A Welcome for Wendy

I know you're all wondering why the most recent post showed such a marked improvement in quality over the posts from the past 7 months. Well, I can satisfy your curiosity by announcing an addition to the Dinner Adventure team: Wendy. Welcome, Wendy. I'm so glad you'll be blogging, because I'm much to lazy to post regularly.

Chewy Chocolate Meringue Cookies

So I tried making these cookies which claimed to be chewy meringue cookies on Sunday. While they didn't taste anything like a meringue cookie ought to they did taste pretty good. I got this recipe (with great pictures) from Bakerella's website. From what I understand meringue cookies are traditionally a dry and crunchy cookie but these were soft on the inside and almost melty (I did use a lot more chocolate than the recipe called for). 

1 cup (8 fl oz / 250 ml) large egg whites – about 7
2 cups (1 lb / 500 g) sugar
5 tbsp (1 oz / 30 g) natural cocoa powder
4 oz (125 g) bittersweet chocolate, finely chopped (I used about 6oz)

Whisk the egg whites and sugar over a double boiler until the sugar it entirely dissolved. Next whip at high speed until stiff peaks form. Fold in cocoa and chopped chocolate. Scoop onto parchment lined baking sheets and bake in a preheated oven at 350° for about 15- 20 minutes. Rotate the pans once while baking.

This is what mine looked like about five minutes before coming out!

Annnnd up close

I didn't take a picture but mine were almost hollow on the inside with just a bit of melty chocolate. 

If anyone else makes meringue cookies (This recipe of another) let me know what temp you cook them at because I'm suspicious of 350°.  


**By the way I was told I'm supposed to introduce myself. So Hi! I'm Wendy Harvey. I'm Ben's sister. I like cooking. And cookies. And eating.  And really food in general. So there's all that.
Bye! 

Chocolate chip pretzel cookies

This is a blog hosted by librarians. As such, it's amazing that we've gotten this far without a book recommendation.Well, we're going to keep that streak going because today I have a book anti-recommendation. Namely, the worst mystery series I've ever encountered: Murder She Baked. These books are bad in every way a book can be bad (and I should know, I've read about 10 so far). Their saving grace, however is the recipes. Yes, recipes. The detective in the mysteries owns a bakery, so almost every chapter there is a recipe.We tested out chocolate chip pretzel cookies from Plum Pudding Murder because: (1) Ben loves chocolate chip cookies and requests that I make them at least once a week; (2) I'm sick of making and eating plain old chocolate chip cookies (see #1); and (3) we happened to have pretzels on hand.

everybody likes these, even Fred

Chocolate chip pretzel cookies

1 cup butter, softened (that's two sticks)
2 cups white sugar
3 Tablespoons molasses*
2 teaspoons vanilla
1 teaspoon baking soda
2 eggs
2 cups crushed pretzels (measure after crushing; to crush, put in ziplock bag and roll with rolling pin)
1 1/2 cups chocolate chips (1/2 less than a whole bag)

*If you don't have molasses, you can substitute brown sugar for white. The math doesn't come out exactly right, but I'd assume that it would be fine. Actually, the math does work if you substitute half light brown sugar and half dark brown sugar, but if you're the type of person who has two kinds of brown sugar on hand you probably already own molasses.

Cream together butter, sugar, and molasses. Combine the rest of the ingredients. Bake at 350 for 10-12 minutes. Let your cookies rest on the pan for a couple minutes before moving to a cooling rack so they don't fall apart when you transfer. (I've tended to ignore that last step in the past, but I've discovered that it really does help.)

St. Louis Gooey Butter Cake

Gooey Butter Cake is a rich coffee cake that is loved by St. Louis natives, the Butter Institute of America, and Ben. There are several apocryphal stories regarding its origins, but I'll let you find them on Wikipedia. I found this recipe on Smitten Kitchen and she got it, ironically, from the New York Times. I hadn't really planned to blog this one, but Ben says this is one of the three cakes he will request for his birthday so I thought I'd better record it.

The cake is made in two stages: first you make a sweet bread dough and let it rise, then you make a custard-like topping and bake. If you have a stand mixer I recommend using it. Otherwise you will need a lot of elbow grease for this one.

3 Tablespoons milk at room temperature
2 Tablespoons warm water
1 3/4 teaspoons active dry yeast
Mix yeast into milk and water and let sit for a few minutes, yeast will form little bubbles.

6 tablespoons butter at room temperature
3 tablespoons sugar
1 teaspoon salt
Cream together.

1 egg (we've been getting extra large eggs -- recommended)
Beat in to butter and sugar mixture.

1 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
Alternate adding flour and milk/water/yeast mixture. Continue to stir for around 10 minutes. This is where the elbow grease comes in. Dough will form into a soft and cohesive ball. When done mixing, spread out into a 9 x 13 inch glass baking dish. Let rise at room temperature for 3 hours. Dough should double, but I find it's hard to tell when it's in the dish.

12 tablespoons (1 1/2 sticks) butter, at room temperature
1 1/2 cups sugar
1/2 teaspoon salt
Cream together. 

1 egg
Beat in egg.

3 tablespoons plus 1 teaspoon light corn syrup
2 1/2 teaspoons vanilla
1 cup plus 3 tablespoons all-purpose flour
Add, alternating wet ingredients and flour. Spread over risen dough. Bake at 350 for 45 minutes (baking time based on my increasingly suspect oven, take a peak after 30 or 35 minutes). 

Lentil soup

Eat more soup. Eat more lentil soup.

Here are some links to help you out:
Lentil Soup from Alton Brown
Lentil Soup from Allrecipes

The Alton Brown recipe is spicy, but not too spicy if you are spice-phobic. My mom is a big fan of this one because she likes to cook anything that allows her to break out her immersible blender. The Allrecipes soup is a classic hearty lentil soup and an old favorite from soup-or-stew Sundays (holla back, Heater).

Fred says to try them both.

Another great pasta sauce

If you ever have an urge to read a really good food blog, you should look at Smitten Kitchen. This week's pasta recipe is one I saw on Smitten Kitchen a while back and have been meaning to try (link!). It's super simple, just three ingredients. Four if you count salt. Five if you count pasta.

Tomato sauce with onion and (lots of) butter

28 ounce can whole tomatoes (I used unsalted tomatoes, but that just meant I had to add more salt at the end of cooking. Use whatever you happen to come across.)
5 Tablespoons butter
1 medium onion, pealed and halved

Heat ingredients over medium heat. Reduce to simmer and let cook for 45 minutes. Mash up tomatoes. Woman from the blog says to use a wooden spoon, but I found that a potato masher worked much better. Salt to taste. Eat.

Very simple, hearty sauce. I will definitely make this again. Ben commented that the sauce was very fresh-tasting and I would agree, although fresh is a funny way to describe something that is mostly made up of canned tomatoes. We ate this on rigatoni pasta which is a short, tubular pasta that holds sauce well.

By the way, please don't be put off by the amount of butter in the recipe. I've read that fat helps the body to absorb the nutrients found in tomatoes (but I'm not going to cite a proper source for that because I'm lazy).

Easy pasta for two

I'm sure this never happens to you, but for me it seems that the more time I have to do something the more it gets put off. I had decided at least two days ago that I was going to make spaghetti for dinner tonight. Last night I had bread dough fermenting in the refrigerator in preparation for baking bread to go with the spaghetti I was going to make for dinner tonight. All day I thought about what recipe I might try out for sauce to go on the spaghetti I was going to make for dinner tonight. So really I have no excuse for waiting until I already had water boiling for pasta before I started on a sauce.

Tomato sauce in a hurry:

Chop onion. Saute in olive oil. Mince 3 cloves garlic and toss in with onion. Add can of diced tomatoes. Sprinkle in what seasonings you like; I used basil, white pepper, black pepper, and salt. Heat until your pasta is done cooking. If you remember (and I didn't) leave your pasta a little under-done and finish cooking in the sauce. Oh, and add a generous dose of grated Parmesan cheese on top of your serving. 

I know that if I read this recipe I would be skeptical. I hadn't intended to blog this one (notice I had already started eating before getting the camera out). My usual sauce is super saucy with tomato paste and tomato sauce and an hour's cook time. But I was really pleased with how this turned out and it was a nice change of pace from my usual.

P.S. Do you see the bread? I made that. Best bread I've made so far.