I’m making my shopping list right now, I swear

It’s no secret that I hate grocery shopping, and based on the breakfast served in my household this morning, it’s obvious that it’s been too long since my list trip to the store: I enjoyed a 100 Calories pack of Doritos, while the Other Eater in my Household went for a handful of jellybeans.

I’m thinking about topping off my Doritos with a tasty Halloween find from my last trip to Target, Pumpkin Spice Hershey Kisses. They are SO much better than I expected.

Pumpkin Kisses

The Kiss itself is orange on the outside, and if you have the patience to bite one in half (but I understand that normal people pop the whole thing all at once, if not a few at a time) you’ll find white chocolate on the inside.  That’s the part that is spiced with all the good fall flavors, like cinnamon and nutmeg.

Prediction: the bag will not last the week at my house.

I’m not the only one who likes them!  Check out this blog to see what all is happening in Hershey.

TWD: Caramel-Peanut-Topped Brownie Cake

I’m torn this week, for a variety of reasons.  First, the idea that it took me three days to create this beautiful dessert put a bad taste in my mouth.  I just don’t bake that way. It’s not fun. And if I don’t have fun baking then the guilt of eating the finished product is just too great to justify putting away half a cake at one sitting.

But I persevered. I shopped Sunday, baked the cake Monday, and finished the topping Tuesday afternoon after the world’s best handyman finished repairing my kitchen light. And I gotta be honest, my tiny little cakes are just not as perfect as the photo and title of the dessert suggest it should taste.

the look good, but

I took the advice of my fellow bakers at TWD and halved the recipe, and then baked it in ramekins to avoid the treacherous grease-the-pan-then-line-the-bottom-with-a-circular-piece-of-parchment-paper-process. The cake is delicious. It’s light, the perfect balance of cake and chocolate.  I’d make them again in a heartbeat, and probably eat one still warm from the oven with melty whip cream on top.

Today I tackled the topping: a caramel made from cooked sugar and mixed with salted peanuts.The smell reminded me of Frau Mueller’s Level 1 chemistry lab in High School – not something anyone who survived wants to relive. It was torture. Her tie-dyed lab coat didn’t soften the blow. But I digress…

My topping’s not good.  See, the tops of my cakes caved in in the center, so when I put the topping on it pooled in the center of my ramekins and hardened like a hockey puck. The other eater in my household looked like he would break a tooth digging into my latest baking effort (just as the presidential candidates were debating the future of health care, might I add), so I quickly made the executive decision to microwave the cakes in order to soften the topping.  It helped, but not as much as three days of work warranted.

Another bust, as far as I’m concerned. Sorry, Dorie fans.  I’ll make the cake again, but I need to find a better topping.

No-bake brownies: a good find

Many thanks for the warm welcome I’ve received from the other TWD bakers.  Not only did they reaffirm my participation in this online project, but their sites provided a great way count down a quiet Friday afternoon in the office. I’ve already found some great recipes I am eager to try!

The first one I tackled was the oven-free Oreo cookie treats I found at Baking and Boys! The list of ingredients was short so I threw them together Friday after work.  They likely will not last through the weekend because they are so good! You can find the recipe here.

No-bake Oreo treats

One taster described them this way: if you think of a continuum of chocolate density where chocolate cake is at one end, brownies are in the center, and fudge is at the opposite end, these are somewhere between brownies and fudge. You can definitely detect an Oreo flavor and a breadcrumb-like presence in the batter, but they are not quite as cakey as a brownie.

I took Baking and Boys!’ advice and used a few extra cookies, coarsely chopped, for a dramatic effect when you cut into them, and they look great! For the candy topping, I used a handful of crumbled toffee I had leftover from an ice cream machine experiment as well as one Snickers bar, and it was great – but think of how cute they would be with Halloween candy or gummy worms for a Worms and Dirt dessert.

Also, considering what’s in them and how easy they were to make, I think they look pretty classy in a silver tray.

TWD: Dimply Peach Cake

Technically this week’s TWD selection was a plum cake, but Dorie’s margin notes said I could just as easily change up a few of the spices and make a peach cake rather than a plum cake. I did, and I was pleased. I am very glad Michelle of Bake-en choose it.

Peach cake: before

I had some peaches leftover from an August trip to Michigan, so I peeled a few of them in preparation for the cake. About halfway through I decided that was dumb and left the skin on many of the peach halves. Both were fine, though if I were trying to impress my dinner guests I’d probably peel the peaches. The other eater in my household, my father and I did fine with the skin on.

Dorie’s margin notes recommended that I add a little fresh basil to the peach cake batter, but I forgot about that  early on and threw in some dry ginger. Then, at the end, I added the basil from my window box, cursed because it was at that moment that I remembered the ginger, and went on with the baking.  I have to be honest: it was pretty darn good with both the flavors.

Peach cake: after

The cake was fluffy and savory – not at all sweet – and perfect for the late summer days when the sun goes down a little earlier than you would like and the temperature is just beginning to drop below 70 degrees. Topped with some vanilla ice cream, the cake is practically irresistible.

My only problem was how to store it. I put it in the fridge to keep the fruit from spoiling, but that soggied the crust that had baked on the top of the cake. Keeping it out on the counter in a cake dome when have fermented the fruit within days. I hate to think this is a dessert I have to polish off in one sitting!

TWD: Chocolate Malted Whopper Drops

I’ve already revealed that I prefer my cookies cakey, rather than crispy, and now I’ll add this: I don’t like them too chocolatey. I prefer, for example, that my cupcakes be yellow cake with chocolate frosting, and that my oven produce chocolate chip cookies rather than chocolate-chocolate chip cookies. But I tried my best with these uber-chocolate creations and I was pleasantly surprised.

Whopper Cookies: before

First problem: I could not find the recommended malted milk powder in any of the three markets I visited. I used chocolate Ovaltine and it seemed to come out ok, but now I’m not sure what to do with the other 17.5 oz. of mix in the Ovaltine canister.

Then, I had the Whopper dilemma. I ended up buying bulk milk chocolate malted milk balls from an upscale grocer I visited near my office while searching for the malted milk powder, and I think they were a huge bonus to the final product. Far better (and also more expensive) than the box of stale Whoppers I bought at Bed Bath and Beyond a few days later while I was looking for a new mildew-resistant shower curtain.

Would you believe I even got the other eater in my household to help chop the Whoppers? I spent a few minutes bagging the bag of candy with a stainless steel spoon, and nothing broke! Not even a chip! So I had to individually cut the candies into quarters with a paring knife. I think the fruitless banging The Other Eater had to endure won me the sympathy vote and we chopped candy side by side. I am proud to report that no blood was lost (unlike the bloody cheese incident of 2004) on the Whoppers and that we remain friendly.

Finally, the whole milk. I used 1/4 cups. I have a lot more in the fridge. I’m thinking quiche is in order this weekend.

Whopper Drops: After

But, the cookies turned out soft and cakey and perfect with a glass of milk. I’ll totally make them again for a chocolate lover in my life. Any takers?

TWD: Chunky Peanut Butter and Oatmeal Chocolate Chipsters

How could this be bad? It has oatmeal, peanut butter, cinnamon and chocolate all rolled into one cookie.

And yet, I don’t think I’ll make them again.

I’m not a huge fan of drop cookies to begin with because I feel like mine and never similarly enough sized to bake evenly, and then they generally turn our more crispy than I like my cookies to be (I prefer bar cookies, in case you were wondering) because they didn’t bake evenly, and so I’m left with a huge amount of cookies that I ‘m not overly proud to pawn off on my coworkers. And then I generally bake something I am proud of a few days later just to prove I’ve still got it. It’s a vicious cycle.

But I was optimistic about these cookies from Dorie, in part because of the featured ingredients but also because of my success with the Cornmeal and Fruit Loaf. So, I gathered my ingredients on a Friday night and made the batter, and then put it in the fridge to chill as Dorie recommended. Saturday afternoon I went to work, with the anticipation that I would have a lovely plate of delicious cookies to take to a BBQ Sunday afternoon.

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The cookies turned out flat and crispy, and just not for me. I baked two trays at a time, one on a silicone mat and one with parchment, and it make no difference. In the end, I had a mess of flat cookies all over my kitchen. They were tasty, but no flat and free cracker-like I didn’t really savor eating them like I do the Christmas cookies (first my mother and now) I have been making for as long as I can remember.

To top it all off, I brought my plate to the BBQ and nobody ate them. They were on a sweet table with chocolate covered strawberries and key lime pie and cheesecake and two plates of cookies that I swear were from the grocery store bakery and delivered on a paper plate to make them look homemade. My sad, flat cookies remained untouched, even as the grocery store cookies were wiped clean.

look good?

  So, I’m left with a plastic tub full of cookies. I’ve dunked them in milk, brought them to my mother-in-law, packed them for the BBQ, smuggled them into a movie with a friend, and brought some to work, just to get them out of my house. I’m looking forward to next week’s recipe.

Not deadly, just gross

Online today we find this story out of Sweden, in which a typo in a cake recipe that was printed in a magazine sent a few people to the hospital.

“There was a mistake in a recipe for apple cake. Instead of calling for two pinches of nutmeg it said 20 nutmeg nuts were needed,” Matmagasinet’s chief editor Ulla Cocke told AFP.

“We know that four adults ate one cake made from this recipe, and they didn’t feel well,” she said, adding that “this is obviously very regrettable.”

nutmeg-and-cinnamon-small.jpg

Whole nutmeg is kind of like a whole olive, as far as size. Most recipes call for a fraction of a teaspoon of the bitter, potent spice, grated against something like you would use to remove the rind from a lemon or sand wood: a metal appliance. Adding 20 nuts to the cake in question probably required use of a dopey looking Christmas nutcracker or a small mallet to break them up. I feel like I shouldn’t need hardware to bake when other people can do it in high heels. (I could do that, but I choose not to.)

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The four people had experienced symptoms of poisoning, including dizziness and headaches, but were now feeling better, she said.

The magazine’s first act was to notify 50,000 subscribers of the error, and also place a leaflet inside store copies telling newsstand buyers of the error.

I would have thought that 1) common sense or at least 2) the price of nutmeg would have kept people away. The magazine editor agreed with me:

“At first we thought this would be enough, because we didn’t really think anyone would bake or eat this cake, since so much nutmeg would give it a horrible, bitter taste, and because it is simply not that easy to get hold of that much nutmeg,” Cocke said…”We publish 1,200 recipes each year, and of course there have been times when they’ve had a bit too much butter or too little flour, but we have never experienced anything like this before.”

In the end, the magazine had to protect the Swedes from themselves and recall all the magazines.

 

So many things to do with jell-o

Have truer words ever been spoken?
It is the eternal cure for the stomach flu.
It identifies in no uncertain terms the pot-luck participant who doesn’t cook.
It’s got a hand in a great office prank (thanks to Derrick and Jenni for illustrating this one).
It does not, however, satisfy the sweet tooth of a hard-cord weight loss seeker, even when prepared with diet soda and whipped topping.
Sorry, Hungry Girl.
Having had such success with the shrimp and asparagus corn chowder in the Hungry Girl cookbook (recipes and Survival Strategies for Guilt-Free Eating in the Real World), I went a little wild and made two desserts from the cookbook in one evening – I know, I know, hold me back.
The first was a southern-style banana pudding with sliced fresh bananas, vanilla wafer cookies and pudding, which topped with the new Cool Whip in a spray can.

Reasonable Banana pudding

This was delicious in a fat-free-sugar-free-pudding-kind-of-way, and went over very big with the other eater in my household, as well. I used parfait glasses to stack 4 slices of bananas and 4 cookies in the glass before I dumped pudding over the top. I think I‘d even serve it for a small dinner party with close friends.
But the jell-o dessert was a disaster. I made a special trip to the store for unusual ingredients because it sounded so promising: sugar free jell-o, diet cream soda, and Cool Whip. It’s not bad enough to throw away (thanks, Dad, for that Depression-era mentality), but I found the soda overly sweet and the portion size totally unsatisfying. I was hoping it would be more like pudding than jell-o and thus become a new comfort food, but such is life.
But I’m still two-for-three in this cookbook, so I’ll keep trying.

Me? Not like M&Ms?

I shouldn’t go to Target hungry, I know, but there were these long and skinny boxes of Premium M&M’s, made in fun flavors like mocha, triple chocolate, and something about raspberries. The mocha ones are sparkly, too – kinda bronze-ish. I threw a box in my cart.
I hate them. I mean, not enough to throw them away, but not enough to buy them again, which in my world equates to hate. They are cloyingly mocha-y, and the flavor stay LONG after you stop eating.
First, the shell is not crispy. It’s soft. If you eat M&Ms, you want the crunch. These do not.
Second, the chocolate tastes expensive, where we all know that I prefer cheap chocolate. I would much rather have a peanut butter cup than a box of Godiva. I prefer M&Ms to truffles. I prefer milk chocolate over dark. These failed on all fronts.
Verdict: I’m sticking with the peanut M&Ms.

Recipe Review: Nutella Ice Cream

This may be the easiest, most heavenly recipe I have ever found online:

  1. Equal parts Nutella and evaporated milk (I used Fat free, but to relieve a fraction of guilt), plus 1 T. skim milk.
  2. In an ice cream machine.
  3. Freeze before serving.

The ice cream comes out with somewhat of a grainy quality, but it didn’t bother me or the other eater in my household enough to put the stuff down for even a second (he actually licked the bowl while he was supposedly washing the dishes, but that’s a different blog). It tastes like the richest chocolate ice cream you’ve ever had, but without making you want to push back from the table or save the rest for later. That could be the fat free milk talking.

Just one note on the simplicity of the ordeal: I mixed the Nutella and milk together in a medium size bowl before putting them in the ice cream machine, which was good. Next time maybe I’ll use a larger bowl to save my t-shirt from the sloshing of the milk and the chocolate spread. Also, I chilled the smooth batter before dumping it into the machine because both of my ingredients were stored at room temperature. It worked well, but created more dishes for said roommate to lick.