One last post of 2010

As 2010 draws to a close, I can't help but notice that it's been a pretty good year. Sure, no one cured cancer, or global warming but overall, I feel good about life in general. I also cooked some awesome things this year, one of which was a goat cheese cheesecake for my friend Becky who is deathly allergic to cow's milk.


I think my friends could tell you that I am very accommodating to people's food allergies. It makes me feel like I'm in my own version of Iron Chef: Allergy edition (people could also tell you that I am not so accommodating to picky eaters. If you're not eating something for no reason, I have no patience for that and you can't come to my house for dinner). So when Meredith made this cheesecake a few months back, I thought immediately, oooh, I can make this for Becky.

My one thought about this recipe is that it had the consistency of a souffle rather than a cheesecake. But Meredith told me it's because I forgot to chill it for four hours first. Whoops.

Goat Cheese Cheesecake - adapted from here

Butter and granulated sugar for the cake pan (or oil if butter makes you break out in hives)
Graham Cracker Crumbs and a light tasting oil - for a crust
11 ounces fresh goat cheese, at room temperature
3/4 cup granulated sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
Grated zest of 1 lemon
1 teaspoon freshly squeezed lemon juice
6 large eggs, separated
3 tablespoons all-purpose flour
1/2 pint blackberries (about 1 cup) (I skipped these)
1 pint raspberries (about 2 cups)

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Press some graham cracker crumbs into the bottom of a 9 inch springform pan. Drizzle olive oil on top and bake for about 10 minutes. Let cool.


Put the goat cheese, sugar, vanilla, lemon zest, and lemon juice in the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment and beat until smooth.


Mmmmm, cheese.

Stir in the egg yolks two at a time, mixing well after each addition. Mix in the flour until incorporated. If you're at your mom's house and don't have access to a stand mixer, use a hand mixer instead. It'll be fine.


Put the egg whites in another mixer bowl, fit the mixer with the whip attachment, and whip on medium speed until soft peaks form.


Using a spatula, gently fold the egg whites into the goat cheese mixture. I used to be totally afraid of folding egg whites. Now I have confidence and these egg whites folded appropriately. Woo!


Spread the batter into the prepared pan.

Bake until a skewer inserted into the center comes out clean, 25 to 30 minutes. Let cool to room temperature.


To serve, run a knife around the inside edge of the pan to loosen the cake, invert a platter on top of the pan, and then invert the plate and pan together. Lift off the pan (or, you know, just take the springy part off the springform pan).


Top with the berries and serve. Chill to get the consistency all creamy like a cheesecake. If you don't, it's still good.


It's a great option for those who can't have milk! Happy super belated birthday, Becky and have a happy new year everybody! See you in 2011.

People really like these

Last night, I stumbled across a great idea. Want to see a picture of it?


That, my friends, is an individually sized candied bacon cheesecake with a gingersnap crust and chocolate drizzled on top. Madness, you say? Maybe.

My friends Anna and Alan come over for a Post-Thanksgiving/Pre-Christmas dinner every year where I get to make all the holiday dishes that I don't make for my family. It's really awesome. I was going over my menu ideas with Alan this weekend and I mentioned that I'd make some candied bacon last week but that it was too sticky to sell or give out. "Why don't you put it in a cheesecake?" Alan suggested. Brilliant. So I did.

First, I made a crust out of Trader Joe's Triple Ginger Snaps, by putting them in a ziploc bag and whacking them with a hammer. Then I melted butter and added it to the crumbs. I pushed it into four individual springform pans (Thanks, Chris!!!!!) and baked them for about ten minutes. Then I let them cool.

Then I mixed a package of cream cheese, an egg, 1/4 cup sugar, and a teaspoon of vanilla in my stand mixer. I chopped up my candied bacon (which had been drizzled with chocolate) and threw it in. I baked it until it was firm and chilled it. Then I put melted some chocolate and used a spoon to make pretty lines of chocolate.

The responses I got to this dish (which I admit, I was a little nervous about) were fantastic. Everybody loved it! I only wish I'd taken more pictures. If I'd known it would turn out so well, I would have taken more. Next time!

Sweet baby Jesus, this cake is good...

...or so said the first person who tasted it. At least, that's what the good people at Vesta Vino (my favorite restaurant in Astoria) told me and why should I not believe them?

I am totally obsessed with this cake. Sometimes I order it when I'm already full and then I feel sick, but it's so good I don't care. It's also so easy to make. This would be a great and appropriate Christmas cake - but Jews like it too! I can say that with confidence. It went over very well at my house this year.

This cake is unbelievably sticky and moist. If you think you don't like dates, you'll still like this cake.




Baby Jesus Cake
6 servings

1 cup dried dates, rehydrated in 1 cup water
1 teaspoon baking soda
3 tablespoons softened butter
¾ cup sugar
2 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 teaspoon baking powder
1½ cup flour

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Butter a 9" square baking dish.

Rehydrate the dates in hot water. Add baking soda and puree in food processor.

In another bowl, cream the butter and sugar. Add the eggs and mix well. Add the vanilla and baking powder. Mix in the date puree, then flour. Pour into baking dish. Bake for 45 minutes or until toothpick inserted is free of cake.

Pour hot sauce (recipe below) over cake and serve with vanilla gelato and unsweetened whipped cream.


Baby Jesus Sauce
1/2 cup light brown sugar
1/2 cup heavy cream
2 tablespoons butter

Melt together until emulsified.



This is not emulsified yet. But it was a hectic picture taking time.

I mean, seriously, how easy was that? Now it's just amazing sticky goodness.

I stained my shirt

Let's say it's a Saturday night. You've worked all week at jobs that you love but that are totally exhausting. Your husband is at work, leaving you all alone to empty the dishwasher and clear out your DVR. As you're trying to throw a Tupperware lid onto a top shelf, it falls to the ground. You lean over to pick it up and as you're standing, you crack your head on the very sharp edge of the microwave that never quite fit into the nook you tried to stuff it into. You end up on your knees on the floor and when you stand up, your head hurts. So you put your hand to your head and when you reach back and look at it, it's covered in blood.

After applying pressure to your head with a dishtowel that you're never going to use again, you figure that the only thing to do is make a bittersweet chocolate and pear cake.

True story.

Don't worry, I'm totally fine, except that now I have both dried blood and cake batter in my hair. Sometimes I think that my grandmother's mental illness really has manifested itself in my brain (my hair?).

This is one of those recipes that I glanced at online and decided it would be easy to make since I have a thousand pears and I don't like them very much. When I started making it, I realized it was a super crazy recipe. But I soldiered on.


Bittersweet Chocolate and Pear Cake - via (where else?) Smitten Kitchen

1 cup all-purpose flour
1 tablespoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
3 eggs, at room-temperature
4 ounces (1 stick) unsalted butter
3/4 cup sugar
3 pears, peeled, in a small dice
3/4 cup bittersweet chocolate chunks (I used Ghiradelli bittersweet chocolate chips. They are my favorite things ever. If you've ever had a dessert I made, I probably used them)

Preheat the oven to 350°F (or just turn it on and pray if your oven is demented, like mine is). Butter a 9-inch springform pan and dust with flour.

Sift the flour, baking powder and salt together, set aside (or ya know, don't. I didn't).

Using a mixer fitted with the whisk attachment, whip the eggs on high speed until pale and very thick. (In a professional Kitchen Aid, it takes at least five minutes; on a home machine, it will take nine minutes to get sufficient volume. This step is crazy cool. I love using my stand mixer).


While the eggs are whipping, brown the butter. Melt the butter in a medium saucepan (because it will foam a lot) and cook it until the butter browns and smells nutty (about 6 to 8 minutes). It helps to frequently scrape the solids off the bottom of the pan in the last couple minutes to ensure even browning. Remove from the flame but keep in a warm spot. Mine got all foamy and had little brown flecks. I think it's okay though. This isn't it - this is my butter pre-browned, but I didn't get a chance to take a brown picture. Whoops.


Add the sugar to the eggs and whip a few minutes more.

Just as the egg-sugar mixture is starting to loose volume, turn the mixture down to stir, and add the flour mixture and brown butter. Add one third of the flour mixture, then half of the butter, a third of the flour, the remaining butter, and the rest of flour. Whisk until just barely combined — no more than a minute from when the flour is first added — and then use a spatula to gently fold the batter until the ingredients are combined. It is very important not to over-whisk or fold the batter or it will lose volume. Full disclosure - I left my mixer on high by accident. We'll see how it turns out.


See the little brown flecks from the butter? Yum.

Pour into prepared pan. Sprinkle the pear and chocolate chunks over the top.


I love it when you make a cake where you put stuff on top and then the batter rises and covers it. Bake until the cake is golden brown and springs back to the touch, about 40 to 50 minutes or a tester comes out clean.


This cake tastes really good. It's really light and the outside is all crisp but the inside is warm and cakey. Pears are the best when you add chocolate to them. Put some fresh whipped cream on top for an amazing end to a stupid bloody evening.

Good lord, this cake is amazing

As far as desserts go, there is nothing I love more than a nice warm cookie and a big glass of milk. I love to make cookies, eat cookies, give cookies to other people, whatever cookie options there are, I love them. However, I've been trying to use all the fruit that I get in my CSA each week and as far as I'm concerned, the more baking I can do, the better. So when I saw this recipe on The Amateur Gourmet, I figured, what the hell. Gotta use that local seasonal fruit.


Good lord, it is amazing. I'm not a huge cake fan, but a slice of this straight out of the oven? I'm kvelling. It rocks.

Nectarine Golden Cake
from Gourmet Magazine (I'm still sad about no more Gourmet by the way. Bon Appetit just isn't cutting it)

1 cup all-purpose flour
2 tsp baking powder
Rounded 1/4 tsp salt
1 stick unsalted butter, soft
3/4 cup plus 1/2 Tbs sugar, divided
2 large eggs
1 tsp pure vanilla extract
1/8 tsp pure almond extract
2 nectarines, pitted and cut into 1/2-inch-thick wedges - I love it when you don't have to peel fruit by the way. Yay!
1/2 tsp grated nutmeg

Equipment: a 9-inch springform pan - I totally have one of these now! Thanks, Alex! Yay for wedding presents.

1. Preheat the oven to 350 F with rack in middle. Lightly butter springform pan.

2. Whisk together flour, baking powder, and salt (Full disclosure: I totally skipped this step).

3. Beat butter and 3/4 cup sugar with an electric mixer until pale and fluffy. Add eggs 1 at a time, beating well after each addition, then beat in extracts. At low speed, mix in flour mixture until just combined.


I have a stand mixer now as well! Wedding presents are neat. Marriage is pretty neat as well.

4. Spread batter evenly in pan. It'll be pretty short - but it'll rise later.


Scatter nectarines over top. Stir together nutmeg and remaining 1/2 Tbsp sugar and sprinkle over top.


Bake until cake is golden-brown and top is firm but tender when lightly touched (cake will rise over fruit), 45 to 50 minutes. Cool in pan 10 minutes. Remove side of pan and cool to warm.



The cake is delicious. It forms a kind of crust around the edges that gives way to a light airy cake dotted with fruit. The almond extract and nutmeg give it some deep flavor that regular yellow cake doesn't have. It's perfect with a little bit of vanilla ice cream or whipped cream. Make it now. But be careful - I ate about 1/4 of the cake before Zack got home. Whoops.

I like cakes

One of the things about being sick is that it makes me not want to cook. All I want to do when I'm sick is sit on the couch and watch Desperate Housewives reruns on Lifetime. It's pathetic. I know it.

But I was feeling a little bit better yesterday, so I decided to try baking something. I had some leftover dates from my trip to Jackson Heights and some assorted nuts in the fridge. I flipped through my Moosewood cookbook (it really is the best cookbook) and happened upon the recipe for Date-Nut Cake. Perfect.

As I started making it, I realized that the recipe called for separating eggs and folding egg whites into batter! Ack! If you may notice (I'm sure you didn't notice this - only crazy people would notice this), I never try recipes where that happens because every time I try it, I fail. Massively. Like, throw out the cake, burn the pan, hide in shame fail. This has happened more than once. But today, I figured, I have grown. I have confidence. I can do it!

Date-Nut Cake (from the Moosewood Cookbook)

butter and flour for the pan (I'm out of butter, I used oil)
3 eggs, separated and at room temperature
1/4 cup sugar
1/2 tsp vanilla
1/3 cup flour
1/4 tsp salt
3/4 cup very finely chopped nuts (I used almonds - walnuts or pecans would be good too)
1 cup chopped dates

I chopped my dates and nuts in the food processor - I truly love my food processor. Here they are:


topping -
1/2 pint heavy cream or 1 cup ricotta (I used cream because it's cheaper and I'm poor)
1/2 tsp vanilla
2 to 3 Tbs powdered sugar

1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Butter and flour a 9 inch cake pan. I only had an 8 inch pan. I was certain that this would spell my doom. But I soldiered on.

2. Separate the eggs. As soon as started cracking and separating the eggs, I felt better. Cold, schmold. Beat the egg whites with an electric mixture until stiff but not dry. I don't really know what that means. But I guessed it meant this.


3. In another bowl, beat the egg yolks with the sugar and vanilla for several minutes until smooth and thick. Several minutes seemed excessive to me. I think I did maybe one or two.

4. Stir the flour, salt, nuts and dates into the yolks and blend well. This seemed really thick to me.


5. Here comes the scary part - "gently fold in the beaten egg whites." First I rewhipped the egg whites for a few minutes because they seemed a little runny. Then I started mixing them in. Gently. I tried to be confident. Egg whites can smell your fear.


I did it! It looked pretty good to me....but who knows.

6. Pour the batter in the pan and bake for 40 minutes.



Here it comes.....what does it look like?


Woo! My cake looks like cake! Score one for me. I had to eat some right then to prove that I did it. It tastes like cake too! Then I let the cake cool.

You're supposed to let it cool and flip it out onto a serving platter.


Now whip your cream with the vanilla and sugar, and spread it on top of the cake. Then serve it cold.


Honestly, I liked it better hot without the cream. But it was pretty good with the cream as well. I mean, whipped cream is good.

Argh

Today I made an Apple Wacky Cake. I got the idea from Meredith's blog. You've seen her blog, yes? Well you should if you haven't. It's neat.

Rather than do the exact same post that Meredith just did, I have decided to just link to her post and take a picture of my final product (which turned out well, in my humble opinion).


I used a cake pan instead of a skillet, like Meredith - I even greased the pan before hand. But the cake stuck to the pan anyways. Oh well. If something called "wacky" cake looked too pretty, that would not be right at all.

What do you do with leftover strawberries?

You make strawberry shortcake. At least, that's what I do. But do I take detailed pictures? Sadly, I do not. And I'll tell you why. I was baking from this recipe. It was going alright but I decided to half it....and then I realized I didn't have any cornstarch, and I only had whole wheat pastry flour and I kinda stopped measuring things like vanilla and orange zest. How good could this be, I reasoned. No need to blog about something that turns out substandard. But then it looked so pretty.


And it tasted great! I hope Zack starts eating it faster before I ruin my girlish figure.

Finally some cake!

You know what I love to do? Make my own birthday cake. Some people think that's crazy. I think it's charming, but I'm a little biased. So, a few weeks earlier, when my birthday rolled around, I decided to break out my brand new Gourmet Cookbook (given to me as a present by Meredith) and make the "All Occasion Yellow Cake" with "Chocolate Ganache Frosting." Sounds good, right?

Cake:
2 cups cake flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 stick unsalted butter, softened
1 cup sugar
3 large eggs
1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract
3/4 cup whole milk

Frosting:
3/4 pound bittersweet chocolate
1 cup heavy cream

Before I start - this was the only cake flour I could find.


Whole Wheat! To make a cake! That was not what I intended. But that's what they had at Whole Foods, and I figured the "cake flour" part was more important than the "whole wheat" part. How did it turn out? Well, you'll see.

1. Preheat your oven to 350 degrees. Butter and flour two cake pans.


2. Sift together flour, baking powder and salt.


I didn't actually sift it. Shhhhh. Don't tell Ruth Reichl.

3. Beat butter and sugar together with your really old and kind of dirty hand mixer until it's light and fluffy.


4. Add your eggs one at a time and keep beating it! Add the vanilla too.


5. Add some milk.....


6. Then some flour....


7. And repeat so that it goes milk, flour, milk, flour, milk, flour.

8. Put your batter in the pans and bake for about 20 or 25 minutes.


9. Cool for 5 minutes in the pan and then flip them out to cool on a rack.


Make your frosting while the cakes cool - it's super simple. Simmer your cream and pour it over your chocolate chips. Here are mine.


Whisk it up until it's smooth and refrigerate it for about two hours - until it's thick but still spreadable. If you make it too hard, just take it back out of the fridge and wait some more.

Spread it over your cake like so:


My friends started to eat the cake before I took a picture. Whoops. That's the sign of a good cake though! It was all gone about ten minutes later. The whole wheat flour was undetectable - just the way I like it. Nobody knew it was whole wheat! Well, until now. Darn.

Battle Time!!!!

Here we go, readers: Iron Chef Hudson: Battle Zucchini!!!!!!

Between our two CSAs, Meredith and I received several pounds of zucchini - big ones, little ones, long ones, round ones. What's a girl to do? Make two different kinds of zucchini bread (apparently). Meredith opted for regular (read about it here), while I decided to go back to a recipe that I've tried and loved before - Clotilde Dusoulier's Chocolate Zucchini Cake.

A side note - Meredith took and photoshopped all these pictures. Gotta love her. Please don't tell me that her pictures are way better than mine. I already know that. Really. Also, I can't quite get all of them to work right now.....I'm getting there, I promise - technical help is needed.

But back to the cake. You can check out the recipe yourself here. I don't follow it exactly - when this recipe was published in the cookbook "Chocolate & Zucchini," a few details had been changed and I followed them - you'll be able to see what they are as I go along.

First I grated up my zucchini! This is an action shot. Meredith took it. She's fancy like that.


Then I chopped up some bittersweet chocolate. Usually, I'd buy bittersweet chocolate chips, but I couldn't find any in Hudson. I did find a huge bar of bittersweet chocolate though...as you can see (or would if I could get my pictures to work).

I put them in a bowl, along with a half cup of flour and mixed it up. This is so that the zucchini and chocolate chips don't sink straight to the bottom of the cake.

Then you take a new bowl and mix your dry ingredients together - flour, cocoa powder, baking powder, baking soda and salt. Whisk it up good so that it's all even.

Then you set it aside and mix brown sugar and olive oil together. I know, you're thinking "olive oil? That's crazy." But you're wrong. It is perfectly delicious and way better for you than butter. Then you mix in some vanilla and 3 eggs, one at a time.

Slowly incorporate the flour mixture to the wet mixture. The batter will be really thick. Then mix in your zucchini/chocolate concoction.

Here's my batter and Meredith's batter, side by side.


And here's the finished cake! I baked it at 350 degrees for about 50 minutes.


It was very good. You can't even really taste the zucchini (which could be a plus or a minus). It was nice and chocolatey. Who doesn't like that? Meredith's was excellent as well - super moist and delicious. Here we are, competitors no more and friends again, pretending to toast each other at our fake wedding.