Category: baking (Page 3 of 7)

Little Phyllo Pies With Feta & Parsley

May 21, 2014 / / 6 Comments

I love little savory pies.

They’re the perfect food to grab on my way to work because they’re easy to transport and don’t make a mess. Plus, I can eat them hot at my desk or cold. I think I’m on a mission to make a new type of little savory pie each week.

A long time ago my friend gave me the cookbook Baking: A Commonsense Guide. At first glance, it appeared to be a typical baking book but then I noticed recipes for friands, beef pie in a double crust, passionfruit and coconut cheese slice (bars) and digestive biscuits. The ingredient measurements are also listed in both grams and cups.

The book is actually published in Australia and I was excited to unearth it last week from a pile of boxes in our garage. Oh, the joys joys of moving.

Most of the recipes in this book are sweet, but it doesn’t neglect the savory. The recipe for phyllo pies stuffed with parsley and feta (borek) caught my eye because it called for minimal ingredients and looked like an easy Sunday afternoon baking project.

This was my first time working with phyllo dough. You can find it in the frozen or refrigerated sections at the grocery store. I bought a box of Athens brand for a few dollars at Target. The sheets of dough are as thin as gift wrap and packed in the box as two rolls.

Overall, I found phyllo very easy to work with and still have half the box to use. What would you make with an extra roll of phyllo? I’m dreaming about making baklava or Lebanese meat pies.

Cheese Borek
Adapted from the recipe for Borek in Baking: A Commonsense Guide, page 260. This recipe makes 24 little pies. You’ll have an extra pack of phyllo so you could easily double the recipe or save it for later. 

Borek

Ingredients:
Feta cheese, crumbled, about 14 ounces.
2 eggs, beaten lightly
Nearly a whole head of parsley leaves, chopped (I used flat, but I thin any type would do)
Black pepper, to taste
Nutmeg, pinch
Phyllo, one roll
Olive oil, melted butter, or both

Instructions:

  1. Pre-heat oven to 350℉.
  2. Combine the crumbled feta, eggs and parsley. Season with black pepper and nutmeg.
  3. Unwrap the phyllo and remove one sheet at a time. Cover the rest of the sheets with a damp towel.
  4. Lightly brush the first sheet with oil or butter. It might tear or crack which is OK because you’ll cover it with another sheet.
  5. Repeat this three more times so you have a stack of four, oiled sheets.
  6. Make sure the sheets are facing you the long way. Cut the stacked phyllo sheets into four even strips.
  7. Place a couple small spoonfuls of the cheese mixture into the bottom of the phyllo strip. Fold the bottom corner over diagonally and continue folding like a triangle. This doesn’t have to be perfect. Just make sure the edges get covered so the filling doesn’t leak. If you overfill, the triangles might burst at the seams.
  8. Place on a lightly greased sheet pan and bake for about 20 minutes or until both sides are golden brown. I flipped halfway through.
  9. Cool on a cooling rack if you have one so the bottoms don’t get soggy.

A Recipe For Cheater Runzas

May 10, 2014 / / 19 Comments

Rejoice with me! I found my old binder of favorite recipes.

It’s easy to misplace things when you move frequently. During our first move from the Twin Cities to Fargo, I packed away my old binder of recipes I collected from cookbooks, cooking classes, friends, and family. I have been looking for these recipes and old photos for three years. Finally, I found them at the bottom of a box underneath a stack of boxes in our garage.

I pulled out a series of handwritten recipe cards my cousin sent me when I graduated from college. She has two daughters and made little notes about how these were some of their favorites. Her recipe for runzas, little bread pockets filled with meat and cabbage, caught my eye. I’ve seen Runza Restaurant featured on television but have never encountered runzas in person. They seem to be more popular in other parts of the Midwest like Kansas and Nebraska. Jake and I love meat pies of all varieties, so I made them this weekend.

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Ally’s Virtual Baby Shower: Little Cream Puffs With Egg Salad

May 4, 2014 / / 3 Comments

I’ve attended plenty of baby showers but this is my first virtual shower. Iowa bloggers Stephanie of Been There Baked That and Yudith of Blissfully Delicious are co-hosting this virtual baby shower for Ally, of Ally’s Sweet & Savory Eats. I’ve enjoyed following all three of their food blogs and got to meet Ally and Stephanie at a blogger meet-up last fall. Ally graciously connected me with this group of bloggers and I’m excited to contribute a recipe to her virtual shower. We send our congratulations and best wishes to Ally and her family.

I recreated the savory, salad-filled cream puffs that I used to serve at Josie’s Coffee Corner Cafe in downtown Fargo, ND. Customers looked forward to the days the owners offered them as summer, chalkboard specials.

Filled Puffs

Cream puffs are made from pate a choux, a dough you begin preparing on the stove top. I made it for the first time when I baked Lois’ Cream Puff Sticks and was happily to find it wasn’t as difficult as I anticipated. Most recipes for cream puffs are essentially the same. Really precise recipes will instruct you to weigh the ingredients and measure out a cup of eggs. I’ve followed less precise recipes with good results.

For this batch, I followed Steamy Kitchen’s recipe and made my own piping bag from a ziplock.

Piping Bag

You can also fill these pastries with sweet foods like fresh whipped cream and berries. I like making my pate a choux dough with very little (or no) sugar in either a sweet or savory application, but you could certainly add more sugar.

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Cream Puffs Ingredients:
1/2 cup water
1 stick butter
1 cup flour
4 large eggs
1/2 teaspoon sugar
1/2 teaspoon salt

Instructions:

  1. Preheat oven to 425℉.
  2. In a saucepan, melt the butter in the water over medium heat.
  3. Stream in the flour and incorporate it into the water-butter mixture by stirring quickly. Let the dough cook briefly and remove from heat.
  4. Allow dough to cool until it’s warm. For quicker cooling, transfer dough to a stand mixer bowl or wait longer before adding the eggs. If you add the eggs when the dough is too hot, they will scramble.
  5. Once the dough is not screaming hot, quickly stir in one egg at a time. Don’t be alarmed when the dough becomes slippery and separates. Just keep stirring and it will come together.
  6. Stir in the salt and sugar.
  7. Pipe the dough onto a greased baking sheet (or one lined with parchment) or drop by the spoonful. Leave a little room for them to expand. Try to make the dough balls the same size and squish down any points to avoid burning.
  8. Bake for about ten minutes. Reduce heat and bake small cream puffs for about 20 minutes until they are puffed and golden brown. Remove earlier if you think they will burn. Larger puffs may take about 30 minutes.
  9. Final words of advice: Try not to open your oven too often, otherwise you’ll release the heat. If you undercook the cream puffs, they will deflate and have a gummy texture inside. Look for a pronounced golden brown color.
  10. Cool completely before storing in a bag or container. I store them in the fridge after a day.

Jeni’s Favorite Egg Salad
Egg salad is another food that we made so often in culinary school that I can practically make in my sleep. I never measure, but add whatever I like and taste as I go. Here is my not very precise method:

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Ingredients:
Hard boiled eggs
Mustard
Mayonnaise
Onion, finely minced or grated
Celery, finely chopped
Pickle, your favorite variety finely chopped (or relish). I used part of a sweet and spicy pickle spear.
Salt
Black Pepper
White Pepper
Dill

Instructions:

  1. Prepare as many hardboiled eggs as you’d like. I used six for a small bowl of egg salad. It’s an adequate amount to fill one batch of cream puff halves. I put the eggs in a saucepan and cover with cold water. I bring them to a boil, remove the pot from heat, cover and let sit for about 12 minutes. Then, I submerge them in ice water until cool and peel.
  2. Cut eggs in half. Add the yolks to the bowl and chop the whites.
  3. Add a couple dollops of mayonnaise, a good squirt of mustard, and minced onion, celery and pickle. Season with salt, black pepper, white pepper and dill.

A Tale Of Two Cookie Doughs: One Made From Beans & One Made From Butter

April 13, 2014 / / 0 Comments

Within the past week, I made cookie dough made with beans and cookie dough made with butter.

Beans
This story began in Chicago while we were staying with my cousin and his family. Sara mentioned that she makes a “healthy cookie dough” made from beans that her kids just love. Jake was especially intrigued and, when we returned home to Iowa, asked many times if I could make it. I usually prefer savory over sweet and avoid recipes with healthy substitutions (like swapping applesauce or pumpkin for butter) so I was very wary of making this.

Sara prepares Healthy Cookie Dough Dip from the blog Chocolate Covered Katie and recommends using half the amount of sugar.

My healthy cookie dough smelled slightly beany but did actually taste like a peanut buttery cookie dough. I can see how this could make a nice snack or dessert for kids, especially when using less sugar. I probably wouldn’t make this again just for the two of us, but would if we have a kids someday. Cookie dough is not a treat that I enjoy eating more than a bite of and it makes too much for Jake. 

The original recipe recommends using a food processor. We don’t have one so here’s my take using a blender. I added salt and sugar to taste, with just enough milk to facilitate blending. 

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Ingredients
1 can chickpeas/garbanzo beans
Salt, a couple pinches or to taste
Baking soda, a pinch (not sure what this does)
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1/4 cup nut butter (we used natural, sugar-free peanut butter)
3 teaspoons oats
Brown sugar or honey to taste
Milk, enough to allow the mixture to blend (we used almond milk)
Chocolate chips

Instructions
Add the beans, salt, baking soda, vanilla, peanut butter and oats to a blender. Add about a 1/4 cup of sugar and a couple splashes of milk. The mixture will be thick and difficult to blend. Alternate between pulsing and adding splashes of milk. Stop the blender often and scrape the mixture around with a spoon. The dough won’t be as smooth as if you had made it in a food processor, but it will be good enough as long as you don’t add too much milk.

Taste it and decide if you want to add more sugar and salt. Stir in chocolate chips.

Butter
When I worked at Josie’s Coffee Corner Cafe, before moving to Iowa, I especially liked their Chocolate Chipper cookies. They differed from ordinary chocolate chip cookie because they contained puffed rice cereal and coconut and had a shortbread texture. I can’t just pop over to Fargo any more, so I tried this recipe for Oh My D-Lux Chocolate Chip Cookies on Food.com hoping they’d turn out similarly.

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I followed this recipe as written, except I added a 1/2 teaspoon of salt. Even though I used salted butter, they were a little bland. If you choose to make them, I’d recommend adding a whole teaspoon of salt. Also, once you drop the dough onto the cookie sheets, smash it down. The cookies don’t spread much during baking and flattening the dough balls ensures the bottom doesn’t burn before the top gets cooked through and golden brown.

Don’t get me wrong, we are enjoying these cookies and I love the crunch from the cereal, coconut, and pecans. However, they did not taste like those Chocolate Chippers I remember.

Oh well, I’ll just have to bake another batch of cookies, later. In the name of research, of course.

Our Favorite Slow Cooker Corned Beef & Cabbage Meal

March 22, 2014 / / 2 Comments

I took the plunge and prepared my first corned beef and cabbage meal for Saint Patrick’s Day.

It turned out well and made us realize that corned beef is not just for the holiday. Corned beef is for anytime.

Since Jake and I have been together, we’ve visited restaurants on St. Patrick’s Day to order corned beef and cabbage meals. The thought of cooking my own corned beef intimidated me until I saw how easy it is to prepare in a crock pot.

A reader, Stu, recommended covering it with water, sprinkling over the seasoning packet, and adding baby red potatoes and carrots.

photo (7)
Cook on low for six hours, add cabbage wedges, and cook on high for another  hour, serving with butter for the veggies.

I also gained some inspiration from Martha Stewart and tossed in some onion and dried thyme. This method worked perfectly.

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Point vs. Flat Cut?
If you have never bought corned beef, you’ll notice your grocery may sell point or flat cuts with a significant price difference. I was only able to find one brand, but I’m sure you can find more in larger cities. We bought our point cut for $7, as opposed to $16.

Afterwards, I learned the point is fattier than the flat and less uniform in shape. But if you are slow cooking it, who cares about its shape? It may be fattier, but at least it won’t dry out. You can always remove the excess fat after it’s done cooking.

We feasted on corned beef for several more meals. As for the last little bit of meat, I shredded it and placed it on top of a frozen cheese pizza. This should be a thing. Corned beef on everything, please.

Soda Bread
We dunked hearty slices of Ina Garten’s Irish soda bread into the corned beef’s broth.

soda bread collage.jpg

I made a few small changes by adding less sugar, substituting lemon zest for orange, and raisins for currants. This also turned out well, though it tends to become more crumbly and dry each day its left over. My only complaint is that the raisins on the surface of the bread got burnt so I picked them off.

Did you make a corned beef meal? What are your favorite cooking methods?

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