Cookies that turned out surprisingly good....

Made these last night, also an eye-balling process getting the job done quickly, but man they turned out great! I'll probably try them again tonight to see if I've correctly replicated the recipe for what I did to make them just at that texture..

Essentially a normal chocolate merengue cookie, with folded in ground walnuts, ending up with a scrumptuously crunchy exterior shell, and chewey-nutty interior, a lot like the small cookies they use to make macaroons, or as they're called in Switzerland, Luxembürgerli... here's pic of those from an indulgence session with my dear friends last week ;)


In any case, after they turned out well, here was my jotted down approximation that I'll have to try again asap..

3 egg whites
~1/8 ish tsp cream of tartar (just shook some in...)
pinch of salt
somewhere between 1 - 1.25 c raw grain sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla
2 Tbsp dark cocoa powder
several Tbsp of well-ground Walnuts to the point that they were kind of moist but still not a walnut-paste

Preheat oven to ~160 C (around 320 F)
Put the first 4 into a large metal bowl set over a large pot with a bit of simmering water (double-boiler arrangement), and over a medium-boil beat it till very fluffy and stiff peaks for about 5 minutes, remove from heat then quickly beat in the vanilla, and cocoa powder just until incorporated, then dump over the ground walnuts, and fold the batter over itself a few times to just barely mix it in. Into a pastry bag of sorts, and pipe out small rounds onto parchment paper. Baked for roughly 20 minutes, rotating once mid-way to check on them and evenly bake if your oven is hotter on one side like mine :)
They should be done when they've got a crispy outter shell when you tap on them

I should try to make a nice cream filling and actually construct those Luxembürgerli out of them next time, too! .. alone they were really tasty though, I ate way more than I know I should have :D

Squash-seed spinach cheese bread

Oops! Thought I had already posted this tasty bread but guess not! haha..zoom into this to check out the texture!
Inspired by my sister skyping me at work to say she 'just had the most amazing lunch of spinach cheese toast with squash seeds...', which instead of her meaning those being toppings on toast, got me immediately thinking of making a bread including all of the above. why not!?

Result was a great fluffy bread, extremely rich in flavor from all those add-ins... I don't often eat just toasted bread without spreads, toppings, etc, but that was definitely rich and flavorful enough for me to do so.

Sorry I have no exact details on proportions at the moment... I eyeballed it, and just added flour to the mix till it reaches the right consistency for handling and rising.
used Ruchmehl (a dark flour, semi-whole grain), salt, a larger amount of yeast than normal to keep it fluffy despite the heavy spinach and cheese additions, some sugar-water to stimulate the yeast, and one egg in the flour, too, ... i think.. then Sbrinz cheese cut up, dark squash seeds, and cooked spinach.
In any case, did a lot of kneeding in my Kitchenaid to get the dough really stretchy, then added the rest of the flour till it reached that right consistency. then I let it rise till doubled in volume, then folded in the seeds and cheese first (since those are not wet and goopy), then spread over the spinach, and folded it in just until it was making a good swirl inside the bread, then let that rest for a bit before putting it into breadpans and letting again rise till puffy as possible.
Baked at around 180 C... maybe 375F-ish, got a crisp-enough crust, and soft interior.
I should do it again and write down the right amounts so I can reliably get it like that again!

in the meantime here's some eye-candy from that batch:

Cinnamon Rolls!

Yay! I nearly *followed* a recipe word-for-word! And a DARN this was a delicious recipe at that....
From this book, The Bread Baker's Apprentice, I made their cinnamon roll recipe, to test out a different way than I normally make them, and these were absolutely scrumptuous!
Looking forward to eating them again! (Email me for the recipe--he writes in a long style, so I took pics of the 4 pages of the recipe) I love that book by the way....

Normally, I make a whole lump of them bundled together in a springform pan, with really juicy filling making them more like stickybuns than cinnamon buns. So this time it was nice to find that making them as separate rolls also turns out really well, with soft moist dough (with thanks to the egg, milk, and fat you add to the dough!), and the sugar inbetween sinks down to make a light carmelized crust on the bottom which was a nice crunchy touch..

Lemon Merengue Tarts

Mmmm... consistency of the lemon custard turned out just right this time... I wish I had only written down the *exact* proportions of what I did! I dislike it when it's too firm, but want it to stay in form when the slice is cut and not start to ooze out of a pie-slice shape.

Just made a standard pie crust using whole wheat flour to pretend it's a healthy meal, the lemon custard, and the merengue using 3 eggwhites, a pinch of salt, and a pinch of cream of tartar whipped up and just 1/3 cup of sugar beaten into it aftewards--don't let it sit around for long after beating it up before piping it onto the cooled tarts, otherwise the bubbles will start to merge and you get weird lumpy merengue. More sugar helps prevent that though :)

Lemon custard (something close to this):
zest of one lemon
lemon juice from 2 large lemons
~1 c water
1/2 c sugar
1-2 Tbsp of butter or light (low-flavor) olive oil if you have it
bring this mix to a simmer.
2Tbsp cornstarch dissolved in a little bit of water, then beaten with 3 eggyolks, and drizzle this mixture into the simmering lemonjuice whisking like made and it should thicken within a couple minutes--don't go for too long or the egg starts to cook and smell like scrambled eggs, and don't want too much water to evaporate so that the custard will still be soft.

Roasted-pepper Eggplant dip

This was really tasty! Forgot I had made this, and just ran into the picture and I sure wish I had the ingredients and I'd immediately whip more of it together for dinner!

I roasted two whole eggplants until they were collapsed, cooled then removed their charred skins, and also roasted two small red bell peppers until they were softened and starting to get bubbly and a bit roasted.

In a food processor, combined 2 large cloves of garlic, one small red onion, with several Tbsp olive oil and blended those until very finely minced, then added the bell pepper and eggplant, and sesasoned with a combination of cilantro, cumin, oregano, chilli pepper pepper and salt, and further processed it till the veggies were also very finely minced.
Made for an awesome spread onto a nice baguette, like this olive bread!

Cup o veggie salad

One of my favorite ways of serving salad... having a parmesan basket on top holding some veggie goodies...
Pretty easy thing to do, tasty (it's just cheese!), and looks cool--and can be shaped all sorts of different ways. All you need to do is sprinkle a very finely-grated parmesan (or other hard cheese), into a flat (preferrably nonstick) skillet, until it just begins to turn golden--a sign it will harden soon, and then to quickly transfer it atop a curved surface like an overturned bowl and press it gently into the curved shape (careful it's hot!)... and it hardens in just a few seconds, into a thin tasty crisp basket adding flavor and functionality to a salad :P
Then any salad, dressing, and sauteed/baked veggies filling for inside the basket.

Tuna salad and "tofu steak"

I think this was a quite satisfying combo to make a nutritionally quite balanced meal :-) Kind of a low-cal high-protein "comfort-food" style.. already made the combo again this weekend!

Tuna salad was a mix of tuna, one minced onion, 2 diced/minced stalks of celery, spoon of garlic aioli, one spoon of mustard, dollop of herb lowfat cream cheese, and fresh ground pepper, spread onto baby lettuce leaves.

I used a *very* firm tofu--gave a good texture, sliced 500g into 4 patties..could have done 5 for thinner (hence more flavored) ones. I slightly marinated the slices with a bit of salt, garlic powder, and a dash of Worcesterschire sauce (or really any other light marinade to give them some flavor would do). Then I coated them in some seasoned ground soybeans (still with some crunchy grains to it). Seared them for a couple minutes per side in a spoon of olive oil till the soybean coating was golden. Served them over rice prepared with boullion, garlic and herbs, and topped with some thick mushroom sauce with plentiful fresh basil.
It was already decently flavorful from especially the flavor-rich mushroom sauce, also the soybean coating, and the light flavor to the tofu from the garlic and sauce, but next time I think I will plan ahead and marinate the tofu longer in some other seasonings to get an even more penetrant, juicy flavor to the whole "steak".