Saturday, September 12, 2009

Ginger-Coconut Muffins

I created this recipe a few months ago to use up some ingredients I had lying around. Sour cream creates a wonderfully thick and rich batter, and the edges and top of the muffins crunch pleasantly when you bite into them. They're terrific by themselves, but I think a little tangy Greek yogurt or cream cheese would be tasty on these.

Ginger-Coconut Muffins
Makes 1 dozen.

1 cup unbleached all-purpose flour
1/2 cup light brown sugar
1 1/4 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 egg
1/2 cup sour cream
1/4 cup unsalted butter, melted
1/4 teaspoon almond extract
1/2 cup flaked coconut
1/4 cup crystallized ginger chips, minced (I use The Ginger People's Baker's Cut)
Turbinado (aka raw) sugar

Preheat oven to 375. In a large bowl, mix flour, sugar, baking powder, and salt.

In another bowl, whisk together egg, sour cream, butter, and vanilla. Stir in the ginger chips.

Add the liquid mixture to the dry ingredients, stirring until just combined. Fold in the coconut.

Fill muffin cups 2/3 full and sprinkle tops with turbinado sugar. For extra crunch, top with 1/4 cup finely chopped almonds.

Bake 18-20 minutes, or until toothpick inserted into center comes out clean.

Wednesday, September 9, 2009

Vegan Brownies

 No, I'm not a vegan.

What I am is a very lazy girl with a voracious sweet tooth that wasn't going to let the fact that I'd run out of eggs and didn't feel like going to the store keep me from baking it brownies.

Which is how I came to Google "vegan brownies." I had all the ingredients for this recipe, so I headed for the kitchen.

Except it turned out I didn't have all the ingredients. In addition to eggs, I was out of white sugar. It seemed like brown sugar would work, though, so that's what I used.

I was on the phone with my little sister as I threw this together one-handed, so I was even more distracted than I usually am when I'm cooking. But even so, I kept exclaiming over the proportions of the ingredients.

"Two cups of sugar? Doesn't that seem like a lot?"

"A whole cup of vegetable oil? That can't be right, can it? A cup? I'm out of regular vegetable oil -- I can use corn oil, right?"

The batter was thick, but extremely oily. I poured it in the pan and chucked it in the oven. About 15 minutes into the 25-minute cook time, I realized I had pecans in the freezer, so I yanked the pan out of the oven and tried to press the nuts into the top of the brownies. They'd already firmed up, though, and it wasn't really working, so I only covered about a quarter of the pan and put them back in to finish baking.

These are definitely cakey brownies, so if fudgy is your thing, just forget it. They'd be pretty good topped with some ice cream and caramel sauce or with a light frosting, but on their own, they're pretty one note. I know a lot of brownies are like that, but with some recipes, you get a more nuanced flavor with butter and vanilla in additon to the chocolate.

What I liked:
  • One bowl recipe!
  • Brownies on demand -- very easy
  • Consistent, small crumb -- would be excellent for frosting and serving on a platter because the brownies hold together well
  • No problem at all getting the brownies out of the pan (probably thanks to that full cup of oil!)

What I didn't:
  • Chocolate flavor was kind of underwhelming - could have been becuase I wasn't using a high-quality cocoa, just basic Hershey's
  • Texture like a firm sponge

Spaghetti with Tomatoes, Ricotta, and Basil

Often when I try to improvise a dish, the results are less than satisfying -- unevenly seasoned, weirdly textured, or just not tasty. Last night, though, I made a simple meal that was exactly what I wanted, so I thought I might as well share my minor triumph.

Poking around in the (quite bare) fridge looking for something I could eat for dinner, I spotted about half a cup of leftover chunky marinara sauce that we made to top pizza last weekend. There was also a carton of whole milk ricotta, a fantastically versatile ingredient that I've decided needs to be one of our staples.

I boiled some spaghetti and scooped it out into a bowl, which I prefer to draining it in a colander -- why dirty another piece of equipment if you don't have to, right?  I topped the pasta with some large dollops of ricotta, splashes of olive oil, and a generous sprinkling of Maldon sea salt. I dumped out the hot pasta water and warmed the marinara in the pot, then spooned it on top of the cheese and pasta. I finished the dish with a scattering of fresh basil leaves from our kitchen herb garden and some fresh ground black pepper.

It was a happy accident that I got the proportions just right -- normally I'd have too much oil or cheese. But the tomato and basil were bright and fresh, the oil and cheese creamy and rich, and the sea salt aggressive enough to perk up the vegetables and cut the fat.

Back in May, Zac and I went to dinner at Scarpetta, an Italian restaurant renowned for its spaghetti with tomato and basil, a very simple, light, yet infinitely comforting meal. The flavors of the dish I made last night reminded me of Scarpetta's spaghetti, and that was a truly pleasant surprise. Of course, I'll never be able to duplicate it, but that's okay.

Tuesday, September 8, 2009

Bourbon Pumpkin Cheesecake

It's Labor Day, which means another summer is finally on its way out the door, and not a moment too soon. After a couple weeks of 90 degree and higher temps, my boyfriend Zac and I started trying to will the cooler weather to descend upon New York by acting like it was fall. We purchased sweaters and boots. We roasted chickens and baked root vegetable gratins. And then, I made Bourbon Pumpkin Cheesecake.

The recipe has been around awhile: Gourmet magazine originally published it in 1990, then again in 2003, and I read it on one of the cooking blogs I like, Smitten Kitchen. It seemed like just the thing for our last "Let's pretend it's autumn!" weekend of the summer.

My fatal flaw as a cook is failing to read the complete recipe before I start. So it was 4:30 Sunday afternoon when I started on the cheesecake... and realized that not only would I have to chill the unfilled crumb crust for an hour, but also cool the baked cake in its pan for two to three hours AND chill it in the fridge for another FOUR hours! So it seemed this would not, in fact, be a dessert for Sunday dinner.

I went ahead with it anyway, doubling the crust recipe as suggested on Smitten Kitchen and popping it in the freezer to speed the chilling time.

I was supposed to whisk together the pumpkin, eggs, brown sugar, cream, vanilla, and bourbon; stir together the granulated sugar, cornstarch, cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger, and salt; then add the cream cheese to the dry sugar/cornstarch mixture before adding those combined ingredients to the pumpkin/egg mixture. But my secondary flaw as a cook is that I don't read recipes carefully enough, so I combined the cream cheese with the pumpkin/egg mixture from the start, so I think the cream cheese didn't get fluffed as much as it should have.  Luckily, this wasn't a situation where it really mattered.

The cake came out of the oven with a beautiful, smooth top, and we managed to let it cool for an hour and a half, then chill for about two hours before we gave up pretending we weren't going to eat it that night.

When I took the cheesecake out to add the sour cream topping, however, I realized that I was supposed to be put it on right after the cake came out of the oven and then bake it for five more minutes. Now that the cake was cool, well, that wasn't really an option anymore. I decided I'd just make some bourbon-spiked whipped cream to top each serving with, so I poured a couple glugs of bourbon into the cream before I stated whipping. It was probably about four times the amount of bourbon that would have gone into the sour cream topping, and was pretty overpowering (my third flaw as a chef is I don't always measure ingredients -- oh, and my fourth flaw is that I tend to be heavy-handed with booze). I think it also kept the cream from really whipping up. It thickened, but that was the best I could do. Overall, the whipped cream wasn't tasty, or necessary.

What I liked:

  • The pecans in the graham cracker crust added flavor and texture
  • Subtle pumpkin flavor kept it from being an ultra-creamy pumpkin pie
  • Cinnamon, ginger, and nutmeg weren't overwhelming like they are in some fall-flavored recipes

What I didn't:
  • The cake was more cream than crumb - I like a cakier cheesecake. The center of the cake, in particular, reminded me of a flavored cream cheese for topping bagels with. Maybe baking the extra five minutes with the topping would have helped.
  • The bourbon in the cheesecake was indiscernible. I think it could have used a little more.