No Empty Chairs

October 14, 2011 · 10:20 am

Pear Cardamom Bundt Cake with Lime Glaze

I love the smells of fall baking. That combination of fruits like apples and pears with heavily fragrant cinnamon, cardamom and other spices. This recipe makes a highly adaptable batter that can be made into a bundt cake, quick-bread loaves, or muffins. Or if your bundt pan is on the small side, like mine, a combination of both cake and muffins. Breakfast and dessert all in one shot!

The lime glaze provides a tart, but sweet contrast to the fragrant fall flavors in the pear cake.

I love cinnamon, but I don’t enjoy large amounts of nutmeg. Small amounts are fine, but I find that it can be very overpowering. One of my favorite fall spices to bake with is cardamom, and I will often swap out nutmeg in a recipe and replace it with cardamom. Cardamom is in the same family as ginger, but it is the seeds and pods that are ground and used for cooking, unlike the root with ginger. It is often used in Indian cooking, but is also a great compliment to cinnamon. It is a versatile spice that can be used in both sweet and savory cooking.

The recipe below makes enough batter for a 12-cup bundt pan. My bundt pan only holds 10 cups, so I use the recipe to make 6 muffins (measure these out first) and the smaller bundt cake. Without the glaze, the muffins make a great breakfast, and they bake up light and airy.

The pears in this recipe are very finely chopped, or grated. I use a food processor to chop them finely. Pear skins are very thin, so I leave those on. They are not noticeable at all in the baked goods.

RECIPE:

Pear Cardamom Bundt Cake with Lime Glaze

Cake:
3 medium pears
about ½ cup buttermilk, milk or plain yogurt (see recipe for exact amount)
¾ cup butter (1 ½ sticks), softened
1 ½ cups brown sugar
3 eggs, lightly beaten
2 tsp vanilla extract
3 cups flour
1 tsp salt
1 tsp baking soda
¼ tsp baking powder
2 tsp ground cinnamon
½ tsp ground cardamom
1 cup finely chopped walnuts or pecans

Lime Glaze, recipe below (optional)
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Preheat oven to 350°F. Grease and flour desired pans: one 12-cup bundt pan; one 10-cup bundt pan plus 6 muffin cups; 2 loaf pans; or 24 muffin cups.

Core pears. Finely chop or grate unpeeled pears (I use a food processor) and place in a 2-cup measuring cup. Use a fork to slightly mash the pears (you should have about 1 ½ cups chopped, mashed pears). Add buttermilk to the pears to equal 2 cups. Set aside.

In a medium mixing bowl, beat butter and brown sugar until light and fluffy. Beat in eggs and vanilla. Mix in pear/buttermilk mixture.

In a small bowl, combine flour, salt, baking soda, baking powder, cinnamon and cardamom. Mix into pear batter just until combined. Fold in nuts. Pour batter into desired pans and bake as directed below.

FOR A 12 CUP BUNDT PAN: Bake for 50-60 minutes.

FOR A 10-CUP BUNDT PAN: First scoop batter into 6 muffin cups. Pour remaining batter into 10-cup bundt pan. Bake bundt for 35-45 minutes and muffins for 18-20 minutes.

FOR TWO LOAF PANS: Bake for 50-60 minutes.

FOR 24-26 MUFFINS: Bake for 18-20 minutes.

—

Lime Glaze (optional):
2 cups powdered sugar
2 Tbs heavy cream
1 Tbs lime juice
zest of one lime

Combine all glaze ingredients and mix until smooth. Add additional lime juice or cream until glaze can be drizzled over cake. Cool cake or loaves completely before drizzling with glaze.

NoEmptyChairs.me

Roasted Garlic Rosemary Beets

Beets are a controversial vegetable in our house. Until recently we were split pretty evenly between beet lovers and beet haters. This recipe, however, has made some converts to the beet-loving camp. There are still 2 hold-outs, but that may be due more to stubbornness than actual taste preferences. One child hardly put enough in her mouth to actually taste it before declaring it gross.

Beets are one vegetable that grew really well in my garden this year. I had to fight the deer for the beet greens, but even without their tops, the beets grew undisturbed by the menagerie of wildlife in my backyard these days. I love how prominent the stripes are in the raw beets!

Roasted fresh beets are a whole different animal than those sweet canned things. Add some garlic and rosemary and I think they are divine.

The cooked beets, unfortunately, don’t look as brilliantly beautiful as the raw ones, but they sure taste great!

RECIPE:

Roasted Garlic Rosemary Beets

Servings: 4-6
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3 large beets, peeled
2 small sprigs fresh rosemary, minced
3 cloves garlic, sliced thin
2 Tbs olive oil
salt & pepper

Preheat oven to 400°F.

Cut beets into wedges (each beet should make 8 wedges). In a large bowl, stir together beet wedges, minced rosemary, sliced garlic and olive oil. Grind in some fresh salt and pepper and toss to coat.

Place in a shallow baking dish and cover with foil. Bake in preheated oven for 30 minutes. Uncover and bake for another 15-20 minutes, or until beets are tender. Remove from oven and let stand for a few minutes before serving. Taste; add additional salt and pepper, if necessary.

Recipe from Guilty Kitchen

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Filed under Side Dishes

Tagged as beets, fresh, recipes, roasted

October 6, 2011 · 10:25 am

Grilled Greek Chicken

The weather here has turned from dreary, cold and rainy to beautiful, sunny and warm. So I am putting away the soup recipes for a couple of weeks, and firing up the grill. This chicken is marinated in a dressing made from lemon juice, olive oil and Greek spices (including fresh oregano-which is still hanging on in my garden!). The tomato cucumber salad is a nice accompaniment to the grilled chicken, providing a tangy balance to the chicken.

When I prepare chicken or other meat to grill, I always make double and freeze half in a separate Ziploc bag for a quick meal another day. You can either cook all of it and freeze the extra cooked chicken (either whole or diced) to add to future recipes, or freeze the extra raw chicken in the marinade, and then thaw and grill it another day.

After making the marinade, I put a small amount (about ¼ cup) in a separate Ziploc bag and marinated some fresh asparagus, and then grilled it alongside the chicken. I put the asparagus on the grill at the same time as I turned the chicken over, and they were done at about the same time. Zucchini/summer squash would be another great vege to marinate and grill.

We ate the grilled chicken and asparagus with this Greek tomato and cucumber salad topped with feta cheese. Most of my garden is done for the year, but I do still have some green tomatoes slowly ripening on my kitchen counter. A couple of nice red ones made for a great fresh end-of-summer salad. You can find the recipe for the salad HERE.

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RECIPE:

Grilled Greek Chicken

Servings: 6-8
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6-8 boneless, skinless chicken breasts
Marinade:
1/3 cup olive oil
1/3 cup lemon juice
1 tsp fresh lemon zest**
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 Tbs fresh oregano, chopped (or 1 tsp dried oregano)
1 tsp Greek seasoning (or additional oregano)
½ tsp sage
½ tsp marjoram
½ tsp black pepper**

Place chicken breasts in a Ziploc bag. Combine marinade ingredients and pour over chicken. Marinate in refrigerator 6-8 hours or overnight. Remove from refrigerator 30-45 minutes before cooking.

Preheat grill to medium-hot and grill chicken 15-18 minutes, or until well browned and firm but not hard to the touch. Actual cooking time will depend on the thickness of your chicken, the heat of your grill and the temperature outside, so don’t overcook.

**or omit lemon zest and black pepper and substitute 1 tsp lemon-pepper seasoning

FOR GRILLED GREEK ASPARAGUS (OR OTHER VEGETABLE):

1 lb fresh asparagus (or zucchini/summer squash or other vege of choice)
¼ cup marinade from above recipe

Place asparagus or sliced vegetable into a Ziploc bag. Add marinade (be sure to place marinade in vegetable bag before adding it to the chicken bag). Let sit at room temperature for 15-30 minutes (longer is fine too). Grill for 5-6 minutes, or until crisp-tender.

Recipe adapted from Kalyn’s Kitchen

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Thai Red Chicken Curry

Looking for a great tasting soup that doesn’t have to cook all day? A healthy, flavorful soup chock full of chicken and fresh vegetables?

This Thai curry is more like a soup than a thick curry that you would eat in small amounts over rice. You can still eat it over rice, if you prefer, but it is light enough that it can be eaten on its own. The vegetables and chicken are quickly stir-fried and then simmered for just a few minutes in a red curry coconut milk sauce. I like to marinate the chicken for a little while in some of the curry paste before cooking, but if you need a really fast meal you can skip that step and have this soup on the table in under 30 minutes.

RECIPE:

Thai Red Chicken Curry

Servings: 6-8
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1 lb chicken breast, cut into thin strips
1 Tbs Thai red curry paste
2 Tbs soy sauce

2 Tbs olive oil, divided
1 large onion, sliced
1 red bell pepper, julienned
1 medium carrot, julienned
1 medium zucchini, shredded
1 cup sliced mushrooms

2 cans (14 oz) coconut milk
2 Tbs soy sauce
2 Tbs Thai fish sauce
1 Tbs brown sugar (or low-carb golden sweetener)
1 tsp salt
2 Tbs lime juice (or 4 kaffir lime leaves, chopped)
2 Tbs Thai red curry paste (adjust amount to personal taste)

1 cup fresh spinach or other greens (I used beet greens)
1/3 cup fresh basil (Thai basil preferably), coarsely chopped

Combine cubed chicken, 1 Tbs curry paste and soy sauce in Ziploc bag. Let marinate 30 minutes at room temperature, or several hours in refrigerator.

Heat 1 Tbs oil in wok or large saucepan. Add onion, red pepper, carrot, zucchini, and mushrooms. Cook over high heat until crisp-tender. Remove from pan. Add remaining 1 Tbs oil to pan. Add chicken and cook, stirring, over high heat until cooked through.

Add coconut milk, soy sauce, fish sauce, brown sugar, salt, lime juice, and remaining 2 Tbs curry paste to the chicken in the pot. Bring to a boil. Lower heat and simmer for 10 minutes.

Stir in spinach, basil, and cooked vegetables. Heat until spinach wilts. Serve in bowls with or without rice.

NoEmptyChairs.me

Soccer Ball Cookies

We are in the thick of soccer season around here. What could be more fun than soccer ball cookies to celebrate a hard-fought victory!

I used my favorite Sugar Cookie recipe for the cookies and Royal Icing to make the soccer ball faces. Start with thick royal icing in a pastry bag with a writing tip. Pipe a circle of white icing around the edge of the cookie.

Using a thinned royal icing, flood the cookie with white icing. A plastic squeeze bottle is the easiest way to flood the cookie, then use a toothpick to spread the icing to the edges of the cookie. Let the icing dry for several hours, or until dry.

I am very artistically challenged, and had a hard time freehanding a symmetrical pentagon. So I printed one off of the computer, then cut out the pentagon. Using a toothpick, I traced the pentagon in the center of the cookie.

Using thick black royal icing, pipe lines to form the pentagon and then from each corner of the pentagon to the edge of the cookie.

Draw a small triangle at the edge of each line. I am obviously no professional here (notice the lopsided geometric shapes), but nine-year-olds are pretty forgiving when they have a soccer ball cookie in hand!

Use thinned black royal icing to fill in the pentagon and triangles. Let dry completely.

For a more professional look (completely flat, without raised black lines), pipe the black lines on the naked cookie (and fill with black icing), then complete the edge of the circle with stiff white lines and flood each individual section with thinned white icing. I made them all completely white first because I was planning on doing some with baseball/softball lines and was hoping to save some time.

For mouth-dropping professional work-of-art cookies,
visit Bridget at Bake at 350. She is truly an artist!

RECIPE:

Royal Icing

4 Tbs meringue powder
scant ½ cup water
1 lb powdered sugar
½ – 1 tsp light corn syrup
few drops clear extract (optional)
gel paste food colorings

Combine the meringue powder and water. With the paddle attachment of an electric mixer, beat until combined and foamy. Sift in the powdered sugar and beat on low to combine. (Do NOT skip the sifting!)

Add in the corn syrup and extract if desired. Increase speed to med-high/high and beat for about 5 minutes, just until the icing is glossy and stiff peaks form. (You should be able to remove the beater from the mixer and hold up and jiggle without the peak falling.) Do not overbeat.

To store for later use: cover with plastic wrap touching the icing and refrigerate.

To use immediately: divide icing into bowls for different colors. Tint using gel paste food colorings.

This “stiff” icing is perfect for outlining, building gingerbread houses and monogramming. To fill in your cookies, first tint with food coloring and then add water to your icing a teaspoon at a time, stirring with a rubber spatula, until it is the consistency of syrup. This technique of filling a cookie with thinned icing is called “flooding.”

YIELD: This recipe will cover 2-3 dozen 3.5” cookies in 2 colors

Recipe from Bake at 350

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Filed under Cookies, Desserts

Tagged as decorating, frosting, icing, Royal Icing, soccer, soccer ball, sugar cookies

September 21, 2011 · 3:10 pm

Nutella (or Cinnamon) Swirled Buttermilk Coffee Cake

Nutella Swirled Coffee Cake

Last week we were swimming in coffee cake around here. Unfortunately, it was not the kind of swimming that helps trim inches off of my waistline. Good thing there were lots of hungry skinny children lurking around!

I was bringing breakfast to our seminary class on Friday, and wanted to try a new recipe, so I had to give it a test run at home earlier in the week. I ended up making quite a few changes to the original recipe, including swapping out the traditional cinnamon topping on one batch with one made from ooey, gooey chocolaty Nutella.

The first batches I made for home (shown in the pictures) used pecans, but I used walnuts the second time around for our class. I preferred the walnuts, but I almost always prefer walnuts over pecans, so choose whichever nut you prefer. Both the cinnamon and Nutella topped varieties were really good. The cake part was moist and light, and just slightly tangy from using buttermilk.

Cinnamon Streusel Coffee Cake

To distribute the chocolaty/cinnamony goodness throughout the cake, I layered half of the batter in the pan, added half of the topping, then repeated the layers. The Nutella topping was very sticky; it was easiest to just use my fingers to drop small amounts onto the batter. It melts nicely into the cake while cooking.For an extra dose of chocolate, sprinkle some chocolate chips (not shown in this picture) on top of the Nutella layers.

The cinnamon topping is crumbly and can be sprinkled easily.

I split the batter and made one of each variety in two 8×8” square pans, instead of one large 9×13” pan. Just an FYI: the full batch that I made later in a standard 9×13” pan rose right to the top edge of the pan when baked, so be sure to use a pan that doesn’t have low sides!

The only down-side of this recipe is that it uses a lot of mixing bowls (four!), but the end result is definitely worth an extra run of the dishwasher.

Recipe:

Buttermilk Coffee Cake

Servings: 12-15
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3 cups flour
4 tsp baking powder
1 tsp salt

3 egg whites, beaten until stiff

1 ½ cups buttermilk
1 tsp vanilla extract

¾ cup butter (1-½ sticks), softened
1 ½ cups sugar

Nutella Swirl or Cinnamon Streusel Topping

Preheat oven to 350°F. Prepare topping in a small bowl; set aside.(Choose your topping below for a 9×13” cake, or make one of each in two 8×8” pans, halving topping amounts)

Sift together flour, baking powder, and salt; set aside. Beat egg whites until stiff; set aside. Stir vanilla into buttermilk. In a separate bowl, cream butter and sugar with a mixer. Add flour mixture and buttermilk alternately until barely combined. Beat just until flour is incorporated; do not overmix. Using a rubber spatula, fold in beaten egg whites.

Spread half of the batter in a well-greased 9 x 13” baking pan (I used baking spray with flour). Sprinkle with half of the topping. Spread remaining batter into pan; sprinkle with remaining topping.

Bake for 40-45 minutes, or until center is set.
_____

NUTELLA SWIRL TOPPING:

¾ cup butter (1-½ sticks), softened
¾ cup Nutella
½ cup flour
½ cup brown sugar
1 scant tsp cinnamon
1 cup chopped walnuts or pecans
½ cup chocolate chips

Mix together all ingredients, except chocolate chips. Mixture will be sticky. Using your fingers, drop small amounts of Nutella filling onto first layer of batter. Sprinkle with half of the chocolate chips. Repeat layers.

CINNAMON STREUSEL TOPPING:

½ cup cold butter (1 stick)
½ cup flour
1 cup brown sugar
1 ½ Tbs cinnamon
1 cup chopped walnuts or pecans

Mix together all ingredients, except nuts, using a pastry cutter or two knifes until crumbly. Stir in nuts. Sprinkle half of topping onto first layer of batter. Repeat layers.