Candied Peel

You know what everyone's favorite part of the orange is? The pith! Followed closely by the peel. But how to best extract the pith from the icky juicy fruit part? By being hideously artsy, apparently.

All this is to say, I don't especially like candied fruit. It, usually comes packaged with some sort of dark green peel and maraschino cherries, which I have reason to believe I'm allergic to. (That link also indicates that the dark green stuff is peppermint-flavored cherries. This is one of the nastiest things I've ever heard of. What is wrong with you people?) But, I wanted to make stollen, because it is Christmas! Therefore, I had (HAD!) to make my own candied peel. Obviously. Also, I was procrastinating from studying for my finals, which are, thankfully, over by now. Here are the before,
after, and results pictures of the peeling process.
The lemons were thin-skinned and very hard to peel. Next time, (ha! this batch had better last me for years) I will pick out the thick-skinned lemons. Then insult them. This recipe (and the upcoming stollen recipe) comes from Home Baking. This is barely a recipe though, you boil the peels for an hour, then change the water and boil them again for 20 minutes, then boil in a 2:1 sugar:water mixture for another hour, and let dry for a few days and coat in sugar. Now, it also says if you want smaller pieces (as I did) you should cut the peel in between water boilings. I forgot completely until they were already in boiling sugar syrup. As someone who got a blister between their thumb and index finger from boiling sugar during badminton week in gym, I was not about to slice up those peels. I did hack at them with kitchen shears for a while though to at least get them smaller. As it turned out, it wasn't hard to cut them after they dried, and the big ones were easier to flip over during the drying process, so not too much lost, I guess.

mmm, millet

I made the no-knead bread a few days ago. I've made the basic recipe 2 or 3 times before, so this time I used 1/2 cup of whole wheat flour to replace some of the white flour, and threw in sunflower seeds and millet. I've been obsessing about millet since college, when the dining hall (hi pierce!) occasionally had this awesome bread that had about 10 billion types of seeds and grains in it. So I hunted down millet in Seattle (seriously, New York has something against bulk foods...maybe it's a law?) and brought it back to New York for this express purpose of making myself bread. And it's very enjoyable bread. Now I just have to figure out what all those other seeds were.

The obligatory somewhat gross pictures of the baking process: right after mixing the dough together. And after about 20 hours. It should have taken less time to get the little bubbles on top of the dough, leading me to believe I should have bought new yeast. Or at least used the unopened packet. Cooked and all. A slice of bread. Sadly, the resolution is not quite good enough to see the tasty sunflower seeds and millet.

August oranges

My roommate is somewhat...particular, so I made him a tried and tested cake for his birthday, even if wasn't as ambitious as previous birthday cakes. The first time I made it, he and I ate it so much that it gone within the day, leading my other roommate to wish she had taken more sooner. It's a light, airy cake and has an quasi-caramelized base and very orangey, and comes from Chocolate and Zucchini.
This shot is of the surface of the moon. Fine, it's the cake pan buttered and sugared. It was hard to refrain licking the pan already.
The recipe calls for 1/2 cup of orange juice, or about the juice of one orange, plus the zest of one orange. I always assume my produce will not be the same size as anyone elses, so I bought two oranges; the worst possible scenario then means I have fresh fruit. Panic! Anyway, it look me one and a half oranges to get the half cup, although I don't have a real citrus juicer either which may have contributed to a low yield. Here are the ravaged and destroyed oranges. One of the reasons I think I like baking so much is that I get to eat the raw batter or dough. This recipe is exceptional in the fact that the batter doesn't taste very good raw. (Believe me, I always lick the bowl when I'm done, and most raw doughs taste excellent. I also assume in this day and age that raw eggs are pretty safe. Or, at least, I've fended off salmonella up until now.) Out of the oven, the cake is supposed to cool for ten minutes in the pan, then you flip it over onto a serving plate to finish cooling, and the caramelized part is on top. It's a really lovely cake, although I think I would flip it over to a rack to finish cooling instead of a plate next time. The plate doesn't allow for much cooling, and means the cake ends up sticking to the plate a lot. Still, my roommate's birthday was successfully celebrated, and thusly ends the summer birthdays. Whew.

Wotcher, muffins

I have had my eye on this recipe for English muffins for quite a while. I've been cast-iron skillet-less for a while though, so I never attempted it. But since I got a skillet for my birthday (thanks, Mom) I finally have all the requisite tools. Now, the temptation to do this post with an English accent or a British theme is nearly irresistible. However, accents don't work as well written out. (Or perhaps they do, at the very least, better than my English accent...) How do people come up with gimmicks for every blog post? I'll just assume that making English muffins from scratch is novelty enough. My del.icio.us shows that I bookmarked this recipe back in April 2005. Back then, I was still in Chicago (*sniff*) about to graduate from college. I can't remember if my thesis was due before or after then, which probably says something about my thesis. Which, actually, brings us to our first picture. This is the milk, shortening, sugar and salt cooling down. Blobs of oil can be seen on the liquid-air interface, which was (more or less, in an excruciating paraphrase) what my thesis was on. Mmm, appetizing.
Possibly even more appetizing is the yeast proofing, shown here for your enjoyment. Sorry. I took the picture, so I'm obligated to share. This picture has nothing to do with my thesis.
Here are before and after rising pictures, as I'm always amazed at how bread actually rises. My apartment is incredibly humid and warm, making for ideal rising conditions, even if it meant I was about to pass out while kneading.

The following picture does not do justice to the kneading/post-kneading situation of the kitchen (and myself) covered everywhere with flour.
Judging by the blurriness of this picture, this is showing cut-out fetal English muffins trying to escape. Their lack of legs prevents this from being a viable option for them, they all ended up staying on the cutting board. I had to re-roll the dough once, which didn't seem to make any difference during the second rise. They were cut with the mouth of a large mug, the nicer looking once being the second go round after I realized I really had to slam that mug down. This is half the dough, and easily made 9 muffins and a baby muffin. (I already called them fetal, so baby doesn't really make sense. So by baby I actually mean runt.)After a second rise, here they are being born. I mean cooked. Same difference. The original recipe is infuriatingly vague ("They're done when they look done."), but...I can't really help. It was very play-by-ear, especially as I kept on adjusting the flame. Cutting one in half was an easy enough test, and I could then eat it immediately. Here're the finished muffins (minus the two I ate while they were cooking.) They look sort of like pancakes, but they're much thicker, with a more cake-y (dare I say, muffin-y) texture. Ah, this reminds me I once knew of a girl at my school who was in 2nd or 3rd grade, about 6 grades below me, whose name was Muffin. This strikes me as meaning she either has very, very cruel parents, or parents with no forethought and little idea that their child might grow up some day. I'm sure she's, uh, fine now. I'm also assuming this little anecdote is un-Googleable.
With my terrible cameraphone, one might think by this photo that I am presenting a store-bought English muffin! (Except for that fact that that would be incredibly boring.)
As the recipe noted, one half of the dough can be made into a loaf of bread. I gently rolled it out after the first rising, then rolled it up into a log for the second rising. Although it looks very promising, I actually don't know how it tastes, because I ate way too many muffins and am mildly over-full. It's now in the freezer, waiting patiently for me.

Anti-depressant peanut butter chocolate chunk cookies!

I'm in a foul mood. I haven't needed nor really wanted to leave the apartment all day, I read the new Harry Potter in about 6 hours and now it's all over, and I've spent far too much time on the internet. Everything I've eaten today has been bland and unappetizing, and just thinking about food now is slightly nauseauting.
Which means if I want something good to eat, I'll have to make it myself. Peanut butter chocolate chip cookies should do the trick. I already took out the stick of butter once to warm to room temperature, only to decide I didn't really want to make cookies and placed it back in the fridge. But now it's four hours later, and although I'm still not convinced I really want cookies, I've taken it out of the fridge again. Because even if I don't eat these cookies (well, I'm sure when the time comes, I'll step up to the challenge), my enterprising roommates will.
Here we begin with exhibits A and B, The Joy of Cooking, 1964 edition, and a stick of warming butter. Mmm. As I have a multitude of cookbooks, I consulted Bakers Illustrated (they wanted ground peanuts, requiring a food processor, so for once let me down) my Joy of Cooking, my roommate's JoC, 1997 edition, and the Better Homes and Gardens cookbook. Strangely, the simple recipe from JoC (1964) is different from a more complicated version in JoC (1997.) Since the first recipe is no longer in print, I'll post an adapted version of it here. It claims it makes "sixty 1.5 inch cookies." All cookbooks are liars. This made about 27 cookies, perhaps 2 inches across.
Preheat oven to 375^oF.
Cream one stick of butter, add 1/2 cup brown sugar and a 1/2 cup white sugar and beat. Add 1 egg, 1 cup peanut butter (I used chunky), 1/2 tsp salt, 1/2 tsp baking soda, 1/2 tsp vanilla and mix. The JoC says you should "sift before measuring" 1.5 cups of all-purpose flour. Sifting flour for cookies is absurd. Who knows, maybe they would have been even more delicious, but there's really no reason I can for it. Anyway, add that and mix it all together.
I then took it upon myself to add chocolate bits, from the giganto-block-o'-chocolate from Trader Joe's. Hand included in picture for scale.
I broke off a fourth of this and alleviated some angst by chopping it into small bits, reducing a once formidable chunk of chocolate into this:
It was between 3/4 and 1 cup of chocolate, and got mixed in. Place balls of dough on a greased or parchment-ed baking sheet, and press fork tines down orthogonally. (My roommate did wander in while they were baking and said they smelled wonderful. Although he enjoyed eating them, he wondered why there were fork impressions in the cookies . I am led to assume that he's never had peanut butter cookies before, as making the criss-cross and eating it is one of the best parts about these cookies. He's also the same one who didn't know that one did not have to bake Rice Krispie treats, so he may not be the best go-to person for this sort of thing. That said, I guess you don't really *have* to flatten the cookies with a fork, you could do it with your palm or the bottom of a glass, but why wouldn't you? Gah.)
Aw, I sometimes wish they could stay this way; uncooked, young, innocent, free from worries and the heat of the oven/world. (Hmm. See previous posts about killing myself with bacteria. Into the oven they go.)
Bake for 12-15 minutes until light golden brown, and let cool on sheet to finish baking slightly to your taste.

Okay, fine, they did cheer me up. It's what cookies do best.

Botulism-free (day one, at least)

This post was written for me. I am both terrified of killing myself with botulism and also way too lazy to do all the boiling steps needed to can things and not, you know, kill myself with botulism. So the idea that you can just make up a small batch of jam and store it in the fridge was very appealing to me. I went to the greenmarket at Borough Hall to buy a half-pint of raspberries and peaches, as seen below. Although you can't tell from the picture, 3 of the peaches are superripe and 2 of them were bought at a different stand and were pretty hard. This ended up not making a difference by the end, which was my hypothesis to begin with. Probably the ripe ones were the way to go though. All of that, which was probably just a little less than 2 pounds of fruit, was roughly peeled and pitted went into the pot, with a shake a salt, a few splashes of lemon juice and a cup of sugar.
Since Pim's recipe was 2 cups of sugar and she was already being conservative, I thought I would be on the safe side. But the jam ended up a little bit too sweet for my tastes, and I should have started with just half a cup of sugar or less. Simmered and stirred for about an hour. Halfway through, it was still very watery with whole pieces of fruit, and no jam-soul. Below, you see the finished product, thick and melded together with definitive glowing blue jam-soul present.

Repurposed a pickle jar by staring at the fridge and figuring out what could be easily transferred to the cheap tupperware.

Sorry, pickles.Hello, jam!

marshmallowy chocolatey goodness

So, for my roommate's birthday, I baked her a cake. This (bookstore-) famous cake.
The recipe was kindly online here, although I am considering buying the book (or making someone buy it for me. 162 days til Christmas!)
We start with the mise en place, as inspired by the probably insane French Laundry at Home.
Fairly standard stuff. Which means this was probably a pretty boring picture for you too look at. You may instead marvel at my other roommate's bizarre paper towel stand. Moving on.
Dry and wet ingredients are combined separately, then joined by chocolate chips and buttermilk in steps to prevent a flour-cocoa explosion in my kitchen. Although that happens to me now matter how slowly I add them.
Now, I have problem in that I only have one cake pan.
"But Donna!" you say, "Cake pans are so cheap, why don't you just buy another one?"
Because I have anxiety attacks when I spend money. I also have anxiety attacks when I can't properly split cake batter into two equal portions, and when the Latter-Baked Cake comes out Mormon. I mean, doesn't rise as much as the first one. In any case, I used one cake pan and things came out more or less all right.
See? Although, indeed, the second one was not as tall as the first. However, the recipe calls for cutting each layer in half, making four layers, with the fourth crumbled up for outside decoration. I assumed this was not as crucial, and could be skimped on slightly. This was (foreshadowing) a minor mistake.
Persevering on! I made the frosting. There are no pictures of this as it was very hot and sticky, and my cell phone does not appreciate such things. In ALL senses of the phrase. It was very exciting however, pouring boiling sugar syrup into fluffy egg whites and then beating them some more. By exciting I mean traumatic. (In 7th grade, I got a really bad blister on my hand between my thumb and forefinger from caramelized sugar the week we had to play racketball in gym. Also, when I made marshmallows a few months ago, I did about the same thing and nearly killed my handheld mixer in the process.) I probably could have whipped it up a little more. I ended up not having quite enough in the end, although I should have just reduced the amount between the layers. Which, conveniently enough, are shown below. It's so pretty, I almost wanted to stop here.
But no, there were sides to frost! And crumbled cake to press on! I should add here that marshmallow frosting is incredibly sticky. The crumbled cake...I should have let the cake half dry out a little before crumbling in order to get smaller crumbs and a more even covering. Which was, as I alluded to earlier, already sort of in a dire position with me skimping on the size of the cake "half." With a moderate amount of effort, we present this.
You can see there's some white patches. It adds character, okay? C'mon.
Now it needed some birthday-ification-tion. Guess how old she's turning! Guess! Guess!
Fine, don't guess. The number 23 and the fuzziness of the picture had been brought to you by viewers like you. And strawberries and mint leaves, which were carefully arranged after about ten minutes of staring at a strawberry.
Long story short, she loved it and I'm the best roommate ever. However, cutting it was sort of difficult as large chocolate chips were in the cake. If they got caught on the blade it got messy and the layers started to shift. As seen here.
Next time I would use mini-chocolate chips or chocolate shavings, as I think was originally in the recipe. Also, I really need a cake dome to store in the fridge, but the cake held up pretty well for a week with a large pot covering it. I would make/eat this again, although I probably wouldn't because it wasn't the best cake I've ever tasted in my entire life, and there are so many cake recipes still out there.
That's a boring way to end this post. Here, instead is a picture of frosting and cake that I didn't work in earlier. If you're not already overwhelmed by excitement/diabetic shock.