What's cooking?

Blujixapug

Good ideas:

Apple pie milkshake. (Idea taken from an ambiguous menu board in a cafe.)

1 cup milk. 2 scoops ice cream. 1 slice leftover apple pie. 1/4 tsp cinnamon. 1 heaped tsp brown sugar. Blend 3 minutes. "This tastes like apple pie. What did you put in it?"

Bad ideas:

Chinese broccoli tempura.

Cut apart the individual leaves of your Chinese broccoli. Rinse well, pat dry. Prepare your tenpura batter and heat the oil. Dip the leaves in the batter and turn to coat. Gently add them to the oil. Step back as the oil begins to spit. Realise you did not dry the leaves thoroughly enough and there was still water on them when you added them to the oil. Attempt to shield your bare skin as the spitting oil intensifies. Hastily locate your splatterguard and cover the oil. Continue frying the tenpura anyway because damned if you came this far to give up now. Eat it and lament the limpness. Clean a faint coating of atomised oil from every surface in your kitchen.

Kerria

Bangers with a whiskey reduction and Colcannon mash.

Kerria

Swordfish steak and rice

Aereidhna

My friend brought me meatloaf, mashed potatoes, green beans and cake to work. It was amazing and I don't even like meatloaf but damn. I have to go home and make chili now because the heathens I live with are picky and won't eat other people's cooking.

Aereidhna

Buffalo chicken tacos!

Sarapis

I made some brown butter-braised cabbage tonight. It was delish.

Sarapis

Blujixapug said:

Good ideas:

Apple pie milkshake. (Idea taken from an ambiguous menu board in a cafe.)

1 cup milk. 2 scoops ice cream. 1 slice leftover apple pie. 1/4 tsp cinnamon. 1 heaped tsp brown sugar. Blend 3 minutes. "This tastes like apple pie. What did you put in it?"

There's a place called Chili Pies here in San Francisco (two locations actually) that does shakes combined with a slice of whatever of their homemade pies you want. My favorite is a vanilla shake with a chocolate-peanut butter pie slice blended in. Stupidly good. (Though I'd blend it only like 10 seconds personally. I like to have chunks of pie in my shake.)

Blujixapug

Baking birthday dacquoise. Realise I have no idea what a dacquoise is meant to look like. Is this too dark? It looks too dark. Why am I making dacquoise? I've never even eaten dacquoise. Why did I think this was a good idea? What am I doing. What is the greater context for my life. It's all spiralling out of control. Absurdism looms. It's after midnight, and anyway I'm really just an atomic speck on a bigger speck orbiting a mote on an arm of a spiral clinging to the skin of a bubble in some cosmic entity's bubble-bath, and how long until that pops? Ditch crap blog recipe, get one from Great British Bake Off lady instead. Second, presumably better dacquoise baking now. Don't let me down, Mary, my fragile world-view won't bear it.

Eld

I have no idea what dacquoise is. Neither does my spell checker, apparently. I'm imagining a froofy drink, basically a daiquiri rendered a turquoise shade by ... curaçao, perhaps? Which makes me think the question is not so much "Why am I making dacquoise?" as "Why am I baking dacquoise?" That's just silly.

Trilliana

Eld said:

I have no idea what dacquoise is. Neither does my spell checker, apparently. I'm imagining a froofy drink, basically a daiquiri rendered a turquoise shade by ... curaçao, perhaps? Which makes me think the question is not so much "Why am I making dacquoise?" as "Why am I baking dacquoise?" That's just silly.

Via Wikipedia:
A dacquoise is a dessert cake made with layers of almond and hazelnut meringue and whipped cream or buttercream

which... sounds delightful, but a pain in the arse.

Berenene

Sounds like a challenge to me.

Krypton

Sarapis said:

There's a place called Chili Pies here in San Francisco (two locations actually) that does shakes combined with a slice of whatever of their homemade pies you want. My favorite is a vanilla shake with a chocolate-peanut butter pie slice blended in. Stupidly good. (Though I'd blend it only like 10 seconds personally. I like to have chunks of pie in my shake.)

@Sarapis Have you done it with the lemon buttermilk pie? There aren't really chunks in the chocolate-peanut butter shake since it has that Oreo crumb crust instead of a pie pastry crust.

Blujixapug

Eld said:

I have no idea what dacquoise is.

Turns out it's just a meringue with chopped/ground hazelnuts and almonds folded in.

First one, not good:

Second one, much better (ty Mary Berry):

Filled with a lightly sweetened yoghurt/whipped cream mixture and frozen raspberries. After a couple of hours in the fridge, the filling started to moisten the meringue so it got an awesome blend of textures. Imagine some birthday candles stuck in the top and it being stabbed overhand with an enormous knife.



I didn't do all the custard filling and chocolate coating and hazelnut crust some of them have. I tried thickening the filling with agar agar but that went hopelessly. I also tried making a little one with coconut cream filling because lactose-free, but that also went hopelessly. Baking: it is an exasperating ordeal. Making it again would be totes ez tho.

Melodie

I would still totally eat that. It looks delicious.

Bluj and Berenene seriously need to come to my house and just bake things. Please.

Deladan

Tres Leches birthday cake yay me hbd to me

Tharvis

someone needs to make this : 

Kerria

I'm not that skilled at basketcon weaving. 

Aereidhna

Real halua/halva. Visiting Zanzibaar always gives me cravings.

Eld

Aereidhna said:

Real halua/halva. Visiting Zanzibaar always gives me cravings.

You might be the only person who's ever mentioned Zanzibaar inducing cravings for something other than rum. Good choice.

Aereidhna

Eld said:

Aereidhna said:

Real halua/halva. Visiting Zanzibaar always gives me cravings.

You might be the only person who's ever mentioned Zanzibaar inducing cravings for something other than rum. Good choice.

Hehehe. In real life I pretty much exclusively drink Long Island iced teas if I'm drinking. I am not a fan of rum (unless it's masked by a whole lot of tequila, vodka, and triple sec), although my character is. I do love the hell out of middle eastern food though and my partner is Lebanese so I cook it a lot. I love that zanzi has halva.

Jozlyn

I had promised to make an apple pie for the gathering on 4th of July but then I lazed about all morning enjoying my day off. About two hours before the gathering I said "hell", got up and began throwing together the fastest apple pie I've ever made. 



TaDa

'Murica

Ruth

Those are some lovely dough flowers!

Mannimar

Got bored today, so decided to try my hand at making jam for the first time. This one is Mariage Frères Marco Polo tea that I made into a jam. it came out deliciously.

I just wish I had a decent muffin to eat it with!

Mannimar

Dinner today was tea themed after a lecture and tasting I went to today...

It started off fairly simple with a basic salad dressing from a bold black tea, that I then decided decided to use in a chicken marinade. While the chicken was marinating I decided to make those muffins that I wanted last week, so I made Earl Grey flavoured english muffins, and paired it with my Marco Polo jelly (it wasn't a jam, I forgot the difference for a while there). So dinner was tea marinated chicken, tea dressing salad, basic asparagus. followed by tea muffins and jam for dessert

The kicker? I didn't have tea with dinner, but I'm wired as hell!

Sadly, no pictures, but approximate recipes, yes!

the dressing is super simple:

2 parts of a strongly brewed black tea (I used a nice local dealer's ice tea blend)
1 part olive oil
1 part canola oil
1 lemon zest and juice per part olive oil
salt and pepper to taste
and a pinch of cayenne for every part olive oil (optional)

blend it up!

For the marinade I used half of my dressing, as I doubled the recipe:

added a quarter of a red onion, finely chopped
four cloves of garlic, smashed
cayenne to taste
and Worcestershire to taste

let marinate for at least 30 minutes

Cook chicken how you want!

The english muffins were a first for me, I rarely work with dough so I was worried I over worked it, but they came out good!

The only change I made to a basic english muffin recipe was that I added a tablespoon of loose leaf earl grey (~ three tea bags) to each cup of milk while it heated up. The beauty of steeping tea in dairy is that it's impossible to over brew! So steep until you get the flavour you want. The stronger the tea is, the better. The flavour will really mellow out when the muffins are done.

Berenene

I went to a board game day yesterday and wanted to bring something, so made this white chocolate and strawberry picnic cake:






It's super simple.
Link to the recipe:
http://everydaygourmet.tv/recipe/strawberry-picnic-cake/

Berenene

I found a recipe for a gingerbread and chocolate mousse cake. I decided to try out the mousse, switching out the dark chocolate with milk, and make it a special treat for my special someone who is coming home on Friday. Hopefully he likes it. 

Here is the recipe for the entire cake. Like I said, I used just the mousse section
http://everydaygourmet.tv/recipe/chocolate-gingerbread-and-berry-cake/

Mannimar

Making lady grey truffles! Started out as just earl grey truffles until halfway through when I decided I wanted to add orange.




Fairly simple assortment of ingredients, and this was my first attempt at truffles.




cream may have been to cool to melt all of the chocolate, but it did a near perfect job.




I didn't get too complicated with my treats, I didn't have the ingredients to get fancy with the coating, so it's just cocoa powder, and dear god the ganache is messy to roll into balls.

Archaeon

Extreme necro. 


I made chicken drumsticks last night with a nice glaze made with mad dog 357 and now I'm really regretting it. Best part is that the fumes got into the bbq drumsticks and gave it a very pleasant spice which my wife and children were very.... thankful for.