Week 17: Earth Week - Earth Cookies [Baking]

Intro from Baking Challenge: Perhaps you'd like to be a little greener and bake an organic treat? Deliciously Organic has a great list of organic recipes - like these fudgy brownies. You could do something Earth Day themed, as well. These earth day cake pops are adorable!

Stole the idea from here since it looked so adorable! Just basic sugar cookie dough, half colored blue and half colored green. I rolled each color into about 12 balls, then smooshed/twisted one of each color together into a bigger ball. They flattened out on their own in the oven.

I think they came out pretty great overall (despite Will thinking the blue dough was pink)! A few really did look like parts of the world!

Week 17: Soy - Pad Thai [Cooking]

Intro from Cooking Challenge: Oi! Soy! One of the biggest crops globally, soy is used as animal feed, as oil in about a million processed foods, and as a foodstuff for humans. It has a very high protein content that makes it a cheap easy source of nutrition. From soy milk, to tofu, to the fermented goods like miso and tempeh, or just raw as edamame, soy can be eaten and prepared in almost limitless ways. So what will you make? Dare to press your own tofu? Marinate some salmon in miso and grill it? Just beware the KILLER TOFU.

I'm really not a huge soy/tofu person beyond eating edamame with my sushi. So I was somewhat dreading this week, until I realized one of my favorite dishes has tofu in it - pad thai! I made my version with chicken as well.

I'll admit I cheated and used a pre-made pad thai sauce (it's been getting pretty expensive to buy all these specialty spices and sauces for each recipe!) mixed with some thai peanut sauce, which I realized afterwards was a huge mistake. It was overly sweet and I wish I had taken the time to make the sauce for scratch.

Week 16: 80s Food - Sloppy Joes [Cooking]

Intro from Cooking Challenge: This was the decade that personal computers started to appear in homes, and where jheri curls, hi-tops and linebacker-sized shoulder pads in women’s shirts were considered cool. The 80’s gave us the Mario Brothers, the first two Back to the Future movies, Eddie Murphy and Michael Jackson at their best and the McRib. Here’s a list of the top 10 recipes that defined the 80’s. You may also want to check out this recent post about the topic. If you want to know what housewives were cooking up, check these out.

This was one of my first real times striking out on my own without a recipe (I'm a baker, not a chef, and I'm used to relying on exact measurements). I'd say it turned out really well!

The meat is a mix of ground pork and lean ground beef, and I added chopped onion and green pepper. The sauce is primarily crushed tomatoes and ketchup (Will went a little overboard on the ketchup...), along with varying degrees of steak sauce, paprika, sugar, white vinegar, garlic salt, and pepper. Spooned onto potato buns and served with steamed broccoli and roasted baby 'bellas.

Week 16: Eggs - Cream Puffs [Baking]

Intro from Cooking Challenge: With Easter coming up, it is only fitting that this week's challenge be eggs. You could make something egg-centric, like this lovely baked egg breakfast casserole or a quiche. That's not the only way to go, though, how about something egg themed? Check out this speckled egg cake and these cupcakes with a cadbury creme egg baked inside.

I used the recipe found here - I felt slightly guilty for "cheating" on the filling by using vanilla pudding packets, but those feelings quickly went away once I tasted it.  We were eating the extra right from the bowl with spoons.

Pro Tip: Wait to fill the puffs with the cream filling until just before you are going to eat/serve them, or else the puffs will get soggy.

Once again, I was super lucky to have a fantastic photographically-gifted friend to take pictures of these.  I apologize in advance for the return to lame pictures for the next post!

Week 15: Knifework - Stir-fry [Cooking]

Intro from Cooking Challenge: Any chef worth their salt knows their way around a knife. Keeping a sharp knife and knowing a few basic cuts will put you leagues ahead of most home cooks, and plenty of professionals. Uniformity of your knife cuts will not only increase the visual appeal of your food, but will also make it cook more evenly. Any introduction I could give would pale in comparison to Alton Brown's "American Slicer" episode of Good Eats. Brown goes over the basics of which knife to use for what application, sharpening and honing, and classical knife cuts. The full episode is available on YouTube for $1.99, or for free download on The Pirate Bay. If you're looking to boost up your knife skills, I cannot highly recommend enough watching this episode.

What better way to practice knife skills than to try chopping up various items for a stir-fry?  No recipe here, just threw together some things that looked like they would be fun to cut and delicious to eat!  I cooked the chicken through first, then added the onion and mushrooms, sauteed with a little stir-fry sauce, added the rest of the veggies and cooked until they brightened (I wanted to keep them nice and crispy).

Plated and served!

Week 15: Layers - Mille Crepes Cake [Baking]

Intro from Baking Challenge: This week's challenge is layers. There's a lot of room for interpretation, as anything with layers works - cakes, cookies or cookie bars (rainbow cookies, anyone?), trifles, baklava and more! Savory dishes work well for this challenge as well - especially casseroles!

For as involved as this cake was, it was SO MUCH fun to make.  After making the batter and filling the night before, I really got into a groove making the crepes and then assembling the cake.  Not to mention, it was so delicious.  A perfect light treat for the first real days of spring.

I used the recipe from here.  One note, there is a bit of a typo under the directions for making the crepes.  It says, "carefully turn the crepe over and continue cooking for a few minutes longer."  Only cook it for a few seconds on the second side!  These really don't need long to cook; they were perfect with almost exactly one minute on the first side and 5-10 seconds on the other.  I just used a normal nonstick frying pan and sprayed some Pam for Baking into the pan before cooking each crepe - no special crepe pan necessary!

Also, please enjoy this far better photograph than I could ever hope to take myself!  A friend who does this professionally happened to be at the BBQ I brought the cake to, and she graciously snapped a few shots for me!

Week 14: Candy - Chocolate Dipped Candied Ginger [Baking]

Intro from Baking Challenge: Yay Candy! This week channel Willy Wonka and create something sweet and magical! There's so many different kinds of candy, such as marshmallows, caramels, gummies or lollipops. A key tool to have when making your own candy is a candy thermometer. Also be careful because because boiling sugar is very hot and sticky. If boiling sugar seems a bit too much to handle try adding some pre-made candies to some cookies, brownies or whatever! CANDY!

I'll admit candied ginger isn't everyone's cup of tea, but I love them coated in dark chocolate.  Without the chocolate, they can be a bit overwhelmingly spicy, so the dark chocolate is really key to mellowing them out and making them tasty.  I used the recipe found here, plus melted down dark chocolate chips for dipping.

Week 14: Belgian - Sole Meuniere with Duck Fat Fries [Cooking]

Intro from Cooking Challenge: We all know about Belgian chocolate and beer and I’m sure you've heard of the waffles, but there’s a lot more to Belgian cuisine that we can explore this week. Similar to many countries, Belgium has outside influences on the food, most notably French and German, but they also have dishes they call their own. A few of the more popular dishes are:

• Moules-frites: mussels steamed with onions and celery, served with fries
• Waterzooi: stew of chicken or fish, vegetables, cream and eggs
• Chicons au gratin: a gratin of endives in béchamel sauce with cheese
• Stoemp: potato mashed with vegetables, served with sausages
• Smoutebollen/Croustillons: Deep-fried balls of sweet dough (Belgian fair food!)

As always, enjoy yourself, learn something new and have fun cooking! And here are a couple links for inspiration: The waffles here do look awesome, Lots of examples of typical dishes.

Disappointingly, I could not find any true Dover sole anywhere in the city this week!  So I was already starting at a disadvantage.  But it was still tasty - I followed the recipe found here.  However, the real star of this week was...

THE DUCK FAT FRIES.  I picked up a nice tub of duck fat from my local greenmarket and fried these babies up.  I have to say, the massive pan of heated oil for the first fry was possibly the most terrifying thing I've done in my kitchen so far.  But it was well worth it.  Recipe from here.