Blueberry Breakfast Cake

This morning I woke up and realized that I didn't have anything for breakfast. Well, I didn't have anything I wanted. I considered going to the store but then decided that I really should try to use what I have. I thought maybe I could do something like a coffee cake or muffins but I wanted to try to keep it healthy.

Anyway, I barely had any butter so it had to be something I could make without much. Not only did I not have much butter, I also didn't have any milk or yogurt. This put me in a slight predicament. I found a recipe that I'd made before and decided I'd try to twist it subbing in applesauce for the missing butter and pureed cottage cheese with a splash of water for the buttermilk. IT WORKED! It's actually really delicious and the texture is fantastic. I don't miss the butter at all!

Here goes:

Blueberry Breakfast Cake
as adapted from Smitten Kitchen's Raspberry Buttermilk Cake

1 c flour

1/2 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp baking soda

1/4 tsp salt (or a few twists of the salt grinder if you have one and are too lazy to measure like I was)
2 T (or a bit less) butter, softened

2 T unsweetened apple sauce

1/3 c sugar

1/4 c packed brown sugar (or a little less)

Splash of vanilla extract

1/2 tsp finely grated lemon zest (I actually used the entire zest of one tiny little lemon because the ones I have are so little)

1 egg

1/2 c low-fat cottage cheese pureed until liquid-y with a splash of water

1 c frozen blueberries...or any berry, really

Preheat oven to 400°F with rack in middle. Spray a 9-inch round cake pan with cooking spray (I use High Heat Canola Spray Oil that I found at Whole Foods).

Whisk together flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt and set aside. In a larger bowl, beat butter and sugar with an electric mixer at medium-high speed until fluffy, about two minutes, then beat apple sauce, vanilla, and zest. Add egg and beat well.

At low speed, mix in flour mixture in three batches, alternating with the cottage cheese, beginning and ending with flour, and mixing until just combined. Scrape batter into cake pan, smoothing top. Scatter the berries over top.

Bake until cake is golden and a wooden pick inserted into center comes out clean, 20 minutes or so. Cool in pan 10 minutes, if you can wait that long, and then turn out onto a rack and cool to warm, 10 to 15 minutes more. Invert onto a plate. *I definitely ate it right out of the pan.

February: Roast Chicken and Stock

The night my friend and I made Sunday dinner, we were both blown away by how cheap a whole roasting chicken was! Now we didn't get anything fancy, just your normal supermarket chicken, but it was still so cheap. What with being unemployed and all, I'm always looking for cheap recipe ideas that are also fun to make and yummy. Both of these fit the bill.

Roast Chicken
I also have to admit that this was not my most successful dish because I don't have an instant-read thermometer and may or may not have undercooked the chicken...but I fixed it!

-1 roasting chicken
-Olive oil
-4 or 5 lemons (depending on size--mine were little baby ones so I used more), 2 thinly sliced
-Several cloves of garlic, peeled and smashed
-Salt n pepper
-Thyme and rosemary, chopped

-Preheat oven to 450
-Wash chicken and remove giblet thingys out of the cavity
-In a little bowl mix salt n pepper, herbs. Loosen chicken skin and shove the salt n pepper n herb mixture underneath and into the cavity
-Add garlic to skin and cavity, add whole lemons to inside and sliced lemons under skin
-Tie the legs together and place chicken on a roasting pan *Note: if you don't have string or twine, use thin strips of tinfoil--I was pretty proud of that trick
-Roast for about 20 min, or until breast seems nice and brown, then cover with tinfoil and return to oven
-Check the bird about 20-30 min later and stick an instant-read thermometer to test for done-ness.

*Note: if you're like me and don't have an instant-read thermometer and wait forever for your regular thermometer to work while it's slowly sliding out of the chicken, you might have a tiny problem of under cooking the chicken.

Here's how you fix it:
-Turn the oven to 375
-Cut up the chicken: take all the meat off the bone (and save the carcass for stock) in big pieces and place, lemons, garlic, and all in a deeper baking pan
-Add half a sliced onion, some more herb, and add a little bit of chicken stock if you had it or water--just enough to cover the pan. Put it back in the oven and roast until the chicken is actually done. This might take a bit but you can cover it to keep the moisture in too.

Stock:
-In a stock pot:
-1 chicken carcass
-Several garlic cloves, peeled and smashed
-1/2-3/4 of an onion, roughly chopped, skin on
-A few sprigs of rosemary
-1 carrot, roughly chopped
-1 stick celery, roughly chopped
-1 bay leaf
-Any other bits and pieces of veggies lying around
-Add enough water to just cover everything and bring to a boil
-Simmer without stirring for half an hour or so or until the liquid seems flavorful
-Strain and discard everything but the liquid
-Refrigerate and then skim off the fat the next day
-Use within 3 days or freeze

January Recipes: Berry Charlotte

One of my neighbor's birthdays is in the end of January and since I've moved in I started a little tradition of baking or cooking each of my neighbors whatever he or she would like for their birthdays. Usually I have them tell me their favorite flavors and favorite desserts and then I do some kind of combo or take on them.

This particular neighbor is one of the tricky kids I know that "doesn't like sweets" but when you ask him what his favorite sweet flavors are, he has quite a lot. He also seems to manage to eat other peoples' bday sweets just fine. He makes things difficult!

I finally got it out of him that he liked berries of all kinds, lemon meringue pie, and cream pies. Last year he got lemon meringue cupcakes, so that pie was out. Cream pie looked intriguing, but they've never been my favorite, so I stuck with the berry idea and perused my new Bon Appetit Desserts cookbook in the hopes that something would jump out at me.

Something did: a Berry Charlotte. If you are like me and have never heard of this, think tiramisu but instead of chocolate and coffee, it's blackberries, raspberries, and raspberry liqueur.

Barely adapted from Bon Appetit Desserts:
Berry Charlotte
(according to the cookbook, it's a french dessert that has it's own fancy little mold. I didn't have anything like it so I used an angel food cake pan...more on that trick below)

-1/4 c sweet white wine (or if you don't want to buy a whole bottle of sweet wine because you don't really like sweet white wine, go to the chilled booze section and get one of those mini - I'm talking baby sized, not just a 1/2 bottle - bottles of cheap wine. I think they're Sutter Home maybe. Get a rose or whatever pink one they have and use that instead. I did and everything tasted just lovely)
-2 large egg yolks
-6 T sugar divided
-1 8-oz container mascarpone cheese
-1 12-oz bag frozen raspberries, thawed, drained, juices reserved (I think the best way to do this is to put them still in the bag in a bowl of really hot water until they feel warm to the touch and squishy inside. Then pour them through a strainer into a big bowl and put the berries in a different bowl)
-1 12-oz bag frozen blackberries, same as above
-2 T (or more, to taste) raspberry liqueur, Framboise or whatever one you can find
-2 3.5 oz packages crisp ladyfingers (they suggest using Boudoirs or Champagne biscuits, I think I used one of those but I may have just grabbed the cheapest crisp ones and not worried about it...)

-Whisk wine, egg yolks, and 3 T sugar in a large metal bowl/double boiler to blend, set over saucepan of simmering water
-Whisk until thick and foamy and thermometer reaches 160 F (they say 2 min, mine took longer I think)
-Remove and let cool, once cooled stir in mascarpone
-Stir reserved, drained juices 1 T sugar, 1 T rasp liqueur in a medium shallow bowl
-Combine drained berries in another bowl, add rest of sugar and liqueur and toss to blend
-One at a time, dip ladyfingers into the berry juice mixture for about 1 second on each side and then press into the bottom of the pan*, trimming as needed to fill the bottom in one layer
-Spoon 1/3 c berries over the ladyfingers
-Top with 1/2 c mascarpone mixture
-Continue until you run out of ingredients, ending with ladyfingers brushed with remainder of juice
-Cover with plastic wrap and then place a plate on top and some heavy jars on top of the plate
-Refrigerate at least 2 hours and up to a day. I did it overnight and it worked out perfectly. Once chilled, remove weights and wrapper, slide knife around the edges and invert carefully onto a platter.
*I didn't have a charlotte mold or a bundt pan which I think might also work. I used an angel food cake pan which worked pretty well. I had to use 2 or 3 thinner strips of plastic wrap since those pans have the center piece that sticks up pretty high, and then I found 3 or 4 cups that were a little smaller than the width of the pan to weight everything down. Perhaps a slightly ghetto way to do it but it turned out great...although it probably was not the most gorgeous thing I've ever made...definitely one of the most delicious though! Again, sorry for the lack of photos.

January Recipes: Peanut Butter Brownies

A few of my friends like to make Sunday brunch...this usually consists of a baguette, a few kinds of cheese, many mimosas, and jam or quince paste if I'm really lucky. Can I just take a second to tell the world how discovering quince is probably one of the most exciting things that's happened to me lately.

Anyway, I got distracted: the brownies. So one day we couldn't do Sunday brunch so we made Sunday dinner. Dinner consisted of roast chicken, a salad, homemade rolls, and peanut butter brownies for dessert. It was excellent all around. I'll get to the roast chicken in a different post since later I made one all by myself.

A different one of my lovely friends gave me Bon Appetit Desserts for Christmas and naturally I'm just a little bit thrilled. So when Sunday brunch became Sunday dinner, I decided that dinner needed a dessert and I figured why not use my new cookbook! PS- Apologies for the lack of photos, I was at someone else's house and they really weren't thaaaat stunning anyway. They taste great though...

Here goes:
Brownies with Peanut Butter Frosting
(not really at all adapted from Bon Appetit Desserts)
Brownies:
-Nonstick cooking spray
-5 ounces unsweetened chocolate, coarsely chopped
-4 ounces bittersweet or semisweet chocolate , coarsely chopped
-1/3 c butter, cut up
-1 1/2 c sugar
-4 eggs
-1 tsp vanilla
-1/2 c flour
-1/4 tsp salt

-Preheat the oven to 350. Line a 9x13 metal baking pan with aluminum foil, spray with nonstick
cooking spray.
-Combine chocolates and butter in a small, heavy saucepan over low heat. Stir until melted and let cool.
-With an electric mixer (or a whisk and strong arms) beat the eggs, sugar, and vanilla until thick and pale yellow (about 5 min). Reduce speed and beat in flour, salt, and then chocolate.
-Transfer to baking pan and bake about 20 min until only few crumbs come out with a tester. Cool.

Frosting:
-1 c creamy peanut butter
-3 T unsalted butter
-2/3 c powdered sugar
-1 T vanilla

-Beat peanut butter and regular butter until smooth, add sugar and vanilla, beat until blended. Spread over cooled brownies. Devour.

January Recipes: Soup

In January I was really stressed. What with insane holiday hours, barely getting to see my family at Christmas, and trying to job hunt while still working, I wasn't so happy. Then, to make things worse, I got sick and had to do inventory. Two days in a row 6 pm-2 am and 8 pm-4 am. No fun. Point here being, I was feeling gross and for some insane reason craving soup. I have never really been into chicken noodle, I still find creamy soups unpleasant sounding, and I figured I needed something a little bit heartier than miso soup.

Kind of Hot and Sour / Miso Soup

-¾ veggie broth container (1 ltr container)

-4 cups water

-1/4 onion

-3 cloves garlic, smashed

-2 smallish pieces ginger, cut in half

-bring to a boil

-1 (or almost) head of broccoli, cut into little pieces

-1 baby daikon washed and roughly chopped

-1 zucchini chopped

-add all these to the broth

-1/4-1/2 and onion, finely chopped

-3-4 cloves garlic, finely chopped/minced

-1 inch piece ginger, minced

-olive oil

-heat oil in a pan, add onion, once softened add the garlic and ginger

-1/8 c rice wine vinegar

-18 c soy sauce

-pinch of sugar

-combine those three and add to onions etc

Once cooked, add everything to the big pot.

Then Add:

-1/3 pack of tofu drained and chopped

-1 tablespoon/teaspoon of miso paste

-teaspoon red chili paste

-sprinkling of red chili flakes

boil for a bit more til everything is done

A Combo of these two:

http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/tyler-florence/hot-and-sour-soup-recipe/index.html

http://japanesefood.about.com/od/misosoup/r/misosouptofu.htm

Delayed...January Continued

Apparently when I say I'm going to work on this in the next few days, I really mean the next few months...woopsies! I've been busy I guess--quit Macy's (super exciting!), I've been job hunting, I visited home for a bit, I've been cooking, making Sunday "brunch," etc.

But look I'm back!

One of my new years resolutions was to make at least two new things every month. So far I've been really good about it. And let me specify: I don't mean change the pizza toppings or make a meatier pasta sauce, I mean make something totally new.

In January I made:

Soup! *This is really exciting because I haven't eaten soup since mid-high school.
Peanut Butter Brownies
A Berry Charlotte

Recipe and Photos in the next post!