balance

First, I'm hosting the NYC arm of StirIt 28, a fundraiser bringing together bloggers to raise money and awareness for Haiti. For more information, or to donate, see here. If you're in NYC, and you'd like to donate your culinary expertise, please email me at ccs316 AT nyu DOT edu.  Raise your hands in applause for Bren of Flanboyant Eats, Courtney of CocoCooks and Chrystal of DuoDishes for putting together this amazing event.

Week 1 of RSBC 2010 has wrapped up, and a few intrepid souls took on beans for breakfast. The general consensus? We definitely should be eating these things more often! I'm almost ready for it to be morning again, just for that moment when warm feet meet cold floor and my brain realizes it gets to explore and create again in the kitchen. After a few more minutes in bed . . .  It's not too late to join in on the fun!  If for some reason I've left you out of the mix, please email me at ccs316 AT nyu DOT edu.

I made corn crepes with black beans, mushrooms and mango salsa. Fairly straitforward, very yummy (see below for my recipe).

Denise of ChezUs made beans with yuzu eggs and chorizo (Yum!) and has posted the next challenge on her website here.

Kara from What's Up With the Wheelers ventures into black bean and zucchini pancakes

Those of you who know me know I don't drink beer. Or wine. Or anything boozy. But I've had a beer sitting in my fridge door since returning home from my summer exploring the northern suburbs of New York City, and it needed some sort of practical purpose to its life. Cake, of all the practical purposes, seemed most appropriate.

I've heard of beer cakes before, chocolate-based ones, that is, and I've even eaten one quite nice chocolate-stout cake. Yet nary a thought of making my own little beery creation presented itself.  Until now.

I think we should call it apostacy cake . . .

or perhaps not.

There were a few challenges in deciding how to construct this recipe: the chocolate stout cakes all melt the butter ahead of time, then whisk in the beer, then add the dry ingredients. I happen to have a soft little space in my heart for the creaming method, and since I was planning on making a caramel version, needed the lovely emulsification that occurs when eggs are whipped together with butter to hold all the sugar and water in the caramel syrup. Additionally, I wasn't quite certain how the chemistry of beer would affect the amount of leavning I used. Was it acidic? How acidic? (about 4 seems to be the average consensus online, for a lager like the Heineken in my fridge, a bit closer to 5) How much base (baking soda) would be appropriate for that amount of acid? Not to mention the tricky little fact that cocoa, which makes up a nice chunk of the drys in the chocolate beer cakes I perused, acts a bit like flour in that the cocoa carbohydrates absorb and hold moisture.

In an ideal world, I would have spent a lot of time researching out these answers. Instead, I took a few educated guesses, and came out with one, wonderfully tender and moist ("carrot-cake moist," my taste-testers proclaimed as they came back for seconds), very fruity and caramelly and not-all-that-sweet cake.

Frost, if you will, with lightly sweetened whipped cream to allow the beer flavor to come through, or pair it with a nice dark ganache made with 72% chocolate such as the Madagascar Bar from Mast Brothers for a more subtle (and to my beer-sensitive tastebuds, more enjoyable) approach to this cake.


Undoubtedly a superbowl hit. After all, what could be better than beer and cake? *rhetorical: I say a tall glass of milk from Rosehill Dairy and cake, but that's me*

Beery Caramel Cake
2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1 1/2 sticks unsalted butter, room temperature*(see below for alternative recipe)
1 cup sugar
2 eggs, room temperature
1/2 cup caramel syrup, room temperature (see below)
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
1 cup lager beer such as Heineken
1/2 cup light sour cream, room temperature

Preheat oven to 350F. Line 2, 9" round cake pans with parchment paper and spray with non-stick cooking spray.

Sift together flour, soda, baking powder and salt. Set aside. Mix together vanilla, beer and sour cream. Set aside.
Using a stand mixer with the paddle attachment, cream butter for one minute. Add sugar, and cream for an additional 3 minutes, or until light and fluffy. Add eggs one at a time, beating for one minute on 2nd speed after the addition of the first egg, and an additional two minutes (on 2nd speed) after the addition of the second egg (or until it starts to look like butter cream frosting--this step makes the emulsion that holds it all together). With mixer running on 2nd speed, slowly add caramel syrup. Continue mixing until caramel syrup is well incorporated. Add 1/3 of the flour mixture, pulsing the mixer on and off until the flour is just incorporated. Then add 1/2 of the beer/sourcream, mix on first speed until just incorporated. Repeat with an additional 1/3 of the flour mixture, then the remainder of the beer mixture, then the final 1/3 of the flour.

Divide batter evenly between the two cake pans. Bake on the middle rack in the oven for 30-35 minutes or until the cake springs back when lightly pressed and the edges begin to pull away from the pan. Cool on a wire rack for 10 minutes, then remove from pans and continue cooling.

*variation: Browned Butter Caramel Beer Cake; requires a bit more planning ahead
Brown 1/2 stick of butter by placing it in a small sauce pan and heating over medium heat until it begins to brown and give off a pleasant brown/caramelly smell. Remove from heat, allow to cool, then add to the other, unbrowned stick of butter when doing the initial creaming step. Remeber that the butter will continue to cook once you remove it from the heat source, as fat retains heat well. Remove earlier rather than later.

Caramel Syrup (you really should keep some of this on hand, it's wonderful in many things)
This recipe was originally part of the November 2008 Daring Baker's Challenge. Shuna Fish Lydon of Eggbeater kindly shared it with the group. For the original caramel cake that inspired today's boozy creation, and caramel sauce, in all it's glory, see here; the syrup below is an excerpt from that recipe.

2 Cups sugar
1/2 Cup water
1 Cup water for "stopping"

1. In a small stainless steel saucepan, with tall sides, mix water and sugar until mixture feels like wet sand.
2. Brush down any stray sugar crystals with wet pastry brush.
3. Turn on heat to highest flame.
4. Cook until smoking slightly: dark amber.
5. When color is achieved, very carefully pour in one cup of water. Caramel will jump and sputter about! It is very dangerous, so have long sleeves on and prepared to step back.
6. Whisk over medium heat until it has reduced slightly and feels sticky between two fingers. {Obviously wait for it to cool on a spoon before touching it.}

For safety reasons, have ready a bowl of ice water to plunge your hands into if any caramel should land on your skin.

*Many thanks to Eggland's Best for giving me the opportunity to try out their eggs via Foodbuzz's Tastemaker program.*

One month into 2010. What have you accomplished? I've caught a cold, learned I'm really allergic to cats, and managed to spit out a few useful phrases in spanish (my favorite being "I only have 5 pesos, could I get a tortilla with beans?" The answer was yes). I think it's time to get the rest of the year going with a few obtainable goals, and a few fun culinary challenges, and I, along with my co-hosts from chezus, want to invite you along.

Enter, once again, the third annual Run Swim Bike Cook challenge (here for 2009, and here for 2008).

For those of you who haven't taken part before, here's the layout: You have 28 days to do one of the challenges, some of the challenges or all of the challenges. You decide based on your fitness level. For every challenge you complete, you will get one entry into a drawing for a yet undecide but absolutely fabulous prize.

Challenge 1: Run 26.2 miles (I suggest a mile a day)
Challenge 2: Swim 2.4 miles*
Challenge 3: Bike 112 miles**
Challenge 4: Cook 3 of the 4 superfood "iron-chef" challenges. Each Sunday I, or my co-host, will post the week's superfood and category, and you have a week to come up with a dish that blows us away.


Week 1: Beans in breakfast (beautiful alliteration)
Week 2: Will be announced Feb. 7th at chezus
Week 3: Will be announced Feb. 14th here
Week 4: Will be announced Feb. 21st at chezus

Now before you freak out and run screaming, remember you have 28 days to do this. Unlike the amazing Ironman competitors, you get a whole month to do your triathlon. And this is no two hour culinary competition with glaring lights and TV cameras and hyper announcers. Nope. This is you, your superfood of the week, and your kitchen going at it for seven days.

Still not convinced? Let me sweeten the deal a bit more: you can do all your running, swimming and biking (and cooking!) inside. Or outside. Your choice.

Notes:
* One water aerobics class = 0.4 miles
**One spin class = 12 miles

Rules: Have fun. Send an email to the host for the week by Saturday at midnight, including a link to your blogpost for the week. Your post should highlight where you are in the event, and/or have a mouthwatering pic of your ironchef entry for the week.

Before we go into the details of what makes beans great, let's start with a quick review of the superfood definition.  Although not really found in the lexicons of the scientific world (try searching for "superfood" on googlescholar. You'll note that most of the references are cited less than 15 times--this is science-speak for "largely ignored."), the mass media defines superfoods as foods that are high in plant sources of nutrients such as vitamins, mineras, antioxidants, fiber, etc (see here). The scientific community enters the discussion on a more basic level, first investigating the health properties and nutrient levels of individual foods, then investigating the effect of consumption of those foods on health; then larger organizations such as the AMA or ADA and even non-organized "organizations" such as the media (in the form of books, newspapers, newscasts, and blogs, as I am currently doing) take that information and attempt to apply it to larger lifestyle recommendations. 

Why choose beans, then, and why beans for breakfast? Two weeks in Mexico definitely left me craving breakfasts with a little less sugar and a lot more--shall I say?--umph.  On the superfood side, foods high in dietary fiber appear to exhibit cholesterol-lowering effects (see here). Black beans contain both anthocyanins and antioxidants, plus they are high in fiber, proteins, vitamins and minerals  (see here, here and here). What better way to start off the day, then? You are certainly welcome to explore traditional bean-including-breakfasts like huevos rancheros, but I bet there are a world of new creations waiting to come to light.

It's been a short January, at least as far as kitchen access is concerned. 16 days in a hotel will do that to you, won't it? Imagine my happy surprise, then, when I opened this month's Daring Bakers' challenge to discover graham crackers on the menu--thanks to a recent foray into s'moreffles (discovered via my hubby's love affair with waffleizer, an amazing new blog that makes my hair curl with delight every time I read it), I actually had a batch of unused graham cracker dough sitting in my freezer! So, between class teaching, carefully worded departmental meetings about sensitive subjects, and the more mundane paper writing (already!), I managed to sneak in a little baking.

Nanaimo bars are beautiful things. I didn't know this before today. A symphony of chocolate, graham, custard, and more chocolate deserves celebration, and since Clumbsy Cookie had already staked out her claim in the nanaimo spoon corner (go visit!), I decided to attempt nanaimopoleans. Or nanaimowiches. You pick which strikes you as the most appropriate name, either way, nanaimopolean-wiches result in skipped breakfasts and lunches, and a few tip-toed trips after lights out to the kitchen where you find yourself caught, a human racoon, in the piercing glare of the refrigerator light with spoon half raised and nainamo-guts everywhere. A dangerous thing, indeed.

As my small grocer does not carry custard powder, and as I felt a bit peckish today when looking at the vanilla pudding packages, I decided to make my own pastry cream (*keep reading, this is important*):

Pastry Cream:
1 cup 1% milk
1/2 cup heavy cream
1/3 cup sugar, divided 50:50
1 vanilla bean
3 Tbsp cornstarch
1 large egg yolk
1 Tbsp unsalted butter
a dash of salt

My recipe is based off of one found in Martha Stewart's Baking Handbook. A fairly authoratative source, yes? Martha (or her recipe writer) tells you to mix the milk, cream, 50% of the sugar and a vanilla bean until the mixture reaches a simmer. Then combine the remaining sugar, the cornstarch and egg yolk, temper (add a portion of the hot milk mixture to the egg yolk mixture while stirring) the egg yolks, then add back to the milk mixture. Yet as I followed the instructions, I found myself arguing with Martha: "Remove from heat as soon as the mixture reads 160F? Really? How can the starch have gelatinized by then?"

But I figured I would try it anyway. And my pastry cream was runny as an egg yolk. So I put it back on the heat, stirred a bit more, and only when it started to do what I recognize as thickening did I remove it.

The take home message? If you know from your own previous experience that a recipe stinks, no matter how authoratative the author is, don't second guess yourself.  What make her recipe a failure, though?

The biggest weakness of Stewart's pastry cream recipe lies in how it is written--technically, if you maintain your mixture at 160F for long enough, the starch will gelatinize, thickening your pastry cream. After all, starch gelatinization requires heat and moisture, both of which are present, and time, which is missing from the recipe. To get around the time, the recipe could have instead suggested heating to a higher temperature (185F, for example), as cornstarch gelatinizes over a wide temeprature range, with maximum gelatinization at 95C.  Ironically, the recipe also calls for 5 minutes of beating in a stand mixer after removing from heat and adding the butter, however, the mechanical process of extensive mixing will actually break down gelatinized starch.

So how would I write the instructions?

Place 50% of the sugar in the bottom of a sauce pan. Add milk, cream and vanilla bean. Do not stir. The sugar will provide a barrier to prevent the milk proteins from sticking to the bottom of your pan! Heat to a simmer, then remove from heat. Mix together the remaining sugar, cornstarch and the egg yolk.  Temper the egg yolk mixture with 1/3 of the milk mixture, then add back to the milk mixture. Return to medium heat, stirring gently with a heat proof spatula or spoon until the mixture begins to thicken and reaches 185F. Remove from heat, fold in butter and salt. Transfer the pastry cream to a shallow dish, cover with plastic wrap (poke holes in the wrap) and refrigerate until well chilled. Eat.

To make nanaimowiches you need:
Home-made graham crackers
Pastry cream
The yummy chocolate mix base
Ganache (50% cream, 50% chocolate)

See here for the graham cracker and chocolate base recipes. Feel free to substitute the instant pastry cream mix, it will probably hold up better for long-term assembly.

And finally, dust off your running shoes, goggles, pull out that bike seat and get set with your whisk:  RSBC 2010 is coming (see here for a hint of what's coming)!