Bake-bake-bake

I’ve felt so bad toting around my cupcake carrier when I see my celiac classmates. I feel like I’m waving it in their faces. HAHA NO CUPCAKES FOR YOUUUU. =(

So it made me oh-so-happy when Michael ordered some Gluten-Free baked treats for Kaitlin! So happy that I went out and bought some GF oat flour from Planet Organic:

I made these little Chocolate Cupcakes with that oat flour! When whisking it together, I didn’t feel like they’d be chocolatey enough. So I added about 1/2 cup of mini chocolate chips. WHOA CHOCOLATE EXPLOSION! They’re somewhere halfway between cupcake and brownie. And have a more hearty texture because of the oat flour. And they’ll rise up in the oven, but then fall when you open it b/c of the lack of gluten. But aren’t they pretty when you add some simple white chocolate to the top?

Here’s the recipe (with my alterations):
1/2 cup soy milk
3/4 cup sugar
1/4 cup cocoa powder
1 1/4 cup oat flour
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
1/4 shortening
1/2 cup mini chocolate chips

Preheat oven to 350 F. Line cupcake tin with paper liners.
Combine oat flour, sugar, baking powder, cocoa, and salt in a bowl.
(Now this step says to combine the soymilk and vegan shortening in a bowl and mix. This did not work out very well for me, so I basically added them in separately)
Mix these together with the dry ingredients. Stir until blended. I added the mini chocolate chips at this point! And then bake for about 17-20 minutes (I may have underbaked these a tad). Let cool. Decorate how you want! I just wanted them to be simple on top since I already overloaded them with chocolate, but if you didn’t put chocolate chips in, you might consider a chocolate frosting. Or a vanilla frosting.

And for fun, I made little poop-drops. Hahaha or at least that’s what they look like to me. These are tasty, but not exactly the most aesthetically appealing. I think I’ll omit the chocolate chips and use a prettier star-tip pastry bag if I ever make them again. I didn’t use the star tip because I was afraid the chocolate chips would get stuck inside!

Chocolate Chip Meringue Drops (adapted from allrecipes.com)
* 2 egg whites
* 1/2 cup white sugar
* 1 teaspoon vanilla extract (make sure it’s real vanilla extract, I’ve been told the artificial one has gluten!)
* 3 tablespoons unsweetened cocoa powder
* 1/2 cup semisweet chocolate chips

DIRECTIONS
1. Preheat oven to 250 degrees F (120 degrees C). Line 2 baking sheets with aluminum foil or parchment paper, and set aside.
2. In large bowl, beat the egg whites on high speed with an electric mixer until soft peaks form. (just like with the last meringue recipe! Whip it good!) Gradually add sugar while continuing to beat until they hold stiff peaks. Mix in the vanilla and cocoa on low speed, then fold in chocolate chips by hand. Drop small mounds of the mixture onto the prepared baking sheets, spacing 1 inch apart. Dropping them on the baking sheet would probably have made actual cookies instead of poop-piles, but I had more fun my way
3. Bake for 1 hour in the preheated oven. Turn off oven, and leave the cookies in the oven for 2 more hours, or until centers are dry. Remove from pan and store in an airtight container. I just baked them for an hour or so and then left them in the oven overnight.

Et voila! POOP!

Sneakpeak into Baking for Haiti!

Thank you so much to everyone who’s been placing order and making comments!! I kept myself busy this weekend and broke in my brand-spanking-new double oven…

Look at that beauty:

Peanut butter cookies…

Chocolate bundt cake with cream cheese tunnel…

This chocolate bundt cake looked DELICIOUS! There’s a layer of cream cheese filled with mini-chocolate chips inside. But this cake went to Daisy and Chris, so I don’t have a picture of the inside. You’ll just have to trust me on it. Or make it yourself and see! =)

Chocolate Tunnel Cake (Adapted from twopeasandtheirpod.com)

3 c. flour
2 c. sugar
1/2 c. cocoa
2 tsp. baking soda
1 tsp. salt
2 c. water
2/3 c. oil (I used 1/3 C oil and 1/3 C applesauce)
2 T white vinegar
1 T vanilla extract

For the filling:
11 oz. cream cheese, softened
1 egg
1/3 c. sugar
1 c. mini chocolate chips

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
2. For the cake: Combine flour, sugar, cocoa, soda, salt in a large bowl.
3. Add water, oil, vinegar, and vanilla. Mix until combined.
4. Pour half of the batter in a greased 10″ bundt pan.
5. Mix together filling ingredients.
6. Spread filling over the batter and top with remaining batter.
7. Bake for 50-55 minutes.
8. Cool and serve!

I topped this with some chocolate sauce, which was also used to dip the red velvet hihat cupcakes!

…What red velvet hihat cupcakes?
Oh. these ones:

SO MANY CUPCAKES! There are the chocolate chip cookie dough cupcakes that I also made on NYE. And the red velvet cupcakes, both with plain cream cheese (well, I shouldn’t call them plain. Cream cheese frosting is ALWAYS yummy!) and hi-hat style! (a trick I learned from Clara, at I Heart Cuppycakes).

It’s not too late to get in on the baking-action. I have lots of orders left, and am willing to take more! You can review the rules on what exactly is going on with this e-bake sale and let me know. And comment on that post, even if you don’t want baked things!

Helping Haiti.

We are all oh-so-busy in our lives. An hour and a half driving to and from the Sturgeon Hospital (wayyy on the NORTH end of St. Albert) eats up a good chunk of my day. Working, learning, studying, eating, and every once in awhile, sleeping. So many activities!

But there’s always time for baking. And there should always be time for helping out others. That’s what medicine’s all about afterall, isn’t it? Wasn’t that part of the obligatory generic answer in the med school interviews? Why do you want to be a doctor?

So I don’t have a ton of time to help out these days. But I want to do my part. I’m going to have an e-bake sale. I will be taking requests for baking! Anything (within reason) that you have a craving for, that I can feasibly make, I will make for you. Think about it…instead of going to a regular bake sale with the usual cookies and puffed wheat squares…you can really satisfy those cravings! I’ll be charging a minimum donation fee of $15.

Even if you don’t live in Edmonton, you can still help! Leave a comment and let me know which charity you think should get the money. I’ve been leaning towards Doctors without Borders. For every person that comments on this post, I’ll donate 50 cents (up to $500).

Technicalities:
1. The e-bake sale part only applies to people in Edmonton unfortunately. I don’t have the time or resources to ship to other parts of the world! Sorry!
2. I’ll make the baking on a first-come, first-serve basis. So you may not instantaneously get your baked goods. I still have to spend 75% of my day in the hospital, you know!
3. Please try to make your requests more general so I have some room for creativity! “cake with cream cheese frosting”, “something with chocolate”, “cookies with nuts”, that sort of thing.

If others would like to get involved in this e-bake sale…let me know =)
Hope to hear from you all soon. <3

To froth or not to froth?

I let people in my rotation make requests about baked goods. Mike requested Meringue cookies and German Chocolate Cake. Haven’t gotten to the german chocolate cake yet, but it’s on my never-ending “to bake” list. Anyways, that’s not the point. The point is Meringue. Oh Meringue. Delicious. Not completely calorie-laden. And oh so tricky =(

The thing about meringue is the beating. You need to whip it good. Whip it long and hard. Okay I’ll stop there.

But seriously. This is what happened with take one, when I thought my handy, trusty kitchenaid mixer would do the trick. I think the bowl was too big and the mixer too high up to truly reach the eggs unfortunately. And so I waited for frothing:

And waited…

yeah no =(

So it didn’t work. And I was sad and slightly disheartened. But resolved to making these cookies nonetheless! So I started with a fresh pair of egg whites, a different bowl, and my handmixer instead. Ahhhh…so THIS is what it’s supposed to froth like!

Meringue is somewhat like a tiny miracle. Two little eggwhites, some cream of tartar, some salt, and some icing sugar. And BAM! ALL THAT MERINGUE! I used a large star tip to make pretty patterns (because meringue ghosts like on 101cookbooks is not exactly in season right now). Since they weren’t as high up as the ghosts, I got about 25-26 cookies. So remember when you’re beating to just keep on going, b/c you’ll need to have nice stiff meringue that makes a lot of cookies. I dipped the bottoms in dark chocolate and white orange chocolate.

Meringue Cookies (Adapted from 101cookbooks.com)

It is important to let your egg whites come to room temperature, this will help you get the most volume. Also, make sure all your bowls, whisk, etc are spotlessly clean and free of any grease.

2 egg whites, room temperature
tiny pinch of salt
tiny pinch of cream of tartar
3/4 cup powdered sugar, sifted

1 dark chocolate bar, melted (optional)

Preheat oven to 200F, racks in the middle.

Get everything ready ahead of time. Line a baking sheet with parchment or a Silpat mat. Set up your pastry bag in a tall empty glass to make it easier to fill. Have a spatula on hand.

Place the egg whites, salt and cream of tartar in a large, clean mixing bowl. Start whisking the egg whites at medium speed in a large bowl with an electric mixer. This stage is all about watching and letting the egg whites tell you what to do next and you have to be nice to them to get them to transform – so avoid turning your mixer on and off. When the whites are frothy and have a bit of volume to them, start sprinkling in the sugar a bit at a time over a minute or two – leaving the mixer on the entire time.

Keep mixing (it took about 15-20 minutes). The whites will become glossy and their appearance will resemble marshmallow cream, keep going. At this point you need much more volume out of the whites, try to imagine making a dozens of cookies out of the mixture. Whisk, whisk, whisk. You will start to see the volume really start to increase, the whisk will be leaving more definitive trail in the meringue. At this point I usually gradually slow down the whisk, and see if I can lift it out of the meringue leaving a stiff structured peak. Imagine, you are going to pipe this out onto the cookie sheets, so you need it to have lots of structure, if you don’t go far enough your shapes will just collapse into a puddle.

Working gently (but quickly) fill the pastry bay -or alternately, a large plastic freezer bag with the corner snipped off – using the spatula. Try to avoid lots of air pockets in the pastry bag, they make piping much more difficult. Close the bag by rolling the top down a few times. Now pipe onto the prepared baking sheets.

Place the meringue in the oven for an hour. After an hour, open the oven door an inch or two and cook for another 30 minutes. I usually touch one of them at this point, they shouldn’t be gummy or wobbly. If they are still too moist, leave them in the oven until they aren’t. Turn off the oven, and leave the meringues in there until it comes down to room temperature.
Dip in your favorite chocolate!

If you are storing them, do so in an air-tight container.

Mm mm good!

Chicken!

The maritimer’s flight finally got in an hour and a half late. We made butter chicken!

I <3 the food network. I don't remember exactly where I saw this recipe first, but it's from the Food Network’s website. Mmm mmm is it ever delicious! Unfortunately, I didn’t take any pictures of it this time. You’ll just have to make it to see how pretty the green peas contrast the red/creamy background! If I were to make it again (which is a strong possibility, it was pretty
yummy!) I’ll probably double the amount of spice put in. Or half the recipe, because it makes TONS! Enough to feed 4 people for sure.

Butter Chicken
Ingredients
Spice Blend:
• 1 tablespoon garam masala seasoning
• 1 1/2 teaspoons ground ginger
• 1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon (I forgot this at home, so we didn’t have any. Poop!)
• 1/4 teaspoon cayenne
Sauce:
• 3 tablespoons butter
• 1 large onion, chopped (about 1 cup)
• 2 teaspoons jarred minced garlic
• 1 tablespoon tomato paste
• 1 (15-ounce) can tomato sauce
• 1 (14 1/2-ounce) can diced tomatoes in juice
• 1 skinless rotisserie chicken, boned out and pulled into 1 1/2 by 1/2-inch chunks (This was a LOT of chicken, so I didn’t quite use the whole thing. I left out half a breast and a bit)
• 1 (10-ounce) box frozen peas, placed in a colander and run under hot water to thaw
• 1/3 cup heavy whipping cream
• Hot basmati rice, for serving (We were lazy so we made some whole wheat instant rice instead)
• Pita bread, warmed according to package directions, for serving
Directions:
To make the spice blend: Stir the ingredients together in a small bowl and set aside.
To make the sauce: Melt the butter in a 12-inch nonstick skillet over medium heat. Add the onion and cook, stirring frequently, until the pieces just begin to turn gold, about 5 minutes. Add the garlic, tomato paste and spice blend, and cook for 1 minute, stirring constantly to prevent burning. The spices will be fragrant. Add the tomato sauce and diced tomatoes and stir will. Add the chicken pieces, spoon the sauce over the top and bring to a simmer. Turn the heat to low and cook, uncovered, until the chicken is warmed through and the sauce is flavorful, about 10 minutes. Stir frequently.
Shake any excess water from the peas. Add the peas and cream to the sauce in the pan, stir well and heat through. Do not boil.
Serve with rice and warmed pita bread.

Breakfast, you say? Why yes please!

Look at me go, two posts in a week!

Mmm…I love breakfast foods. Brunch is my favorite meal because you get breakfasty foods AND lunch foods. But I could eat pancakes and waffles at any time of the day. I don’t have a waffle maker unfortunately, but my friend Paulfreund does!

I love Paulfreund’s house. He has an adorable puppy named Molly. And adorable parents who make us delicious tea. And I get all these lovely boys to help me cook!

Joy the Baker (joythebaker.com) has awesome breakfasty foods on her website that make me drool. So we made some of them.

Maple Black Pepper Bacon:
Drizzle maple syrup (100%, no cheap aunt jemima’s for us!) on bacon. ~ 2 tablespoons for the 8 strips we used. And then sprinkle with a reasonable amount of black pepper. Bake for ~ 10 minutes or until crispy to your liking. Serve the DELICIOUSNESS!

Waffles:
3 cups all-purpose flour
1 Tablespoon baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon nutmeg
3/4 teaspoon cinnamon
1/4 cup brown sugar
2/3 cups canola or grapeseed oil
4 large eggs
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
2 1/2 cups buttermilk

Set up your waffle iron on a level, clean surface and turn on to preheat.

In a large bowl combine flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt, spices, and brown sugar. Whisk to blend. In a medium bowl, whisk together eggs, oil, buttermilk and vanilla extract. Add the wet ingredients to the dry ingredients and fold. Once almost fully incorporated, add the bacon bites. Stir. Try not to over mix the batter or the waffles will become tough. It’s ok if a few lumps remain in the batter.

Cook according to your waffle machine instructions. This made HUGE quantities. I think we made 6 full-size waffles. that’s 24 waffle sections!

Our downfall was the pancakes, I think. Simply too many good things in one breakfast. Unfortunately we couldn’t finish all the pancakes and waffles and fruit AND bacon. But it was all mighty delicious.

Eggnog Pancakes:
This makes about 4-6 fairly big pancakes
1 cup all-purpose flour
1 tablespoon brown sugar
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
heaping 1/2 teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg
1/8 teaspoon cinnamon
pinch of ground allspice
3 Tablespoons butter melted until browned
1 egg
1 cup buttermilk
1 Tablespoon whiskey or spiced rum or 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
butter or a lightly colored oil for cooking pancakes
maple syrup for serving

In a small sauce pan, melt butter until much of the water has evaporated and little brown bits appear in the bottom of the pan. Remove from the flame and add the nutmeg, cinnamon and allspice. Set aside to cool a bit.

In a small bowl, beat the egg with the buttermilk. Add the melted butter, being to sure to scrape all the browned bits and spices into the buttermilk and egg. If the butter seizes up a bit in the cold milk, that’s ok. Add the whiskey/rum or vanilla extract and just whisk it all together.

In a medium bowl, whisk together flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda and salt. Add the wet ingredients to the dry ingredients and stir to incorporate. Don’t overmix. It’s ok if there are a few lumps.

Let the batter rest, untouched for 5 minutes while you heat a griddle or skillet. Add a tablespoon of canola oil or butter to the hot skillet. Dollop heaping tablespoonfuls onto heated and oiled skillet and cook until evenly browned, flipping once. Place cooked pancakes on an oven-proof plate in a warm oven until ready to serve.

Look how full they are! Pancake overload! But we polished up pretty good.