Category Archives: cooking

6 Egg white Cake, Hurray for the Internet

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Yesterday I made another batch of ice-cream. The chocolate was fabulous, but I wanted some vanilla as well, and I still had seven free-range organic vegetarian eggs in the fridge. The vanilla ice-cream called for six eggs, which would leave one leftover, so I started separating yolks until I came across an egg that bounced back.

Apparently some hens lay hardboiled eggs.

I digress, this is not a post about ice-cream, this is a post about what to do with the leftover egg whites that come when you take away the yolks to make ice-cream: they sit in a measuring cup in the fridge and look lonely. Very lonely.

Six is too many to make Mexican Chocolate Chewies, five pushed that limit to the brink, and I’m pretty sure six would’ve pushed it over the edge. So I did the only logical thing, I googled around the internet for a solution.

There were not many to be found, until I came across Self-Frosting Angel Cake at the Cookie Baker Lynn blog: it used six egg whites, I had those. It used cake flour, I used to have some, but it went out with last weekend’s pantry purge (the box said it expired in 2008). I don’t use cake flour very often, but I am not one to be easily deterred. You can fake cake flour, and I had cornstarch on hand.

Once I had the necessary faux cake flour, the recipe and directions were delightfully simple… I didn’t have any almond extract, so I added more vanilla. I also used an 8×8 pan, lined with a parchment paper sling.

27 minutes in the oven and a little time cooling later, we cut some small sample pieces. Gavin and Patrick liked the cake, Oliver got sidetracked by the ice-cream.

This is by far the best way to use up egg whites that I have ever come across.  Continue reading →

Ice-cream without Assistants

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This evening, the conclusion of the free-range, organic, non-vegetarian eggs and ice-cream making saga.

After yesterday’s failed attempt and extra assistance I decided to wait until the boys were tucked into bed before I tried again. The bowl had been freezing for well over 24 hours, and with no extra helpers to stick their fingers in the soupy mess I was sure things would go smoothly.

About five minutes into the process Oliver started wailing – I am still not entirely sure why. We rushed up stairs, leaving the mixer to do it’s thing, settled Oliver back into bed, and returned to gloriously creamily churned ice-cream.

Ok, it wasn’t quite that easy, I had to scrape down the sides of the bowl once or twice before the hollering started, and the churned ice-cream didn’t all fit in my up-cycled yogurt container, but aside from that, things went very smoothly.

It tastes amazing. I think the local, free-range, organic, non-vegetarian eggs helped, as did the local, organic heavy cream and milk. The least local-organic-free-range things I used were the Ghirardelli coco powder and chocolate chips, and the salt (it is sea salt fromCostco), I’m ok with that.

Most of it made it to the freezer.

I also found a use for the five unused egg whites. I made Mexican Chocolate Chewies (a friend gave me the Homesick Texan Cookbook for my birthday, sadly the recipe does not appear to be posted on her blog).

The recipe called for three egg whites, but I had five leftover, I figured the eggs I’d been using were a little smaller than the average off-the-grocery-store-shelf egg (the chickens just started laying) so I used them all.

Next time I do that I’m going to up the chopped pecans from 2 to 3 cups. Other than spreading a LOT more than the previous batch (those are scant 1-tablespoon sized drops of cookie dough), they taste pretty AMAZING too (I think the Ghirardelli helped there too).

Next time, after Bedtime

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It has been a while since I made ice-cream. The last blog post about it is from 2008, and then I cheated and made my amazing hazel nut gelato. It has been even longer since I’ve last attempted a custard-based ice-cream recipe, but the hardest part is usually separating some eggs with out getting egg-shell bits in the yolk.

Armed with my dozen free range, organic, not-so-vegetarian-diet eggs, I set about finding a recipe that would use almost half of them, but was still simple enough to manage with my two assistants.

I turned to my oft-flipped-through-with-great-longing-but-never-yet-used cookbook devoted to ice-cream: “The Perfect Scoop” and cleared space in our freezer for our kitchenaid ice-cream maker.

I soon settled on basic chocolate ice-cream (although rocky road with homemade marshmallow looked very good too), and once I acquired heavy cream at the store we were set to go.

That was Thursday afternoon. Thursday night and early into Friday morning, Patrick decided to wake up several times to remind me he was CUTTING A TOOTH!! and he NEEDED COMFORT (and a boobie, and to kick me in the ribs) NOW!!

Friday morning, more than a little exhausted, and with a constant stream of three-year old chatter in the back ground “make dis ice-keem mommy! make dis ice-keem! me help mommy! make dis-ice-keem” I assembled the necessary ingredients, hauled the me-help-mommy tower from the garage, and loaded up Patrick’s tray with finger snacks so he’d be somewhat occupied.

Both the recipe and directions were simple, keeping Oliver from touching the hot pot, splashing simmering liquid everywhere, and grabbing things because it was “me turn mommy!” was less easy. He also kept scooting his tower within inches of me, pinning me between the stove, tower and Patrick’s chair.

     

After the custard had chilled in an ice-bath, and then in the fridge, we poured it into our ice-cream maker. After a few minutes I realized we probably hadn’t frozen the bowl long enough, and the custard wasn’t thickening, and it was all soupy.

By this point Patrick wanted to participate too. He had launched his banana off his tray and Oliver had taken his crackers. He wailed in dismay from his vantage point, firmly strapped into his booster seat. I sat him on the counter, only to snatch him back up again as he reached his fingers into the bowl while the machine was running. He was unharmed, just cold and sticky-fingered.

"NO! BABY!"

Next time I am going to wait until after they’ve gone to bed.

Realizing it wasn’t going to solidify any time soon, I did the only logical thing to do, I poured the soupy custard into a repurposed yogurt container and stuck it back in the fridge, cleaned out the ice-cream maker bowl and put it back in the freezer.

We will try making solid ice-cream tomorrow afternoon, once the bowl has frozen for 24+ hours, and then perhaps I will come up with a use for the five egg whites that were left behind.

 

*I had initially embedded links in this post, but for some reason they did not publish. I am not pleased. 

free-range, organic, vegetarian diet eggs

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On Thursday one of the mother’s in Oliver’s waldorf group approached me and asked if I had chickens. Some days I think we are the only family in West County with a chicken-less backyard. I’m OK with that. I like chickens, they’re great, I like to roast them, bake them, fry them, have them on sandwiches, but running around my back yard/over-sized flagstone patio? No thanks, I’ll pass.

She looked very relived to find I was chicken-less, and then asked if I would like some chickens. Not so much. She explained they had ten chickens (they’d over-bought assuming they’d loose some to predators – and they hadn’t), and the chickens had started laying eggs, by laying eggs, there were “50 this morning” and she had some eggs in the car, would I like some eggs?

Eggs, yes. Chickens, no.

Thankfully the chickens are not going to new homes, just their eggs. So I came home with a carton of free-range, organic, vegetarian diet eggs (the carton said vegetarian diet, but her husband made her scratch it out because the chickens ate organic, free-range worms and bugs, they were bad vegetarians).

While I was thrilled by the gift of a dozen free-range, organic, vegetarian diet eggs, I usually buy them in cartons of six because I don’t use eggs very often. I didn’t want the eggs to bad (although Gavin has since assured me they’re likely to last for quite some time as they were freshly collected Wednesday and Thursday morning and grocery store eggs are at least a month or two old), so I did what any logical person with small children who like to “help” and who needs to use up a few eggs does: I decided to make custard-based ice cream.

Yep.

some of the remaining eggs

Learning to Cook

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This evening as we sat down to a dinner (crockpot lentil soup, cornbread with honey butter, and a salad) I was reminded of my father-in-law, Stephen. Early on in our marriage Stephen asked Gavin “Did you know she could cook when you married her?” to which Gavin replied, “No, but she didn’t know either.”

We’d probably been married just over a year at that point as we were living in Sebastopol and I’d brought down some dish (probably a cheesecake, torte or sticky buns), and he was quite impressed by my culinary masterpiece.

I did not start out being able to cook, I started out being able to follow a recipe VERY WELL, which is more important than one might realize. Sure all it takes to make bread is flour, yeast and some water, but how much of it, and what you do with it is very important.

So where did I learn to cook? At the time I think my reply was “too many hours of Food Network,” but that isn’t entirely true.

To be honest, I didn’t learn to cook in just one place and most what I learned was NOT from the Food Newtwork.  Continue reading →

Zucchini Confessions

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I hate zucchini, I have always found it to be a revolting vegetable. Texturally slimy when cooked, mushy even when breaded and fried, zucchini was something I avoided – that and eggplant, but this post isn’t about that.

Up until about two months ago our home had been a zucchini-free zone, then P started to eat, and eat, and eat. So I started making my own baby food, which led to me reverse-engineering his all-time-favorite jar of mush “organic summer vegetables.”

Organic vegetables are easy to come by so I read the label: potato, carrot, green beans and zucchini.

Zucchini?! Really baby, can’t mommy get a break?

Continue reading →

A farewell to Sweet

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As I surfed around the internet one dreary rainy day I came across a recipe that really made my day. I thought it would be simple, fun and really neat, then I saw the ingredients and I hit delete!

The recipe in question was for star-crunch cookies, the recipe looked so revolting I opted not to bother to try it. A jar of caramel ice-cream topping? Really? Ew.

I also came across a recipe for oatmeal creme pies - another childhood favorite. Yes, at one point my mother put Little Debbie snacks in my lunch (shocking, I know!) This afternoon O wanted to help “cook goo-coos” (cookies) so helped me bake up a batch of oatmeal creme pie knock-offs.

Continue reading →

me turn! me help!

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Oliver has decided he likes to Help! This is not a new feature, but it has become more pronounced as the months pass, and now that O is armed with his helping tower his rate of helping has increased dramatically.

O has also acquired the concept of “me tun” – after waiting patiently and watching me do something, he decides it is his turn to undertake the task. It does not matter if the task is vacuum cleaning, unloading the dishwasher, feeding the baby, pressing the buttons on the food processor or spooning muffin batter, eventually, if it is OK for mommy to do, it is OK for O to Help!

The challenge comes with balancing what is truly helpful and what just makes a big mess. We are working on finding balance in the kitchen: chopping cucumbers for the salad is truly helpful – he can manage to do so with a dullish knife, and it does not matter if the cucumber is a uniform size. I will not however, let him chop onions. Pressing food processor buttons is fine too, he’s helping make “foof” for “Pa-tik.”

Then there are things which require no help. The other day P slept late and I felt the need to express some milk. O came into the kitchen where I was pumping, declared “me see boob!” and then attempted to assist with the positioning of the shields. Thanks for the offer, but no help needed.

I try to have several activities through out the day that O can help with. This morning started with a trip to the grocery store where O helped push the cart, bag apples, and navigate to and select the ice-cream. This afternoon, during P’s nap time, he helped bake muffins lemon blueberry muffins.

Helping “cook!” muffins is a finer line: half an extra egg here, some extra salt there, batter dripped all over the counter – my inner baking perfectionist does not appreciate the mess, but the muffins came out tasting alright, and he had a lot of fun while helping “cook cake.” The recipe was fairly forgiving -it held up to my modifications and O’s input- and while they are unlikely to win any awards, they will make for excellent snacks through out the week.

Continue reading →

Foodie Baby

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Patrick is a bit of a foodie. Oliver enjoyed starting on solid foods, but he mostly enjoyed food as a textural experience and as a medium to create a colorful mess all over everything. P also enjoys food as a textural experience and medium for colorful messes, but he packs away more in one meal than O would in a day.

  

P is quite the eater and he enjoys a variety of foods. O enjoyed single-vegetable and fruit purees. Just squash, just peaches, just peas, etc. P will eat those, but he really enjoys multiple-vegetable/fruit purees, and he loves bananas.

By “really enjoys” I mean he’ll eat through a jar or two a meal at both lunch and dinner, clearing 3-5 jars of organic baby food a day. Continue reading →

Spiced PearSauce Muffins

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I have pints and pints of home canned WTF sauce sitting in my pantry and a growing collection of dregs in the fridge. In an attempt to cut down on the collection of dregs in the fridge (and free up some of my jars), I’ve been scouring the internet looking for ways I can use it.
I came across a recipe for Spiced Apple Sauce Bread, and modified it to suit my needs: I swapped out the oil for pear sauce (you can swap apple sauce for vegetable oil using a 1:1 ratio, pear sauce is like apple sauce, right?), cut back on the sugar to 1/4 cup of light brown, used whole-wheat flour, swapped out the pecans for raisins and then made 12 very full muffins instead of a 9×5 loaf. I mostly used the recipe as a guideline for approximate ratios of wet-to-dry ingredients and even there I fudged things a bit.
I cut into a muffin once they had cooled a little bit (but were still warm) and sampled them plain, with butter, and with homemade pear butter. Flavor-wise they’re good, both on their own, and with a light spread of either butter or homemade pear butter… texture-wise, when they’re fresh and warm, they’re very moist, and a little gummy (not sure how that will change once they cool off further).
Renowned children’s author Debbie Duncan assured me that apple sauce can be used in place of butter. My own experiment has concluded that pear sauce seems to work as an apple-sauce replacement (at least when swapping it for oil), so I might experiment with using it again in another muffin recipe or two.