Pumpkin Cornbread

I've been starting to think about Thanksgiving this year because we have family coming, and this pumpkin cornbread was my first recipe test success!  Not too sweet, hearty, textured - this is a winner!  When I make it again, I'll go ahead and make in muffin form like the original recipe at Sweet Pea's Kitchen gave as an option.  I think as is, it took a bit too long to finish baking in the center.

This will be so good with cinnamon-honey butter!

Pumpkin Cornbread

(recipe from Sweet Pea's Kitchen)

Ingredients:

1 cup all purpose flour
1 tablespoon baking powder
1 teaspoon kosher salt
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg
1/2 cup light brown sugar
1 cup cornmeal
2 large eggs
1 cup pumpkin puree
1/4 cup olive oil
1 tablespoon molasses

Directions:

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees. Grease an 8×8″ cake pan.
In a medium bowl, whisk together the flour, baking powder, salt, spices, brown sugar, and cornmeal; set aside.
In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, lightly beat the eggs, and then stir in the pumpkin, oil, and molasses.
Stir the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients just until combined, and then pour the batter into the pan, smoothing the top.
Bake 25-30 minutes or until toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.

Recipe Note:
This recipe makes 12 cornbread muffins, reduce baking time to 10 to 12 minutes.

Cookbook Review - The Artisan Jewish Deli at Home

The Artisan Jewish Deli at Home by Nick Zukin
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I received a review copy of this cookbook from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

As someone who frequents an amazing Jewish deli in my city, yet has only had partial success in making my own bagels, I thumbed through this book with awe and trepidation. The author makes it LOOK easy, but many of these recipes take quite a bit of finesse - babka, rugelach, bagels. Most of the recipes in here are very traditional, but that's completely the point.

I'm happy to keep trying to perfect these recipes, and this book makes me want to try again. Many of the recipes have seasonal variations, which I thought was a nice touch. I've had dreams of the chocolate babka french toast since I saw the picture. That may be our holiday breakfast this year!

I did adapt one recipe to a lower sugar macaroon, and although they got a bit toasty, they were still tasty!


Other recipes I want to try:

Open-faced Potato Knishes
Hungarian Mushroom Soup
Chocolate Babka (and Chocolate Babka French Toast!)
Cheese Blintzes (seasonal toppings include blackberry lavender for summer and spiced pumpkin for fall)
Classic Brown Sugar & Cinnamon Rugelach (for winter - chocolate and fig!)
Three-Strand Braided Challah (with really great picture directions)

Cookbook Review - Southern Italian Desserts

Southern Italian Desserts: The Great Undiscovered Recipes of Sicily, Campania, Puglia, and Beyond by Rosetta Costantino
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I received a review copy of this cookbook from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

This cookbook is very specific, focusing solely on the desserts of Southern Italy. No breads, no main dishes, no cheeses, just desserts. As a baker, I thought this was a wonderful concept for a cookbook. What usually happens is that I will go looking for Italian desserts and I'll come across gelato, ricotta cheesecake, and those fried honey balls that are from several Meditteranean cultures. The specificity of this cookbook allows for a much deeper exploration of a regional cuisine that needs more attention!

The recipes I've marked as most likely to try are a good representation of the contents:

from Sicilia:
Biscotti Eureka (almond filled spiral cookies)
Cuccia di Santa Lucia (wheat berry pudding served on St. Lucia day)

from Campania:
Pere Mast 'Antuono Imbottite (ricotta-filled baked pears)
La Coviglia al Caffe (frozen espresso mousse)

from Calabria
Torta di Melee Ricotta (apple and ricotta cake, going to try this next weekend!)

from Puglia & Basilicata
Dolci di Noci (walnut cookies)

The only recipe I could not even fathom is the Crostata al Gelo di Mellone, which is a watermelon pudding cake. But it sounds so strange, and looks so interesting, that I just know I'll end up making it. I'm always the most interested in the recipes I can't imagine.

The cookbook is saturated with historical context, in fact more of the pictures are of scenery than of the recipes. For me, I would have liked more pictures of the finished product, but the contextual information is fascinating and makes the cookbook very readable.

Cookbook Review - Balaboosta

Balaboosta by Einat Admony
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I received a review copy of this cookbook from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

Einat Admony is the chef-owner of two NYC restaurants - Balaboosta and Taïm (a falafel/smoothie vegetarian place!). While you might expect this cookbook to be a companion book to the restaurant of the same name, it really isn't, except for one chapter called "Fancy-Schmancy," which features recipes from the restaurant.

Balaboosta is a Yiddish term meaning "the perfect housewife, homemaker, wonderful mother, cook & gracious hostess. She does it all and she does it well!" (definition taken from restaurant website). The idea is that Einat Admony is the embodiment of a balaboosta, and she includes recipes that span her own heritage as well as the broader scope of Mediterranean cuisine. If that sounds a bit far-reaching, well, it is, but there are traditional recipes alongside modern takes on dishes in this book that I really appreciated.

The sections are not divided by type of dish, but rather by theme. There are chapters such as "Grown-Up Table," "Hurry, Hurry, Hurry," and "Backyard Barbecue." This makes for a more difficult quick reference, but aids in meal planning for entertaining or just making dinner.

From the "Hurry, Hurry, Hurry" section, I made shakshuka, a spicy egg-tomato dish. I've made varieties of this dish before from other cultures, but this one is more of an Israeli focus. It was good, a nice balance of vegetables and spices, although I did instinctively cut back on the salt called for (and wished I'd cut back more!)


I had also marked the Casablanca Catch and Challah from the "Grown-Up Table" section, Moroccan Carrots and Eighteen-Minute Rice from the "Hurry, Hurry, Hurry" section, and Sabich (an Iraqi eggplant sandwich), baklava, and Sambusak (Israeli empanada-ish dish) from "Thinking About Home." The "cook/bake the book" people over at Serious Eats recently made the baklava, and the recipe is available over there if you want to take a peek.

The last recipe I had a chance to try were the Space Cookies. The recipe calls for tahini and poppy seeds, and I had always wanted to try tahini in a cookie after seeing it all over Turkish baking blogs. I'm not sure what I personally thought of the recipe - there were no eggs in it so the texture was more like shortbread, very crumbly, and I thought the tahini was pretty savory for a cookie. I brought them to work and my student workers were equally torn, until two guys came in and ate the rest between the two of them. Although the verdict was mixed, I think they were definitely appreciated by those two.


The one recipe I will most definitely still make because I can't get it out of my head is the Turkish Coffee Brownies. I had to track down cardamom at the spice store downtown because none of the local grocery stores seem to be stocking it these days, and then there is the challenge of keeping chocolate in the house... but someday, it will happen. Someday soon. And that recipe is a great example of the combination of traditional ingredients presented in a new way - Turkish coffee in brownie form.

Peach Poppyseed Cake

Even after making mohnkuchen and space cookies, I still had poppyseeds to burn!  My new friend Angelika sent me a recipe for a poppyseed-nut-peach cake, and after finding local peaches at the farmers' market, I decided to give this one a go.

I'll include the recipe as converted to American measurements, although Angelika did the translating.  It should have nuts, but I was out.  It also should have a jam glaze but I didn't have any light in color, so I made a simple butter-powdered sugar-cream-rum glaze for the top.

Poppyseed-Nut-Peach Cake

Batter:
1 1/2 cups (minus 2 tbsp) flour
2/3 cup-3/4 cup poppy seeds (to taste)
2/3 cup walnuts, coarsely chopped
2 teaspoons baking powder
½ teaspoon cinnamon
2/3 cup sugar
12 tbsp soft butter
4 eggs
3 tablespoons rum
1/2 cup whipping cream
2 large peaches (3 small), peeled and sliced, with the pits removed

Glaze:
150 g Apricot jam
1 Tablespoon rum

Decoration:
Whipped cream and / or confectioners‘ sugar

1. Preheat oven to 350° F.
2. Cream soft butter with sugar until creamy. Add eggs one of the time, beating after each addition.
3. Mix in the rest of the ingredients (alternating dry and wet is a good way to go.)
4. Put batter in greased and floured Springform pan.
5. Push peach slices down into batter, smooth backs showing, in whatever pattern you desire.
6. Bake about 35 Minutes (check with wooden pick)
7. Heat jam with rum and spread it out on cake. 
8. Let it cool and decorate as desired.

My batter looked like this prior to baking

Trying a Recipe from Balaboosta: Space Cookies

One of the cookbooks I got to review from NetGalley is Balaboosta by Einat Admony.  The publisher description says it best:

Einat Admony is a 21st-century balaboosta (Yiddish for “perfect housewife”).She’s a mother and wife, but also a chef busy running three bustling New York City restaurants. Her debut cookbook features 140 of the recipes she cooks for the people she loves—her children, her husband, and the many friends she regularly entertains. Here, Einat’s mixed Israeli heritage (Yemenite, Persian) seamlessly blends with the fresh, sophisticated Mediterranean palate she honed while working in some of New York City’s most beloved kitchens.


The cookbook is organized not by meal type but in suggested meals or types of occasions.  It makes it a little hard to navigate but it would be completely flexible how a person could mix and match the recipes.

This isn't intended to be a full cookbook review, as I have two more recipes I want to try out first.  I keep seeing tahini cookies mentioned in Turkish blogs, so when I saw her recipe for "Space Cookies," I knew that would be the recipe I'd try.

Don't Google Space Cookies.  Or do, but all the mentions I can find of them are pot cookies.  That is not what this recipe is, so when I made them for my student workers, I called them "Tahini and Poppy Seed Cookies."  I won't be posting the recipe because the book isn't out yet, and there's a chance it will be tweaked before it is published.

I'm still not sure what I think of them.  I ate two the night I made the cookies, and kept stopping and asking, "Do I like this?"  Tahini is similar to peanut butter in some ways, and we use peanut butter in sweet dishes all the time.  There is enough tahini in these cookies to be noticeable, maybe a bit bitter.  The poppy seeds only added to that bitter element.  I also wasn't sold on the texture of the cookies; lacking eggs, they had more of a crumbly shortbread texture than I personally prefer.  Full disclosure: I have a bias against shortbread.  And still I'm not sure what to think of the cookies.  Maybe I need to make them again.

What I do love about this and other recipes in the cookbook is that Admony takes ingredients we think of from the Mediterranean region and uses them in different ways.  Some of the recipes are traditional, maybe slightly tweaked or improved, while recipes like this take ingredients like tahini and combine them in new ways.  Just wait until I track down some cardamom in order to test the Turkish Coffee brownies! 

 

Pumpkin Pancakes (low-carb and gluten-free)

I think I post about pancakes a lot more often since we started eating low-sugar most of the time.  Hey, they're a lot easier to make without bready flour and gluten!

This past weekend, it started to feel like fall.  Or maybe I was just really ready for fall.  It is never too early for pumpkin, anyway, and I had hoarded a can of pumpkin in the back of the pantry for when this craving was bound to hit.

The coffee has the pumpkin syrup recipe I blogged about last November, so check that out.

The pancakes recipe is a mild tweak of a paleo recipe that I found in Pinterest.  It comes from the Cupcakes to Crossfit blog, which has some great stuff on it so check it out.  I'll just post my version and not her original.  If you're not low-sugar and don't mind things like maple syrup, that would probably taste even better with pumpkin.  It relies on coconut flour, which I am growing to really like in pancakes when used correctly.  I added walnuts because I had them and they sounded tasty.

Pumpkin Coconut Flour Pancakes

Serves: 6-8 pancakes

 

Ingredients

• 3 eggs
• ½ cup pumpkin puree (not pumpkin pie mix)
• ½ cup milk (original recipe uses canned coconut, I used almond)
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 1 Tbsp brown sugar Splenda
• 3 Tbs coconut flour
• 1/2 tsp cinnamon
• 1/2 tsp nutmeg
• 1/4 tsp ground cloves 
• 1/4 tsp baking soda
• pinch of salt
• Chopped nuts (optional)

Directions

1. Blend pumpkin and milk until smooth
2. Add eggs, vanilla, and maple syrup and beat together for 30 seconds
3. Slowly sift in the coconut flour, spices, baking soda & salt.
4. Blend together until smooth
5. Heat a non-stick skillet over medium-high heat
6. Once hot, grease the griddle with coconut or vegetable oil and pour batter into small (2-3 inch) pancakes.  I used a scant 1/4 cup. If using nuts, sprinkle over the batter immediately after pouring it into the pan.
7. Cook until edges are firm & starts to bubble (takes longer than regular batter ~ 3-4min) then flip and cook through

Ispanaklı ve Peynirli Gözleme

One of the foods I've been dying to make in my Turkish culinary adventures is gözleme.  To me, it looks like a Turkish quesadilla, although it is more like a flat borek.  In the picture, the cigar shaped pastry is a borek, which can come in almost any shape.  I won't give a specific recipe for the gözleme, more of a formula.  Use one yufka sheet (yufka is similar to phyllo but a bit thicker, if you can only find phyllo use three sheets together), place filling ingredients in the middle, seal with water along the edges, and pan fry in a little bit of olive oil.  So delicious.

Ispanaklı ve Peynirli Gözleme = Spinach and Cheese Gözleme.  I actually don't know if I need the "ve" in there, because you don't always use the word "and" in Turkish.  Peynirli means "with cheese" and Ispanaklı is "spinach."

According to Wikipedia:

"Toppings for gözleme are numerous and vary by region and personal preference, and include a variety of meats, vegetables, mushrooms, tubers, cheeses, as well as eggs, and seasonal herbs and spices."

This is something I love about Turkish food - so many variations for tasty treats! I will make this again for sure.

Soft Sprinkle Cookies

I needed a festive cookie recipe that would still be okay a few days later through the mail, and adapted this softbatch cookie recipe for my purposes.  I prefer it to a lot of the similar recipes I've seen where you basically use cake mix.  You could vary the sprinkle colors depending on your holiday, but these are soft and sweet!

Soft Sprinkle Cookies
(Adapted from Softbatch Funfetti Sugar Cookies on Averie Cooks) 

Ingredients:

1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter, softened
1 1/2 cups granulated sugar
2 large egg
1 tbsp vanilla extract
3 cups all-purpose flour
4 teaspoons corn starch
1 1/2 teaspoons baking soda
1/4 tsp salt
1 1/2 cups sprinkles

Directions:

1. Beat together the the butter, sugar, egg, and vanilla on medium-high speed until creamed, light and fluffy, about 5 minutes, stopping to scrape down the sides of the mixer as necessary.
2. Add the flour, cornstarch, baking soda, salt, and mix until just combined, about 1 minute.
3. Add the sprinkles and beat momentarily to incorporate, less than 1 minute, or fold in by hand.
4. Cover and chill the dough at least 30 minutes. Preheat oven to 350F,
5. Use a cookie scoop for uniform size and don't put more than 12 to a parchment paper-lined cookie sheet.
6. Bake for 8-10 minutes, or until edges have set and tops are just beginning to set, even if undercooked, pale, and glossy in the center. These cookies should not turn golden or brown at all and should stay white. Allow cookies to cool on the baking sheet for about 5 minutes before removing and transferring to a rack to finish cooling.

Adventures in Baking: Mohnkuchen

This summer, I read Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace, only I didn't read it alone, I read it along with an international reading group.  As we chatted about the book we talked about other things, and one reader in Germany found out I had a baking blog.  She wanted to know why Americans hardly ever use poppy seeds, since some of her favorite recipes have tons of them.  I'm not really sure why we don't, and one of my mother's standards was a lemon poppy seed cake, but it didn't have poppy seeds in it the way mohnkuchen does.

Fast forward to Angelika sending me a recipe for mohnkuchen.  She made an initial attempt to convert the recipe to English words and ingredients, but we still had to puzzle through items like "custard powder" and "curd."  I also had to find a place to buy "ground poppy seeds" online.  In the end, they don't look all that different to me from regular poppy seeds, but maybe I am missing something. 

Mohnkuchen translates directly to "poppy seed cake."  There are many versions out there, some that have a streusel topping, some that just have the poppyseed layer on top of a thin crust, some with poppy seeds throughout a pound cake.  This version has a shortbread crust, a paste layer of eggs, poppy seeds, almond flour, and semolina, and a cheesecake-custard layer. 

I feel like I made a lot of mistakes on this baking experiment, and I'm not going to post the recipe until I've had a chance to try it again.  That should help me figure out if it is user error or recipe error, or even ingredient error.  I used Bird's Custard Powder for the custard powder, and cream cheese for the curd.  I didn't let the middle layer cool completely.  Something in there made the middle take forever to set, and that burned the bottom of the crust.  It did set up overnight in the fridge, but was still clearly not quite right on the top layer.  I also should have rolled out the crust and just pressed it into the pan, and you can see it isn't quite right.  I still ended up bringing it to work and it was eaten.  I think next time I will take more time to let the poppy seed layer cool, but also I might try it in a larger pan where the layers will be a bit thinner.  I will also not wimp out on the crust rolling.  And I will mix the butter and cream cheese layer together before adding the eggs for the top layer.

Have any of you ever made mohnkuchen?

Kugel for breakfast

I'd had Arthur Schwartz's Jewish Home Cooking: Yiddish Recipes Revisited by Arthur Schwartzon my to-read list for years, and finally found it at the library to look through it. I'd had a taste of Jewish cuisine from an excellent deli in town and wanted to try more.


It was interesting to thumb through this cookbook on the heels of reading  97 Orchard : An Edible History of Five Immigrant Families in One New York Tenement, because much of the information in the chapter on Jewish Immigrants was mirrored in the textual parts of this cookbook. Schmaltz is praised and utilized like crazy; this is old-school Jewish cuisine! The recipes come from the Ashkenazi tradition more or less, but it feels like Polish grandmother food. Same difference, maybe. Hearty, full of fat, and full of tradition.

I bookmarked quite a few recipes to try, but the idea I kept coming back to involved pasta for breakfast.  Sweet kugel, that elusive, mysterious creature, would be mine!  There are two recipes for sweet kugel in this cookbook, I picked the recipe that didn't ask for pot cheese, since I wasn't sure I could find that anywhere.



This is my rendition of Anne Whiteman's Birthday Kugel.  It is a grandmother dish too!  Anne Whiteman is the mother of the man who helped create Windows on the World, the restaurant well known for its presence in the World Trade Center.  I mixed it up the night before and by morning, the citrus zests and creamy custard were ready to permeate the noodles.  It felt like home, and I made a silly post in Facebook about kugel making me believe in reincarnation.  Well - I'd never had a sweet version before, but it felt so familiar and homey.  I suppose that is what traditional, comfort food is for. 

Lower Carb Pie Crust - Coconut-Almond

I was playing around with ingredients and came up with a crust that was nice with the berries and a sugar-free glaze.

Coconut Pie Crust
1 cup unsweetened desiccated coconut
1 cup other flour (I used a combination of almond flour and graham cracker crumbs)
3 tbsp butter, melted
1 egg

Mix dry ingredients, toss with wet until blended and dough sticks together lightly.  Press into pie plate.  Bake at 350 for 10 minutes or until browned and your house smells amazing.  Let cool before filling with some kind of summery filling that you can chill to set.

Nora Ephron's Key Lime Pie

"The pie I threw at Mark made a terrific mess.... The Key Lime Pie is very simple to make. First you line a 9-inch pie plate with a graham cracker crust. Then beat 6 egg yolks. Add 1 cup lime juice, two 14-ounce cans sweetened condensed milk, and 1 tbsp grated lime rind. Pour into the pie shell and freeze. Remove from freezer and spread with whipped cream. Let sit five minutes before serving.... I should add that the pie was hardly the first thing I'd thought of throwing at Mark...."
-Nora Ephron, Heartburn, Random House (1983 print, 2013 audio)

Who wouldn't want to make a key lime pie after it played such a pivotal role in this story?  Heartburn is Nora Ephron's first novel, and I recently listened to the audiobook.  Ephron would go on to make some of my favorite films (Sleepless in Seattle, You've Got Mail, etc!) but this is where she started.  Each chapter involves some kind of recipe that came from her own collection.  They are told in this narrative fashion, as the main character is a cookbook writer who can rattle off recipes like they are stories.

The scene involving the key lime pie also made it into the movie, where Meryl Streep stars alongside Jack Nicholson who plays Mark.  The audiobook is read by Meryl too, so it was a nice tribute to the movie.

I used the slight tweak on the recipe as desribed by the blogger at A Common Sea, with a little less juice and a little more zest.  I also used a pre-made crust because then I could bring it to work without having to bring dishes home.

Nora Ephron’s Key Lime Pie


Ingredients
6 large egg yolks
¾ cup key lime juice (I used bottled)
2 Tbsp lime zest (I used a regular lime)
2 14-oz cans sweetened condensed milk
9”-10” graham cracker crust
A few slices of lime for garnish
Whipped Cream

1. Beat the 6 large egg yolks in a large bowl. Add lime juice, zest, and sweetened condensed milk. Mix until well blended.
2. Pour into prepared graham cracker crust pie shell.
3. Freeze 6 to 8 hours, until firm.
4. When ready to serve, allow pie to thaw for a few minutes on counter. Add whipped cream (if you’d like) and lime slices for garnish.
5. Cut and serve. Throwing at your husband is optional.

This isn't my favorite key lime pie ever; I tend to prefer the custardy baked kinds.  But this was about using Nora's actual recipe!  I brought it to a meeting and by the time the meeting was over, the pie had melted and morphed into a less appetizing cold key lime pudding.  Definitely make this when you can control when and how it is served!  With the key lime juice, it was very tart and refreshing.

Coconut Flour Pancakes (low-carb, gluten free)

This past week, I posted about cream cheese pancakes that I had made in the unending quest for low-carb pancakes that aren't awful.  One of the (happy few) who seems to read this blog consistently posted another recipe to try, and I went running to the All Day I Dream About Food blog for the recipe.  It seemed logical - a scant 1/2 coconut flour to 6 eggs and 1 cup of milk (coconut flour is greedy), so I marked it to try for the weekend.

I made them this morning and I'm already blogging about them, so that should tell you something.  The batter gets thick instantly and even though you have to spread it in the pan, they still manage to have a pancake texture.  You can taste the coconut flour, and it has a bit of a density crunch, but these might be my favorite low-carb attempt yet.  The only change I made was using a few Splenda packets instead of the listed sweetener; I often make pancakes completely unsweet so I'm not sure they needed either.  The syrup you see is sugar free.

I'm copying the recipe here since recipes can't be copyright protected, but the original blogger had more to say about cooking with coconut flour, and I recommend a trip to her blog!  I would also say that this recipe is intended to feed 6, and I only used half the batter.  Next time I'll cut it in half.

Coconut Flour Pancakes

Ingredients

1/2 cup coconut flour
3 tbsp granulated erythritol or 3 Splenda packets
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
6 large eggs, lightly beaten
1/4 cup butter, melted
1 cup almond milk
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
Additional butter or oil for the pan

Instructions:
Preheat oven to 200F. In a large bowl, whisk together coconut flour, erythritol, baking powder, and salt. In a medium bowl, whisk together eggs, melted butter, almond milk and vanilla extract. Add the egg mixture to the coconut flour mixture and stir well to combine. Heat a large skillet over medium high heat and brush with vegetable oil or melted butter. Scoop two heaping tablespoons of batter onto skillet and spread into a 3 to 4 inch circle. Repeat until you can't fit any more pancakes into the skillet (you should be able to get 3 or 4 in). Cook until bottom is golden brown and top is set around the edges. Flip carefully and continue to cook until second side is golden brown. Remove from pan and keep warm on plate or baking sheet in oven, while repeating with remaining batter.

Cremita de Maiz

I haven't yet read a book set in Puerto Rico, but I have made something for breakfast from Puerto Rico that I will never forget.  Why won't I forget it? Because we love it and will keep eating it!

Cremita de Maiz, when I first saw it on the Always Order Dessert blog, looked like comfort food through and through.  She remembered having it as a child when she got sick, and it looked kind of like the cream of wheat my Dad used to make, painstakingly making it lump-free. I followed the recipe exactly except because of the pan I was using, I really didn't need 10-12 minutes to cook my porridge.  I think mine cooked for 5.  I also used Splenda instead of sugar since it was just for us.  But since 1/3 cup corn meal goes for two people, this recipe isn't that bad carb-wise, and is very satisfying and soul-soothing.  Highly highly recommended!

Cremita de Maiz (Puerto Rican Cornmeal Breakfast Porridge)
Serves 2

Ingredients
2 cups whole milk
1 teaspoon kosher salt
2 tablespoons unsalted butter, plus more for serving
3 tablespoons granulated white sugar
1/3 cup finely ground cornmeal
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
Ground cinnamon, for serving

Directions
Combine the milk, salt, butter, and sugar in a medium saucepan over medium heat and stir gently just until the milk starts to bubble. Lower the heat to the lowest setting and add the cornmeal, stirring continuously with a whisk until the porridge thickens--about 10 - 12 minutes. (Note that it will continue to thicken as it cools.)

Remove from heat, stir in the vanilla and divide into two dishes. Sprinkle with cinnamon and serve immediately topped with additional butter.  (If you'd like it thinner, stir in an additional half cup of warm milk.)

Cream Cheese Pancakes (low-carb, gluten-free)

Yes, low-carb.  Yes, low-sugar.  Yes, gluten-free.  And they did pancake-like things in the pan, like sticking together and browning (after trying a large number of so-called pancake recipes, you would want to qualify it too).  As the pan got hotter, they started looking more like flowers and less like rounds, but still were tasty.

I doubled the recipe I found on the "I Breathe... I'm Hungry..." blog, and thought that nicely fed two hungry people.  Are they as good as floury, fluffy pancakes?  Well, no.  But when you eat lower-carb, you learn to find satisfaction with other things that seem kind of like other things.  And these are a pretty good version of almost pancakes!

Ingredients

• 2 oz cream cheese
• 2 eggs
• 1 packet stevia (or any) sweetener
• 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon

Instructions

• Put all ingredients in a blender or magic bullet. Blend until smooth. Let rest for 2 minutes so the bubbles can settle. Pour 1/4 of the batter into a hot pan greased with butter or pam spray. Cook for 2 minutes until golden, flip and cook 1 minute on the other side. Repeat with the rest of the batter. Serve with sugar free syrup (or any syrup of your choice) and fresh berries.

Notes

Approx nutrition info per batch: 344 calories, 29g fat, 2.5g net carbs, 17g protein

Toasted Coconut Pound Cake

A lot of recipes end up on my "Recipes to Try - JennyBakes" Pinterest board.  A lot.  But some I can't get out of my head until I try making them, like this toasted coconut cake.  No occasion, no reason, just to smell and taste it for myself. (For what it's worth, I've recently obsessed over until I baked Salted Carmelitas as well, but I don't have any good pictures to show for them.)

Toasted Coconut Pound Cake
(Recipe credit: "Little Bits Of..." Blog)

Ingredients

• 3/4 cup unsalted butter, room temperature, plus more for pan
• 2 cups all-purpose flour (spooned and leveled), plus more for pan
• 1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon fine salt
• 1 cup granulated sugar
• 1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
• 3 large eggs
• 1 cup plus 2 tablespoons buttermilk, divided
• 1 1/2 cups sweetened shredded coconut, toasted, divided
• 1 cup confectioners' sugar

Directions:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease and flour a loaf pan. Whisk together flour, baking powder, and salt. In a large mixing bowl with paddle attachment, beat butter and granulated sugar on medium-high until light and fluffy, scraping down bowl as needed. Add vanilla, then eggs, one at a time, beating well and scraping down bowl. With mixer on low, add flour mixture in 3 additions, alternating with two 1/2-cup additions buttermilk, and beat until combined. With a rubber spatula, fold in 1 1/4 cups coconut.

Transfer batter to pan and bake until a toothpick inserted in center comes out with a few moist crumbs attached, 60 minutes. Let cool in pan the remove cake from pan and let cool completely on rack.

Whisk together confectioners' sugar and remaining 2 tablespoons buttermilk. Drizzle over cake and sprinkle with remaining 1/4 cup coconut.

Defeating the Garden Creatures

This year in the garden, we got smart.  We decided that if we were ever going to get to enjoy our blueberries, we were going to have to hide them from the squirrels, chipmunks, and birds (and beagle) that enjoy them every year.  Nathaniel added a net to the bigger bush, and we waited.

It worked!  Saturday I went out to the garden between thunderstorms and rain showers, lifted the netting, and picked an entire cup and a half of ripe berries from one bush.  (I had to send the beagle back inside because he was also enjoying being able to pick the berries more easily.)

Blueberries like this demand to belong to something more than just being snacked on.  I dug out my favorite go-to breakfast baking cookbook (A Passion for Baking ) and made her Blueberries and Cream Mall Muffins.  I didn't have the giant muffin tins, but for once I had sour cream on hand.  I soured some almond milk to replace the buttermilk and otherwise made them as the recipe described, besides dividing it in half.  They were delicious and perfect with the cold-brewed iced coffee on these humid summer days.

Baked Goods in Life After Life by Kate Atkinson

Everyone knows that I love to find ways to combine two of my favorite hobbies - baking and reading! Every once in a while, I'm surprised by an opportunity I wasn't expecting.  Life After Life">Life After Life by Kate Atkinson has been on my radar for quite a while, nominated for awards, very positive reviews, everyone seemed to be reading it, etc.  Still, I wasn't expecting it to also include a lot of content about baked goods and pastries of England and Germany from 1910-1949.  When Ursula Todd, the main character who lives many versions of her life, is in Germany, the baked goods are in German, so I had to do a bit of research.

I recently connected to a baking friend in Germany through a reading group we are both in, where we are reading Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace.  We've started exchanging recipes, because as she noted, I don't bake a lot of German desserts!  That's a shame as my heritage is half German.  I think this book and her influence will give me some opportunities to bake dishes I hadn't yet tried.

I love how far a baked good can do to set the scene, and I appreciate Kate Atkinson's obvious research into this level of detail.   How much can you learn about two people sitting down to "glasses of elderflower cordial and slices of milk fadge spread with blackberry jelly?"

Some of the baked goods that are mentioned, I have baked before:
Schwarzwalder Kirschtorte, p. 3
Mrs. Glover's seed cake, p. 47
Dobostorte, p. 136
Bakewell tart, p. 258

Some seem like German names for baked goods I have baked before (please correct me if there are differences):
Gugelhupf, p. 3 (I made a kugelhopf)
Käsekuchen, p.3 (cheesecake)

Some are baked goods I haven't ever made so I tracked down recipes to try at some point:
Bienenstich, p. 3 ("bee sting cake")
Pflaumen Streusel, p. 3 ("plum streusel cake")
Bloater-paste sandwiches, p. 46 (bloater-paste is smoked herring pate from what I can find)
Lemon curd sandwiches, p. 46-7
Jam roly-poly, p. 69
Cremeschnitte, p. 136
Riz impératrice, p. 153 (This is like a set rice pudding with geleed fruit, I don't think I'd like it!)
Milk fadge, p. 164 (similar to soda bread)
Apple charlotte, p. 168
Poppy-seed streusel, p. 362
Cinnamon and plum Torte, p. 362
Brandy-soaked pudding, p. 171

This is when I need your help! Which of these recipes should I try first?  Bloater-paste is probably the least likely, just due to lack of ingredients.  I had pinned Bienenstich for another reason, and have always wanted to make apple charlotte, but I am completely open to suggestions!

Never Fail Devil's Food Cake

 

Book: The Ponder Heart by Eudora Welty
State: Mississippi

Baked Good: "Never Fail" Devil's Food Cake

I'm in this online book group called On the Southern Literary Trail, which hosts two group reads every month.  I can't always spare the time to participate, but when The Ponder Heart by Eudora Welty came up, I jumped at the chance.  I'm always trying to read more southern authors, and hadn't yet read anything by her.

In the story, Daniel Ponder is on trial for the murder of his wife, and just like traditional southerners do, everyone in town brings food by.  Here's an excerpt:

There are mentions elsewhere of banana pie and "the kind of fudge that anyone can make," but I was interested in the Never Fail Devil's Food.  I did a little hunting around the internet and found this was one of those recipes intended for people who had to stretch their ingredients or make something with what was around the house.  I found a few versions and went with the one I found most often.

As you'll see, it just lists "fat" as an ingredient, but I imagine the texture would vary depending on what kind was used.  I used vegetable oil.  I interpreted "moderate oven" as 350 and checked it at 20.  I think it ended up baking for 30-35 minutes, since I didn't know what size to pan in.  I poured everything into a 9x9 pan, but probably should have done two rounds.

 

"Never Fail" Devil's Food Cake

from Depression Era Cooking 

Mix and sift:
1 cup sugar
1 1/2 cups flour
Pinch of salt
2 tablespoons cocoa
1 teaspoon soda

Mix:
1/2 cup sour cream
1/2 cup fat
1 beaten egg
1/2 cup hot water

Add sifted dry ingredients to liquid, beat well.  Bake in moderate oven.

New Office Treasure Hunt

In my third office move in under two years, I decided to make the location change announcement a little more fun this time around.

I posted this picture, the view out my window, and said if people could find me, they would receive a tasty treat!

If you know the library at all, the ramp rails that you can see is what would give it away, and the view of the tree is clearly a main-floor view.  Most people knew where I was already, so it wasn't the greatest mystery, but fun just the same.  I even found a new home for one of the plants left behind.  I'm a very nervous plant parent, so the fewer I have to worry about, the better!

What was the tasty treat?  Well America's Test Kitchen had posted a recipe for chewy chocolate cookies and I just had to make them.  I followed the recipe exactly, even purchasing DARK karo syrup and DARK brown sugar, but still ended up with cakey cookies instead of chewy.  *shakes fist* 

Still, people seemed to like them.  One librarian in particular came back for more!  The picture of the cookies is on my desk looking out to the reference stacks, the view I see even more often than the outdoor view. 

I'm happy with my new office - it is closer to the people I work with, and much easier for students and faculty to find.  Now I just need to find a new music librarian this fall and consolidate to just having one office, one set of files, one set of post-it notes, and I think work will be much easier to manage!  Soon.

Anniversary Decadence

On June 24th, we celebrated our thirteenth wedding anniversary!  I know that the traditional gift for 13 years is textiles, but who would pick fabric over peanut butter mousse?

Yeah.

I hadn't really decided what to make so I just scrolled through recipes I'd always meant to try until I came across a picture by Culinary Concoctions by Peabody for her Peanut Butter Cup Brownie Torte.  Honestly, if there is something more decadent on the earth, I do not know of it.

I made a modified, slightly cheater version.  First, I never feel like homemade brownies are anywhere close to box brownies.  I've tried recipes that claim to be close to that chewy texture, but NO.  So I always grab the Ghiradelli double chocolate type when I need brownies, although this time I went with triple chocolate because I wanted super moist chewy.  They were perfect. 

I made the brownies and the peanut butter mousse (as written) the day before.  Then I cut the brownies into hearts that I split in two and put peanut butter mousse between and on top.  Then I drizzled the ganache.  Then I sprinkled with chopped peanut butter cups.

The plate you see pictured above? I could only eat half of one brownie heart torte thing.  We fell asleep on the couch in decadent coma.  We're old and married, and it was worth it!

TWD Baking with Julia: Tomato & Cheese Galette

I signed up with the Tuesdays with Dorie group in order to keep challenging myself as a baker despite not eating many baked goods anymore.  This group started out by baking through Baking: My Home to Yours by Dorie Greenspan (a favorite in my house!) and moved on to Baking with Julia, based on the series with Julia Child.  This is another favorite cookbook in my house, so I was excited to join.

It is just now that I'm baking something along with the group!  Hopefully they still want me, and hopefully I will sink into their twice a month baking schedule.  Now on to the recipe!

For June 18, the recipe selected is the Cheese and Tomato Galette from page 429 of Baking with Julia

Basically, the recipe asks you to make the galette crust ahead of time, and the same recipe is used for sweet and savory galettes in the cookbook.  I had never made a crust that mixed ice water and sour cream, and the only sour cream I had at home was 'light,' but I just went for it.  The other key ingredients besides the obvious flour and salt are cornmeal and butter.

There had been some chatter in the group discussion on how roasting the tomatoes made for a less watery galette.  I had two tomatoes in the fridge, and used the Barefoot Contessa's roasted tomato recipe as my framework.  I sprinkled the tomatoes with dried basil since I had neglected to buy any fresh.

When I assembled the galette for baking, I used mozzarella and provolone that I topped with the tomatoes.  I baked it a little less than directed because I could smell it was ready, and when I took it out the crust was already a little more browned than I would have liked.  That's a pure butter crust for you!

Other than the time you have to allow for the crust to chill, this is a quick and easy recipe.  I had made sweet galettes before (see my Blueberry and Blackberry Galette with Cornmeal Crust) but never a savory version, so I enjoyed making this recipe!  Now I have another crust to use, will it go for something sweet or savory?  Spoiler - I have peaches in my fridge, so I think I know.  Maybe I'll combine the two and do peach-rosemary or something.  I'll report back.

Now for the real question - is the "g" in galette hard or soft?

Chia Pet Pudding

Chia seeds are the newest trendy food.  Not only are they linked to the Aztecs and Mayans, they claim to give a body everything from fiber to weightloss to reducing cholesterol. Every time something comes along that promises to deliver more than ceasing hunger, I think back to Michael Pollan's writings on nutritionism and smile, knowing the fad will pass.

Still, I couldn't wrap my head around how the same thing that could do this:

...could also make something delicious.  And that deliciousness would also be low in sugar, and even considered raw if done correctly.  I had some chia seeds in the pantry that I had used on homemade crackers, and didn't like very much, so it wasn't even wasting them to try this chia pudding, what we fondly refer to as chia PET pudding, because come on, that's hilarious.

There are a bunch of more creative recipes for chia (pet) pudding on the internet - mocha and chocolate varieties.  I went as simple as I could - I started out by mixing 1 cup of coconut-almond milk and 1/4 cup chia seeds, stirring together, stirring together the next morning when I thought I could eat it for breakfast and it wasn't ready, and then eating the next morning with some fresh raspberries.  First I mixed in a bit of sweetener and some vanilla extract.  Most recipes start with sugar but as you know, I try not to eat much of it, but just with the milk it wasn't quite sweet enough.

I liked it the first time, but the second time it seemed harder to eat. I swear I did it the same way, so I'm not sure what happened; I didn't even want mine, and just ate the fruit off the top.  I still have my eye on a few other versions of it that I might try should the pantry elves discover more chia seeds.  For now, it was a fun experiment but didn't change my life.

Momofuku Milk Bar Cornflake-Chocolate Chip-Marshmallow Cookies

I came across this recipe in Pinterest, and decided to make it right away because it sounded so good! You can track it down on The Cooking Actress or Martha Stewart if you want to try it, but I'm not sure I recommend it.  The high sugar content means these overcook easily and turn crunchy even more easily.  Something isn't quite right about the recipe, and I'd have to play with it a little bit to see what I could make better.

The cookie pictured is one of mine, but not all of them looked so pretty.  It could be that I just have a bias against crunchy cookies.

Momofuko Milk Bar sells these for $2 a piece, so they have it figured out.  The cornflake crunch, an element in the cookie that has to be made first, has powdered milk in it which adds an interesting flavor. Also salt. That added to the 1.5 tsp salt also made them saltier than I really like.

Pannukakku

After my visit to Flour Haven Bakery, I could not get pannukakku out of my head.  I found a few recipes that I pinned to my "Recipes to try - jennybakes" board in Pinterest for the next opportunity I had to bake for people (this is where I store all the recipes I'm just waiting for a chance to make!)  My group in the library had a retreat, and I decided to bring breakfast.  I knew it had to be pannukakku.

When searching for a recipe, it was important to me that the recipe was not merely another oven pancake like the recipe I used to have in rotation from the Betty Crocker cookbook with its equal amounts of egg, flour, and milk.  It is tasty, but the pannukakku I had tasted was more custardy than that. 

I found a recipe from Whiterock that looked perfect.  It is an adaptation from a recipe she got from her friend in the U.P. of Michigan, where I imagine there are a lot of Finnish people.  In her family, they call it Bunny Cake, which is a slight tweak on the pronunciation of pannukakku (bun-a-guck-ooh, according to that blogger.)

I made it exactly as written, although I took too long and the first stick of butter burned in the oven.  After cleaning out the pan, I melted another stick in the microwave and put about a third of it into the pan, adding 2/3 of it to the batter.  Other than that, the recipe that follows is exactly what I did, adding raspberry jam and powdered sugar.

Pannukakku (Finnish Pancake)

1 stick butter
6 eggs
3/4 cup sugar
1 tsp vanilla
1 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
1 tsp salt
2 cups whole milk

In a 9x13 inch baking pan, melt the butter in the oven while it preheats to 375 degrees. Meanwhile, with electric mixer, beat eggs until blended and frothy. Add sugar and vanilla; beat until sugar is dissolved. In a separate bowl, stir salt into flour. Alternately add flour mixture and milk to egg mixture, mixing well between each addition. Add approximately 2/3 of the melted butter and mix in. Pour batter over the remaining butter in the pan.

Bake in preheated 375 degree oven for 35 minutes. Serve warm.

While I was pining after pannukakku, I found this silly animated video with a pannukakku song.  Enjoy! And let me know what you think after making this delicious breakfast. Seriously, my mouth is watering for more.

Flour Haven Bakery - Greer, SC

When you come across Flour Haven Bakery in what seems like the middle of nowhere, South Carolina (it's actually in Greer), you might not expect a lot.  I didn't.  The outside and inside are both unassuming spaces, with more of a diner atmosphere.  But this bakery isn't joking around. It was also completely packed with almost no place to park, and people who came in after us had to wait to eat or order carry-out.  This is always a good sign!

Besides a breakfast and lunch menu, there is a full case of baked goods such as donuts, pastries, cinnamon rolls, sticky buns, and cookies.  You can fill up a box of a dozen of a mixture for less money than you would spend at Dunkin Donuts, and all of these are made on location.  (It is so rare to find actual homemade donuts anymore!)  There are also shelves of homemade bread, rotating based on a daily schedule.

The biggest surprise to me was the presence of a few Finnish items on the menu.  They had samples of Pannukakku above the donut/pastry case, and I knew that I would be ordering that for breakfast.  It was an oven baked pancake with a very custardy texture, far creamier than standard oven baked pancake fare.  The bakery appears to be family owned and operated, and they looked Finnish but I didn't ask.  There is also a Finnish sweet bread on the menu and bread rotation, which is also made into French toast.

We ordered an omelet, a cinnamon roll, and pannukakku to try.  It was all tasty although the omelet had plastic-I-mean-American cheese (I would have preferred a real cheese, but this is more of the diner fare I would have expected from how the place looks).  The cinnamon roll was good but the true highlight was the pannukakku (pictured at 9 o'clock on the picture above).  I'd like to go back and sample more of their baked goods.  This is worth the trip from Greenville, and is about 20 minutes from where I live on the very north side of town.

Quinoa Flakes with Stewed Rhubarb

 

You can buy quinoa flakes at most higher end grocery stores.  They are a great, higher-protein substitute for breakfast cereals such as Cream of Wheat or oatmeal.  It is tasty with additions such as cinnamon, something sweet, milk, and nuts.  To really dress it up, try making rabarbaragrautur (an Icelandic word), or as we say in English - stewed rhubarb.  

Rhubarb is not something I grew up eating, but truly love it.  It came as early as usual in the south this year, but since everything else started so late, I never got anything with a strawberry-rhubarb combination.  I thought some of the rest of you in more temperate states might just be seeing rhubarb in the markets.

I don't really have a recipe for you as much as an idea.  Cook the quinoa as directed on the package.  Slice the rhubarb after cleaning, and cook with sugar or sweetener and some water until soft and slightly syrupy, like above.  Top the quinoa with the rhubarb and milk.  I could eat this every day and never get tired of it.

Low Sugar Chocolate Macaroons

I know it is slightly past macaroon season, but chewy sweet coconut cookies are tasty.  Every season should be macaroon season!

Most macaroons are made with sweet condensed milk, sugar, and sweetened coconut flakes.  Those things are a no-go for this lower sugar household!  I had found a few recipes that didn't use condensed milk, so even though I found a sugar-free condensed milk recipe, I didn't end up needing it for this recipe.  I will probably still make it for coffee, but that will be a different post.

Nathaniel kept seeing chocolate macaroons at the store, and they were taunting him, so he challenged me to try to make a lower version of them.  Most of the recipes I found used a combination of melted chocolate and cocoa powder.  One of them used only cocoa powder, but looking closer, the recipe wasn't as traditionally macaroon, so I decided to go ahead and use a bit of sugar in the bittersweet chocolate I melted down.  That's why I call them low sugar and not sugar-free, just to clarify.  Your mileage may vary.

This recipe is based on a Martha Stewart recipe, but I tweaked it enough to call it mine.  Thanks for giving me a good place to start, Martha. 

Lower Sugar Chocolate Macaroons

• 4 ounces bittersweet chocolate, roughly chopped
• 1/4 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
• 1/4 cup brown sugar Splenda (you might want to use 1/3 cup for a bit more sweetness)
• 2 1/2 cups unsweetened coconut flakes (the kind I find was almost ground but not quite)
• 3-4 large egg whites
• 1 teaspoon vanilla
• Pinch of salt
• Handful of chocolate chips, optional

Directions

1. Heat oven to 350 degrees. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper.
   
2. Melt chocolate and cool.
   
3. Combine cooled chocolate, cocoa, sugar, coconut, egg whites, vanilla, and salt. Use your hands to mix well, completely combining ingredients.  Mix in chocolate chips if desired.
   
4. Dampen hands with cold water. Form 1 1/2 tablespoons of mixture into a loose ball, and place on prepared baking sheet. Repeat with remaining mixture, placing macaroons 1 inch apart.
   
5. Bake until just firm to the touch but still soft in the middle, 15 to 20 minutes.