Tips to Help You Beat It Better

Eggs are one of God's most perfect creations, don't ever forget that. What else is going to bind our batters, make fluffy meringue pies, and then give us guilt-free pavlovas, nostalgic divinity candy, everyone screams for ice cream and perfectly scrumptious omlettes? That is only an off-the-top of my head list and that is a lot.

I found egg whites to be quite a challenge as we started trying out souffle recipes. My attempts at beating egg whites were pathetic, no volume, crumbly, flat. Through much Internet research, tooth gnashing, and trial and error, I learned a few things about the craft of beating egg whites into submission. Before you go beating yourself up (oh wow, I'm so punny), may I offer these suggestions:

• Separate your eggs when they are chilled, fresh out of the fridge.



• Crack your eggs on a flat surface, not the edge of a bowl. Much less chance of shell pieces ending up in your dish.



• Once they are separated, let the whites reach room temperature before allowing the beating to commence.



• If you are separating a bunch of eggs at once, crack them all into one bowl and then lift the yolks out one at a time with your fingers. Works only with well-chilled eggs and see below about the danger of getting yolk mixed in your whites.



• When separating, make sure you get absolutely, positively NO egg yolk in your whites at ALL. Seriously, it will jack with your meringue and you won't get good volume.



• Add a smidge of cream of tartar, lemon juice, or vinegar just as the egg whites are starting to get frothy. The acidity helps stabilize them, allowing them to get tall and fluffy.



• Start your beating speed at slow-medium and don't increase your speed until you get to foamy. If you rush it in the beginning, bad things will happen. The stages to watch for are: liquid, foamy/frothy, soft peaks, hard peaks.



• If you are making a dessert souffle, add your sugar at the beginning of the soft peak stage, slowly pouring it in into the side of the bowl.



• Don't overbeat. Once you have reached hard peaks, turn the damn mixer off. It is only going to go downhill from here.



• Resist the urge to lick the spatula. Those egg whites look so angelic, but they are still raw and you don't to get mad chicken disease.



• Don't leave your egg whites idling, try to plan your baking so you make use of them right after beating so they don't deflate.



• Find a use for all your newly-divorced egg yolks: flan, ice cream, or feed them to your dogs (see below); it gives them a nice glossy coat.

I had a helper during my photo shoot. I think she was lurking, waiting for the yolks. Get out of the shot knucklehead!

moar funny pictures

The Cupcake Calamity And The Peanut Butter Bars

I set out to make a batch of cupcakes for a bake sale. This is a simple enough endeavor and I felt well-equipped to handle it, what with my vast baking expertise. I decided on a recipe in the Cake Mix Doctor book, which involves just adding a 3 oz. box of jello and an extra egg to a cake mix. In the book, she bakes in a bundt cake pan but I figured making it into cupcakes wouldn't make too much of a difference. (Is there a way to cue foreshadowing music on a blog? Here would be a good spot.) I wanted to make lime cupcakes with a yummy cream cheese frosting and had planned on doing cute little marshmallow flowers. Oh such lofty aspirations!


I only filled my cups 2/3 full, like a good girl and everything seemed great. But something went terribly wrong when they were baking. They ballooned up to monster proportions and when I peeked in the oven they looked like giant snot bubbles (lime jello). Gadz! This was quickly turning into a bad 6-grade science fair exhibit. In an effort to try to get them to bake all the way through, I left them in the oven 3 minutes longer, then 5 more minutes, and before I knew it, the tops got crispy. Now I was really screwed.


I had a brief moment where I thought to myself 'am I dreaming?' because nothing bad ever happens to me. No really, don't laugh. I don't get in car accidents or throw my back out or have mean people say mean things to me. I usually pick the right checkout lane at the grocery store and have nice waiters bring me soup with no flies. For the most part, things go amazingly great in my life so at times like this, I have to get my bearings for a second. Like, wait, the cupcakes are burnt? What do I do again when something goes wrong? I forgot, I need a manual for times like this.


As I surveyed the damage I tried to calculate if I could salvage what I had - not enough good ones, I'd have to do something else for that bleeping bake sale. I am not a wasteful girl, however, and was not about to trash 24 perfectly edible cupcakes. So voila, I am going to make key lime trifle, I've blogged about it so now I suppose I must. I peeled all the lovely intact cupcake bottoms out of their foils and scrapped the tops. The color is an amazing edamame green.

But now I still had to find a plan B. So what did I do? What any self-respecting mom with a whimpering baby hanging off her ankle would do, I went to the pantry and got out a bag of cookie mix! So plan B was born:


Peanut Butter Chocolate Bars

Betty Crocker peanut butter cookie mix
3 Tbsp. oil
1 Tbsp. water
1 egg
2 cups semi-sweet chocolate chips

Heat oven to 350, spray a 13 x 9 pan with Pam, mix the mix, oil, water, and egg and press into the pan. Bake for 12 to 15 minutes, let cool for 5. Microwave the chocolate chips for a minute or so until melty, and slather on the baked cookie with a spatula. Chill for 30 minutes and then slice into bars. So easy and tasted great.





See? Really, nothing bad does ever happen to me.

Ahi, Take Two

(Handy food photography tip: You say your food photo looks weird? All is not lost - simply go with a sepia tone that screams 'rare vintage photo' and no one will be the wiser. No really, doesn't this look like 1910 tuna tartare? Fooled you.)

You might remember a few days I posted about some yummy grilled ahi we made. The next day we made a fantabulous tuna tartare, loosely based on this recipe:
http://www.foodnetwork.com/food/recipes/recipe/0,1977,FOOD_9936_32773,00.html

We didn't have any currants so we used raisins instead, it tasted great. Hubby also added some cashews, which lent added a great texture and taste to the dish, as they got along nicely with coconut. No avocado mousse this time, but we've made it in the past and loved it.



We used the infamous La Brea Bakery bread toasted bread and also brought out some delicious butter lettuce to make some lettuce wraps too.



For the drinkin' part, we decided some Midori Coladas were in order. They turned out hella good, one of those dangerous drinks where you don't realize how potent they are because they taste so sugary. They are also a gorgeous color of Mountain Dew green. We mixed:

1 part coconut rum
2 parts Midori
2 parts Pina Colada mix
1 cup of pineapple sorbet I had in the freezer. You could use pineapple juice.
1 cup of ice cubes

Toss it all in the blender and mix.

Little Captain Oatmeal Rum Raisin Cookies

I love baking cookies but some nights I get tired just thinking about dragging out a laundry list of ingredients to make them. So I always keep a stash of bagged cookies in the pantry. These cookies are fast and easy, just like me.

Little Captain Oatmeal Rum Raisin Cookies

1 bag Betty Crocker oatmeal cookie mix

3/4 cup raisins

4 Tbsp. Captain Morgan's Original Spiced Rum, divided

1 stick unsalted butter

1 egg

optional: 1/4 tsp. cinnamon, 1/4 nutmeg

Heat oven to 375. Let the butter soften to room temperature. Combine raisins and 3 Tbsp. rum in a bowl, microwave until warm, cover and let sit for 30 minutes or so. Your butter is thawing out anyway so do this now, pour yourself some rum and relax. Everyone is happier with a little Captain in 'em.

Stir the softened butter, remaining 1 Tbsp. rum and egg in a medium bowl. Stir in cookie dough mix and spices. The dough will be stiff; just add more rum if it is making you nervous (good opportunity to steal another swig). Stir in the raisin/rum mixture. You will probably want to mush the dough together by hand right now as it is the consistency of Play-Doh. Refrain from eating - raw egg, remember.

Drop the dough by rounded teaspoonfuls 2 inches apart on ungreased cookie sheet and bake for about 10 minutes. Let them cool for a minute on the pan before moving them to a wire rack. Store in an airtight container.

These taste moist and chewy, even the next day. Not bad for cookie mix.

Ahi, Take One

We picked up some gorgeous-looking ahi at Costco the other day. I know what you are thinking, but the Costco here has some great fish! It wasn't a Kramer-sized portion, but we did get enough to split into 2 meals. Since the weather is so beautiful we wanted to grill, so for the first meal we did a grilled ahi with honey glaze, in addition to some lovely grilled peppers, onions, mushrooms, and asparagus. We also got some of that great La Brea Bakery bread again, yum. Does that picture give away my love of onions or what? You can't even see the tuna steak.

We used this recipe, sans the cilantro: http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Grilled-Lime-Cilantro-Ahi-with-Honey-Glaze/Detail.aspx

At the last minute, we decided that this meal was in desperate need of some margaritas so I whipped some up using bottled margarita mix. Um .... not so tasty. Not bad enough to throw out, I'm not about to waste good tequila, but I now have a new mission: finding a great margarita recipe. Drop me a line if you have one you like.

Beer-Battered Tilapia

Rummaging through the freezer I found that I had 3 tilapia filets packed away in there. I said to myself "Hot damn, let's crack open a beer and make dinner!"

We let the tilapia filets soak in some lemon juice, parsley, salt and pepper while we whipped up the batter:

5 Tbsp. flour
1/4 tsp. ground cumin
1/4 tsp. salt
dash cayenne
1/2 cup beer
1 egg yolk

While a few tablespoons of olive oil was heating in the pan, we dredged the tilapia in the batter, then fried them for 2 to 4 minutes on each side. We used Newcastle Pale Ale and it added a great taste to the fish. Next time we might add a little bit of panko bread crumbs to the batter to add a bit more crunch.

We served this up with some edamame, salad, and crunchy take-n-bake. Light and delicious.

Don't you love my ghetto-fabulous food photography?

Maple-Glazed Salmon Sammies

Every time we go to Costco I always run over to the bakery section, hoping I can grab the last bag of LaBrea Bakery bread before they sell out. LaBrea makes these great ciabatta sandwich rolls that are killer.

For this sandwich we used our standard maple-syrup glaze, which is just a great, easy way to make salmon and invariably it ends up being our default salmon glaze. We usually do a variation on this general theme, sometimes adding different spices into the mix:

1/4 cup maple syrup
2 tablespoons soy sauce
1 clove garlic, minced
1/4 teaspoon garlic salt
1/8 teaspoon ground black pepper
1 pound salmon

Let the salmon marinade in this mixture for about 30 minutes before frying, then fry about 3 to 4 minutes on each side.

It will be really hard to not start noshing on the rolls while you are preparing your sandwiches, I suggest having a sacrificial roll right there set aside just for nibbling. Once your salmon is cooked, just load up your roll with whatever toppings you like. Here we used sauteed mushrooms, lettuce, and grated Parmesan.

Retro Lemon-Filled White Cake

I have mentioned before that I love old cookbooks and this is one of my faves. The pictures in this book are so kitschy and cute, I love it. It is Betty Crocker's Cake and Frosting Mix Cookbook, published in 1966. I picture these moms puffing on a ciggy and knocking back a 'cordial' while they do their baking.

That chocolate cake on the front says "Tex" with a little lasso coming up and encircling a "5." And his candles are a little campfire! So today I am writing about a recipe in here called Lemon-Filled Coconut Cake. But all the girls in my house hate coconut so I'm going to omit that part. The cake on the right side of the cover is actually the cake I am making. That yellow on the frosting is tinted yellow coconut flakes. As you can see, my cake will look really different but it ended up being delicious nonetheless.

On my initial attempt at the lemon filling, I used Splenda instead of sugar. This is what happens when you combine Splenda and cornstarch and water. Yummy cornstarch balls! Had to scrap it and try again with real sugar. I guess some things just work better with real sugar.

The final lemon filling was so tart and delicious it was worth having to make it twice. Of course I added some booze because everything is better with a little alcohol. Next time I might add a dash of yellow food coloring too because it looked very anemic and how retro is that? Not very. I think Technicolor YELLOW will look better next time.

Lemon Filling:

3/4 cup sugar (I used the real deal, see Splenda debacle above)

3 Tbsp. cornstarch

1/4 tsp. salt

1/2 cup water (originally 3/4 cup but I replaced the last 1/4 with triple sec below)

1 tsp. grated lemon peel

1 Tbsp. butter

1/3 cup lemon juice

1/4 cup triple sec

The book recommends just using a standard white cake, the lemon filling above, and then using a boxed frosting (boxed, not in a can, this book is OLD) and tinting some coconut with yellow food coloring and sprinkling it on top. I opted to go with just some whipped cream frosting like so:

1 cup whipping cream

1 Tbsp. Splenda

1 tsp. lemon extract

and it tasted great. I just whipped the above in the Kitchenaid until it looked like frosting and topped the cake with a few lemon drops.

Chocolate-Themed Mother's Day

My mom loves chocolate. Not in the normal way like, "Yeah, I'd love a box of chocolate, thanks." More like in the way Amy Winehouse loves smack, like if chocolate was illegal my mom would be a criminal. So for Mother's Day it only seemed appropriate to cook her a chocolate-themed meal.

We started with chocolate dry rubbed steak. We'll add the brown sugar next time, it was really espresso-y and not very sweet. Our sides were some nice salad and veggies, along with take-n-bake. I can't live without my take-n-bake, one of the best inventions ever. It is unbaked bread, already in la oaf shape, and you just pop it in the oven and bake it for 15 minutes. Bingo, fresh bread!

Then for dessert we used the Kitchenaid to make triple-chocolate ice cream and our ever-improving chocolate souffle. The triple-chocolate in the ice cream is : unsweetened, semisweet, and milk chocolate, hence the name. The recipe is a convoluted process and rather time consuming. We didn't chill it for the 8 hours recommended and even with only an hour of chill time, the ice cream got frozen amazingly fast. You know it is done when the Kitchenaid starts sounding like it is having a seizure. Yay, ice cream is done.

We have been working on our chocolate souffle for weeks now and this one was pretty damn good. The secret is in the 'fold.' We have been using this recipe; the instructions are awesome. And yes, you really need that much chocolate, trust me it is worth it.

The combination of the cold ice cream dabbed on the hot souffle was fabulous and so filling we couldn't even find room for dinner, hours later. Not to mention the mom points I got from going with a chocolate theme, bonus!

Balls of Pancake

I have a vintage cookbook obsession. I can't stop buying them. Never mind the fact that most of them have confusing ingredients. What exactly is a size No. 2 can of tomatoes?

Flipping through this cookbook from 1966, a picture of beautiful, perfectly-round pancake balls caught my eye. Whah? I must make some.

Aebleskivers are made in a special pan (ironically enough, an aebleskiver pan, also called a monk pan). The pan has little hollows in it and you pour batter into them to make pancake balls. Tell me honestly what is more fun sounding than pancake balls? Problem was, I didn't own an aebleskiver pan. Happily, one quick trip to William-Sonoma and that problem was solved. We picked up this one from Nordicware. It isn't a bad-ass cast iron pan but it'll do for now. That morning I ended up making a Finnish pancake. See that thing on the cover? That is what a Finnish pancake looks like.

The next morning when we decided to get cracking on aebleskivers, we were so starving that we opted to just use some Krusteaz pancake and waffle mix. Next time we'll use the recipe in the Sunset book, the mix was a tad bland.

One of the cool things about aebleskiver, beside the fact that they are pancake BALLS! is that you can leave them hollow or stuff them with yummy fillings. We did a few with Granny Smith apples with cinnamon and sugar, a few with chocolate chips, and left a few hollow. After they were all cooked, it was like aebleskiver roulette wondering what kinds we had on our plate.

Dusted with a little powdered sugar and tada!, adorable breakfast coming right up. I can't believe I forgot to take any pictures of them. I guess I really was starving. And I only did a Swedish Chef impersonation for half the prep time, so I want props for that.

Pineapple Sorbet

More Kitchenaid mixer fun. We made this refreshing pineapple sorbet using the recipe from the Kitchenaid manual, with just some minor tweaks. You pour it in and worry if maybe you should have doubled the recipe ...

but then it gets huge:

• 1 cup cold water


• 1 cup Splenda (instead of sugar)


• 1/4 cup corn syrup (cause it has enough sugar already, see?)


• 1/8 tsp salt


• 5 1/2 c chilled fresh pineapple chunks (about 1 pineapple), divided


• 1 Tbsp. lemon juice


• 1/4 cup vanilla vodka (Splenda doesn't have the softening abilities of sugar so I thought we'd add some insurance. You don't want a solid rock of sorbet. Alcohol works just as well.)

Turned out crazy good. The Kitchenaid manual says it is 80 calories per 1/2 cup serving, but this is even less because we took out the cup of sugar.

Post Cinco Fish Tacos

So I managed to drag myself to the store the day after Cinco so we could make something with the leftover beans and rice. I also had to remedy the fact that we had NO tequila in our house. How could that even be possible? For shame. I picked up a bottle of Cuervo Clasico, which looked interesting. Apparently I have good taste; come to find out it has all of this going for it:

"Clear. Bright citrus peel, pungent fresh herb, and sweet spice aromas are intriguing. A silky entry lead to a dry oily medium-to full-bodied palate with tangy lemon peels, smoky herbs, and vibrantly peppery herb flavors. Finishes with a long, light sweet and medicinally herbaceous fade of metallic minerals,candied citrus peels and white pepper. Curious."

That was courtesy of tastings.com. I will be bookmarking that site for future reference, when I need to sound like I know what I'm talking about. I do love a good herbaceous fade ....

Anyway, back to de tacos. We got out some tilapia filets, soaked them in lemon juice for a bit and then fried them, seasoned them with salt and pepper and drizzled them with some tequila. We served the tacos with the leftover Mexican Flag beans and rice, green onions, corn, and red leaf lettuce, all wrapped up in corn tortillas. I want to make fresh tortillas someday, I think that would taste out of this world.

Mexican Flag Drunken Shrimp with Beans and Rice

In honor of Cinco de Mayo, we made shrimp soaked in Midori. We didn't have any tequila (oh hush) and Midori gave us the green for our flag. See? We meant to do that.

We sauteed the shrimp with some onions and garlic for a few minutes, then added the Midori and some lime juice. The onions turned green but that was intentionalish, remember? The sweetness of the Midori and onions combined with the POW of the chipotles was awesome.

All this goodness went onto a black beans and rice salad:

• 2 cups cooked rice
• a few chipotle peppers
• 1/2 cup diced tomatoes
• 1/2 cup salsa
• 2 cans of black beans, drained
• spices (onion flakes, cumin, oregano, thyme, garlic powder, cayenne powder, salt, pepper)

So we had red (chipotle and tomatoes), white (rice) and green (onions) for our flag. Now all that was lacking was tequila so we had to make do with beer. I know, the sacrifices we have to make.

Hope you all had a great Cinco, the parts you can remember anyway ...

If Lava Flow Was A Dessert

So we were just playing around with the KitchenAid mixer tonight and made the best concoction ever. We had planned on making one of the recipes that came with the ice cream attachment. There are only, like, 3 or 4 in the book though and they all require you to chill the batter for EIGHT HOURS. Hello, I want to eat ice cream tonight, not in 100 years. So off to the blessed Internet I went and found a recipe on the KitchenAid forums that a) had NO chill waiting period and b) had only 4 ingredients, all of which we had. That is what we like to call a slam dunk, people. Oh and did I mention it has booze? Triple threat!

Rum-Coconut Ice Cream:

2 cups half and half

1 - 14oz can of unsweetened coconut milk

3/4 cup Splenda

2 TBSP dark rum

In a heavy saucepan, bring the half and half to a boil, stirring occasionally. Remove from the heat and let cool. Stir in the coconut milk, sweetener and rum. Place the mixture in the ice cream attachment and process for approximately 30 minutes. Serve immediately for soft serve or freeze for a few hours if you like your ice cream harder.

This came out so deliciously wonderful I had to control myself and not actually stick my head right into the bowl to get every last bit. I was worried the Splenda would have bad repercussions but it tasted fantabulous. And yes, I do realize that using Splenda in a recipe that also involves coconut milk and half-and-half is downright laughable. But I did it, and I liked it, and I'll probably do it again.

Ginger Mahi Mahi and Nantucket Lemonade

After stuffing ourselves to capacity at Souplantation for lunch, we definitely wanted to make something light for dinner. We started with this recipe for Ginger-Glazed Mahi Mahi, with rice and edamame. And lets be honest, nothing is better than having some nice mixed drinks with your honey on the weekends right? So I went out and found this cool-sounding lemonade with a little kick. The ginger glaze was wonderful and complimented the mahi mahi perfectly. Then the rice soaked up some of the glaze; it was all good. The lemonade was refreshing, but due to my recent obsession with Lava Flows, I felt it lacking. I drank it of course, I'm not gonna waste good booze! Pete and I agreed that next time we should pick something a little more tart to drink with this meal though, as the glaze was so sugary.