kitchenklutz: (fresh baked bread)
Continuing to work my way through variations in the Panera Bread Cookbook, I made some modifications and came up with an extra-tasty alternative to their Cinnamon Raisin White Bread -- Cinnamon Toffee Chip Raisin Bread. )

I haven't yet made Option 1 myself, but I'm including it in this recipe because of other spiral breads and cookies I've made before. With option 1, you'll get icing in a spiral pattern throughout the dough; with option 2, you'll get icing as a topping on an already tasty-bread.

As with most Panera recipes, there's quite a bit of waiting around for the bread to rise, but this bread is definitely worth it. I received a ton of compliments on it, and would wholeheartedly recommend it to anyone.
kitchenklutz: cookie sheet (cookie sheet)
Name totally pending! I printed out a sugar cookie recipe off of the Food Network site, and then improvised my way into a incredibly tasty citrus-flavored iced cookie. Overall, this recipe felt incredibly easy to put together, and the final product looked enough like a sunny-side up egg yolk that I decided to tentatively name it the Sunny Side Up Citrus Sugar Cookie )
kitchenklutz: spoons and bowls (Default)
This morning was filled up with quite a bit of household tasks and chores, so to take a break I made a batch of banana nut bread. Mostly this was motivated by having plenty of leftover bananas that were overripe and about to go bad anyways -- double bonus!

Banana Nut Bread )

Ridiculously easy to make and cook, smells fantastic, and my loaf is just about to come out of the oven. Of course, I did neglect to properly grease the pan before I put in the dough, so no doubt it'll end up a bit stuck to the pan -- learning experience for next time!
kitchenklutz: spoons and bowls (Default)
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.
kitchenklutz: spices in bottles (spice bottles)
Over Thanksgiving my mom and stepdad came out to Boston to visit, and we had many a culinary discussion. One of the things that came up was mention of a traditional Sicilian cookie that my stepdad has made, which (I believe) he inherited from a distant grandmother from the old country. Called "cuchidades", these are fig-stuffed cookies -- like fig newtons, after a fashion, but sooooo much better.

I managed to track down a recipe online and then modified it to my own satisfaction. The result has been wildly popular with pretty much everyone I've introduced it to.

Fig-Stuffed Sicilian Cookies (Cuchidades) )

The first time I made this, I made the icing with milk and vanilla; the second time I made it with orange juice and orange extract. Overall, I'm far more satisfied with my second batch, but your mileage may vary -- try both and see which one you prefer!
kitchenklutz: cookie sheet (cookie sheet)
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!
kitchenklutz: spoons and bowls (Default)
This was another recipe that I tried out for the autumnal get-together back in November. It was the first time I'd ever attempted to make a potato salad, and I feel that the end result was reasonably good.

The original recipe came from Penzey's. I was IM'ing with a friend of mine while making it, so there were a number of modifications and changes suggested and I improvised quite a bit.

Spicy Potato Salad )
kitchenklutz: spoons and bowls (Default)
I've been doing a lot of cooking and experimentation since around Thanksgiving, but with the holidays I haven't had as much chance to update this journal. Today, hopefully, that gets corrected.

I've been making a good number of different recipes gotten from Penzey's spices, and one that I tried out for the first time over the holidays was Holiday Cookie Balls. )

Reasonably easy to make, these confections are a little bit sweet and a little bit savory. I thought that the dough was maybe a little too crumbly, rather than chewy, but perhaps that's something I can work on if I tinker with it more in the future.
kitchenklutz: cookie sheet (cookie sheet)
I snagged this recipe off of a baking LJ comm a while back and gave it a wee bit of modification. Overall, though, I'm quite happy with the way it turned out. Really tasty, all in all. So, no further ado, the recipe:

Triple Chocolate Cranberry Cookies )

They're usually a big hit for being awesomely chocolate-y with extra cranberry tartness. Hope you like them as much as I usually do!
kitchenklutz: cookie sheet (cookie sheet)
Yesterday was the Adam Ezra Group's Ramble (which was, by the by, awesome), and as last year there was a bake-off (with cookies for free to anyone, and you put money into the jars of the cookies you liked the best, all proceeds going to charities to help feed the hungry). Determined to impress, I made not one but four different batches of cookies: traditional oatmeal raisin, triple chocolate cranberry, my spicy ginger cookies, and an experiment...

Peppermint Chocolate Chip Cookies )

Aside from uncertainty over the color of the cookies (which is why I say the addition of the food coloring is completely optional), these were generally well received. People said, and my experience with a test cookie matches, that they ended up tasting pleasantly like Thin Mints.

(And on a side note, although I didn't get recognized as having one of my batches raise the most contributions -- I came in a close third -- I'm quite happy that the combination of all four different batches just around tripled what anyone else's single batch did. All in all, I'm quite happy with that, particularly since the proceeds all go to charity. *wry smile* )
kitchenklutz: spices in bottles (spice bottles)
A few years back, on a trip to the American southwest, I randomly picked up a bottle of Mrs. Dash's Southwest Chipotle mix. It turned out to be a my favorite, near-perfect thing to add to scrambled eggs, chili, and other needing-to-be-spiced-up dishes. Unfortunately, it's not really sold around here -- and though I could get a half-dozen bottles online from Amazon or similar places, it would take me something like a dozen years to use all that spice.

Instead, I started screwing around with making a spice mix of my own, working off of the list of ingredients on the side of the Mrs. Dash's bottle. It took a little experimentation, and a lot of "shake my spice mix in bottle and compare scent to original Mrs. Dash's mix", but I finally got the proportions worked into something I'm fairly happy with.

Southwest Chili Pepper Spice Mix )

It might not be precisely the same as the Mrs. Dash's mix, but it's certainly close enough in appearance, scent, and taste for my purposes. Enjoy!
kitchenklutz: spices in bottles (spice bottles)
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.
kitchenklutz: cookie sheet (cookie sheet)
First time attempting this recipe, so it'll be interesting to see just how it turns out in the end. Nonetheless, it certainly looks promising, and although the dough's cooling now the filling smells enticing.

Poppyseed Spiral Rum Cookies )
kitchenklutz: spoons and bowls (Default)
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 )
kitchenklutz: spoons and bowls (Default)
Last week, I made some of my cinnamon carrot raisin muffins for co-workers, and they were such a hit that I've gotten requests for other types of muffins since. One request in particular was for chocolate chip muffins, so I went to a number of sources, looked at muffin recipes I'd baked before, and tinkered about to end up with this:

One Dozen Chocolate Chip Muffins )

All in all, these turned out much better than I was expecting for a first attempt. Light and somewhat airy, with just enough sweetness and an excellent aroma of cinnamon.
kitchenklutz: spices in bottles (spice bottles)
Adapted from another one of the discovered trove of Chinese recipes, I kind of threw this one together from a couple of different sources. I tinkered with some of the quantities on the ingredients, because parts of it seemed far out of proportion to what else was up there. Nonetheless, I ended up with a surprisingly tasty result -- pleasantly comparable, I must argue, to the kinds of Chinese dumplings (potstickers, specifically) I've eaten in restaurants or bought in frozen packs at the market.

Juicy Fried Dumplings )

Hoisin Dipping Sauce )

Overall, I was very pleased with the way these came out. For cooking the potstickers, I do recommend edging towards a 7-minute cook time rather than 6 minutes -- it makes them a bit crisper without being overcooked. Your mileage may vary, of course.
kitchenklutz: spoons and bowls (Default)
Late last week, I came across an Emeril recipe for roast chicken. Up until then, I'd never actually gotten a whole chicken at the market and prepared it for a meal. This, clearly, needed to change! I adapted the recipe slightly for what ingredients I had, once I'd purchased the chicken -- mostly in quantities of added ingredients, since the smallest roaster I could find at the local market was somewhat larger than the recommended size on the original recipe. (That, and I neglected to buy a lemon.)

Perfect Roast Chicken (My Version) )

Now, I had my savory main dish -- and it smelled and tasted terrific. However, at the same time I wanted to serve it over something. The easiest thing to do was rice -- but I was rather bored with regular plain white or brown rice. Something inside me asked hey, what about sweet rice? Now, as far as I know, I've never even had sweet rice, so I didn't know what I was getting into, but I flexed my Google-fu and found an intriguing recipe for Lebanese sweet rice. I adapted it into the following:

Sweet Rice (My Version) )

Tonight I had the roast chicken as the main dish, with the sweet rice as a side -- and overall, the tastes were surprisingly complimentary. The chicken and vegetables are rich and savory, and mixed with the sweet rice (which was sweet, but not too sweet), it made a memorable and quite enjoyable dish. I definitely plan to make both again in the future.
kitchenklutz: spices in bottles (spice bottles)
Following through on my resolution to try at least one new recipe every week, I stumbled over an old printed recipe for garlic naan. That inspired me to pull out my copy of Bay Books' The Essential Asian Cookbook, looking for Indian recipes. Thus, being not too immediately hungry, I decided to try out both the naan and a recipe for Madras curry.

Madras Curry )

Naan )

This is finishing up cooking as we speak, although the naan still has a while to go -- I haven't even divided up the dough yet. The curry smells great, though, and I'm anticipating it'll be very tasty given all the spices that went into it.

ETA: The curry turned out quite good, though nowhere near as spicy as I was expecting. I had it with rice, and with the naan on the side. The naan was surprisingly tasty, considering it was my first time trying to cook it. It's very straightforward to fry up. I actually realized only after I'd mixed up the dough that it indicates "Portions: 14" -- so I made three pieces of naan and kept the rest on the tray to refrigerate. I can quickly fry up more naan each morning or night, given a little melted butter.
kitchenklutz: spoons and bowls (Default)
It took a little doing, and some advice from online friends (thanks sumobabe!), but I finally managed to make a reasonable (and quite tasty!) batch of peanut brittle. Third time's a charm, right? Peanut brittle is challenging to make if you don't know just what signs to watch for when preparing the ingredients, as evidenced by my two failed attempts, but once you know the trick it's pretty straightforward.

Peanut Brittle )

I chose to add cinnamon to my attempt, being a huge fan of cinnamon, but you can experiment with other spices as well. Additionally, though peanuts are traditional, many types of nuts will work well in a brittle.

Pictures to come soon -- my camera's battery ran out of juice and is recharging.
kitchenklutz: spoons and bowls (Default)
Not at all put out by my failure to successfully make peanut brittle, but still filled with a hankering for something sweet and peanut-y, I decided to pull out an old recipe of my mom's. These rich, hearty snacks were always quick to disappear whenever they were made when I and my sister were growing up. I never could, and still can't, resist a serving of Mom's Peanut Butter Rice Krispy Treats. )

Easy to make, quick to prepare, and ridiculously tasty. This has been one of my favorite snacks since childhood.

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March 2015

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