Slow Cooked Honey Nut Granola

I go through different workday breakfast phases. After college, there was a time of morning acai and banana smoothies. Then a street cart bagel phase, till that got too unhealthy. There were two separate periods were my usual breakfast was a slice of plain homemade toast. There was a summer of eating muesli and a winter of making oatmeal quickly in the microwave with walnuts and honey. There have also been many days where it's just a cup of coffee or chai tea. Lately, my breakfast of choice has been granola. 

The great thing about making granola is that you can adapt it however you like. My favorite ingredients are below, but I've made many variations depending on the sweeteners I've had on hand. I once even made a successful batch of granola using leftover simple syrup. To keep it healthy, I try to use the minimum amount of oil and sweetener necessary. 

You can make granola in the oven, but I also learned this year that it can be made in a crock pot and wanted to share how easy it is. Leave the granola to cook while you go about your lazy weekend afternoon, checking to stir it now and then. Be careful not to get so caught up in your day that you forget about it altogether, though, or it will burn on the edges (it's happened to me more than once). 

A batch this size usually lasts me about two weeks worth of weekday breakfasts. It also makes about four gift-size portions. This holiday season, I shared my granola by preparing jars for my coworkers. It was much less work than baking up a storm of cookies and it stores better.

Slow Cooked Honey Nut Granola

4 cups rolled oats

1 cup walnuts

1/2 cup almonds (or other nuts)

2/3 cup unsweetened coconut flakes

1/3 cup flax seeds

1 tsp cinnamon

1 tsp ginger

1 tsp nutmeg

1/3 canola or olive oil

1/3 cup honey (or maple syrup or sugar or some combination)

1/2 cup dried currants or raisins (optional - add after cooking)

In the slow cooker, combine the dry ingredients. Add the honey and oil and stir until the granola mixture is thoroughly coated. Cook on high for 2 1/2 hours, with the lid slightly propped open with a chopstick or other utensil. Stir well every 30 minutes so that it cooks evenly. Turn off the heat once the oats are golden. Be careful to not let the granola on the edges starts browning. Add the currants and  transfer to a glass or ceramic container to store.

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How to Make a (Vanilla Blueberry) Ice Cream Cake

First, find a good reason to make one. I knew for months that I wanted to make an ice cream cake for Evan's birthday party. He tried to steer me away, saying it would be too messy, too hard to serve, etc. Indeed, I usually avoid making cakes for parties, preferring to bake simpler handheld apportioned desserts like cupcakes. But I felt a special occasion such as a double 30th birthday party (he shared his party with his best friend who was born only 10 days away) merited an extra special baking adventure, especially for someone who loves ice cream as much as Evan.

Second, decide on your preferred style of ice cream cake. It turns out it's hard to find basic instructions for ice cream cake. There are lots of variations out there, often involving elaborate cookie studded ice cream or unusual flavors. Some aren't real cake, just cookies crumbled into a layer topped with ice cream. I scoff at those. Some are made of ice cream spread between two whole layers of cake. But Evan doesn't like regular cake that much, so I didn't want to make the cake primary and the ice cream secondary. Some versions involve a layer of ice cream molded in a cake pan to perfectly match a layer of cake in size. However, those recipes call for a lot of ice cream (two quarts), which would consume too much money and time to make. Many suggest whipped cream as frosting. But I don't like whipped cream.



Decide on a cake of your own design: In my case, it was a Vanilla Ice Cream Cake with Blueberry Filling: half a layer of vanilla cake, topped with blueberry filling, then a layer of vanilla ice cream, then half a layer of vanilla cake, and then frosted with vanilla ice cream. After it's all spent time in the freezer together, the slightly-ice-cream-soaked-half-cake-layers are just the right size to provide a chilled sturdiness, while the pure vanilla ice cream shines and the blueberries jazz it up.

Two or three days ahead, bake the cake. I used Smitten Kitchen's Best Birthday Yellow Layer Cake. Like Evan, I think regular cake is kind of boring, but Deb did not let me down and this cake was surprisingly tasty, so I kept sneaking bites of the bits that stuck to the pan. I have just one cake pan that is a rectangle around 7x11 inches, so I diminished her recipe by a quarter and left out the buttermilk and salt because no one misses that. Cream 1 1/2 sticks of butter and 1 1/2 cups sugar, whisk in 3 eggs, 1 cup milk and 2 tsp vanilla. Dump in 3 cups flour, 1 1/2 tsp baking powder and 1 1/4 tsp baking soda and beat to combine until smooth. Bake at 350 for 35-40 minutes. I had trouble getting the cake out of the pan even after it had cooled for an hour, so I employed a trick of placing a wet washcloth around the bottom of the pan for a few minutes before trying again, and it actually worked. Wrap the cake in plastic wrap and store it in the freezer.



Sometime between making the cake and the ice cream, make the blueberry filling. It is essentially a blueberry jam, and you want to make sure you leave enough time for it to chill before assembling the cake. In a saucepan, combine 1 pint of blueberries, 1/2 cup sugar, 1/2 cup water, 2 tbsp cornstarch and the juice of half a lemon. Let the mixture simmer on low for about a half hour, until the juice has evaporated off and it's thick enough to spread. Let it cool completely.



One day ahead, make the ice cream and assemble the cake. Homemade ice cream is soft enough to spread easily after it first comes out of the ice cream machine, so you want to have everything ready to assemble as soon as it is done churning. I followed the trusty recipe for basic vanilla ice cream that is found in the little pamphlet that accompanied my ice cream machine. Whisk 3/4 cup sugar and one cup milk until the sugar is mostly dissolved. Whisk in 2 cups cream and 2 tsp vanilla. Turn on your ice cream machine, pour it in, and let it churn for 15 minutes.



While it churns, begin to assemble the cake. Remove the cake from the freezer and carefully carefully slice it in half. You probably want to use a long serrated knife. Spread the blueberry preserves over the bottom layer and stick it back in the freezer to let the blueberry layer firm up a bit.



When the ice cream is done churning, spread about half of it on top of the blueberry filling. Lay the second layer of cake on top and then spread the remaining half of the ice cream across the top. Leave the sides for last and do it quickly. As I learned, ice cream does not work that well as "frosting" since it melts and drips rather than adhering to the sides. Nevertheless, do your best and ignore the mess. You can cleanly scrape away the melted puddle around the cake after it has spent its time in the freezer.

Store the ice cream cake in the freezer until just before serving. Luckily, it fit quite well inside of my cupcake carrier, which fit just barely into my freezer. Otherwise I probably would have tried to wrangle plastic wrap around it.



When it comes to time to serve, make sure all accompanying items are at hand, since time is of the essence when it comes to serving ice cream cake. We ushered everyone outside to wait with champagne and sparklers, while I scrambled last minute to find a lighter for the candles. Then I was glad to have a real candlelit cake to present for the happy birthday chorus moment. This was followed by shouting "quick come and eat the cake before it melts!" while the other birthday boy was presented with his present, a bow-adorned bicycle. We got about 20 small squares out of this ice cream cake, which turned out to be enough, because as anyone who's been to a wedding knows, not everyone wants cake at a party.

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Strawberry Rhubarb Ice Cream

The season of strawberries and rhubarbs has come and gone, but I've only now had time to take these photos off the camera. Evan made this ice cream, not me, but he was so enamored with it that he wanted me to share. For fruit ice cream, he likes to take the time consuming method of cooking fruits down into a jam that can be added to the ice cream machine after you've put in the plain ice cream base. Bookmark this one for next June.

Strawberry Rhubarb Ice Cream
1 3/4 cup rhubarb, chopped
1 cup strawberries, chopped
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 cup water

Stew ingredients for twenty minutes. Puree. Return to the pot and simmer until it reduces to a jam consistency. Test to see if it's ready by using the frozen plate test (put a spoonful on a frozen plate, wait a few minutes, then touch it and see if it wrinkles).

1 cup whole milk
2 cups heavy cream
1/4 cup sugar

Meanwhile, whisk these ingredients together until sugar is dissolved. Pour mixture into ice cream machine to churn. After the ice cream machine has been going for ten minutes, slowly add the strawberry rhubarb jam. Let it churn for about another five minutes. Store in the freezer overnight until the ice cream firms up.

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Beet Cocoa Cupcakes

I helped my boyfriend throw a party last month and was rearing to bake some interesting cupcakes, as I hadn't made any since my birthday party in December. I decided to try my recipe for chocolate zucchini cupcakes with pureed roasted beets in place of zucchini -- since it's wintertime and beets are available seasonally but zucchini is not. I also used only 3/4 cup of cocoa powder instead of a full cup because that was all I had on hand. It turns out that missing quarter cup of cocoa powder made a big difference. Instead of having a rich chocolate flavor, they were mildly cocoa tinged, more like these beet oreo cupcakes or these cocoa applesauce muffins. The moral of the story is that beets can be great with chocolate (as with my walnut beet brownies), but make sure there is enough chocolate power to match the earthy sweetness of beets. Also, it's cool to see beets make the batter turn so pretty and jewel-toned. And finally, I topped the cupcakes with coconut frosting, but found that the coconut and beet competed for attention in a distracting way rather than tasting complementary.

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Make Ahead Pumpkin Cinnamon Rolls

I was determined to have pumpkin cinnamon rolls on New Years morning, so I followed Pink of Perfection's overnight approach and spent a relaxed afternoon on New Years eve preparing the dough, with the addition of roasted pumpkin puree, frozen from the fall. The pan of rolls went into the fridge to wait patiently, while we dressed up and drank champagne and danced and watched fireworks. Come morning, all that remained was to take the pan out, let it warm up a bit and put it in the oven. And it worked! Which makes this an excellent brunch party dish because it can be made ahead. Of course, I forgot that I usually crave savory over sweet on the morning after a night of drinking and dancing, but luckily there was also bacon and eggs to go around and friends to enjoy the rolls.

For some reason, I missed the cinnamon filling step in the recipe and spread glaze inside the rolls instead. When I realized this, I compensated by sprinkling powdered sugar after they came out of the oven. They may not have been as cinnamon-y and gooey as possible, but it still works as good option, say if you want to be cutting down on the butter anyway. They plumped up into pillowy sweet rolls with a hint of pumpkin spice and zingy fresh ginger. Some liked the ginger, but I didn't, so I leave that up to you.

Also, I cut the original recipe in half, and experimented with slicing different sized rolls. I am confident you can still get 12 rolls out of the halved recipe since we had more than enough for three people. I can't ever imagine needing to make the full recipe unless you're having a giant brunch party.

Make Ahead Pumpkin Cinnamon Rolls
(Adapted from Pink of Perfection. I apologize for basically repeating her same steps here, but I wanted to have a record of my slight adjustments.)

dough
1/2 cup milk
1/4 cup butter
1/2 cup pumpkin puree
1 tsp active dry yeast
1/3 cup white sugar
2 1/14 cups flour
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp ground ginger
1/2 tsp cinnamon
2 eggs

filling
2/3 cups brown sugar
1 1/4 tbsp ground cinnamon
1 1/2 tbsp flour
3 tbsp butter
1 knob of fresh ginger, peeled and diced

glaze
1 cup powdered sugar
2 tbsp butter
1 tbsp milk
1 tsp vanilla
1 tsp maple syrup

Warm the milk until it just bubbles. Remove from heat, stir in butter until melted, and let cool. Once it's lukewarm, add the yeast, sugar, pumpkin and eggs. In a bowl, combine the flour, salt and spices. Stir in the liquid mixture. Add more flour a little at a time if necessary until it comes together as a dough. Knead for about five minutes. Let it rise for however long it takes you to combine the filling ingredients.

Roll out dough into a 9×12ish inch rectangle (mine was more like 10x15). Spread filling (or alternately, the glaze) over the dough. Roll up dough from the long end. Cut into 12 equal size rolls and place cut side up in a pan - I used a 10ish inch round greased cast iron pan, or you could use a baking pan. Cover and refrigerate overnight.

In the morning, remove pan from fridge and let sit for about 30 minutes. Preheat oven to 375 degrees F. Bake for 20 minutes, or until lightly browned. Meanwhile, whisk together glaze ingredients. After rolls are done, pour glaze over top. Alternately, if you already spread the glaze inside, sprinkle powdered sugar on top. If you do not serve them all immediately, they are best toasted.

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Pumpkin Ice Cream

I made pumpkin ice cream last year and never posted about it here, which was silly. Because ice cream with fresh roasted pumpkin puree, fall spices and crunchy walnuts feels homey like pumpkin pie. So here it is now. I like mine with walnuts, but not everyone does, so that's optional. I recommend roasting your own pumpkin rather than buying a can at the store, unless you like BPA in your food. Roasting a pumpkin is easy - you just cut it in half, stick it in the oven, take it out a while later and scoop out the puree. More on that over here. Plus you'll have extra pumpkin leftover for other baking and you can make roasted seeds for snacking.

According to my boyfriend, this ice cream was at its best the day after it was made - creamy with a subtle texture from the pumpkin flesh. But by the time I tried it a few days later, it had frozen too hard, similar to how my hand-churned ice cream comes out. Maybe the pumpkin puree affected the way the creaminess ratio held up in the freezer?

If you want to go extra fall, this ice cream makes an excellent ice cream sandwich inside my pumpkin snickerdoodle cookies.

With all the ice cream I've made since I originally posted my standard recipe last year, I've updated my recipe in a few ways. First, just use the whole two cups of heavy cream that come in a pint, because that's how cream is sold and it's silly to have a little cream leftover. Second, you don't need to get the cream-milk-sugar mixture that hot to dissolve in the sugar, which also means you don't need to wait as long before adding the eggs. Third, cooking it into custard can take upward of 20 minutes and is an imprecise science. Sometimes I'm not sure if it got thick enough so I just give up after a while and the ice cream still turns out fine.

Pumpkin Ice Cream
2 cups heavy cream (1 pint)
1 cup milk (I use 2%)
2/3 cups sugar
3 egg yolks
3/4 cup pumpkin puree
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp nutmeg
1/2 tsp ginger
3 whole cloves
1/2 cup walnuts, chopped (optional)

Warm cream, milk, and sugar in a saucepan and stir vigorously until sugar is nearly dissolved and just before steaming. Remove from heat and wait approximately 10 minutes to let cool. Whisk three egg yolks in a separate bowl. Slowly whisk half a cup of the milk mixture into the eggs, and then another half cup, to temper the eggs. Then, slowly whisk the egg mixture into the saucepan. Add spices. Cook over low heat for approximately 20 minutes, stirring constantly, until custard thickens enough to coat the back of a metal spoon. Remove from heat, and let cool. Remove cloves. Transfer to an airtight container in fridge overnight to chill completely.

Prepare according to ice cream machine directions, or hand churn by putting container in freezer and removing to whisk every 30-90 minutes over the course of a few hours until it reaches the desired consistency. Stir in walnuts if you want. Scoop. Enjoy.

Apologies for the strage juxtoposition of iphone and DSLR photos.

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Hurricane Dinner

I decided to spend Hurricane Irene weekend upstate at my parents' house, although it turns out I didn't need to leave Brooklyn since the flooding was apparently minimal and the power didn't even go out. Flooding is going to be more of a problem in my journey through New Jersey to get back to the city tomorrow. With a lot of time on my hands, I cooked dinner for my parents on my second night here: a zucchini parmesan casserole and cantelope sorbet for dessert.

 

My mom has grown some massive squash in her garden this year. The snake-like one is called a cucuzza squash and is common in Italy, but I chose to use the oversized zucchini - and I actually only needed to use half of it to create two create two casserole dishes. I breaded zucchini slices and lay them in a glass baking dish, which I topped with tomato sauce, stale pieces of bread, and shredded mozzerella cheese and baked for a half hour. It was fine, but a bit mushy. I recommend either frying the breaded squash first for a crisper texture, although it's time consuming, or going more deconstructed by dicing the zucchini and combining it with the bread pieces (but no bread crumbs), sauce and cheese rather than layering.

I also made sorbet out of an overripe cantelope that was too mushy for eating. We blended cantelope pieces and then added 2/3 cups of orange juice and 2/3 cups of simple syrup. It came out with a large ice grain texture, which could be improved by cutting down the OJ and syrup and using an ice cream maker instead of my handmade stirring method.

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Apricot Cherry Muffins (or Cupcakes)

For a birthday party on Friday, I was requested to make an interesting hearty muffin-like cupcake, rather than a plain, light and fluffy cupcake. Hence the chopped cherries and whole wheat flour for texture. The apricot flavor was subtle and you want to make sure you find some sweet delicious cherries, since I was tricked by cherries that looked tasty but were actually lackluster. I know this picture is terrible, but my kitchen has terrible light at night, which deterred me from taking further pictures of the end product. They looked like cute little lumpy muffins until I frosted them with my bourbon cream cheese icing. But you could easily skip the frosting and serve these as muffins for breakfast.

Apricot Cherry Muffins/Cupcakes
7 tbsp butter
2/3 cup sugar
1/3 cup honey
1 cup apricot puree (about three apricots)
2 eggs
3/4 cup milk
1 tsp vanilla
1 1/2 cup whole wheat flour
1 1/2 cup all purpose flour
1 tbsp + 1/2 tsp baking powder
1 pound of cherries, pitted and diced

Preheat oven to 350. Grease two muffin tins. Puree three apricots in a blender or food processor. Cream butter and sugar, and beat in honey, eggs, apricot puree, milk, and vanilla. Dump flour and baking powder on top and then stir to combine. Stir cherries into batter. Bake for 15-20 minutes. Makes 24 muffins. Add icing to serve them as cupcakes. I recommend bourbon cream cheese icing or lemon icing.

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Rosemary Leek Buttermilk Biscuits

What did I end up making with the butter and buttermilk? Again I copied Kelly of Eat Make Read and made biscuits! With dried rosemary and a chopped up baby leek from the farmers market.

This was the first time I've tried making biscuits and they didn't rise very much. I'm not sure if the consistency of the batter was too wet. Or it could have been that I used white whole wheat flour. Or that I cut the dough into rounds too small. Despite not being fluffy, they still had a great buttery flaky taste.

I brought the biscuits, as well as extra butter for topping, to a friend's potluck and meant to take pictures but was having so much fun that I forgot! I will also add that the homemade butter has lasted a few weeks now and has not gone bad as I had read it might.

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Cocoa Zucchini Cupcakes

I had a little party this weekend, a housewarming of sorts, although I am living in a sublet, so I can't take credit for the beauty of the home, and I will be moving out again in just a few months. But does one ever really need a reason to gather friends together, old and new alike, and prepare a storm of snacks and drinks to offer them?





There was a spread of roasted red pepper hummus, white bean garlic herb dip, cheeses, crackers, and other sundries, and cupcakes per usual. I originally thought I would turn my recipe for cocoa applesauce muffins into cupcakes, but apples equal fall, and I'm not quite ready to accept the turn of seasons yet. I'm a big advocate of continuing to take advantage of summery produce until it disappears from the markets. With my schedule busier lately than I'm used to, I also didn't feel like taking the time to slowly cook apples down into sauce, so a simple grated zucchini from the greenmarket made sense.





I ended up adapting Heidi's recipe for chocolate zucchini cupcakes on 101 Cookbooks, but left out the chocolate chips because they actually aren't necessary. I've never before been able to achieve a rich chocolatey taste through cocoa powder alone. The key, I've now learned, is to use a full cup of cocoa, as a quarter or third of a cup won't cut it. My cupcakes tasted sharply of dark chocolate, with moist shredded zucchini hidden secretly and healthily inside. I paired them with bourbon cream cheese icing, but lemon or peanut butter icing might also be fun.



Cocoa Zucchini Cupcakes
1/2 cup butter
1 cup sugar
1/3 cup honey
3 eggs
2 tsp vanilla
2/3 cup milk
1 zucchini, about 2 cups grated
2 cups flour
1 cup cocoa powder
2 tsp baking soda
bourbon cream cheese icing

Preheat oven to 350. Cream butter and sugar. Whisk in honey, eggs, vanilla, milk, and grated zucchini. Add flour, cocoa, baking soda and beat until batter is combined and smooth. Bake 20-25 minutes. Remove, let cool, and top with icing. Makes two dozen cupcakes.

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Season's End

Summer's season is ending, and so too are peaches, I hear, although they could still be found heaped aplenty at last weekend's farmers market. But while Labor Day appropriately felt like summer's last hurrah, this week has already transitioned to crisp breezes asking for jackets to be worn and leaves to fall. The golden September light is a reminder to hurry up and enjoy summer's produce before it passes by.


Summer is my favorite season, so I'm sad to see it go, but at least I can look back fondly on it this year. I filled my last long weekend with warm weather activities: Free kayaking in the Hudson River aka sunbathing and paddling on a personal boat in a protected pier...


A dance party in a museum courtyard... Walking in the sunshine... Biking around Prospect Park...


And a boatload of cooking projects, including peach coconut ice cream. I like peach smoothies, so why not peach ice cream, with coconut leftover from a cupcake endeavor. Follow the almond chip ice cream recipe, but add two pureed peaches and 1 1/2 cups toasted coconut when making the custard, and obviously leave out the almond and chocolate.


Then enjoy ice cream instead of dinner on the remaining warm nights of the year. Do not fear that this will be the last of the ice cream, though, now that my sister is a milkmaid market lady for the Milk Thistle Organic Dairy Farm.

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