Wingin’ It Wednesday: Experiments in Grilled Cheese

I’m trying to change up the way that I make food that I know is crappy for me. I figure if I make it well, with conscious effort to be precise, then it somehow makes it less crappy. Early on in our relationship, the Pie schooled me on the correct way to make a grilled cheese sandwich, and today I’m going to start playing with it to see if I can’t jazz it up a little bit. Today I’m going to add some tomatoes to the mix. Because tomato/cheese sandwiches are a favourite of mine.

So we start with our bread. The Pie prefers a solid white Texas toast or thick-sliced sandwich bread to be his base. Everyone has their own preferences of course, but I do like how light and crispy white bread gets when you grill it, and it’s pretty much the only time we eat white bread so we figure that’s okay. Next, sparingly cover one side of each slice of your bread with margarine. This is the only time (aside from making those margarine cookies) that we use oleo in the house. Normally it’s butter, but we find the butter tends to burn too quickly in this particular case.

Make sure to go right to the edges with your margarine. And don’t add too much – this is already a grease pile of a snack so you don’t want to overdo it. This is also why you don’t put margarine on BOTH sides of the bread. That’s too much.

Now you can plop one of the slices of bread, spread-side down, on your warm griddle (medium heat is best), and add your cheese slices. We like to use high quality old Canadian cheddar. Because really it’s the best.

I also had some cheese curds in the fridge so I added those as an experiment.

Then I added on my slices of tomato. I think it helps if your tomato is at room temperature so it doesn’t interfere with the melting of the cheese.

Then my second slice of bread and more cheese. I need the cheese on the second slice to melt enough to stay in place when I flip it down over the tomatoes.

Of course when I flipped all the cheese curds fell out into the pan. But then I got some warm fried cheese curds, which were great. Like mini haloumi.

And now you cook it long enough for everything inside to get gooey. Some people like their cheese only lightly grilled.

Others, like myself, prefer a tougher exterior.

Serve with a glass of milk and some pickles on the side. Always. How do you do YOUR grilled cheese? Next time, I’m going to try avocados!

Jammy Bran Muffins

These muffins are a little bit different from your usually brown bran muffins. As you may know, I have a love/hate relationship with bran, so I’m always looking for new ways to ingest fibre without feeling like I’m eating sawdust. It’s a never-ending challenge. The additional challenge of these is that for some reason I have four jars of jam in my fridge and neither the Pie nor I is eating a lot of toast at the moment. So I decided to use it as my sweetener in this shindig.

Start by setting your oven to preheat at 350°F and spray a muffin tin or rub it with butter. If you don’t have any buttermilk on hand, feel free to sour some milk by adding 1 tablespoon lemon juice to every cup of regular milk. Give that a stir and leave it for 5 minutes.

In a large bowl, whisk together 2 cups all-purpose flour, 1 1/4 cup bran, 1/4 cup ground flax (because it’s good for you – make sure it’s partially ground before you add it in), and 1 1/4 teaspoons baking soda.

In a smaller bowl, scramble together 4 tablespoons melted butter, 3/4 cup of your favourite jam (this one is serviceberry), 1 large egg, and 2 cups buttermilk (or alternative).

Now pour the liquids into the solids and gently whisk until only just combined.

Dump in 1 cup raisins (or not, if you’re not a fan of raisins) and whisk until just combined again – never over-mix muffins. If you do they end up flat. And that’s lame.

Divide the batter in your tin. Bake those puppies for 20-25 minutes, until the centre muffin tests clean when stabbed with a toothpick.

Leave them in the pan for about 5 minutes to cool a little bit before digging them out and eating them or letting them cool completely.

We always like our muffins hot, with butter. Because, well, butter.

Ginger Molasses Cookie

So there’s a certain giant mega-corporation coffee chain near our office. I’m sure you know the one – it has a fishy logo. Because it’s the only place near our office, we go there ALL THE TIME. And I’m kind of in love with their giant ginger molasses cookies. But they’re a million dollars and I just KNOW that the reason they’re so chewy and amazing is because they’re filled with all sorts of ick. And there’s probably some form of addictive substance in them (other than sugar, I mean), because I don’t even LIKE cookies and I can’t resist these. And I just found out TWO DAYS AGO that the place near work has discontinued the darned things.

So it’s been a quest of mine to re-create the recipe on my own. Turns out I’m not the only one who has tried. Most of the recipes I found seem to be taken from the same source and have mostly the same ingredients, so I picked this one from Food.com. Forgive my crappy photos – it’s a weeknight in the winter in Canada so it’s dark. Start by preheating your oven to 375°F and line two large baking sheets with parchment paper. Then grab your ingredients.

Whisk together 2 1/4 cups flour, 2 teaspoons baking soda, 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon, 1 teaspoon ground ginger, 1/2 teaspoon ground allspice, and 1/2 teaspoon ground cloves. Set that aside for a few minutes.

Next, in the bowl of an electric mixer, cream together 3/4 cup butter and 1 cup dark brown sugar. I didn’t have dark brown so I went with regular brown. But the darker your sugar, the darker your cookie.

Scrape down the mixing paddle and the sides of the bowl and crack in 1 large egg. Pour in as well 1/4 cup regular unsulphured molasses. I used fancy grade molasses, because that seems to be what you can get in Canada. Not sure what the difference is.

Give that a good beating until it’s smooth.

Now, slowly add in your flour mixture while beating on low speed. Keep mixing until the dough forms a cohesive mass – it’ll be super thick and you’ll have to scrape things down occasionally to ensure good mixage.

Now grab your cookie dough, and your baking sheets, and a shallow dish or plate. Tip about 1/3 cup granulated sugar onto the plate and spread it around. Scoop out 1/4 cup of the dough (I’m not kidding, these things are huge), roll it into a ball, and roll it in the granulated sugar before placing it on the baking sheet.

Do that five more times for the first sheet, spacing them far apart (they spread). Do the other six on the other baking sheet (yeah, this recipe only makes 12. If you’re not insane and you’d like a smaller cookie go ahead and do that).

Next, wet your fingers and press down on each cookie ball to flatten it slightly and dampen the sugar coating. Shove one baking sheet in the fridge and the other in the oven.

Bake each sheet, one at a time, for 12 minutes, rotating halfway through, or until the cookie is an even brown and is mostly solid in the middle. Let those giant suckers cool on the baking sheet.

I’m not sure if they’re *quite* the recipe I was looking for – I might add more ginger and more molasses (or maybe my ginger is just a little old). But they’re really good nonetheless!

Yet Another Spider-Man Cake

The Pie’s crowning achievement in life (in his mind) is having gotten the General addicted to Spider-Man (or “Pydermun” as the General says). So when Atlas asked me to make a cake for the General’s second birthday party, we all knew what the theme would be. I made a cake for the Pie a year back with an arachnid theme so I was pretty confident I could replicate my awesomeness. The resulting decoration, due to some recalcitrant icing, was a little underwhelming but boy the cake was good – it disappeared within about twenty minutes!

The cake itself is pretty easy. I adapted a simple yellow cake out of the Joy of Cooking and decided to tip in a bunch of strawberries, too.

So I washed and cut up about a pint of the little red gems, and made sure that they were in decently small pieces.

Then I buttered and lined a 9″ x 13″ baking pan with parchment paper. This cake is very moist and fragile so you need some help tipping it out of the pan and the paper helps. You can preheat your oven to 350°F as well while you’re at it.

If you don’t have any buttermilk on hand, then whip up this quick substitute: add 1 tablespoon lemon or lime juice to a 1 cup measuring cup and fill the rest with milk. Stir and leave for 5 minutes. Set that aside for now.

In a bowl, sift together 2 1/3 cups flour with 1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder and 1/2 teaspoon baking soda. Set that aside and grab your mixer.

In the bowl of your mixer, dump 3/4 cup softened butter and whip that into a pale fluffy frenzy for like three minutes.

Now tip in 1 1/3 cup sugar and beat again until you have a fluffy amazing pile of salty sweet buttery goodness.

Now add in 3 large eggs, one at a time, as well as 2 teaspoons vanilla extract, and beat until fully combined and smooth.

Grab your flour mixture and your 1 cup buttermilk (or substitute) and alternate adding them to the mix, stirring each time. Start with the flour, so you have three additions of flour and two of buttermilk, and go until it’s all smooth and batter-y.

Dump in your 1 pint chopped strawberries and stir those in well.

Smooth the batter into the pan and bake for about 45 minutes, until a toothpick inserted in the centre comes out clean. Set that on a rack in the pan to cool completely.

Make yourself some icing – your choice, but I prefer the standby cream cheese recipe of 1 cup butter:1 package cream cheese:3-4 cups icing sugar. I tipped in some almond extract to boost the strawberry flavour, and then dyed it appropriately with gel paste food colouring.

I actually ran out of red colour so the background ended up a wee bit pink.

And the black stuff got super wobby when I was piping it so it didn’t look so hot. However I did manage to get the floppy cake onto the lid of a tupperware container before decorating so it was a simple matter to simply jam the bottom on top for easy transport!

Apple Galette – Fancy Cheating

For the first time in I don’t know how long, it wasn’t up to me to cook Thanksgiving dinner this year. I’d been traveling for two weeks straight and I simply didn’t have the time. I did, however, volunteer to make a dessert for the meal, and I decided on something autumnal but at the same time not too heavy: an apple galette, which I adapted from this Jacques Pépin recipe. The best part about galettes? They look SUPER fancy and elegant and they’re hella easy. So it’s almost like cheating. And I made the pastry and cut the apples the day before so it got even easier.

Dump 1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour, 1 1/2 teaspoons granulated sugar, and 1/2 cup plus 2 tablespoons ice cold butter (cut into small pieces) into the bowl of a food processor.

Pulse for about 5 seconds, until you have some rough crumbs. Drizzle in 1/3 cup ice water and pulse again for another 10 seconds, until the dough starts to come together.

Scoop it out onto a sheet of plastic wrap and pat it into a small disc. Wrap up tight and refrigerate until chilled. I left it in overnight.

Next, grab yourself 4 apples of your choice and give them a good scrubbing. You can peel them if you want but I like the colour that leaving the skin on brings to a dish. And yes, I know there are six apples in the picture, not four.

Halve, then quarter the apples and remove the core. Slice them into crescents about 1/4″ thick.

If you want to do the apples the day before, you totally can. I layered my slices in a plastic container and sprinkled each layer liberally with lime juice (this prevents browning and adds a nice level of tartness to the finished dessert). Then I covered them with plastic wrap and sealed the container. They were fresh as daisies the next day.

When you’re ready to git ‘er done, preheat your oven to 400°F and lightly flour a clean work surface. Roll the pastry dough out until it’s about 14″ in diameter. You can free-form this galette by laying it on a baking sheet, but I have a very shallow tart pan that is ideal for making sure nothing gets away on me. Lay your dough into your dish (you will be folding over the edges, but if the edges are super extreme feel free to trim them).

Slap on one layer of apple slices, arranged however you like – I did concentric circles. Drizzle that layer with about 1 tablespoon honey.

Do another layer, or until you run out of apple slices. Then sprinkle the top with a mixture of 2 tablespoons brown sugar and 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon. Cut 1 tablespoon butter into tiny pieces and distribute those evenly over the top.

Fold the edges of the dough over the top of the apples.

Bake for 45 minutes to an hour, until the crust is nicely browned and the apples are cooked through. Keep an eye on things and remove the pie if things are starting to burn. Serve warm or at room temperature.

Dulce de Leche Cookies

I told you it would be sticky.

I made these for a coworker’s birthday (oh how quickly I have fallen yet again into the baking trap!) and they were very well-received.

If you already have dulce de leche on hand, good on you (I’m especially amazed that you didn’t use it all up pouring it into your mouth because that’s kind of what I do). If you don’t, I’ll show you a super easy and pretty much fool-proof way to make it. Grab a can or two of condensed milk. For this recipe you will barely use half a can but if you want some more on hand for other things, you might as well make it all at once because it takes for ever.

Peel off the paper. You’re going to be boiling these so you don’t want that paper in there getting all gummy.

Grab a large pot and fill it with water. Plop the can(s) in on their sides (so they can roll around and cook evenly). Ensure that they are covered completely with at least an inch of water. Bring the water to a boil and then let it simmer for 3 hours. You will likely need to top up the water occasionally so it’s always covering the cans. If the cans become expose then the whole convection element of the water stops working and the cans could explode. You don’t want that.

After three hours, carefully remove the cans from the boiling water and set them upright on a rack to cool completely. Do not under any circumstances attempt to open a can while it is hot. You will be covered in horrible caramel burns as a result and that is a good way to ruin a nice day.

Once it’s cool, you can make some amazing cookies, which I actually found on the Land o’ Lakes site. Those people know things about butter, which makes them my kind of people.

Start by stirring up a bowl with 1/3 cup granulated sugar, 3/4 teaspoon salt, 1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon, and 1/8 teaspoon ground cardamom. Set that aside. Your cookies are going to wear that later.

Now, in the bowl of a mixer, beat up 1/2 cup softened butter with 3/4 cup packed brown sugar.

Tip in 1 egg and 2 teaspoons vanilla and keep beating until smooth.

In a separate bowl, whisk together 1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour, 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon, and 1/2 teaspoon baking powder.

While mixing the egg/butter/sugar madness, slowly add in the flour and stir until fully combined.

Separate about 1/4 of the cookie dough from the bowl. Chill both blobs of dough for about 30 minutes.

When you’re ready, preheat your oven to 375°F and line some baking sheets with parchment paper. Grab from the larger blob and make 24 balls of dough. Set the balls onto the baking sheet at least 2 inches apart, because they do spread.

Dip the handle of a wooden spoon into flour and drive it into the center of each ball so that there’s a good-sized divot in each.

Pile about 1/4 cup dulce de leche into a small resealable plastic bag and snip off a bit of one of the bottom corners.

Pipe the caramel into each divot until the caramel comes level with the top of the hole.

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Now grab your smaller blob of dough and divide it into 24 equal pieces. Flatten each piece into a patty and use it to seal over the top of the caramel hole.

Smooth down the edges to get a good seal.

Bake, rotating halfway through, for 9-11 minutes, until the edges are slightly browned.

Let the cookies stand on the sheet for 1 minute, then dip them in the sugar until thoroughly covered and leave them to cool completely on a wire rack.

I don’t know how well these store because they didn’t last that long …

Rice Pudding

I LOVE rice pudding. It was a big treat for us growing up in a household where desserts were a rarity. And it was a dessert that, like apple crumble, was totally legal for BREAKFAST too! My grandmother made it. My mother made it. I’ve made it too.

I’ve been hankering for it recently, and I realized I haven’t made it in almost a decade. BECAUSE THE PIE *HATES* RICE PUDDING. So in all the years we’ve been together I’ve only made it once.

Well that’s about to change. If he doesn’t like it, then it means I can have the whole thing to myself for breakfasts and desserts for, like, a WEEK.

Now there’s kind of two schools about rice pudding – there’s the totally squishy school of puddings, where the rice pudding actually is more pudding like – and then there’s the baked pudding school, where it’s more like a casserole with custardy bits surrounded by crunchy. I’m kind of somewhere in the middle, but on this one I’m going to go with the more creamy stove-top version. I also like mine with raisins and orange zest and cardamom and lots of cinnamon so if you don’t, well – just leave them out. But I’m going to judge you for that. I won’t judge you for replacing dairy with coconut milk – that stuff goes well with everything.

The type of rice you use can determine how creamy your pudding will turn out, and as traditionally this dish likely emerged from leftovers, take a look at what you’ve got stored in your fridge. If you use arborio rice, for example, your pudding will be very much like risotto (because that’s what arborio rice is for). Short or medium grain rices will also make for more creamy puddings. And then the spices you use all depend on which grandma’s recipe you’re using, and where that grandma is from. So this is *my* version, that I came up with after some experimentation. It’s not quite my mother’s. It’s not quite my grandmother’s. It’s all mine. I’ll be the grandma some day with this recipe.

Before you start, measure out 2 cups milk or cream and crack open a 400mL can of coconut milk (or use any combination thereof).

Beat up 1 egg and put that in a dish. Actually, scratch that. Put an egg in a dish. THEN beat it. Hard to do it the first way ’round.

Zest as well 2 oranges and put the zest in a dish. Juice the oranges and drink up that glorious vitamin C. You’re gonna need it – winter is coming.

Now, grab 1 cup arborio rice (the risotto stuff).

I plopped it in a large pot with 2 tablespoons butter and let the butter get all melty and bubbly and stuff.

Then I poured in 2 cups water and brought the whole thing to a simmer.

FOR LIKE EVER. Seriously it takes forever to cook risotto. Keep stirring it occasionally so it doesn’t stick to the bottom.

Getting there …

… almost there …

When you can kind of scoop it to one side and it doesn’t flow back super fast you’re probably ready for the next step.

Now you can pour in the milk and give it a stir. Tip in the egg as well and stir it around before the milk gets hot enough to curdle the egg.

Bring it to a simmer and let the mixture begin to thicken, which it will do pretty quickly. While that’s happening, I grabbed 1/2 cup raisins and left them to soak in 2 splashes warm water and 1 splash bourbon (optional).

Tip some honey into the pot until it’s sweetened to taste. I used about 1/4 cup honey.

You can add in your orange zest now, as well as 1 teaspoon cinnamon and 1 teaspoon cardamom.

Then I chucked in the raisins, bourbon-water and all.

Lower the heat and allow that to simmer, stirring occasionally.

The liquid will begin to disappear.

We are almost there. I dig those totally round air bubble pockets.

When the pudding is at a consistency that you like (i.e., when you stir it the liquid doesn’t form pools) then it’s ready to serve. You can enjoy it hot and liquidy or cold and solid – it’s entirely up to you!

Oatmeal Chocolate Chunkies

I made these to serve a double purpose: to provide cookies for the shindig last week (which was my parents’ 40th wedding anniversary), and also for the birthday of one of my coworkers – so I froze the dough for the birthday (which is tomorrow, yay!) and made the rest up for the party. I made these traditional oatmeal chocolate cookies with a little bit of a twist – the addition of some chipotle spice. It’s not excessive, but feel free to omit the spice if you wish.

Start by creaming together 1 cup butter, 1/2 cup brown sugar, and 1/2 cup granulated sugar until it’s all lovely and fluffy.

Beat in 2 eggs and 2 teaspoons vanilla.

Now whisk together 2 cups flour, 1/2 teaspoons baking powder, 1 teaspoon cinnamon, and then — DRAMATIC PAUSE — 1/2 teaspoon chipotle powder.

Then mix in about 1 cup oats. If you want them more oaty and nubbly, then add in 2 cups total – that’s up to you. The more oats you add the more structure the cookie will have. I was looking for flat and crispy so I only put in the one.

Chop up as well a large amount of chocolate. This worked out to about 2 cups chopped Belgian chocolate. Mmmm …

Now chuck the dough in the fridge for a little bit to chill so it’s easier to manipulate. Preheat your oven to 350°F and line some baking sheets with parchment. Plop rolled teaspoons of the dough onto your baking sheet and spread them out as they will flatten and expand while baking. I put them too close in these pictures so act accordingly.

Bake the cookies for about 10 minutes, rotating the baking sheets halfway through, until the centres are set. Let the cookies cool on the rack for about five minutes before putting them on a wire rack to cool completely. Enjoy!

Quick Lemon Bars

I picked these lemon bars from the Barefoot Contessa because they didn’t involve making lemon curd ahead of time and also because they froze well. Next time I think I’d make them a little less sweet. I like my lemon squares to kind of punch you in the face and these didn’t quite do the trick.

Start with a 9″ x 13″ baking dish. Butter it and line it with parchment (otherwise you will never get the bars out alive). Then juice and zest about 4 lemons, until you get about 2 tablespoons lemon zest and 1 cup lemon juice.

In the bowl of an electric mixer, cream together 1 cup room temperature butter and 1/2 cup granulated sugar.

Bit by bit, add in 2 cups all-purpose flour and mix until just combined.

Form the dough into a ball and press it firmly into the base of the baking dish.

Chill that for about 10 minutes, then bake at 350°F for 15-20 minutes, until a light golden. Leave the oven on.

In a bowl, whisk together 6 room temperature eggs, 3 cups granulated sugar (I would use probably half this amount next time), the lemon zest, lemon juice, and 1 cup flour (this flour seemed a little out of place to me and made for a very solid lemon bar. Next time I’d either halve it or leave it out altogether).

Pour the filling onto your still-warm crust and bake for a further 30 minutes, until the filling is set.

Let that cool before cutting into triangles or bars and eating. You can also dust the tops with icing sugar prior to serving for extra pizzazz.

Not *quite* what I was going for, but still good.

Cheesecake Brownies

More shindig food, so you’ll have to forgive my less than ideal photos – I’ve been doing a lot of night baking and then shoving everything whole into the freezer, so I can’t get the best pictures. So needless to say, these freeze really well. If you want better photos, go to Yammie’s Noshery, which is where I got the recipe.

Butter a 9″ x 13″ baking dish and line it with parchment paper.

Start with 1 cup butter and 2 1/4 cup granulated sugar, and melt those together in a pot until smooth and bubbly.

Let that cool for at least 10 minutes and preheat your oven to 350°F.

While that’s chilling out, whisk together 1 1/4 cups cocoa, 1 teaspoon baking powder, and 1 1/2 cups flour. Set that aside for a wee spell.

In another bowl, whisk together 8oz softened cream cheese (remember that the warmer it is, the less lumpy it will be), 1/3 cup sour cream, 1/2 cup sugar, 1/2 teaspoon vanilla, and 1 egg. You may want the hand mixer for this job. Set THAT aside.

Grab another bowl (so many bowls) and whisk together 1 teaspoon vanilla and 4 eggs.

Tip in your butter-sugar goo and whisk it until it’s glossy.

Then tip all that into your flour-cocoa mixture and stir until smooth.

THEN dump in 2 cups chocolate chips and mix those in.

Smooth all your cocoa batter into the pan. Try your best to dig little troughs down the length of the pan and fill those with the cream cheese batter. As you can see, my best is not the best. My batter was more fluid I think than was intended so the troughs kept filling in. It was like trying to build a sandcastle in a rising tide.

Then grab a butter knife and cut into the batter, dragging the knife perpendicular to the troughs.

I hope yours looks better than this.

Bake for 25-35 minutes (25 for gooey, 35 for non-gooey; mine was in-between) and let cool completely before cutting into bars.

I can’t wait to eat one of these puppies on Saturday!