Cooking ideas...

Sorry for not posting!  It's been busy with work and studies.  :)

Instead of blogging about what I've cooked, I decided to make a 'to-do' list of things I'd like to cook.  {Not like I need yet another to-do list, but these recipes looked yummy}.

I found this Chicken Gyros with Cucumber Salsa and Tsatsiki on the Gourmet Magazine website.  Doesn't it sound scrumptious?  I love gyros, but I've only had it with lamb. 

While browsing the Gourmet magazine website, I also came across these frozen delights--Lemon Ice Cream Sandwiches with Blueberry Swirl, which I thought sounded like a fun and different dessert.  The only thing I might do differently is make my own ice cream, instead of using it 'ready-made.' 

Back to my favorite Fine Cooking magazine, I found this recipe for Oreo cookies.  I told my mom the other night that I wanted some Oreo cookies next time she went grocery shopping, but then I thought "Hey, wouldn't it be cool if I could make those?!"  Soooo I found a recipe!  These are definitely a priority.  :) 

One last recipe:  Pop-tarts.  Anyone out there had any luck with these?  I've seen them here on Fine Cooking, as well as on the Food Network website here, and of course Alton Brown has a video clip from his show Good Eats here.  I'm thinking I'll go with A.B.'s recipe. 

More Adventures with Ice Cream and Cupcakes...

This Sunday my mom announced she wanted some sort of dessert to go with our lovely turkey dinner Dad roasted.  I listed several options--a cake, pie, torte, cookies...but we finally decided on ice cream. 

I chose the Hazelnut and Chocolate Chunk ice cream option from the Fine Cooking magazine.  It's hard to believe the last time I made ice cream was over a month ago!  Check it out here.  Very easy, except I think the hardest part was waiting for the ice cream to finish churning! 

Also a couple of side-notes.  I used a 4-oz. bar of Girardelli chocolate.  The family thought this was too much (I don't understand how you can ever have too much chocolate, though!), so next time I'll only use about half as much.  This recipe also calls to infuse the milk/cream/sugar mixture with the nuts.  I did this, and afterwards I saved the hazelnuts.  I plan on making oatmeal within the next day or two and stirring in some of the nuts--I mean, you can't go wrong with hazelnuts cooked in sugar and cream!  haha  Next time I make this recipe, I'll probably leave some of the nuts in the mixture simply because everyone agreed it would have been even better with some extra crunch.

Finally, I have 5 egg white sitting in the fridge, since the ice cream recipe only uses yolks.  Any ideas what to do with them?

And no pictures, due to the fact the entire batch of ice cream was eaten immediately following dinner.

Now on to the cupcakes.  My friend came over last Saturday and we made dessert for the family dinner.  We chose bright, cheerful colors because it was pouring down rain/extremely windy/chance of tornados.  Very depressing weather.  Anyway. 

Our sunflower cupcakes.  :)

We used Abigail Johnson Dodge's chocolate cupcake recipe and made a simple buttercream recipe for the frosting.



All 12 cupcakes.



Dear me.  I haven't posted in a while, have I?  It's been rather hectic, between trying to finish my last 2 classes and starting a second PT job.  And I really haven't had time to cook--last week I wasn't home for dinner AT ALL.  *sigh* Oh well.  I'm working on that.

So two weekends ago (flasback time!) I made cake pops with a friend (we also made blondies and pancakes).  I got this book out of the library for inspiration (all of the designs are really cute!!).  You basically make a cake, crumble the cake all up (horrifying, really, ruining a perfectly good cake that way), then mix in frosting (which acts as 'glue'), then roll it into one- or two-bite sized pieces of cake.  Then you cover the cake with melted candy coating.  We chose to use a ganache (after we figured out why it kept seizing up) instead, but it didn't give us that pretty, smooth finish.  It tasted better, though!  :)  We also decided to go with a homemade cake and frosting recipe, instead of a box-recipe. 



Ta-da!  Our lovely cake pops.  :)



And this week I did have time to bake a cake.  I don't normally bake cakes, but I thought "I can handle cookies, brownies, and cupcakes, so a cake can't be that hard...".  I made this Butter Cake with Browned Butter Frosting, from the Land 'O Lakes website.  The recipe was very easy, but my cake seemed a little flat around the edges...of course, I don't think that was helped any by the fact I almost forgot to add the baking soda...

Now on to the frosting.  I browned the butter in a small pan (I did have to let it cook more than 5-6 minutes...more like 8-ish), then let it cool.  After beating in the sugar and vanilla, I tasted it.  I was really surprised to taste--caramel!  It tasted like caramel frosting to me.  Very surprising.

What to do with...bamboo rice

Remember I said in the Grilled Chicken Tacos Alambres post there'd be more to come?  Well here it is, the beginning of an occasional series about "what to do with..." a certain ingredient, the ingredient's origin, and maybe a recipe or two.

Anyway, one of my best friends and I browsed through Fresh Market looking for things we'd never heard of or eaten before.  The first thing we came across was bamboo rice. 

After Googling and reading about bamboo rice, it seems to simply be a short grain white rice infused with bamboo juice.  Easy enough.  Anybody cooked bamboo rice before?

Coconut and Chocolate Cupcakes

Yep.  I'm back to cupcakes--for the moment anyway.  I used Abigail Johnson Dodge's Emergency Blender Cupcakes from her cookbook, The Weekend Baker (New York: 2005).  If you remember, I also made these earlier this month here.  This time, however, I tried a different flavoring and the frosting was once again successful.  :)

I made these into mini cupcakes, and instead of 12 regular sized cupcakes the recipe made about 42 minis.  I also chose to flavor the buttercream frosting with coconut.  I beat 1/4 butter (room temperature) with about 1 1/2 cups confectioner's sugar.  I then added about 2 tablespoons of coconut milk and beat that in.  Voila!  After topping the cakes with frosting, I sprinkled coconut flakes on top (sweetened of course). 

more dessert

Spiced cupcakes with cream cheese frosting.  Hungry yet?  I've made this scrumptious recipe from the Gourmet magazine two times now, and they're a huge hit. 

{Please ignore the Christmas/holiday cupcake wrappers...they were the only ones handy.}

This was a very easy recipe from the something-er-rather issue of the Gourmet magazine.  They remind me of my Molasses cookies, but a very tender cake version and with a lovely cream cheese frosting.  And this time I followed the recipe and didn't mess up the frosting!  yay!  The only thing about this recipe (which I'd noted from last time) was the original recipe didn't make nearly enough frosting to frost all 12 cupcakes.  So I made 1.5x which worked well. 

I also made Mocha Cupcakes (on a different day, of course) from the Wild about Cupcakes cookbook by Rachel Lane.  These were very yummy, too.  I didn't like that the cupcakes sank, though.  They're not supposed to be poufy cupcakes like the spiced cupcakes above, but I was still rather disappointed.  Also, the topping is a flavored whipped cream so instead of "frosting" them all I stashed the cream in the fridge to be dolloped on top when dessert was served. 

Family dinner adventures

Last Tuesday was a very productive evening--cooking-wise.  The parents had a "date night" at home, with cheese fondue and homemade bread.  Dad and sis worked on that and the final result was a wonderful loaf of bread: Crackly crust and airy interior.  Mom made spiced nuts for a snack.  Quite tasty--they had sugar, salt, a bunch of spices, and some dried fruit.  It was more of a savory snack, and not as sweet as it might sound.  A slight kick of spice, too.

The addictive nuts on the left and the beautiful loaf of bread on the right.

Since the parents were having their own meal, I made dinner separately for the sibs and I.  It was a simple pasta dish with spinach, roasted red peppers, canned artichokes, and parmesan.  I sauteed 2 cloves of garlic in a little olive oil then added the spinach.  After that cooked down I added the thinly sliced pepprs and diced artichokes to the mix.  I added a little chicken broth, let that and the veggie juices cook down, then seasoned to taste.  In the meantime, I got a pot of water boiling and cooked approximately 8 ounces of pasta.  I drained that and added it to the veggie mix.  Dinner time! 

It was fairly easy, but I still need to work on my proportions.  I forget that I have a lot of pasta and that there really aren't as many veggies as it seems!  Still, it was tasty and there weren't any leftovers.  :)