Madhu Knits and Cooks

Super Soft and Moist Almond Flavored Cake

Cake flour, cake flour, did I truly bake wonderful cakes before you?  It's hard to believe that I did given how consistently great my cake flour cakes have been. 

This simple almond-flavored cake was no exception, producing an incredibly soft, moist and dense cake that could be enjoyed by adults and children alike with its smooth, simple flavors.  

I halved the recipe because I didn't have a particular occasion to make it for, and I also substituted low-fat milk, which didn't seem to have a large impact on the outcome of the cake.  I also increased the amount of almond extract to 1 tsp. to get a stronger almond flavor. 

The only thing I would change in the future is to reduce the baking time.  I baked the cake in a 9-inch cake pan for approximately 23 minutes, whereas 21 or 22 probably would have been enough (note how much the sides of the cake pulled in from the tin post-baking).

The recipe utilized the "paste" method of adding in the butter to the dry ingredients to form a sand or paste-like texture, and then adding in the other wet ingredients in thirds.

I don't know if I have done this method before, so it was an interesting approach for me to try.  Not sure if this is what led to the super moist cake?  More research and experimentation is clearly warranted!

Almond Shortbread Cookies - A Subtlety Sweet, Lightly Flavored Cookie

With leftover almond flour in my fridge from the wonderful Chocolate Orange Tart, I have had the opportunity to experiment with new almond flour-based recipes.  A recent attempt focused on the deceptively simple Almond Flour Shortbread Cookies, the dough for which can be made while your oven is pre-heating.

These cookies were sweet, but not sugary at all.  They were very lightly flavored from the almond flour and had the texture of a soft butter cookie, rather than a crisper traditional shortbread.  

I ended up baking the cookies for longer than the recipe time - about 14 - 15 minutes over 8 - 10 minutes - because of how long it was taking for the cookies to lightly brown. In hindsight, I think 13 minutes would have been enough.

These cookies ultimately didn't wow me, but I think they would be good to serve with an assortment of other cookies during a tea time or when I am looking for some sort of easy weeknight or afterthought of a dinner party dessert.

Easy, Different and Healthy Party Dip - Spiced Yogurt

Milk Street is quickly becoming one of my top recipe websites.  Chris Kimball has really captured lightning in a bottle the second time with this post-Cook's Illustrated venture.  My latest Milk Street recipe was their Spiced Yogurt Dip, which I made for a recent dinner party we attended.  

This healthy Greek-yogurt based dip had really interesting and unexpected spicy and sweet flavors, from a mixture of ingredients that included honey, coriander, turmeric, cumin, and red wine vinegar (I know - how did they come up with this list?!).  The recipe, somewhat unsurprisingly, was inspired by a Madhur Jaffrey Indian-dip, but the honey and vinegar definitely unique enough for repeated dips and discussion about what the underlying ingredients could be.

The dip also has the benefit of taking nearly no time to prepare, and it uses ingredients that are always in my pantry, including 2% Greek yogurt which I used in place of whole-milk yogurt.

The only downside of this dip was that its flavor profile wasn't quite to my taste.  The coriander in particular I found a bit overpowering (which I generally do with anything requiring more than a bit of this dried powder), but the others who had the dip really loved it.  And coupled with some sliced cucumbers and carrots, this really can be a fast, guilt-free addition to any gathering!

Chewy Cinnamon Chip Oatmeal Cookies - An Unexpected Children's Treat

For a child's birthday party recently, I decided to bake simple, partly improvised cookies.  My target eaters were the party's adults who I thought would be more attracted to the multiple, deep cinnamon flavors of the cookies than the children.  Instead, these cookies were not only all devoured by young children, but I also received multiple recipe queries from them as well!

In hindsight, cinnamon-infused snickerdoodles are a childhood favorite, so I guess I shouldn't have been that surprised.  In any case, their reaction means that these simple cookies will be a feature at future child-attended events.

The substitutions that I made to the recipe were: used butter exclusively instead of a butter / shortening mixture, substituted Vietnamese cinnamon for regular cinnamon, and added in cinnamon chips (from King Arthur Flour), which I eyeballed when mixing into the dough.

I formed cookies that were slightly larger than the recipe called for because I ended up with 17 dough balls instead of 22 - 24.

Correspondingly, I baked for these cookies for 14 - 15 minutes to accommodate their larger size.  The cookies burst with deep cinnamon flavors, and the texture was otherwise a standard, thin oatmeal chewy cookie.  I look forward to wowing children again with these!

The Lightest, Most Delicious Chocolate Cake - Cake Flour Forever!

With a recent King Arthur Flour online order, I reached the point that so many of us do of needing to add one more item to my cart to get free shipping.  Just a few dollars to avoid a much higher shipping fee.  I decided to try something different, so I added a box of cake flour to my cart. 

I've actually bought cake flour in the past, but it's always expired before I've had the chance to use it.  So fresh cake flour entering my apartment, what to do, what to use it in during its prime?

As you can tell from the above image, I didn't end up looking too far - just as far as the back of the box.  And what an endorsement of box recipes this cake ended up being.  It really was the simplest, lightest, fluffiest, and most delicious chocolate cake (ok, maybe not the most delicious, but felt like among the best light cakes I've made in some time).

And the best part?  The cake was a cinch to prepare - mix together dry ingredients, then wet, and then mix together.  No special instruments needed.  In fact, when I re-made the cake today, I used a simple spoon to do all of the mixing.  I also ended up not brewing coffee for the recipe, instead using 1.5 teaspoons of the KAF instant espresso powder mixed with water in the wet ingredients.  The extra dark color comes from Hersey's Special Dark Cocoa, which is a mix of dutched and non-dutched cocoa.

After about 33 minutes or so, this cake (1/2 of the recipe, baked in one 9-inch round cake pan) was done.  After several more minutes of cooling, it was ready to eat!  I really liked not only its light texture, but also the lightness of the chocolate flavor.  It was just slightly bitter, not too sweet, and was made complete with the addition of some vanilla gelato.

Collard Chips are the New Kale Chips (Maybe I'm a Few Years Late to the Trend)

A few years ago, collard greens replaced kale as the hot green superfood.  This declaration may not have been from a particularly reliable source of information, but instead from places like the Food Network.  Well, whatever collards are and however popular or trendy they may be, I learned that they make an equally delicious, if not more delicious, baked chip as kale.  

I simply ripped up some heavily wilting collards from the fridge, eyeballed some olive oil and kosher salt to rub onto the leaves, and baked them.

Eighteen minutes in a preheated 300-degree oven was all it took, with a simple toss of the chips at the 12 minute mark.  

I think I liked these chips better than kale chips because the slightly bitter flavor of the collards came out more in these chips, which made them feel more hearty and interesting than kale chips, which are blander in flavor.  So I can certainly see myself making these again!

Poolish Batard - My First Bread with a Dough Starter!

For several months, if not more than a year, I have had the lovely Breaking Bread book on my shelf.  The book by King Arthur Flour Head Baker Martin Philip contains a wonderful set of recipes, stories, and illustrations on how one can master several different types of bread.  

I have often taken the book off the shelf, admired the pictures, even read a story or two, only to days later replace the book on the shelf.  I'll admit that I have been intimidated by the complexity of Philip's yeast bread recipes as they require actual kneading, several rises, temperature checks, etc. - unlike my go-to no-knead bread approaches.

And then a few weeks ago, I finally resolved that I would finally attempt one of the feared recipes on a slow weekend, when I would have the time for multiple rises.  I settled on the Poolish Baguette recipe, but lacking baguette shapers, I decided to use the recipe to form a batard, a more rounded, rectangular shape than the skinny and long baguettes.

The result was declared by my husband as the best bread I've ever made, and I have to admit it wasn't THAT onerous as long as you have a full morning free to do all of the requisite shaping, rises and baking.

The bread was super crusty, and the inclusion of an overnight starter (poolish) definitely added more depth of flavor, a slight sourness and saltiness that made this feel like almost it's own main course instead of a bland and boring instrument to sop up other flavors and food.

The dough didn't have as many air holes as I expected, so it was fairly substantive.  This isn't a negative attribute of the bread, just a flag that like some no-knead breads, this will serve multiple people instead of airier baguettes.

I largely followed the recipe as is, though I halved the ingredients (using the metric grams to measure them out) to make just one loaf, and I used instant dry yeast, which I proofed before creating the poolish (apparently comes from Poland).

For the dough itself, I didn't pre-proof the yeast, just added the instant yeast as is.  One interesting feature of this book mentioned above is that you do have to measure temperatures of the water, flour, poolish, dough, etc. to get the "desired dough temperature" for the type of bread you are making.  So my instant read thermometer got a lot of unexpected use, which was relatively easy to pick up after reading through the directions.

So day 1, you may the poolish, or the starter for the bread, which is a shaggy dough mixture of flour, water, yeast, and salt.

Twelve to sixteen hours later, check your poolish and its temperature, before adding in additional temperature-appropriate water, bread, yeast, and salt.

Then begins the rises.  First, a two-hour covered rise.

Then a series of 15-minute folds and rises, which at each progressive fold, the dough became more flexible and smooth.

Finally, the gradual shaping, which also requires a number of interim rests and rises for the dough.

Finally, the baking, which I did on the parchment that I had shaped the bread on and did the final rises.  I baked the loaf for 32 minutes before it got a very dark brown crust.  I did back the loaf won a pre-heated baking stone, and did use steam.  

I look forward to making this bread again and again on calm Sunday (or Saturday) mornings.  It is a real winner, with more much sour, salty and rich flavors than no-knead breads!

Damn Good Queso - Torchy's Queso Comes Home

Torchy's, an Austin, TX-based regional taco chain, makes a damn good queso - or so the restaurant self-proclaims.  Before I tried Torchy's, I was skeptical that their queso could be that good.  I mean, a good queso is a good queso right?  And while you can definitely tell a bad queso from a good queso, I have to admit that I didn't really believe one could find nuance among good quesos.

Of course, how this story ends is that I finally tried Torchy's queso and realized that it really is quite good.  Lots of different spice flavors from multiple types of chiles, and the toppings they put on - "diablo" sauce, cotija, and guacamole - really add to the cheese dip instead of distracting from it.  Now whenever I visit Texas, at least one Torchy's visit is required.  Both so I can eat queso for a full meal, and then have the leftovers for breakfast the next morning (can't let it go to waste!).  

Well now, I can produce a fairly close approximation to Torchy's queso from the Homesick Texan's QUESO book. 

I made some modifications to the recipe, which probably accounts for why it didn't fully turn out like Torchy's.  Well, let me be more specific, I made the modifications to the most critical component of the queso - the fiery red salsa which approximates the Torchy's diablo sauce.  Instead of using actual red chiles, habaneros, I substituted 2 jalapenos instead.  So far less spicier and a much different flavor profile as well.

It was still a really good queso though, so much so that I ate the full portion that I made in a few days.  While my better judgment says that I should halve the recipe moving forward, it's complicated enough that making a full portion makes more sense - but so does inviting friends over to share it with me.

You start by preparing the two salsas - the red salsa is from roasting vegetables and the green salsa is from boiling vegetables.  Each are then blended separately.

To get to the queso component of the recipe, pour all of the blended green salsa into a saucepan, add Velveeta to it, and stir occasionally until the mixture completely melts.

Then the final serving of the queso includes a healthy drizzle of the fiery red salsa, and if you have it, cilantro, cotija and guacamole.  Yum!

Oven Baked Sweet Potato Fries - Great Flavor, Less Great Texture (User Error?)

With when some sweet potatoes unexpectedly arrived in a vegetable box delivery, I was inspired to try something new.  I found a spiced oven roasted sweet potato fries recipe after a bit of searching, and decided to give it a go after reading on other websites that cornstarch, the central component of this recipe, is the key to a crispy oven fry.

The flavor of these fries was fantastic with the smoked paprika and garlic powder, but they were not evenly crispy, nor that crispy overall.  I think that part of the reason is that I didn't use even cornstarch for the amount of sweet potatoes that I had, and I also think that I should have cut the sweet potato sticks even thinner.

I also think that I may not follow this particularly approach again because the amount of work that these fries took.  To start, you have to peel and cut them evenly, which took more time than I expected.

Then you soak the sticks for thirty minutes, before patting them completely dry.

Then drizzle the sticks with olive oil, before combining a cornstarch / spice mixture and evenly coating on the sticks.

 

Then finally layer the sweet potato sticks on the baking trays, bake for approx. 30 minutes, tossing once, and then serve after cooling for 5 minutes.

I think I'll probably use this same spice mix (sans cornstarch) in roasted sweet potato cubes or whole baked sweet potatoes in the future to combine the great flavors of this recipe with an easier preparation method.

Chocolate Orange Tart - Wonderful Year-Round Treat

It's not often that I make pies or cakes that can truly be served year-round.  Most have a distinctly summer (think berry or light cream) set of ingredients, or distinctly winter flavors (gingerbread or other spice cakes).  

Enter the Milk Street Chocolate-Orange Tart.  While the orange-chocolate flavor combination does seem to create more of a winter, holiday-time feeling, the base for this tart is actually ricotta, which makes it a creamy and lighter treat.  

The partial almond flour crust also adds a lightness of flavor to the tart, with the orange and chocolate also coming through as accents rather than the primary feature of this delicate dessert.

The best part of this tart?  It's relatively simple to prepare, at least compared to most pies that require far more chilling and prep time for the dough.

To construct this crumbly tart, you simply combine the ingredients in the food processor, press into the tart pan, and then chill once before blind baking (no multiple chills needed to prevent the butter from getting too warm).

After the blind baking is complete (approx. 1 hour and 15 minutes for me), mix together the tart ingredients in the same food processor, pour into the warm crust, and then bake.  I think I overbaked the tart at 33 minutes, but it was still very good with a smooth consistency.

I look forward to making this simple tart again and again!