Pumpkin Bandwagon

Congratulations to Starbucks for the creation of Pumpkin Spice Mania.  You can find that flavor available in nearly everything from beef jerky (okay I am judging-yuck), M&M’s, beer and donuts to candles and air fresheners.  In fact, since 2008 the number of pumpkin spice products has risen well over 200%.  I had a horrifying moment at the gas station the other day when I thought I saw pumpkin flavored Snickers.   After a few seconds of beginning the “They have gone too far” rant in my head I realized they were pumpkin shaped Snickers.  The real surprise there was that it shocked me to think such a thing was out of place considering how many product lines are trying to cash in on trend.

Now normally I like to think that I avoid trendiness.  I make pumpkin spice cupcakes in March, because I am a rebel.  That is right, there is no telling what I will get up to-look out world!  To my shame, I now have to admit to hopping on the bandwagon.  In my defense, it was a special request from a friend of mine and it turned out lovely.  For those of you who saw the pictures on Facebook and asked if I delivered…here is the recipe.

Pumpkin Swirl Cheesecake:

Ingredients:

• 1 ½ cups graham cracker crumbs
• 2 tablespoons sugar
• ¼ cup unsalted butter,melted
• 16 ounces (2 blocks) of cream cheese, softened
• 16 ounces (2 blocks) low-fat cream cheese, softened
• 1 cup sugar, divided
• 1 tsp vanilla
• 4 eggs
• 1 can (15 ounce) pumpkin
• 1 teaspoon cinnamon
• ¼ nutmeg
• 1 dash ground cloves

Directions:

1. Combine the graham cracker crumbs, 2 tablespoons of sugar and the melted butter in a medium bowl until thoroughly mixed.  Press the mixture into the bottom and partially up the sides of a 9″ springform pan.
2. Preheat the oven to 325º
3. In a large bowl beat the cream cheese, ¾ cup sugar and vanilla on medium speed until completely combined.
4. Add the eggs, one at a time, beating between each just until combined.
5. Remove 1 ½ cups of the batter and reserve.
6. Add the pumpkin, cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves and ¼ cup sugar to the remaining batter and blend to combine.
7. Pour ½ the pumpkin batter into the springform pan.  Drop spoonfuls of ½ the plain batter in a random pattern.  Repeat with remaining batters.
8. Swirl with a butter knife to create the marble pattern.
9. Place pan on the rack positioned in the lower third of oven and bake for 1 hour, 15 minutes or until almost set.
10. Turn the oven off and crack open the door, leaving the cheesecake in the oven for 30 minutes.
11. Remove from oven and allow cheesecake to come to room temperature.
12. Cover and refrigerate for at least 24 hours.

Biscuit Nostalgia

Way, way back in the middle ages, when I was a teenager working at Hardees, I was the biscuit girl.  I would wake up at 3:30 am in the morning and go in and make biscuits.  Getting up so hellishly early may have seemed like a crap job, but from my perspective, I would get done early enough to enjoy the rest of my day.  I would make the biscuits by hand in a giant bowl: add the dry ingredients, cut in the shortening by hand, add the ice-cold buttermilk and then use my short little arms to mix away.  Don’t worry, I washed up first.  My hands would ache with the cold from the buttermilk.  You would think, after such a glamorous adventure, that I would hate biscuits, but I loved them, even as a surly teenager.  I had not attempted to make them as a surly adult until now, but I always order them at restaurants.  Minus the gravy.  I do not love sausage gravy.  Please feel free to send all the hate mail you want.  This surly adult eats her biscuits with butter and honey.

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One of the secrets behind a great biscuit turns out to be the mixing by hand.  Go ahead and use a spatula if you must, I will not judge because I too hate having crap all over my hands, but it really is the best way.  The recipe below is for a small batch of biscuits, enough for one meal, which is good, as they are best fresh from the oven.  As indulging in a tray of biscuits as supper seems like a bad idea, I made a chicken as a side dish:)  Enjoy!

Buttermilk Biscuits:

Ingredients:

• 2 cups flour, plus more for dusting
• 1/4 teaspoon baking soda
• 1 tablespoon baking powder
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 6 tablespoons cold butter, plus 1 tablespoon melted
• 1 cup buttermilk.

Directions:

• Preheat oven to 450º
• In a large bowl, combine the dry ingredients and cut in the cold butter until it looks like coarse meal.  I always think it looks like sand.
• Make a well in the center of the bowl and pour in the buttermilk and mix just until combined.  The dough should be very wet.
• Place the dough on a floured board and, using your hands, fold dough four times.  You will probably want to flour your hands..unlike what I said earlier about the spatula, a rolling-pin is a big no-no at this point.
• Press the dough to 1 inch thick and use a round cutter (or a cold glass if you don’t have a round cutter) to cut out the biscuits.  You can gently put the scraps together to make more-the purists will tell you it isn’t as good, but why waste the dough?
• Place the rounds on a cookie sheet, or even better, a baking stone and bake for 10 minutes, or until the tops are golden brown.
• Remove from oven and brush the tops with melted butter.

Blueberry Tart

The Queen of Hearts,

She made some tarts,

All on a summer’s day;

The Knave of Hearts,

He stole those tarts,

And took them clean away;

The King of Hearts,

Called for the tarts,

And beat the knave full sore;

The Knave of Hearts,

Brought back the tarts,

And swore he’d steal no more.

–Author Unknown

Did you ever read Alice in Wonderland and wonder what a tart was?  I mean it would have to be pretty damned amazing if the King of Hearts was willing to beat the Knave for them right?  I can finally see what the fuss is about.  I found blueberries on sale and decided to have some fun with them (don’t worry, that does not mean anything icky).  Some of my work guinea pigs had asked for a fruit pie..but I needed to put my own twist on it.  I decided on a free form blueberry tart.

Due to the fact that Wisconsin lost the bid for summer weather, it was cool enough for me to make the crust from scratch.  If you have never done so, or are one of those smug bastards who just whips it up in their food processor, let me tell you, cool weather is important.  The key to the flaky yumminess is the cold butter.  I tend to wax eloquent (in my own head at least) about how important the butter being in the right state is.  If a recipe calls for cold butter, it means business.  Likewise if a cookie recipe wants softened butter, melted will not do.  Trust me, it’s important.  Anyways, this was the first time I did not cheat with a Pillsbury Pie Crust, and I am so happy with the results.

The guinea pigs were also happy….to the point of being a little scary.  One of them offered (?) to stalk me so they could find out where I lived and force me to do nothing but make them more.  Who knew I could bake something so delicious it would require a restraining order? I made the recipe again, not a gun point I swear, but cut the dough into quarters prior to rolling out and made four smaller tarts and they turned out just as well.

Free Form Blueberry Tarts:

Ingredients:

Pastry:

• 1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour, plus more for rolling out the pastry
• 1/4 teaspoon ground ginger
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 12 tablespoons (1 1/2 sticks) cold unsalted butter, cut into tablespoons
• 1/4 cup, plus a tablespoon of ice cold water

Filling

• 1/4 cup sugar, plus 1 teaspoon for sprinkling
• 1 lemon
• 1/4 cup all purpose flour
• 4 cups blueberries
• 1 egg white, beaten

Directions:

1. In a large bowl, combine the 1 1/2 cups flour with the ginger and salt.  Add the butter and, using a pastry cutter, cut it into the flour until it is the size of small peas.  Sprinkle on the ice water slowly while mixing with a spatula just until the pastry starts to come together.  Turn the pastry out onto a piece of waxed paper and pat into a disk.  Wrap in plastic and refrigerate for two hours or until firm.
2. 20 minutes before bake time, microwave the lemon on high for 10 seconds.  Combine in a large bowl 1/4 cup sugar, the zest from the lemon and the flour.  Cut the lemon in half and squeeze the juice into a small bowl.  Fold the blueberries and 2 tablespoons of the fresh lemon juice into the flour/sugar/zest mixture.  Once completely coated, let stand for 15 minutes.  Preheat the oven to 375º F.
3. Line a large baking sheet with parchment paper.  There is a good chance that the juice will leak out and you will thank me for this step later.  On a lightly floured work surface, roll out the pastry into a rough 14 inch circle.  It should be about a 1/8 inch thick.  The beauty of the rustic free form style is that this does not have to be perfect.  All my fellow OCD’ers out there need to read and repeat a couple of times.
4. Transfer the dough to the parchment and spoon the blueberry mixture into the center.  Allow at least 1 1/2 inch border around the blueberries.  Fold the pastry dough over the blueberries, pleat as necessary.  Brush the beaten egg yolk on the pastry and sprinkle with the remaining sugar.
5. Bake for 55 minutes, or until the pastry is golden brown and the blueberries are bubbling.  Remove from oven, guard from the Knave of Hearts.  Allow the tart to cool to warm and serve cut into wedges.  Make sure the King of Hearts gets his to avoid a beat down.

Chocolate Covered Strawberry Cheesecake

Cooking sometimes feels like you take a little bit of this and a little bit of that and voila, dinner is served.  My sister, who is a baker by nature, has had to resist strangling me on several occasions.  She will call up and ask how to make something, and I start saying things like “you add a glop of this”.  I do realize that glop is not an actual measurement that you will find on any chart, even one as oddly structured as the US standard/imperial system.  The problem that we had in communicating was that I was into cooking and knew in my heart that it was an art and therefore allowed, nay encouraged, to be loosey goosey in the measurement.  She was into baking, which is a science, and knew in her heart that there were rules and measurements not to be trifled with.  With time, I have come to realize that we were both right.  Not that I am ready to admit that to my little sister.  Besides, as we have gotten older, we have grown into each others comfort zones.  As a result, I don’t make her want to strangle me nearly as often.

I still don’t always follow all of the rules, but that is due to research, not being loosey goosey.  The comfort level I gained in cooking has translated into my baking.  When I see a picture of a dessert that looks interesting, and then read a recipe that has me scratching my head, I make my own recipe to go with the picture.  A good example of this is the chocolate covered strawberry cheesecake I made for a friend’s going away party.  I downloaded the recipe on the picture alone.  When it came time to make the cheesecake I read the recipe.  It had odd ingredients like unflavored gelatin.  Sorry, there are places I just choose not to go.  Instead, I took my Ultimate Cheesecake Recipe, I left out the lemon peel and replaced the regular graham crackers with chocolate ones.  I swirled strawberry preserves that had been thinned with a bit of water into the cheesecake batter.  The step with the strawberry preserves is a good example of needing to ignore instructions.  The fist attempt was taken from a different recipe and was way too thin.  You need it to be thin enough that you can swirl it and but not so thin that it is watery.

Once the cheese cake was done and had spent the night in my fridge (ahh the night life of cheesecakes), I poured chocolate ganache over the top and let set.  I needed it, as the swirls of strawberry tend to create fissures in the cheesecake.  Gotta love ganache, delish and cosmetic all in one.  All that was left to do was add the chocolate covered strawberries.  Hopefully, you can use this to find inspiration of your own, despite the bad picture (operator error).  It is the opposite of the good photo, bad recipe that inspired me!

Terrible photo, yummy cheesecake

Black Bottom Cupcakes

The stress-0-meter has been hitting the bell lately, and I don’t know a better therapy than baking up treats for everyone.  I usually have the ingredients for this recipe on hand, so black bottom cupcakes it is.  The only problem is that every time I make them, I feel a need to double-check one of the ingredients to make sure I didn’t “oops” while adding it to the file.  I may have finally caught on to the whole concept of reading all the way through an ingredient list before starting a recipe.  It is a novel approach, I know, but I am willing to take a shot.  The odd ingredient in this recipe is vinegar.  It is the only sweet recipe I have made, to date, that calls for vinegar so it always throws me for a loop.

Lucky for me, the Google oracle is only a step or two away from the kitchen.  So that you can understand what happened next, part of my kitchen therapy is music while I work.  I always get “Fat Bottomed Girls” stuck in my head on repeat when I bake black bottom cupcakes.  I was humming away, innocently trying to look up a recipe when I inadvertently combined the song with the recipe and Googled   “Black Bottom Girls”.  This does not get you to any recipe websites, I can assure you.  It does, however, bring up an astounding amount of porn sites-though why any amount of porn should surprise me in this day and age…

Once I got back to the less pervy side of the internet, I verified the vinegar and got started baking.  The first time I made these I wasn’t that impressed with them.  There was something missing, which is strange because these cupcakes have a lot going for them: chocolatey but not too sweet or rich, with a chocolate chip studded cheesecake-like center, light except the center which is dense.  After playing around a bit I tried adding just a dash of cinnamon and it worked out perfectly.  You can’t really taste the cinnamon, but your nose picks it up just enough to bring warmth to the cupcake.  It’s like a hug for your taste buds.  Once again, the portion bandit struck, so while the recipe originally said it made 20-24, I made 17-go figure.  Either way, they turned out grand.  Enjoy!

Black Bottom Cupcakes:

Ingredients:

FILLING:

• 1 package (8 ounces) cream cheese, softened
• 1/3 cup sugar
• 1 egg
• 1/8 teaspoon salt
• 1 cup (6 ounces) semisweet chocolate chips

CUPCAKES:

• 1 cup sugar
• 1 cup water
• 1/3 cup vegetable oil
• 1 egg
• 1 tablespoon white vinegar
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1 to 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1/4 cup baking cocoa
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• Dash of cinnamon

Directions:

1. In a small bowl, beat the cream cheese, sugar, egg and salt until smooth. Stir in chips; set aside.
2. For cupcakes, in a large bowl, beat the sugar, water, oil, egg, vinegar, cinnamon and vanilla until well blended. Combine the flour, cocoa, baking soda and salt; gradually beat into egg mixture until blended.
3. Fill paper-lined muffin cups half full with chocolate batter. Drop a heaping tablespoon of cheese mixture in center of batter of each cupcake.
4. Bake at 350° for 25 minutes. Cool in pans for 10 minutes before removing to racks to cool completely. Refrigerate any not eaten right away.