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Chocolate cloud cakes

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Chocolate marshmallow madness

I am a person who bakes for fun. I never thought I would be here but here we are. So now my stir crazy boredom has given life to cloud cakes. Fluffy chonky cookies with fudgy chocolate chunks and marshmallow. I call it nut allergy friendly Rocky road.

Ingredients

  • 2 cups flour
  • 3/4 cup granulated sugar
  • 3/4 cup brown sugar
  • 1 tsp. Salt
  • 1 tsp. Baking soda
  • 1 tsp. Vanilla extract
  • 1 tsp. Ground cinnamon
  • 2 sticks of room temp butter
  • 2 eggs
  • 1/4 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
  • 1/4 cup buttermilk
  • 1/2 cup chocolate chunk
  • 1/3 cup mini marshmallows

Directions

  1. In the bowl of your stand mixer cream together your sugar, butter, eggs, vanilla and buttermilk together till fluffy and combined.
  2. In a separate bowl whisk together all dry ingredients till combined.
  3. Slowly combine dry ingredients with your wet until combined.
  4. Fold in your chocolate and marshmallow until mixed well through out.
  5. Bake in a preheated to 375 degree oven for roughly 18 minutes.

They are a cakey cookie because of the buttermilk so they take longer to cook.

Spicy Sweet Sambal Noodles

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Creamy and Spicy

A slight riff off of Bon Appetit’s chris morocco’s recipe.

Ingredients

  • Olive oil
  • 1 pound ground pork
  • 1 2-inch piece of ginger, cut into thin matchstick pieces
  • 5 garlic cloves, thinly sliced
  • 2 tbsp. granulated sugar
  • 4 tbsp. tomato paste
  • 1/3 cup chili paste (sambal oelek is the one I used.)
  • 1/4 cup soy sauce
  • 1/4 cup unseasoned rice wine vinegar
  • 1/4 cup heavy cream
  • 2 tbsp. butter
  • salt
  • spaghetti noodles

Directions

  1. Heat oil in a pan till it reacts like water (freely moving). Add half the pork to the pan and break into large chunks. Cook for five minutes in the pan undisturbed. Flip the pieces and cook for three more minutes.
  2. Add other half of pork, ginger, garlic and sugar to the pan. Break up into small chunks. Cook for five minutes.
  3. Add tomato paste cook about two minutes till it darkens and pork is covered.
  4. Add all of your liquids to the pan and bring to a simmer. Reduce heat and cook for about thirty minutes so the flavors have time to meld together.
  5. Cook noodles till Al Dente then add to pan. Cook till sauce coats noodles. About five minutes.

Garbage Cookie

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Salty Sweet Amazing

These cookies were put together during a rare night I got to myself. I needed something sweet and a project to keep me busy.

Ingredients

  • 2 1/2 cups flour
  • 2 tsp. baking soda
  • 1 tsp. salt
  • 2 sticks butter
  • 3/4 cup granulated sugar
  • 3/4 cup brown sugar
  • 1 tsp. vanilla
  • 2 large eggs
  • 1/4 cup pretzel pieces
  • 1/2 cup mixed candy(m&m, peanut butter cups, butterscotch bits, etc.)

Directions

  1. Mix your flour, salt and baking soda together in a small mixing bowl.
  2. In the bowl of a stand mixer cream your butter, sugar, vanilla and eggs together till light and fluffy.
  3. Add your dry ingredients to your wet ingredients till well combined.
  4. Fold in your mix-ins till evenly combined in your dough.
  5. Spoon out your cookies onto a parchment lined baking sheet. About an inch apart.
  6. Place a pretzel into the top of each cookie.
  7. Put in an oven preheated to 375 for 9 minutes till golden brown.

Ta Da! Garbage cookies!

Cooking with my kid

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We are all home cooks now. This is the nature of our reality. So what a better time then now to teach our children the things you wish your parents had taught you. For me it’s baking. I never baked anything as a child. It wasn’t really a thing my mom did unless it was from a box. So as I’ve turned the corner into thirty and I am discovering a love of food I didn’t realize I had before I want to show my son what he can make with his bare hands.

So this week we are going to try a few things. First and foremost I believe we might do something together that I have yet to try. We are going to try and make soda bread. Its a non yeasted bread. It’s leavened with baking soda and baking powder which means it doesn’t need to proof. So awesome right? Perfect for small kids with no patience.

The next thing we are going to do is bake and decorate delicious super hero cupcakes. We are going to do hulk cupcakes so they will have a surprise filling inside. It’s going to be a whole lot of fun. I want to make memories with my son that he can take with him for a long time.

It’s important for me to make the most of this rare time I have with my son. This means trying desperately to let go of my control in the kitchen and teach my son things he can take with him into adulthood. Let me know in the comments what kind of things you’ve taught your kids to cook. We need to create a new generation of home cooks especially in our little men.

Smoked Bean Duo

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Spicy and Fragrant

The pantry panic is real folks. Stores look real empty and the list of available ingredients is real short. So I created a series of recipes using what happens to be the most available protein in my grocery store…smoked sausage! Here is my smoked bean duo. Now this recipe is one where you can use whatever veggies you have on hand. I used the halves of two different onions you obviously can use a whole onion of whatever variety you have or no onion at all. My hope for the pantry panic series is to give people a framework for inspiration.

Ingredients

  • 1 pound smoked sausage
  • 1 half red onion, chunky dice
  • 1 half yellow onion, chunky dice
  • 3 garlic cloves, minced
  • 4 teaspoons mixed fresh herb(I used basil, thyme, rosemary)
  • 1 can diced tomato
  • 1 can pinto beans
  • 1 bag frozen black eyed peas
  • 3 mini sweet peppers, sliced
  • 3 cup water
  • 2 beef stock cubes
  • salt/pepper
  • 2 tbsp. vegetable oil

Directions

  1. Put 3 cups of water and 2 beef stock cubs into a large pot. Bring it to a boil.
  2. Add the bag of frozen black eyed peas and stir. The ones I bought had to cook for 45 minutes.
  3. While that’s cooking put your sausage, onion and pepper into a pan with the vegetable oil. Cook for about ten minutes on medium heat till your sausage and onion get some color on them.
  4. While that’s cooking cut your aromatics(garlic and mixed fresh herb). Put half in the stock pot with the black eyed peas and the other half in with your sausage mixture.
  5. Put pinto beans and canned tomato into sausage mixture and cook down for about 5-8 minutes. It allows the juices from the canned tomato to cook down with the juices in the pan.
  6. Put your sausage mixture into the stock pot and stir to combine. Cook down for the remaining time till the black eyed peas are cooked through. Salt and pepper to taste.

Chicken Taco Pie

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Hello everybody and welcome to another entry in the pantry panic series. Today we went Mexican which is one of my favorite cuisines to cook and to eat. This pie came together super easy and with only a few pantry and fridge ingredients.

Ingredients

  • 4-5 chicken breast tenders
  • 1 can black beans, rinsed
  • 1 can tomatoes, with juices.
  • 1/2 red onion, diced
  • 3 cloves garlic, minced
  • 1 tsp. cumin
  • 3 sprigs thyme, chopped or 1/2 tsp. dried thyme
  • 1 sheet puff pastry
  • olive oil for cooking
  • salt/pepper to taste

For Cheese Sauce

  • 4 tablespoons butter
  • 2 tablespoons flour
  • 2 cups cheese blend
  • 2 cups milk

Directions

  1. Brown chicken in a pan with olive oil. Season with salt, pepper and cumin.
  2. Add onion, beans, tomatoes and thyme and cook for five minutes.
  3. While that is cooking melt your butter in a sauce pan. Then add flour and whisk until combined. Add milk and cheese blend. Continue whisking until cheese is melted and the sauce starts to thicken. Salt to taste.
  4. Preheat oven to 400 degrees.
  5. Combine cheese sauce with chicken mixture and stir to combine. Put in a pie dish and cover with puff pastry.
  6. Cook for 25 minutes until golden brown and flaky.

Tip: Put a baking sheet under your pie plate. I over filled my dish and it bubbled over.

Lemon Cream Cheese Sugar Cookies: An experiment

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Yesterday I was home with my son and decided I wanted to bake some cookies I had never made before. I Used Rosanna Pansino’s Cream Cheese Sugar Cookie recipe as a jumping off point. I added about 1/3 cup of lemon curd to the recipe. It made them very moist but strangely didn’t impart very much lemon flavor. I think the next time I make them I’m going to make them like thumb print cookies. I’ll create a well in the cookie so when it bakes there’s a place to put lemon curd after they’re baked. Then I’ll cool them so they resemble a lemon bar.

Ingredients

  • 1 and 1/4 sticks of butter
  • 3 ounces cream cheese
  • 3/4 granulated sugar
  • 1/2 tsp. salt
  • 1 tbsp. powdered sugar
  • 1 tsp. vanilla
  • 1 egg
  • 2 cups flour
  • 1/3 cup lemon curd

Directions

  1. Mix everything except the flour in a stand mixer or with a hand mixer until its light and fluffy.
  2. Add the flour and mix until well combined.
  3. Dump cookie dough onto your work surface and roll it into a tube shape. Wrap in plastic wrap and chill for an hour.
  4. Preheat oven to 375 and line 2 baking sheets with parchment paper. Cut pieces off the dough and roll into golf ball shapes. Smash dough ball to about half an inch. Cake for about 12 minutes.
  5. Let cool completely before you eat them.

When I let them cool completely the extra moisture sort of recombined into the cookie. Like letting a steak rest and letting the juices go back into the meat. They were not quite what I wanted but they had a good flavor. The texture of them was like cheesecake to a certain degree which I didn’t expect but was good.

I’m going to try them again at a later date and see if I can tweak the recipe a little.

Sausage Roll

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Welcome to the next post in a series of recipes inspired by my local ingredient shortage. Its my version of a sausage roll with shortcrust pastry. You can make it with any flavor smoked sausage you can get your hands on. The shortcrust pastry is only four ingredients and super simple.

Ingredients

For Pastry

  • 2 cups flour
  • 1 tsp salt
  • 1/2 cup butter, cubed
  • about a 1/4 cup water
  • 1 egg mixed with water for brushing

Filling

  • Smoked sausage any flavor, cut into 1 1/2 to 2 inch long pieces

Directions

  1. Preheat oven to 350.
  2. In a food processor put your flour, butter and salt and pulse it until the cutter and flour combine in a bread crumby texture. (If you don’t have a food processor you can do it with a fork.)
  3. Slowly combine water and pulse until dough comes together. It will look a little dry.
  4. Dump it out onto a floured surface and combine it into a ball. Mashing the dryer bits into the ball. Wrap it in plastic wrap and put it in the freezer for 10 minutes so the butter chills again.
  5. When the pastry has chilled roll it out onto a floured surface about a 1/4 inch thick. Place your sausage pieces on the pastry and cut the pastry big enough to wrap the sausage completely.
  6. Place your sausage rolls on a parchment paper lined baking sheet and brush the tops of the pastry with the egg wash.
  7. put in the oven for 30 minutes. They should be golden brown.

Recipe should make about 6 rolls

Quarantine Pantry Pasta

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Hello everyone and welcome to the first in a series of recipes inspired by our current fresh ingredient shortage. I stood in Walmart yesterday and very nearly cried. I couldn’t believe how empty the shelves were due to people self quarantining themselves. I should’ve taken pictures. The thing that was so mind boggling to me…all the jalapeno peppers were gone. Where did they go? Who is making buckets of salsa?

Anyway here is the recipe I am calling Quarantine Pantry Pasta. A recipe that can be done with whatever you have in your pantry and whatever you can find in your local produce section. I chose smoked sausage for the protein because it’s the protein being left on my local grocery store shelf.

Ingredients

  • 1 pound smoked sausage, sliced
  • 1/2 a yellow onion, chunky chop
  • an assortment of tomatoes, sliced (i used 2 roma and a handful of teeny weeny tomatoes I had from Trader Joes)
  • 3/4 cup beef stock
  • 3 tablespoon vegetable oil for cooking
  • 2 sprigs of oregano, chopped
  • 2 sprigs of rosemary,chopped
  • 3-4 basil leaves, chopped
  • 1/4 tsp. red chili flake
  • 3 cloves garlic, minced
  • salt/pepper
  • Small pasta of any size cooked to box instructions. (I was only trying to feed three people so I used a half a bag of egg noodle I had in my cupboard.)
  • 1/4 cup pasta water

Tip: If you don’t have any fresh herbs you can use dried italian herbs. What I had came out to about 2 tablespoons of fresh herb once it was chopped. You are going to want to use more if using dried though cause the flavor isn’t as strong. So I would up it to three tablespoons of dried herb at least.

Directions

  1. Heat oil in a pan till it moves around the pan like water. Add onion and tomatoes. Cook for about 3-5 minutes until onions start to soften.
  2. Start your water for pasta. SALT YOUR PASTA WATER!!! Until it tastes like the ocean. Bring it to a boil and add whatever noodle you chose.
  3. While your pasta is going add your sausage to the pan and cook an for about five minutes. When it starts to pick up some color.
  4. Add your beef stock and all your herbs and garlic. Simmer while your pasta cooks.
  5. When the pasta is done drain all the water except about a 1/4 cup. This delicious salty water is going to be added to your pan. Dump the pasta and water into the pan.
  6. Salt and pepper to taste and let it cook together for another five minutes. The stock should cook down and cover all your pasta like a thin sauce.

This recipe could serve roughly four people. I only have three people in my house and two of us had seconds. I hope this helps somebody.