Chocolate Cake Balls are the Balls of the Gods
Posted on | March 7, 2010
Well, not literally, as in we’re not talking about male gods specifically here. More like, if gods ate food, and if they liked eating their food in ball form, this is the sort of food they’d be eating. For dessert. Unless they were really unhealthy gods, then they might just eat them all the time. I certainly do!
Anyhow, cake balls are super easy to make. First, you get a cake mix, and make a cake following the directions on the back. Any cake mix works; some seem to enjoy red velvet, and I am a fan of your standard chocolate or devil’s food cake. Not that I can tell the difference between either. As an aside, one of these days I would like to make a checkerboard cake using an angel food cake mix and a devil’s food cake mix, and I shall call it “Purgatory Cake.”
So, once your cake is done, let it cool enough so that you don’t scald your hands, and crumble it all into a big bowl. Then, dump a can of cream cheese frosting on top. Use your hands to squish it all together until it’s a gross looking pile of brown. Refrigerate this for an hour or so, then form the cake goo into a bunch of balls, laying the balls out on wax paper on a pan.
Stick the pan in the freezer for an hour or so – this makes the balls much less likely to fall apart when sticking them in chocolate. For that part, you’ll want to microwave an entire bag of chocolate chips. It seems like a lot, but these babies will totally use it up, and possibly then some. Dump the chocolate chips into a bowl, and microwave for about a minute. Take out of the microwave, stir, and stick back in for 10-15 more seconds. Repeat the previous sentence over and over until you have liquid chocolate.
Now, delicately dip your balls in the chocolate using toothpicks or other thin implements of poking. Set back on the wax paper to dry. Sprinkles are an excellent topping for these, but be sure to sprinkle not long after dipping into the chocolate, as the chocolate dries pretty quickly.
These things are so amazingly satisfying, it’s like being able to eat a gigantic truffle without passing out from a sugar coma! I made this particular pile of them for Valentine’s Day for Drew, and he was pretty happy with them. I also made him this fabulous card:
Because nothing says “I Love You” like a happy bouncing sausage.
How to make super easy thin crust pizza
Posted on | March 1, 2010
You can use many things as a pizza crust (well, not counting actual pizza crust here). English muffins work quite well if you like a tougher crust. Bagels also work great – plain bagels as well as more exciting flavors like onion bagels. I don’t recommend cinnamon raisin or chocolate bagels, but then again, who knows? Can’t knock it ’till I’ve tried it and all. French or Italian bread can also make an excellent crust, if you like your crusts nice and thick, crisp on the outside and floofy in the middle. For thin crusts, what apparently works well are flour tortillas.
I’ve made pizza quesadillas before, which are essentially quesadillas made with mozzarella cheese and filled with pizza ingredients, but it’s never before occurred to me to make just straight up pizza with tortillas. You’ll need tortillas, cheese, whatever ingredients you want, and sauce. You can buy sauce, but it’s not much more difficult to just straight up make the sauce. Just get a can of tomato paste, and dump the paste in a bowl. Fill the now-empty can with water, and dump that in too. Add in a dash of vinegar and a bit of sugar (the amount depending on how sweet you like your sauce), plus whatever nefarious seasonings you desire (garlic, pepper, oregano, cilantro, or anything found in your standard “italian seasonings” mix works well). Mix well.
So you preheat your oven to 360, and lay your tortillas out on a pan. If you are like me, you will need to eat off the edges of your tortillas to make both of them fit on your apparently too small pan.
Spread sauce, then dump on cheese and toppings. I used a combination of mozzarella plus Mexican farmer’s cheese, along with tomato and pineapple chunks. Bake until not burnt, which will be around 10 minutes or so. Unless you like burnt pizza. In that case, feel free to bake as long as you’d like. Also feel free to crank the heat up to 500 or so, just because you can.
So good! Flour tortillas make for a fabulous thin crust. Using a large tortilla shell makes the perfect amount for a person with a stomach sized like mine to eat! Tiny tortillas would be fun to try as well.
Cute Onigiri
Posted on | February 25, 2010
Onigiri, a.k.a. balls of seasoned rice with stuff inside, are really great to make when you desperately crave sushi and you a.) want to be cheap and make your own food and b.) are too lazy to make full blow sushi. Not that onigiri are that lazy, really, as there’s still preparation to them, but the process is shorter then sushi. Plus, you use less dishes, meaning less cleanup time.
So first you need to make your pot of rice, and season it appropriately with rice vinegar and sugar. You also need ingredients to go inside your onigiri. Well, it’s not technically *required*, but who doesn’t like exciting fillings? Pretty much anything that goes well in a sushi roll works inside onigiri as well. My preference is for squishier ingredients, as it makes it easier to form the ball. I made some tamago (japanese egg omelet), not having to worry about it being a pretty shape or anything as I was just going to hack it up to stuff inside some rice anyhow.
You form a little cup of rice in the palm of your hand, shove the filling into the hole, and then mold the rice over the whole and form with your hand so you have a nice compact rice ball. I’ve seen sphere shapes as well as more triangular shapes, pretty much anything that’s not gonna fall apart on you will work I’m sure.
You can take a small piece of nori, wet it, and form it around part of the onigiri ball. This gives you a means of holding it while eating it without getting your hands all sticky with rice. If you can get ahold of some furikake, or Japanese rice topping, it’s great both for flavor and aesthetics on onigiri. You can sprinkle it on top or roll it into the rice itself. Incidentally, if you ever have leftover rice you don’t know what to do with, just dump some furikake on it and it’s Instant Delicious.
If you have any spare nori, I recommend cutting out shapes and faces to make the onigiri as cute as possible. I appreciate the Japanese ideal of putting faces on everything that you eat, it makes life more exciting. The onigiri above are my pretty basic attempt at make cute food with faces (the exacto knife was being less cooperative then I would have liked on the nori). There, are, however, plenty who’ve succeeded in onigiri cuteness where I have only achieved cuteness mediocrity. Alas, it just means I’ll have to try making more!
Delicious Baked Apples
Posted on | February 21, 2010
Baked apples are so freaking good. This is not a particularly new revelation. Rather, it is a revelation that is good to re-experience when one has a surplus of apples and a desire to turn some of them into sugar. How convenient and exciting for me, that I had apples of multiple varieties!
I decided to bake a red delicious and some variety of greenish apple, one each for Drew and I. So I preheated the oven to 360 and hacked holes in the middle of these guys, removing their core. Since I keep butter in the fridge, I microwaved a chunk (about 2 tbsp or so) until soft-ish. I then dumped in a glob of brown sugar, a chunk of cinnamon, and a bit of white sugar for good measure, mixing it all up. My apologies for the fact that “glob”, “chunk”, and “bit” are not very specific. It’s more of a “guesstimate based on what will mix well with 2 tbsp of sugar and can fit inside two apples” kind of thing. Oh, and walnuts. I crushed them up a bit, adding them to the mix, and then stuffed the entire mix inside the two apples, placing them in a pyrex dish.
It’s like the apple grew chunky brown hair! I added a bit of water to the bottom of the pan, for moisture. Next, they baked for about 40 minutes. Took them out, and they’d grown decidedly darker in color:
I cut each in half, so Drew and I could each have half of both types of apple. I liked the greenish apple better, as tangy apples always seem to work better overall when used in sugary circumstances, be they baking or covering with caramel. The apples were still a bit firm, but soft enough to be quite satisfying. Still, next time I might give them 10 more minutes.
What they really needed, though, was a giant glob of vanilla ice cream to top them off! Oh, my lack of foresight. Maybe next time!
Chorizo Burgers
Posted on | February 14, 2010
So I recently mentioned having used some leftover chorizo for spaghetti sauce. Said chorizo (AKA seasoned ground pork) was leftover from making some delectable chorizo burgers!
First off, to satiate your undying curiosity, here is how the chorizo looked pre-ripping-open-of-package:
$.97/lb is a glorious price for such a thing.
So, making burgers from chorizo seems pretty much the same as making burgers from ground beef, minus one step – not having to add in the seasoning, as it’s already seasoned. Woohoo! This is bizarrely significant to me. See, I have this bad tendency to have my ground meat be not completely thawed when I start mashing in the worchestershire sauce, peppercorns, other misc. seasonings, etc.. Meaning that my bony little hands are mashing these seasonings into ice-cold meats. Trust me, it’s quite chilly and unpleasant! Anyhow, I got to avoid that pesky step, and could jump straight to the “forming into patties and frying” stage.
I wasn’t sure how long to fry the chorizo. The coloration was a bit redder then ground beef, meaning I was never sure when it was no longer raw. In time however, the red faded to a brownish-red, and the patties looked more like “delicious thing I want in my mouth” and less like “pig in a blender.”
I topped off the burgers with some mild cheddar cheese, and put my burger onto a poppyseed bun with lettuce, tomato, avocado, and mayo. Or rather, Miracle Whip, as I find it’s slightly tangy flavor much more exciting then your run of the mill mayonnaise. The burger was quite tall, so I smashed it down with my hand and promptly consumed it.
It was delightful. The next time I catch chorizo on sale, I’m going to have to get more. It’s got a nice spicy flavor that mingles nicely with a hefty dose of avocado plus cheddar, and in general works quite well in burger form.
Poorly Executed Haphazard Spaghetti with Chorizo
Posted on | February 12, 2010
So 2010 seems to be the year that I will be sick once a month. Or that’s the trend so far, at least, as I am currently in the process of recovering from Cold #2 for the year. When I am sick, I am exceedingly lazy, and mostly stick to eating Campbells soup and fruit (when I eat at all). However, I had some chorizo sitting in the fridge which stood a good chance of going bad were I to let it continue sitting in the fridge for much longer. So, feeling downright awful, I forced myself to make spaghetti, a meal I’d planned days before, back when I was feeling like a spring chicken (spring sausage?).
For those not aware, chorizo (or Mexican chorizo, to be specific) is ground pork with a bunch of seasonings added to it. My possession of chorizo, combined with a recent sale on tomatoes, had me anxious to try making some interesting spaghetti sauce. I’d already procrastinated a few days on this as it was. See, Drew had recently taken chopped tomatoes into work to use for a taco bar. There were a bunch of leftover tomato chunks, perfect for future sauce, but he had a bad tendency to not think of them when he left work. When he finally did remember, I was promptly assaulted by a stuffy nose, sore throat, etc.. Despite the misery, I had chorizo staring longingly at me whenever I opened the fridge, and I couldn’t bear the thought of it going bad. Thus, the spaghetti got made.
I had a recipe that I briefly looked at for this, calling for 10 large tomatoes. I guesstimated while shrinking the recipe a tad, dumping the taco bar remnants into the blender along with three romas that I first blanched and removed the skins of. Added in a dash of olive oil, about 1/3 of an onion, and about 2 cloves worth of garlic, and blended until smooth. The mixture was a bizarre shade of orange by this point, but the recipe assured me that simmering would cause it to turn a more appetizing red.
So I added some ground peppercorns, a bit of salt, oregano, a dash of vinegar, and about a tablespoon of sugar, letting it simmer for 30 minutes or so. Becoming paranoid that the tomato sauce simply wasn’t tomatoey enough, I cracked open a can of tomato paste and mixed in about two tablespoons.
At some point during all of this, the onion and garlic decided to make their presence known. The apartment began to reek of them, and I in my sickly state began to feel waves of nausea washing over me. The chorizo still had to be cooked, however, so I stumbled about the kitchen waving around a pan, a spatula, and raw meat, and managed to somehow fry the chorizo. I poured the sauce over the chorizo, mixing it, and hid out in a room far away from the kitchen while they cooked together for a bit. I also went ahead and cooked some angel hair pasta in a separate pot.
So much onion and garlic stink! It was awful. I knew I should taste it to see if it needed salt, pepper, arsenic, etc, but I just couldn’t bring myself to do it. Lucky for me, Drew came home from work not soon after this, so I made him try it. Apparently, it tasted pretty good. Maybe once I’m feeling fully healthy, and if there’s any leftovers for that matter, I’ll see for myself.
Pineapple Curry Fried Rice
Posted on | February 6, 2010
I’ve been in the habit lately of acquiring large piles of random vegetables with no specific ideas as to how to use them. After stumbling across a recipe for fried rice that looked absolutely fabulous, I decided to have at it with all these wacky vegetables lounging around in my fridge.
I’m such a sucker for eggplant. I’m still figuring out the best methods for cooking and eating it, mind you, it’s just that they’re so cute. Try hugging an eggplant sometime, I guarantee that it’s very satisfying.
I didn’t follow the recipe exactly, so I’ll post my hackneyed list of ingredients here:
1 tablespoon vegetable oil
1 tbsp of chopped garlic
garlic chili sauce
1 egg
3 tablespoons chicken stock
3 tablespoons soy sauce
1 tablespoon curry powder
1 teaspoon sugar
A smattering of smashed almonds
Day old rice, not really sure how much, enough to make fried rice though, apparently
About 1/2 a large can of pineapple chunks
1 large boneless chicken breast, chopped
1/4 cup raisins
pile of chopped green onion
1/4 cup chopped cilantro
About 1/4 of a green pepper
about 1/4 cup frozen corn
one large carrot, sliced
1/2 onion, chopped
about 1/2 an eggplant, chopped
So first I chopped up a bunch of vegetables and stuck them aside in a bowl. The vegetable pile consisted of the green pepper, corn, carrot, onion, and eggplant.
In a separate bowl I mixed up some water plus chicken bouillon to make the chicken stock, then added in the chili sauce, soy sauce, curry powder, and sugar, and mixed it all up.
Next, I dumped some oil into the wok, added the garlic, then added the chicken, cooking it until it didn’t look deadly anymore. Dumped the chicken into the bowl with the raw vegetables for the time being.
At some point during all of this I grabbed a hammer and started smashing away at the almonds. This is a very effective (not to mention satisfying) method of converting whole almonds into tiny pieces of almond. Here is my workspace at about this point in the process:
Next, I cracked in the egg and let it cook in the oil until appropriately eggy. I dumped in the giant bowl of vegetables + chicken, along with the almonds, and topped it all off with a little bit of the liquid mixture. Pushed this around for a few minutes, then dumped in the rice, pineapple, plus the rest of the liquid. After this, I added in the green onion, cilantro, and raisins, cooked for another 30 seconds or so, and declared it finished.
It was rather tasty. Aesthetically, it didn’t look nearly as good as the original recipe, but I’ll blame that on my lack of shrimps (errr, along with my bad habit of not completely following directions). The essence of shrimps is to improve everything that they come into contact with, which indeed makes it a shame that Drew dislikes them. Ah well, more shrimps for me!
Sticking Tofu in the Toaster
Posted on | January 29, 2010
My block of tofu that’s been sitting in the fridge for the past several weeks was originally going to be reserved for miso soup. Thing is, I was sick recently. While being sick, I ate entirely too much soup of the instant and canned variety, as being sick = being lazy. So, being officially sick of soup, I decided the miso soup was not meant to be. There was this bag full of wheat rolls that had been staring longingly at me for quite some time now, so I decided to pair the two and make tofu burgers.
So you’re supposed to drain tofu before using it, something that I tend to completely forget about. This time, however, I remembered, and here are some precise instructions for doing so:
1. Remove tofu from package.
2. Plop tofu on a surface which is allowed to get wet (I used a pan).
3. Lay paper towel on top of tofu.
4. Lay random heavy object on top of tofu.
5. After 5 minutes, you will hear a loud clattering sound from the kitchen. Go into kitchen and retrieve heavy object that has fallen off of tofu. Tofu should have a vaguely trapezoidal shape by this point.
6. Find an object that is more bottom-heavy then the object you were previously using. Set object on top of tofu. Object should slant dashingly but, in theory at least, will not fall off. Let sit for 20 to 30 minutes, or whenever you get too hungry, whichever comes first.
So after this, slice the tofu into appropriately meaty slices. I did three, though I really could have done four. My original plan had been to bake them in the oven, but then I got this brilliant idea. A slice of tofu is approximately the shape of a slice of bread. Thus, tofu goes in the toaster. I cranked the toaster to a nice high setting, and kept retoasting the tofu until it looked appropriately crispy. This worked far better then I would have imagined. This is the first time in my entire life that I’ve managed to make tofu with an actual crisp exterior. Cooking tofu in a toaster is awesome, and I shall be repeating this method in the future.
I was only brave enough to try one slice, so the other two went in the oven, after being slickly coated with Country Bob’s All Purpose Sauce. Incidentally, this stuff is pretty good. You can even try a bottle for free, by sending away for a coupon here!
So we made delicious sandwiches using some colby jack, tomatoes, and spinach:
Incidentally, the next time I make some fried rice, I’m gonna cook tofu in the toaster and then dice it up and add it to the rice. For too long have I dealt with overly-moist spongy tofu, and am looking forward to never having to deal with it again!
Delicious Guacamole
Posted on | January 25, 2010
It is no secret that I am a huge avocado fan. So much so, that this is the second year in a row that I’ve made a video entry for the seemingly annual Avocados from Mexico video contest. Incidentally, this is also the second year in a row that I did not win any money from said contest. However, they are very nice at giving consolation prizes. As a result, I have a t-shirt as well as a cookbook compliments of the contest, which I can add to the collection of last year’s t-shirt and cookbook. Well, Drew gets the t-shirts, as since they’re of the “one size fits most” variety, I’m swimming in them, but I get to enjoy the cookbooks.
This year’s cookbook prize was Mexican Everyday by Rick Bayless. A decent number of ingredients in the cookbook are familiar ones, which is good as the fewer ingredients from a recipe I recognize, the less likely I am to make it. The recipes also range in complexity. I decided to make one of the easier ones after flipping through the cookbook and having an insatiable urge for guacamole.
It’s apparently really easy for you to make guacamole. Once upon a time I, too, bought those little “guacamole seasoning” packets from the grocery store that were entirely too salty, but no more! Basic guacamole just takes a squishy avocado, some garlic, and salt. I also added in half a lime’s worth of juice, plus some crushed peppercorns.
So then I’m all like, what do I dip into this delicious concoction?! The obvious answer would be tortilla chips, but I was lacking in those. I never buy them, as the only satisfactory ones I eat are from Mexican restaurants. The ones you buy in the store are inevitably too salty. So, I decided to make do with what I did have: flour tortillas. I sliced a tortilla in half, and stuck each piece into the toaster. Toast, and then stick the other end in the toaster. Then you slice it up into wedges. This works surprisingly well.
Mmm green goo. It was so good, that two days later (“two days later” being defined as “for today’s lunch”, in this particular case) I made some more, this time also adding in some chopped cilantro, green onion, and tomato. I was so excited for lunch today that I cut up the tortilla before toasting it, then stuck the pieces in the toaster after the fact. This led to some awkward moments involving jabbing a fork into a toaster, but hey, you’ve gotta do what you’ve gotta do.
Thai Stir Fry, plus a way to find exciting new Asian recipes!
Posted on | January 19, 2010
So I had a bunch of miscellaneous vegetables plus chicken lying around, meaning it was high time for some stir-fry. I poked around for a recipe and was originally going to make this one. It was basic enough that I wouldn’t screw it up. Plus, after having visited the grocery store, I had all the necessary ingredients. However, I really wanted to add a lime, so I decided to search around for a recipe that incorporated lime. I ended up on this recipe, and more or less blended the two recipes together. Well, up until the point where I abandoned the recipes entirely and started adding things all willy-nilly, but that just kinda happens sometimes. The final outcome was better then most of my other wok experimentations, rather like a thai ginger sweet sauce:
First, I whisked together a sauce in a separate bowl, consisting of various quantities of the following:
-1 lime
-1/3 cup water + chicken bouillon
-fish sauce
-sugar
After tasting it and remembering all of the items living in my cabinet that I’ve yet to use, I added a chunk of powdered coconut milk along with more water. After tasting this, I impulse-added some coriander.
I chopped up some vegetables and set them aside in a big pile. I really like stir-fry in that you can dump in whatever’s sitting around, and it generally tastes good. Here’s what I used:
-eggplant
-onion
-red cabbage (though it really needs to be called purple cabbage, IMHO)
-green onion
-cilantro
-carrots (the remnants of a bag-o-salad, so no chopping for me!)
-celery
Next, I chopped up some ginger (probably more then necessary, but I’ve been excited about ginger lately), and stir-fried it along with some garlic in sesame oil. I added a dash of rice wine as well. Next, I dumped in some chopped chicken, along with a little of the aforementioned sauce. After the chicken had cooked thoroughly, I added in the vegetables and the rest of the sauce, plus some ground peppercorns, pushing everything around for a few minutes. I served it on some brown rice, and declared it delicious.
I’m a sucker for both Asian cooking and the Allrecipes website. Not only is there a great variety of recipes, but there are also a great deal of reviews. These are great for not only seeing if a recipe is good or not, but seeing how other people have altered a recipe based on lack of ingredients of wanting to alter the taste. It seems that Allrecipes is branching out into other countries. The very first recipe I linked to is on Allrecipes Asia, and there are several other branches as well, including Japan, China, and Germany. Not really sure why Japan and China aren’t just included in Asia, though. For some reason, the Asia site is in English, but all of the other countries (the ones that I looked at, at least) are in their nation’s own language. So I’m looking forward to thoroughly exploring the Asia one.
I will not, however, let a site’s being in another language be a hindrance to my accessing their recipes. A quick visit to your favorite Babel-type site will fix those language issues nicely. Well, kind of. For example, I inputted this recipe, only to end up with this version. While I am rather excited at the prospect of making some “California the straw raincoat rubbish dumpling which comes”, I do have my doubts as to how easy it will be to interpret the resulting Engrish from the translator.
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