August 17, 2008 at 4:12 pm · Filed under In the Kitchen and Foodstuff
On July 7th Eric emailed me this blog post detailing an experiment in mixing two delicious things: bacon and chocolate chip cookies. In the subject line he asked, “wanna bake some cookies?”. Yes, of course I did. Various summer going-ons delayed our cookie date but yesterday we finally got the chance to try this experiment ourselves.
Muffin was so great at documenting her experience so I’ll try to give the recipe without too many embellishments. We started with your standard chocolate chip cookie dough recipe:
3/4 cup butter (She suggests trying 1 cup because her cookies may have been a bit dry. I only had 3/4 of a cup in the fridge and did find the dough a bit too dry so added a smidgen of vegetable oil.)
2/3 cup packed brown sugar
2/3 cup white sugar
1 egg
1 tsp vanilla extract (She uses 1/2 tsp as well as 1 tsp of hazelnut extract. I didn’t want to introduce other complicated flavours and only used vanilla.)
2 1/2 cups flour (If you are only using 3/4 cup of butter, I would reduce the flour to maybe 2 cups…?)
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 cups semi-sweet chocolate chips (She uses 1 cup of white chocolate and 1 cup of semi-sweet chocolate but Eric and I both agreed the white chocolate would be a bit too festive.)
2 cups of bacon bits - the real-deal bacon bits, not simulated
We bought two jars of these bacon bits at Stong’s, each having just under 1 cup of bits:
The cookie dough was assembled like any other cookie dough and the bacon bits were mixed in at the end (at the same time as the chocolate chips):
This is the finished dough:
Doesn’t it look wonderful? A taste test left me drunk with cookie anticipation while we rolled the dough into small balls:
Each pan went into the oven at 350 F for 10-11 minutes. In the meantime, we fried the topping bacon. We used a whole package, I don’t know how many pounds it was, but your standard package size of bacon:
Baking cookies in the oven and frying bacon on the stove might not be the most comfortable activity for a hot, humid day in August. Luckily the sun was going down and we were gifted with a beautiful, calm and cooling sunset sky:
While the cookies and bacon cooled a little, we prepared the maple glaze. Muffin was so smart to include the maple glaze. It acts as both a adhesive for the bacon topping and a bridge between salty savory bacon and the sweeter cookie. The glaze was made with:
2 cups icing sugar
1 1/2 tablespoon maple extract
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
some cinnamon
milk to make a thicker glaze (She uses water but I didn’t feel right about that.)
We spread the glaze on each cookie and topped with a piece (or a few) of the fried bacon. The results:
The conclusion: these are some of the most incredible cookies that I have ever eaten. The salty bacon compliments the cookie and chocolate so well. The layers of flavour leave you feeling like you have just eaten a delicious breakfast meal in cookie form. I have never had such satisfaction out of a cookie as I do with these. I can’t imagine anyone who is not a vegetarian not liking these cookies. Make them. Eat them.
August 17, 2008 at 8:20 am · Filed under Creatures
This summer we’ve continuously have had visitors on our kitchen window. Both inside and out. Yesterday it was this guy:
For a sense of his size, he was a bit longer than a wasp.
I don’t know what he is but he didn’t mind his photograph being taken. I spent a substantial amount of time at the sink and he stayed there all afternoon. It wasn’t until later in the evening that he took flight and danced around the ceiling light in the dining room.
The sad thing is that he probably spent all day wanting to get outside. The kitchen window was the closest thing - did he get stuck there? Or was he sleeping? Should I relocate my kitchen friends or are they happy where they are?
August 13, 2008 at 9:35 am · Filed under Experiences
On Sunday I hiked up Alouette Mountain in Golden Ears Provincial Park.
I made the mistake of thinking that since it was sunny and clear in Vancouver, it would be the same 50km away from Vancouver and on a mountain no less. Ha. Luckily I was with some generous people who knew what was going on and had rain jackets to spare.
Actually, it didn’t rain too much. It was never pouring. But at times the path was narrow and low hemlock branches were waiting with lots of water to slap you with. It kind of felt like walking through a car wash.
The bright side (heh heh) of being soaked was that the bugs for which the trail is notorious were not too much of a bother. They only started swarming a few times when we stopped to admire murky ponds and tall tall trees spooky in the fog:
I heard there was an amazing view at the top. We were far from being rewarded with that but the atmosphere had its own sort of beauty:
It felt movie set surreal and cut off from the rest of the world.
August 12, 2008 at 2:32 am · Filed under Thinking
I was just outside to see if I could catch a glimpse of any the Perseids meteors. I didn’t go very far from my home but waited in a spot where a relatively large number of stars were visible in the clear sky. I waited until my neck got sore and my eyes watery, burning, and seeing white dots that are most distracting on this type of occasion. Now that I’m back, I feel directed to mention my lack of food holiday celebrations.
Have you ever made s’mores without the open fire? It’s very posssible, there are instructions on the graham cracker box to do so but…still. Over the weekend both the weather and my schedule were not conducive to a bonfire on the beach or sitting around a coal BBQ. Not to say it wasn’t a highly enjoyable weekend and I didn’t get my BBQ fill.
But roasting marshmallows over the mini Coleman gas BBQ? (Coal BBQs are acceptable as it brings back childhood memories.) The spirit was not there and honestly, my spirit for food in general has been waning with this project. Over the weekend I stopped looking forward to the Raspberry Bombe, Filet Mignon, and Lemon Meringue Pie that were to be celebrated this week. I did make rice pudding on Saturday but couldn’t bring myself to draw the frozen custard. So I’m wrapping the project up, ditching the schedule of occasion and from here on I will celebrate the desserts and food I want to when I want to. Of course if you’re ever in the mood to celebrate a specific food day, I would be an enthusiastic participant :)
August 7, 2008 at 8:52 pm · Filed under In the Kitchen and Foodstuff
Not much to be said here. Raspberries and cream, whipped cream. The perfect compliment to raspberry tartness.
Raspberries and cream day is like a finishing nod to the raspberry season so it’s a little sad. I’ve eaten pints and pints of berries and cherries in the past few months and will miss them come fall.
August 6, 2008 at 9:15 am · Filed under In the Kitchen and Foodstuff
Having recently celebrated ice cream soda day, I wasn’t really up for a root beer float even with leftover root beer and ice cream at my disposal. To be honest, I don’t really like soda/pop hence think floats are kind of a waste of ice cream. Maybe that’s what A&W was thinking when they started selling bottled ice cream floats. Pushing it a little. Not really a float anymore is it? The Great Root Bear probably didn’t have much of a say in making bottled floats. In fact, I wonder how much they ever listened to his opinion. They keep him around because the kids love bears and that jingle but we can’t even begin to imagine the agony of hearing ba-dum-dah-dum everywhere you walk.
August 5, 2008 at 9:03 am · Filed under In the Kitchen and Foodstuff
Good morning! It’s a happy day indeed - it’s waffle day!
Some waffle facts:
Waffles date back to the middle ages when thin, crisp cakes were baked between two iron plates connected together with a hinge and imprinted with a design, sometimes the waffle grid we know today.
Eggo had/has a 65% share of the frozen waffle market (I’m assuming both in the States and Canada).
“L’Eggo my Eggo” has been used by Eggo since 1960.
I have been called “Meggo my eggo” since 1981.
Belgian waffles are made with yeast-leavened batter, North American waffles are leavened with baking powder.
My laptop is named Waffles. This is because breakfast is the most incredible meal of the day. It is also because of Gir.
My house does not have a waffle iron :( so I ate frozen waffles this morning. I have not eaten them since a period of time in high school when I had Eggo waffles every morning. So I had a crazy wave of déjà-manger.
Waffles are incredible.
August 4, 2008 at 8:05 pm · Filed under In the Kitchen and Foodstuff
Chocolate chip day celebrated with one of my favourite varieties of chocolate chip baking:
The banana chocolate chip muffin. The ones at this café were missing the bananas it seems.
So get this - chocolate chips were not produced until 1939. Can you imagine it? So much history with no chocolate chips?
In 1933 the owner of the Toll House Inn in Massachusetts, Ruth Graves Wakefield, altered a batch of butter drop cookies by adding cut-up chunks of a Nestlé semi-sweet chocolate bar. The cookies were a success at the inn and Nestlé offered Wakefield a lifetime supply of chocolate in exchange for permission to print the cookie recipe on the chocolate bar packaging. They sold the bars with a little tool for cutting them up but soon enough, they began to sell the chocolate in “morsel” form. Story from Nestlé here.
Now chocolate chips are put in everything baked (and not): muffins, cake, cookies, ice cream, loaves, bagels, waffles, cheesecake, brownies, other squares, etc. and they are not always chocolate. Bless the souls who invented butterscotch chips.
Finally, in case you were wondering, chocolate chips came after Hershey’s Kisses. So did Hershey start the standard chocolate chip “drop” shape using mini Kisses machines? Because I never see Nestlé chocolate chips in the grocery store. Only Hershey’s and Baker’s. Hmmm…someone needs to tour a few chocolate factories…
August 3, 2008 at 8:39 pm · Filed under In the Kitchen and Foodstuff
A summer icon but odd looking without the seeds.
Summary of my seedless watermelon production googling:
A chemical called colchicine is used to double the number of chromosomes of a normal watermelon. If colchicine were used on us, we would probably die but the watermelons are cool with it. It actually makes them bigger and stronger so colchicine is often used in watermelon breeding. If these watermelons with extra chromosomes are crossed with normal watermelons, a sterile offspring is produced. This offspring can be used to produce seedless watermelons but the normal watermelon is still needed to provide pollen that the sterile watermelon lacks. Oh and you also need a lot of bees.
Next time I’ll buy a seeded watermelon but if I make watermelon bombe, I may make it seedless. I was never a fan of frozen chocolate chips in my sherbet.
I’ve been reading other things about watermelons: they are not actually melons in the proper melon sense (like honeydew, cantaloupe, and cucumber), there is a breed called “cream of saskatchewan” that I can’t believe I have not tried, and there are southeastern European folk legends of vampire watermelons.
According to tradition, watermelons or any kind of pumpkin kept more than ten days or after Christmas will become a vampire, rolling around on the ground and growling to pester the living. People have little fear of the vampire pumpkins and melons because of the creatures’ lack of teeth.
It’s a good thing watermelon gets eaten up so fast.
August 3, 2008 at 6:04 pm · Filed under Mostly Hilarious
My fortune cookie fortune today:
A MAN WITH BROWN EYES HAS A SURPRISE FOR YOU
August 3, 2008 at 10:01 am · Filed under In the Kitchen and Foodstuff
Yikes, falling behind on the food holidays already! Yesterday was ice cream sandwich day:
I could make my own but they are more satisfying bought individual at a store and devouring before the ice cream melts. Maybe another weekend when I’m not still working on a pie.
August 3, 2008 at 8:34 am · Filed under Art
These are the three small cups I mentioned last week:
I also mentioned trying, but failing, to make a small bottle with a tapered top and spout to go with them. This week our instructor demoed throwing a tall vase and pitcher, both with tapered tops and, following her process, I was able to make my bottle. It was difficult though. After tapering the clay above the neck became all uneven and wonky. Maybe I was not centered properly from the beginning?
Other than the bottle, I made a bowl and a plate. Pictures to come next week. But that’s it for throwing this summer. I have three classes left and they will be spent trimming the rest of my work, glazing, and more glazing. I am so looking forward to seeing the final pieces but the glazing process will be hard. So many colours to choose from and so little idea what they will look like in the end!
August 2, 2008 at 4:27 pm · Filed under Experiences
This wasp had been sitting on the kitchen window for two or three days. It looked dead but would change locations between my visits to the sink.
This morning I decided to take a picture of wasp friend and, forgetting I had turned it on the night before, took a photo with the flash. If he had been having a 2-3 day nap I think I woke him up. He immediately started moving around the window. I took more pictures. Then it seemed like he was becoming perturbed. His abdomnen was moving up and down and I wondered if he was wanting to sting. Then he flew away.
I felt a little bad. Why was he there? Was he sick, resting, being lazy and hiding from other wasps? Later I was biking down Discovery St. and a large bug collided into my face. It reminded me of kitchen wasp friend and I wondered about his fate.
August 2, 2008 at 9:07 am · Filed under In the Kitchen and Foodstuff
Yesterday was raspberry cream pie day and the day before was raspberry cake day. I kind of cheated and combined the two and well, it’s not cake but pie is like cake and I made the pie on raspberry cake day so the spirit was there.
A close up of my un-photogenic raspberry cream pie:
What it lacked in looks it made up for in personality!! Though it’s that kind of personality you absolutely love but can only handle in small doses. This was a learning lesson and next time I’ll be prepared to make the most charismatic pie.
To start with a pie meaning well: I used this recipe for a Raspberry-Chocolate Tart from Epicurious. I don’t believe in tarts with a chocolate-crumb crust - it’s really a pie. The filling was made with pureed raspberries, whipping cream, and mascarpone cheese. I had never used mascarpone before but it’s an Italian cream cheese that gaves the filling a light, velvety texture with a bit of cream cheese sourness, enhanced by the tartness of the raspberries, but with none of that cream cheese rubber/process-y-ness if that makes sense.
After chilling overnight, the pie got a little too excited. I had visions of 3 layers of brown, pink, and white perfectly holding each other together like a neopolitan cloud. Instead of following the recipe topping of fresh raspberries and raspberry preserves, I made whipped cream and spread it on top. That was probably my first mistake. Freshly whipped cream is probably at its best dolloped onto dessert immediately before serving.
Then I went further and figured that chocolate sauce should be drizzled over the pie to balance out the chocolate bottom. I made a sauce that was probably more a ganache and dripped/globbed/mixed it over the whipped cream. Then there was the dipping of raspberries and the placement of more raspberries and the drizzling of more sauce and then ooooh…the pie was just messy.
Next time I may or may not include the chocolate sauce. If I do, it will be drizzled onto the raspberry filling. That will be stored in the fridge and immediately before serving I will place a dollop of whipped cream and bouquet of raspberries on each individual serving.
That whole lesson being said, it was still an incredibly tasty way to learn.
Pie was followed by Blocus and I think while I slept raspberry, chocolate, and cream Blocus pieces danced in my head.
July 31, 2008 at 9:26 pm · Filed under In the Kitchen and Foodstuff
It’s a bean, there’s jelly inside with candy roots back to Turkish Delight, and there’s the harder shell.
Actually, I’m a bit depressed/cranky tonight and as much as I want to keep going with this food holiday thing - I’m just not feeling the jellybean. My mood is currently such that when I think jellybeans, I think that to all of life’s wonderful variety you still have to deal with disgusting black licorice in the mix. And I forget and, upon encountering a new batch, hope for black currant. Maybe they could learn from winegums.
But no. Black licorice. You can taste it on the neighboring beans too. Then there are those green mint flavoured beans. Ewww…let’s not get started. This girl has got to get some sleep.
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