Toffee and Truffles

I absolutely love giving away treats and there's no more perfect time of year for wrapping up some homemade goodies than the holiday season. Last year Chris and I gave homemade candy canes and peppermint marshmallows. This year I was inspired by my cousin to try my hand at toffee. I've never been a big toffee fan but last year I was blown away by cousin D's homemade confection. Can you think of a better combination than butter and sugar? If not, toffee is for you.

To go with this super easy candy, I prepared an adaptation of the Chocolate Chambord and Macadamia Nut Truffles from the book Bakewise by Shirley Corriher. I received this book last Christmas from my sister and it's one of the best resources I have. It delves into the hows and whys of baking and has a ton of educational information that help you understand why your cake looked awful when you tried to omit one egg. Anyway, I couldn't find Chambord in my local supermarket, so I substituted Kahlua instead. I was tempted to omit the Chambord all together but it very specifically said that if enough "water-type liquid" was not added, the chocolate would seize. The other modification I made was to roll half the truffles in crushed macadamia nuts and the other half in unsweeted cocoa powder. These truffles have something for everyone; the mac nut truffles have a burst of salty followed by the sweet smooth chocolate while the cocoa coated confections have a slightly bitter cocoa taste surrounding the sweet chocolate center.

The finishing touch on this years tasty treats were fantastic treat boxes by Martha Stewart through Michael's craft store. They come with everything from the boxes, to the tissue paper, to the ribbons and labels. I'm just in love with them.

I Declare Holiday Baking Season Open!

It's started! The nonstop month of baking between Thanksgiving and Christmas! I've got recipes lined up for just about every occasion and decided to open the holidays with a favorite recipe of mine. Most people seem to avoid chocolate desserts on Thanksgiving in favor of more standard fall treats; so I decided to go with my favorite Chocolate-Glazed Chocolate Tart from last year's Gourmet magazine (which no longer exists sadly!). The idea is pretty simple - start with a chocolate graham cracker crust, add a chocolate custard of sorts, and top it off with a thin layer of chocolate ganache. In all, it takes less than 2 hours to prepare but tastes like it took a week. It's also a great opportunity to use some of your favorite chocolate; I wholly recommend using a good quality bittersweet chocolate for this since it is the centerpiece of the recipe.

Black and White and Cake All Over

It's been a little while now since I baked like a maniac. Fortunately, one of my labmates again gave me a good excuse to destroy my kitchen. We decided to go with 4 dozen cupcakes and a two-tiered cake to match! I was really conflicted over what kind of cake I wanted to do. For some reason I was just stumped. Then, it came to me. My bedroom curtains were the perfect inspiration! I have an eclectic mix of black and white striped and black and white floral curtains in my bedroom that made for what might be my favorite cake yet. I decided to add to the mix of patterns by stacking a round cake on top of a square one.

On the cupcake side of things, I went with 4 different designs to give everyone a good choice. First off were vanilla cake with vanilla buttercream adorned with pearlized silver sprinkles and gold-dusted white chocolate "J" pieces. Second were (my favorite) red velvet cupcakes with cream cheese icing adorned with silver sprinkles and gold-dusted dark chocolate finials (generously gold-dusted by E.!). Also with cream cheese icing were a set of carrot cake cupcakes (easy as pie to make!). Finally, I went with a unique caramel cupcake with a caramel buttercream (E. and I ate all the extra out of my bowl!) and spun sugar abstract decorations on top. All this baking taught me one thing: I need to make cupcakes more often. The most difficult thing: keeping Chris away from all the cupcakes for any appreciable amount of time.

I was very pleased with how it all turned out and even more surprised we got everything to the park in one piece! I had good help with the transport. Hopefully there will be more cupcakes in the future.

Stormy Weather Stew

It may not have been what many of you east coasters would call stormy, but it was stormy enough by my Pasadena standards to warrant a good, hot, rustic stew. This is a little late coming, but a few weeks ago, it got cold (for about 2 days) and even rained! When I say cold, I mean it got below 70 (in the 50s at night!) and when I say "rained," it might have drizzled for 20 minutes. That's a big deal here in October! I seized the opportunity though to bust out my first real winter dinner of the year! My favorite nasty weather recipe is none other than my mom's beef stew recipe. I have no idea where it comes from or how old it is, but it does the trick when I feel icky and cold. It takes a little while to braise the meat and get the veggies to the right amount of "mushy," but it's worth the time and little bit of extra effort. In the end, it may not look pretty, but it always hits the spot.

I started with 1.5 lbs of pre-cut stewing beef and dredged it in a mixture of flour, salt, and pepper. In a small amount of heated oil in a heavy bottomed cast iron enameled Dutch oven (my FAVORITE!), brown all the meat, being careful not to crowd it too much. After all the meat is browned, add 2 32 oz. containers of low sodium beef broth (I use low sodium so that I can control the level of seasoning). Once you add the beef broth, you get to the best part: DEGLAZING! Make sure you get all those brown flavorful bits off your pot and into your broth (wood spoon, please). After you've delgazed, bring to a boil, turn down the heat, and simmer, covered, for about 1 hour. While that's simmering, give 8 carrots and 6 red potatoes (peeled) a rustic chop job and set aside. After the 1 hour, toss in your veggies (and whatever else you want really) and simmer covered for another 45 minutes. If your stew doesn't thicken up enough during the cooking process, you can use Wondra mixed with a little water to thicken the stew after cooking is done. The last thing I add is a little salt, pepper, and gravy master. You can dress this up however you please; it's kinda like a blank canvas in that sense. I serve it steaming hot over egg noodles with fresh sourdough bread and a good red wine.

This is the first real family recipe I've made recently and posted. I'm hoping to get a few more of my mom's favorites up here in the near future.

Hometown Homage

Yesterday another one of our labmates graduated and as is becoming the custom, I made the cake. It's been a little while since I made a big cake (and as such I must have forgotten saying I would never make one during the work week again), so I was itching to do something big and extravagant. Our labmate is moving on to a postdoctoral position in New York and this is where I drew my inspiration. What better way to instill excitement about his upcoming NY adventure than an homage to my own hometown in cake? I went with a 2-tiered blue fondant white cake with vanilla buttercream. The bottom tier was rectangular while the top tier was a small round cake offset from the center of the lower tier. Around each cake I depicted silhouettes of the city in black fondant (tip: buy black fondant, don't dye it yourself!). The lower tier had silhouettes of the city skyline while the upper tier had a Brooklyn bridge silhouette wrapping it. Both cakes had the little yellow "Broadway lights" along their lower border (and great thanks to Chris's little sister for rolling all those for me!). On top of the round cake I thought I would mould a "Big Apple" our of rice cereal treat (great trick for keeping it light) and cover it with fondant. To finish it off, a Broadway street sign, a few subway line signs, and a little "I Heart NY" sign surrounded the big apple. For the first time ever, the cake I served actually looked like the picture I drew. Maybe I'm getting a little better at this or maybe I'm becoming more realistic about what I can accomplish in a week's time in cake (likely the latter).

Portabello Burgers

Hello loyal readers, all 10 of you. Sorry it's been awhile since our last post. We've been busy, but the upshot of that is there's a lot to talk about. Among those things is my first formal food post.

One of the under-appreciated benefits of living in Southern California is the fresh produce available not only in the farmer's markets that are ubiquitous throughout LA's cities and towns, but also the ease of access to that produce in the supermarket. Sure, you can get real organic heirloom tomatoes every Thursday night in South Pasadena, but you can get them all week in Whole Foods, Pavilions, or even Vons. Needless to say, the fact that we can get such vegetables without any special effort got Pam and I thinking less about what to have with chicken, and more about what to have with a produce centerpiece.

This paradigm shift in our dietary planning is much healthier, as well. Sating your hunger with more filling-but-calorically-poor foods like produce, and less from calorie-rich-but-not-filling pre-prepared foods and meats leaves you feeling full, but with fewer calories to burn at the end of the day. So, if you're concerned with caloric accounting, this is probably the easiest way to go quickly from the distinctly American habit of overeating to feeling full but having to worry less about how much you ate that day. If you're grad students like the two of us are, it's certainly the least time-consuming way that we've focused on for living a more healthy lifestyle.

Before I digress much further, this is the philosophical underpinning for some of the dishes we've been experimenting with lately. Specifically, a classic entree that shocks many when they're told how satisfying it is as the centerpiece of any meal: the Portabello Mushroom burger.

The Portabello has all sorts of health benefits of varying veracity that are detailed in other places, but the revelation that appealed to us was that each portabello has about 20 calories in it. 20 calories, and you can feel as full afterward as if you just ate a normal-sized hamburger.

The downside is that the mushroom itself has little to no taste before being cooked, but that's where the fun really starts.

To start with, we prepared a dressing consisting of a 1:1 mixture of olive oil and balsamic vinegar. Into this suspension was mixed a combination of crushed fresh rosemary (great to use the rear end of a wooden spoon to crush these in olive oil), and minced garlic, with a little fresh ground pepper and salt for extra seasoning. The flavor of fresh rosemary is subtle relative to its dried counterpart, so feel free to liberally add the herb. Also, a touch of basil similarly crushed gives a savory kick to the dressing if it is desired, but has a tendency to dominate the flavor, so be careful. This dressing was prepared in under 5 minutes, so it's a simple, healthy and fresh addition.

After removing the stipe (a mushroom's stem) to give a flat, patty-like bell, we added our well-mixed dressing by drizzling it from the bowl onto the underside of the mushroom in order to saturate but not overfill the gills. Now we're ready to cook.

We've had a lot of trial and error with the grilling side of things, but have found that the best way to keep the mushroom moist and flavorful without the leathery undercooked texture or the burnt blandness associated with too long on the grill is straightforward. Placing the dressed mushroom top-down on a squared piece of aluminum foil and wrapping gives a neat, grill-ready package for cooking.

Insofar as the grill is concerned, pre-heat to about 500 degrees, then just throw your mushrooms on for about 10 minutes, keeping the temperature in the 400-500 degree range. The foil keeps the mushroom cooking evenly, and prevents burning. Perhaps most conveniently, you don't have to flip the mushroom while it's on the grill, so if you're like me, you can watch TV (sports and other manly things, never the food network) inside, and come back in 10 minutes.

To check if the mushrooms are done, just peel back some of the foil and see if the mushroom gills look softer, in that they have lost their ability to hold their shape. Generally, if the dressing is boiling on top of the mushrooms, you're in good shape, and you can take them of the grill. Once that's done, turn up the heat to high, hopefully over 600 degrees.

At this point, peel off the package and take out the mushrooms. To the extremely hot grill, add these again in order to sear both sides, for about a minute each. Grill the top sides first to get your customary grill marks and then flip, letting the dressing fall out. This will kick up flames, so be careful. Close the grill top to keep the flames down, but after only a minute, take the mushrooms back out.

We recommend serving them with a slice of tomato and a thick slice of mozarella cheese on a bun. Let them sit for about 2 minutes with the cheese on to get an awesome texture contrast of the soft cheese with the crisp and juicy mushrooms and tomatoes. The result is a satisfactory bite with a sour and meaty burst of juicy flavor from the first bite to the last. If you still feel like adding extra seasoning, we haven't found them lacking, but we'd certainly love to hear your suggestions.

This is our first go-to thoroughly vegetarian meal, and has inspired us to look into more. So, as the summer starts to wind down, give it a shot... happy grilling!

Salted Caramel Ice Cream

It was as if Gourmet magazine knew that my little sister had bought me the Cuisinart automatic ice cream maker for my birthday. In this month's issue (August 2009), they had a whole frozen desserts section that I promptly flagged for weekend cooking fun. First on my list was the salted caramel ice cream. One thing that always lacks for me with store bought caramel ice cream is the homemade caramel aftertaste. I don't think I could put words to it, but if you've ever made caramel at home, you know what I mean. And if you haven't made caramel at home, it's about time you did!

This recipe starts out with a simple dry caramel. Most caramel you make begins with a sugar/water solution and gradually boils off the water. This takes quite a bit longer than just dumping a cup of sugar in your pan and heating it up - as in a dry caramel. I had never done this dry caramel before but I think I've been converted. Just watch the heat so it doesn't cook too quickly. Once you hit that deep amber color, you can start adding the cream. The recipe says this splatters, and it's correct. Add the cream slowly so that you don't hurt yourself or your stove. From there onward, it's a standard ice cream recipe with a cooked custard base combined with the caramel sauce.

The end result of this was beyond my expectations. Hands down this was the creamiest ice cream I've ever had. Even after 2 days in the freezer, it still has a texture that can only be compared to silk. As far as taste goes, it's distinctly homemade, very rich, and very sweet. The added sea salt really enhances the sweetness of the caramel. I'm usually one to dress up my ice cream with toppings or whipped cream, but this one must stand alone. It needs no help at all.