Natalie MacLean's Drinks Matcher

Check out the newest addition to All Up in My Kitchen. A nifty lil' widget that takes the guess work out of pairing great wines with any food. You can find this in the side bar on the right. Try it out and see what pairings you come up with!

It smells good in here...

Preview:

In the oven right now, Apple Spice Cake. I haven't decided what type of icing to give it just yet. This one is a healthier recipe using agave nectar in place of sugar and applesauce instead of oil. It's the first time I'm experimenting with this concoction, so keep your fingers crossed.

So far so good. It looks just right and it smells incredible! If it tastes as good, I'll post the recipe and picture. Oh, I wish you could smell it! Scratch your computer screen and take a sniff...

Whoop, whoop!! The Great Whoopie Pie Experiment

I've been wanting to try making whoopie pies for a while now. Actually, I only just recently found out what these yummy little goodies were named. They are basically two cake cookies with icing in the middle. Sounds so simple, looks so decadent. I chose to make mine with a pumpkin spiced cake batter. I also love chocolate so of course I had to throw in some milk chocolate chips. And I chopped some pecans to roll the edges.

My first experiment with these are not quite the result I saw in my head when dreaming of these every night. But they turned out good enough to take into work and share. Believe me, when you are involved in the study of "experimental culinary goodness" there are more than a few recipes that lack a little, well, goodness. Those less than triumphal results usually stay at home on the kitchen counter or in the fridge until they have sufficiently ripened to the point that I no longer feel guilty about dumping them in the garbage.

Not a bad first attempt, but a little more filling will help.

In the Great Whoopie Pie Experiment of June 2008, I accidentally discovered a twist that I had not expected, but like so much more than the whoopie in my dreams. First, since this first batch was a test, I made them with a little less icing than normal. I just wanted to make sure that I has the taste down, I could always add as much icing as I wanted for the final version. But testing recipes can add a lot of "real estate" to my butt in a very short time. For this reason, I also made most of them in a mini version. The minis were cute and just needed a little less time in the oven, although they didn't puff up as much as the larger version. The lack of icing, however, does make it difficult to roll the edges in the pecans because there is not much for the nuts to stick to.

I had a little cream cheese icing left over from my big giant Red Velvet Mega Cupcake. Once the icing was gone, I had to improvise. I checked around the kitchen for inspiration. On the TV in the other room, the opening melody of Giada DeLaurentis' "Everyday Italian" began to chime out and inspiration struck. Giada, although not in this episode, often makes the most devilish desserts with Nutella. Many times I have had to wipe the drool from my chin as I watch her make something like a Nutella Pizza or Fried Ravioli with Nutella Filling. And lo, up on the top shelf of my all too tiny kitchen cabinet was a lone jar of the chocolate and hazelnut ambrosia of the gods.

Nutella to the rescue!

My mini, flat whoopies were saved. Adding the Nutella in the middle was genius. That wonderful pumpkin spice was perfectly complimented and the pecans stuck like glue in the gooey goodness. When I make these for the final testing, they will definitely have the Nutella. Silly me... cream cheese icing, what was I thinking?!

Mini Pumpkin Spiced Chocolate Chip Whoopie Pies With Nutella Filling and Pecans

Food Gawker- A New Tasty Treat!

After a sad day of learning about the end of Tastespotting.com, a shining beacon of hope has come to the rescue. The cyber-refrigerator door has opened and the little light has come on to reveal a new site hoping to pick up where Tastespotting left off.

FoodGawker.com has taken the reigns to lead lovers of "food porn" to the promised land. Bloggers are already posting and it seems to be off to a great start. I for one will be checking it out as soon as I'm done writing this post.

I hear there are other sites starting to pop up hoping to create something as wonderful as Tastespotting. I will hunt them down and add links to my column on the left as I find them.

Food is one of the essentials of life, and so too is food blogging! Thank you Chuck from Sunday Night Dinner for getting Food Gawker up and running so quickly. You don't know how many meals you have saved!

In the kitchen with Mary...

I have decided to go ahead with making my cookbook. Everytime I cook something really yummy I think, "Why don't I write this down and take a picture of it?" I have so many ideas for recipes. Making a cook book might give me the reason to go ahead and test some new things. And I'll be photographing the ones that turn out "pretty" so I can remember what they are supposed to look like because I just hate cook books without pictures! I never know if I've made it right or how it should be plated.

mmm...doesn't it just make you drool?

This first recipe that is going into the book is a smoked turkey sausage served with spaghetti squash, into which, I mixed 3 different cheeses. I cleverly named it...wait for the drum-roll...
Smoked Turkey Sausage with 3-Cheese Spaghetti Squash
I know, shocking! I'm so creative sometimes. I'd like to think I use so much of my creativity in my cooking that there's nothing left for the name. (wink) Whatever, I'm just a dork.

Oh ya, I'm not a vegan!

I will be refining the recipe a little before I set the final version in stone. I used red onion, which I usually don't cook because I prefer the bite of it when it's raw. But I had a little red onion left over in the fridge that I wanted to use before it went bad (naughty onion) so I mixed it with a little spanish onion, also a left-over. I really want the sausage to stand out though so I think I might try this with shallots next time. According to Mario (Iron Chef Mario Batali), shallots have a more subtle flavor. I don't remember a specific time that I have cooked with shallots before but I'm sure I have. And I like the slight pinkish color of shallots too. I want this dish to be colorful. I thought of adding roasted red pepper or sundried tomatoes to the mix but I thought the flavors would get too much in the way of the sausage, and certainly the spaghetti squash, for this one.
Spaghetti squash has such a lightness about it that it is easily overwhelmed by other stronger flavors. For that reason, I am also going to cut down on the amount of cheese. Oh, there will still be three cheeses, just not as much. I didn't use much cheese to begin with. But I also want to make this a healthy dish. I chose cheeses that pack a lot of flavor in them so I don't have to use so much to get the point across. You're dying to know what they are, aren't you? Fine, whatever. I used a little fresh goat cheese to create a nice creamy sauce. I also love, love, love asiago so I had to throw that in there. The last one was one that I haven't cooked with before. I found that aged provolone, which I don't like in my favorite tomato and provalone sandwhich (I prefer the lighter taste of regular provalone for that), is quite nice when melted. The aged provalone has a good bite to it like parmesan but...different. The asiago and aged provalone do get a little oily (which doesn't really jive with the whole "healthy" thing) when melted but I think that problem will be solved once I reduce the amounts used.

Isn't it pretty?

The result of this first try was incredibly "nummers"! The kitchen smelled sooooo good and it looked good enough to, well, eat. Don't laugh, you haven't heard about all my culinary disasters. That's going to be a whole other book. And my neighbors must think I'm crazy, out on the patio taking "beauty shots" of my food before I eat it! Whatever, it's my world, everyone else is just scenery. LOL!
Posted by LittleBrownBird at 8:19 AM
Labels: All Up In My Kitchen

2 comments:
moonmystic said...
Oh my yummy!
June 8, 2008 12:59 PM
Made By Tammy said...
That is Pretty!I'm going to come over and take it off your patio, Yum!!
June 8, 2008 8:11 PM

Spice Cabinet Woes!

I'm hoping to figure out a way to organize this mess. I have the tiniest kitchen and only this tiny cabinet to store all my spices. As you can see, I use A LOT of spices when I cook. Very few of these go unused.

A close up of the scene of the crime!

I spend most of my "cooking" time looking for the spice or dried herb that I need. And when I open the cabinet, tiny bottles go flying into my sauce pans! I don't exactly have a user-friendly kitchen.