April Daring Cooks Challenge - Brunswick Stew

Grab a drink, settle in, and here we go!

The 2010 April Daring Cooks challenge was hosted by Wolf of Wolf’s Den. She chose to challenge Daring Cooks to make Brunswick Stew. Wolf chose recipes for her challenge from The Lee Bros. Southern Cookbook by Matt Lee and Ted Lee, and from the Callaway, Virginia Ruritan Club.

I am going to be honest with you. When I first read that our challenge was stew, I was... well, not overly excited. I like stew, don't get me wrong, but I make stew already. Okay, okay, give it a chance, read the recipe. Okay, reading, reading, not your regular beef and root vegetable stew, looks interesting... wait. What is traditional Brunswick Stew made with? What kind of meat? Rabbit. Uh oh. I have never had rabbit before, and feel really, really weird about it. Funny that I don't feel weird about cows or chickens, but rabbits? Yeah... weird. And this was Easter month... Just couldn't eat the Easter Bunny.

But wait. Here is the most awesome part about the Daring Kitchen, and the challenges therein. It is all about learning, it is all about trying new things, and they are totally cool and understanding about modifying recipes for dietary needs, restrictions, and even preferences.

I quickly put my reservations aside and started planning my stew. The first order of business was making stock. If you remember, last month's risotto challenge also called for making stock, so I was much more confident this time, and used some of the tips from the other awesome Daring Cooks. I am really hooked on homemade stock now - so much more rich and flavorful than the boxed or canned stuff. My stock even gelled up a little in the fridge (trust me, that is a good thing), which made me so proud that I had to call my sister (fellow Daring Cook and Baker) just so that someone else could revel in my gell-y stock with me. Yes, we are cooking nerds.

The next step was to decide what kind of meats I was going to use in my stew. Chicken was a given - it is in the recipe and is a standard in this house. But for variety and flavor, I wanted a second kind of meat, too. I didn't find any inspiration in the butcher section of the grocery store, so decided on two pork chop ws that I had wrapped and frozen in the freezer. I took them down and put them into the fridge the day before I was planning on making the stew, and made sure I had a nice, full package of chicken leg quarters, too, since I find dark meat tastiest and most flavorful.

Meats chosen, defrosted and ready to go, it was time to gather my vegetables. The recipe called for a number of root vegetables, including yukon gold potatoes, onions and carrots, which I embellished with a sweet potato, red onion and parsnips. It also called for dried red chiles. Hot! In addition to the vegetables and spices, the stew also called for butter beans, either fresh or frozen. But, going to the grocery store looking for "butter beans," I could only find them canned. Not only did the recipe specify fresh or frozen, but I have been trying to buy less and less canned foods, so when I returned home, I did a bit of research. Went to google, typed in "butter beans," hit enter. First hit - a link called "What are butter beans?" Turns out they are lima beans. Score! Little miss loves lima beans. No, I am not joking. Back to the food store, pick up a bag of dried lima beans, throw them in a pot to soak, and we are rolling.

All ingredients gathered and ready, it was time to start making the stew. Wolf gave two different recipes, one to make the stew a long way, and one to make the stew a short way. I chose the first recipe, to make the stew the long way. Not only did it look like more of a challenge, but it looked more flavorful, so, since I am going to do the challenge, might as well go all in!

The first step was to cook up some cut bacon in the bottom of the pot. Bacon crisped, the pieces are set aside, and the meat, both the chicken and the pork, is browned in the bacon fat at the bottom of the pot, then set aside with the bacon pieces. I always brown my meat for stew, and I love bacon, so I loved the added flavor. At this point, I realized that I was also supposed to quickly heat the chiles in the bacon fat, so I threw those in for a minute. I am not the biggest fan of super-spicy foods, but I have to tell you how delicious those peppers smelled as soon as they touched the heat. Yum.

The remaining steps of the process were straight forward - adding stock, reducing it over the heat a bit, adding the vegetables and meat back to the pot at various times. While it was not overly complicated, it required some time management, effort and attention to make sure that everything made it into and out of the pot at the right times. Once the meat was cooked all the way through, I removed it from the still-simmering stew and shredded it as finely as I could with two forks. The shredded meat was returned to the pot and the stew kept simmering. As I said - not overly complicated, but definitely kept me on my toes throughout much of the process.

The finished stew is very thick and very hearty - thicker than it looks just sitting in the pot! So thick, in fact, that all of the Daring Cooks began posting pictures of their finished stew pots with their spoons standing straight up in the pot. So, of course, I had to take the obligatory spoon-in-pot picture. That spoon stood straight up for long enough for me to take several pictures, put the camera away, wipe the counter... yeah, that's a nice, thick stew. The funniest part of it, though, was little miss's reaction to it. I mean, she thought it was cool and fun to stand a spoon in a pot, but it has sparked in her a desire to test how thick everything is. Mixing cake batter, making pancakes, a bowl of cereal - "Mommy, will the spoon stand up in this?" It is very funny.

While the stew was simmering on the stove top, I decided that I wanted a little something extra with it, so I decided to mix up some drop cornmeal dumplings. These are super easy to make - little miss did most of it for me, from measuring to mixing to grabbing clumps to drop onto the stew. I used the dumpling recipe listed at the bottom of this recipe. After dropping these onto the top of the still simmering stew, I just put the lid on the pot and let the whole thing cook for another 25-30 minutes. It was that easy.

The finished stew looked and smelled so delicious, and the taste did not disappoint at all. I can hardly believe I had been skeptical to try this one. Each spoonful was so hearty and fulfilling and, just, well, yummy. And best of all, everyone liked it. Which is a good thing, because it made a lot. LOTS of leftovers. All three of those takeout soup containers are in the freezer, all ready for dinner on some night when I am too busy or lazy to cook. And also to use in some of the really fun recipes that some of the other Daring Cooks came up with to make use of their leftovers. Interested? Check out the other Daring Cooks!

Thank you, Wolf, for a really great challenge. I am so glad that I learned about this delicious stew, and will definitely be making it again!

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Rainbow Cake

As I may have mentioned, little miss had a birthday this weekend. In addition to all of the celebratory cake pops that we made, I also wanted to make a more traditional birthday cake to bring with us to our Sunday night family dinner. I also had the rare instance of having the house (and thus, kitchen) to myself for a while on Sunday morning, so I was able to surprise everyone with my cake creation.

What I brought with us was this:









Totally normal looking cake, yummy chocolate frosting, pretty, pastel flower sprinkles... No one suspected anything. But when the cake was sliced, what everyone got was this:









Isn't that cool? And the awesome part was that everyone was surprised. Yay!

I have actually wanted to make this for a while. I was planning on making it in cupcake form for little miss's preschool class before deciding on the cake pops. When I came home from the gym Sunday morning to an empty house, though, I knew I had my opportunity.

This is actually pretty simple to make, but requires a little planning, some food coloring, and a lot of bowls. Once again, I used a cake mix, this time for a white cake, to give myself the cleanest base for my colors. Once the cake batter was prepared the normal way, I divided it into five bowls, one for each color that I wanted in my rainbow. The tricky part of this process is figuring out quite how much batter to put in each bowl. You have to know which color you want to be your outside ring (red, for me), and you need the most of that color, with slightly less of each following color, ending with the least of your final, center color (in my case, blue).

Because I wanted a two layer cake, I prepared two eight inch cake pans and began building my rainbow. Beginning with my red (okay, pink... there is only so much food coloring I was willing to use...) batter, I poured half directly into the center of each pan. It doesn't reach the edges, but that is not a worry. I then took my orange batter and poured half directly into the center of each pan, right in the middle of the pink layer. The addition of the orange batter helps to push the pink batter out further to the edge of the pan. I repeated the same process with the yellow, green, and, finally, blue batter, pouring half of each directly into the center of the pan, right in the middle of the previous color. What resulted was so cool looking, don't you think?

The other thing that resulted was a sink full of dishes. The prettiest dishes I think I have ever generated with a single baking project, but a LOT of dishes none the less.

The hardest part of the process was making sure that no-one peeked at the cakes while they were cooling. Daddy and little miss came home not too long after these came out of the oven, so I tented them with some foil and put a note over them requesting that they pretty-please not peek. I then took advantage of the beautiful weather later in the afternoon by sending them outside to play so that I could layer them up and frost everything.

This was a ton of fun to make, and even more fun to surprise the family with. I will definitely do it again, though I am now on the lookout for better food colorings - both more vibrant, and without all the fake chemicals and and preservatives... and I will stop using cake mixes...

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Cake Pops (part 2)

Yesterday we made our second round of cake pops for the week, this time to bring in to little miss's ballet class, which was this morning. Since these were going to ballet, I figured we could be a little more girly with our colors and decorations.

Since we only made half of the chocolate cake into pops for her preschool class, we decided to make two flavors for ballet - we made the second half of the chocolate cake with the second half of the chocolate frosting, then we also baked up a yellow cake, and mixed that with vanilla frosting. By this point, little miss was pretty much an expert at the whole process, and wanted to do it herself, but I still maintained supervisory control...

Both flavors of balls in the fridge, we decided to use two different colors of candy coating so that we could differentiate between the two flavors. Little miss chose pink for the chocolate and purple for the vanilla. We also chose cute pastel flower sprinkles to make them extra cute and springy.

Between the two flavors, we wound up with 31 cake pops to bring in, which was more than enough for the 17 girls in the two ballet classes, with plenty to share with the ballet teacher, studio owner, parents and siblings who were hanging around. I gotta say, though, that I was ready to be done by the time I hit number 31... I was proud that there were no casualties this time. At least, none that couldn't be fixed with an extra little drizzle of melted candy... These were definitely a fun way to celebrate little miss's birthday with her classmates and fellow ballerinas.

And in case you are curious, little miss chose pancakes for her birthday breakfast, and asked me to make her a GIANT pancake. Then she asked if she could have chocolate syrup on it. Happy 4th birthday, little miss!

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Cake Pops (part 1)

Little miss is having a birthday this weekend. I can hardly believe that my baby is turning four. Man, time flies...

To help celebrate her birthday, I said that I would bring a treat in to her school class tomorrow. I originally thought that I would make cupcakes, but then thought that this might be the perfect opportunity to try something really cool that I have been wanting to try for a while now - cake pops. I first heard of these from a friend several months ago, and have since been amazed by the amazingly creative variations that I have seen around. And hey - what could be better for a pre-school treat - individual portions of cake with a handle!

The process of making cake pops is straightforward and deceptively simple, and I didn't think I would have too much trouble with it, and it was something that little miss could help me with quite a bit.

To start, make a cake. Any cake, any flavor, just make a 9"x13" cake. We made a chocolate cake from (*gasp*) a mix. I had a lot going on today... sorry... Anyway, I set out all of the ingredients, all pre-measured, and little miss made the cake mostly by herself, pouring everything in the bowl and mixing everything up.

The next step was probably little miss's favorite - once the cake has cooled completely, crumble it up. I cut the cake in half and we made a half batch, since there are only eight kids in her class, but that made no difference to the fun that ensues when mommy says "go wash your hands - we need to smoosh this cake up!"

Once the cake is good and crumbled, mix in some frosting. Again, busy day, we used pre-made. Again, sorry. Since we only used half of the cake, we also only used half of the frosting. Just scoop it right into the bowl of cake crumbles and mix it up. Once the whole thing is all incorporated, I put the bowl in the fridge, since it was a really hot day here and I didn't want the frosting to be too melty for the next step:

Rolling the cake and frosting into balls. This was little miss's second favorite part of the process. You may have noticed a pattern here - using hands = good thing to a kid. Mommy letting said kid use those hands in food preparation = awesome thing, even worth an extra trip to the sink for a wash. I only had to re-roll a couple of hers, too - she is pretty good at it! The tray of rolled balls is then cooled thoroughly - either in the fridge for a few hours or, if you are in a hurry, in the freezer.

While the balls of cake and frosting were chilling, I set some white chocolate to melt over a double boiler. I know I could melt the chocolate in the microwave, but I always opt to use the double boiler. I have no idea why. I took the balls out of the freezer and took out some lollipop sticks. Little miss SO wanted to help with this part, but I was worried about having her too close to hot, melty chocolate, so I had to take the lead. I dipped the ends of the lollipop sticks into the chocolate, then pushed them into the cooled cake balls. This is supposed to help the sticks stay in the balls. And for the most part, it worked. The stick can then be used as a handle, and the balls are then dipped and covered in the melted chocolate. Little miss then helped me sprinkle colored sprinkles onto the the still melty chocolate. The recommendation is to then let them cool upright by pushing the bottom of the lollipop stick into a block of styrofoam, but I didn't have one, so I just lined them up on the cookie sheet, so they will have flat tops. I am not too worried about that.

The only problem I had was that, for some reason, my chocolate, despite the fact that I kept it over the hot water in the double boiler, did not stay smooth and liquidy all that long, which made it a little difficult to coat the cake balls nicely and smoothly... but other than that, this was a lot of fun, and I think that they came out pretty cool! I am excited to bring them into little miss's class tomorrow.

And, believe it or note, we only had one casualty, with one cake ball falling right off of the stick as we were trying to put the sprinkles on it. The stick actually broke all the way through the cake ball, so it was well enough beyond repair that, well, we just had to taste it!

And in case you are wondering why this post said part 1, I promised to bring a treat in to little miss's ballet class this weekend, so we will be making more... so stay tuned!

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Baked Banana Custard

So remember those egg yolks left over from yesterday's Angel Food cupcakes? I so had a plan for them. Then I came into the kitchen this morning and realized that, in addition to six egg yolks, I also had four of these:









Hmmm.... I really didn't feel like making my original plan AND something banana-y. I mean, I love to bake and we all love to eat, but there really is a limit to how many baked goods we really need in the house at one time. So it was time to change the plan. When looking for recipes involving both bananas and egg yolks, the most common result, at least for me, was banana cream pie. Which is good, but not at all what I wanted. Then I found this, a baked banana custard that didn't just throw sliced bananas into a vanilla custard, and thought it looked pretty good. I actually found that exact same recipe posted in three different locations. So I figured it was worth a shot.

I normally stick to a recipe exactly as it is written the first time I make it, but I did take a couple of small liberties with this one. The recipe called for breadcrumbs to be sprinkled onto the mashed bananas, and I decided to swap out the breadcrumbs with nilla wafer crumbs, which little miss was more than happy to help me make. I mean, how often do I tell her to smash cookies with a rolling pin?

The next thing I changed was that I added a vanilla bean to the milk when heating it up. I split the bean, put the seeds into the milk, then put the whole pod into the milk, too, but fished it out once the milk was warm enough. I love vanilla, I had the beans... why not?

While the milk was warming, we gave the bananas a spin in the mini-blender, sqeezed in the juice of one lime, sprinkled in a touch of nutmeg, and added some sugar. The banana mixture was put into the bottom of the dish and sprinkled with our nilla wafer crumbs.

The next step was the one I was a little worried about. We beat the egg yolks with some sugar, then it was time to combine them with the hot milk. Which meant that I had to temper the eggs, so as not to wind up with scrambled eggs. This just requires a slow hand pouring and a quick hand mixing, as well as a bit of patience, just to make sure I don't add too much hot to the eggs too quickly. Little miss was fascinated by both the process and the explanation as to why I was doing it, which was pretty cool. Milk and eggs successfully incorporated, this mixture was them poured on top of the bananas and cookie crumbs. I probably should have poured a little more slowly, but I had an awkward grip on the pot handle, so I went a little quickly, but I don't think that was too much of a problem. Sunk the crumbs in the center of the dish, but I am not wholly convinced that that wouldn't have happened anyway...

The only problem I had with the recipe was that I wasn't quite sure how long this was supposed to stay in the oven. The recipes all just said "bake until custard is set." I started with 25 minutes and kept going from there... by about 45 minutes, it looked pretty good, and, when I gently slid a knife into the center, it wasn't soupy, so I figured we were good to go. After letting it cool for a few minutes (while I did the dinner dishes), I served up a couple of bowls. The first serving did not come out pretty. It fell apart and was very watery. Weird. The second piece came out much more nicely, but I was still surprised by how watery the dish seemed - not the custard itself, but the dish - like water was leaking from the custard into it. It tasted good, but I was confused. So much so that I actually popped it back into the oven, just to see what would happen. The answer was, not much. The custard is definitely set, but it still let off more water than I expected. I don't know if that is just the nature of custard, if it has to do with the bananas, or if I did something wrong... If anyone knows, please share!

Anyway, that aside, this was yummy, and definitely a good way to use up both must-use ingredients at once.

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Angel Food Cupcakes

I used to be afraid to make Angel Food Cake. It just looked complicated. And I don't have a tube pan. But, about a year ago, I bit the bullet and went for it. The lack of tube pan called for a little bit of creativity, so I made cupcakes instead of the traditional ring. They came out really well, and I was really excited to knock something off of my to-try list.

The only problem with making these, though, is the sheer number of eggs. Well, no, I don't have a problem with using that many eggs. I don't even have a problem separating that many eggs. The issue arises when you have to figure out a use for all those egg yolks. Angel Food Cake uses a dozen egg whites. I had no idea what to do with a dozen egg yolks. That first time, I happened across a reverse-Angel-Food-Cake recipe, one that used 12 egg yolks. So on that day, I made four dozen "Angel Food Cake" cupcakes - 24 the traditional way, using egg whites, and 24 with the alternate, egg yolk recipe. It was a great experiment, but I have to tell you, the yolk recipe was nothing like Angel Food Cake, and it was no one's favorite.

So why am I telling you this today?

On Sundays we have family dinner with the in-laws, and I usually bring dessert. It being Easter Sunday, as well, I wanted to bring something extra special. My mother in law mentioned that she had strawberries, and that they wanted to do something light, so my husband suggested making Angel Food cupcakes to bring, so that we could have a light strawberry shortcake for dessert.

I never bookmarked the recipe from last year, so I looked around to find it again. Most Angel Food Cake recipes are pretty similar, so I didn't stress too much as to which to choose. I also decided to cut the recipe in half, so that I would only make 12 cupcakes instead of 24 because I know I will be making a whole lot of cupcakes this week, but I will get to that later this week. So, recipe selected, all measurements halved, helper in place, we were ready to start.


Eggs separated, the recipe called for cake flour and confectioners sugar to be sifted. I don't have a sifter, but I figured it was nothing a whisk couldn't manage, so I set little miss to work carefully whisking those together. Meanwhile, the KitchenAid mixer was busy whipping up all of those egg whites, together with a little salt, some cream of tartar, as well as some sugar and vanilla extract. This was whipped up until the whites held stiff peaks, not to mention showed really cool patterns from the beater.

The next step was to take the dry ingredients, beautifully mock-sifted, and slowly and carefully fold them into the egg whites. I wanted to take extra care so as not to deflate the egg whites, since the whole idea of these cupcakes is that they are light and fluffy. One recipe I found online (I would totally link it here if I remembered where I found it...) described Angel Food Cake as what every little kid dreams that a cloud would taste like, if they could actually taste a cloud. So I wanted to keep it light and fluffy and cloud-like.

I thought I did a decent job as I spooned the batter into the cupcake tin, which actually might have been the hardest, and was definitely the messiest part of the process. Here's what they looked like right before going into the oven:









But when they came out, I kind of got the impression that I may have over-mixed them, because they deflated quite a bit, coming out like this:









And I seriously can't remember if they deflated quite that much the last time I made them. But the good news is that they still tasted good - were light and airy and tasted just like Angel Food Cake, too. I can't tell you if it is what clouds taste like, but we all enjoyed them.

If you would like to give it a try, here is the recipe that I used.

And I even think that I know what I am going to do with the egg yolks, too... so stay tuned!

Angel Food Cupcakes

(from The Pittsburgh Post Gazette)

1 cup cake flour

1/2 cup confectioners' sugar

1 2/3 cups egg white (11-13 large egg whites)

1 1/2 teaspoon cream of tartar

1/2 teaspoon salt

1 1/4 cup granulated sugar

2 teaspoons vanilla extract

Preheat oven to 375 degrees.

Sift flour with 1/2 cup confectioners' sugar (or whisk together).

In a large bowl, with mixer at medium speed, beat egg whites, cream of tartar and salt until foamy. Increase speed to high. Beat until soft peaks form. Sprinkle in granulated sugar, two tablespoons at a time, beating until whites stand in stiff, glossy peaks when beaters are lifted. Beat in vanilla.

Sift the flour mixture, one third at a time, over the beaten egg whites. Fold in with rubber spatula just until flour mixture is no longer visible.

Spoon batter into muffin pan cups (either well greased or lined with paper liners). The batter should come almost two inches over the top of each muffin cup.

Bake 20-22 minutes or until toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean. Immediately remove cupcakes from pans and cool completely on wire rack.

When cupcakes are cool, dust with confectioners' sugar or frost as desired.

Enjoy!

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Waffles, Picnics and Eggplant - What a day!

Hooray for Spring! Today was a beautiful day, with temperatures in the high seventies, so we wanted to celebrate and spend as much time outside as possible.

We started the celebration with breakfast. We usually have a pretty simple breakfast - cereal, toast, fruit, yogurt... I mean, not all in the same meal, but some combination of those is usually about all either of us is really up for on a daily basis, with the occasional pancake or french toast day thrown in. Today I pulled out the waffle iron. This is the waffle iron that my husband got me for our one year dating anniversary, so it's always a special day when we use it.

Little miss loves waffles, and was happy to help me make them. Stirring one bowl was not enough - she had to stir everything! At once! Whisking dry ingredients, stirring melted butter - she had a hand in most of the preparation of this batter.

I chose buttermilk waffles today, since I still had some buttermilk left from my Irish soda bread venture a few weeks ago. The recipe called for two cups, and I only had one cup left, so I made the recipe with half buttermilk and half my buttermilk substitute. It worked beautifully, though, and the waffles were light and fluffy, with a little crisp to the outside. Little miss wanted hers plain (okay, she actually wanted it with chocolate sauce and whipped cream, but I told her she had to have a more breakfast-y one first... I know, I am such a kill-joy), but I piled mine with banana slices and drizzled it with honey. YUM. We have plenty of leftovers, too, so I think little miss will have her chocolate sauce and whipped cream waffle for dessert this weekend.

Breakfast done, it was time to play outside. And I didn't want the outside fun to stop just for lunch, so we ran inside, made some sandwiches, and continued our outside celebration of the beautiful weather with a picnic right out front.

For the last leg of our day of fun, I decided that our veggie with dinner tonight, eggplant, would be served in the least-veggie way possible - covered in breadcrumbs and then smothered in tomato sauce and cheese. Not quite eggplant parm, I generally call this eggplant lasagna, because I layer it like a lasagna and use ricotta cheese in addition to mozzerella. Little miss wanted to help with this one, too, so helped me coat the eggplant pieces with breadcrumbs. We baked our eggplant rather than frying them because, well,I still wanted it to be a LITTLE healthy... ish... Once the dish was all layered and ready, it went in the oven for about a half an hour until the sauce was bubbly and the cheese was all melty and delicious looking.

Definitely more of a side than a veggie dish, this was still delicious. Even little miss loved it, despite telling me that she just wanted her eggplant plain.

All in all, a really fun day.

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