Creamsicle Pudding

HAPPY BIRTHDAY RUSTY!

I adapted this recipe from Food52 when I had three oranges and two lemons and I didn’t know what to do with them (other than simply eat them, but that’s not very exciting).

Start by zesting and juicing your 3 oranges and 2 lemons.

You should end up with just over 1 cup juice (like a cup plus a couple tablespoons, which is good).

Set a medium-sized pot on the stove with a couple inches of water in it and set it to simmer.

Then grab a metal or heatproof glass bowl and crack in 6 large eggs plus 2 egg yolks. Give those a thorough beating-up. They probably deserve it, the jerks.

Whisk in 1 1/2 cups sugar.

Then toss in your zest and your juice.

What a lovely colour.

Set that on top of the simmering water and make sure the water doesn’t touch the bottom of the bowl. Stir pretty much constantly. If you leave egg yolks and granulated sugar alone for more than a minute they get a bit grainy and we don’t want that. Keep stirring!

After about 10 or so minutes, the foam will disappear and you’ll have this lovely thick stuff that leaves a trace when you move the whisk. If you test this with a thermometer it should read around 180°F.

Remove the bowl from the heat and let it cool a bit, stirring occasionally to release more heat. You want it somewhere around 140°F before you put your butter in. My butter was actually frozen so I started adding it in at around the 150°F mark.

Tip all your lovely citrusy goo into a blender (you can use an immersion blender if you have a deep enough bowl) and add in 2 cups of unsalted butter, a few cubes at a time, mixing thoroughly between each addition, until your concoction is pale and very thick. I may have overfilled my blender here. Oops. All the more reason to make sure the lid stays on.

The finished product is more or less a curd, so you can use it to fill tarts, spread it on scones or toast (I have some panettone that is simply itching to be slathered), or eat it as a pudding. I’m also tempted to whip up some cream and fold them together to make a frozen fool (though the weather outside is too cold to make me crave cold treats). Just keep it covered and in the fridge if you don’t eat it all right away.

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St. Clement’s Cake

I made this Jamie Oliver recipe for Mrs. Nice’s birthday cake and it was a real hit. If you’re not super into the huge layer cakes with tons of icing then I think this will be right up your alley. It’s a nice moist cake as well so it keeps for quite a few days if you wrap it up well.

Measurements for this recipe are mostly in metric, so if you have a scale handy I would recommend using it. Start by greasing a springform cake pan with butter, and then line the bottom with a circle of parchment paper. Preheat your oven to 350°F.

Next, grab yourself a large orange and take all the zest off. Juice it as well while you’re at it. Set that aside for a bit.

In the bowl of your mixer, beat together 125g softened butter with 125g sugar until it’s soft and fluffy and amazing.

Next, crack in 4 large eggs, one at a time, beating between each addition until everything is foamy and smooth.

Tip in *most* of your orange zest. Keep some aside for the syrup and topping.

Next, fold in 100g self-rising flour (see here for a DIY substitute) and 200g ground almonds.

Smooth that loveliness into your cake pan and bake for about 30 minutes, until fully risen and lightly golden.

Let that cool in the pan for a few minutes and make some syrup.

In a small saucepan, tip in 100g sugar and the juice from that orange you smooshed earlier. Add in a pinch of the remaining zest as well for extra flavour if you like. Stir over medium heat until the sugar is totally dissolved.

Next, take a skewer and poke a ton of holes all over your still-hot cake. Go all the way to the bottom.

Drizzle the syrup all over the top of the cake and leave it for a few minutes to soak in before popping off the edges of the pan.

Let the cake cool completely.

Now I want you to zest and juice 1 lemon. Add a pinch of the lemon zest to your remaining orange zest, but stir the rest of it into 225g icing sugar.

Drizzle in your lemon juice, stirring the whole time, until you have a glaze that is a nice consistency for pouring.

Pour your glaze slowly over the entire cooled cake, allowing it to drip off the sides. It’s best to put a sheet of waxed paper under your rack BEFORE you do this.

Sprinkle that remaining zest on top and leave it to harden a bit. Once it’s set you can transfer it to a plate for serving.

Enjoy!

Cardamom Orange Date Squares

I know we’ve already done some truly decadent date squares at Ali Does It, but I wanted to do another one to emphasize how truly great dates are. They’re so underrated. And in date squares? My, my, my. Date squares always seem like some kind of old people food when you’re just looking at them, but then you bite into that crumbly, sticky, gooey-ness and you remember that they’re just pretty much amazeballs, regardless of how old you are.

I was making these for that shindig business that’s coming along and I sent the Pie out to buy dates – I wanted the ones in a block, not the ones I would have to pit and chop up. Because I’m lazy. And the Pie, knowing my penchant for doubling and tripling every recipe, picked up the biggest block of dates he could find. IT’S A KILOGRAM. A whole kilogram of dates. So here’s what I came up with in order to deal with a KILOGRAM of dates.

Start with your kilogram of dates. Unwrap them from the triple-wrapped wrapping craziness. I guess they’re pretty sticky if you let ’em.

Then slice your block up a bit.

Chuck that in a pot with 3 cups water. Bring that to a boil and then simmer it for like 10 minutes.

It’s gonna be all squidgy and icky and gross. Take that off the heat and let it cool slightly. Zest and juice 2 oranges.

Tip the juice, as well as 2 teaspoons ground cardamom and 4 teaspoons vanilla, into your date goo. Give it a stir.

If you want, shove it in a food processor. I like my dates to be smooth but I’ll leave that up to you.

And buzz it until it’s all super sludge.

Now preheat the oven to 350°F and butter and line some baking dishes with parchment paper.

While that’s heating up, whisk together 3 cups flour, 3 cups oats, 2 cups brown sugar, 1 teaspoon baking powder, and that orange zest you have on hand.

Cube up 2 cups room temperature butter and dump that in the flour. Mix it in with your hands until it’s all crumbly and you want to eat it.

Scoop half that mixture into the bottoms of the dishes and press it down.

Scoop the date mix into the dishes as well and smooth it over.

Add the rest of the oat mixture to the top and press it down slightly.

Shove those into the oven for 45 minutes, until everything is golden brown.

Let those cool slightly in the dish, on a rack, and then lift them out to cool completely on the rack before cutting into eatable-sized squares. I won’t judge you on the size of said squares. Whatever works for you!

Carbonated Coffee for Summer

When I saw this coffee soda on Man Made DIY a few weeks back I thought, ew, weird. But then I thought, welp, better try it. And so here we are. This is an interesting twist on iced coffee if you’re tired of the latte version.

Man Made has a whole system for making special double-strong cold brewed coffee.

But I wasn’t so picky, opting instead for just brewing my favourite espresso double strength and letting it cool before straining and chilling.

The process is pretty simple: you have your chilled super-strong coffee, a large glass, some of your favourite fizzy water, an orange, and a vegetable peeler. And some ice, but that stayed in the freezer while I took this photo.

Fill your glass about half full with your cold coffee and plop in some ice cubes. You can sweeten the coffee if you wish (I keep a small jar of simple syrup in the fridge for this very purpose). Use the vegetable peeler to scrape up a good-sized chunk of orange peel.

Top the glass off with soda water. Squeeze the peel over the beverage to get the orange oils in there.

Then rub the oily peel around the edge of the glass before plopping it right into the coffee.

And that’s it. It’s definitely different, but I think I like it. Give it a try and tell me what you think!

Bees plus Booze: Making Krupnikas

This recipe popped up on Global Table back in January 2012 and I have been positively itching to make it ever since. The problem is that in order to make lovely, lovely liqueurs, you need grain alcohol. And there are very few provinces in Canada where you can legally purchase such things. Fortunately one of my lovely friends picked some Everclear up for me when he was in Michigan and brought it across the border for me for my birthday.  And this lovely warming sipper will make a fantastic gift. Did I mention it makes your house smell lovely as you’re making it, and also that it’s ridiculously easy? LOVELY.

First, though, you have to do your due diligence regarding what you’re going to put your finished concoction in. I searched high and low, in second-hand stores and restaurant supply stores, to find appropriate bottles for a reasonable price. Finally I found these 200mL flasks at Terra20 (sorry non-Ottawans, it’s a local store, but they do have online shopping). Now, you can put your bottles through a run in the dishwasher if you like, but I don’t trust my dishwasher fully because I have never cleaned it. I am my father’s daughter and as such he has taught me to properly sterilize things you’re going to put booze in. So first you wash them thoroughly in detergent and hot water.

Let them drip dry.

Then grab some Star-San if you can get it from a local home-brew place.

Follow the instructions carefully, and wear gloves! Let your bottles air dry while you prepare your ingredients.

I love that this recipe uses whole spices.

In fact, it uses WHOLE turmeric, which was tricky for me to find after trolling through several health food stores. But it was super cheap. When the cashier asked me how much I wanted to order, I said, “Oh, 200g or so,” not knowing how much that would be. It was a lot. And it cost me about $4. I only need one of those weird little ginger-like knobs.

You’ll need about 1 1/2lbs of honey (organic and local if possible, naturally). This works out to about 550mL liquid honey.

Peel 1 orange.

And peel half a lemon.

Grab 3 or 4 cinnamon sticks.

And 5 allspice berries.

And a nutmeg. (A nutmeg? A meg nut? I dunno.)

And 8 cloves.

And 10 cardamom pods.

And 1 teaspoon fennel seeds.

And 1 1/2 teaspoons black pepper.

You will also need 1 vanilla bean, sliced and scraped. Except for some reason I totally forgot to include that in the recipe. It’s still amazing, but I bet a vanilla bean would make it even more amazing.

Grab yourself a 3″ knob of ginger, and slice that into four pieces.

And grab a 2-3″ knob of turmeric, and slice THAT into four pieces.

Look at that gorgeous orange. The turmeric will give a nice sort of earthy base to the booze, while at the same time keeping that lovely yellow tint you expect of something made with honey.

Crack all the spices to let the flavour out. I used a nutcracker on the nutmeg.

And my pestle for the rest.

Gather your spices and plop them in a cup for now. Not shown of course is the vanilla bean I forgot.

In a large saucepan, dump in your honey and 1L water and bring that to a simmer.

Skim any foam off the top with a slotted spoon.

Dump all your spices in and let that become an amazing concoction.

Simmer that sucker, stirring occasionally, for about 35 minutes. At this point the young man who was fixing my ceiling crept up behind me and asked me what I was making that smelled so good. As he was about 16 years old I did not offer him any of it. I’m not sure if he was sad or not. But I’m sure the craftsmanship on my ceiling would have suffered.

Remove the pot from the heat and pour in 750mL grain alcohol. Watch out, as it will fizz up and the fumes will likely make you cough a bit. While it still smells good I don’t recommend you go around huffing grain alcohol fumes. That might be bad.

Strain out the spices and use them for something else, like a syrup or ice cream base.

I plopped them into some applesauce I was making. It made the applesauce taste like CANDY.

Line up your bottles ready for filling. I put them all in a dish and wedged them with a dish towel to keep them steady while I filled them.

I filled all 8 200mL bottles exactly, just like I’d planned.

Seal the bottles and let them cool. The mixture will be cloudy at first.

But still gloriously cheerfully yellow.

The cloudiness is a sediment that will settle over the next couple of days. You can drink this stuff right away and it will be unbelievably good, but the longer you let it sit the mellower and more amazing it will get. Try to wait at least two weeks.

Even after just 24 hours most of the sediment has settled. You can stir the sediment back in if you like, or filter it out and serve it on cake or whatever.

My true sadness is that I was hoping for a little extra krupnikas to try myself, but I didn’t get any. I am going to give all of this away. So I hope that my friends share.

Citrus Chipotle Cranberry Sauce? Believe it.

I made a fancy cranberry sauce for Christmas last year but for some reason I didn’t blog it. This year for Thanksgiving (13 October in Canada) I wanted something a little spicier (but not much spicier) than the traditional sauce, so I thought that this would be a good bloggable opportunity, and I modified this recipe I found on Epicurious (originally of Bon Appétit) to do it. The result is a delightfully rich cranberry sauce with a hint of savoury and garlic and a smoky after taste. It’s truly amazeballs (yes, that is the technical term).

Start with 2 dried chipotle chillies. Super dried. Gross.

Plop those in a medium saucepan filled with water and bring it to a boil. Reduce to a simmer and let those chillies soak up the hot water for an hour to an hour and a half, depending on how dried out they are. You want to be able to mince them in the end. Your house will smell like chipotle for like forever, just a warning. But that’s not necessarily a bad thing.

Grab yourself an orange and a lemon and zest them.

I used a small rasp to get most of the zest but I used one of the fancy kinds for cocktails to get a bit of rind for colour.

Juice the lemon while you’re at it and save the juice. Eat the orange because it’s good for you. DO IT.

When the chillies are soft, drain them and then plop them in another pot with 24oz fresh cranberries (that’s two of the standard bags you get at the grocery store), the lemon and orange zest and lemon juice, 3/4 cup dried diced apricots (optional but worth it), and about 2 cups sugar. I actually saved a splash of the chipotle water and added it in as well, probably about 2-3 tablespoons.

Heat that over medium, stirring, until the sugar is all dissolved.

Now, you’re supposed to keep the chillies in there until the end and then take them out, stem and deseed them, and then plop them back in. But my chillies were so soft they started falling apart almost immediately.

So I took out the bits of chipotle earlier, minced them (which was easier than I thought it would be, considering how hard they used to be), and added them back in. A few stray seeds made it in as well but there’s no harm in that.

Keep cooking the berries, stirring occasionally now, until they start to softly POP open (it’s a delightful noise, I promise). Stir in 2 teaspoons minced garlic, 1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon, and 1/2 teaspoon ground cumin.

Keep stirring that until the sauce starts to thicken a bit and you can tell that the flavours have all gotten to know each other. Then you can remove it from the heat and let it cool.

Chill the cranberry sauce for up to one week before it’s needed. It also freezes fantastically.

I actually hope this lasts until Thanksgiving Monday. The Pie and I keep scooping out bites of it with a spoon.

Orange and Caramel Bananas: In the Woods

 

Happy Labour Day!

I halved the recipe for this dessert from The Camping Cookbook, and it was so good I think I need to make it again from home. Like, all the time.  At this point we were sick of the rain and the damp and had pretty much determined that this would be our last camp meal, so I really hoped it didn’t disappoint. And it didn’t. This is good. And it was easy enough to construct in the dark, in the rain, under a flapping tarpaulin.

Start by zesting and juicing one orange. Tip the juice and zest into a saucepan.

Thickly slice up 2 large bananas and set those aside for a moment as well.

Add 1/4 cup granulated sugar and 1 teaspoon vanilla to the orange juice in the pan and cook over medium heat, stirring often, until it starts to caramelize.

Tip in the banana slices and shake the pan to coat them in the glaze.

Add in 1 tablespoon butter and cook that, stirring, for 3 minutes, until everything is thick and glossy.

Rather than add extra dishes to our soggy lot we ate this straight from the pan, piping hot. Worth it.

There MUST be a better way!

 

Today we fly from St. John’s to Ottawa, so you get a filler post.  A silly filler post.

I was browsing imgur the other day (don’t judge, it’s great), and I came across this photo of a new way to peel an orange.  Normally, I end up digging my thumb into the top of the thing, removing the peel in chunks, and I end up covered in orange oil and juice.  So normally I don’t eat oranges, because I can’t handle this complication.

But I thought I would try this new method, in the hopes that it would improve my life. So you peel off the top and the bottom parts of the peel.

Then you make a slit in the side of the peel, and open it like a scroll.

But these navel oranges have really thick skins and so this didn’t really end up working.

And then I found out that this image was of a mandarin (or clementine, or satsuma), with a super thin skin.  And I have no trouble peeling those at all.  Who has trouble peeling mandarins?  You have issues, my friend.

So that’s my story.  It’s not as exciting as this orange peeling story, which I found as well.  And I’m still covered in orange juice.

Orange Coconut Scones

I had a bad experience making (read: burning) scones when I was a kid and haven’t tried them since.  But our receptionist at work made these for the Sweet Treats club (seriously, the best idea I have EVER had) two weeks ago and I thought I would share with you the awesomeness.  If you think something is awesome in Newfoundland, you say that it’s “best kind.”  Not THE best kind.  Just best kind.  And these are best kind.

Preheat your oven to 400°F and line two baking sheets (or three, depending on the size of your scones) with parchment paper.

Stir together 4 cups all-purpose flour, 2 tablespoons baking powder, and the zest of 2 oranges in the bowl of a stand mixer.

Dice up 3/4 cup cold butter and add that in, mixing on the lowest speed until the butter pieces are all pea-sized.

Lightly beat 4 eggs and pour in 1 cup cold heavy cream.  Give that a stir then add it to the mixing bowl and mix until just blended.

Combine 1 cup shredded coconut with 1/4 cup flour and add that in as well.  I found I had to stop the mixer at this point and manipulate it in with my cold hands, as it slowed the machine down quite a bit.

Dump the dough onto a floured surface and knead it into a ball.

Flour a rolling pin and flatten the stuff out until it’s about 3/4″ thick. Use a cutter or a knife to cut your scones from the dough.  When you run out of room, squish up the scraps and roll them out again.

The scones will expand upwards while they cook, not sideways, so you can crowd them pretty close on the baking sheet.

Bake the scones for 15-20 minutes, until the tops are browned and the insides are baked all the way through.  They will be firm to the touch, not sticky.

Let them cool for about fifteen minutes, and while they’re doing that, mix together 1/2 cup confectioner’s sugar (icing sugar), 4 teaspoons freshly squeezed orange juice, and the zest of 1 orange.

Drizzle the glaze over the still-warm scones.

Serve right away, with honey and butter.  Or secretly leave half the batch on your neighbour’s doorstep.

The Un-Cola

I saw this recipe on Freshly Pressed this past summer and was inspired by Krista and Jess to make this recipe from the New York Times (thanks ladies!).

My brother Ando has always been a fan of carbonated beverages.  Specifically the cola variety.  The more caffeine the better (he used to be a bit of a night owl).  Sodas aren’t that great for the teeth, of course,  as they contain a lot of sugar.  The colas especially so.  Ando’s tip for strong dentition: drink sodas only in conjunction with food, and use a straw.  When I saw this recipe, I thought he’d like it.  It’s made of all natural ingredients and contains significantly less sugar than your average can of Coke (which has 39g of sugar in it, the same as 10 sugar cubes).

These sorts of natural syrups are a sign that we are trying to return to simpler times, and the creators of this recipe, Brooklyn Farmacy & Soda Fountain, are doing just that (so you can go visit them Ando and tell me how the recipes compare — it’s just over the bridge after all).

So this is his DIY Christmas gift from his little sister (SURPRISE!), which, together with all the other presents for the Manhattan Crew, I am trying to get completed and mailed out before the end of the month — how’s that for organization?

The recipe itself is pretty straightforward, but does require a certain attention to detail.  I also had to do some serious sleuthing around St. John’s to find all the appropriate ingredients, though if that means puttering around Food for Thought and Fat Nanny’s for an hour or two then I really don’t mind.

You’ll need to grate the zest from 2 medium oranges, 1 large lime, and 1 large lemon.  I doubled my batch so that the Pie and I would have some to try, and then made up an extra set of dry ingredients so that Ando can cook himself up a refill.  Each batch makes about 3 cups syrup.

So I grated a lot of citrus.  I’m going to save it and make a fabulous beverage soon.

For the extra dry ingredients, I used a zester, which gets the peel without the bitter pith.

Then I heated my oven to 150°F and spread the peel on a baking sheet to dry.

It probably cooked for about an hour while I was doing all that other stuff.

Take some whole nutmeg and a fine rasp and grate yourself about 1/8 teaspoon of that stuff.  Mmm, smells so good.

Crush one section of one star anise pod with a spoon.

Cut a vanilla pod so you have a 1 1/2″ section (that’s almost 4cm for you metric folk).  Use a knife to split that section in half lengthwise.

You’ll also need 1/8 teaspoon ground cinnamon, 1/2 teaspoon dried lavender flowers, 2 teaspoons minced ginger, and 1/4 teaspoon citric acid.  You can get citric acid at stores that sell canning supplies, or try specialty or health food stores.

In a heavy pot over medium heat, bring all those ingredients to a simmer in 2 cups water.  Reduce the heat to low and let it simmer for about 20 minutes.

In a large bowl, mix together 2 cups plus 2 tablespoons granulated sugar and 1 tablespoon packed brown sugar.

Plop a colander or strainer on top of that and line it with a double layer of cheesecloth.

Pour the contents of the hot pot over the cheesecloth and gather the ends of the cloth together so that all the solids are in a nice little package.  Use a spoon to squeeze out all the liquid from the package against the side of the pot.

Stir the syrup occasionally until the sugar dissolves, about 10 minutes.  Transfer to a container and keep it in the refrigerator.

In order for this to last the trip over the sea and land and a river to Manhattan (from one island to another) I decided to can it.  You can see my tips on canning with a stove top canner here.

To drink, pour 1 part syrup over ice and mix with 4 parts seltzer or soda water.  It tastes FANTASTIC.  Not like a commercial soda, but one where you can taste all the flavours that went into it.  AMAZING.

And here is the little container with the dried peel and all the other dried ingredients (minus the sugar) that Ando will need to make his own batch.