Slow cooker tapioca pudding

I wanted to make some tapioca pudding.  However, as the minute tapioca at Kroger was selling for an exorbitant price, I decided to get a bag of tapioca pearls for $0.99 at the Chinese grocery store.  I found a good recipe and went to work.

My notes:

• This really could not have been easier: mix ingredients; turn on slow cooker.  Not too difficult.  It didn't even require soaking the tapioca pearls beforehand.
• A few of the reviewers at AllRecipes mentioned that the eggs were more for texture rather than taste.  I'd probably only use one egg next time instead of two.
• The recipe didn't call for vanilla but I threw some in.  It probably ended up being somewhere between 1 1/2 and 2 teaspoons since I just used whatever we had left in the bottle.
• Our slow cooker doesn't have a "medium" setting; it has "high", "low", "simmer", and "warm".  So I set it for 1.5 hours on high, then turned it to low for about 15 minutes, after which I thought that was too much heat and set it to simmer for the last hour of cooking.  This seemed far under the time that recipe said the pudding would take, but it seemed to be nicely thickened at this point, and based on evidence it didn't seem to be getting any thicker with the longer cooking.  Rather than risk it burning, I just turned off the heat.
• If anything, I'd reduce the sugar a bit, maybe to half cup; 2/3 cup seems a bit excessive.
• I used nonstick spray on the liner of the slow cooker.  I don't know if this helped, but I certainly didn't want to find out how fun cleanup would be without it.

Definitely a recipe I'd try again.

Delicious!

Cloverleaf rolls v3.0

This recipe for cloverleaf rolls even says in its title that they are "fantastic".  This, unfortunately, was not my experience with them.  From an imbalance of liquid and dry ingredients to a lower yield, this was not anywhere near as good of an experience as I'd had on Wednesday with making cloverleaf rolls.

My notes:

• The recipe calls for 3 1/2 cups of flour, but I ended up using a little more than 4 cups, and even then I did not really get a dough, but more of a stiff batter.  I didn't want to add more flour because of a dire warning in the recipe about flour amount.  Maybe this was a mistake on my part.

Cake batter?

• There was a lot of liquid in this recipe: 3/4 c. water to dissolve the yeast, 1 c. milk, 1/4 c. melted butter, and 1 egg.  By contrast, the recipe I used on Wednesday only used a little over 1 c. milk, 1 egg, and 6 (not melted) tablespoons of butter.  Maybe this is why I should have added more flour.
• However, it did seem like a good idea to dissolve the yeast in what amounted to sugar water.  Get the yeast to really start eating before it even got to the flour, right?
• Because of the point at which I'd stopped adding flour, I ended up with what was essentially a thick batter, but a batter with gluten (there was definitely gluten forming in this stuff).  By the time I finished dividing the dough into 12 muffin cups, I felt like one of those people in the commercials for the faucets that you only need to hit with your wrist to get to turn on.  I had anticipated this and had, against my environmental science bachelor's degree, turned on the water before I started dealing with the dough.

Before 2nd rising: they look like biscuits, or something.  There was no way this stuff was going to be formed into any other shape than 'blob'.

After 2nd rising: at least they look more like rolls, now. 

They may not be "cloverleaf" rolls, but they turned out to be rolls nonetheless.

These turned out to be more like brioche: soft, buttery, sort of eggy, a little sweet.  This would have been great had I been going for something like a brioche (which, honestly, had been next on my list of breads to try), but this did not make for good cloverleaf roll dough.  The recipe had promised 12 large cloverleaf rolls, but I ended up with 12 comparatively smaller brioche.  So, this turned out to be not so bad of a result as I had thought at the start; I might keep the recipe around for brioche, but then I might just find a recipe that specifically says that it's for making brioche!

Lavazza: Caffè Espresso

I have one of these coffee pots:

The Bialetti Moka Pot.

It was a great pickup and it's already saved me a lot of trips to the coffee shop.  I only wish I'd found out about these in college!

I drink coffee every weekday and the moka pot gives me two mornings' worth of coffee, so I end up using this 2-3 times each week; the day-old stuff isn't nearly as tasty as the fresh, but it's no less effective.  Since the time that I bought this back in September, I've been trying out different brands of coffee, so I figured I should start keeping track of which brands work out and which...not so much.

Lavazza Caffè Espresso

This Lavazza passed the test: not so strong as to be bitter but certainly flavourful.  Only too late did I realize that all of the info about the coffee itself is on the side of the can, but that info is also at Lavazza's website.  It's a medium roast suitable for all coffee makers but optimized for espresso makers--the moka pot is technically not an espresso maker, but the coffee still seems to work just fine.

Verdict: would buy again.

Cloverleaf rolls v2.0

After the cloverleaf fiasco of earlier this month, I found four new recipes online and resolved to try each of them.  We tried one of those this evening, the results of which far exceeded my expectations.

Extended Narrative
The recipe calls for "1 cup plus 2 Tablespoons milk", which conveniently measured out to about 250 mL.  Huzzah for the metric system, right?

We also don't keep bread flour; the recipe calls for 4 cups of that.  I started out with 3 cups of all purpose flour and added just under 1 more cup during the mixing process.  The dough ended up being slightly sticky but not unlike our pizza dough, so I figured it was all right.

I was so excited about how things were turning out, even early on in the process, that I took way more photos than I usually do.

The stand mixer with dough hooks once again came through for us.

The recipe said something about running the stand mixer for 6 minutes; I probably came in at around that amount of time after having added that last cup of flour rather gradually.

I made sure to punch down the dough after the first rising which was not specified in the recipe.

When the time came to shape these I realized that this was a lot of dough.  Fortunately, I'd purchased a 12-muffin tin after the last experiment with these rolls, which worked out very well and had a nonstick coating to boot; as an experiment, I only sprayed half of the cups with nonstick spray.  The dough for most of the rolls filled the muffin cups (unlike last time).  I didn't bother to coat these with melted butter, mostly because I didn't feel like putting in that extra effort.

All cozy-like.  Rolls on the right are in the zone of nonstick spray, while the rolls on the left  are the control group.  As it turned out, there was no difference (statistically significant or otherwise) between the two halves of the batch.

Being somewhat paranoid, I set the timer for 30 minutes for the second rising, while the recipe called for 45 minutes. When the timer went off I realized that this would actually work out well as I still had to preheat the oven (our oven takes a while and there's no telling where it might be at any given point in the preheating process).  Here's the result of the second rising:

WHOA.

Rather different from that first time, eh?

These got baked for 14 minutes rather than the specified 15-20 minutes.

NOM.

About five minutes after this photo was taken, that roll on the top right was gone.  Soft, rich, and buttery; if there were any modification I'd make to the recipe, I'd probably add slightly more sugar--but that's really just trying to find something to have to change.  The recipe was fairly quick (edit: I should say that the active part of the recipe was fairly quick; obviously there was an hour and a half there where I didn't have to do much!); it didn't require a lot of ingredients; and it was pretty foolproof even for someone like me, inexperienced as I am (was?) with yeast breads.

Of course, I'd still like to try the other cloverleaf roll recipes that I'd found, but this is going to be hard to beat--but was it only because of the first failure that this success seemed so great?

The finished cloverleaf roll.  Look at that crumb.

Chicken paprikash

This experiment came about from three factors:

1. We had a container of sour cream in the fridge that I didn't know what to do with.
2. We always want to broaden our culinary horizons.
3. Captain Sisko cooked chicken paprikash on a recent episode of Deep Space Nine that we watched ("Family Business"--of course, Sisko was still a Commander at the time...).

Joy of Cooking gave us a relatively easy recipe to go on, and we even had a good supply of sweet paprika to use.  This turned out to be incredibly tasty and not too spicy.  We would definitely make this again, which is typically my criterion for deeming whether or not a recipe is a keeper.

Our notes:

• This was a straightforward recipe, but not one for a hot day; though we used only one skillet, that particular burner on the stove was on for the entire cooking time and I had to be standing there for most of that time.  Fortunately we managed to keep the smoke detector from going off (it's gone off from us boiling pasta in the past).
• We used chicken tenders rather than the "3 1/2 to 4 1/2 pounds of chicken parts" called for in the recipe.  This definitely cut down on the prep work and cooking time, and they didn't dry out in the cooking or anything.
• In the interest of using the sour cream as quickly as possible, I probably put in more than was called for; would definitely cut back next time.
• There was, not surprisingly, a large quantity of paprika in this: 1/4 cup for the full recipe, and 2 Tbsp. for a half.  It gave the dish just enough spice to prevent us from finishing our plates in a hurry--always a good thing.
• We served this over rice, but it would probably work just as well with spätzle, egg noodles, potatoes, or other dumplings.

Flavourful!

Joy of Cooking (2006), p. 431-432

Blueberry Cornbread

Hello all - this is a guest post is by Dom, so bear with the brevity - I'm but a simple engineer.

Background:

After we first made the delicious flour tortillas previously posted, I really wanted to try making corn tortillas.  However, this turned out to be much more difficult than the flour tortillas, and not as tasty (in our opinion).  Thus began a quest to find other recipes that use some of the 5 lbs. of masa corn flour we bought for the corn tortillas.

The recipe for the blueberry cornbread is from food.com.

Note:

We did not have buttermilk, so I used 1 Tbsp. of lemon juice with enough milk to make a cup.  I was supposed to let them sit together 5-10 minutes and then stir before using, but forgot - oops...  However, this did not seem to matter as I let the wet ingredients sit mixed while I got the dry ingredients ready.

Result:

Tasty cornbread that is gritty but not dry, with blueberry deliciousness in every bite!  We would definitely make this again.

Final Product - with a couple of pieces taken out.

22 July 2012: Addendum from Caroline!  After about three days this started to go bad, so we would recommend making this only if you intend to finish it quickly.

Cloverleaf rolls

Recently I became enamored with cloverleaf rolls.  The ones I had were soft, moist, at once pillowy yet dense, and more than twice the size of the muffin cups they'd been baked in.  So you see, I may have some unreasonable expectations when it comes to these things.

I really wanted to like this recipe.  I had the utmost faith in Joy of Cooking's methodology but the rolls I cooked up with its recipe came out more like hard biscuits than the pillowy creations I'd known before.  They didn't even fill the muffin cups of the pan when they came out of the oven.

Sad cloverleaf rolls.  At least the copious amount of nonstick spray worked as advertised.

This was my first time making yeast-leavened rolls; I've made biscuits in my time, but recipes for those can be summarized thus:

1. Mix.
2. Bake.
3. Consume.

I've also made pizza dough, but if I've been messing that one up, then those have been some tasty mistakes.

Looking back, perhaps it was a combination of errors that led to an unfortunate final product.  Let's see, shall we?

• It's probably best to make these on a day when it's cooler than 100°F outside; even with the air conditioning on, the rising times were altered and the 425° oven was not so pleasant.
• Punching down dough after the first rising is more important than I'd realized; we don't do this for pizza dough (and yet it's still darn tasty) and I haven't yet made many other breads.  Important!
• Just as it's important to let the dough rise, it's equally important to not let it rise for too long.  I suspect that this was the main culprit behind the hardtack biscuits that resulted.

So it's probably not the recipe itself that's to blame after all, but the ol' "user error".  We'll probably try this one again, but a lot of Interweb sleuthing has turned up four more promising recipes for cloverleaf rolls, all of which I intend to test.  Will I find a recipe that results in my vision of the ideal cloverleaf roll?  We shall see, shall we not?

Sad cloverleaf rolls are sad.

Joy of Cooking (2006), p. 610

Almond pudding redux

After our failed attempt at making almond pudding some months ago, I wanted to try it again seeing as how we still had a few envelopes of gelatin left.  Accordingly I found another easy recipe for almond pudding; it only required a few ingredients and some quick calculations to scale it down.  This turned out much better than our first try, and we had a nice refreshing dessert.

Our notes:

• The prep time for this is pretty minimal.  I decided for sure to make this at 5.30, and by 6 PM we were out the door for Dom's hockey game, with the dessert reposing in the fridge.
• The finished product was not overly sweet.  Sugar content is a recurring theme for our recipes since neither of us likes super-sweet desserts.  This recipes qualifies as-is but I might reduce the sugar even more next time (probably closer to 1/4 cup rather than the 1/3 called for).
• We used an 8"x8" dish for the pudding; this translated to about a 1/2" of dessert.  While this doesn't affect the taste at all, I'd probably try to use a smaller dish next time to get thicker cubes of dessert; alternatively, I might double the recipe since there's no such thing as too much almond pudding.

This recipe worked out much better than that last one we'd tried, and it was a fabulous dessert for a 100°F day.  You'd have to ask Dom as to whether this was a good after-hockey snack though...

Almond pudding: always good with fruit cocktail.  Sadly, our can of Del Monte had roughly 4 halves of cherries--and way too many pears.

Strawberry icebox cake

I first saw this recipe for a no-bake strawberry icebox cake in summer 2010 and wanted to try it out immediately.  Peak strawberry season and the vicissitudes of life being what they are, I didn't get a chance to make one until this spring.  It's an easy recipe, the results are just scrumptious (it really is like a strawberry shortcake), and it makes for an excellent dessert choice for informal spring or early-summer dinners.

Our notes:

• You can't get away with throwing subpar, underripe, pale strawberries in this; we had a couple of these, and I'd thought that they might be hidden under the flavours of all the other strawberries.  This was not the case and there was a big taste difference between areas of each slice that contained visibly ripe strawberries versus areas that had the underripe ones.
• Going strictly by the recipe, I couldn't tell whether I was supposed to put the graham crackers directly on top of the strawberries (implied in the recipe but not as structurally stable), or to put whipped cream and then the crackers on the berries (more stable).  I ended up putting the crackers directly on the fruit, partly because I prefer to follow the recipe as much as possible the first time through, and partly because the whipped cream was the limiting factor in this endeavour.  It seemed to work well, though I'll try the other method next time to see how that goes.
• I have yet to make a good ganache in all the times I've tried.  Maybe I'm not patient enough to keep stirring something for the time needed for all the chocolate to melt.
• We found it best to go conservative on the powdered sugar to put in the whipped cream, even though the recipe calls for a relatively low amount as it is.  We didn't want to the berries to be overpowered by any more sugar than was absolutely necessary to get the cream to not taste like Vitamin D milk.
• I didn't want to over-whip the cream and end up with butter, so I erred in the opposite direction and came out with more of a "Cool Whip lite" consistency.  I don't know if this is ideal or not, but since thicker cream seems like it would lend a better aesthetic to the finished product (by looking slightly less messy), I'd probably whip the cream for a little longer next time.
• The recipe said to let this chill in the icebox...refrigerator for about 4 hours before consuming.  Because I'd made this late in the evening on a Wednesday we didn't get a chance to sample it until Thursday dinner; the graham crackers still had a little body to them.  By Friday and Saturday we thought the flavour and texture had gotten even better, but on Sunday I noticed a small decrease in quality, though nonetheless still good.  The following days showed a continuing (but shallow) downward trend in quality, with the graham crackers becoming more and more insubstantial in both texture and taste.

I took this before the ganache went on because I had a suspicion that the chocolate would make this less photogenic.  That may have been correct, but the finished icebox cake was only enhanced by the addition of the chocolate.

12 July 2012: Addendum!  We made this for an Independence Day celebration and it turned out very well to whip the cream a little longer.  Dom did up the decoration on top:

Festive, no?