Thursday, September 18, 2014

Sweet Potato Pecan Spice Cake with Toasted Pecan Glaze #BundtBakers


Baked sweet potato, peeled then mashed, can be used in a variety of sweet or savory dishes. In this beautiful Bundt cake it adds flavor, sweetness and texture. With the pecans inside and then piled on top in a sticky glaze, this is a dessert that will add autumn spice to any holiday table.

Autumn Harvest
This month’s Bundt Baker theme is Autumn Harvest and I was fully prepared to try something new. New to me, that is. I could have sworn it was around this time last year that I saw quince for sale in the Dubai supermarkets but this year, nothing. Come to find out, quince season starts in October so I’ll have to wait a month to get out my runcible spoon. Meanwhile, I chose to use my favorite of all fall produce, the sweet potato. I’ve been known to boil and freeze these babies and haul them, Ziplocked, in my suitcase to various countries, just to make sure we will have candied yams for Thanksgiving and Christmas dinner. No kidding.

Sweet Potatoes vs Yams
In the southern United States we use the terms sweet potato and yam interchangeably to mean those root vegetables that are pinky brown on the outside and brilliantly orange on the inside. I’ve discovered in my travels that yam refers to a very different vegetable in other places. There are, in fact, 600 species of yams and the American sweet potato is not even in the same family genetically. Who knew? But I’ll tell you what, I learned to call a sweet potato a sweet potato overseas or risk getting something white or yellow or even purple set on my plate. Real yams are much drier than our sweet potatoes and not nearly as sweet. They are a staple for many in our world, especially in Africa because they can be stored for up to six months without refrigeration or can be dried and milled into flour which can last even longer. Now I’m not saying they wouldn’t make a decent cake and many swear that ice cream made from the purple ones is the best, but, if you can, use the orange sweet potato for this recipe.

Many thanks to our wonderful host, Tux of Brooklyn Homemaker, for proposing the great Autumn Harvest theme and doing all the behind-the-scenes work this month for our Bundt Bakers group post.

Ingredients
For the Bundt cake batter:
1 cup or 100g pecans
3 cups or 375g flour
2 teaspoons baking soda
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
3/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg
2 1/2 cups or 500g sugar
1 cup or 240ml canola or other light oil
3 eggs
1 1/2 cups or 385g cooked, mashed sweet potatoes (nothing else added)
2/3 cup or 160ml buttermilk
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Glaze:
1 cup or 100g pecans
2/3 cup or 130g sugar
3 tablespoons water
1 teaspoon vanilla
Good pinch salt
1 tablespoon browned butter (or normal butter if that’s all you’ve got), at room temperature

Method
Toast your pecans (2 cups or 200g total – for the batter and for the glaze) in a dry skillet over a medium low flame. This takes just a few minutes so keep stirring and mixing the nuts up to make sure that none scorch. When you can smell the rich aroma of toasted pecans and all of them are little bit darker brown, remove the skillet from the heat and allow to cool.

Preheat your oven to 350°F or 180°C. Grease and flour a 12-cup Bundt pan and set aside.

Chop the pecans roughly with a sharp knife and divide them in two.



Sift together the flour, baking soda, baking powder, cinnamon, salt and nutmeg and set aside.

In another large mixing bowl, beat the oil and sugar together until well blended. Add the eggs one at time, beating well between them. The mixture should turn light yellow and a little fluffy.

Add in the flour mixture, the sweet potato, the buttermilk, one pile of the chopped pecans and the vanilla. Mix on a low speed until completely combined and then mix on medium high for two to three minutes.



Pour into your prepared Bundt pan and bake in the preheated oven for one hour and 15 minutes. Start checking it for doneness at one hour though, as ovens vary in consistency and often have temperature fluctuations.



Remove from the oven and allow to cool for at least 10 minutes before turning the Bundt cake out on to a wire rack to cool completely.



When it is completely cooled, prepare your glaze by putting the sugar, water, vanilla and a good pinch of salt into a small pot.

Heat over a medium flame until the sugar is dissolved then add the second pile of chopped toasted pecans.



Cook for a few minutes or until the glaze thickens slightly.  Take the pot off the stove and add in the browned butter. Stir well. You can add in a little more water, if the glaze seems too thick.



Carefully spoon the pecans and glaze over the cooled cake. Yes, it’s a lot of pecans. No, it’s not too many. Just keep spooning. There can never be too many pecans on a sweet potato cake.



Enjoy!




BundtBakers


Who else is ready to bake with Autumn produce? Check out the gorgeous bunch of Bundts we have for you this month with apples, cranberries, carrots, zucchini, figs, sweet potatoes, pumpkin and more!

#Bundt Bakers
Interested in learning more about us? BundtBakers is a group of Bundt loving bakers who get together once a month to bake Bundts with a common ingredient or theme. We take turns hosting each month and choosing the theme/ingredient. You can see all our of lovely Bundts by following our Pinterest board right here.

Links are also updated after each event on the BundtBaker home page here.

If you are a food blogger and would like to join us, just send an email with your blog URL to foodlustpeoplelove@gmail.com. If you are just a lover of Bundt baking, you can find all of our recipe links by clicking our badge above or on our group Pinterest board.



Tuesday, September 16, 2014

Dark Chocolate Chunk Chocolate Peanut Butter Cookies #CreativeCookieExchange

These wonderfully soft, chewy cookies are chock full of pecans in addition to the cocoa, dark chocolate and creamy peanut butter. But there is only so much information one title can contain. A cold glass of milk is an essential accompaniment.
 


Comfort Food Cookies
The theme for this month’s Creative Cookie Exchange is comfort food cookies.  Hmmm, comfort cookies. There are a lot of things that I find comfort in but, I’ve got to say, as a person who doesn’t crave sweets as much as she does salt and fat, I’m more likely to go for a link of smoked sausage or a slice of cheese than a cookie. 

I considered baking savory cookies but, I’ll be honest with you, that didn’t really say comfort to me either since they are usually more cracker-like. So, what it came down to was, if I were to eat a cookie for comfort, what would it look like? 

1. It would have to have dark chocolate - black chocolate, as the French call it, because sweet milk chocolate is for chocolate wimps. 
2. It would have a salty element. I considered bacon but decided on peanut butter, which helps with the next requirement. 
3. It needs to be chewy. And for good measure
4. I was going to throw some pecans in there. Because pecans are my favorite nut. They remind me of home home and that’s a comfort.

What would a comfort cookie look like for you?

Dark Chocolate Chunk Chocolate Peanut Butter Cookies

This recipe make 2 dozen thick cookies or more thin ones, if that's your preference. Do know that thinner ones won't be as chewy though.

Ingredients
3 1/2 oz or 100g dark chocolate
1 cup or 100g pecans
1/2 cup butter or 115g butter, at room temperature
1/2 cup or 140g creamy peanut butter
1/2 cup or 100g sugar
1/2 cup, packed, or 100g dark brown sugar
1 1/2 cups or 190g all-purpose flour
1/2 cup or 40g cocoa (I used Hershey’s regular, not the dark special.)
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 egg
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

Method
Roughly chop the chocolate and pecans with a sharp knife and set aside.



With your electric or stand mixer, cream the butter, peanut butter and two sugars together until they are light and fluffy. Scrape the bowl down a couple of times as you go.

In a separate bowl, combine the flour, cocoa, baking soda and salt.

Add the egg and vanilla into the butter/sugar and beat well.


Now add the dry ingredients into the wet and mix till combined. You will have a fairly stiff dough.


Add in the chocolate and pecans. Mix again.


Turn the dough out onto a large piece of cling film and shape it into a large roll.


Cover the roll tightly with the cling film and refrigerate for at least half an hour.

When you are ready to bake, preheat your oven to 350°F or 180°C and line a cookie sheet with parchment paper or a silicone mat.

Slice your dough into rounds and place them on the prepared pan. Neaten them up with your hands, if need be. I like my cookies thick and chewy so I sliced mine pretty thick. If you prefer a crunchy cookie, by all means slice yours thinner.


These don't spread out much so you can put them fairly close together.


Bake in the preheated oven until the cookies are done the way you like them. I baked my thick cookies for just less than 10 minutes.


Allow to cool on the pan for a few minutes then remove to a wire rack to finish cooling. Okay, go ahead and eat one!


Serve with a glass of ice-cold milk.



Enjoy!



The Creative Cookie Exchange theme this month is Comfort Food Cookies! What cookie says comfort food to you? If you are a blogger and want to join in the fun, contact Laura at thespicedlife AT gmail DOT com and she will get you added to our Facebook group, where we discuss our cookies and share links. Many thanks to Laura for all the work it takes to organize this great group each month! 

You can also just use us as a great resource for cookie recipes. Be sure to check out our Pinterest Board and our monthly posts (you can find all of them here at The Spiced Life). You will be able to find them the first Tuesday after the 15th of each month!

Also, if you are looking for inspiration to get in the kitchen and start baking, check out all the comfort cookies my fellow CCE bloggers have made this month:


Monday, September 15, 2014

Biscoff Muffins with Pecans #MuffinMonday

Creamy Biscoff spread added into batter makes a beautiful muffin that is just the right amount of sweet for breakfast or a snack. That is to say, just sweet enough but not too sweet, even with another drizzle of Biscoff on top of the crunchy baked in pecans. 

Hoarding or saving - tomayto, tomahto
From years of living in places where supplies were short and I had to haul essentials like peanut butter and pancake syrup in my suitcase each year after our long leave, I became a hoarder. Not on the lines of those poor souls who can barely move about their homes for the stuff piled high to the ceiling on that sad, sad television show,  but still. I would buy packets of taco seasonings, chocolate chips, smoked sausage and the like and use them sparingly until we came into the home stretch of spring semester when I knew that another home leave was close at hand. THEN, I was more profligate, adding chocolate chips to all baked goods, dicing the sausage into omelets and sharing peanut butter with the dog. Okay, that never happened. But you know what, I can now. Even my precious Jif (Fat reduced too!) is readily available here so I have tried very hard not to buy extra and hoard it. This does not apply to items purchased on holidays.

Last year I came back from a trip with a jar of Biscoff, that lovely spread, sometimes called speculoos after the Dutch spice cookies of which it’s made. For more than a year it’s been in my cupboard, mocking me. I was waiting for that special recipe, that great occasion that would warrant the opening of a bottle of cookie spread! Sad, huh? Well, today, I did it. The jar was opened to make muffins, to share with some lovely friends. Which makes this a special occasion. And that's the way this should work.

Do you hoard anything? What do you save just for a “special” occasion? Have you ever saved something so long that it is no longer good?

Ingredients
2 cups or 250g flour
1/2 cup or 100g sugar
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon salt
2 eggs
3/4 cup or 180ml milk
1/3 cup or about 90g Biscoff spread
1/4 cup or 60ml vegetable oil
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

For topping
1/2 cup or 70g whole pecans
1/4 cup or about 70g Biscoff spread

Method
Preheat the oven to 350°F or 180°C and either grease your 12-cup muffin tin or line it with paper liners.

Chop your pecans roughly with a sharp knife.

In one big mixing bowl, add your dry ingredients: flour, sugar, baking powder, cinnamon and salt. Mix well and set aside.



In small mixing bowl, whisk the eggs, milk, oil, Biscoff and vanilla together thoroughly. Because of the raw eggs, resist drinking this silky rich mixture, no matter how wonderful it looks.

Fold the liquids to the dry mixture, stopping when they are just mixed.



Divide the batter between your prepared muffins cups. Scatter the pecans evenly on the muffin batter and press them down gently till they are stuck.



Bake for 20-25 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the middle comes out clean.  Remove from the oven and allow to cool for a few minutes.



Drizzle the last 1/4 cup of the Biscoff on top the muffins. You can warm it briefly in the microwave if need be. I used an icing decorator bag and a small tip so the warmth of my hands was enough to get things drizzling.



Remove from the muffin tin and finish cooling on a rack.



Enjoy!




Thursday, September 11, 2014

Pea and Bacon Risotto

As author Stephanie Le says, once you have the technique down, risotto is quick and easy to make. Best of all, a good basic risotto recipe can be customized to suit your own taste. This version with crispy bacon and peas, from her recently released cookbook, Easy Gourmet, is an ideal starting point.


As a cookbook junkie, it’s hard to resist the offer of a new cookbook, especially when it’s gorgeous and written by a fellow blogger who I am half in love with. I say only half because the awe gets in the way. I mean, really! Have you met Stephanie Le of I am a Food Blog yet? Her dishes are gorgeous! The flavors, the textures, the styling, the props! It’s no wonder that she won the Editors’ Choice Award and Blog of the Year (!) from Saveur magazine this year. So I love her like some people love famous movie stars. It’s love tinged with the sad and certain knowledge that it will no doubt remain unrequited. But that’s okay, because I can still stalk her online and in the pages of her beautiful book with its easy to follow, deliciously different recipes.

Stephanie’s lovely book is called Easy Gourmet – Awesome Recipes Anyone Can Cook. < That there is an Amazon affiliate link in case you can’t wait and want to order your own, but go have a look at the book on Stephanie’s site as well right here. Isn’t it beautiful? Even more awe-inspiring is that she designed every part of it as well! I am in full on food blogger crush mode.



The hardest part about cookbook blog tours for me is making the recipe as it is written because I am not a very good recipe follower. But how can I tell you a recipe is wonderful if I haven’t actually made it properly? So I have to discipline myself and follow the instructions. In the case of this risotto, I changed only two things.

I couldn’t find thick cut bacon here so I used six slices of the normal stuff, hoping the weight would be about the same. And since I had to start by frying my bacon till crispy, and I was going to use the same saucepan to cook the risotto, I used an equal amount of bacon fat in place of the butter and oil to sauté the onions and toast the rice. That said, I’m going to leave the ingredient list and recipe exactly as it is in the book, so you can do it Stephanie’s way. I recommend you use the weights if possible as they are the most accurate way to make sure you have the right proportion of rice to peas and cheese.

Recipe printed with permission from Page Street Publishing. Any adaptations are in parentheses.


Ingredients
4 1⁄2 cups or 1L chicken stock
1 tablespoon or 15g butter
1 teaspoon or 5ml oil
1 cup or 228g Arborio rice
1⁄2 small onion, diced
1⁄2 cup or 64g frozen peas, thawed
4 slices cooked thick-cut bacon, cut in 1-inch or 2 1/2cm pieces
1⁄4 cup or 45g freshly grated Parmesan

Method
In a medium stockpot, heat the stock to a gentle simmer. (Stephanie advises that warming the stock first is essential to making great risotto.)

Melt the butter with the oil in a medium saucepan over medium heat. Add the diced onions and cook until translucent, 1-2 minutes.



Turn the heat up to medium-high and add the rice.



Toast the rice, about 3-4 minutes, until slightly translucent.

Turn the heat down to medium and add a ladle of hot stock.



Stir into the rice until the liquid is mostly absorbed.

Continue stirring and adding hot stock as the rice absorbs it.

Taste after about 15 minutes.



If the rice is soft but with a bit of bite, it’s ready. (Mine took quite a bit longer but I think I had my fire lower than medium.)

If still uncooked, continue adding stock a ladle at a time. (You might not use all the stock.)



When done, remove from the heat and stir in the peas, bacon and cheese.



Taste and season with salt and pepper. Enjoy immediately. (We added our own pepper sauce, because we love things spicy but, with the saltiness of the Parmesan, a special wedge my husband brought back from Italy, additional salt was not necessary.)

Enjoy!



If you’d like to try out a few more recipes from this amazing book, here’s a list of the links so far on the blog book tour. That cod is next on my list to try, followed closely by the hot wings. Or maybe the mushrooms. Seriously, you all, everything looks so good!


*Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links to the book, Easy Gourmet – Awesome Recipes Anyone Can Cook.  If you buy after clicking on my link, I make some small change from the sale and you are still charged the normal price. I received a copy of this book for review purposes, with no other personal compensation. All opinions are entirely my own.


Tuesday, September 9, 2014

Fiona’s Wonderful Bread #BreadBakers


This classic wheat bread recipe makes two loaves of some of the best sandwich bread I’ve ever tasted. Approach it with confidence and it won’t let you down. 

Our new bread baking group
My friend, Renee and I have created a new blog group for bread bakers called, ahem, Bread Bakers. Pretty catchy, huh? As host of our inaugural month, Renee chose the theme Favorite Breads, so I want to share one with you that is special to our family, along with some memories of the dear woman who baked it, week in and week out for as long as I knew her. Make sure to scroll on down to the bottom of this post for links to the rest of the Favorite Breads and information on how to join the group.

The back story
If you’ve been reading along here for a while, you might already know the story of how I met my husband’s lovely father and his delightful wife, back in 1985. It’s a good one and this special bread is even mentioned there. Go have a quick read. I’ll wait here.

For those of you who already know the story of my first private airplane ride,
here's a photo of the happy couple on one of their visits to our home in Paris.

Okay. I almost called this Fi-Fish Bread because Fi-Fish was her nickname and that is what we called the wonderful bread that Fiona made with such ease and, I would even say, nonchalance. In a world where folks fret over baking with yeast, she made it look effortless. But, so as not to confuse you, my lovely readers, with visions of fishy bread, I decided to go with the title I put on the top of the hand scribbled notes, from when I watched and learned how to make it. Little did I know at the time, but that would be the last time I would see Fiona alive or taste her wonderful bread made by her own hands. So, let me add some advice here: Get that special family recipe! Get it now. We never know what the future holds.

As you can see, it's been used often through the years. This is the first time I've
actually quantified the amount of salt and sugar though. 


Fiona was a survivor. She’d been through the breast cancer wringer: Mastectomy, chemo and rough recovery. With her quick wit, positive outlook and indomitable spirit, we were pretty sure she could beat anything. But, in 2001, after a fabulous spring break week entertaining us all, she went in to the doctor to discuss a mass she’d felt in her abdomen, saying, “Can we get this taken care of before bikini season?” Classic Fiona. We had plans to meet again in the Channel Islands during the summer but, with the new chemo regime, she was unable to travel. We were told she was doing great. Turns out liver cancer is not so easily dislodged. We lost her in October that very same year, and my father-in-law died, one short but traumatic month later, of a broken heart.

Every time I make Fiona’s wonderful bread, I am reminded of the great times, sitting out on their balcony in Freeport, Grand Bahama, where a picnic lunch was always served in the fresh ocean breeze: An assortment of cheeses, green salad with Fiona's homemade vinaigrette, ripe tomato wedges and leftover cold beef or lamb roast, certainly some Branston Pickle, all with thin slices of Fi-Fish bread and chilled white wine. It is the perfect bread and those were perfect lunches.

I miss them. I miss it all.

Ingredients

2 1/4 cups or 530ml very warm water
2 tablespoons vegetable oil
3 cups or 410g whole wheat flour
2 cups or 250g strong bread flour
One palm full or 1 1/2 teaspoons salt
One palm full or 1 1/2 teaspoon sugar
2 packets Fleischmann’s Rapid Rise yeast (1/2 oz or 14g total)

N.B.: The cup to gram converter I usually use at this link here, says that one cup of wheat flour is only 120g. I actually weighed mine and it was 137g so that is the measure I have used in the ingredients list. You can adjust the amount of bread flour you add to compensate. If the dough is starting to look dry, stop before you put it all in. If your dough is too sticky, add a little more than the prescribed amount.

Method
Mix two of the cups or 275g brown flour with the salt, sugar and yeast, in a large mixing bowl and add in the warm water with the oil.



Mix well.

Add in the last of the brown flour and mix again.



Now add the bread flour in gradually, mixing thoroughly as you go. (See note above.) Just let the machine turn as you drop it in by spoonfuls, scraping the bowl down occasionally as you go.

Knead for several minutes on a floured surface, adding a bit more bread flour if necessary.

Put it in a greased bowl and cover with a damp cloth. Leave to rise in a warm place for 45 minutes to one hour. Fiona always put hers on top of the water heater in a little cupboard off the kitchen.

I tried to take the two photos at the same distance from the bowl so you could see how much this expanded!


Meanwhile, grease two loaf pans.

Punch the dough down and knead it again briefly.

Cut it the ball in two and roll each half into sausages. Tuck the ends under and place in the greased bread pans, tucked ends under and seam side down.

Before rising



Sprinkle flour on top and cover with a damp tea cloth. Let rise for 40 minutes in a warm place.

After rising


When the time is almost up, preheat your oven to 400°F or 200°C.

Bake the loaves in your preheated oven for 20 minutes.

Just out of the oven!


Tip the loaves out onto a wire rack to cool.



Enjoy!





BreadBakers

First some thank yous!
Since this is our first group post, let me add a plug in for - and a thank you to - the designer of our Bread Baker logo, Dai Foldes. See more of his beautiful work at DaiFoldes.com.

Many thanks to Renee from Magnolia Days for hosting this inaugural month of Bread Bakers! And thank you to our dozen bakers this month. You all jumped on board with such enthusiasm that it's been quite contagious! I hope all of your favorite breads will inspire everyone to get into the kitchen and bake!

And now THE LIST!


About Bread Bakers
#BreadBakers is a group of bread loving bakers who get together once a month to bake bread with a common ingredient or theme.  Follow our Pinterest board right here. Links are also updated each month on this home page.

We take turns hosting each month and choosing the theme/ingredient.

If you are a food blogger and would like to join us, just send me an email with your blog URL to foodlustpeoplelove@gmail.com.

Here's to more fresh bread in months to come!