No Knead Bread

I made this bread more out of curiosity than anything.  My friend and fellow food blogger Ashlie sent me this link to a recipe for a no-knead bread that was published in the New York Times.  I was very curious and intrigued: how do the glutens properly develop without kneading?  I had to try it out to see for myself.

Ingredients (1 loaf):
3 cups bread flour
1/4 tsp yeast
1 1/4 tsp salt
1 5/8 cup water

I always marvel at the simplicity of bread ingredients.  Okay, so here are the three dry ingredients.

Then, add the water.  I aimed for a comfy warm water, somewhere between lukewarm and room temperature.

Okay!

Then you mix it all together with a spoon and you get this sticky mess.

That's it.  Now you cover the bowl with wrap and let it sit for 12-18 hours in a warm room.  If you're baking in the summer, great.  If you live in a cold region like me and it's the middle of winter, you might keep it near-ish the heat vents or in the kitchen near the stove. 

After it has sat for a while, you'll see that your bread baby has grown in size, and the top will be speckled with little holes (eek). 

Plop dough onto a lightly-floured surface.

Fold it over on itself a few times and let it sit 15 minutes.

Now, use some corn meal to coat the exterior of the dough...

And plop it on a corn meal covered surface seam-side-down.

Cover it with a towel and let rest for 2 hours.

Once it has rested, it should have doubled in size.

Heat oven to 450F for about half an hour with an oven-friendly heavy covered pot.  I found that my Le Creuset was perfect for the job, but any ceramic or cast iron skillet will be fine.  When oven is heated, toss the dough into the pot.  I say toss because you have to use a rather quick motion to get it in there.

Cover the pot and bake for 30 minutes, then 15-30 more minutes until the crust is golden brown.

Here we are!

Not bad for a no-knead dough!

A pretty good sized loaf, though I could stand for it to be a little taller. 

Let's see what the crumb (inside of bread) looks like...

Nice!  Very respectable loaf of bread!

This was delicious to eat with just simple buttery spread, but also hearty enough to be a good soup bread.

Thanks to the creator of this recipe, Jim Lahey, and the NYT for the awesome recipe!

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For a printable (and original!) version of this recipe, please click here.

Sunday Story: Etsy Store

So, today I finally broke down and opened an Etsy store!  You can check out the items by clicking on the tab.  I thought I'd try it out because friends have been urging me to do so for years.  I don't know if I've ever shared this with you guys on this blog, but I LOVE knitting.  I've been knitting since I was in my early teens, got somewhat serious in college, and got super crazy into it when I was in grad school.  I'm the crazy girl that owns numerous plastic tubs of yarn, gets yarn and knitting supplies for birthdays and Christmas, and carries a knitting project with me at all times.  So there you have my confession. 

 
My hobbies often find a way of intersecting.  Like my love of cooking/all things kitchen and knitting.  I've been really into knitting mug cozies (how cute is the concept?  sweaters for mugs?!), and I thought I would share these with the world through an Etsy Store.  So, peruse away!  I'll be adding more and more things as I complete them, but I thought I'd share the site with you guys first.  Have a great day!

Roasted Brussel Sprouts with Sun-dried Tomatoes and Herbs

My husband and I take part in a CSA (community supported agriculture), and we get fresh organic produce from our farmer in a giant box every week.  This week we got a little baggie of brussel sprouts.  I decided to roast them with delicious sun-dried tomatoes, which add amazing flavor and tang to any dish.  I kicked it up some more with a generous amount of herbs de provence, and thus this recipe was born.

Ingredients (2 servings):
10-15 brussel sprouts, halved
½ onion, chopped
2 cloves of garlic, minced
1 tsp herbs de provence
pinch of hot pepper flakes
4-5 sun-dried tomatoes, chopped
2 tbsp olive oil
salt and pepper to taste

Here are some of my pretty sprouts.  Wash them good, and take them to the cutting board. 

  
Chop off the butt end and removing a few of the external leaves.

Then cut them in half.  They look like little baby heads of cabbage.

Throw them into a small-ish casserole dish.  

Mix the brussel sprouts with chopped onions, minced garlic, herbs de provence (italian seasoning would work fine here), and hot pepper flakes, if you feel so inclined.  I am always so inclined.

Then mix in your chopped sun-dried tomatoes.  I get the kind in a giant jar from Sam's Club, and then I just use some scissors to cut up pieces into dishes.  A little goes a long way, so just don't overdo it.  You still want the brussel sprouts to take center stage.  Drizzle with olive oil, then salt and pepper to taste. 

Bake at 400F for 40 minutes, or until sprouts are tender.  I used my convection toaster oven, so it took a little less time, but I think a standard oven should be able to do this in 40 minutes.  Here's the delicious dish that resulted!

Each sprout was deliciously tender, almost creamy in the middle.  The combination of herbs and the aromatics made the dish deeply rich in flavor, and the sun-dried tomatoes gave it a kick of tang that helps the flavors from getting too muddled.  It was so good, even my picky husband (whose palate is often like a 12-year-old's) liked it.  I would totally make this again, and I hope you'll give it a try too!

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For a printable version of this recipe, please click here.

How to Prep Minced Garlic

I use a lot of garlic in my cooking.  I love the sweetness, the earthiness, the pungency, the sharpness, and everything else about it.  The downside is that, when I'm in a hurry, it's rather annoying to have to peel garlic.  I love the flat-knife-smash method to crush and peel garlic, but sometimes that takes forever, especially for the little baby-sized garlic cloves.  

My mom taught me this trick of prepping your own minced garlic ahead of time.  I find that the jars of minced garlic you get at the grocery store, which to me taste bad because they seem to add preservatives to make them stay good.  But my mom's way of freezing minced garlic preserves the taste perfectly, and it's easy to do. 

Peel a head of garlic.

Put them into your food processor, blender, herb mincer, or whatever you usually do to pulverize things.

Mince the garlic good.

Now, take a zippered baggie and use your favorite mug to kinda perch it on.  My mug was chosen completely arbitrarily.  La di dah...

Scrape your garlic into the baggie. 

Zip up the bag.

Then smush down the garlic flat.  I just use my hands and flatten it out evenly.

Stick it in the freezer!  Now you have a frozen stash of garlic that you can use anytime.  When you're ready to use it, just break off a slab of garlic and toss it into your soups, marinades, casseroles, etc. 

Super easy and saves tons of time!  Hope you enjoyed this little trick from my mom's kitchen.  Have a lovely day!

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Lowfat Vanilla Cupcakes with Orange Fennel Seed Glaze

Happy (Almost) Valentine's Day!  I made these heart-shaped cupcakes over the weekend, and I wanted to share this recipe with you.  THIS is the cupcake recipe I've been looking for all my life.  A lowfat cupcake that is light and airy and more like a sponge cake than the traditional buttery cake that is rather dense and often guilt-ridden.  It requires no butter or oil, and uses foamed egg whites to get its fluff.  Each cupcake (with glaze!) is just under 100 calories.  

Plus, the glaze is ridiculously good--a light, citrusy glaze that tastes like summer.  The tangy flavor is cut by the addition of fennel seeds, which adds a surprising dimension to the cupcake that is beyond sweet or tart.  Convinced?  Let's get started! 
   
Ingredients (12-18 cupcakes):
3 egg yolks
1 cup sugar (divide in half)
1 tsp vanilla extract
¼ cup cold water
1 cup flour
1 tsp baking powder
pinch of salt
5 egg whites
⅛ tsp cream of tartar


Orange Fennel Seed Glaze

1 ½ cups powdered sugar
1 tsp orange extract
2 tbsp fresh lemon juice
1 tbsp fennel seeds


First, separate three of the eggs, and reserve the egg whites.  I find that the gentlest way to separate eggs and have foolproof, unpopped yolks is by doing it with my hands.  You want to make sure you don't get any egg yolk in the whites, so this is the best way.   

So cute :)

Now, beat the yolks with half a cup of sugar.  You’ll use the other half later.  Add vanilla and water.

In a separate bowl, sift flour, baking powder, and salt.  Since it's a really light batter and we want things to be as smooth as possible, I took extra care to sift.

Add the dry mix to the wet mix.

You should get a rather thick batter that looks like this.

Now, it's time to foam the egg whites with cream of tartar.  Cream of tartar is what you use when you want to make baked goods extra fluffy.  You invest in one of these guys and it actually lasts a long time. 

So yes, foam five egg whites with cream of tartar until you get soft peaks.  So that's the three egg whites we saved from earlier, plus two more whites.  Yeah, you'll have to toss two yolks, but that's okay.

Once you get the soft peaks, take the remaining 1/2 cup of sugar and whisk it in, little by little, until all is dissolved.

Now, very gently fold the egg whites into the batter.  You want to add the foam to the batter, not the other way around, because you don't wanna squish all the bubbles you [or your mixer] worked so hard to get by foaming.  I use kind of a cut-down-then-lift-up-and-out motion when I'm folding egg whites.

There we go.

Now, preheat your oven to 350F, and get your pans ready.  In the spirit of Valentine's Day, I used these adorable heart-shaped cupcake molds I got from the dollar rack at Target a few years ago.  You might remember this recipe from a few years ago.

So really, the best way to fill cupcake molds is by using an ice cream scoop with a scraper thingmabob.  Er...you know what I mean.

Cute!

 So, I ended up filling 12 of the hearts and then another 6 in my regular cupcake pan.  You might get 18 like I did, or less if you're a generous scooper.

Twenty minutes later, we get this adorable little cuppies!  Aww, how cute are the hearts?!  (Also, a tip for using silicon bakeware--make sure the cupcake has cooled on a rack in the cupcake mold before you try to yank them out.  I ruined a huge batch of cupcakes once because I thought you had to try to get them out right away.)

While the cupcakes chill out, you can start making the glaze.  I am not a huge frosting person, so this glaze was a really nice change.  Plus, these cuppies are so light and fluffy, it would be very odd to top them with heavy buttercream frosting.  Okay, so sift the powdered sugar into a bowl.

Then get yourself a nice lemon.  I used a meyer lemon because that's what we got in our CSA (community supported agriculture) box this week.  

Meyer lemons are more...orange.  Huh.

So here's the lemon juice (2 tablespoons), plus the orange extract.  When you start mixing, you'll be like, what the heck...this is never gonna turn into glaze.

And then you're like, huh, the tiny amount of moisture is actually working itself through the sugar.  Interesting.

 
So mix until you get a nice creamy, drippy glaze that is just a tad thicker than glue.  If you need it to get a little more liquidy, add a little water, a drop or so at a time.  A little liquid goes a long way for glaze.

I'm not the most impressive glaze drizzler in the world...look how awkward this first one is going.  Though I blame it on having to take a picture with my right hand at the same time.

Things got a little better once I put the camera down.  Haha look at the sad one in the bottom left.  The middle one looks pretty nice though.

See?

Now, you'll have to trust me on this.  Get yourself a little fennel seed (it was in my spice rack) and sprinkle a few on the glaze before it hardens.  Fennel seed is a little licorice-y and palate-cleansing.  I always munch on them at the Indiana restaurants I go to as I'm checking out.  They're delightful, and they give the cupcake a lot more depth.  Your friends will bite into the cake and go, "Ooh!" because it is just that surprising.

How cute is that?

I love this recipe so much, and I hope you'll try it too!  It's a pleasant change from the typical cupcake, and it's light enough that you don't feel guilty eating it.  Have a wonderful Valentine's Day, everyone!

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For a printable version of this recipe, please click here.

original recipe in 500 Cupcakes by Fergal Connolly