Brownies with an orange twist

Can I just say: NOM NOM NOM. Okay. Now that's out of the way, I made some brownies.



These are my latest variation on the Best Cocoa Brownies from Smitten Kitchen. I followed the recipe mostly, but was forced to put this into variation territory when I ran out of cocoa powder part-way through. To make up for having less cocoa powder than required, I substituted some Orange Hot Chocolate powder I had - a few heaping tablespoons worth. (Whittard's, if anyone's interested). Since this has sugar in it already, I reduced the sugar I added separately. I also used less butter because I ran out of that as well - but not significantly less, maybe 10 g less? No noticeable effect.



Result: moist, dense brownies with a slight orange-y taste. Not overwhelming, but quite pleasant. In the future, I may try this with orange zest instead of orange hot-chocolate. I bet that would taste even better.

hearty soup

I said summer never came to Scotland this year, but almost as soon as I said it the UK had a "heatwave." Well, autumn is reasserting itself after a few warm days. Today I was glad to remember I had some soup already made, just waiting in the freezer for a cold, drizzly evening. Even better, I took pictures when I first made it, perhaps thinking I would blog about it before now, so I wasn't tempted to wrestle with my camera in the dark.

Okay, so I never said it was an appetizing picture. It was delicious, honest!

This is Mushroom Barley Soup from the Tall Grass Kitchen. It was tasty the first time, and just as tasty after defrosting, although the carrots disintegrated a little. No worries. I also added broccoli this time, since everything is better with broccoli. (Oh, I'm the only one who thinks this? Haha. Ah well.)

I found the recipe while browsing Gojee.com, a recipe aggregator website that I discovered not too long ago. Although it does some things that other recipe sites also do, such as sorting recipes by ingredients you already have, I love the presentation on Gojee - gigantic, delicious photos for each recipe possibility. Food Pr0n.

The Unphotogenic Kitchen: Pasta / Noodles with Ginger-Garlic Peanut Sauce

It's still light out at dinner time, which I love. So, I took some pictures of my dinner.



Noodles with Ginger-Garlic Peanut Sauce, Chickpeas, and Peppers
Serves one.

Pasta or noodle equivalent of your choice (I used penne)
Half a can of chick peas, rinsed and drained
Bell peppers or other vegetable (I used half a red pepper, and a quarter yellow one.)

1 clove of garlic, minced
1 smallish chunk of ginger, minced*
1 heaping teaspoon of peanut butter
1 tablespoon sesame oil
splort of soy sauce
pinch of ground cayenne
pinch of ground cumin
boiling water

Cook your pasta/noodle equivalent. While it is cooking, combine garlic, ginger, sesame oil, peanut butter, soy sauce, and spices in a bowl. Mix until even, adding boiling water to get desired consistency.

Drain noodles. Add chickpeas and chopped peppers. Drizzle sauce over, and stir to coat everything.

Eat!



Bonus: this is vegan, assuming your pasta/noodles aren't made with eggs.

Next time, I'll add some lime juice to the sauce. My glass citrus-juicer thing shattered (as glass does when you drop heavy things on it), and I haven't replaced it, so my lemon and lime usage is way down these days.

*How does one accurately measure the amount of ginger? My ginger chunk was probably about 1.5 cm square. Er cubed?

Notes from the Unphotogenic Kitchen: Hummus

We recently got a hand blender as a gift from my parents. This is especially exciting because it has a small food-processor attachment thing. The reason this is so exciting? I can make my own hummus* again! I used to make it quite frequently at home with my parents' ancient food processor, but lately we buy it from the store. Which is fine, but too salty and not as awesome.

I'm weird about condiments and sauces. Can't stand mayonnaise, mustard, ketchup, vinegar, or even salad dressing. However, I use hummus as a condiment often: in addition to dipping things in it, I spread it on bread for sandwiches, and eat it with anything really.


Lunch is never photogenic.

Ahem. Half-assed attempt at food styling. More delicious than it looks, I swear!

I almost never have tahini on hand when I want to make hummus, so I use sesame oil, and it is still delicious. It's probably not as creamy as it would be with tahini, though. I tend to like it a bit chunky, so I don't mind at all. I also love lemons, so I use a lot of lemon juice. I like how the fresh sourness cuts through the nutty oil. The recipe I use the most is below, but works equally well without the spiciness and is open to endless adaptations.

Please excuse the wacky wacky metric measurements - this is what it says on my teaspoon and tablespoon measures!

Spicy Hummus
(adapted from New Light Cooking)

1 can chick peas, drained and rinsed (540 mL)
Juice of 1/2 a lemon
3 tbsp (45 ml) water (or more to achieve desired consistency)
1 clove garlic, minced
1 tbsp (15 ml) sesame oil or 2 tbsp (30 ml) tahini
1 1/2 tsp (7.5 ml) ground cumin
1/2 tsp (2.5 ml) cayenne pepper

Blend all ingredients in a food processor. Eat with anything! Enjoy.



*I can never remember how to spell it the British way. Houmous? Hoummos? Hummous? Whatever. Also, I stubbornly continue to call it "pita" instead of "pitta." Transliterations are funny.

bikers, baking, sundry

I just wrote a long rant about my inability to find/get a job, but it turned out super whiny, so instead I'll just say I am at the whiny stage of my January job search. Now have some pictures of baking.

Look, I made rolls:



My dude prefers rolls to regular bread for some reason I can't understand, so I've been trying out recipes and techniques. I'm no longer afraid of baking with yeast, although it's still very mysterious to me. I'm learning a lot.

For this batch I used this basic rolls recipe by the Hairy Bikers - we don't have a tv and I've never been a devotee of food television, but I must say it sounds like an excellent premise for a cooking show. Chefs who are bikers and also hairy? Woot.

Anyway, I've made these before and didn't get any photos, but this time I ran out of white flour so I used mostly whole wheat.



As a result, these turned out really dense. I happen to like really hearty bread, but I wouldn't recommend doing what I did if you only like soft, fluffy bread. To be honest, I'm not sure they were worth the effort: kneading for 25 minutes? Man. I guess it is good to get an arm workout any way I can.

Tasty things

I suffer from a common blog ailment that causes me not to take pictures of things at suitable times when there is enough light. This happens especially frequently with food, which is why I don't blog about food much. To begin with, I tend to cook and bake when it's already dark, and this time of year at 55°57'N doesn't yield a whole lot of daylight. I blog, but I'm not committed to changing my lifestyle in order to have better photos for the blog, so it's probably going to stay that way. Another reason is that I make mostly unphotogenic food at the best of times. Mmmm one-pot-meals.

On that note, here are some unphotogenic cheesy bisuits I made the other day. (Biscuits in the American sense, in this case).



I think they look like cheesy beasts of doom.


Raaaarrrr.

Cheese-beast Biscuits aka Baking Powder Biscuits

1 cup whole wheat flour
1 cup white flour
2 tsp baking powder
3/4 tsp salt (optional)
1/3 cup olive oil
3/4 cup milk
Extra mature cheddar

Stir together dry ingredients. Add oil and milk, and stir quickly. Add grated cheese: I didn't measure how much I used, stupidly, but it depends on how cheesy you want the biscuits to be. Experiment. Knead the cheese in gently 10-12 strokes on a floured surface. Divide into 12 parts, roll into balls, and pat down to 1 inch thick on an ungreased baking sheet. Sprinkle extra grated cheese on top, if so desired.

Bake at 350 F / 180 C for 15 minutes, or until golden.

It's November

And I've signed up for NaBloPoMo, since I figure I can bang out a blog post per day without killing myself, but there's no way I'll be able to tackle writing another novel while in grad school. Anyway, we'll see how this goes.

First:

Pumpkin chocolate chip cookies (originally typoed "chocolate hip cookies," rather appropriately).

I saw them on Cosmicpluto and immediately needed to make them. (Bandwagon! Hurray!) So, on Halloween without much else to do except hope no trick-or-treaters showed up (we have no candy), I made them.



What I love is that the original recipe calls for canola oil instead of butter or anything else. That's my kind of recipe. I almost never use butter and substitute canola oil as much as possible, even when it doesn't seem ideal.

Mods: used brown sugar, half whole wheat flour, slightly more pumpkin, and only one egg.

You can probably see orange bits in the cookie: this is the day I learned that canned pumpkin doesn't freeze well. See, in the past I've been lucky enough to bake with home-pureed pumpkin, which lives quite well in the freezer, so when I used part of this can last month and froze the rest, I figured it would be fine. Not so. Upon thawing, the pumpkin puree itself was kind of stiff and chunky, and didn't mix into the dough as smoothly as I had hoped. It still worked pretty well, and the cookies turned out well, but yeah. Now I know. No freezing of the canned pumpkin.

Recipes blatantly ignored

I got inspired to make Austrian Raspberry Shortbread on Smitten Kitchen. I love Smitten Kitchen for the photos as much as for the recipes, and she's always so inspiring. However, following recipes isn't exactly my forte, so in the end I came up with this.


Rhubarb-blueberry cake bar things. Yummy, if almost entirely different from the original recipe.

Here's how it went down.

Change #1: We had some rhubarb-blueberry jam in the fridge that needed using, so I grabbed that.

Change #2: My eyes bugged out at the amount of butter called for (1 pound): I halved the recipe to begin with and then halved the butter again, adding oil to compensate. At that point it was obvious these were destined not to be shortbread, but I was okay with that. For the record this is the first time in recent memory that I've used solid fat in my baking; I have a habit of substituting like a mad thing, consequences be damned.

Change #3: Egg yolks. I am far to lazy to separate egg whites from yolks, so I just used whole eggs, pretending that 1 egg is equivalent to 2 yolks. Not sure if that's legitimate math, but that's what I did.

Change #4: Instead of freezing the dough thoroughly, I was too impatient after putting it in for about 15 minutes, so I couldn't grate the dough into the pan. I spread it instead, neglecting to realize that spreading a second layer of dough on top of a layer of jam was ill-advised. It worked out after some careful spatula work, so no harm done.

Result: surprisingly delicious! They're a bit greasier than I would have liked, so next time I'll probably use less oil or maybe even take the plunge and use all butter. They aren't shortbread, but they have a pleasant dense crumbly texture, and they don't look like a total mess! (Compared to much of my baking experiments. I'm a fan of delicious messes anyway). I probably added a bit more lemon zest than called for as well - didn't measure, just grated half a lemon's worth - and it really helped the dough. Mmm lemon. More Smitten Kitchen in my future, and maybe I'll follow the recipe next time.

Summer baking

One of my goals for the indeterminate future is to improve my food-photography skills. To do this I need to take more pictures of food, for a start. One reason I don't is because I seem to do all my baking at night, and flashed out food photos aren't too appealing.

But summer means more daylight and a forest of rhubarb in the back yard; combined, here's my latest effort.



Rhubarb Muffins
(heavily adapted from a recipe I found on the internet years ago and have since forgotten where)

2 1/2 cups whole wheat flour, or a mixture of whole wheat and white
2/3 cup brown sugar
3 tsp baking powder
pinch salt
1 cup milk
1/4 cup vegetable oil
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
1 egg, beaten
2 cups finely chopped rhubarb

Mix wet and dry ingredients separately, then mix them together. Fold in rhubarb.
Bake at 375 F for 20-25 minutes. Makes about a dozen muffins if you're using a large muffin tin and "giant" baking cups.

These are quite tart, which I appreciate in rhubarb!

cookie time

Tangentially inspired by library school: Transcending Boolean would be a great name for a band. Or maybe Boolean Transcendence.

In other news, I am typically antisocial and passed up karaoke in favour of baking cookies and taking pictures of them, to the probably amusement of the roommates. Since I finally bought flour and sugar, and I actually have an oven! (I have newfound appreciation for the kitchen in this place, having found out that at least a few classmates are living off hot-plates.)



Lately I have problems with proportion. I made a few too many cookies. Left to my own devices I'm sure I could finish them off in a shorter amount of time than they deserve, but then I would be sick and feel gross. So I froze 2/3 of them. Anyone want chocolate chip cookies?



Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies
may have originally come from the ancient Better Homes and Gardens cookbook, but it has been modified almost beyond recognition

1 cup oil
1 1/2 cups brown sugar
2 eggs
1/2 cup plain yogurt
1 3/4 cups flour (this time I used all whole wheat, usually I mix white and whole wheat)
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp baking powder
cinnamon
nutmeg (optional)
3 cups rolled oats
1 cup chocolate chips

Mix oil, sugar, eggs, and yogurt. Mix dry ingredients together, and add to wet. Stir in chocolate chips. Bake 8-12 minutes at 350 F.

I, in my shame, had no cinnamon (or nutmeg) to add because I thought the communal spice rack had cinnamon. Turns out, the cinnamon jar was empty, but since it is opaque I didn't realize. The cookies are missing something without cinnamon, but still nice. Also, I forgot to buy baking soda, so I just put a bit more baking powder. Not clear it helped or hindered anything. They turned out fine.

Mmmm.

Brownies are a vegetable

A few years ago, my mom discovered that pureed pumpkin is an excellent substitute for butter/margarine in brownies (and as it turns out, some other baked goods). Ever since, we've made brownies with pumpkin exclusively. We ran out of freezer pumpkin, but we have loads of zucchini and squash from the garden, so the other day I did an experiment (GASP). My mom also used to make zucchini chocolate cake, and I thought - why not zucchini brownies? I ended up using crookneck squash, but I expect it is texturally equivalent to zucchini.

Brownies with squash/zucchini/pumpkin/other
or, "What I did this time"
1 cup whole wheat flour
2 cups white sugar (less if using sweetened applesauce/peaches etc)
3/4 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
1 cup pureed (lightly cooked) squash
1/4 cup vegetable oil (optional)
2 eggs
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 Tbsp instant coffee powder

Slice squash thinly. Steam or cook with some water in microwave until it begins to get clear and soft. Cool and puree in food processer.

Mix dry ingredients, sifting cocoa and instant coffee if required. Stir in oil and squash, beat in eggs and vanilla. Preheat oven at 350 F. Bake in lightly greased or parchment papered 9" square pan. These took a long time to bake, and I probably checked them too frequently, but I think it ended up being about 40 minutes.

The brownies turned out really moist and chewy. Mmmmm.

In the past I've also used pureed canned peaches, and I expect apple sauce works as well. Sometimes I leave out the extra oil, and it also seems to work.

Ontario peaches and baking

I love peaches. I love Ontario peaches especially. I don't love how peaches often look beautiful on the outside but have a mealy interior.

This is easily solved, however.



Last night I used almost a whole basket of questionable peaches to make crisp. AKA crumble.

I don't think I've ever made a crisp/crumble before that was solely composed of peaches. Usually we have a mixture of fruit that needs to be used, but this time just peaches required urgent attention. In some ways I prefer using rhubarb because it is sour to begin with, so the finished product isn't so sweet. I used some lemon juice in the peach crisp to try to counteract that, since peaches are so sweet to begin with, and yet sugar is required for the texture. I might try adding lemon juice overtop when it is finished next time, actually. When I make crisp it is rarely crispy, but that's okay; I prefer the oat topping to be slightly chewy.



My favourite way to eat crisp is warm with plain yogourt. Mmmm.

recipe: This is so inexact because I pretty much do whatever looks right, but it should be close.

6 cups chopped peaches - I don't bother peeling it because I like peach skin.
1 cup sugar (I used white because it mixes with the fruit easily, but I expect brown would work too)
1/4 cup flour
1 tsp cinnamon
juice of half a lemon

Mix, spread evenly over bottom of baking dish.

topping:
1.5 cups rolled oats, or as much as you need to cover the fruit (trial and error)
a small amount of flour
1/2 cup brown sugar
vegetable oil - enough to slightly wet the oats, but not drench them

Mix and spread over the fruit.

Bake 35 minutes at 350 F. Or however long it takes to lightly brown the topping, if that's what you're into. Mine is always drenched in juice, so it doesn't brown easily, but I don't mind.

cookie time!

Almond cookies. I consider these my most successful attempt in a while - I modified the recipe heavily enough that I consider it my own, but sometimes that has disasterous results.

This time? Delicious, almond-y, crunchy, crumbly cookies. I expect I could have made them softer or chewier if I'd used butter or margarine, but I almost never use solid fat in baking anymore. Next time I'll use a little less sugar and slightly more spice.



Almond cookies
2 cups white flour
3/4 cup whole wheat flour
1 cup granulated sugar
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon ground ginger (or more)
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon (or more)
pinch salt
1 cup vegetable oil
1 egg
1 teaspoon almond extract
whole almonds

Mix dry ingredients, including sugar. Add oil: mixture will be moist but crumbly. Lightly beat egg with almond extract and add to the main mixture.

Roll into balls ~1 inch or slightly larger and place on baking sheet 2 inches apart. Place an almond on top of each cookie and press in slightly.

Bake for 15-20 minutes at 325 F.