Sunday, January 19, 2014

Authentic Caipirinhas

Caipirinhas are the quintessential Brazilian cocktail, made with local cane alcohol called cachaça, lots of lime juice and a big spoon of sugar. Just go easy because they sneak up on you.


It’s my birthday week so I am delighted to be starting it out with cocktails!  Check out the 28 festive libations my fellow bloggers have made for the party!  (I’m pretending they are all for my birthday!  Yay!)  I’m sharing one of my favorite cocktails, a love acquired when we lived in Brazil for several years.  My dear husband got very good at making caipirinhas, so he volunteered to do the needful while I took photos.

Ingredients
1 lime per glass
1 generous tablespoon sugar or more if you like things sweeter (Authentically, this should be coarse grain sugar but the normal white stuff works if that’s all you have.)
Crushed ice
Cachaça
Short straws

Method
Cut the lime into quarters and use your same sharp knife to remove all the seeds.  We happened to be using seedless limes this time.



Put the lime into a short glass, adding a generous tablespoon of sugar.  Or more if you like things sweet.


Smash the limes and sugar with a muddler.


Now fill the glass with crushed ice and top it up with cachaça.





Finally, give it a good stir.  Serve with a short straw for sipping.



Enjoy!

Now wasn't that simple?




Cheers to my fellow Cocktail Day bloggers, who are mixing it up with me today!  I'll take one of each, please!




Thursday, January 16, 2014

Pecan Bundt Cake with Orange Cream Cheese Icing for #BundtBakers


This beautiful pecan Bundt cake is made with very little flour since the coarsely ground pecans bind with the sugar and eggs to create a rich batter.   It bakes up light and is perfectly complemented by the rich orange cream cheese icing. 

I know your mother told you differently growing up but sometimes having a reputation is a good thing.  When people know you love to cook and bake, for instance, they buy you cookbooks and magazines.  They send you interesting links to deliciousness and sometimes they even cut recipes out of newspapers for you.  When we were in Rhode Island over Christmas, my mother-in-law handed me a bit of the Houston Chronicle “Flavor” section.  She had pulled out the pages, folded them up and brought them with her from home because she knew I would like to read them.  Because: Pecans!  They were FULL of pecan recipes.  Little did she know, but I was especially pleased because our new Bundt Bakers group theme for January was going to be NUTS and pecans are my go-to nut of choice.  In fact, I’m the host for this inaugural event so I chose the theme!

The only major tree nut that exists naturally in North America, the pecan grows wild in groves as well as in cultivated orchards.  The name pecan comes from the Algonquin word meaning “needs a rock to crack.”   I find a nutcracker much more useful.  Pecans were a major source of nutrition for Native Americans and became a staple for cooking and baking for the settlers as well.  Of course, they are crunchy and wonderful but, according to the appositely named website for the National Pecan Shellers Association, I love Pecans, they are also very heart healthy!  Thanks to well-sealed Ziploc bags and a big deep freezer, pecans feature heavily in my kitchen all year long.

Adapted from a recipe printed in the Houston Chronicle contributed by Carol Aimone from Tomball, Texas.

Ingredients
For cake:
2  1/2 cups or 315g chopped pecans, toasted, plus another generous handful for decorating, if desired.
3 tablespoons flour plus more for coating your Bundt pan
4 teaspoons baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
6 eggs
1 cup or 225g sugar
Butter or non-stick spray for coating your Bundt pan

For the icing:
8 oz or 225g cream cheese
1 oz or 30g butter
16 oz or 450g confectioners’ or icing sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract or essence
Zest 1 navel orange
2-3 tablespoons fresh orange juice

Method
Preheat your oven to 350°F or 180°C and prepare your Bundt pan by slathering it liberally with butter, spraying it generously with non-stick spray and then coating with flour.  Do this and do this well.  You will thank me later.  Set aside.

In a mixing bowl, combine the three tablespoons of flour, the baking powder and the salt.

Put half of your pecans in the food processor and process until they are coarsely ground.   Add them to the flour bowl.  Repeat with the remaining pecans.




Put your sugar and eggs in the processor and process until completely smooth.


This will be very liquid.  Add the pecan mixture and process again, scraping down the sides, if necessary.   The mixture make get a little foamy.



Pour into your prepared Bundt pan and bake in your preheated oven for about 50-55 minutes or until a tester (I use a wooden satay stick.) comes out clean.



Meanwhile, you can be making the icing.

Put all the ingredients into your mixing bowl, starting with only two tablespoons of orange juice.

Beat until thoroughly mixed and creamy.  If it seems a bit too thick to spread, add the extra orange juice a little at a time, beating well in between, until the icing is of good spreadable consistency.

When the cake is baked, remove the pan from the oven and allow it to cool for about 10 minutes on a wire rack before inverting and removing the cake from the pan.



We are all friends here so I am going to share the photo that never usually gets seen.

When the cake sticks in the Bundt pan.




Never mind though.  Just pry the pieces out and set them back where they belong.  The icing will cover everything and no one will be the wiser.  And next time you will vow to butter and flour that pan more generously!

Allow the cake to cool completely.

Cover with your orange cream cheese icing.   Because of the delicate state of my cake, I decided to put the icing in a decorating bag and pipe it on instead of trying to spread it with a spatula.  Sprinkle with the handful of extra pecans, if desired.

I think it turned out rather pretty.


And even when it was cut, you would never know what near tragedy had been averted.



Enjoy!


BundtBakers

I am delighted to be hosting this inaugural edition of Bundt Bakers.  I chose NUTS as the theme since we are all nuts about Bundts and couldn’t imagine not baking at least one a month when the BundtaMonth group disbanded.

Have a look at all the wonderful nutty Bundts we’ve baked for you!  For information about how you can join us in the coming months, scroll on down.

We are a group of Bundt loving bakers who get together once a month to bake Bundts with a common ingredient or theme.  Follow our Pinterest board right here.

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 at foodlustpeoplelove@gmail.com or ask to join our private Facebook group.


Monday, January 13, 2014

Apricot Muffins #MuffinMonday



Canned apricots and their syrup add wonderful flavor to this vanilla muffin, made even prettier when topped with a sliced apricot half before baking.

Today’s muffin comes to you with a little added history lesson.  Did you know that canned food, first in glass bottles and then in cans made out of tin plate, dates back as far as 1809?  Canning was first devised as a way to feed armies on the move and sailors on long sea voyages, until mechanized production of the actual cans and the sterilization of their contents eventually made canned food accessible and affordable to the masses.  What I find funniest about this whole story is that the first can opener wasn’t invented until 30 years after the first can.  Soldiers used bayonets and rocks to open them.

Nowadays we take for granted that grocery store suppliers fly in fresh produce from all over the world and we can eat most anything, even out of season, because it’s in season somewhere.  We also take for granted the humble can.  According to a BBC magazine article quoting the Can Manufacturers Institute in Washington DC, Europe and the US alone use more than 40 billion cans of food a year!  This week’s muffin, using canned apricots, is a tribute to the innovators who first came up with the idea.  Gentlemen, I salute you!

Ingredients
1 can (14.5 oz or 410g, net weight) apricot halves in syrup
1 3/4 cups or 220g flour
1/2 cup or 100g sugar
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 cup or 60g unsalted butter, melted and cooled
1/4 cup or 60ml milk
1/4 cup or 60ml apricot syrup (from the can of apricot halves)
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 large egg

Method
Preheat your oven to 350°F or 180°C.  Prepare your 12-cup muffin pan by putting liners in the muffin cups or greasing them well with butter or non-stick spray.

Drain your apricots, making sure to save the syrup.  Set aside the prettiest six for decorating the tops before baking.


Chop the rest of them in small pieces.  Cut the pretty ones in half and then make three slits almost all the way through to the top so that you can fan out the apricot half in four sections.



Whisk together flour, sugar, baking powder, and salt in a large bowl.


Whisk together the melted butter, milk, syrup, vanilla and egg in a bowl until combined well.


Pour the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients and fold to combine.


Gently fold in your chopped apricots.



Divide batter among muffin cups.

Decorate each with a fanned out apricot half.


Bake in your preheated oven until the muffins are golden brown and a toothpick inserted into center comes out clean, about 20 to 25 minutes.



Remove to a wire rack to cool.


Enjoy!