Chocolate lava cake

I wanted to make a chocolate lava cake the other day, but we don't have little soufflé moulds, so I just made one cake, in our smallest pyrex bowl. It was really delicious, and got a full-star Ed-rating. As pictured below.

Luckily, I saved the cake from Ed before he actually took a bite out. I highly recommend making this.

• Chocolate lava cake
• The recipe is from here, the NYT molten chocolate magic. I cut it in half.
• 
  
• 1/4C butter (half a stick)
• 2 ounces bittersweet chocolate
• 1 egg
• 1 egg yolk
• 2Tbs sugar
• 1tsp flour

Melt the chocolate and butter in a double boiler. As it melts, beat together the egg and egg yolk and sugar. Let the chocolate cool just enough so it won't cook the eggs, and then mix it in. Beat in the flour, until just combined.

Butter the mold, and dust it with cocoa powder. Pour in the batter. Cook at 450 for 8 minutes, until it is just set.

Invert the mold, dump the cake on a plate, and dust with powdered sugar. Feel free to garnish with raspberries and whipped cream =)

Popovers, update

So, we figured out a great popover recipe over last winter, but we've been tweaking. Basically, they weren't always rising as high as we thought they should be rising, and after adjusting every variable in the equation, I finally stumbled upon the reason. The ingredients just have to be warm enough. Also, you can't beat the batter too much, or you'll work the flour too much and it'll be all smooth and bread-like and not at all shaggy and rough like it should be.

The original recipe, which I'll retype below just for ease of use, is still a winner. These are pretty much my favorite bready thing to go along with dinner, and I think Ed's too.

Popovers

2 eggs, beaten

1 tbs butter

1C milk

1C flour

1 big pinch of kosher salt

Preheat your oven to 425F. Grease 8 muffin tins really well. Melt the butter in the microwave. Add the milk. Put that in the microwave too, until it's warm to the touch. Add the eggs, and whisk this mixture really, really, thoroughly.

Basically, you want the ingredients to be warm, so that when the popovers hit the very-hot oven, all the oven's heat will go into puffing them up, not into warming up the batter. You want the eggs very well whisked, because they're most of what provide the structure for the puffing action.

Add the flour and the salt to the liquids. Whisk to combine. Pour the batter into the greased muffin tins, 3/4-all the way full.

Cook at 425 for 15 minutes, without opening the oven door. After 15 minutes, turn the heat down to 350 and cook another 20 minutes. Consume!

Puffy, golden, shaggy, and delicious.

Look at all that custard-y hole-y goodness! Yummm.

Also, the meal shown with these delicious morsels was a turkey, white bean, kale soup. With caramelized onions and lots of garlic. That was also tasty.

Gingerbread latte

The other day, after some really fun orienteering training, Becky suggested that we stop by a Starbucks that was just around the corner from the park we were in. I think she used some excuse like "hot chocolate is a great recovery food", but I don't need much convincing when it comes to hot sweet drinks after a run. Anyway, I was all set to get a hot chocolate, when I saw the gingerbread latte on the board. I've never actually had one of those seasonal drinks from Starbucks, normally I don't go in there for anything other than a refill of my coffee mug, but I figured hey, if Becky says it's good, I may as well try it.

Holy crap! Those things are amazing! No wonder the world is addicted to $4 seasonal coffees!

Becky has no idea the damage she has wrought. Not only has she introduced me to something delicious, but she introduced me to something delicious that is too expensive for my budget, and that is only available part of the year. This is Not Good.

Luckily, I'm not the only person with this dilemma. I found this site. I made their gingerbread latte, with a couple tweaks, and it was delicious. Crisis averted! Now I can have my very own 300-calorie coffee drinks whenever I want one! Making an entire latte is probably too much work for an average morning, but I do think the syrup will be good just in normal coffee.

No Ed-rating for this, although maybe he'll try it in hot chocolate. He'll probably just turn up his nose, though, he thinks addictions are for wusses.

Gingerbread syrup
2C water
1.5C sugar
2 tsp molasses
2-1/2 tsp ground ginger
1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
1/2 tsp vanilla
1 tsp peppercorns
1 tsp whole cloves

(Yes, I use imitation vanilla. It tastes fine)

Put everything in a saucepan, and bring to a boil. Reduce the heat to a simmer, and simmer for 10 minutes, stirring somewhat continuously. After 10min, I tasted it, and decided that it was as spicy as I liked it, so I strained the syrup through a strainer into a measuring cup. Then I put it back in the pot, sans peppercorns and cloves, and continued to simmer for another 10 minutes, until the liquid ran off the spoon in a continuous stream, rather than in drops. It made just about two cups of liquid, so I put most of it in canning jars and just let them seal themselves.

The result is a sweet, spicy, flavorful syrup. Most delicious! Maybe it isn't exactly what you get at Starbucks, but it was a helluva lot cheaper, and tastes good enough to do the trick when I'm craving a $4 fancy coffee.

It made a really dark syrup. I'm going to pretend that makes it even more delicious. To make the latte, I microwaved ~1/2C of 2% milk until it was foamy, poured in the coffee, and then added probably 2tbs of syrup. Whipped cream and a sprinkle of cinnamon completed the fruity tooty drink!

And of course, then came the test- is it possible to whip just two tablespoons of heavy cream? The answer is: barely. And it makes a mess.

Chocolate snickerdoodles

I had a real chocolate craving the other day, and I don't have any chocolate hanging around. For sort of the same reasons I don't have any ice cream sitting around. That stuff disappears too quickly; I have no idea where it goes to. So I just don't buy it. But, what to do when you really want chocolate??!? Turned out I did have cocoa powder, so I looked up a recipe for chocolate crinkle cookies, and I was all set to make them, when I realized that I didn't have any powdered sugar to roll them in. But then I came up with an even better idea! Roll them in cinnamon and sugar! I don't know if this is the only definition of a snickerdoodle, but it seemed like a damn good idea to me.

They got a pretty high Ed-rating, too, so clearly, the idea wasn't completely whacko.

Chocolate Snickerdoodles
Made 26 cookies

1 stick of butter (1/2C), room temperature
3/4C sugar
2 eggs
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
1-2/3C flour
1/2C unsweetened cocoa powder
1-1/2tsp baking powder
1/2tsp salt

2 tbs cinnamon
1/4C sugar

Cream the butter and the sugar. Once it's soft and homogenous, add the eggs, one at a time, and beat until the mixture is smooth between each one. Then add the vanilla. Then dump all the dry stuff (except the cinnamon and sugar) on top of the batter, mix together the dry stuff lightly, and then stir it into the batter. It may feel a little dry, that's ok, just get it all incorporated.

Preheat your oven to 325F. Grease two cookie sheets. Roll the cookie dough into small, bite-sized balls, using your hands.

In a small bowl, mix together the sugar and cinnamon. Roll each cookie in the cinnamon mixture, and place on the greased cookie sheet. Bake for 10-15min, until the tops of the cookies are a little cracked. Don't overbake the cookies! Chewy cookies > crunchy cookies, always.




(Rolling the cookies in cinnamon and sugar)

Gyoza

We'd picked up some gyoza wrappers at the Super88 last time we were there, but then I went and stole them from our freezer and brought them to Amherst, where Ali and I played at being Chinese factory workers frantically making gyoza. The frantic part comes in because we were really hungry, and had discovered that you couldn't just use the shells as a taco - they really wanted to be cooked.

The filling was somewhat uninspired, but it was tasty when wrapped in gyoza wrapper. I think it was diced cabbage, onions, carrots, pork meat, and lots of soy sauce. The smaller you dice stuff, the more even the filling, and then it'll hold together better.

I should have taken a photo of the wrappers - they were like four inches across, and round. I put 1-2 tbs of filling in each one, and then folded them over on themselves to make a taco shape. I used some water to seal the edge, spreading the water with my finger. Then I spread a little more water on one of the ridge sides, and sort of pressed the ridge up against itself bit by bit, until it made a pretty ridge-y thing. I can't really describe it any better than that. You just have to play around.

Once we had a plateful of these guys made, we heated some oil in the frying pan, and fried the dumplings on medium-high heat until they were golden brown on one side. At that point I dumped some amount of water (I think 1/3C?) into the pan, and covered it, and cooked for another 5-7 minutes or so, until the water was mostly gone, and the dumplings looked done. They were delicious! But I'm not sure if they're worth making just for eating - maybe for a dumpling party, but I thought it was a lot of work!

Kale with sausage and garlic

I was getting sick of crunchy kale, my usual use for the green stuff, and I had a sausage in the fridge, so I figured it was time to try something new. It was pretty tasty, and I made it all pretty by putting it on a plate over some sliced sweet potatoes, and topping it with some pan-fried oyster mushrooms. Pretty things taste better.

The kale itself was pretty simple. I chopped the sausage up into bits (a more flavorful sausage would have been good, but I had a mild one. It was fine). I cooked that in a separate pan, just to cook it through. In the main pan, I heated some olive oil, then toasted some slices of garlic. Once they were golden brown, I added the chopped kale, as much as you can fit in the pan. I threw in some lemon juice and some kosher salt, and then covered it and let it cook away. When the kale was properly wilted, and the sausage was cooked, I combined the two, and we ate it.

This got an approving Ed-rating. Another fine way to eat your greens!

Also, sweet potatoes sliced thinly, tossed with olive oil and salt, and baked at 400F for 10 minutes are pretty delicious.

Tapas

Left to his own devices, Ed came home with all sorts of random ingredients, and announced that we were making tapas for dinner. To me, this just sounds like a lot of cleanup after, because you're making like five different courses and only eating little bits of them, but it was delicious enough to be worthwhile.

We made fried sardines - fresh sardines! I've never had them before, they were very pretty and shiny. They also tasted pretty good. Meaty, and not salty like the canned ones. I mean, we also deep-fried them, so of course they were delicious. We served them with a dipping sauce, that was a mix of greek yogurt and sriracha, with some salt sprinkled on top. And some fresh-squeezed lemon over the fish. Very delicious!

Shiny!


We also made some toasted bread things - the first one was with black forest bacon bits, shallots caramelized in the bacon grease, and topped with smoked cheese. It was delicious. The second toasted bread thing was toasted bread, topped with a mixture of beet greens and feta cheese and lemon juice.

There is also plenty of toasted garlic and kosher salt in this dish.


We also made a beet-and-feta cheese salad. This was tasty. Ed had bought some golden beets when he bought the sardines (hence the beet greens), so I boiled and peeled them, then diced them and tossed in vinaigrette of lemon juice, brown sugar, and olive oil. I added chunks of feta, toasted walnuts, and some pomegranate seeds, and I thought the salad was delicious. Ed wasn't into the pomegranate seeds. Apparently he doesn't like the taste. More for me!


And we also had some random olives scattered about. Overall, a very delicious meal! And the cleanup wasn't too bad.