Terrapin Liquid Bliss Cupcake

Now, what I didn’t mention before is that the birthday boy in question was only turning 1 year old. The fact that his birthday party was at Terrapin was more for the benefit of the parents than the children in attendance, but because the brewery has a nice grassy field out back, the chilluns were able to crawl about and enjoy their time, while the parents (and non-parents in attendance, such as myself) were able to sip on some beer and munch on snacks.

Because of the large age discrepancy in the partiers and their parents, there was some concern about separating my baked goods from the others – nobody wants a liquored-up toddler. I knew that conventional wisdom says “all alcohol gets baked out” of boozy baked goods, but because I was curious, I did a little research.

All the beer-y cupcakes

Interestingly, it turns out that the question of all alcohol burning off in baked goods is a completely wrong! For alcohol to completely bake out of anything it has to bake for a solid 3 hours (something you’re never going to do to your cupcakes). I found the same chart repeated on almost all the websites I looked over regarding cooking method and length of time versus the percentage of alcohol that remained in the food – for the 30ish minutes I cooked these cupcakes, according to the chart about 35% of the alcohol contained remained! Certainly not enough to get even a little buzz off of a single serving, but still more than you’d probably want your child to eat!

Alcohol content aside, though, the cupcakes didn’t taste like booze much at all, though it did taste like the beer itself, which was perfect! To cap off a chocolate-porter cake base, I added a blob of peanut butter ganache to each one. You remember ganache, right? It’s the delicious combination of chocolate and heated cream that can be made into anything from frosting to rich chocolate truffles! For peanut butter ganache, I picked up some Reese’s Peanut Butter chips instead. Success!

Now that I’ve found a nice base recipe for beer cupcake, I definitely see myself making more – there’s so many great beers out there, it’d be tough to stop now! So come one, come all! Grab a pint…and then pour it into some batter!

Ingredients:
Cupcakes:

• 2 cups sugar
• 2 1/2 cups all purpose flour
• 3/4 cup cocoa powder
• 1 1/2 tsp baking soda
• 3 eggs
• 1/2 cup vegetable oil
• 1/2 cup milk
• 3/4 cup plain greek yogurt
• 1 tsp vanilla
• 11-12 oz (1 bottle) Terrapin Liquid Bliss Porter

Ganache:

• 10oz Peanut butter chips
• 3/4 cup heavy whipping cream

Instructions:
Cupcakes:

1. Preheat the oven to 350F
2. Mix beer, milk, oil and vanilla in the bowl of your mixer until combined.
3. Add yogurt and eggs (one at a time) until combined.
4. In a medium-sized bowl, mix remaining dry ingredients with a whisk. Break up all clumps,
5. Turn the mixer on low and slowly add dry ingredients to the wet ones until fully combined.
6. Line a cupcake/muffin tin with liners (or grease the tin with butter or a spray) and fill each up 3/4 of the way.
7. Bake for 20-25 minutes, rotating halfway through.

Ganache:

1. Heat the cream in a small pan until steaming (not boiling)
2. In a medium-sized bowl, add all peanut butter chips, then pour the hot cream on top. Let sit for 5 minutes.
3. Once the chips have begun to melt, gently stir until fully melted.
4. Chill for 15-20 minutes.
5. With a mixer, whip the ganache until it’s pipe-able.
6. Pipe in dollops, swirls, or however you like until you’re happy! Word to the wise – it’ll slowly get easier to pipe as it warms in your hands – consider letting it out for 10 minutes ahead of time to loose it up slightly.
7. CONSUME!

The post Liquid Bliss Cupcakes Recipe appeared first on spatialdrift.

Anyway, over time friends, family, and fellow food bloggers have assured me that scones are worthy of love and will not break my teeth, and that I should stop being ridiculous. In the spirit of open-mindedness (and in search of something new to bake, as well as something to do with leftover buttermilk – always a problem, amirite?), I did some recipe research and cobbled together a savory recipe of my own that, it turns out, is pretty killer.

Cheesy Buttermilk Scones

I think one of the reasons I’ve steered away from scones in the past (something that possibly added to my nonsensical prejudice) is that it contains one of my least-favorite cooking methods: cutting butter into flour. The idea behind the technique is that you leave little chunks of unmelted butter in your dough so when it bakes in the oven you get flakes or layers in your pastry. To do this, you have to keep your butter cold until the last minute, at which point you chop it up into small pieces – using a food processor, dough blender, or even just a knife – and then gently rub, blend, or toss it in the flour. Since I don’t own a food processor this is typically this is a big, messy pain in my butt, but thanks to a tip from Jamie Oliver I found a much easier way to get my butter the right texture: a cheese grater!

1 Cup of Grated Butter

It turns out that grating butter with a cheese grater works like a charm; it gets the butter into the perfect size (seen above!) and requires minimal tossing afterwards. Typically I chop up the cold butter with a knife and then spend 5 minutes rubbing flour into the chunks manually – a sticky and annoying process. Grated, the butter takes minimal massaging, and it mostly just takes a gentle toss. It’s great, and definitely encourages me to try more butter-cutting recipes in the future (biscuits, pie crusts, short cakes!).

 
Even with the super-advanced cheese-grating technique under your belt this recipe gets your hands pretty messy, but despite it all, this recipe has finally ended my hatred of scones – my misconception of them being dry and crunchy has been thoroughly squashed by this recipe. Soft and delicious, these scones are made best, I think, by the buttermilk and sharp cheddar. I’m almost tearing up, here!

Enjoy some delicious scones with your morning eggs, you guys. End scone-hatred now!

Couldn’t you just eat this raw?

Ingredients:

• 3 1/4 cup flour
• 1/4 cup sugar
• 3 tsp baking powder
• 1 tsp kosher salt
• 8 tbsp unsalted butter
• 1 1/4 cup buttermilk, cold
• 3/4 cup shredded cheese (I suggest sharp cheddar)
• 1 tsp black pepper

Instructions:

1. Preheat your oven to 350F.
2. In a medium bowl, whisk together all the dry ingredients (not the cheese).
3. Grate/cut the butter into the dry mixture and gently rub with your fingers until it resembles bread crumbs.
4. Add the buttermilk and stir with a wooden spoon until everything begins sticking.
5. Add the cheese and fold it into the dough with your hands. Don’t over-fold; you don’t want the butter to melt or for the scones to get too tough!
6. Put the dough onto a lightly floured surface and shape it into a rectangle, approximately 1 inch thick. You can use a rolling pin, but since your hands are already covered in flour from folding the dough, I usually just push the dough into the right shape by hand.
7. Using a knife, cut the dough into triangles; I’m typically able to make 10.
8. Place each triangle on a greased baking sheet, about 1 inch apart.
9. Bake for 45 minutes (40, if you’re into a slightly-gooey center!).
10. Let cool for a couple minute and CONSUME!! I think they’re good on their own, but a little butter and jelly or honey can give a nice sweet/savory combination!

The post Cheesy Buttermilk Scone Recipe appeared first on spatialdrift.

For the last day of Bacon Week I got to try another new recipe – dumplings! I’ve never steamed anything other than vegetables before (and them almost always in the microwave, not over the stove or in a steamer), so I thought this would be an interesting foray for my last bacon post of the year.

The dough itself is pretty straight forward, although interestingly it’s composed of both all-purpose and cake flour. Cake flour has a much finer consistency than all-purpose and contains less gluten. Gluten is what makes your baked goods chewy, so using cake flour means you have a lighter consistency, as opposed to bread flour, for example, which has a much higher gluten content to ensure your breads are tougher and chewier. The more you know!

The filling was also delightfully straight forward! Most recipes for pork dumplings called for a pork roast or ribs of some sort, so I did a simple trade-up for the same weight of bacon. The only other requirements were some shallots and hoisin sauce!

Once the dough had risen, I rolled the whole thing into a snake and then chopped that snake into 12 even pieces. Each piece was then rolled by hand into a ball. Then, one by one, I used a rolling pin to flatten each ball into a circle, deposited a small helping of the filling right in the center, then folded the edges in and pinched to form a little dumpling shape. Easy peasy!

Then came the tricky part – as I mentioned, I don’t actually have an official steamer (everything I read assumed you had a bamboo steamer. Are bamboo steamers a standard part of your kitchen?). Instead I did a little googling and then whipped out my colander/steaming basket that I very rarely use. I’d read that you could steam the dumplings with a colander, so I attempted to do just that – with moderate success.

I had to do the steaming in batches, but that wasn’t a terrible inconvenience. I cut 3 small squares of parchment out to keep the dumplings from sticking to the basket and spaced them evenly with the intent of keeping them from touching. As I said, a moderate success.

Here you can see the steamer in action! The basket was placed above a pot of simmering water and left there for around 15 minutes. I felt proud as I watched my little hand-made dumplings expand and get steamed into deliciousness.

So everything sounds like it went smoothly, right? Well, mostly it did, but there were some noted differences between my dumplings and ones I’ve eaten before. The biggest one was the size of the dumplings. I feel like the dough was thicker than it should have been, and as they steamed they puffed up a lot. Each bite was probably 2/3 dough and at most 1/3 filling. I probably should’ve rolled the dough thinner, or added more filling. Or both! Additionally, I think I could have steamed all of them longer. Most dumplings came out with an under-done top (that is, still doughy), while the bottom and sides were more well cooked.

Otherwise, they were pretty good! I’m looking forward to trying other versions of dumplings in the future (probably with “real” filling).

The traditional annual Bacon Badge

Steamed Bacon Dumplings

This is another experimental recipe, just like the doughnuts. Use and tweak this recipe at your own discretion! Adapted from FoodNetwork.com.

Makes 12 dumplings

Ingredients (dough):
Follow Food Network’s directions precisely!

Ingredients (filling):

• 1/2 pound bacon
• 1 bunch diced scallions
• 3 tbsp hoisin sauce

Instructions (dough):
Follow Food Network’s directions precisely!

Instructions (filling):

1. Cook the bacon to where it’s still slightly chewy and not crispy.
2. Pat down the bacon to remove as much grease as possible, then cut into small chunks (I used scissors and cut the strips into approximately 1/2 inch sections).
3. Mix together the bacon, scallions and hoisin until evenly combined.

Assembly:

1. Roll out a ball of dough into around a 3″ circle.
2. Put a small scoop of the filling into the center of the dough.
3. Fold the edges of the dough together and pinch at the top.
4. If you have a steamer, steam the buns for around 15 minutes.
5. If you don’t have a steamer, break out your metal colander and find a pot it will fit inside without touching the bottom. Put a couple inches of water into the pot (the colander shouldn’t touch the water, either!) and set it to simmer. While you wait, cut 3-4 small squares of parchment paper and place them in the colander, each with a “raw” dumpling on it. Don’t crowd them – use your discretion to decide whether you should add 3 or 4 at once. Once steam starts rising from the pot, place the colander and dumplings inside for ~15 minutes.
6. CONSUME!!

The post Bacon Week 2015: Steamed Bacon Dumplings appeared first on spatialdrift.

A close-up of the finished product.

For this year’s Bacon Week, I am contributing my experience with this Maple Bacon Biscuit Bake. After having done Bacon Week for several years, the recipes start to kind of look the same and fall into two categories: “crazy to pull off technically/oh god why” or “something you regularly make just with added bacon.” For this year’s recipe, slightly modified from King Arthur Flour, I’ve tried to avoid both categories as best as I can.

This is easy to make in an afternoon and novel, too – at least to me. It’s like traditional biscuit meets monkey/pull-apart bread and they have a child on a Canadian pork farm. Like an upside-down pineapple cake, you put the sweet-bacony syrup on the bottom, the dropped biscuits on top, and then flip the whole thing after baking. It’s dead simple, and I find having a non-sweet bread to go under such a sticky-sweet topping to be a nice change of pace from a cinnamon roll. Here’s how it works:

syrup
1/2 pound cooked bacon
1/3 cup brown sugar
1/4 cup all-purpose flour
1/4 cup maple syrup
2 tablespoons melted butter

directions
1) Preheat the oven to 475°F. Lightly grease an 8″ square or 9″ round pan; whichever size you choose, make sure it’s at least 2″ deep, to prevent any boil-over. This is a good time to be cooking the bacon if you haven’t already.

2) Syrup: Chop the cooked bacon into 1/2″ pieces. Combine the bacon with the remaining syrup ingredients, stirring until well combined. Spread in the bottom of the prepared pan.

Syrup mix ready for the pan.

3) Biscuits: Whisk the dry ingredients together in a bowl.

4)Work in the butter until the mixture is crumbly; some larger, pea-sized pieces of butter may remain intact.

Mixing the butter into dough for bacon.

5) Add the milk or buttermilk, stirring to make a sticky dough.

6) Drop the dough in heaping spoonfuls atop the syrup in the pan. We used large globs, as waiting for tiny ones to fall was too painful.

 
7) Bake the biscuits for 10 minutes. Turn the oven off, and leave them in the oven for an additional 5 to 10 minutes, until they’re golden brown.

Fresh from the oven and ready to be flipped.

8) Remove the biscuits from the oven, and immediately turn the pan over onto a serving plate. Lift off the pan, and scrape any syrup left in the pan onto the biscuits. Pull biscuits apart to serve. Yields about nine large biscuits before flipping… or 16 according to the original recipe with the tiny biscuits, but I say it doesn’t matter: cut them as small as you like to serve.

The finished product.

We enjoyed these. Having the thick glaze at the bottom and flipping it seems like the only way to go, though if we could have thinned it, that would have improved the experience somewhat. The only other thing I would have done differently is to include some crushed pecans and/or cocoa nibs to the topping for added interest.

On the whole though, it’s truly a dead-simple recipe and one that seems exceedingly easy to riff off of. What if I had peach jam in there instead of bacon? Or a variety of nuts? Or anything, really. I think it has a lot of possibility. Anyway, fellow Bacon Week enthusiasts, I salute you with my bacon biscuit bake in hand. Meat be with you.

The post Bacon Week 2015: Maple Bacon Biscuit Bake appeared first on spatialdrift.

This Bacon Jam Redux turned out way better than the original version. I re-read the post and noted my major mistakes: mostly, grossly over-cooking the jammy mixture. I also decided to reduce the amount of jam I made, since I wasn’t convinced I wanted 2 cups of it sitting in my fridge (hey I love bacon just as much as the next guy, but that doesn’t mean eating bacon jam for 2 weeks straight is something I – or my waistline – really want to do. Yes yes, I’m a traitor to my cause). So I read over a few recipes and re-vamped my expectations.

I also wanted to keep the flavor profile pretty straight-forward this time. I left out the bourbon and kept it mostly sweet with brown sugar, maple syrup, and a little rosemary. I cooked up a couple rounds of bacon, sautéed some onions with rosemary and a little of the leftover bacon grease. Then I heated it all up together with eyeballed amounts of sugar and syrup.

I guess what I”m trying to say is that I made this up as I went along. >.>

After I let the goop bubble for a few minutes, I took it off the heat and let it cool before tossing it into the food processor.

The verdict? A jam that tasted much better than the one I made 2 years ago – good enough to munch on enjoyably with crackers! – but the texture just isn’t quite there yet. It’s still a little hard once it cools, where it should instead be softer and easily spreadable. I clearly needed to add more liquid and let it cook longer in order to soften everything up more.

Sounds like there’ll have to eventually be a 3rd attempt in the future!

The traditional annual Bacon Badge

Bacon Jam Redux

Not really good enough to share the recipe – next time!

The post Bacon Week 2015: Bacon Jam Redux appeared first on spatialdrift.

To kick things off this year, I have something not using bacon specifically, but rather what it lovingly leaves behind: its fat! Rather than throw my bacon grease down the drain (which you should never do, by the way) or simply freezing it before throwing it in the trash, I always keep mine in a jar to use occasionally throughout the year. A little bacon fat is a great way to spice up your morning eggs, a chili, or – as you’ll see here today – make your cookies a little more interesting.

Earlier in the year I’d pinned a recipe for shortbread cookies made with bacon fat and I loved the idea so much, I figured it couldn’t be that difficult to do something similar with your basic chocolate chip drop cookie. It turns out, while not particularly difficult, I still had to go through a few iterations to get it just right.

For my first attempt at these cookies, I said to myself, “DAMN THE TORPEDOS, FULL-ON BACON FAT!” Which is to say, instead of using any butter, as you typically do with cookies, I’d do a full 1:1 replacement with bacon fat. This yielded some pretty standard-looking cookie dough, which I excitedly rolled into balls and tossed into the oven. At that point, though, the similarities to “normal” chocolate chip cookies faded. An 8-minute bake time turned into 10 minutes, which turned into 15 – at which point I finally took them out. They didn’t brown like normal cookies, and even after 15 minutes of baking they were still weirdly pale. They tasted okay, but honestly – and, I suppose, unsurprisingly – they were unappealingly greasy. And to top it all off, the texture was akin to eating a patty of sand.

Suffice it to say, they were not great.

So going “full-on bacon fat” was a bad idea, one I won’t make again. My next iteration fixed the problem – I halved the amount of bacon fat I was adding and replaced it with good ‘ole butter to make the texture and flavor a little better. This version turned out much better, with a decent texture and much less greasier flavor, but my ratios of sugars and flour were off (I didn’t include any brown sugar, and I used a little too much flour). 3rd time’s a charm, right?

This time the cookies were perfect – half of my sugar I converted to brown to give it a more caramely flavor and I reduced the flour by a quarter cup to let the cookies be a little less stiff. These cookies came out sweet and tender with a distinct, yet not overpowering flavor of bacon in them. You know how you can tell from the dough if you’re doing things right? I was pretty confident at around this point:

I’ve pawned these off on a handful of people, all with positive results. One friend pointed out they’re great for people with less of a sweet tooth, as the bacon flavor does a great job offsetting the sugar and chocolate. I think these are great for a party, if you want to bring something a little fun and quirky. This recipe makes a straight-up perfect dozen of these little weirdos – and if you like both bacon and chocolate chip cookies, you should definitely make them.

Save that bacon fat, y’all – it’s too useful of a cooking tool!

And join us for some Bacon Week times! Grab the badge and post a recipe of your own!

The traditional annual Bacon Badge

Bacon Fat Chocolate Chunk Cookies

Makes 1 dozen cookies

Ingredients:

• 1 1/2 cup flour
• 1/4 cup granulated sugar
• 1/4 cup brown sugar
• 1/4 cup butter
• 1/4 cup chilled bacon fat
• 1 egg
• 1/2 tsp baking soda
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 1/2 cup chopped chocolate (or just chocolate chips – I was in a chocolate chunk mood at the time!)

Instructions:

1. Preheat the oven to 350F.
2. Cream together the butter, bacon fat, and sugars until fluffy.
3. Add all other ingredients except for the chocolate and mix until dough forms.
4. Mix in the chocolate chunks so they’re evenly distributed.
5. Roll pieces of the dough into balls, place them on your greased (or parchment paper-covered) cookie sheet, and press them down to slightly flatten.
6. Bake for 10 – 12 minutes.
7. CONSUME!!

The post Bacon Week 2015: Bacon Fat Chocolate Chunk Cookies appeared first on spatialdrift.

Oh that’s right – TO MAKE THEM EVEN BETTER! It’s time to bring back brown butter, guys…and add a little red food coloring for extra festivity!

Browned Butter Red Velvet Brownies

It’s the time of year for red velvet, and as tired as you might be of seeing post after post of red and pink themed desserts, I feel like it’d be simply irresponsible to not add something for this February. The good news is that, adorably-red or not, these brownies are delicious and definitely worth your time. This is mostly due to the magical powers of brown butter.

A couple years ago I went on a browned butter kick, and I was delighted to be reminded of it again for this recipe. Brown butter takes normal brownies and gives them a nutty, richer flavor. Fun fact, in french brown butter is “beurre noisette“, which literally translates to “hazelnut butter”. The more you know!

Brown Butter in Phases:

 
What’s even better about brown butter is how easy it is to make. If you have the patience to stir melted butter until it smells nutty and delicious, you officially have the patience to make your baked goods a little bit better. It’s another one of those easy techniques to have in your bag of tricks that make you look fancy, but in reality isn’t that hard to accomplish.

But let me stop before I get too far off on a brown butter tangent – I’ll get to that in another post! These brownies have a rich texture and taste due to the relatively large amount of butter in them. They’re not super thick or anything, but they’re definitely filling (which is to say, one piece is probably enough!), and the tops are lovely and cracked while the insides stay moist and buttery.

Check out that sexy batter!

Gotta have a bite.

Browned Butter Red Velvet Brownies

Adapted from Something Swanky
Ingredients:

• 1 cup flour
• 1 1/4 cup sugar
• 1/4 cup cocoa powder
• 2 eggs
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 1 tsp vanilla
• 1 tbsp water
• 1 tbsp red food coloring

Instructions:

1. Preheat oven to 350F.
2. Grease or use parchment paper to line a 9×9 pan.
3. In a medium bowl, whisk together all dry ingredients.
4. In a small saucepan, melt butter over medium-low heat. Once melted, continue heating at the same temperature and stir continuously until brown flecks appear (for “browned butter”). Allow the flecks to continue forming, but remove from heat before they blacken. The butter should smell nutty and delicious.
5. Add eggs, vanilla, and water to the dry ingredients and mix.
6. Add butter and food coloring and mix. Mixture should become velvety and smooth!
7. Pour the batter into your prepared pan and bake for 25 minutes, or until a sharp knife poked into the center comes out clean.
8. CONSUME!!!

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Jamie’s Food Revolution

Greetings, and happiest of new years to you all! Welcome to a new year at Spatialdrift, one I’m very glad to be a part of. I’ve been out of town for a few months for work (sorry about that), and it’s nice to be back and preparing for a year of baking, cooking, and blogging.

Getting back to a regular blogging schedule is one of my goals this year (you’ll notice I’m dodging the all-too-tired discussion on the validity of New Year’s Resolutions), but to jump-start regular blogging, I really needed to get back into regular cooking and baking as well. Getting into the habit of cooking as opposed to eating out is a goal you hear from people all the time, but finding the right place to start can be difficult. Sure, there’s plenty of recipes and advice to be had all over the internet, but if you’re looking for an all-encompassing solid reference for daily cooking and simple, tasty meals, let me give you a good place to start – Jamie’s Food Revolution.

Jamie Oliver is a chef who has starred in several of his own cooking shows, written a multitude of cookbooks, and is generally a charming gent devoted to food and health. He endeared himself to me especially when, a few years ago, he made it a personal goal to take bad health and the rise of obesity to task by teaching people not only a single recipe to use whenever company comes over for dinner, but rather to cook a multitude of recipes, to understand health, and to pass that understanding on to friends and family. Indeed, he wanted to start a food revolution where people took a “pass it on pledge” – learn one recipe from each chapter of his book and then pass those recipes on to others.

Ingredient-stained cookbook: always a good sign.

I’ve spent the end of December and all of January informally working my way through this cookbook, and it’s been a surprising delight. At the time I didn’t choose Food Revolution for any particular reason other than the fact that it was on the top of a pile and that I recalled it containing straight-forward recipes, but I’m glad that I did.

Over the past month I’ve made tikka masala, pan-fried trout, and ground beef wellington, just to name a few recipes. The tikka I love so much I’ve actually made it several times, and each time I’ve tweaked it a bit for my own preferences – and it’s always delicious. Plus, I’ve actually made and posted Food Revolution‘s recipe for self-rising dumplings (side note: the stew from that post was also from Food Rev. All of that to say, from first-hand experience I can definitely give these recipes a ringing endorsement.

 
“But Mary”, I’m sure you’re asking, “that’s great, but what makes this cookbook good for me, the regular Joe just struggling to make easy meals every day??” And I would tell you, “that’s a great question.” After I’d made a few recipes back to back, I started noticing something about them: they all take startlingly simple and easily reusable ingredients, especially the spices. It’s a rare recipe that requires more than salt and pepper to taste, or a sprig of rosemary, or just some butter to flavor the meat and vegetables. As someone watching my budget while also cooking on a regular basis, it’s refreshing to have a huge stock of recipes with ingredients I can easily pull from my shelf or refrigerator. Nobody wants to have to make a grocery store run every time you want to cook something new. Food Revolution fully accounts for that.

On top of that, Jamie makes everything sound easy – and it is. The book begins with basics – stocking your kitchen with both basic tools and implements – and then is broken into a chapter apiece on different food types – pastas, curries, salads, stews, and the like. Regarding preparation, each recipe is simple and requires limited-to-no finesse. Can you chop vegetables and cook ground beef? Can you slice onions and sauté them with chicken? We’re talking basic cooking fundamentals and straight-forward ingredients. Plus, he includes a handful of suggestions on both ingredients and techniques in each recipe. Truly, a learning-cook’s delight.

So if you’re kicking off your new year hoping to become a better chef, I highly recommend grabbing Jamie’s Food Revolution. The recipes are delicious and basic; there’s no better way, in my opinion, to become a regular cook than having a stockpile of tasty recipes with interchangeable ingredients. You’ll never be bored with your food, and you’ll always be happy with the outcome.

Consider this me fulfilling my pass-it-on pledge! Happy New Year!

Jamie’s Food Revolution – Rediscover how to Cook Simple, Delicious, Affordable Meals

For interested parties, here’s a list of recipes I’ve personally made from this book (an asterisk* for ones I’ve made multiple times):

• Chicken Tikka Masala*
• Basic Stew*
• Best Ever French Beans*
• Ground Beef Wellington*
• Boiled Eggs
• Simple Pan-Fried Trout
• Crunchy Garlic Chicken
• British Beef and Onion Pie
• A Cracking Burger

The post Jamie’s Food Revolution appeared first on spatialdrift.

Key Ingredient: Gross Old Bananas

If you feel like throwing yourself on that hand grenade, you can always just eat a slightly-softer-than-preferred piece of fruit. If it occurs to you, you can put them in the freezer for later use, where they’ll surely be forgotten until the next time you clean it out and you say to yourself “Ugh, what moron put these in here?”

OR, if you’re really on your game, you can pull out all the necessary ingredients from your cupboards to make a wicked batch of banana bread. Or even better, chocolate banana bread.

(Of course if I’d been really really on my game I’d have made double-chocolate banana bread by throwing in some chocolate chips. You can’t win them all, y’all).

So this is what I did recently with my sadly wasting away bananas. I’d normally just do a batch of banana bread all on its lonesome, but I wanted to jazz it up a bit: chocolate it became!

Banana bread is actually a wonderfully versatile dessert. You can add anything to it to give it a little extra pizzazz, to make it taste a little different, or you can keep it plain-jane; either way it always ends up being moist, sweet and delicious. If you do it right, you can even make it relatively healthy! …But we’ll save that for another post.

For now, just enjoy some simple, chocolatey banana bread – don’t let your bananas go to waste!

Chocolate Banana Bread

Makes 1 loaf
Slightly adapted from ItsAlwaysAutumn.com
Ingredients:

• 2-3 medium bananas, mashed
• 1 cup sugar
• 2 eggs
• 1/3 cup vegetable oil
• 1 1/2 cups all purpose flour
• 1/2 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
• 1 tsp vanilla
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1 cup chocolate chips (optional: for double-chocolate bread!)

Instructions:

1. Preheat the oven to 350F.
2. Line a standard bread pan with parchment paper, or grease with butter, or Baking PAM
3. In a large bowl, beat together eggs, sugar, and oil.
4. Mix in the mashed banana and vanilla.
5. Add flour, cocoa, baking soda, and salt. Mix until just combined
6. Bake for 1 hour, or until a knife inserted in the middle comes out clean
7. CONSUME!!! (careful it’s hot, obviously)

The post Basic Chocolate Banana Bread Recipe appeared first on spatialdrift.

END MEAT SWEATS NOW.

And let’s not forget about your vegetarian friends! They deserve love too, and more than just a paltry cheese pizza option. They eat meatless meals every day of their lives and they seem to be doing okay.  And going meatless can be a great way to save some money!

…Wait, why did this become an advertisement for meat-free living? Weird.

Anyway, my point is that you should never turn up your nose at some meat-free meals since they can be just as good as their meat-filled compatriots. Case in point? This meal: butternut squash and black bean enchiladas.

Some delicious (though a bit too chunky) enchilada filling

This recipe is a great integration of vegetables into a Mexican enchilada. Basically, you chop and roast a combination of veggies, roll them in tortillas, cover them in enchilada sauce and cheese, then bake. Easy peasy, and pretty delicious-sounding right?

Despite their conceptual ease, however, I was just as equally dreading them because they require peeled and chopped butternut squash. If there’s any cooking technique I hate (besides folding together ingredients) it’s peeling food, and butternut squash can be a particular pain because of its weird shape. Even so, I ended up making this recipe not once, but twice, and that, combined with the fact that I had to peel a large vegetable, should speak to how good it is.

Weirdly-Shaped Butternut Squash

I made this recipe once for my brother and sister-in-law, and once for Emily and her husband. Both groups agreed that this recipe was definitely a keeper, both as fully vegetarian and with added meat (in both cooking instances I made approximately a half-pan of veggie and a half pan of veggie plus meat). What’s even better is that making this twice gave me some insight on how to best peel a butternut squash, so even that part is less of a headache now (pro tip: just get a peeler. Seriously, save yourself the headache and buy a $5 peeler).

The original recipe for these enchiladas includes more ingredients than I finally decided to use; besides squash, onion, and black beans it also includes zucchini and corn.  Other similar recipes I’ve seen include tomatoes and chilis, too (varieties I may try in the future).  I decided to reduce these ingredients for several pretty legitimate reasons:

1. In my experience, it is impossible buy a small amount of butternut squash (more on that below).
2. I don’t really like zucchini.
3. SO MUCH CHOPPING UGH.
4. Cash moneys.

Mostly, though, a medium onion, medium butternut squash, and can of black beans creates so much filling that adding more ingredients doesn’t make sense; even with these ingredients I had to use an additional pan to accommodate all the enchiladas.  If you want to feed an entire army, by all means add even more vegetables to the mix, but this recipe is constructed be just for 4 or 5 eaters. Personal preference does make this recipe nice and flexible, though; if you like zucchini or any other vegetables, by all means throw it in and give it a try!

So much filling!

The peeling, chopping, and other preparations required in this recipe are completely worth it, let me assure you. The butternut squash gives the enchiladas a hearty feel and that in combination with the black beans always makes me feel nice and satisfied.  And like I just mentioned, it’s an incredibly versatile recipe.  You can keep it simple like I have, with 3 main ingredients and salt and pepper, or you can jazz it up with more vegetables, garlic, cumin, red pepper – there’s so much you can do with it.  And most importantly, I guess, it’s an easy crowd pleaser and makes a big ‘ole pan of food.  Add in some rice on the side and you could feed even more!

Try these enchiladas, and you will have no regerts. This is my promise.

NO REGERTS.

Not the best pic, but it was tough for my patience when all I wanted to do was eat it.

Butternut Squash & Black Bean Enchiladas

Adapted from RedluctantEntertainer.com
Makes 5 servings (2 enchiladas a piece)

Ingredients:

• 1 small or 1/2 a medium butternut squash
• 1 large onion
• 1 16oz can of black beans, drained
• 10 large tortillas
• 2 tbsp olive oil (or melted fat of your choice, if you’re not going hard-core vegetarian)
• Salt & pepper to taste (a couple teaspoons apiece; I tended to add more pepper)
• 1 bunch cilantro, chopped
• 1-2 cups shredded cheese
• Salsa or enchilada sauce (your choice)
• Sour cream & avocado enchilada toppers (optional)

Instructions:

1. Preheat the oven to 400F.
2. Peel and dice both the butternut squash and the onion and put them in a large bowl.  If you’re unsure whether your pieces are small enough, remember you’ll be eating these in a tortilla, so giant chunks aren’t a great idea.  Consider 1/2″ cubes at their biggest.  To be clear, the filling pictured above is actually too big – the 2nd time I made them I had good success with smaller cubes.
3. Add olive oil, salt, and pepper to the bowl and toss to coat.  Any other spices you want should be added here; I found that salt and pepper, despite their simplicity, were perfect.
4. Spread the vegetables in a pan and roast for 15 minutes.
5. Pour the black beans into the pan as well, mix/stir.  Roast for another 15 minutes.
6. While roasting, prepare a 9×13″ and a 9×9″ pans (or if you’re feeling lucky, you can try getting all 10 enchiladas into the 9×13).  Pour a thin layer of either enchilada sauce or salsa over the bottom of the pans, spreading to make sure all area is covered.
7. When vegetables are ready, reduce oven temperature to 350F.
8. Mix in the cilantro.  Add ~1/2 cup of filling to each tortilla, roll, and place it, seam-down, in the pan.  Don’t be stingy with your filling, but don’t worry if you end up having some left over – it’s actually really delicious by itself (or on eggs!  Or on tortilla chips!).
9. Cover the rolled enchiladas generously with more enchilada sauce/salsa, then again with cheese.
10. Bake for 30 minutes at 350F.
11. Garnish with sour cream, avocado, and more cilantro!
12. CONSUME!

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