Cooking in Cambridge

So again, I'm spending the summer in Cambridge, visiting Benson. Both of us very much enjoy cooking, and I've been eating better here then I usually do at home, since usually at least *one* of us feels like cooking, and it's a  lot more fun to cook for two then to cook for one. So, the result of this is that Benson and I have made breakfast (or brunch) at least once every weekend since I've arrived, which has been pretty awesome. I actually brought to England with me a small bottle of maple syrup which I bought in New Hampshire last week as a gift to Benson -- it's already over half gone!
We've done pancakes, omelets, Dutch Baby, the world's best scrambled eggs, Challah french toast (from scratch -- with my friend Zahava's amazing homemade Challah recipe), and this weekend we made Oeufs en Cocotte (eggs in a pot). I'd never heard of these before (and thus had never made them before), but while we were browsing in a kitchenware store (looking for a cheese grater, amongst other things) we stumbled across these little ceramic mini-casserole dishes which were just too cute for me to pass up (my one true weakness: kitchenware). So, while commenting to Benson, waiting in line, that I had no idea what we would make with them but I had to have them anyway, the lady in front of us suggested making Cocette - a french dish she knew, with eggs and ham all made in a tiny ramekin - perfect for the little crockery we were purchasing. So, with help from Google, we had this for brunch this morning.



Oeufs en Cocotte
4 eggs
150 grams (5.5 oz) créme fraiche
nutmeg (a pinch)
salt and pepper (to taste)
handful of fresh chopped dill
butter
Optional additions: chopped up ham, bacon bits, asparagus, smoked salmon, cheese, anything else that might go in a delicious eggy breakfast dish!




This dish was quite easy to make - first, preheat the oven to 180C/350F (switching units of measurements for temperature and cooking in England has been a tad aggravating, I admit, but I'm getting used to it). Mix the créme fraiche with dill, salt and pepper, and a dash of nutmeg in a small bowl. Then, butter 4 ramekins (we just did this in the 2 little dishes, but ramekins are usually smaller) completely, and put  a generous spoonful of the creamy mix in the bottom of each one. If you are adding ham, cheese, or other things, put those in next (we just used ham, which was a nice addition), and crack an egg on top of that (in our crockeries we put 2 eggs, since they were large enough). Finally, put a dallop of the créme fraiche mix on top of all of this, and put another sprinkle of salt and pepper and a dash of dill to garnish. Put your ramekins in a baking pan, and fill the pan with warm to hot water until it comes halfway up the side of the ramekins. Bake for 15-20 minutes, until the eggs have set nicely.

These are great. I particularly like the taste that the dill gives to the recipe - dill is something I really like but don't actually go out and get very often (it doesn't dry well in my opinion, fresh is the way to go, and I usually don't buy a lot fresh herbs because they only come in huge packs at the store and they go bad before I can use them all). I also associate the taste and smell of dill with my grandmother (on my dad's side) -- she was a fantastic cook, and I don't think I encountered dill very often anywhere other than her house when I was little, so it's a pretty strong sensory memory associated with her. Can't have it without thinking about her. Anyway, so yes, a delicious brunch, and pretty easy to do, if you have ramekins.

Dinner is also a thing Benson and I have been making, obviously. So we also recently made the *best* chicken wings I've ever made in my life. We combined two recipes for the task -- first, Korean chicken wings are amazing, so we found a recipe for the sauce used in San Tung Fried chicken wings (here). We lack a deep fryer, however, so instead we decided to bake our chicken wings. However, the best thing about Korean chicken wings is how deliciously crispy they are. Which means we managed to discover a recipe which crispifies chicken wings in the oven extremely well instead (here)! We modified the crispy bit a little.


Crispy, Oven-baked San Tung Chicken Wings
Wings:
4 lbs chicken wings
2 tsp baking powder
3/4 tsp salt
1/2 cup flour

Sauce:
2-3 scallions
10-15 cilantro sprigs
2-3 tbs soy sauce
1/2 cup honey
1/4 cup water
3 garlic cloves, minced
1 tbs rice vinegar (we substituted apple cider vinegar mixed with white wine)
1 tsp chili garlic sauce or red peppers (AKA - Sriracha sauce!)

Preheat the oven to 250F (yes, two hundred fifty, not a typo). Pat the chicken wings dry. Mix baking powder, flour, and salt and sprinkle/coat the chicken wings with the mix -- you don't want to heavily coat your wings, because then they taste like baking powder, but you want to cover them well. This is the agent which is going to make your chicken wings crispy! You can add the flour mix through a sifter or a mesh strainer to sprinkle it lightly over the wings if you would like, rather than rolling it in the flour mix to coat it.

You are going to bake the wings on a wire rack -- so you want to put the rack on a cookie sheet, with aluminum foil covering the sheet (for easier cleaning). Then evenly arrange the wings, skin side up, in a single layer on the rack and bake at 250F for 30 minutes (this dries out the skin). Then, increase the temperature of the wings to 425F for 40-50 minutes more, rotating the sheet halfway through. The wings should be lovely and crispy and brown at this point, so take them out and let sit for 5 minutes. Then, simply toss in the sauce until they're all coated and delicious.

Ah yes, the sauce. Also an important thing you should make. The sauce is quite easy though -- just mix all the ingredients in a sauce pan, put on low-medium heat, and simmer (stirring frequently) for 5-10 minutes until it has thickened. We found that starting the sauce right after you rotate the chicken wings is about the right amount of time, giving you 20 minutes or so.

These are AMAZING. We served them over rice -- we actually made a half recipe, which was plenty for two with the rice. But for a larger group, make more!

So, all in all, having a lovely time in Cambridge. I've also gone into London 3 times now -- once as described in the last post, once for a live show of a comedy radio program I really like, and once to go to the Victoria and Albert museum as well as to track down the *best scotch egg* in London. We succeeded in this second task, finding ourselves in a really great Michelin star pub for lunch which served game and had *perfect* venison sausage covered scotch eggs. That was a good day!

Until next time!

Of Cookies and Cupcakes

On Monday evening I held a board-game night, for people both from college and from my department. It was a great evening, with lots of fun boardgames played (Pandemic! Ticket to Ride! Cards Against Humanity! Taboo! Settlers of Catan! Dominion! Etc!), lots of fun people, and lots of fun food and drinks. My friend Kaila was here for the weekend, (as previously seen in the "Funtimes with Kaila and Benson" post), so she was extremely helpful in aiding my food prep for the evening. She made a delicious spinach dip, for example, as well as helping with numerous other dishes including finding a GREAT recipe for basil pesto bread in my bread machine cookbook. But the most awesome dish that the two of us made was a previously untested (by us) recipe that Kaila found online that looked really cool: Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough Cupcakes - the original recipe can be found here.

This is exactly what it sounds like: cupcakes, stuffed with cookie dough. They're pretty straightforward, too - just drop frozen chunks of cookie dough on top of your cupcake batter and bake. But of course, you need to make the dough and the batter! So as a bonus, this post also includes a recipe for delicious Vanilla Pudding Cookies (with chocolate chips!) - a different recipe for chocolate chip cookies that was the standard at our place in college. Unlike my other chocolate chip cookie recipe (see "Christmas Cookie Spectacular" blog post), this recipe is designed to put out large, fluffy, SOFT cookies which stay soft for a long time after you've baked them, as in, probably a week though they've never really lasted that long! And although you only need a half a recipe for the cupcakes, well, we made a full batch so that we could have cookies in addition to cupcakes! So two delicious desserts for one! Apparently you can also just use the standard pre-made cookie dough that comes in tubes to make this recipe even easier, just roll THAT in balls and freeze it instead of making homemade cookie dough. You can also substitute other cookie doughs or other cake mixes to mix and match.

Vanilla Pudding Cookies (makes 4 dozen)

2.5 cups flour
1 tsp baking soda
3/4 cup packed brown sugar
1/4 cup white sugar
1 3.4 oz package vanilla pudding mix
1 c. softened butter
2 eggs
1 tsp vanilla extract
2 cups chocolate chips
(1 cup walnuts)

Preheat the oven to 350F (assuming you are making cookies). First mix all your dry ingredients (flour, baking soda, the sugars, the pudding mix) in a large bowl, thoroughly. Next, mix in your softened butter. Repeating something I said in my "Christmas Cookie Spectacular" blog post, be sure to actually soften your butter, rather than microwaving it until it's melty. Melted butter and softened butter are very different animals, and the quality of your cookie somewhat depends on your butter consistency! While we did soften our butter as we were supposed to, if you are in a rush, there is an easy trick to make it soft really quickly, without cheating with the microwave - if you have a cheese grater, you can grate your hardened butter through it, which increases the surface area of the butter and lets it soften up right away. Plus, since it's already grated, it mixes easier than straight up hard butter does, even when each individual piece might be harder than truly softened butter. So a handy trick if you are ever in a pinch, like you've suddenly developed a massive cookie craving in the middle of the night and you MUST BAKE NOW. Yes, this has happened to me.

Once you've added and mixed the butter, proceed to add the eggs and vanilla as well, and mix thoroughly. Now, at this stage, your dough may look a little dry and/or flaky. If this is the case, you need to mix it more thoroughly, until it's completely homogenous. The easiest way to do this is just get in there with your hands and mix it thoroughly! So everything should look nice and smooth, as a cookie dough should. Once you've done that, add the chocolate chips as well. And if you like nuts in your cookies, I suppose you can also add those, though I wouldn't recommend them for the cupcakes, and personally I don't like nuts in my chocolate chip cookies! So, if you are making cookies OR cupcakes, you'll want to put the dough into 1 tbs balls and place them on a cookie tin (or, in the case of the cupcakes, into something that will fit into your freezer but keep the balls separated). If making COOKIES: bake for 10-12 minutes in your preheated oven, until they're nice and brown on the bottom.  Remove from the oven, let cool, and consume. These will stay soft for at LEAST a week, probably longer!

If making CUPCAKES: place the balls (24 of them, one for each muffin, though I added an extra one for luck) into the freezer for at least 2 hours, until they're frozen solid. The reviews of this cupcake recipe are very vehement that the cookie dough MUST be frozen solid for these cookies to turn out right. So freeze them well. Heck, overnight, if you so desire, I guess. When they're frozen, you are ready to make your Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough Cupcakes



Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough Cupcakes
1 box of cake mix
Any additional ingredients required to make said cake mix (this usually consists of some number of eggs, some oil or butter and water)
24 frozen solid 1 tbs balls of chocolate chip cookie dough - REALLY frozen.

Preheat the oven to 350F. Mix your cake mix according to the instructions on the box. In our case, this involved a red velvet cake mix, 3 eggs, 1 1/4 cup of water, and substituting a half a cup of softened butter for the half a cup of oil (because that way your cupcakes are more buttery! Can't go wrong with that!). Next, either line your cupcake tins with cupcake holders or grease the cupcake pan. We didn't have the paper cupcake things, so we just greased it, but next time I'd definitely use the liners: especially since if these are underdone they're otherwise quite difficult to remove from the pan. Fill your cupcake pan so that each cupcake thing is 2/3 full. I would emphasize that you are adding both cookie AND cupcake batter to your tins, so don't overfill: the cupcakes rise significantly. We overfilled ours, and they overflowed a little. Still tasty, but not as pretty! Next, place a frozen dough ball on top of each of the cupcakes, centered. It will sink as the cupcake bakes, so you don't need to press down or anything.

 In the comments from AllRecipes, it emphasizes to REALLY make sure the dough is frozen and DO NOT over cook the cupcakes, or they'll cook, and you'll have chocolate chip cookie stuffed cupcakes instead of chocolate chip cookie DOUGH cupcakes. Not a tragedy if you overshoot a little, but just be aware. Bake for 16-18 minutes - test the cupcakes by sticking a toothpick into it near the side of the cupcake - since you are testing the doneness of the cupcake part, not the cookie dough part. Once you think its done, remove the cupcakes from the oven, and let cool for 15 minutes (so it settles) before removing from the tins. Then you can pop them out, and they're ready for frosting!

Chocolate [Almond] Frosting
1/4 cup milk
1/4 cup butter, softened
2 1-oz squares of unsweetened chocolate (melted)
1 tsp vanilla
Optional: small splash of almond extract
2.5 cups powered sugar

Bring the butter and the milk to a boil in a small saucepan, then blend in the chocolate, vanilla and, if you so desire, the almond extract. We actually didn't intend to add almond extract, but the bottle of vanilla and the bottle of almond extract look very similar, and some went in before we realized our mistake. But it was a very tasty mistake indeed, so if I made this again, I would replicate it! Next, slowly add your powdered sugar, blending as you go until it's smooth. You should probably taste as you go, and add more or less as you desire your sweetness level. While the original frosting recipe we were following (from my wonderful all chocolate-based recipe cookbook!) called for 2.5 cups of sifted powdered sugar, we cut it down a bit to 1 3/4 - mostly because that was all the powdered sugar we had. However, we found that it was actually just about the right amount of sweetness, so it wasn't a huge problem. The icing WAS a little runny, however, and tended to get a bit melty when in a warm room, so I'd probably go with the full amount of sugar if you have it. Once that's all done, you can frost your cooled cupcakes! And you have a delicious treat for you.

Our final products were very tasty, but NOT the prettiest cupcakes I've ever made. Our first batch turned out slightly overdone - so it was an absolutely scrumptious cupcake with a soft and fluffy chocolate chip cookie baked inside - which was delicious, but wasn't chocolate chip cookie dough we were going for. For our second batch (I only have 12 cupcakes worth of cupcake pans, so we had to do it in 2 batches), we overcompensated and undercooked - so we got the cookie dough part, but the cupcakes were almost falling apart because they weren't quite cooked enough. I'd error on this side, personally, if you have cupcake liners, since the main problem here was difficulty of removal from the pan. Note that the cooking time difference between the two batches was 2 minutes (18 minutes for the first, 16 for the second). So there is a fine, fine line here. And it probably varies based on the exact cookie dough and cake mix you use - so experiment a little! But all in all, very tasty, I would definitely make these again.

Baked cupcakes before the icing stage

Christmas Cookie Spectacular

Dad and I, decorating the tree
and stringing the lights

Christmas season is well upon us, and I, of course, headed home to Baltimore for the holidays. I spent several days, and had many productive hours decorating the tree, making cookies and Christmas Eve dinner, and generally spending quality time with family. Then on Christmas day, my parents and I headed up to New Jersey, to spend day with my grandfather. Since Poppop doesn't really do much cooking, (or like much cooking to be done in his kitchen) we all went out for dinner at a local diner - which are quite plentiful in New Jersey. Then today, it was back to NYC. Over the break, Benson will be visiting, and we'll be going on a cruise with him and two friends from college, which I'm looking very much forwards to!

Holiday traditions are always nice, and of course, the most classic one is that of the Christmas Cookie! While we do tend to vary exactly which cookies get made every year, we made two of our favorite standbys this season. The first is the  fantastically delicious and quite simple to make Hello Dolly Bars. I've also seen these listed elsewhere as Magic Cookie Bars, but the name "Hello Dolly" just has a bit more pizzazz. The second is the more traditional Chocolate Chip Cookie:  literally the standard recipe that you get off the bag of chocolate chips, though I do put in some notes about technique. But these are pretty classic, you HAVE to have chocolate chip cookies for Christmas, if nothing else!



Hello Dollys (aka Magic Cookie Bars)

1/2 cup butter
1.5 cups graham cracker crumbs  (8-ish graham crackers, crushed)
1 (14 oz) can of Eagle Brand Sweetened Condensed Milk
1 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips
1 (3.5 oz) can flacked coconut (or 1 1/3 cups of coconut)
1 cup chopped walnuts.

mmmm... toasty!

Preheat the oven to 350F. Melt the butter completely in a 13x9 baking dish. Make sure to tilt the pan so the butter is even over the bottom surface, then sprinkle the graham cracker crumbs over the butter evenly. Next, pour the milk over the surface (evenly).  Note that this is easier said than done: sweetened condensed milk is THICK, and I usually have to  spread out the last bits with a spatula, and tilt the pan back and forth a bit before it is even... and there are usually a few holes leftover. As long as they're small, this is fine. Follow with the rest of the layers (chocolate chips, then coconut, and finally the walnuts) - making sure each layer is nice and even, and that you don't neglect the edges of the pan. Press all of this down firmly so it's nicely packed. Bake for 25-30 minutes until the coconut is nice and toasty brown, and the chocolate chips are starting to get nice and gooey. Remove from the oven and let cool, then cut into bars. You can store these at room temperature. (Makes 24-36 bars, depending on how big you cut them). These are delicious, rich, and chocolatey, and absolutely one of my favorite cookies every year.



Next, onto the classic. Chocolate chip cookies are an absolute MUST for the Christmas season!





Nestle Tollhouse Chocolate Chip Cookies
2.25 cups white flour
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp salt
1 cup (2 sticks) softened butter
3/4 cups white sugar
3/4 cups brown sugar
1 tsp vanilla extract
2 large eggs
2 cups chocolate chips
1 cup nuts (optional)

Softened butter, sugar, and vanilla!
For a nice creamy texture.

It is a good idea to put out your butter a couple hours in advance, so that it softens naturally and you don't have to microwave it to soften it and risk melting it altogether. You want SOFT butter, not melted butter, to get the batter texture right and for the best cookies (yes, how you put in the butter actually matters for the finished product!). So do this well in advance! This is a good plan for any cookies or cakes which require softened butter. Honestly, butter doesn't really need to be refrigerated as much as you might assume - while you don't want it in a super hot place, if you keep it out in a relatively cool area, you really won't have any problems. However, I still tend to stick it in the fridge, where it will last longer. But if I'm eating a lovely loaf of homemade bread, or something, I will occasionally leave out a half a stick of butter so that its soft and easily spreadable!

Sifty sift

Another note, for your dry ingredients: when making Christmas cookies, we (my father and I) ALWAYS sift the flour before adding it, and similarly, we ALWAYS sift the sugar. This avoids lumps in the batter! Admittedly, when making cookies on my own, I don't always do this. But Christmas cookies are worth the extra work!

Preheat oven to 375F. First, combine (sifted!) flour, baking soda, and salt in a small bowl and mix well. In a larger bowl, thoroughly mix the softened butter with the (sifted!) white sugar, (sifted!) brown sugar, and (not sifted, silly!) vanilla extract. To this, add eggs one at a time, beating well after each. Then gradually add the flour mixture to this. Do this SLOWLY, a bit at a time, so that it doesn't lump up, or get uneven, or whatnot. This part is probably the most strenuous - we always do it by hand, and it gets quite thick after a while. In fact, this can get to be a problem. Years back, my dad and I made an extremely large batch of cookies, a triple recipe or so. Dad did the bulk of the stirring at that time, though we switched off a little, and his arm got QUITE sore. In fact, the next day, his elbow still ached.   And the day after that, it STILL ached. In fact, Dad had what we dubbed "chocolate-chip-cookie-elbow" for several months following that Christmas. Since then, I've done the bulk of the stirring when we make cookies - and we haven't made quite so large a batch, either.

Chop chop chop!

Once you've mixed the dough, you can now add the chocolate chips! Mix well until they're evenly distributed.  You can then add nuts at this point, if you so desire. While my mother is a big fan of chocolate chip cookies with nuts, my father and I aren't such fans. Therefore, we always weigh out the cookie dough precisely and make 1/3 with nuts, and 2/3 without. This saves much family argument.

My dad, putting the last few cookies
onto the tray

Now, all that's left is to bake them before you eat all of the delicious cookie dough. That's always my temptation, the dough is as good as the cookies, I swear. In college, the campus convenience store sold pre-made cookie dough which you could buy with your meal plan. As such, there was often a thing of cookie dough in my dorm fridge, of which my roommate Zahava and I always ate a lot, and our other roommate, Dahlia, protested about it's presence as too much temptation (but she still ate a LITTLE bit anyway!). I have, in fact, at least on one occasion, made a half batch of this cookie dough and failed to get any actual cookies out of it. I'm generally not concerned about raw eggs and such, since the odds of getting ill from that are quite low.

But anyway,  make rounded tablespoons of dough and place them on an ungreased cookie sheet, with a bit of space between them, then bake for about 10 minutes, until they're nice and brown on the bottom. Then transfer the cookies either to cooling racks, or lay them out on the table on top of a brown paper bag (which you can cut up for this purpose as a makeshift cooling rack!). And there you have it! Delicious chocolate chip cookies. You can store them in cookie tins or whatever you have on hand. I will note that when I store a few chocolate chip cookies in a container with a few Hello Dollies,  the Hello Dollys actually keep the chocolate chip cookies softer than they would be otherwise, which is nice!

All in all, I had a wonderful Christmas. Key gifts include an iPad Mini, some very fine mittens, and, on the foodie front, a nice set of springform pans! So expect a cheesecake post at some point in the future.

Merry Christmas, and a Happy New Year!