When Rich Meets Rich: A Case for Lighter Desserts

created by Ideogram.ai, with Adobe Photoshop help

There’s a little-known, though entirely predictable, phenomenon in restaurants that I like to call the dessert escalation. You know the drill: you’ve just survived a main course that could probably sustain a small nation—cheeses aged like fine antiques, pastas swimming in butter, sauces richer than a trust fund—and then the dessert menu lands on your table like a dare.

Chocolate lava cake? Check. Triple-layer buttercream cake? Naturally. Cheesecake so dense it might qualify as a building material? Absolutely. (Also, is this menu trying to kill me? Asking for a friend.)

I love dessert. Don’t get me wrong. I worship at the altar of a perfectly caramelized crème brûlée and can have emotional conversations with a good gelato. But sometimes--hear me out chefs--sometimes less really is more.

After you’ve navigated a rich main course, your body might be quietly screaming, “Enough!” That’s where lighter desserts come in. A delicate poached pear, spiced ever so lightly, or a scoop of tart lemon sorbet can feel like a breath of fresh air for your palate. Even a tiny fruit tart or a selection of macarons. (And, bonus, your digestive system might actually forgive you.) 

These aren’t just “diet” desserts or sad compromises. They’re the unsung heroes of the meal. They refresh the palate, highlight the flavors of what came before, and make your diners feel, dare I say it, graceful as they leave the table, instead of waddling toward their cars, regretting their life choices.

So here’s a friendly plea: next time you design a dessert menu, think about the arc of the meal. Dessert doesn’t need to be the final battle; it can be the gentle, elegant bow that leaves everyone smiling, planning their next visit, and secretly hoping for a small scoop of something light.

Indulgence is divine, yes. But surviving a butter-laden meal, dear chefs, deserves its own medal.

* Any products in this post that are mentioned by name may have been provided to Minxeats by the manufacturer. However, all opinions belong to Minxeats. Amazon links earn me $! Please buy!

Posted on Minxeats.com.

Gluten-Free Double Chocolate Banana Bread

When the freezer rains bananas, I know it's time to make a banana bread. 

We buy bananas just about every week, eat most, but inevitably have one hanging around long enough to turn brown. I hate food waste, so I usually tuck the little fella into the freezer. There's got to be a dozen bananas in there right now, in every available crevice. Sometimes they throw themselves at me when I open the freezer door to grab an ice cube or ponder the evening's dinner possibilities. The other day, three different bananas suicided themselves, so I put them on the counter to thaw. 

When frozen bananas thaw, they become rather liquidy, which makes them perfect for smoothies. But also banana bread. Most recipes call for very ripe bananas which need to be mashed with a fork. Personally, I prefer using near-liquid banana. It doesn't need to be mashed, just stirred in, which produces sweet little pockets of soft fruit in the finished product. If you're a fan of a more homogenized texture, then by all means mash some never-frozen but overripe nanners for this recipe.

Oh yeah, the recipe. I usually put walnuts and chocolate chips in my banana bread, but I've been craving chocolate recently (I probably need more magnesium). I consulted the Google and found a chocolate chocolate banana bread recipe that was essentially Martha Stewart's non-chocolate recipe, with a couple of random tweaks. I happen to think Martha's recipe is the very best, so I consulted her web site and used her recipe, with two changes. Her recipe calls for 1 1/2 cups of AP flour, but I wanted to make this gluten-free and add cocoa powder. Cocoa is fairly similar to flour in heft and texture, so I swapped out a half cup of flour for a half cup of cocoa. The rest of the flour was replaced by oat flour. You may use any gluten free flour you wish, but I strongly suggest adding 1/4 teaspoon of xantham gum per cup of gf flour. You may leave it out, but the gum makes a big difference in the texture of the bread. Honestly, I cannot tell that I didn't use regular flour. I'm not your mother, so do as you please, but don't come crying to me afterward. The one other thing I changed was to add more sour cream. A quarter cup is good, but a half cup is better. It makes the texture outrageously moist. (Greek yogurt works here, too.)

If you make this, let me know in the comments. I'm going to go cut myself another slice to go with my coffee.

GF Double Chocolate Banana Bread

1/2 cup cocoa powder

1 cup oat flour

1/4 t xanthan gum

1 t baking soda

1/4 t kosher salt

1/2 cup butter, or dairy-free butter substitute, melted

2/3 cup sugar

2 large eggs

1/2 cup sour cream

1 t vanilla extract

3 super-ripe bananas, mashed if fresh, thawed if frozen

1 cup milk chocolate chips

1/2 cup chopped walnuts

 

Preheat oven to 350º.

Spray the inside of a 9 x 5 loaf pan with Pam or similar release spray. Borrow a tablespoon or so of the cocoa powder and sprinkle it over the Pam, shaking and banging the sides of the pan to make sure every surface is coated with both release spray and cocoa. Knock out any excess cocoa.

Combine the rest of the cocoa, oat flour, xanthan gum, baking soda, and salt and stir well with a fork to distribute ingredients. If you're fussy, you could sift it, but I don't see the need to dirty a sieve or sifter.

In a large bowl, combine the melted butter, sugar, eggs, sour cream, and vanilla. If your bananas were frozen, you can basically pour them into the bowl, otherwise, scrape in the mashed bananas and give it a good stir.

Dump the dry ingredients into the wet and stir well. You don't want any streaks of flour. Fold in chocolate chips and walnuts. 

Scrape batter into baking pan and bake for 1 hour, or until toothpick comes out clean. You might have to try a few spots, in case you stab a melted chocolate chip.

Cool in the pan on a rack for 20 minutes. Run a paring knife around the edge of the pan to loosen bread, then turn over onto the rack. Put another rack on top and flip the bread over, so the top is...on top. Allow to cool completely before slicing. You can, of course, ignore this direction, but I can't guarantee the bread won't fall apart when you slice it.

Posted on Minxeats.com.

Gluten-free Non-Dairy Chocolate Orange Cake

Most readers know that I try (and fail miserably) to follow a gluten-free diet, but have I mentioned that what I really need to stay away from is dairy? As of May 2022, I am lactose intolerant. One day I could put half and half in my coffee, and the next day I couldn't. It's hard to avoid dairy, since many commercially manufactured foods contain milk in some form (WHY?), and restaurants love to use tons of butter in everything. The best and most obvious way to keep lactose out of my body is to cook everything from scratch, which is fine, if I was into that sort of thing. Instead, I have invested in large jars of Lactaid pills, which need to be taken every 30-45 minutes if I'm eating something that might contain dairy. And as I said, it seems to be everywhere. 

I was dreaming about cake the other night (literally) and when I woke up, I decided it was time to bake one. Specifically, Nigella Lawson's clementine cake. We had a big bag of clementines, plenty of eggs, and a new bag of almond flour. It's an oddball cake in that the clementines are first boiled, then cooled, and finally plopped into a food processor for a spin. Peels, flesh, all of it. This makes for an extremely moist cake with a ton of orange-y flavor.

I've made this baby a number of times over the years, and this time I thought I'd make it a little differently. I wanted a chocolate orange cake, one that might taste like those Droste or Terry's chocolate oranges. If you've never had one, they're balls of orange-flavored chocolate made up of orange-wedge-shaped pieces, all wrapped in foil to resemble--you guessed it--an orange. I already had the orange portion of the program under control, but needed to incorporate chocolate. I did this by subbing out 1/3 cup of the almond flour for cocoa powder, and I made a non-dairy chocolate ganache for the top. Can't have too much chocolate! And to make it pretty, I decorated the cake with candied orange slices from TJ's. If you don't have those, leave the cake as is. It will be delicious no matter what.

This cake is not super sweet, so if you like 'em sugary, you might want to try a different recipe.

Chocolate Orange Cake

For the cake:

4 to 5 clementines (about 1 lb total)

1 cup plus 2 tablespoons granulated sugar

6 large eggs

2 cups ground almonds

1/3 cup cocoa powder

1 heaping teaspoon baking powder

For the ganache:

1/4 cup unsweetened non-dairy milk

1/4 cup sugar (optional)

1/2 cup non-dairy chocolate chips (I like Ghirardelli 100% Cacao Unsweetened Chocolate Chips. If you use sweetened chips, omit the sugar.)

1 teaspoon non-dairy butter substitute (I like Earth Balance original)

1/2 teaspoon vanilla bean paste

Candied orange peel or candied orange slices from Trader Joe's

To make the cake:

Put clementines in a pot with enough water to cover and bring to a boil. Turn temperature down so the water is at a hearty simmer and cook for 2 hours, adding more water if the pot looks like it's running dry. Drain and allow fruit to cool. Once the fruit is cool, tear them open, remove the stem bit from the end and any seeds.

Preheat oven to 375°F.

Place the clementines--skin, pith, and all--into the bowl of a food processor fitted with the blade. Add the sugar and puree. Add the eggs and pulse to combine. Add the almonds, cocoa, and baking powder and pulse until completely incorporated.

Line an 8-inch springform pan with a circle of parchment and coat bottom and sides of pan with butter or release spray. Pour the batter into the pan and smooth the top. Bake for 1 hour then check doneness with a toothpick. If the pick comes out with moist crumbs, it's done. If it comes out with batter on it, add more time. At this point, the cake might start to burn, so cover the top with a piece of foil for any remaining time in the oven.

Remove the pan from the oven and cool completely on a rack before loosening the pan sides. Move the cake to a cake plate by putting a plate on top of the cake and inverting it. Remove the pan bottom and carefully peel off the parchment. 

To make the ganache:

Put the non-dairy milk and sugar (if using) in a microwave-safe bowl. (A 2-cup Pyrex measuring cup is perfect for this.) Cook on high for 2 minutes, then stir. If the mixture hasn't yet boiled, put it back in the microwave for another 30 seconds or so. Watch so it doesn't boil over! Remove the cup from the microwave and add the chocolate chips. Stir to melt chocolate. Once the chocolate is nearly all melted, add the butter substitute and the vanilla bean paste. Stir until smooth. 

Ganache will thicken as it cools. When it reaches a consistency that is thick but still pourable, pour over the top of the cooled cake. Use an offset spatula to smooth out the top. Decorate with candied orange peel or slices.

Serves 8.

* Any products in this post that are mentioned by name may have been provided to Minxeats by the manufacturer. However, all opinions belong to Minxeats. Amazon links earn me $! Please buy!

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Pumpkin Recipes, With and Without Spice

Click image if you're basic.

I'd have my Basic White Girl card taken away if there weren't at least a dozen pumpkin recipes on the blog. No chance of that happening, as there are eighteen recipes (so far) using pumpkin as a main ingredient. Most of the recipes are sweet, of course, but a couple are savory. Pumpkin is a vegetable, after all. I am rather surprised that I don't have a recipe for pumpkin hummus here somewhere--a situation that will be rectified very soon. I recently found a yummy-sounding one on the Interwebs but haven't had a chance to whip it up. 

I've made more variations on pumpkin cheesecake (3) than anything else. There are also muffins, cake, cupcakes, breakfast items, plus soup and risotto. One thing I noticed while searching for pumpkin recipes: the older posts have some pretty horrible photography! Going from small digital camera to iPhone camera has made a big difference in the quality of my images. Good lighting makes an impact as well. So this post is recipe-heavy and photo-light. 

Curried Pumpkin Soup This recipe is stupid-simple. 

Gluten-Free Pumpkin Chai Muffins This is clearly one of my more recent recipes, as I eat mostly gluten-free these days. Plus I'm hoping that the term will attract new followers to the blog....

mini pumpkin cheesecakes

Mini Pumpkin Cheesecakes Specialty pan alert! You need two 4-inch springform pans for this recipe. I suppose one 6" pan will do, but the cheesecake will need to bake for a bit more time. Don't ask how long. It's in your hands now.

Pumpkin Bread Just to be different, I added a bit of curry powder. 

Pumpkin Butter Don't spend $5 on a jar of pre-made pumpkin butter! Make it yourself for much less.

Pumpkin Cheesecake This is for a full-sized cheesecake to serve to family and friends. 

Pumpkin Cheesecake Brownies Rather than the usual cream cheese-swirled brownie, these are topped with a thick layer of pumpkin cheesecake. 

Pumpkin Cornbread There's actually no good reason to add pumpkin to cornbread. But I did it anyway.

Pumpkin Cupcakes Rich and moist, these cupcakes taste better after a day or two.

Pumpkin Fruitcake Don't be afraid--this is more pumpkin bread with dried fruits and nuts than actual fruitcake. Real fruit, not those awful red and green plasticized cherries.

Pumpkin Gingerbread Trifle is a great dish for the upcoming Winter holidays. Make it easy on yourself and use boxed gingerbread and pudding mixes.

Pumpkin Oatmeal sure is cozy on a fall morning!

Pumpkin Pancakes are too!

"pumpkin" pie made with squash

"Pumpkin" Pie There are quotes around the word "pumpkin" because this recipe calls for fresh squash. Pretty much all canned pumpkin is actually butternut squash, and it can be substituted for the other squashes in this recipe. 

Pumpkin Risotto There are no "pumpkin spice" spices in this recipe!

Pumpkin Seed Brittle only uses the seeds, not the flesh. My late Dad said it was "like heaven" in his mouth. 

Pumpkin Spice Cake This is like a blondie, only pumpkin-spicier.

Pumpkin Waffles with Apple Compote Do make the compote! 

* Any products in this post that are mentioned by name may have been provided to Minxeats by the manufacturer. However, all opinions belong to Minxeats. Amazon links earn me $! Please buy!

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Appreciating What We Have

Today is Memorial Day, and I know many of you are griping that you cannot celebrate the holiday the way you would like. There will be no large family gatherings (at least, there shouldn't be) or neighborhood block parties (again, there shouldn't be), or gatherings of clustered maskless folks in enclosed spaces (once more--there shouldn't be). Honestly, I don't care what your state tells you is ok, it's most likely not. (I welcome you to come back in 6 weeks if there hasn't been a spike of cases and tell me I was wrong.)

This whole situation has been going on for ten weeks now, and honestly I have gotten pretty used to spending 80% of my time in my own dining room with no company other than my husband and our dog. Last week, however, we had the opportunity to get out of the house and socialize. It was Dara's birthday, and she invited friends to come over and sit on her lawn, 6'+ away from each other, to enjoy cake and company. We were to arrive in shifts, and fortunately our shift overlapped with that of other friends, the Keefers, whom we have not seen at all in 2020. We spent a good hour or more discussing life after Covid, the current season of Top Chef, and the local restaurant industry. I haven't had such a good time in, well, at least 10 weeks! And I realized that such simple pleasures--sitting in the sun, talking with friends--are among the most important things in life. Not haircuts and manicures or going to bars.

Stay well, readers. See you on Thursday for our next recap.

* Any products in this post that are mentioned by name may have been provided to Minxeats by the manufacturer. However, all opinions belong to Minxeats. Amazon links earn me $! Please buy!

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Cypriana

When Cypriana was downtown, sprinkled here and there in office buildings and in the University of Maryland hospital, they specialized in things like kebabs and salads. I loved their Greek salad, the typical inauthentic pile of lettuce with cucumbers and tomatoes, topped with a generous amount of feta cheese and a cup of creamy tarragon dressing on the side. The dressing really made it.

A few years back, they closed their fast casual restaurants and opened a full-service place in the Broadview apartments, former home to the venerable French restaurant Jeannier's, among others. I'm not sure why we put off going for so long, but this spring we finally paid Cypriana a visit. It was a pleasant evening, so we asked to sit on the patio, which may or may not have been a good idea. The restaurant's patio is divided into two areas, one more loungy, and the other for dining. After we were seated, we noticed a lot of musical tables and chairs being played by a trio of people who were apparently hosting a graduation party. They never seemed particularly satisfied with the number of tables pushed together or the chairs arranged around them, and the whole thing got uncomfortably close to where we were seated. As in, perhaps one of us would get smacked with a heavy metal table or chair. Fortunately, seating arrangements were resolved before I felt we had to move out of the way.

But then the kids happened.

There must have been a large party inside, one with many small children. Many small children who decided to run around outside on the patio. A patio that is actually a large balcony. Had any of those children been curious enough to climb the short wall to see what was on the other side of the balcony (a drop into a courtyard), there may have been a tragedy. One parent was outside briefly, sitting on a chair and playing with his phone while the children ran in and out of not only the dining room entrance, but also the ramp into the kitchen entrance. Bad enough they caused a ruckus on the lounge section of the patio, but they also decided to run around in the increasingly more crowded dining section, hiding behind tables and running around servers with full trays of food.

And nobody said a word to anyone.

I'm not sure why half a dozen kindergartners were allowed to run around largely unsupervised in a restaurant. I don't understand why parents cannot parent their children.

Anyway...Cypriana is lucky that neither of us got belted by a chair or had food spilled on us by a waiter who had to avoid rugrats. And the food was good.

We mostly stuck with mezzedes, small plates. We tried the spinach and feta flatbread, which was crispy and melty and nicely cheesy.

Also the beef- and lamb-stuffed grape leaves. They were much larger than normal grape leaves, and really very nice, with flavorful filling and tender leaves. They were supposed to come with a yogurt sauce that our waiter forgot, promised to bring, but never did. I suppose they didn't need it.

The sesame roasted feta was drizzled with honey and served with fresh hot pita. I love baked cheese, and could have eaten a few more slabs of this stuff.

We also had the "Mousaka of Cypress," a small and unphotogenic ramekin with layers of eggplant, zucchini, potato, and a beef and lamb mixture, covered in a dreamy bechamel. It was quite possibly the best moussaka I have ever had.

We tried one entree dish of tender grilled octopus served with a cucumber salad (called tabouli on the menu) and some red quinoa, which brought nothing to the plate. The octopus itself was very nice. I tried dipping it in the container of what appeared to be plain, unseasoned, red wine vinegar, and felt that it was fine on its own.

We couldn't pass on dessert, especially when pistachio sea salt baklava was on offer. Made as individual pieces rather than in a large pan, it made for a much neater serving, though it was a bit difficult to cut into bite-sized pieces. The flavor was very good though.

The menu lists the chocolate rose cake as "layers of dark chocolate cake with rich Belgian chocolate and edible roses with a semi-sweet fudge icing." I figured the "edible roses" were made of frosting, but no, there was a definite rose flavor to the cake, and pulverized rose petal dust garnished the plate. I never would pair chocolate with rose, and while it worked here, I still probably won't pair those two strong flavors. The cake was otherwise moist and quite good.

I have mixed feelings about Cypriana. While by and large the food we had was good, the service was meh (still waiting on that yogurt sauce!) and the rugrat disturbance was pretty inexcusable. I can perhaps understand that management might not have wanted to upset their customers by asking them to mind their own brats (Really? I actually do not understand it at all.) but why sacrifice the enjoyment of the other diners?

Cypriana
105 W 39th Street
Baltimore, MD 21210

* Any products in this post that are mentioned by name may have been provided to Minxeats by the manufacturer. However, all opinions belong to Minxeats. Amazon links earn me $! Please buy!

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Flashback Friday - Pina Colada Cake

This post originally appeared on Minxeats.com on June 25, 2009.
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When I posted my pineapple upside-down cake photos on Facebook, a friend responded with a recipe for a cake that contained crushed pineapple. I decided to make the cake for Father's Day, so added a rum glaze and flaked coconut. Dad loves a good pina colada.


Pina Colada Cake

Cake
1 ­ 20 oz can crushed pineapple and juice
2 c all-purpose flour
2 c sugar
1 c coconut
2 eggs, beaten
2 t vanilla
2 t baking soda

Rum Glaze
1/4 lb. butter
1/4 c. water
1 c. white sugar
1/2 c. rum

Preheat oven to 350F. Place ingredients in large bowl and mix by hand until thoroughly blended. Pour into a well-greased bundt pan. Bake 30-40 minutes.

Prepare Glaze: Melt butter in saucepan. Stir in water and sugar. Boil 5 minutes (stirring constantly). Remove from heat and stir in rum. Drizzle glaze over cake. Allow time for cake to absorb glaze. Repeat until glaze is all gone.

---

The cake was a big hit. It was moist, despite not having any fat in addition to that in the egg yolks. It wasn't light and fluffy, of course, but somewhat dense. I wished the coconut flavor was more pronounced, so might try this again, removing the pineapple juice and substituting coconut milk.

Posted on Minxeats.com.

Clementine Cake

I love oranges, particularly sweet navals, but so often they have more pith than flesh. What really irritates me is when the orange flesh is dried out. Those babies are expensive, and I hate feeling like I wasted my money. So when those small crates of sweet, easy-to-peel, clementines started appearing in supermarkets, I was happy that I could get my citrus fix consistently and at a somewhat more reasonable price. At least I could back in the 90s and early 00s. Nowadays, the little fruits, while still easy to peel, are often tart and have a few pips. The only routinely sweet ones I've found are the "Cuties" brand, which are more expensive than the rest. I'm guessing that when the demand for these little guys increased, producers started cutting corners or obtaining fruit from countries with less-than-optimal growing conditions or practices. The only consistency now seems to be in my disappointment.

But clementines aren't completely useless. They make a pretty great little cake, one that is super moist, keeps fairly well, and is absolutely gluten-free, though you would never know that from the flavor and texture.

I've made this cake many times over the years, using a recipe from Nigella Lawson's How to Eat. The recipe below has the same proportions as the one in her book, but the photos are from a cake half the size. Why? Because I only had 3 eggs available to me, and the recipe calls for 6. I also was pretty sure that while I seemed to have quite a lot of almond flour, it was surely not 2 1/3 cups. It was entirely reasonable to me to cut the recipe in half, or half-ish. And you know what? Four small clementines, 3 eggs, 1 cup almond flour, 1/2 cup sugar, and 1 heaping teaspoon of baking powder made a fine cake in a 7" round springform pan.

Nigella's Clementine Cake

4 to 5 clementines (about 1 lb total)
1 cup plus 2 tablespoons granulated sugar
6 eggs
2 1/3 cups ground almonds
1 heaping teaspoon baking powder

Put clementines in a pot with enough water to cover and bring to a boil. Turn temperature down so the water is at a hearty simmer and cook for 2 hours, adding more water if the pot looks like it's running dry. Drain and allow fruit to cool. Once the fruit is cool, tear them open, remove the stem bit from the end and any seeds.

Preheat oven to 375°F.

Place the clementines--skin, pith, and all--into the bowl of a food processor fitted with the blade. Add the sugar and puree. Add the eggs and pulse to combine. Add the almonds and baking powder and pulse until completely incorporated.

Line an 8-inch springform pan with a circle of parchment and coat bottom and sides of pan with butter or release spray. Pour the batter into the pan and smooth the top. Bake for 40-45 minutes then check doneness with a toothpick. If the pick comes out with moist crumbs, it's done. If it comes out with batter on it, add more time. At this point, the cake will start to get very brown, so cover the top with a piece of foil for any remaining time in the oven.

Remove the pan from the oven and cool completely on a rack. Sprinkle with powdered sugar or not. I used Trader Joe's dried and sugared lemon slices as a garnish.



Posted on Minxeats.com.

Foodie Book Review: Cake, I Love You

I wish I had more time to bake, because I would make every single one of the cakes in Jill O'Connor's new book, Cake, I Love You: Decadent, Delectable, and Do-able Recipes. Every. Single. One.

My birthday was a week ago, and I chose a recipe from Cake, I Love You as my special cake. I was sick, so Mr Minx put it together for me and did a smashing job. It involved a brownie-like nearly-flourless chocolate cake, chocolate mousse, chocolate sauce, and candied nuts. It was everything a sick person could want on a birthday or any other day of the year. Funny thing about this recipe, though it had four separate components and involved 24-ounces of chocolate, I didn't feel that it was overly involved nor expensive to make. Oh yeah, and it had a lot of booze in it, which also made it great. The only thing missing was some boozy whipped cream to dollop on top.

I'm looking forward to trying more recipes from Cake, I Love You and might just whip a few somethings up for the various holiday parties coming up in the next month or so. In the meantime, here's the recipe for the cake shown above.

If you need to buy a holiday gift for someone who enjoys baking, I highly recommend this book.

Heartless Bastard Break-Up Cake

If broken hearts have an edible remedy, this is it—a little chocolate, a little booze, with a few crunchy bar nuts thrown in for good measure. The cake is easy to prepare, but baking it is absorbing enough to distract from weightier woes. You can use the combination of spirits I suggest, or just choose one or two of your favorites to make things easier. I love the texture and added zing from the bar nuts, but go ahead and skip them if the added complication causes distress.

Serves 6 to 8 (on a good day)/ Serves 1 (on a bad day)

Quickie Milk-Chocolate Mousse:
12 oz [340 g] milk chocolate, finely chopped
1 cup [240 ml] heavy cream
2 Tbsp chocolate cream liqueur (such as Godiva or Mozart)
2 Tbsp bourbon, dark rum, or Irish whiskey

Boozy Chocolate Sauce:
3 to 4 Tbsp sugar
1/3 cup [80 ml] brewed coffee
2 Tbsp unsalted butter
6 oz [170 g] coarsely chopped semisweet chocolate, or chocolate chips (56 % to 62 %
cacao)
1 Tbsp Irish whiskey
1 Tbsp dark rum
1 Tbsp chocolate cream liqueur (such as Godiva or Mozart )

Sweet-and- Spicy Bar Nuts:
1 cup [140 g] unsalted fancy mixed nuts (any mixture of pecan halves, whole almonds,
cashews, and pistachios)
1 Tbsp salted butter, melted
2 Tbsp sugar
1/8 tsp cayenne pepper
1 Tbsp Irish whiskey or bourbon
1/4 tsp Maldon sea salt for sprinkling

Cake Batter:
6 oz [170 g] coarsely chopped dark chocolate (60% to 62% cacao)
3/4 cup [165 g] unsalted butter
3/4 cup [150 g] sugar
3 eggs, separated, plus 1 egg yolk
1 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
3 Tbsp Irish whiskey or dark rum, or a combination
1/3 cup [45 g] all-purpose flour
1/2 tsp fine sea salt

To make the chocolate mousse: Place the chopped milk chocolate in a medium bowl. In a medium saucepan over medium-high heat, warm the cream until very hot and small bubbles start to form around the edges of the pan. Just before the cream comes to a boil, pour it over the milk chocolate. Let the mixture sit for 1 minute for the chocolate to soften, then add the chocolate liqueur and bourbon and whisk until smooth. Cover loosely with plastic wrap and refrigerate until very cold, at least 2 or 3 hours or up to overnight. If you don’t want to wait, pop the chocolate cream into the freezer for 10 to 15 minutes, stirring occasionally, just until very cold (but not frozen.). While the chocolate cream is chilling, make the Boozy Chocolate Sauce, the bar nuts, and the cake.

To make the sauce: Combine the sugar, coffee, and butter in a medium saucepan over medium-high heat. Stir until the sugar dissolves and the butter melts. Reduce the heat to low and add the chocolate, stirring constantly until the chocolate melts and the mixture is smooth. Stir in the whiskey, dark rum, and chocolate liqueur and whisk until smooth. Remove from heat and set aside to cool slightly to room temperature.

To make the bar nuts: Position a rack in the center of the oven. Preheat the oven to 350°F [180°C].

In a medium bowl, toss together the nuts, melted butter, sugar, cayenne, and whiskey. Spread in a single layer on a rimmed baking sheet and toast in the oven for 6 to 8 minutes, stirring halfway through. Remove the nuts from the oven and transfer to a medium bowl. Crush the Maldon Salt with your fingertips, sprinkle over the nuts, and toss to combine.

To make the cake: Position a rack in the center of the oven. Preheat the oven to 325°F [165°C]. Coat a 9-in [23-cm] round or square cake pan with nonstick cooking spray and line the bottom with parchment paper.

In a microwave-safe bowl, combine the chocolate, butter, and sugar. Heat on high for 1 minute. Stir, return the bowl to the microwave, and heat on high for 1 minute longer. Stir until the chocolate and butter are completely melted and the mixture is smooth. Whisk the egg yolks, one at a time, into the warm chocolate mixture. Stir in the vanilla and bourbon. Sift the flour and fine sea salt into the chocolate mixture and gently fold in by hand, using a rubber or silicone spatula, just until smooth.

Place the egg whites in the medium bowl. With an electric hand mixer set on low speed, beat the egg whites until they are opaque and frothy. Increase the mixer to medium-high speed and beat until they form soft, fluffy peaks and triple in volume, 2 to 3 minutes. With a rubber or silicone spatula, fold one-third of the whites into the chocolate batter to lighten it, and then gently fold in the remaining egg whites, taking care not to deflate them. Scrape the batter into the prepared pan, and spread evenly with a spatula.

Bake for 30 to 35 minutes, until a wooden skewer inserted into the center of the cake comes out with moist, fudgy crumbs clinging to it.

To finish the cake: Transfer the cake pan to a wire rack and let cool for 15 minutes. Invert the cake onto a serving plate, peel off the parchment paper, and let cool completely. The cake may sink slightly in the center.

Right before serving, whip the chilled chocolate mousse with an electric mixer set on low speed just until it holds soft peaks. Spoon the mousse over the top of the chocolate cake, mounding it in the center. Drizzle with the Boozy Chocolate Sauce, and sprinkle with a few coarsely chopped sweet-and- spicy bar nuts. Devour.

Can’t finish it all by yourself? Refrigerate any remaining cake for up to 2 days.

* Any products in this post that are mentioned by name may have been provided to Minxeats by the manufacturer. However, all opinions belong to Minxeats. Amazon links earn me $! Please buy!



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Chocolate Strawberry Naked Cake

Sometimes I am too ambitious for my own good. I've never been much of a baker, excepting the occasional tray of brownies and cookies at Christmastime. There's also the annual cake for Mr Minx's birthday, but that's usually a simple chocolate bundt. This year, I wanted to do something fancier. I was desperate to make a "naked cake," a cake with exposed layers, popularized by Christina Tosi at NY's Milk Bar. I've seen a lot of them on Instagram, and they look so cool. Also, they didn't seem all that difficult to make. Frosting the sides of the cake always seemed like the most fidgety part, and making a cake naked eliminates that whole messy ordeal.

My idea was to use the same super moist recipe that I use for the bundt cake, with the addition of roasted strawberries, and a simple stabilized whipped cream frosting. It would be like a strawberry shortcake, only not short and with the added goodness of chocolate.

I didn't want to attempt to cut round cake layers in half horizontally, pretty sure that would be a disaster. Instead, I made several flat rectangular cakes in a jelly roll pan and cut them into rounds. That ended up looking a bit sloppy. Perhaps my knife wasn't sharp enough, or the cake recipe I used was too moist. In any case, the somewhat jagged layers got stacked between pieces of waxed paper and spent the night in a cake carrier until I was able to assemble it the next day. It would have been too much to try to get it all done on Saturday morning before our annual afternoon birthday crab feast guest arrived.

The roasted strawberry idea I got from a foodie newsletter. The recipe in the newsletter was actually for oven-dried berries, but I liked the idea of cooking strawberries in the oven until they got soft and gave up a lot of liquid. Some of that liquid became a subtle flavoring for the whipped cream frosting that I stabilized with gelatin so it would last longer and not weep all over the cake.

I had used up all the strawberries in the roasting process but wanted to top the cake with something besides whipped cream. Birthday candles were out of the question (as was singing "Happy Birthday"), but I remembered we had a bag of Crunchies freeze-dried strawberries that the company sent me to taste after the Fancy Food Show. I had been nibbling them on their own, but felt they would be the perfect garnish for this cake and a good counterpoint to the squishy roasted berries between the layers. They stood up like sweet stalagmites, adding height as well as color and flavor. They softened a bit as the cake stood, but they never sagged, and I kinda liked the third strawberry texture in the mix.

Crunchies are non-GMO, gluten-free, vegan, kosher, and halal and contain no added sugar or artificial flavors. They are just freeze-dried fruit, pure and simple. I also love the Crunchies mango snacks and am contemplating making a similar cake, with yellow cake and mango filling, so I can use them as a garnish, too. That is, if we don't just eat it all straight out of the bag. :)

For someone who didn't really know what she was doing, I did a pretty decent job. Though the cake isn't the most beautiful thing in the world, it tasted so so good. ::::patting self on back:::::

Chocolate Strawberry Layer Cake

For the roasted strawberries:
2 pounds strawberries, hulled and halved, quartered if large
1/4 cup sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

For the chocolate cake:
1 cup unsalted butter
1/3 cup cocoa powder
1 teaspoon kosher salt
2 tablespoons liqueur of your choice (I used Kahlua)
2 cups all-purpose flour
1 3/4 cups granulated sugar
1 1/2 teaspoons baking soda
2 large eggs
1 cup sour cream
2 teaspoons vanilla

For the frosting:
2 teaspoons unflavored gelatine
2 cups heavy cream
1/4 cup confectioner's sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Garnish:
Crunchies freeze-dried strawberries

To make the strawberries: Preheat the oven to 400°F.

Toss the strawberries with the sugar, then with the vanilla. (Don't put the vanilla on the sugar to cut corners; it will just make the sugar clump up and make it hard to toss with the strawberries. No, I did not learn that through experience.) Spread in one layer on a parchment-lined baking sheet. Roast for 25-30 minutes, until strawbs are soft and there's lots of yummy juice on the baking sheet. Allow to cool at room temperature before scraping into a covered container and refrigerating until completely cooled.

To make the cake: Preheat oven to 350°F. Place a layer of parchment in a jelly-roll pan and grease it lightly with butter.

Combine the butter, cocoa, salt, and 1 cup of tap water in a saucepan over medium heat. Cook only until butter is melted and mixture is completely combined. Stir in the liqueur.

Place the flour, sugar, and baking soda in a large bowl. Pour in the chocolate butter mixture in 2 or three batches, stirring between each to combine. Beat the eggs with the sour cream and vanilla and stir into the flour mixture. Whisk until fully incorporated.

Here's the tricky part. Depending on the size of your pan, ladle in enough batter to cover the parchment entirely and be no more than 1/2 inch deep. Bake for enough time that the cake springs back when you touch it. I used a 9" x 13" jelly roll pan, which made three cakes with the amount of batter specified, each baking from 13-15 minutes (the first cake took longer and the last cake took less time). An 12" x 17" pan or thereabouts would probably take 18-20 minutes, so start checking at the 16 or 17 minute mark. Just looking at it should tell you if the middle is wet or cooked through. Once your cake or cakes are baked, allow them to cool in the pan for a few minutes. Loosen the edge of the cake with a knife and turn out onto a rack to cool completely. You should peel off the parchment while the cake is still warm.

Once the cakes are cool you can cut them. If you want to make it really easy on yourself, cut each cake in half and make a square layer cake. (Next time, that's what I'm doing!) But if you want a round cake, use a 7" or 8" round template as a guide. Place each cooled cake on a cutting board large enough to hold them, or right on your counter or table if that's easiest. Using the template and a sharp knife, cut your circles. Lift them away with a large spatula and put them on parchment or waxed paper until you're finished cutting. The scraps can be eaten as a cook's treat, or put them in a plastic bag and freeze them for when you're having a cake craving.

To make the frosting: Remove 3-4 tablespoons of the strawberry roasting liquid to a bowl. Sprinkle the gelatin over the liquid and allow to rest for several minutes until set. If your strawberries didn't give off much liquid for some reason (perhaps because you ate it as you scraped it off the pan), use a few tablespoons of water instead.

Place the cream, sugar, and vanilla in the bowl of a stand mixer (or a regular bowl, if you're using a hand mixer) and beat for a minute or so. Put the gelatin in the microwave for about 10 seconds to liquify (it might take 15 seconds). Stir well so there are no clumps of gelatin, and with the mixer running on a fairly low speed, v e r y slowly drizzle it into the cream, beating all the time. Once incorporated, turn the mixer speed up and beat until medium peaks form. Don't overbeat, or you'll have butter. Scrape the cream into a piping bag fitted with a large star tip, or the tip of your choice.

To assemble the cake: Place a round of cake onto a cardboard cake round or on an aluminum-foil covered springform or tart pan bottom of appropriate size. Eyeball the strawberries. Do the pieces seem too big? Then chop them up a bit. Maybe you should just chop them up a bit anyway. Spread an even layer of strawberry pieces + some of the cooking liquid on the cake. Pipe on a layer of the cream, then top with another cake layer. Add another layer of cream, then another layer of cake. Top this third layer of cake with more strawberries and more cream. (You won't use all the strawberries. Eat them with ice cream or with a spoon.) Add the fourth layer of cake and pipe the frosting decoratively on top. Refrigerate cake until ready to serve.

Garnish with freeze dried strawberry pieces before serving.

* Any products in this post that are mentioned by name may have been provided to Minxeats by the manufacturer. However, all opinions belong to Minxeats. Amazon links earn me $! Please buy!



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Peach Upside-Down Cake

One of Baltimore's old-fashioned bakery specialties is a yeast-raised cake topped with sliced peaches. My Mom would buy slabs of peach cake often in the summer months; she and Grandma seemed to enjoy it quite a bit. I, on the other hand, was not a fan. The cake was too bread-like and the moist peaches created a slime-like ooze that coated the top of the bread. Bleh. But I had extra peaches and Mr Minx wasn't interested in peach pie. I briefly considered making a peach tart tatin when I recalled an image I had seen on Instagram earlier in the week. Peach upside-down cake.

I used a no-fuss recipe for pineapple upside-down cake that I had made a few times in the past, I just swapped peaches for the pineapples, skipped the maraschinos, and used brown sugar in place of the toffee chips. A little cinnamon sprinkled over the peaches added a little sweet spice.

It's terrific for dessert, or with coffee for breakfast or a snack.

Peach Upside-Down Cake (adapted from Tate's Bake Shop: Baking for Friends)

3 large or 4 medium peaches
1 1/2 sticks salted butter, 4 tablespoons sliced, 8 at room temperature
1/2 cup dark brown sugar
Cinnamon
1 1/2 cups unbleached all-purpose flour
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
3/4 cup sugar
2 large eggs at room temperature
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
3/4 cup plain nonfat or low-fat Greek yogurt

Position an oven rack in the center of the oven and preheat it to 350°F.

Peel the peaches, cut in half, and remove the pit. Cut each half into thin slices and set aside.

Melt the 4 tablespoons of sliced butter and pour into in a 9" square pan. Sprinkle the brown sugar over the butter evenly. Overlap the peach slices in straight rows (three should fit nicely) and sprinkle with a bit of cinnamon. If there is any peach left over, chop it up and set aside.

In a medium bowl, whisk together the flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt. In a large bowl, beat the sugar and 8 tablespoons of room temperature butter with an electric mixer set to high speed until light and fluffy, about 3 minutes. One at a time, beat in the eggs, followed by the vanilla, scraping down the sides of the bowl as needed. With the mixer on low speed, add the flour mixture in thirds, alternating with the yogurt in 2 equal additions, mixing until just smooth after each addition and scraping down the bowl as needed. Do not overmix. Stir in the chopped peach, if there is any. Spread the batter evenly over the peaches in the pan.

Bake until the top is golden brown and a wooden toothpick inserted in the center of the cake comes out clean, about 40 minutes. Let cool in the pan for 5 minutes. Run a dinner knife around the inside of the skillet to loosen the cake. Place a serving plate over the skillet, and, using pot holders, invert the skillet and plate together to unmold the cake. Serve at room temperature.



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Date, Walnut, & Nutmeg Cake

I am not a baker, although I love eating baked goods. I also love watching the Great British Baking Show and have really been enjoying the "Master Class" addendum series with Mary Berry and Paul Hollywood demonstrating their recipes. It's actually more fun for me to watch people baking than to do it myself. In fact, the thought of making something more complicated than a bundt cake or brownies is more than a bit intimidating. How those people--amateur, home bakers--can make such incredible fantasias with meringue and gum paste and multiple layers of cake and icing is incredible to me. Also time-consuming and potentially kitchen-messing.

Sometimes I do go into the kitchen to bake, and sometimes it goes well. Normally when I cook, I alter recipes like crazy, but I can't do that with baking. Baking is science, and therefore shouldn't be messed around with because it could end badly. So I rely on cookbooks most of the time. Like The Cardamom Trail, by former British Baking Show contestant Chetna Makan. Chetna was known for using unusual flavor combinations in her baked goods, which is one of the things that endeared her to me. But she also liked to bake straight-up British favorites, like Victoria sponge and lemon drizzle cake. The recipe I've included in this post is for a cake somewhat similar to sticky toffee pudding in that it uses dates as a main ingredient. There's also a sauce component, which I have omitted, that would make this dish even more like STP. (And I would have made it, had we double cream on hand.) Without it, this cake is somewhat like a quickbread in flavor and texture, and it is lovely with a scoop of vanilla ice cream or a cup of coffee or tea.

Date, Walnut, & Nutmeg Cake (from The Cardamom Trail)
You need a kitchen scale for this one. Also, you can make your own self-raising flour by adding 1 1/2 teaspoons of baking powder and 1/4 teaspoon of salt to a cup of flour. For this recipe, you'll need about 2 cups of flour. Sift together the flour, baking powder, and salt and then measure out the 10 1/2 ounces.

4 1/2 ounces pitted dates, chopped
1 cup water
5 1/2 ounces of unsalted butter, softened, plus extra for greasing the pan
5 1/2 ounces light brown sugar
3 large eggs
1 teaspoon baking soda
10 1/2 ounces self-raising flour
1 3/4 ounces walnuts, roughly chopped
1/2 teaspoon freshly ground nutmeg

Preheat the oven to 350°F. Grease a bundt pan and set aside.

Bring dates and water to a boil in a saucepan. Reduce heat to low and simmer 10 minutes. Allow to cool.

Cream the butter and sugar until fluffy, then add the eggs one at a time, beating until each is incorporated before adding the next. Add the baking soda and the flour and mix well. Fold in the dates and any leftover liquid, the walnuts, and the nutmeg.

Scrape batter into prepared pan and bake for 30-35 minutes, until a toothpick inserted into the center of the cake comes out clean. Cool pan on a wire rack for 5 minutes before unmolding cake. Allow to cool completely before dusting with powdered sugar.



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Tea Cake

Right after Christmas I purchased a holiday tea sampler from my favorite tea purveyor, David's Tea. It's a Canadian company with a handful of outlets in the US; I hit up the Bleecker Street branch just about every time I'm in NY. It used to be that I blew all my money on perfume when I went to NY, now it's tea. I order from their web site on occasion, but only when I need enough to qualify for free shipping ($50 minimum purchase)--not very often. But after the holidays, they had so much good stuff on sale for half off, I couldn't resist buying everything. One of those things was a star-shaped box with wee 3-tablespoon tins of several of their holiday teas. I figure that while I would drink some of them, others I would use to flavor ice cream (you know I love making ice cream with tea). And one weekend afternoon, when I had some rare free time, I decided to use one in a cake.

After sniffing all of the tins three times, I settled on "Coffee Cake." The web site description reads thusly: "There’s nothing more nostalgic than a classic coffee cake. Just picture it. That dense, yellow cake, dotted with fruit and topped with crumbled brown sugar." The list of ingredients includes pineapple, cranberries, and cherry juice. Huh? I suppose Canadian coffee cake is a bit different than the version I grew up eating. I don't recall any fruit in my cakes. And while the tin of tea did have what appeared to be a tiny piece of dried pineapple, it did not smell fruity at all. More maple-y, I would say (and Mr Minx concurs). In any case, it smelled lovely and it tastes great in this cake, too.

It would be quite the coincidence if you had the same tea at home, so use whatever tea you like. Something with warm spices, like a chai, would be lovely, I think. Earl Grey would work as well, or something with hints of chocolate or berries.

The glaze is optional. A dusting of powdered sugar would be just fine.

Tea Cake

2 tablespoons of your favorite loose tea, divided use
1/2 cup whole milk, plus additional for glaze
1/2 cup butter, at room temperature
4 ounces cream cheese, at room temperature
1 cup sugar
2 eggs
1/2 cup sour cream
2 cups flour
4 teaspoons baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon vanilla
Powdered sugar
Cocoa powder

Preheat oven to 350°F. Grease and flour a standard bundt pan and set aside.

Add 1 tablespoon of the tea to the milk in a microwave safe bowl. Cover with plastic and nuke at high power 30 seconds at a time until the milk is boiling, 1 minute to 1 1/2 minutes. Set aside to steep. After about 10 minutes, strain out the tea leaves and reserve.

Grind the remaining tablespoon of tea to a fine powder in a coffee grinder. Set aside.

With a stand mixer, cream the butter, cream cheese, sugar, and the ground tea until light and fluffy. Add the eggs, one at a time, then the sour cream, beating until well blended. Combine the dry ingredients in a bowl, then add them to the butter and sugar mixture, alternating with the tea infused milk. Stir in the vanilla and, if desired, some of the tea leaves left over from soaking the milk.

Scrape the batter into the prepared pan and bake for about 35-40 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted in the cake comes out clean or with a few dry crumbs.

Make a glaze with 4 tablespoons or so of powdered sugar, and 1 tablespoon or so of cocoa. Dribble in enough milk and stir to make a thick but pourable glaze. Drizzle over cooled cake and allow to set before cutting.



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I Don't Get It

Mr Minx and I each have an Instagram account (@neal.patterson and @minxeats, respectively - please follow!) I spend a few minutes each day looking at images in my feed. Lots of random shit goes through my head when I do this and I'm going to share some of it with you. (Lucky you!)

Red velvet cake. I don't get it. Red velvet used to be chocolate cake made with non-alkalized cocoa and an acidic ingredient like buttermilk, which kept the cocoa looking somewhat red. More red-ish, as opposed to dark brown. However, most cocoas are "Dutch processed," which makes them darker, necessitating the use of artificial colorants in red velvet cake. For some reason, people prefer the red color over the chocolate flavor, and use very little cocoa, if any, and gobs of red food coloring. To me, red velvet cake just tastes sweet. Like a white cake with white icing, only scarier.

So what's the appeal? The color? Why? If one wants to eat something red, there are tomatoes and strawberries and other naturally red foods that actually taste good.

Birthday cake croissants. A well-made croissant, flaky and buttery, is perfection. Why mess with a good thing? On a related note: Why are the chocolate-filled ones, which are commonly rectangular, still called croissants (crescents)? Admittedly, they do make great Instagram fodder.

@cheatdayeats

Rainbow bagels. Why, for the love of unicorns, why? This is coming from someone who prefers plain bagels, or maybe sesame, untoasted, with butter. (Toasting is for poor-quality commercial bagels, IMHO.) If I am going to have cream cheese (which is rare), I just put on a thin schmear, not a thick slab. So a multi-colored bagel with a generous layer of funfetti cream cheese scares me.

@thebagelstore

Milkshakes with crap stuck to the outside of the glass and piled on top. A milkshake is an indulgence, one that is already pretty perfect. A slab of cake on top and do-dads of candy affixed to the outside of the glass must be for shock value. Does all that crap get eaten, or is most of it thrown out? And I can imagine that dish washers just looooove having to scrape all that frosting and candy off. (Fuck, I sound old. And I am thankful that I don't feel the need to keep up with all the insane food trends.)

Filters. Instagram has a slew of filters that do weird things to the coloration of photos. It's a good way to make a crappy photo seem intentionally bad. Many of them make the image look faded and change the colors to something less-than-natural. I can understand using them on photos of people or inanimate objects, but on food? A faded greenish purplish cheeseburger just isn't appetizing, sorry.

Obvious artificial lighting. Sure, I understand the need for additional lighting in dark restaurants, but using those ring lights that attach to cellphones provides a bit too much. When the light colored areas in a photo have absolutely no detail, the lighting is too harsh. When food throws intense black shadows, the lighting is too harsh. I am seeing it more and more on Insta, and the guilty parties are still getting oodles of likes, so they're not going to stop doing it. I just hope that over-lighting doesn't become the norm.

I have a ring light, but prefer to use it as a lamp, holding it off to the side to add just a bit more illumination. Nothing, however, beats natural light (which of course is sorely lacking during dinnertime in the fall and winter months).

Bloggers who call themselves chefs when they're not. Simple enough. If you don't lead a professional kitchen, you're not a chef. You're a cook. Nothing wrong with that. Lots of cooks work in professional kitchens! Not everyone has to be a chef. And you're not fooling anybody.



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Making it Work

I have experienced quite a bit of disappointment recently. Our latest book, Maryland's Chesapeake, which took nearly a year to research and write, hasn't yet found an audience. The recent election has me facing the five stages of grief; I fear I will be stuck in the fourth stage - depression - for most of the next few years. Friends and family have let me down. Christmas is right around the corner, and as a childless adult, I wonder why I bother celebrating it at all.

Despite all the shit, life goes on. It must. I cannot allow myself to wallow. After all, there is cheesecake to eat!

The cheesecake in question is itself the result of another recent disappointment. I had tried to recreate Starbucks' Cranberry Bliss Bars at home. They seemed like underbaked blondies with cream cheese frosting and dried cranberries - how difficult could they be? As with many things in life, more difficult than anticipated.

I did consult some other "copycat" recipes on the Internet before proceeding. While some were merely cut-and-paste copies of the same recipe offered without credit to the original author, others had little differences, like adding ginger to the frosting. I decided to go ahead with my own relatively plain concoction, adding dried, juice-sweetened, organic cranberries (which are not the bright red of Starbucks' berries) and white chocolate chips to a straightforward blondie batter (essentially Toll House cookies, without the semi-sweet chips). After 20 minutes in the oven, I realized that underbaked blondies will just be gooey blobs of dough. Baked for the proper amount of time, they'll be too chewy, and crusty on the edges to boot. In any case, I pressed on, making a cream cheese frosting while the bars were baking. It's a simple enough process - just beat a couple cups of powdered sugar into cream cheese and butter and add a touch of vanilla. Voila! - frosting.

Once the bars were cooked and cooled, I topped them with some of the frosting and a sprinkle of cranberries. And then I did a taste test.

They were diabetes in bar form.

The cookies were too sweet, the white chocolate chips were completely unnecessary, and the frosting make them even sweeter. They were a disaster. Disgusted, I scraped the frosting off the bars and into a container with the extra frosting (there was quite a bit left over) and put it in the fridge. The scraped bars were still too sweet, but we managed to finish them off. But lesson learned: never again will I put white chocolate chips into an already sugar-laden bar cookie (unless I am making these).

I wasn't in the mood/didn't have time to make a cake for the cream cheese frosting, which languished in the fridge for an entire week, unloved and getting in the way. However, I did realize that it was just a couple ingredients away from a cheesecake batter. So the following weekend I pulled it out of the fridge, whisked in eggs, more vanilla, a bit of lemon, and some milk. We had blueberries, so I tossed in a handful of those as well. While it was in the oven, I made a little blueberry sauce for the top.

Damn if they weren't just fine. More custardy than cheesy, which is the way I prefer my cheesecake, they were surprisingly not too sweet, considering the source material.

I guess you want a recipe. It's kinda hard to give one, but cheesecake is one of those baked goods that isn't an absolute science, so just make it work, like I did.

Blueberry Cheesecake
I used three 4-inch springform pans and the maximum amount of crust materials. If you want thinner cheesecakes, or just like round numbers, use four pans.

1 to 1 1/2 cups graham cracker crumbs
4 to 6 tablespoons salted butter, melted
1 1/2 cups homemade cream cheese frosting
2 large eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 tablespoon lemon zest
Pinch salt
1/4 to 1/2 cup milk
Blueberries
Sugar

Preheat oven to 350°F.

Combine the crumbs and butter in a bowl until crumbs are well-coated. Press firmly into three or four 4-inch mini springform pans so they cover the bottom and go up the sides a bit. Bake for 10 minutes. Remove to a cooling rack.

Put the frosting in a large bowl. Whisk in the eggs, vanilla, lemon, a pinch of salt, and enough milk to make a pancake-batter consistency. Toss in a handful of blueberries, if you're so inclined, but they're not absolutely necessary. Spoon batter into pre-baked crusts and bake until puffed and set (they may jiggle a wee bit in the centers, but shouldn't be wet), 30-35 minutes.

Cool cheesecakes on a rack. After about 15 minutes, use a sharp knife to loosen them from the sides of the pan, then gently remove the pan sides.

While cheesecakes are cooling, make the topping. Add a couple handfuls of blueberries to a saucepan with about 1/4 cup of granulated sugar. Add a pinch of salt and some lemon and/or cinnamon, if desired. Cook over medium heat until thickened, 15-20 minutes. Allow to cool before spooning over cooled cheesecakes.

Serves 6.



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Happy Anniversary to Us

We've been blogging here at Minxeats for 11 years, but Mr Minx and I have been married for 16. Happy Anniversary to us!

(Cake by Patisserie Poupon)



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Flashback Friday - Grub Street Diet

My diet is pretty boring.

--Kathy

This post was originally published on April 24, 2013.
------------------
Grub Street Diet

One of my favorite features of the New York Magazine Web site is the "Grub Street Diet." Every week, some NY-based celebrity (actor, musician, director, media mogul, etc.) is asked to keep track of everything he or she eats during the week and submit it to the magazine in essay format. Some folks have an interesting life but a boring diet, and with some others it's vice versa.

Recently, Mr Minx and I found ourselves eating in restaurants a lot more than usual, which made me think of the Grub Street Diet. We're in the "interesting diet, boring life" category, as you'll see.

Monday, April 15
Monday is usually Panera day, and my regular order is a large coffee and a breakfast sandwich. I've been stuck on their Mediterranean egg white, which has pesto, spinach, cheddar, and roasted tomatoes on ciabatta. It's quite a tasty combo - love the roasted tomatoes - and plenty filling to satiate me until lunch.

Around 1pm, lunch was a Voskos exotic fig non-fat Greek yogurt. It tasted ok, but the fig seeds made it unpleasantly crunchy.

Mr Minx always has dinner in the works when I get home from work. This evening, he was in the process of making a day-glo yellow Curry of Indeterminate Origin from a recipe he found on teh Innernets. He insisted it was supposed to be a Thai-style curry, but it looked Indian. Smelled Indian, too. In any case, it was brightly colored and slightly sweet and went nicely with a big pile of basmati rice. It also used up the block of super-duper-firm tofu we picked up at Trader Joe's a few weeks ago that was on the verge of expiration.

Tuesday, April 16
Today, I went to Au Bon Pain for my coffee. I like iced coffee when the weather is warm. ABP only offers the caffeinated stuff, so I make my own by overfilling my cup with ice and mixing hot decaf and their Irish cream flavor half and half (their hazelnut is rather flavorless) with some milk. Their large iced drinks are so huge, I end up finishing it with lunch. But first, breakfast, which is a boring cup of Muller FruitUp yogurt in the Peach Passionfruit flavor. It's tasty enough, I suppose, though the fruity part on the top is a bit gelatinous. And now that I've gone to look for the nutrition label online, I've decided that I can no longer eat this particular yogurt. Why? Because it contains tilapia. Yes, I realize that is a fish, but I wonder if Muller knows that?

I was hoping that the UMB farmers' market would have started up already so I can get my summertime fix of two tacos from Ruben's Mexican Food. Instead, I ate the lunch I brought, which was home-made sweet potato hummus with baby carrots and sweet potato tortilla chips.

Mr Minx picked me up from work today. When I asked what he wanted to do for dinner, he suggested we could eat the leftover pasta from Friday. Except for the tilapia in my yogurt this morning, I hadn't eaten meat since Saturday, so really wasn't in the mood for that particular pasta, which had a vegetarian goat-cheese-and-tomato sauce. Mr Minx then suggested we go to Burger Brothers, which at that point on our ride was about a block away, so that's what we did. The first time we ate there, the burgers and fries both were super-salty. This time, the saltiness of my cheeseburger with bleu cheese, pickles, and tomato was my own damn fault, since bleu cheese is salty, but it wasn't anything like the first time. The fries were pretty good, too.

Wednesday, April 17
On Wednesday, I took the day off work so we could get a bunch of errands done. Breakfast was a bowl of cereal - a handful of Honey Bunches of Oats to finish off the box, and another handful of Mini-Wheats, topped with 2% milk.

Squire's everything pizza
We then went to Home Depot to pick up stuff for our new vegetable garden, made a trip to the storage locker to pick up some furniture, including a much-needed office chair. We had been using one of my Dad's old chairs from probably the late 80s. It was so wonky that after sitting in it for more than ten minutes we found ourselves sliding so far forward our knees were in danger of hitting the ground. That one was disposed of in a quick trip to the dump. We had borrowed my brother-in-law's truck, so after returning that to him, we visited with my mother-in-law who lives in the same area. By the time 3pm rolled around, our stomachs were growling and Mom suggested we order a pizza from Squire's, which we did. Almost nothing satisfies a ravenous appetite more than one of their hearty "everything" pizzas topped with pepperoni, sausage, mushrooms, and meat sauce. I was a pig and ate three slices, but other than the cereal, didn't eat anything else all day.

Thursday, April 17
I was home on Thursday, too, and after a breakfast of toasted Panera honey wheat bread topped with a bit of Richard Blais's recipe for pimento cheese (post on that coming soon!), I decided to tackle a recipe from a cookbook that I received for review. The pineapple upside-down cake from Tate's Bake Shop: Baking for Friends turned out extremely well. Except for the part when the caramel oozed up the side of the pan and out onto the bottom of my oven. Luckily, it was lined with a sheet of foil that caught the now-burning and smoking caramel, and I quickly whipped it out and replaced it with a fresh sheet, all without: 1) burning myself; 2) causing the cake to fall.

No lunch again today because we planned to have dinner with my brother at Birroteca. He's been threatening to move out of town and has been trying to eat at as many of the restaurants I've recommended as possible. Earlier in the year, Mr Minx and I had a terrific meal at Birroteca with our friend Melinda, but it was mostly vegetarian in nature. This time, we ordered dishes fit for a carnivore (and a post about that meal will be forthcoming). We again ate the calamari alla plancha because it's so freakin' good, but we also tried the meatballs, the duck duck goose pizza, and the Thursday special of Sicilian steak.

Friday, April 18
I was back to work today and had an Oikos Café Latte yogurt for breakfast. No fish in that yogurt, but it does have "black carrot" juice for color. Huh? It was really good - I'll buy this one again. Lunch was leftover hummus from Tuesday with more baby carrots.

For dinner, we had the leftover pasta that we eschewed on Tuesday, beefed up (literally) with some of the steak left over from Birroteca. We try to be really good about eating all of our leftovers, whether they come from meals eaten at home or in restaurants. There's too much waste in this country as it is.

Four days a week, we eat nothing between dinner and bedtime, but on the weekends, we indulge in a bit of ice cream. Tonight we had it with some of the pineapple upside-down cake from Thursday.

Saturday, April 19
Breakfast was leftover black bean enchiladas from last Sunday's dinner, topped with a fried egg. We need the protein for the day ahead.

For the past three Saturdays, we've been attempting to downsize our storage locker. This week, we made still more progress before calling it quits and going home to wash up a bit. Honestly, I can deal with dust and grime for only so long before my dirty hands trigger my semi-compulsive need to wash them.

After washing up, we decided to have dinner at Earth, Wood, & Fire. The last time we were there, I fell in love with their coal-fired chicken wings. They're perfectly cooked, tender and juicy, with a nice crisp skin with patches of char and a light smack of cumin. I had some of those with a small arugula salad with bleu cheese and seedless grapes.

Late night dessert was a bowl of ice cream with pineapple upside-down cake.

Sunday, April 20
The original plan was to meet my brother and Dad at the Nautilus diner for breakfast. Mr Minx and my brother were then going to head down to the Orioles game and Dad would drive me home. But Dad wasn't feeling well, so I stayed home with the dog. While the boys ate omelettes and bacon, I made myself a sandwich with pancetta, a fried egg, and a spoonful of Blais' pimento cheese on toasted rye. While the Nautilus is fine and dandy, I dare say I probably got the better end of the breakfast deal.

After taking quite the long walk with the dog in order to obtain one of those horrible "e-collar" thingies so he won't scratch his eyes out (he has terrible hay fever), I spent the afternoon reading cookbooks before heading to the kitchen to work on dinner. I wasn't sure if the boys would be up for dinner after the game, but I made enough for several people anyway - red-braised chicken thighs, smashed marinated radishes (both from Fuchsia Dunlop's latest Chinese cookbook) and some oven-roasted asparagus with sliced garlic. I fixed a "beauty plate" for photographing, then ate that as my dinner, along with the lion's share of asparagus.

We finished up our ice cream stash with more cake before hitting the sack a bit earlier than usual.

See. Boring. And long-winded, to boot.



Posted on Minxeats.com.