Easter eggs

I don't like hard-boiled eggs, but I'm still the one who makes them. =)  Jamie & Brianna eat them; G is like me and won't touch them.  So I don't usually make very many to dye at Easter, since I don't want to have a bunch of eggs that don't get eaten.  Plus G is still young enough to need help, and my patience with egg-dying wears thin pretty quickly.  Maybe we'll do more next year.

The recipe I use is from Cook's Illustrated; it works great.  You put the eggs in a pot filled with cold water and bring it to a boil over high heat.  Once the water boils, you turn off the heat, cover the pot, and let the eggs sit in the hot water for 10 minutes.  At that point, I move the pot to the sink and run cold water in it until the water is all cool, then add a whole bunch of ice to the pot.  I usually leave the eggs in there until most of the ice has melted, then dry them off and put them in a carton in the fridge.

You can find the actual recipe here at Cook's Illustrated.

Citrus Sunday - Triple Citrus Bars

I've mentioned before that I love cooking magazines.  It was such a revelation the first time I ever read one (thanks to my wonderful husband who thought it would give me something to do while I was wiped out by the flu 13 years ago).  There are so many enticing new recipes in every issue!  Lots are seasonally appropriate, so sometimes I'm inspired to drop what I'm doing and make a new recipe right away.  That happened with the July/August 2006 issue of Cook's Illustrated.  Amazing that I remember that almost 6 years ago, isn't it?  The recipe that grabbed my attention was for Key Lime Bars.  I immediately made a double batch to take to a 4th of July potluck.  They were a huge hit and several people asked for the recipe.  I made the bars several times shortly after that, but as often happens, I got sidetracked by new recipes after that and have only made them maybe once or twice since then.

When I was trying to come up with a good citrus recipe for my blog event, I considered several ideas.  I even made an orange & vanilla bundt cake that turned out pretty good, but just wasn't quite what I was looking for.  I'm always short on time and frequently indecisive as well, so it really isn't surprising that I was sitting here yesterday (yay for a Saturday off!) still trying to decide what to make.  I turned to Eat Your Books to see what I could find on my bookshelves.  I bought some limes when we were shopping Friday night (to add to the lemons, tangerines & tangelos already in the fridge), so I started off searching that.  Nothing jumped out and grabbed me, so I thought to try searching for "citrus" instead.  Bingo!

Triple Citrus Bars came up a couple times in the list--they're a variation on the Key Lime Bars, and can be found in the magazine (online) as well as in the new Cook's Illustrated Cookbook.  Instead of just lime juice and zest (you can use either key limes or regular Persian limes), you use lemon and orange juice and zest as well.  The zests are used in equal amounts (1 1/2 teaspoons of each), but most of the juice is lime, with just a tablespoon each of lemon and orange.  I actually used tangelo zest and juice instead of orange, since that's what I had.

Rather than graham crackers, the crust is made with animal crackers.  They are pulsed in the food processor along with some brown sugar and a bit of salt and then melted butter is added to bind everything together.  This recipe gave me a change to use a new baking pan that I bought myself for my birthday--a Fat Daddio's 8" square baking pan.  (I love my Pyrex baking pans, but they don't work well for everything.)  The crust is baked for 18-20 minutes, which allows enough time to mix up the filling.  The filling consists of cream cheese, the zests, a bit of salt, sweetened condensed milk, an egg yolk, and the citrus juices.  Once the crust is baked and cooled for a few minutes, the filling is added and the bars are baked for another 15-20 minutes.  The bars are allowed to cool to room temperature, then are refrigerated for at least a couple hours.

The verdict?  These aren't quite as tart as the straight lime ones, but I like the flavor that the mix of fruits brings to the bars.  As the test kitchen cooks determined, the addition of the cream cheese and egg yolk helps firm up the filling so that it can be cut into neat bars.  I'm definitely not going to let so much time pass before I make these bars again.

If you'd like to try the recipe, you can find it here on the Cook's Illustrated website, or in the Cook's Illustrated Cookbook.  And be sure to check out all the other yummy citrus recipes that my blogging friends have made!  If you'd like to join us in the future, leave a comment or email me at diskitchennotebook at gmail dot com, and I'll add you to my email list.

The mother of invention

I lost count.  I was really excited last month when I realized that I had a blogging milestone coming up.  I knew it would be sometime in February.  But I apparently wasn't paying attention.  So instead of happily announcing that I am at post #400, I can now tell you that I'm at post #402.  Oh, well. =)

Even though I already posted some this month, I figured such a momentous event called for celebrating with brownies.  Who am I kidding?  I don't need an excuse to make brownies.  But it is a good opportunity to make some new brownies.  Ones that I won't have that much competition for, since I have a feeling my kids won't eat them.  The one category I had left for this month was magazine focus.    It's not usually the first place I look, but I thought I'd try Bon Appetit.  I like a lot of what I read in the magazine, but don't search their website all that often.  The recipe that quickly caught my eye was the Cocoa Brownies with Browned Butter and Walnuts.  It's from Alice Medrich, and I've made enough of her recipes to be pretty confident that I'd like the brownies.

I only made a couple of small changes to the recipe--I used pecans instead of walnuts, and I added salt--half a teaspoon.  I also took a shortcut and simply lined my pan with non-stick foil.  I may try another cocoa powder in the future, but for this round I went with plain old Hershey's.  The batter was easy to mix up, and I love the fact that you can make it in one pot.  The suggested baking time of 25 minutes worked great for me.

The only downside is that I was making the brownies last night after dinner.  So I knew it was going to be challenging to get decent pictures.  Sometimes I can manage to take pictures in the morning before work, but I had a very long day today.  I left the house before the sun was up, and knew that I wouldn't be home again until long after it set.  Then inspiration hit--I took a page from my friend Abby's book (she likes to take dough on field trips), and took the brownies to work with me.  Now you're probably thinking, she takes baked goods to work all the time.  That's true, but not with the intent of taking pictures of them in natural light.  Which meant, in my car:

The verdict?  The pictures turned out better than I expected. =)  I need to work on the setup if I do this again, but at least the color in the pictures is good.  The brownies were really good, too.  Jamie and I both like them a lot.  I'm not usually in a nuts-in-my-chocolate mood, but I love pecans, and they worked really well in these brownies.  I think the salt was a good addition, too.  I did share the brownies with one of my coworkers, who thought they were fantastic.

If you'd like to try the recipe for yourself, you can find it here at Bon Appetit!  So what's the most unusual thing you've done to get good blog pictures? =)

One little word

Happy New Year!  Hopefully 2012 is treating you all well so far.  My year started with house guests and a busy work schedule, so I haven't had much time for blogging.  But I had this weekend off, which means time to bake, so I now I have a bunch of stuff to share.  First, though, I wanted to write about my ideas for what I want for my life in 2012.

I don't do New Year's resolutions.  But last week, I read an intriguing post on my friend Anandi's blog. Rather than starting off the year with resolutions, she came up with a single word to use as her theme for the year.  She shared a post from Ali Edwards, who has been doing One Little Word for a number of years now.  The idea is to come up with one word that stands for what you want for yourself for the year.  I started reading through the comments on Ali's post where others had shared the words they picked and why they chose them.  Some were interesting, but after a little bit of reading I found the one that really spoke to me.  FOCUS.  That's what I want for my life this year.  

I struggle a lot with stress and anxiety--I'm a worrier by nature.  The more things that are going on, the more I feel overwhelmed and unable to figure out where to start.  So I don't.  I just shut down and avoid dealing with anything.  I also worry way too much about being perfect and about what others think, instead of figuring out what's right for me.  Already, I see my daughter Brianna (who'll be nine this month) struggling with these same things.  I want to provide a better example for her.  I need to focus on doing a better job of taking care of me so I can do a better job of taking care of everyone and everything else.  I need to focus and handle one thing at a time.  Heck, I need to slow down and figure out which things really need to be handled by me, which can be handled by someone else, and which things just aren't that important.  

Sometimes I feel like I'm forty years old and I still don't really know what I want to be when I grow up.  I tend to go with the flow and do what's expected of me, instead of figuring out what I really want.  I've struggled with that a lot in the past year.  It's really hard for me to say no when someone else wants me to do something, and even when I do say no, I end up feeling really guilty.  I need to focus on that inner voice, listen to it, and give up the guilt.  I suspect it's going to take me the entire year (maybe longer) to get good at all these things.  And that's okay.

When I shared with Anandi that I was going to do One Little Word this year along with her, she asked if I was going to write about it, or "maybe bake a cake with FOCUS iced onto it?"  Well, here you go!  It was too good an idea to pass up.  The great thing about this cake is that it's really quick and easy to make, and it's delicious.  It was published in Fine Cooking in 2004, and I've made it quite a few times since then, but have never blogged about it.  The recipe is from one of my favorite authors of chocolate recipes, Alice Medrich.  One reason I love her is that she most often uses natural cocoa, which I prefer. I broke out the good stuff--Scharffen Berger--since cocoa provides all the chocolate flavor in the cake itself.  Once the cake is cooled, you top it with ganache for another punch of chocolate flavor.  To be honest, I've topped the warm cake with ganache and promptly eaten it with vanilla ice cream, and it's quite fabulous that way.  This time, though, I made sure the cake was cool and then let the ganache set for several hours so I'd be able to decorate it.  

The verdict?  Anything with chocolate is well-received in this house, and this was no exception. =)  As soon as Brianna and Gillian saw it, they wanted to know how soon they could have some.  One thing I really like about this cake is its size--just the one layer, so we actually get through all of it while it's still at its best.  

If you'd like to try the cake for yourself, you can find it here at Fine Cooking.  (The recipe appears to be available to all, not just website subscribers.)  If you're thinking of picking a word for yourself, Ali compiled a list from the comments on her post--you can find it here, and see what speaks to you.  

Stay tuned for more posts this week.  I've come up with some ideas for what I want to focus on here on my blog this year.  I want variety, as well as the chance to share lots of things that I like, and I think I've come up with a good way to do that.