Shrimp Dip

I like to make dips, so much so that I think my next cookbook might be all about them. Why do I like them so much? Besides the obvious deliciousness factor, dips are versatile. Though some are specifically meant to be eaten at room temperature or cold, many can also be heated until bubbly and golden. Some can also be re-purposed as a sauce for pasta (like the corn dip in this pasta casserole) or a sandwich component (try crab dip on a hot dog). If the dip is hearty enough, it can be dinner (see: fondue).

When we received samples of Farmer's Pantry Cornbread Crisps, I determined that they needed a dip. Well, not really--they are perfectly delicious on their own. The jalapeno flavor is especially tasty, and it does indeed have a peppery kick. I found myself eating them by the handful even before the dip came out of the oven. By that time, I was getting full, so the dip became my dinner. (Mr Minx's too, even if he didn't eat half a bag of Crisps before dinnertime).

The dip is full of chunks of shrimp and artichokes, with lots of cheese and a few sliced almonds scattered on top for crunch. It's one of those things that would also work really great as a topping for chicken breast fillets or pasta, so consider that if you have any left over. And that's a big "if."

Shrimp and Artichoke Dip

1/2 onion, chopped
1/4 red bell pepper, chopped
Olive oil
Pinch salt
8 ounces of shrimp, peeled, deveined, and chopped into dime-sized pieces
2-3 teaspoons Chesapeake Bay-style seafood seasoning, like The Spice Lab Best of the Bay
4 ounces cream cheese at room temperature
3 tablespoons mayonnaise
1/2 cup grated Swiss cheese
1/2 cup grated Parmesan + more for topping
1 (14-oz) can artichoke heart quarters, drained, chopped, and blotted dry
Lemon juice
Sliced almonds

Preheat oven to 375°F.

Over medium-high heat, cook the onion and bell pepper in a bit of olive oil and a pinch of salt until translucent. Stir in the shrimp and cook a few minutes until opaque. Stir in Bay seasoning to taste.

In a large bowl, combine the cream cheese and mayo. Stir in the Swiss cheese, the 1/2 cup of Parm, the artichokes, and the shrimp mixture. Add lemon juice to taste.

Scrape the mixture into a round or square 8" baking dish, or into individual ramekins. Top with additional Parm and some of the sliced almonds. Bake for 15-20 minutes until oozy and the cheese and almonds are browned.

Serve with Cornbread Crackers or sliced French bread.

* 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.

Apple Pie a la Mode

More ice cream! Yes, I do love playing with ice cream flavors, never having been a "plain vanilla" kind of girl. This one has all the flavors of apple pie a la mode: cooked apples; cinnamon; even chunks of buttery crust. There are a few more steps involved here than in some other ice cream recipes, but the result is well-worth the effort.

Apple Pie a La Mode Ice Cream

1 1/2 tablespoon unsalted butter
2 Rome apples, peeled, cored, and diced
1/3 cup brown sugar
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
Pinch salt
Squeeze of lemon juice
2 cups whole milk
1 1/4 cup heavy cream
3 cinnamon sticks
2/3 cup sugar
2 tablespoons light corn syrup
1 tablespoon plus 1 teaspoon cornstarch
2 tablespoons softened cream cheese
1/8 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/2 an all-ready pie crust, baked and cooled

Melt the butter in a saute pan over medium heat. Add the apples, brown sugar, and cinnamon. Cook, stirring regularly, until the apples have softened but are not mushy, about 8-10 minutes. Stir in a pinch of salt and a little lemon juice. Scrape into a container and refrigerate until cold.

Mix 2 tablespoons of the whole milk with the cornstarch to make a slurry. In a separate bowl, whisk the cream cheese, salt, and cinnamon together until smooth.

Put the remaining milk and cream in a large saucepan with the cinnamon sticks. Bring to a boil, then turn off heat and allow to steep for 1 hour.

Prepare a shallow ice bath: in a large bowl or baking pan, place an inch or two of cold water and several ice cubes. Set aside.

Remove cinnamon sticks from the milk mixture and add the sugar and corn syrup to the pot. Bring to a rolling boil over medium-high heat. Boil for 4 minutes, watching carefully so it doesn't boil over (stir when it starts to expand), remove from heat, and slowly whisk in the slurry. Bring back to a boil over medium-high heat and cook until slightly thickened, about 1 minute. Blend a few tablespoons of hot milk mixture into the cream cheese to loosen it, then pour the cream cheese mixture into the pan of milk. Remove from heat and add the vanilla. Whisk well until smooth. Pour into a container with a tight-fitting lid and place the container into the ice bath until cool, ensuring that the water level doesn't come up as far as the lid. When the mixture seems mostly cool, refrigerate until completely cold.

Freeze ice cream according to manufacturers instructions. Once ice cream is mostly done, start adding the apple mixture a little at a time. When the ice cream is completely done, scoop some into a lidded storage container. Layer on some of the crust pieces. Continue to add layers of ice cream and crust to container until both are used up. Press a piece of wax paper onto the surface of the ice cream. Seal container and freeze until firm, at least 4 hours.



Posted on Minxeats.com.

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.



Posted on Minxeats.com.

Cardamom Carrot Ice Cream

Ever since I discovered the book, Jeni's Splendid Ice Creams at Home, I've been somewhat obsessed with making ice cream. I prefer a custard-based ice cream, made with eggs, to the so-called Philadelphia-style (without eggs) because it has a smoother texture, but hate having to use so many eggs. Egg yolks, rather, which leaves 5 or more whites to use in something else. Yeah yeah, egg white omelets, meringue, yadda yadda. Still - it makes more work for me to think of another application. Jeni's recipe is just as smooth and creamy as an egg custard based ice cream, but is thickened instead with cornstarch and cream cheese. A pack of cream cheese lasts long enough in the fridge to make several batches of frozen treats, and can always be put into service as a bagel schmear.

Of course, me being me, I haven't made any of Jeni's recipes, but I have used her technique several times already. The Key Lime Pie ice cream I made in August was a huge success. Last month I made a Peanut Butter Pie ice cream, upping the cream cheese and adding both peanut butter and peanut powder. This time, I wanted to do something with cardamom. Cardamom is an underutilized spice, at least in this country, but it's popular in both Scandanavia and India. I wanted to make an ice cream that was flavored only with cardamom, but with some sort of textural interest. There's an Indian dessert that I love called gajar ka halwa, made with carrots and milk and seasoned with cardamom. I thought adding some of that to the ice cream, along with crushed cashews, would work nicely.

And it did. It was rich and cardamom-y, tasting a lot like kheer, an Indian rice pudding, which made me think I should have added some basmati rice as well. But we're not making frozen rice pudding here....

Cardamom Carrot Ice Cream

For the ice cream:
2 cups whole milk
1 tablespoon plus 1 teaspoon cornstarch
2 tablespoons softened cream cheese
1/8 teaspoon salt
1 1/4 cups heavy cream
1/2 cup sugar
2 tablespoons light corn syrup
1/2 teaspoon ground cardamom, or to taste

For the carrots:
1 1/2 cups grated carrot
2 tablespoons butter
5 tablespoons milk
6 tablespoons sugar
Big pinch cardamom

To finish:
1/2 cup cashews, lightly crushed

For the ice cream: Mix 2 tablespoons of the whole milk with the cornstarch to make a slurry. In a separate bowl, whisk the cream cheese and salt together until smooth. Prepare a shallow ice bath: in a large bowl or baking pan, place an inch or two of cold water and several ice cubes. Set aside.

Cook the remaining milk, cream, sugar, corn syrup, and cardamom in a large saucepan until it comes to a rolling boil, Boil for 4 minutes, watching carefully so it doesn't boil over (stir when it starts to expand), remove from heat, and slowly whisk in the slurry. Bring back to a boil over medium-high heat and cook until slightly thickened, about 1 minute. Blend a few tablespoons of hot milk mixture into the cream cheese to loosen it, then pour the cream cheese mixture into the pan of milk. Whisk well until smooth. Taste for seasoning and whisk in more cardamom if you would like a stronger flavor. Pour into a container with a tight-fitting lid and place the container into the ice bath until cool, ensuring that the water level doesn't come up as far as the lid. When the mixture seems mostly cool, refrigerate until completely cold.

For the carrots: Combine all ingredients except cardamom in a saucepan and bring to a boil. Cook over medium-high heat until most of the liquid has been absorbed by the carrots, about 10 minutes. Season with cardamom. Scrape into a lidded container and refrigerate until ready to use.

To finish: Freeze ice cream according to manufacturers instructions. Once ice cream is mostly done, start adding the carrot mixture a little at a time. It will have chilled into a mass, but you can crumble it with your fingers into the ice cream maker. Once the carrots are combined and the ice cream is done, scoop some into a lidded storage container. Layer on some of the cashews. Continue to add ice cream and cashews to container until both are used up. Press a piece of wax paper onto the surface of the ice cream. Seal container and freeze until firm, at least 4 hours.



Posted on Minxeats.com.

Satisfying a Need

I don't know what turned me into a cupcake baking fool all of a sudden, but here I am. Every once in a while, I get an uncontrollable urge that must be satisfied. The other day, I needed some chocolate cupcakes. I also needed fresh cherries, but my allergy to fruits in the genus Prunus prevents me from eating them raw. So I chopped some up and added them to chocolate cake batter. In case that wasn't cherry enough, I added some cherry preserves to a batch of cream cheese frosting, which turned it a lovely shade of pink that went beautifully with the dark brown of the cupcakes.

About the frosting: I'm not a huge fan of the chalky flavor of confectioner's sugar, which is why I won't make the standard butter + sugar style of buttercream frosting. But frosting needs a certain amount of sugar to achieve that perfect, fluffy, pipe-able texture, even if doing so makes the result too sweet. After adding one cup of powdered sugar to a box of cream cheese and declaring it sweet enough, I decided to boost the texture by adding some of the Ultra Tex 3 that I had received in my box of samples from National Starch. It worked like a charm without affecting the flavor one bit.

Chocolate Cherry Cupcakes

1 cup light brown sugar
1 egg
1/2 cup milk
1/4 cup vegetable oil
1 tsp vanilla
3/4 cup + 2 tablespoons flour
1/4 cup + 2 tablespoons cocoa powder
1 tablespoon instant coffee
3/4 tsp baking soda
3/4 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
1/2 cup boiling water
1/2 cup pitted fresh cherries, chopped

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Fill muffin pans with 12 cupcake liners.

Stir together sugar, eggs, oil, milk, and vanilla. Add dry ingredients, and beat with wooden spoon until incorporated. Add boiling water and beat until blended. The mixture will be very thin. Stir in cherries.

Spoon into lined muffin pans. Bake for 22-25 minutes until tops spring back when pressed lightly (a toothpick test won't be accurate because of the cherries). Remove to wire racks and cool. Frost with Cherry Cream Cheese Frosting.

Cherry Cream Cheese Frosting

1 8-oz package of cream cheese, softened
4 tablespoons softened butter
1 heaping tablespoon cherry preserves
2 cups powdered sugars OR 1 cup powdered sugar and 1 tablespoon Ultra Tex 3

In a large bowl, beat together cream cheese, butter, and preserves. Beat in powdered sugar, or sugar and Ultra Tex. Spoon into piping bag and frost cooled cupcakes.

Posted by theminx on Minxeats.com.

Pumpkin Cheesecake

I usually have several posts in draft format, some of which I promptly forget. When I hit the link to view my draft posts, there it was...a post on Christmas dessert. Yes, I realize that we're already a month-plus into 2011 and I still haven't posted something from 12/10. :::shrug:::

Pumpkin isn't just for the holidays; I enjoy cooking with it all through the colder half of the year. Same goes for eating cheesecake, except that's a 12-month thing.

Christmas Eve 2010 was largely spent making Christmas dinner: a massive lasagna with home-made sauce and real lasagna noodles (the kind you have to boil - honestly, it makes a real difference). Although the sauce required time to cook, it was an easy dish to assemble and bake on one day and transport and reheat the next. I wanted a similar low-maintenance dessert and thought a pumpkin cheesecake would be both festive and easy. And delicious, of course.

I used a Betty Crocker recipe that called for four 8oz boxes of cream cheese and five eggs. In the past, I've found that recipes that have a 1:1 ratio of boxes of Philly to eggs produces a cake that is to my liking: more fluffy than dense, nicely moist. So why did I travel outside of my comfort zone? Lord knows. I guess I thought that one more egg wouldn't make a difference, but it did. While this cake tasted fine, it was far too dense. I could barely finish one slice, and then I really didn't want to eat any more of it. And because it was so dense, no one else could finish more than a slim slice, so even after giving guests cake to take home, we still had too much on our hands.

Sadly, about a fifth of it ended up in the garbage after we got tired of looking at it.

I hate when I make something that doesn't turn out to my liking because it occasionally puts me off the dish entirely. Suddenly pumpkin cheesecake isn't my friend. Does anyone have a recipe to share that will change my mind?