Search Results for '("C'

[BakerAunt]

Italian Cook--Thank you for posting about your olive oil chocolate chip cookies. I've been toying with the idea of trying an oil-based chocolate chip cookie. (Of course, the chocolate chips, with their saturated fat, are part of the issue for me.) I have a couple of comments:

You might want to reduce the oil to 2/3 cup. Usually 1/3 cup oil is the substitute for each 1/2 cup of butter. I try to mix in some milk powder with the dry ingredients, as I do with my sourdough crackers, since I think it gives a better flavor, but that may just be me, and you may not be able to use that ingredient. (I use Bob's Red Mill because it is finely ground, but the regular granules could be ground in a small food processor.)

When I make an oil pie crust, I use some buttermilk in place of the oil because, again, I think it improves the flavor and reduces the oil a bit. I follow their directions of beating the oil and buttermilk (or regular milk) together to make a "creamy emulsion" before mixing it with other ingredients. When I've made a cake, I've done that also before beating in the sugar, then the eggs. For a cake, I mix in the flour at a very low speed or by hand.

The directions for the oil-based pie crust say that after putting it in the pan, it is good to refrigerate it for about an hour because it helps relax the gluten. It says not to refrigerate it in a mass and then try to shape it, so your decision to go ahead and scoop them was good. I'm wondering if refrigerating the scooped dough, then freezing the balls before packaging, might solve the issue of the balls forming one large mass.

Another possibility: I bought the following item from King Arthur:

https://shop.kingarthurflour.com/items/cookie-dough-freezer-trays

I have not used them yet, but if I do bake some chocolate chip cookies, the best way to control how many are eaten at a time would be to freeze some of the dough, so I plan to try them. At least with these, the dough balls will not clump.

Your experiment with oil-based cookies encourages me to try some, so thank you!

[BakerAunt]

I've had biscotti on my mind. So many of my recipes are butter-based. For healthier ones, I have the pumpkin biscotti recipe that Skeptic posted, and I baked another one posted here at Nebraska Kitchen last year, although my husband complained about the anise. I also made a great Cardamom-Tahini biscotti last year that my husband didn't particularly like, although I noted he WAS eating a few. I now have the new Apricot Almond Biscotti that I baked last year. These recipes use healthy fats rather than butter.

I was checking the King Arthur Cookie Companion and found an entire section on biscotti. It distinguishes between "Italian" and "American" biscotti. It gives a variety of recipes that can be used with each basic dough. None of the "Italian" included a fat other than what is in eggs (although there was a propensity to include saturated fat in the form of chocolate or other chips). Has anyone tried these "Italian" style biscotti? My thinking is that the right kind of fat, in addition to what is in the eggs, would make a tastier, and perhaps more healthy, biscotti.

I have adapted a ginger-pistachio biscotti recipe from Bon Appetit to use canola oil rather than butter and liked it. I'm considering doing so with some of my other butter-based biscotti.

[BakerAunt]

On Thursday, I’m baking the King Arthur Whole Grain cookbook’s Maple Granola, but using the tweak posted online in their recipes of reducing the oil to ½ cup and adding ½ cup milk powder. (I use Bob’s Red Mill, not the KAF special dry milk.) I also add 2/3 cup pumpkin seeds.

Chocomouse--Welcome Back! For the frosting/glaze, I used 1 cup powdered sugar, 2 Tbs. 1% milk, and 1/4 tsp. vanilla. My husband says, "Don't change a thing!" I drizzled it on about twenty minutes after I took the rolls out of the oven.

NOTE: I meant granola, not biscotti, and have changed the post to reflect that. (Yes, I've also had biscotti on my mind.)

• This reply was modified 6 years, 7 months ago by BakerAunt. Reason: I corrected an absentminded error

[chocomouse]

I am back in the kitchen! We cancelled our trip last week - my sister's husband had a medical emergency and spent some time n the hospital, and I had an allergic reaction to a post-op med for my cataract surgery. It's been a month that I have not been able to see much at all (I'm mostly blind in my other eye, due to a stroke) and I am so relieved to finally, yesterday, be seeing much better.

So, I got busy and made two 5-gallon pails of tomatoes into marinara and pizza sauce. I agree with Len - process the ripe tomatoes into sauce asap, but if you are too busy, just put them in zip-lock bags in the freezer until you have time or need more sauce. I've learned a new trick! I no longer dip in boiling water and peel -- just core, squeeze out a lot of the seeds and juice, cut into chunks, and whiz with a stick blender. The skins just disappear, but they add so much flavor and, I believe, nutrients. I prefer chunky sauce, so then I add onions, peppers, and celery (handy, since they are ripe at the same time in the garden), simmer a couple of hours, and package for the freezer.

[Mike Nolan]

For chicken, I'm generally doing more of a broth because I generally use a whole chicken. I can get chicken backs in bulk, but I'd have to buy a 40 pound box, and that'd make a whole lot of chicken stock.

For beef I use mostly shank and neck bones, though the shank bones generally do have some meat on them, which I pull off, marinate in barbecue sauce and serve on a bun like pulled pork.

The point to a bone-based stock (some chefs call it a bone broth) is to extract the collagen from the bones, making it thick when it cools. (I will sometimes throw some chicken feet into chicken broth to help thicken it.) You can get a second or even a third 'wetting' from good quality shank bones. I mix them all together.

Aspic, which is almost unknown in modern restaurants, and consomme, which is only slightly better known, take beef stock to its extreme limits.

[BakerAunt]

On Wednesday evening, I made up another double recipe of my lower saturated fat version of Whole Wheat Sourdough Cheese Crackers. I’ll bake the crackers in a few days.

I also am experimenting with another cinnamon roll recipe to see if it will work for my husband’s family reunion. My plan is to take along my bread machine. I modified his aunt’s Snails recipe, which was, from what I can tell, a recipe that she herself often varied. I substituted 1 cup of white whole wheat flour and added 2 tbs. flax meal and ¼ cup special dry milk. I replaced ¼ cup of shortening with 3 1/3 Tbs. canola oil. I used 3/4 cup buttermilk and 1/4 cup water in place of 1 cup milk. I also used the special gold yeast. It had no filling but was often used with one by her daughters, so I combined 1 cup light brown sugar and 1 ½ Tbs. cinnamon. I spritzed the dough before covering it with the mixture (except for about ½ inch at the end), then spritzed it again and used the back of a spoon to push it down into the dough. I’ll let it rise overnight and bake it in the morning.

[skeptic7]

Got it. Just because its heated in the microwave, doesn't mean its superhot ( unless you don't want it particularly hot, I've overcooked lots of things with a microwave ).

[Italiancook]

I made olive oil-based chocolate chip cookies for the freezer & lunch. I replaced the cup of butter with 3/4 cup light olive oil. I mixed well the oil & both sugars to start the recipe. Here are my observations:

(1) The dough was looser than with butter. I scooped them out onto a baking sheet for the freezer. By the time I reached the end, the dough balls had spread. With butter, they hold their shape. Oil makes dough significantly more sticky. But it came out of cookie scoop okay.

(2) With butter, I freeze for one hour and they're ready to be bagged. I froze the oil ones for 75 minutes, but think they need at least 2 hours to maintain their shape when pulled off wax paper to put in bags. Because of this, I began to wonder if olive oil freezes. A Google search found that it does freeze. I put 6 cookies per bag. Normally, I bake them frozen. I'm worried that because of the stickiness, I'm going to have a glob of dough stuck together when I'm ready to bake them.

(3) Because of the spreading, I chilled the dough before baking eight for lunch. In spite of the chilling, the first ones had spread by the time the eighth was scooped. They baked-up nicely. They taste like chocolate chip cookies in spite of having no butter. What I really like about them is that baked, they're softer than with butter, using the same recipe.

[BakerAunt]

For lunch on Monday, I made a mostly vegetable frittata, based on reading about it in a Mark Bittman email. I sautéed some onion in olive oil, added ½ cup leftover shredded zucchini, then a sliced mushroom. We had about five snow peas from the garden, so I added those. I whisked an egg, added some Penzey’s Mural seasoning, then dumped the egg over the vegetables. (I used my smallest frying pan.) I tipped the pan to make sure the egg was evenly distributed. When it had set, I flipped it over for a bit, and sprinkled cheese on the top, which I pushed into the frittata. I ate it as the filling on a sandwich made with the bread that I baked last night. It was yummy.

[Mike Nolan]

I don't have a recipe for it, it may have been something she found on a box of Dream Whip.

I did find one recipe that sounds close online: Chocolate Dream, but I don't specifically remember her putting eggs in it. (The picture is terribly out of focus.) I remember it'd fill two 9 x 13 pans and we'd finish it off in a day or two, but there were six of us kids.

[Mike Nolan]

I'm not a big fan of pumpkin pie, don't like either the taste or the texture. (Aside from a few dishes like ratatouille, I don't eat much squash. I like spaghetti squash, but my wife thinks it is too high in carbs.)

I'll make a pie crust for one if my wife wants one for Thanksgiving (she'll make the filling using her mother's recipe which is not all that different from the one on a can of pumpkin puree), but I generally don't eat dessert then, I'd rather fill up on turkey, stuffing, potatoes, gravy, etc.

My mother made a sinfully decadent dessert for holidays using angel food cake, English walnuts, melted chocolate chips and Dream Whip. I much preferred that over pumpkin pie. I tried making it with Cool Whip once, it doesn't come out the same.

[Mike Nolan]

Growing up in NW Illinois we would sometimes take the train (Burlington Northern or Rock Island Line, both went through Savanna with separate stations) from Savanna to Chicago with my mother's folks. The BN Zephyrs would usually have a dining car and my grandfather loved eating in it. It was a 2 to 2 1/2 hour train trip, so there was time for the dining car. (The Illinois Central went through Galena, not Savanna.)

It was a sad day for train travel when Amtrak took over passenger rail service.

[Joan Simpson]

Tuna salad sandwich and pork-n-beans here tonight.

I had a great time at my sister's,enjoyed almost all of it.Played lots of cards,went shopping to thrift stores and no I didn't find anything.I caught a 24 hour virus the next to last day and was so sick,vomiting until I was dry heaving (I hate to vomit) but all's well and I'm back home.I've caught up on all the posts since I got back.

I took lots of fig jam and shared with my sister and nieces.The bread I had baked turned out rally well with a good texture and very moist.The banana bread was very moist and good too even if it was a little jagged.

[Mike Nolan]

When I was in high school I took the (pre-Amtrak) City of New Orleans from Chicago to New Orleans and back. I was probably too young to appreciate the dining experience then.

[RiversideLen]

Thank you Joan and Baker Aunt. While I normally make an oil crust (started using Jenny Jones recipe last year) I was lazy and used a store bought refrigerated crust. Those things really aren't bad but an oil crust is pretty easy to make and probably a bit healthier. Speaking of being lazy, I also didn't peel the apples. But I don't mind that. The peel is supposed to be where most of the vitamins are.

Does anyone make a pumpkin pie in which the pumpkin mixture is precooked? I'd like to give that a try.