Madhu Knits and Cooks

Relatively Low-Fat and Low-Calorie Chocolate Cake - and It Tastes Good!

For Superbowl Sunday, I prepared a mix of new dishes and MadhuKnitsandCooks.com favorites.  I made the Cook's Illustrated Classic Mac and Cheese for the first time to anchor the food fest, and prepared Fire-Roasted Tomato Salsa and Guacamole as appetizers.  I also made a home-made pizza with jalapenos and sliced garlic.

Finally, for dessert, I wanted to make something simple that I could prepare early in the day and that wouldn't be too calorie-laden given the previous food offerings.  I ended up settling on the Cook's Illustrated Light Chocolate Sheet Cake because it seemed easy enough to prepare, was 270 calories a slice, and called for ingredients that I had easily at home (though I substituted regular cocoa powder for the Dutch-processed).  

Although at first I thought I had overbaked, and thus ruined, the cake, that final product turned out wonderfully.  It was incredibly moist, tasted greater for the days that followed its preparation, and didn't need frosting for flavor - a little bit of powdered sugar was the perfect accompaniment.  I will definitely make this recipe again - it's a perfect last minute dessert to prepare for dinner or a potluck.

Banana Bread - Is There a Ceiling to How Great It Can Be?

I make a lot of banana bread, mostly because I buy bananas fairly frequently and then never eat them before they turn black.  I then either make banana bread or muffins right away, or freeze the ripened bananas for future baking.  

For the past several months, my go-to recipe has been the Martha Stewart Banana Bread recipe.  It's really, really good and I generally would not imagine deviating from it.  However, recently I had 3 frozen, ripe bananas and 3 black bananas on my countertop, so I decided to take a gamble and try the Cook's Illustrated Ultimate Banana Bread.  The Cook's Illustrated recipe calls for 6 bananas, which is generally far more than I ever have.  

In classic Cook's Illustrated form, their recipe is more complicated than one's standard banana bread recipe (including the Martha Stewart version) and involves cooking down some banana liquid.  Despite the longer process and need for far more cooking instruments, the result is really amazing.  Incredibly rich with banana flavor (remember, 6 bananas for one loaf!), a perfect crisp exterior and good consistency within the bread.  The presentation of the bread is also much nicer than one usually finds because one banana is sliced and placed on top of the bread before baking (perfect for a brunch potluck).  

So, all in all, I am very happy I decided to try the new recipe and will look forward to trying more because it seems like maybe banana bread can only get better and better?

Classic Mac and Cheese - Standard Winter Party Dish

Sadly, I never documented my recent making of the Cook's Illustrated Classic Mac and Cheese with photographs, so this will be a short post.  The recipe was easy to make and resulted in a very tasty mac and cheese (though not groundbreaking with only 2 cheeses used).  The only note-to-self for future attempts is that my broiler had my breadcrumbs on fire after about 3 - 4 minutes, so I should really be careful with higher casserole dishes in my current broiler.