Inside My Kitchen

Wow, or maybe I’m just super sleep deprived since Jacob woke up THREE times last night (thanks, Jake).

Nic had a recipe not long ago for Chewy Cheesecake Cookies. They looked too good to this cheesecake lover to just print out the recipe and stick in “the file”. You can follow the link to the recipe.

After reading the comments, I decided to try the original recipe along with several of the suggested alterations. I baked 1/3 of them as directed, to 1/3 of them, I added lemon juice (had no zest as suggested), and rolled 1/3 of them in sugar before baking.

The originals were fantastic. They’re a soft, delicate cookie that’s very pretty. The 1/3 I added lemon juice to were yummy, also. At first, I took a bite and couldn’t detect the lemon, but it came through nicely after I’d chewed for a bit. Something about the lemon detracted a bit from the cheesecake flavor. I think it tasted more like a sugar cookie - and hey! there’s some lemon here, too. I wouldn’t suggest covering the cookies in sugar. They didn’t come out as pretty at all, and I wouldn’t say they were fantastic. It wasn’t bad, I just won’t mess up a good thing and try it again.

These were so easy, didn’t take too long and reminded me of Wetzels. Yipee!

This recipe came from the book knead, by Carol Tennant, and is retyped exactly how it appears in the book. A book review will soon follow.

Pretzels
3 cups all purpose flour
1 cup strong white bread flour
2 1/2 tsp instant yeast
2 T soft light brown sugar
1 heaped tsp salt, 2 T kosher sea salt - divided
1 1/2 cups warm water
2 T baking soda
vegetable oil, an oil mister is preferable

This makes 12 large, soft pretzels. Eat them on the day they are baked.

1. Mix together the flours, yeast sugar and 1 heaped tsp salt in a large mixing bowl. Add the water and mix to a soft dough. Knead for about 5 minutes until smooth and elastic. Shape into a neat ball and put into an oiled bowl. Lightly oil the surface of the dough and cover the bowl with plastic wrap. Leave to rise 1 hour, or until doubled in bulk.

2. Cover 2 large cookie sheets with waxed paper and set aside. Preheat the oven to 450.

3. Cut the dough into 12 equal pieces. Take the first piece and roll it using the palms of your hands into a long thin rope, about as thin as a pencil. Shape into a pretzel by crossing over the ends, twisting them, then folding them up over the loop. Set aside on a floured surface. Shape all the pretzels.

4. Mix the baking soda with about 2 cups hand-hot water until dissolved. Dip the pretzels, one at a time, into the solution then transfer to the prepared cookie sheets, leaving them well-spaced. Sprinkle with the kosher salt. Leave to rise, 15-20 minutes until just puffed up. Bake 8-10 minutes until golden. Serve warm or cold.

Like I said, easy and delicious. BUT, let me emphasize what it said above - eat them on the day they are baked. Within 24 hours, the pretzels looked liked wrinkled nastiness and got tough instead of soft and chewy.

Other stuff:
*Read all the directions first, carefully - I actually re-wrote the part of the recipe. In the original, she lists salt twice, and in direction #1, just says “salt” not which salt she was talking about.
*With half the pretzels, I brushed with melted butter, then sprinkled generously with cinnamon sugar instead of using the kosher salt. They were good, but not as much of the sugar mix stuck as I was hoping would. They weren’t whatcha buy in the store, but not bad.
*Rolling the pretzels takes work. A lot of work. It’s a very elastic dough, and I had to use a lot of pressure while rolling between my hands to get them thin enough. I had tired arms!

A lot of simple situations at my house turn into full fledged experiences. And so it was with the kiwi jam.

Most of the recipes I found were pretty similar. The one I used went a little something like this:

3 cups chopped kiwi fruit
1 packet powdered pectin
1 cup unsweetened pineapple juice
4 cups granulated sugar

Combine kiwi, pectin and pineapple juice in a large pot. Bring to a boil, stirring constantly. Add sugar, stirring until dissolved. Return to a rolling boil. Boil 1 minute, stirring constantly. Remove from heat. Ladle into hot jars, leaving 1/4″ head space. Adjust lids. Process 10 minutes in boiling water canner.

Yields 8 jelly jars or 4 half-pints.

Simple enough, right? It would be, unless your stove top burner had something on it left over from the previous cooking encounter. It would be simple enough, unless that something on the burner would not quit smoking. The recipe would have been simple enough, if both smoke alarms in my house did not keep beeping at a kajillion decibels each. And, oh yea, Jacob the wonder kid was sitting at the table absolutely distraught at the loud sounds, which doesn’t make too much sense since he makes enough loud sounds of his own.

So, my point is this: I’m pretty sure that recipe would’ve worked just fine, IF I was able to stick to the boiling/stirring/boiling/stirring instructions. Instead, I was running around the house with a stool and a towel and a screwdriver trying to swat away the smoke from one smoke alarm with the towel, then running back to the other to try to unscrew it from the ceiling to make it Shut! Up! so I can get back to the dang JAM! And running back. And forth. And back. And you probably get the idea by now.

Here’s how the jam turned out: it’s delicious, but it doesn’t have the emerald color I was hoping it would. Also, it didn’t gel correctly. We have a very thick syrup type consistency in a bunch of jars.

Serving suggestion: use the jam to top cream cheese covered wheat thins. Absolutely delicious. My friend suggested pouring the jam over filo-covered, baked brie. That sounds pretty darn yummy, as well.

Bottom line: the husband loved it, I loved it, and next time we make it (I will definately make it again) I’ll probably make sure the oven burners are clean first.

*Where mediocre always refers to the review (and hopefully not the book) TM

I hope you read this review of Lori Longbotham’s Luscious Chocolate Desserts in time for Valentines Day, being that February is the month-o-chocolate-goodness. I hope you not only read this review, but that you get your hands on this cookbook. I’ve owned this book since September or October of 2004, and have been thinking about it a lot lately. I might be itching to crack it open and try a new recipe out of here.

The pictures are great, the set up of the book is nice. The chapters are divided into cakes; pies, tarts and a cheesecake; chocolate special favorites; puddings, custards and a souffle; cookies; frozen chocolate desserts; confections and a drink; and sauces. I enjoyed the section just before the recipes, which gave a history of chocolate, talked about the forms chocolate comes in, the best way to taste chocolate, basics of baking with chocolate, and more. It was informative and fun to read.

The mini-gripe I have about the recipe section: many recipes that are 2 pages (the book is a small 7 X 8 1/2 inches) are set up so that you must turn a page mid-cooking. Lots of white space (that’s not white, but you get the point) is used in this book, and it’s a pain to cook while turning pages when it’s a problem that could’ve been easily averted.

Only one recipe that I’ve tried (so far) has been a miss - the Chocolatiest Crinkles on page 105. I much prefer the recipe I’ve been using for chocolate crinkles that to this new one. The recipe in the book wasn’t even fair.

The hit of the book is a grand slam, and now one of my standby desserts for company. The Killer Chocolate Cheesecake is thick and rich and smooth and divine. It is easy to make and quite impressive, as well. The text by the book says that “gorgeous and tall, this is a beautiful, bountiful, and glamorous dessert.” I agree.

Killer Chocolate Cheesecake

Crust
one 9 ounce package chocolate wafers, broken into large pieces
6 T unsalted butter, melted

Filling
1 lb bittersweet or semisweet chocolate, chopped
1/4 cup unsalted butter
2 T unsweetened cocoa powder
three 8 ounce packages cream cheese, room temp
1 cup sugar
4 large eggs
pinch of salt
1 1/2 cups sour cream, room temp
2 t pure vanilla extract

Position a rack in the middle of the oven and preheat the oven to 350. Butter a 9 inch springform pan and wrap the outside tightly with heavy-duty aluminum foil. Have a roasting pan ready, and put a kettle of water on to boil for the water bath.

To make the crust: pulse the chocolate wafers in a food processor until finally ground. With the motor running, slowly add the butter, and process just until blended. Press the mixture onto the bottom of the pan.

Bake the crust for 8 to 10 minutes, until set. Let it cool on a wire rack.

To make the filling: Melt the chocolate with teh butter in a heatproof bowl set over a saucepan of about 1 1/2 inches of nearly simmering water, whisking until smooth. Whisk in the cocoa powder. Remove the bowl fromthe heat and let the mixture cool to room temp.

Beat the cream cheese and sugar with an electic mixer, beginning on low speed and increasing to medium-high, in a medium deep bowl until light and fluffy. Add the eggs one at a time, beating well after each addition. Beat in the salt. Beat in the chocolate mixture just until smooth, scraping down the sides of the bowl again.

Transfer the filling to the springform pan. Set the pan in the roasting pan, place it in the oven, and carefully pour in enough boiling water to reach halfway up the sides of the springform pan. Bake for 45 minutes, or until the center is almost set but still slightly jiggly; do not overbake - the cheesecake will firm as it cools. Remove the roasting pan from the oven and let the cheesecake cool in the water bath for 15 minutes.

Remove the springform pan from the water bath and let cool completely on a wire rack, then remove the foil and refrigerate the cheesecake, loosely covered, until thoroughly chilled, at least 12 hours, or overnight.

To serve, let the cheesecake stand at room temperature for 20 minutes. Remove the pan sides, smooth the sides of the cheesecake with a table knfe, and cut into wedges.

At the farmers market today were such beautiful strawberries. They’re not local; they were grown in Santa Maria about 4 1/2 hours south of here. They weren’t just pretty, they were sweet and juicy and tasted like August. Jacob loves strawberries and was shrieking from his stroller for a “bite! bite! bite!” And when it was gone, he wanted “more! more! more!” The car smelled so good on the ride home, just like fresh strawberries.

I couldn’t decide what to do with the one basket I bought. I only knew they would get eaten tonight. I thought about getting good vanilla ice cream and slicing the berries on top. When I told Nathan, he pretty much begged for strawberry shortcake. When I asked him if he wanted to try a chocolate strawberry shortcake, he asked how good the berries were. When I told him they were fantastic, he said we should stick with a known good thing instead of trying something new.

And with that, dessert tonight was Chocolate Strawberry Shortcake.

I thought for just a second about putting some cocoa powder in Bisquick. But it only lasted a second. In the house right now, we have good quality cocoa powder, and I just couldn’t justify mixing it with Bisquick. So I did a super quick search and found this recipe. As is usual, I didn’t follow it at all. But it was a nice starting point. I ended up adding almost twice the amount of sugar (I always add extra sugar to shortcakes), and a bunch more cocoa. I’d write out the recipe that I wrote, but I have no idea what I’d write, as I didn’t measure. Big surprise.

It turned out really good. The shortcake was rich, but Nathan thought it could’ve used more cocoa. We also used fresh whipping cream, which was delicious.

Lest you think I’m a professional chef, Internet, I’ll share with you my cooking oops’ as well as the successes. I pulled ham leftover from New Years out from the freezer, and decided to attack. After this week, we may never again eat ham.

I whipped together a quiche that was good, but not in the WOW! This is SO good! category. I’m still learning when it comes to building my own recipes from scratch, as you will soon be quite aware. It started as a take on a recipe I found, but now looks nothing like the original. Which might be the problem. First, the ingredients, then the results and the play-by-play analysis:

Spinach Ham Quiche
2 c milk
2 eggs
1/2 cup egg substitute
3/4 cup bisquick
2 T butter
2 T reduced fat margarine
1/2 cup grated parmesean cheese
1o oz frozen spinach, thawed and drained
1 cup cubed ham
4 oz shredded cheddar cheese
Beat together milk, egg, egg substitute, bisquick, butter, marg, and parmesean cheese. Add spinach, ham and cheddar. Stir. Pour into greased 2 quart baking dish. Bake at 375 for 50 minutes.

The taste was actually pretty good. Something happened with the eggs, though. If anyone reads this blog - especially someone who has more knowledge of food science than I (that would be anyone) - I’d appreciate some insight. I had a thin layer of egg that seems to have separated from the rest of the mix and cooked at the bottom of the dish. Was this because I had egg and egg subtitute both in the recipe, and they acted somewhat like oil and water?

I think that next time, I’ll use swiss cheese instead of parmesean. The spinach and ham was great in it, though. I was surprised that it was still a little greasy. I can’t imagine what it would’ve been like had I used all butter and more cheese, like I was tempted to do.

Nutrition Information: 6 servings, each with 293 calories, 18 g fat and 1.2 g fiber, or 7.0 Weight Watcher points.

For kicks last night, I made Orange Curd Filled Cupcakes with Cream Cheese Frosting, inspired by Chockylit. I’m wondering if I did something wrong with the curd, as it tasted more of egg than orange. I’m guessing I overcooked the curd. Other than that, I highly recommend those cupcakes. You eat one and hit your sugar quota for the week. Very good.

Don’t ask for the NI - you don’t want it. Just eat and smile.

We buy a large bunch of them every week, but they’re just so easy to forget about. Jacob will go through periods when he wants to devour them. Currently, he is going through a “yuck” stage with bananas. When they get too brown to look at anymore (when I remember to look at them), they get stuck in the freezer and wait until I can come up with something creative to do with them. Lots of times, they even get thrown away. Very undignified.

Last night I flipped past Ina Garten making Banana Crunch Muffins. I’m not usually big into nuts, but it was enough to inspire me to find a new banana muffin for breakfast this morning. I found a recipe for Banana Crumb Muffins that looked good on bakingsheet. Let’s face it. I’m a sucker for any muffin with a crumb. The info Nic has on that page about bananas was really interesting, with some great links. For example, I learned that the plants that yield bananas are the largest herbs in the world, that bananas are actually berries, and that it’s indeed possible to live on a diet of bananas and milk alone. Fascinating stuff.

The muffins were delicious. I was expecting them to be like mini-banana breads, but they weren’t at all. They had a nice, firm texture, were not overly sweet, and turned out pretty. I love pretty food. They domed just right, and the crumb slightly browned nicely. I changed the recipe just a tad, as I didn’t have buttermilk in da house. While we’ll definately make this again, I think I might substitue butter for the shortening in the crumb mixture to see how the flavor and texture changes.

To go with the muffins we had hearty scrambled eggs (I don’t have a pan large enough to make an omlette big enough for 3 of us!) with diced ham, green onions, diced tomatoes and cheddar cheese. The breakfast was TttttHhhhhhhhIiiiiiSsssss good.

muffin
1 1/2 cups all purpose flour
1/2 t baking soda
1/2 t baking powder
1/2 t salt
2/3 sugar
3 T vegetable oil
1 1/2 t lemon juice added to milk to make 1/2 cup total (in place of buttermilk)
1 egg
2 mashed bananas, divided
1 t vanilla

crumb topping
1/2 cup flour
1/3 cup sugar
1/4 t salt
3 T shortening
1 T mashed bananas

Sift together first four ingredients. Whis together the rest of the ingredients, reserving 1 T of mashed bananas for the topping. Stir together until just combined. Fill 12 muffin cups each 2/3 full. To make topping, whisk together dry ingredients, cut in shortening, add banana. Top each muffin with the crumb mixture. Bake at 350 for 18-21 minutes.

The batch makes 12 muffins, each with 229 calories, 7.3 g of fat and .9 g fiber, or 5.0 Weight Watcher Points. I used nonfat milk in this recipe and for the calculations.

*Where mediocre always refers to the review (and hopefully not the book) TM

I just (not) finished Julie & Julia: 365 days, 524 recipes, 1 tiny apartment kitchen, by Julie Powell.

Yep. You read that right. I didn’t finish it.

I wanted to like the book. I wanted to like the author. Desperately, even. But I could not bring myself to dig this book. I tried - I read 3/4 before I decided tonight to be done. Julie Powell is a temp in Long Island who is approaching 30 and needing a cause to live, basically. She decides to take her mom’s copy of Julia Child’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking, and cook through the entire book in one year. And document The Julie/Julia project on her blog. First comes the project, then comes the blog, then comes the book deal in the baby carriage! Or something like that.

Honestly, I think I didn’t get into the book because I wanted it to be like what the blog probably is. More food, less “woe is me, I’m turning 30, I live in a terrible apartment and have weird friends.” Additionally, I hate the F word. You won’t hear me cuss, and I generally don’t love it when others do. But I won’t run away screaming “sinner - you’re saying bad words!!!” I can take the cuss words when they’re salt and peppa’d throughout. But the F word was used as liberally as butter in this book. And it was too much for me to take, thankyouverymuch.

Come on, you know you want to. And come quick, before you find out that I’m grossly overcharging you. This sure as heck is not one of those super fancy home tours where nosy curious people pay money to walk through a home, oohing and aahing at a home they wished was their own. Nope.

Sometimes, my kitchen looks like this:

That’s The Husband (who may turn out to be less than thrilled about making his debut appearance in My Kitchen, so shhhhh) doing dishes after we had friends over for New Years dinner. Good man.

But today, the kitchen is clean. Which is why this is the two cent tour instead of the penny parade. When we moved into this condo almost two years ago, the kitchen brought me unfettered joy. We moved from a 500 sq foot shoebox apartment with a kitchen that would make seasoned NYC dwellers cringe. No dishwasher, no garbage disposal, room for exactly one person at a time, non-existent counter space and a sad lack of cupboards. When I see pictures of what the condo kitchen looked like when we moved in, I shake my head and wonder how - how?! - I was excited. Exhibit one:

That, Internet, is what the kitchen looked like the day we moved in. Do you see it? The dark brown, fake wood cabinets? The white walls? The tacky lineoleum? It was ugly, internet. It was ugly.

Where the joy came from, the joy that made me want to do the newsies jump/dance, was from the counters without end, the cupboards that were really holes that dug halfway to China. Plus, things improved much six weeks after the move in, when I decided to use my spring break (former life knew me as a teacher) and take my seven-month pregnant self and decided to re-do the kitchen. I took down the cabinet doors, painted the doors, painted the hardware (huge mistake, totally should’ve replaced it), painted the cabinets, painted part of the ugly counter top, painted the carpet, painted my clothes, and called the job done. I present to you the current kitchen:

Quite a difference, isn’t it? The floor helps a ton, too. It was the second floor we have put in the kitchen since we’ve lived here, and the last one, thank goodness. You might notice that the new baseboards aren’t down yet, but you shouldn’t. It’s not polite to nitpick flaws in other peoples homes. It would really help if Home Depot would have gotten our big, huge rebate to us by now (it should’ve been here summer 2005) so we could use that to buy the materials. But you probably don’t care about that, do you, Internet? Since you paid me a whole two pennies, I’ll give you two more pictures:

Not too bad, is it? Almost cute, even. Especially if you like really ugly dishwashers and oven fronts that are especially hard to clean. Particularly if you like dark kitchens with terrible light and electrical plugs in lousy locations. And you’d love this kitchen if you like to have people over for dinner, only to have them visit without you while you’re putting the finishing touches on the food, because the kitchen kind of hides from the living room.

But really, it’s not that bad. I could be cooking on this floor every day:

It’s about looking on the bright side, people.

And with that, I’ll show you to the door. No, Internet. There are no refunds.