Archive for the ‘Cooking’ Category
With just a few exceptions, most baking recipes call for butter to be softened or at room temperature. Softened butter spreads easily onto bread and toast, and it whips up into a fluffy mixture with sugar that helps produce a fine, tender crumb in baked goods. Chilled butter is too hard to cream into sugar easily and melted butter simply begins to dissolve the sugar, and does not create the light mixture produced by creaming.
The best way to soften butter is by leaving it out on the counter for an hour or so before you will need to use it. The exact time will vary depending on the temperature in your kitchen and in hot weather your butter will soften much more quickly than in cold! Softened butter should yield easily to a gentle squeeze of the wrapper and it should have an easy-to-spread consistency, so that a butter knife can easily cut through it and scoop some up. The butter should not be so soft that it cannot hold its shape or that it has begun to melt. If it is very hot, keep a close eye on softening butter so that it does not over-soften and pop it back into the fridge before it gets to that point if you’re not ready to use it.
If you need to soften your butter quickly, it is not a good idea to pop it in the microwave for a few seconds. This can melt the butter and, while it will probably not have a big impact in a batch of chocolate chip cookies, it actually can impact the fluffiness of the crumb in a cake recipe. The best thing to do is to chop the butter up into small pieces, as they will soften faster than a whole block of butter. You can put the pieces into a mixing bowl and beat it (starting on low speed) with a mixer or the paddle attachment of a stand mixer to encourage it to soften. A few minutes of mixing along with 10-15 minutes of sitting out in small pieces should soften the butter enough to use in a recipe.
During a heat wave, most of us aren’t thinking about turning on our ovens and baking up a couple of batches of cookies. That prospect is not nearly as appealing as it is during the winter, when the idea of working in front of a warm oven sounds very appealing. In the summer, we want air conditioning, refreshment and, most importantly, nothing that will make us hotter than we already are – even if a freshly baked chocolate chip cookie still sounds tempting. Here are a couple of recipes, sweet and savory, to help beat the heat during a heatwave:
Put that ambient heat to good use and turn your oven into a car with a batch of Car Baked Chocolate Chip Cookies. When it is over 100F outside, the interior of a car can reach up to 180F when left in the sun – hot enough to do some long, slow baking. The cookies turn out just like they would from the oven! You won’t need to turn on your oven and you’re car will smell like freshly baked cookies when you’re done, too. Oatmeal cookie fans can try Car Baked Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies instead of the original.
Classic s’mores are a great summer treat if you’re camping, but if you don’t already have a roaring fire going, try a S’mores Ice Cream Terrine instead. This layered dessert has all the elements of a s’more in a much more refreshing format. The terrine is made with ice cream, fudge sauce, marshmallows and graham crackers and it really does capture that s’more flavor! It can be made well in advance and served to a crowd for dessert or simply saved for treating yourself on a warm afternooon.
Homemade Ice Cream Drumsticks are another great frozen treat for summertime. Starting with store bought sugar cones, you can easily customize this ice cream truck favorite with any kind of ice cream you like. Simply press the ice cream into the cone and shape it into a neat scoop. Chill, then dip into chocolate to coat. You can even dip the unset chocolate into chopped nuts, shredded coconut or sprinkles to give it a sundae-like look! These are another treat that keep very well in the freezer if you take the time to make a good sized batch of them.
Outdoor cooking is a lot more appealing than indoor cooking when it is hot. You don’t need to heat up your oven, and standing in front of a 500F grill actually makes you feel cooler! Grilled Pizza is a great summertime option and alternative to burgers and sausages. The dough can be made in advance and it only takes a couple of minutes of cooking on each side to finish the pizza. Keep the toppings light, because they won’t have as long to cook as they will in the oven.
Finally, one last summertime favorite is gazpacho. This chilled tomato soup is not only refreshing, but uses up lots of fresh-from-the-vine tomatoes when they are at their best. Salmorejo is a type of Spanish gazpacho that uses a lot of olive oil and has bread incorporated into the soup mix. These two ingredients make the gazpacho exceptionally creamy, while keeping the great tomato flavor and losing none of the refreshment of the dish. You can also make a watermelon gazpacho for something with a sweet and spicy finish to it!
Sweetened condensed milk is evaporated milk that has a significant amount of sugar added back to it to make a very thick, sweet product that is often used in ice creams, pies and other creamy desserts. It comes in full fat, low fat and fat free varieties. Most recipes simply call for sweetened condensed milk and are usually designed to work with the full fat product, but since sweetened condensed milk is fairly high in fat and calories, a lot of bakers and cooks wonder about substituting in the low fat or fat free version.
When it comes to baking, there is a difference in using full fat, low fat and skim milk because even a small amount of added fat from the milk can really increase the moistness and tenderness of the finished product. Sugar also does this. Sweetened condensed milk and its lower fat counterparts are very similar in consistency, and all of them still have a very high amount of sugar and that extra-creamy texture. That richness and high sugar content will keep baked goods made even with fat free sweetened condensed milk moist and tender. It is also primarily used in custards or other creamy dishes, rather than in cake and muffin recipes, where the creaminess and sweetness of the milk, rather than the fat content, are the most important elements. Because of these factors, sweetened condensed milk is generally a good candidate for lower fat substitutions in recipes that call for a full fat product, as you’ll still get the same (or darn close to the original) result.
In ice creams, puddings and bar cookie recipes, I’ve always had great results using lower fat sweetened condensed milk. Fat free sweetened condensed milk will thicken when an acid – such as lime juice – is added to it, just as the full-fat variety will, so it works well in fillings for key lime and other pies. I will also use it in Thai iced tea or iced coffee for a slightly lower fat (but still sweet!) drink.
Cornstarch is a fine, powdery starch that is made out of corn. The cornstarch is actually made from the endosperm of the corn, which makes up most of the kernels that we eat when enjoying popcorn or corn on the cob. Cornstarch, also sometimes called cornflour, is produced by grinding, washing and drying the endosperm of the corn until it reaches that fine, powdery state. Cornstarch is gluten free.
Cornstarch has many culinary uses, but it is most often used as a thickener for sauces, gravies and fruit pie fillings. Cornstarch thickens very quickly and easily, and forms a clear sauce after cooking, rather than an opaque one. It has roughly twice the thickening power of flour, and while it is flavorless after cooking, it does need to be cooked for a short period to remove any starchy flavor from the starch, as well as to give the mixture it is used in a chance to thicken. Unlike flour, cornstarch will clump up if added directly to hot liquids and must be mixed with a small amount of color liquid before being incorporated into something hot, such as a gravy or a pudding. It if is added to a cold mixture, it does not need to be prepared in any way before cooking and will dissolve as the mixture heats up. If cooked for an extended period of time, or whisked too vigorously, a mixture thickened with cornstarch can break. Arrowroot and tapioca are both good substitutes for cornstarch when it comes to thickening power.
Cornstarch is also included in many baked good recipes, and is often used in conjunction with flour. Since it is gluten free, cornstarch can help add some structure to a baked good while increasing its tenderness. It appears very often in shortbread recipes, where bakers are looking for a very crumbly and tender texture in the finished product. Another common way of using it is adding a small amount of it to all purpose flour to make a substitute for cake flour. You will also often see it included in batters, where it helps contribute to a light crust after frying.
My grandmother was a huge fan of Deviled Eggs and made them for all kinds of holidays and family gatherings as I was growing up. I became a fan, too, so as soon as I was old enough to operate the stove safely I asked my grandmother to teach me how to make them myself. I made them with her whenever I visited, and these days I often just make myself them as a snack.
Good deviled eggs start out with good hard boiled eggs. Actually, there are lots of egg dishes (from egg salad to and brightly colored Easter eggs) that start out with hard boiled eggs. The trick to getting a perfectly cooked hard boiled egg is to cook it just long enough to cook through without making the egg tough or discolored. Nothing is less appealing than opening a hard boiled egg and seeing a gray-green cast to the once-yellow yolk. That gray-green color results from overheating eggs, which causes sulfur to be released from the egg whites and turn an discolor canary-yellow yolk.
My grandma tended to estimate the time the eggs needed to boil, but I find that an actual timer works much better. I start by placing my eggs in a pot and add just enough water (tap water) to cover them.
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