Shopping Organic

Organic food is a hot topic in our group of friends right now. We've had a lot of discussions about the benefits, practicality, and cons of the organic push. I thought I would share how I determine when to go organic or not:

http://ecologiquedesign.files.wordpress.com/2011/01/dirty-dozen1.jpg

I printed this little guide out and keep it in my wallet; no fuss at all, and I can pull it out and see right away if I need organic or not so much. It's a great place to start for learning about organic food and the difference between harmful and not-so-harmful pesticides. Hopefully it can help you too!

Crescent rolls by hand, from scratch: you can do it!

Once upon a time, I wanted to learn to make bread. Naan, soft pretzels, baguette, simple dinner rolls; the things I tried making usually turned out tough and, while good when warm, not so good the next day. Then I made this crescent roll recipe, and the world was beautiful. They were airy, soft, and turned out the first time. I froze them to eat over the next few weeks and they were delicious once thawed again--food you can freeze is a college student's dream.

I don't have a bread maker or a Kitchenaid, so if you don't either, you can still do it. Take chances and be creative!

For this crescent roll recipe, as with any bread recipe, you want to set aside your yeast in warm water immediately so it will be frothy by the time you need to add it. For this recipe, you'll put 2 T of yeast in 1/2 cup of warm water. (Usually a yeast mixture is just water and yeast, though sometimes a recipe will tell you to add sugar.)

Start by putting 1 cup milk and 1/2 cup butter in the microwave--heat it up until the butter is melted.

Transfer this to a mixing bowl and add 3 beaten eggs (see below) (I whisked mine in a bowl with a fork). To the mixture you'll want to add 1/2 cup sugar and 1 teaspoon of salt.

To this, add the yeast mixture that should be bubbly by now.

Now you want to start adding your flour. This is the hardest part to get the hang of when making bread by hand. If you dump in all the flour the recipe calls for, it may be too much. I've made a lot of crappy bread this way. Instead, I usually add half of the flour the recipe calls for, mixing it in well. After this, I add half cups of flour at a time until I find the right amount.

This is what the dough looked like after I had added two cups of flour:

Still pretty soupy, but good and bubbly. I continued to add flour a little bit at a time until the dough started to naturally form a ball, pulling away from the sides. (If you're doing this in a Kitchenaid with a dough hook, it will do the same--pull away from the sides and form a ball on the hook.)

Once the dough starts to do this, you want to pull it out of the bowl and start to knead it. There will not be enough flour in the dough, it will be very sticky. You want to start out with a lot of flour on the counter (see below) because you're still adding flour to the dough by kneading it in.

Dump the dough out of the bowl onto the flour. I also add flour on the top and try to coat the outside with a thin layer of flour so I can work with it. It may still be sticky, but as long your hands, the counter, and the outside of the dough ball are floured, you can work with it.

If you're unsure of how to knead dough, look up a quick tutorial online. The basic idea is to fold the dough over on itself and continue to work it until it's malleable and smooth. Kneading is important for further activating the yeast and making the final texture of the bread the right one.

Your dough should be soft and shouldn't crack or rip when you knead it. If it does, you've added too much flour, or it isn't mixed well enough.

When you have kneaded all of the flour into the dough, you will need to add more if it's still too sticky.

This is what you want to avoid, the dough sticking to the counter (or your hands):

Add more flour as needed to prevent this from happening. I usually add mine right under the dough and knead the dough onto it.

Another oops:

Any dough recipe will recommend a kneading time, but you should adjust it as needed. You will know your dough has enough flour in it when you can knead it without it sticking to the counter. It may still be (and should still be) a little sticky, but not so much that it sticks like the pictures above. It should bounce back like one of those foam mattresses they have the infomercials for. Once it has enough flour, I usually knead it for five to ten more minutes for good measure.

When your dough is ready and well kneaded, you want to form it into a ball. You can do this by tucking the dough in on itself.

There will be uglies on the bottom (below; these will smooth out when the dough rises like a balloon smoothes out when you blow air into it), but there should be a nice dome on top (above).

When I set my dough aside to rise, I usually put it right back into the bowl I mixed it in. I don't even scrape it out or anything; just spray it well with Pam and plop the dough in, dome side up.

Spray the top of the dough ball with Pam as well, and cover it with a hand towel so the dough can rise without becoming hard or crusty.

When you let dough rise, the rule of thumb is that it should be at least double from its original size. A good starting point is one hour, but I've last time I made this recipe, I let them rise for two and a half hours because I left the house and went to dinner. If your dough isn't rising, it may need to be in a warmer place. Set it aside, though, set a timer and you're free to go off and do something else.

 When the dough is doubled in size, drop it onto a floured or greased surface. I spray my counter with Pam before I roll it out. If you halved the recipe, you'll have one circle to roll out; if you made the full recipe, you'll have to divide the dough in two and roll out both pieces.

 (Glamorous college life: large cup as a rolling pin.)

 Once you've rolled out the dough (it should be a centimeter thick), spread the entire thing with a thin layer of butter. Use a pizza cutter to slice the dough as you would a pizza; how many slices you have will affect how large your end rolls are, as well as how long you'll have to bake them for. I'd recommend 16 slices the first time--it will make a pretty standard sized crescent roll.

 Roll each piece from the outside toward the inside to give it that crescent roll look.

 As you can see, one batch will make plenty of rolls. Make sure not to crowd them, because after you form and place them, you'll let them rise again for an hour. Cover them and let them double in size. I learned the hard way that you shouldn't touch the rolls after they've risen for that extra hour in their form, because moving them after they've risen will literally deflate them. Place them and let them rise how you want to bake them.

 These rolls are wonderful. I put mine in ziplock bags and place them in the freezer as soon as they're cool enough. When they thaw, it's just as if they're fresh.

You won't regret trying these!

Nutella Frosted Chocolate Cupcakes

It's time to resurrect this blog, and I'm not sure there's an appropriate way to do it except with chocolate.

Also, Jessica graciously offered to trade dinner for chocolate baked goods, so this one's for her. For her chocolate cupcakes, I used this recipe and adapted it slightly because I don't have vinegar. When I look fro a recipe, I simply google what recipe I want and find the one with the highest ratings. Many great baking websites will display the number of stars the recipe's been voted right in the search results. Look at how many  votes there are, and how highly they've voted it. It's never gone wrong.

Another draw to this recipe that there are no animal or dairy products, which can be a health draw. (Or, if you simply don't have eggs or milk in the house, recipes such as these are great finds for using what you do have.)

Here's the adaption:  lemon juice instead of vinegar. You could also use milk instead of the water that's called for.

This recipe simply instructs, "mix," but I mixed the wet ingredients in first. Many recipes will call for you to mix the wet ingredients and add in the dry ingredients. The reason is that you can then slowly whisk (not mix with a spoon or spatula, but whisk) the dry ingredients in to prevent lumps, which will become hard lumps in your baked cake.

Now we need to have a word on bubbles. Bubbles are seriously bad for your cake batter. A great way to get the bubbles out of the batter is to pick up and drop the container on the counter. I would recommend spooning the batter into the cake pan or muffin tin before doing this, since spooning it in will mix air into the mixture again anyway. Do this a few times and right before you slip them into the oven, and you will have better cake from scratch. (I still cannot figure out how box cake mixes manage to come out fluffy every single time... they're pretty hard to mess up. Use this tip when making from scratch though, for fluffy, good cake.)

Remember to stick one (lovingly) with a toothpick, knife, or fork to make sure they're done when they come out of the oven. Stick the largest muffin / cupcake because it will take the longest time to bake. 

I decided to frost them with more chocolate--Nutella. I looked up several different Nutella frosting recipes, but decided to settle on using straight up Nutella, which it looked like many other bakers had used (and anyone would love). I would recommend heating up the Nutella so it will spread more easily.

Delicious!

Buffalo Wings

I don't care what you say: this is a baked good. It is placed in a glass pan and baked in the oven. So it's not a dessert, nor is it sweet.

I am currently addicted to Frank's Red Hot Buffalo Chicken Dip.

I find it interesting that something made out of so many things that I consider nauseating (cream cheese, blue cheese dressing) can turn out tasting so good! And what I like most about it is that this dip tastes just like buffalo wings. It's delicious.

I don't even know why I try to pretend while walking home from class that I'm going to eat something other than the entire casserole dish of buffalo dip in the fridge. In fact, that is what I just did. Not even kidding. I made it last night at about 7pm, shared some with Marie and Megan, put it in the fridge, had some as a midnight snack... and ate the rest of the entire thing just now for lunch. It's not even a food group. It's terrible for you. I pretty much just ate an entire block of cream cheese and half a cup of blue cheese dressing. But it's so good that I don't even care.

Make it. Make it now. And then invite me over so I can eat the majority of it for you.

Chocolate Orange Cupcakes

This blog hasn't been updated since well before the holidays, so I wanted to come back in with a bang. Warning: this post is a lot of going on about subtle tricks and tips, so it's a longer one. Still, if you really are looking for some good tips, hopefully this can help.

For the cake recipe, I half this 1-2-3-4 recipe of Paula Deen's, which I've used before. When I make cupcakes I usually use a box cake mix, because they taste just as good and are easier to handle. This is a good, easy cake mix, though, that I'd recommend to any beginners.

A quick word on "creaming butter and sugar." You will see this in many baking recipes. Something I've learned from my own experience is that you need to make sure you beat the butter for long enough. If you have enough butter (1 cup+) you can beat butter own its own. Most recipes, though, will call for you to beat sugar or powdered sugar or something similar with it. If it's less than a cup, like 1/2 cup (1 stick) I used for this recipe, it's helpful to add the sugar so there's something there to actually mix. In any event, make sure you beat the butter mixture for several minutes. Down below is a picture of my butter-sugar mixture after I beat it for 1 minute:

 And here it is after I beat it for a full 6 minutes:

You can (hopefully) see the difference in how fluffy it is. The air in your batter will make a big difference for many recipes. You can tell when the mixture has doubled (or more) in size. Sometimes I'll be mixing mixing mixing and look down and, "Oh! That definitely fluffed up." You can't over cream butter, so if you're not sure, just add a few more minutes to be safe.

One thing I've started doing is putting batter or frosting into ziploc bags and using them as piping bags. Since I was making cupcakes, and not a round or sheet cake, this was a handy and much cleaner to portion the batter into the baking cups. Simply snip a corner off and you can push the dough/frosting/whatever out. So easy and nice!

For my frosting recipe, I had to improvise. In the modern days of cooking with online recipes, I can be difficult to find the right recipe.

A really easy job of this is to find a highly rated recipe online. Look for recipes with five stars and a lot of ratings (in the hundreds). However, sometimes you can't find a recipe you want that has five stars and a lot of ratings, like with my orange frosting recipe search, and you have to decide to ditch it or fix it.

It's always a good idea to read the reviews recipes get. Even highly rated recipes have problems that get mentioned in the reviews. You'll find that some things people had a "problem" with (i.e. "I didn't like the nuts in this recipe," "This recipe didn't make as much as I wanted," "This recipe wasn't what I expected") are not things that would be problems to you. Other times there might be problems that you just need to be aware of or that you might want to change.

For example, I finally decided on this orange frosting recipe. The recipe only has three reviews (a minuscule number), but it used all the ingredients I had (i.e. butter and not cream cheese) when I had limited ingredients to work with. The two complaints in the reviews were that the flavor wasn't strong, and that the frosting wasn't thick enough.

Also remember to take reviews with a grain of salt, but to keep them in mind.

After looking at other recipes and deciding that this one was still the best suited to my ingredients, I decided to go ahead with this recipe. As I made it I paid attention to the problems that might come up (I wouldn't recommend changing a baking recipe before you make it as written in case it turns out okay in the first place). While I didn't want an overly strong orange flavor in the first place, I did end up adding a teaspoon of orange peel and 2 additional tablespoons of butter. The flavor was good, and not overpowering or artificial, and the frosting was so thick that it peaked like beaten egg whites.

Here's the modified recipe I ended up with:
5 Tb Butter (added 2 Tb from original recipe)
3 3/4 C Powdered sugar
5 Tb Orange Juice
2 1/2 t. Orange peel (added 1 t. from original recipe)
2-3 Shakes of salt

The frosting turned out pretty well. I put it in a ziploc bag (just like my cake batter) in the fridge while the rest of my cupcakes finished baking. I'm notorious for frosting things before they cool, but I've found that refrigerating frosting while everything else bakes will help it to thicken even more and be easier to work with.

My orange zesting set up:

 Cupcakes fresh out of the oven (I over baked this batch by about 2 minutes):

 Piping in the second batch of cupcakes:

 This is the frosting after I added the orange and salt and beat it for an additional 3 or 4 minutes:

 You can see how thick it is:

 Aaaand this finished product (I also piped the frosting on with a ziploc):

 

A few last notes on polishing up your cupcakes:

Keep it in mind that you may not always have enough frosting to frost all the cupcakes your cake recipe makes. I usually frost my best cupcakes first, going down in quality, so that all the best cupcakes were frosted.

If you want to add some kind of garnish on the top, just be mindful of the effect it will have on the overall cupcake. I considered adding chocolate flakes to the tops of these cupcakes, but decided against it since there was already a lot of chocolate in the batter. I also considered more orange zest, but decided against that because peel tends to bleed over time and can look strange after a day or two. Always experiment, though, and do whatever you think is fun.