5 posts tagged “cooking”

So today is Dear Husband's birthday, and when I asked him what he'd like for his cake, he asked for blueberry muffins.  So, blueberry muffins it is. :)

Here's a fabulous recipe for them, should you want to join us in a global celebration of Man. :)

INGREDIENTS

    * 1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
    * 3/4 cup white sugar
    * 1/2 teaspoon salt
    * 2 teaspoons baking powder
    * 1/3 cup vegetable oil
    * 1 egg
    * 1/3 cup milk
    * 1 cup fresh blueberries

Topping:
    * 1/2 cup brown sugar
    * 1/3 cup all-purpose flour
    * 1/4 cup butter, cubed (cold butter works best for me, but I use a pastry cutter for blending.)
    * 1 1/2 teaspoons ground cinnamon

DIRECTIONS

   1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees F (200 degrees C). Grease muffin cups or line with muffin liners.
   2. Combine 1 1/2 cups flour, 3/4 cup sugar, salt and baking powder. Place vegetable oil into a 1 cup measuring cup; add the egg and enough milk to fill the cup. Mix this with flour mixture. Fold in blueberries. Fill muffin cups to the top, and sprinkle with crumb topping mixture.

   3. To Make Crumb Topping: Mix together 1/2 cup sugar, 1/3 cup flour, 1/4 cup butter, and 1 1/2 teaspoons cinnamon. Mix with fork, and sprinkle over muffins before baking.

   4. Bake for 20 to 25 minutes in the preheated oven, or until done.

Note: If using buttermilk instead of white milk, also add 1 tbsp vanilla.

So, I've just finished my test run of a chocolate ganache spider pie. Hee!

The recipe is supposed to fill a pre-baked bate brisee tart crust and is filled with a dark chocolate ganache. The spiderweb design is made by piping concentric circles of melted white chocolate onto the surface of the dark ganache and pulling a toothpick through the rings to make the connective webbing. I however cheated, and used a chocolate graham cracker crust.  

There's two ways to do this: The hard way, and the easy way.  Picking which one to use really depends on your audience.  For sophisticated palates, go with the ganache, for kids, use chocolate pudding mix. ;)  

Easy way:  Buy a chocolate graham cracker crust.  Use two boxes of chocolate pudding mix, 2 cups milk, 3/4 cup half and half.  Mix well for 2 minutes, pour into crust.  You can either use melted white chocolate, as described below, or you can buy bottles of vanilla plate decorating syrup and follow the directions below.  

Total time to  make: 5 minutes, serves 6-8.

Here's the hard way:

The trick to getting the a clean spiderweb is to try and make sure that the white chocolate and the ganache are at the same consistency and temperature when you go to finish the design; the filling needs to be very warm, as does the white chocolate.

The tart can set at room temperature, but will harden much faster in the refrigerator. Once finished, it is basically a divinely dark chocolate truffle with a pastry shell attached - and will be pure heaven for anyone who loves chocolate truffles. It is very rich and should be served in small, thin slices. Whether you choose to serve it near room temperature or straight from the fridge is entirely up to you, although I prefer it closer to room temp for texture purposes.

Spider Tart (Chocolate Ganache Tart)

• 1 10-inch bate brisee tart crust, baked and cooled
• 12-oz dark chocolate, chopped
• 1 1/4 cups heavy cream
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 1-oz white chocolate, chopped

Place chopped chocolate (a chipper is useful for this) into a large mixing bowl.
In a small saucepan, bring heavy cream to a near-boil (steam will rise rapidly from the cream and small bubbles might form near the edges of the pan). Pour hot cream over chopped chocolate and stir with a whisk until very smooth. Whisk in vanilla extract.

If there are still chunks of chocolate, you can place the bowl over a double boiler (a small pot of just-simmering water) and stir until all the chocolate is melted.

Before you pour the chocolate ganache into the tart shell, melt the white chocolate in a small bowl (short intervals in the microwave and frequent stirring, if you don’t want to use a double boiler) and transfer to a pastry bag.

Pour the ganache into the tart shell and smooth with a spatula, spreading filling to the edges of the tart. Pipe melted white chocolate into concentric circles (5-7, or so) on top of the ganache. The circles don’t have to be perfect - after all, the idea of the spiderweb at Halloween is that it looks a bit spooky. Insert a toothpick at the center of the tart and gently drag it through the filling, towards the edges of the tart. Repeat at regular intervals to make a spiderweb design. You can also try alternating and dragging the toothpick from the edge of the tart into the center.

If you have a plastic spider (which I did), insert into the center and leave tart to set, otherwise just let the tart set for at least 2 hours at room temperature or 1 hour in the fridge.  Store the tart in the fridge, if not serving soon after making.

Theoretically serves 16. (Yeah, right.)

I've also finished packaging, packing, and shipping all the promo bags off for the Lemming Central promotion in November.  In each bag I included a pumpkin soap, a honeysuckle bear soap, and a small spritzer of Babylonia.  Hopefully, it'll drive some holiday traffic to the site.  I included a discount code that will go live in November, which I'll also publish here. :)

See, it looks so easy when master chefs do it.  It does.  I mean, nothing could be easier, right?   Heat up some cream, melt some good chocolate in the hot cream, add cognac, vanilla, espresso, stir, form into balls, dust with cocoa powder.  

They lie!  They all lie!  It's not that easy.  If it were that easy, chocolatiers wouldn't get 60 dollars a box for them, that's what I'm saying.

Needless to say, my second attempt at truffles didn't go as planned.  Although, it was much better than my first attempt, so...there's that.  And I have 2 pounds of truffle filling made, so I'll try again later to create a shell, since my filling is far too soft to just roll in cocoa powder.    I can't figure out if I used too much cream, or not enough chocolate, or what.  I followed the directions exactly, so the only thing I can imagine is that the recipe was deliberately wrong because the Barefoot Contessa doesn't want me to make truffles.  (Ok, perhaps trying to make truffles while having my "cranky week" wasn't such a smart idea...but that doesn't stop the fact that they lie, they all lie...those bastards!)

Ahem.  Sorry.  Perhaps I'll just eat my truffle with a spoon and call it done. ;) 

I always love to cook.  My mother was a professional chef, so I started making mistakes at a young age, but have been told I've gotten better.  ;)

This morning, after I stopped by the craft store to get some of the "crafting" pumpkins, to replace the real ones which have become the base for a whole new form of moldy life, I stopped by a market in the that town rather than the chains I hate in my little burb.  They had an entire organic produce section, and range fed, hormone free, non big farm milk, cheese and meat.  It was so exciting.  Like shopping in a real city, instead of somewhere where avocado flavored doritos count as a vegetable. 

So, instead of soap, today I'm going to make a hearts of romaine salad with caramelized pears, apples, and walnuts with an orange vinaigrette from my mom's recipes, pan sauteed chicken breasts with an orange pecan crust, and a citrusy polenta.  If time, I may even get ambitious enough to make apple pie. 

I've got to learn to stop shopping when I'm hungry...