Author: StreamingGourmet

Categories
Breads Breakfast/Brunch Pumpkin Uncategorized

Spiced Pumpkin Drop Biscuits

Pumpkin Biscuits
Pumpkin Biscuits

It’s day 5 of 31 days of pumpkin, and I’m excited to share this recipe for pumpkin biscuits with you. I grew up on the Eastern Shore of MD where sweet potato biscuits were popular, so this seemed like a natural next step. I was tempted to let the pumpkin stand on its own in this recipe, but in the end, I couldn’t resist adding just a hint of the traditional spices we’ve all come to expect with pumpkin flavor. I showed restraint though in both quantity and array, so that there is just a hint of the pumpkin pie rather than the full effect.

In this version, I dropped the biscuits in spoonfuls onto a “greased” (nonstick cooking sprayed) sheet, rather than rolling out the dough and cutting the circles. I just don’t have the patience for such things, although I readily admit that rolled biscuits are much more beautiful. Maybe next time.

Drop biscuits
Drop biscuits

Spiced Pumpkin Drop Biscuits
Makes 12 large biscuits

Ingredients

2 cups all purpose flour
2 tsp salt
3 tsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp cinnamon
1/8 tsp allspice
pinch nutmeg
5 Tbsp cold butter
1 cup canned pumpkin
1/2 – 3/4 cup plain yogurt

Method

1. Preheat oven to 450˚F. Mix together the dry ingredients in a medium bowl. Cut the butter into tablespoon slices and then cut the butter into the flour mixture. Blend thoroughly.

2. With a spoon, stir the pumpkin purée into the dry ingredients. Add enough yogurt so that a ball of dough forms. Do so by adding a couple of tablespoons at a time. Knead the ball of dough 8-10 times until everything is thoroughly mixed together.

3. Spray cookie sheet with nonstick cooking spray. Drop large spoonfuls of dough onto cookie sheet. There should be about a dozen spoonfuls altogether. Bake for 12-15 minutes or until tops are just turning golden brown.

Pumpkin Biscuits
Pumpkin Biscuits
Categories
Breakfast/Brunch Dessert Pumpkin Uncategorized

Pumpkin-Apple Spiced Bundt Cake

Pumpkin Apple Spiced Bundt Cake
Pumpkin Apple Spiced Bundt Cake

Day 4 of 31 days of pumpkin and we arrive at a Bundt cake. I’m psyched because I actually bought this bundt cake pan today at Mollie Stones in Sausalito. It’s nonstick, so I really wasn’t worried when it came time to invert the cake onto a plate. And then I had so much fun sifting the powdered sugar on top. Can you tell I’ve been waiting a long time to make a Bundt cake?

Continue reading “Pumpkin-Apple Spiced Bundt Cake”
Categories
Appetizers Pumpkin Soups and Stews Uncategorized Video How-to

Pumpkin-Sage Soup

Pumpkin-Sage Soup
Pumpkin-Sage Soup

Day 3 of 31 days of pumpkin brings us to a savory recipe.

The secret to this pumpkin soup isn’t the sage (that’s in the title after all). It’s the fact that the onions are caramelized first. Caramelizing onions takes a bit of time (about 30 minutes, in fact), but it’s well worth it to bring out the sweet, nutty flavor hidden inside. The trick to caramelizing onions is to keep the temperature very low while they are sautéeing. Caramel is created when sugar undergoes controlled pyrolysis – the chemical decomposition that happens when organic stuff gets hot. If it gets too hot, then it gets charred. Char creates the familiar grill marks on a perfectly grilled steak. We’re not charring the onions, we’re trying to decompose the sugars in such a controlled way that they turn into caramel and that takes controlled temperature for a long time.

Elise Bauer, from Simply Recipes, created a stop-motion movie to show onions caramelizing. Her post about how to caramelize onions is here.

Continue reading “Pumpkin-Sage Soup”
Categories
Dessert Pumpkin Uncategorized

Pumpkin Cardamom Crackle Custard

Pumpkin Cardamom Custard Crackle
Pumpkin Cardamom Custard Crackle

Day 2 of 31 days of pumpkin and we come to a custardy pumpkin crème brulée with a hint of cardamom. I love making desserts that come in individual servings. Maybe that’s because I hate sharing. This way, everyone gets his own ramekin and no one has to fight over who gets the bigger piece.

Since starting this project, I’ve learned something about sugar: there’s more than one kind. Of course, I always knew there was brown sugar, and dark brown sugar, but I haven’t really gone beyond that sort of basic knowledge of sugar. This week, I discovered demerera sugar and I use it in this recipe.

Continue reading “Pumpkin Cardamom Crackle Custard”
Categories
Dessert Pumpkin

Chocolate Chip Pumpkin Cookies

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Chocolate Chip Pumpkin Cookies
Chocolate Chip Pumpkin Cookies

October is my favorite month. Halloween is my favorite holiday and today is the one year anniversary of my recipe blog, StreamingGourmet – The Blog and my culinary videosharing website StreamingGourmet. To celebrate, I’m kicking off a month of daily pumpkin recipe posts. Follow StreamingGourmet on facebook (look to your right) and you won’t miss a single recipe.

Today’s recipe is for a fluffy pumpkin cookie with semi-sweet chocolate chips. Since the recipe contains both baking powder and baking soda, the cookie dough dough puffs up to make a soft, cakey cookie. The interplay between pumpkin pie flavors and the chocolate chips is surprisingly yummy. I think you’ll be seeing a lot of chocolate/pumpkin pairings this month.

Fold in chocolate chips
Fold in chocolate chips

 

Chocolate Chip Pumpkin Cookies
 
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Prep time
Cook time
Total time
 
A fluffy, cakey cookie perfect for a Halloween party.
Author:
Recipe type: Dessert
Cuisine: American
Serves: 36
Ingredients
  • ½ cup unsalted butter, softened
  • ¾ brown sugar
  • ¾ granulated sugar
  • 1 cup canned pumpkin
  • 1 egg, beaten
  • 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
  • 2½ cups flour
  • 1 tsp cinnamon
  • ½ tsp ginger
  • ¼ tsp ground cloves
  • pinch freshly ground nutmeg
  • pinch mace
  • 1 tsp baking powder
  • 1 tsp baking soda
  • ½ tsp salt
  • 1 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips
Instructions
  1. Preheat oven to 350˚F.
  2. In a large bowl, cream together the butter and sugar. Add pumpkin and beat well. Then add eggs and beat well. Finally add vanilla and beat well.
  3. Mix together dry ingredients in a separate bowl. Add dry ingredients to pumpkin mixture, about ⅓ at a time and mix well after each addition. Fold in the chocolate chips with a spoon or spatula.
  4. Spoon batter onto cookie sheets that have been sprayed with non-stick cooking spray or lightly buttered. Bake for 15 minutes or until lightly golden brown. Let sit for one minute after removing from oven. Then cool on wire racks.
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Ready to bake
Ready to bake
Chocolate Chip Pumpkin Cookie
Chocolate Chip Pumpkin Cookie
Categories
Dessert Produce Uncategorized Vegetarian

Grilled Peaches with Toasted Almonds

Grilled Peaches with Toasted Almonds and Vanilla Ice Cream
Grilled Peaches with Toasted Almonds and Vanilla Ice Cream

I know, it’s late in the season to do a post about peaches, but I swear, local peaches are still on sale here at Paradise Market, so I didn’t hesitate when the dinner party menu I was using from the Williams-Sonoma Dinner Parties book included this Grilled Peaches dish for dessert. Once again, I adapted the recipe and made it my own.

The method I used for each step of this recipe differed greatly from the one outlined in the Dinner Parties book, because I’m lazy and I like to keep the cleanup as simple as possible. Therefore, instead of using the oven and a cookie sheet to toast the almonds, I just toasted them in a sautée pan and rather than using my gas grill outside to grill the peaches, once again, I whipped out my All-clad non-stick grill pan. During the party, I had just grilled the Halibut, so I actually had to wash the pan between the main course and the dessert course before I could fire it back up, but because it’s a non-stick pan, washing it was a breeze and it was ready for another round of action in no time.

I have to say, the guests at the party went unexpectedly wild about this dessert. None of us were prepared for the peaches to cook all the way through in such a short amount of time, so we all took our first bite a bit tenatively. The peaches only grill for about 6-7 minutes, but they come out soft, warm and sweet – all they way through. Guests also commented enthusiastically about the contrast among textures with the crunch of the almonds, the creamy chill of the ice cream and the warm, soft texture of the peaches. A splash of Balsamic Vinegar lent tang and flavor. One guest, Steve, likes to make a Balsamic reduction for grilled fruit, because then it’s an amazingly sweet addition. See the links to other blogs at the bottom of this post to find out more about how to do that. For me, the Balsamic vinegar was a last minute thought, and I was just glad to have splashed it in.

Brush the peach halves with olive oil for grilling
Brush the peach halves with olive oil for grilling

Grilled Peaches with Toasted Almonds
 
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The perfect ending to a summer dinner party.
Author:
Recipe type: Dessert
Cuisine: American
Serves: 6
Ingredients
  • ½ cup slivered almonds
  • 3 large, ripe, yellow peaches, halved and pitted
  • Extra virgin olive oil for brushing on peaches
  • Vanilla ice cream
Instructions
  1. Heat a 10-inch skillet over medium-high heat. Add almonds and toast, watching carefully so they don't burn. If the pan has truly had time to heat up, it takes about 2 minutes on the first side and then 1 minute after flipping them. Set almonds aside.
  2. Brush both sides of each peach half lightly with extra virgin olive oil. Place peach halves in the pan, round side down and grill for about 3 minutes. Check one to see if grill marks have appeared. Turn them over and grill on the other side until grill marks appear, about 4 more minutes.
  3. If peaches are large, place one half on each plate. For medium sized peaches, you could plate with two halves. Sprinkle with almonds and add a scoop of vanilla ice cream.
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Grilled Peaches recipes from around the Food Blogosphere

Grilled White Peaches Recipe w/honey balsamic glaze & homemade Crème Fraîche from White On Rice Couple

Grilled Peaches & Cream from bell’alimento

Grilled Peaches with Mascarpone and Balsamic Syrup from Closet Cooking

Categories
Dessert Uncategorized

Just Another Cupcake

Vanilla Cupcake with Buttercream Frosting
Vanilla Cupcake with Buttercream Frosting

I really have no business posting anything about cupcakes given what’s out there about cupcakes these days, but I had fun baking and icing these with my son today, so there.

We used a boxed vanilla cake mix and added a couple of teaspoons of vanilla for good measure. Then we made a traditional butter icing with 1 box of confectioner’s sugar, 1 stick of butter, 1/4 cup of milk and a couple of teaspoons of vanilla. We added 5 drops of red food coloring and 1 drop of blue to get this version of pink icing. Iain was excited to add sprinkles we had leftover from Christmas. Red, green, and pink: my favorite color combination.

For cupcake inspirations with a lot more heft than mine, check out:

Sprinkles Cupcakes – The original cupcake bakery. Located in Beverly Hills, it is credited with igniting the craze. The site has truly inspired gift ideas.

Dainty Cakes LA Blog – An online cupcake delivery company. They sell homemade style gourmet cupcakes, cakes, cookies, pound cakes, and other desserts. The photos are to-die-for!

Cupcakes Take the Cake – Most likely, the #1 blog about cupcakes, Rachel Kramer Bussel, Nichelle Stephens and Stacie Joy keep you coated in sprinkles with the latest in cupcake trends, news, recipes and more. They have a link list with virtually every cupcake bakery in the world. Incredible.

Cupcake Project – When Stef volunteered to make cupcakes for her friends’ wedding, she didn’t know she would become one of the leading baking bloggers out there, but she did. She’s fearless. She’ll make a cupcake out of almost anything.

Or check out this video from the Culinary Institute of America demonstrating how to make a Cupcake Bouquet.

Vanilla Cupcake with Buttercream Frosting
Vanilla Cupcake with Buttercream Frosting
Categories
Breads Breakfast/Brunch Uncategorized

Zucchini Bread

Zucchini Bread
Zucchini Bread

I’ve been making this Zucchini Bread recipe my whole life. Although, it has been awhile . Zucchini was on sale for $0.49/lb the other day, so I knew that I was going to revisit this old favorite. I’ll never forget making this recipe in France in 1987. I was a 16 year-old student staying with a French family for the summer and I was eager to share my American culinary culture with them. I made Maryland Fried Chicken one day and another day, I made this zucchini bread. Their impression of it? Trop sucré. (Too sweet). I was baffled at the time, but my adult taste agrees and I’ve cut 1/2 cup of sugar from the original recipe. My French hosts also couldn’t understand why I wanted to spend time cooking for them, when I had an opportunity to experience French gastronomy for six weeks. Well, then as now, I guess I just couldn’t help it.

My Childhood Recipe Notebook
My Childhood Recipe Notebook

Zucchini Bread
Makes 2 medium loaves

Ingredients

3 eggs
1.5 cups sugar (in 1987 it was 2 cups)
1 cup vegetable oil
2 cups grated zucchini
1 Tbsp vanilla extract
3 cups flour
1 tsp salt
1 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp baking powder
1 Tbsp cinnamon
dash of freshly ground nutmeg

Method

1. Preheat oven to 350˚F. Beat eggs until foamy. Add sugar, zucchini, oil and vanilla. Mix lightly but well (with a spoon).

2. In a separate bowl, mix dry ingredients.

3. Add dry ingredients to egg mixture (in batches) until blended. Don’t over mix.

4. Bake for 1 hour.

Zucchini Bread
Zucchini Bread
Categories
Breakfast/Brunch Sauces Uncategorized

Strawberry Coulis Infused Pancakes

Strawberry Coulis Infused Pancakes
Strawberry Coulis Infused Pancakes (Dairy Free)

These might look like buckwheat pancakes, but the color comes from the strawberry coulis that is in the batter, not from buckwheat flour.

With strawberries still in season and on sale here in California, I couldn’t resist trying something new and a little decadent with them. I’ve been thinking about putting the strawberry goodness right into the pancake rather than just spreading jam or syrup on top. The result? A bright, light pancake with lots of flavor. The strawberry coulis replaces the milk which makes for an interesting twist. Also, instead of baking powder, this version uses the acid from the orange juice mixed with baking soda to get the fluffy rise needed for a good pancake. Also, in this rendition, the eggs are separated. The whites get whipped up into a wet froth and folded into the batter at the end. This helps make the batter smooth and shapely as it goes into the pan and gives a light, bubbly texture to the finished pancake.

Batter with the egg whites folded in
Batter with the egg whites folded in

Strawberry-Coulis Infused Pancakes
Serves 2

Strawberry Coulis

7 large strawberries (CA large), sliced in half
Juice of one small orange
1 tsp orange zest (optional) – gives pancake a little bite
2 Tbsp confectioner’s (powdered) sugar

Purée all ingredients in a blender and push through a sieve (to remove the strawberry seeds). This makes almost one cup of coulis – enough to put coulis in the pancakes and pour some on top. Set aside 1/2 cup for the recipe and chill the rest.

Pancakes

1/2 cup strawberry coulis (see above)
2 eggs, separated
1/2 cup all-purpose flour
1 tsp salt
1 1/2 tsp baking soda

Method

1. Start heating your pan under medium heat. Having the pan fully and evenly heated helps make even the first pancake come out just right. Beat the egg yolks with the strawberry coulis and set aside. Mix all of the dry ingredients.

2. Beat the egg whites rapidly with a whisk until the are stiff, but not so stiff that they would stay in the bowl if you inverted it. It takes about 2 minutes of serious whisking.

3. Stir together the dry ingredients and the coulis/egg mixture until completely combined, but not overly mixed. Fold in the egg whites. Again, don’t over mix. You just want to get the egg whites incorporated.

4. Drop a dollop of butter into the pan and allow it to melt, but not brown. Drop one ladle full of batter into the pan. Allow to cook until edges appear less shiny and bubbles appear on the surface of the pancake. Flip and cook for another 2 minutes or so. Transfer to a warm plate. If not eating immediately, keep in an oven heated to 250˚F. Garnish with fresh strawberries and serve with additional strawberry coulis.

CA strawberries are in season
CA strawberries are in season

Categories
Dessert Pizza and Pasta Uncategorized

Marbled Cupcakes – Chocolate Brownie + Vanilla Swirl

Chocolate Brownie + Vanilla Cupcake Swirl
Chocolate Brownie + Vanilla Cupcake Swirl

I got it into my head the other day that I just had to make marbled cupcakes. I don’t know why. I scoured the internet for techniques but in the end, I just invented my own. I needed to use what I had on hand in the pantry and I didn’t have any buttermilk or orange peel or almond extract or baker’s chocolate or lots of other things that the recipes were calling for. So I improvised. I made two batters: one was a version of Mark Bittman’s (again?!) Golden Layer Cake batter from How to Cook Everything and the other was a pre-packaged brownie mix batter to which I added an extra egg. The extra egg in the brownie batter made it light enough to co-exist with cake batter in a cupcake. I spooned the golden batter into the cups first then added a large dollop of chocolate brownie batter. Then I simply swirled a knife through with a circular and upwards motion. Once baked and cooled, I iced them with a basic butter cream frosting and added some sprinkles. I don’t have any cake decorating tools, so my icing job looks pretty amateur (at best), but I’m learning.

Marbled Chocolate Vanilla Swirl Cupcake
Marbled Chocolate Vanilla Swirl Cupcake

Marbled Cupcakes – Chocolate Brownie + Vanilla Swirl
Makes 24 cupcakes

Vanilla Cake Batter

1 1/4 sticks butter, softened
2 cups all-purpose flour
1 1/4 cups sugar
4 eggs
2 tsp vanilla extract
2 1/2 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
3/4 cup milk

1. Cream the butter until smooth. Add sugar gradually and continue to cream for 3-4 minutes. Add the eggs, one at a time, incorporating each one completely before adding the next. Then beat in the vanilla extract.

2. In a separate bowl, combine flour, baking powder and salt. Alternate adding the flour mixture and the milk into the butter mixture, incorporating each completely before adding the next.

Chocolate Brownie Batter

1. Follow the instructions on the packaged brownie mix, but add one extra egg.

Assembling the Cupcakes

1. Preheat the oven to 350˚F. Spray two cupcake pans with cooking spray and insert paper cupcake liners.

2. Spoon in enough vanilla batter to fill about halfway up each cupcake liner. Then spoon in a heaping tablespoon of the chocolate batter. Take a knife and swirl it through the batter with an upward motion at the end. Don’t stir too much or the batters won’t remain delineated.

3. Bake in the oven for 25-30 minutes. An inserted toothpick should come out clean. Cool on rack. When completely cool, ice with a simple buttercream frosting.

Buttercream Frosting

1 stick butter, softened
1 lb package of confectioners sugar
1/4 cup milk (more or less)
2 tsp vanilla extract

1. Cream the butter. Alternate adding sugar and milk, beating everything to a smooth, creamy texture. Beat in vanilla. Adjust thickness by adding milk or sugar, but remember that putting it back in the refrigerator will also thicken it up.

Marbled Cupcake
Marbled Cupcake
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