Barefoot Bloggers – Birthday Sheet Cake & Beatty’s Chocolate Cake

Welcome to chocolate overload zone!

I made these cakes on the same day during my Ramadan blogging hiatus. The making of both is somewhat of a blur (which you are no doubt thankful for). I was so geared up to make these, especially the sheet cake because who wouldn’t want a humongous chocolate cake with fudgy icing (well, except Kayte). See, in my mind, I had turned this into a chocolate sheet cake and was euphoric about the Barefoot Bloggers selections for September. Two cakes! Both chocolate! That is, until I realized this wasn’t a chocolate cake at all. Ultimate bummer.

We aren’t huge fans of white or yellow cake, so I doctored the cake batter with a healthy dose of Vietnamese cinnamon. The end result was a subtly cinnamon cake with chocolate icing that was delicious. It’s a very sturdy cake, not a tender crumb but perfect for a child’s birthday party. Since there were no available children having birthdays, I took this to the mosque to serve after iftar (the meal we have after breaking our fast in the evening) and it was very popular.

But Beatty’s chocolate cake was a transcendent chocolate experience. I pulled out all the stops and used the “good” chocolate as Ina always suggests. It was moist, and oh the frosting, the frosting, the frosting. I iced the cake in record time (hence the awful appearance and specks of butter, which melted right in and didn’t affect the texture or flavor) before I had to leave for the evening, and left the kitchen looking like it had been used for a kindergarten cooking class. Since I was fasting when I made and iced the cake, I didn’t taste any of it until I got home around midnight. Oh my. I licked the offset spatula, mixing bowl, paddle from the mixer and the plate on which I set the paddle. Too much information? Sorry. So much for losing weight during Ramadan.

This cake is The One. My new go-to chocolate cake recipe. As in go to this website and get the recipe. Make it tonight or this weekend. Just don’t deprive yourself (or the chocolate lover in your life) of it any longer than the weekend. I told M. I was making it for his birthday (which was last month, but he was on a business trip), and then I ate more of it than he did.

If you’d like to check out what the other Barefoot Bloggers did, you can find them all here.

Barefoot Bloggers – White Pizza with Arugula

I heart pizza. A lot. I could eat it every day, twice a day, and never get tired of it. But I have never made it at home. Until now. It took Andrea of Nummy Kitchen to pick Ina Garten’s White Pizza with Arugula for this week’s Barefoot Bloggers recipe for me to realize that pizza, like most everything, is better when you make it yourself. I bought a pizza stone for my Bread Baker’s Apprentice baking, so I baked our pizzas directly on the stone. It made the crust nice and crisp.

Ina’s crust is super easy. I substituted about 1/2 cup of whole wheat flour for some of the all-purpose flour, and it gave the dough a wonderful flavor and texture. Ina calls for fontina, fresh mozzarella and goat cheese, but I skipped the fontina. Even though we love garlic, I left it out of the oil this time as we were going out for the evening.

This pizza was incredible. It was good with the arugula salad, but I could be just as happy leaving it off.

Give this one a try, you won’t be disappointed! You’ll find the recipe here.

******PLEASE NOTE: Lethally Delicious is on hiatus for the month of Ramadan. While I have a couple of posts that I completed in advance (like this one), I will be staying away from active blogging. If you leave me a comment, I will try to stop by and visit you. I’ll be back around Sept. 20th, reenergized and ready to make bigger and better messes in the kitchen. Peace.

Barefoot Bloggers – Peach Berry Crumble

This recipe is the best part of a food fantasy. It seems healthy, but it’s not.

It starts with a goodly volume of fruit, kissed with sugar, lemon zest and lemon juice. It’s topped with the simplest crumb mixture scented with cinnamon. I doubled the crumb topping, and increased the fruit (I used peaches, cherries, blueberries and blackberries) by about half. The crumb topping melts into the fruit somewhat, so your crumb topping ends up being thinner than you thought it would be. Don’t let this worry you at all. The merging of the fruit with the topping, particularly around the edges, creates an unctuous buttery fruit experience… Excuse me. I need a moment to collect myself.

Where was I? Oh yes. I served this crumble as a breakfast treat, and it was a hit. It would have been far better served warm with vanilla ice cream, but ice cream for breakfast seemed a little over the top, especially when you’re already eating buttery fruit.

I love Barefoot Bloggers. We make recipes from Ina Garten, and they are consistently some of the best things I cook and bake. They’re almost always calorie laden, which is why I resisted her recipes for so long. But they’re always good great. This week’s recipe was selected by Aggie of Aggie’s Kitchen. I love her blog and I encourage you to spend some time there. You can find the recipe here or here. And if you’d like to join us as we cook through Ina’s truly delicious recipes, we’d love to have you! You can find out how to join us here.

Barefoot Bloggers – Pasta with Sun Dried Tomatoes

Brace yourselves, taste buds. We have liftoff.

This is one of the best Ina Garten recipes that I’ve tried. I know I’ve said that before, but they’re all so good. Not this one.

It’s great. Absolutely delicious, fresh and bursting with flavor. Laziness made me serve it as a hot pasta dish. I cut out the salt, used less olive oil, and added the basil, garlic and parmesan cheese to the food processor to become part of the sauce. Adding the basil to the sauce made the sauce a funny color, but it was easy and the flavor was fabulous. I put the chopped olives, tomatoes and mozzarella in the bottom of a medium bowl and put the hot pasta and sauce on top, mixing the ingredients together. The pasta melted the fresh mozzarella slightly. Oh baby, was it good. It’s in the rotation, perfect for quick summer meals.

I have Cat at Delta Whiskey to thank for this amazing pick. If you’d like the recipe, be sure to check out Cat’s blog. Or you can get it on the Food Network site here.

CEiMB – Vegetable Cheese Stratta and Barefoot Bloggers make Ina Garten’s Gazpacho

This week’s Craving Ellie in My Belly selection is Vegetable Cheese Stratta, selected by Jenn of A Mid-Life Culinary Adventure (gee, that’s what I feel like I’m having!)

This one was such a pleasure to make and eat. It had loads of veggies (a great use of my CSA goodies) and was very flexible (I didn’t have an onion, so I substituted scallions; I felt like adding spinach, so I did). It was a great make-ahead, and I ate it for lunch rather than for breakfast. It would even be great for dinner. Since I’m still on my own this week, I made 1/8th of the recipe so I wouldn’t have to eat it for 8 meals.

I added some crushed red pepper flakes for a little kick and I used the last of an olive oil rosemary bread. It wasn’t whole grain, but it worked well with the flavors, and it was what I had on hand.

After having this for lunch the next day, I regretted making 1/8th of the recipe. It was fantastic! So cheesy and flavorful from the garlic and nutmeg. This one is going into the rotation.

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Meryl of My Bit of Earth chose this week’s Barefoot Bloggers recipe and it was perfect timing, as summer officially began in the northern hemisphere and many Barefoot Bloggers live in parts of the US and Canada that are already sweltering. We’re finally heating up in northern California, so this was still a great option to use summer’s bounty.

Thankfully, this one didn’t dirty a kitchen full of dishes, just the food processor, a measuring cup and a large bowl. I used some of my Nudo olive oil (which I learned about thanks to Nancy), but I reduced the vinegar and olive oil by half. The only ingredient that came from my CSA was the red onion, although later I realized I could have added diced yellow squash and it would have been perfect. I used orange peppers because that was what I had, and I added a diced small avocado. I ate the first bowl after I made it, and it was good and fresh, but needed more salt (I used low sodium vegetable juice, so I wasn’t surprised). I’m thinking about adding hot sauce or cilantro, or maybe both. Ina says this is better after it sits for a few hours, so I’m really looking forward to enjoying it after it cures.

Many thanks to Meryl for a great pick! If you’d like to join us as we cook and blog our way through Ina’s cookbooks (and why wouldn’t you, her recipes are easy and great!), check out how to join here.

Barefoot Bloggers – Cranberry Orange Pecan Scones

I don’t usually participate in the Barefoot Bloggers bonus recipes. After doing Tuesdays with Dorie, Craving Ellie in My Belly (both weekly) and Barefoot Bloggers (twice a month), I generally want to focus on recipes I want to make from other bloggers. But when Em of The Repressed Pastry Chef picked the bonus recipe for this month, I had to do it. See, I love scones but I’ve never made them, and I knew Ina’s recipe had to be easy enough for a scone-making newbie like me.

I’ve seen Ina make scones on the show a couple of times (maybe it’s the same episode and I’ve watched it more than once!), and that was good because some of the lessons she taught made this an easy recipe. Some of the Food Network feedback said the scones were too salty, and some said they needed more orange zest or extract, and some said more sugar. I thought the salt level was fine, but I agree they could have been a little sweeter and had more orange flavor. Perhaps if I had used Dorie Greenspan’s technique of rubbing the zest with the sugar before adding it to the bowl, it would have brought out more of the orange flavor.

Ina’s technique of letting your mixer do the work was wonderful. I was extra careful not to over mix the dough. I wanted to add pecans for some crunch, and I mixed them together with the dried cranberries in the empty cranberry bag, before adding the flour and shaking it up. In hindsight, my dried cranberries were a little too dried, and I should have rehydrated them (which you can do by putting them in a steamer basket over boiling water).

When I turned this out to shape the dough and cut it out, it was very shaggy, which I expected. I rolled it only to get it to the 3/4″ thickness, and floured a 2″ biscuit cutter before cutting each scone. I baked off a few immediately (the dough was absolutely incredible!), then put a few in the freezer for another day, and the rest went into the refrigerator to bake and take to work.

My 2″ guys baked for about 20 minutes, and I think that was a bit too long. Since they were smaller than the 3″ Ina recommends, you may want to check them at 18 minutes. Even so, they were fluffy, tender and delicious, in short, nothing like the “scones” you can get at national chain coffee houses.

Next time (and there will be a lot of next times) I will up the orange zest, use Dorie’s zest/sugar rubbing technique, increase the pecans, decrease the dried cranberries (or use fresh!) and add slightly more sugar. But before I make these again, I want to see if I can replicate (and improve) the lemon curd scone served at my favorite coffee house. With Ina’s tender scone as a base, you can go in many directions with this recipe. Check it out here or here. And my thanks go out to Em for choosing this wonderful recipe. Now I know how to bake scones!

Ina Garten’s Curried Couscous, Ellie Krieger’s Double Chocolate Pudding Pie AND My 100th Post!

Talk about a mega post!

This week’s Barefoot Bloggers recipe is Ina’s Curried Couscous, selected by Ellyn of Recipe Collector & Tester. We love couscous and I’m always trying to think of new ways to make it exciting. Trust Ina to come up with a tasty twist on this go-to side dish.

I changed up the recipe somewhat, substituting whole wheat couscous, nixxing the red onion (figuring the spring onions have enough onion flavor), substituting cilantro for parsley (sorry cilantro haters!) and slivered almonds for sliced. I also tossed in a can of drained and rinsed garbanzo beans for some added protein and called it dinner! What can I say, I was going to make tandoori chicken to serve along side but that requires taking the chicken out of the freezer. Maybe next time!

This was soooo tasty and it made (in typical Ina fashion) a ton of couscous. We’ll be eating it for a while, and I’ll have plenty of chances to dress it up with different proteins and make it seem new. It had a great curry flavor without being overbearing, and the almonds and carrot gave it a nice crunch. Definitely another great recipe from Ina. Thanks, Ellyn for a wonderful pick!

For Craving Ellie in My Belly, we made Double Chocolate Pudding Pie, selected by Tessa of Handle the Heat. This recipe was so easy, I made it at 6 AM before work, with time left over for 20 minutes of cardio (I MUST counteract all of these!) and a shower before leaving for work. Hearts make me happy, so I used these mini tart pans I got while we were in Paris. I also wanted to break in my new mini pie pan, and two of the heart shaped ramekins I bought about 10 years ago at Williams-Sonoma and have never used. Truly. I made Ellie’s graham cracker crust almost as written (no water, extra tablespoon of butter and one additional graham cracker sheet). I didn’t mess with the filling, using 70% bittersweet for the chocolate. I did follow one Food Network reviewer’s suggestion to sprinkle the gelatin over cold water rather than hot, and I didn’t have any clumping at all. It took ten minutes of constant whisking before the chocolate mixture thickened. Once it did, I actually LISTENED to the voice in my head that said to use a ladle to fill the various tins, ramekins, molds, etc. No spills to clean up, though we won’t talk about what happened to the traces clinging to the side of the pan.

This was delicious! The crust wasn’t as sturdy as my usual butter-laden graham cracker crust, but this was outrageously chocolaty and the perfect portion size. Truth be told, I preferred the ones I made sans crust, as the graham cracker crust interfered with my enjoyment of the chocolate pudding. If you prefer a less assertive chocolate flavor, you could substitute milk chocolate and the flavor would mellow out.

And finally, this is my 100th post. I’ve been thinking about it for a couple of weeks and can’t get my head around it. When I started this blog last fall, it was to be a part of Tuesdays with Dorie. I’ve since joined Craving Ellie in My Belly and Barefoot Bloggers, and have gotten more out of blogging than I could have ever imagined. I love to cook, and I love to share my cooking, and this is just another way to share. Most of all, I love visiting your blogs to see what YOU’RE cooking, to be inspired by you, to learn from you, and to share in your story. You have elevated my cooking by your words and your sharing, and I am a better cook and baker because of you. Thank you.

Barefoot Bloggers – Outrageous Brownies and Tuna Salad (a catch up post!)

This week’s Barefoot Bloggers recipe was Ina’s Outrageous Brownies, selected by Eva of I’m Boring (which she definitely isn’t!). They could be outrageous because you start with a pound of butter, add over two pounds of chocolate, a small amount of flour for the amount of butter and chocolate, a half dozen EXTRA LARGE eggs, some walnuts and other ingredients, and bake them in a half sheet pan. I’ve never in my life made brownies in a sheet pan, but I’ve never owned a successful catering business, been a policy wonk in the White House, driven a BMW (now a Mercedes) or been married to someone who was a Dean at Yale. Maybe baking brownies in a sheet pan is something one does after achieving these other things in life. Me, I work for a not-for-profit affiliated with a university, am a CPA, drive a Prius, and am joined at the hip with a romantic yet pragmatic electrical engineer. So my brownies are baked in 9 x 13 or 8 x 8 pans. Until I made these.

It’s always a joy to make a recipe where one needn’t worry about how to utilize the remaining sticks of butter. This recipe dispatches with the whole pound right off the bat, so I don’t have to worry about them going bad in my refrigerator. Nor will I be tempted to spread some on toast or make grilled cheese. My hips thank you, Ina!

I didn’t get why Food Network considers this recipe “difficult.” Maybe they knew I’d be making them at the same time as my Tuesdays with Dorie Chipster-Topped Brownies. I briefly considered chopping chocolate for these, until I came to my senses and realized if chocolate chips were good enough for Ina with her up-market taste, they were certainly good enough for me and my Toyota-bean counter-non-profit-mad scientist life. So I pulled out my best chocolate chips (Ghirardelli) and forged on. Instead of instant coffee, I added the instant espresso powder, even though some commenters on Food Network said it was overpowering (we love chocolate and coffee, so it seemed like a no-brainer).

I wasn’t up for buttering and flouring the pan, so I used my secret pal, Baker’s Joy. I evenly spread the batter in the sheet pan and put it in the oven for 30 minutes, only realizing after 27 minutes that I was supposed to rap the pan on the oven rack at the halfway point. I didn’t do that until 27 minutes in, so I’m blaming everything (including my hip size and falling real estate values in California) on my failure to rap on time. My brownies baked 33 minutes before they tested done. I let them cool on a rack before bypassing the refrigeration part and slicing into the corner. 

They were…OK. Seriously, these aren’t going to lead to world peace (there’s a cookie for that) or even a cure for cancer, though they are tasty and chocolaty. I found the espresso flavor to be too prominent, and the texture was meh, but again, I assume that’s due to my delinquent rapping and lack of refrigeration. This fact alone did not prevent me from sampling a couple more small slices from the pan…I was trying to be sure, just for your sake. I have a brownie that I believe is more ethereal than these, one which I’ve never shared with you but will have to in the future.

Thanks, Eva, for a wonderful pick!

I also made Ina’s Tuna Salad (selected by Kate of Warm Olives and Cool Cocktails) this week. This one was supposed to be posted while we were on vacation, and I’m just now getting around to making and writing about it. We loved the dressing (though next time I would cut back on the salt and add more wasabi). I grilled the fish instead of sautéing it). I was doing three other things at the same time, so I sort of overcooked the tuna. It wasn’t rare at all. I served it over lettuce from last week’s CSA. It was phenomenal, and I would definitely make it again. Especially since this one gives the cows a day off–no butter or cream required!

Barefoot Bloggers – Croque Monsieur, as Ina never imagined it

You know how sometimes you improvise a dish and it works well, or you go overboard and your mouth says “Huh?” when you eat it? I was definitely in danger of the latter this week with Kathy’s (of All Food Considered) pick, Croque Monsieur, from Ina Garten’s Barefoot in Paris cookbook. We don’t eat ham, so that one was definitely out. No dijon mustard. White bread? Boring! So I went in a completely different direction. Ina may sue, or I may be thrown out of Barefoot Bloggers, it’s that different.

I started at Whole Foods, because I needed bread and cheese for the sandwich. I sometimes find Gruyere cheese to be too strongly flavored, so I decided I would mix Ementhaller and Gruyere. I happened upon a loaf of apple cinnamon bread and I just had to use it for the sandwich. Cheese and fruit are such a classic combination.

At home, I knew I had a package of sliced turkey breast and a jar of mustard, so I was all set. I grated the cheeses, warmed the milk, made the roux, added the milk and a bunch of the cheese and found it to result in a very odd mound of what I imagined was supposed to be a sauce. Hmm… Turns out I added too much of the cheese. Oops.

Since the oven took too long to warm up, I toasted the bread in the toaster, transfered it to the sheet pan, spread the bottom slice with sweet and spicy mustard, grabbed the package of turkey and only then noticed my sliced turkey breast was really pastrami. Yes, turkey pastrami.

It was too late to turn back. I had a mound of “sauce” in the pan, too many graters, dishes and pans already dirty and I was hungry, so there was no turning back. I assembled the sandwich and mounded the “sauce” on the top, precariously balancing the remaining grated cheese on the top, and popped it into the oven. After just two minutes, the mound of “sauce” became a dripping, oozy, cheesy coating of love on my sandwich, which I then browned under the broiler. I did regret not lining the sheet pan with parchment or a Silpat as the cheese laminated to the pan, but that’s a problem for later. I dug into the sandwich with knife and fork, and was greeted with an explosion of flavors. The smokiness of the turkey pastrami and the nuttiness of the cheese was perfectly balanced with the sweetness of the apple cinnamon bread and the spicy sweet mustard. I can’t imagine it could get better than this. Sometimes turning a recipe upside down is a mistake, but this time it was delicious.

For other crazy innovators, I present Croque Monsieur (as adapted from Ina Garten).

• 1 tablespoon unsalted butter
• 1 1/2 tablespoons all-purpose flour
• 1 cup hot milk
• freshly ground black pepper to taste
• Pinch nutmeg
• 3 ounces Gruyere, grated (1 1/4 cups)
• 3 ounces Ementhaller, grated (1 1/4 cups)
• 1/4 cup freshly grated Parmesan
  
• 8 slices apple cinnamon (or cinnamon raisin) bread, crusts removed
• Sweet & spicy mustard (I get mine at Trader Joe’s)
• 4 ounces turkey pastrami

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees F.

Melt the butter over low heat in a small saucepan and add the flour all at once, stirring with a wooden spoon for 2 minutes. Slowly pour the hot milk into the butter–flour mixture and cook, whisking constantly, until the sauce is thickened. Off the heat add the salt, pepper, nutmeg, 1/4 cup of the Gruyere and Ementhaller mixture, and the Parmesan and set aside.

To toast the bread, place the slices on a baking sheet lined with parchment and bake for 5 minutes. Turn each slice and bake for another 2 minutes, until toasted. Or you can use a toaster as I did.

Lightly brush half the toasted breads with mustard, add a slice of turkey pastrami to each, and sprinkle with half the remaining cheese. Top with another piece of toasted bread. Slather the tops with the cheese sauce, sprinkle with the remaining cheese, and bake the sandwiches for 5 minutes. Turn on the broiler and broil for 3 to 5 minutes, or until the topping is bubbly and lightly browned. Serve hot.

Barefoot Bloggers – Croque Monsieur, as Ina never imagined it

You know how sometimes you improvise a dish and it works well, or you go overboard and your mouth says “Huh?” when you eat it? I was definitely in danger of the latter this week with Kathy’s (of All Food Considered) pick, Croque Monsieur, from Ina Garten’s Barefoot in Paris cookbook. We don’t eat ham, so that one was definitely out. No dijon mustard. White bread? Boring! So I went in a completely different direction. Ina may sue, or I may be thrown out of Barefoot Bloggers, it’s that different.

I started at Whole Foods, because I needed bread and cheese for the sandwich. I sometimes find Gruyere cheese to be too strongly flavored, so I decided I would mix Ementhaller and Gruyere. I happened upon a loaf of apple cinnamon bread and I just had to use it for the sandwich. Cheese and fruit are such a classic combination.

At home, I knew I had a package of sliced turkey breast and a jar of mustard, so I was all set. I grated the cheeses, warmed the milk, made the roux, added the milk and a bunch of the cheese and found it to result in a very odd mound of what I imagined was supposed to be a sauce. Hmm… Turns out I added too much of the cheese. Oops.

Since the oven took too long to warm up, I toasted the bread in the toaster, transfered it to the sheet pan, spread the bottom slice with sweet and spicy mustard, grabbed the package of turkey and only then noticed my sliced turkey breast was really pastrami. Yes, turkey pastrami.

It was too late to turn back. I had a mound of “sauce” in the pan, too many graters, dishes and pans already dirty and I was hungry, so there was no turning back. I assembled the sandwich and mounded the “sauce” on the top, precariously balancing the remaining grated cheese on the top, and popped it into the oven. After just two minutes, the mound of “sauce” became a dripping, oozy, cheesy coating of love on my sandwich, which I then browned under the broiler. I did regret not lining the sheet pan with parchment or a Silpat as the cheese laminated to the pan, but that’s a problem for later. I dug into the sandwich with knife and fork, and was greeted with an explosion of flavors. The smokiness of the turkey pastrami and the nuttiness of the cheese was perfectly balanced with the sweetness of the apple cinnamon bread and the spicy sweet mustard. I can’t imagine it could get better than this. Sometimes turning a recipe upside down is a mistake, but this time it was delicious.

For other crazy innovators, I present Croque Monsieur (as adapted from Ina Garten).

• 1 tablespoon unsalted butter
• 1 1/2 tablespoons all-purpose flour
• 1 cup hot milk
• freshly ground black pepper to taste
• Pinch nutmeg
• 3 ounces Gruyere, grated (1 1/4 cups)
• 3 ounces Ementhaller, grated (1 1/4 cups)
• 1/4 cup freshly grated Parmesan
  
• 8 slices apple cinnamon (or cinnamon raisin) bread, crusts removed
• Sweet & spicy mustard (I get mine at Trader Joe’s)
• 4 ounces turkey pastrami

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees F.

Melt the butter over low heat in a small saucepan and add the flour all at once, stirring with a wooden spoon for 2 minutes. Slowly pour the hot milk into the butter–flour mixture and cook, whisking constantly, until the sauce is thickened. Off the heat add the salt, pepper, nutmeg, 1/4 cup of the Gruyere and Ementhaller mixture, and the Parmesan and set aside.

To toast the bread, place the slices on a baking sheet lined with parchment and bake for 5 minutes. Turn each slice and bake for another 2 minutes, until toasted. Or you can use a toaster as I did.

Lightly brush half the toasted breads with mustard, add a slice of turkey pastrami to each, and sprinkle with half the remaining cheese. Top with another piece of toasted bread. Slather the tops with the cheese sauce, sprinkle with the remaining cheese, and bake the sandwiches for 5 minutes. Turn on the broiler and broil for 3 to 5 minutes, or until the topping is bubbly and lightly browned. Serve hot.