Pumpkin Waffles

I have been given a bunch of eating pumpkins and now am searching out tasty pumpkin recipes. Today we had pumpkin waffles for breakfast and they were delicious. I recommend you go try them!

Ultimate Pumpkin Waffles

Vols Au Vent

The September 2009 Daring Bakers' challenge was hosted by Steph of A Whisk and a Spoon. She chose the French treat, Vols-au-Vent based on the Puff Pastry recipe by Michel Richard from the cookbook Baking With Julia by Dorie Greenspan.

Puff pastry is in the ‘laminated dough” family, along with Danish dough and croissant dough. A laminated dough consists of a large block of butter (called the “beurrage”) that is enclosed in dough (called the “détrempe”). This dough/butter packet is called a “paton,” and is rolled and folded repeatedly (a process known as “turning”) to create the crisp, flaky, parallel layers you see when baked. Unlike Danish or croissant however, puff pastry dough contains no yeast in the détrempe, and relies solely aeration to achieve its high rise. The turning process creates hundreds of layers of butter and dough, with air trapped between each one. In the hot oven, water in the dough and the melting butter creates steam, which expands in the trapped air pockets, forcing the pastry to rise.

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I procrastinated this challenge this month. I could list reasons but they aren't great. However, It wasn't a huge challenge to me as I've made croissants in the past and making puff pastry dough is pretty similar. Roll dough, add butter packet. Lots of rolling in "turns" and putting it back in the fridge when its not cold enough. Eventually you have it incorporated in such a way that you get lots of tasty flaky layers.

It's a time consuming process and on top of that I had to choose a filling. I was never inspired by anything new to try and finally just used vanilla pudding and kiwis. They made a lovely light dessert. Honestly, making puff pastry is not something that gets me excited or that I ever really plan to do again. I guess its good to know I can though right?

As far as mistakes, I skipped the egg wash and that was not smart b/c the layers need something to help them stay together. I also improvised on my hole cutters and so some had too big of holes and some had too little. Luckily after you add filling, it doesn't really matter. They taste good either way. If you would like to make them, be sure to visit another Daring Baker's page for the recipe. Either way, check out all those daring bakers. Some of them are super creative!

Artisan Bread in 5 minutes a day

I finally got a copy of this awesome book from the library and it was worth the wait! While many of the ideas are explained on the blog, the book is a good read and full of interesting info. I made our first loaf yesterday and it was amazing. It actually did have the custard crumb interior with the perfect crust. It was delicious and I only got one piece! So we're having more today. The recipe really is super simple. It is about the technique. If you haven't read this book yet or tried this method, you really need to check it out. It will change how you view baking bread at home. I am excited for the sequel on healthier breads as well.

Link to master recipe for basic bread dough in this method.

Spanish Lentils & Rice

I love this simple dish. It's super tasty, super simple, frugal and a great variation from typical casseroles that are heavy and meaty. The lentils & rice make a good complete protein so you can just add a salad and its a quick, easy, healthy, complete meal. Approximate cost: $2.50 for entire casserole.

Spanish Lentils & Rice
from 2003 Southern Living
Makes 4-6 servings
approx 20 min. prep, 30 min cook, 20 min bake

3 1/2 cups water
1 cup uncooked long grain white rice
1 cup dried lentils
1 tsp salt
1 onion, diced
1 bell pepper, diced
1/2 tsp cumin
1/2 tsp chili powder
1/4 tsp garlic powder
1 (10 oz) can ROTEL Mexican festival diced tomatoes
1 cup sharp cheddar cheese, shredded

Bring first 4 ingredients to a boil in medium saucepan, reduce heat, cover and simmer for 20-25 minutes until lentils are tender.

Saute onion and bell pepper in large lightly greased skillet over med-high heat until tender. Add cumin, chili powder, garlic powder and cook, stirring constantly for 2 minutes.

Stir onion mixture and tomatoes with rice mixture, and spoon into lightly greased 13x9 baking dish.

Bake at 350 for 15 minutes, top evenly with cheddar cheese, bake 5 more minutes.

Dobas Torta

The August 2009 Daring Bakers' challenge was hosted by Angela of A Spoonful
of Sugar and Lorraine of Not Quite Nigella. They chose the spectacular Dobos
Torte based on a recipe from Rick Rodgers' cookbook Kaffeehaus: Exquisite
Desserts from the Classic Caffés of Vienna, Budapest, and Prague.

So, what is the Dobos Torta (or Torte)?

The Dobos Torta is a five-layer sponge cake, filled with a rich chocolate buttercream and topped with thin wedges of caramel. (You may come across recipes which have anywhere between six and 12 layers of cake; there are numerous family variations!) It was invented in 1885 by József C. Dobos, a Hungarian baker, and it rapidly became famous throughout Europe for both its extraordinary taste and its keeping properties. The recipe was a secret until Dobos retired in 1906 and gave the recipe to the Budapest Confectioners' and Gingerbread Makers' Chamber of Industry, providing that every member of the chamber can use it freely.

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The last time I attempted a multi-layer cake, I had issues with stacking the layers and getting a nice cake shape. Guess what I had issues with this time? The same thing, only worse since there were more layers!

Additionally, making the layers for this cake was quite difficult for me. It involves lots of parchment paper, drawing circles, pouring/spreading batter, multiple timers and shelf rotations...and not really knowing how dark to let a layer get before it was done. I think I should have cooked most of my layers longer because they were extremely sticky still when cool and stuck to everything. (I also realized afterward that I had forgotten the vanilla to flavor them, but luckily they still had a good flavor.)

There was no way I was going to be able to trim the 9" rounds into perfect 8" rounds, just keeping them whole was challenging my skills. Plus I used a large plate to flip some of the layers off the parchment paper and one layer stuck firmly to the plate. Since there was no way to remove it, it became the bottom layer. I toyed with the idea of trimming the rounds, but my layers were too delicate and sticky. It just wasn't going to happen without shredding them - which meant I would destroy the circles I had so carefully kept whole coming out of the oven!

Making the buttercream went a lot better, but I should have chilled it longer before assembling the cake. It was still a bit runny and slid all over the place. My cake frosting skills are not the best anyway, so this became quite the challenge.

The caramel came out extremely lemony and hard to eat for us. No one liked the flavor, and it seemed incongruous with the rich chocolate buttercream flavor. At least in making the caramel layer I succeeded pretty well. Though I suspect maybe my caramel had caramelized too much perhaps and the fact that I used store bought lemon juice may have affected the flavor as well. Extra pieces of caramel were twisted to try and make decorations but they proved too soft and chewy to hold much shape.

With no hazelnuts or almonds on hand to decorate I used the extra buttercream to make some rosettes to dress it up a bit, but I think nuts would have been lovely. My dinner party guests loved the cake, the rich buttercream and light cake layers are very delicious together, even if not aesthetically stunning.Would I make it again? Maybe. The buttercream I would use again, perhaps a different recipe for the cake layers. No caramel layer though.

Thanks to the hosts for a great Daring Baker challenge! It stretched my skills and introduced me to new things. It was great fun to say I was making a Hungarian dessert! For the recipe, visit the hosts' blogs, linked at the beginning of this post. Make sure to visit other Daring Baker blogs to see some awesome cakes made by all the amazing Daring Bakers out there.

Mock Tom Ka Gai (Coconut Lime Chicken Soup)

I had a friend make this for us while she was visiting and it is amazing. We could not stop eating this soup; it is delicious! Quick and easy if you have cooked chicken on hand.

1 lb chicken meat cut into strips or shredded (she used a roast chicken from the store and pulled the meat off )
2 (14 oz cans) coconut milk
2 cups chicken broth
2 Tablespoons minced fresh ginger root
4 Tablespoons fish sauce
1/2 cup lime juice
1/4 tsp cayenne pepper
1/2 cup rice
2 Tablespoons thinly sliced green onion or lemongrass
1 Tablespoon chopped fresh cilantro

Bring coconut milk and chicken broth to a boil. Reduce heat, add ginger, fish sauce, lime juice, cayenne, rice and chicken meat. Simmer 10-15 minutes until rice is done. Add scallions and cilantro and serve hot. Enjoy!

Mallows & Milans

The July Daring Bakers' challenge was hosted by Nicole at Sweet Tooth. She chose Chocolate Covered Marshmallow Cookies and Milan Cookies from pastry chef Gale Gand of the Food Network.

I love cookies so this challenge was very exciting! Making marshmallows has been on my to-try list for a while as well. For this reason, I started with the mallow-esque cookies first. The wafer base was a simple tasty cookie. I did them the day before I was to make marshmallows. Making marshmallows goes quickly at first - the sugar solution started boiling much faster than I expected and I was scrambling to get the gelatin bloomed in time. Then it came time to whip the egg whites to soft peaks which took a few minutes and then it was time to mix the sugar solution and the egg white solution and I was foolishly using a hand mixer. This part felt like it took forever! I'm pretty sure it would have been simpler and faster with my stand mixer, but that didn't occur to me in the first 15 minutes of mixing with the hand mixer and by then I wasn't switching! So lesson learned: USE A STAND MIXER when making marshmallows!It is true what they say, the homemade marshmallows were soft, light, airy, delicate... amazing and totally different from store bought. They easily piped onto the cookies and waited a bit to firm up before we did the chocolate dipping. These cookies were only hard for me because cookies are all about quick gratification of a sugar craving usually and these take several waiting stages to make! 2 long hours later, I mixed my oil and chocolate, being careful to keep the temperature low to prevent chocolate issues. Then I dipped the marshmallow cookies in the chocolate and put them out to harden. Which they never did. Perhaps because I keep my house at 80 F in the summer, or perhaps too much oil? or perhaps I didn't temper it as well as I thought I did. I'm not sure. They went into the fridge to develop a shell though and then I could photograph them and finally sample them!They do taste like little bites of moon pie, a delicacy I haven't had since I was a small child. And they are very much like mallowmars, according to my DH and friends. I took them to a party and they were a big hit. My only complaint about the recipe is that the dough portion makes WAY more than 2 dozen cookies (I cooked up half the dough and got 3 dozen easily) while marshmallow filling wise, I had just enough for 2 dozen cookies and enough chocolate maybe for 3 or 4 dozen. So the cookie recipe should be scaled down or halved when made again. I'm freezing all the extra wafer cookies to use next time we want some mallows!Recipe:

Mallows(Chocolate Covered Marshmallow Cookies)
Recipe courtesy Gale Gand, from Food Network website

Prep Time: 10 min Inactive Prep Time: 5 min Cook Time: 10 min Serves: about 2 dozen cookies

• 3 cups (375grams/13.23oz) all purpose flour
• 1/2 cup (112.5grams/3.97oz) white sugar
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 3/4 teaspoon baking powder
• 3/8 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 12 tablespoons (170 grams/ 6 oz) unsalted butter
• 3 eggs, whisked together
• Homemade marshmallows, recipe follows
• Chocolate glaze, recipe follows

1. In a mixer with the paddle attachment, blend the dry ingredients.
2. On low speed, add the butter and mix until sandy.
3. Add the eggs and mix until combine.
4. Form the dough into a disk, wrap with clingfilm or parchment and refrigerate at least 1 hour and up to 3 days.
5. When ready to bake, grease a cookie sheet or line it with parchment paper or a silicon mat.
6. Preheat the oven to 375 degrees F.
7. Roll out the dough to 1/8-inch thickness, on a lightly floured surface. Use a 1 to 1 1/2 inches cookie cutter to cut out small rounds of dough.
8. Transfer to the prepared pan and bake for 10 minutes or until light golden brown. Let cool to room temperature.
9. Pipe a “kiss” of marshmallow onto each cookie. Let set at room temperature for 2 hours.
10. Line a cookie sheet with parchment or silicon mat.
11. One at a time, gently drop the marshmallow-topped cookies into the hot chocolate glaze.
12. Lift out with a fork and let excess chocolate drip back into the bowl.
13. Place on the prepared pan and let set at room temperature until the coating is firm, about 1 to 2 hours.

Note: if you don’t want to make your own marshmallows, you can cut a large marshmallow in half and place on the cookie base. Heat in a preheated 350-degree oven to slump the marshmallow slightly, it will expand and brown a little. Let cool, then proceed with the chocolate dipping.

Homemade marshmallows:
• 1/4 cup water
• 1/4 cup light corn syrup
• 3/4 cup (168.76 grams/5.95oz) sugar
• 1 tablespoon powdered gelatin
• 2 tablespoons cold water
• 2 egg whites , room temperature
• 1/4 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

1. In a saucepan, combine the water, corn syrup, and sugar, bring to a boil until “soft-ball” stage, or 235 degrees on a candy thermometer.
2. Sprinkle the gelatin over the cold water and let dissolve.
3. Remove the syrup from the heat, add the gelatin, and mix.
4. Whip the whites until soft peaks form and pour the syrup into the whites.
5. Add the vanilla and continue whipping until stiff.
6. Transfer to a pastry bag.

Chocolate glaze:
• 12 ounces semisweet chocolate
• 2 ounces cocoa butter or vegetable oil

1. Melt the 2 ingredients together in the top of a double boiler or a bowl set over barely simmering water.

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Making the Milans:

I didn't make the milans until the last day before the challenge, it looked like a quick and easy recipe, since it had a ganache like filling and I've dealt with ganache several times in the past. The tricky part with them was the cookies which are piped out onto cookie sheets for baking. I didn't have any parchment paper or silicon mats on hand, and usually its not too big of a deal but for these cookies it was an issue. They are very sugary and caramelize to the pan if left on at cooling. But you have to let them cool on the pan because they are so soft coming out of the oven! At any rate, my first few batches are not very pretty to look at and I'm not going to be able to get parchment paper before publishing this to make some prettier cookies. These cookies are very rich. Love the hint of orange taste in the ganache and the vanilla/lemon combo in the cookies. I wish I'd halved this recipe too because they are so rich! We did need more ganache filling because DH liked it thicker between the cookie wafers.
Milan Cookies

Recipe courtesy Gale Gand, from Food Network website
Prep Time: 20 min Cook Time: 1 hr Serves: about 3 dozen cookies

• 12 tablespoons (170grams/ 6 oz) unsalted butter, softened
• 2 1/2 cups (312.5 grams/ 11.02 oz) powdered sugar
• 7/8 cup egg whites (from about 6 eggs)
• 2 tablespoons vanilla extract
• 2 tablespoons lemon extract
• 1 1/2 cups (187.5grams/ 6.61 oz) all purpose flour
• Cookie filling, recipe follows

Cookie filling:
• 1/2 cup heavy cream
• 8 ounces semisweet chocolate, chopped
• 1 orange, zested

1. In a mixer with paddle attachment cream the butter and the sugar.
2. Add the egg whites gradually and then mix in the vanilla and lemon extracts.
3. Add the flour and mix until just well mixed.
4. With a small (1/4-inch) plain tip, pipe 1-inch sections of batter onto a parchment-lined sheet pan, spacing them 2 inches apart as they spread.
5. Bake in a preheated 350 degree oven for 10 minutes or until light golden brown around the edges. Let cool on the pan.
6. While waiting for the cookies to cool, in a small saucepan over medium flame, scald cream.
7. Pour hot cream over chocolate in a bowl, whisk to melt chocolate, add zest and blend well.
8. Set aside to cool (the mixture will thicken as it cools).
9. Spread a thin amount of the filling onto the flat side of a cookie while the filling is still soft and press the flat side of a second cookie on top.
10. Repeat with the remainder of the cookies.

Black Bean Enchilada Bake

Another entry in the frugal dinners category, this one is tasty, healthy & filling. It's also quick to pull together once your beans are ready (which takes a bit of pre planning but is worth it from a cost perspective!)

Start 2 days before by putting your black beans to soak. Rinse and sort a pound of black beans, then cover with water in a large bowl and leave overnight to soak. The next morning, drain, rinse and put in the slow cooker. Cover with water and put on low for several hours or the whole day until they are cooked. Cool down and place in the fridge in storage. Use 2 cups in the following recipe. The remaining 3-4 cups of beans will keep up to a week in the fridge for other recipes or you can place single layer on a cookie sheet in the freezer to freeze individually and transfer to a freezer bag once mostly frozen. This way you won't have a frozen lump of beans.

Now to make the enchiladas you'll need:

1 T oil
1 large onion $0.10
3 cloves garlic, minced $0.10
2 cups of your cooked black beans $0.30
1 cup frozen corn kernels $0.50
1 tsp cumin
2.5 cups salsa, divided $1
6-8 small tortillas, corn or flour $1
1/2 - 1 cup shredded cheese (Monterey Jack, Cheddar, combo...) $1

In a large skillet, heat oil over medium high heat, saute onion and garlic for 2-3 minutes. Add the beans, corn, cumin and 1/2 cup of salsa. Cook for 3-4 minutes, coarsely mashing beans with the back of spoon or a potato masher. Spoon 1/3 cup of filling into each tortilla, roll up. Spoon 1/2 cup salsa into 11x7 or 8x8 baking dish. Arrange tortillas seam side down, top with remaining salsa. Cover with foil. Bake at 350 for 15-20 minutes. Uncover, top with cheese, bake 2 minutes longer or until cheese is melted. Makes 4-6 servings (or more depending on what you serve it with!)

Total cost of meal: ~$4

This was a big hit with my boys & DH. Meatless main dishes that satisfy them are awesome! Using dried black beans really makes it cheap too! Enjoy!

Red, White & Blue Popsicles

Strawberry puree made from white grape juice and a couple strawberries on the bottom layer, topped with vanilla yogurt and then some blueberry puree made from blueberries and white grape juice. Freeze in a fun popsicle mold and you have your own healthy rocket pops!

Another popsicle option - make smoothies and freeze into popsicles. These are a mixture of orange juice, spinach, banana, blueberry, strawberry and yogurt. The spinach does not give any flavor and a good blender mixes it up so small the kids never see it. A fun way to get in a "green smoothie"!

Honey & Spice Banana Muffins

The first time I made this muffin recipe I found on the side of a cereal box, we were pleasantly surprised. They smelled amazing and were quite tasty. Since then we have tried several types of flake cereals and had them all work wonderfully in this recipe.

These delicious muffins are a great way to use overripe bananas or bran cereal. But you don't really need a reason to make them, they are so delicious! These egg-free muffins could easily be dairy free and gluten free as well. Using freshly grated nutmeg is great fun too. Hope you enjoy them!

1 cup bran flakes cereal
1/4 cup milk
1 cup flour
1/2 cup honey
1/4 cup butter/margarine, melted
2/3 cup mashed ripe banana
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1/4 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/4 tsp ground ginger
1/4 tsp ground nutmeg

Heat oven to 375. In a small bowl, soak cereal in milk for 5 minutes. In a large bowl, combine remaining ingredients, then add cereal mixture. Beat at medium speed, scraping bowl often, until well mixed (1-2 minutes). Spoon into greased or paper-lined 12-cup muffin pan, filling cups 2/3 full. Bake for 20-25 minutes, or until tops spring back when touched lightly. Cool 5 minutes; removed from pan. Yield: 12 muffins