Gasp! An update! Nobody reads this anyway...

Really. They don't. And if you do, well. Then I'm wrong. It happens. Occasionally.

So anyway. I've basically been very lazy in posting anything I make. I have made quite a lot, it's just.. I feel the need to give more information on what I made. And I just didn't want to do it. Partly because after I made it, I went on and on and on to people about it. And my best friend kindly puts up with it as we chat on AIM. He just does other things and lets me talk, throwing in random statements of understanding even though he read nothing. Yes, it sounds like he doesn't care, but he does. He humours me and lets me ramble. And I do the same for him. :]

This post is actually two things. I had been wanting to do something with ground turkey. Why?

Because I hadn't used it except for in Culinary Arts I last year. And even then, I didn't directly work with it. I did the dessert. I think that was when we did the lemon mousse/soup. The night I made it.. it was soup. Then the next day, I got to class, took it out of the fridge, unwrapped the pan, and.... it had separated. Crap. I tried to fold it together, but it didn't work. It was flat. I tasted it. It was still amazing. Just.. not mousse. I tried heating up some of it with extra gelatin we had.. but it didn't firm it. We just got globs of creamy, lemony gummies. I loved them. But the entree was stuffed shells. With homemade turkey sausage. 'Twas good. So I decided I would make my own shells with the ground turkey. Except.. not sausage. I also knew that if I used a whole pound of turkey for shells.. I'd be eating them for the next week. So I made lasagna with the rest of the turkey! With thin slices of zucchini instead of pasta! Which I ate for the next five days... And I still only got through half of it before I had to throw it out.


Turkey Base

1 lb ground turkey (I used 93/7)
half a medium sized onion, chopped
about 2-3 cloves of garlic, minced
salt and pepper
crushed red pepper, optional
oil

Heat up a large skillet and add he turkey. Once some of the fat from the turkey has rendered a bit, add in the onion, salt and pepper to taste, and crushed red pepper. Stir as you will, trying to brean the meat up as it cooks. Add in more oil if you need to. Towards the last few minutes of cooking, add in the garlic. (You can add it in the beginning if you'd like. I just fear burning my garlic, so I like to add it towards the end since it doesn't take too long to cook and I will still be giving whatever it is I'm cooking some flavour.)

That's pretty much it for that bit.



Stuffed Turkey Shells

1/3 of the cooked ground turkey mixture from above
about a half of a medium zucchini, chopped
salt and pepper
oil
parmesan cheese, grated (I bought a wedge and just grated some in until it looked good)
about a pinch of oregano
7 or 8 jumbo pasta shells, a little undercooked
marinara sauce, about a cup or more, depending on how much you want for the shells

In a skillet, heat a bit of oil. Mix the zucchini with some oil, salt, and pepper. Add to the pan. Try to get one layer and let it go until the bottom starts to turn golden, then stir and let the other side turn golden as well. If you need to, you can cover the pan to let the zucchini steam a bit if it isn't cooking through. Remove from heat.

In a bowl, mix the turkey, zucchini, parmesan cheese, and the pinch of oregano. Spoon into shells. You could always cook up some mushrooms or peppers or such to add to the mixture. But the peppers and mushrooms didn't look to good at the store. So I didn't do it.

Spoon a bit of marinara into the bottom of a square 8 x 8 baking dish, place the shells in the pan, and spoon a bit more sauce over the tops of each, sprinkle a bit more grated parmesan cheese and bake in a 350º F oven for about 15-20 minutes, or until heated through. You can cover it if you'd like. I chose to just throw it in the oven as it was. I wanted those toasty, crunchy edges of shell.




Turkey Lasagna

2/3 cooked ground turkey mixture
about half a head of broccoli cut into florets, cooked, cooled, chopped
1 16-ounce container of ricotta cheese
12 ounces of mozzarella cheese, grated (My grocery store makes some on-site, so I got that.)
2 medium zucchini, thinly sliced (I just used my peeler to cut thin ribbons off.)
parmesan cheese
2-3 cups of marinara sauce

In an 8 x 8 inch square baking dish, spoon a little marinara sauce in to just coat the bottom of the pan. Lay down a layer of zucchini ribbons. Top that with some turkey, then marinara, then mozzarella, broccoli, ricotta, then grate on some parmesan cheese, and repeat the process. I wound up getting three layers out of it, ending with a top "layer" of sauce and mozzarella. You can also change up what goes next to what, or add in more things. I actually meant to add in some chopped, frozen spinach. But I forgot about it because it was in the freezer.

Bake the lasagna in a 350º F pre-heated oven for about 40-50 minutes, or until heated through. Again, you can cover it if you'd like, but I feared the cheese would stick to the foil. So I left it uncovered.


I really liked the lasagna.. but I should warn you.. the zucchini has a tendency to let out liquid as it cooks. I let the lasagna sit for a bit before cutting. Ha. I still got a rush of cheesy, tomato-y liquid fill in the cut out hole. It isn't bad unless you don't like that. I ate it like soup. It was amazing.
Yay for sun glare on cheese!

Daring Bakers: Eclairs.

So. The Daring Bakers challenge this month was... eclairs. I love eclairs. In ninth grade, there was a fundraiser for band. Well. This was back in California, so the band fundraisers were actually good. This particular one sold cheesecake, cookie dough, jellyrolls, and.. eclairs. (The band fundraiser here in Texas? Personalised pens. Yep. Twenty-dollar pens that had your name on it. They told us we had to get a sample to show everyone. So we all signed the paper. Then once we got our sample pens they told us, "Oh, if you don't sell at least seven pens, you have to pay for the sample." Anyone want a black-ink green pen that has me name on it? I only write in blue ink. All they offer is black.) Anyway. I had my mom buy me the eclairs. They were amazing. I loved them.

So a few months ago, I decided I wanted to try making eclairs. They didn't work out so well. I didn't fancy them at all.

Nevertheless, I pressed on with this challenge. It called for a pate a choux, a chocolate pastry cream, and a chocolate glaze. I chose to follow the recipe for the choux and the glaze. Instead of pastry cream, I filled it with milk chocolate mousse.

They were... okay. I wasn't thrilled by the choux. I don't recall -how- long I baked the choux, but I know it was about thirty-five minutes or more. And -still- they weren't completely dry. They were still moist. But I was impatient. It was also really eggy. It made me think of french toast. But without any vanilla or cinnamon. When I paired it with the chocolate mousse, it helped some, but. It didn't help enough for me to make the rest. I made three. My sisters and I were home alone that night, so I made one for all of us. The youngest liked it. The other decided she didn't like the chocolate mousse.


With the rest of the mousse, I chose to make a chocolate mousse pie with. And just because I happened to have graham cracker crumbs in the pantry. I was addicted to that crust. Really. I baked it and it was toasty goodness.

Tacos. Fish Tacos.

Okay, so. There's not much of a recipe here. More.. just showing of the picture in hopes you find it interesting.

I had some frozen salmon I had been doing all sorts of things with. This was probably my favourite. I just made a rub for the salmon, cooked it in my cast iron skillet, cut it into chunks, and put it into two warmed flour totillas. Then I topped it with what I found in my fridge. Which was basically the leftovers from the hamburgers we ate the night before. It was amazing.


Salmon Tacos

1 4-ounce salmon fillet
seasonings or rub of your choice, enough to coat the fillet
oil
toppings of your choice (I used shredded lettuce, slice avocado, caramelised onions, and salsa)
two small flour tortillas, warmed

Rinse and pat dry the salmon. Sprinkle on your seasoning, then cover and set in the fridge for about fifteen minutes or so. (I simply seasoned it, and put it in the fridge while I prepared my toppings and heated my skillet.)

Which brings me to my next point. Preheat a small skillet and lightly coat the bottom with oil. Take the salmon out of the fridge and cook the fillet, about four minutes per side, or until cooked completely through.

Cut the salmon into chunks and divide the chunks evenly amongst the tortillas. (I cut my fillet into eight chunks and gave each tortilla four.) Top with whatever toppings you'd like. I chose left over carmelised onions, lettuce, and avocado, with a little salsa. Oh, my god. Those onions really made it so amazing, paired with the creaminess of the avocado, the cool, clean crisp of the lettuce, and the refreshing salsa. (Fresh local salsa... it's so good; I'm actually willing to pay the four bucks for it, so yeah. It's good.) It really was amazing.

Mmm. Cupcakes.

Yes, yes. I'm a bit late to be posting such festive Fourth of July cupcakes. Actually. Even if it was around Fourth of July still.. I wouldn't be making cupcakes to represent those colours. That's just not me. Unless it's Halloween. Mmmm. I would so make some chocolate cupcakes with orange frosting. I love Halloween. But I digress.

You see, the reason I am posting such obnoxiously flamboyant American cupcakes is that the theme for this month's Cupcake Hero is Red, White, and Blue. Fun.

It took me quite a while to figure out what to do. After countless ideas going between my friend Michael and I of all the sweet and savory ideas we could come up with, I finally settled on these. Strawberry and Malibu Lemon Cupcakes.

I found a lemon cake recipe, attempted to colour it blue. And it worked. Well. When it was still batter. Now... everyone has been saying, "You just had to have some green, huh?" Sigh. Oh, well.
Since the blue in the cupcakes pretty much failed, I threw on some blue star sprinkles to make up for it. Which I didn't want to do. But I did it in the name of Cupcake Hero. I really do hate sprinkles.

The frosting was a recipe for a coconut buttercream I found on my hunt for a lemon buttercream. I decided to try it out instead. But I chose not to get the imitation coconut extract which is all you can find in stores. Instead, I used a couple tablespoons of Malibu. If you want, you could just use extract. Not that much. But. To make it "kid-friendly." But truthfully. There really isn't that much that I don't see why a child couldn't consume it. Because think about it. If I had used -all- the buttercream on twenty-four cupcakes, that would be about a quarter teaspoon of alcohol to each cupcake. Now really? That's not much at all. And yes, it only made twenty-two cupcakes. But I still had about a cup and a half of buttercream left. So each cupcake probably had less than a quarter teaspoon.

And finally.. my red. I used a strawberry puree. Really not that hard. Frozen strawberries, thawed, blended, little bit of sugar and lemon juice. My only problem was that I usually just get the one-pound store-brand bag. But of course they were out. So I had to spend twice the amount on a ten-ounce bag of organic frozen strawberries. I don't have a problem with organic. I just have a problem with the price. You can try preaching to me about how the benefits make up for the cost. But I don't really want to hear it. You know you would so rather spend a dollar fifty on a pound of strawberries than three bucks on ten ounces. It's simple logic.


But anyway. With all the squeezing lemons and making strawberry puree.. I started craving strawberry lemonade. So I did the quick and easy thing. I took a can of Minute Maid Light Lemonade, swirled a bit of strawberry puree in and presto. Strawberry lemonade. And yes. It was good. And no I don't feel guilty about using canned lemonade because psht. Five calories and I don't have to squeeze lemons? Thanks. But you can make your own if you'd like. After making lemonade from lemons almost every other week at school the whole second semester.. I'm done. And even so. Does that not look good? Well. It looks good to me at least.

So. Onto the cupcakes.

Lemon Cake

2 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
3/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 1/2 cups granulated sugar
1/2 cup (one stick) salted butter, softened
3 eggs
1 cup buttermilk (I didn't have any, so I just used sour milk: 1 tablespoon lemon juice and enough milk to make one cup.)
2 tablespoons finely grated lemon zest
2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
blue dye if you really want

Preheat oven to 350°F.

Line two cupcake pans with 22 muffin cups. If you can get 24 cupcakes from the batter, congratulations. I couldn't. :)

Combine the flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt in a medium bowl and stir to combine.

In the bowl of your mixer, combine the butter and sugar and beat until well-blended on medium speed. Add the eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition. Add flour mixture and buttermilk alternately to sugar mixture, beginning and ending with the flour. Beat in the lemon zest and juice.

Fill each cupcake cup about two-thirds full and bake in the pre-heated oven for about 15-17 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted in the centre of a cupcake comes out clean. Allow to cool completely before frosting.

Malibu Buttercream (adapted from Epicurious)

4 egg whites at room temperature
1/4 teaspoon cream of tartar
1/2 teaspoon fresh lemon juice
1 1/4 cups sugar
1/2 cup water
3 sticks (1 1/2 cups) unsalted butter, cut into pieces and softened (I just quartered each stick lengthwise and cut that into tablespoon pieces and seperated about half of them into individual squares and put it back in the fridge to firm up a bit whilst the sugar syrup was cooking.)
2 tablespoons Malibu Caribbean Rum (the original Coconut flavour.)

Beat the egg whites in the bowl of your mixer with the whisk attachment until frothy, then add the cream of tartar and beat just before stiff peaks form.

Meanwhile, stir together the sugar and water in a small heavy saucepan and bring to a boil over moderately high heat, stirring until sugar is dissolved and washing down side of pan with a pastry brush dipped in cold water. (I actually didn't do that. And I probably never will because I tend not to slosh it around that much. But you can if you'd like.)

When syrup reaches a boil, put your candy thermometer into it and continue boiling, without stirring, until it reaches about 238-242 degrees Fahrenheit. Immediately remove from heat, turn your mixer back on (if you had it off like me) and slowly pour the hot syrup in a thin stream into the egg whites, beating constantly at high speed and making sure to not pur directly on the side of the bowl. Beat meringue until the bowl is cool to the touch. It took me about 20 minutes. When you have about five minutes left, take your butter out of the fridge. Oh. And my butter was still a little cold after five minutes and my meringue was just a tad warm. They canceled each other out.

At this point you want to change out your whisk for your paddle attachment and scrapes down the sides of the bowl. On medium speed, gradually add butter about two pieces at a time, beating well after each addition until incorporated. (I just threw about two pieces in, waited about ten seconds, and threw about two more in.) Continue beating until buttercream is smooth. (Mixture may look curdled before all butter is added, but will come back together before beating is finished. If that doesn't work, try chilling it a bit in case your meringue was too hot.) Finally, add the Malibu and mix thoroughly.

Strawberry Puree

10 ounces frozen strawberries, thawed.
2 teaspoons sugar, more or less (to taste)
1 teaspoon fresh lemon juice, more or less (to taste)

Place the strawberries and their juice into your blender. Pulse a few times until pureed. Stir in the sugar and lemon juice until it's the taste you want.


Finally, take a cooled cupcake, pipe or spread on a bit of the frosting, spoon over some strawberry puree, sprinkle on a few sprinkles (or not) and consume. They're amazing.

Finally. Internet Again.

Okay. So I'm incredibly sorry that I was late on the Daring Bakers reveal for June. I had been without internet and was not able to get on at the precise date. I'm going to post it now, even though I might be penalized. I'm sorry.

So. When I found out that we were doing danishes, I was rather.. terrified. I had always avoided laminated doughs because I had these great fears that it would all wind up a giant melted puddle of butter and soggy dough. (I have an active imagination.) Nevertheless, I decided to push through and do it.

It was easy. Like.. really. It really wasn't as bad as I thought. The hardest part was not getting too many tears in my dough. But I really think it was okay.

So after I made my dough, all I had to do was figure out what fillings to dough. I didn't want to do the apple one, and all I could think of were cheese danishes. So I made one. It was amazing. Only my dad, Gram, and I ate it. But it was amazing. I also made a pizza danish for lunch for my sisters, my Gram, and I one day. My dad ate some of the cold leftovers and was so amazed by it. My mom had some even later and is now trying to get me to make it again.

In the end, danish wasn't so bad. I went through a lot of butter and cream cheese making it, but oh well.

And again. Terribly sorry for not being able to post on the true date.



This is my favourite one of all. My cheese danish. The filling has lots of lemon zest it in so it has a very bright, clean flavour with the cream cheese.
This is my pizza danish. It was pretty nifty.

And these are my medley of danishes. It's apple, peach, and mixed berry. A few have some sweetened cream cheese as well. My friend Chris came over on my birthday and we made them. :)

Okay, I lied.

I didn't get you any update a couple weeks ago. But I'm here now! Finally. I've been wrapped up in graduation stuff, finals, etc. I've also had little sleep. But, I've brought cupcakes. So that's good. :)

These are actually my entry to Cupcake Hero this month.

Well. This past year was the first year my high school had its Culinary Arts class. Since we had planned on making it into a restaurant, we needed a name. So we had a contest. Whomever's name was picked for the restaurant won a free dinner for two. They got to plan the meal, everything. Within reason, of course. Well. The French teacher won. She asked for cake with "real buttercream frosting." Crap.

Buttercream had always been my enemy. Actually. I just had never attempted it. It seemed scary. Whipped egg whites. Cooking sugar without cooking it too far. Preventing crystallization. Not letting the butter melt and it all turning into a soupy, melted disaster. Ack. I have an active imagination. But I knew I had to do it. I plan on making wedding cakes for a living. I have to do it sometime. But I could get out of it! She continued on, "But anything chocolate is fine." That could work. Or, I decided, I could combine the two. Chocolate cake with chocolate buttercream. Genius. And better yet. Chocolate cupcakes. Because the theme ingredient for Cupcake Hero is cocoa powder. So I did it.

The buttercream was amazing. I loved it so much, I made it again a week later. Double-batch. >.> It's now sitting in my freezer. I plan on baking some kind of cake this weekend since all my family is out for my graduation.


Chocolate Buttercream

4 ounces semi-sweet chocolate, melted and cooled (I used chips.)
3 sticks (1 1/2 cups) salted butter
6 tablespoons water
3/4 cup sugar
3 large egg whites
1/4 teaspoon cream of tartar
6 tablespoons unsweetened cocoa powder

Chop the butter into about 1/2-inch cubes. You want to let it soften, but not too much. I just chopped it, put it in the fridge, then took it out when I was whipping the egg whites with the sugar syrup.

In a small saucepan, bring the water and sugar to a boil, stirring until sugar is dissolved. Boil syrup, without stirring, until a candy thermometer registers 245 °F.

While syrup is boiling, beat the whites until foamy, then beat in the cream of tartar in your mixer using the whisk attachment. Beat the whites until they just hold stiff peaks and beat in hot syrup in a stream (try to avoid pouring onto beaters and side of bowl). (I tried to get it in time, but I wound up stiffening my egg whites before the sugar syrup was hot enough. I just turned it off, then turned it back on when the sugar syrup was about 240°F.) Beat mixture at medium speed until completely cool, about 10 minutes. (At this point I took the butter out. It was still a little firm. It worked fine.) Change out your whisk for your paddle attachment. Beat in butter, 1 piece at a time, beating until mixture is thickened and smooth. (I've been told that the buttercream may start to look curdled at some point. When I made the single batch, it didn't happen. When I made the double batch, it happened. I'm guessing the difference in volume. Don't worry. As soon as all the butter was in, it was thick again.) Beat in the cocoa powder and melted chocolate, beating until smooth.

You can make the buttercream ahead of time, just make sure you bring it to room temperature first. Apparently some people beat it in their mixer once it's to temperature. I just handmixed it with a rubber spatula. It worked fine. And I didn't have to get out my mixer.
(Adapted from Epicurious.)


Chocolate Cake (actually adapted from a recipe I found on Laurie's blog.)

INGREDIENTS
2 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
½ cup plus 1 tablespoon cocoa powder
2 teaspoons baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup unsalted butter (I made this at school. If it was at home, I would have used salted butter and cut the salt down to 1/4 tsp or so.)
2 1/2 cups packed brown sugar
3 eggs
1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract
3 tablespoons vegetable oil
1 cup sour cream
1 cup really hot water. Or just hot water.

Preheat oven to 350 °F. Line two muffin pans with liners. (Which I didn't do. >.> That's what Pam for Baking is for!)

Sift together the flour, cocoa powder, baking soda, and salt. Set aside.

In a large bowl, beat the butter and brown sugar until well mixed, trying to get some sort of volume (it will lighten a bit in colour... and it took me a while to get it to do that. I think part of it had to do with such a small batch in an industrial-size mixer). Add eggs one at a time. Beat in the vanilla and oil. Add 1/2 the sour cream and then 1/2 the dry ingredients to the butter mixture until well blended.

Add the remaining sour cream and dry ingredients to the batter. Stir in water.

Fill cups about 2/3 full with batter. Bake for about 15 - 20 minutes, or until a toothpick comes out clean.

Allow to cool completely before frosting.



In the end, the chocolate buttercream didn't kick my ass. It liked me. And I liked it. And I found out the "real buttercream" she asked for was a butter and powdered sugar one. Last I knew, that was mock buttercream.

Yay! Buttercream!

So. It took a lot longer. But that's only because some water people came. Trying to sell us stuff. They wanted to do a "quick demo." Two hours later, I could finally do stuff in my kitchen.


So with this being my first ever buttercream, I am quite happy. It was very light. It had a good chocolate taste, but wasn't overpowering. (For me.) I'm weird. I like dark chocolate, but too much and I sneeze. Yeah.

I wanted to just eat it all right then. But there's the whole fact that it's for cupcakes I have to make at school. So, yeah. But I am taking a pound of butter home with me. So make up for the butter I had to use. Mmmm. It's so good. I need to make a double batch if I want to do a cake. Because I use a lot of frosting.

Tomorrow I will post pictures of the cupcakes complete with frosting and give the recipes. That is, if I don't eat the frosting beforehand.