Twitter chef avatar fun: Emeril's homemade cheese hoppers!

Margaret picked our March chef for our Twitter avatar fun...I was really excited to see that it was Emeril Lagasse. One of my favorite Christmas gifts this year was this cookbook that my kids (via my hubby, of course) got me. I've never cooked anything from Emeril before, but I was excited to have a kids' cookbook by a known chef. We own Pretend Soup and Salad People from Mollie Katzen, both of which we love, but I've found that a lot of other cookbooks geared toward little kids favor simplicity over quality and produce either tasteless or taste-bad food.

The first recipe I made from my new cookbook (There's a Chef in my Soup!) was cheesy star snacks.

One of my kids' very first snack foods was Annie's Honey Bunny Grahams. If you haven't experienced these, they taste like Teddy Grahams and look like little bunnies. We used to hop-hop-hop them across the table to the little guy when he was very small, and somehow he named them Hoppers...they've never lost this name. (In fact, while writing this paragraph, I actually had to go searching on the web to find the real name.) We still snack on normal Hoppers (the graham kind) and Cheese Hoppers (the baby girl's favorite).

This name is engrained in our family community...One of our good friends was at work and a coworker of his had a box of Annie's on her desk. He saw them and said, "Oh, can I have a few Hoppers?" I'm sure she looked at him like he was crazy.

Anyway, when I saw that Emeril had a recipe for cheesy star snacks, I knew I had to try them in the hope that they'd be homemade Hoppers.

Hubby and I found them addictive; eventually, I had to send the remainder to work with him so we'd stop eating them...but they didn't taste like our Hoppers...way too overly spiced for the kids.

Cheesy snacks (aka Cheese Hoppers)
adapted from Emeril Lagasse

1 cup all-purpose flour
1 cup finely grated sharp cheddar cheese
2 tsp baby bam (Emeril's spice mixture made of: paprika, salt, dried parsley, onion powder, garlic powder, black pepper, dried oregano, dried basil, dried thyme, celery salt)
1 tsp salt
1/2 tsp dry mustard powder
4 tbsp unsalted butter, cold, cut into pieces
2 tbsp cold water
1 egg white

1. Mix flour, cheese, spices in a food processor fitted with the metal blade.
2. Add butter and pulse until the mixture resembles coarse crumbs.
3. Add cold water and pulse (or mix by hand) until mixture becomes a smooth dough.
4. Form dough into a disk, cover with plastic wrap, and refrigerate for 30 minutes.
5. Using a lightly floured rolling pin, roll dough to a 1/8 inch thickness.
6. Cut the dough using tiny cookie cutters (about 1 inch). Gather up leftover scraps, reroll and recut.
7. Place cut out shapes on a baking sheet and paint with egg whites.
8. Bake in a 375F oven for 15 minutes.

Emeril includes a note at the end to experiment with different herbs and different cheeses. If I were to make these again with the children in mind, I would cut out the spices (or at least seriously reduce them) and just use cheese.

Under the wire: Normandy Apple Bread (Mellow Bakers - February)

Phew...wasn't sure I was going to get this one in on time! Luckily my hubby is a patient guy and was willing to do a little extra kiddo duty so I could spend a few minutes building a stiff levain this morning, peeling and slicing apples this afternoon, and mixing up the dough this evening.

So here we are, at bedtime on February 28, with the last of the Mellow Bakers' February breads: Normandy apple bread.

The dough includes dried apples (we were short on time, so I sliced the apples very thinly and baked them at 250F for two hours), old apple cider (I splurged on some good stuff!), bread flour, whole wheat flour, water, a little instant yeast, salt, and some water (I mixed hot water with the cider to try to regulate the temperature a bit).

I was a bit distracted at times and rushing at other times, but the final result is quite tasty: slightly sweet from the apples, chewy crust, delicious smell, all around good flavor...this one is a win!

A birthday party featuring Vanilla Bean Pound Cake (Bake!)

My son fell in love with trains when he was really young. Happily, before his second birthday, I found this pan on clearance at a store's going-out-of-business sale. So my guy has gotten a train cake for his past three birthdays (by request ~ he's pretty predictable!).

The cake is always adorable...but sadly, always dry. I've experimented with different bundt cake recipes: a couple from Cook's Illustrated, an old family recipe. But by the next day when I decorate them and we eat, they've always been dry and a little tasteless.

Finally I decided that maybe the problem was that I was cooking bundt recipes, which are often glazed to hold in the moisture. I wondered about pound cakes, which Nick Malgieri describes as being moist without needing any sort of glaze. I'd loved his New Orleans praline pound cake, so I decided to try the vanilla bean option from Bake! Phyl had already made this and commented that the vanilla flavor wasn't very strong, so although the recipe says to use the vanilla bean in place of vanilla extract, I decided to use both. And then I used another vanilla bean in the Bake! meringue buttercream frosting.

The cake was still not moist, but it was way better than it's been in previous years: not too dry, great vanilla flavor, and (key with a pan like this) popped out of the pan easily without much mess. I think pound cake is the way to go!

We decided to have a birthday brunch for the little guy because he loves all breakfast foods. I made three pans of BBA cinnamon rolls, two NM ham, egg, and cheese tarts, ATK's blueberry pancakes, a fruit salad, bacon and sausage. Lots of fun and not many leftovers...a success!

Four!

My little guy turned four today...guess he's not so little any more. (sniff) Actually, I enjoy birthdays. I enjoy getting older and I like watching my kids grow older, too. I'm always excited to see what the next stage has in store.

His birthday party is tomorrow...a birthday brunch. I've got cinnamon rolls, pancakes, two Nick Malgieri egg tarts, and the annual train cake all in the works. Today, his actual birthday, we celebrated as a family. He requested "butternut and chocolate scones" (NM's butterscotch scones to which we always add chocolate chips) for breakfast. Then we went to our Saturday morning swimming lessons, played at the small indoor playground at the elementary school where we take lessons, went out for bagels, and then went to a large indoor park for running and climbing and sliding.

We let him set the agenda and the menu for the day. He requested mac-n-cheese and chicken nuggets for dinner, and for his birthday dessert, chocolate cupcakes with yellow banana frosting. Having just made chocolate cupcakes for my mother-in-law's birthday last weekend, I wasn't especially enthused about the request. And I thought banana frosting sounded strange.

Luckily the day after he told me what he wanted, I read Tracey's post on banana split brownies. They sounded perfect: chocolate and banana, as requested! I asked him what he thought about brownies with banana and (the thing I knew would push him over the edge) mini marshmellows! My kids love mini marshmellows. Sure enough, he told me, "I like to change my mind, Mom! That sounds great!"

I decided to fulfill the request for cupcakes by baking the brownies in a muffin tin. I followed the recipe Tracey posted, but made only a 1/2 batch. I put 1/4 cup of brownie batter into each muffin cup, and the 1/2 batch made 10 muffins. They baked for 25 minutes and were perfect.

I made the ganache, although I didn't even use close to the 1/2 batch I'd made. I'd probably make 1/3 or 1/4 batch next time. And I skipped the sliced almonds because, while I love them, my kids aren't fans of nuts in, well, anything. I put the mini marshmellows on top and set the cupcakes under the broiler for a couple of minutes. Way too long! While not blackened, the marshmellows were definitely darker than we'd like. Luckily, they peeled off easily and I tried again, this time watching like a hawk.

The verdict? Perfection! Hubby said they were the best cupcakes he's ever had in his life, the kids gobbled them up, and I loved them. We will definitely make these again!

I may have a problem...... (simple milk loaf)

I may be a trifle obsessed with my pullman pan. I can't seem to make bread in any other pan these days.

Here's my newest loaf: simple milk loaf, which was recommended to me by Nancy and Kayte when I was bemoaning the fact that I simply cannot find a homemade bread that the little guy will eat with his sandwiches. I found a lot of recipes and discussions around Dan Lepard's milk loaf, and ended up adapting a bit based on what I had in the house.

Simple milk loaf
adapted from Dan Lepard

7g instant yeast
720g whole milk, room temperature
58g maple syrup
15g kosher salt
50g unsalted butter, melted and cooled
250g all purpose flour
450g whole wheat flour
300g bread flour

1. Mix everything together except the salt until it forms a shaggy mass.
2. Let rest for 10 minutes.
3. Sprinkle salt and knead briefly to incorporate.
4. Let rest for 10 minutes. Knead for 10 seconds. Rest for 10 minutes. Knead for 10 seconds. Rest for 30 minutes.
5. Form into four equal balls (each about a pound) and put into greased and floured pullman pan.
6. Let rise until 1/4 inch from top of pan.
7. Bake for 15 minutes at 410F and then 40 minutes at 350F (until internal temperature reaches 190-200F).
8. Cool.

The verdict? The milk loaf smelled wonderful while baking, and we all enjoyed it as an after school snack with butter. As for the sandwich test? The kiddos licked off the peanut butter and jelly from one sandwich and ate the turkey off the other one.... And the search continues.

Pain de mie with whole wheat flour

We really enjoyed both the pain de mie and the toast bread from Hamelman's Bread, but because I like to feed my family whole grains, I was eager to try adding whole wheat flour.

When hubby requested that I make chicken noodle soup and grilled cheese sandwiches (with pain de mie, of course!) during his parents' visit, I decided it was the perfect time to try it with whole wheat.

I had a big breakthrough with this recipe, too. I used Hamelman's instructions on baker's math to rescale the recipe, and for the first time, I feel like I actually understood what I was doing. Having struggled with getting the straight pullman pan corners, I decided to try 3 pounds of dough in the pan this time. I scaled the recipe for 3 pounds and was on my way!

I followed Hamelman's pain de mie recipe, but used half whole wheat flour (actually part white whole wheat and part whole wheat, finishing up two bags of flour that I had in the cupboard). The only problem was with my scale (again!): right as I started pouring water, my scale turned off (GR!), so I ended up with too much water and had to put in extra flour to compensate. I think I ended up with more than 3 pounds of dough. And then I forgot about the bread while it was doing its final proof and came to find it had exploded out of the sides of the pan! We really struggled to get the lid off, but finally did. I punched down the dough, reformed it, and put it back in the pan.

The next challenge was that this last (unexpected) rise happened during bed time, so it overproofed a little again. I ended up with not only square corners, but square corners with an extra T at the top. Closer...at least I discovered that I really could get square corners. :P

Anyway, the bread was delicious and the grilled cheese sandwiches were the best ever. Next time I'll try it with just slightly under 3 pounds of bread, but will still use at least 50% whole wheat.

Chocolate cupcakes with buttercream frosting (Bake!)

My mother-in-law requested cheesecake for her birthday. I was eager to try it, but was worried the kiddos wouldn't like it.

Ever since I received my birthday copy of Bake! last week, my kids have been begging me to make the cupcakes which are featured on a large picture in the middle of the book. So I decided to make a half-batch of chocolate butter cake cupcakes for them to eat while the adults enjoyed the cheesecake.

The recipe was time-consuming but not difficult. The most challenging part for me is that NM starts with a base recipe and then gives variations on later pages...the chocolate was the variation I picked. So I had to bounce between pages because all of the ingredients are listed on the variation page, but most of the method is listed on the original recipe page...but then there are some variations to the method listed on the variation page, too. Seemed to increase the likelihood of making mistakes, especially for a distracted baker like me. Luckily I baked these when the kids were in bed, so there were no distractions and I didn't mess up! =)

The side note suggests that a half-batch should make about 9 or 10 cupcakes. I made 11, and I should've made 12. My cupcakes spread out over the sides of the pan and I couldn't get them out without breaking them. I ended up cutting out an outline around the outside of the muffin cup to get them out. My in-laws, hubby, and I were happy to eat the scraps, but I was still a little disappointed at how rough they looked.

The next afternoon, I made the meringue buttercream frosting recipe also from Bake! ~ another first for me. I started with egg whites, sugar, and salt, and then added soft butter. The kids had requested pink frosting, and I decided that instead of using food coloring, I would try NM's fruit puree variation. I made a little strawberry puree and mixed it with the buttercream. It was sooooooo tasty; I had to fill the mixing bowl with water to avoid licking it out! Then I played with my new-to-me pastry set to decorate them with ribbons of frosting.

These were a huge success. The kids often lick off frosting and leave cake/cupcake on their plates, but they devoured these. And my father-in-law and hubby had some, too, even after the cheesecake! I'm looking forward to trying the other variations of both cake and frosting.