AnotherPurl :: a knitter's life

It's all about cake

Most of my friends at this point realize that I like to bake, and that I like to try and bake allergen free when possible. Obviously successes vary, but every once in a while it is possible to succeed in nearly all fronts.

I made this chocolate cake from Bakerella's site. I was making it lactose free for a friend's vacation, and I didn't want to buy lactose free milk (mostly because it pushed me from 2 grocery shopping trips to 3). In the end it was dairy free and gluten free, but I still had eggs and nuts.

This cake uses vegetable oil, and while I was looking originally for cakes that used butter I chose this one at least in part because I ran out of time and because, well, it looks delicious. However, I wanted to try baking with coconut oil, so I used the coconut oil in place of vegetable oil. For the milk in the batter, I used hazelnut milk (after opening the container of chocolate hazelnut milk and deciding it was too scary to use).

This cake was an easy swap to make it gluten free, because one of the containers of flour I have is Arrowhead Mills Gluten Free all purpose flour. It has xanthan gum and leavenings already in it, and suggests using it as a 1:1 replacement for the flour in your recipes with no other changes. So, I did a simple flour swap, which worked lovely.

I used the same frosting recipe as in Bakerella's recipe, except I used 1/2 cup of coconut oil and 2 sticks of Earth Balance. I probably used less sugar as well, but it was certainly sweet enough for my sweet tooth and made a ridiculously huge amount of frosting.

Ganache. Well, that is where things sort of fell down. I made these coconut milk caramels, which taste awesome. However, I don't have a large enough container for making this much caramel, so I divided into 2 pans. I knew I wanted to use it like a ganache, but it wasn't developing enough color to contrast with the bright white frosting, so I took it off the heat at about 230° (or 235° F) and added about an ounce or 2 of semisweet (dairy free) chocolate. It was already solidifying by the time I got to pouring it on the cake, so it wasn't as beautifully smooth as a ganache.

Long story short. It was delicious, but too coconutty for my husband. I have a bit of caramel left to do something with, and I brought the leftover cake to Gather Here to share its coconut chocolate goodness.

I can definitely recommend Arrowhead Mills for gf baking. It's my second time using the flour (first time was cookies), and it doesn't have that gritty texture that can sometimes happen, doesn't interfere with the other flavors of baking and seems to rise fine. Obviously more testing needs to happen, which is fine because I need to make cookies to mail to my mom and dad. Testing away!

sometimes there is a cookie fail

Helene (of Tartelette) is teaching food styling/photography at Squam. It is one of the many classes I wanted to get into. Helene is one of the two food bloggers I read who I would call a queen of macaron.

I decided I'd make macaron. Not just any macaron. Her peanut butter and jelly macaron. Unlike my previous experiences with macaron, this time I wasn't using almond flour (I was out and decided not to replace with hazelnut flour) but almonds and peanuts. Suffice to say I didn't grind them fine enough. My mixture was too chunky to pass through my tip (which probably was also the wrong size). Now, once the nuts are mixed into the stiff egg whites, there really is no going back. So, I used my mini cookie scoop (about 1 inch cookies/mini ice cream scoops) to put the batter out.

It's mostly the right size. It's even mostly the right shape. It's developing a foot. But the bite and the crunch will not be quite the same.

I'm telling myself that as long as they are tasty it doesn't quite matter. Unfortunately macaron aren't just a flavor, but they are a visual experience.

My other batch of cookies will be baked tomorrow.

on the road to Squam (java java java)

I'm leaving for Squam on Wednesday morning. While I might not act excited in a traditional manner, I am pretty thrilled. It's a very comforting and nurturing environment, and it is nice to have a bit of time to myself (not that I don't carve out some me time on a regular basis, but somehow it is a bit different when you aren't quite as accessible).

Last year people complained about the quality of the coffee. Now, I love mself some good coffee, but I drink Starbucks drip, lattes from a number of places, coffee from Mary Lous (which varies in intensity, but hey they give Victor a dog treat almost every time), and places with various levels of quality. To me, coffee is almost always coffee. I like it better when it is good, but even mediocre coffee is pretty good. The standard complaint was strength, more than quality of flavor itself.

However, for me, I am an early riser. Last year even without an alarm, I woke up at 5 or so every morning without the alarm on my phone or iPod. The dining hall opens about 2-3 hours after I've gotten up, so this year I'm making my own coffee. Yesterday I bought a Woodneck from Dwelltime yesterday. This morning I made myself coffee using it for the first time using their brew instructions. The Japanese instructions involve about 20 grams less coffee, so the Dwelltime instructions make a much stronger brew. I'll probably try it again with one scoop of grounds (about 16 grams) next time. This is a much better coffee than even the Clever Dripper, though I have to wonder how much of that is the amount of grounds vs. the brew method.

Either way, this involved making coffee this morning that was at least as good as what I can buy in my neighborhood. I tend to buy coffee out, because something about the French Press means that it just doesn't taste quite as good as what I'm buying out. Given that this tastes better than both Mary Lous and Donut King, my local coffee places, I'm way more likely to make coffee at home.

public relations and cookies

So, I had a good post and Typepad ate it when it decided I wasn't logged in. Grr!

So, here's a recap of what was in the post.

About 2 weeks ago, Komen Foundation defunded Planned Parenthood over what appeared to be reasons chosen to guarantee defunding. There were reasons to be unsupportive of both sides, but the vast brunt of the public opinion came down on the side of Planned Parenthood. They received thousands of dollars of funding to make up the shortfall from Komen and shortly thereafter Komen rescinded its decision.

In honor of this PR fiasco (and at my husband's suggestion) I made cookies.

(my photo color correcting is way off)

Clusterfucks and penis For the Cure cookies.

Clusterfucks are a standard nut and chocolate/candy melt candy. Mine are 1/2 each of almonds and walnuts with a handful of pecans and chopped up and toasted then mixed with a melted bag of pink candy melts and 1/2 cup of chopped pistachio nuts (red pistachio nuts, green pistachio nuts). Then you drop them in small scoops onto a parchment covered cookie sheet and chill. They're a snap and are pretty tasty. You could use any non-melting, non-wet foods as long as you have about 2 cups of fill ins.

The cookies on the other hand were more work. I went to iParty and got a penis shaped cookie cutter (bachelorette party staple apparently). The booklet that came with the cookie cutter is horrific in its punniness. It also was more racist than I was expecting. Not something I would have bought if I had known.

The cookies are a standard sugar cookie recipe made with almond extract (from Cookie Craft), so they would too be filled with nuttiness. I then made a small batch of chocolate royal icing. I decorated the cookies in 3 stages: first I piped the outside and then I thinned the icing to change it to a flood consistency and flooded them. After they were dry I then used pink candy melts to write For the Cure on the cookies. I'll admit that I was in a bit of a rush, so the piping is not the best I've ever done.

I only made about 9 cookies, but I have dough frozen to make other cookies later.

Of course, doing this made me remembering how much I enjoyed decorating cookies, though it is always more fun with it is silly like this.

Happy almost Friday!

[10 Tuesday] mmm, chocolate

Chocolate is probably my biggest dietary downfall. It is easy to acquire, requires nearly no effort on my part to prepare and is quick and super caloric to consume. Of course, my other downfalls are wheat thins and mashed potatoes. What can I say, I love the carbs.

My favorite chocolate treats really do run the gamut, but I am hoping to not get any chocolate this year for valentines day. Eating healthy is hard enough without a box just sitting there staring at me.

1. Peanut Butter M&Ms / Pretzel M&Ms. Now, I don't even remember if these have chocolate in them (well, the pretzel ones do), but they are like a super delicious treat. I'd buy them more often if I could resist eating the entire bag at once.

2. Rolos. These are the basis for the bachelor cookies that I love. The bachelor cookies are faux turtles. Take mini pretzels and place 1 unwrapped rolo onto each pretzel. Place in an oven at 200° Fahrenheit for like 2 minutes. Just until melty. Push a pecan half into the melting rolo. Voila. Mini turtle cookies.

3. Lindt truffles. My favorites are probably the stracciatella (cookies and cream) and the white chocolate, though I'm not sure if I've ever had one that I'd consider bad. One of my friends makes hot chocolate by adding a single truffle to hot chocolate and about a tablespoon of Godiva licqueur. It is so tasty!

4. Old fashioned hot chocolate. If you don't really like drinking milk, this is a great way to get more milk into the diet. It is good with pretty much any cocoa powder I've tried, though obviously more affordable with Hersheys. I just follow the stovetop instructions on the can and mix the sugar, salt and cocoa in a bowl first (it helps prevent lumps).

5. Chocolate pudding. Another dairy source that I really like. There is this recipe on Joy the Baker that has been on my list to try since it came out, but I haven't bought the black onyx cocoa powder. I know I could try it with a more pedestrian cocoa powder, but I really want to try the black onyx. I had some last year at Baitcon and it was good but hard to differentiate from other chocolate with all of the dairy that went into it.

6. Chocolate chips. I have these tiny sake and green tea style cups and one of my go to no work desserts is to just dump about an ounce of chocolate chips in them. I love the callebaut style dark chocolate chips or mega chunks, but I don't buy them quite as often. If they are very dark and rich then I feel the urge to eat less.

7. Neuhaus. Au Chocolat has a wide assortment of them, so I love going and picking out one. They are pricy, but that isn't so big a deal if you are only eating one or two. My favorites are Seduction (raspberry ganache surrounded by a toffee and enrobed in chocolate), Frais du bois (dark chocolate with a liquid strawberry center) and Prestige (liquid caramel center). They are all very good and the frais du bois has exceptionally good mouth feel.

8. Fudge. I used to make a ton of fudge, using variants on the never fail fudge recipe from the marshmallow fluff. One of my friends doesn't like the fluff-based recipe and so I've been trying to find a fudge recipe I like that doesn't use it. So far its an uphill battle. I make a lot of white chocolate based fudges, because they are the best for making alternative flavors like my maple fudge of space and time.

9. Chocolate Thin Mint Ice Cream, Chocolate Ice Cream with a Salted Caramel Swirl or Nutella Rocky Road. These are ice creams I've made for the ice cream party I hold in July. They are super chocolatey and have just enough of something else to make them eatable for people with a wider range of chocolate tolerances.

10. Salted Caramels. Au Chocolat has these in both bags and as individual pieces. I love that if I just want one, but more often my husband gets a box of them from Whole Foods and I then spend the next month having one a day. It's a good thing, because if I buy a bag from Au Chocolat and leave them in my desk at work then they are gone within minutes of opening the bag. So dangerous!

I really do love chocolate, but my current diet as it were restricts me to one sweet after dinner. Usually that sweet is a half serving of the salted caramels or Girl Scout cookies. Though I made cookies yesterday, and I will probably need to eat a larger dessert tonight!

amateur food porn (marmalade)

Last week via Twitter I read RWW's articles on food porn. Amateur food porn specifically. Smartphones with cameras have made it easy for many people to take a photo of their dinner from the food truck, the dimly lit restaurant or their own home. Most of these meals are pretty ugly on camera though they probably look delicious in person.

So, like any right thinking geek with a bit of tech and some time to kill, I sent them amateur food porn (Twitter link). It was my breakfast: slices of blood oranges with plain yogurt with lemon-kumquat ginger marmalade. It was delicious, but the photograph from the iPad was not stellar.

But the marmalade is amazing.

I looked at a number of different recipes when I decide I was going to make marmalade. In the end, I used the general formula: cups water equals cups sugar. Boil till gelled.

Meyer Lemon - Kumquat Ginger Marmalade

Ingredients
2 pounds meyer lemons
8 ounces kumquats
1-inch ginger, peeled and minced
water to cover
sugar to taste

Method
First peel the lemons. Cut the lemon peels into long thin strips and set aside. Peel as much pith as possible off of about half of the lemons and discard. For the remaining lemons, cut into thin slices and remove seeds. Add to a large non-reactive pot (I used my enamel-lined dutch oven). Cut the kumquats into small rounds. Remove seeds and add kumquats to the pot. Add the peeled and minced ginger (I could have used more ginger).

Add water to cover and then sugar to match. For me that was 6 cups each of water and sugar.

Boil over medium heat, stirring on a regular basis. Check the marmalade for gelling at 45 minutes and every 15-20 minutes afterwards. To check for gelling put a small amount of the marmalade onto a plate. If it is not runny after about a minute of cooling then it is ready.

This made about 3.5 pints of marmalade. I canned mine in my smallest pot (sadly, that made it a lot slower).

But delicious!

Yup, spread it on english muffins, add it to yogurt, put between in layer cakes. Everywhere!

Iron Craft 2: The search for hearts and flowers

Per normal, I had too many ideas and eventually not enough time. The power of procrastination is strong with me.

Last night I finally got around to making something (rather than stealing the xanthan gum) from my molecular gastronomy kit, a gift from my husband. I wanted to try two techniques: gelification in both shapes and spaghetti form and spherification. Given the theme, I had this elaborate idea of making flowers from gelification and the center topped from the spherification. I was going to use the spaghetti and the other flavor to make a stem and leaves.

It even sort of worked.

So, the kit (which is no longer available at Thinkgeek) I have contains all of the chemicals I need for these items in 2 gram packets. I did some basic math and modified the recipes in the kit and came up with strawberry flowers with basil leaf and stem.

Here is the general recipe (warts and all):

Strawberry Puree
1 lb Strawberries, diced
40 grams sugar

Add the sugar to the strawberries and let macerate for 30 minutes. After the strawberries have been sitting for about 30 minutes, puree them and then strain them to remove the seeds.

400 ml water
4 grams calcium salts (I swear that I add the correct chemical name later)

Combine and stir until the calcium is dissolved. It takes about a minute and can be set aside.

Spherification
200 ml strawberry puree
10 ml vanilla vodka
1 gram sodium alginate

Using an immersion blender, combine the 3 ingredients until the alginate is completely dissolved. Let sit at least 30 minutes to degas (the color will be much truer the longer you let it sit... a good reason to use straight fruit juice and let it sit overnight).

To create the spheres, you can use a syringe or pipette to drop into the calcium mixture. The longer they sit the thicker the "calcium skin" will form around the sphere. Alternatively, you can fill a normal half-sphere teaspoon with the mixture and gently over turn it into the calcium water. This will create a larger sphere (or ravioli for the largest sizes). The one pictured is from a 1/4 teaspoon measure.

Gelification
200 ml strawberry puree
20 ml balsamic vinegar
2 grams carageenan

Combine the three ingredients over medium heat and stir until boiling. Turn off the heat. Pour onto a cool surface (I used a pizza pan), and store in the fridge.

For the basil, I used the same amount of carageenan, but I used a basil puree from a tube. Bad idea. It had additives including xanthan gum and salt and the entire thing smelled good and tasted, well, strongly of salt. Because I used the puree and then strained it out, the liquid was fairly pure and possibly not as strongly basil flavored as I was trying for. I also needed a larger amount of carageenan to get a similar level of gelling as the puree. No recipe, because it was not worth repeating though I did get to try out the syringe and the tubing to make spaghetti.

To combine, I placed the basil on the bottom of a plate, and using a heart shaped cutter I put 4 heart "petals" on top of the basil. In the center of the 4 petals I put a strawberry sphere. Visually it worked, but the flavor of the basil marred what could have been a wonderful strawberry experience.

Things I learned: Getting appropriate caviar shapes is harder than it looks. Mine all looked like tiny worms or tears. My lack of patience meant I had a much better success with the larger spheres. This all takes a fair amount of time, and it is best that at least some of these things are spread out over a day or two. Oh, and clean things right away. Getting things stuck in tubes and pipettes is not really a fun time had by all.

homemade Japanese-style veggie burgers

So, last year I found this veggie burger recipe on angry chicken. I've been using it off and on since then, because veggie burgers are affordable, tasty and full of wholesome tasty ingredients. Mostly I've been making my own veggie burgers, because homemade veggie burgers cost less than $4.00 for ingredients to make anywhere from 12 to 20 burgers depending on size.

Ingredients:
3 strips wakame, soaked, drained and chopped
1 10-oz bag shelled edamame, thawed
1 15-oz can cannelini beans, rinsed and drained
3 scallions, chopped
1 inch ginger, peeled and chopped
1/4 cup sesame seeds (mine were hulled)
3 large carrots, peeled and cut into 3-inch pieces
2 TBSP gluten-free tamari
1/2 cup rolled oats (for GF, try Bob's Red Mill)

Preheat the oven to 400° Fahrenheit (about 205° Celcius).

Wakame is a bit expensive, but it lasts for a really long time and no recipe really uses that much. Pull out 3 strips and put in a large bowl with cold water to cover. Let sit for 5 minutes. Scoop the wakame out of the bowl, leaving the soaking water behind and then chop and set aside.

Using a food processor, shred the carrots. Set about half of them aside in a large bowl. Change blades (at least I have to on mine) and add the edamame and beans. Puree until mixed, but you can still see some texture. At this point I pulled out about half the mixture, so I could retain more texture, but that is not completely necessary.

Continue adding the remaining ingredients including wakame, pulsing to further chop and combine. Lastly add oats to the food processor and pulse. If the mixture in either the bowl or the food processor is very wet, add more oats until it clumps but is still moist. I shape into patties. These ones are slider sized, and I got 20 slider sized patties. Place on a silpat, greased cookie sheet, or parchment paper.

Bake for 10 minutes, flip the burgers (they will be a little fragile) and bake for 15 minutes more.

These were really tasty. Neither my husband nor I are afflicted by Celiac, so the slider buns are generic flat buns from the supermarket and are not gluten free. With the tamari and wakame they are definitely salty enough without just screaming salty.

Of course we ate these with some weird (but tasty) chipotle, cheddar potato bites. Not a meal that went together at all even though each piece was good to eat.

Mmmm, cake

The last cake of the year is sometimes a bit of an uphill battle. It is the constant fight between big ideas and the time crunch at the end of the year.

For many of my friends, I have made super hero cakes. I have made Superman (using a character pain pan) a number of times, Captain Hammer, Ghost Rider and, well, Green Lantern.

Green Lantern is a salted caramel ice cream cake, and until I had a crust fail the cake would have been gluten free. Unfortunately, I made this delicious and moist cake which had two flaws: it cracked and it shrunk.

The cracking wasn't really a surprise, but I expected to be able to cover it with ganache or frosting and have no one really know. However, the shrinking meant that it didn't fit the springform pan I was using for the final cake. Instead I took the cake and processed it with chocolate bunny grahams (and thus ruining the GF nature of it all) and then pressed it up the sides and bottom of the buttered springform pan. I had more crust than I needed, because I didn't make quite as much ice cream as I needed to fill the pan. The ice cream was this recipe and it had its own issues with fail. All my fault, both sets of fails.

The ice cream was resurrected with a bit more custard added to the base and a couple grams of xanthan gum (which did what it did best). The texture wasn't quite like ice cream the way I am used to it, more like a thick and delicious caramel sauce. It was awesome however and everyone seemed to like it just fine.

The green lantern symbol was my last bit of excitement. Normally I would use fondant, but my box of fondant was like diamond hard or at least granite. Instead I colored white chocolate and piped it to shape. Possibly tastier, but really no one was expected to eat the decoration! It was a bit harder to pipe it smooth, but if I had been thinking I would have used a pastry brush and a tiny amount of water to smooth the surface. I've never seen Green Lantern looking so, so rustic!

Happy Birthday!

Oh, and this is the post my husband said I should write. There will be knitting tomorrow as I write about my last knit of 2011.

[10 Tuesday] dreaming big dreams

10 Things You Want to Do in 2012.

Ahem. I almost feel like it would be better to say 10 things I don't want to do in 2012 (that would be drinking, drugging, whoring, phone tech support for family, cleaning, the chicken dance, pick up dog poo, UFOs, waking up before 4 a.m. and having baking failures at the last minute). Of course, some of these are going to happen.

2012 is the year I am going to clean up some of my UFOs (which I already wrote about). So, outside of the knitting circle, here are the 10 things I'd like to do in 2012.

1. Actually maintain my Etsy store. I have ideas, but a laziness about implementation that defies gravity description. If I can just put one or  two new things in there every week, I might slowly be able to transition to the crafting as a source of income.

2. Eat healthier. As the primary cook I tend to make too much of the "looked good on the blog" food, which often is super delicious and equally often is made of more butter than I probably should allow to pass my lips. My husband and I are already back on the way the food out bandwagon, because we've gotten very slack over the past 5 years or so....

3. Exercise more regularly. As in every day. I read this post a little over a week ago, and it definitely resonated with me. If I don't make it a daily habit, it is far too easy to say I'll do it after work. After work becomes I'm too tired. Maybe when I get home, and before I know it I've had a week of nothing more strenuous than baking a batch of cookies (see #2). I have a pool membership, a gym membership, hand weights and a treadmill. There is just no excuse. Of course, because I'm a wuss, walking Victor counts.

4. Manage stress better. I am a mean person when I get stressed out, and I get easily stressed out. I'm type A, and tend to think of everything as an emergency.

5. Play more board games. My husband would like to play more games, but most of the time I don't necessarily want to do something new (or something that interferes with my knitting that much), but I should be able to make time for this. Even one day a week would be better.

6. Try new things. I am the person who goes into a restaurant and has the same thing every time. My kitchen isn't really any better. For all that I love to cook, what I eat falls under 3 or 4 fairly standard categories. Most of those could be broken down into a single category: carbs. While delicious, it isn't super nutritious.

7. Lose the damn weight. It crept on as soon as I thought that I didn't need to work out as much or as often. While this is highly related to exercise every day and eat healthier, there is a goal. That goal is to fit back into my old work pants, so I don't need to go out and buy new ones.

8. Try a new craft. This year I'm thinking of finally trying quilting. I've got quilting friends and I love seeing the beautiful quilts online. Obviously I need a new hobby that uses lots of materials and space and is easy to create WIPs for. But in all honesty, I have an idea and that idea needs to become a quilt. See also, Iron Craft.

9. Drink more water. I don't enjoy drinking water, but I don't want to fill my body with Crystal Light either. So, it is time to learn to love water. Right now I'm doing well if I get through 20 ounces of water, and 2 12-ounce containers of hot chocolate or decaf coffee.

10. I want, I want to sing! I don't think I can justify being in a show in 2012, but I would like to support my friends in their shows and just sing in general. I should look for a choir. I made a brief check in that direction a couple of years ago, but never really followed through on the entire idea.

Most of these are little dreams and some of them are probably just not feasible. Others are too vague or too specific to make really work, but I'm trying and some of them are already happening now.