Experimenting with Cake Mix

In my stash of cookbooks I have two that are focused on mixing up cake mixes to make something better or different, I found the idea for this little science project in one called 101 Things to Do With a Cake Mix. It said simply white cake mix one cup yogurt. Now I've seen the pictures all over Pinterest of the Greek Yogurt and cake mix recipe, so I was curious. Hungry Girl had a newsletter with 5 different substitutions for the eggs and oil in a cake mix, and I was curious to see how well they would work. Naturally I don't want to make 5 different cakes, but I figured a 16 oz cake mix would divide into 4 portions easily--and I could try 4 different ratios to compare.

The number one tool that made this work was my food scale--which helped me divide the cake mix and figure out the amount of liquid ingredients to add to each.

Ingredients: 

1 box moist style white cake mix
zest and juice of tangerine, grapefruit, lemon, and lime
unsweetened coconut
Egg substitute
apple sauce
lite coconut milk
pink grapefruit flavored no-calorie sparkling water
key lime flavored Greek yogurt

So I divided the cake mix into 4 bowls with about 4 oz in each. The mix is really lumpy, so I used a fine mesh strainer to break up the lumps. I chose a different citrus for each batch, and added some zest to each to pull out the flavor. The ratio is 4 oz of cake mix to 4 oz of liquid.



Batch 1:
Cake Mix
Lime Zest
Key lime Fat Free Greek Yogurt
Lite coconut milk


Batch 2:
Cake Mix
grapefruit zest
pink grapefruit flavored no-calorie sparkling water

Batch 3:
Cake Mix
tangerine zest
tangerine juice
lite coconut milk

Batch 4:
Cake Mix
lemon zest
egg substitute
applesauce


 The nice thing about this experiment is that each batch was just enough batter to mix up in my cereal bowls. I made these in my new mini muffin pan--and mini donut pan though I didn't succeed with that so used the mini muffin tin for most. It was difficult to figure the cooking time, so I think the first batch that came out poorly is partially a need for a few more minutes in the oven to give it more structure since it is so soft anyways.

The Verdict: The best is absolutely the one with the egg substitute and apple sauce. It tastes just like what one would expect with a cake mix made with egg and oil. It also has the best texture and color. Next is the coconut milk and juice--the texture was not as good, it was more crumbly and most didn't come out of the pans in one piece. But it still had good color, flavor, and more cake like texture. The soda one was very soft, almost mushy, didn't rise well, and had a more unpleasant taste. I love the fake ruby red grapefruit flavor, so it wasn't just that, they just tasted gross. The very worst, however, was the yogurt one. It was so gross that I put the leftovers down the drain. It was soggy, mushy, tasted off and while it raised more than the soda one, it didn't get a good texture. After these were mostly so bad, I wanted to try two recipes from scratch to compare. I'll post on those next!

Baked Kibbeh and Carmelized Onions

I went to graduate school in Ohio, and at that time did a lot more eating out than I do now. Mediterranean food was one of my favorites--pita, felafel, hummus, and kibbeh. So when I saw a recipe for a baked kibbeh that was pretty easy, I wanted to give it a try. The kibbeh I used to eat was a fried beef fritter, cinnamon scented and flavorful. This recipe is baked and uses lamb--though I added some beef as the ground lamb was over 8 dollars a pound. I also changed the recipe by making the caramelized onions in the slow cooker--which actually worked and only ended up with one night overwhelming onion scented apartment.

Ingredients:

2/3 c cracked bulgar wheat
1/2 lbs lamb
1/4 lbs beef
1 large onion
 tsp cinnamon
alspice
salt and pepper

Topping:
Lots of onions
1/4 c pinenuts
1/2 tsp cinnamon
allspice
salt and pepper

So this recipe has two parts, and I made them on two different days, bringing them together on a third day. Though it really isn't a complicated recipe, I just spread it out. One the first day I made the kibbeh base, the second I caramelized the onions, and the third I brought it all together.

First the bulgur needs to be rinsed and drained, and set aside to dry. The onion is peeled and then pureed, and added to the meat, salt, pepper, cinnamon, and a bit of allspice. I used my immersion blender to blend it all to a paste. Even though I used ground beef and ground lamb, this took some doing to break down the gristle. Once that was a paste, the bulgur is added and blended again.

This mixture is pressed into a baking dish--a large tart pan would work, or a 9x13 inch dish, which is what I used. Then it is scored. At this point I covered the pan and froze it until I was ready to cook.


So as I was contemplating making this dish, I was researching caramelized onions for tips and tricks, since I've never done it before. Somewhere on line I read that you could do it in a crock pot, and that it would be hands off and produce lovely caramelized onions with much less work. Well, of course I had to give it a try and since my crock pot is enormous I had to get a bunch of onions!

Monday night, around 10 pm when I was off of work, I chopped 5 lbs or so of onions and filled my crock pot to the brim. I pre-sprayed the pot with cooking spray before hand, but didn't add anything else. I cooked them on low all night long--and my apartment smelled SO strongly of onions I had to shut the bedroom door. In the morning I drained a bunch of the liquid and then I turned them down to warm when I went to work for another 9 hours. When I got home I cranked it to hot with the lid off to get any remaining liquid.

I didn't use all of the onions in this topping, though there is no shortage of things one can do with a lovely pot of caramelized onions! For the topping I toasted the pinenuts in a hot pan and then added a bunch of the onions, the cinnamon, salt and pepper, and a bit of allspice.


The kibbeh base goes in a 375 degree oven until it turns brown on top and is cooked through--depending on how thick it is in the pan will change how long it needs to cook. I overcooked mine, because I didn't check it quickly enough, so be careful. The kibbeh base is topped with the onion pinenut mixture. I served it with zucchini fritters and leftover spinach salad.

The Verdict: Fragrant and delicious--it isn't the same as what I had in Columbus, but it was still the same flavors. The cinnamon in the meat really worked, especially with the onions. If I did it again,I'd use more of the onions for the topping and increase the amount of topping.

My Moroccan Mains: Chicken Tagine with Maximum Yumminess

So about a month ago I found some bags of meyer lemons at WalMart and decided to make something I'd never had before--preserved lemons. Today is the culmination of that experiment, in which I made an elaborate tagine to highlight the lemons and the flavors of Morocco. I was inspired by Claudia Roden's book Arabesque, which I checked out of the library, though I may have to buy my own copy! I made 5 recipes from this one book, in one weekend--this has to be a sign of a book I should have in my collection.

Ingredients:

1 tbs olive oil
2 onions
3-4 cloves of garlic
pinch saffron thread
1/2 tsp ground ginger
4 chicken thighs, 1 chicken breast
salt and pepper
juice of 1/2 lemon
2 tbs chopped cilantro
2 tbs chopped flat leaf parsley
Peel of 1 1/2 preserved lemons
18 kalamata olives
1 tsp harrisa paste
12 oz artichoke hearts

I cooked this up in my dutch oven from start to finish, so while any dish I have to start thinking about a month before hand is elaborate to me, this actually could be a one pot meal! The first step is to chop the onions really fine and saute them in a tablespoon of oil heated up in the pan until they soften. Then grate the garlic and add it, the ginger, and the saffron to the pot.

 I went to four stores looking for saffron--though actually all but one had saffron. I just couldn't spend 18$ on a bottle, so I kept looking. I ended up spending 10$, but it was the cheapest I could find. And that 10$ buys this teeny little baggy, so small! It does give a nice yellow color and an indescribable flavor that apparently can't be duplicated. The chicken goes on top of the onions and is generously seasoned with salt and pepper. Then about a cup and a half of water is added and the pot simmers for 15 minutes covered. I turned the chicken once and checked to add some more water if it dries out. At this point I remembered the harissa and added it--though it should have gone in at the beginning.

While that simmers away, I got out the preserved lemons, and the rest of the add ins. While I made the lemons for this dish, I've already used them, and may actually make another jar before citrus season is over. They are just that good--I could eat them plain, on veggies, with eggs, with fish. I thinly sliced them, rough chopped the olives (I prefer a little of the olives through out), chopped the parsley and cilantro, and juiced the lemon.



After 15 minutes simmering, I pulled out the chicken breast and let the thighs cook for another 25 minutes. At that point, I added in the artichoke and the fresh herbs, olives, preserved lemon and lemon juice and returned the breast to the pan. That cooked for another 15 minutes--I did take out the chicken and let the sauce reduce some more.

I served it with a cucumber yogurt salad and a spinach preserved lemon salad, and a little bread.

 The Verdict: Lemony, savory, salty goodness--this has just a hint of heat and is not the flavor profile I would have thought from my last tagine. I love the onions and artichokes, the tender thighs, and the sweet salty bite of the lemon. The breasts were a bit over cooked--in the future I would just do thighs or just breasts--though I think the ability to cook the darker meat longer helps develop the flavors. It went really well with the spinach and just a crust or two of fresh bread.

Naughty Sarah's Salmon in Phyllo

Top shelf is books I've cooked from so far.

So yesterday was epic--EPIC, as in I chased after the police to get them to come back to handle a second issue requiring police intervention (also required an ambulance and for some reason a fire truck). Today on my day off, I treated myself to a bit of  shopping spree, going a little crazy at the thrift store and then at the grocery store. I once again failed to buy the clothes I need--but I have some new (and used) cookware, lots of fabulous ingredients, and the one guilty indulgence a whole stack of new cookbooks. Yes, I still haven't made it half way through the ones I have, no I have not even made all the recipes I want from the ones I have, but cheap cookbooks! Retro cookbooks! Healthy cooking cookbooks! Local cookbooks! I went a little crazy--but to make up for it, I came right home and looked through them and found a recipe that I actually had everything for in my house, and made it for dinner. I was going to have leftovers, but this was actually really easy and so delicious and fancy looking. Perfect for a party or a post shopping spree dinner!

Ingredients:

3 Salmon Filets (4oz each)
1/2 lbs asparagus
4 oz brown button mushrooms
2 oz Greek yogurt cream cheese
1 tbs egg substitute
1/2 tsp capers chopped
1 tbs chopped onion
quarter of preserved lemon
1/2 tsp Greek seasoning
garlic powder
salt and pepper
red pepper flakes
6 sheets of phyllo dough 
cooking spray

I'm still kind of surprised I had all of these ingredients to make this with no planning ahead--but I've had phyllo dough defrosted in my fridge waiting to be used, and I'd bought some salmon on sale and frozen it. It is entering asparagus season and I couldn't walk past it at 1.28 a pound!

Anyway, assuming your salmon and phyllo is defrosted this comes together really fast. The recipe calls for parboiling the asparagus, but I prefer mine roasted. I put mine with the sliced mushrooms under the broiler, tossed with some very finely diced preserved lemon, some extra seasonings, and let that cook for about 3 minutes--though I like it pretty crispy, and mine was super tender young asparagus.

While that cooked, I mixed the cream cheese with the egg substitute, the chopped capers, onions, seasonings, and preserved lemons. Both the capers and lemon are pretty salty--even after I rinsed the lemon off, so I did not add any extra salt. This becomes a nice paste that brings together the rest of the dish.




Next is assembly time! On a baking sheet, lay out a layer of phyllo dough and spray with the cooking spray and then lay another. Spoon a third of the cream cheese mixture over the bottom, then lay a bunch of the asparagus on top of the cheese, and some mushrooms. On top of that goes the salmon filet, flesh side down. I did generously salt and pepper it and spread a little left over cheese mix on it. Fold the phyllo dough up over the salmon and carefully roll it up towards the top, making a little bundle. I tucked in the ends, though the original recipe says to trim off the ends.

These delightful packages are sprayed with the cooking spray and go in a preheated 400degree oven for 15-20 minutes until they are golden brown. It really depends on how thick your fillets are how long you want to cook it.

The Verdict: I have had a lot of salmon a lot of ways, and this has moved to the top of the list as one of my favorites. I love that there is no need for an extra carb, this one package was enough for my whole meal. The creamy cheese with the bite of lemon and capers, the crispy phyllo, the crunchy asparagus, it is a spring time meal fancy enough for company, but easy enough for an everyday dinner! My one caveat is that it is a little tricky to eat--since it is all together you need to cut it up to get a bit of everything in each bite. I might in future chop the asparagus into bite sized pieces before it goes on the cheese. But go forth and try this wonderful portion controlled salmon dish--you could add your own seasonings to the cream cheese to make this your very own! EDIT: I reheated the leftovers in a hot pan and it re-crisped the phyllo and actually made it even easier to eat.

Bread Attempt #2

So while contemplating my first bread attempt, with its long and relatively specific and complicated directions, I pulled another book (this one still in the library's collection) called Artisan Breads Every Day to compare the techniques. This is another long process with low kneading requirements. I don't have a stand mixer and my sister's is broken, so I wanted to give this a try to see how it compares. Partially because I wanted to make a whole wheat bread, and this book had one I had all the ingredients for in my house (I didn't have to borrow any ingredients from my sister, but I did anyways. It is good that she doesn't read this blog!)


This makes two loaves, but I'm already making another loaf, so I divided it in half. Hopefully that doesn't screw up the bread.

Ingredients:
14 oz whole wheat flour
.25 oz kosher salt
3/4 tbs agave nectar (thanks Emily!)
1/2 tbs yeast
11 oz lukewarm water
1 tbs vegetable oil


The dry ingredients are added together--including the sugar, but not the yeast (I may have done that at first and had to redo this!), and mixed to combine. The yeast is combined with the lukewarm water and the agave nectar--stirred until they are combined and the yeast has dissolved. Then the oil is added and whisked. The wet mixture is then added to the dry ingredients until the flour is all moistened.



At this point the dough is set aside for the flour to fully absorb the moisture, 5 minutes--I may have lost track of time, but came back and got on. I don't have a stand mixer, but I have a hand one with a dough hook, so I employed it for this next step. The dough is supposed to be stirred for 4 minutes at medium low speed increasing to medium high for the last 30 seconds--my dough was pretty dry so I added two tablespoons of water one at a time while I stirred. This was pretty hard for me--even with the mixer it was a lot of work.

After the dough was stirred enough I dumped it on a lightly floured surface and begun the fold and stretch part. Basically you pull from the bottom of the ball towards yourself and then wrap around to the other side, do that from each side, wrapping it. Then it goes into an oiled bowl and sits for 10 minutes at room temperature and then the same dump, pull, stretch, and wrap. This is repeated 3 additional times with 10 minutes in between.


After the final time, it goes into an oiled bowl, is covered well with plastic wrap, and goes into the fridge at least overnight, but for as much as 4 days. It does a lot of raising in the fridge--not only was it visibly bigger, but big bubbles appeared on the top. I pulled it out around 1 pm, after about 20 or so hours later.

Normally it would be divided into two loaves, but I'd split the recipe in half. So I dumped it on a floured surface and formed a loaf by pulling the edges towards the center. The book had some nice illustrations to demonstrate how to do this. I'm not sure I did it right but it is supposed to be a homestyle hearth loaf, not a fancy shaped loaf. I placed it on a sheet of parchment paper with cornmeal on bottom on top of an inverted sheet pan. It is covered with an oiled plastic sheet and let rise for about 3 hours until it had doubled or more. I kind of lost track of time, so I'm not sure how long it was, but you can see how much bigger it is.
The oven requires a specific set up for this type of bread--different from the last one, but a similar principle. The idea is to create a heated place to put the bread, rather than just put the pan in a preheated oven. So this is trying to recreate your stone hearth of yore or brick oven. I didn't have any kind of pizza stone, tile, or stone anything. But my sister had this heavy duty stoneware casserole that I borrowed--I'm dog sitting and she told me to make myself at home so I did. It goes into a 500 degree oven, along with a sheet pan. The two racks are moved to the bottom two slots, and pre-heat for at least 40 minutes. They need to be really hot to create the right environment to cook the bread.

About 15 minutes before it needs to cook, I took off the plastic and cut two parallel cuts in the bread dough and let it relax.  Then it is transferred into the prepared oven. This was pretty tricky with the casserole as opposed to a pizza stone or other flat stone. So the loaf got distorted, and since it was so hot it really started to bake right away. I poured a cup of very hot water into the sheet pan below, and reduced the oven's temperature to 425 and cooked for 15 minutes and then turned the pan and cooked for another 15 minutes. It had browned very well so I pulled it out and let it rest for 15 minutes before tearing into it.

The Verdict: This is a nice soft intensely wheaty bread. The wheat is perhaps a little bitter--it could use more agave or honey or sugar to balance out the amount of wheat. That said, it has a really nice crumb, with a lovely texture. I'm actually surprised at how soft and moist it is considering it isn't enriched. The crust isn't too hard, but goes well with the soft interior. I will try this again, increasing the sugar and maybe cutting the whole wheat with some white flour to moderate the taste--or adding some flavor counterpoint.

Kneadlessly Simple--my first loaf of bread

I'll admit to being a breadlover--while I don't pair every main course with a carb, I just love a good bread, and so does my family. We used to joke that we could eat our fill out of the bread bowl at family dinners and not even need an entree. But I can't say that we ate a lot of homemade bread growing up--besides the good old bread machine. I have to say I didn't love the texture of the crust on it, though it never stopped me from eating it. So in my quest to learn to cook, baking bread seemed like a skill I would naturally love to develop. I even had a book in my collection that made it sound easy, so I'm giving it a try.

The book I'm baking from is called Kneadlessly Simple and promises Fabulous, Fuss-Free, no-knead breads. While it says simple and easy, this is no quick recipe where you toss a few things together and have results right away. Rather it is putting things together and letting time do its business. Lots of hurry up and wait.

Ingredients:
3 cups unbleached bread flour
1/2 c yellow cornmeal, plus some for garnish
1/2 c old-fashioned rolled oats
1/2 c whole wheat bread flour (the original called for rye, which I didn't have)
1 tbs granulated sugar
2 tsp salt
3/4 tsp fast rising yeast
2 c ice water
cooking spray

Baking like this is a lot of science, so I broke out the scale to get exact measurements--I borrowed the bread flour from my sister--if she was not out of town I'd get her to try some of the bread. Mix dry ingredients thoroughly--including the sugar and yeast--and then add the cold water. I added it slowly to try and get the dry ingredients moistened slowly, since the flour seemed to absorb as much water as it could and was kind of difficult to get all of the flour mixture moistened. The dough was, as the recipe indicated, quite stiff. The dough is sprayed with the cooking oil, covered, and stuck in the fridge for 3 to 10 hours.

The book says two rises--but there are really three in the book. First is when it rises in the fridge--which it does quite a bit, and then in a cool place for 12-18 hours, and then a regular raise in a warm place. These three rises are supposed to substitute for kneading, with the flavor developing as well. The idea is that while this takes more than 24 hours to make, most of it can be done while you sleep or at work.


Anyway, around 8 at night, I pulled the dough out of the fridge and set it on the counter top to raise. I lowered the temp in the house to a cool 66 degrees, so the bread would have a nice slow time rising. I covered it with plastic wrap and sprayed the top with oil.





         In the morning the dough had doubled, and you could see an incredible array of bubbles and air pockets along the side of the bowl. I liked being able to see the dough in the clear bowl--science in action! I let it work for a few more hours, not starting the second rise until after my water aerobics.

So with an oiled rubber spatula I lifted from the corners and folded it into the center to deflate it and begin the second raise. I turned the heat back up and let that rise for two and a half hours. About twenty minutes before it was to go into the oven, I put my dutch oven in the oven and preheated both to 450. The book suggests dropping water in to make sure it is hot enough--it got sizzling!

The dough is dumped into the screaming hot pan--which is easier said than done. It turned out somewhat inelegantly in the pan and it was so hot it started cooking right away and couldn't be shifted. I used a pair of scissors to cut a circle in the top of the bread, sprinkled the top with water, and sprinkled it with cornmeal.

I lowered the temperature of the oven to 425, and the bread goes into the oven with the lid on for 50 minutes. During that time the whole house begun smelling deliciously of baking bread. At 50 minutes cooking, the lid comes off and it bakes for another 15 minutes, or until the thermometer reads between 210-212. I have to say mine didn't get quite that high, even though I let it bake the 15 minutes and then the extra 5 minutes it recommended. The top was getting really brown, and I was worried about burning it. I pulled it out and let it sit in the pot for a good 15 minutes, and then tore into it and had a big chunk with my beef and vegetable tagine.

The Verdict: This is a crusty bread with a surprisingly moist interior. I expected such a lean bread to be drier, but it is deliciously tender, with a really crunchy crust. There is a good amount of flavor developed here from the long rising and the four grains. I have to admit I want to eat this whole loaf in one sitting--but it is so good warm and delicious out of the oven. I am pretty proud of my very first loaf of bread--it is a big step above being just edible!