So much for the healthy eating resolutions...

Somehow I managed to commit to making two cheesecakes this week... one for church and one for a friend. Here's the first of the two.

Note: I've found that all cheesecakes generally work best if you make them the day before you plan to serve them, and this one is no exception.


(My apologies for the poor picture quality, this is the lone survivor of the church potluck, as people were nice enough to take home most of the extra so I wouldn't have to figure out a way to dispose of a quarter of a cheesecake all by myself).

This recipe is an adaptation of a much love recipe I found in a bargain priced cookbook at Barnes and Nobles.

Melt together on low heat:

½ C Butter
4 oz chocolate (or ½ C chocolate chips)

After chocolate is melted, add the following

1 C sugar (I reduce it to ¾ C if I’m not using bittersweet chocolate)
2 eggs, beaten

Add 1 Tbsp instant coffee to 1Tbsp boiling water, stir until dissolved, then add milk to equal ¼ cup total liquid. Add this liquid to the chocolate mixture.

Stir in until just blended:
1C flour

Add to greased and floured 9” springform pan. Cook at 350 for 20-25 minutes.

While chocolate base is cooking, mix together the following:

2 ¼ C cream cheese at room temperature (I use reduced fat. Nonfat won’t work well, though).
2/3 C sugar

Add in one at a time:
3 eggs (it works best if these are also at room temperature).

Mix until well blended, then add 1 tsp vanilla.

Take 1-2 tbsp instant coffee (I use two for a strong coffee flavor) and add to 1 tbsp boiling water as before. Then add plain yogurt (or sour cream would work, I guess) to a total volume of ½ C. Stir this mixture until fairly well blended, then add to the cream cheese mixture. Mix everything together, then pour over cooked base. I generally give the base about five minutes to cool down before adding the cream cheese mixture, but I don’t think it matters all that much.

Bake cheesecake at 350 for 45-55 minutes or until not quite set. The edges should be set but the center won’t quite be there yet. Run a knife around the edges to prevent cracking, then allow to cool to room temperature. Once it’s at room temperature stick it in the fridge (the more gradual cooling helps prevent cracking). Keep in fridge at least a couple of hours until chilled.

Topping (from Dorie Greenspan's cookbook):
In small saucepan mix the following:
1 ¼ C sour cream (I use low fat)
½ C powdered sugar.
Heat and stir until warm (but not hot) and well blended, then pour over top of chilled cheesecake. Put cheesecake back in fridge for at least another two hours to set the topping. I also grate bittersweet chocolate over the top right before serving just because I think it’s pretty.

Other Notes:
I’ve made this cheesecake without the coffee, and it works great. I’ve also made it without the topping, which is fine. I think the topping is nice when you do have coffee in the cake, though, as you get the three-color visual appeal.

Weekend bakination...

They say the first step to solving a problem is admitting you have a problem... Between baking for socialness on Saturday and baking some cookies for a friend's Sunday school class I ended up logging some serious cooking time this weekend.

These are the pumpkin muffins I described earlier, as well as some cheese muffins from a recipe I adapted from a Cooking Light recipe (I'll post it if anyone is interested).



I also baked the rest of the chocolate cookies, and made the amazing espresso shortbread cookies, which I believe originally came from a Dorie Greenspan recipe (it's only a matter of time before I break down and buy her fabulous cookbook) [Edit: I found one for 1/2 price on Amazon. I broke down and bought it. That didn't take long]. I've made these shortbread cookies twice. I don't keep expresso powder on hand, so I used instant coffee instead. One time I used 2 tablespoons and the other time I only used 1; go with the higher amount. I also tried it with dark chocolate and with toffee/chocolate. I didn't think it made a huge difference one way or the other; the toffee flavor doesn't really come out.


(shortbread)


(shortbread and chocolate cookies)

And lastly I made my usual chocolate chip cookies for the Sunday school class. This is a recipe I've adapted from a Mrs. Fields cookbook.

Cream together:

1/2 C butter (Earth Balance works fine for this recipe; I have a relative who is allergic to milk so I've tried it quite successfully).
1/2 C brown sugar

(optional: add 1/4 C white sugar in addition to brown sugar. I don't because I don't like super-sweet cookies, but I do find some people prefer it).

1 tsp vanilla
1 egg/ener-G equivalent (I use the equivalent because then you can eat the cookie dough without having to worry about salmonella. Also it's cheaper).

Add in:
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp salt
1.25 C flour

Mix until blended, then throw in a few handfuls of chocolate chips (the more the better; I probably use about a cup).

Eat cookie dough.

Bake remaining dough at 325 for 10-15 minutes (my oven runs pretty hot, so it doesn't take long). I like to take them out when they look just barely underdone and leave them on the cookie sheet to cool. This allows them to bake that last little bit while staying soft).

Why Sam needs to bike this weekend: exhibit A

Background for why I'm baking during the week: During the summer I am able to go to Tae Kwon Do classes on Thursdays. Unfortunately, once the school year begins the Thursday TKD class is switched back to what I like to think of as "Crazy People TKD" class, wherein competitors try to kill each other and themselves. I don't attend this class. Luckily for me, though, I've managed to arrange general socialness this weekend (read: Sam offloads baked goods on unsuspecting friends).

I decided to try this recipe, as I respect any recipe that has a LOT more chocolate than all the other ingredients put together.

Mostly I followed the directions as listed. I did make a few changes, though. The most basic change stems from the fact that I am a poor grad student, and poor grad students (even psycho baking ones) don't have tons of high-grade chocolate on hand. I therefore replaced the unsweetened chocolate with a couple squares from an 85% lindt chocolate bar I picked up on sale not long since, and replaced the six ounces of bittersweet chocolate with 3/4 cup (which is roughly equivalent volume/weight) semi-sweet chocolate chips. (Costco sells 10 pounds of semi-sweet chocolate chips for $17.99. I love Costco). In order to compensate for these changes I dropped the sugar from 2/3 C to 1/2C.

The second change came about because I always freeze my raisins because I buy them in bulk from the local co-op; bulk foods are notorious havens for nasty little bugs, so I like to be careful. Unfortunately, this can lead to interesting baking if (like me) you don't have a microwave to thaw things out quickly. Also, I was suspicious about how good raisins would be in chocolate cookies. My solution was to take about a cup of raisins (I didn't bother to measure) and cook them in a splash of rum. This had the advantage of tastyifying the raisins while simultaneously thawing them out.


In order to not throw off the liquid/dry ingredient balance I made sure the rum was all cooked away before adding the raisins to the cookie dough.

Next I melted the chocolate chips/lindt bar squares with butter as directed. I've found it's a good idea to turn off the burner (if you have an electric stove like mine) halfway through; it will retain enough heat to gradually melt the chocolate. Do not turn your back on this step; chocolate melts and burns quickly! This is what it should look like right before it's done; at this point you can see small bits of butter remaining, but it's basically smooth. I recommend removing the pan from the burner entirely at this stage; the chocolate is warm enough to finish melting all on its own.



I am a huge fan of my stand-alone mixer. That being said, I did (and would strongly recommend that others do as well) follow Ms. Greenspan's directions about mixing in the last ingredients by hand. I chose to use 3/4 cup each semi-sweet chocolate chips and white chocolate chips, and about 3/4 cup pecans. There are, at this point, way more add-ins than dough.



Luckily for me, someone gave me a silicon sheet several years ago. I placed this on a cookie sheet and very carefully scooped cookie dough onto it. The dough at this point is almost more like brownie batter than normal cookie dough, so you must use a spoon to drop it.




I tried (in the spirit of scientific experimentation) using pan spray in addition to the silicon sheet, and using only the silicon sheet. The verdict was clear: don't use pan spray. The cookie with pan spray spread out and burned on the edges; the other one did not. Here's a picture of the finished product:



I only cooked the two trial run cookies; my get-together isn't until later in the week. I'll try to update with a better picture once I've baked some more cookies. All in all I'm extremely pleased with this recipe and will make it again. I'm just hoping that a rich, distant and unknown relative will die and leave me a chocolate factory so that I will be able to make them frequently without having to worry about replenishing my baking chocolate supply.

Weekend cooking...

As a note of explanation, I do most of my cooking on the weekend because my weeks are way too crazy to have time to cook proper meals. Anyway, I decided to try this recipe. I managed, through extremely good luck, to pick up a bottle of truffle oil at TJ Maxx, of all places, for a reasonable price. I actually sprayed canola oil on the onions/potatoes, rather than adding olive oil, as the truffle oil added later on is responsible for the flavor, not the olive oil. Otherwise I more or less tried to follow the recipe.

I was quite happy with how it turned out, and the recipe fit well in my cast-iron pan. It takes a long time to cook, but I've been baking other things, so I just had it sitting in the oven as I did the rest of my cooking. (This meant I used a lower temperature, though, which is undoubtedly why it took so long to cook).

One of the aforementioned "other cooking" recipes I was making was the soft chocolate chip cookie recipe from the King Arthur's Flour baking book. I made these, I hasten to add, not for my own consumption (I'm on a healthy eating kick right now), but for a friend who had a really rotten week last week (cue "I hate men" song here). I have to say that I wasn't super-happy with this recipe; it's simply way too sweet for my taste. Normally I cut at least 25% of the sugar from any cookie recipe, but I decided not to do so this time. In the future, if I make these again, I will definitely decrease the sugar.

Apple sauce!

Since I'm a Californian, the idea of "seasons" is still somewhat a novelty for me. That being said, I've found I really enjoy living here in New England, where each season is celebrated in its own way. For me, making apple sauce is a way to celebrate fall (my favorite season, as it's still warm enough to bike but not so sunny as to cause spontaneous combustion in those of us who inherited a skin tone known scientifically as "day-glow white."). This tradition started my first autumn in Vermont, when I made my way to a very remote pick-your-own apple orchard and spent an enjoyable, albeit soaking wet, afternoon picking apples. I then had to figure out what to do with them, as I dislike raw apples.

My apple sauce recipe is pretty basic. I should also stress that this is not a recipe suitable for canning, as I have not included lemon juice or any other acidic ingredient to inhibit the growth of Clostridium botulinum, the organism responsible for botulism poisoning. This is, rather, how I make myself a pot of applesauce to eat throughout the week.

Recipe (such as it is):

Buy one of those nifty apple-peeler-corer-slicer thingies. Really, it's worth it, and they're not very expensive.

Peal/core/slice about three pounds of apples. This translates to 1/2 a peck, roughly, I believe, although I've never known what a "peck" is. Unit of volume? Weight? I haven't a clue.

Throw apple slices in a pot. Add enough water to completely cover the bottom of the pot (this prevents burning. I found out the importance of this step the hard way last year. I had to throw out probably five pounds of apples because I scorched the bottom of the pot).

Add roughly:

Juice from one orange.
1/4 cup dark brown sugar
1 tsp cinnamon
1/4-1/2 tsp cloves (I used more because my cloves are old, so they've lost quite a lot of their original punch).




Simmer apples on low to medium heat, stirring when you remember to do so, and (this is important) adding water as needed to keep the bottom of the pot covered in liquid. You could use apple cider to do this; I simply didn't have any on hand. It also occurred to me that number of herbal teas would probably be excellent in place of water as well. The time needed for cooking depends on how high your stove is turned up, and how broken down you want your apple sauce to be. I'd estimate I had it going for about 45 minutes just because I had other things going on. You can also use an immersion blender to achieve a smoother texture sauce. I didn't because I like my apple sauce to still have little recognizeable bits of apples.



At the end I threw in a dash of (Vermont, bien sûr) maple syrup because I felt the apples were a little tart. If you choose do this please, for the love of all that is holy, do NOT use that awful maple-flavored corn syrup "imitation maple syrup" crap. Use the real stuff or just skip it.

I eat this with plain yogurt mixed in. So...tasty... and healthy, actually.

White wine and orange cupcakes

I tried this recipe today because I owe a friend a thank you for being willing to drive me somewhere tomorrow. (I am Sam the Carless). I must say that while I almost always play with recipes, this one I left as described, and it turned out fantastically well. I used white wine that had been sitting in the fridge for over a week, and it worked just fine. Highly recommend this recipe.

Pumpkinmuffingoodness

In my family we have a tradition of eating pumpkin ice-cream with hot fudge sauce. Not necessarily an intuitive pairing, but it's incredibly tasty nonetheless. This means that I try to add chocolate to any pumpkin recipe I can, with the possible exception of pumpkin pie because you just can't mess with tradition too much without being in danger of being stabbed to death with salad forks by angry traditionalists. If you don't like pumpkin and chocolate then I suppose (she conceded grudgingly) you could leave out the chocolate chips.

I made these tasty pumpkin muffins to celebrate the fact that the weather has finally cooled down and I'm no longer in danger of spontaneous combustion and/or melting. I very loosely based the recipe off of this one. However, it's sufficiently changed that I think I'd better list the ingredients anyway...

Mix in separate bowl:

1.5 C flour
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp baking soda

Combine until well blended:

3/4 C brown sugar
1 C canned pumpkin (not pumpkin pie filling)
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/4 tsp cloves
1 tsp cardamom
2 eggs worth of Ener-G egg replacer (you could use eggs, but I don't if I can get away with using the egg replacer)
1/4 C oil

Stir dry ingredients into pumpkin mixture until just blended. Add in several handfuls of chocolate chips because everything is better with chocolate chips. Spoon into medium-sized muffin tin (should come out to exactly 12 muffins if you haven't eaten too much batter). Bake at 350 for 20-25 minutes (my oven tends to run hot, test muffins by sticking something into the center. With the exception of melted chocolate chips it should come out clean if they're done). I use a sharp knife but I understand that non-grad students use a "cake tester," whatever the hell that is. Eat tasty muffins.

What to do with bolted thai basil...

So here in Vermont summer takes a long time to get started, but then when it does everything bolts immediately. (For you non-gardeners that means all your herbs/salad greens/etc start flowering, which isn't so good for your yields). I finally gave up trying to keep ahead of the flowers, and cut a whole bunch.

Unfortunately, you can't really cook with basil flowers, as their texture isn't very good. The solution? Find an old glass bottle, stuff the flowers in it, and add cheap white vinegar. Surprisingly (to me, anyway) the purple flower stalks turned the vinegar a bright pink colour, so now I have a pretty bottle of basil vinegar. Tasty and decorative... what more can a poor grad student ask for? (Other than an increased stipend, but we all know that's not going to happen until they're handing out down parkas in hades). The bottle on the left has peppercorns thrown in as well; I actually didn't like the flavor of that as much, and will stick with just basil in the future.

Ok, ok I caved...

After years of secretly reading other foodie blogs I finally caved and made one of my own. I hope this will be a community effort, as I know a lot of my friends are hardcore foodies. If you send me photos of your creations I'll post them and everyone else will be properly impressed and/or jealous.

Sam