Oreo Cupcakes

My sister and I threw a party on Friday night to welcome her to the hood. She made these fab Oreo Cupcakes, displayed in a new cupcake holder I got for Christmas. Scroll past the pictures for the recipe

Oreo Cupcakes
1 cup butter
1 cup plus 2 tbsp sugar
2 tsp vanilla extract
2 eggs
3 oz melted chocolate
1 1/2 cups milk
2 cups flour
2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1/3 cup cocoa powder
dash cinnamon
dash ginger

Bake at 350 degrees for 20 minutes.

Oreo Frosting
1 cup butter
1 cup powdered sugar
3 tbsp milk
1 tsp vanilla extract
chocolate shavings

Combine ingredients, frost cupcakes, and top each with Oreo crumbs and one large Oreo chunk.

White Bean Dip

I haven't felt very inspired when it comes to cooking lately. My life is still all out of sorts, and I've moved but not really, so half of my cooking supplies are in one apartment, and half of them are in another. I made a couple of meals this week, but neither is worth dishing out to the blogosphere (pasta with roasted tomatoes and chicken; attempted indian spiced crock pot vegetables).

There's just one thing I've made recently that was a huge hit, unexpectedly. I had a "housewarming" party (for an apartment I haven't really been living in) last weekend, so I whipped up a white bean dip on the fly, not sure what to expect having never tried making a spread with white beans before, but everyone loved it. White bean dip is so flexible. I thought it would taste great with sundried tomatoes or roasted red peppers, but I didn't have time to procure those, while fresh herbs beckoned from my deck.

This week, as cool fall air begins to set in, I've really been itching to bake up a storm of sweet treats to satisfy my daily afternoon chocolate cravings, so hopefully you'll see some delectable baked goodies on here soon.

Roasted Garlic and Herb White Bean Dip

1 can white beans

2 cloves garlic, whole, unpeeled

1/4 cup olive oil

small handful fresh rosemary

small handful fresh thyme

zest and juice of 1/4 lemon

salt

pepper

Through the garlic onto the baking sheet while making crackers. After about ten minutes, when the crackers are done, squeeze the garlic out of its peels. Throw all ingredients in a food processor and blend until smooth and creamy. Add additional seasoning as needed. Spoon into a serving dish. Reserve a few of the fresh herbs to sprinkle over top. Serve alongside crackers.

Another Barbecue

Another weekend, another barbecue, trying to fit them all in before summer slips away. I invited friends over last night for a low key gathering, and wasn't sure how many people would come, so I ended up with a lot of leftovers, both food and alcohol-wise. I guess that's a good thing, except it means I'll have to move all of it (see below).

I made grass fed burgers using ground beef from Elk Trails with my signature fresh sage (from my deck) and worcestershire sauce combination. I grilled them myself - it was the first time I'd ever personally made hamburgers on the grill, and they came out perfectly medium and yummy.

I baked up the crisp flatbread again, this time using 1 cup local whole wheat flour and 3/4 cup white flour, and mixing in fresh ground pepper instead of rosemary, and I thought it had much better depth of flavor.

For dipping, I made hummus and baba ghanoush. I bought eggplants from a new, mad cheap vendor at the Union Square Greenmarket, but I was unlucky and it turned out they had tons of seeds, so I did my best to remove them to keep the baba ghanoush from being overly bitter. I'm not going to post the recipe I used because it was kind of fly-by-my-pants and didn't come out quite as magical as I hoped. I also ended up with less than stellar corn, that was small and not especially sweet, but people enjoyed it anyway, especially topped with some Ronnybrook butter.

And now, I should probably continue packing, since I'm moving into my new apartment tomorrow. I like to think I don't own a lot of posessions, but I've realized that my obsession with food means I will have to ferry box after box after box of foodstuffs and kitchen accoutrements. Moving is a bitch.

Kale Hummus

Last Saturday I had some week-old kale that was on its last legs, yellowing in its vase. I wasn't sure what to do with it. It didn't fit into my dinner plan of braised lamb and cabbage. Being just a few leaves, it didn't seem like enough to make it worth it to sautee and freeze it for some future meal. And the leaves were too small to make kale chips.

Then Jesse requested an appetizer before dinner. Not wanting to spend money on cheese and crackers or non-local salad greens, I thought about what I had in the kitchen. A can of chickpeas, easily transformable into hummus. And an opportunity to use up old flour to try my hand at making crackers for dipping. But would kale go well with hummus? A quick search on google revealed that it has indeed been done before
in the form of kale and sundried tomato hummus. I didn't have sundried tomatoes on hand, but I went ahead and made it without it.

The kale hummus turned out surprisingly tasty (though my crackers did not). And as I mentioned, it was so good that we ruined our appetite for dinner. In fact, I'm still paying the consequences of this - I've been trying to use up the leftover rice and cabbage in various forms for lunch and dinner all week. I've found that grated parmesan cheese and crushed red pepper work wonders at masking the taste of slimy old braised cabbage.

I recommend only using half a bunch of kale or less so that the kale taste isn't overpowering. While I enjoyed this kale hummus just fine, I can see how it would benefit from sweet sundried tomatoes. But I'll have to wait till tomato season to try that combination, if I ever get around to making my own sundried tomatoes.

Kale Hummus

1 can chickpeas (or 1 cup chickpeas soaked overnight and simmered for an hour until tender)
few leaves of kale
2 tbsp tahini
1 tbsp olive oil
2 fat cloves garlic
salt
pepper
lemon juice
cayenne pepper
paprika

Tear or chop kale into pieces, discarding thick stems. Place in a pot with half an inch of simmering water and cover until steamed(wilted). Remove kale from pot and let cool.

Combine first six ingredients in a food processor and process until smooth. Add remaining spices to taste and process again. Add water if needed until hummus reaches a creamy consistency. Serve with pita or crackers.

Moroccan Carrot Dip and Hummus

This Saturday I held my annual holiday party, and for some reason decided to be ambitious and spend all day in the kitchen for it. It was nice to spend the day by myself cooking in a peaceful apartment. My roommates were both out all day so no one was in my way, and I just had my cute dog hanging out on the couch to keep me company.

When party time came, and people didn't eagerly gobble my food, I decided that I won't go to so much effort next time. No one cares that it was homemade. They would have been perfectly happy with storebought hummus and chips and chocolate and so on.

Early in the day, I made chips and dips. I used my old standby recipe for pita chips, which is always a crowd pleaser. Next it was time to tackle the food processor. Jesse got the food processor for Christmas. For some strange reason, he decided that we needed it. I was, and still am, skeptical about this, as I always got along fine in my life without one. Up until Saturday I had never used a food processor before. If I wanted to puree something, such as soup or pesto, I have always just done it in my blender.

I watched the 45 minute instruction video to see if I could get some idea of whether this device is actually useful. Interestingly, on the video they often put prepeeled and sliced vegetables into the processor to chop them up more finely and mix them. Now I think this is kind of silly. If you've already gone to the trouble of getting out a cutting board and a knife to chop a pepper into large pieces, why not just go all the way and knife it up into fine little pieces rather than having to use electricity and getting a whole other object in the kitchen dirty to chop it up more finely. Same goes for mixing cookie batter in a food processor. Are people too lazy to use their arm muscles anymore?

But I figured I should give the food processor a try, since it is ideal for making dips and spreads. After completing the recipes below for hummus and Moroccan carrot dip, I will agree that it is a lot easier to use the food processor than the blender for dips. I think I might also try using the food processor when I want to tackle pastry dough someday. But other than that, I think it will stay hidden in our makeshift kitchen storage, aka the underneath of a table in my living room (our kitchen is impossibly small).

Some Moroccan carrot dip recipes call for cinnamon and honey, so I included them. However, carrots are already sweet and this made the dip a little too sweet for what should be a savory snack, so I omitted them from my recipe below. The hummus came out great. In the next month I really want to try cooking Mediterranean food more often - hummus, falafel, tabouleh, tajine, and so on. Mmmm.



Moroccan Carrot Dip

4 medium sized carrots
1 large garlic clove
1 tsp cumin
1 tsp paprika
1 tsp ginger
pinch of cayenne pepper
salt and pepper
juice of 1/2 lemon squeezed
2 tbsp extra virgin olive oil

Chop carrots in large pieces and unwrap garlic clove, leaving it whole. Place carrots and garlic in a pot of salted water, bring to a boil, and then let simmer, partially covered, about 20 minutes until carrots are tender. Drain in a colander, reserving 1/2 cup cooking water. Let carrots cool for a few minutes.

Place carrots and garlic in food processer and process until smooth. Add cooking water and process again until smooth. Add spices, honey, and lemon juice, and process again. Add olive oil slowly while the machine is running. Taste and add more spices to your liking. Spoon into a serving bowl, drizzle with a little olive oil, and serve with pita chips.



Hummus

1 cup dried chickpeas
1/3 cup tahini
juice of 1/2 lemon
2 garlic cloves
salt and pepper
1/2 tsp cumin
2 tbs extra virgin olive oil
dash of paprika

Put the raw chickpeas in a pot with cold water to cover and soak overnight.

The next day, drain and rinse the chickpeas, then place them in the pot and cover with about an inch of water. Add one whole clove of garlic to the pot. Bring to a boil, and then simmer, partially covered, for about an hour or until the chickpeas are tender.

Drain the chickpeas and garlic, reserving the cooking liquid. In a food processor, process the chickpeas and garlic until finely ground. Add tahini, lemon juice, remaining garlic clove, and 1/2 cup of the cooking liquid and process until smooth. Add cumin, salt and pepper and process again, adding more of these spices to taste. While food processor is running, add 2 tsbp olive oil. If consistency is too thick, add more of the cooking liquid a little at a time until hummus is smooth and paste-like. Spoon hummus into a serving bowl, drizzle with olive oil, and sprinkle paprika over the top. Serve with pita chips.

Halloween Treats

Last weekend, I hosted a Halloween party at my apartment, complete with decorations, costumes, and season treats.










Toasted Pumpkin Seeds

I gave Jesse the task of carving the pumpkin, and when I returned, I was pleasantly surprised by his unique and well-carved interpretation. "It's a girl?" I said. "Of course it's a girl, it has a girl shape!" he responded. Okay then, if you say so.

I took the innards out of the pumpkin. The stringy guts weren't worth saving, as it was a surprisingly small amount for such a large pumpkin. But I did use the seeds to make toasted pumpkin seeds, a la Simple Recipes - with a couple modifications. First of all, I added paprika because I love to add that spice to all most every dish I make. I am never sure just how much taste paprika really adds, but the color seems to give food a psychological kick for me at least.

Also, the recipe above only requires 20 minutes in the oven. Some of my seeds were done at that time, but I had to let others sit in the oven until 50 minutes or so, and they still weren't deliciously crunchy but overly tough and chewy. Who knows, maybe due to my shitty apartment oven?

Chocolate Covered Apple Chunks

Next up, I made chocolate covered apple chunks. I thought about making caramel apples, but last time I tried to make caramel (over popcorn) it didn't come out right at all, so I decided to stick with coating the apples in chocolate because it is so much easier to do - just melt chocolate! I saw something similar on Iron Chef, where they created a trio of mini caramel covered and chocolate covered apples on sticks using an ice cream scoop to scoop out round pieces of apple.
So that was my inspiration. But I don't have an ice cream scoop and I don't have toothpicks, so I just left them as jagged apple pieces to melt in your hand. They turned out fine, but weren't a very exciting snack. I think taste-wise, caramel goes better with apples than chocolate does.

Bring a couple inches of water in a saucepan to boil, then lower to simmer. Place a metal bowl over the saucepan as a double boiler. Empty a bag of chocolate chips (milk, dark, semi-sweet, whatever you prefer) into the bowl and stir continuously until melted.

Meanwhile, chop 3 apples into 2-inch pieces. Once the chocolate is melted, Slowly stir in the apples with a metal spoon making sure the apple pieces are coated evenly.

Cover a baking sheet with aluminum foil. Lay the apple pieces evenly on the foil, without letting them touch (if they touch, they will stick together). Place sheet in the refrigerator for at least one hour (can be made a day in advance and stored in the fridge) to allow chocolate to set. Remove from fridge shortly before serving.

Carrot CupcakesAs you may have figured out by now, I like to make cupcakes and muffins for parties rather than full-sized cake because 1. they take less time to bake and thus use less energy 2. they are already in personal-sized portions with no cake cutting involved 3. they are easy to eat with your hands.

I also made carrot cupcakes for theparty, modeled after Straight From the Farm's carrot cake. Here is my version of it, modified to include less oil and eggs, replacing that with more apple sauce, honey, and milk. She used pear sauce, but luckily I had made apple sauce from local apples a week or two ago and was saving it for a random baking adventure, so the apple sauce ended up in this and didn't go to waste. Just for the record, the carrots, apples, eggs, and honey in this were all local.

I liked this recipe. It is a nice change from most carrot cake recipes, which gain moistness from pineapple, which is definitely not local. I would consider them muffins without frosting and cupcakes with frosting. I also ventured away from typical carrot cake frosting to do a plain vanilla cream icing because I don't like cream cheese icing. I have never believed that cream cheese should have a place in baking, whether it be cheesecake or frosting. The photo shows both chocolate and vanilla frosted cupcakes. What happened was, I had lots of chocolate at the bottom of the bowl after making my chocolate covered apples, so I scraped up the extra chocolate and just spread it over the top of cupcakes. But there wasn't enough chocolate for all the cupcakes so I ended up having to make vanilla frosting too. Next time I would just stick to vanilla frosting for these as chocolate kind of masks the actual taste of the cupcake.

They would have tasted awesome if I hadn't overcooked them. They came out dark on the bottom, slightly tough, with a slight burned taste, but still relatively yummy. Next time the only change I would make would maybe be to add more flour and one more egg so as to have more batter and bigger cupcakes - as you can see in the photo above, they are somewhat small.

1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
2 tsp ground cinnamon
1 tsp ground nutmeg
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
1/3 cup extra virgin olive oil
1 cup apple sauce
1 cup brown sugar
2 eggs
2 tbsp honey
2 tbsp soy milk
3 cups grated carrots (about 3 average sized carrots)
1/3 cup chopped walnuts

Frosting
2 tbsp butter
1 tsp vanilla
1 tsp milk
1 cup confectioners sugar

Preheat the oven to 350 F and prepare two muffin tins with a good coat of nonstick baking spray. Set out the ingredients for the icing so they come to room temperature.
Sift together the flour, spices and baking powder and soda and set aside.
In a large bowl, whisk together oil, apple sauce, sugar, honey, and milk until everything is well combined. Add the eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition. Slowly stir in the flour mixture until just combined. Do not over mix! Add the carrots and walnuts.

Pour the batter into the prepared muffin tins and bake on the center oven rack for 15-20 minutes. Make sure to check on them so they don't overcook! Test with a skewer inserted into the center to see if it comes out clean. When the skewer is clean, remove cup cakes from oven and allow to cool completely on a wire rack.

While the cake is cooling, make the icing by combining the buter, vanilla, and milk. Add half the confectioners’ sugar and stir slowly to start and then beat well to get rid of lumps. Taste the icing to determine if it’s sweet enough for you. If not, add more sugar until you’ve reached your desired sweetness. When cake is completely cooled, spread icing over top. Makes 24 cupcakes.

The Roommate's Goods

My roommate Gina also contributed to the party goods. She made sugar cookies, and I topped them off with icing left over from my cupcakes:

Gina also made a pumpkin pie, following her boyfriend's mother's pie crust recipe - coming out much better this time than her first attempt at pie crust - and a Paula Deen pie filling complete with cream cheese. Paula Deen, butter lover, scares me as a rule, but this pie tasted pretty good.

Unrelated: Bread

Finally, I have embarked on the quest to bake my own bread instead of shelling out $4-$5 for great farmers market bread. This is my second loaf and hey it looks like the real thing! My first loaf was all whole wheat, but was flat on top and dense, probably because I didn't let it rise long enough. For my second loaf, below, I followed the recipe for Basic Hearth Bread in The Bread Bible. With all the rising involved, I started at 7:30pm after work and didn't get to taste a finished slice until 1:15 am. Yikes! This was good, but much whiter than I would like. Next time I think I'll go for 3/4 whole wheat and 1/4 white flour, and let the sponge ferment in the fridge overnight. The great thing is, I have so many chances to improve at this if I keep making a new loaf of bread every week. I won't be sharing a recipe on here till I come up with my perfect bread. This week's bread was good, but not perfect.

Which brings me to an issue about this blog. As you may tell, I haven't been posting everything I've been cooking. As a perfectionist, I feel insecure about posting not only my failures but also meals that are just okay. I aspire to greatness and that means you'll just have to put up with sporadic posts, waiting for the best.

Whole Wheat Rosemary Crackers

1 1/4 cup whole wheat flour
1/2 tsp salt
1/4 tsp baking powder
1/4 cup dried rosemary
1 tbsp garlic powder
1 1/2 tbsp olive oil
1/2 cup warm water

Preheat the oven to 350F. Mix the flour, salt, baking powder, rosemary, and garlic powder in a large bowl. Add the oil and water, and mix well. Mix with hands if necessary. The dough will be a little sticky, but it shouldn’t be hard to handle. If it feels too sticky, add a little more flour. Flour a work surface, and a rolling pin, and roll the dough out as thin as possible, approximately 1/16 inch.
Use a knife to cut the dough into rough squares. Lightly oil a baking sheet and place crackers about 1/2 inch apart on the sheet. Bake for approximately 15 minutes.

(From Kitchen Illiterate)