First Friday Food

Rich Almond Cake

/ Shane / Leave a comment

The Reason:

The reason is that this cake is easy to make and tastes like heaven. However, the original source mentions this as something that even an un-skilled chef could make for Valentines Day, so this is also timely. On one hand, the girl of your dreams will be very impressed with your mad cooking skillz. On the other hand, she will probably marry you on the spot, and then you’ll have to explain that you don’t actually have mad cooking skillz, unless of course she wants to eat Rich Almond Cake every day for the rest of her life, which she probably will.

The Journey:

Eating this cake reminds me of eating my mom’s almond sugar cookie dough raw (this is a good thing). If you like almonds, you will love this cake. Even if you don’t, you will love this cake. And it’s so easy to make, it really only takes a few minutes.

Sara happens to love this cake so much, that she literally finds it irresistible. I offer the following photo as proof:

“So good it makes me want to lick a listeria filled beater.”

The Verdict:

What more can I say about it? Serve it with real, home-made whipped cream. If you use cool whip Sara will hunt you down and kill you. Her words, not mine.

The Recipe:

Recipe by way of Get Rich Slowly.

  • 1 1/2 cups granulated sugar
  • 3/4 cup real butter, melted
  • 2 eggs
  • 1 1/2 teaspoons almond extract
  • 1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract
  • 1/4 teaspoon salt
  • 1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
  • 3 Tablespoons sliced almonds (for garnish)
  • 1 Tablespoon granulated sugar (for garnish)
  1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.
  2. Use butter wrappers to generously grease a 9″ round cake pan.
  3. With a mixer, blend together the sugar and melted butter.
  4. Add eggs, one at a time, and beat in.
  5. Stir in extracts.
  6. Add salt and flour and mix until everything is incorporated.
  7. Spread batter in the pan and sprinkle the top with sliced almonds and sugar.
  8. Bake 30-35 minutes, or until golden brown.
  9. Cool completely on a wire rack before removing from pan.
  10. Serve with homemade whipped cream (or prepare to die)

Bûche de Noël

/ Shane / Leave a comment

And not just any Bûche de Noël, but one with Nutella mousse filling, chocolate ganache frosting, and meringue mushrooms!

The Reason:

Bûche de Noël is a traditional French Christmas desert, also known as a “Yule Log”. It’s part of the tradition that it is supposed to look like an actual log, one that you might throw in the hearth to warm your toes on Christmas morning.

Barb made one for me last Christmas as the grand finale to my fabulous dessert-of-the-month present, and it was absolutely amazing. So she agreed to make one for us again this Christmas. It is so rich and chocolatey, it will blow your socks off. If you remember, this was the dessert that had Evie fighting a massive chocolate coma as hard as she could, just to eat one. more. delicious. bite.

The Journey:

The cake part is pretty much the same as making a pumpkin or jelly roll: bake the cake, roll it in a towel to cool it, un-roll and put the filling on like frosting, then re-roll it.

Although the cake part is the amazing part, I don’t think the mushrooms can be beaten for visual awesomeness. It really puts the whole thing over from “good dessert” to “masterpiece”.

Pipe out the caps and stems and let them dry.

Attach the stems to the caps with a little melted chocolate so it looks like that dark underside of a mushroom.

Dust on a little cocoa for the final effect! Again, remember that the tradition is to make it look like a real log. What could be more appropriate than a couple of mushrooms growing up on the side?

The Verdict:

Oooooh, to die for! It’s a lot of work, but well worth it (especially when someone else makes it!) You technically could skip the meringue mushrooms, but who would do that?? They’re probably my favorite part. They look so awesome and realistic, and they don’t taste half bad either (although it’s hardly fair to compare them to chocolate-chocolate-chocolate cake!).

The Recipe:

There are four major parts to the recipe: the cake, the filling, the frosting and the meringue mushrooms. The ingredients are listed each in their own sub-section.

Sponge Cake:

(From Betty Crocker Cookbook, circa 1973)

  • 1 cup cake flour
  • 1/4 cup cocoa
  • 1 tsp. baking powder
  • 1/4 tsp. salt
  • 3 eggs
  • 1 cup sugar
  • 1/3 cup water
  • 1 tsp. vanilla
  • powdered sugar for dusting
  1. Heat oven to 375⁰.
  2. Line jelly roll pan (15 1/2 x 10 1/2×1) with foil or waxed paper; grease.
  3. Stir together cake flour, cocoa, baking powder, and salt; set aside.
  4. In small mixer bowl beat eggs about 5 min., until very thick and lemon colored.
  5. Pour eggs into larger bowl, gradually beat in sugar.
  6. On low, blend in water and vanilla.
  7. Gradually add dry ingredients, beat just until smooth.
  8. Pour into prepared pan, bake 12-15 min.
  9. Loosen edges; invert on towel dusted with powdered sugar.  Remove foil, roll cake and towel. Cool.

Nutella Mousse:

(combination of some Internet recipes)

  • 1/2 cup Nutella
  • 1 cup heavy cream
  1. Microwave Nutella just to soften, not warm.
  2. Beat heavy cream until peaks form, beat in Nutella.
  3. Unroll cake, spread mousse, reroll.  Place seam side down, chill.

Chocolate Ganache:

(combination of several recipes)

  • 6 oz. bittersweet or semisweet chocolate
  • 1 cup heavy cream
  1. Place chocolate in bowl.
  2. Heat cream just to scald, pour over chocolate.
  3. Let stand for 5 min.
  4. Stir until smooth. Refrigerate until cold but not solid, stirring occasionally.
  5. Whip until consistency of soft butter.
  6. Spread on chilled cake.

Meringue Mushrooms:

(don’t remember, but not Martha Stewart)

  • 1 egg white
  • 1/4 cup superfine sugar
  • 1/8 tsp. cream of tartar
  • 1/8 tsp. vanilla
  • 1/4 cup dark chocolate
  • cocoa powder to dust
  1. Bring the egg white to room temperature.
  2. Beat until soft peaks begin to form.
  3. Slowly add sugar and cream of tartar.
  4. Whip until stiff peaks form and sugar is dissolved.
  5. Add vanilla, beat briefly to mix.
  6. With round nozzle on pastry/icing bag, pipe stems, standing straight up, and caps, round blobs, on parchment paper lined baking sheet.
  7. Bake in oven at 250⁰ until dry, about 1 hr.
  8. Melt chocolate.
  9. Spread chocolate on bottom of cap, stick top of stem in center of chocolate, leave upside down to dry.
  10. Before arranging on or around cake, dust with cocoa powder.

Green Bean “Un-casserole”

/ Shane / 1 Comment

The Reason:

I must admit, I am not a big fan of traditional green bean casserole. Actually, I am not a fan of cream-of-anything soup, which is what mars the green bean casserole for me. We’ve had this recipe for a long time, so I don’t remember exactly how we got it in the first place, but it is awesome, and I think everybody who tries it likes it. And those who don’t are probably filthy Communists*.

*I don’t actually believe Communists are any filthier than Capitalists. I meant to say filthy hippies**.

**Even though hippies do in fact tend to be filthy, how about we say “earthy” instead of “filthy”? Earthy hippies. Even hippies would be happy with that one. Except for the fact that earthy hippies would probably enjoy Green Bean Un-casserole.

The Journey:

This is just flat out delicious, however, some people see green beans and artichokes, and they won’t even try it. So, in order to prove to you how delicious (and un-healthy) this is going to be, I’m going to show you a picture of Sara drizzling oil over garlic and cheese:

Aw, what the heck, let’s throw some butter on top too.

Are you with me now?

The Verdict:

This is soooo good. I could eat it by the gallon. It was probably the best part about Thanksgiving, which is a holiday entirely centered on delicious food. In fact, it was so good, that we ended up making a second batch the next day!

The other nice thing is that the recipe is easy to scale up. So if you need to serve it in large quantities (such as for Thanksgiving), you can easily just double or triple the recipe. Or quadruple it and eat it all yourself!

The Recipe:

I’m not sure where this originally came from, so I can’t credit the source. Sara changed it a little over the years, so I’m not sure how much it even resembles the original recipe.

  • ~1/2 lb. frozen green beans, semi-defrosted
  • 1 14 oz. can artichoke hearts, hand-squeezed (you need to remove the water) and chopped
  • 1 tbsp olive oil
  • 1/4 c parmesan cheese
  • 1/4 c bread crumbs
  • 1 cloves garlic, pressed

—

  • 2 oz French fried onions
  • 1 tbsp butter
  • Salt & pepper to taste

Combine 1st group of ingredients in casserole dish. Top with dots of butter and salt and pepper. Bake covered for 20 min at 400°F. Top with onions and bake uncovered for 15 min.

Homemade Yogurt and Granola Parfaits

/ Shane / 5 Comments

The Reason:

When you tell people you’re making yogurt, you sound like some sort of super-hippie. But why not make your own yogurt? It’s *super* easy (as you will see below), and it’s cheaper than buying it (its about 1/2 to 1/3rd the price of buying yogurt). It’s healthy. It encourages you to eat more yogurt, which is a healthy habit. And if you’re making yogurt, you might as well make some homemade granola to go with it.

The Journey:

The craziest thing about making yogurt is how simple it is. It’s mostly just milk!

You can even save some of the yogurt from the previous batch as the culture to start the next batch, though I’ve heard that eventually the strain won’t be strong enough to continue without mixing in some fresh stuff from the store. I can’t verify that.

I will admit that making the yogurt takes a long time, but it’s not really active time. It’s not like you have to do anything during that time. It’s mostly just a matter of keeping it warm.

The granola could have been a post in its own right. Of course it gives a nice crunch to your parfait, but you can use it for anything you might use granola for. Sara eats bowls of it with milk for breakfast.

The Verdict:

It’s great. The kids love it. The thing about yogurt is that it is so versatile. You can mix in honey, vanilla, or jam. You can have it with blueberries, strawberries, or mango. You can use it to substitute for oil in baking. You can decide how much to sweeten it, and after doing this for awhile, you won’t be able to go back to the super-sweet, store-bought variety. What’s not to love?

And that’s to say nothing of the granola, which has a million uses itself, even above and beyond yogurt parfaits. Make it with almonds, make it with dried fruit. Throw whatever you want in there. Yum!

Plus, you sound impressive when you say you make your own yogurt. Nobody has to know how easy it is. That’s between you, me, and the public Internet.

The Recipe:

Yogurt

This recipe is from Stephanie O’Dae’s A Year of Slow Cooking.

  • 8 cups of milk (half-gallon). We generally try for organic whole milk, but I think you could use anything (we have made it with 2% and couldn’t tell the difference).
  • 1/2 cup of plain yogurt (live/active culture).
  • That’s it. Seriously. Just milk and a little yogurt!
  1. Add the milk to the crock pot. Cook on low for 2 1/2 hours.
  2. Turn off the crock pot. Let it sit for 3 hours.
  3. Scoop out 2 cups of the warm(ish) milk from the crock pot, and mix that with the 1/2 cup of “starter” yogurt. Then put the whole thing back into the crock pot and stir.
  4. Cover the crock pot with towels and leave it overnight (at least 8 hours)

Maybe it’s because of the towels, which sort of force you to unwrap the thing like a present on Christmas morning, but it’s always something of a surprise / delight when you  get up to find yogurt in the crock pot! For some reason, it always seems like it’s not going to work. Maybe because it’s so easy…a little TOO easy!

Granola

This recipe is from Mark Bittman, although any recipe for granola is really more of a suggestion than a recipe. So I’ll give you his recipe, but I’d say we make it a little different every time (as intended!).

  • 6 cups rolled oats (not quick-cooking or instant)
  • 2 cups mixed nuts (you can probably use anything, but we usually use chopped walnuts or almonds)
  • 1 cup shredded coconut (optional)
  • 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
  • 2 teaspoons vanilla
  • 1 /2 to 1 cup honey or maple syrup (we usually do 1/2 cup that is a mix of honey and maple syrup)
  • 1 cup chopped dried fruit (such as raisins or dried cranberries)

We usually don’t actually put in the dried fruit, since we are usually using this in yogurt parfaits. You can always throw dried fruit in when you’re going to eat it, if needed. Also, we find that the coconut really adds something. We’ve tried it with and without, but after not having it and then putting it back in, I don’t think we’ll go back to leaving it out!

  1. Heat the oven to 350°F. Combine everything except the dried fruit. Spread evenly on a rimmed baking sheet and bake for 30 minutes or a little longer, stirring occasionally. The mixture should brown evenly; the browner it gets without burning, the crunchier the granola will be.
  2. Remove the pan from the oven and add the dried fruit (if you want to add dried fruit). Cool on a rack, stirring once in a while until the granola reaches room temperature. Transfer to a sealed container and store in the refrigerator; it will keep indefinitely.

We have also made the Spiced Granola from that page, which is the same as above, with the following additions:

  • Another teaspoon ground cinnamon
  • 1 teaspoon ground ginger
  • 1/2 teaspoon ground anise (we usually leave this out, mostly because we don’t have any anise)
  • 1/2 teaspoon cardamom
  • 1/4 teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg
  • 1/4 teaspoon ground cloves
  • 2 teaspoons vanilla extract

Coconut Tres Leches Cake

/ Shane / Leave a comment

The Reason:

This recipe was specifically requested by Sara. A long time ago, we had a delicious coconut tres leches cake at a restaurant, and I promised to make one for Sara’s birthday. I almost forgot, but she didn’t! So here we are.

For the record, “tres leches” is Spanish for three milks, which will be demonstrated shortly.

The Journey:

The idea here is to make a very light and fluffy cake, which will absorb the milk mixture and turn into a nice, delicious, pudding-y mush. This is all about aerating everything, and in this case it requires separating the egg whites from the yolks. This is something I have always had a lot of trouble with, until Sara showed me the trick of doing it in the actual egg shell.

Basically, you just crack the eggs in half and then dump the yolk back and forth between the shells until all of the white is out. Seriously, I’ve tried all sorts of little tools and things, and they just never work. I can’t really explain why this works better, so you’ll have to take my word on it.

After that, it’s just a lot of mixing to put air in and make it light and fluffy.

After the cake is baked, you poke holes in it and pour the milk mixture on top, to let it soak in. You’re going for that tiramisu-sort-of-texture, where everything is just soft and delicious.

Note that this picture only shows a half recipe’s worth of cake, because we made two halves and froze one. We haven’t gotten out the frozen one yet, so I can’t vouch for it, but it certainly seems like the kind of thing that will do well frozen.

I do believe we made a full batch of the whipped cream and toasted coconut, which we didn’t need since we froze half. But wait a minute, what am I saying? When do you not need more homemade whipped cream and toasted coconut??

The Verdict:

It was awesome, and specifically a nice change of pace from a regular cake.

However, it wasn’t exactly perfect. I blame myself more than the recipe. The cake itself was a little dense, and I’m not sure why. Was it the substitution of whole wheat flour? Maybe I didn’t beat eggs enough? Perhaps the holes I poked with the toothpick were not quite big enough to let the milk soak in?

I don’t know. If anybody gets better results, let me know. But these were really minor issues and didn’t take away from the deliciousness at all. I think I’m just being hard on myself. But hey, I set a certain bar with Sara’s cake last year, and I wanted to do a good job!

The Recipe:

This recipe is adapted from chow.com.

  • Butter, for coating the baking dish
  • 1 cup all-purpose flour (we substituted whole wheat flour)
  • 6 large eggs
  • 1 cup granulated sugar
  • 1 (14-ounce) can sweetened condensed milk
  • 2/3 cup evaporated milk (not nonfat)
  • 1/2 cup unsweetened canned coconut milk
  • 1 tablespoon dark rum, such as Myers’s, plus more as needed
  • 1 cup sweetened flaked coconut
  • 1 1/2 cups heavy cream
  • 1 tablespoon powdered sugar
  1. Preheat the oven to 325°. Grease a 13-by-9-inch glass baking dish. Whisk the flour to aerate and break up any lumps (I didn’t do this, but maybe I should have).
  2. Split the egg whites and yolks into separate bowls. Add the sugar to the yolks and beat on high until pale yellow, about 5 minutes. Whip the egg whites on high speed until medium peaks form, about 1 1/2 minutes.
  3. Gently fold the egg whites into the yolks. Sprinkle the flour over the egg mixture and gently fold it in, just until there are no more white flour streaks. (Do not overmix.)
  4. Pour the batter into the prepared baking dish and bake until the cake is puffed and golden and the edges pull away from the sides of the pan, about 20 to 25 minutes.
  5. Meanwhile, place the three milks and the rum in a large bowl and whisk until combined.
  6. Remove the cake from the oven and place on a wire cooling rack. Using a toothpick or wooden skewer, poke holes all over the cake and allow to cool for 15 minutes. Pour the milk mixture evenly over the cake and continue cooling, about 45 minutes more. Tightly cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate at least 4 hours or overnight.
  7. When the cake is ready to serve, spread the coconut in an even layer in a large frying pan. Toast over medium heat, stirring often, until lightly browned and fragrant, about 5 minutes. Immediately remove from the pan.
  8. Place the heavy cream and powdered sugar in large bowl and whisk until medium peaks form. (If you like, flavor it with a teaspoon of dark rum. We opted to go rum-free on the whipped cream.) Slice the cake and serve topped with a mound of whipped cream and a sprinkle of toasted coconut.