French Onion Soup

My absolute favorite time of year is fall leading into winter...crisp cool air, sweaters, leaves, Thanksgiving...and then Christmas!!  And of course lots and lots of baking happens in the fall, its only natural =)  One of my favorite fall-ish foods in french onion soup...its so warm and homey, and really easy to make!!  Already tired of summer (least favorite season of them all) I decided to do something to remind me of fall, so I whipped up this french onion soup.  All you really need is about 5 white onions, some garlic, a carton of beef broth, balsamic vinegar, and whatever spices you want to add.
The first thing I did was take a heavy bottomed pot...I used the Calphalon 4 quart soup pot...put a little olive oil in the bottom and add your chopped onion...throw in a little salt to pull out the moisture and let them cook down until they begin to get limp and sweat.

After they begin to cook down they will look like this...

When they start to brown a little you can add a few splashes of balsamic vinegar and a little bit of sugar...I used agave nectar but I used a little too much and my soup was sweeter than I wanted it to be...so its better to use less and add more later if you wanted to...basically the sugar is just to help caramelize the onions...once they start to caramelize they will look like this...

Allow them to continue to cook...stirring occasionally to make sure they all get evenly browned and caramelized...

Once the onions look like the above picture you can add the carton of beef broth and whatever spices you want...I got a little spice happy haha and added a whole bunch of different things...dried basil, paprika, red pepper, nutmeg...
Cover the soup and allow to simmer for about 30 minutes...after its finished simmering ladle it into crocks and add croutons or slices of french bread...

Then you can add cheese, most recipes call for gruyere, but I didn't have any so I just used fresh mozzarella...

 Stick under the broiler for a few minutes until the cheese turns brown and bubbly...

 Enjoy!! =)

devil's food cupcakes with salted almond double chocolate frosting!

Due to my want of chocolate for the past couple of days I decided to crack open the cupcake book my friends got me for my birthday and try out the devil's food cupcakes and experiment with a new buttercream frosting recipe (since my usual one is sickeningly sweet).  The cupcakes were super easy to make and intensely chocolaty!!  To make the cupcakes you are gonna need...

1 cup all purpose flour

1/4 cup unsweetened cocoa powder (I used the special dark kind)

3/4 baking soda

1/4 tsp salt

1/2 granulated sugar

1/2 cup packed brown sugar

4 tbsp unsalted butter (room temp. is best)

1 egg (also room temp...just a little tip, its always best to bake with room temp. eggs)

1 tsp vanilla extract

1/2 cup lukewarm water

1/4 cup buttermilk (or you can just use regular milk with a tsp of lemon juice or white vinegar)

First make sure you preheat your oven to 350 degrees and place 12 cupcake liners in your cupcake pan.  Then you are going to take the dry ingredients (remember, sugar is not a dry ingredient) and mix them together in a medium bowl.  This is going to consist of the flour, cocoa powder, baking soda, and salt.  The mixture will look like this...

Next you are going to take the granulated sugar as well as the brown sugar and blend it together with a hand mixer until the butter is incorporated with the sugar...

After the butter and sugar are mixed together add the egg and the vanilla, blend the mixture again until it reaches a creamy consistency...

You are then going to begin to add the dry ingredients to the sugar mixture - it should be added in three doses, alternating the water and buttermilk in between each dose...also, make sure to blend well in between each dose but be careful to not over blend or else the cupcakes with be tough.

Once the batter is all blended together divide into 12 cupcake cups and bake for about 20 minutes...

 

While the cupcakes are baking you can start on the frosting.  Now, I normally do a powdered sugar frosting but I didn't want anything too sweet for these cupcakes or it would have overpowered in intense chocolaty goodness!  And I also wanted to experiment and try something new - so I turned to the back of the book where I discovered a buttercream recipe that I have never hear of before!  For the frosting you will need...

3-4 egg whites (depending on the size of the eggs)

3/4 cup granulated sugar

1 tbsp powdered sugar

1 cup (16 tbsp, or 2 sticks) room temp. butter

2 tbsp unsweetened cocoa powder (I used the special dark again)

1/2 cup dark chocolate chips

2 tsp almond extract

First you are going to want to heat your egg whites with the sugar over a double boiler for a few minutes or until the temperature of the mixture reaches 160 degrees.  If you do not have a double boiler you can always use a heat proof bowl over a saucepan filled with simmering water.  Make sure you are constantly stirring the egg white mixture or else the egg whites will cook...yuck!!

Once the 160 degree temperate is reached pour the mixture into a bowl and allow it to cool down for a few minutes before beating with a hand mixer until the mixture forms stiff peaks...it took me a little over 5 minutes to get it to this point...

 You can't really see the stiff peaks in this picture...but it was holding, you will be able to tell when it is done.

After the mixture is holding still peaks you can add the cocoa powder and beat the mixture again.  Next you are going to want to melt the chocolate chips in the double boiler with about 3-4 tbsp of the butter...

Once the chocolate mixture is melted allow to cool and then add to the frosting mixture.  Next you are going to want to add the rest of the butter, powdered sugar, salt, and almond extract and mix until it reaches a fluffy frosting texture.  Now it may seem a little runny at first...but you are going to want to refrigerate it for about an hour so that it hardens and is easier to spread on the cupcakes.  After it is done refrigerating if will look like this...

After frosting the cupcakes sprinkle a small pinch of sea salt chunks on the top...this gives it the really yummy sweet/salty taste!

This recipe was taken and adapted from Cupcakes  "luscious bakeshop favorites from your home kitchen" by Shelly Kaldunski...Devil's Food Cupcakes pg. 28...Basic Buttercream Icing pg. 112

what are you smokin?!

So for awhile now I have been wanting to try out the Polyscience Smoking Gun from Williams-Sonoma and along came my perfect opportunity to learn being that it is part of my tech class on Sunday.  When I found out I was going to be doing a class on BBQ ribs I was kinda nervous because I have never made ribs before and never ever have I even come close to using the smoking gun!!  So I asked my manager if it would be okay for me to take it home for the night to experiment...and that is just what I did.  In my fear of filling the entire kitchen with smoke I took the little machine outside along with an assortment of random things from the fridge. I opened up the box, assembled the smoker and filled the little cavity with my first choice of chips...Mesquite.

After filling the little cavity with my chips I proceeded to light them...after burning my fingers twice I finally got the thing to light and smoke begin piping out of the tube!!  I wanted to try the technique of trapping the smoke inside of a container, so I did it with some left over pasta.

After success with the pasta I went on to smoke some salt and then I used some Applewood chips to smoke some apple sauce...I thought it would be weird but it actually turned out really good!  For the class I will be smoking bbq sauce which I will be brushing on ribs.  You can pretty much smoke anything...from sauces, to salads...to even ice-cream and drinks!!

sandwich contest

This weeks contest was a create your own sandwich challenge and I have been wanting to try roasting red peppers for awhile so I thought this would be the perfect opportunity.  I ended up making a roasted red pepper pesto which I spread on a crusty Italian roll which I put prosciutto with sauteed mushrooms, caramelized onions and melted asiago cheese.

To make the roasted red pepper pesto you first need to roast the red peppers.  To do this all you need is a jelly roll pan and a broiler.  Place the peppers on the pan and stick under the broiler turned on high for about 20-ish minutes or until they start to get wrinkly and slightly black.  Make sure you watch them like a baby cause they can burn quickly...turn the broiler down to low if you need to.  Also, make sure you turn them often in order to get every side done evenly.

They will look like this once they are done...then you want to put them in a glass container with a lid so that the steam can help to loosen the skin...it will look like this once the skin is ready to be removed...

To take the skin off just take two forks and pull it right off...it should come off very easily.  After you remove the skin take out the seeds and slice the peppers into slivers.  Then place them in a food processor with a handful of basil and about 4 cloves of garlic...also add parmesan and either pine nuts, walnuts, cashews, or almonds (or whatever nut you want really!)...I used almonds.  Pulse, adding olive oil as you go until the pesto is at the right consistency...you can add salt to taste if you want be careful not to add too much.
Here's what the final pesto should look like...

While your doing the pesto you can get the caramelized onions going...take a medium sized saucepan (do not used non-stick or else you will have trouble deglazing.  Pour into the saucepan about 2-3 tablespoons of olive oil (lets just be honest here I never really measure anything so all of this just has to be eye-balled haha)...take a few cloves of garlic and let them cook down in the garlic.  Chop a medium sized white onion and allow them to cook down over medium heat until they start to "sweat" (you can add a little salt to help the process)...once they are sweating add a little butter and a little agave nectar or honey (the sugars will help the onions to caramelize).  Crank the heat up to high/medium-high heat and let the onions do their thing...stir them once or twice to get them off of the bottom of the pan.  After they are caramelized removed them from the pan and deglaze with white wine...immediately throw the mushrooms in and cover to let them cook (bring the heat down to medium)...add a little salt to help pull the juices.  Once they are cooked there will be a lot of liquid in the pan, at this point add the onions and garlic back into the pan...turn the heat down or off and cover.
Here are the onions beginning to caramelize...

Here is the final garlic/onion/mushroom sauce...

To assemble the sandwich use a crusty Italian roll (I am in Lancaster so I got the closest thing I could find...and let me just tell you it was an embarrassment to a real Italian roll...).  Take the pesto and spread it on the top half of the roll...

Then take a few slices of prosciutto and layer them on the bottom half...now I found that I forgot how salty prosciutto is so if you aren't a salty fan you can go with any meat really...sliced grilled chicken would be great!   You could even go with capicola or a salami if you wanted to...the meat is pretty interchangeable.  After you layer the meat take some of the mushroom sauce and lay it on top of the meat...

Then take the asiago cheese (you can change out the cheese too if you want) and layer it on top of the mushrooms...its okay if it doesn't look perfect cause its going to get all melty anyway.  Place it under the broiler until the cheese melts and gets bubbly (make sure it stays open faced when its under the broiler).

This one probably could have stayed under a little longer...until the cheese got more bubbly and browned but it still tasted yummy :)

Cupcake Contest!

Its summer, so that means between my jobs I need something to do with my time (since all that school work is gone hahaha) so I have decided to enter a few baking/cooking contests.  I am thinking about doing about one per week for the duration of the summer =).  The first one that I just recently entered is a cupcake contest...the recipe had to be original and completely homemade.  After much though I decided to create some sort of mocha frappacinno type of thing...which evolved into a spiced mocha frappe cupcake with almond sweet cream frosting =)

The recipe is:
Cupcake Batter
1 1/2 cups all purpose flour
1/4 cup granulated sugar
1/2 cup brown sugar
1 tbsp baking powder
1 tsp allspice
1/4 cup dark unsweetened cocoa powder
1/2 cup butter
3 tbsp strong black coffee
1 tbsp espresso powder
1 1/2 tsp almond extract
1 cup whole milk
1 egg
Frosting
1 1/2 cups cold heavy cream
3 tbsp confectioners sugar
2 tsp almond extract

Preheat your oven to 350 degrees fahrenheit , in a medium bowl mix together the dry ingredients (even the sugar - although it is "technically" considered a wet ingredient do it anyway...).  Then, in a small bowl melt the butter and add the cocoa powder, coffee, espresso powder, and almond extract...whisk together until smooth.  Whisk in the milk and egg.  Then add the wet ingredients to the dry ingredients and beat with an electric hand mixer until combined and smooth (be careful not to over mix!)  Bake in prepared cupcake pan for 25-30 minutes or until toothpick comes out clean.  While they are baking you can beat together the heavy cream, confectioners sugar, and almond extract.  Be sure to wait until the cupcakes are completely cool before frosting them.

Ready for the oven!!

Nice and fluffy =)

Making the sweet cream frosting!

If you want to get fancy, you can make a caramel drizzle and a chocolate drizzle....making a caramel is very easy, its basically just sugar and heavy cream.

First, take about 3/4 cup granulated white sugar and put it in a saucepan over medium high heat...make sure to stir constantly...

It will very quickly melt down to this golden colored (very sticky) syrup...keep stirring!!

Slowly add heavy cream (stirring, stirring, stirring...) until desired consistency is achieved.

Immediately pour into a glass bowl and allow to cool before drizzling over the frosting (or else the frosting will melt!)

To make a chocolate drizzle just melt together chocolate chips and butter...

Chicken Paella

So tomorrow is a pretty exciting day for me because I am teaching a cooking class at Williams-Sonoma...its been such a long time since my last class so I am very excited!!  Williams-Sonoma has introduced a new type of cooking class called Sous Chef where they feature a chef and their restaurant with a presentation of one of their dishes.  Tomorrow I will be making Chicken Paella adapted by MacGregor Mann from the Amada Tapas restaurant in Philadelphia.  I was really excited when I found out the restaurant is in Philly because I go to school in Philly so I will definitely be trying it out!

For more information on Sous Chef and to get the Chicken Paella recipe check out the website
http://www.souschefseries.com/

Amada Tapas Restaurant
http://www.amadarestaurant.com/

chocolate chip cookie dough dip with my best friend =)

Tonight was my best friend, Heather's, last night on campus for the summer so we decided to make some chocolate chip cookie dough dip for our celebration night =)  It was so easy to make!!  Its basically a bunch of bad stuff for you whipped together in a bowl...but hey everyone needs to celebrate sometimes.  The recipe is 1/2 cup butter, 1/3 cup brown sugar, 1/2 cup powdered sugar, 8 ounces cream cheese, and chocolate chips (of course)...but quite honestly, we didn't really measure (dorm room cooking...gotta get creative) so pretty much just eye-ball it...throw it together...taste it...and if it needs more stuff throw it in...trust me you can't mess this up.

Sometimes I get a little crazy when I bake...heather was the victim of my powdered sugar incident...

All done!!  It tastes better after its been in the fridge for like an hour-ish...

Mmm...its yummy on a pretzel!!