Week 24: Alcohol - Guinness Chocolate Brownies [Baking]

Intro from Baking Challenge: This week's challenge is a fun one - alcohol. There are a plethora of alcohol themed treats. Cocktail inspired cupcakes are a personal favorite, like these car bomb cupcakes, or these bellini cupcakes. Want something a little heavier? How about a rum cake. Or, maybe, less sweet? Beer bread is a delicious way to use booze in a savory dish. Don't drink? Mocktail deserts, like pina colada cupcakes, are a great option.

I had some extra Guinness leftover from the Beer Cooking Challenge a few weeks ago, so I decided to try out this recipe for this week's challenge. I am definitely more of a fudgy-brownie (rather than cake-brownie) girl, and I was so happy with how these turned out. You can clearly taste the Guinness, but it works really well with the chocolate brownie. I opted for walnuts instead of pecans for personal preference.

One word to the wise, make sure you follow the directions around adding in the flour mixture a few tablespoons at a time to the batter. To compensate adding the Guinness afterwards, the batter gets VERY thick at this point. I made the mistake of trying to add a bunch of flour at a time (about half a cup) and first had a flour/cocoa sand explosion in my face, and then nearly broke my hand mixer.

Week 23: Confit - Duck Confit [Cooking]

Intro from Cooking Challenge: Stemming from the French verb confire, Confit means "to prepare". The term was originally used in the middle ages to refer to fruits preserved in sugar, but the term grew to incorporate meats preserved in a similar fashion in fat rather than syrup. Most people are familiar with Duck Confit, the French classic of duck leg slowly cooked in it's own fat, but the same technique can be applied to a range of other meats, including beef, chicken and even fish! If you're more in the mood for sweets, cooking fruit slowly in a neutral flavored syrup can yield some incredible results. Sweet or savory, just remember: Slow and low, that is the tempo.

I wish I had a better shot of the duck so you could see how amazingly juicy and tender it was inside, but I was too busy inhaling it after I took this picture! Alongside the duck is some steamed broccoli and potatoes I roasted in some of the remaining duck fat. My trusty tub of duck fat from Hudson Valley Duck Farm (by way of the Union Square Greenmarket) is quickly becoming one of my favorite kitchen staples.

For the confit, I relied on this recipe, using two duck legs from Hudson Valley. I cured the duck legs in the salt/thyme/shallot/garlic for two days prior to cooking, and then cooked them in the fat for about three and a half hours at 225 degrees F.

Week 22: Africa Day - Moroccan Kefta Briouats [Baking]

Intro from Baking Challenge: Africa Day commemorates the founding of the Organisation of African Unity and so to celebrate it let's bake up some African goodies! Africa is composed of over 50 countries, each with their own culinary style, so grab a country and start baking! There's chabakia from Morocco, malva pudding from South Africa, Egypt's Om Ali, Ethiopian Injera or mandazi found throughout East Africa. You don't need to take directly from their recipes. You can gather inspiration from the wildlife or culture to create your own treats. Have fun!

I whipped this up with the extra fillo dough I had from the previous week's baklava, largely following the recipe here. That link has a great step-by-step guide for folding the briouats, which I highly recommend, as they can be a little tricky at first. Alternatively, you can just roll them into a sort of taquito shape.

I used beef (kefta) for my filling. I opted to leave out the massive amounts of butter, used water instead of egg wash for folding, and chose to bake rather than deep fry the briouats to keep this on the healthier side. To bake them, just arrange the briouats on a baking tray, spray with a little olive oil cooking spray, and cook for about 20 minutes at 350 degrees F.

When reheating, I found searing them in a lightly oiled pan gave them a nice crisp!

Week 22: Turkish - Pecan Baklava [Cooking]

Intro from Cooking Challenge: Turkish food, like many other cuisines, borrows ideas from other countries and molds them into a cuisine they call their own. Also like many other countries, it is a cuisine that varies across the country. For example, the region close to the Black Sea uses more seafood than the other regions. Here is a short list of frequently used ingredients to give you an idea of where the cuisine starts (this list is in no way definitive, but only meant to give you an idea of the flavors in Turkish cuisine): Nuts, Lamb, Chicken, Eggplant, Yogurt, Tomatoes, Garlic, Olives, Lentils. And some dishes in Turkish cuisine: yoğurtlu çorba (a yogurt soup cooked with spices and rice), İşkembe (tripe soup), baklava (a sweet pastry with nuts and honey), manti (a dumpling filled with minced meat, usually steamed, and served with a garlic yogurt), kuskus (version of couscous that can be served with meat or vegetables), mahmudiye (named after a town in Turkey, this is a dish that consists of chicken mixed with honey, apricots, almonds, currants and black pepper), köfte (almost like a Turkish meatball, with spices common to the region), Şiş kebabı. For desserts, there is an interesting technique that produces Turkish ice cream(dondurma) that has a different texture and is melt resistant. And don't forget Turkish Delight! There are many more areas of Turkish cuisine to explore! Some recipes and more info.

Ok, so these might look a little familiar...I'll admit I fell behind on the weekly challenges while I was traveling for three weeks, so I might have cut corners by also making baklava for the Nut Baking Challenge.  However, I was sure to make two different types of baklavas!  Which my beach body is regretting.

As with the last one, the recipe is stolen from here. The fillo dough was definitely a bit of a pain to work with, but I got into a groove after the first few tries. I also picked up some delicious whipped honey with cinnamon by Andrew's Honey at the Union Square Greenmarket and used it with this (leaving out the cinnamon in the nut mixture).  

Who am I kidding?  I do not regret having two pans of this at all!

Week 21: Beer - Guinness Baked Beans [Cooking]

Intro from Cooking Challenge: All it takes is Yeast, Barley, Hops & Water! Let's have these guys explain how Beer is made. It's a crazy science that with the right equipment at home, you can make a brew! Beer is great on it's own, but it's also stupendous in recipes!

Not exactly the first thing you think of when you think of summer food, but a cool beer is great any day! I cooked down some chopped up bacon in a pot until the fat was rendered, and then added baked beans, some diced onion, ketchup, spicy brown mustard, dark brown sugar, and a bottle of Guinness Extra Stout. After letting it simmer for about 15 minutes (it was very watery), I spooned it into a glass oven dish. I like my beans on the thicker side, so I used a slatted spoon to scoop out the good stuff into the dish, then added some of the remaining juice until the dish was full (I had a fair bit of juice left over in the pot). Then I cooked them for about 50 minutes at 400F.  Now to figure out what to do with the other five of the six pack!

Recipe adapted from here.

Week 23: Cheesecake - Lactose-Free Mini Cheesecakes [Baking]

Intro from Baking Challenge: This week's challenge is...cheesecake! There are many kinds of this decadent treat. Well known styles include New York, Chicago, Pennsylvania Dutch, and Roman. There are, of course, all kinds of fun flavored cheesecakes as well, like Chocolate Grasshopper or Key Lime. Vegan or lactose intolerant? There's a cheesecake for you too - made using cashews and coconut milk.

Ignore the wax paper tabs - they're for easy removal!

As a lifelong lactard, it's always a struggle to find cheese favorites that won't wage war on my stomach.  So I was very excited to find this recipe for vegan cheesecake.  I know "vegan" anything tends to strike fear into the hearts of meat eaters, which is why I labeled these "lactose-free" - plus, since I used honey, they are typically non-vegan.  However, they are most definitely delicious!  I decided to make four flavors - peanut butter chocolate chip, coconut, strawberry, and blueberry.

Ready to eat!

Week 21: Nuts - Walnut Baklava [Baking]

Intro from Baking Challenge: Packed full of protein and, in some cases, incredibly deadly to a lucky subset of people! Yay nuts! There's a huge variety of them and they all work so well in baking. They're perfect as just a simple addition to a recipe such as White Chocolate Macadamia Nut Cookies or German Chocolate Pecan Pie Bars. Or, go a bit classier with a Nutty Biscotti or some Pistachio Macarons. Nuts are also great as the main feature of the dish such as these Honey Nut Bars or the classic Baklava. Of course nuts can also be turned into nut butters, which are also amazing in baking. Peanut butter is the old stand-by but Nutella is also crazy popular.

Good lord, these are tasty! Recipe stolen from here. The fillo dough was definitely a bit of a pain to work with, but I got into a groove after the first few tries. I picked up some delicious whipped honey with cinnamon by Andrew's Honey at the Union Square Greenmarket and used it with this (leaving out the cinnamon in the nut mixture) - Wow, that stuff is really good. I was eating this straight from the pan.