Porter House

Cook's Country's Wellesley Fudge Cake

I feel so guilty about my terrible photographs of this cake. We cut into it last night before I took any pictures, therefore I couldn't get very good ones. They certainly do not do this cake justice.

Let me start off by saying that I wasn't really wanting chocolate cake yesterday. We finished a German chocolate cake last week and I wasn't really ready for another one. However, I was craving something sweet and this cake showed up in my brand new Cook's Country magazine. Their photo and the description really made me want to give this recipe a shot.

Apparently about a hundred years ago, Wellesley students were not allowed to eat sweets, as college founder Henry Fowle Durant held that "pies, lies, and, doughnuts shall never have a place at Wellesley College." Ha! That would not have been the school for me...

The Wellesley students took to having secret fudge making parties in their dorm rooms. Within 10 years, Wellesley Fudge Cake was showing up in local tearooms.

Cook's Country revamped the modern versions of this recipe, trying to return it to it's former glory. The beautiful square shape was worth my purchase of new square 8-inch cake pans. The recipe developers made the cake sturdy enough to handle the thick fudge frosting. They also made the fudge frosting easy to make without a candy thermometer. I love that.

The frosting proved easy to make, I encountered no problems. The square shape of the cake made frosting it much easier and resulted in a perfect looking cake. (Before we hacked into it that is...)

Okay so Justin sliced us all a piece after dinner. I took a bite and was bowled over by how utterly delicious it was. I was worried about the frosting being too sweet for me. It was not. It perfectly complemented the cake. The frosting was thick, fudgy, and left a slight grainy sugary feeling on the tongue. By this time, Justin had started eating his piece and he and I both proclaimed it THE best chocolate cake that we have ever had. It was not so rich that you couldn't finish your slice, on the contrary it left you immediately wanting another piece.

Justin and I joke that if I like something it means he won't and vice versa. I like things not too sweet and with a lot of flavor, Justin definitely likes his chocolate on the sweeter milder side. Somehow, this cake made us both very happy. Please pick up a copy of Dec/Jan 2010 issue of Cook's Country and make this cake!

Carrot Salad

I grew up not loving carrots. The only time I really had them was when they were cooked along side a pot roast. I didn't like cooked carrots. I have grown to appreciate them now. However, my very favorite recipe for carrots is David Lebovitz's Salade de carottes râpées. In fact, I crave it with about as much intensity as I do chocolate. It is just so well balanced and fun to eat. I am always amazed at how happy it makes me to eat it.

His recipe (or actually Romain's) is pretty vague in the way of measurements. However, it always comes out perfect. Here is the way I interpret his directions.

By the way, I greatly prefer flat leaf parsley, but my store is often out of it. I use the food processor to grate the carrots.

Carrot Salad

1 pound of carrots, peeled and shredded finely

1/2 bunch of parsley, chopped

two lemons, juiced

2 tablespoons of olive oil

2 tablespoons sugar, plus more to taste

salt and pepper

Whisk together the lemon juice, olive oil, sugar, salt and pepper. Taste. It should be well balanced between tart, sweet, and salty. Add more sugar/salt as necessary.

Toss the dressing over the carrots and parsley in a medium bowl. Serve- Enjoy!

Todays Green Drink

Mmm. This one turned out really good. Lemon/lime juice, spinach, celery, parsley, ginger, cucumber, red bell pepper, green grapes, honeycrisp apple, granny smith apple. All these fruits and vegetables broken down so small that your body has no problem digesting all the nutrients. I love it! Apples not pictured; I throw them in once the mixture is smooth and then let it go on high for a bit.

 

Classic Red Mole

I received my long awaited Vita-Mix last week. It was a generous present from my husband, who has been working more overtime than he should. You see: Vita-Mix for me = nearly guilt-free hunting for him.

This machine has a 7-year warranty but will likely last a lifetime. I will not extol all of its virtues here. I am sure most of the people reading my food blog already know about this machine. I will say that I have put it to great use in the last week, and that I have definitely upped my consumption of raw fruit and vegetables 10-fold already.

Every morning, I have a full glass of Dr. Oz's Green Drink. I would be scared to try this recipe, with all the fiber/peels without a heavy duty blender like the Vita-Mix.

Dr. Oz's Green Drink

juice of one lemon

juice of one lime

2 cups of fresh spinach

1 bunch parsley

1/2 inch or 1 teaspoon of fresh peeled ginger

2 cups unpeeled cucumber

1 stick celery

2 cored apples, unpeeled

Add the juices and about 1/2 cup water to the bottom of the Vita-Mix. Layer the other ingredients in the order listed. I hold back the apples until the mixture is smooth using low-medium speed, then add them through the top with the machine running. Once the apples are all in, I crank up the Vita-Mix to 10, for about 30 more seconds. This makes about 28-30 ounces, or about 3 servings. Refrigerate leftovers for the next couple of mornings.

I wanted to branch out and try something new today. I made Rick Bayless' Classic Red Mole. I didn't have time to order chiles, so I had to do it without mulatos. This was sad, but I think it still turned out great with just anchos and pasillas.

There are about 17 ingredients in this mole: tomatillos, sesame seeds, lard/oil, mulato chiles, ancho chiles, pasilla chiles, garlic, almonds, raisins, salt, cinnamon, black pepper, anise, cloves, toasted bread, Mexican chocolate, and sugar. It is important to have everything ready before you begin.

 

Here are the broiled tomatillos, toasted sesame seeds, and fried almonds/garlic/raisins. The kitchen smelled so good around this time.

 

The chiles were toasted, rehydrated, and then pureed with the water used to rehydrate them. The mixture turned out so smooth. Very impressive.

 

Then all the other ingredients were pureed separately.

I fried the chile puree for about ten minutes. Then I added in the other puree and fried it for another 10 minutes. I added water and simmered it all for 45 minutes. Then I added the salt and sugar. Mole should be a delicate balance of salty, sweet, and spicy.

 

Unfortunately, I have to wait until tomorrow to have this with a braised turkey breast. It gets better with a day or two in the fridge. I did scrape a few corn tortillas in the bit left in the pan though. I want more.

Perfect Southern Cornbread

 

This is just a recipe for cornbread. Boring right? However, every time I need to make cornbread I have to track down THIS recipe. This usually involves calling my sister and getting her to give it to me again. I promised her the last time, that I would make a more permanent note of it. So here it is.

The ingredients are all very normal and standard. Somehow though, these exact proportions create a way better cornbread then all the other recipes. The small amount of sugar in the recipe is more for seasoning like salt, not for sweetness.

Cornbread

1 cup corn meal

1 cup all-purpose flour

1 tablespoon baking powder

1 teaspoon salt

2 teaspoons sugar

1/4 cup vegetable oil

1 1/8 cup buttermilk

1 egg

Preheat the oven to 450 degrees. Mix together corn meal, flour, baking powder, salt, and sugar in a medium bowl. Whisk together buttermilk and egg in a large measuring cup. Pour the oil in a cast iron baking pan, place it in the hot oven.

Add the liquid ingredients into the dry ingredients. Combine gently. Pour half of the hot oil from the pan into the batter. Stir in well. Pour the batter into the baking pan and place in the oven.

Bake about 15 minutes or until the top and edges are browning in spots. Loosen from the pan, and turn out onto a rack to cool.

Cinnamon-Roll Coffee Cake

I am still baking my way through Cuisine at Home's Holiday Baking issue. In fact, I have another recipe that I was supposed to tell you about first, but then I tasted this coffee cake.

I love coffee cake. I have made dozens of them over the years. I have found many good ones. This one is GREAT. Perfect even.

It is not even irritating to make. You mix up brown sugar, cream, and a pinch of salt. You put this in the bottom of the pan. Then you place toasted pecans on top of that. You make a standard cake batter with buttermilk and yogurt in it. Half the batter goes in, then some cinnamon streusel you mixed in the food processor, and then more batter, and more streusel.

It is nearly downright quick to make. It bakes for about 50 minutes and then Voila! Heaven. The cake is extremely light and buttery, it has the perfect amount of cinnamon in it, and the caramel pecan topping is delicious.

So, needless to say...  this is my go to coffee cake recipe from now on.

Caramel-Cashew Thumbprints

Last weekend my sister showed me a copy of Cuisine at Home's new Holiday Baking issue. I was thrilled to see that it was made up of recipes that I have never seen before. I wanted to make virtually every recipe. I went and bought the issue the next day, and then I stocked up on lots of ingredients yesterday.

The first recipe that I decided to make was for caramel-cashew thumbprints. It is a brown sugar dough, rolled in chopped roasted cashews, with a thumbprint filled with caramel. Then you drizzle white chocolate on top. Luckily my mother-in-law Paula, gifted me with a pound of El Rey white chocolate from Whole Foods.

These are such beautiful cookies. They are interesting and easily likable. The cookie itself was tender and buttery. Then you had the slight saltiness of the cashews paired with a soft, smooth caramel. The fantastic white chocolate really paired with the cookies nicely.

This would definitely make a great a addition to my cookie tray this year. Hopefully I will still be able to bake that many cookies in December...

Cherry Pie

Cherry pie happens to be my very favorite pie. When I was growing up, it was always one of the pies my grandmother made on Thanksgiving and Christmas. They were not scratch pies, but I loved them. Desserts were not very common in our household. This could have been what caused all my obsessive baking.

The problem with making cherry pies down here in the south is the lack of fresh or frozen sour cherries. Sour cherries are crucial to a classic cherry pie. Jarred sour cherries are a pretty great option but they are hard for me to find. I usually have to buy them in Austin. So my only reliable option are canned sour cherries packed in water. These are usually found with the other canned fruit, like peaches, not with canned pie filling. Luckily they make a pretty dang good pie; much better than canned pie filling or frozen pies.

This time I used the same cream cheese pie crust that I used on the rhubarb pie. I decided to skip the lattice though; less work and more crust!

The pie filling is simple and perfect. I just substitute drained canned sour cherries for the fresh cherries.

Cherry Pie Filling

(Adapted from a Rose Levy Berenbaum recipe)

3/4 cup plus 2 tablespoons sugar

2 1/2 tablespoons  cornstarch

pinch table salt

1-1/2 lb. fresh sour cherries pitted or 4 cans sour cherries packed in water, drained

1/8 teaspoon almond extract

Stir together the ingredients. Let sit for 10 minutes before filling a double pie crust, cut vent holes in the top crust. Brush pie with milk and sprinkle with sugar. Bake at 425 degrees for 40-55 minutes, or until filling is bubbling.

Ribeyes at Porter House.

I am sure it has something to do with this pregnancy, the books certainly push you to eat more beef, but I have been positively craving steak. A good steak, not one of those depressing ones from Walmart. This morning, I had the brilliant idea to go to Vieux Carré and finally try their gorgeous hand-cut dry-aged steaks. Just the other day, Justin and I were discussing how we have never knowingly tried dry-aged steak. It had to be remedied.

I bought Justin's favorite: bone-in ribeyes. They were certainly not cheap. When you think about it though, the rest of the meal is super cheap: 4 potatoes and something green. Plus, Justin's birthday is next week, and he will be out of town that day. Happy 31st Birthday, Justin! The steaks were unbelievably great looking.

 

They were also huge. I asked for them to be about 1 1/2 inches thick, they were closer to 2. They clocked in at 4.38 pounds, total.

 

I used a CI recipe. I salted the steaks and let them warm up on the counter for an hour. This is important. It allows the meat to cook evenly, and really makes a big difference. Over the course of the hour, the salt dissolved and soaked into the meat. Then we dried them thoroughly and peppered them. Justin seared them on a hot charcoal fire and them moved them to the cool side to finish cooking. We pulled them at 130 degrees. After, resting they were nice and medium... and bloody gorgeous.

 

Justin sliced them. He gave me a small fatty piece. I died. They were without a doubt THE best steaks we have ever put in our mouths, The four of us practically attacked the steaks, barely touching our baked potatoes and creamy braised brussels sprouts. Ryan and Justin gnawing on the bone was a lovely sight.

Justin made me promise that we would do these at least 1-2 a a month year. Umm, no argument from me.

(Our dogs are quite happy tonight, too.)

Rhubarb Pie

I was running all over town the other day, trying to find a store that sold real white chocolate. No luck. Walmart carries coconut white chocolate, and creamy center white chocolate but none of the real stuff. Unfortunately my stash from New Orleans and Austin was nearly gone.

While visiting all my local stores though I did manage to find some beautiful rhubarb. It was 6 dollars a pound cheaper than the last time I purchased it too. I decided this morning to make Rose Levy Beranbaum's lattice-top rhubarb pie from Fine Cooking Issue 65. The pie crust in this article and the fresh fruit pies have been some of my favorites for years. I have never made the rhubarb version though.

The pie crust is an all-butter/cream cheese dough. It is flaky and absolutely delicious. The best part though, is that it is much easy to handle during lattice-work that any other recipe I have tried. It bends without breaking.

 

As I have mentioned before, my preferred way of rolling/transferring pie dough, is to roll it out on a sheet of parchment paper. When it is rolled out, flip the paper upside down over your pie plate, center it, and then carefully peel off the paper. Then you can ease the dough into the pan and trim or flute the edges.

 

This filling is merely rhubarb, sugar, cornstarch, lemon zest, and a pinch of salt.

 

The lattice is fairly straightforward. You roll out the second disk of dough into a large rectangle on a piece of parchment. You straighten the long edges. Then using a ruler you cut 3/4 inch strips. My secret that most recipes do not mention is, after the strips are cut, you slip the sheet of parchment onto a sheet pan and place it in the freezer for 10-15 minutes. This makes it MUCH easier to handle. Then you use your large plate-sized "spatula" (Which every baker should have: see Baker's Catalog for purchase.) to separate a strip and gently place it on the pie. Lattice as usual.

 

 

 

This pie always turns out beautiful and delicious! I cannot wait to eat it tonight. (By the way, these recipes are also in her book: The Pie and Pastry Bible.)