November 14th - AMAZING Coffee Cake

Every chef/cook/baker has a signature recipe; a special concoction that they have perfected over time to make it so delectable and scrumptious that it needs not to be changed one bit.  While I haven't quite found my signature recipe, I think I may be well on my way with my Coffee Cake.  This particular recipe reflects the most recent modifications that I have made since the last time I made it.

AMAZING COFFEE CAKE - 

Batter:

• 1 stick butter
• 1.5c brown sugar
• 2 eggs
• 1.5c flour
• .66c sour cream
• 2 apples, skinned and chopped
• 1tsp baking soda
• 1tsp cinnamon
• .5tsp nutmeg
• .5tsp salt
• 1tsp vanilla extract

 Cinnamon Swirl - 

• 2-3 tbsp butter
• .66c cinnamon chips

Streusel - 

• 3 tbsp brown sugar
• .33c sugar
• .75c chopped, toasted nuts
• 2 tbsp butter
• 3tbsp flour
• .25tsp cinnamon
• .25tsp nutmeg

1. Cream the butter and brown sugar until smooth
2. Beat in the eggs, one at a time
3. Sift together the dry ingredients
4. Slowly mix the dry ingredients with the wet ones, adding the sour cream, chopped apples, and vanilla extract
5. To make the swirl, gently melt the butter and cinnamon chips together over a double boiler
6. Pour half the batter into a greased 9x9 in pan
7. Pour the swirl over the batter
8. Pour the rest of the batter in the pan and "swirl" with a knife
9. Put in 350 degree oven for 25 mins
10. In the meantime, create the streusel by combining the room-temperature butter with the dry ingredients until the mixture resembles coarse crumbs
11. After 25 minutes, sprinkle the streusel over the cake
12. Return the cake to the oven for another 25 minutes or until a tester comes out clean (keep an eye on the cake)
13. Let the cake cool COMPLETELY before serving - at least 1 hr 

RESULTS - 
This was AMAZING.  Enough said.  The team LOVED it, and they begged me to bring it to the caf so they could have it for dessert.  I have already had numerous requests to make another one.  Success!  The other chef of the team did suggest that I might want to make the cake a tiny bit lighter in texture, and I must say that that is an excellent suggestion.  In this particular cake, I changed the amount of flour from 2 cups to 1.5 cups to make it more dense, but not changing the amount of sour cream produced a very heavy, albeit moist, cake.  Next time, I think I will decrease the amount of sour cream to .33 cups; the cake may not stay moist quite as long, but it is my goal to have it consumed long before it goes dry anyways...

November 11th - Banana Muffins

If it has the word "banana" in it, chances are, runners will eat it.  With the day off of school on account of Veteran's Day, I figured I needed to bake something.  But two days before regionals wasn't exactly the best time to bake the most fattening thing I could think of (I'm saving that for after the race...).  So scanning through Joanne Chang's new cookbook, Flour, I came across a recipe for banana bread that seemed perfect.  I didn't actually have a bread tin, so I had to bake the batter in muffin tins.  This actually worked out better though since it divided up the bread into nice portions (so that none of my teammates would be fighting over who got the "bigger piece").

MUFFINS - 

• 3.5 mashed, ripe bananas
• 1.66c flour
• 1tsp baking soda
• .25tsp cinnamon
• .5tsp salt
• 1c + 2tbsp sugar
• 2 eggs
• .5c oil
• 2tbsp sour cream
• .66c chopped, toasted walnuts

1. Baked at 350 degrees for 25 minutes

Note the missing muffin...

RESULTS - 
These did not survive the trip down to regionals.  Only a few of the guys on the team tried them at first, but once word got around at how moist, banana-y, and generally delicious they were, they were fighting over who got the last ones.  I personally loved them as well.  They had just the right amount of flavor and were neither too light and un-fulfilling nor too heavy and dense.  The chopped walnuts were great in the batter, though next time I may add more varieties of nuts into the mix.  Also, I might change half of the sugar to brown sugar and substitute some of the oil with applesauce to make it a tad healthier.  However, on the other end of the spectrum, if I wanted to make them more "dessert-like," a nutty, brown sugar/cinnamon streusel could be added.

November 7th - Apple Cinnamon Scones

With a rare Sunday afternoon with no homework and generally nothing to do (except practice at 4:30), I decided that I needed to bake something - especially after yesterday's slightly dissappointing banana cake.  But what to bake?  Going for my customary "Sunday morning caf chill" with the team, I noticed that they were serving various kinds of scones at the pastry counter.  This piqued my curiosity and I decided on the spot that they were exactly the thing I was looking to make.  It being November, something "fall-y" was appropriate and thus cinnnamon apple scones would fit the mood perfectly.
I got the technique for making scones from a baking book I just picked up off of the bargain rack at my university's bookstore but other than that, this was a completely original recipe:

SCONES -

• 2c flour
• 2tsp baking soda
• 1.5tsp cinnamon
• .33c cinnamon chips
• 1 skinned, finely chopped apple
• 8tbsp cold, cubed butter
• .25c sugar
• 1 egg
• .25c milk

GLAZE -

• .33c powdered sugar
• 1tsp vanilla extract
• 1tsp milk
• .25tsp cinnamon

1. Sift flour, cinnamon, and sugar together
2. Knead in cold butter until mixture is crumbly
3. Mix in apples, cinnamon chips, milk, and egg
4. Knead lightly until mixture is even
5. Cut into triangles, place on baking sheet in 400 degree oven for 15-20 mins, WATCH CLOSELY
6. Drizzle glaze on when cooled

RESULTS -
Wow.  These were really good!  I almost overbaked them by not checking up on them often enough, (next time I will remember that the baking time is closer to 15 minutes than 20 minutes...) but they just had a nice crisp to them.  The flavor was great, and it was made even better by the glaze which added just the right amount of sweetness.

November 6th - Upside-Down Bananas Foster Coffee Cake

Runners have a natural affinity for bananas.  So combining bananas with dessert was something that I had been wanting to do for awhile.  And bananas foster is one of my all time favorites, so I was trying to think of a way to combine that into something that could be baked.  Using a modified recipe for my very successful apple coffee cake, I tried something that I called "upside-down bananas foster coffee cake."

First I basically made bananas foster:

• .5c brown sugar
• 4tbsp butter
• pinch of cinnamon
• 4 bananas, sliced

1. Combined ingredients in saucepan over low heat
2. Poured mixture into greased 9x9in cake pan

Then I made the cake:

• 1 stick butter
• 2 eggs
• 2c flour
• 1.5c brown sugar
• 1tsp baking powder
• 1tsp cinnamon
• .25tsp nutmeg
• 1c sour cream
• 1tsp vanilla extract
• .25tsp salt
• .33c cinnamon chips
• .5 chopped walnuts

1. Poured cake batter over the bananas foster mixture
2. Baked at 350 for 45 mins
3. Flipped over the pan to get the "upside-down" effect

RESULTS - 

Unfortunately, bananas foster is not quite as delicious after it has been baked for 45 minutes.  The taste changed significantly, and it wasn't exactly what I had expected.  I definitely should have added more cinnamon to both the cake and the bananas foster "topping."  It essentially became a modified banana bread instead of coffee cake with a banana twist.  To bring it back toward the "cake" end of the spectrum, I added some quick icing:

ICING - 

• 1c powdered sugar
• .5tsp vanilla extract
• 4tbsp softened butter
• 1tbsp coffee

With the icing, the whole thing became more of a traditional banana nut cake than my original intention of it being a coffee cake.  Don't think I will be making this one again...  Oh well, you live, you bake, you learn!

Two Weeks Ago - Chocolate Pecan Pie

I have always been a huge fan of Southern cooking.  The rich, dense, homestyle dishes just have a comforting nature about them.  From barbeque to mac and cheese, I have always thought that the nation's best food comes from below the Mason Dixon.  And having tried (and LOVED) one classic Southern dessert - sweet potato pie - I was very curious to make another decadant staple of the South: pecan pie.  But when I was researching recipes, I came across a chocolate variation that I just couldn't resist...

 

Crust -

• 1c flour
• .5c shortening
• .25c water

 

Filling -

• 1.5c chopped toasted pecans
• 3 eggs
• 1c light corn syrup
• 1tsp vanilla extract
• .25tsp salt
• 1c white sugar
• 2tbsp melted butter
• .33c melted dark chocolate chips

 

Baked for 1 hr at 350

 

 

RESULTS -
I got this recipe online. Meh.  Probably won't make this particular variation any time soon.  Turned out WAY too sweet for even my taste.  It was more like a chocolate sugar pie with a slight pecan aftertaste.  My family (who happened to be on campus for parent's weekend) was nice enough to say they liked it; whether they were telling the truth or not remains unknown...  The crust was also pretty tasteless, though I later did some research and found out that using ONLY shortening tends to produce tasteless crusts, even though they are easy to make.
Oddly enough, the next weekend when I was down in South Carolina for our cross country conference championships I had some PROPER Southern chocolate pecan pie at the banquet the night before the race. Now that was some good stuff!
So after taking into consideration what I liked from the pie at the banquet, here is my edited recipe (any suggestions are welcome):

Crust - 

• 8tbsp cold cubed butter
• 1.33c flour
• .25c cold water
• 2tbsp graham sugar or .25c finely crushed graham crackers

Filling - 

• 1.5c chopped toasted pecans
• 4 eggs
• .66c light corn syrup
• 1tsp vanilla extract
• .25tsp salt
• .5c brown sugar
• 2tbsp melted butter
• .33c melted dark chocolate chips
• .5tsp nutmeg
• .5tsp cinnamon

Background

I have always been obsessed with food.  It was much more evident before I started running - my wicked sweet (or savory, depending on what I was eating...) tooth had given me what some referred to as a "nice layer of insulation."  Basically, I was on the chunky side.  But then one day my my sophomore year of high school, I decided to go for a run.   The rest, as they say, is history.  With family members including former alcoholics, mental patients, and gamblers, it seemed to be my destiny that I would get addicted to SOMETHING.  I just got lucky that it happened to be running.  
Even after logging thousands of miles on the streets of my hometown (and the surrounding towns), completely changing my body and life in the process, I have always maintained that ravenous sweet tooth that has existed since as long as I can remember.  In fact, running has only seemed to make it worse!  Athletes are known for their appetite, but pound for pound, I honestly believe that a runner is the hungriest creature on Earth.  My college team is known throughout campus for "taking over" the cafeteria for hours, doing nothing but endlessly eating; vainly attempting to quell our bottomless hunger.
Meals are undoubtedly my favorite part of the day; I look forward to going to "the caf" after practice hours before practice even begins!  When you are in a constant state of hunger, food is always on your mind.  So when I discovered that there is an entire CHANNEL dedicated to food (the foodnetwork), it instantly became a personal favorite.  Oddly enough, I had no clue how to cook when I started to watch this wonderful network.  But after watching Paula Deen, Ina Garten, Bobby Flay, and company for 2 hours a day,  the knowledge of how to cook somehow seeped into my brain.  So when, this past summer, I one day gathered the courage to fire up the grill and cook dinner, it came naturally to me.  The following month before I went back to college had me experimenting with new and exciting dishes every night - by the end of August I had become fairly comfortable with making food.  But now, as I write this at college, I cook and bake mostly for fun, not out of necessity (I am on a meal plan, after all...)  And I am no pro by any means - this blog is more of a personal "cooking journal" than anything else.  So as I experiment, I will record my successes and inevitable failures here.  And I hope you enjoy it as much as I do!