culinary experiments and explorations

One of the things I've wanted to do more this winter is try my hand at baking bread. I've got a handful of cookbooks with many recipes to try, but one of the first ones I wanted to try was a recipe card I picked up at Penzey's back around Yule.

It looked intriguing, and I'm definitely more of a fan of bread recipes that don't require yeast and substantial rising periods. I didn't know how it was going to turn out, as I'm usually not an enormous fan of drinking beer, but the result was astonishingly good.

( Beer Bread )

Alternatively, instead of placing all the dough in one 8x4 bread pan, you can split the dough into a six oversized cup muffin tin. If you do so, reduce baking time to 28 - 32 minutes -- the smaller volume of dough in each cup means it will bake notably faster.

I admit I had my doubts about this when I first set out to make it, largely because I'm not a huge fan of Newcastle Brown Ale. (I've used Brooklyn Ale for a particular spicy Cajun stew before to great effect, though.) To my delight the Newcastle turned out amazingly well with the Savory Beer Bread option, so I urge anyone else who tries this recipe to experiment with beers of their liking.

Towards that end, I'm intrigued to try out the Sweet Beer Bread option using Redd's Strawberry Ale. Its alcoholic content isn't particularly high (3.2%?) but without any yeast in the recipe I believe it's the carbonation that's important.

Back sometime last year I got inspired by a cup of hot chai tea. Soooo tasty... were there any recipes that could duplicate that particular taste in a cookie? I did a little searching and turned up no existing recipes out on the web.

So what goes in chai tea? A little more creative Googling and I'd turned up the various ingredients that most commonly go into chai tea mixes. From there I started experimenting on cookie doughs, and after half-a-dozen drafts I finally arrived at a final result I was satisfied with. Now, at last, I feel comfortable sharing it with the world. Try these out, and let me know how you like ( Chai Cookies. )

I always have a fun time handing these to people and asking them to tell me what they think it tastes like. Many of them can identify some of the ingredients, but rarely all of them... and when I tell them they're chai cookies, this look of dawning comprehension always comes over their faces and they immediately agree. Try it and see for yourself!

For Christmas, my ever-lovable sister got me an unusual cookbook -- "Homemade Winter", by Yvette Van Boxen. I was immediately intrigued by it -- it's laid out in a very nonstandard, flowing, I-just-wrote-this-recipe-down-by-hand manner. It's got scads of apparently hand-drawn illustrations to go along with the directions, so visually it definitely catches the eye.

This morning, I decided while making breakfast that I was going to give one of the recipes a shot -- ( Gingerbread, or Pan D'Epice. )

Mixing the dough is probably best accomplished with a standing mixer. I initially tried mixing it both with a wooden spoon and by hand, and the dough was so sticky as to coat my hands with scads of gingery flour that had to be scrubbed off under the faucet.

That said, I'm quite happy with the final, modified, result. The adapted recipe produced a lovely loaf of bread -- light, moist, subtly spiced, and quite delicious. I'll no doubt make it again in the future, keeping my modifications in mind.

Enjoy!

OK, so I'm on a bit of a chocolate baking roll. I did a broad Google search for recipes involving chocolate, and one of the recipes I stumbled over was one for rum raisin chocolate chip morsels. However, as it went for an entirely non-gluten/organic angle (the ingredients of which could be rather difficult to easily get one's hands on) I modified the original recipe substantially. Nonetheless, for what was basically a lot of improvisation off of my past experience, these cookies turned out uniquely and surprisingly tasty.

( Rum Raisin Chocolate Chip Cookies )

Moist, subtle, and with a definite rum kick, these were one of the tastier recipes I've experimented with all year. This recipe is definitely going into my book as one to make again -- it's worth it!

A while back I made me some chocolate mint brownies, which turned out reasonably well. However, after making them I still had quite a bit in the way of creme-du-menthe liqueur left over. Ever since, I've been looking for minty recipes to use it up on. I decided, what the heck, why not try cupcakes? And as it happens, they turned out pretty damn well!

( Vanilla Cupcaks with Minty-Green Cream Cheese Frosting )

Tasty cupcakes, with just enough mint flavoring to add some zing. Alternatively, substitute in 2 teaspoons Triple Sec (or other orange-flavored liqueur), 2 teaspoons grated orange zest, and 1/8 teaspoon each of red and yellow food coloring to swap it from minty-green to orange-flavored frosting.

After the fun of the Ramble Bake-Off, I decided to start experimenting more with cookie recipes. I spotted one recipe on a Livejournal site that included Heath Toffee chips, and immediately thought about adapting it for use in one of my own baking projects. The result was better than I expected, and the cookies themselves turned out both subtle and savory.

( Toffee Chip Cinnamon Molasses Cookies )

I decided to get a bit of an early start on the whole 250-new-recipes-in-a-year project, and after a quick stop by the grocery store for various supplies got home and began working on my first piece. (This recipe is straight from Emeril's Potluck, page 267.)



( Glazed Lemon Pound Cake )

( ... with Lemon Glaze. )

Despite my complete inexperience with making cakes (I've only made cookies, muffins, and the solitary attempt at bread in the past), this turned out astonishingly good. It's sweet, light, incredibly delicious cake and the sweet tartness of the lemon glaze adds an excellent kick. I just about had a foodgasm when I took my first bite. Highly recommended, and I'll no doubt be making this again in the future... either for others, or to keep all to myself. : )

Crossposted from Kitchenklutz.

Last Monday, I'd tried out a recipe for big soft ginger cookies on AllRecipes.com. They turned out alright, but not quite as good as I'd hoped -- they were actually a bit softer than I would've preferred, and not quite as gingery. I modified the recipe, and I came up with ( Crisp Ginger Cookies. )

Overall, I was quite pleased with the way this batch turned out. Well-spiced with ginger, aromatic, and just crispy enough while still remaining chewy. The cayenne adds a warm afterburn that hits just as the main taste of the ginger is beginning to fade - overall, as near to perfect as I've ever gotten with a ginger snap.

Crossposted from Kitchenklutz.