All the Ingredients

Chocolate Bacon Doughnut Cake

Earlier this month, Bacon Boy celebrated his 21st birthday, and I wanted to invent a cake worthy of such an occasion. A while back, I had purchased a doughnut cake pan at Williams-Sonoma at an incredible markdown. Add chocolate, bacon, and the Chocolate Bacon Doughnut Cake was born!

I started by candying half a pound of bacon. I did this by cooking it in my cast-iron skillet with a seasoning made of brown sugar and a little chili powder for zing. I had to be very careful and watch the bacon closely so that I didn't burn it. As soon as I took each strip out of the pan, I laid it in a rack to dry and firm up. Usually I blot bacon with a paper towel, but this bacon was so sticky with the brown sugar, that wasn't an option.

Then I made the chocolate cake. I started by creaming together:

• 2 sticks unsalted butter
• 2 cups sugar
• 1/4 cup bacon fat

I had the bacon fat from cooking the bacon--why not infuse the flavor from the very beginning? I whipped these together until fluffy--about five minutes.

Then I added:

• 4 eggs, lightly beaten
• 1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract

Then in another bowl I mixed together the dry ingredients:

• 3 cups all-purpose flour
• 2 teaspoons baking powder
• 6 tablespoons cocoa powder
• 1 1/2 teaspoons salt
• a dash of J&D's Bacon Salt

A side note here:  If you haven't discovered Bacon Salt, it's one of my favorite ingredients! It is an artificially-flavored, low-sodium salt, that is vegetarian AND kosher. It is the perfect seasoning to sprinkle on top of home-made macaroni and cheese, and it adds bacony goodness to everything from grilled cheese sandwiches to chicken salad. I buy can but the Original and Hickory in the spice aisle at my Target, but there are other flavors: http://www.jdfoods.net/products/baconsalt. As it says on the label, "Everything should taste like bacon!" I use Bacon Salt almost every day. Back to the cake.

Alternate adding the dry ingredients to the butter and sugar with:

• 1 1/3 cups milk

Beginning and ending with the flour mixture, beat well after each addition until the ingredients are just incorporated. Stop as necessary to scrape down the sides of the pan. I chopped the bacon up, and folded half of it into the batter. Then I poured the batter into my two doughnut pans and baked them for about 40 minutes at 350 degrees. This amount of batter would easily fill two 9-inch cake pans.

After the cakes were baked, I let them cool in their pans for five minutes, and then turned them out onto racks to cool. Then I trimmed each half of the doughnut so that the two sides that went together were flat. The assembly directions didn't call for frosting between the two doughnut halves, but I glued them together with a quick frosting made of powdered sugar, cocoa powder, and just enough milk to make a spreadable frosting.

Then I made the chocolate glaze for the doughnut. I melted together:

• 5 tablespoons unsalted butter
• 4 ounces semi-sweet chocolate chips

Then I put that mixture in a bowl and whisked in:

• 1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract
• 2 1/4 cups confectioner's sugar
• approximately 1/2 cup hot water

until the glaze was a consistency that would pour over the cake. I had assembled the doughnut on my cake stand, and put strips of waxed paper around it to catch the glaze overflow. As soon as the glaze was on the cake, I sprinkled on the rest of the bacon pieces.

Bacon Boy thought this cake was delicious. His girlfriend, not sure she would like the chocolate-bacon combination, ended up having two pieces. My husband thought the bacon flavor in the cake was subtle until I added the glaze with the extra bacon bits. He said those were the best bites. What we didn't finish, Bacon Boy took back to school him. The cake was very dark and dense--perfect with coffee.

Happy 21st Birthday, Bacon Boy!

 

Back in the Saddle with The Pioneer Woman Cooks: Food From My Frontier

I have a confession to make. I judged a book by its cover. Considering I sell books for a living, this is not a good thing.

I refused for a very long time to even open Ree Drummond's first cookbook, The Pioneer Woman Cooks: Recipes from an Accidental Country Girl, because on the cover she is holding a $300 Le Creuset Dutch oven. An "accidental ranch wife" doesn't find herself on the prairie cooking out of anything this expensive! But then when I did open the cookbook, I loved it. I have recommended this book over and over as a wedding present or first cookbook for someone who is not really comfortable in the kitchen. By the time you have followed all the photographed steps for a recipe, your Cheese Grits will look and taste just like Ree's. 

So I have been happily anticipating the second volume: The Pioneer Woman Cooks: Food from My Frontier, which came out last month. I decided to jump right in and make the Spicy Dr. Pepper Pulled Pork. I love making pulled pork in the crockpot. I put the ingredients on, go to work, and come home to a fragrant dinner. This recipe could not have been any easier. 

• 2 onions, peeled & quartered
• 1 whole pork butt (it was on sale!)
• salt & pepper to taste
• one 11-ounce can of chipotles in adobe sauce
• two 12-ounce cans of Dr. pepper
• 4 tablespoons packed brown sugar

First, you put the quartered onions in the bottom of the crockpot. Then you put in the pork butt, layer on the rest of the ingredients, and pour the Dr. Pepper over the top. Cook for at least 6 hours on high, flipping the meat several times during the process. It makes your house smell like smokey-sweet, meaty goodness. Then you remove the meat, shred it with forks, and add it back to the juices until ready to serve. 

This pulled pork was fabulous! Sweet with lots of heat. Too much heat, in fact, for my husband. I went back and fished out the chipotles, which had stayed surprising whole, so he wouldn't get them in a mouthful, and he liked the pork much better. If you aren't a fan of really spicy food, I would suggest either using half the can of chipotles, or seeding them first before adding them to the crockpot. 

The other thing I love about making pulled pork in the crockpot? All the leftovers. Ree has great suggestions at the end of the recipe about what to do with the leftovers, and we tried several of them. After eating the meat on buns with crunchy dill pickles, we made nachos, and used the meat as a pizza topping. I dug out a package of wonton wrappers, and made another version of my baked wonton cups with the pulled pork and mozzarella cheese. I also froze some of it for sandwich filling for dinner on another busy day.

I look forward to trying other recipes in this new cookbook. As always, Ree's photographs are meticulous and stunning. I know how long it takes me to set up and get one photo. Each recipe in Food from My Frontier has at least nine or ten photos. I worry about the Drummond children. I imagine them, pining away in the background, waiting for the photos to be snapped, starting to whine--just a little--"Can we eat yet?" Next time Bacon Boy is home, I'm making the Ranch-Style Chicken--yummy grilled, marinated chicken breasts topped with crispy bacon and cheddar cheese. But I'll only take one or two pictures!

What's New: Yumnuts

Everyone is talking about nuts these days. Nuts help reduce your chances of having a heart attack. They help with fat loss, and help you build muscle. They boost brain power with their dose of omega-3 fatty acids, and are a great source of protein. I grew up in a house where we ate nuts a lot. My father loved cracking pecans and hazelnuts for us to eat out of hand. My mother served walnuts inside sliced dates. And there was always a bowl of mixed nuts on the table at cocktail parties, not to mention pecan pie at Thanksgiving--although maybe those last two aren't the most nutritious way to snack on nuts.

I have come to eat nuts--almonds--every day as my mid-morning snack with fruit. Right now I am enjoying clementines because they are plentiful and go well with almonds, as do apples. My husband snacks on walnuts and cashews every day. But the big thing right now is flavored nuts. Why eat plain almonds when you can eat flavored ones? I understand this--I love butter toffee peanuts and peanut brittle, but again those work against the "nuts are healthy" ideal. Enter Yumnuts.

Yumnuts is a company that flavor-roasts almonds and cashews in a variety of flavors. Most processed nuts are roasted at high temperatures that degrade the valuable oils in the nuts, making them less healthy. Yumnuts roasts nuts at a much lower temperature, making them flavorful AND healthy. 

Yumnuts sells 5.75 ounce bags in a four-pack. I ordered the version that let's you chose the flavors you want to try. I got: Touch of Honey Cashews, and three almond flavors--Dark Chocolate, Cinnamon, and Ginger Orange. I am not a big fan of cashews, but the Touch of Honey were fabulous. The additional honey really brought out the nuts inherent sweetness during the roasting process. My husband motored right through them.

I parcelled out the almonds into snack-size bags, and enjoyed them over the next several weeks. The Dark Chocolate had the flavor of a perfectly roasted almond with a chocolate finish--great with coffee. The Cinnamon were roasted with cinnamon and allspice to give them a wonderfully spicy flavor--these were my favorite of the three. I loved the Ginger Orange. These almonds were my favorite snack with clementines, but I have become a little bit obsessed with ginger lately, and I thought the nuts had great orange flavor, but needed more ginger.

The four-pack sells for $19.96 which is $4.99 a pouch for six servings. That is more than you pay for the flavored nuts you can find at your local grocery, but the flavor is so much better, Yumnuts are worth it. You can also return the pouches the nuts come in, and Yumnuts will recycle them and give you reward points to use toward Yumnuts gear. I love my reusable shopping bag!

So take a look at Yumnuts: http://yumnutsnaturals.com/products.html for Nature's perfect snack. I think I will have to try the Roasted Coconut Cashews next--don't tell my husband!

New in the Kitchen: Cuisinart Blend and Cook Soupmaker

I haven't had a blender I've liked since 1982. That's the year I moved into my first apartment. I was trying to furnish a tiny hallway kitchen (you walked through it to get to the bedroom from the living room) with finds from second-hand stores. The kitchen had a tiny white, Easy Bake Oven and stove--the electric burners on top were so close, if I used more than one pot at a time, their sides touched. The oven was large enough to slide in a frozen pizza. The counter tops were a deep, bright orange. Keep-you-awake-in-the-dark orange. 

I went to Goodwill, and found a chrome toaster. It popped the toast straight up into the air, making every breakfast a rousing game of catch. When I got married three years later, I convinced my husband that this toaster was more fun than his Sunbeam that simply toasted the bread and popped it up. We spent years catching the toast until one day my chrome beauty fell from the counter to its death. We advanced to buying Cadillac toasters after that. the one we have now takes up one end of the kitchen counter with its long wide double-slots that can toast bagels or baguette slices. We eat a lot of toast in our house because my husband considers it to be a food group. Like ice cream and pizza.

At Goodwill I also found a great blend blender for my apartment. It was a study Waring with a glass jar that had originally been a very expensive kitchen tool. I got it for $7, and was told by the nice lady behind the counter that they guaranteed it to work for seven days. There was just one problem with the blender. It was pink. The base was pink. The lid was pink. It looked lovely on my orange counter top. I took to sleeping with my bedroom door closed because otherwise I could hear the pink warring with the orange in the dark. 

What I loved about the Waring was that it had a six-horsepower motor, and could make a smoothie out of concrete. I perfected a recipe for frozen strawberry margaritas--the perfect summertime drink in my unairconditioned apartment. I loved that blender.

Then I got married, and we got a lovely blender for a wedding present. It was white, and had a plastic carafe and could muster just enough power to blend milkshakes out of partially defrosted ice cream and milk. The plastic carafe quickly got scratched and cloudy. The strawberry margaritas always had chunks of frozen strawberry in them. I hated it. My father-in-law, a man who knows his kitchen appliances, promised to buy me another glass-carafed blender. Instead, I got plastic blender #2 which had more blending force than the first plastic blender but not by much. I stopped using it when the bottom blade assembly fused to the carafe, and I could no longer get it apart to clean it thoroughly.

Then last fall I started to see commercials on the cooking channels for the Cuisinart Blend and Stir Soupmaker. I loved the idea of being able to cook in a blender--I love soup, but it tends to be something I don't make from scratch. I don't eat it out of cans either because of the high salt content. Canned soup just doesn't taste good to me. I watched and waited. Sure enough right after Thanksgiving Williams Sonoma had the soupmaker on sale, AND had four days where there was no shipping charge on orders. I sent an email hint to Santa at the North Pole, and sure enough, on Christmas morning there was the Soupmaker under the Christmas tree.

I have to confess, with all the joys of working retail during the holiday season, it was the end of January before I even got my new soupmaker out of the box. I managed to get it assembled and on the counter without too much trouble. It is big, and takes up a good chunk of counter space. And it matches all my other black counter top appliances. The soupmaker comes with a small recipe book, and I decided to try the recipe for cauliflower cheese soup first. 

I based this soup on the Lightened Broccoli and Potato Soup in the recipe booklet, using cauliflower because I didn't have any broccoli. I put the following in the blender jar:

• 2 cups vegetable broth
• 1 garlic clove, chopped
• 1/2 small onion, chopped
• dash of salt
• dash of pepper
• 1 medium potato, peeled and cubed
• 3/4 pound cauliflower, cut into roughly 3/4 inch pieces

Then I put the lid on the jar and set it to 10 minutes on High. Once the broth started to heat up, I saw that the cauliflower wasn't covered all the way, and I added about a half a cup more.

In a few minutes the broth inside the blender jar started to boil. Then I hit the "Stir" button for about 15 seconds to start to move the ingredients around in the broth. At the end of the 10 minutes, the liquid was at a rolling boil, and the glass of the blender jar was hot to the touch.

The blender timer went off after 10 minutes, and I reset it to 30 minutes on medium. Periodically during this time, I stirred the soup  ingredients around. The blades at the bottom of the blender are extremely sharp, but on "stir" the speed is low enough so that the mixture moves, but isn't pureed. 

When the timer went off at the end of the 30 minutes, I tasted the mixture. The cauliflower wasn't cooked all the way through yet, so I set it for another 10 minutes on Medium. Then I added 2 ounces of grated sharp cheddar, and blended the soup on Speed 1 until it was smooth and creamy. I poured the soup into bowls, and sprinkled it with some green and red pepper flakes that I had made from my own dehydrated garden peppers from last summer. My husband and I love these pepper flakes, and sprinkle them on everything short of ice cream.

 This recipe made four very generous servings of soup. We would have had two meals out of it, but we ate it all. With some crackers. It was a lot of soup. And it was delicious.

What I liked about this soup was that once I had chopped everything and put it in the blender, I could do things in other rooms of the house, stirring the soup periodically until it was done. I was very careful the first time to chop all the vegetables uniformly, but as the blender stirs, it continues to chop the pieces so now I am not as careful to have all the pieces small and uniform. I whack up the veggies, onion, and garlic, throw it in the blender, add broth to cover, and let it go. Sometimes I add sour cream wit the cheese at the end. Sometimes I don't add the cheese at all. This is so easy we have been eating soup twice a week, less than an hour from start to bowl.

I wanted some soup to freeze, so I made the recipe in the booklet for Carrot and Ginger Soup--delicious! (My husband doesn't like carrot soup.) And wonderful to take to work with a sandwich.

For most of these creamy vegetable soups, I have found that we like the consistency better when I add the potato. The soup is lighter because the potato makes the soup creamy without being cream. The best soup so far has been a potato cheddar with crispy bacon bits added right before serving. No leftovers again. For clean up, I fill the blender jar halfway, add a little dish soap, and blend it clean. The blender does come with a brush for cleaning which is very helpful for the blades--they are very sharp!

$199 is expensive for a blender. Not so expensive for a soupmaker that I am using twice a week. It makes great smoothies too. Next I will have to try and find that strawberry margarita recipe again!

New Year, New Food: Barbari Bread & Persian Potato Chicken Salad

My friend Rebekah is married to a tall, dark, handsome Iranian. Over the years I have worked with her, she has learned to cook a number of Iranian dishes. One time she brought a dish into share (we have a little lunch group, low-cal, where some of us occasionally make lunch and bring it in to share). I have to confess that I don't remember what Rebekah made for lunch that day. I only remember the bread she brought. It was a wonderful Iranian flatbread called Barbari. Rebekah had brought it to share because this flatbread is fat free--a plus for a lo-cal lunch. After we had all eaten, there was flatbread leftover. Several pieces. I ate it all. Toasted, it was heavenly. A nice, light brown flatbread topped with sesame seeds. Toasted. Maybe I put some butter on it after I toasted it. Maybe it wasn't fat free then.

Anyway, it's not a bread Rebekah buys locally. Friends of hers go to Chicago to shop the  Middle Eastern food stores there and bring things back. Like the Barabari. So on the first day of this new year, Rebekah brought me an entire package of Barbari. Two and a half feet of it! As I was carrying it gingerly out of work later, Ryan (you know, the one who loves the pineapple angel food cake) asked, "Is that a skateboard made of bread?" It certainly was large enough. So I took my flat of bread home, and thought about what to make with it. 

So I noodled around on the web looking for a salad that might be served with this Iranian flatbread, and came up with Salad Olivieh. Supposedly Russian in origin, it is served throughout the Middle East. The salad is a cross between chicken and potato salad. I like chicken salad, and I like potato salad, but I had never thought of combining them. So I continued to examine recipes and soon realized that there was no way I could follow a traditional recipe for Salad Olivieh, which calls for anywhere from two to three CUPS of mayonnaise, and still serve it to the lo-cal lunch group. So, what follows in the recipe I created. It is based on a traditional Salad Olivieh, but features lower calorie ingredients.

Persian Potato Chicken Salad

• 2 chicken breasts
• 3 small, plain baked potatoes
• 5 carrots

The recipe I was very roughly following called for 2 cups of shredded chicken. You could buy a roasted chicken and use the meat from that. But since I was starting from scratch, I roasted two whole chicken breasts with the potatoes and carrots. Then I chilled them, got rid of any residual chicken fat, and cubed the potatoes, chicken, and potatoes. I didn't shred the chicken because I was cubing everything else, and did the chicken that way too. Not traditional.

In a bowl, to the above ingredients, add:

• 3 hard-boiled eggs, also chilled and cubed
• 1 cup frozen peas (you could also use a frozen peas and carrot mix)
• 1/2 cup sweet pickles, diced

The traditional recipe calls for a 19-ounce jar of Persian pickles. I have never eaten a Persian pickle, and have no idea what their flavor is like. I substituted gherkins because I had them in the fridge. I put in only half a cup because I didn't want them to overwhelm the flavor of the other ingredients. Again not traditional.

For the dressing: 

• 1 cup fat-free mayo 
• 1 tablespoon honey mustard
• 1 tablespoon Dijon mustard
• 1 tablespoon yellow mustard
• 1 tablespoon olive oil
• 1/4 cup fresh lime juice

Whisk all of the above ingredients in a bowl, and then gently stir the mixture into the other ingredients. As I mentioned the more traditional recipes all call for lots  of regular mayonnaise. They also use more olive oil, and lemon juice. I used less olive oil, lime juice instead of lemon (personal preference), and fat free mayo. VERY not traditional. This was plenty of dressing for my tastes.

I took the salad into the lunch group, and served it with toasted pieces of the Barbari Bread. Rebekah said it was delicious, but had I not told her it was my version of the Persian chicken and potato salad, she never would have known. Her husband's family always shreds the chicken, uses the correct pickles, and uses a LOT of mayonnaise. I was going to take a picture of the other members of the lo-cal lunch group enjoying the salad and Barbari, but by the time I remembered to get out my camera, their plates were clean.

I will certainly make this salad again. But I may have to try and make the Barbari myself because I don't know when I'll get more. Thanks Rebekah!

 

Double Chocolate Hazelnut Biscotti: For Deborah & Darin

I have already written my lament at the passing of Gourmet magazine. I miss it most at Christmastime. Every year I would wait for the cookie-covered December issue to arrive to see what new delight I could bake to send to family members. And then, when publication of Gourmet stopped, it was with the November issue. You know that those holiday cookie recipes were already written, the December cover photo already chosen. It was a doubly cruel blow. But I have my back issues.

Every year, I go into my office, and poke through the plastic magazine holders to find the December 1994 Gourmet. It contains a family favorite, Double Chocolate Walnut Biscotti, on page 236. Actually, that's not quite true. I have never made the recipe with walnuts. They are wonderful nuts, and I always have them on hand, but to me chocolate and hazelnuts are made for each other. So I mix up a batch of chocolate hazelnut biscotti every year to send to my brother's family in North Carolina. They are a holiday favorite of my niece, Deborah. And since Deborah and her husband Darin are among the few (yet special!) regular readers of my blog, I have decided that this year, my present to them will be the Christmas biscotti recipe. 

Double Chocolate Hazelnut Biscotti

(as adapted from Gourmet, December 1994, page 236)

• 2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1/2 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 3/4 stick (6 tablespoons) butter, softened
• 1 cup granulated sugar
• 2 large eggs (I prefer brown)
• 1 cup hazelnuts, rough chopped
• 1/2 cup semisweet chocolate chips
• 1/2 cup dark chocolate chips
• 2 tablespoons confectioners' sugar

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees, and butter and flour a large baking sheet. In a bowl, whisk together the flour, cocoa powder, baking soda, and salt. In the bowl of an electric mixer, beat together the butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Then add the eggs and mix until well-combined. Stir in the flour mixture to form a soft dough. Stir in the hazelnuts and chocolate chips.

On the prepared cookie sheet, form the dough into two slightly flattened logs, each about twelve inches long and about two inches wide. (Flouring your hands makes this easier.) Dust the top of each log well with the confectioners' sugar. Bake the logs 35 minutes, or until slightly firm to the touch. As the logs bake and expand, the tops will crack slightly. Cool the logs on the baking sheet for about five minutes. 

On a cutting board, using a sharp knife to slice cleanly through the hazelnuts without tearing the dough, cut the log diagonally (or straight across--my preference) into 3/4-inch slices. Arrange the biscotti, cut sides down, on a clean baking sheet and bake until crisp--about ten minutes. Cool the biscotti on a rack. They don't keep well because as they bake, the biscotti make the entire house smell like chocolate, and they are eaten almost immediately! I was able to keep some once in a holiday tin, for three days because I had labelled zucchini bread. I am sure they would freeze beautifully.

So, Deborah and Darin, the biscotti are in the mail. The tradition is yours now. Merry Christmas!

Cooking from the Books: Good Eats: Volume 1: Baby Back Ribs

I had a week off in October. One of the things I did that week was to cook food in large quantities so that I would have things in the freezer to get me through Holiday Retail Exhaustion. After spending nine hours on my feet helping customers, I want to come home to a hearty dinner that is already thawed and ready to heat. 

This week, however, I discovered that I had a rack and a half of baby back pork ribs left from a big bundle I had bought at Sam's Club in July. With snow on the ground, it is too cold to grill them slowly over charcoal like we prefer. But in all the Cooking Channel's reruns of Good Eats, I remembered seeing an episode where Alton cooks ribs in the oven. I dismissed this idea as nonsense, but decided that that would be the recipe to use for these ribs.

The recipe comes from his Episode 27: Pork Fiction, and was easy to assemble. I took the thawed ribs, and covered them with my SECRET dry rub recipe. This is a rub recipe I adapted from a Cook's Illustrated recipe that I have followed for years to grill my famous pork back ribs. (Yes, they are famous because my father-in-law talks about them to all his friends in Texas.) I also use this dry rub to cook my son, Bacon Boy's favorite bacon, but I digress. Alton includes a recipe for a dry rub if you need one.

Then the ribs are bundled into heavy duty foil pouches, meat side down, where braising liquid is poured into one end of the foil pouch. Alton's recipe uses white wine, white wine vinegar, Worcestershire sauce, honey, and garlic. I am all about using what's on hand, so I made my braising liquid with:

• 1/3 cup apple cider (fresh pressed)
• 2 tablespoons apple cider vinegar
• 2 tablespoons rice wine vinegar
• 1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce
• 1 tablespoon honey
• 1 smashed and chopped clove or garlic

And since I had cooked some of my dry-rubbed bacon for BLTs at lunch (the very last garden tomato--sadness), I added about a tablespoon of the seasoned bacon fat.

I divided the liquid between the two pouches of ribs, and put them on a cookie sheet. I baked them in a 250 degree oven for 3 hours. This allowed me time to get the Christmas tree in the stand, get the lights on it, and go to the gym. This time of year, I am all about dinner that doesn't need tending.

After three hours, I opened the ends of the pouches, and poured out the braising liquid into a skillet (I used the one from cooking the bacon that I had drained the fat out of), and simmered it until the suce thickened. While the sauce was simmering, I baked a bag of Alexi Onion Rings in the oven. If you have never tried Alexia Onion Rings, they are crunchy and wonderful, and hidden in the healthy frozen foods section at the grocery store.

When the onion rings were done, I opened the pouches and put the ribs, meat side up, onto the cookie sheet. Then I painted the thick rib glaze on the creepy looking gray ribs, and broiled them for about five minutes. They came out of the oven looking like they had been grilled, low and slow, over charcoal. The whole house smelled of porky goodness.

I served the ribs with a salad (Marzetti's Champagne dressing), a choice of Famous Dave's barbecue sauces, and the Alexia Onion Rings. I thought the ribs would be good, but they were excellent! The meat was tender and juicy, and the flavor off the glaze was a sweet amalgem of the braising liquid ingredients.

Once the snow falls here in Iowa, summer favorites like garden tomatoes and grilled baby back ribs fall off the menu. Alton's oven rib recipe has put the baby backs back!

 

Duncan Hines Cake Mix & Wilderness Fruit Filling: Part 2: Angel Food Cake Cupcakes

I think that Angel Food Cake is the white bread of the cake world. It has a nice flavor and texture, but I never crave it by itself. Angel Food Cake needs dressing up. 

Some where, some time in the last few years someone gave me a great, and fantastically easy, Pineapple Angel Food Cake recipe. You take a box of Angel Food Cake mix, pour it in a bowl, and add a large, 20-oz. can of crushed pineapple, stir them together and bake until golden--about half an hour--in a 9 by 13 pan. This is one of my favorite cakes to treat my co-workers with. It takes me two minutes to get it in the oven, and by the time I am dressed, the cake is out of the oven and ready to go. Angels could not make a cake faster that tastes as wonderful. And it's inexpensive--less than $5.

After the first batch of Duncan Hines cupcakes that I made, I still had half a can of the Wilderness More Fruit Blueberry Pie Filling. I also had one free Duncan Hines Cake Mix coupon left from the batch I received as part of the Foodbuzz Tastemaker Program. So I got a box of Duncan Hines Angel Food Cake mix with it.

Last Saturday morning, we had to open our store an hour earlier than usual--and an hour earlier than the schedule had originally been written for. I had to ask several employees to come in an hour earlier. When one of them balked, I coaxed, "I'll make the Pineapple Angel Food Cake." 

"Deal!" he agreed.

This time I had to get up a little earlier because I wanted to make the Pineapple Angel Food Cake as cupcakes. I dumped the box of Duncan Hines Angel Food cake in the bowl, added the large can of crushed pineapple, and stirred. This always produces a slightly fizzy cake batter. I am sure Alton Brown could tell me why, but I just like stirring as the batter fizzes. This time, just as I was about to dish the cake batter into the cupcake papers, I added the half can of Wilderness More Fruit Blueberry Pie Filling. It was very heavy compared to my light, fizzy batter, so I just let it sink in the middle of the bowl, and gave it a little swirl with a spoon. Then as I scooped out the cupcake batter, I made sure to dip into the middle of the bowl each time and nab some of the blueberry pie filling. The usual Pineapple Angel Food Cake recipe makes 24 cupcakes; this batch made 40.

The resulting cupcakes were swirled with the blue of the pie filling and very moist. They very quite popular at work, and the employee who agreed to come in early enjoyed four! I think even my mother, the cake purist, would have enjoyed them. 

So, is you are looking for a way to treat your co-workers this holiday season, start with a box of Duncan Hines Cake Mix!

What's New: Duncan Hines Cake Mix & Wilderness Fruit Filling

My mother raised me to be a cake purist. A snooty cake purist. If it wasn't whipped up by loving hands at home, from scratch, it wasn't good cake. All it took was my son remembering at 9 p.m. at night that he needed cupcakes for the school bake sale/class party/birthday treat at school the next day for me to become an instant fan of cake mixes. I began keeping boxes of chocolate and yellow cake mixes hidden in the back of my cupboard for just such emergencies. Once I had baked the cake or cupcakes needed, I could easily whip up my mother's favorite frosting for cakes for children--creamy peanut butter mixed with confectioner's sugar. Life was much easier. 

And although I still prefer to make cake from scratch, nothing cheers up stressed out retail co-workers this time of year, as showing up to work with cake. Cake says. "Although I can't give you a raise, and the customers might not always be cheerful and happy this time of year, I appreciate all your hard work, and make you cake." As part of the Foodbuzz Tastemaker Program, I received coupons for Duncan Hines Cake Mixes and Wilderness Fruit Filling. I bought a Classic White Cake Mix, and a can of Wilderness More Fruit Blueberry Pie Filling. Following closely after the many indulgences of Thanksgiving, I wanted to try the low fat version of the cake mix featured right on the Duncan Hines box.

First, I lined two pans with cupcake papers, and spritzed them lightly with Pam for Baking. If you have ever baked fat-free cupcakes, you know that they become very attached to the cupcake papers. But you only want to give the papers the lightest misting--too much and the cupcakes don't attach to them at all, and they look like ladies shucking frilly skirts. not an appealing look.

Then I mixed the Duncan Hines Classic White Cake Mix according to the lower fat version, adding 1& 1/4 cup water, 1/4 cup unsweetened applesauce, and 3 egg whites. I spooned batter into each cupcake paper so that they were half full. Next I placed about a teaspoon of Wilderness More Fruit Blueberry Pie filling into the center of each cupcake more or less neatly. Then I topped them off with rest of the cake batter--roughly a tablespoon each. I sprinkled a little blue decorating sugar on top, and baked the cupcakes for about twenty minutes. 

Then I cooled the blueberry cupcakes briefly on a rack, put them on a platter, and went out the door to work. Because of the ease of using a Duncan Hines cake mix, I was able to make these cupcakes before I left in the morning, showing up with a cheerful plate of fabulous cupcakes to treat my co-workers. A success all around--and everyone said they were delicious! Because I used the low fat option on the box, and didn't use frosting, they were light enough that some people ate two. (Like me!) And I got to hand out the extra Duncan Hines coupons that I had received as well.

I have half a can of the Wilderness Blueberry Filling left, so today I bought a Duncan Hines Angel Food cake mix and a small can of crushed pineapple. That way I can make Retail Relief Blueberry Pineapple cupcakes to take to work on Saturday. Try taking Duncan Hines cake to work, and see how happy you can make your co-workers!

Cooking from the Books: Good Eats: Volume 2: Swiss Steak

Alton Brown makes my short list of food personalities that I admire. After all, the man convinced me that brining is a necessity for the Thanksgiving Turkey, and I have a permanent Post-It on that page in I'm Just Here for the Food. But I have to confess that although I have all his cookbooks (including the newest, Good Eats: Volume 3), I have not cooked around in them very much. Maybe it's because I consider him a sort of foodie older brother. Need to know why high-gluten flour works better for homemade pizza dough? Check Alton. The answer will be there in one of those volumes--probably accompanied by a cute diagram of gluten molecules. Alton has all the answers.

My husband and I recently had the pleasure of hearing Alton speak in person at a benefit for the Cedar Rapids Public Library. A flood two years ago laid waste to the main branch of the library, and soaked many of its volumes. Alton came to speak at a fund-raising benefit, and donated a number of books to help rebuild the Library's collection, including some rare and odd cookbooks, and all of the ones he has authored. He was just as charming and funny in person as he appears in all of his television venues.

The Cooking Channel is rerunning all of the Good Eats episodes, and there are many that I have never seen. I was intrigued by the episode about Swiss Steak and how it belongs in the Museum of Food Horrors. I was born in Atlanta, but spent most of my formative years in Phoenix. I learned how to cook South, and Southwest. Swiss Steak was not on either of those menus. Then when I moved to Iowa to go to graduate school, I entered a new food arena and learned that many people in the Midwest ate breakfast, dinner, and supper (instead of breakfast lunch, and dinner), often consuming "hotdish" at some of those meals (instead of "casserole"), and drank pop instead of soda. And suddenly I was dining in restaurants that had pork tenderloin sandwiches instead of tamales, and Swiss Steak instead of fried chicken, biscuits, and gravy.

I ate Swiss Steak once in a well-known restaurant because my husband likes it, and recommended it to me. It tasted like the sole of an old shoe floured, fried, and swathed in white gummy gravy. Nasty! It quickly joined the list of things I never order in a restaurant like beef stew (no one ever makes it as well as I do) or tuna sandwiches (they should not be half dark tuna, half mayo and onion).

So I was intrigued by Alton's tear down and reconstruction of this midwest favorite. The rules emerged: you should buy your own good quality meat, slice and tenderize it yourself, and after flouring and searing the steaks, cook them low and slow in a broth in a Dutch oven. Alton set the bar pretty high, but I don't have time to buy, slice, and tenderize my own meat. Plus I shop at a small-town grocery that has a beautifully run meat department. In their meat case, I found lean, high-end,
tenderized "cube" steaks. I bought four.

Then I floured them lightly in seasoned flour. I am big fan these days of Mrs. Dash's Table Blend--no salt (and I don't miss it), but lots of pepper and other spices with a nice zing. Then I browned them in olive oil, and layered them in my Dutch oven. I strayed outside the suggested recipe here: I used organic beef broth, but added about half a cup of mushrooms and onions that had been left over from a batch I had sliced and sauteed for another recipe. I also threw in a little chopped sage, fresh from the garden. Then the covered pot went into the oven for about two hours. Halfway through, I rotated the meat layers. 

Instead of making mashed potatoes which seem to be the standard accompaniment to Swiss Steak, I again took the fast route and put half a bag of Ore Ida Golden Fries on a cooke sheet in the oven. My mother always made real Beef Stroganov over shoestring potatoes, so I piled my fries on the plate and topped them with Swiss Steak and the now thick and creamy mushroom and onion gravy. My husband pronounced the combo fabulous, and rechristened the dish "Swiss Steakanov." He said that this take on Swiss Steak is a new creature entirely, moist and tender in a way that most midwest Swiss Steak is not. 

I think it's time for me to cook around a bit more in the Good Eats cookbooks. Thanks, Alton!