Author: admin

I'm a suburban amateur chef and professional writer who hates grocery shopping. Go figure.

TWD: Sugar-topped Molasses Spice Cookies

These were a treat right around Thanksgiving, and given that I have a whole new bottle of molasses in the pantry now, I’m thinking they might be a treat again someday soon!

Spiced Ginger Molasses Cookies

These cookies were chewy and dense and certainly spiced well – you must like ginger snaps to like these cookies, because they offer FAR MORE than your grocery store variety spice cookies.  Also, they were a bit of a handful to get into the baking pan, so definitely chill the dough as Dorie recommends before trying to rol them out (I still ended up with a thin layer of dough on each hand after I rolled a dozen or so out). The woman knows her stuff!

I, of course, was drinking them with milk or weak tea, because that’s how I roll these days. But they would also be lovely with the last of the wine after dinner. They certainly are not overly sweet to where they might compete with the wine.  I served them after brunch (french toast, quiche, sausage and cocktails) with friends for the perfect ending to a delightful Sunday morning.

I seriously thought she was kidding

I routinely read the articles filed by the Chicago Tribune’s health  reporter Julie Deardorff, if only for their comic value.  She routinely finds ways that either I am shortening my life or ruining the lives of those around me by performing mundane tasks, like emptying the lint tray in my clothes dryer. If only I could use my left hand instead of my right hand for the chore, we’d all beat cancer.

Today, though, I really thought she was kidding in her article about 9 foods worth eating.  It describes foods we all learned to hate as children, why our parents made us eat them, and then why they are worth a second shot as adults.  I was with her for the first few: sardines, beets licorice.

Then she got to crickets.

I leave the rest to you.

TWD: Sweet Potato Biscuits

I am proud to report that this week I followed as few of Dorie’s instructions as possible and I STILL came up with a product that made me eat an otherwise undesirable vegetable. I feel like I am making progress.

Sweet Potato Biscuits

Contrary to what the cookbook said I put the sweet potatoes and room temperature butter in the food processor and then mixed the puree with he dry ingredients, including pumpkin pie spice from one of my favorite stores. I then dropped the dough onto a cookie sheet in heaping tablespoons, smoothed the shape with my finger and baked them.

The resulting biscuit probably isn’t as light and flaky as Dorie would like, and it certainly wasn’t as well shaped, but they are as delicious with pot roast as they are with apple cider or my morning coffee, and I am darn proud of my low maintenance technique.

I’ve never been a fan of sweet potatoes, you see, and I know they are good for me when prepared appropriately. Here’s why, according to the Louisiana Sweet Potato Commission:

  • The Center for Science in the Public Interest ranked the sweet potato at 184 in nutritional value, more than 100 points ahead of the baked Idaho potato, spinach or broccoli.
  • Sweet potatoes provide twice the recommended daily allowance of vitamin A
  • Sweet potatoes provide more than one-third of the daily requirements of vitamin C.
  • Sweet potatoes are an important source of beta-carotene, vitamin B6, iron, potassium and fiber.
  • Studies have consistently shown that a high intake of beta carotene-rich vegetables and fruits, like sweet potatoes, can significantly reduce the risks for certain types of cancer.
  • Sweet potatoes contain virtually no fat or sodium.

I imagine, however, that this is all negated by the butter in these biscuits or by the deep fryer in the case of sweet potato fries. DRAT.

TWD: Allspice Crumb Muffins

I had such high hopes for these, but they failed me on various levels:

Allspice Crumb Muffins

1) My crumbs were runny, turning to crusty when the muffins cooled.

2)  The muffins were excellent warm, but kind of dry when they cooled off. I needed coffee to go with them later in the week. Would the lemon zest have made a difference? I didn’t have any in the house!

3) Without the crumbs, the muffins were kind of dull. Nice with coffee, but not the kind of thing I was eager to eat in the car on the way to the train in the morning.

But I have high hopes for the sweet potato biscuits I’ll make Sunday when I return from Nashville!

Housekeeping

Between working on the house, working at my job, celebrating with family, hosting overnight guests, and just sheer exhaustion, I’m WAY behind on my posting for TWD. But know, dear bakers, that I’ve been eating right alongside you and loving most of our creations.

I just recently pulled the photos of our Applesauce Spice Bars off of my camera (they were just before my niece’s Christening photos), and they were one of my favorites! I baked them over one of the first really cool fall weekends using Farmer’s Market apples, and they were popular both at home and at work – so popular that I forgot to photograph them before they were all gone:

Applesauce Spice Bars

Mine came out like a thin piece of apple cake with a sticky icing (which I enjoyed – it wasn’t too sweet)  but it made them very difficult to transport to the office in one piece.  We had to scrape the icing off the tin foil covering. Nevertheless, the tart fresh apple bits, plump golden raisins and wonderful fall spice blend made them worth it! I highly recommend these for an at-home treat.

They were F-A-R better then Rachel Ray’s Tiny Grape Upside Down Cakes. Mine tasted like overly dense pancake batter topped with apple jelly, and looked like something you would feel an elementary school classroom’s pet turtle:

Grape Upside Down Cakes

But maybe you’ll have more luck than I did.

Web find: guiltless orange dessert

Hungry Girl calls this dessert Scoopable Creamsicle Crush Pie, but since I turned it into parfaits, I’m not really sure that the name still applies. But it tastes darn good. You can find the recipe at her site in celebration of National Creamsicle Day (Aug. 14).

frozen orange

Two things appealed to me about this recipe: 1) it uses Nilla Wafers, which I love, and 2) it doesn’t mandate anything I din’t usually have in the house – most especially, no mass quantities of Splenda. I made the creamy filing with instant pudding mix, yogurt, Cool Whip and the juice from a can of mandarin oranges, and then layered it with whole orange slices and cookies that she recommended you break up.  I think my way was much better, if only because it dictated single servings in the cute parfait glasses I got at a second hand store for 25 cents a piece.

Plus, I could eat them with the excuse that Baby needed fruit and calcium and maintain some truth to my story – the ingredients are that real. Life is good.

(Alas, the dessert would be far cuter if I had a can of cool whip to spray on top, but that would have mandated another trip to the grocery store, most likely in my pajamas, and nobody wanted that.)

$250 burning a hole in my imagination

A blog I occasionally read asks today, “what would you do with a $250 grocery story gift card?”  I think that’s easy: stock the freezer. Ground meat, chicken breasts and thin cut pork chops. Heat and eat veggies. Lots of plastic tubs filled with my own spaghetti sauce and pesto sauce and casseroles. Bagels and waffles for my bleary-eyed husband to nosh before he dutifully marches off to work. And ice cream – ooooohhhhh the ice cream.

http://www.bwog.net/uploads/groceries.jpg

I’m thinkin’ I’m gonna need it all when this baby arrives in March and I’m too a) sleepy, b) disheveled, c) hypnotized-in-love with the baby, or d) cash-strapped to get to the grocery story and make us the dinner we both need. Or maybe there will be 6″ of snow falling in Chicago (since it’s not safe to put the snow shovels away until after Memorial Day).

What else should I stock up on for a March baby?

TWD: Cheesecake Brownies

I made the bold decision to leave the espreesso out of these brownies, and I feel like I stopped mid-step.  I should have left the sour cream topping off, as well.

cheesecake brownies

The brownies were really good – though my marbling left a lot to be desired. The brownie part was dense, the cheesecake part was creamy, and the combination was a delight! I really enjoy chocolate and cheese together in general (so much so that I once attended a chocolate and cheese pairing class at Vosges, where I made a mess of myself eating white chocolate panini, and I would do it again in a heartbeat), second only to chocolate and peanut butter, and this 9″ pan of goodness did not last long in my refrigerator.

However, the sweetened sour cream topping added nothing but a big mess.  The taste didn’t really enhance the brownies at all, and it made them difficult to eat in the car – one of my true tests for good feed: can I eat it in transit? Sour cream leaves too much evidence, and it smells if you forget to wipe it off your steering wheel before you leave your cap in a sunny parking lot and board the train in the mornin.

I’m just saying: leave the topping off, then love the brownies.

TWD: Brownie Buttons

 These desserts are so tiny, I’m hesitant to say too much in my post: these were not great, but they have a great form and so they may end up in a holiday basket just for their darling appearance.

Brownie Buttons

The chocolate cake is kind of dry and I’m not digging the orange-chocolate combination.  I would have preferred instant espresso powder to deepen the flavor.  BUT, the hard white chocolate topping and mini-muffin cup size is wonderful – totally different from anything else I’ve made, and so I might make them again just for the aesthetics.

You’ll find the recipe at Two Scientists Experimenting in the Kitchen (who photographed them is a darling cake dome!). I have a few suggestions to enhance Dorie’s advice:

1) Use a tablespoon of batter in each mini muffin cup, but a teaspoon. These barely rose at all.

2) Butter the muffin cups really well or else use paper liners.  The batter looked so slick I might have skimped on the Crisco, and I had a really hard time getting them out of the pan. Several buttons were lost in the process.

3) Skip the orange in favor of almond extract, espresso, or mint even.