THE Cheesecake would probably have been the perfect cheesecake if only I had made it perfectly. I decided to take advantage of this girl's quest for the perfect cheesecake. I, too, would like to eat perfect cheesecake. She was scientific about it in a way I wish I was, but I will never be, so I just decided to take her word for it that THE Cheesecake is what we have been searching for. Thanks for doing the brainwork, Kitarra! Whoever you are!

I love that this cheesecake has no crust because it allows the velvety texture to shine. And was it ever velvety. It was practically winter formal wear. It was just the right density- dense but not dry. The taste was also very nice and tangy with just a hint of lemon.

If you make it- be sure to get your springform pan water tight (via directions in the recipe) I didn't do a good job and some water leaked into the cake, so some spots on the bottom were not velvety like they should have been. Also- you might want an oven thermometer if your oven (like mine) doesn't have 200 degrees on the dial. This can also create some texture issues.

Before I link to the recipe, here's my take on a hard-to-find ingredient, and also a warning on the time consumption of baking this cake. She calls for kifir cheese or labnan, a type of cheese. In my searching I discovered that they are more commonly spelled "kefir" or "labne". You can make the cheese if you buy your own kefir, or you can use her suggested substitution, drained greek yogurt. That is what I did. I don't know what the difference is between greek yogurt and regular old plain yogurt. It tasted like it was full-fat and thicker than your average american-made yogurt. I think you could easily and undetectably substitue sour cream.

Finally- read the baking directions before you decide to start making this at, say, 9 o'clock at night (start at 500 degrees for 15 minutes, turn oven down to 200 degrees for an hour, loosen the cake, bake again for an hour, turn up the heat again....) Consider yourself warned.

Without further ado, here's the link to the recipe, plus the creator's novel of comments about her quest.

Very Bitter Greens
Is it not true that certain plants are bitter tasting as a warning that they are actually poisonous?

If so, then I don't know how on earth broccoli raab came to be acceptable for human consumption.

Broccoli Raab is actually pronounced like "broccoli rob". It is also called broccoli rabe or rapini. Last night I made broccoli raab with sausage and grapes.

Somebody must like it, but Ryan and I couldn't even eat our dinner so I am not posting the recipe. Maybe we just aren't the healthy vegetable-lovin type. Rachel, if you want this recipe, then email me.

TURNIP THE HEAT, IT'S COLD IN HERE

In an effort to mature my palatte, I have decided to incorporate vegetables that I have never tasted, prepared, and/or never enjoyed into our dinners. Feel free to join me in my adventures, or send recipes you love for vegetables that are generally less-loved.

First up: turnips. So ordinary, but I have never tried them. Plus: they are available at the pathetic produce section of my most local grocer.

I made these pureed. No exact recipe is needed. That is, if you know how to make mashed potatoes. In fact, for thickness, throw a potato or two in with the turnips. I used 2 turnips and one potato.

Peel and cut the potato and turnips into cubes. Boil them (in a pot of boiling water, of course) until the turnips are very soft. They take longer than potatoes alone- about 20 minutes total. Then drain the potato and turnips and puree them with a bit of butter, salt, and pepper. No milk is needed because they should be thin enough.

MY VERDICT: Turnips do nothing for me a potato can't do better. Not bad, though.Here's to an effort towards a well-rounded palette.

Join me next time for adventures with broccoli rabe!

Sweet Seduction
Sugar High Friday #28

There is nothing in my house that is more seductive than these molten chocolate cakes.

I will keep this short because my words pale in comparison with the deliciousness of molten cakes.

In short, here is a link to the recipe. My advice is to use the best chocolate you can afford. I like 70% cacao for these cakes. They are best topped with ice cream or whipped cream and, most importantly, rasberries.

Ryan’s Sweet Buns
Caramel Rolls, Sticky Buns, call them what you will but I will call them “Ryan’s Sweet Buns” because Ryan really enjoyed having these for breakfast every morning last week.

These rolls remind me of the pecan rolls from Cinnabon. They are baked in a shallow bath of caramel sauce and pecans, which makes for one deliciously gooey roll. I doubled the caramel sauce in the recipe below, because I thought they would be even better that way, though they were pretty good the way I made them originally, too. Total active time in the kitchen was only about 20 minutes and the machine does the rest.

I am not a bread snob, and I am happy to have a machine that knows just when and how much to knead the bread. I love my bread machine. I highly recommend them, and Bread Machine Magic by Linda Rehberg and Lois Conway.

The dough I used for these rolls was SO easy to work with.. No overworked, tough rolls here. I am usually terrible at rolling it out with only a few swipes of a rolling pin, but with this recipe it was a snap They were delightful and light, especially right out of the oven.


Ryan’s Sweet Buns
Adapted from “Basic Buttermilk Sweet Dough” from Bread Machine Magic by Linda Rehberg & Lois Conway and “Cinnamon Rolls” by Cathy Nowell on Allrecipes.com

For 1 ½ lb bread machine
7/8 C buttermilk (or 3 T buttermilk powder with 7/8 C water)
1 egg
3 C all-purpose flour
1 t salt
4 T butter
¼ C sugar
¼ t baking soda
2 ½ t fleischman’s active dry yeast or 1 ½ t Red Star brand (there are about 2 ¼ t in a ¼ oz packet of yeast)

2/3 C butter
1 C brown sugar
1 C vanilla ice cream
1 C pecans (optional)
½ C butter, softened
1 T cinnamon
½ C brown sugar

place all ingredients in bread pan, select Dough setting, and press Start.

As dough is being made, melt 2/3 C butter in a small saucepan. Add 1 C brown sugar and 1 C ice cream; bring to a boil and cook for 1 minute. Pour into 9x13 inch pan. Spread Pecans over caramel, if desired

When the dough has risen long enough, the machine will beep. Turn off machine and turn out dough onto floured countertop. Roll out and spread or dot with ½ C butter. Sprinkle 1 T cinmamon and ½ C brown sugar on the top. Roll it up and seal the edge. Cut into 12 rolls, and place in prepared pan of caramel. Allow to rise until doubled (I let mine rise for about 75 minutes in a slightly warm oven, though it might take only 45 minutes)

Bake at 350 degrees F for 20 to 25 minutes, or until golden brown.
Serve upside down, so the caramel and pecans are on top

New Years Resolutions are to blame for my outdated blog.

I have realized that cooking, though I enjoy it, is the enemy in keeping up with housework.

So, meet my new best friend, T Marzetti's Asian Ginger salad dressing. As a salad dressing, its not that great, but I have found it to be a versatile chicken marinade. I add a little bit of fresh ginger with the dressing and marinade chicken for as little as a couple of hours or overnight. I have been using it to top Won-Ton Chicken salad, sticking it on skewers with red peppers and grilling it, or if I forget to marinade it, I just put some chicken peices in a pan with this dressing, ginger, and peppers for a stir-fry to be served over rice.

It is so easy to make and, more importantly for me, easy to clean up!

Instead of cooking, I am trying to make my new hobby working out.

we'll see about that.

Anyway, mytastebuds really miss the variety in my dinners. If anybody has quick and easy dinner ideas, feel free to post them in the comments section! We could use a few more in the rotation. 

Friends, it has been too long since I last blogged on the glutton.

And sadly, my entries might continue to be sparse.

This is a picture of our breakfast a couple of weeks ago: banana bread french toast with berry topping and whipped cream. Toni told me about this delicious dish and it was as good as she described (very good).

I used Mark Bittman's banana bread recipe from How to Cook Everything , I won't post the recipe because it wasn't my favorite and I don't want to get in trouble. The banana bread has coconut in it, which I thought was nice and it went well with the berries.

So use your favorite banana bread recipe, make french toast out of it, and warm some frozen mixed berries in a small pot with a bit of sugar, and a dash of salt for a topping. It's delicious!

 

what? a vegetable?

It's unlike me to get this excited about asparagus. This is my new favorite way to cook it. With 1/2 a stick of butter and a couple of cloves of garlic in the ingredients, what's not to get excited about?

Pan-Fried Asparagus
from kim at Allrecipes.com

1/4 C butter
2 T olive oil
1 t coarse salt
1/3 t ground black pepper
3 cloves of garlic
1/2 pound fresh aspargus spears, trimmed (just hold asparagus and bend the thick end until it breaks. It will break at just the right spot.)

melt butter in a skillet over medium-high heat. stir in olive oil, salt, and pepper. cook garlic in butter for a minute, but do not brown. Add asparagus, and cook for 10 minutes, or until tender, turning asparagus to ensure even cooking. 

These little truffles are a long time coming. After several tries, I finally created a coconut truffle that fit my requirement of a smooth, fluffy, filling with no coconut chunks.

This is my attempt to duplicate a truffle I used to buy on occasion at Gertrude Hawk, a local chocolatier. It was a coconut truffle under the "Gertrude's Best" line. Now it is only sold in boxes with other flavors that I don't particularly want, like mocha and peanut butter. So I had to make my own.

Then, since I misplaced the paper where I wrote the ingredient amounts, I tried to duplicate it. This is the result of the duplication, which actually wasn't a duplication at all. The filling was not fluffy this time around. Maybe it is because the first time I used good quality Lindt white chocolate, next time I tried Nestle Baking white chocolate. I liked the fluffy better, but ryan liked these smooth creamy truffles better. These were definitely harder to work with, so they aren't so perfectly shaped. If only I had a truffle mold. Also, with a softer filling, it was easier to roll them in almonds and then dip them in chocolate so that the filling didn't melt away in the chocolate.Any way I make them, I eat lots of truffles, so here's the recipe. I found it addicting.oh yeah, and it really isn't that time consuming to make though the recipe looks long.

Glorified Almond Joy Truffles

6 oz white chocolate (don't use white chocolate chips or low quality white chocolate. make sure it has cocoa butter in it)
1/2 C plus 1 T heavy cream
1 and 1/8 t coconut flavoring (or to taste)
1 C finely chopped almonds
10 oz chocolate for dipping (dark or light) More if you want to do 2 coats. I did only one, but it would probably be prettier and tastier with 2.

Finely chop white chocolate and put in a medium bowl.

Pour cream into a small saucepan and heat over medium heat. When it just comes to a boil remove from heat and pour over white chocolate. Stir until melted. Now you have a white chocolate ganache.

Add the coconut flavoring and stir. You might want more or less flavoring than I used.

Cool ganache until it feels cooler than room temperature. You can just stick it in the fridge, and stir it occasionally, or put it in an ice water bath and stir.

When ganache is cooled, whip it. Whip it good. The first batch I made whipped up until it was stiff enough to make little truffle balls with my hands. The second batch wouldn't whip up quite as high. So whip to your liking- until it is merely frothy, or keep whipping until it is stiff enough to make little truffle centers. If you want a softer center, then you will have to then freeze the ganache in order for it to be the right consistency to roll the truffle centers (or use a melon baller).

So roll little balls of whipped ganache into balls for truffle centers. Put them in a dish in the freezer for 30 minutes.

meanwhile, chop the dark or milk chocolate into little peices and place them in a small glass or metal bowl.

Boil a little bit of water in a small saucepan. Place the bowl of chocolate on top of the saucepan so that the bowl is sitting on top of it. It should not touch the water at all. now turn off the heat and stir constantly until chocolate is melted.

Prepare wax paper with a thin layer of nonstick spray, so truffles will not stick while they harden.

Roll frozen balls of ganache in almonds and press the almonds into the ganache. Immediately dip in chocolate, using a fork so excess chocolate can drip off. Place each truffle on wax paper until cooled.

store in the fridge or freezer.  

The knob on my old oven, when turned to choose the baking temperature, is correct if you turn it left to right. If you turn it right to left, it is about 100 degrees too hot.

This, my friends, is what happens when you try to bake Lucky 32 Sour Cream Apple Pie at 450 instead of 350 degrees.
yes, the picture is blurry. but I think you get the idea.

Since the pie was unfit to bring to the birthday celebration I made it for, it has been sitting on my counter all day. I find all pies irresistable, so despite it's tarry edges, this pie is almost half gone.

The recipe is usually a good one. I like it. If you use apples other than granny smith, then cut down on the sugar. I used a jonagold/granny smith mixture in the tar pie, and I cut the sugar in half.

Also, note that this pie is baked in a 10-inch springform pan. I would put a jellyroll pan underneath, as the pie might overflow and then the juices will be forever burned in the bottom of your oven.

Lucky 32 Sour Cream Apple Pie

1 ¼ cups sour cream
2 eggs
1 ½ cups sugar
2 ¼ tsp vanilla
1/3 tsp salt
2 Tbls flour
2 ¼ lbs Granny Smith Apples
1 recipe pie dough
1 ½ cups apple pie topping
¼ lb butter

topping:
½ cup flour
2 oz. walnut pieces
1/3 cup brown sugar
1 Tbls cinnamon

Preheat oven to 350. Combine sour cream and eggs in large mixing bowl and whip until creamy. Add sugar, vanilla, salt and flour and blend thoroughly. Core and slice the apples directly into sour cream mixture. Toss apples to coat well. Place dough in a 9” springform cake pan. Using fingers, press dough gently until pan is evenly covered and smooth. Add sour cream apple mixture into pan. Spread topping (described below) evenly over the top of the pie. Cut butter into pats and place over the top of pie. Bake in preheated 350 oven for 2 hours and 20 minutes. (Pie may be frozen and served later.)

Topping: combine flour, brown sugar, walnuts, cinnamon in the bowl of a food processor. Blend until ingredients are crumbled.

I haven't posted any recipes recently. That's because I haven't been making as many new recipes, and also because I noticed a correlation between the number of new recipes I make/post and the number I see on the scale. It's unfortunate.

Anyway, I have been trying to create just the right coconut truffle for this month's sugar high friday. Since these truffles were good, but not just right, I am posting them before the actual event. Like I said, they were good. But the texture was not quite as smooth as I was hoping. I am actually only posting them because I am embarrassed about the quality of food photography thus far on The Glutton. I am hoping to bring up the average grade here. I spent some time last week with the camera. Hurray for manual focus and natural lighting!

I made the truffles with chocolate ganache made with coconut milk instead of cream. Then I whipped the ganache after it cooled, made little truffles and dipped them in dark chocolate. oh yeah, don't forget to roll them in almonds. That was the best part!  

to see more of Kimmy's fantastic aprons, visit http://www.kimchiandolives.blogspot.com/

I sense that some of you still haven't baked Supernatural Brownies. There is only one good excuse for that- no good semi-sweet or bittersweet chocolate with which to make them. well, get some.

Heed the call of the supernatural.

You Won't Be Sorry

I stand corrected. Molten Chocolate cakes are not the best chocolate dessert on earth. Nick Malgiere's Supernatural Brownies are. His cookbook won the Julia Child award for the best baking book, you can read a blurb about that and get the recipe at the above link. I found them at David Lebovitz's site, and he's a man who really knows chocolate, so I decided to try this recipe. I used Cadbury Dark Chocolate bars for the chocolate, and they worked well. Make sure you butter the parchment paper. I didn't and it was not good. I had to bake mine for an extra few minutes. They are deliciously fudgy. The edges aren't chewy like mix brownies (I wish they were- that is the only improvement the brownies could stand.) Make these brownies. Now.

I just began writing a post about the pumpkin sage pasta from Rachael Ray that I made last night, but who can concentrate on pasta when there are brownies in the oven?

So I will make the pumpkin post a quick one. I was intrigued with the idea of a pumpkin pasta sauce, and I was not satisfied until I made this one. It was yummy, and a very festive orange color. The sauce was a bit thick, but that might be due to the fact that I took the white wine down from 1/2 C to just a splash, and then I cooked it to death so there was no alcohol left (ryan had to drive to the church after dinner - didn't want him to be tipsy). I don't think this will be a pasta that I make regularly, but it is a good one. Plus- pumpkin and onions are good for you, and this recipe is full of 'em!

I would have taken a picture, but after the pasta sat for a little while, it absorbed a lot of the sauce and it didn't look so good. Next time I will serve the sauce on top instead of tossing the pasta with it.

Sorry- I just can't post pictures of the pears because, as I discovered, I have not a smidgen of talent for food photography.

However, I will post a picture of the pumpkin cream cheese muffins I made. They were delicious. I ate 3 jumbo muffins and one regular-sized muffin yesterday (for the sake of the blog, of course, so it can live up to it's name).














I was thinking of making pumpkin muffins, then I remembered the delicious pumpkin cake roll with cream cheese that we had last year at thanksgiving, and I was inspired to make a cream cheese filling. I think I did the right thing.

I made one and a half batches of the following recipe, and it made 12 jumbo muffins plus 4 regular sized muffins.

Pumpkin Muffins with Cream Cheese Filling
Adapted from Letters, Gourmet,
November 2006 which was dapted from the American club, in Kohler, Wisconsin

1½ cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 cup canned
solid-pack pumpkin (from a 15-oz can)
1/3 cup vegetable oil
2 large eggs
1 teaspoon pumpkin-pie spice
1¼ cups plus 1 tablespoon sugar
½
teaspoon baking soda
½ teaspoon salt1 teaspoon cinnamon

Filling:
beat together the following:
1 8-oz brick of cream cheese
1/3 C
sugar

Put oven in middle position and preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Put
liners in muffin cups. Whisk together flour and baking powder.Whisk together
pumpkin, oil, eggs, pumpkin-pie spice, 1¼ cups sugar, baking soda, and salt in a
large bowl until smooth, then whisk in flour mixture until just combined. Stir
together cinnamon and remaining 1 tablespoon sugar in another bowl.
Put a
spoonful of batter in each muffin cup. Add a spoonful of cream cheese mixture
and top that with batter until each cup is 2/3 full. Sprinkle tops with
cinnamon-sugar mixture. Bake until puffed and golden brown and wooden pick or
skewer inserted into the center of a muffin comes out clean, 25 to 30 minutes.
Cool in pan on a rack 5 minutes, then transfer muffins from pan to rack and
cool to warm or room temperature.

Last night Ryan and I enjoyed what is possibly THE perfect dessert.
Surprisingly, for those who know me, it doesn't involve massive amounts of
chocolate. It doesn't involve chocolate at all. How, then, can this possibly be the most perfect dessert? The virtues of this luscious dessert are many. It is easy and comes together quickly-- you might even have all 6 ingredients on hand. It is healthier than the average dessert, and even low-fat if you don't scrape up every last bit of the sauce (like I did last night). It has a rustic beauty worthy of company. The spices evoke cozy fall-like feelings, and the aroma fills the kitchen as you bake these delicious pears. I can't say enough about these pears. I am going to make them again tonight, and then I will post a picture. This recipe is from "Anna Rose's Pears" at Cooks.com

Creamy Baked Pears
2T butter
1T Sugar
dash of nutmeg
dash of
cinnamon
2 pears
1/2 C whipping cream

preheat oven to 400
degrees farenheight. wash core, and half 2 pears. Don't peel. Melt 1 T butter in
dish. Sprinkle with 1 T white sugar, dash of nutmeg, and dash of cinnamon. Place
pears face down on top of butter mixture and dot the pear peels with the
remaining 1 T butter. bake for 5 minutes. Pour 1/2 C cream over the pears. Bake
for 10-20 minutes, or until pears are tender.

By the way- welcome to my new blog. Inspired by pears. Powered by gluttony.