Mar
06

Indian-Spiced Chicken Pitas

By Sheri · Comments (3)

Another meal from EatingWell, and we really liked this one too. The chicken is flavored with salt and garam masala – simple, but really delicious.

The cake, on the other hand was simple to make but yet again the recipe wasn’t well-tested. I’m unhappy with this cookbook. The author gave a nice talk at Omnivore books and seems very sweet, but as much as I want to love this cookbook, I can’t. I love the idea but I have little tolerance for recipes that aren’t well tested.

My complaint with this cake is that the photos shows a slice of cake that looks like it was made in a loaf pan. But the recipe calls for an 8-inch square pan. And an hour of baking time. That seemed really long to me, so I set the timer for 45 minutes. Honestly, it could have even come out sooner. The cake is good, but not spectacular. And the salt really doesn’t come through. Also, the vanilla syrup that is brushed over the cake is just okay, and the recipe makes way too much.

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Categories : Poultry
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I had a little bit of a problem keeping these salmon burgers together, but otherwise we loved them, and we loved the salad dressing. I had an issue with my quinoa (gummy) for the first time ever, but otherwise we really liked this dinner.

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Categories : Salad, Seafood
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Mar
03

Gingerbread Truffles

By Sheri · Comments (1)

This was my first attempt at actually making a filled chocolate, and I had mixed success. After agonizing and fretting over what sort of center I was going to make and how I was going to create and decorate the truffle, I finally settled on a gingerbread-flavored ganache, enrobed (hand-dipped) and decorated simply with a bit of candied ginger.

The ganache is milk chocolate with molasses, cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg and clove. I tempered the milk chocolate then added the flavorings and spread the filling in an 8×8 pan to set up overnight. I cut the filling into 1-inch squares for enrobing.

I had some success hand-tempering, but was nervous about having to maintain the temper by hand while trying to dip, so my expensive hobby got a little more expensive with the purchase of a simple home-tempering machine. Well, seemingly simple. I’m happy with the purchase, though. I used a dipping fork to dunk the ganache centers into Amano Ocumare 70%.

It took some practice to get all of the excess chocolate off of the centers. I found that a combination of tapping and using a second fork was helpful.

The trick to hand-dipping is to get the finished chocolates onto the surface without making a mess or creating a “foot” (pool of chocolate under the center) or a “tail” (trailing off the back). I tried a bunch of different methods and began to get the hang of it.

Note the messy smears of chocolate at the top of the photo below – that was my first attempt. As I set chocolates on the pan liner, I added the candied ginger.

As the chocolates dried, it was clear from the dull appearance and bloom that formed that I had a tempering problem. The chocolate was still pretty firm so it wasn’t a complete failure. A lot of the chocolates went to my co-workers, who were kind enough to ignore that they didn’t look pretty. They tasted great (bloom doesn’t affect taste) and several people came back for more.

I contacted Chocovision support for help with my tempering issue, and of course it was primarily user error. Chocovision support was fantastic – Chef Joe talked with me by phone and gave me very specific instructions for the Amano chocolate. Higher melting temperature, seed the chocolate, and use the “difficult temper” button. The Amano is a little finicky due to the high cocoa butter content, but that’s what makes it have such a great texture.

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Categories : Chocolates, Dessert
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Mar
02

Doughnut Muffins

By Sheri · Comments (0)

The recipe for these indulgent muffins comes from the Downtown Bakery & Creamery in Healdsburg. It appeared in an issue of Fine Cooking in 2001 and I mentally filed it away, thinking I’d make them someday, but I never did. Then last week, one of the guys on my team told me he wanted me to try to re-create something he saw on The Best Thing I Ever Ate, a muffin that tastes like a doughnut. I asked him if it was from Downtown Bakery…. yes! Ah, I have the recipe, I told him. I was going to make them last night, but alas, I didn’t have the FIVE sticks of butter required (three for the batter, two for coating the baked muffins before rolling them in cinnamon sugar. These muffins are not for the faint of heart.

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Categories : Baked Goods, Breakfast
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I’m not sure why I picked these cookies out, since I don’t like peanut butter and Larry doesn’t like peanut butter cookies. I’ve had a bit of an odd obsession with peanut-y things over the last few months despite my dislike for peanuts in general, so I’m chalking it up to that. Anyway, these are nice cookies – great texture, and I like the addition of oatmeal and chocolate chips. I used couverture chocolate instead of regular chips. I like how the fat discs of chocolate melt in the cookies (I usually use Guittard semisweet wafers, found in 1-lb. boxes at Whole Foods).

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Categories : Baked Goods, Cookies, Dessert
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I’ve got about 10 lbs of Meyer lemons right now, and there are a ton more weighing down the neighbor’s tree, which is prolific (lucky me)! We have a baby Meyer lemon tree in our backyard but it doesn’t produce that many lemons yet. Lemon curd is my standard go-to but lemon cake is also popular with those that receive the baked goods coming out of the kitchen.

The cake is good, very moist and lemon-y. It sunk in the middle, which seems to happen a lot with lemon loaf cakes. According to Brian Geiger, The Food Geek, there’s probably too much leavener. He thinks the one I made from Baked seems fine (although I remember it coming out kind of flat, not quite sunken but not poofy on top either). He suggests next time, leave out the baking powder and cut back to 3/8 tsp. baking soda (see the original recipe here).

If it seems like all I ever do is bake lately, it’s just a stressful time at work, and I’m Stress Baking! Plus travel has gotten in the way of regular cooking.

  • Lemon Cake with Lemon-Brown Sugar Glaze (Salty Sweets, p. 82)
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Categories : Baked Goods, Dessert
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I had some issues with this recipe. I think I overbaked them – flavor is good but they’re a little dry. Also, it says to fill the cupcake liner 3/4 of the way full, and yield is 12-14 cupcakes. I filled them just over halfway, and still only got 10 cupcakes. And I never got the delicious, delicious butterscotch icing to set up – but I saw this feedback from other people online. I chilled it overnight and finally gave in and just used an electric mixer to thicken it. I’ll make these again, because they have a lot of potential. Plus I want to eat all of the icing.

  • Dark Chocolate Fleur de Sel Cupcakes with Snappy Butterscotch Icing (Salty Sweets, p. 67)
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Feb
22

Vegan Triple Chocolate Cupcakes

By Sheri · Comments (0)

These vegan cupcakes are filled with a creamy mocha filling and are topped with ganache. The cake part of the cupcake is moist and delicious. I got the recipe from Zoe Francois, who in turn got it from New Vegetarian. Zoe’s turned out so much nicer than mine – I need to work on my chocolate shavings, and should have let my ganache set up a bit more.

  • Vegan Triple Chocolate Cupcakes (Zoe Bakes)
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Feb
21

Chocolate Oatmeal Cookies

By Sheri · Comments (4)

I’m lucky to live close enough to Omnivore Books to be able to attend events there on occasion. I was excited to attend the author appearance by Christie Matheson, who wrote the cookbook Salty Sweets. I’m a huge fan of salt paired with sweets, particularly chocolate. I picked up the cookbook, and if these cookies are any indication, I’m going to enjoy cooking out of it.

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Categories : Baked Goods, Cookies, Dessert
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We loved these turkey burgers, although we both thought they’d be better without the focaccia. No matter, it gave me a chance to make up a batch of this focaccia, which we love and tend to inhale. Luckily I set aside some for the burgers first. We also really liked the buttermilk dressing. Larry liked the potato/broccoli mash more than I did, but it’s good. I just don’t like broccoli that much.

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Categories : Poultry, Salad
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