Yummy Yummy Yummy!... and a little Sticky :-)

By my mom's request I am posting this amazing quick banana cake that I served for dessert the other night. I apologize, I didn't get any pictures but they wouldn't do it justice anyway!

Carmel Walnut Upside-Down Banana Cake
acquired from Blue Ribbon Cooking Culinary Center, Seattle, WA

Topping:
1/2 Cup (1 stick) butter
1 Cup (packed) brown sugar
2 Tablespoons dark corn syrup
3/4 Cup walnut halves or pieces (I chopped whole into pieces)

Cake: 
1 3/4 cups flour
1 Teaspoon baking powder
3/4 Teaspoon baking soda
1/2 Teaspoon salt
1/2 Cup (1 stick butter), room temperature
1/2 Cup sugar
1/2 Cup (packed) brown sugar
2 Eggs
1 Cup mashed ripe bananas (2 or 3) whatever you have on hand really will work
3 Tablespoons sour cream
1 Tablespoon dark rum (any rum or brandy will do)
1 Teaspoon Vanilla extract

Directions:
Topping- Thoroughly spray two 8- inch round cake pan (a 9 x13  Pyrex  casserole dish or muffin tins can be used as well). Bring butter,sugar, and corn syrup to boil in medium saucepan, stirring constantly until butter melts. boil syrup for 1 minute. Should go from a glassy look to a creamy carmel  color. Remove from heat and stir in nuts. Spread topping evenly in prepared pans. Let topping cool before pouring batter over top.

Cake- Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Sift first 4 dry ingredients into medium bowl and set aside. using electric mixer, beat butter and both sugars in large bowl until blended. Beat in eggs 1 at a time, then mashed bananas, sour cream, rum, and villa. Beat in dry ingredients in 2 additions just until combined. Spoon batter over cooled topping in pan.

Bake cake for about 55 minutes. cool for 15 minutes. Cut around cake and then place a platter over the top and flip the pan on to the platter. let sit for 5 minutes and then pull the pan off the cake. If you let cool for too long the carmel may get stuck in the pan and not melt over the cake.. that would be a sad day! Serve this warm with whipped cream or ice cream.

See its yummy yummy, yummy.... and a little sticky!

Chocolate Chip Cookies

I am so shocked that i haven't posted anything since last year... guess I've got to get my butt in gear and start blogging! For my first blog of 2011 I wanted to blog my FAVORITE thing to make... CHOCOLATE CHIP COOKIES.
I have been known for making the best chocolate chip cookies by my family and friends. My relationship with cookies began many years ago as a young girl. A family friend of my parents used to make chocolate chip cookies every time we would go have dinner over there and she would let us kids each have a spoonful of raw dough... it was the best. Still to this day I think of her every time I make my cookies.
The recipe she used to use was the nestle toll house recipe, when I started making them i used the recipe that Crisco published and I was using that one for a long time and even had it memorized at one time. Thankfully i became more daring and decided to try a few other recipes and I have decided on two to share with you. for the last few years I have been using these two recipes, they are very similar, however they come out completely different... couldn't tell you why though!

TJ's Chocolate Chip Cookies

Ingredients:
2 1/4 Cups flour
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup white sugar
1 cup butter, softened
1 teaspoon vanilla
2 eggs
2 cups chocolate chips

Beat together butter and sugar and then add in the rest of the wet ingredients, omitting the chocolate chips. Add salt and baking soda until combined and then slowly add the flour. Once the flour is combined add the chocolate chips. Bake them in a 375 degree oven. Enjoy! should make about 2 dozen


Anyone who lives in the Seattle area or has had the luxury to enjoy the goods from Macrina Bakery then you will know that these cookies are phenomenal. I work in downtown Seattle and always go to Top Pot for my morning coffee. Instead of getting a hot fresh doughnut I would always buy a chocolate cookie, ironic but I am not a huge fan of doughnuts and the cookies they have a so good and they usually only have about 8 each day so you gotta get them when you can.
On day I went there and was raving to the barista about how much i loved the cookies and they told me that they get those delivered fresh from the Macrina Bakery everyday. I was so shocked that they didn't make them there but it was also a blessing because now i knew I could walk two more blocks to the bakery if i was really craving on and Top Pot was sold out! :-)

This sparked my interest as well. Now that i knew it was a bakery that made these cookies I had a feeling that the recipe would be on line somewhere... low and behold I found one and it is AMAZING!


Chocolate Chip Cookies derived from Macrina Bakery and Cafe Cookbook

Ingredients:

2 1/4 Cups flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
8 tablespoons butter
1/2 cup vegetable shorting
3/4 Cup white sugar
3/4 Cup brown sugar
2 eggs
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
3 cups chocolate chip cookies

Mix the butter and sugar together and add one egg at a time. Incorporate everything one by one except for the flour and chocolate chips. Once the batter is ready add the flour slowly and the chocolate chips.  Bake at 350 degrees and Enjoy!

The main tip I can give to anyone who wants really good cookies, is to use a ice cream scooper. The use of an ice cream scooper will make for the cookies to be completely even in size, therefore they will cook evenly and no one will be fighting for the biggest cookie!

Here concludes my first blog of 2011.... I'll try and be better here on out!

Rise and Shine!

To rise and to shine...Well that was the goal but I didn't succeed at it that well. The challenge for the month of November for daring cooks was a souffle. I had never made one but growing up I had them all the time. My childhood best friends parents made an egg souffle about once a week for dinner and they were always so good and fluffy. I always dreamed that I would make one as good as Christine Bickson would make but she must of had the "touch" that i don't :-(

I wanted to make a savory souffle since this was a daring cooks challenge and not a daring bakers challenge but I was hosting a dinner and needed to conquer this souffle so what better time than to test on my friends and make them eat my experiment.

I made a chocolate souffle, and as always, I changed the recipe up a little bit from what they told me. It wasn't a big change, but it may have been the culprit of what mess the whole thing up! Instead of buying dark chocolate I decided to use the semi-sweet chocolate chips from the 5 lb bag i already have... I prefer things a little sweeter so I didn't think it would change the recipe that much.

Anyway, the final product tasted fine but i always remembered it being much fluffier and not like a cake texture. I have posted the recipe below.... hope fully it is a much better product for you than me!
GOOD LUCK


Just the cocoa powder that lined the souffle dishes

  Chocolate Souffle

FOR THE DISHES:
2 tbsp unsalted butter
cocoa powder

FOR THE CREME PATISSERIE
2 tbsp flour
2 tsp caster sugar (super fine sugar)
1/2 tsp corn starch
1 medium egg yolk
1 medium whole egg
4 tbsp milk
5 tbsp heavy cream
3 oz dark chocolate (this is where i used semi-sweet chocolate chips)
2 tbsp unsweetened cocoa powder

FOR THE EGG WHITES

poppin them in the oven


6 medium egg whites
6 1/2 tbsp caster sugar

Directions:

1. heat oven to 375 degrees
2. Take four 1 cup souffle dishes and brush them with softened butter. tip a little cocoa powder into each dish, roll the dish around tilting it as you do so it is evenly lined all around.
3. For the creme patisserie, mix the flour, sugar, and corn starch into a small bowl. Put egg yolk and whole egg into a medium sized bowl, beat lightly, then beat in half the flour mixture to give a smooth paste. Tip in the rest of the flour mixture and the cocoa powder and mix well.
4. To make the ganache, pour the milk and cream into a pan and bring just to the boil. Remove from the heat. Ass the chocolate and beat until it is melted and smooth with no lumps.
5. Gradually stir hot chocolate ganache into the paste from step 3. This is your creme patisserie.
6. Whisk the egg whites to soft peaks with an electric whisk. Sprinkle in the sugar as you are mixing. Keep whisking to give stiff, firm peaks to give volume to souffles.

Out and sunken already :-(

7. Stir about 2 tbsp of the beaten egg whites in the creme patisserie. Carefully fold in a third of the rest, cutting through the mixture. Fold in another third (take care not to lose the volume), then fold in the rest.
8. Spoon the mixture in to the dishes and makes sure the surface is flat and even. Wipe away any excess around the dish, as it will burn while cooking.
9. It suggests to bake the souffles for 15-17 minutes but i am suggesting to bake a little less like 13 minutes. that way it will be a little softer in the middle and will be more like a molten cake. so when they are done they should be set on the top, jiggle a little, and rise about 2/3rds.

Well there you have it! That is the recipe I followed along with my picture documentary. I bet with a little more attention and a little less wine and not hosting a dinner party,  it would have been DELICIOUS!

....never thought I would make DOUGHNUTS!

Truly I never thought I would ever make anything fried, let alone eat it, but what a treat these pumpkin doughnuts were. I have a major sweet tooth but not for doughnuts, so when the challenge was posted on the daring bakers website I thought, "I will probably never do this again but lets see what happens."

The first thing that everyone asked me when I told them I had to make doughnuts was, Can you bake them? the answer is YES but I decided that i would fry them because that was the real challenge here, not the actual making of the doughnuts.

We had a few options of what we could make, 1. Yeast Doughnuts or Raised. 2. Cake doughnuts or Old Fashioned. 3. bomboloni or Jam filled Doughnuts. 4. Pumpkin Doughnuts.... Ding ding ding and the winner was Pumpkin doughnuts. Tis the season right?

I knew I was going to be sending my doughnuts away with my roommate to take to her work at Seattle Children's Corporate so i wanted them to be really good but mostly i just wanted to get rid of them. I mean really? what would i do with 24 doughnuts and 24 doughnut holes? having a roommate who works at a large office has given me more inspiration than ever to bake.

Thankfully I got rave reviews from everyone and would love to make these delicious treats again on a cold day.

Recipe; credit of Daring Bakers:

I made a few changes because i was too lazy to run to the store. please see below for changes...

PUMPKIN DOUGHNUTS

Preparation time:

hands on prep time: 15 minutes

Chilling time: 3 hours

Cooking time: 10

Yield: About 24 doughnuts & 24 doughnut holes

Disclaimer : They tasted much better than they look in these pics.

Ingredients:

3 1/2 cups all purpose flour

4 teaspoons Baking Powder

1 teaspoon table salt

1 teaspoon cinnamon ground

1 teaspoon ginger ground **

1/2 teaspoon Baking soda

1/4 teaspoon nutmeg

1/8 teaspoon Cloves

1 cup white sugar

3 tablespoons butter

1 large egg

2 large egg yolks

1 teaspoon vanilla

1/2 cup plus 1 tablespoon Buttermilk **

1 cup pure canned pumpkin (not pumpkin pie mix)

Canola oil ( one regular sized bottle)

** these signify the changes i made. I am not a big spice person so I did not have ground ginger and ground cloves on hand so i just winged it with other yummy festive sounding spices that i had in my spice rack. GO a head and see what you can find in your spice rack and get creative. The second thing I changed was the buttermilk. I directly exchanged it for sour cream. I had sour cream but not buttermilk but later found it in the back of my fridge. I knew that sour cream was some what like buttermilk so I researched it and found that it can be exchanged for the exact measurement.. perfect for the lazy me!

Directions:

1. Whisk together first 8 ingredients in medium bowl to blend. Using electric mixer, beat sugar and butter in large bowl until blended. Beat in egg, then yolks and vanilla. Gradually beat in buttermilk and pumpkin. Using rubber spatula, fold in dry ingredients in 4 additions. fully combine and cover with plastic and chill for 3 hours.

2. Sprinkle a dry surface with flour and roll out 1/3 of the dough to about a 1/2 inch thickness.

3. using a standard size cup, press out doughnut rounds and using a tall and thin shot glass, press out the doughnut hole. BE creative and decide what you can use in your kitchen. You can buy cutters but seriously, what would be the point?

4. lay out paper towels for the doughnuts after they have been fried to drain off the oil.

5. Pour oil in a dutch oven and heat to 365 degrees. make sure it stays around this temperature and by keeping the oil a little hotter at first helps because the cold dough will decrease the temp. Fry the doughnuts and doughnut holes until they  are golden brown, about 2 minutes a side.

6. Once cooled make the glaze

7. Glaze:

2 Cups Powdered Sugar

4 Tablespoons of Whipping Cream

Add cooled Doughnuts to the bowl and coat.

THERE YOU HAVE IT! Delicious pumpkin doughnuts! yummy yummy

Beets- Love them or hate them... here are two salad recipies to try!

Before I give my recipes, and before those that hate beets graze over this post, I want to share some of the nutritional attributes to beets and why we should all be eating them.

1. It has the amazing power of cleansing blood and ridding the body of unwanted ailments
2. low in fat and calories and but rich in FIBER (yes women love that) and other vitamins and minerals
3. Contains significant amounts of vitamin-C.

the relationship between beets and I began when I was a young girl. My mom used to, and still does, eat pickled beets out of a can. ICK... that sounded terrible and made me never want to eat a beet or even try one EVER! I am sure many of you can agree that beets don't seem very appetizing that is why I want to open your eyes and get you tasting new yummy things like these two wonderful salads I have to share.

This first recipe I acquired in a cooking class I did while I was in college with my boyfriend at the time. The class was called "Couples in the Kitchen" so all the recipes were directed so that both you and your significant can play a role in the kitchen; we had a great time. Some of my most favorite recipes that i have used over and over to WOW my friends have come from this class.

Chickpea with Roasted Beets, Garlic, and Herbs
(not a very creative recipe name but that is basically what it is)

• 4-5 medium sized beets, trimmed of their tops
• 2 cups cooked chickpeas ( I just put in a can 14.5 oz can drained and rinsed. Original recipe was made with home cooked chickpeas, but that's for a different blog)
• 2 heads of garlic
• Juice and zest of two lemons
• 1-2 large shallot bulbs, julienned
• 4 ounces feta (or more if you like ;-)
• 1/3 cup sherry vinegar
• 2/3 cup olive oil
• A bunch of flat leaf parsley
• salt and pepper
• Olive oil for beets

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. In baking sheet place a sheet of foil down, enough so that you can make a "pouch" for the beets and the garlic. Place the trimmed beets cut side down. Brush with olive oil and sprinkle with salt and pepper. Trim the the top 1/4 inch off of the whole garlic clove and brush with oil. Cover tightly and bake until garlic is blond and soft; poke beets with a skewer or knife to make sure they're cooked all the way through. You may need to remove the garlic first.
While the garlic and beets are roasting, take the thinly julienned shallot and place in a small bowl. Heat the sherry vinegar in the microwave or in a small sauce pan until steaming hot. Pour over the sliced shallot. This reduces the strength of the shallot while maintaining a little crunch. In another bowl, most likely the bowl you will be serving the salad in, add the lemon juice and zest and the chickpeas and stir gently. When the beets and the garlic are done and cooled, carefully peel the beets and dice in to medium sized pieces. Add to them chickpea mixture and squeeze the garlic out of the whole clove over it. Stir gently and drizzle with the olive oil. (You don't have to add as much oil if you like your dressings more vinegary). Toss in the minced parsley and feta cheese. Add sherry vinegar and shallot mixture and serve promptly.
***if you aren't serving this salad same day you can make the garlic and beets ahead of time and combine everything quickly the day of****

This next recipe is one i stumbled on just recently. I went to one of my good friends going away parties and it was a true feast. we had a spread of smoked pork and mango salsa, quinoa, curried cauliflower, Hawaiian rolls, corn on the cob and much more... I rolled out of the party because I was so full. My favorite thing on the table beside the mango salsa was the salad someone had made. I had to ask her what was in the salad because I wanted to recreate it. NOTE: this would be a great salad for a valentines dinner because of the vibrate red color it gives. Also I do not have specified amounts of ingredients

CAB Fresh Greens Salad
(I made up this name but named it CAB for chickpea, avocado and beet salad but I also named it this because it would be paired well with a nice Cabernet Sauvingon)

• 5 oz. of fresh greens (baby romiane, or mixed greens, NO romaine) depending on how many people you are serving it could be more greens or less.
• 3- 4 carrots peeled and shredded (i just used my cheese grater)
• 2 raw beets peeled and shredded
• 1/2 can- whole can of chickpeas (drained and rinsed)
• 2 avocados
• olive oil
• balsamic vinegar
• salt and pepper
• green or red onion (optional)

This is a much simpler recipe than the one above but just as good. Basically there are no directions to this recipe so just throw it all together and serve! Definitely my favorite salad right now.

Daring Cooks September 2010 Challenge- Food Preservation

For the first challenge I completed for the Daring cooks was posted by John from Eat4fun.

His whole challenge was obviously about food preservation. We had the option of canning or roasting... I chose roasting!

I was excited for this challenge because I thought it was coming at the perfect time of year for me because usually at this time of year my garden is bursting with tomatoes I can't pick them fast enough. Well, unfortunately this year, as the whole country was having a heat wave, the pacific northwest wasn't having a summer. If you blinked you missed it. We have tons of green tomoates still on the vines but the temperatures here never got high enough to get the amount of tomatoes I've picked in previous years.

Sad as it was that I couldn't get the tomatoes fresh from the vine from my own backyard, it was also an excuse for me to go to the sunday farmers market... one of my favorite things to do!

I picked some very bright red fresh roma tomatoes to roast. Here is the recipie:

Oven Roasted Tomatoes (for Freezing):

1 lb (10-12) Tomatoes- Cut in half and cored.

3 Leaves Fresh Basil Juliened

2 Cloves Garlic Chopped

1 Tlb Olive Oil

Salt and Pepper

1. Coring a tomato




2. Spread on a baking sheet and bake in 325 degree oven for about an hour or until they are slightly browned.




3. The finished tomatoes can be stored as-cut, chopped or pureed to make a sauce or tomato paste.

What did I get myself into?

SO I took the plunge and joined my first "online club" and also started my first blog! I am totally amateur at this so hopefully over time this will all get better.

I am so passionate about baking and cooking. On a daily basis I hear from friends, family and others that have tasted my goodies, that I should start my own bakery. I always say that if i ever when the lottery I will travel the world, collect recipes, and then return to Seattle, WA to start my own bakery. Everyone always says follow your dreams but my dreams equate to a lot of money going into a start up company. One day it will happen....

To give you an idea of myself, I am very passionate about exercise and health and along with that comes food. I try to find balance with exercise and food and that is my key to staying in shape. I truly eat everything from healthy foods to the worst fried goodness for you. I don't eat any fast food or processed foods. My philosophy is that if it starts with a "whole" food then it is a good food. By that I mean, if you have fresh vegetables and fresh organic chicken you can make Chinese food and it is still healthy. Since I am making it with my own hands and love I know what is going in the food and what my body is going to receive out of it! Blah, blah, blah... i could go on forever, Anyway.......

I love to try new recipes and will do my best to post those that are amazing and worthy of sharing. Please post an suggestions or recipes you would like me to try, that's what this is all about right?

Have fun and keep that stove busy.