St.Patrick's Day Dinner & Dessert!

So, ye lads and lassies - what does one do when St. Patrick's Day falls on a weeknight and you still wish to celebrate in style?  You make corned beef sandwiches with saurkraut on rye, buy top quality potato salad, and top it off with a cool one (Irish beer) and another cool one (homemade Irish mint 'n' chip icecream) of course!

Don and I have some serious Irish blood rushing through our veins, so this is one of our favorite holidays to celebrate (let alone the fact that green is my all-time favorite color! :-)

Now, they say the Reuben sandwich is an American affair, so the fact that it is created with corned beef just makes too much sense for a weeknight St. Pat's meal, now, right? (Mmmmmm... I say:  who wouldn't claim that this does just the trick, eh?)

I always listen to music while I bake/cook and this dinner is for sure no exception.  Every St. Patrick's Day dinner has to start by setting the mood with some good solid Celtic tunes:  The Chieftains, Altan and some mournful Irish airs will always get you started off right!

Stop by your favorite Deli for some really good rye, the best fresh potato salad you can find, good Irish Dubliner (preferred) or Gruyere cheese, saurkraut, Thousand Island dressing, and fresh corned beef...

(...well heck, at 6PM on St. Patrick's - they were fresh out of corned beef(!) but we found some really great beef pastrami to be a great alternative so just play along with us, if you will... :)

Slice a piece of cheese for each sandwich you make.

Ryes come in many varieties - this lighter New York Style was awesome.

Lightly toast your bread to your liking (*This awesome Kitchen Aid countertop oven is [next to our mixer of course!] our very favorite kitchen tool.  We use it for everything from cooking dinner, to reheating, to toasting, to baking small batches of cookies.  I frankly do not know what we did before we had it!)  :-)

Grill the beef in a smidge of butter in a frying pan and let the cheese ooze over its top.  Add this onto your toasted rye prepared with a little thousand island dressing and saurkraut and your Reuben is set. 

So what does one do when one wishes to skip the full-fledged stoutness of true Guinness on a weeknight eh?  Well, one discovers (and consequently loves...) this Guinness sister: Smithwick's ale.  Awwww - so perfect with these Reubens!

A fitting Irish tribute, 'tis this!  :-)
* * * * * 

So, in almost as much time as it takes to make your dinner, you can start your Irish ice cream to go with!  This awesome KitchenAid IceCream Maker is just incredible for serving 2-6 people.  We keep ours in the freezer so it's always ready to go.  As you can see - the set comes with the freezer bowl, paddle and special attachment and is an absolute cinch to use and clean.  (The Lactaid?  You're right - doesn't make sense with the whole cream next to... let's just say that for a 99c clearance item, it was the perfect milk for this recipe!) 

Now, when it comes to American ice cream, you just can't beat the masters (that would be Ben & Jerry, natch!)  Any entrepreuners that start from scratch with a winning philosophy that ice cream sells in a freezing climate because the chill from it in your body beats any other below freezing temperatures in Vermont are purely brilliant in my book!  (Not to mention all the fresh ingredients and cool names they use for their flavors! :-)  (Google: "Internal-External Temperature Differential and Equalization Theory", ha.)

So, we turned to the great B&J for their awesome Oreo Mint ice cream from B&J's Ice Cream and Dessert Book and here is our adapted version:

IRISH MINT 'N' CHIP ICE CREAM

(makes 1 generous quart)

Ingredients:

2 large eggs

3/4 c. (organic) granulated sugar

2 c. heavy whipping cream

1 c. whole (or 2%) milk (Clearance Lactaid not required!)

2 tsp. pure peppermint extract

1 tsp. pure mint extract

pinch of salt (*really brings out the flavor in ice creams)

a bit of green food coloring (optional)

~3/4 cup of quality semi-sweet chocolate drops (like my favorite: Sweet Earth Chocolates)

Whisk the eggs in mixing bowl until light and fluffy (~1-2 minutes.)  Whisk in sugar, a bit at a time, then continue whisking until completely blended (~1 minute more.)  Pour in the cream and milk and whisk to blend.  Add the extracts, salt, and green color and do a final whisk.  Pour the mixture in the prepared icecream freezer and keep your mixer on low/medium until thickened (about 10+ minutes.)  Hand stir-in the chopped chocolate and serve immediately.  Freeze any remaining (if any!) ice cream. 

 

A mixture of mainly peppermint with some mint thrown in creates that good minty flavor.

This fancy contraption attaches to the mixer head and then fits right on top of the mixing paddle in the bowl.

Roughly chop your chocolate drops to various sizes to provide some bite.  Drops are larger in size and stronger than regular chocolate chips and so are perfect for ice cream.

Hand blend-in your chocolate and serve immediately.  If your ice cream is still a bit soft, stick the whole bowl in the freezer a bit until the consistency is right.  This recipe keeps really well frozen, so you can continue to enjoy for several days after St. Patty's! 

 Erin Go Bragh!

Rustic Blood Orange Tart with Salted Caramel Sauce

I was so excited to get an email response from Deb of the famous Smitten Kitchen blog the other day!  In it, she wrote the following thoughtful words about my little BakerBee site: 

Hi Heidi --

Thanks for your note. Your site looks lovely so far. Those crepes and those nonpariels (my favorite) are awesome looking.

Thanks for sharing,
Deb

Too cool!  Well, in honor of this little "pat on the blog" by the Smitten Baker herself, I turned back to Smitten Kitchen to make one of the many awesome recipes featured.  One such recipe I had had my eye on was this beautiful rustic tart made with colorful blood oranges.  It just so happened, too, that we were recently gifted with a few beautiful organic blood oranges right from the farm and so I thought that this recipe was definitely the perfect celebratory occasion!

One of the things that especially intrigued me about this recipe was the incredibly simple, FAST and absolutely perfect caramel sauce that Deb lent to it.  (Yes, I guess there truly is a great reason why this woman gets over 1 MILLION hits a month to her blog!  *whew* she ain't no baker-in-the-box now, people!)

The original recipe for the tart is from Food and Wine and can be found here. You can use your favorite pie crust recipe for this rustic tart base, but the one they use is a good one.

Round up your ingredients - you'll find it won't take many!

Although I tend to label myself as a bit of a purist when it comes to baking, I have come to swear by the food processor for making excellent pâte brisée and pie crusts of all other sorts.  If both Julia and Martha swore by it, I knew there had to be good reason, and there is.  The secret to perfect, flaky crust is simply this:  make it ice cold, bake it red hot.  It therefore stands to reason that the more you mess with a crust, the more it's going to heat up and therefore lose its crusty integrity. The food processor allows you to blend together your crust ingredients in a matter of seconds, and when you start with ice water and ice cold butter, you are in good shape.

I always pat my dough into discs, rather than rounds, for refrigerating.  This makes it much easier and faster to roll out when you take it out of the fridge.  (See the chunks of butter showing through in this dough?  That's exactly how you want it - 'tis this streaky effect that creates good, flaky texture!)

Roll out your dough with as little handling as you can to the size of a pizza-size stoneware if you have one, or you can improvise on a flat cookie sheet.  A good tip for keeping a pliable dough every time:  keep it moving on a lightly floured surface by flipping it with almost every pin stroke to avoid any stickage.

Blood oranges are gorgeous as you can see!  They have a sweet, less acidic taste than Navels or Valencias.  Taste teste a piece of orange (oh darn, ha!) to test for sweetness and keep the tartness or sweetness in mind when you go to sugar your tart.

The recipe calls for some of your oranges to be sliced and some to be segmented (and like Deb, I only used five oranges total.)

Look at this array of color!  

Arrange your orange slices and sections together onto a holding plate (your eyes will thank you :-)

Arrange the segments into somewhat of a pattern near the middle of your tart...

...then sprinkle segments with your sugar, top with chunks of butter, fold over your tart, and brush the tart with your egg wash.

Top your rustic tart with the orange slices in a pleasing pattern and bake away.

NOW...the pièce de résistance!

(Wow, this recipe is amazing.) 

I've adapted Deb's recipe just a smidge - here is my version:

SALTED CARAMEL SAUCE

Makes about 1 1/3 cups of sauce

1 cup sugar (organic!)

6 T. unsalted butter

good pinch of kosher salt

1/2 cup heavy cream

Pour your sugar into a medium to large size pot or Dutch oven.  Whisk the sugar over medium to moderately high heat until it melts evenly.  Continue to cook and whisk until it reaches a nice caramel color.  Add the butter all at once and stir in, then turn off heat.  Pour in the heavy cream (a little foaminess will occur) and whisk until the sauce becomes nice and smooth.  Let cool a bit and pour over your tart as desired. 

If you have any sauce remaining (ha!) -keep refrigerated for 2 weeks and microwave for about 1 minute to warm up and make pourable.

This is the trippiest part of the recipe.  You start with a clean, dry pot and add only the sugar. Heat the sugar until it melts.  Yes - from dry to wet in a matter or minutes - no liquid at all is added at this stage.  You'll go from sugar crystals to liquid like this...

...to bubbling at the perfect temp here, post butter and cream addage (remove from heat before it burns which can be a matter of seconds!)...

...to the creamiest, most delicious caramel sauce here - all in a matter in minutes!  You don't even need a candy thermometer.

Here is the finished beauty with the most unusual topping.  You'll find the tartness of the oranges is really set off well by the buttery sweetness of the caramel.  

What a colorful and unusual dessert!  :-) Enjoy.

The Baked Spicy Brownie

O.k., for true, now... does this not look like the most moist, delicious thing ever? :)

For Valentine's Day, we decided to cook our own dinner and splurge instead on... dessert!  Since first hearing about an innovative new bakery in Brooklyn's Red Hook district, I became kind of hooked, myself!  Baked (read all about them here) is the newest place on my list of bakeries that is as interesting on the outside as it is on the inside.  This place was started by two young guys - one a baker, one a fledgling entrepreneur, who wanted to open up a hip, lodge-like coffee house with top of the line baked goods and friendly service.  This is no Magnolia Bakery knock-off with frou frou cupcakes - this is serious baked goods with hard core spices, top of the line chocolate, and, well... "manly" stuff! From what I was soon to find out, they truly "delivered" -and I mean...delivered as in look at what I ordered for us!  ^ ^ ^  

From the moment I started talking to the friendly staff, I knew this place was classy.  I spent a good ten minutes on the phone deciding exactly what I wanted, when to order it to ensure the straight from the oven freshness, and how to have it all wrapped up for a perfect Valentine's Day present for us.

("Get Baked!" wrote owners, Renato and Matt in my special signed recipe book :-)  

When we tried Baked's exclusive "spicy brownie" we just knew we had to make it for our little sis for her upcoming birthday.  We rounded up the ingredients for you above... (oops - ignore that bag of cayenne pepper - don't use that unless you want to blow your tongue off - or use a teeny pinch... we used New Mexico chili powder instead!)

Here it is, (with my own spin incorporated:)

THE BAKED SPICY BROWNIE (slightly modified)

*Makes 9 big or 16 medium brownies

*Preheat oven to 350°.

Ingredients:

·         3/4 cup all-purpose flour

·         1/4 tsp. salt

·         1 heaping T. dark cocoa powder (King Arthur Flour's is amazing)

·         ¼ to ½ tsp. of New Mexico Chili Powder

·         1/2 tsp. cinnamon

·         5 ounces coarsely chopped dark (60 percent) chocolate

·         1 stick unsalted butter , plus more for pan

·         3/4 cup granulated sugar

·         1/4 cup packed light brown sugar

·         3 large eggs

·         1 1/2 tsps. pure vanilla extract

·         1/4 tsp. freshly grated ginger

Butter and sugar an 8" x 8" pan.

In a medium bowl, whisk together flour, salt, cocoa powder, chili powder, and cinnamon.

Configure a double boiler (fill a medium saucepan with 2 inches of water and fit a bowl on top without letting it touch water; bring water to a boil). Place chocolate and butter in bowl and stir occasionally until both are completely melted and combined, about 6 minutes. Turn off heat, but keep bowl over water and add both sugars. Whisk until completely combined and remove bowl from pan. Let stand until room temperature, about 20 minutes.

Add eggs to chocolate-butter mixture and whisk until just combined. Add vanilla and ginger; whisk to combine. Do not overbeat the batter at this stage or the brownies will be cakey.

Sprinkle flour-cocoa mixture over chocolate mixture. Using a spatula (do not use a whisk!), fold the dry ingredients into the wet until there is just a trace amount of the flour-cocoa mix visible.

Pour batter into pan and smooth the top with the spatula. Bake brownies for 27 to 30 minutes; brownies are done when a toothpick inserted in the center comes out with a few moist crumbs. Cool brownies completely before cutting and serving.

To use the exact amount of chocolate drops, I used my Escali scale.  I just love this thing - I got it with a gift certificate to my favorite baker's catalog...The Baker's Catalog!  (That would be King Arthur Flour, folks - please see here.) 

Use a good double broiler set up to do your melting - OR, you can use a good stockpot on low heat (just be careful to monitor for burnage.)

I used King Arthur's black cocoa for this recipe.  It is amazing stuff and lent itself really well to this spicy treat.

Fresh ginger lends an additional subtle but spicy kick!

Be careful to fold gently when you get to this stage.  As Matt and Renato describe it:  

"fold the dry ingredients into the wet until there is just a trace amount of the flour-cocoa mix visible."  This helps preserve the texture for  your brownie.

As is my mantra - butter and sugar your pan.

A good trick for thick batters:  After filling your pan, take hold of both sides and lightly tap a couple of times flat onto a safe countertop.  This helps air bubbles rise to the surface and evens out the top of your batter.

Another great trick: 

Make an instant rack sturdy enough for a heavy pan of brownies to cool - just remove a cool burner cover from your stove then move your brownies away from your hot oven and onto the cover for the big cool down!

(Now that's one moist, spicy brownie, mmmmm.)

Wait...what's that you say- too hot in this kitchen?  No worries - just leave out the chili powder, ginger and/or cinnamon to please your palate! :-)

I cut the pan into nine big squares and wrapped these spicy brownies up in pretty brown parchment paper from our health food store (see here), tied up with linen string.

The brownies fit perfectly into this recycled salad container from the local health food market. These boxes are waxed inside and meant to hold liquidy contents, so with a light washing inside it's nice and fresh for a re-use!  Start thinking in this direction with all those recyclables that we all go through - salad containers, ice cream cartons, soup cups, nut cartons and boxes...the list goes on.  With a little "Homemade" sticker (from Michaels - see here) and some cute ribbon or string, you've got yourself a nice little eco-friendly box of delight :-)

Happy "Baked" Birthday, little sis!  So glad you enjoyed these :-)