Archive for September, 2009
This past Saturday, I headed up to San Francisco for the 2009 BlogHer Food conference. It’s the first of what I think will be an annual conference series from BlogHer and was aimed at food bloggers. All of the breakout sessions of the conference covered topics that would be of interest to people who write recipes, review products and just like to write about food in general. The topics varied widely from how to attract readers to your blog, how to take better food photos and how to translate your love of cooking or photography into other venues, to name just a few topics. The speakers included (by blog) Simply Recipes, Pioneer Woman, Veggie Venture, Kalyn’s Kitchen and Matt Bites, again to name just a few of the many, many bloggers in attendance.
I skipped the lunch served at the conference because it was – no kidding – frozen Italian food. A food conference is a great place for product placement, but not in place of what could have been a more interesting meal. I instead went out to lunch next door at the SFMoMA’s Cafe Museo with Cooking with Amy and San Diego Food Stuff. I noticed several other conference attendees in the room with us, as well. Lunch was delicious. I had a ham and fontina panini.
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I like roasted, salted nuts. But I also like nuts that are coated in sweet, crunchy shells, including honey roasted peanut and praline pecans. Praline pecans are similar to candied pecans, but tend to have a much thicker sugary coating on them. With a salted nut underneath, they’re indulgent and addictive. I regularly pick up praline pecans (or similarly named confections) at local farmers markets and at Trader Joe’s, which carries its own version. I generally eat them a few at a time, but I sacrificed a whole bunch to infuse their nutty, sugary flavor into this delicious cake.
I pulsed a bunch of praline pecans in a food processor until they were very, very finely chopped, then incorporated them into the batter of this cake. The cake is incredibly light, with an almost feathery, fluffy, texture. The crumb is very tight, so it tends to remind me of a pound cake in appearance, although it is much lighter. The reason that I ground up the pecans is that I didn’t want them to break up the lovely texture of the cake. I simply wanted them to flavor it, so I could get all the tastiness of pecans and still achieve that cloud-like texture. The finished cake is not too sweet and has a great hint of praline and pecans.
This cake doesn’t need any accompaniments – no frostings, no fillings and no glazes. It goes perfectly with just a cup of coffee. If you want to dress it up a little bit, however, fresh raspberries or a drizzle of raspberry sauce adds a nice touch of color and sweetness.
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Tempering eggs is a critical culinary process, especially when it comes to making puddings, custards and other similar recipes. Eggs are tempered when a hot liquid (usually milk) is carefully streamed into them, bringing the eggs up to a very high temperature without cooking them. When properly incorporated, eggs have thickening properties that will help bring a custard to the appropriate consistency. This process is trickier than it sounds, since eggs cook a lot more easily than other ingredients and the last thing you want to add to a pudding is scrambled eggs!
To temper an egg, or multiple eggs, you need a large bowl and a whisk. Give the eggs a brief whisk in the bowl. Take your hot milk mixture and, working with just a few teaspoons at a time, pour it into the eggs as you whisk continuously. Adding the milk in this slowly prevents the eggs from being coked instantly from exposure to heat. Keep adding the milk in very small increments until all of it has been added. Strain the egg mixture back into your saucepan, removing any bits of egg that might have gotten cooked, and proceed with your recipe as written.
Now, you could try and just stream in your eggs (or egg mixture, as seen in this banana cream pie recipe) to the hot milk mixture to save time and dishes. This is not a good idea. When your egg hits that hot liquid, even if you whisk very fast as you work, it will cook almost instantly. In a best-case-scenario with this method, you will end up with a lump or two in your finished pudding/custard. In a worst-case scenario, you will end up with a saucepan full of scrambled egg pudding. If things go awry in the previously described method, you’ll only have to throw out a small portion of your hot milk mixture and start over with new eggs, saving a lot of time and a lot of batter.
Way back in January, I said that one of my goals for this year was to finish a huge project: to write a cookbook. Unlike the resolutions that involve pledging to use that gym membership everyday (or at all), this is one that I can check off the list. I’m thrilled to announce that The Baking Bites Cookbook is coming out this October!
The book has 51 recipes – and to give you some perspective on how many this is, it’s almost 4 months’ worth of posted recipes! Almost all of the recipes are new, never before seen treats. Only four have been featured on the site before and it’s only because they’re so popular (and such favorites of mine!) that I absolutely couldn’t resist putting them in. The cookbook is styled after some of my favorite single-subject cookbooks, with full-page, full-color photos of every recipe. It uses a large font, making it easy to read and follow – no need to squint at the pages or bend down close to the counter to figure out the next step in the recipe as you work.
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I am a big fan of the Halloween M&Ms this year. They’re not just black and orange, but black, orange, neon green and purple. The combination of colors looks fun, bold and a bit spooky. I honestly love the look of them. I wanted to showcase their bright seasonal colors in something other than my candy dish, so I incorporated them into a batch of chewy, chocolate cookies. The dark color of the cookie really lets to bright colors of the candies stand out, making the cookies appear a little more exotic and in keeping with the Halloween season than your ordinary chocolate chip cookies.
Don’t let the not look of the cookies in the photo fool you, because these cookies are darker in person than they appear. They have a lot of cocoa powder in them than gives them their color, not to mention their deep chocolate flavor. These cookies are rich tasting and chocolaty, with a hint of fudginess that comes from their chewy texture. The fact that there are some miniature chocolate chips thrown in to add a little bit of extra chocolate doesn’t hurt, either. The M&Ms are, of course, both crunchy and chocolaty. If you get a cookie when its warm from the oven, you’ll get a nice bite of melted chocolate inside the M&M shell. for The cookies look a little more Halloween-ish than plain chocolate chip cookies would with M&Ms added.
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