Chocolate Buttermilk Cake With White Chocolate Frosting

Okay that was a mouthful. I made this cake for Father's Day so I frosted it to look like grass driveway pavers:

The cake and frosting recipes are from the Cake Mix Doctor book, by Anne Byrn. Just a little frosting magic can even fix a broke-ass looking cake like this:

After smushing the 2 cakes together with frosting Bondo, I lined my plate with wax paper to catch any frosting mishaps. This frosting tastes cream cheesy and super delicious. It is easy to spread and doesn't get beaded up, run, or get too dried out. I'm loving it.

After I frosted, I let it set up in the fridge, then took it out and ran a pastry spatula dipped in hot water over the surface to get it mostly smooth. Not fondant smooth, but smooth enough for some decorations.

Here comes the fun part, sprinkles! Gee, now where did those sprinkles get off to, I just had them here a minute ago. Wait, why is the baby being so quiet ...

Once I nabbed the sprinkle thief, it was time to sprinklefy this bad boy. The contraption I'm using for the sprinkles is a pie crust cutter. You are supposed to use it to make 'faux' lattice pie crusts but I always end up using it in some other fashion, as a sprinkle stencil for example.

I was pretty happy the way they turned out:



And there you have it!



Cake:

• 18.25 oz Devil's Food cake mix
• 2 Tbsp. unsweetened cocoa powder
• 1 Tbsp. ground espresso coffee, run through food processor to powder
• 1 1/3 c buttermilk
• 1/2 c vegetable oil
• 3 large eggs
• 1 tsp. vanilla extract

Combine all ingredients, mix on low for 1 minute, scrape down the sides, mix on medium for 2 minutes more. Pour into two greased and floured (I used cocoa powder) 9-inch pans and bake at 350 for 28 to 30 minutes, cool on wire rack for 10 minutes, then invert onto a rack and cool completely before frosting.

Frosting:

• 6 ounces white chocolate, melted (in microwave at 50% power, 30 second intervals)
• 8 oz cream cheese, room temperature
• 1/2 stick butter, room temperature
• 1 tsp. vanilla extract
• 2 1/2 c confectioners sugar, sifted

Beat cream cheese and butter in mixer 30 seconds, add melted chocolate and mix 30 seconds more. Add vanilla and sugar and blend 30 seconds more more. Increase speed to medium and beat until fluffy, about 1 minute more.

Cornbread Waffles

Yet another great recipe from this vintage cookbook right here:



They were titled 'cornmeal waffles' in the book, but they end up tasting exactly like cornbread, only wafflier. I can't think about waffles without hearing this song in my head:

Hippie warning: this recipe is from the '60s and involves the use of wheat germ. Participate at your own risk.

This recipe also involves separating your eggs and beating the whites separately, then folding them in. They didn't do things the easy way back in the olden days! We didn't notice a huge increase in fluffiness, so this probably isn't 100% necessary and you could just combine the whole eggs and buttermilk if you wanted to save time.

2 eggs, separated
2 cups buttermilk
1 cup whole wheat or white flour
3/4 cup cornmeal
2 tsp. baking powder
1 tsp. baking soda
1/2 tsp. salt
2 Tbsp. sugar (I used Splenda)
1/4 cup wheat germ (see?!)
6 Tbsp. butter, melted and cooled

In a medium bowl, beat the egg yolks and buttermilk until blended. In another medium bowl, stir together flour, cornmeal, baking powder, baking soda, salt, sugar, and wheat germ (basically, just all the remaining dry ingredients). Gradually add flour mixture to yolk mixture, blending until smooth. Stir in butter.

In a small bowl, beat egg whites just until stiff, moist peaks form; fold into cornmeal batter just until blended. Bake waffles in a preheated waffle iron just like you regularly would. Makes 1 dozen 4-inch waffles (also known as 3 whole waffles).



Top waffles with butter and honey and you'll be in cornbread heaven.

Salsa, Pronounced Salsaaahhh

It's Rojo Caliente! (Possibly the worst song/video ever, just warning you, but it still makes me laugh every time she says rojo caleentay.)

Well the temperature is climbing and nothing tastes better on a hot day than some spicy salsa and a cold beer, or margarita, or raspberry daiquiri, or ... wait, what was I talking about? Oh, salsa! I love homemade salsa and find it hard to choke down anything called salsa that comes out of a jar. It shouldn't be allowed to be called salsa, so-solsa might be more fitting.

I also got to use more of my backyard cilantro which I'm so excited about. Yay for walking out your back door and bringing in food, makes me feel all pastoral.

For homemade salsa you just need a few key ingredients and don't worry so much about measuring. Like a good soup, it's more about just getting on with it and using what you have. Limes or lemons, red/white/yellow or green onions, any kinda pepper, etc. For today's salsa I used:

3 tomatillos
4 roma tomatoes (on the vine, so they were safe!)
1/4 of a red onion
2 hot peppers
1 heaping tsp. minced garlic
half a lemon's worth of lemon juice
3 to 4 Tbsp. cilantro leaves
salt to taste

Tomatillos are my secret salsa weapon. If you aren't familiar with them, they look like small green tomatoes and will have a papery wrapper. They give such a fresh, cool flavor to salsa.

Experiment with the kind of peppers you use for heat. We used Costco's cryptically-labeled 'mixed hot peppers' that were a mixture of red, yellow, and green peppers. You can go all Anaheim, jalopeno, serrano, etc.If you mess up and add too many hot peppers (we used THREE in this recipe, cough) you can always just use that batch as a salsa starter and add more tomatoes and tomatillos to it, to mellow it a bit. Speaking from experience here people.

We used our lovely Wolfgang Puck hand blender that has a little food processor attachment. You can use a blender or chop it by hand but a food processor makes ultra-quick work of it. Just a few pulses and you are ready to chow down.

Cherry-Almond Chocolate Frozen Yogurt

This frozen yogurt puts pinkberry to shame. I was searching for something to make with the KitchenAid ice cream maker, yet again, and was actually using the search term 'watermelon' because, as I've said before, I usually have quite a bit floating around. Through a great stroke of luck, I stumbled upon this recipe and stopped dead in my tracks. Cherries? Coconut milk? Yogurt? Done.

I immediately went to the kitchen and got busy getting the pits out of some cherries. The recipe calls for 3/4 cup but I like cherries so I was pushing a full cup when all was said and done.

Then, of course, the tweaking began. I cut the amount of sugar and substituted it with Splenda, adding chunks of dark chocolate, and I added a few tablespoons of kirsch, which is a cherry liquor (great addition to cherry clafouti, BTW). Everything tastes better with chocolate and booze added.



What kicks ass about this recipe is the LACK of ingredients and cooking. There aren't 50 different things to assemble, eggs to separate, or custard to cook and then wait an intolerable amount of time to cool. Just grab a few items, stir them together, and then freeze. I didn't even wait the prerequisite hour before putting the mix in the ice cream maker (shhhhh).

To make about a quart you'll need:

3 cups Greek-style yogurt (or strained yogurt*)
1/2 cup Splenda
1/4 cup sugar
1/2 teaspoon almond extract
3/4 cup cherries, pits removed and roughly chopped
1 cup unsweetened coconut milk
2 Tbsp. kirsch, cherry liquor
1 1/2 oz. dark chocolate, coarsely chopped

*No, not like strained family relations, strained like you take the liquid out. To make strained yogurt, you need to start with double the amount of yogurt required (2 cups whole-milk plain yogurt for every 1 cup of eventual strained yogurt). Lay a couple layers of cheese cloth in a strainer, add your yogurt, gather up the ends, fold them over and refrigerate at least 6 hours.

See why I went out of my way to just get the Greek yogurt. Six hours? Gah! I'd have died from the anticipation by then.I used Voskos' Greek yogurt so I wouldn't have to bother with straining it, just tossed 3 1-cup servings into the mix.

Mix together all ingredients except chocolate chunks. Stir until the sugar is completely dissolved. Refrigerate 20 minutes to 1 hour. Stir in chocolate chunks. Mix in ice-cream maker, following manufacturer's instructions. I used a KitchenAid ice cream maker attachment and it took about 20 minutes to freeze.

The resulting yogurt is so addictive, I've already made 2 batches this week. For research purposes and all, of course.

Pretzels From Scratch

Pete blurted out "lets make pretzels" this weekend. At first I thought it was some newfangled term for ... you know ... making pretzels (nudge, nudge) but no, he actually meant really making real pretzels, with ingredients, in the kitchen.

I don't know why I thought pretzels would be hard, but they weren't. Time-consuming and kitchen-destroying yes, but not technically difficult in any sense.

Things I've learned about making pretzels in the 2 days I've been a pretzel-maker:

• Don't think you can go right over to ehow and get a decent pretzel recipe. They don't know shit.


• Make sure your yeast is alive and willing to cooperate. I'll explain further below.Let your dough 'relax' (chill in the fridge) after it has risen. Get it? Chill? Relax? I couldn't make this stuff up.


• Don't stretch, pull, or slap your dough around like a $2 whore, treat it gently.


• Beer and pretzels are, like, soulmates.

Okay so on to the actual recipe. This is the one we ended up using (thanks ehow for sucking!) for take 2. Alton Brown is a never-ending font of knowledge so when I see his little fish avatar I know I'm in good hands. Just ignore the disturbing weiners in the photo.

Sprinkling the yeast on top and waiting for it to foam will save you trouble down the road. If you don't get bubbles, toss it and buy new yeast. Better to find this out now, rather than an hour later when you are staring at a flat pile of dough.

For the proofing part (setting it in a warm place), I stuck it in our Thermador. This stove is so complicated I didn't even know it HAD a proof setting, so check yours, you might be in luck. Basically it just warms the oven ever so slightly so your dough will rise. If you don't have this option, you can set it in a sunny windowsill or someplace old-fashioned like that. While you churn butter and get water from the well.

After an hour, it should have doubled in size. Now gently cut it with a knife or pizza cutter (don't tear) into 8 chunks and put them on an oiled parchment-sheeted pan, cover, and put in the fridge. Now is that chilling part I was talking about earlier. It isn't mentioned in the recipe but we recommend it. We skipped this step on our first attempt and the dough was so springy and unmanagable. Leave it in there about 30 minutes or so.

(I've read different recipes that suggest rolling out the dough into pretzel shape right after mixing it and then letting it rise. Haven't tried this option out yet, remember I've only had my certification 2 days, but thought I'd share. )

Then comes the rolling. Be gentle and roll forward only, with just your fingertips, on an oiled surface. When you are about to roll into unoiled territory, bring it back to the bottom and repeat. Focus most of your efforts on the center of the strip and it will stay more even. Once you get it about 2 feet long, fold it into a pretzel pattern. If you can, set up a videocamera because watching yourself later as you try to decipher exactly what goes into making a pretzel a pretzel is comedy gold! Also, don't attempt to do this stoned, I'm just guessing it wouldn't work as I could barely do it completely straight edge.

Here is one of our first attempts at shaping: deformed and hideous, but still delicious.

Now the pretzels go back onto the oiled sheet while they wait for their boiling bath. There are 2 methods of doing this, adding either baking soda or lye, to the water. In other words, the safe way and the accidentally-blinding-yourself way. We chose the former. Either one will help produce the Maillard reaction, which gives pretzels their lovely glossy carmelized appearance and taste. Keep the water at a low rolling boil and just dip the pretzels in 1 at a time, holding them down between 2 spatulas for 30 seconds.

Put them back on the baking sheet and slather on the egg wash, top with pretzel salt. We just used coarse kosher salt but I'm going to try to find chunkier salt next time. Now they are ready to be baked for 12 to 15 minutes.

Warning: Your house will become enveloped in the completely devastating aroma of pretzels. Anyone within sniffing distance of an open window will come a'knockin at your door so make sure you are decent, aka not 'making pretzels'. Apologize to your carb-conscious neighbors for this will be their undoing.

I plan to post more varieties once we finish these batches and thats no lye. Enjoy!

Bam! Cilantro Shrimp Salad

This recipe started got its origins from Emeril's New Orleans Cooking, (I have a signed copy, don't hate) which was published in '93... As in last century. Coolness factor? Through the roof once you see the photo of Emeril wearing Ray-Bans and talking on a giant cartoon-sized cell phone. Ahhh, remember when?



So in this book there is a recipe for Arugula with Cilantro Oil, Pepper Goat cheese, and Roasted Walnuts. Gee, it just rolls right off the tongue doesn't it? There are 3 separate actions you need to perform on 3 different ingredients before you get to eat, no wait, 4 separate actions, so this isn't a throw-together in 5 minutes salad. Don't you miss the '90s and how complicated things were? Makes 4 servings.

1/2 cup Cilantro Oil (see below)
1 cup roasted walnuts (below again)
10 ounces goat cheese
2 Tbsp. peppercorns, roasted and cracked (no really, see below again)
2 Tbsp. chopped fresh cilantro
8 cups arugula (I used mixed greens)
1/2 tsp. salt
12 turns black pepper
some shrimp (my contribution to the original recipe)

First you are going to make some Cilantro Oil. Why it is capitalized I don't know. The whole reason I got started on this wild goose-chase of a salad was because we had just planted some cilantro and it was getting leggy.

Cilantro Oil: Combine all of these ingredients in a blender and puree for about a minute. Lasts in the fridge up to a week. So delicious!

1/2 cup packed cilantro leaves
1 tsp. minced shallots
1 tsp. minced garlic
1/2 tsp. salt
3 turns black pepper
3/4 cup olive oil

Next you roast 1 cup of walnuts (or whatever nuts you like, I used pecans). Just spread them on a baking sheet and pop in the oven at 375 degrees for 5 to 6 minutes. TIP: You can roast a bigger batch of nuts and save some for laterz.

Next you should probably roast and crack your peppercorns. Put them in a dry skillet and shake almost constantly for about 4 to 5 minutes, until they crack and release their oil. Your house is going to smell all incensy from this, but I dug it.

Form the goat cheese into a log 2 inches thick. Combine your cracked pepper and chopped cilantro on a plate and roll the log in the mixture until completely covered. Wrap in plastic and place the log in the freezer until firm 10 to 15 minutes. Remove plastic and slice into 12 rounds. Note: It took longer than 15 minutes for mine to firm up so we just ate it crumbled. No such thing as a bad cheese log.



In a large bowl, toss the arugula with the Cilantro Oil. Season with salt and pepper and toss again.

I wanted a little protein with this salad so I decided to thaw out some precooked shrimp and add it. We seasoned it with just a mixture of cayenne, crushed red pepper, salt, paprika, and garlic powder. I just tossed in a little of each, no measuring, and then gave it a quick turn in the skillet to heat it up.

Toss it all together and bam! you're done. Listen to some Nirvana while you are eating it, to get the full '90s effect.

Chocolate Souffle Exposed

It's Saturday so I thought it would be the perfect time to talk about chocolate. We have been trial and erroring (okay, mostly erroring) our chocolate souffle but it is finally approaching wonderfulness. I briefly touched on my adventures with chocolate souffle in this post but was in such a chocolate coma at the time I wrote that, I couldn't really elaborate much.

Our first few souffle attempts were mixed. The very first one was pretty good, but that was just a cruel joke, setting us up for disappointment when the second one sucked royally. After some tearful online research and armed with a new-found understanding of the importance of egg whites, we plugged in the KitchenAid and decided to persevere. Turns out badly beaten egg whites will slice the tires on your souffle. Here are some helpful egg white tips, just a few things I learned along the way.

First batch of chocolate seized. Damn, what a waste of a snooty 85% dark chocolate bar. My husband gave me a look that said 'you are officially crazy, lady' when I insisted he scrape the seized chocolate into a Tupperware and I would find a way to use it later. Doesn't he know you can't just THROW AWAY even remotely-edible chocolate?! I mean, I could remelt it and use it for a face mask or something, right? Second batch of chocolate went much better. We ended up scrapping the double boiler technique and microwaving it instead. This is my favorite way of melting chocolate; call me white trash but its wut wurx fer me. Just put your chocolate in a microwave-safe bowl, lower the microwave power setting to 50% and watch like a hawk. Take it out and stir it about every 30 seconds until it is fully melted.

Then came the folding. Folding is something I never quite understood before but the correct way is:

take your plastic spatula and gently dollop some egg whites onto the chocolate mixture. Slice down through both at the back of the bowl, across diagonally to the front, lift up and over and give the bowl a quarter-turn. Repeat, gently adding more dollops and flipping back to front.

This worked out VERY well, much better than my original 'slap ingredients together, smash haphazardly, add more, mush together more' technique. Good thing I didn't try and patent it, cause it sucked.

One of the great things about this souffle recipe is that after all that work, once they go into the oven it is only FIFTEEN MINUTES before you get to the finish line. Not like a cake or a pie where you are looking at hours and hours until you can enjoy your masterpiece.

Once these were done, they looked gigantic and tasted amazing. The top tasted different than any of my previous attempts; the closest thing I can equate it to would be a toasted marshmallow, with that crusty top and then the soft gooeyness inside. This is the chocolate souffle recipe we used and the tutorial-like breakdown made it really easy to understand. He takes your hand and leads you step-by-step through the souffle process.

Watermelon Martini

I have been buying a watermelon every time we go to Costco; what this means is that I have approximately 3.5 watermelons in my kitchen at any given time. This usually works out okay for me because I lurve watermelon like, a lot. It is such a quick and easy snack to grab out of the fridge and munch on.

We wanted to try to incorporate some watermelon into SOMETHING because we have so much of it. I found this great watermelon martini recipe, replete with video tutorial and a hot British accent voiceover. Note: I used grenadine instead of 'sugar gomme', whatever that is.

The Little Aebleskiver That Could

Well we got out our monk pan and tried aebleskivers again. Our first try was okay, but our second attempt at aebleskivers came out even better. What is there not to love about a batter that includes beer? (This recipe suggests using beer as a substitute for buttermilk, for those poor people who just ran out of buttermilk. That would be us.) We did this whole batch hollow and served them with apricot jam and powdered sugar. They had a yummy hopsy taste from the beer.