Rocks

This is the time of year wherein I try to catch up on all the recipes I didn't get posted over Christmas. So first up is a recipe for what is essentially a sweet party mix, like Chex mix but better because everything is better with chocolate.

I think I got this recipe from my mother, who in turn got it from a Sunday School lesson if I remember correctly.

Rocks

2 cups chocolate chips
1 1/2 cups dry roasted peanuts
1/2 cup peanut butter
1 12.3 oz box Crispix cereal
Confectioners sugar

Melt the chocolate in a large bowl in the microwave on high for one minute. Stir well and heat for an additional 30 seconds if necessary, or until all the chocolate is melted. Stir until smooth. Add the peanut butter and stir until completely incorporated.

Add the peanuts and cereal to the chocolate mix and stir until the pieces are thoroughly coated (I find a wooden spoon works well here).

Put the confectioners sugar in a Ziploc bag. Add a third of the chocolate-coated cereal mix, close the bag tightly and shake until the mix is completely coated in sugar. Repeat for the other thirds of the mix. Give it a few minutes to cool and solidify before serving, and store in an airtight container. Keeps for up to a week.

Servings: lots. I have no idea how many servings this makes, really. At least 15, though.

Gobs

Gobs are a chocolate cookie that my grandmother usually makes and freezes around Christmas time. They're one of my favorite cookies in the whole world: a thin white layer of crispy, sugary icing sandwiched between two soft chocolate cookies. Sometimes I eat them layer by layer: gnawing the cookies off until only the layer of icing remains. Sometimes I just eat them like a normal person. when I'm really feeling decadent, I dip them in hot cocoa. Any way I've tasted them, they're reliably fantastic, and sure to please family members of all ages.

The other amazing property of these cookies is that they freeze amazingly well, and can be kept for several months that way. Give them fifteen minutes or so to unfreeze, and you can have amazing chocolaty goodness for quite a while. We usually eat them all before the freezing time is a consideration, though! I've never seen a batch last for longer than a week. Usually if we're freezing them, we've made two or three batches at a time. Their name is appropriate because once you've tasted one, you just want gobs and gobs!

Gobs

2 cups granulated sugar
1 cup butter, melted
2 eggs, beaten
4 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 cup unsweetened cocoa (regular, not dutch process)
2 tsp salt
1 cup soured milk (Yes, you read that right. Leave a cup of regular milk out at room temperature for an hour or so.)
2 tsp baking soda
Vanilla icing (you can use store-bought, but I prefer to make my own with a simple vanilla icing recipe)

Preheat the oven to 350F.

Combine the sugar, butter, and beaten eggs in a large mixing bowl and mix thoroughly. Stir the flour, cocoa, and salt together in a smaller bowl, then add the dry ingredients to the wet ones in the large bowl, alternating with the sour milk. Add the baking soda to the dough, then mix until everything is combined.

Drop spoonfuls onto a greased cookie sheet (try to get them all a similar size, since you'll be making sandwiches) and bake for 10 minutes. Cool on a wire rack, then form sandwiches by spreading a thin layer of icing between two cookies.

Martha Washingtons

After a banner month of October I was a BAD food blogger. I posted nothing in November. I am ashamed.

But in December, I will redeem myself. This is the first of several posts worth of Christmas traditions. For many families, Christmas food means fruit cakes. For mine, it mean cookies and candies galore. Chocolate sandwich cookies, date-nut cookies, peppermint cookies shaped like swirls and candy canes, sugar cookies powdered snowy white. Candies covered in chocolate, candies covered in chocolate and powdered suger, truffles, nut brittles. Christmas around here means a veritable landslide of sugar.

These little candies are one of our most treasured traditions. On the outside, they look like glossy chocolate bon-bons, about the size and shape of truffles. On the inside, they're velvetty nougat, chock full of pecans. Absolutely delicious, from my family to yours.

Martha Washington Candy

2 boxes confectioners sugar
1 stick butter
1 can sweetened condensed milk
1 tsp vanilla extract
4 cups chopped pecans
1 package (1/2 lb) bitter chocolate squares
1 block paraffin
toothpicks

Cream the sugar, butter, condensed milk, and vanilla together in a mixer. Add the nuts, and let that get mixed until homogenous. Roll the nougat mixture into balls the size of walnuts (or a little smaller). Use extra powdered sugar to dip your hands in so that it doesn't stick to your palms as you roll.

Melt the chocolate and paraffin together in a double boiler over low heat, stirring to mix. Dip the nougat balls into this mixture, one at a time, by sticking a toothpick in the top of the ball and swirling it around in the chocolate. Deposit the coated balls on a sheet of waxed paper to cool and harden, and refrigerate after they've set for an hour or so. These stay fresh for several weeks in a fridge, so make them ahead of time to eat throughout the holiday.

Servings: 75-100 pieces of candy

Pumpkin Cheesecake

I am a cheesecake fiend. I love it dearly, in (almost) all its varieties. I will eat cheesecake for breakfast, mid-morning snack, lunch, twosies, afternoon tea, dinner, and as a midnight snack.

Strangely, for someone so obsessed with cheesecake, I'd never tried to make my own until a few days ago. This one was made for a party, and it disappeared so quickly that I was reminded once again of the singular magic of a well-made cheesecake: it vanishes like no other dessert you'll ever meet.

Anyway, I think that for a first effort at cheesecake, this was a more than respectable effort. I'll probably come back to it at Thanksgiving, for an alternative to (or, ooh, alongside) pumpkin pie.

Pumpkin Cheesecake

For the crust:

3/4 cup graham cracker crumbs, crushed
3/4 cup ginger snap crumbs, crushed
5 tbsp butter, melted

For the filling:

1 cup sugar
3 (8 oz) packages of softened cream cheese (Avoid the low fat stuff. It's cheesecake; it's a dessert. You're eating it for the taste, not for the low calorie count. So ditch the diet and get the stuff that tastes good)
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 tsp whiskey or bourbon
1 cup canned pumpkin (NOT sweetened, NOT spiced, just regular pumpkin with no additives)
3 eggs
1 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp nutmeg
1/2 tsp allspice
1/2 tsp ground ginger

Begin by preheating the oven to 350F.

Make the crust by combining the graham cracker and ginger snap crumbs with the melted butter in a medium bowl. Stir them until they're all coated with the butter, in crumbly little bits. Locate the springform pan or pie dish that you're using to bake the cheesecake in. The springform is optimal in theory, but I don't own one, so I used a deep pie dish, which turned out fine. Press the crumbs evenly into your dish. They shouldn't reach all the way up the sides, this is to be expected. Aim for a crust that ends 2/3 of the way up the sides of your dish. Bake the crust in the oven for 5 minutes, then remove it and set aside until the filling is ready.

In a large mixing bowl combine the cream cheese, sugar, vanilla, and whiskey, and beat them with an electric mixer until smooth. Add the pumpkin, the eggs, and all the spices, and continue beating. This is the important part: turn the mixer up to its second or third highest setting, the one for cake icing or some similarly thick substance. Let it run on this high setting for 2 full minutes. Why? Because this inflates the eggs and will make your cheesecake light and fluffy. Once you've properly mixed your filling, pour it immediately into the pan with the crust and get the whole thing into the oven as quickly and gently as possible (you don't want to agitate out the air bubbles).

Bake for 60-70 minutes. The key to proper cheesecake is to reove it from the oven BEFORE the center is completely set. There should still be a reasonable jiggle to the middle of the cheesecake when you remove it from the oven, though the sides should be set. This is key to the texture. Let your cheesecake sit out to cool to room temperature, then refridgerate it for at least 4 hours before serving. Overnight is best, but if you're like me you don't plan that far ahead.

Serve alone, or use a pint of fresh whipping cream and some sugar to make homemade whipped cream to put on top. Don't bother with the storebought stuff (the texture is all wrong, and the taste always seemed faintly chemical to me), but if you're willing to put in three minutes of elbow grease, the silky-heavy texture of the homemade stuff is a good complement to the cheesecake.

Servings: 8-10

Grandma's Teacakes

When I first started this blog, a few months ago, one of the first recipes was my Grandmother's take on Carrot Cake. Well, this recipe is from my other grandmother, the one on my dad's side.

When she was much, much younger, my dad's mother actually ran a bakery out of her home. She catered events in the small town they lived in, and people would come by their house to buy all sorts of baked goods. The front door on the house actually opened into the kitchen, so the front of the house doubled as her storefront.

By the time I was born, Grandma was far too old to still be baking, but people still talked about her legendary potato salads and pound cakes. My father's favorite recipe was her teacakes, a cookie that was very soft, almost pillowy, and only barely sweet. The recipe to these cookies had been lost, and when I was young my mother tried all sorts of recipes to try and approximate the storied teacakes, but none measured up to what my father remembered. They were all too crunchy, or too sweet, or doughy instead of soft.

It wasn't until we cleaned out her old house after my Grandfather's (her husband's) death that we found the recipe. It was on a card, tucked away on a high shelf under an unused flour container. My mother made the recipe to try it, and it turns out these cookies deserved every bit of their reputation for being addictive. The barely-sweet nature encourages you to eat lots of them because hey, it can't be that much sugar, right? And truth be told, I've never felt guilty about gobbling these. I keep some frozen for when I get cravings, or when my nightly tea just won't be complete without a little something special. I think that in a lot of ways, I like these better than chocolate, and that's saying something!

Grandma's Teacakes

1 1/2 cup flour
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
6 tbsp unsalted butter, softened
3/4 cup sugar
1 large egg
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
1/2 tsp lemon
1/3 cup buttermilk

Preheat the oven to 350F.

Whisk the dry ingredients (flour, salt, baking soda) together and set that bowl aside. Using a mixer and a large mixing bowl, cream the butter. Add the sugar, and beat that in until the mixture forms pale yellow, curd-like lumps and you can no longer see free standing sugar in the bottom of the bowl. Add the egg, and beat that in. Add the vanilla and the lemon juice, and beat some more. Add about 1/3 of the flour, and mix until that's incorporated. Add half the buttermilk, and beat that in. Add the second 1/3 of the flour, and beat. Add the rest of the buttermilk, beat, then add the rest of the flour and mix the whole thing for a minute or so to make sure it's creamy. At this point, the batter should be pale, smooth, and fairly soft.

Cover a baking sheet with parchment, and use a tbsp to drop cookies onto the sheet, about 2-3 inches apart (these will spread quite a bit). I can usually fit 12 cookies onto a standard size baking sheet, in four rows of three. Bake for 11-15 minutes, until the bottom edge of the cookie has just begun to turn brown. Do not be tempted to leave these in until the tops of the cookies brown. The tops should be very pale, and the bottom edge of the cookies should have just a very fine rim of brown. When this happens, remove the cookie sheet from the oven and let it sit for two minutes, then remove the cookies to a cooling rack to finish their cooling process. Repeat the cooking process with another cookie sheet, until you've used up all the batter (this recipe usually is perfect for two sheets with me).

These cookies are best eaten almost as soon as they're out of the oven, when they're warm and pillow-soft and amazing. They stay amazing for one day, and are perfectly fine the day after, but too much longer and they start to lose their delightfully soft texture. So if you don't plan to eat them pretty quickly, just stick them in the freezer. They never take long to thaw (five minutes, less if you've got a toaster oven), so that way you can have them whenever you want.

Servings: 20 - 25 cookies. It usually makes exactly 24 for me.

Fancy Strawberries

I should have posted this weeks ago. This is the dessert that I did for Mother's Day, and I was pleased with how it came out. It's not complicated, but it tastes good and I like simplicity when it come to my desserts. The lemon and mint infusion in the syrup gives this a hint of sophistication, and the handmade whipped cream is a nice homey touch. Overall, it's something that can be made ahead of time and stuck in the fridge until you need it, at which point it's impressive. My kind of dessert.

Fancy Strawberries

1 lb fresh strawberries
1 1/4 cup sugar
Zest from 1 lemon
Zest from 1 small lime
4 fresh mint leaves (No, extract won't do. It's got to be fresh mint on this one, but pretty much any kind of mint will work.)
1 1/2 cup heavy whipped cream

Start by making a simple syrup: combine 1 cup of the sugar and 1 cup of water in a saucepan over medium-high heat, and stir it until all the sugar has gone into solution. Turn the heat down to medium, then add the zest from both the lemon and the lime, and the mint leaves. Let these infuse for 5 minutes or so, and then run the whole thing through a strainer covered with cheese cloth to get out the mint leaves and zest scraps. The syrup should be clear (DO NOT let it caramelize. If it caramelizes, you've got your heat way too high), and you should taste both the citrus and the mint if you sample it.

Wash your strawberries, and slice them horizontally into 1/4 inch circles, discarding the leafy tops. Dump your sliced strawberries into your syrup, and sit it in the fridge to chill out until you are ready to serve it.

When you're ready to serve, add the remaining 1/4 cup sugar to the 1 and 1/2 cups heavy cream in a large mixing bowl. Taste this mixture. It should taste pleasantly sweet, like cool whip in liquid form, except better. If you like your whipped cream sweeter, add more sugar. This is a to-taste thing, there's no science to making whipped cream. When the mix of cream and sugar tastes right to you, use a whip to beat it into fluffy peaks. This should take about 3-5 minutes of rapid whipping. It's really not that difficult, I'm not sure why so many people seem intimidated of making their own whipped cream.

Serve the strawberries by spooning them into bowls, and drizzling syrup over them. Spoon some whipped cream on top, and drizzle a little syrup over that too. Serve immediately.

Servings: I have no idea. 8-10, probably.

Simple Pie Crust

One of my favorite parts of summer is the fruit. I love fresh peaches, strawberries, blackberries. And with fresh fruit, comes fruit pies.

I find that a lot of people are intimidated by pie crusts, which always strikes me as funny. A good pie crust is no more difficult to make than a simple cookie recipe, and the buttery, flaky crust is what makes or breaks a pie for me. No store-bought cardboard-tasting crusts here, thanks, I'll make my own.

This is the recipe that my mother has used for years for pie crusts. It's remarkably easy, and I think it originally came from a Southern Living cookbook. It makes a single crust (just the bottom layer). If you want a double crusted pie (bottom and top) just double the recipe. Below the pie recipe, I've included the directions for setting a pie crust, which is the most important part of pie making that most people don't do. It involves crisping the outside of the pie crust, so that when you fill the pie with a liquid and bake it, the crust stays crisp instead of absorbing so much liquid that it turns to mush. More pie-makers than you would believe allow their crusts to turn all mushy because they neglect to set the pie properly, but it always tastes much nicer when the crust is still crisp, even on the bottom.

Simple Pie Crust

1 1/2 cup all purpose flour
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 cup shortening (you can substitute unsalted butter here, but I find that shortening makes a more flaky crust)
4 or 5 tbsp water

Stir together the flour and salt, mixing them thoroughly. Add the shortening, and cut it into the flour until the shortening is in pieces the size of small peas. Add the water one tbsp at a time, tossing the dough and mixing after each addition. After the fourth or fifth tbsp, the dough should suddenly assume the consistency of proper pie-crust, almost as if my magic. Stop adding water immediately; the goal is a dough that is moist and very faintly sticky, but never wet. Form your dough into a ball. It should stick to itself easily, but shouldn't stick to your hands if you've got the consistency right.

Flour a large flat surface lightly, and flour a rolling pin. Roll out the dough into a round sheet, about 1/8 - 1/4 inch thick. When the dough is properly thin, grab your pie dish. Fold the dough in half, the into quarters and lift it into the pie dish. Unfold it, and press it into the corners of the dish. There should be some crust that hangs over the edges. Trim this crust off with a paring knife, and use the resulting scraps to patch any holes, cracks, or thin areas of the crust. If you want to be artistic, you can flute your crust by pressing the edges between your fingers and repeating as you move around the pie-dish.

Set the crust by lightly beating one egg white with a tsp of cold water, then brushing this mixture over your crust. Poke holes all across the bottom of the crust, then refrigerate it for 30 minutes. These two steps will keep your crust flat while you bake it by preventing airpockets and hot-spots. Bake the crust for 5 minutes at 450F, then allow it to cool to room temperature before adding whatever liquid filling you've got in mind.

Very Important Note: Your pie crust will shrink as it sets or bakes. This means that when you trim the crust, you should not trim it too close to the pie-dish, or you will end up with a crust that is shorter than your dish. When in doubt err on the side of too long when it comes to trimming pies.

Chocolate Truffles

After posting the cake recipe a few days ago, I thought I'd redeem myself by offering a recipe that is perhaps the polar dessert opposite of a stupidly easy cake. This is a dessert that uses pretty much only ingredients found in nature (no preservatives here, thanks); that takes a long time and much care to properly produce; and that is guaranteed to wow any audience to which you present it.

There's a certain mystique to truffles: Godiva sells them for exorbitant prices, people think of them usually around holidays, and most cooks are intimidated by the idea of trying to make them. There's a reason for that intimidation. These aren't easy, but they go easier if you've got a little knowledge of candy-making, especially chocolate tempering, under your belt already. I've found that the best way to make truffles is with a friend. That way, things go more quickly (an advantage when you're working with ingredients that can melt or deform when they get too cool or too warm), and the whole experience is more fun with two people. Plus, with a friend's help, you won't be tempted to eat all the truffles yourself, which is the biggest problem that I have when I make this recipe!

It's worth it, though, even if you go it alone. These little candies are the very height of decadence: a creamy, melt-on-your-tongue center surrounded by a crisp chocolate shell, and delicately -- but not overwhelmingly -- accented by the flavour of a liqueur. They are candies to be eaten in many bites, savoured for their rarity (how many truffle-makers have you known in your lifetime?) and for the impressive oomph of flavour that they can pack into a tiny, neat package. They are also very pretty, suitable to serve as a centerpiece during a meal and the dessert afterwards, especially if you pair them with pretty red berries and stripe them with white chocolate. In short, these truffles deserve their reputation both for divine taste and difficulty in the kitchen. Try them once, and you'll never go Godiva again, because they make store-bought truffles taste like cardboard in comparison (trust me, I've held taste tests!). These are what you whip up when you're cooking balls-out to impress.

Chocolate Truffles

Note: With any recipe, the quality of ingredients is crucial to the taste of the final product, but that's especially true here. Use only the very best chocolate that you can get your hands on for these. Be willing to spend a few extra dollars to get good chocolate. Ordinary Hershey's chocolate is NOT sufficient. My personal favorite is Scharffen-Berger's Antilles bar, but that particular brand can be hard to come by. Ghirardelli (which is much easier to come by) and Valrona are also very good. One note: I don't recommend Green & Black's, or any of the other organic bars. While they may be expensive, they have a strangely fudgey texture, and they tend to melt oddly. It's more difficult to get them to temper correctly, and they tend to make an uneven ganache, in my experience.

10 ounces bittersweet chocolate, chopped fine (What particular percentage of chocolate you use is a matter of personal preference. I tend to go for Scharffen-Berger's Antilles bar, which is a 75% blend, or Ghirardelli's 60%.)
8 additional ounces bittersweet chocolate, chopped fine (You can use the same, or a different chocolate here)
3 tablespoons unsalted butter (It's very important that the butter be unsalted. In fact, if you can find the unsalted, creamy European-style butter at your grocery, use that.)
1/2 cup heavy cream
1 tablespoon light corn syrup
2 vanilla beans
1/4 cup brandy or your favourite liqueur (I've used everything from a good port wine to Chambord here. Just go with whatever floats your boat. If you're not into alcohol, leave it out completely, but honestly, it's worth it to add the hint of flavour you get here.)


Start by adding 10 ounces of chocolate and the butter to a microwave-safe mixing bowl. Microwave for 30 seconds on full power. Remove and stir to help redistribute the chocolate, and repeat this process 1 more time. Stir again, and set aside. It's okay if all of the chocolate isn't completely melted, the residual heat in the bowl will help it continue melting for a few minutes afterwards.

Heat the heavy cream and corn syrup together in a small saucepan over medium heat until the mixture simmers (don't boil!). Slice the vanilla beans down the middle with a sharp knife, and scrape out the seeds. Add the seeds and the beans to the cream mixture, and allow these to simmer for 5 minutes, stirring slowly. Remove the pan from the heat, fish out the bean halves, and pour the cream-corn syrup mixture over the melted chocolate and butter. Let this stand for about a minute, then use a rubber or silicone spatula (the idea is something flexible, but with a bit of stiffness to stir the thick chocolate) to stir the mixture in slow circles, until all the chocolate is melted and the whole thing is glossy and very smooth. Add the brandy or liqueur, and stir again (gently!) until the mixture is once more smooth and homogeneous. Congratulations, you've just made a chocolate ganache. Pour the mixture into an 8x8 baking dish and refrigerate for at least an hour. Longer is better with the refrigeration time, as the goal is to have a very, very hard ganache when it's finished chilling.

Once the mixture has been in the fridge a while, remove it and use a melon baller or two spoons to scoop out little balls of chocolate onto a baking sheet lined with parchment or waxed paper. The key to this process is being relatively quick: don't let the ganache get too warm, or you'll have trouble because it tends to stick. I usually dip my melon baller into cocoa powder to keep the balls of ganache from sticking to it, then use my bare hands to shape the scooped balls into spheres. This process gets chocolate all over my hands, but if I'm very quick about the rolling (my hands are on the ganache balls for less than three seconds, usually), it produces a more uniform candy. When the ganache has all been rolled into balls, return the balls to the fridge for another hour or so to get them chilled back up and re-firmed.

After the ganache balls have chilled for an hour or so, place the remaining 8 ounces of chocolate in a double boiler, and bring the water under it to a bare simmer. Lower heat is better in this case, because the goal here is fairly fine temperature control. Position a candy thermometer in the bowl so that the end of the thermometer sits in the middle of the melting chocolate (not against the bowl, which may be hotter than the mixture itself). Stir the chocolate occasionally, and watch the thermometer. Heat until the mixture reaches 88F, then remove it from the double boiler. The actual goal is 90F or 92F, but removing the heat source before it reaches the goal temperature will keep the chocolate from getting too hot. DO NOT allow the chocolate to heat past 94F. If you do, your coating will not have the snap or shine to it that distinguishes a well-made truffle. You may need to adjust your heat occasionally to maintain this optimal 90-92F temperature. Just watch the thermometer carefully, and you should be fine

Remove the ganache balls from the fridge, and stick a toothpick in the top of one. Using the toothpick to hold the truffle, swipe it QUICKLY through the melted chocolate to coat it. The need for speed cannot be over-emphasized: if the truffle remains in the hot melted chocolate too long, the ganache will melt and contaminate your coating chocolate, preventing a smooth, shiny coat for future chocolates. It may also fall off the toothpick, which means that you must use a spoon to retrieve it, and its shape will get mangled. So do this quickly. Once the truffle has been coated, sit it back on a different baking sheet covered with parchment or waxed paper, and after fifteen or so seconds, remove the toothpick, leaving a coated candy with a small hole at the top.

Important notes for the dipping procedure: Observe your ganache balls carefully during this process: if they sit out too long, they will soften to room temperature, and you will have a more difficult time coating them. If your ganache balls seem to be getting too soft, just stick them back in the fridge for a while, then remove them and continue when they've re-firmed. It is advisable not to stick the coated truffles in the fridge for at least an hour, to give them time to set. Cooling them too quickly may shock their chocolate coating, and will make it look less shiny. It won't affect the taste or texture at all, but the appearance won't be as fine. This is a rather delicate process, as the melted chocolate must be monitored to keep it under 94F, the ganache balls must be monitored to keep from getting too warm, and the truffles must be swiped through the coating quickly yet carefully to get complete coverage while preventing them from melting. Nonetheless, a careful baker will find that it goes more smoothly than perhaps this recipe makes it sound. I'm simply warning for all contingencies; not all these situations may present themselves during your truffle-making attempts.

Once the truffles have all been coated, the remainder of the melted chocolate can be discarded. Allow the truffles to sit for an hour or so to set. Afterwards, if you wish to decorate them further, you can melt a little white chocolate and drizzle it over the candies with a spoon to give them white stripes. This technique can also be used to disguise the toothpick holes, if you're fussy. Other options for decoration include sifting cocoa or confectioner's sugar over the truffles immediately after they've been dipped, before the chocolate has a chance to set, or rolling the barely-set truffles in chopped nuts (Although this is a difficult and messy operation, and I don't necessarily recommend it).

Once set, the truffles should be stored in an air-tight container in the refrigerator. They will keep for up to two weeks. To serve, remove them from the fridge half an hour or so before service, to allow them to come to room temperature. The texture is good when they're cold, just out of the fridge, but the taste of the chocolate really displays its many dimensions best at room temperature.

Servings: About 35 truffles.

Stupidly Easy Angel Food Cake

Writing this blog for the past few weeks has helped me realize that I bake more than I thought I did. Previously, baking was a simple, experimental matter of throwing a few ingredients together and seeing what emerged from the oven, but now I make myself think about quantities in case I enjoy a recipe enough to end up posting it. I almost didn't post this one, partly because it uses two different mixes (Really, there's nothing at all natural in this recipe. It's shameful!) and partly because it's so stupidly easy.

But then I thought to myself, "Self, if you think that you occasionally deserve a break from the hours baking a cake can entail, don't you think others might appreciate the same?" So here's a cake you can throw together in less than five minutes. No kidding. Total prep time should hover somewhere around two minutes, and that's only if you have to go off and search for scissors to open your cake mix. It has exactly two ingredients (and like I said, neither of them is even vaguely found in nature), but if you find out that friends are coming over in a few minutes and somehow simply lack the willpower or supplies to do anything else, this recipe will see you through. It's certainly not culinary school material, but hey, even ambitious cooks sometimes need a guilty secret!

Stupidly Easy Angel Food Cake

1 box angel food cake mix (I like Duncan Hines, but Betty Crocker will do in a pinch)
1 can fruit pie filling (Cherry, peach, blueberry, it doesn't matter. They all work, so pick your favorite. I usually go with blueberry.)

In a 9x13 baking pan, mix together the angel food mix and the pie filling, stirring until they are roughly homogenous (try to get out all the lumps of dry cake mix). Ignore the cake mix box when it tells you that you need things like liquids, all you need is the pie filling. Cook your cake per the box's instructions about time and temperature.

Servings: 15? I don't know, it depends on how big you cut your cake pieces.

See? Wasn't that stupidly easy? I'll have to post something desperately fancy and a little difficult next time to make up for the fact that this is so easy.

Hamentaschen

My first experience of hamentaschen (say it "HA-men-TA-shen") came courtesy of my friend Nechama. Nechama has blue, pixie-style hair, fifteen piercings at last count, eight tattoos, and travels to India yearly to meet with the gurus of Anusara yoga, which she teaches back here in the States. She is the only woman I know who can honestly say she's been lost in a monsoon in the jungles of India. She is also Jewish, which is how she came to be serving me hamentaschen during a Purim party a few years ago.

Even though I'll always associate hamentaschen with Nechama's stories about her crazy travels, the rest of the world knows this little cookie as a traditional part of one of the most beloved Jewish holidays. Purim is a fabulous holiday, in which Jews are required (required, do you hear?) to eat, drink, and be merry. In fact, according to the Talmud, a person is commanded to drink until he cannot tell the difference between "Blessed be Mordecai" and "Cursed be Haman". My kind of holiday!

The villain of the Purim story is Haman, who was a greedy advisor to an ancient king, and who tried to have all the Jews killed way back when. This cookie takes it's name from the Hebrew for 'Haman's pockets', and supposedly the triangle shape represents Haman's three-cornered advisor hat. Much like greedy Haman in the stories, this cookie gets it's 'pocket' stuffed with something sweet: I prefer apple butter or strawberry preserves, but I've heard of people using anything from fig jellies to cherry pie filling (I think that'd be too sweet, but to each his own). Fun to make and with a fantastic history, hamentaschen are the kind of cookie I like to make year-round. They go great with a cup of hot tea for a late-night snack. I use whole wheat flour, and the dough turns out a little darker than in the photo above, so don't be alarmed if they don't look exactly the same.

Hamentaschen Cookies

2/3 cup butter or margarine, softened
1/2 cup granulated sugar
1 large egg
1/4 cup orange juice (get the kind with no pulp)
1 cup white flour
1 cup wheat flour (DO NOT substitute white flour! The wheat flour is necessary to achieve the right texture!)
2 tsp. baking powder
1 tsp. cinnamon
A filling of some kind, be it apple butter (my fav) or some sort of jam or jelly

Cream the butter and sugar together using an electric mixer. Add the egg and beat until incorporated. Add the OJ and beat until mixed. At this point, you should have a very soupy butter mixture. Add the flour, 1/2 cup at a time, alternating white and wheat. Mix thoroughly between each. Add the baking powder and cinnamon with the last half cup of flour. The resulting dough should be fairly moist and sticky, and pretty dense. I always have to scrape it out of the beaters on my mixer, it tends to clump inside the beaters since it's so dense. Cover the batter and refrigerate overnight or for at least 4 hours.

Remove the dough from the fridge and grab the cookie trays you're using. I prefer a non-stick tray for this, since the dough is minimally easier to shape on this tray than on a normal tray. Flour the cookie sheet lightly, but don't skimp here. Again, the flour makes the shaping process easier. I find that flouring everything that's going to touch the dough is very important to making this cookie successfully, because the dough is very sticky, and pulls out of shape very easily if there's not a thin layer of flour to keep it from sticking. Scoop off a two-tablespoon hunk of dough (or a little bigger, you'll get a feel for size as you go), plop it on the cookie sheet, and use your floured fingers to press it into a 1/4 inch thick circle, about three or four inches in diameter. Dollop a generous teaspoon and a half of your filling of choice into the center of the circle. Using a floured silicone spatula, lift the edges of the dough off the tray and fold them towards the center. Do this three time, to form a triangle shape (refer to the picture above for an idea of how this is supposed to go, and what the final product should look like). Pinch the edges of the triangle to make sure that the 'flaps' of dough don't come unfolded during the baking process. Repeat to fill the cookie sheet; I can usually fit 6 cookies on one sheet.

Preheat the oven to 350F. Once the oven is at temperature, bake the cookies for 16-20 minutes. 20 min is perfect in my oven, and the goal is that the cookie should be a light, toasty brown, but the filling should not bubble over. Apple butter tends not to bubble over easily, but preserves are more prone to boiling just before the cookies get done. I've made these enough now that I time the cookies' doneness by the progress of the filling: when the strawberry preserves begin to bubble, but not bubble over, the cookies are done.

Servings: 15-20 cookies, depending on size.

Vanilla Panna Cotta

Panna cotta is one of those desserts that I didn't meet until I was in college. The American South, for all its agricultural riches, is shamefully undereducated when it comes to classic cuisine. Mentioning panna cotta to the cooks I grew up with would have provoked raised eyebrows and questions of 'Is is like egg custard?' Egg custard is the only custard-like dessert that rural South Carolina ever met. Egg custard pies, egg custard tarts, and for the really creative cook, egg custard topped with fruit. So I was deprived of the heaven that was panna cotta until I escaped to the Northeast for school.

But once I got there and had a taste, I made up for lost time. I became the Queen of Panna Cotta in my dorm. I made it for all my friends. I played around with flavours: pumpkin panna cotta for fall, pomegranate panna cotta topped with freshly whipped cream, green tea panna cotta topped with delicate slivers of sugared ginger. I would do it in batches and serve individual helpings in shot glasses (because hey, I was in college).

So when I started thinking of a dessert for my family's upcoming Easter lunch, my mind naturally ran towards this lovely, light little finisher. Here's the recipe for the basic vanilla version - though I use real vanilla beans here to dress things up a little. I top it with sugared raspberries, which make a beautiful presentation with the pure white custard. Here's hoping even my Southern relatives will find something to like!

Panna Cotta

1/4 cup water
3 1/2 tsp powdered gelatin
3 1/4 cups heavy or whipping cream
3/4 cup confectioners sugar
2 whole vanilla beans
2 piece lemon rind
Raspberries (The exact amount will depend on how many servings you're making. I usually buy two small cartons worth.)
2 tbsp additional confectioners sugar

Place the water in a small bowl and sprinkle in the powdered gelatin. Stir it, and set it aside to thicken for five or so minutes. While the gelatin is gelling, use a sharp knife to split the vanilla beans in half down the middle and scrape out the seeds. Place both seeds and beans into a medium saucepan with the cream, sugar, and lemon rind. Simmer over medium heat for five or so minutes, stirring gently and making sure that the cream doesn't stick. The goal here is a sort of low, even simmer.

When the cream has thickened a little, add in the gelatin mixture and continue at a medium simmer, stirring constantly, for another three or so minutes. The gelatin should be completely dissolved by this stage.

Strain the cream-gelatin mixture through a very fine mesh, and fish out the lemon rind and vanilla beans. Those can be discarded. Pour the mixture through cheesecloth into panna cotta molds, or if you're like me and too poor or lazy to buy panna cotta molds, into whatever pretty container you intend to serve from. I like shot glasses, but small teacups or martini glasses are also pretty.

Refrigerate your panna cotta. How long the refrigeration needs to last varies depending on the size of the containers you're serving from, but a good rule of thumb is at least four hours. Overnight is okay, and will make your prep time less hectic the next day. So fridge it and forget it for a while.

About an hour before you intend to serve the panna cotta, get out your raspberries and rinse them very gently. Pat them dry, then toss them in the extra confectioners sugar and pop them in the fridge. This will encourage the juices to swell, making them plump and shiny. It will also make them fragile, so be a little careful when handling sugared raspberries.

To serve, grab the panna cotta from the fridge. If you're making them with molds, try dipping the bottom and sides of the molds into a hot water bath for a few seconds to loosen the panna cotta. Run a knife around the edges if necessary (avoid this if possible, it will usually mess up the presentation). Then, tip the panna cotta out of molds and onto the plates on which you will serve. If, like me, you usually serve out of glassware (I've graduated from shot glasses to pretty cut-glass cups), you can skip that step. Either way, top each individual serving with a few sugared raspberries to finish the presentation. A mint leaf is also pretty if you're really feeling snazzy that day.

Servings: Depends on the size of your containers. It makes 30 fl oz, or between fifteen and eighteen shot glasses worth, so take that as you will.

Grandma's Carrot Cake (w/ Cream Cheese Frosting)

Some families pass down the secret recipe to a meatsauce. Some jealously hoard their special cookies, or perhaps a recipe for a magic dressing that improves even the lamest salad. In my family, we pass down carrot cake. In fact, even committing this recipe to writing is something of a heresy; my grandmother never wrote it down, and baked from memory each of the hundreds (or thousands) of times she made this cake. My mother used this cake as the recipe for her wedding cake, and even as Grandma baked twenty (!) of the cakes for the reception, she never told my mother what the exact ingredients were.

She passed it to me a few years ago over the telephone. I'd broken up with a boyfriend, and was consoling myself by baking like a madwoman. There's nothing like fresh bread and cookies to ease the pain of men. Anyway, Grandma chose that moment to give me the recipe for her special carrot cake, and I've made it ever since. I've always been a little scared that I'll lose the piece of paper jotted with notes on how to prepare it, though, so now it's going into this blog. I know that nothing on the internet is sacred, but I don't think it matters. Some recipes are special no matter what.

This cake is lighter in texture than any other carrot cake I've tried, and is faintly sweet but not sugary. It's in fact less sweet than I always expect it to be, which is perfect for the cream cheese icing. It's also perfect for letting me delude myself into eating lots of it, because hey, it's got less sugar and carrots! That's almost like it's healthy, right? Right?

Grandma's Carrot Cake

2 cups self-rising flour
2 cups sugar
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp salt
1 tsp cinnamon
1 1/4 cup vegetable oil
4 large eggs
3 cups grated carrot
1 cup nuts
1 tsp baking soda

Preheat the oven to 350F.

Mix all the dry ingredients (flour, baking soda, baking powder, sugar, salt, cinnamon) together. In a separate large bowl, beat together the eggs and the oil. Add the dry ingredients to the eggs and oil, and stir to mix thoroughly. Add the carrots and the nuts to this mixture, and stir until they're evenly distributed through the batter. Pour the batter evenly between two 9 inch cake pans.

Bake for 25 minutes or until a knife inserted into the center of the cake comes out clean (in my current oven, I bake it for 35 min at 375F, but then my current oven tends to run cool).


Cream Cheese Frosting

8 oz cream cheese
1 stick margarine (or unsalted butter)
1 box confectioner's sugar
2 tsp vanilla extract

Optional: 1 can coconut OR a handful of nuts

Soften the cream cheese and the margarine to room temperature. Using an electric mixer, beat together the margarine and the cream cheese. Add the confectioner's sugar (may want to turn the mixer down some, so that the sugar doesn't poof everywhere), and beat until the sugar is incorporated completely and the icing is smooth. Add the vanilla, and beat until that's incorporated. If you're adding other ingredients (I like this icing kept simple for this cake, but for other cakes coconut or nuts may feel more appropriate), add them here. Cover and chill the icing if you're not using it immediately.

Roasted Apples

This is such an easy dessert that I almost feel guilty for having to put some sort of recipe down in writing to remember it, but that's how my brain goes: if I don't write it down, it'll be gone in a few days, no matter how much I liked it.

This is a great accompaniment for meals because it basically cooks while you're eating, and it takes pretty much no time to assemble. Plus, it's fairly light, as desserts go, so it won't leave you feeling like you've eaten a stone afterwards. I have a set of special apple-roasting dishes (they look like large ramekins with a ceramic finger sticking up through the center of them for impaling the apple), but this recipe works just as well with a normal baking dish. I've got the portions here set for two people, but as you can see, there are no set 'correct' amounts of fillings, so it's VERY easy to adjust this to four apples, or even more. Just add one apple per person. The cooking time shouldn't change, and there are no 'right amounts' for the fillings; it's pretty much whatever floats your boat.

Roasted Apples

2 Rome apples, or another type of cooking apple
Brown sugar
Cinnamon
Honey
1 tbsp unsalted butter
Whipped cream or ice cream

Preheat the oven to 350F.

Core the apples, but don't peel them. I use a paring knife for this, but my mother (who taught me this recipe) uses a longer boning knife. Either way, this is probably a step that the grownups should do if you're making the recipe with kids.

Place the cored apples into your baking dish of choice. If you don't have apple-baking ramekins, I suggest lining a small baking dish with tinfoil. Ideally, the baking dish should be small enough that the apples just fit; this will keep the juices from burning, and will produce a lovely, super-sweet apple 'soup' at the end. Once you've got your apples arranged, pack brown sugar into the core until 3/4 full (This is why there aren't portions of the sugar listed in the recipe, it's difficult to know how much sugar this requires). On top of the sugar, sprinkle a generous layer of cinnamon, then finish filling the core up with honey. For extra fun, drizzle honey on the outside of the apples too in artistic patterns. Place a 1/2 tbsp butter pat on top of each apple's core-hole.

Place the apples in the oven, and bake for 40-50 min, or until the apples are soft all the way through. I use a cake tester to check done-ness: just poke it through the apples and make sure you don't encounter much resistance. The peels on the apples may have split in the cooking process; that's normal. Serve in bowls, one bowl per apple. Drizzle the juices left over in the dish over the apples, and top with lots of whipped cream (my favorite) or ice cream.

Servings: 2