Butternut Squash and Blue Cheese Casserole

It was my week to cook, again, and this time I remembered to take pictures! Woohoo! (Also, the last thing I made was NOT very…photogenic, to say the least.) Anyways, without further ado…DINNER!

Butternut Squash & Blue Cheese Casserole
Ingerdients:

• 3 cups butternut squash, peeled and cubed
• 1 medium onion, cut into strips
• 1 TBSP olive oil
• 1 TBSP sugar
• 1 pkg Buddig Honey Roasted Turkey (could totally be left out to make vegetarian, or you might substitute a flavorful, but delicatly smokey bacon, which might complement the blue cheese nicely)
• 1/4 cup + 2 TBSP crumbled blue cheese (Maytag or Gorgonzola…or whatever floats your boat)
• 2 TBSP dry white wine
• Nonstick cooking spray

1. Preheat the oven to 400F.
2. Put the squash in a single layer on a baking sheet and mist with olive oil (or brush each piece). Put in the oven to roast for about 30 minutes, until the squash is tender
3. While the squash is cooking, caramelize the onions.  Saute them in a saucepan/skillet with the 1 TBSP olive oil and 1 TBSP sugar. Cook them until they are brown and sticky. Set aside.
4. Cut up the turkey into small pieces.
5. Prepare a small baking dish (loaf pan size works well) by spraying with nonstick spray.
6. When the squash is done roasting, remove from the oven and turn the temperature down to 350F.
7. Put the squash in the prepared baking dish. Add the turkey, 1/4 cup blue cheese, onions, and wine . Mix well. Top with the extra blue cheese and put back in the oven. Bake for about 20 minutes. Then, turn on the broiler and bake another 5 minutes to brown the cheese on top.
8. Serve warm!

And, we definitely suggest serving it with this:

Walnut-Cranberry Couscous
Ingerdients:

• 2/3 cup couscous
• 1/2 cup dried cranberries
• 4 TBSP walnuts, chopped
• 1 tsp olive oil
• Cinnamon

1. Cook the couscous according to package directions.
2. Add oil, cranberries, and walnuts; mix. Top each serving with a sprinkle of cinnamon

(*This is how I cooked it this time, but I would definitely recommend LESS couscous. I adapted from an internet recipe and I was using dry measurement, but I think the original must have meant cooked. Oh well, live and learn.)
**Both of these recipes came from Healthy Girl Cooking.

Blizzard Baking, 2011!

For some reason, being snowed in and off of school/work for two days gave me the urge to bake. Like, seriously bake. Actually, it took about an hour of being snowed in for the desire to hit, but a day and a half to decide what to make and to act on it. As anyone who followed on Facebook knows, I faced a serious baking dilemma: no eggs. Yep, none. No egg substitute, liquid or powdered. Nada. Hmmm…how bad did I REALLY want to bake? Well, apparently bad enough. I decided to experiment and go for it…with a1956 Betty Crocker cake recipe. So, with no further ado, here it is:

Betty Crocker’s Burnt Sugar Cake (with Burnt Sugar Frosting)
Cake Recipe:

• 1/2 cup sugar
• 1/2 cup boiling water + extra
• 2 1/4 Cups Softasilk floud
• 1 cup sugar
• 3 tsp baking powder
• 1 tsp salt
• 1/4 shortening, softened
• 2 eggs
• 1 tsp vanilla (optional)

Grease and flour 2-8″ or 9″ pans (or one 9″x13″ pan). Preheat the oven to 350F.
Caramelize the 1/2 cup sugar, melting over low heat until medium brown (shaking pan to keep from burning). Remove from heat. Slowly add 1/2 cup boiling water (be careful – will splatter!). Return to head and stir until all lumps are dissolved. Remove from heat and measure; add enough water for a total of 1 cup of carmel-water mixture.
Sift together the flour, sugar, baking powder, and salt. Add the shortening and 2/3 cup of the cooled carmel-water mixture. Beat 2 minutes. Add the rest of the caramel-water mixture, eggs, and optional vanilla. Beat 2 more minutes. Pour into prepared pans and place in hot oven. Cook the cakes for 25-35 minutes, depending on the size of your pan.
Frosting Recipe:

• 1/2 cup sugar
• 1/4 cup boiling water
• 1/2 cup shortening
• 2 1/2 TBSP Softasilk flour
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 3 cups confectioner’s sugar
• +/- 3 TBSP water
• 1/2 tsp vanilla

Caramelize the sugar (same as cake) and add 1/4 cup boiling water, stirring vigorously. Set aside. (Heat further if you need to dissolve any lumps)
Melt 1/2 cup shortening in saucepan. Add 2 1/2 TBSP Softasilk flour and 1/4 tsp salt; stir. Slowly stir carmel-water mixture into shortening mixture. Return to heat and boil. Boil for one minute and remove from heat. Stir in (alternately) 3 cups confectioner’s sugar and about 3 TBSP water. Put in bowl of cold water and continue beating until spreadable consistency. Stir in vanilla.

How I Changed It Up:

• First off, I halved the cake recipe. We didn’t need that much cake for just the two of us, not really (we would have eaten it…but the fact remains that we didn’t need it!) Quite the adventure in math (1/6 Cup = how much? (2 TBSP + 2 tsp, in case you’re curious))
• Second, as previously mentioned, NO EGGS! I did some research online and came across a lot of different options. I ended up going with a cornstarch water combo to make up for my lack of eggs. (1 TSBP cornstarch + 3 TBSP water)
• Third, since I halved the recipe, I used two 6″ round cake pans. These are my new favorite! I pretty much never need to make full-size cakes so I finally made the investment in these. I used them earlier on the strawberry birthday cake as well.
• Fourth, I added a LOT more water to the frosting recipe. It was WAY too difficult to spread. Actually, it was practically to thick to beat with my electric hand mixer, let alone spread with a knife.

Overall, it tasted pretty good. I actually quite enjoyed the cake. The frosting was a bit…strong for me. It complimented the cake well, but it tasted just a tad too…burnt. I had some difficulty with the caramelization of the sugar (I burned it a bit too much). Woops. If it was just a little more mild, I probably would have thoroughly enjoyed it. The hubby enjoyed it, but also agreed that the frosting was a bit much. I am glad that I opted not to frost the sides of the cake.

Hubby's Birthday Cake

So, anyone who knows my husband is well aware that his favorite type of cake is strawberry. Yes, pink, girly strawberry cake. And I love him for it. So…for his birthday, I made it my mission to make a strawberry cake from scratch (how hard can it be?) and to hunt down a good “white wedding frosting” for it (because, again, his favorite type).
After sifting through many, many strawberry cake recipes that involved strawberry jello, strawberry extract, and red food coloring, I finally cake across a recipe on a food blog that caught my eye. No strawberry jello. No extract. No food coloring. Just strawberries. (In case you’re wondering it is from the blog “Confections of a Foodie Bride” here) The comments on the post all sounded good so I decided to give it a shot. The batter was pretty pink color and had a definite strawberry flavor to it. Now, one thing that I did change a little was the strawberries. The strawberry puree in the original was no sugar added organic frozen. Well, we bought the sugar added HyVee brand….because it was the cheapest! *duh*
Anyway, moving on to the frosting, I know how to make basic buttercream (thanks to my cake decorating for beginning Wilton class). However, it’s never “quite right.” So, I commenced again with searching to find a worthwhile recipe. The one I ended up settling on was from the website/blog Dine & Dish. It looked simple (read: EASY) and not THAT much different that what I normally. The only differences were milk instead of water and half butter/half shortening instead of all shortening. They taught us that this was an option in class…but then your frosting is, well, perishable.
The frosting turned out pretty well. I was quite happy with it (and so was the boy). I took a little bit of the frosting and added a bit of powdered sugar and some of the juice drained off the strawberries and made a thinner strawberry frosting for between the layers.

Well, the only real problem I encountered while making the cake was….the middle. I wanted to make the center section just a tad thicker, so when I made my dam with the white frosting, I doubled it up (something they taught us that we could do in class). The problem: my white wasn’t thick enough to support this. I definitely needed to make a thicker frosting and maybe double the width of the dam as well. Perhaps needless to say, the cake did a fair amount of sliding as I attempted to frost the cake.

In the end, I couldn’t get the frosting as smooth as I like (because of the sliding)…so I covered it with sugar sprinkles and threw it in the fridge in hopes that it would get a bit more solid. It didn’t…not really. The top tried to slide off when you cut it!!

The cake was pretty good overall. The strawberry icing in the center was FANTASTIC (too bad I have no idea how much strawberry stuff I put in). The cake didn’t have a very strong strawberry flavor to it. The flavor was there, but it wasn’t very prominent. If you are looking for a strongly flavored strawberry cake, you probably should just use the box mix! However, it was delicious–rich, dense, and moist! I’d make it again in a heartbeat, especially with the frosting.

American-style Pumpernickel Bread

So today was a long day.  As was yesterday, and I know the upcoming 7-10 days are probably not gonna be much of a picnic either.  So, after I finished my book for Medieval Seminar on Thursday, I decided I was going to take a bit of time and bake some bread from scratch, something I've been wanting to do now for a long time.  I'm really hoping that this is something I can keep up on and off throughout this school year as a means of stress reduction, along with brewing and (hopefully, fingers crossed) some cheese-making as well.  Kinda the Trappist monk-inspired trifecta.  So, that being said, I've never really gotten a "from scratch" bread to work out before.  I've made some pretty decent focaccia before, but it really didn't need to rise all that much to be good.  My raised breads have always ended in disaster.  So I was a bit worried.  However, I'm happy to say this turned out pretty well!  I used the following recipe,

               www.thatsmyhome.com/bakery/basic/gerpumpb.htm

and for once, I actually followed a recipe to the T, not substituting anything or messing around with it in any way.  I actually got the bread to double in size (which I've never been able to do before, for one reason or another) and with the exception of getting a bit over-zealous w/my scoring of the top, these guys look pretty good!