It appears that 2009 will go down in my book as a White Christmas... for two reasons. The first is that big, fluffy snowflakes started falling at 8:30 or so on the 23rd, and there are a couple of inches on the ground now. I have high expectations that the snow will last through Christmas day. If not, at least Christmas Eve is going to be beautiful.
The second reason we're having a White Christmas is that this week my sister got engaged to a man with the surname White.
A new baby and a new brother-in-law and a little excitement overload for me, but lots of wonderful things happening in my family lately.
And you know me, right away I wanted to gauge Wendy's fiancé's tastes and find out what foods he likes. So far, I know that he likes French Toast for breakfast. We celebrated his birthday (same as Nancy Kay's) and I found out he likes cheesecake better than layer cakes and isn't a big fan of chocolate or nuts. I can accommodate! He's very diplomatic about things, too. You know how I harass people about my cooking with "What do you think? What would make it better?," but he will not be nonplussed - simple, quick, polite answers and that's the end of it.
I'm personally hoping for a few days of rest after Christmas to catch up on sleep. I usually do something memorably crazy when I go without sleep, like cutting open my finger while slicing bread, setting my wallet on top of my car and then forgetfully driving off without it (that's happened twice), etc. This week, Adam and I doubled with Sarah and John. We were playing Cranium, and then while trying to hand a game card to Sarah, I spilled a full mug of hot chocolate on the white carpet next to my date. Wow. He helped me clean up the mess, though. That's attractive.
There are budding snow drifts in my backyard. Snowball fight at my house tomorrow! followed by sledding on whatever hills or drainage ditches we can find. Merry Christmas!
I hope there is a market for my anger, because I've got a lot of it bottled up and ready to ship out. I have a lot of problems with you people, and now you're gonna hear about it!
My annual Festivus party was a typical disappointment. Serenity now!
The Black and White Cookie is a New York classic, and if there's anything that inpsires my angry Festivus spirit, it's anything related to New York. It's a dirty, nasty, cynical place, the least happy state in the Union. I spent the worst weekend of 2009 there.
I wrote this post a year ago. Seriously. But I figure this is a good holiday recipe, so without further adieu, I present Cassata Siciliana.
One of the best things I did during my visit to New York was attend a cooking class at the Institute of Culinary Education taught by a sweet little Sicilian lady. The theme of the class was Pan di Spagna (yeah, that links to Italian Wikipedia), which is Italian sponge cake, and it's useful for any number of desserts: cupcakes, biscotti, tiramisu. In class, we broke into small groups and each group made a different recipe using the Pan di Spagna recipe as the base. I made Cassata Siciliana.
I didn't get a lot out of the class in the way of new cooking skills or techniques, but it was a lot of fun, and I did get this recipe.
Basic Pan Di Spagna Sponge Cake 6 large eggs 1 cup sugar 1 teaspoon Fiori de Sicilia (available at King Arthur) or vanilla extract 1 cup flour 1 teaspoons baking powder
Separate the egg whites and the yolks. Beat the egg whites with 1/2 cup of the sugar until stiff. Using the same beaters, beat the egg yolks with the remaining 1/2 cup of sugar until thick. Add the Fiori de Sicilia or vanilla and fold in the flour with one-third of the whites to lighten the batter. Fold in the rest of the beaten egg whites, spoon into two 8- or 9-inch layer cake pans and bake in a 350°F oven for 20 to 30 minutes.
Cassata Siciliana *You will need to increase the Basic Pan di Spagna recipe by half for the Cassata Siciliana. We used three tart pans, instead of two cake pans.
Ricotta Filling 5 cups fresh ricotta 1/2 cup sugar 1/2 cup candied fruits, chopped 4 ounces chopped milk or semi-sweet chocolate or small chocolate morsels 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
Beat the ricotta and the sugar with an electric beater until silken smooth. Place 1 cup of the ricotta in a bowl and set aside for the icing. Divide the rest of the ricotta between 2 other bowls and add the candied fruits to one and the chocolate and cinnamon to the other to make the two fillings.
Ricotta Icing 1 cup reserved ricotta 2 cups confectioners' sugar
Beat the ricotta and the sugar until smooth and of spreading consistency. Set aside.
Assembly and Decorating 3 layers of Pan di Spagna 1 1/2 to 2 cups Marsala wine 1/4 cup each red and green candied cherries, sliced in half 1 cup sliced blanched almonds
Place one cake layer on a serving platter or cake plate. Place the Marsala in a small spray bottle, and spray one-third of the wine on the first layer. Spread the ricotta and fruit filling on top of the cake layer. Place the second layer on top of the ricotta filling, and spray with another third of the Marsala wine. Spread the ricotta and chocolate filling on the second layer, top with the third layer, spray it with the rest of the Marsala wine, and let it rest for 10 minutes.
Spread the icing on the top and on the sides of the cake. Press the sliced almonds lightly all over the side of the cake. Place the cherries cut side down in a pattern around the top of the cake alternating red and green. Chill until ready to serve. This is a rich cake, and a small portion is very satisfying. Serves 16 to 20 or more.
I definitely recommend doing something like this if you have an interest in cooking at all. Nice change of pace after doing lots of touristy stuff in New York, and it was fun to meet different people and cook with them - probably the only time I'll play nice in the kitchen. I made the cake again once I got home.
Winter weather is finally here! Not that I'm not a big fan of cold weather, but I like snow in December. It puts me in a holiday spirit. The rest of the season, the frigid air and short days are a little depressing. But I was very happy to see big, fluffy snowflakes falling this morning.
If the weather outside is frightful, and you need a beverage to warm you, why not try Champurrado?
Never heard of it?
Champurrado is a chocolate-based atole, a warm and thick Mexican drink, based on masa (hominy flour), piloncillo, water or milk and occasionally containing cinnamon, anise seed and or vanilla bean (tasting somewhat like a thick chai tea). - Wikipedia
I used my Indonesian cinnamon (Korintje Cassia) from Kalustyan's. Maybe that makes it less Mexican, but it works.
And I threw in a snowman truffle for good measure.
Thanksgiving was a little different for me this year. I didn't host dinner at my house, and I didn't do much cooking. Although, the Friday before Thanksgiving we had a potluck Thanksgiving meal at work, and I brought the turkey and gravy and a dessert.
United had a sweet deal going during November, where if you spent $100 in the store, they gave you a coupon for a free turkey (up to 22 pounds). Here's the part you won't believe, I never spent enough to get a coupon. I haven't spent $50 in a single visit to United in months. I don't buy groceries or cook anymore, and it's pretty pathetic. So Mom gave me one of her turkey coupons, and I picked up a free turkey.
I rubbed butter all over the turkey's skin, then sprinkled it with salt and pepper. Under the skin, I put more salt and pepper, plus some rosemary and orange and lemon zest. I am much better at carving turkey than I was the first time I roasted a turkey. Via NYTimes, a video on how to carve a turkey.
This cake has legions of devoted fans. It was reviewed on foodnetwork.com by 2,141 people, with an average five-star review. Some of the reviews are a little morbid, though, with postings like "Pumpkin Pie is dead to me..." and "mom's favorite-before she died." Is that a recommendation or not?
Lots of delicious food at Thanksgiving dinner with my family. I returned to my cake baking roots and made two desserts as my contribution:
I have a standing weekly date at Five Guys Burgers and Fries, and if I'm not recovering from kidney stones, and he's not rebuilding schools in Puerto Rico, and I don't bail on him, and he doesn't have to drive to some tiny outlying town for work, it's on.
I order the Little Cheeseburger with mayo, grilled onions, and grilled mushrooms. He gets the same thing "man-sized," and we share an order of cajun style fries. Highly recommend it.
I haven't served a decent meal at my house since before the Frog Legs. I can count everything I've cooked or baked since August on my fingers. I've already told the story of the Red Ribbon Red Velvet and Chocolate Truffles, and now I'll recount the rest for you:
I find that Paula Deen's recipes are usually overkill in one aspect or another, and in this case it's probably butter. But if loving butter is wrong, I don't want to be right. This is a good recipe, very sweet, very rich and buttery. The improvements I would try: reduce the butter in the crust, halve the streusel recipe, bake it for 10 minutes longer than it specifies, and perhaps add pecans to the crust and/or streusel. This recipe did get lots of compliments, though, and I would definitely make it again.
The cake's components: Kahlua Fudge Cake, Chocolate Ganache filling (basically this recipe, but use half semisweet chocolate and half bittersweet chocolate, and use 2 cups of cream per pound of chocolate instead of 2 1/2 cups), and Vanilla Buttercream frosting. On taste, this one ranks with the best, but I still haven't learned how to smooth frosting properly.
I got an invitation to attend a recipe exchange this weekend. The theme is desserts! Obviously, this is my kind of party, but which recipe should I take? The hostess said "easy to medium" level of difficulty, but it's a sliding scale, that is, what are we calling easy? Like Mystery Fruit Salad easy or Gianduia Cake easy?
Frankly, I'm feeling so busy these days that anything more taxing than the Mystery Fruit Salad sounds like too much work. Perhaps I can rise to the occasion, but I need suggestions. Help!
Those crazy kids Katie and Porter are going to go and make an aunt out of me. I am very excited. I have a feeling I'll be one of those doting relatives that sees any mildly cute kid's outfit or toy and buys it immediately for which to gift the child. I'm determined to be this kid's favorite aunt, and since for now I'm the only one living in the same town, I think I can best the competition.
I'm also hoping that a new baby is a good excuse to buy a decent camera, with which to take thousands of pictures of said baby. I voiced this opinion to Katie a couple of weeks ago, and the baby seriously hiccuped or burped or made some kind of noise from the womb to affirm that it is indeed a good idea.
Katie's co-workers gave her a baby shower last week. I collected pictures of Katie and Porter as children for a slideshow:
The hard thing about not being the oldest child in the family is that there are precious few pictures without the older siblings in them. And Porter, being the third child, is lucky there are pictures of him at all! Abby watched the video and said, "Wow, you guys dressed up a lot." I didn't even notice. I suppose we did dress up a lot as kids, putting on plays and fashion shows and for Halloween.
I made chocolate truffles for the shower. This is one of my favorite recipes. This time I took three different flavors, raspberry, almond, and coffee (Chambord, Amaretto, and Kahlua).
Perfect Chocolate Truffles Recipe from Cook's Illustrated Makes 2 dozen 1-inch truffles.
Ingredients
Ganache
9 ounces semisweet chocolate or bittersweet chocolate, chopped coarse 1/2 cup heavy whipping cream 2 tablespoons unsalted butter 1 tablespoon light corn syrup 2 tablespoons Cognac , dark rum, Grand Marnier, Framboise, Kirsch, Frangelico, Amaretto, Kahlua, or port
For the ganache: 1. Melt chocolate in medium heatproof bowl set over pan of almost simmering water, stirring once or twice, until smooth. Set bowl aside.
2. Bring cream, butter, and corn syrup to strong simmer (about 160 degrees) in non-reactive pan over low heat. Remove pan from heat, cool for 5 minutes, then whisk into chocolate. Whisk in liquor.
3. Refrigerate mixture until it cools to 80 degrees, 15 to 20 minutes.
4. Either in bowl of electric mixer fitted with whisk attachment or with handheld electric mixer, whip mixture at medium speed until slightly lightened and thickened to a texture like store-bought canned chocolate frosting, 25 to 30 seconds.
5. Spoon ganache into large pastry bag fitted with 1/2-inch plain tube. Hold bag perpendicular to pan and with tip about 3/4 inch above work surface, and pipe 3/4-inch mounds (pulling tube away to the side to avoid leaving points) onto parchment or wax paper-covered baking sheet. Alternatively, scoop mounds with tiny (less than 1 tablespoon) ice cream scoop or melon baller.
6. Refrigerate mounds until hardened, at least an hour.
For coating: 7. Following directions in step 1, melt coating chocolate, then cool to 90 degrees, making certain that no water comes into contact with chocolate.
8. Arrange chilled truffle mounds, bowl of melted chocolate, and cocoa-filled high-sided roasting pan on work surface. Working one mound at a time, dip palm of one hand about 1/4-inch deep into melted chocolate, pass one truffle mound with other hand to chocolate-covered hand and close hand around mound to coat, re-dipping hand into chocolate every third or fourth mound.
9. Drop coated truffle into cocoa; roll to coat using fork held in now empty clean hand, leaving truffles in cocoa until chocolate coating has set, about 1 minute. Repeat process until all mounds are in pan of cocoa.
10. Gently roll 5 to 6 truffles at a time in medium strainer to remove excess cocoa, then transfer to serving plate or tightly covered container. (Can be refrigerated for up to one week.)
Notes: These truffles are meant to look like the real thing—small, irregular mounds instead of perfectly spherical balls. If you decide to omit the liquor flavoring, reduce chocolate from 9 to 8 ounces. For microwave-oriented cooks, you can melt the chocolate at 50% power for about 3 minutes. The ganache mixture is quite forgiving. If it cools too much in step 1, place the bowl in a larger pan of warm water and stir the mixture until it has softened and warmed up. If this overwarms the mixture, cool it again as directed. The same flexibility applies if you overwhip the ganache by mistake. Simply warm it over the hot water, cool it, and whip it again. One person alone can dip and coat the truffles, but the process is simpler with a second person to roll coated truffles in cocoa and lift them onto a clean pan.
If the predictions are right, baby Rondella should arrive around Christmas.
For Halloween, I went as a website - not even a particularly good website, or one I frequent, mind you, but a website nonetheless. Okay, so it might be a little 2007, but by the time people in Lubbock catch on to something, the trend has already faded in the civilized world.
I dressed up at work on Friday, October 30. I had the ears, face paint, tail, and signs to set at the reference desk. Unfortunately, very few people were at the library since it was a Friday (and its being Halloween Eve possibly affected traffic as well), so my awesome costume and lolspeak signs were not seen by many. I did see some other fun costumes: the Tattooed Ladies of TX Library Association, a pirate, a Super Trooper, and my personal favorite, a Texas Tech coed. Sight unseen, I correctly guessed most of the components of that costume: big, blond wig, t-shirt, short running shorts, and UGGs. There was a little boy of 5 or younger that came trick-or-treating to the library, dressed as a Bumblebee Transformer. Someone said, "Don't hurt me!," and he quickly retorted with a loud, "It's just a costume!"
Mark dressed as another website, People of Walmart, which I found hilariously ingenious. He also sent me a scary and disturbing birthday card:
Even though that is a terrible picture of me, I can't resist sharing. This is the result of not having taken a good picture since the 1980s. I involuntarily screamed when I saw that card, and it was awkward because I screamed loud enough that I needed to explain to the people around me why I screamed, but I didn't really want to go there.
Oh, and no Halloween is complete without a little mischief. Here are a couple of "Costume Crimes" from the BYU Police Beat:
October 24: A boy in a gorilla suit was reported attempting to scare girls in Wyview Park. Officers located the monkey man, asked him to go home and he did.
October 29: A suspiciously dressed male was reported entering the law school. He was dressed in all black, was wearing a leg holster, a bulletproof vest, a portable radio, and five rounds of shotgun shells across his chest. The individual was carrying a black bag that contained two Airsoft pistols. The suspect turned out to be a law student and was called out of class for questioning. He stated he was dressed up for costume day; however, he was the only one in the class dressed up in costume. He was directed to remove his vest and was released since he was not violating any federal or state laws.
