Leprechauns in January

I'm horrible, I know.  I have not posted in seemingly forever.  Mostly because baking can be expensive.  Also it is not good to have sweets lying around the house.  Also, sometimes I bake and I'm too intent on getting the food into the oven to stop for 30 seconds to take a picture.  And posts just aren't worth it without a picture.  But this cake, I promise, has a wonderful picture.  Several actually.

Now I can't take credit for the idea.  I stole it directly from notmartha.org and made only several slight modifications but I can promise you it is FAR easier than it looks.  Too easy in fact to the point where I tried to make it harder on myself.


The ingredients are as follows:
1. Cake mix (white or yellow)
2. Food coloring
3. Cocoa powder
4. Eggs
5. Butter
6. Vanilla extract

Frosting:
1. 1 cup butter
2. Powdered sugar
3. 1/2 cup milk

Directions:

1. Note that the ingredients mostly don't have amounts.  You really don't need measuring cups for this recipe.  You do need a lot of bowls though.  A LOT.  So start by making the cake following the directions on the box, except use melted butter instead of oil.  It gives a better taste.  Add in vanilla if you like that kind of thing.

2. Now split the batter into four more bowls with each bowl containing slightly less batter.  The biggest bowl is done.  The next bowl I made green by adding lots of food coloring.  Add food coloring to each of the other bowls making sure to wash the spoon between mixing otherwise it will bleed colors.

3. I added a few tablespoons of cocoa powder to the two darker shaded batches of batter.  To the lightest bowl I added a bit of cocoa powder and a bit of cayenne pepper and cinnamon to give it a kick.  The smallest bowl only had about 2/3 cup of batter so it's not going to make the cake spicy, but it will add a little extra flavoring.

4. Now this is where I had to make major adjustments.  The point of this cake is to lure a leprechaun to your cake so that when he goes for the gold in the center he falls into the hole at the center of the bundt pan.  Sadly, I don't have a bundt pan so I had to make one out of a circle pan.  I folded aluminum foil into a circular shape at the center of the pan and poured around it.  But this worked out quite nicely so I recommend it for anyone else who doesn't have a bundt pan.

5. Pour the white/yellow batter that you have the most of into the pan on the bottom.  Then pour each layer of color on top of it in concentric circles getting thinner and thinner with each layer.  It should look like this:

6. Now when mine came out it didn't look like it had kept the colors properly but when I cut inside it worked just fine. 

So don't panic.  Bake it at 325 or 350 F (really either one is fine) for about 45 minutes or whatever it says on the box.  When it looks done, take it out and let it cool.

7. In the meantime, beat the softened butter in a bowl with mixers and add in 2 cups of powdered sugar.  Slowly add in the milk and lots of green food dye, and then continue to add powdered sugar until you get the right consistency for your frosting.  This can be anywhere from 3-5 cups of sugar.  I swear powdered sugar disappears when it gets wet.  It's weird like that. 

8. Once the cake has cooled, I did a crumb layer of frosting.  Basically that means you frost it a little and then freeze the cake for about 10 or 15 minutes.  Then when you go back to finish frosting it, the crumbs don't get flaked into the frosting to ruin the look.  Very fancy.  I'm cool like that.  Once you've finished frosting the cake, you can take a fork and give the frosting a 'grassy' look.  Keeping in line with the impressive fancy methods and all.

9.  Now if you have leftover gelt from Hannukah, place that in the center and you're golden.  If not, I used Reese's candy and it looked just as good.  Then I made a ladder out of cut-up Kit-Kat bars.  They stick to the frosting so it works out well.

10. The Final touch is adding your sign to let the leprechauns know where the gold is.  My leprechaun looked oddly Amish, but I'm not the best of drawers.  Next time I'll get a redhead.

11. Serve and enjoy!  And remember, you're eating a lot of food coloring, so you may start to sneeze in bright colors.  Only one of the many wonderful side effects of this sugary concoction.

The Lazy Pie

This is a pie I could drown my sorrows in.  Seriously.  Nothing that  falls into the depths of this baby is coming out for air and I mean it. 

I had a bad day last week and I decided the answer was pie.  Clearly I've been busy because I haven't updated my blog since February.  Which doesn't mean I haven't been baking, I've just been too tired to take pictures of my food as I make it which leads to me not blogging about it.

Anyway, I had a bad day and came home to discover I had lots of leftover berries in my refrigerator and freezer so I decided the answer was to make pie.  I also had a pre-made crust so that helped.

Anyway, I started by pulling the basic ingredients you need for a pie.

Ingredients:
10-12 oz Any kind of berry (frozen or fresh.  If using frozen try to thaw it out first and drain the liquid before starting the recipe)
6 Tb Butter (I like salted but unsalted works fine)
3/4 cup Sugar
1/2 cup Brown sugar
1 Tb Lemon juice
1 1/4 to 1 1/2 cup Flour
1 frozen Pie crust thawed

Then I added some fun things:
2/3 cup Chocolate chips
1/3 cup Chopped walnuts
3 Tsp Cinnamon

And then I made up a recipe.  It mostly worked, though in the future i would recommend letting the berries completely thaw and draining them of most liquid.  I was in too much of a hurry to get to pie heaven to take this step, which led to a much juicier pie than I intended.  But still good.

Anyway, here's what I did:

1. Mixed the berries in a bowl with 1/2 cup sugar, lemon juice, 3/4 cup flour, and cinnamon.  You can probably use just 1/2 cup flour but I had a lot of liquid from the melting berries that I wanted the flour to absorb.

2. Sprinkled chocolate chips and chopped walnuts onto the defrosted pie crust (I cooked it for about 10 minutes in the oven at 350 first to get it a little firm).

3. Poured the berry mixture on top of the chocolate chips and walnuts.

4. In the same bowl that I mixed the berries (because we know how I feel about washing dishes unnecessarily, and also because I thought the berry juice would add flavor to the crumb topping) I combined the butter with brown sugar, 1/4 cup white sugar, 3/4 flour, and cinnamon.  I mixed it all together with a fork until it made a nice crumbly topping

5. Sprinkled the crumb topping over the berries and baked in the oven at 350 F for about 40 minutes.

6. Let the pie cool.  It's insanely tasty warm, but it is unbelievably wonderfully amazing cold.  The chocolate hardens and makes a nice layer on the bottom that mixes so nicely with berries.  Like I said, this is a pie you can drown in.

So pick up your fork and dig in!

Maple Sweetness

This dessert was so good I made it twice in two days.  Literally.

Of course I got it out of my Toll House cookbook, because that thing is the most amazing gift to bakers and stomachs everywhere.  Yum.  I wanted a dessert that was more exciting than plain chocolate, but I didn't want to avoid the ingredient altogether.  This was a perfect marriage of flavors.  To begin with you will need:

Ingredients:
1 cup flour
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 cup butter softened
1/2 cup firmly packed brown sugar
1 egg
1/2 cup maple syrup (or in my case, 1/2 cup 'light' maple flavored syrup.  Because it 's cheaper and has 1/3 the calories)
1 tsp vanilla
2 cups chocolate chips
1 cup chopped walnuts

I can't quite take credit for using maple flavored syrup.  The recipe in my cookbook actually calls for maple flavored syrup, not real maple syrup.  Perhaps the authors knew that no average American is going to shell out $35 for maple syrup and then pour half a cup of it in brownies.  It would probably make it taste that much better, but I was just fine with the flavored syrup.  After all, I am rather poor these days.

Directions:
Anyway, the first thing you do (after preheating the oven to 350 of course) is beat the butter in a bowl and slowly add in the sugar until it gets nice and creamy:

Now beat in the egg slowly until it's well mixed.  Slowly use the beaters to add in the maple syrup and vanilla:

Now mix in the flour and baking powder:

Beat well. 

Chop up your walnuts and try not to cut yourself like I did (don't worry, I didn't bleed into the batter or anything):

Mix 1 cup of chocolate chips and 3/4 of the walnuts into the batter and spread into a 9x9 inch square baking pan.  Frequently I read recipes that say spread batter evenly, which I don't understand.  Who would choose NOT to spread evenly?  Who would say, "You know, I think I'll spread this batter completely unevenly so it under-cooks on one side and overcooks on the other?"  So I'm not going to tell you to spread evenly.  I'm going to assume you have the wherewithal to know you should do that on your own.  And then I'm going to talk about it for an entire paragraph.

Now bake until a toothpick (or fork tip) comes out clean.  This should be about 25 minutes, though it depends how hot your oven gets.  I think it took about 30 for me, but recipes tend to make you under cook things so you don't blame them when your food burns.  You can blame me if it burns.  I can handle it.  Just don't try to feed me your burnt food.

Anyway, once it's out of the oven, spread the second cup of chocolate chips on top and let it sit for a minute or two until they're nice and shiny.  This means they're melty and you can spread them (*evenly*) over the top of the cake so you have a nice chocolate layer on top of the bars.  Now sprinkle the rest of your walnut pieces onto the melted chocolate and let it cool.  At this point it's totally edible, but you're supposed to let things cool first so you don't burn your tongue.  Silly, I know.  But theoretically practical.

Doesn't it just make your mouth water?  I had to leave it at my sister's apartment because she invited me over for dinner, so I went home and made it again so I could have leftovers to eat over the course of the week.  I'm pretty sure it was gone in four days anyway.  So. Good.

It's a loaf! It's a Challah! No! It's SUPERBREAD!

This is one of two baked goods that I make without looking at a recipe. 

Mostly due to the fact that I've made it so many times I don't need it anymore, but partially because it really does require a lot of adapting to the specific dough at hand.  It is the best eggless challah recipe, and when I want a good bread in the middle of the week (like I did with this one) I just put it in a loaf pan and voila!  It magically becomes the perfect loaf for a sandwich or french toast.

I have given this recipe out more than any other one I own, and I received it from a rebbetzin (a Rabbi's wife) in Pittsburgh.  I've since adapted it to my own liking, but I always think of her when making bread because mine rarely achieve the same state of perfection that her eggless challah never failed to meet.

The basic thing to remember for this recipe are:
Don't worry about adding more water and flour, the consistency of the dough is what's important
Kneading more is better than kneading less
Double rising is awesome

And with that forewarning, away we go!

Ingredients:
4 cups + 2 cups flour
3/4 cup sugar
1 packet yeast
1/4 cup oil (I use olive but vegetable works just fine too)
1 Tb salt
1-3 cups water
1 Tb vanilla (optional)
cinnamon
2/3 cup walnuts chopped
1/2 cup raisins

Directions:
First you're going to want to go get some patience.  I'm serious.  Don't do this quickly or it will fail.  And failed challah is so horribly depressing.  Sometimes I get in the mood to make bread, but have to talk myself out of it because I'm too hungry and I know I'll mess it up.

Now that you've go that on hand you can focus on the actual baking.  Start by putting the whole packet of yeast in a glass and sprinkle a pinch to a tablespoon of sugar on top of it. 

Now fill the glass halfway with lukewarm water.  Too hot and you'll kill the yeast, too cold and it won't necessarily activate it.  Basically, if it's burning your hand when you put your finger under the faucet, it's too hot.  If it's cool enough that you'd still drink it, it's probably too cold.  Now set the glass down (no need to stir it) and get out your flour.

Mix the flour, sugar, and salt in a large bowl.  I always like to add in a few teaspoons of cinnamon at this point, though this all depends on how much you like cinnamon.  If you add more than a two teaspoons it starts to color the dough a bit and sometimes by the time it comes out of the oven it looks like you've used whole wheat flour.  Not a problem at all, but just be aware that the more cinnamon you add the darker the dough will look.

Now you can add in the yeast which should look like this:

Along with the water/yeast mixture you can add the oil and vanilla and start to mix it all together.
Refill the empty yeast glass with warm water and slowly pour it in as you continue to mix the dough.  Once the flour is fairly mixed into the dough you can stop adding water and start kneading. 

I like to put a little flour on the counter top and continue to slowly knead in more flour to the dough as I go along.  Kneading for at least 10 minutes is ideal.  You're literally pushing air into the dough so that it can rise, so the more air that you get in there, the fluffier the dough will be.  I guess if you're going for a very dense loaf you could choose to knead it for less, but even though 5-8 minutes is the minimum you'd want to do.

Now coat the mixing bowl with oil (you can use pam too) and drop your rounded dough into the bowl. Turn it over once or twice so the whole dough is covered in a nice layer of oil.  This prevents it from sticking to the bowl or towel and from drying out.  Cover the dough with a towel and let it sit for at least 8 hours.  I like to make the dough at night and then leave it out while I'm sleeping.  It helps because otherwise I'd spend the 8 hours thinking about how much I want to make my bread RIGHT NOW. 

In the morning I punch the dough down

and roll it out into a large rectangle (this is pretty similar to the apple bread recipe I posted earlier).

Sprinkle with a nice layer of cinnamon, walnuts, and raisins. 

Now roll it up like a cinnamon bun and squish it into a loaf pan. 

If you're making challah I recommend making a much long and thinner rectangle, rolling it once so the nuts are inside, and then snaking it in like a snail shell or the challahs around Rosh HaShanah.  Once you have your shaped loaf, cover it and let it sit for another 2 hours.  I went out to the Library of Congress to distract myself because two hours is a very long time and watching bread rise is less fun than watching water boil.

Once the loaf has properly risen, preheat your oven to 350 degrees.  I like to add a coat of oil, butter, egg yolk, or pam to the top of the loaf so it colors nicely but this step is not necessary.  Bake for 20-30 minutes or until the loaf is golden on top.  When you slice it open it's all so nice and pretty.

See, now wasn't it worth all that effort?  I challenge you to buy a loaf that looks this good at any old Safeway. Really.  Go ahead and try.

This Cake is Bananas! B-A-N-A-N-A-S.

Don't you want a piece right now?  Those of you who don't like Bananas may not particularly enjoy this cake, but for everyone else, this is an incredible and tasty alternative to the usual banana bread that graces many a tables after finding a banana or two that have seen better days.

Ingredients:
1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, softened
1 cup sugar
1 egg
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 1/2 cups flour
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp baking powder
3/4 cup milk (skim is fine)
3/4 cup mashed ripe bananas (about 2 medium)
1/2 cup walnuts finely chopped

Frosting:
2 Tb unsalted butter, softened
1 (12 oz) package cream cheese, softened (reduced fat is fine, fat free is not)
1 ripe banana, mashed
1/4 tsp freshly grated nutmeg
2 tsp vanilla extract
3 Tb cream or milk (skim is fine, cream just makes it richer)
1 lb confectioner's sugar

After the obvious preheating of the oven to the standard 350 degrees, I chopped up a few handfuls of walnuts, because the crunch adds a lot to any cake or bread.

Next I mixed the flour, baking soda, and baking powder in a bowl.  You'll see why I did this later, and you know there's a reason because I always leave out extra bowls if I can help it.

In another bowl I mixed the softened butter, egg, vanilla, and sugar.  Don't they look so pretty all in a row?

Use the beaters and mix it up until you have a nice smooth, thick, batter.

Meanwhile you'll want to mash up your bananas.  Mine weren't really ripe enough, but I was firm in my fork usage so it worked out alright anyway.

Now you're going to slowly add in the flour mixture alternately with the milk, starting and ending with the flour.

Now some milk:

And then the last bit of the flour!  See how pretty it curves?  You can go surfing on it, it's that smooth.  Man, can you imagine surfing on cake batter?  It's the stuff of dreams I tell you.

Now fold in your chopped walnuts:

Pour it in a greased cake pan (I used a bundt, but any pan will do) and bake for 30-40 minutes or until it has a nice golden top:

This is actually just half the cake recipe.  The original recipe makes a three layer cake, but that's a lot of cake and I was having a small meal so I didn't want to over-do it.  That said, it's super easy to double the recipe and make twice as much.  If you love bananas, cake, and people, I say go for it!

Now onto the frosting.  I should warn you, I'm actually pretty terrible at frosting.  For some reason, with cream cheese frostings especially, I always get a liquidy glaze, not a thick frosting.  This was no exception.  But I went with it and it totally worked.  So I guess if you do exactly what I did, you'll get the same results.  But if you're a great cream cheese frosting maker, feel free to go wild with your own recipe.  What makes this special is the fact that is has a banana in the frosting and nutmeg which majorly brings out the flavor.

So to start with, throw the butter, cream cheese, and mashed banana in a bowl.  I used the amount of butter recommended in the original recipe and it was unnecessary.  Usually the only way I can get a cream cheese frosting to work at all is to completely remove butter from the equation.  So you can either use 4 Tb of butter (what I did but wouldn't do again), use 2 Tb (which may still be more than you need), or use none at all.  But if you use the 4 Tb it will look like this:

Then when you mix it all together and dash the nutmeg on top it looks like this:

Pretty right?  Now you'll add vanilla and the milk (you can probably skip the milk if you want, or at least use half as much as this recipe claims you should use):

Now add confectioners sugar.  This is where it started to look kind of more like a glaze than a frosting for me.  But maybe yours will work better than mine.  I did add in the entirety of the sugar in the 1 lb bag. 

But despite all my besting, it was to no avail.  So I ended up refrigerating it overnight and then in the morning when it was still pretty thin I just poured it over the cake anyway, sprinkled some walnuts and cinnamon on top, and served it for dessert. 

Despite by best efforts to apologize for the runny frosting, my guests assured me it was delicious.  They all had seconds, and over the next few days, I had thirds, fourths, and perhaps went as far as fifths.  So like I say, make this at your own risk.  Because I can vouch for how good it is, but not for how slim your waistline will stay while it's in the house.

A Vegetarian Goes South

I like chili.  I also like cornbread.  Putting them together is a mild stroke of genius.

Especially when it saves you an extra pan.  I got this rather amazing cookbook from my sister several years ago when I was still in my Vegan Period (somewhat like Picasso's Blue Period but with food) and I swear everything I made from it was delicious.  I used to lie and tell my friends it wasn't vegan because apparently vegan food is scary and makes you fart.  This IS chili and therefore it will very likely make you fart, but it isn't scary and it IS delicious and incredibly easy.  So I highly recommend it.


Side note: I got too excited and forgot to take pictures until the end.  But I am going to trust you can imagine imagine it all or base it off my descriptions.

Ingredients:
1 large onion, chopped
1 vegetable of your choice, chopped (I used a zucchini, you can use a pepper, mushrooms, butternut squash, really anything you want.  I've tried them all and they're all equally great.)
Olive oil or cooking spray
1 1/2 cups mock ground beef (you can use real beef if you want to go the non-vegetarian route, but I've found that Boca fake ground beef tastes amazing and works very well in this recipe)

1 14-oz can diced tomatoes with juice or three large juicy tomatoes chopped
1 19-oz can beans of your choice, I like black beans personally
1 cup frozen corn (fresh if it's in season)
1 hot chili pepper chopped
2 tsp cocoa powder
2 Tb chili powder
2 Tb honey
cumin, salt, and garlic powder to taste

Cornbread topping:
1 1/4 cup milk
1 Tb apple cider vinegar (rice vinegar works too)
1 cup flour
1 cup cornmeal
2 tsp baking powder
2 Tb sugar
1/2 tsp salt
2 Tb oil

Directions:
Most of the effort of this recipe is in the chopping before you even start cooking.  Once that's all ready, saute the onion and chopped vegetable of your choice in oil or cooking spray until the union is translucent and the vegetable is halfway cooked.  If you're using squash you might want to cook it a little before throwing it in with the onion or chop it into fairly small pieces to begin with.  Then add the remainder of the chili ingredients and simmer for 5-10 minutes.  At this point you can turn the oven on to 400 degrees.

I don't usually measure anything in this recipe which is weird for me because I love things to be exact.  But with chili you really just have to go with the flow.  Think about what you'll like to taste and put more or less of that in it.  I like spicy so I buy bigger chili peppers, if you don't like spicy avoid it.  I also just throw in random amount of cocoa powder, but it adds a really nice flavor so try not to leave it out if you can help it.

Once the chili is simmering you can turn to the cornbread.  Pour the milk in a small bowl and add the vinegar.  Let it sit while you mix the rest of the dry ingredients.  The vinegar will curdle the milk and allows you to avoid using an egg (see, it's egg-less for those with allergies!).  Mix the flour, cornmeal, sugar, baking powder, and salt together.  Sometimes I add in a dash of cayenne pepper or nutmeg if I want the cornbread to have a little extra flavor.  Then add in the oil (it doesn't have to be exact, you just need a little fat to make it work) and the milk/vinegar mixture and stir until just combined.

Pour the chili into a baking dish.  Size may vary depending on how much vegetable you used.  If you use a lot it might take up a 9x13 inch pan, I made a smaller 9x9 inch pan.  But I also like the cornbread thicker.  Once the chili is in the pan pour the cornbread mixture on top.  If the batter is thick you can spoon it on top and smooth it out.  Then bake for about 15-20 minutes until the cornbread is nice and golden.

Now invite all your vegetarian hating friends over and let them drool while you enjoy a nice southern-inspired meal.