Archive for September, 2011
Pumpkin pie, pumpkin cake and pumpkin bread and just some of the many tasty baked goods that you can make using pumpkin to infuse a little fall flavor into your kitchen. Another favorite of mine are pumpkin pancakes. I can’t think of a better way to start off a cool, fall morning than with a big stack of sweet and spicy pumpkin pancakes topped with a little butter and doused in maple syrup.
These are Thick and Fluffy Pumpkin Pancakes, the kind that make a dramatic tower on a breakfast table and soak up just the right amount of maple syrup. The pancake batter is made with pumpkin puree and it uses just 1/2 cup, which means that after baking that batch of pumpkin muffins you’ll have just the right amount leftover for pumpkin pancakes. The batter is sweetened with maple syrup and gets a hint of butteriness from buttermilk. I used my own homemade pumpkin pie spice blend of cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger and cloves to season these, but you can add those spices in any combination you like or use a store bought pumpkin pie spice mix.
They may be thick, but these pancakes are light and tender, not dense or heavy feeling. They do take a minute or so longer than some other pancake recipes do to cook, so after heating up my griddle and making the first batch, I will often turn down the heat to medium to ensure that the pancakes don’t get too dark as they cook.
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In addition to standard round and square cake pans, the shelves of cooking stores are lined with plenty of shaped pans. These pans come in designs from sandcastles and cartoon characters to miniature wedding cakes, giving you the option of baking a cake that features an elaborate design without trying to carve an intricate pattern into a cake yourself. Most of these specialty shaped pans come with recipes right on their packaging, but to make them worth the purchase price you’ll want to know that you can use them again – and that means that you should be able to bake more than just one recipe in them.
Shaped pans come in a wide variety of shapes and sizes, and it often turns out that no two are going to be exactly alike when it comes to baking times and the amount of batter that they hold. The easiest thing to do is start out with the recipe on the package and tweak it for different flavors, since you know the volume is just right for the pan. Beyond that, there are two main options: you can either measure the volume of the pan and convert existing recipes to match it (8×8-in pan = 6 cups, 9×9-in pan = 10 cups, 10-in bundt = 12 cups) or you can make a full batch of batter for another recipe and just pour as much into the pan as you need. Conversions can be convenient when two pans hold the same volume of cake batter, but I don’t like to scale recipes to strange proportions when I don’t have to. In those instances, I’ll pour batter about 3/4 of the way up the sides of the specialty pan (both for small cakes and larger ones) and bake off any remaining batter in a small muffin pan for a few cupcakes. It streamlines the process and leaves me with a few bonus cupcakes!
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You’re probably used to seeing the same types of chocolate chips in markets over and over, so when I saw the bright white packaging of Enjoy Life Semisweet Chocolate Mega Chunks, it caught my eye and I picked one up to try. Enjoy Life products are made without the eight most common food allergens – wheat, dairy, peanuts, tree nuts, egg, soy, fish and shellfish – and are marketed as being allergy friendly. Their chocolate chunks are also marketed as being allergy friendly, and they definitely are, as it says right on the packaging that they are manufactured in a dedicated nut and gluten free facility on a product line dedicated to dairy and soy free products.
The chocolate chunks contain evaporated cane juice, chocolate and cocoa butter. Most semisweet chocolate is made with just sugar, chocolate, cocoa butter and sometimes vanilla (some brands have an emulsifier added, as well, but not all), so I wasn’t surprised when this chocolate tasted almost exactly the same as other semisweet chocolates I’ve tried. It had a good, not-too-sweet flavor and an excellent melt on the tongue. I liked the bar-like shape of the chocolate chunks, which varied in length but not width, and felt that they were a great shape for chocolate chip cookies. Not needing an allergy free food, I would buy these again just because I liked the flavor and the shape of them. It’s great for those with food allergies to know that these chocolate chips, although they are made in pretty much the same way as other chocolate chips, are made in a facility where they won’t be exposed to other allergens, so you can enjoy your chocolate chip cookies – gluten free, peanut free or just regular cookies – without worries and with some good chocolate chunks.
Layer cakes are notoriously difficult to slice and serve if you want to keep the slices looking their best. After the cake has been sliced, you typically need to slide a small spatula or even a pie server underneath the wedge of cake and try to transfer it to a waiting dessert plate. The multi-layer slices of cake often shift around, needing to be held in place with a steadying finger or two, or land on their sides when they tip over after being pushed off the spatula. Unless a cooking show is being filmed in your home (or you’re a food blogger who takes a lot of photos!), it’s not critical to ensure that every slice of that cake looks perfect – but I know that when I spend a lot of time and effort decorating a cake, I want every piece to look as good as possible. This is where The Cake Knife might come in handy.
This knife is made of an unusual type of resin (Ultem, which is often used in making medical instruments and is actually used to make some guitar picks, as well), which is nonstick, as well as heat and stain resistant. It has a wide, flat blade that is just 4.75 inches long and 3 inches high- an ideal size for cutting into 8 and 9-inch round layer cakes. In short, the knife can slice through a two l or three ayer cake without getting cake stuck all over the blade, then you can use the large, flat blade of the knife to lift that slice easily onto a waiting plate.
I am constantly on the lookout for new ways to incorporate bananas into various baked goods. I always have bananas on hand and it’s nice to have alternatives to banana bread. These Banana Chocolate Chip Cookies are one of those variations. I wanted to create a cookie recipe that had a chewy – and unmistakably cookie-like – texture to them, but still had a good banana flavor. Often, cookies that use bananas and other fruit purees have a dry and cakey texture to them. These are moist and chewy, but you won’t mistake them for banana bread.
There is a whole banana in this recipe. It is mashed up and added to the cookie dough along with the usual ingredients that you would find in chocolate chip cookies: butter, sugar, brown sugar, eggs, etc. You could easily add in cinnamon and other spices to this dough, but I kept the spicing very basic and only used vanilla extract to play up the natural banana flavor. This basic dough would probably be delicious as-is, with no mix-ins, though I couldn’t resist stirring in a whole bunch of semisweet chocolate chunks. When the cookies are still slightly warm from the oven and you take a bite, getting a mouthful of sweet banana cookie and melted chocolate, you know that the chocolate chips are a good idea.
These cookies get slightly crisp around the edges during baking, but they are a bit softer than your average chocolate chip cookie. They are moist and have a good chewy quality to them. Don’t overbake the cookies or they’ll get a little bit dry. The cookies should be lightly browned on top with a golden brown bottom when they’re done. They keep well (and actually freeze quite well, too) for a couple of days when stored in an airtight container, but stack them with layers of parchment or wax paper because the cookies will tend to stick together slightly when stored.
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