IT’S THE CAKE OF THE TIME LORDS
Apparently, I take every opportunity I can to bake people birthday cakes, and the geekier, the better. This time, it was for my friend the math club president. We are all Whovians, it seems, so I took this opportunity to make yet another Doctor Who cake. (I made TARDIS of questionable quality and four pounds of powdered sugar for my birthday last fall.) This time, I opted for a slightly less precarious option. From the outside, it looked like a normal, innocent, cake frosted with white cream cheese frosting. But the inside was the surprise. The math club president did not know that the inside would be TARDIS blue (or as close a color as I could manage.) I was pleased with my efforts.
The round top of the cake was just begging for something in Gallifreyan, so I found someone’s vision of a Gallifreyan “L” on the internet and topped the cake with that. Then my narcoleptic sidekick got ahold of what she declared the “frosting gun” and wrote out a happy birthday message on graham crackers to accompany the cake.
I am still slightly confused as to why this recipe uses baking soda and vinegar, because all I could think of was elementary school science fair projects. I should investigate the science behind this. This recipe also came with a suggestion for frosting with coconut, marshmallow, and pecans, which I thought seemed like a horrible travesty. So I ignored it and made better, hardcore cream cheese frosting instead.
Getting the color of the cake itself was rather tricky. I was once again faced with the food coloring dilemma. At the grocery store, they sell the four-packs of little bottles of all the colors of food coloring. You can also buy large bottles of green, yellow, and red. In other words, every color but blue. So to get blue, you have to buy the whole four-pack. This is a problem for Whovians like me. We need to protest. Then there’s the second problem: the blue food coloring doesn’t actually make TARDIS blue, even if you use the whole bottle. This I discovered when making my TARDIS cake. This time, I added a few drops of red to darken the color. The recipe also called for a bit of cocoa powder, which it turned out we were out of. (Don’t ask how I ever let such a travesty occur.) I opted for hot cocoa mix, which I had to pick the miniature marshmallows out of while my roommates laughed at me. The color was still not perfect, as evidenced by the pictures. After scouring the internet, the conclusion that I have come to is that I need to invest in some industrial-grade food coloring. I have yet to figure out how or where to obtain such things, but apparently they exist, and unless people photoshopped their food, they are also much more effective than grocery-store food coloring.
In the meantime, while I investigate how to dye my food obnoxious colors, enjoy this terribly geeky cake.
Gallifrey Cake
2 cups sugar
2 sticks butter at room temperature
2 eggs
1 packet hot cocoa powder
1 bottle blue food coloring
2½ cups flour
1 teaspoon salt
1 cup milk
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
½ teaspoon baking soda
1 tablespoon vinegar
Cream together the butter and sugar in a large mixing bowl. Add the eggs and mix after adding each. Mix together the cocoa powder and food coloring and add it to mixture. Add the salt. Slowly add the flour, alternating with the milk, then add the vanilla. Combine the baking soda and vinegar, which will be like a miniature version of your volcano project, so be prepared. Stir this into the mixture as well. Pour into two greased 9” round pans and bake at 350ºF for about 25 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.
Cream Cheese Frosting
1 package (8 ounces) cream cheese
1 stick butter
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2-3 cups powdered sugar
Beat together the cream cheese and butter with an electric mixer. Add the vanilla. Add the powdered sugar slowly, scraping the sides of the bowl occasionally, until you reach the desired consistency. Once the cake is completely cooled, frost it and consume!
Source: foodnetwork.com
VEGETARIANS MAY EAT THIS TURTLE
It seems like there is an alphabet book of everything for little kids. One of them that I grew up with was an alphabet cookbook. Cool. Teach kids how to cook and bake some basic things. This book decided that full-on yeast bread seemed like the appropriate recipe to accompany the first-grade reading material for the letter “T”. I don’t know who’s responsible for this strange decision, but I would like to thank them.
As per the picture, the reason for placing bread under the letter “T” can be explained by the fact that it was officially called “Turtle Bread.” I really wouldn’t have thought it that difficult to find a food that actually started with T, instead of having to relabel bread. Tiramisu, tamales, tandoori chicken, and turkey all start with T. Then again, good luck having a small child make tiramisu.
This has become one of my rather random staples of baking. Because it contains a much higher ratio of yeast than something like oatmeal bread, it doesn’t need to rise as long and can therefore be made in the middle of a karaoke party at my apartment. (This has only happened once, to date.)
My parents have pointed out that it is not necessary to make this bread in the shape of a turtle, and also that it is possible to make other bread into the shape of a turtle. But I never actually do that. Why? Because you just don’t. It’s called Turtle Bread. What would it be if it weren’t in the shape of a turtle? Just bread. That’s boring. And if I made oatmeal bread into the shape of a turtle, it would be Oatmeal Turtle Bread, and who’s ever heard of an oatmeal turtle?
Plus, the turtle’s limbs are like rolls, so you actually get two types of baked goods in one when you dismember the turtle after removing it from the oven. That does bring up the Gingerbread Man Dilemma, though: is it better to first eat all the limbs and let it live as long as possible or to behead it and put it out of its misery? I’m not the only one who worries about this, am I?
Turtle Bread
2½ - 3 cups flour
1 packet yeast
1 tablespoon sugar
1 teaspoon salt
½ cup water
⅓ cup milk
1 tablespoon butter or margarine
1 egg
Whole cloves
In a large bowl, mix 1½ cups flour, yeast, sugar, and salt. In the microwave, heat the milk, water, and butter until the liquid is lukewarm and the butter has melted. Stir this into the dry mixture. Mix in the egg. Continue to add flour and mix until the dough becomes easy to handle (and hard to stir). Sprinkle flour on the counter and transfer the dough to the surface. Knead, adding more flour if necessary, until the dough is smooth and elastic. Put it back in the bowl and let rise for ten minutes in a warm place (like the oven with only the oven light on).
Grease a cookie sheet. After dough has finished rising, punch it down. Pull off four small dough blobs for feet, a slightly larger blob for the head, and a slightly smaller one for the tail. Shape them into balls and round out the remaining dough. Place the dough for the body on the cookie sheet. Flatten the ends of each of the extremities and tuck them under the body. Add cloves on the head for eyes. Make cross-cuts on the top of the body for the shell pattern and to allow the bread somewhere to rise.
Heat the oven to 400ºF and allow the turtle to rise for 20 minutes. Bake for 20-25 minutes or until the shell is hard and golden brown.
No turtles were harmed in the making of this bread.
BACON MAKES EVEN BEANS BETTER
I told my friend from downstairs to pick out what the vegetable for Easter dinner would be. It turns out he did a Google recipe search for beans and bacon grease. It seemed the best solution to the fact that I had gotten the really cheap bacon from the grocery store and after having used the bacony part of it, what was left in the freezer was mostly a frozen chunk of pig fat.
Anyway, he found this spectacular recipe, which I will officially declare a success because I had seconds of the vegetable. Mind you, I had seconds of everything that day. And let’s also not think about the way the bacon negates the healthiness of the fresh green beans, especially since we may or may not have double or tripled the amount of greasy bacon that the recipe calls for. The recipe gives an alternative to bacon grease, but I’m not even going to put that in here. It’s bacon. Accept not substitutes. (Though if you happen to be short on your secret stash of bacon grease, you can click through this post to see the original recipe.)
I also suspect that this would have been more successful if I happened to possess a large cast iron skillet like the recipe calls for (which clearly just means I need to get one). By the time we got to this in the dinner-making process, there was one clean pan and one clean pot, and there was no way all those beans were going to fit in that tiny little frying pan.
Green Beans and Bacon
1 pound green beans
2 tablespoons bacon grease (supplemented with bacon, if you’re like me)
3 cloves garlic
1 medium onion, chopped
1 cup chicken broth
1 red bell pepper, chopped
Salt and pepper to taste
Snap off the ends of the beans (and break the beans in half into smaller bean pieces, if you have a small mouth). Melt the bacon/bacon grease in a skillet over medium heat and add the onion and garlic, cooking for a minute. Add the beans and cook for another minute, until the beans turn bright green in color. Add the remaining ingredients. Cover with a lid, but leave it open a crack to let the steam boil off out of the chicken broth. Turn the heat to low and let simmer for 20-30 minutes, or until the liquid has evaporated and the beans and soft but still a little crisp.
Source: thepioneerwoman.com
EASTER DINNER
Doesn’t every college student feel the need to make a complete Easter dinner when not going home for the holiday? My friend from downstairs, the narcoleptic sidekick, and I were all in Boston for the holiday, so I decided this was of course the perfect opportunity to finally use the last chicken remaining in the freezer. (The sidekick’s parents felt the need to bring a couple of chickens to cook at some point.)
I’m pretty sure it qualifies as the fanciest meal all year. We ate at the table and even got out the placemats for the occasion. The table was set with the proper silverware and everything, too. But notice that there are still plastic cups. Because that’s the only kind we have. I guess that makes it a college-classy meal.
So over the next [undetermined period of time], I shall be posting with painstaking slowness the food that I made for that meal:
Green Beans with Bacon
Roast Chicken
Dinner Rolls
Chocolate Pie
I’m not going to tell you how to make mashed potatoes, though those were also a part of the meal. Nor am I going to attempt to explain how my friend from downstairs made his clam chowder (which was the first course and is also a food with which I am totally unfamiliar).
The only reason I’m telling you here what I made for Easter dinner is so you don’t get it confused with all the other food I have made over the past [undetermined period of time] that will be posted in a very confusing fashion all mixed up with this. Because I definitely didn’t make pancakes for Easter dinner.
MAC & CHEESE… WISCONSIN STYLE
There are three tupperware containers in the fridge filled with mac & cheese. This doesn’t come close to the time I made macaroni and cheese for the entire clan at a family reunion once with multiple pounds of cheese, but my roommate still asked me why on earth I made so much of it. The answer: yum? Also, it makes good lunches for the rest of the week.
This is what we commonly refer to in my family as “real” macaroni and cheese. In other words: real cheese, not the stuff from the box with the mysterious magic yellow powder (though make mistake - I eat that, too). This is the mac & cheese of my childhood, complete with the hot dogs in it. My dad used to have my brother and I try to count up all the hot dog ends in the mac & cheese to figure out how many hot dogs he had put in. Except my dad usually ate a few of the ends and then we’d end up with 3 hot dog ends and just get confused…
But I digress. My point is that this is classic comfort food, complete with the nostalgia. It’s gooey and delicious and don’t think about the fact that the only healthy thing about it is the large quantity of dairy in it.
I have seen all kinds of ridiculously complicated recipes for macaroni and cheese involving white sauces and baking it in the oven after cooking it, and so forth. I learned this simple way from my dad. And everyone seems to love it and think t took extraordinary effort or something. It takes about 20 minutes, and about the only additional work over the boxed mac & cheese is cutting up the cheese yourself.
You can really put in whatever cheeses you want to. No one will judge you. Unless you put in Kraft singles or something like that. But I honestly don’t think that counts as cheese. It falls more in the category of plastic, if you ask me. This time around, I used about half Monterey Jack and half cheddar, then randomly decided to add Parmesan at the last minute. Swiss adds a really nice tang to it, but also tends to make it on the stringy side. Mozzarella will make it the most ridiculously stringy thing you have ever eaten in your life, if that’s what you’re going for. So enjoy!
Macaroni and Cheese
1 box (1 pound) elbow macaroni
8 ounces cheese (see note above for what kinds)
½ cup milk
2 hot dogs
Pepper to taste
Cook the pasta according to the package directions, then drain it and return it to the pot. Place it back on the stove over low heat. Add the remaining ingredients. Stir intermittently until all of the cheese has melted into gooey deliciousness. Whatever you don’t eat reheats really well for leftovers later, especially if you add a little milk when you microwave it.
HOME-COOKED CHICKEN, WITH GARLIC OF COURSE
My mom now spends all day at home. For Christmas, I inadvertently gave her a subscription to a magazine full of recipes, Family Circle. (Long story on how one accidentally does such a thing.) The result: she spends significant amounts of time planning and making all kinds of experimental new things to cook and bake. Then she throws dinner parties and sends me pictures. Just to make me jealous, I think.
When I went for spring break last week, we spent a lot of time in the kitchen, of course, including lots of new recipes: double chocolate chip cookies, cheese cake, crock pot chicken, curry…
I’ve made chicken in a crock pot before. My friend from downstairs apparently deemed it necessary to bring a slow cooker to school. Or his mother did. My narcoleptic sidekick’s parents delivered a whole chicken to us, and we scoured the internet for how to combine the two. We randomly threw seasoning on it and stuck in the crock pot for about 7 hours with a bunch of vegetables. Apparently the high setting was a bit much, because the whole thing fell apart when we took it out of the pot. But it was still delicious, and it made picking the bones out to make soup out the remains much easier…
But back to this chicken. My mom actually had a recipe, this one from the Family Circle magazine. I approved of it because it called for putting massive quantities of garlic inside of the chicken. It also called for shallots, which were expensive at the grocery store, and also easily substituted for green onions, so Mom made the executive decision to make the change.
Herbed Roast chicken with Green Onions and Garlic
1 chicken (about 4 lbs)
2 tablespoons chopped fresh flat-leaf parsley
1 tablespoon chopped fresh rosemary
½ teaspoon fennel seeds, crushed
8 garlic cloves, peeled
1 teaspoon salt
freshly ground pepper
1 tablespoons olive oil
1 bunch green onions (or 3 shallots, as the recipe originally called for)
Remove the neck and giblets from the chicken cavity and reserve them for another use (like feeding the neighbor’s cats). Trim away any excess fat.
Chop together parsley, rosemary, fennel seeds and 3 of the garlic cloves. Place mixture in a small bowl and add salt, a generous grind of pepper and the oil. Place about one-third of the mixture inside chicken cavity along with remaining 5 garlic cloves. Spread the rest of the herb mixture over chicken. Place chicken in a large slow cooker. Sprinkle with green onions.
Cover and cook on LOW for 6 hours, or until chicken is tender and temperature in the thickest part of thigh measures 165 degrees on an instant-read thermometer. Cut chicken into serving pieces and serve with cooking juices. And mashed potatoes, or rice. And green vegetables.
POTATO SOUP… WITH BACON
To be 100% honest, the entire purpose of this soup was because I wanted an excuse for bacon. From that perspective, it was a complete success. I ate all the bacon I cooked. With help from my friend from downstairs, that is.
I don’t exactly have a recipe for this. As with most soup, I sort of just started throwing things into a pot and hoped that it tasted good. It’s pretty easy to not mess up soup.
I started by boiling a bunch of potatoes. While they were cooking, I prepared a cup of white sauce. When the potatoes were cooked and drained, I added some water with chicken bullion (rather a lot of bullion, actually, which accounts for the color of the soup).
Then it was in with the white sauce and some seasoning: mostly garlic, basil, and oregano, and garlic. I also like adding just a dash of cayenne pepper to potato soups. It gives it a nice bite. I didn’t feel the need to add any salt. The bullion pretty much covered the necessary sodium levels.
I let that simmer for awhile while I fried up some bacon and crumbled it into pieces. Actually, correction: my friend from downstairs cooked the bacon and then I tried to crumble it into pieces while it was still too hot, therefore almost burning my fingers with bacon grease in my impatience for dinner. A tip for any soup with bacon: don’t put it in until the absolute end, or add it to individual servings. Any earlier and all the flavor will be leached out and the bacon will be left limp and lonely and tasteless. We wouldn’t want that, now, would we?
I served up the soup with a generous topping of Monterey Jack cheese and, of course, the bacon. Next time, though, I might go a little lighter on the cayenne pepper.
DID I WIN AT PIZZA?
We had a pizza-making contest. I think I won. Because I made the most pizza.
Wait, that’s not the qualification for winning?
I also made the most people cry from eating my pizza.
Nope, that’s not how you win, either.
People seemed to like my pizza?
That’s more like it.
I teamed up with my friend from downstairs, and the two of us hauled over all the necessary ingredients and kitchen supplies to someone else’s dorm kitchen to join many of our other friends to wantonly gorge ourselves and ungodly amounts of pizza, including dessert pizza.
But first we had to decide what to kind of pizza to make.
I knew one of the pizzas had to be a classic pizza, seeing as in our trash-talking Facebook comment conversation over who had the best pizza recipe, I had already bragged about having the family recipe memorized for years. It’s normally just a standard pizza: crust, sauce, topping cheese. I decided to mix it up this time by making it stuffed crust and then adding garlic and parmesan cheese to the top of the crust. Both were good life choices.
I left my friend from downstairs in charge of designing the second pizza, which he spent nearly a week agonizing over, only deciding once we were halfway through the grocery store while shopping for ingredients. The verdict: the spiciest pizza known to mankind, apparently.
I’m actually not sure who “won.” There wasn’t so much judging as massive consumption of pizza. The eating of the spicy pizza was limited, though. It had to be eaten slowly and interspersed with shots of half-and-half. I ate one piece. Most people ate a few bites at most. Apparently that’s what 20 servings of hot sauce does. My friend from downstairs ate three pieces. I’m still not sure how.
The recipe for regular pizza can wait, seeing as I will make that many times in the future. I also need to fix the issue of the cheese oozing out of the crust and spilling onto the bottom of the oven and nearly setting off the smoke alarm. The spicy pizza will be the featured recipe for this post. Enjoy! But keep your dairy products near at hand.
Spicy Jalapeño Pizza
1 can (6 ounces) tomato paste
1 can (8 ounces) tomato sauce
Sriracha hot sauce
½ of a 5 ounce bottle scotch bonnet hot sauce½ - 1 teaspoon Cayenne pepper
4 ounces Capicola
½ medium onion
½ – ¾ pound jalapeño peppers
Mozzarella cheese
Monterey Jack cheese
Start preparing the dough. In a small bowl, mix together the tomato products with the hot sauces and pepper. Set aside. Slice the onion. Slice the peppers as they appear in the picture. Do not remove the seeds. Grate the cheese (as much you want, with about equal quantities of each type).
When the dough is ready, roll it out and place it on the pizza pan. Spread on the sauce, topping with the onion and green pepper. Inevitably, not all the seeds will stay in the peppers. Take any seeds that are left behind and stud the crust with them. Sprinkle on the cheese. Bake at 500ºF until the crust darkens and the cheese is bubbly and just darkening. (I don’t know how long this actually is. We’ve never actually timed any pizza-baking at home. Just keep an eye on it.)
Pizza Dough
1 cup warm water
1 tablespoon yeast (or 1 ¼ ounce packet)
1½ tablespoons oil
Pinch of salt
Dash of sugar
1 cup whole wheat flour
White flour
Mix the water and yeast in a large bowl. Mix in the oil, salt, and sugar. Add the whole wheat flour and mix. Add white flour until the dough becomes too thick to stir. Transfer to a floured counter and continue to add flour and knead until the dough is smooth and elastic. Allow the dough to rise for as long as the other steps of the recipe take.
WE HAVE RAMEKINS BECAUSE OF REASONS. LIKE CHICKEN POT PIE.
The decision to make chicken pot pie was made quite a while ago. As in, September, I believe. My narcoleptic sidekick even found a set of four ramekins on sale so we could all make individual chicken pot pies! It was very exciting.
Then my roommate dropped one of the ramekins and it broke.
Then I realized that I’d never made pie crust before.
Then we realized we didn’t have a recipe and the internet was overwhelmingly full of recipes of uncertain quality.
Then I got realized I actually had to get school work done sometime this year.
Then I decided not to do the schoolwork and finally got around to making the chicken pot pie. Six months later. (Don’t worry, the ingredients were not sitting in the fridge for six months. We were also to lazy to get those earlier.)
My pie crust was a little on the tough side, but considering that I had absolutely no idea what I was doing (that having always been my dad’s domain, and me having generally avoided most of the pies because they contained fruit, which I will not eat).
So on a Friday night, when I arrived home at around 8 PM, I decided that this was clearly the most logical time to make chicken pot pie, when I was starving because I had also forgotten to eat lunch. I survived. I persevered for the sake of the chicken pot pie!
There are probably easier ways to do this than the directions here call for, such as using every pan in the kitchen to cook all the vegetables separately. But it worked. I did create a spectacular mess, but that’s beside the point. (Though it does make the cooking look more hardcore.) I also ended up making a few changes along the way, mostly because I didn’t have things or was lazy. The origin of this recipe, however, is one of the classics: a church cookbook. To be specific, it’s from my church’s cookbook, which my mom gave me a copy of for Christmas. The chicken pot pie turned out well, but I do not think that quite gives me the guts to try the recipes for taco cheesecake or pink fluff salad.
Chicken Pot Pie
1 cup carrots, peeled and sliced
1 cup frozen peas
2 potatoes, peeled and diced
¼ cup butter
½ cup onion, chopped
⅓ cup flour
salt and pepper to taste
¼ teaspoon dried sage (I used thyme since I had no sage)
2 cups water
1 cup milk
1 tablespoon chicken bouillon granules
3 cups cooked chicken, cubed
Pastry for a double crust pie (which I don’t currently trust myself to give you a recipe for)
Cook the peas and carrots until tender. In a separate pan, boil the potatoes until tender. In a large saucepan cook the onion in butter until tender but not brown. Stir in the flour, salt, pepper, and sage (or thyme) and mix. Add the water, milk, and bouillon. Cook and stir until thickened and bubbly, then two minutes more. Add the vegetables and chicken. Cook until heated. Pour into a 9x13 pan, or even better, divide into 6 portions and place in ramekins! Top with the pastry dough and cut slits for steam. Bake at 400 degrees for 10-15 minutes or until crust is golden brown. If made in individual servings, they can be refrigerated and reheated with another 10-15 minutes in the oven. But I would recommend just eating a bunch of them right away.
MAKING SCONES MEANS FIRST WORLD PROBLEMS
My first world problems:
All four of us were in the kitchen trying to cook four different things and it was busy.
The butter was too hard to easily cut into the dry ingredients without a pastry cutter. I bent the fork.
I put the scones too close together on the pan and they all ran together.
All the butter knives were in the dishwasher, so I had to use a paring knife to spread butter on my scone (because the ¾ cup of butter already in them wasn’t enough).
We’re almost out of honey.
My scone fell apart in my hands.
Excuse me while I go get napkin.
Then one of my future flatmates came to pick up a key from me, and I made her come up and eat a scone. I also had to promise to make more scones next year and teach her how to cook. I am excited. And she requested the scone recipe, which is why I’m posting this immediately after making and eating my scones. Also because (once again) I do not want to do my homework.
Then my roommate met my friend from downstairs in the hallway and informed him that there were scones. I arrived a few minutes later consume them. I suppose it’s only fair, seeing as it was his idea that I make scones in the first place.
I’ve made this recipe a few times now. I think that my roommates appreciate it when they wake up at 2:00 PM
on a Saturday and I’ve made scones a few hours previously.
Scones
3 cups flour
½ cup sugar
5 teaspoons baking powder
½ teaspoon salt
¾ cup butter
1 egg
1 cup milk
Preheat the oven to 400ºF.
In a medium-sized bowl, mix the first four ingredients. Add the butter and cut it in until it has the consistency of course crumbs. The easiest way to do this is with a pastry blender, but if you don’t have one you can use a pair of knives or a fork.
In a small bowl, beat the egg and mix in the milk. Stir it in to the dry ingredients just until moistened. Knead briefly. (You can just knead it in the bowl.) The dough will be really sticky and stick to your hands. Divide the dough into 12 pieces and pat into rounds about ½ inch thick. Space widely on a cookie sheet. (They will spread some, and you can see that I clearly had a problem with my inability to space things.)
Bake for 15 minutes or until golden brown. Serve warm with butter and honey.
Source: allrecipes.com
