Malted Milk Powder

This post has been brought to you by nostalgia. I grew up drinking malted milk as Olvaltine, and I enjoyed foods with malt in it such as the Whoppers candy and malted milk shakes. As an adult I consume a lot less sugar and as such, needed to figure out how this stuff was made in order to make it from scratch. Why make it from scratch? Because there are so many additives to today's malted milk powders. Just look at the ingredient list for Nestle's Carnation or Olvaltine. King Arthur has a cleaner ingredient list but it costs $10/lb.

I'm not terribly inclined to add wheat flour since it is primarily used as a thickener. This is just malted barley (whole barley berries that have been sprouted, dried, then ground into a powder) and dry milk powder. Also, this is not for making beer.

I got my organic barley grains Whole Foods's bulk aisle; though, you can certainly procure whole grains at any feed store or brewing supply shop.

How to Make Malted Milk Powder

This can be made from whole wheat or barley berries. For this experiment, I am using barley berries. You'll want to find unhulled berries because you want these to sprout. Do not use cracked, pearled, or hulled berries.

Sprout. Take 1 cup of dry grain and rinse it thoroughly in clean pure water. Soak it over night, or about 8 hours, in a 1 quart mason jar with a loose lid. Place a clean mesh lid on the top of the jar and strain out the soak water. Fill the jar again with pure water, stir and strain again. Drain. Rinse your jar of grains once a day. Watch for sprouting hairs after day one, it usually takes between 1-2 days depending on the room temperature.

Ferment. As the barley germinates, it starts to break down the starch into sugars. This is what gives malt powder its natural sweetness. If wild yeast is introduced as the barley is fermenting, the yeast will eat the sugar and convert the liquid to alcohol. You don't want the latter to occur.

Dry. Three possible methods of drying. Air/sun drying (requires 90+ degree temperatures for a few days), food dehydrator, or oven drying. This is to stop the fermenting process.

Air drying - spread moist, freshly sprouted grains on sheet pans in an even layer. Place pans in a dry, well-ventilated area. Dry for 18-48 hours depending on the humidity/temperature. If you are drying this outside, cover your grains with cheesecloth or food-safety screens to keep bugs/birds from eating it.

Food dehydrator - Set dehydrator to 115 F and dehydrate grains for 12-24 hours, or until the grains are dry.

Oven drying - Set oven to its lowest setting, between 150-170 F. Check for dryness in 8-12 hours.

When fully dry, the grains should weigh about the same as what it weighed before sprouting.

Grind. A this point, you are essentially making barley flour from sprouted, dried barley grains. You can grind these in a grain mill, food processor, or blender. You want it to a fine powder, with the granular consistency of say.. cocoa powder.

Storage. Store sprouted flour in an airtight container in the freezer or refrigerator. If using in baking, this can substitute regular flour at a 1:1 ratio.

Now that you have barley malt powder, you can blend it with dry powdered milk!

Here are some sweetened and unsweetened powder ratios.

Depression Era Malted Milk (ratio comes from backtobasicsgal blog):

6 tbsp barley malt powder
1/4 c granulated sugar
2 c powdered milk

Unsweetened Plain:

2 c instant dry milk, whole or nonfat
6 tbsp malt powder

Unsweetened Chocolate:

2 c instant dry milk powder, whole or nonfat
6 tbsp malt powder
6 tbsp unsweetened cocoa powder

To make one cup: add 1/3 c dry mix to 8 oz cold milk. Blend or whisk together. Sweeten to taste with sugar, honey, or stevia.

Fresh Peach Scones

I am using the last of the tree-ripened peaches that I got from a couple weeks ago. You might wonder, how did I get these to stay fresh? For starters, put the ripe ready-to-eat peaches into the crisper drawer in the refrigerator. My crisper drawers have two types of vents on them, a larger vent for apples and a smaller vent for vegetables. I put these into the drawer I have apples in. I should also say that whatever nitrogen the apples give off don't affect each other since I have the apples in plastic bags. On a side note, apples kept this way in the refrigerator will keep for a few months before they start to desiccate and shrivel. Also, you should eat damaged or bruised apples as quickly as you can since they will be the first to go bad.

TheFoodening Blog - peach scones fresh from the oven

This recipe ratio comes from King Arthur's recipe website.

These don't look anything like a classic buttermilk or heavy cream scone. They are certainly not really a scone with a fluffy crumb texture that's for sure. I forgot to add the granulated sugar and I used 6-ish tablespoons of Trader Joe's Apricot-Mango Greek yogurt. Whoops!

Ingredients

2 c unbleached all purpose flour
1/4 c organic granulated sugar
1 tbsp baking powder
sprinkling of ground nutmeg

6 tbsp cold unsalted butter, diced

2 large eggs
6 tbsp Greek yogurt, vanilla yogurt, or sour cream
1/2 tsp almond extract

1 c diced fresh peaches, skins removed

Directions

Preheat oven to 375 F.

1. Sift dry ingredients together, then cut in the butter using a pastry knife, couple of forks, or a food processor.

2. Whisk the wet ingredients together. Stir in dry ingredients. Fold in peaches.

3. Use a 1/4 cup measure to drop the batter onto a prepared baking sheet.

4. Bake for 15-20 minutes, or until golden brown.

Peach Brandy

Fruit wine or brandy? It's mostly up for debate about what to call this. I've been referring to it as peach wine and I typically think of brandy as an alcohol that's distilled from a fruit wine. This batch of wine was made using the tree-ripened yellow peaches I got from the volunteer harvest with the Portland Fruit Tree Project. 25# of peaches is a lot to process, btw, when the freezer is full of other things (like strawberries and rhubarb when those were in season).

Hot, humid days and bruised peaches are not a good combination. Many of these peaches were rotting fast even though they were sitting in the coolest (by temperature) room in the house and they weren't touching each other. But it seems that proximity was enough to hasten spoilage.

This recipe process comes from the Delishably food blog. The best part about it is that you can leave the skins on. Just wash the peaches and make sure that there aren't any bugs or rot. I also left out the peach pits because I needed space in the jar for more peaches.

TheFoodening Blog - Peach Wine, Peach Brandy

Ferment start: 8/19/2016
Ferment stop: 8/28/2016

Ingredients

1 qt peaches, washed and diced
1 lb organic granulated sugar
2 tsp dry yeast
2 c cold, filtered water

Directions

In a 1.5 qt or 2 qt jar, layer peaches and sugar until the jar is full. You can squish it all down with a wooden spoon, if you want. Add yeast and fill jar with water.

Place a dish below the jar, in case the peaches try to escape.

If you have cheesecloth, use that. Otherwise, you can use clean paper towels to cover the top of the jar. Secure the towel or cloth in place with rubber bands.

You'll want to give this a stir every day until the yeast is done eating. This summer it's been between 80-90 degrees F indoors. My batch stopped bubbling at around 1.5 weeks. And, if you let the mixture sit undisturbed, a clear, dark peach-colored layer of alcohol will separate from the rest of the pulp pixture.

To decant:

Place a mesh strainer (one that has a handle, so it can balance on top of a much larger bowl) on top of a bowl large enough to accommodate one quart of liquid. Let the fermented peaches strain using gravity (e.g., don't try to hurry the peaches along by using a spoon to push the peaches through; you don't want any of the pulp in your alcohol).

What I made:

1 pint + 2 oz in glass jars in the refrigerator
3 cups in a quart container in the freezer (to separate the solids from the liquid)

Kitchen Notes: Bourbon, ABV and Used in Cooking

Since having converted most of my sweet wines into jams or jellies, I haven't really had the need to stock anything other than rice wine for cooking savory dishes. But, the previous weekend I came into having 25 pounds of free, tree-ripened yellow peaches; most of which I managed to convert into edible jam.

In my research on pairing peach jam with an alcohol, there were plenty of suggestions for bourbon.. not whiskey, mind you, but good old fashioned Kentucky bourbon. And there's been quite a lot of drunken chatter on the Net about famous brands watering down their bourbon (looking at you Maker's Mark) while raising prices. Both versions of the peach jam came out tasting really good; except I can't taste the bourbon in either. Jim Beam is simply not a good choice for cooking with.

Among my foodie friends who also drink whiskey, I had many suggestions for bourbon brands to use in cooking:

Buffalo Trace
Eagle Rare
Four Roses
Jim Beam
Knob Creek

The last time I used a bourbon in cooking was for a Mardi Gras themed potluck where I made New Orleans Bread Pudding with a whiskey sauce using Makers Mark. It came out so tasty, that not only did people scoop into it before I could snap a photo, it was devoured long before the evening ended.

Personally, I have no tasting memory of whiskey, bourbon, or any of the variants in its class (cask strength, straight, blends, whatever). I wouldn't be able to discern between a 40% ABV or an overproof 51.5% ABV bourbon. Some people recommended a higher ABV because you need a strong flavor to survive the cooking process (in retrospect, they are correct) and others who suggested more mild, smoother tasting bourbons probably have not cooked with the lower ABV bourbons.

That said, the 40% ABV Jim Beam that I ended up using (cheapest of all the brands at Costco), I think I should have dished out more money and started my bourbon cooking quest with Knob Creek or Costco's private label of small batch bourbon (103% overproof), the latter of which is made by Clear Spring Distilling Company who also makes Buffalo Trace.

Here are the numbers from my Costco bourbon browsing:

Knob Creek small batch bourbon, 1 liter
100 proof (50% ABV)
$29.89 + wa tax $6.13 + ltr tax $2.83 = $37.85

Costco small batch bourbon, 1 liter
103 proof (51.5% ABV)
$28.99 + wa tax $5.94 + ltr tax $3.77 = $38.70

Makers Mark 46, 1 liter
94 proof (47% ABV)
$32.89 + wa tax $6.74 + ltr tax $2.83 = $42.46

.

Jim Beam, 1.75 liter
40% ABV
$22.39 + wa tax $4.59 + ltr tax $6.60 = $33.58

Maker's Mark, 1.75 liter
45% ABV
$44.99 + wa tax $6.74 + ltr tax $6.60 = $60.81

Hatch Chile Salsa, Batch #1

This is the second time making it and first time actually committing the ratio to paper.. err digital cookbook journal. The first time was last year and it was delicious. This batch is really the second batch of tomato salsa for this summer.

A note about roasting fresh peppers. I started with 2 lbs fresh hatch chile peppers; but after processing them by roasting, peeling, removing the stem and discarding the seeds, I had 14.25 oz left. And, this is fine.

A common substitution for Hatch chiles is Anaheim,
and after roasting these Hatch chiles I really can't tell the difference.

This summer I've made 3 batches of salsa so far with different ingredient ratios. Batches #1 and #3 are essentially the same; the red chile pepper got swapped with Anaheim chiles in #3.

Batch #1, main heat ingredients - jalapenos (8), red chile pepper (1)
Batch #2, main heat ingredients - hatch chiles (2 lbs)
Batch #3, main heat ingredients - jalapenos (8), Anaheim chiles (5)

TheFoodening Blog - Hatch Chile Salsa

Batch #2 Ingredients

5 lb red tomatoes, roasted and peeled
1 head garlic cloves, roasted, peeled, chopped
4 tbsp fresh lime juice
2 lb (14.25 oz) prepared hatch chile peppers, roasted, peeled, seeded
1/2 bunch of fresh cilantro, stems removed and chopped
1 tbsp kosher salt

Directions

1. In a large stockpot, bring tomatoes, garlic, chile peppers, lime juice, and salt to a boil; then simmer over medium heat to reduce the water content. You want salsa that can stay on a chip, not fall off like a soupy mess.

I let the water boil off for roughly 1.5 hrs; then got bored and used a mesh strainer to get more of the solids out into the jar.

2. Turn off heat and stir in cilantro. 

3. Fill sterilized glass jars and process in a hot water bath for 20 minutes.

Makes 5 pints.