Mocha 'Mallows

Who knew marshmallows were so easy to make?!  Seriously?!  Sweet!!!

I basically followed the recipe here http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/alton-brown/homemade-marshmallows-recipe/index.html.

I also watched "Puff the Magic Mallow" before proceeding (in 3 parts)

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3

So, on to the actual recipe I followed (you knew I couldn't just leave well enough alone, right?)

3 packages unflavored gelatin
1 cup cold coffee, divided
2 cups sugar
Somewhere between 1/3 and 1/2 cup cocoa powder
1/2 cup molasses
1 big pinch of salt
vanilla extract to taste

First, set the gelatin to soften in 1/2 cup of the cold coffee in the mixing bowl of a stand mixer, or whatever bowl you will be using to mix up the marshmallow.  Use a pretty sizable bowl.

Line your pan of choice with foil, spray down with nonstick spray, and liberally coat with cocoa powder (or another powder of your choice).

In a 2 quart sauce pan, place the other 1/2 cup of coffee, sugar, cocoa powder, molasses, and salt, stir to combine and heat on medium-high heat until the mixture reaches anywhere between 240 and 250 degrees.  A thermometer is rather important to candy making!  I use an infrared digital thermometer from home depot.  The mixture will start to sort of foam up as the bubbles after awhile pile on top of one another.  Remove the sugar mixture from the heat, it will remain pourable for a good several minutes (maybe up to 15 minutes would be my guess).

Turn the mixer on the now solidified gelatin on low to medium speed.  SLOWLY pour the molten sugar down the SIDE of the mixing bowl, do not get it on the beaters unless you want hot, sticky, liquid sugar all over the place and possibly on you (not as wonderful as it sounds I assure you....).  This will melt the gelatin, and the mixture will look an ugly brown colour.  It gets better.

Once you have mixed all the sugar syrup in, crank the mixer to high, as high as you can (a high sided bowl is great here) to work as many bubbles into the mixture as you possibly can.  You can add the vanilla extract (imitation or real) at any point now.  Whip and whip and whip for about 10-15 minutes.  When it is done the mixture will be a much prettier shade of light brown, puffy, and the top will start to pull away just a little bit from the side at the top.  Trust me you will see a difference in the shape of the top of the mixture.

Now fanagle the sticky, puffy mixture into your pan.  I'd suggest using a flat, flexible implement coated in nonstick spray.  Smooth it as well as you can.  Mine was not even in thickness, but hey that's cool, we're not some big candy factory.  I really rather liked the swished top that came about.

Let this set for at least 4 hours (or overnight).  I next liberally sprinkled the top with cocoa powder (remember, we are working with a sticky substance here).  Set down a sheet of foil, and flip the marshmallow onto it, and remove the foil that was in the pan.  Now take a cutting implement such as a pizza cutter or tall knife, coat in spray, and commence to cutting.  You may have to re-coat at some point.

Pull the marshmallows apart.  Some of them may stick a little bit, but if you pull gently they should pull cleanly away from each other and the foil.  The key is to pull GENTLY.  Finally, get a little cocoa powder and dip each cut side into the powder and sort of pounce against your hand to both remove the excess cocoa powder and distribute it onto the slightly uneven surface.

That's it!  You are done!  Now enjoy these not-too-sweet marshmallows, and don't forget to share! :D

Here is the 'mallow after sitting overnight.  The thickness is not even, but who cares?  I love that swishy top.

Mmmm, beautiful swishy top.  I didn't quite want to cut it.

Sprinkled the top with cocoa powder before flipping out onto another piece of foil.  If you are worried about sticking, you can smooth it on with your hand to get the cocoa really distributed well.  I didn't bother though, and only had a couple of spots stick, and even those spots pulled off without much trouble.  I would not try this without any powder whatsoever though.  Pulling up the occasional spot isn't so bad, but I'd hate to have to pull off the entire thing.  The top will be a bit less tacky than the rest of the marshmallow as it will have dried slightly.

Here is the mondo' 'mallow turned out onto a new piece of foil, you can see the cocoa powder on the outside from the pan.  I really REALLY did not want this stuff sticking to my cutting board.  I bet a glass sandwich or cutting board would work well too, as they are non-porous.

I cut these with a lubed butcher knife.  They are not quite pretty yet.

Here are the finished marshmallows after I dipped the cut sides into cocoa powder and tossed each one against my hand to evenly, thinly distribute the cocoa powder.

The corner pieces were a bit taller and had a pretty outer texture.

These are really springy and bounce when dropped on a plate.

Ptak Science Books: Food and Not Having It: Visual Displays of Data, Britain and Germany, 1918

Click on the link to see the graphics:

Ptak Science Books: Food and Not Having It: Visual Displays of Data, Britain and Germany, 1918

".... Unfortunately we do not see what the Germans had to eat, though in the next graphic (same source, though 23 March 1918) we see the "ingenious" ways in which the German people got around not having certain foodstuffs. The means look more desperate than anything else: meat/sausage for example is replaced by "War Sausage", which was coagulated ox blood bleached with peroxide, and also by a "vegetable" meat, which was dyed glucose. "

Elliot's Birthday Brownies

These are one of Elliot's favourite brownies.  Sometimes I just cannot leave well enough alone, brownies are so easy and delightful to play with!  You can add peanutbutter, use cocoa powder, and generally add whatever you want and tailor them to whatever is available in your kitchen at any given time.  You can bake a batch of brownies every week of the year and manage to not repeat a pan.

3/4 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips
1-2 oz. unsweetened chocolate
1 14 oz. can sweetened condensed milk
2 eggs
1/3 cup flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Combine the chocolates with the milk in a microwave safe bowl.  Nuke at 5 - 10 second intervals after an initial interval of 30 seconds at high power, stirring often.  When it is almost fully melted, I'll usually just pull the bowl out of the microwave and let it sit on the counter for a few minutes to finish.  Add the eggs one at a time and MIX VERY VERY WELL fairly swiftly.  I don't know if swiftness is quite necessary, I just worry about putting the eggs in a warm product; don't want them to cook.  Then, just toss in the flour, baking powder, and vanilla.  Finally, add any mix-ins that strike your fancy, such as MORE CHOCOLATE! Then just put in your favourite greased brownie pan and bake at 350 to desired doneness.

These work out to be a very dense fudgy brownie.  So don't eat too many at once, trust me.  Been there, done that, regretted it, though it was fun while it lasted!

Porcupine Roadkill

I LOVE my mom's porcupines.  Big ground beef and rice meatballs simmered in tomato sauce and rice, it's one of those things that tastes better the next day.

Make some meatballs of ground beef, minute rice, an egg, garlic, and oregano.  My mom always made them pretty big, but I never quite got the hang of frying the big ones so that the center was done and the outside wasn't burnt, so I just make smaller ones.  Someday I will master the (small) fist-sized meatball.  When they are cooked through, put some tomato sauce, garlic, oregano, water, and rice in the pan and simmer it all together until the rice is done.

Of course, sometimes you want a porcupine after a long day of work.  You could simply plan ahead and have some frozen meatballs ready to go in a pan with tomato sauce and rice, but that would be too easy!  So some nights I make porcupine roadkill.

Here we have some pearl rice, crushed tomatoes, dried whole oregano (if your herbs don't smell, they won't taste!), and some leftover tomato soup.  After browning the ground beef with some garlic, I added the whole lot plus some water.  Well, not all of the oregano.  Just two small palm fulls.

After it simmered over low heat for awhile, the rice was done, and I got my porcupine fix.

This is a play on depression era food.  You would have used rice to stretch out the meat, you would have grown some oregano and maybe garlic or even left them out completely (still tasty by the way), and probably used tomato soup, or whatever tomato product you could find.  Maybe even some tomatoes from the garden.

Clearance Chicken, Macaroni and Cheese, and Pasta Salad

Elliot found a great buy in the markdown bin the other day:  Pappy's seasoned bone-in chicken breasts.  These things were HUGE!  I have a relatively small  (rectangular brownie) baking dish that fits quite well in the little roaster oven.  Only two of the three chicken boobs fit.  So I baked them up and made some macaroni and cheese.  I don't have an actual recipe for macaroni and cheese, I just make by eyeball enough bechamel sauce to cover the macaroni and add cheese until it tastes good ;)  I added bacon, just a little cayenne, a teaspoon or two of lemon juice (it needed a little sharpness), and the thing that made it just perfect... the drippings from the chicken, along of course with the medium cheddar cheese and the usual small handful of parmesan.  The drippings were that one tiny little flavour that made the dish taste JUST RIGHT.  I'm going to keep that in mind from now on.  Using half a package of macaroni made enough for a big serving that night (there's no such thing as just a little macaroni and cheese anyway lol) and two more large servings for lunch.

There was enough chicken left on the cooked boobs for pasta salad (and heck I STILL have that one uncooked piece), so I made some up for the week.  I made a half recipe of this ranch dressing by a poster by the name of Kittencal on food.com which was formerly recipezaar only I used yogurt in place of the sour cream (hey gotta work with what you got, and yogurt is a common substitution for sour cream, as they are about the same texture and tangy), and used 1/2 teaspoon of seasoned salt instead of the quarter that would have been asked for in a half-recipe, and some granulated onion in lieu of the fresh (just to taste as I don't know what the conversion is off-hand). 


I boiled the other half of that macaroni with PLENTY of salt in the water.  Seriously, try adding several (SEVERAL) pinches of salt next time you make pasta (or a small palm full as I usually do) and try telling me the pasta doesn't taste just a bit better and require less salting of the sauce. 


I then mixed some (erm.... Ok as usual I didn't measure...) frozen peas, one coarsly grated carrot, and one thinly sliced celery stalk with the leftover chicken from the night before with the cooked pasta.  The hot pasta thawed the peas.  After letting it cool, I added the dressing and three string cheese sticks I cut into chunks.  Turned out great and we have enough to last at least half if not the whole week for lunches :)

I even kept the bones to freeze.  Between these and another package of whole chicken legs (thigh and drumstick), I should have enough bones to make a nice bit of chicken broth next week.

Quickie Salisbury Steak

Oh you gotta love frozen ground beef patties (^__^)  Tonight's dinner is salisbury steak and egg noodles.

Just dredge some patties in egg, then flour, twice for a nice thick crust (which will end up as a soggy, delicious piece of carby goodness), and fry until browned.  Then remove the patties, dump the oil and melt some butter and brown a bit of garlic and flour, maybe some onions if you feel like it.

I had some garlic and onion soup leftover from last night, so I used it for the gravy.  I added some dehydrated onion just because I find salisbury steak was apparently MADE for using up dried onions, they just add a certain "something".

My only regret is that there was no sourdough left to serve with it!

I Dream of French Onion Soup... And Cheese..... And Garlic......

How about a little of both (^_^).  I had this vision of a soup, a hot garlicky, oniony broth over mozzarella cheese.

First I would need caramelized onions, so I chopped half of a red onion, and tossed it in a pot over medium heat with two tablespoons of melted butter.  I stirred it ever so often until the onions were almost burnt, then added several tablespoons of minced garlic. 


Next, I tossed in about five or six cups of beef broth, a half or so cup of beer, an ancho, and a bay leaf, and left to simmer and reduce a bit for about a half hour or so.  At the end, I added a hit of worchestershire sauce, honey, and a couple of teaspoons of tomato paste.


I had the idea to have softish pieces of cheese in a strong broth, and have spent the last day or two pondering the idea.  I cubed some mozzarella cheese into 1 inch cubes, and put them into the bowls, and poured over the boiling hot soup.  In hindsight, I should have let the soup cool a bit, and used smaller cheese cubes.


But this turned out really well.  A strong beef soup, with some nice sweet onion and plenty of garlic flavor, and soft bites of cheese.

Salted Caramel Brownies

Ever since the cookies, I've thought of how to combine chocolate pastry with salted caramel.  The problem with the cookies was caramel expulsion, with only about half of the cookies coming out with the caramel neatly enrobed in the chocolate cookie.

So now comes salted caramel brownies!  These are based on the brownies from the Eagle Brand website  http://eaglebrand.com/recipes/details/?RecipeId=4166&category=-1 and the caramel recipe here http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/ina-garten/fleur-de-sel-caramels-recipe/index.html

As always, I modified the recipes to my purpose and ingredients (^_^)

Brownies:

1 14oz can sweetened condensed milk
3/4 cup 60% cocoa chocolate chips
1/3 cup cocoa powder
2 eggs
1/3 cup baking mix (I swear it doesn't matter what kind.... biscuit, buttermilk pancake, muffin, whatever)
1 or 2 tb. strong coffee (I mixed about a teaspoon instant coffee with a tablespoon or two of very hot water)

Caramel:

1/2 cup vanilla sugar
1/4 cup molasses
1 1/2 cup heavy cream
5 tb butter
1 tsp salt

To make the caramel, combine the sugar, molasses, and half cup water in a pan, and bring to a boil for several minutes, meanwhile warming the cream, butter, and salt.  After boiling the sugar mixture for about 5-10 minutes, add the cream, and boil over medium heat for.... awhile (*^_^) until it almost reaches firm-ball stage (drop some caramel into ice cold water to determine this).  It took at least 20 minutes of boiling for me, and the mixture reduced a bit.

To make the brownies, combine the sweetened condensed milk, chocolate chips, and cocoa powder in a pan and melt (or do it in the microwave).  In another bowl, combine the biscuit mix and eggs.  Add the chocolate mixture and coffee, combine well, and bake in a 350 degree oven.

About halfway through baking, swirl as much of the caramel as you desire over the top of the brownies, and continue baking until done. 

I sprinkled the top with some coarse turbinado sugar for a bit of a sweet crunch, since neither the brownies nor caramel are super-sweet.  I think they could have taken or left the sugar, but what the hey, I felt indulgent and decadent ((^_-))

Sweet, salty chocolate, tastier than it sounds!