Homemade Vanilla Extract

Waiting...

After making the sunflower butter, I had 2 leftover vanilla beans. Because they are so expensive, I decided to try to make my own vanilla extract. There are a lot of recipes for this, but I followed this particular one because it makes a small, affordable batch. (http://www.abeautifulmess.com/2012/02/make-your-own-vanilla-extract.html)

It’s very simple- I took the 2 hulled vanilla beans and 8 ounces of the cheapest vodka I could find and combined them in a jam jar. This mixture should be left to sit for about 2 months, then can be used for future baking ventures.

Before 

After

Sunflower Butter

I tried to follow several recipes at once today. Maybe not my best idea, but it all worked out in the end. I’ll split them into three posts for the sake of organization. I’ll start with the sunflower spread; because that was the first recipe I tackled. This recipe came from Heidi Swanson’s 101 Cookbooks (http://www.101cookbooks.com/archives/cinnamon-vanilla-sunflower-butter-recipe.html). It’s a simple sunflower butter made in the food processor, and I look forward to using it throughout the week.

Roasted Sunflower seeds --> Sunflower Butter

Here are the ingredients:

2 cups of sunflower seeds

~¼ cup of sunflower oil

½ teaspoon salt

Seeds from 2 plump vanilla beans

3 tablespoons of ground cinnamon

Preheat oven: 325º F

Roast the sunflower seeds on a rimmed baking sheet. Stir the seeds partway through; this process took me about 15 minutes in total.

Unroasted versus Roasted Seeds

Once cooled, puree the seeds with 1 tablespoon of the oil and salt. Add 2 more tablespoons of oil while the food processor is running. I found that the mixture took a while to get through the “coarse” stage to the smooth stage. I just continued adding ingredients and gave the food processor breaks when necessary. Be sure to scrape down the sides- as well as the compounded mass stuck below the blade. Add the seeds and cinnamon and continue pulsing. You really just need to keep pureeing the mixture; I found myself giving the food processor breaks and just blending everything by hand using the back of a spoon. Be patient, the butter is worth it in the end. I would highly recommend using photos as a reference, because the butter goes from course to shiny and smooth.

Finished Product

Blackberry Cobbler

I have been waiting an entire year to try this recipe again. Wild blackberries tend to ripen sometime in August here in the Northwest. I live near miles of trail that happens to be lined with Himalayan Blackberries (the non-native species that has taken over quite a bit of land, but tastes too delicious to be completely loathed). Every summer I seem to jump the gun and try to go berry picking before any are ready, but this summer I only jumped it by about a week, instead of the usual 3 weeks or so. The season started a little earlier this year, which is fortunate because I will definitely be making this dessert again, and probably some jam as well.

Freshly Picked Berries

This cobbler is one of the easiest baked desserts I make. It takes me about ten minutes to prepare and mix the ingredients, and I don’t even use a mixer or food processor. In addition to being simple it’s good. I’m giving most of the credit to the ripe berries; if you are able to pick them yourself be patient and only pick the berries that come off the plant without any hassle. These are the sweetest and juiciest, and will make all the difference later.

Enjoy this recipe; this cobbler is my definition of late summer. I got this recipe from Southern Living (http://www.myrecipes.com/recipe/easy-blackberry-cobbler-10000001816143/). If you take issue with the amount of butter, it’s their fault, not mine, and totally worth the final product.

Here are the ingredients:

4 cups of fresh blackberries

1 tablespoon of lemon juice

1 large egg

1 cup of sugar

1 cup of flour

6 tablespoons of melted butter

Preheat temperature: 375º F

Place your washed berries in a lightly greased 8” by 8” glass baking dish. Sprinkle the berries with lemon juice and set aside. While this is happening, I recommend that you melt the butter on the stovetop. I accidentally browned mine, which changed the taste a bit, and is likely noticeable in the photos.

So much better than using the microwave

Mix the egg, sugar and flour in a bowl until the mixture has a course meal texture. I just used a fork to accomplish this. Sprinkle the dry mixture over the fruit and pour the butter over all of this. The butter will not seem to cover all of the dry mixture; this probably seems to remedy itself in the oven.

Crumbly mixture

Crumbly mixture + berries + questionable amount of browned butter

Bake the cobbler in the oven for 35 minutes, or until the topping is browned and the berries are bubbling. Remove from the oven and cool for 10 minutes.

Finished product- nice and golden

It's getting eaten rather quickly....

Brown Sugar-Cinnamon Cookies

I’m back again. It’s been a bit too hot to bake lately, so I’ve been focusing on all the fresh fruit in season. I recently fell in love with apricots, and have been trying to master broiling them. The first recipe I tried came from here: http://prouditaliancook.blogspot.com/2011/08/easy-labor-day-weekend-ideas.html. The pistachios and apricots tasted wonderful together, but the honey did not sweeten the apricots enough for my family’s tastes.

Attempt No. 2 came from Joy the Baker (http://joythebaker.com/2011/06/simple-roasted-apricots-with-honey-mascarpone/). The flavors were far simpler, but the apricots came out of the oven wonderfully caramelized, almost like marshmallows initially. In addition, adding the mascarpone after broiling still allowed for some wonderful ooziness. I loved this recipe so much; I might have repeated it with my lunch three days in a row…

So, the seasonally available goodies have stolen away my attention for a while. I went Marion berry picking last week and will probably pick blackberries in the coming weeks. I’ll try to post some jam recipes as I have time.

Wonderful summer flavors!

Without further ado, here is my newest cookie attempt from Tina Casaceli’s book Milk & Cookies. I tried her Brown Sugar-Cinnamon Crisps. Mine turned out a bit chewier than the recipe indicated they should turn out, but I also struggled with the dough expanding in the oven. Overall, they were large and delicious sugar cookies with a slight kick of cinnamon.

Here are the ingredients:

3 cups (12 ounces) all-purpose flour
½ teaspoon salt
¼ teaspoon backing powder
¼ teaspoon cream of tartar
1 ½ cups (12 ounces) unsalted butter, at room temperature*
1 ¼ cups (8 ¾ ounces) brown sugar
2 large egg yolks, at room temperature
2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract
2 tablespoons milk
½ cup (3 ½ ounces) granulated sugar
*Due to a shortage, I had to mix unsalted and salted butter. I just left out the salt in the dough.


½ cup (3 ½ ounces) granulated sugar
2 teaspoons ground cinnamon

Preheat temperature: 350ºF

Before I jump into the recipe, I’d like to acknowledge some mistakes. First of all, if you are going to crack your eggs ahead of time like me, crack each egg into a separate container. Otherwise, you will struggle to add each yolk individually. Second, I think I did not chill the dough long enough, as the heart shaped cookies looked a bit more like hearts from someone who suffers from high HDL, not normal, Valentine’s Day friendly shaped hearts.

Mistake No. 1

Now to the instructions.

Combine the flour, salt, baking soda and cream of tartar in a medium sized bowl and set this dry mixture aside.

Put the butter into your mixer that is fitted with a paddle. Beat it on low, increasing the speed to medium and keep the mixture going for 3 minutes. The butter should be very light and smooth.
Add the brown sugar in ¼ cup intervals. Once all of the sugar has been added, beat the mixture for another 2 minutes.

Add the yolks one at a time. Have a rubber spatula out to scrape down the sides of the bowl after each egg is added. Add the vanilla and beat the mixture for another minute.

Keep the mixer running as you add half of the flour mixture and the milk. The milk allows you to keep the mixture from getting too tough to be mixed. After these additions add the rest of the flour and mix by hand with a kneading motion, being careful not to overwork the dough. Just make sure that all of the ingredients are blended together.

Mixing Montage 

Make a large disk out of the dough, and wrap it tightly in plastic wrap. Refrigerate the dough for 1 hour to 3 days, until it is firm.

When it’s time to bake the cookies, make sure the oven has been heated to 350ºF. Line baking sheets with parchment paper for easier clean-up.

Unwrap the dough from the plastic wrap and place on a floured surface. This is the point in the recipe where I veered off course. I rolled out the dough, cut it into heart and circular shapes, dipped it in a cinnamon-sugar mixture and dropped it on the cookie sheets. I baked the cookies for about 10 minutes, removing them once they were brown along the edges. That is a little harder to gauge with these cookies due to the darker colored dough from the brown sugar. Allow the cookies to cool on wire racks and store in an airtight container for up to a week, if you don’t eat them sooner.

Golden and not over-expanded

Roasted Strawberry Buttermilk Cake

Hey everyone,

I know it’s been a while since I’ve written any new posts. I think it’s been a combination of busyness and a tendency towards baking the same wonderful things over and over. Sorry about that…

Anyways, I am back with a brand new recipe. This time it is Joy the Baker’s Roasted Strawberry Buttermilk Cake, which you can find here: http://joythebaker.com/2012/05/roasted-strawberry-buttermilk-cake/

I am a novice to baking with strawberries. I’m not sure why, I guess I just eat them “raw”. But, it’s Father’s Day, which seems like the perfect excuse to bake something new. My own dad is anti-chocolate and lacks my sweet tooth, so a buttermilk cake seemed like a good choice for him.

Everyone loves strawberries, I hope.

A few notes- I did not have a cast iron skillet, so I used a 9 x 2 ¾” springboard pan, because it seemed closest to the thickness of a cast iron skillet. I was heartbroken to find myself skillet-less, but the springboard pan was nice in that there was hope that I’d be able to get the cake out in one piece in the end.

Here are all of the ingredients:

Roasted Strawberries

8 oz. strawberries cut in half (I quartered some of mine, though)

2 tbsp. maple syrup

1 tbsp. olive oil

Pinch of salt

2 tsp. balsamic vinegar

Buttermilk Cake

2 ½ c flour

1 tbsp. aluminum-free baking powder

½ c granulated sugar

½ tsp. salt

2 large eggs

1 ½ c buttermilk

¼ c butter melted and slightly cooled

1 tsp. vanilla extract

Roasted strawberries (see above)

3 tbsp. turbinado sugar for topping

Oven Settings: Preheat to 375º F for strawberries and turn up to 400ºF for cake.

Roasted Strawberries (originally courtesy of Heidi Swanson’s Super Natural Everyday, which is a wonderful cookbook to keep around anyways)

Fully line a rimmed baking sheet- this is important so you can catch the strawberry juices.

Cut off the strawberry tops (I give mine to the chickens in my backyard; do whatever sustainable activity you would like to do with yours) and slice the strawberries in half. I cut some of mine into quarters. Regardless, they will shrink down while roasting.

In a small (i.e. cereal) bowl, whisk together the maple syrup, olive oil and salt. DO NOT added the balsamic vinegar to this mixture. I got a little too excited and did this and ended up redoing the mixture completely.

Not yet roasted, but here's an idea of how liquid-y everything should be.

Place all of your strawberries on the baking sheet and pour on the liquid mixture. Toss everything together on the sheet and place in the over for ~40 minutes. This is important- watch your strawberries closely. After 33 minutes the juices from mine had pooled over the edge of the parchment paper and had burned. You want to get everything out of the oven before this happens so you can incorporate the juices with the rest of the strawberry mixture.

Roasting

Remove from the oven before things go wrong and place back in the cereal bowl. Toss on the vinegar and set aside while you complete the cake. While you are near the oven, turn it up 25ºF.

A bad sign...

Another bad sign.

Soaking in vinegar

Buttermilk Cake

In a large bowl mix up all of your dry ingredients- flour, baking powder, sugar and salt. Set aside.

In a smaller bowl (for reference I would recommend bigger than a cereal bowl), whisk together the wet ingredients. Experience has taught me that not only is it important that the butter be slightly warm, but there is such thing as too cold of buttermilk during this step. My mixture was too cold overall, and the butter kept solidifying. Lesson learned for the benefit of anyone reading this.

The butter problem.

Dump the smaller bowl contents into the large bowl and stir everything until smooth and fully combined.

Pour the cake batter into whatever pan you will be using. Add strawberry + balsamic vinegar mixture on top. A few notes: some of my strawberries were burnt. My childlike tendency to attempt to eat anything in front of me led me to the discovery that burnt roasted strawberries are horribly bitter, so I picked out the burnt parts as I was able to. I did not have the strawberry juices left over, so I mixed up a very small amount of olive oil and maple syrup (1:2 ratio) and add this on top as well. Top with sugar- I only used 1 tbsp.

Ready for the oven.

A note on this photo- I resisted playing with the filter so I could show how dark the berries are prior to baking.

Bake for 18-23 minutes. I would recommend reading Joy’s note on baking times varying according to type of pan. I will second her in pointing out that this cake bakes very fast- mine took 21 minutes, and at 18 minutes it had not seemed baked at all. As it bakes, the strawberries will slightly sink into the batter. Overall this recipe takes a bit of babysitting, so make sure you have the time and attention span for it. 

Baked, complete with sunken in strawberries.

Vegan Chocolate Avocado Cake

Hey everyone,

While I was home for break, I decided I'd try something different and bake an entire cake. Usually I stick with just cupcakes because my apartment oven can dependably bake them and they are much easier to give out to people. So, with some amount of free time and access to a more well-equipped kitchen, I tackled a double layer cake. I'm afraid I don't have photos, but if I re-make it I will post some.

This recipe comes from Joy Wilson's blog Joy the Baker. This is the specific recipe: http://joythebaker.com/2009/07/vegan-chocolate-avocado-cake/.

Her wonderful looking cookbook Joy the Baker Cookbook: 100 Simple and Comforting Recipes includes a very similar recipe in cupcake form with a chocolate frosting. I may have to try that if I ever have spare avocados in my apartment...

Now for the cake details- it pains me to part with 3 avocados so quickly. I'm not from the warmest of climates, so avocados tend to be shipped and the price goes up quite quickly. However, I promise that they went to a delicious cause. Normally I excuse my increasing use of butter due to the fact that, in my opinion, it makes everything delicious. However, I don't think it made a difference this time. This cake is very moist, and the frosting is not as avocado-y as comments on Joy's site would indicate. I will warn you now- it really is green. My skeptical family tried the green covered cake, and reported that it's pretty good despite the unsettling color.

One thing I have to rave about is that for the cake itself you do not need any sort of electric mixer. I usually have to mix everything I make by hand anyways, but this is especially simple to throw together.

Here are the ingredients:

Chocolate Cake (makes 2 8"-9" round cakes)

3 cups all-purpose flour
6 Tablespoons unsweetened cocoa powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons baking powder
2 teaspoons baking soda
2 cups granulated sugar
1/4 cup vegetable oil (Joy used almond oil)
1/2 cup soft avocado, well mashed, about 1 medium avocado (really mash this so it doesn't show up in the finished cake)
2 cups water
2 Tablespoons white vinegar
2 teaspoons vanilla extract

Oven Settings: Preheat oven 350°F.
Spray two 8" or 9" round cake pans, depending on desired thickness of cake layers.
Mash the avocado very well.


Sift together all of the dry ingredients except the sugar.  Set that aside too.

Mix all the wet ingredients together in a bowl, including the super mashed avocado.

Add sugar into the wet mix and stir.

Mix the wet with the dry all at once, and beat with a whisk (by hand) until smooth.

Pour batter into a greased cake tins. Bake for 30 to 40 minutes, until a toothpick inserted comes out clean. I baked mine for 35 minutes and wish I took it out 5 minutes earlier; the crunchy edges aren't the greatest.

Let cakes cool in pan for 15 minutes, then turn out onto cooling racks to cool completely before frosting with avocado buttercream.


Avocado "Buttercream" Frosting  (Joy got this from Alton Brown)

8 ounces of avocado meat, about 2 small to medium, very ripe avocados (no mushy brown spots in the meat, though)
2 teaspoons lemon juice
1 pound powdered sugar, sifted
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

Peel and pit the soft avocados.  It’s important to use the ripest avocados you can get your hands on.  If the avocados have brown spots in the meat, avoid those spots when you scoop the meat into the bowl.

Place the avocado meat into the bowl of a stand mixer fit with the whisk attachment.  Add lemon juice and whisk the avocado on medium speed, until slightly lightened in color and smooth, about 2-3 minutes.

Add the powdered sugar a little at a time and beat.  Add vanilla extract until combined.  If not using right away, store in the refrigerator.  Don’t worry.  It won’t turn brown!

I know that the frosting seems very sugar-heavy, but I would still recommend that much because it keeps the recipe buttercream-esque.

Sorry there are no photos, I'll put some up next time I make this or try it in cupcake form.

Boozy Cupcakes: Round 2

Hey everyone,

So this past weekend was a re-make. I re-made Irish Car Bomb cupcakes. This time I added green food coloring to the icing. In addition, the ganache solidified, which really changed the overall texture of the cupcakes. I think this is an improvement. Plus, they are plenty festive for St. Patrick's Day! :)



St. Patrick's Day Success!
Photo Credit: Violet Martin