Golden layer cake with chocolate buttercream

Another birthday this week!! This time it is my 25 year old brother. I had to make a cake, so I went with the classic yellow cake (p. 907) with chocolate frosting. It was very good. (that may or may not have had something to do with the fact that I accidentally added two full sticks of butter to the batter rather than just ten tablespoons….)
While mixing together the batter for this recipe, I figured out what my mistake was from last week! It was not that there wasn't enough sugar in the blueberry muffins, it was that I put in baking soda rather than powder. WHAT. I never used to make mistakes like this.. and now twice in a row. I better start reading the directions more throughly! I did decide to omit the almond extract because I am not a huge fan of it but I am wondering if you can really even taste the almond anyway. If I make it again I'll definitely add it to see if there is a difference.

 the delicious batter (how can it not be with 6 tablespoons of butter extra)

Perfectly cooked! I baked them for 20 minutes rather than 25. They came out with unexpected but delicious crusty edges.

 The frosting recipe is from page 917 and I made the modifications for chocolate frosting. 

Time to dive in! and yes, I had two pieces.

Mushroom Risotto

This recipe is found on page 467 of the textbook, but I added some ingredients and steps. I started off by adding garlic and zucchini with the onion to brown it up and added some chicken sausages for more protein. When all of the ingredients were browned I soaked them in some white wine and added to the rice then to absorb the wine flavor and the fat and flavors of the mix-ins. I didn't really follow the recipe all that closely, I just used it as a guide since I make this often. At the end I added more than the recommended amount of cheese and added pecorino to the parmesan for one extra gooey outcome. Overall it tasted fantastic, but I have been making this dish a while and perfecting my skills as I go. If I had a signature dish, this would have to be it. 

Stuffed Mushrooms

A couple months ago I had some fabulous stuffed mushrooms and I've been craving more ever since. This week I thought I'd try my own (recipe found on page 31). I made a small change, though. Since I only made a 1/2 recipe I didn't want to bother splitting an egg, so I used cream cheese (honey nut flavor!) as a sticky binding agent. These mushrooms turned out so deliciously that I'd love to make them again sometime. -Deidra A

Cookies!

This week I thought I would try my hand at homemade chocolate chip cookies (p. 711) .  Cookies are one of my weaknesses in life and I can never pass them up, but typically if I make them I just buy the kind that is premixed in a bag and all I have to do is add an egg.  When I made these I realized that it is just as easy to quickly mix up this dough if you already have the ingredients, as it is to mix up the store bought dough.  I was a little nervous that they wouldn’t turn out because I cut the recipe in half, due to lack of brown sugar, and self control, so I estimated on some of the measurements.  This didn’t seem to be a problem at all though and I also added a little extra butter, because I like soft cookies, and extra chocolate chips, because who doesn’t like chocolate?  In the end the cookies turned out pretty close to perfect, and I ended up eating way to many as always.

emergency tomato soup with quinoa patties

Back story: On Friday afternoon I went grocery shopping with a few people at Seward Co-op, making a point to pick up half a pound of cod from their seafood counter--supplied by Coastal Seafood (yay)! I would have liked to go to their store but I didn't want to make the extra trip... Anyway, I bought this lovely piece of fish with the intention of broiling it, making one of Bittman's salsa recipes to pile on top and eating with the leftover rice in my fridge.

That was the plan. We headed to someone's apartment right after shopping so I didn't get to drop my groceries off at home. When we got there, I stuck the fish in her fridge for (what was supposed to be) safekeeping. "Don't let me forget to take it when I leave!" I said.

Of course I forgot to take it when I left. I got ahold of her yesterday but she was going out of town for the night. She'd be back some time Sunday, she said, and I could swing by and pick it up then.

By noon today I hadn't heard from her and decided I needed an alternate plan. I didn't want to go out and buy anything. I had planned to use a can of tomatoes for the salsa, and from that an idea struck me: tomato soup. It can't be too complicated, Bittman must have a recipe. And I needed some comfort food to alleviate my frustration over the fish situation.

Turns out he does (page 58, softcover), and I had everything I needed in my kitchen to make it.

Veg stock, canned diced tomatoes, onion, carrot, thyme, olive oil, s&p

That's the vegetable stock I made the first week of class! It's come in handy a couple times already.

This is crazy easy to make. I don't know how my mother ever let the canned condensed stuff into our house. Onion, diced carrot, oil, and spices go on the stove, cook until soft, add tomatoes and stock, and cook down for 10 minutes or so to let the flavors come together.

It's pretty chunky, so I decided to food process it to get it to a more tomato soup-like consistency.

The ever faithful Cuisinart

I thought about making grilled cheese to go with it (so good), but all I have right now is pita bread which wouldn't lend itself well to that. I did, however, have a ton of quinoa sitting on my dry shelf. My other most-used cookbook has a good recipe for quinoa patties so I threw a batch of those together too.

Best food ever

Eggs, quinoa, parm, onion, salt, rosemary, garlic 

Cooked quinoa gets combined with eggs, a pinch of salt and grated parmesan--note the block rather than pre-shredded. It's way more delicious! And I know if you buy the semi-fancy Belgioso brand (found at Rainbow... nothing crazy) it's the same price per ounce.

I'm not a big fan of raw onion, so I cooked it with the garlic on the stove before adding them, even though her recipe says to just throw them in as is. I also substituted fresh rosemary for the chives in the recipe because that's what I had.

Then--looking at the bottom of the recipe--I realized I didn't have any breadcrumbs. And without a toaster, no good way to make any. I went through my dry foods one more time to find a potential substitute, and I decided to try using oats.

I put them in the food processor to grind them, and that actually worked really well. They stay a little grainy, but I was trying to replicate bread crumbs so that was perfect.

Add "bread crumbs" to the rest of the ingredients, mix, and form patties on a baking sheet. I like to pop them in the oven for 20 minutes or so instead of frying them as she suggests. As you can see, they turn out nice and brown and crispy anyway!

I grabbed one of the patties, tossed a little white cheddar in my bowl of tomato soup, and added some greens on the side with a tahini-miso dressing I made last week (Jenny inspired me!). I ate this like an hour ago. It was wonderful, and I'm actually kind of glad the fish didn't make it back with me.

RECIPE
Little Quinoa Patties (Super Natural Cooking by Heidi Swanson, page 121)
Makes 12

2 1/2 cups cooked quinoa, room temp
4 large eggs, beaten
1/2 t salt
1/3 c fresh chopped chives (I replaced with about 1 t fresh chopped rosemary)
1/2 onion, finely chopped
1/3 grated parmesan or gruyere cheese
3 cloves garlic, minced
1 c whole grain bread crumbs

Preheat oven to 375.

Combine quinoa, eggs, and salt in a bowl. Add chives (rosemary), onion, cheese, and garlic. Add the bread crumbs, stir, and let sit for a a few minutes so the crumbs can absorb some of the moisture.

Form the mixture into patties and place on a greased baking sheet. Bake 7-10 minutes on each side until deeply browned.

Vegan Chili and Cornbread

I decided to make chili this weekend, as I haven't had it in a while and I am trying to show my dad that vegan foods are not disgusting. haha! I used the recipe Chili non Carne from Bittman p429 for the chili and the Corn Bread recipe from p831.


In place of the meat, I used Boca crumbles to make it vegan.

 

I used tomato juice instead of the vegetable stock and used more of it than called for. I also added a can of diced tomatoes.

 

 

This is just a photo of how messy the kitchen gets when I am cooking :p

 

Here is the final product. Pops approved ;) He said that he could hardly tell that there wasn't meat in there! Vegan:1 Pops:0

I didn't show any pictures of the cornbread being made, but I used ground flax seed for the egg. The cord bread turned out kind of dry. I am pretty sure it was because I didn't put the veg butter in. The instructions were kind of confusing. It said to "Put the fat of oil in an 8-inch ovenproof skillet or square metal baking pan over medium heat." I didn't really know what that meant. I can't put a "baking" pan on the stove top. So, I just didn't put any in :/ I guess next time I will put it in with the wet ingredients.

 

Chocolate Cupcakes!

Adapted from Chocolate Layer Cake

Bittman pg. 911

One of my good friends had a birthday this week so I thought I would try to make her cupcakes! I usually just modify a boxed cake recipe so I was excited to finally make them completely from scratch.  I read the instructions for modifying a cake recipe for cupcakes on pg. 909 and was on my way!

For the ingredients, I did not have baking chocolate so I used the appropriate substitutions with cocoa powder and butter.

 

I also didn’t have an electric mixer so I had to use my immersion blender, which made things considerably more difficult. I gave up halfway through and finished it by hand. Once I had finished mixing everything, my batter seemed WAAAY thicker than what I was used to for a cake. I made one cupcake first just to see if it would turn out and it did so I continued with the rest of them.

When they were done and cooled, I topped them with some super delicious, super easy cream cheese frosting and called them good!

I only made half a batch and ended up with 15 cupcakes, which was plenty. These cupcakes were really good the night that I made them but the following day, they were pretty dry and not as enjoyable. The cake also got really dense (almost like a brownie) after they had fully cooled and wasn’t quite what I was hoping for. In the future, I think I might stick to boxed cake. It is way easier, less time consuming, and tastes just about the same.