Birthday Michael!
Doug’s La Caja China Pig Roast
I hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving. I had an action packed week, mostly full of food. This past Saturday I organized to have a pig roast at my friend Doug’s house in NY.
I almost backed out because when looking at the pictures during research, I got a little emotional at the idea of eating a pig. I might go pork-free soon for various reasons.
I purchased a 44-pound pig from my local butcher and had it cut in half (should have been spliced, but it was a bit screwed up). Luckily our friend Joe has a La Caja China box. I made a marinate of a gallon of apple cider vinegar, ketchup, brown sugar, garlic powder, salt, red pepper, and black pepper.
The marinade was hysterical because as Dennis was putting it in the bag he started screaming in pain. The boys were working in the yard and cut up hands with vinegar does not feel good on wounds.
We also added an applewood rub, which I just randomly bought from the supermarket. All my spices were down south and I knew my parents wouldn’t use the leftover stuff.
The split pig goes between the bars and in the box. On top are the coals we heated over the fire pit. Every hour for the next 2 hours we add more coals. By ‘we’, I mean the boys. I planned it and was there to instruct. They were nice gentlemen and did the actual labor and let me take pictures.
After the 3rd hour we were ready to flip the pig. You only need to do it ¾ of the way through since it’s just to char the skin. After 4 hours, the pig was pretty much done, but the skin wasn’t as crispy. So when have the final unveiling of the pig, we only served a half and let the other portion cook up.
This was honestly worth the hassle, the meat was incredibly juicy. It was just dripping and sliced like butter. It’s also a great excuse to hang out over a couple of beers for many hours. Such a fun time!
Hugh’s Stout (Guinness) Brownies
Hugh is a pretty spiffy, we chatted a lot during softball (because it’s a dreadfully boring sport). That’s where I learned that he brews his own beer (and can actually catch a ball pretty well), therefore it felt necessary to mailed him these Stout Brownies.
Regardless if you like beer or not, going Guinness is a good way to accentuate chocolate, but not have to overkill on sweetening it up by actually adding chocolate. There’s only 1 cup of sugar for a 9×13 pan. That’s about half the amount for regular brownies.
This recipe also calls for while chocolate chips to be melted with regular chocolate chips which I’m undecided if it makes any bit of difference. Tasted no different to me.
Two funny things about making these. First, like most baking recipes, you mix wet and dry ingredients separately. While this is fine, I actually made the entire recipe WITHOUT ever adding the dry ingredients.
Baking takes some precision, so I should probably give it more attention rather then my podcast (that’s what I do when baking). As soon as I put the brownies in the oven and went to clean up, I noticed a lonely bowl FULL of dry ingredients.
Luckily these babies only managed to be in the oven an whooping 30 seconds, which left time to salvage.
Second silly fact, I never checked with Hugh to see if he would be home. He was at the airport going on a weekend getaway the Friday they were delivered. Oh well, stale brownies it was!
I think Guinness works better for chocolate cupcakes (cream cheese icing, yum). But these work ok. Admittedly this is not making the top of my recipe list, I’d rather black bean brownies or traditional.
- 1 cup all-purpose flour
- 3/4 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
- 1/4 tsp salt
- 6 tbsp unsalted room temperature butter, cubed
- 8 oz dark bittersweet chocolate, chopped
- 3/4 cup white chocolate chips
- 4 large eggs, at room temperature
- 1 cup sugar
- 1-1/4 cups (10 oz) Guinness (any Stout beer)
- 1 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips
1. Preheat the oven to 375 degrees F. Butter and flour a 9 x 13-inch baking pan.
2. Combine dry ingredients in a bowl.
3. Over a double broiler, melt butter, bittersweet and white chocolate until melted.
4. In a separate bowl, beat eggs and sugar on high until light and fluffy. Add melted chocolate until combined.
5. Beat flour mix into wet mix. Whisk in Guinness, this will be a thin batter. Drop semisweetchips on top. Bake 25 to 30 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out almost clean.
Orange Soda Crock-Pot Pulled Pork
I love pulled pork. Slow cooked meats that are so soft they fall of the bone… That’s finger lickin’ good.
I make my own dry rub a day or two before, it gives you control over what you put on the meat. But at the same time I never write down what I did the last time, so what’s the point of perfecting a rub if I have no record? Oye. I’m a mess.
In that case, let me record what it was: 1 tbsp black pepper, 2 tsp cayenne pepper, 2 tsp coriander, 2 tbsp chili powder, 3 tbsp cumin, 2 tbsp dark brown sugar, 4 tbsp paprika, and 2 tbsp salt. Note to self: More sugar next time.
This 8 lb shoulder sat in my very empty fridge for two days. I like to line the crock-pot with onions to add flavor. Usually after it’s done cooking they’re either thrown out or served on the side. But my guest loves onions, so I just threw it into the pulled pork mix.
My secret ingredient was orange soda. I know it’s common to put root beer in (or nothing). I’m not entirely sure what makes root beer so special. To me, all soda is pure sugar, so I thought it would be interesting to see how this panned out.
Verdict: I don’t think the type of soda makes a difference (aside from diet). Confession: I only used orange soda was because I had an abundance of it in my fridge for a friend. It was an impulse decision when taking the shoulder out. If you eat the onions on the side, you’ll notice the coloration is much more orange though.
This pork shoulder had a hard time getting in the crock-pot by the way. I had to really get my hands dirty getting it in there. Side note: Thanks again to Sean for the loan!
10 hours later, this thing is beautiful. I find that it usually needs a little bit more time then suggested. Look at it! I picked up the bone all the meat just fell! That’s without touching it!
Some of the meat on the skin needed help being scrapped off, but hey, I’ll work for it.
So yea… Crock-pot pulled-pork is the best thing ever. Apparently you can freeze it too (but the internet will tell me anything I want to hear). I’ll find out just how true that is in 2 weeks.
