So I have a little obsession with food, epicurian to be exact. No, this is not an inference to sex, but rather the devotion to the pursuit and enjoyment of good food. Thursday nights, it seems, I have spent crafting desserts in my kitchen.
I am still working on the creme bruleé recipe. My last batch came out with the consistency of densely thick soft cheese. It did bake in a water bath, I think the quantity of heavy cream was too much. I started on creme bruleé as a practice mechanism for my latest kitchen toy, a mini torch. The test of a good batch is when the sugar layer of the custard makes the sound of breaking glass with the deft strike of a spoon. I have yet to a) get the sugar to melt evenly, and b) make the custard edible.
Tonight's dessert batch is the oatmeal cookie, with a secret (no wait, I meant to say special) ingredient. Although, I doubt anyone at work will notice. They might if I ever make stollen and bring that in. I try really hard to read and follow instructions, even ones that I wrote myself. But, alas, some deviation occurred while I was madly cackling and mixing ingredients. It all started when I melted the butter entirely instead of softening it. That one step makes a big difference in the consistency of the cookie dough.
Total cook and prep time: 1.5 hours
Yield: 3 dozen
Material cost: low
Btw, one of the most expensive desserts to bake for work is rice krispies treats, by material costs alone. And, it only has three ingredients! So simple, so delicious that I have polished off entire batches by myself. Usually, I eat less than 10% of any batch. Most of it is fed to unsuspecting subjects. (insert mad cackling)
post.script. The raisins were rehydrated in dark rum. That should be interesting flavor.
Cooking, the mad scientist way
It would be fair to say that I cook primarily from "scratch". This comes from growing up in a household where packaged goods are greatly frowned upon. Not because of the time they would save with food prep, but because they are highly processed, contain too much sodium, or have food colorants and preservatives. I am an omnivore and proud of it. It is my belief that you should experience what nature has to offer at least once, be it picking up something new at the Farmer's Market, cooking a dish that you've never tried before, or eating a cuisine that is foreign to the everyday fare. So let's take quick a step back to before the era of the printing press and recipe books. The art of cooking is a learn-by-doing discipline. Just about everyone can learn it, and some do it far better than others. I'm somewhere in between those two groups. My passion comes from developing and making recipes that suit my palate needs and various food allergies. I certainly know a lot about food and what I like to eat. Let's just say that my stomach is happiest when I make frequent, daily sacrifices to it.
The Foodening
This blog's name comes from a food reference in the Invader Zim episode #23 - "The Frycook What Came from All That Space".
Here is the episode transcript on Fandom:
Chocolate soufflé
Godiva's ingredient list started out as this..
Chocolate soufflé:
6 ounces bittersweet chocolate, chopped
6 tablespoons unsalted butter
4 large egg yolks
1/4 cup granulated sugar, divided
6 large egg whites
Pinch of salt
What would you do with the leftover egg yolks? I suppose this is what could happen.. The Godiva recipe leaves you with two egg yolks, I could crack open three more eggs, giving me five egg yolks (for lemon curd) and have three egg whites (for chocolate meringues).. which makes me wonder why I would hatch open nine eggs to make a batch of chocolate soufflé. So, the recipe has evolved twice. I dropped the salt and added cream of tartar because I lack copper mixing bowls.
6 ounces semisweet chocolate, chopped
6 tablespoons unsalted butter
6 medium egg yolks
1/4 cup granulated sugar, divided
6 medium egg whites
1/4 tsp cream of tartar
I use Ghirardelli's dark chocolate since it's a decent chocolate that retains its flavor after baking and is somewhat sweet, but less sweet to its Nestlé or Hersheys counterparts. With Ghirardelli though, it still tastes sweet to me. If I make this version again, I'll probably drop the sugar requirement to 1/8 cup, or eliminate the sugar altogether if I'm baking for an Adkin's dieter. Dropping the sugar requirement would allow me to add 1/4 tsp almond extract to enhance the flavor of the chocolate and make it more aromatic. Flavor is a function of taste and smell, so while I probably can't fool the human tongue, I can still mess with the other senses.
So there you have it. Chocolate soufflé.
Preheat oven to 425 degrees F. Fill molds 3/4 full. Bake for 12-15 minutes until puffed.
The evil GS cookie empire
This year I am boycotting GS cookie sales. There are many things wrong with the GS sale process, the primary one being that parents have become cookie pushers in their workplaces. There are other things as well, perhaps it is the natural evolution of cookie marketing. But, there are fewer cookies per box (yes, box size got a lot smaller) and the price has gone up. Now, granted that dairy prices have fluctated a bit over the last few years, having risen due to mad cow disease scares. Distribution costs are still low. GS has an army of girls, and now their parents, siblings, relatives, etc., peddling these cookies to anyone who breathes. They're outside supermarkets, movie theaters, in your workplace, and even peddled by retail merchants. It's amazing how much money is dumped into this "goodwill" scheme. If anything has come of this, it's that girls have learned how to delegate up, which is a very good skill if you can master it before you reach corporate America.
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