Different pound cake….

Virginia was fiend-ing for pound cake last night… but instead of making the Paula Deen pound cake that I normally make.. I thought I’d try something different. So, I looked around online and found this recipe: http://thepioneerwoman.com/cooking/2010/01/perfect-pound-cake/  .. now, a lot of friends talk about the Pioneer Woman… so… I figured I’d give it a shot… plus, the recipe seemed super easy.. so… why not?

Here’s what you need….

• 3 Sticks Butter
• 3 Cups Sugar
• 5 Whole Eggs
• 1 TSP Butter Flavoring
• 2 TSP Lemon Flavoring
• 3 Cups All Purpose Flour
• 1 Cup Sprite / 7-up / Sierra Mist

The recipe starts off just like any other pound cake recipe….

Toss your softened, room temperature butter into the mixing bowl… get it “creamed” up rather nicely, and then add your sugar, a little at a time until you get an awesome suspension of sugar and butter… also, this is a good time to preheat you oven to 325… it doesn’t take long to whip up the batter.. in fact, you might be waiting for the oven to finish preheating after the batter is complete..

Then, it’s time for eggs…. Now… I read something yesterday while I was researching pound cakes that said the density of the cake has to do with how you add the eggs to the butter/sugar mix.. something about if you just crack the egg and toss it into the mixer with the sugar/butter mix, the mix can’t properly incorporate the whole egg… it can get more evenly distributed if you beat the egg a bit before adding it to the mix…

So… I broke the 5 eggs into a measuring cup and beat them with a fork before adding them… the previously mentioned thing  was reading also said that after you whip the eggs, you should add them to the mix 1 TBSP at a time.. that seemed a bit ridiculous, but after whipping the eggs,  slowly added them to the mix… looking into the mixture, the result seemed to be that the butter / sugar / egg mixture was  bit more light and fluffy than usual… but.. it’s hard to quantify something like fluffiness. This is a good time to add your lemon extract and butter flavor as well… (I didn’t have butter flavor… and Martin’s didn’t have it either.. so, it didn’t get used..)

But, you can see above, the mixture is rather smooth..

Next up, it’s time for some flour…

I’m a big fan of King Arthur flour… I didn’t think it made any difference.. then I started using it in my bread and my bread all of the sudden became awesome… so.. here in Staunton, they actually carry King Arthur flours everywhere… Food Lion… Kroger… Martin’s… etc… so, since it’s so easy to find, I’ve started using their All Purpose flour as well… wen you’re out shopping… Red bag = All purpose … Blue bag = bread flour…

Add your flour slowly to the mix, about a half cup at a time… you’ll want to do it on low speed, or it’ll go everywhere… go ahead.. ask me how I know..

While the flour is getting mixed in, this is a good time to get your cake pan ready… We have a pretty awesome Bundt pan, but a tube pan will work equally as well… Like the Pioneer Woman, I’m a big fan of baking spray… the stuff I use is store brand, and has flour in it… and for the most part, works like a champ.

Give it a nice thick coating… it’ll need it…we’ll discuss why at the end…

After you’ve got all of the flour mixed in, it’s time for the last thing…

1 Cup of Sierra Mist…  This was interesting… with the rest of the batter pretty much made, it doesn’t like new things being introduced.. Meaning, put he mixer on the lowest speed available and add the soda very slowly. I had the mixer on “2”, and the soda went flying everywhere if I added it any faster than a few drips at a time….

Now, the batter is done, the pan is greased, the oven is preheated…. so, pour the batter into the pan and toss it into the oven for about an hour and a half.

It’ll grow a little bit, so if you have a shorter / smaller Bundt pan, you may want to put a pan with foil on it under the cake to catch anything that might overflow….

It grew a little above the top of my pan.. but not bad enough to overflow… the above picture is probably about an hour into baking…

Let the cake bake until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean… the Pioneer Woman states 1hr 10min baking time… it took me about an hour and a half… so cooking times may vary a little bit…

Once it’s done, pull it out of the oven and flip the whole she-bang onto a cooling rack. After 1/2 hour to 45 minutes, it should slide out of the pan pretty easily.

 

 

 

 

 

 

So…. that’s it….

 

Now, for my thoughts.  I don’t think that this recipe is as good as the recipe I normally make. This is a lighter, lemon flavored cake… so, if you’re into having a lemon flavored pound cake, this should be right up your alley…. I think it’d be pretty tasty if you toast the pound cake, then serve it with a scoop of vanilla bean ice cream, and perhaps a little grated lemon rind…The crust is decently chewy and sweet… but not as much as the Paula Deen pound cake. Also, I think that the 1/2 Cup of shortening in the Paula Deen pound cake helps it release from the pan a bit cleaner…  It was interesting to try something new, but this will likely be the only time I make this recipe of pound cake…I didn’t make it exactly to the specifications of the Pioneer Woman, as I couldn’t find butter flavoring… but I doubt that the 1 TSP of butter flavoring would have changed my mind …

First update from the new place…

Well… looking back, perhaps naming the blog “Cooking in Boone” may not have been the best choice… as we’re no longer in Boone… so… there may be a slight name change in the future… however, the address to the blog will remain the same I suppose….

 

So… we’re in our new place in Staunton, and after spending a week unpacking and trying to figure out where things should go… I finally got the kitchen to a point where I could start cooking in it again….

This is our new kitchen… you may notice we’re running extremely short on counter space… so… we’re tossing around the idea of buying some sort of island… or, I might build one…. until then, this is our “prep” area…

So… that makes things interesting… but… all of that aside… on to the food!

I had a pork shoulder going in the crockpot… so, we needed some bread to make BBQ sandwiches with…. I decided to make some Refrigerator Rolls.. it’s a simple recipe, that gives you nice, yeasty rolls… You’ll need

• 2 Packages Active Yeast
• 2 Cups warm water
• 1/2 Cup Sugar
• 1 TSP Salt
• 6 Cups All Purpose Flour
• 1 Egg
• 1/4 Cup Shortening

Starting off, put the 2 cups of warm water in a mixing bowl and add your 2 packages of yeast, 1/2 Cup of Sugar, and 2 cups of flour. Mix all of these together until they are well blended…

This will be very thin, but you’re basically just making the base for the bread first…. Then add the shortening and egg and mix that in well…

After it’s mixed together well, add flour 1 cup at a time until you start to get a soft dough….

It shouldn’t be as stiff as if you were making French or Italian bread… it shouldn’t be “goopy” … but it shouldn’t be stiff either… it should be somewhere in the middle…

Spray some baking spray in the mixing bowl covering the bowl, and covering the top of the dough. Then, cover the bowl and toss it into the fridge overnight.

In the morning, your dough should have risen pretty significantly, (so, make sure you use a mixing bowl that is large enough….)

Here is the dough after rising overnight in the fridge… This is a good time to preheat your oven to 400 degrees…  Then, punch the dough down…

After you punch the dough down, spray a baking sheet with baking spray and begin to divide your dough…

You should be able to fit 6-8 rolls on your baking sheet, depending on the size of your rolls…

For BBQ rolls, I started with rolls that were about 2-1/2” across.

For me, this is about a palm sized roll… so, not quite the size of a hamburger bun… but still big enough for a decent sized sandwich… When you break the dough up into rolls, you may be tempted to make little round balls… but, you want to make them flat, like hamburger patties. As they cook, they will rise and become round all on their own… If you make them round to begin with, they’ll just get taller… they won’t get much wider… so, get the width that you want, and let the baking process take care of the height…  If you like, you can brush the top of the rolls with a little butter, or with some egg whites…

Toss them in the oven at 400 degrees for 12-15 minutes… or until they’re golden brown…

You’ll notice some cracking / opening of the rolls as they cook… the cracks / openings are caused from overlaps in the dough.. and since the dough was sprayed to keep it from sticking to the mixing bowl, it also will not stick to itself very well…

This roll was made by sticking several smaller pieces of dough together… while it’ll still taste the same, it doesn’t have the strength or appearance of a roll that was formed from one, uninterrupted piece of dough.

This roll was basically cut off from the large piece of dough in the mixing bowl, then quickly and gently formed into a patty shape… here, you don’t have many cracks (there will always be a few cracks during the baking as the dough vents, but you can control the venting location by cutting a slit on the top of each roll)

That’s it for making the rolls… they’re really amazingly easy to make… it might take you a bit of practice to figure out how to form them so they look all pretty, but you should be able to get the hang of it rather quickly… You wouldn’t have a problem if you didn’t spray the bowl and dough with baking spray, but then, you’d also have a sticky doughy mess when you try to form the rolls… so.. it’s a trade-off….

We finished up the pork last night, and pulled it… so we’re ready for some BBQ sandwiches… if you need a recipe for the pork, just look back in the archives of the blog… Here: Pork Day 1 and Here: Pork Day 2 .

Holy cannoli!

So… having never done it before… I decided to make some cannoli.. I figured.. “how hard can it be?” Make some tubes… make some filling… bada-bing bada-bang… It’s done…

 

So… the night that we had folks over for pasta and meatballs, I figured that’d be a perfect time to make some cannoli’s up.. first up was finding a recipe… easy right? In the days of the internet, how hard could it possibly be? Well let me tell you… http://tinyurl.com/3olhn4q   yeah… some 450,000 hits. So… I started looking through them until I found one that “sounded right” to me… you know… with my vast experience of never making them before.. and eating them very rarely… the recipe I found that sounded the best to me was this one: http://www.recipegirl.com/2007/04/23/cannoli/ …

First up… making the filling.

so.. step 1.. hang the ricotta to dry…

I had to get a little inventive on this one.. the instructions say to hang the ricotta in cheese cloth overnight to let it drip out a bit…. so.. I draped the cheese cloth over a mason jar.. and secured it around the top with a brand new, unused hair band… I’m sure a rubber band would work equally as well.

So… load your 3/4 cup of ricotta into the cheese cloth, and let it drip in the fridge for a while… after it’s dripped for a while, wrap the cloth around the ricotta and squeeze out all of the moisture that you can.

Obviously, it won’t be dry like parmesan cheese… but… it should be stiffer than normal, and you will have likely squeezed out several tablespoons worth of liquid…. 

Next… start adding the rest of the ingredients… 3/4 cup of mascarpone .. 1/4 cup powdered sugar.. 1/2 tsp ground cinnamon a pinch of salt… and the recipe calls for 1/2 tsp Grand Marnier… which.. I didn’t have.. so, I used a combination of orange liqueur and vanilla.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

So.. now… mix it all up!

After it’s all creamed together nicely, toss it in the fridge and it’s time to work on the shells…

2 Cups of flour… 1/2 TSP Cinnamon, 2 TSP Granulated sugar, pinch of salt, 2 TBSP Melted Crisco, 3/4 Cup sweet marsala wine, and 1 large egg white.

Now… this is where I messed up again… I don’t read directions well… so.. I added all of the above together in the blender and stirred… the result was a dough that was too sticky…

 

After the dough is mixed, wrap it in plastic an toss it in the fridge for a few hours.

So… when I pulled the dough out… it was too soft… too sticky… it should b the consistency of a pasta dough… it should be “formable” … so.. at this point, when I took the dough out to roll it into shells, I had to add a good bit o flour as I worked the dough.

Roll the dough nice and thin… then the recipe says to cut it out in 4” circles… well.. I didn’t have anything that could make a nice 4” circle… so… I cut squares… in any case, take the cut out dough and roll it around your cannoli tubes. The egg white that I tossed into the dough was supposed to be used to make the dough stick to itself while cooking… so.. I had to crack another egg for that… but.. then, it’s into the oil that’s preheated to 375ish.

These will cook relatively quick.. so… you just want them to get a nice golden brown. As soon as they hit that brown, pull them out of the oil with a pair of tongs an shake off the excess oil back into the pan… then stick them on a cooling rack. I’d recommend putting the rack over the sink so any excess oil doesn’t get all over the counters.

It won’t take too long to have all of the shells cooked up. One thing I learned was that you have to be very careful about getting your egg wash on the cannoli tube. Remember how the egg wash was to make the cannoli stick to itself? Turns out it’ll make the dough stick to the tubes as well. So.. the method I used was to pull them out of the oil, let them sit for about 30 seconds to begin to stiffen up.. then hold the whole cannoli and tube in a towel, and rap on the end of the metal tube with the handle of a spoon/fork/knife/etc. This was just to break the tube loose from the dough before the dough got completely hard.

So.. the shells are cooked and ready.. and the filling has been chilling for a good while… so. time to fill them… However, my filling was a bit thin as well, so I tossed it into the mixer and whisked it until it thickened up a bit… Same principle as making whipped cream… just whip some air into the filling and it’ll be light and thick. After I thickened the filling up, I spooned it into a zip-loc bag and cut the corner out of the bag to make a makeshift icing bag.

So, from here, it’s fast and furious. Grab the bag in one hand, grab a shell in the other.. and fill the shells.

Viola! Here are the filled shells. From here, it’s a matter of adding some garnish / extra flavor. This can range from candied orange shavings to…

…chocolate chips!! It’s pretty easy.. take your “garnish” and put it in a shallow bowl. Dip the cannoli ends into your “garnish” and the cheese mixture will adhere to it.

Top them off with some powdered sugar.. and they’re done… Now, you should avoid filling and finishing them until you’re ready to serve them… if you let them sit filled too long, the shells will get soggy. I made these and immediately took them in to Virginia’s office… where about half of them disappeared rather quickly… then, we took the remaining ones to our favorite place for wine tasting and buttered up the employees with them.

The general consensus from everyone that ate them is that these were the best cannoli’s ever made in the history of the world. So..on that note, I’d recommend you make them. You should be able to find cannoli tubes at your local kitchen store. We got our tubes for all of $2.99 .

Meaty, wonderful, meatballs.

So… we had some folks over for dinner not too long ago… and I decided to make some fettuccini and meatballs  for dinner.

The quality of your meatballs will greatly depend on the quality and type of meat that you put into the mix.

For this batch, I used (from left to right) Ground beef, Italian sausage, and ground lamb. Regular ground pork works as well… and normally instead of ground lamb, I would use ground veal… but none of the local grocery places had ground veal. If you get sausage like above, you’ll have to take it out of its skin… but no big deal, a simple slit with a knife, and it pulls right off.

 

So… this is about a pound of beef, a half pound of sausage, and a half pound of lamb… along with 2 TBSP Italian spices… 2 eggs…. 1 cup of parmesan cheese… a cup and a half of breadcrumbs.. and of course.. 2-3 freshly chopped garlic cloves. Once you have it all in a bowl together.. mix it all up by hand.

After it’s all mixed up, it should be sticking together nicely and easy to form into balls….

Form the concoction into meatball sized balls…

.. and then bake them at 375 degrees for about 40 minutes or so…

They should be a nice golden brown after 40-45 minutes… once they’re done in the oven… pull them out and toss them into a pot on the stove…

They should sit on the stove in simmering sauce for at least an hour. That’s it! It’s that easy to make some awesome meatballs…