baked « parsnips aplenty

Entries categorized as ‘baked’

Spaghetti Squash with Sarsaparilla and Sage

December 27, 2008 · 4 Comments

When I first started cooking with any intention, I wasted a tremendous amount of money. One day, years ago, I was home from college for the summer and a few friends came to visit for the weekend, and we decided to make a curry for dinner. The recipe we picked was, of course, one with thirty ingredients, most of which were spices. My parents tossed me their debit card and we went to the store.

We spent eighty-four dollars. To make one pot of curry. And you know why? Because we bought a jar of every spice on that list. All of which were, of course, organic. And at least five bucks a pop. I have learned since that the most wonderful thing about health food stores is the bulk section, specifically the bulk herbs and spices. Heed this!: Never buy a jar of spices, because you can buy them by the teaspoon (or tablespoon, or whatever) at your local co-op for fifty cents, which saves you tons of money - and, since you’re not buying a whole jarful at a time, you don’t have to worry about it going stale. I think this is one of the biggest mistakes we make when stocking our pantry: spices, especially pre-ground spices, lose their potency quickly, and when you leave a jar of curry powder in the cabinet for a year before you finally get around to making that great vindaloo recipe you’ve been hanging on to, I can promise you it will hardly taste like anything except the twenty chilies you had to put in.

So there’s tip number one for the day. Tip number two, which I try to emphasize often in this blog: substitute whenever and wherever you can. When I was first getting the hang of cooking for myself, I made sure to follow new recipes to the letter the first time I made them, and then allowed myself to adapt them as needed. I think this is important for a beginning cook, but now that I’ve got a better sense of things, I do it less often, and have become more of a recipe-as-guide person, as opposed to a recipe-as-law. I love reading a recipe that has notes for variation, because it means that whoever developed it played around with it a lot before releasing it to the wind, and it also gives more of a springboard for ideas of different directions that I can take with it.

This second tip is the main reason I’ve never made spaghetti squash - well, at least not until this afternoon. It feels like such a… unitasker. If I’m going to make something with winter squash, I grab one arbitrarily from the pile at the grocery store. (Or farmers’ market. Of course.) Spaghetti squash seemed almost gimmicky to me - it’s squash, and it can be made into ribbons? Who cares?

I picked one up last week. I caved.

Okay, okay, the pastasquash is fun. I admit it. You can wrap it around your fork, suck a piece down like a noodle, and pile it up into a lovely orange tower of angel hair. But it’s squash, which everyone in their right mind loves, and so it goes terrifically with simple, earthy flavors. I’m using only two - sarsaparilla and sage. One trendy, one classic, both delicious.

You know how you make broth with a bundle of aromatic herbs? I followed the same idea here. When I split the squash down the middle to bake, I put sarsaparilla in the pan, underneath the cavity of the squash. This helped the flavor really permeate, without that annoying texture of, well, wood. No one likes eating bits of wood.

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Spaghetti Squash with Sarsaparilla and Sage
serves 2-3

1 spaghetti squash
olive oil
2 teaspoons sarsaparilla
2 dried sage leaves, crushed
salt to taste

Preheat to 350. Halve spaghetti squash lengthwise, and scrape out seeds and goop. Put 1/4″ of water in the bottom of a pan large enough to hold both squash halves, and put a teaspoon of sarsaparilla in the place of where you’ll put each half. Drizzle a bit of olive oil in there, too, then put each squash half over the little piles of sarsaparilla. Cover tightly with aluminum foil or a good lid, then put in the oven and bake until soft, 30-45 minutes. Remove from the oven and let cool for a few minutes.

Take a look at which way the strands are going. You meat-eaters will know that it’s best to cut meat to make the fibers as short as possible - the opposite is true here. With a fork, gently loosen the strands of squash - with the grain, not against it. Pile onto a plate and top with sage and some good salt.

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Categories: autumn · baked · sides · under 5 ingredients · vegan · wintery

Cranberry-Orange Cornbread with Five-Spice Glaze

November 10, 2008 · 7 Comments

A few months ago, I mentioned my love for Crescent Dragonwagon, a self-professed “closet vegetarian” for years who finally outed herself in her wonderful cookbooks. She’s done a lot to influence the way I think about food, and has much to do with my refusal to see vegetarianism as a limitation.

So imagine my surprise when I saw that she had commented on the entry! She had her publishers send me a promo copy of her newest book, The Cornbread Gospels, and while I think it is indeed possible to beat a single food item into the ground, I trust Crescent to make anything well. I finally cracked it open last week, to make her Cornmeal-Oatmeal Cranberry-Orange Loaf. The bread itself was definitely above average, cakey and moist and everything it should be in Crescent’s magical kitchen, but I was astonished to see that the recipe called for orange zest without making use of the orange juice that would be left over!

Well, I said to myself, we’ll just fix that.

So I made this glaze and holy cannoli, it’s amazing. I understand that part of the point of having a food blog is to toot one’s own horn, and I try not to do that too much, but, really, I am a GENIUS. I had my doubts when this stuff first started heating up on the stove - the five-spice powder + Cointreau was a bit overpowering - but once it started to thicken, any sharpness mellowed and I considered buying a funnel so that I could just pour it directly down my throat. That method, however, would neglect the cornbread itself, with which this goes brilliantly. I’ll mention that all of the measurements for the glaze should end with “or so”, since I added a bit of this and a sprinkle of that. All raves aside, I can say no more other than that you really need to drop whatever you’re doing and make this. You know, now.

Cranberry-Orange Cornbread with Five-Spice Glaze
adapted, and in some cases, directly copied, from a recipe by Crescent Dragonwagon

vegetable oil cooking spray
1 1/2 cups unbleached white flour
1/3 cup stone-ground yellow cornmeal
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
3/4 cup plus 2 tablespoons sugar
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 eggs
3 tablespoons mild vegetable oil
1/2 cup plus 2 tablespoons buttermilk (I used half milk and half yogurt)
finely grated zest of 1 orange - save the juice!
1 cup cranberries, washed, picked over, and coarsely chopped
1/2 cup chopped pecans
1/4 cup rolled oats

Preheat the oven to 350F. Coat an 8″x8″ pan with oil. Sift together flour, cornmeal, baking powder, baking soda, sugar, and salt into a large bowl. In a separate bowl whisk together eggs, oil, buttermilk, and orange zest. In a third bowl combine cranberries, pecans, and oatmeal. Sprinkle a tablespoon of flour mixture over them, and toss well.

Quickly combine flour mixture and egg mixture, using as few strokes as possible. Gently stir in the cranberry mixture. The batter should be stiff. Spoon batter into prepared pan and bake 45-55 minutes. Check two-thirds of the way through the baking period; if the loaves are browning excessively, tent them loosely with foil.

Let the baked bread cool for 10 minutes in the pan, then run a thin knife around the edge of the pan and turn the loaf out. Drizzle with glaze: in a saucepan, combine…

1/2 cup powdered raw sugar (I used Mexican sugar)
juice from the orange you zested
a splash of Cointreau
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon Chinese five-spice powder

Bring to a boil and cook, stirring constantly, until reduced to a thick glaze. (This will go fast - watch it!) Pour it on, baby.

Categories: autumn · baked · breakfast · desserts · fruity · pantry-dependent · quickbreads · snacks · wintery

Mango Meringue Pie

September 15, 2008 · 8 Comments

There’s a scene in Kissing Jessica Stein when the two main characters are discussing the phenomenon known as Sexy Ugly. Famous men falling into this category include: Mick Jagger, Steve Buscemi, Harvey Keitel, and Alan Rickman. (I’m adding Alton Brown to the list as well.) Upon doing some more research into this descriptor, I found only one woman who is commonly considered for the prize - Sarah Jessica Parker. We could talk about this at length, taking any one of the several levels offered up for discussion, but this is a food blog, not my gender studies thesis. Which was excellent, by the way. (And what about Janeane Garofalo?)

Yesterday I made a pie. I screwed it up in several ways, but oh my heavens is it still delicious. This, friends, is the Lyle Lovett of pies - the ugliest sexiest pie I’ve ever made.

My biggest mistake was overbeating the egg whites. I’d never done that before, and I always figured that you’d have to try awfully hard to actually get them to such a point. Turns out, not so much with the trying.

Another stellar move: after cooking the mango curd, I rinsed out a bowl to store it in the fridge for a bit, and I didn’t toss out every last drop of the rinse water, so when I poured in the curd, there appeared little pockets of non-curd liquid that I cursed at and mopped up with a paper towel. This was a Sunday afternoon full of pitfalls. I’m sure I avoided a few of them by cheating on the pie crust. (Store bought! I refuse to feel guilty. I have made hundreds of great pie crusts. Well, maybe tens. But I’ve put in my time. I can buy a frozen pie crust from Whole Foods now and again. So can you. It’s okay.)

In the end, after all my fussin’ and cussin’, when the pie came out of the oven, it was ugly as sin and just as good. The mango curd was strained not once but twice, making it super silky and light. The meringue has just a bit of sugar, and while I would recommend not overbeating the egg whites, this is proof that life goes on even when the albumen disagrees with you. I served this on a plate that’s seen five too many dishwasher cycles - it seems only fitting. And I’m eating it with ginger chips from Trader Joe’s. You could throw some powdered ginger in the meringue and/or the curd for the same effect. Or maybe crystallized ginger in the crust, if you eschew the frozen foods section and make your own crust. Ooh, that’d be good. You’d also do well to serve it with some toasted coconut. But don’t go makin’ it too pretty.

Lyle Lovett Sexy Ugly Pie
aka Mango Meringue Pie
makes 1 pie

1 good quality pie crust

2 large dead-ripe mangoes, peeled and roughly diced
quick squeeze of lemon or lime juice
1/2 cup plus 2 teaspoons sugar
pinch of salt
8 eggs, separated
2 tablespoons butter

Preheat to 400F. Prick holes in the pie crust with a fork and put in the oven to prebake until very lightly done, about 30 minutes. Set aside.

While crust prebakes, combine mango, lemon juice, 1/2 cup sugar, and salt in the blender, and puree until smooth. Add egg yolks and buzz it again. (We’ll use the egg whites in a little while.) Strain mixture through a sieve, discarding remaining pulp, and put it in either a very thick-bottomed saucepan or the top of a double boiler, with the butter.

Cook on low heat, stirring almost constantly, until mixture starts to thicken, 10-15 minutes. Strain it again. Let cool at room temperature, then pour into a bowl and cover with plastic wrap - make sure the plastic wrap is touching the whole surface of the mango curd, so no condensation occurs. Refrigerate at least an hour.

Preheat to 350F. Pour mango curd into prebaked pie crust and bake 50-60 minutes or until curd is still just slightly wobbly in the middle. Turn off the convection heat and fire up the broiler to high. Whip egg whites with remaining 2 teaspoons sugar until peaks form, then pile it on top of the pie, making sure to spread the meringue enough that it covers the edges of the filling. Broil until it starts to brown, then remove from oven and use your superhuman strength to wait until it cools a bit before you slice into it.

ps. Yes, I saw the Keri Russell pie movie.

Categories: baked · desserts · fruity · pies · summer

blueberry muffins with extra lovins

September 8, 2008 · 5 Comments

Hello dear Parsnippians! I bet you thought I disappeared, didn’t you? Ha! Fooled you. I am indeed still up and at ‘em - only now I’m in Portland, OR. Not Bulgaria, not Asheville, not in the stressville that was my life the week before I hauled it cross country to land in this strange utopia. But now I’ve got a job, an apartment, a (fancy) cell phone. So I’m set. I’ve got a couple of weeks before I start working, so I’ve been spending time getting to know the area. I drove out to Multnomah Falls last Tuesday - that’s where the top and bottom pictures are from.

Right now I’m crashing with a friend who’s got a giant, beautiful house within walking distance of the nearest Whole Foods - I only wish she were home more often so I could show my gratitude to her by cooking her more dinners! This morning I baked up some nice blueberry muffins and threw in some ginger and citrus peels. If I don’t scarf them down plain, I might take the time to spread some ginger pear butter on them - I made that a few days ago. You’ll get the recipe for that, too. Why not?

If you wanted to, you could veganize this by making the usual substitutions - but here’s an idea: use pear butter instead of the egg. Yes? Yes.

Blueberry Ginger Orange Muffins
makes 12

1 cup half-and-half
1/3 cup melted butter
1 egg
1/2 cup sugar
2 cups flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon sea salt
1 teaspoon grated fresh ginger
grated zest of 1 orange
grated zest of 1/2 lemon
60 or so blueberries

Preheat to 400F and grease 12 muffin tins. In a small bowl combine half-and-half, melted butter, egg, and sugar. In a large bowl sift together flour, baking powder, and salt. (If you use kosher salt, put that in with the liquids instead, to give it more chance to dissolve.) Combine the two and mix until it just barely comes together. Add ginger and zests and give it another couple of stirs.

Fill muffin tins half full with batter. Go through and put about 5 blueberries on each muffin. (This will keep you from getting purple streaky muffins, which would happen if you had mixed the blueberries in the bowl. This is especially needed with frozen blueberries.) Top with remaining batter. Bake ‘em for 20 minutes or until a tester comes out clean. Let sit for 2 minutes, then remove from pan.

Ginger Pear Butter
makes 1 cup

3 pears, peeled, cored, and roughly chopped
1/2″ fresh ginger, finely grated
juice and grated zest of 1/2 lemon
1/4 cup honey
1/4 cup water

Throw all that in a heavy-bottomed pan over medium heat until water comes to a boil. Turn the heat down to low, mash the pears up, and cook, stirring frequently, until it reaches a thick, spreadable consistency.

What you’re essentially doing here is cooking most of the water out of the pears, so you don’t need any grand cooking skills to do this - just patience. This is a low-n-slow dish.

Categories: baked · breakfast · fruity · quickbreads · snacks · summer · vegan

Spanikopita

August 18, 2008 · 3 Comments

In Bulgaria I made my share of banitsa, putting leeks or spinach in it whenever I had them. One day I put in a ton of spinach and an extra helping of yogurt, and when I took a bite, I said, “Oh! This is spanikopita!”

Spanikopita was always something that my mom made on special occasions or that I got to eat at the Greek Orthodox church’s annual festival, and really never more often than that. It seemed labor- and time-intensive, and I never had enough of a mania over it to want to spend the effort making it. Coming back to giant American refrigerators from my just-big-enough Euro chill chest is almost exhausting, but it does mean that I get excited about tossing in ingredients from major fridge rummages. This spanikopita got extra love from cream cheese, lemon zest, and a squeeze of orange.

The thing about spinach: it’s watery. When I’m baking with it, I prefer to get frozen spinach, because then it’s easier to control the amount of liquid in it. After you let it sit out in a collander for an hour or so to thaw, you’ve got to squeeze the ever-lovin daylights out of it, because if it lets out any of that water during baking, you’ll get a soggy mess and end up ordering pizza for dinner. So squeeze, and squeeze hard.

How unintimidating is spanikopita? So unintimidating I didn’t even look up a recipe. This is spinach and feta and phyllo dough. Nothing to freak out about. If I had covered this up while it was baking, the top leaves wouldn’t have fanned up this way, but I like that they did, so I skipped the foil. If you want a nice well-mannered spanikopita, though, cover this for 50 minutes and uncover for the last 10.

Spanikopita

1/2 pound feta cheese, crumbled
1 shallot, chopped
2 cloves garlic, minced
2 packages frozen spinach, thawed and strangled
1 cup whole milk yogurt (don’t use low-fat - that’s just watery)
2 eggs
a few gratings of nutmeg
6 ounces cream cheese, at room temperature
a squeeze of orange juice
zest of half a lemon
1/2 teaspoon kosher salt
a few heavy grinds of black pepper
phyllo dough
olive oil
toasted walnuts, roughly chopped

Preheat to 350F. In a bowl combine all ingredients except phyllo, olive oil, and walnuts. Drizzle olive oil over the bottom of a 9″x13″ baking dish and place 2-3 layers of phyllo in the bottom. Spread with 1/3 of the spinach mixture. Put 2-3 more layers of phyllo down, drizzle it with olive oil (you don’t even have to pull out the pastry brush! How easy is this?), and spread another third of the mixture. Repeat once more, then top off with another couple of layers of phyllo, topping off with another drizzle of oil - but this time, make sure you get the oil out on the edges too, since you don’t want them to get too dry in the oven. Pop it in for an hour. When it’s golden brown and bubbling, you’re good to go. Let it cool for about 10 minutes, then cut it up and serve garnished with walnuts.

Categories: baked · mains · one-dish meals

Pomegranate Molasses and Sheep’s Cheese Biscuits

June 16, 2008 · 6 Comments

Woke up this morning. Talked to my parents. Asked Dad, “What should I have for breakfast?” Dad said, “Um… pomegranates, scones, garlic.” I said, “Well, I could do the first two.”

Based on Crescent Dragonwagon’s biscuit recipe from Dairy Hollow Soup and Bread. These are great. Strong flavors pack a delightful punch. Drown them in honey. ‘Scuse my brevity - I’ve got to go eat more. Mmmph.

Pomegranate Molasses and Sheep’s Cheese Biscuits
makes 16

2 cups flour
1 tablespoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
1/3 cup cold butter, cubed
1/4 cup grated fresh sheep’s milk cheese
1/4 cup pomegranate molasses
3/4 cup milk
sesame seeds
honey, for serving

Preheat to 425F. Sift flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt together into a large bowl. Add butter and cheese and incorporate into the dry mixture with your fingertips, a pastry cutter, or two forks, until the whole thing is a little coarser than coarse cornmeal and a little finer than peas. Combine milk and pomegranate molasses and stir thoroughly; add about 2/3 cup of this mixture to the bowl and give it a few strokes with a fork. If it’s still too dry, add remaining liquid. This dough should barely hold together as you dump it out onto a floured work surface. (And I do mean barely. Proper biscuits require trust.) Pat it together into a square and use a pizza cutter to slice it into 16 pieces.

Why aren’t we making nice round biscuits?, you may ask. Because this method insures the least possible amount of dough handling. If you want to use up all your biscuit dough and you make circular biscuits, you’re going to have to do another couple of rounds of kneading the dough - which makes for a very Not Perfect Biscuit.

Sprinkle the top with sesame seeds, load these onto a baking sheet, and pop ‘em in the oven for about 15 minutes. Remove to a linen-lined basket and don’t be shy with that honey.

Categories: baked · breakfast · snacks

The Perfect Muffin: Matcha, White Chocolate, Rose Petals

May 4, 2008 · 7 Comments

This weekend, I went to the Artmospheric music and art festival, where I would have had a great time save the fact that there was inescapably loud pounding electronic music playing for 20 out of every 24 hours. I was so happy to be out in the middle of nowhere, on a stunning mountain in my favorite region of Bulgaria, but I am flabbergasted at the amount of sleep I did not get. I returned home last night, had a cup of tea, and slept for 10 hours. I’m still a bit hazy, so I’m just going to give you this muffin recipe and say that I don’t know how I ever lived a satisfactory life before I made these last week. Seriously.

Matcha Muffins with White Chocolate and Rose Petals
makes 12

2 cups flour
2/3 cup sugar
1 tablespoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
2-3 tablespoons matcha green tea powder
1 cup yogurt
1/4 cup oil
1 egg
petals of 10 dried rosebuds
3/4 cup white chocolate chunks

Preheat to 350F and butter a 12-cup muffin tin. In a large bowl sift together flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda, salt, and matcha powder. In a small bowl combine yogurt, oil, egg, and rosebuds. Let this sit for about 10 minutes to let the rose petals soften a bit, then pour wet into dry and mix until just barely combined. Fold in white chocolate and divide mixture evenly between muffin tin cups. Bake 15-20 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean, being very careful not to overbake. Eat.

Categories: baked · breakfast · pantry-dependent · quickbreads

Strawberry Goat Cheese Banitsa with Pecans

April 10, 2008 · 6 Comments

In Bulgaria we’ve got this thing called banitsa.

If you’ve ever been here, that last sentence just made you exhale like Homer Simpson at Krusty Burger. Banitsa is the ideal savory pastry. It’s similar to Greek spanikopita or Turkish byurek, but dough leaves called kori (a little thicker than phyllo) and the addition of Bulgarian sirene make this arguably one of the world’s best things to wake up to. There are a hundred variations but at its most common, it’s white cheese, eggs, and yogurt mixed together, rolled into kori sheets, made into a coil, then baked. You can add spinach, leeks, red bell pepper, pretty much anything you like. There are sweet banitsas, too, more often made in the colder months, with walnuts, sugar, and pumpkin or apples instead of cheese. Time spent in any Bulgarian city is practically uncountable if you haven’t found the best banitsa stand in town, and if you go to the village - you’ve got to find out which grandma’s oven draws the crowds.

Since I’m not really into publishing any straightforward traditional Bulgarian recipes, my neo-Bulgo twist on banitsa this week is one with sweetened cheese, strawberry jam, and an excuse to use up the last shipment of pecans from back home. (You could also use almonds or walnuts.) Instead of being formed into a coil, it’s layered, which dresses it up a bit and makes it look prettier when cut, but this is still a rather rustic dish. Again, if you aren’t anywhere near a Bulgarian grocery, you can use goat cheese instead of the sirene, and phyllo instead of the kori. Just make sure to do the usual phyllo treatment of brushing the layers with butter so that they don’t get dried out when cooking. You may have to trim the dough to fit your baking pan, which you can do it as you go - lay the whole sheets down in the pan, trim by running a very sharp knife along the edges, then cover with filling.

Strawberry Goat Cheese Banitsa with Pecans
makes about 16-20 squares

500 grams sirene (preferably dunavia) or 1 pound goat cheese
4 eggs
200 grams plain yogurt (about a cup)
1/3 cup powdered sugar
1/2 cup all purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
grated zest of 2 oranges
2 1/4 cups roughly chopped pecans
1 package banitsa or phyllo dough
1 cup strawberry jam
granulated sugar

Preheat oven to 400F. Heavily grease a 13″x9″ baking dish and set aside. In a large bowl mix together cheese, 3 eggs, and yogurt, blending until as smooth as possible. Sift in sugar, flour, and baking soda, and stir to combine. Add orange zest and 2 cups pecans, mix, and set aside.

Unroll banitsa dough and put 2-3 layers in the bottom of prepared baking dish. Spread with a quarter of the cheese mixture. Put down another 2 layers of banitsa dough and another quarter of the cheese mixture. Put down 2 more layers of dough, then spread all of the jam on. 2 more layers of dough, another quarter of the cheese, 2 more layers of dough, top off the cheese, 2 final dough layers. Whisk the remaining egg in a bowl and, using fingers or a pastry brush, coat top of banitsa with egg. (You’ll have a lot of egg left over. Mini-omelet?) Sprinkle with a little granulated sugar and remaining 1/2 cup pecans. Bake 30 minutes or until top is golden brown and edges are bubbling. Wait 10 minutes before cutting to serve.

Categories: baked · desserts · neo-bulgo · pantry-dependent

date beer bread with orange-ginger butter

March 29, 2008 · 3 Comments

So many good recipes come from scrounging up bits and pieces left over in the kitchen. Crescent Dragonwagon, easily one of my top five favorite vegetarians, talks about not just leftovers but “planned-overs”, intentionally making extra batches of one thing so that it can be used in a recipe for something else the next day. Making extra risotto to use in tomorrow’s risotto cakes, doubling up on the potato curry to make samosas soon after.

I do this when I remember to, and it’s a great idea (in fact, I’ll be trying out some quinoa hash cakes later today with what’s in my fridge right now), but really the point of this entry is to talk about the stuff that you left sitting out last night and really want to do something with so you don’t feel guilty by throwing it out. Banana bread would be the classic example - the browner the bananas, the better bread they make - but I’m talking even more obsessive. A few days ago I didn’t finish a bottle of beer I had with dinner and, in an “omigod do you even realize how much food we greedy Americans throw away, like, every hour?” moment, I could not bring myself to dump these four malty ounces down the drain. So I made a quickbread with it and got my Resourcefulness Points for the day. In fact, I scrounged so well that I didn’t even have to go to the store to buy any packages of anything whose remaining contents I would have to use up again, thus bringing to a screeching halt the cycle of Overcapitalized Wanton Wastefulness. (OWW.) I am truly amazing.

This bread has a lovely flavor - a deep sweetness from the dates, yeast from the beer, and the orange zest in the butter just makes the world a better place. (Instead of butter you could also use some strained yogurt.) Orange zest is my favorite last-minute addition; I put it in French toast, pancakes, rice pudding, you name it. On measuring dates, I used displacement - I put the beer and milk in a Pyrex measure and then added dates until the liquid rose to 1 1/2 cups. If you don’t have a blender, you could get by with chopping up the dates instead before you add them to the liquids.

The recipe I made was a little dense, so for you I’ll write down to add an egg to the batter, even though that’s not what I did myself. You and I both know it will work without me having to make it again to show you, plus I’m out of dates after making Elle’s date bars and I’ve got to move on to other kitchen stashes to use up. Lemme tell you right now, this bread is not going to be pretty. But it sure will taste good.

Date Beer Bread

2 cups all purpose flour
1 cup whole wheat flour or all purpose flour
1 tablespoon baking powder
2 tablespoons sugar
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup flat beer (I used Tuborg Christmas Brew)
1/2 cup milk
1/2 cup fresh pitted dates or rehydrated dried dates*
1/4 cup oil or melted butter
1 egg

Preheat to 375F. Butter an 8″ cake pan or a 9″x5″x3″ loaf pan. In a large bowl whisk together flours, baking powder, sugar, and salt. Combine beer, milk, and dates, and with a blender (I’ve been using a stick blender and don’t know if I can ever go back!) buzz the three up until the dates are comletely pureed. Add oil and egg, mix well, and add this to the dry ingredients. Mix until just combined (dough will be thick) and empty into prepared pan. Bake 30-40 minutes or until a tester inserted in the middle comes out clean. Serve with…

Orange Ginger Butter
makes enough to serve with the above recipe

2 tablespoons softened butter
1/8 teaspoon finely grated orange zest
pinch of sugar
pinch of powdered ginger

Stir ‘em up. Done. I didn’t actually measure any of this, so you don’t have to either.

*Just put a few dates in boiling water and cook until plump.

Categories: baked · pantry-dependent · quickbreads

Gingerbomb Cake

March 15, 2008 · 1 Comment

I’ve been spending some time lately working on a community cookbook - a compilation of Bulgarian and non-Bulgarian recipes from friends and colleagues. Last year I overhauled the previous cookbook that had circulated among us for awhile, and this year I’m just tidying things up a bit. Another American friend, who will stay here for a year longer than I, has been helping shape it up, and she came over last weekend for a joint editing session. It goes without saying that we cooked - some nice pizza on Friday, some fancy sandwiches on Saturday - but the star of the weekend would be the recipe for a triple-ginger bread that she toted along from allrecipes, that we of course tweaked. Fresh grated ginger, dried ginger, and crystallized ginger form the trifecta of rhizome love that is this sweet, sticky, densely-flavored cake.

My favorite gingerbread recipe is the one from Baking with Julia that includes cocoa powder, coffee, and tons of ground black pepper. This is a bit too much for many, and I can accept that, but I can’t make any gingerbread now without adding just a pinch of black pepper - it adds a layer of heat that plays perfectly off that of the ginger.

Bulgaria friends and colleagues: this recipe will not be going in the cookbook, since you can’t easily get crystallized ginger or molasses here. But next week I will be posting something from the freshly-updated reference. I’m still not sure which recipe I’ll use, though, so if there’s anything you’d like photographed and talked about, kazhi.

Gingerbomb Cake

2 cups all purpose flour
1 cup whole wheat flour
1 tablespoon cinnamon
1 1/2 teaspoons ground cloves
1 1/2 teaspoons powdered ginger
1/4 teaspoon ground black pepper
2 teaspoons baking soda
3/4 teaspoon table salt
2 eggs, lightly beaten
1 cup white sugar
1 cup vegetable oil
1 cup molasses
1/2 cup apple juice
1 tablespoon grated fresh ginger
1/3 cup chopped crystallized ginger

Preheat to 350F (175C). Butter and flour a 10″ springform pan. In a large bowl sift together flours, cinnamon, cloves, powdered ginger, black pepper, baking soda, and salt. In a separate bowl combine eggs, sugar, oil, molasses, apple juice, and fresh ginger. Add wet to dry and mix until just combined. Fold in crystallized ginger. Pour mixture into prepared pan and bake for an hour or until a thin knife inserted in the middle of the cake comes out clean. Run a knife around the edge of the cake before releasing the sides of the pan. Serve warm.

Categories: baked · desserts · wintery

parsnips aplenty