It's That Time of Year!

Settembre always means it's dorm food o'clock, for better of for worse. Giovanni will have a break from the heavy food photography for some other work, and I'll have a break from cooking. The need for creativity never dies, though, especially in the dining hall. Until next time, goodbye, and thanks for all the fish!

Espaghetti Esquash

Good luck cutting the guy open. I wondered if just throwing it at a tarp would have been easier and safer. Our esquash was extremely estubborn. In revenge, I scraped out (with a big espoon), all it's flesh and seeds. Its seeds I further tortured with washing, oiling, and salting, and then baking at 300 F for about 15 minutes (stirring every 5 minutes). Yummy!

After my esnack, I eslathered the esquash with olive oil and s&p and baked it at 350 for what was supposed to be 40 minutes (cut side down) and ended up being a secret, due to the fact that oven didn't tell me when it beeped and then kept right on cooking. (The nerve!!!) When you take it out, you see that magic has happened:

You can pull on the flesh and, viola, estrings!

At this point, you can do many things: eat it plain, throw it at the ceiling, feed it to the dog (the dogs in this particular kitchen didn't deserve any...) but I cooked it in some sauteed garlic and leftover tomato sauce (which I was too lazy to post about; sorry) with some sherry. It basically looked and tasted just like regular espaghetti, so I'll have to do this again sometime for further research!

Chocolate Zucchini Cake!

Most people's reaction to my saying I was planning on making a chocolate zucchini cake with chocolate ganache and strawberries was "Chocolate and zucchini? Ew!" Naturally, they weren't invited. And naturally, they missed out! Chocolate and zucchini turned out to be a very happy couple, making delectable and succulent, and the chocolate chips added little chocolately explosions in the mouth; warm out of the oven the chocolate chips had lost their shape somewhat, and thus weren't so much distinct vertices of chocolate as extra little kicks of flavor. It was perfect.

Teh interwebs surprisingly have many recipes for chocolate zucchini cake, but I chose one from the Chocolate & Zucchini blog. The first thing I did was to process our handsome zucchini so I had two cups of chopped zucchini. (Ok here's the secret: you can't taste it, obviously, but the zucchini makes the cake super moist and delectable.) Set the zucchini aside, or if you're processing it the day before, put them in the fridge. 

In a medium bowl, mix together 1.5 c flour, 1/2 c cocoa, 1 t baking soda, 1/2 t baking powder, and 1/2 t salt. Then, in the bowl of my new best friend, the Kitchen Aid mixer, cream together 1/2 c butter, 1 c brown sugar, 1 tsp vanilla, 1 tsp instant coffee, and 3 eggs (I used 1 whole egg and 2 whites). Take the time and mix it well after each addition (cream the butter well before adding the sugar; mix well between adding eggs). All it takes is an extra minute and the mixer does all the work. The batter should be fluffy before the eggs and speckled afterward.

Then you mix wet and dry, and while that's mixing, quickly stir 1/2 c flour and 1 c chocolate chips into the chopped/processed zucchini, and then fold this into the chocolate batter. Doing it this way really highlights just how much moisture the zucchini adds: before, the batter stuck to the paddle like stiff frosting, while afterward it was smooth and more runny. This recipe makes enough for a 10" spring form pan, but you can experiment with other shapes. Since we liked the slightly crusty edges so much, I'm considering doing it as cupcakes next to maximize the amount of edge that each serving has. I'm sure the size of your chopped zucchini pieces matters, but note that you can't really see the zucchini (click the picture to enlarge).

Bake at 350 for 30-35 minutes, and here you have to use the edges' pulling away, color, and texture as a measure of doneness; a toothpick never quite came out clean but burned chocolate zucchini cake would have been a tragedy, so we played it safe. The cake was a gorgeous dark brown.

When the cake is almost cool, heat half a cup of heavy cream on medium heat until it's just about to boil. Then pour over 4 oz. of really, really amazing darkish chocolate, chopped, and as it melts the chocolate, whisk everything together to form a smooth covering that requires all of your self control to not pour down your throat. I added a tbsp of butter and about 1/2 t instant coffee for added flavor, but there's lots of variation in ganache recipes, so you can't really be wrong. Let it cool until it's at a consistency you think is optimal for spreading, and pour - don't spread - over the cake. Using a spatula makes not-super-smooth lines; we had good luck carefully tilting the cake and the cooling ganache spread itself. I garnished it (very amateurishly; I blame the paring knife) with strawberries, and then we dug in.

A final word of advice: as you can see, it doesn't make a ton of cake. Your best bet is to make extra if you've got many unrelentless chocolaholics around, or you can make it for just me (I won't tell anyone ;)), and then you'll only have to make a single recipe's worth. Store it in the fridge if you've got a fruit fly problem - the last thing you want is rotten strawberries spoiling your beautiful ganache! And please send pictures if anyone makes cupcakes!!!

Chocolate Heaven

If my sleepy brain remembers correctly, I know some people who think they have a dessert with this name. However, tonight was born proof that they need a new name. This "tart" is 72845042859% Ghiradelli semisweet chocolate chips, so no doubt it was amazing.

Brownie "tart" from the crazy Barefoot Contessa. First you melt 2 c chocolate chips (the quality really, really, really matters so splurge and get something good!) and 6 tbsp butter in a double boiler until things are thick and creamy and you almost want to jump in and bathe in the stuff. With the kitchen aid workhorse, mix up three eggs (your choice as to how many whites and yolks you want to use; I used one whole egg and two whites) with 1 c sugar, 1/2 tsp vanilla, and 1 tsp instant coffee. (Use the coffee! If you don't want the caffeine, use decaf like us; if you don't like coffee, don't worry, you won't taste it--it just enhances the chocolate flavor; if you don't like chocolate, get out!). Turn the mixer on low and leave it on while you stir together 1/2 c flour (we actually used almond flour because we were out of all-purpose, 1/2 tsp baking powder, 1/4 tsp salt, and another cup of your awesome chocolate chips. (Flouring the chocolate chips is supposed to help them not sink to the bottom. I forgot this step, but I'm not sure if they sunk or not, because it didn't really rise so there wasn't really a bottom or a top.) Put the dry ingredients in the wet, then add the chocolate and butter mixture. (If it's before dinner, don't do what I did and eat half the chocolate-butter mixture because it's the best thing you've ever tasted. Not that I'm allowed to talk.) Mix well and pour into a tart pan, or a 9" round, your mouth, etc. If it survives until the oven, bake at 350 for 35 minutes. Inside is gooey chocolate heaven, so don't expect a toothpick to come out completely clean.

My advice is to do this when you can be sure you'll be by yourself; it's not the kind of thing you'll want to share. :) And no, there are absolutely NOT pictures of the final thing! Would you have been wasting time taking pictures when you could have been eating it?! Of course not!

The Perfect Muffin

Today I reached for the stars and left them in the dust. I've been wanting to do this for so long!

I chose a recipe impulsively from the comments on another recipe website, and it worked out perfectly. I proved that hard work and not taking shortcuts is important for getting where you want in life: lacking orange juice, I squeezed my own from an orange, had a first impromptu solo flight with a super cute mini food processor, poured muffin batter from one paper cup to another, and trashed the kitchen. And then took about fifty pictures, they were that good (the muffins were good; in defense of taking so many pictures, many of the pictures were crap, which explains why I take so many. I'll stop taking so many pictures if someone wants to donate a digital SLR... :P).

It was SO worth it. Even people who ate zucchini loved it. They rose perfectly, were the best possible brown, were moist, delicious...I need to go eat another right now! Here's the recipe:

Zucchini Carrot Spice Muffins

1.5 c flour (I used 1/2 c white, 1 c wheat)
1.5 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp cloves
1/2 tsp allspice
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
2 egg whites
1/6 c canola oil
1/2 c honey
1/2 tsp vanilla
1/2 c orange juice
1 c zucchini, grated or finely chopped (yay food processor!!!)
1 c carrot, grated or finely chopped (double yay food processor!!!)

Mix wet and dry well individually, then mix together just to moisten. Fold in orange juice and veggies only until combined. Bake at 370 for 15-20 minutes until beautiful brown and a tester comes out clean.

That's my batter at the last step; the puddles on the right are the freshly squeezed orange juice. I'm taking this success as a sign it's gonna be a great fall!

Baked Garlic Fries

I don't really read magazines, but apparently my foodie-ism has gotten so bad that a promise for a recipe for garlic fries on a cover can delay my getting in the shower, even if I'm really sweaty. In reality, maybe it's silly to even be taking the shower before making these, because having the oven on 450 has a way of necessitating another shower....

So despite heating things up, these couldn't be easier. I made them once with minced fresh garlic, but found that using garlic powder worked better as it could spread the garlic flavor around more completely. You can cut them in any shape; I used thick matchsticks, which were also fun because they were a novelty and left room for lots of chewy potato on the inside. Then you toss them with a tablespoon or two (don't measure) of olive oil, and salt, pepper, and garlic powder to taste before spreading on a greased cookie sheet and baking at 400 or 450 F until you can't wait any longer (by this I mean watch them; because smaller potatoes take less time to cook, and the last thing you want is burned potatoes).

Smitten Cake

Yet another impulsive cake. One of the best impulsive decisions ever. The recipe comes from the Smitten Kitchen blog, which I was perusing (this time on a Sunday at 5 pm) and was so captivated by the photos I had to make it amoebiately. Lessons learned involved following directions, not just ingredient lists, and again, learning to take things out of the oven in time. The cake ended up too dry because I baked it too long, but it's better to learn from experience than threats, so I'm not too unhappy. Anyway, ten seconds in the microwave and some ice cream work wonders.

You start by creaming a stick of butter until it's super smooth. I let it first soften at room temperature until it was soft, and then let the Kitchen Aid mixer go to work. Normally I would have stopped after a minute, but there were still lumps, so I decided to see what would happen if I let it mix for longer. What happened was perfect, smooth butter. Guess who's never melting butter in the microwave again! Then you add 1 c packed brown sugar and 1/2 c white sugar. Hey, it's less sugar than the Hershey's Holiday chocolate cake!

The directions said to beat three minutes, or until fluffy. I had no idea what she meant by fluffy, but when I checked a few minutes, later, things were fluffy! I added an egg, then a 1/2 c plain nonfat yogurt, and 1/2 c skim milk (in lieu of 1 c buttermilk), and 1 tsp vanilla. I was reminded to keep reading the directions when I saw they said not to worry if things were uneven, because I had been worrying that things looked uneven. I added the dry ingredients (1.5 c flour, 3/4 c Dutched cocoa, [note: if your cocoa isn't dutched, leave out the baking powder and use 1/2 tsp baking soda] 1/4 tsp baking soda, 1/2 baking powder, and 1/4 tsp salt), and the result was beautiful:

Waiting for it to bake (an hour!, at 325 F) was hard, but worth it. Next time I'm gonna try to not take fifty pictures.

So the Kitchen Aid mixer is my new best friend. Her and the treadmill!