A mini batch of lemon cupcakes with cream cheese filling

I really enjoy making cakes, but the problem with baking a whole cake is that then you have to eat it, which can take a while when you live in an apartment with only one other person.  I've tried to solve this problem by making tiny cakes (seen previously in my recipe for chocolate beet cake).  I have a whole backlog of tiny cake recipes and photos, which I'll eventually turn into an entry which will pretty much be an ode to the 6"x2" round Magic Line cake pan.

Two 6" round layers are equivalent to one 9" round layer, which is still a decent amount of cake.  So this time, when feeling the baking inspiration, I decided to make a tiny batch of cupcakes.  The cake recipe is based on the yellow cake recipe from The Cake Bible by Rose Levy Beranbaum.  The cream cheese filling is based on my vague memory of the last time I made black bottom cupcakes.

Cream cheese-filled lemon cupcakes
(makes a small batch, approximately 6 cupcakes)

Cupcakes:

combine in a medium bowl:
1 cup sifted flour
1/2 cup sugar
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt

combine in a small bowl or measuring cup:
2 egg yolks
1/3 cup milk
1/2 teaspoon vanilla

Add 4 Tablespoons of very soft butter and half of the milk & egg mixture to the flour.  Stir to moisten the flour.  Add the rest of the liquid and beat by hand for a minute or two.

Stir in the zest from one lemon.

Filling:

3 oz. cream cheese, room temperature
1 egg white
1 Tablespoon sugar

Beat together with a fork until smooth.

Fill the cupcakes halfway, then drop on a heaping spoonful of cream cheese.  Top off with batter, to a total of 2/3 full, trying to cover up the filling as much as possible.

Bake for 20-25 minutes at 350 degrees.

My cupcakes ended up slightly overfilled, with the tops spilling over the edges; it might be better to make 7 or 8 cupcakes instead of 6, but I suppose it depends on the exact size of your pan.  These cupcakes aren't overly sweet--anyone with a real sweet tooth might prefer them frosted.  And really, you could make them into any other flavor of cupcake, as well--just replace the lemon zest with some other sort of fruit zest or extract.

A Salad Named Tuna

I'm a bad, bad man. I have been meaning to post with the best of intentions, and yet, here I am, stranger to the world of the foodblog. However, with provident convenience, I come with amends in the form of tuna salad, which is hopefully not on the list of Foods Lisa Avoids With Vengeance (FLAW-V, not to be confused with its predecessor, Foods Lisa Avoids With Irrational Vengeance, or the next form, Foods Lisa Avoids With Vengeful Intent). But I digress. This is not about me. Well, it is, but it's really about a part of me, which is my love for tuna salad. I blame this weakness on my father, whose tuna salad is just too delicious. I remember being but a wee child (yeah, I busted that phrase out), with a roll stuffed to the gills with tuna salad. With a trophy like that I had no qualms about eating something the size of my face, and trust me: I have a big face. However, I don't just faceroll for any salad. A great salad is harmony, a tale of taste and texture and color that appeals to the senses. Put this way, plain, insipid salad ('I popped a can'--we've all been there) is a tragedy in three parts, the kind that's best left halfway through. So without further ado, I share the following recipe/technique as adapted from The New Best Recipe, poked and prodded by my own history--more complex than your 'pop and mix' common tuna, but worth the work.

Hearty Tuna Salad

2-3 Tbsp of lemon juice
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp ground black pepper
1 tsp dried dill

1 small clove garlic, minced
1/2 small red onion, minced
3 celery ribs, washed and minced

3 cans of solid chunk tuna packed in water (no cat food. you know the type.)
5 hard boiled eggs (don't worry; I'll tell ya how)

1/2 c mayonnaise
1 Tbsp chopped fresh parsley

In a large bowl or container (the one you'll be storing your tuna salad in is fine), add the lemon juice, salt, pepper, and dill, and whisk together with a fork.

Get your eggs ready by placing them in a medium saucepan and covering them with about 1 inch of cold water (aka, if the eggs are at the bottom, there's roughly 1 inch water above the egg).
Turn the heat to medium high and let the water come to a boil (eggs inside, water should be bubbling vigorously, not simmering or simply forming bubbles). At that point, take the saucepan off the heat and cover, allowing the eggs to rest for about 10 minutes. When ready, remove the eggs from the hot water with a slotted spoon and place in a bowl with cold water. (If your saucepan is a simple metal saucepan with no nonstick coating, you can just carefully move it to the sink and run cold water over the eggs that way.)

While waiting for the eggs (water coming to a boil and then letting the eggs rest), chop your garlic, onion, and celery. Open up all of your tuna and empty the cans into a colander in the sink.

Using your hands, break the tuna down into finer pieces/shreds--just pinch away like St. Paddy's at the larger clumps and they should easily flake out. (If your tuna is green, you should seriously reconsider the whole affair.) Grab a handful of tuna and squeeze gently to remove more liquid (don't squirt yourself, which is surprisingly easy to do); add this to the bowl with the seasoning and repeat with the rest of the tuna. (Please, for the love of lunch, don't skip this process. A sloppy tuna is an unloved tuna; it's like somebody cried in your salad. More practically, it throws the flavor off and your bread will not be happy.)

Add the chopped garlic, onion, and celery to the bowl/container as well. Mix these together to distribute the seasoning evenly.

Your eggs should be decently cool by now; take an egg and remove the shell however you prefer. (Hammer not recommended, unless it's a Captain and then you're Very Very Lucky.) Slice in half, then each half into 4 wedges (lengthwise), then chop the wedges. However you do it, dice the egg. Do this for all 5 eggs. Add the eggs to the tuna mix and stir again; the yolk helps to absorb any leftover seasoning/liquid.

Chop your parsley and add it to the tuna mix with the mayo. Mix one more time! Taste and fine tune the seasoning. And you're done! Store. Devour. Faceroll.

(You can just eat the salad straightup, but if you're feeling Fancy, a good ol' tuna melt is just 15 minutes away--preheat the oven to 300F, grab yourself some bread, cheese (something akin to the Swiss family work work out fine) and tomato. Stack 'em in that order and give a good layer of tuna, bake for 10-15 and that's how it works.

Oh, and as is my tendency: here's the recipe cheatline: lemon juice, salt, pepper, dill + garlic, celery, onion + drained tuna + eggs + mayo, parsley. Yes. I made you read all that, first. Insanity is like tuna salad; it's made to be shared.)

Flashback to Florence

When I was in Florence for two weeks last summer (thanks NYU!) one of the nicest things we found was a restaurant off of Santo Spirito Square (name forgotten...).  In two weeks I ate there three times, and everything on the menu was wonderful.  One of my favorites, which I may not have ever ordered for myself--each entree was so gigantic and delicious that everyone at the table could take a taste--was risotto with zucchini and parmesan.  The risotto at the restaurant had some sort of delicious softy melty globs of parmesan cheese, but even without the melty parmesan globs Marcella Hazan's zucchini risotto definitely brought me right back to Florence.

Zucchini Risotto

2-3 large or 4-5 small zucchini cut into 1/2-inch slices
approximately 3 T chopped onion
1 clove garlic, finely chopped
2 T vegetable oil
2 T butter
2 cups arborio rice
1 cup broth + 4 cups water
salt to taste
1/3 cup freshly grated parmesan cheese

Put the chopped onion and 2 Tablespoons of oil into a large pot (we used our new dutch oven).  Turn heat to medium-high, and heat until the onion starts to become transparent.  Add the garlic and heat until it starts to color.  There's a lot of cooking still ahead, so err on the side of undercooking the onion and garlic at this point.

Next add the zucchini, and turn the heat to medium low.  Cook for about ten minutes, turning the zucchini occasionally so that they cook evenly.  Add a pinch of salt, and continue to cook for approximately 15 more minutes, until the zucchini turn a nice golden color.  While the zucchini is cooking, bring 1 cup of canned/boxed/whatever broth plus 4 cups water to a steady simmer in a pot right next to your risotto.

Once the zucchini is done, add one tablespoon of butter.  After the butter melts, add the rice and stir to coat it well with butter.  Turn the heat to high, and ladle in approximately 1/2 cup of simmering broth.  From this point on, stir constantly!

Scrape the sides and bottom of the pot to prevent the rice from sticking.  Whenever most of the liquid has been absorbed by the rice/boiled away, add another half cup.  If you run out of broth, heat up some more water and keep adding it to the rice.  The temperature in the risotto pot should be fairly high, so that the broth continues to boil when you add it to the risotto pot, but turn it down if it seems to be boiling away too quickly.

The risotto will be done when the rice is soft (not crunchy!) but still has a little bite to it--don't let it overcook into mush.  This should take approximately 20 minutes.  As it gets closer to done, add the broth in smaller increments so you don't accidentally end up with soupy risotto.  The goal is for a risotto that's still wet, but not runny and gross.

When the rice tastes just slightly underdone (approximately 2 minutes before it's done, according to Marcella Hazan--I guess you learn how to time it that exactly from experience?) stir in the second tablespoon of butter and the grated parmesan cheese, and stir!  Once it's cooked, remove it from the heat and add salt if needed.  I added at least a half teaspoon of salt, probably.  Don't leave this step out--the difference between under-salted and correctly salted was really obvious--all of the flavors become stronger, but it doesn't actually taste "salty."

Serve with additional grated parmesan on top.  Leftover risotto is significantly less delicious than fresh risotto, so eat up!  If you do reheat leftover risotto, be sure to add a little more water so it doesn't get dried out and gluey.  The internet tells me that you can make some sort of pancake out of leftover risotto, so perhaps that will be my next recipe!

Chocolate Beet Cake

What do you do with five pounds of beets? Obviously make them into cake.  This recipe (slightly modified) is apparently from Farmer John's Cookbook, but I found it in various places on the internet:

Beet Chocolate Cake:

4 oz unsweetened chocolate
3 eggs
1 cup vegetable oil
1 3/4 cups sugar
2 cups cooked pureed beets
1 T vanilla
2 cups flour
2 t baking powder
1/4 t salt

Bake at 375 F.

Begin by cooking enough beets to make 2 cups of puree.  We estimated randomly and ended up with the exact right amount, I advise doing the same.  Wash the beets, remove the tops and bottoms and any bad spots, and cut into quarters.  Place into a pot of water, and bring to a boil.  Simmer until the beets are soft (probably at least half an hour).  This probably removes all of the nutrients from the beets, but it's less of a pain than roasting them or cooking them in the microwave.

While the beets are cooking, melt 4 oz of unsweetened chocolate, broken into chunks, along with 1/4 cup of oil.  If you melt chocolate in the microwave, make sure to only heat it in short bursts and stir in between, or you'll ruin your expensive and formerly delicious chocolate.

After letting the beets cool a bit, remove the skins (pull them off if they come off easily, otherwise peel them).  Then puree!  A food mill works well; a blender or food processor would also do the trick.  And you are left with exactly 2 cups of beet puree.

Meanwhile, beat together 3 eggs and 1 3/4 sugar.  I recommend breaking the eggs perfectly in half:

Beat the sugar and eggs until they're fluffy, then mix in the remaining 3/4 cup of oil and the 1 T vanilla.  Next comes the most exciting part--adding the beets!  This actually is not a very exciting process, but will turn the batter into an exciting fuchsia color.

 

Mix for a while and enjoy the bright color, then pour in the melted chocolate.  I like to pour the chocolate in slowly because I'm always paranoid that the heated chocolate with cook the egg, and leave me with a batter filled with small pieces of scrambled egg.  There was a traumatic incident involving scrambled-egg-hot-chocolate when I was in college, that's all I want to say about that...but believe me, not at all delicious.

After the addition of chocolate, the batter continues to be an awesome purple/pink color that is somewhat disturbing.  Next, mix together the flour, salt, and baking powder, then add to the batter.  Mix just until the flour is incorporated, you don't want to overbeat the batter and end up with a tough cake.

After adding the flour, the batter should be a little lumpy, and now a weird purply-brown color, which means it's ready to bake!

Preheat the oven to 375F, and pour the batter into greased and floured cake pans.  I went with two 6" cake pans, plus a few cupcakes; the recipe would probably make at least one 9" round cake.  

Bake for approximately 40 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted near the center comes out clean.  Remove the cake from the oven and let it cool completely on a wire rack.

To make a layer cake, slice each cake horizontally with a bread knife.  Frost between the layers, and then cover with additional frosting.  Cream cheese frosting turned out to be delicious:

1 package cream cheese, softened

1/4 cup butter, softened

confectioner's sugar

Beat together the cream cheese and butter until smooth.  Add confectioner's sugar (at least 3 cups) until the desired frosting consistency is reached.  Add a small splash of milk if the frosting gets too dry.

If you want to feel like a giant, use a tiny spatula to frost your tiny cake!

Finally, this cake is best enjoyed in the sunshine, with a glass of milk.  The cake ends up slightly more red than a normal chocolate cake, and with the slightest hint of beets--although I'm not sure thatyou would immediately guess beets as the secret ingredient if you didn't know beforehand.

Lisa's Swedish Pancakes

My favorite thing, after dessert, is stealth dessert: things that technically sort of qualify as a real meal, but are just as delicious as dessert.  In some cases these meals can involve some actual nutrition.  This is...sort of one of those cases, as long as you're convinced of the healthfulness of eggs and butter in large quantities.  You could think of these pancakes as being just like scrambled eggs, with a little milk and flour added, except that that makes them sound really disgusting.  And instead of disgusting, these pancakes are delicious.

The magic of Swedish Pancakes is that they are super-thin, and a little crispy around the edges, and very tender.  They're sort of like crepes, but much more eggy.  They're not particularly sweet, but they are an excellent vehicle for sweet things.

I once found the perfect swedish pancake recipe online, but then could never find it again. As a result I've tried several recipes over the years, with varying amounts of success.  This time I think I've finally figured it out!  This is sort of a combination of the my grandma's recipe (which was her mom's next-door-neighbor's recipe) and some other random recipes from the internet, based on several rounds of trial and error.

Lisa's Swedish Pancakes

4 eggs, beaten well

2 c milk

4 T butter, melted

1 T sugar

1 1/2 c flour

Combine all of the ingredients and stir well--don't worry about overmixing.  Stir vigorously while you add the melted butter to the milk/eggs, to avoid any premature egg-cooking.  The butter will sort of congeal and tend to float on top, so give the batter a good stir before ladling out each pancake.

Cook the pancakes in a non-stick pan, on medium-low.  I used about 1/3 cup batter in a 10" pan.  The secret of Swedish Pancakes is to make them very thin--after ladling in the batter, immediately pick up the pan and tilt it around to spread the batter across the entire bottom of the pan as evenly as possible.

Cook until the pancake starts to set and the edges start to look a little crispy, probably not more than a minute or two, then flip and cook for another minute or so.  Both sides should be sort of unevenly golden brown.  Roll the pancake around something delicious and serve immediately!

Swedish pancakes are good with a combination of sweet and tart flavors.  Lingonberry jelly with whipped cream (or canned cranberry sauce with whipped cream) is delicious.  We've also had them with black currant jelly.  As always, I also recommend replacing the whipped cream with greek yogurt.  Dust with powdered sugar, and enjoy!

3 Awesome Cookies

One of my favorite things about christmas is the cookies.  This year we made an old favorite and tried a couple of new recipes, which I'll share here.  On the left, Mint Crinkles.  On the right, Pumpkin Cookies with Brown Sugar Frosting.  In the back, Citrus Slices (AKA the best cookies ever).

Citrus Slices

First up, Citrus Slices.  Probably my favorite cookies ever.  Everyone who doesn't hate citrus in general loves these cookies.  Plus they don't have eggs, which is good for people who are allergic.  You can decorate them to make them actually look like slices of citrus fruit, or you can pile on the delicious icing. I like to err on the side of deliciousness and laziness.  In fact I probably wasn't even the one to ice these cookies.

Cookies:

mix together until creamy:
    3/4 butter, softened
    1/2 c granulated sugar
    1/2 confectioner's sugar

add:
    1 t grated peel each from a lemon, lime, and orange
    2 T lime juice
    1 t vanilla

gradually mix in:
    2 c flour
    1/4 t baking soda
    1/4 t salt

just until blended.  Divide the dough in half and shape into 8-inch logs, about two inches in diameter.   Wrap in plastic wrap and refrigerate for at least 4 hours (or as long as you can stand to wait--basically it just has to chill so that it's firm enough to slice).  Cut into thin slices, about 1/4 inch thick, and place on an ungreased cookie sheet.  Bake 10-12 minutes (until slightly golden brown on just the edges) at 350 degrees.  Be careful: overcooking the cookies makes them too dry.

Icing:

1 T butter, melted
2 c confectioner's sugar
1/2 t vanilla
1 T lemon juice
2 T orange juice

You can make the cookies fancy by sprinkling citrus-colored sugar onto the cookies before baking. Then pipe the icing on in lines on the sprinkled side, to make the cookies look like sliced oranges and limes and lemons.  You can even put little frosting "seeds" on.  Or you can just put large quantities of icing on each cookie, because it's delicious.

Mint Crinkles

Mint crinkles were an experiment this year.  I ended up liking them a lot, because my love for mint is second only to my love of lemon.  Basically we made them because Anthony and I saw packages of pre-crushed Andes mints at the grocery store.

3/4 c andes mints

1/3 c shortening

1 c sugar

1/2 t baking powder

1/4 t salt

2 eggs

2 t vanilla

1 1/2 c flour

plus some mints to sprinkle on top

Melt the 3/4 cup of Andes mints (I recommend using the microwave, heating for short amounts of time and stirring between heatings) and then let the melted deliciousness cool for a few minutes.  Meanwhile combine the wet ingredients. Then stir in the cooled chocolate, beat in the remaining ingredients, and finally stir in the flour.  Chill 3 hours. 

After the dough has chilled, place 1 Tablespoon-sized balls of dough 2" apart on an ungreased cookie sheet.  Be sure to leave enough room between cookies, they spread out a lot. Bake 10 minutes at 350, or until edges are done and the tops are crinkly.  Take the cookie sheet out of the oven and sprinkle the tops of the cookies with mints, then bake for another minute to melt them.

Pumpkin Cookies with Brown Sugar Frosting

Actually my mom made these cookies and I didn't help at all.  But they were so delicious that I will share the recipe anyways, and maybe you can find someone else to bake them for you, too!

Cookies:

2 c butter, softened

2 c sugar

2 t baking soda

2 t baking powder

1 t salt

1 t cinnamon

1 t nutmeg

2 eggs

2 t vanilla

1 15 oz can of pumpkin

4 c flour

Drop heaping teaspoons 2" apart on an ungreased cookie sheet,and bake at 350 for 10-12 minutes.

frosting:

1/2 c butter

1/2 c brown sugar

1/4 c milk

1 t vanilla

2 3/4 c powdered sugar

Heat and melt the butter and brown sugar, stir in the milk and vanilla, and beat in the powdered sugar.  Frost cooled cookies.

All of these cookies are wonderful, and relatively easy to make.