Thursday, June 25, 2009

Honey Dijon Salmon

Since it is in abundance here, Anthony and I occasionally eat salmon. I am betraying my vegetarian self when I do it, but there were times when we first lived here that I thought I was going to die of malnourishment and fish seemed like a good alternative to dying. I haven't quite forgotten what it was like last November, and so I'm still eating the fish. Plus, salmon are just swimming to their death anyway, so that's how I justify it. I've been trying to find recipes for salmon that Anthony will actually eat since he's not too keen with the salmon flavor. This recipe masks the fishiness of salmon, so Anthony likes it. He also really likes mustard, so it was bound to be a hit. I thought it was decent.

Dijon Salmon

1/4 cup butter (melted)
3 tbs Dijon mustard
1 1/2 tsp honey
1/4 cup dry bread crumbs
1/4 cup finely chopped pecans
4 tsp parsley
4 (roughly 4 oz) fillets of salmon
salt and pepper to taste

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees. Stir together the melted butter, mustard, and honey. In another bowel mix the bread crumbs, nuts, and parsley. Brush the salmon with the mustard mixture and then sprinkle on the bread crumbs. (Note: I had a lot of leftover sauce and bread crumbs, so I just threw all of it on there. The more the merrier I say!) Bake 12-15 minutes or until it flakes easily with a fork.

I had a picture, but it wasn't pretty. Imagine a fillet of salmon with a lot of yellow sauce on top. It tastes good, though!

Monday, June 15, 2009

Fail

Not everything I make turns out okay. Last week I had a number of failures. Take, for instance, the banana bread I made. The recipe seemed promising since it had almost 4,000 reviews on allrecipes.com. With 4.5 stars, I figured it was going to be good. A red flag went off for me when I read the recipe and saw no vanilla (come on, this is a baked good!), no cinnamon, no nutmeg, no spices at all. This recipe also called for a ridiculous amount of bananas. I ended up using over five bananas in this bread. I had a feeling the bread would have some texture issues, but I baked on anyway. Long story short, this bread was flat, gummy, and without much flavor. I even threw in some vanilla and cinnamon just because it felt right, and it still turned out sort of blah. There were way too many bananas and they just sunk to the bottom of the bread, making a weird sort of mashed banana layer. I suppose this all could have been user error, but really, no vanilla?

My second bad experience was with some oatmeal raisin cookies. I was in a hurry so I pulled the butter out of the fridge and microwaved it for 15 seconds. It was a good consistency at this point (soft, not melted) so I went forward with the cookies. I creamed together the butter and brown sugar and went to move on to the next step. It was then I realized that I still had to add white sugar. So, I added the white sugar and creamed it some more. This was a mistake, as my butter became more liquidy. By the time I added the other ingredients the butter seemed to be melted. My cookies spread in weird shapes and ended up crispy. Boo. This is my go-to oatmeal raisin recipe, so it was definitely user error.

Learn from my mistakes. Shy away from any baked good recipe without vanilla (unless there is some other sort of extract) and don't over-beat the butter.

Tuesday, June 9, 2009

Cookies and Cream Cupcakes

I was trying to figure out what to do with a white cake mix and I had a moment of brillance. I could make cookies and cream cupcakes! This was easy and had a good cookies and cream flavor. I topped it with an Oreo cream cheese frosting. Yum.

I forgot to take a picture with the frosting. They weren't exactly pretty, but they were good!

Cookies and Cream Cupcakes
1 white cake mix (and the things you need to make a cake mix, i.e. eggs, oil)
1 package Oreos

Make the cake mix as directed. Crush up the Oreos and put about 2 cups into the cake mix batter. You can put more or less depending on your personal preference. Bake as directed.

Oreo Cream Cheese Frosting
8 ounce package cream cheese (room temp)
1/4 cup butter (room temp)
3 to 4 cups powdered sugar (just depends on how stiff you want the frosting)
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
3/4 cup crushed Oreos

Whip the cream cheese and butter until fluffy. Add vanilla. Add powdered sugar one cup at a time until you get the desired consistency. Stir in Oreos.

Sunday, June 7, 2009

Gifts for Samara (& Aaron) and Erin (& Anthony)

We receive tons of emails & calls every day with questions like, "I just made beer cheese soup and the cheese is staying at the bottom of the pan burning and the whole thing is greasy. What should I do?"
And "I tried making the margarita cake, but it never fluffed up. What went wrong?"

Also, "We love your blog so much, we want to get you and Erin something nice to say thank you. What should we get foodies like you."

First, Throw that greasy mess away. And next time make sure your shredded cheese is lightly coated in flour and and small batches of cheese at a time whisking it in over low heat until melted.

Second, I did not create this recipe, so I would ask Better Crocker. It was probably old cake mix. I've had that happen too sometimes. :(

Finally, foodie gift options include fun kitchen gadgets. Erin needs a 9 cup Cuisinart food processor, so do I. Well, I use need lightly since I have a 3 cup, but with the way I cook, I need something bigger. Much bigger. We also have this weak spot for chocolate. And we both have been dying to try Vosges Chocolate, especially the Mo's chocolate bar. (Yes, Erin will eat the bacon if it is coated in chocolate.) And really who can resist flavors like:
This sounds like a fun taste explosion, but with each cand bar costing about $8.00 each, I don't think either one of us will be getting any of these for ourselves any time soon.

Just a few suggestions.

Saturday, June 6, 2009

My experience with fondant


Last weekend was our anniversary and I decided I would make a cake with fondant to celebrate. This was my first fondant experience and it was less painful than expected. I thought it was going to be terribly tedious, messy, and not all tasty. Really, fondant has been all about appearance in my past experiences. It's just so pretty! The fondant I made was super easy, not terribly messy (not any more so than sugar cookies), and tasted pretty good. Please don't judge me and these terrible photos. Fondant is a bit tricky to place on the cake. I put a few holes in the bottom white layer (that's why I put those leaves on the cake). I also didn't know what to do with the bottom of the cake so I rolled little balls and put them on the bottom. They don't look great, but it was my first time. Another thing I learned is that you should not use chocolate buttercream on the cake! You put a layer of buttercream on your cake before covering with fondant so the fondant will stick. Well, I made a chocolate cake so I thought chocolate buttercream would taste the best. It tasted good, but was a pain with the white fondant because I kept getting on the pretty whiteness. Lesson learned. All in all I thought it turned out decent for my first try. Pictures and recipe below.

Marshmallow Fondant
1/4 cup shortening
1 (16 ounce) package of mini marshmallows
4 tbs water
1 tsp vanilla
2 pounds confectioner's sugar

Put the marshmallows in a microwave safe bowl and heat for 30 seconds to 1 minute to start melting the marshmallows. Stir in the vanilla and water and stir until smooth. Slowly beat in cups of confectioner's sugar until you have a sticky dough. Reserve one cup of powdered sugar for kneading. The dough is really stiff at this stage.


I then put shortening all over my stand mixer dough attachment and let the stand mixer knead the fondant until it was smooth. I added a bit more powdered sugar. I let the mixer knead for about 5 minutes. If you're kneading by hand it will take longer. The dough should no longer be sticky but more of a play dough consistency.

Wrap the fondant into plastic wrap and let it sit in the fridge. The recipe I was using said to let it be overnight, but I only did for an hour and it was fine. When you take it out let it get to room temperature before trying to roll it out. I sprinkled corn starch on the counter to prevent sticking when I rolled out the dough.

Before placing the fondant on the cake ice the cake with about 1/4 inch layer of buttercream. This will allow the fondant to stick. I made different colors of fondant by kneading in gel food coloring. I noticed the color got darker the longer it sat, so just know that when you're coloring your fondant. I rolled the fondant out to about 1/4 inch thickness. This seemed to work well and let plenty of fondant for a two layer round cake.

Hamilton Beach 3-in-1 slowcooker: a review

After reading the 365 days of crockpotting blog, I did some research about what kind of crockpot/slow cooker I wanted. I read reviews of a number of different crockpots and slow cookers and I took into consideration my life style ( a couple with no kids who hosts a lot of dinner parties) and decided on the Hamilton Beach 3-in-in slowcooker. The problem is I have a 5 quart slow cooker that works just fine that I got about 2 years ago when one I inherited from my mom had started to leak. So there was pretty much no way I could talk Aaron in to letting me get a new $60 appliance when mine is fully functioning. I looked on line at Target.com, Macy's.com and Amazon.com, the cheapest I found it was $45, but then I had to pay shipping (which would be at least $15 if not more).

I went to the local AC "home" store on my break the other day. (Home is used loosely because it technically sells stuff like pillows, but you only have one option. And it sells things like over priced sofas and ovens, but again there is no selection, just one to pick from.) And there it was in all it's glory: the Hamilton Beach 3-in-1 slowcooker! I'm not going to lie, I knew it was there. I have known since around Christmas, but it was still $60, until today. Today it was $30. I think I can justify a $30 purchase. So I brought it home and it was all mine.
It has 3 different pots in 3 pretty colors: pumpkin orange, soft custard yellow and sage green. There are 2, 4 & 6 crocks to put in it. There are buttons you push to indicate what crock is in it and it also has a high, low and warming setting. The 2 quart bowl will be perfect for heating up a chocolate or cheese dip. The 4 quart will be perfect for a dinner just for Aaron and I and maybe one other person. And the 6 quart is perfect to roast a chicken in then make chicken soup when it is done cooking.

There was PLENTY of room in the crock for the whole chicken. I didn't even have to try to squish the wings down. I looked it on high for 3.5 hours and the meat was tender and just fell off the bone. When I added the noodles, I had it set to warm for about 20 minutes and the egg noodles were perfect and didn't become mushy. It was nice. I am so looking forward to making more things with the slowcooker. I'll keep you posted.

I want to mention that the large crock does not plop down all the way in to the heating thingy. It was engineered this way, so looking at it the first time was weird. But everything turned out fine
.