It's all about the recipe. Really, it is! I have amassed quite a collection of recipes from my favorite cookbooks and food magazines, and now, because of all the foodie blogs out there, I am adding more every day! I test every recipe I post. Some I've been cooking for years, decades even, others I have cooked just once or twice. I don't post mediocre recipes. I don't post good recipes. I post GREAT recipes, recipes that I LOVE. When I find a recipe like that, I can't wait to share it! And the only thing better than sharing a recipe is hearing that someone else tried it and is as excited about it as I am :) Please, try something! Then let me know if you love it as much as I do! Or even why you don't... Either way, I'd love to hear from you!
My friend John, the rugged he-man, Lake Superior Chef (of Asian Glazed Thigh fame), has submitted another recipe. I am posting this now because it sounds like it’s just the thing for a Sunday supper. Go now! Get a chicken! You can have this for dinner tonight!
John says: “I adapted the chicken and potato recipe from Williams-Sonoma. The recipe for the asparagus spears is my own. I like this recipe for a number of reasons…, you only have to use two pans and one bowl, your kitchen smells wonderful when you’re done, you can drink chardonnay while you cook and the recipe is so easy.”
Roasted Rosemary-Garlic Chicken
with New Potatoes and Seared Asparagus Spears
Ingredients:
3 cloves garlic (diced)
2 sprigs fresh rosemary (rough chop)
1 roaster chicken (3 to 5 lbs)
1 ½ lbs small red potatoes, quartered
Olive oil
Kosher salt and fresh ground pepper to taste
Asparagus spears, washed and trimmed.
Directions For Cooking the Chicken and Potatoes:
Preheat oven to 400º.
Pour a glass of cool (not cold) chardonnay to enjoy while you cook.
Mix olive oil, garlic and rosemary in small bowl.
Coat chicken with olive oil mixture, reserving about ¼ of the mixture for the potatoes.
Place chicken in a large oven-proof fry pan, breast side up. Tuck wings behind back, and tie the legs together.
In another bowl, stir together potatoes and remaining olive oil mixture.
Arrange the potatoes around the chicken, sprinkle both chicken and potatoes with salt and pepper, and transfer pan to oven.
Roast until instant read thermometer (inserted into thickest part of the breast, away from bone) registers 160º F, about 60 to 70 minutes.
Transfer chicken to carving board and cover loosely with foil. Let rest for 10 minutes.
Directions for Roasting the Asparagus:
Rinse asparagus and pat dry.
Coat with olive oil, salt and pepper.
Heat ribbed skillet over high heat until “screaming hot”.
Sear asparagus, turning frequently.
Transfer skillet to oven (still hot from cooking the chicken) for five minutes.
To Serve:
Carve the chicken and serve with potatoes and asparagus. Another glass of chardonnay wouldn’t hurt either!
Now doesn’t that sound good? I think a slice of the Chocolate-Pumpkin cake–I just posted the recipe–would round off this meal quite nicely!
I took twelve slices of this cake to my clay class yesterday. I think it made everyone very happy. The class was certainly more social than usual!
I’ve had a request to post this recipe, so here it is, just in time for Halloween and Thanksgiving. It looks great, doesn’t it? This is truly a special event cake. The pumpkin doesn’t really add taste, but it sure enhances the chocolate and keeps the cake moist. The cake tastes sooo good. The frosting is cream cheese, powdered sugar, cocoa powder, and a bit of cinnamon. YUM! (I think the frosting is the magic of this recipe) To gild the lily (I think that’s the right expression) the whole thing is glazed with bittersweet chocolate. How can this be anything but good?
You can do this! My instructions are pretty explicit so if you have trouble with them, let me know! This has been Abby’s signature cake for a few years now, and a couple of her friends request it for their birthdays (even August birthdays!). This recipe is from a 2007 “Country Living” magazine.
Chocolate Pumpkin Cake
For the Cake:
1 ½ c. flour
2/3 c. unsweetened cocoa powder (Hershey’s Special Dark is good)
2 tsp. baking powder
1 tsp. baking soda
½ tsp. salt
1 cup canned pumpkin
½ c. buttermilk
2 tsp. vanilla
¾ c. butter, softened
1 c. dark brown sugar
1 c. sugar
3 eggs plus one egg yolk
Preheat oven to 375º. Line the bottoms of two 9″ cake pans with parchment paper and lightly butter (or spray with Pam for Baking). Sift flour, cocoa, baking powder, baking soda and salt together. In another bowl stir together the pumpkin, buttermilk, and vanilla. In the bowl of an electric mixer beat together the butter and the sugars until light and fluffy. Beat in the eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition, and then the egg yolk. Reduce speed to low and beat in 1/3 flour mixture, and then 1/3 pumpkin mixture. Repeat until all ingredients are used. Pour batter into prepared pans. Bake until cake passes the toothpick test, about 35 minutes. Cool, frost and glaze as directed below.
For the Frosting:
6 oz. cream cheese, at room temperature
¾ stick butter, softened
1 (16-oz.) box powdered sugar
3 T. cocoa powder
½ tsp. cinnamon
1 tsp. vanilla
Maybe, 2 – 3 T. cream (you might not need ANY…)
orange paste food coloring, optional (the orange color, with the cocoa, makes for a sort of rust colored frosting. I like it, but it’s purely optional. There is no food coloring on the top, whole cake picture. The second picture, the fuzzy close-up one, does have some orange food coloring in the frosting.)
Beat cream cheese and butter together until well blended. Stir in powdered sugar, cocoa powder, cinnamon, vanilla, orange color, if using, and enough cream (IF needed) to make a stiff spreading consistency. Spread 1 cup frosting between the two layers, and use the remaining frosting for the tops and sides. Chill cake for a minimum of 30 minutes before glazing.
For the Chocolate Glaze:
4 oz. bittersweet chocolate, chopped
1 T. butter
3 T. corn syrup
½ c. heavy cream
Place chopped chocolate, butter, and corn syrup in a small bowl. Heat heavy cream until boiling. Pour hot cream over chocolate mixture in bowl. Let sit for 3 minutes then blend with whisk until smooth. Let glaze sit for 15-45 minutes to thicken slightly. Pour the glaze on top of the chilled and frosted cake. Smooth out glaze to edges, and then let drip down the sides. Refrigerate to set glaze.
Thanks for stopping by my kitchen today. This is one of my “signature” cakes. You have to make it at least once this Fall. Send me a picture when you do!
My new favorite pumpkin recipe, and my new favorite muffin recipe, just in time for your fall weekend baking: Pumpkin Cream Cheese Muffin! Am I your favorite food blogger, or what?! This recipe is all over the food blogs right now, and I am a bit late-for-the-train in posting it (one of the casualties of the lost camera saga).
This muffin has been likened to the Starbucks Cream Cheese Pumpkin Muffins. I think that’s a fair comparison, but I like this recipe better, for two reasons. One, I think the Starbucks muffin cook is heavy handed with the cloves, this recipe has no cloves, and that’s a very good thing. Two, you can make two dozen of these muffins for the cost of buying just two muffins from Starbucks. Yes. I said twenty-four muffins.
Unfortunately this recipe makes 24 muffins. Not that I am opposed to 24 muffins, but I hardly ever need or want that many. I try to have each muffin recipe make 12 muffins, which is usually more than enough for a home cook. I tried to cut this recipe in half and I tried to cut it down to two-thirds. Neither attempt worked. The muffins were dry. The twenty-four muffin recipe is not dry, so you’ll just have to make them all. Invite the neighborhood over! Drop some off at a friend’s house! Have a bake sale! Give some to the gardener or your child’s teacher! These muffins stay moist for several days.
Start this recipe the night before. The cream cheese filling needs to sit in the freezer for at least a few hours, and overnight is fine, before baking. That’s ANOTHER great thing about this recipe. FINALLY, a method that works for inserting a cream cheese layer into a baked goods. Ohhh, it’s a good day to be stopping by my kitchen!
I have inserted three options for the topping of the muffins. The fourth option is to not add a topping to the muffin. These muffins really don’t need a sweet topping. The cream cheese layer, and the muffin itself, are sweet enough. I found the struesel layer to be just a bit too much. Imagine me saying that! Me, a Sweet Tooth Queen! I like the idea of sprinkling a few pumpkin seeds on top (the green ones, pepitas), which is what Starbucks does, but I couldn’t find pumpkin seeds the last time I was at the store. The muffin above has a slight sprinkling of raw sugar on top. I like the little crunch.
½ cup all-purpose flour
1/3 cup sugar
¼ cup pecans, chopped finely
3 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted
½ teaspoon cinnamon
Alternate toppings: a sprinkling of green pumpkin seeds (Pepitas) or raw sugar
Pumpkin Muffin Batter:
2 cups all-purpose flour
2 cups sugar
2 teaspoons baking powder
¼ teaspoon baking soda
1 1/2 tablespoons pumpkin pie spice
2 teaspoons cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon nutmeg
½ teaspoon salt
1 ¼ cups canned solid-pack pumpkin (or 1 ¼ cups fresh pumpkin puree, drained)
3 eggs, lightly beaten
1/3 cup vegetable oil
½ teaspoon vanilla extract
Directions
The night before: Make the cream cheese filling. In a medium bowl, beat the cream cheese and confectioners’ sugar until smooth. Add the vanilla, and blend to combine. Form the mixture into a log on a piece of plastic wrap, wrap it, and freeze it overnight, or at least an hour or two.
Preheat oven to 350 ºF. Line two 12-cup standard muffin tins with paper liners. Set aside.
Combine the flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda, and spices in a large bowl. In another bowl, lightly beat the pumpkin, eggs, oil and vanilla. Make a well in the center of the flour mixture, and pour the pumpkin mixture into the well. Mix with a fork just until moistened.
Remove the cream cheese from the freezer, and divide it into 24 slices. (I usually cut the log into 12 pieces then cut each of those pieces in half)
Evenly divide half of the batter among the muffin cups-about one tablespoon of batter in the bottom of each muffin cup. Place 1 slice of the cream cheese filling in the center of each cup. Top the cream cheese with another tablespoon of batter. Cover the cream cheese completely.
Sprinkle top of muffins with pumpkin seeds, raw sugar OR this Pecan Streusel. In a medium bowl, combine flour, sugar, pecans, butter and cinnamon. Sprinkle some of the pecan streusel on top of each muffin.
Place muffins in a preheated oven and bake until golden, about 20 to 25 minutes. Cool on wire racks. Muffins should be served at room temperature. Hot cream cheese is really not very appetizing.
Happy Fall! Go on, bake a batch of these, enjoy them with your family, friends and neighbors. Here’s a picture of my grandson enjoying his. He loves his Grandma’s muffins <3
My daughter, who shall remain nameless (so I don’t embarrass her, HA!), has a crazy crush on a French exchange student. It’s one exchange student in particular, but there are about thirty others she’s crazy about if this one doesn’t work out. Her roommates bragged to the French students about my nameless daughter’s cooking skills. They told the French students she can make cakes, she can make cookies, she can make Rice Krispie treats… Then one of the Frenchmen looked at her and whispered, in a very excited voice, with that wonderful French accent, “Can you make pastries?” She answered, “Sure!” Then she flew home (a two hour drive) to learn how to make pastries! She succeeded, too, she took back with her a large Glazed Fruit Tart, a dozen Cheese Danish and, being a first generation American teen, a big tray of Peanut Butter Rice Krispie Treats. I haven’t heard from her since, but she has been posting on Facebook how very wonderful her life is and how much fun she is having…
Abby (Oops! Blew her cover) found many pastry recipes on line. She printed out about a dozen, and made this one. Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding. Winner, winner, winner, winner, winner. Ina Garten rocks! I wish I had known how easy these were to make years ago. I could have wowed so many people! But never mind, I am going to start wowing them NOW!
These are so easy to make. Really. Easy. And they are beautiful. And delicious. And impressive.
Abby followed the recipe for the first time, and made four pastries with one sheet of puff pastry. We decided the pastries were wonderful, but a bit too big, so she cut smaller squares, and made 8 pastries with the second sheet of puff pastry. I have left the directions as she originally found them, but feel free to cut the pastry into smaller squares. We found the quantity of the filling to be more than adequate, so no need to skimp!
Ina Garten’s Cheese Danish
8 oz. of cream cheese, at room temperature (if you are in a hurry, soften slightly in the MW)
1/3 cup sugar
2 egg yolks, at room temperature
2 tablespoons Ricotta or Mascarpone cheese (we used Mascarpone)
1 teaspoon vanilla
¼ teaspoon Kosher salt
grated zest of one lemon
1 box (2 sheets) puff pastry, defrosted
egg wash (one egg beaten with 1 tablespoon water)
Sprinkling of raw sugar (optional)
Sprinkling of powdered sugar (optional)
Directions
Preheat oven to 400 degrees.
Line a rimmed baking pan with parchment paper.
With an electric mixer, cream the cream cheese and sugar together. Reduce the speed to low and stir in (don’t beat or whip) egg yolks, ricotta or mascarpone, vanilla, salt and lemon zest.
Unfold the defrosted puff pastry and roll out, on a lightly floured board, to a 10 x 10 inch square (approximately). Cut sheet into quarters (or smaller, see note above).
Brush border of each pastry square with egg wash, and then place one tablespoon of filling into the center of each square. Fold the 2 opposing corners together over the filling. Squeeze the pasty corners together so they stick. Brush pastry with egg wash. Sprinkle lightly with raw sugar (if desired)
Place pastries on prepared pan. Refrigerate pastries on the prepared pan for 15 minutes to re-chill the puff pastry.
Remove pastries from refrigerator and place in a preheated 400° oven for 20 minutes, or until pastry is puffed and golden brown. Rotate the pan once during baking time.
Remove from oven and let cool to room temperature. Sprinkle with powdered sugar, if desired, just before serving. These are even good the next day!
It’s nice to be back in the kitchen. THANKS for stopping by. Now I have a new camera, there shouldn’t be any more two week breaks!
