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Brunch Ring

February 1, 2010 in baking, cooking, food, review by spinstah | 2 comments

This was the other dish I made for my January brunch, and is yet another recipe from the January 2010 Vegetarian Times. This one was a big hit. Tasted great, looked impressive, and was easy to make. Essentially, it’s a tofu scramble encased in puff pastry. In this case the scramble uses some Indian spices, but you could really use any favorite tofu scramble recipe, so long as the volume is about the same.

In terms of wrapping the pastry around the scramble, I learned a couple of things — there will probably be a few extra pieces of crescent roll dough, and it works best to shape and mold the scramble, rather than just try to pile it on. I had trouble getting the points of the dough all the way around and underneath the ring, so I just pulled them into the middle and poked at them in hopes that this would work, and it did.

I didn’t modify this recipe a whole lot — in this case I just changed the spicing. As written the recipe is vegan, and calls for 1/4 C nutritional yeast. After some online research and a chat with the lovely SparkleJ, I decided to omit it and just include more spices. Since the recipe called for turmeric, I poked around and decided to add in some ground ginger, coriander and cumin. (In reality this meant I could have just used the curry powder in my cabinet, but I thought of this too late.)

This can be made ahead — you can do the whole thing right up to baking and then just chill it in the fridge overnight, covered loosely with plastic wrap or foil. I didn’t do that since I had enough time to make it before my guests came, but if you have folks staying over, this might be a nice thing to be able to offer pretty quickly in the morning.

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Apple Cider Muffins

October 17, 2009 in baking by spinstah | No comments

The weather has started to edge into fall, which means at night I start getting cravings for tea and carbs. So, when I spotted this Apple Cider Muffin recipe on Serious Eats, I knew I needed to kick off my muffin baking season with them. I picked up some cider and some stayman apples and got to work.

I’ve started doing a monthly brunch with a small group of friends, and so I doubled the recipe because I wanted to have a stash for a muffin bar brunch that I’m planning to do this winter. The recipe came together quite easily (though shredding the apples is a bit messy) and I filled my two standard muffin tins . . . and had only used up half the batter. I put the rest into my Texas muffin tins, but they also provide instructions on baking the batter into bread. (When I just went back to the recipe, I noticed that someone else said they wound up with twice as many muffins as they expected.) So, be ready with extra baking apparatus if you make these.

Despite the fact that I burned the muffins a bit by turning the oven up too high (it runs cold, and I turned it up to 50 degrees higher than I wanted, rather than the 25 degrees that is generally what wokrs), they’re quite delicious. Especially when microwaved — they apple has kind of melted away into the batter, and they’re sweet and rich and almost buttery. I will definitely be making these again, though I probably won’t double the recipe!

Black-Eyed Susan Cupcakes

May 27, 2009 in baking, food by spinstah | 1 comment

In the last couple of weeks, I’ve made a lot of delicious food for parties. The first were Black-Eyed Susan cupcakes for a Preakness Party in mid-May. (Inspired by a specialty cupcake produced by Charm City Cupcakes.) For those who aren’t up with the cocktails surrounding the Triple Crown, a Black-Eyed Susan, the official version calls for vodka, bourbon, OJ and sour mix.

I started off with the recipe for the Car Bomb Cupcakes as my foudnation (from Smitten Kitchen). For the cake part, I made a basic yellow cake (I use a recipe from the Gourmet Cookbook that was created with the intention of mimicking box cake mixes; in this case I just used regular flour instead of cake flour). Read the rest of this entry »

Car Bomb Cupcakes

March 17, 2009 in baking, food by spinstah | 1 comment

Cupcakes!

As many of you know, I made Car Bomb Cupcakes to take to a St. Patrick’s Day party this past weekend. (Recipe from Smitten Kitchen.) Isn’t that the most delicious thing you’ve seen in ages? I thought so.

These were so much fun to make. I’m not going to lie, a lot of work goes into these cupcakes. But I love to cook and bake, and I especially love to feed people. So to me, making something like this is an expression of my affection for the folks who then get to eat them. Since I work in a job that requires the occasional weekend shift, I had a comp day I needed to take this month. I decided to take it the day before I needed to have these ready, so I spent Friday making the cupcakes and filling them (I also baked a loaf of bread and 16 scones), and then made & frosted them on Saturday. But as the recipe notes, you can easily make these farther ahead and pop them in the fridge or freezer. Read the rest of this entry »