June 17, 2009
Molten Chocolate Cakes
I love chocolate cake. It’s one of my biggest cravings, one that pops up over and over again (almost always late at night). But in the last few years, I’ve noticed something disturbing (to me, at least): I don’t seem to be able to eat it anymore. Take last month, for instance:
Brandon was out with some friends so I was home alone. For some reason when I’m home alone I always want to bake so I decided I would finally indulge my chocolate cake craving and make a cake. After looking though my delicious account, I decided to try Smitten Kitchen’s Peanut Butter and Chocolate cake. So I went to all the trouble of making the cake layers and the two different kinds of icing and after a couple hours finally sat down with a delicious looking piece of it to eat. I took two bites, two bites, and I had to set it down. I couldn’t eat anymore. It’s not a bad cake, in fact, it’s a wonderful cake but it was just so rich that it was too …
June 8, 2009
BBA Challenge: Artos and Bagels
I’m still chugging along with the Bread Baker’s Apprentice Challenge. So far I’m (mostly) having fun and learning a lot.
The second week bread was Artos or Greek Celebration bread. I really didn’t have any trouble at all with this bread because it was really similar to my King Cake except that Artos has a lot more spices: cinnamon, nutmeg, allspice and cloves. The only trouble I had was the shaping, of course. I can tell it’s going to take a lot of practice to get good at shaping things because I’m just not good at that at all. The version of artos I did was called Christopsomos (though I made it plain, it’s technically supposed to have nuts and dried fruit in it), which is shaped into a boule (an oval, the only shape beside a loaf that I can do without much trouble), but then you roll out two strips of dough and lay them on top of the boule in a cross and then you split the ends and roll them …
June 5, 2009
Pink Grapefruit and Strawberry Granita
I have a very obsessive personality. It tends to invade all aspects of my life from how I work to the music I listen to and the amount of time I spend on the internet or how much TV I watch. (I’m not a “casual” TV viewer at all, I either have to see every episode of a show from the very beginning or I don’t watch it at all; I HATE missing episodes and I’ll only start watching a show in it’s second or later seasons if I can catch up by watching the DVDs of previous seasons first.)
But my obsessive personality has a really big effect on how I eat. It’s probably one of the reasons I’ve always been such a picky eater. When I decide I don’t like something, then that’s it, I don’t eat it again. Ever. I haven’t eaten a carrot in 20 years because once in elementary school I threw up in the cafeteria after eating them. Recently I decided I should give it another try, but no, it was just as bad as I remember. (I used …
May 27, 2009
Lemon Glazed Strawberry Tart with Pastry Cream
I’ve been on a strawberry kick lately (seriously, I hope you like strawberries because I have two more strawberry recipes coming up). I also finally bought a tart pan last week and I wanted to make something fun and different. This may not sound like such a “different” dessert, but it’s really different for me. The majority of the desserts I make are either cake or cookies (or some variation like cupcakes and brownies). I’ve only make pie during the holidays and as much as I’d LOVE to make my cheesecake all the time I have to force myself to save that for special occasions.
Anyway, I found this recipe in my favorite cookbook and decided to go for it. I’m glad I did because this was damn good but it’s kind of involved. It’s definitely worth the effort to make, but like pies and cheesecake, I think this is a “special occasions” kind of dessert. It’s not difficult, per se, but there’s a lot of steps because you have to make all the parts (the crust, the …
May 20, 2009
Bread Bakers Apprentice Challenge: Anadama Bread
So I decided to do something a little crazy. The awesome Nicole at Pinch My Salt started a group to make every single recipe in The Bread Baker’s Apprentice by Peter Reinhart
May 6, 2009
Oatmeal Cream Pies
I don’t usually post recipes I’ve found on other food blogs (and actually the original recipe is from Recipe Zaar, you see my Delicious account for recipes I like from other food bloggers), but I just had to post this one because these are so awesome. Have you ever eaten a Little Debbie oatmeal cream pie? These are just like them…in fact, they are better. I used to love these when I was kid, but haven’t allowed myself to eat one in years. While these are by no means good for you, you at least know what all the ingredients are and you don’t have to worry about all the chemicals and whatever else crap is in the store bought version. I made a batch for my boyfriend to bring to his office and they were a giant hit with his coworkers who all agreed they liked them better than the originals.
April 30, 2009
Bacon and Rosemary Chicken with Maple Mashed Sweet Potatoes
This is just a damn good dinner. I mean, come on, can you ever go wrong with bacon? Bacon makes everything better (Seriously people, you can still eat bacon, virus be damned). Also, sweet potatoes are in my top 5 favorite foods ever. I could eat them pretty much everyday and I think they get a bad rap as being “that stuff with marshmallows that you eat at Thanksgiving”. They are way more versatile than that one dish (see exhibit B another great chicken dish with sweet potatoes and where I got part of the inspiration for this recipe).
I’ve been making this chicken dish for a while and it’s always a treat. In fact, I don’t make it all that often because I think of it as my “special” chicken dish. I think it tastes better when you only save it for special occasions.
While I wouldn’t call the recipe hard, I definitely struggled with it the first few times I made it, but that may have just been my cooking inexperience. If you’re not prepared then it can be really …
