Chocolate Caramel Truffles

The first step to identifying your problem is admitting that you have one.  Friends, I have a serious addiction to chocolate. I can’t help it. Chocolate is the key to our hearts and the root to our souls. I think it provides the chemical we feel when we’re in love after we take that first bite which explains why chocolate comes around on Valentines Day (Singles Day) I got a little sad around Valentine’s Day, so I made these truffles for my Single friends.  After all, chocolate makes us feel 1000 times better.

So friends, I hope u enjoyed them because they were time consuming but were the best thing I’ve made from Gourmet so far. Mom helped me with the mixture.  It wasn’t too complicated- it was just time consuming.

30 Truffles (we doubled it)

• 1 cup sugar
• 2/3 cup heavy cream
• 9 ounces fine-quality bittersweet chocolate (not unsweetened), chopped– (we used chips)
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1 teaspoon vanilla

For coating

• 1/4 to 1/2 cup unsweetened cocoa powder, sifted, and/or 1/2 to 1 cup pecans, ground fine

“In a dry heavy saucepan (about 3 1/2 quarts) cook sugar over moderate heat, stirring with a fork until melted… ” (It was so cool to watch the sugar melt into caramel- I’ve never made caramel before-)

…”swirl pan until sugar is a golden caramel.  Remove pan from heat (we turned heat off) and add cream carefully (mixture will bubble up)…”  it bubbled up A Lot.  I thought I was doing something wrong, so Mom took over (my natural instinct).  I learned that when heat is over boiling temperature adding cold heavy cream will make the caramel bubble a lot.  Learning a little science as I cook is always fun.    “Return pan to heat and simmer, stirring, until caramel is dissolved.”

Remove pan from heat and add chocolate, salt, and vanilla. Let mixture stand 5 minutes (we didn’t do this we kept stirring until chocolate melted. Transfer mixture to a bowl and cool, uncovered. Chill mixture, covered, 2 hours, or until firm.

Coat truffles:
Scoop out truffle mixture with a spoon and form into 1-inch balls. Roll truffles in 1/2 cup cocoa powder or coat with 1 cup pecans, pressing nuts slightly to adhere. (Alternatively, roll half of truffles in 1/4 cup cocoa powder and coat remaining truffles with 1/2 cup pecans.) Chill truffles on a tray lined with wax paper until firm, about 1 hour. Truffles keep in an airtight container, chilled, 2 weeks.

Mom got sleepy. My accountant friend Andrew is in the middle of busy season and had to work a full twelve hour day on Saturday.  He came over starving around 8ish.  By the time he came over, I was ready to put him to work.   He helped me form the mixture into chocolaty truffles covered in coco power.  As Forest Gump said, “Life is like a box of chocolates, you never know what your gonna get.” That was precisely what we tried to do. Some truffles had nuts on the outside or on the inside.  Even the ones covered in coco powder had nuts.  So, you really never knew which one you were getting.

I woke Mom up to try one- and she gave it a 5+ and Dad kept wanting seconds and thirds.

Ratings:

Taste: 5+

Do-Ability: 2- Very time consuming… Chocolate melts very easily so we kept putting the mixture back in the fridge to solidify since it kept melting in my hands.

Overall, a complete success!!

Lovely Polenta

Several months ago, I made corn muffins that tasted like cardboard.  My old roommate Lara commented, “Ashley I had those corn muffins you made and… what did you do to them? They tasted horrible!”

At the time, I had just bought Michael Ruhlman’s book Ratio: The Simple Codes Behind the Craft of Everyday Cooking (a.k.a the anti-recipe book).   I always hated recipes because I can never follow them so I thought I’d do his method.   His theory makes sense.  If you know the ratio for muffins, than you can make any kind you want because the ratio doesn’t change.  However, if you’re me, and you think you know the ratio but don’t actually know it, then you end up with cardboard corn muffins.  The trial and error method is a no no!

The cornmeal from those dreadful corn muffins is still in my cabinet and I decided to make a simple polenta using a Gourmet recipe, of course.  I noticed that I hadn’t made many sides and an easy polenta was just the thing to do.

This recipe is called Creamy Polenta:

Consists of:

• 4 cups water
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1 cup polenta (not quick-cooking) or yellow cornmeal (5 ounces)
• 2 tablespoons unsalted butter

“Bring water and salt to a boil in a 3-quart heavy saucepan, then add polenta in a thin stream, whisking. Cook over moderate heat, whisking, 2 minutes. Reduce heat to low and cover pan, then cook at a bare simmer, stirring with a long-handled spoon for 1 minute after every 10 minutes of cooking, 45 minutes total. Remove from heat and whisk in butter until incorporated.

Serve polenta warm.”

It was very tasty- and if you let it sit for a minute it gets really thick.

Ratings:

Do-Ability: 5= very easy

Taste: 4.5  Was a little on the salty side but mmmhmmm goood.

Yes, I would make this again and again.

A New Take on the Oatmeal Raisin Cookie

I’m not a baker.  Sadly, I grew up with boxed brownie, cookie and cake mixes.  Everything I made was always consistently moist, so I never made anything from scratch because it was too complicated.  With cookies from scratch (or what I call “scratch cookies”), I’d put in so much time and effort into baking.  And, for what? A dry cookie.

Have you ever had a spicy cookie? Six-Spice Oatmeal Raisin Cookies are not your typical gooey, sweet cookie.  These spices… kick in at the end of your bite.   Who’s ever heard of cayenne pepper in a cookie recipe? I admit that I didn’t use all the spices because a small jar of ground cloves in NY was $9.99 and the recipe called for a pinch of ground cloves.   I was not spending $9.99 so I could use a pinch of ground cloves, once.  Let’s face it; I would only use it, once.  What else didn’t I use? Cumin and nutmeg, which would explain why the ginger was so potent.   I think we (my roomies are guinea pigs almost every time) all agreed that the ginger was a bit strong.

My other guinea pig, Yanina, was so excited when I told her I was making oatmeal raisin cookies.  She’s the kind of person who will tell it to you like it is- no BS, just straight off the bat to your face this is how I feel kind of deal.  I knew that if it was a bad/good/dry/moist cookie, I could count on her to tell it to me straight up.   Everyone needs a friend like that- someone who will give you a good kick in the a$$ when you need it most.  That’s why we’re friends.

Luckily, my oatmeal raisin cookies met her high expectations.  She’s a spicy gal and these ones matched her palate.

Rating: 1-5  (5=Excellent, 1=worst cookie of my life)

Taste: 3.5, I’m a gooey gal.  The cookie was stiff.  I like sweet cookies.

Recipe: 4.5- I didn’t use all the spices; extra points for a unique recipe

Do-Ability: 3.5- Baking is hard.  You have to be precise- I get flustered too easily and there are always too many directions that I end up doing backwards.   Although I separated the dry ingredients from the wet ones, I put the flour and spices in a big bowl and the butter, sugar and eggs into a smaller bowl.  If I read the directions correctly, I would have noticed that the dry ingredients are supposed to go into the wet ingredients and not vice versa.  I mixed the batter in a small bowl instead of a big bowl and then transferred the dough into the big bowl later.

When baking, does the order really matter? Aren’t they all going in the same place?

Cook to Impress? Go with Pasta

If you want to impress, go simple.  Simple = Pasta.  I’ll only try new things on myself because I’d hate to mess up on someone else- esp. if I’m cooking to impress.  This week, I came across an unusually picky guinea pig who gave me a guideline of foods he doesn’t eat.

1. no seafood; which was hard for me because I like fish.

I said, “Chicken or steak?”

He said, “Both are fine.”

I’ve cooked way too many chicken recipes and may turn into one if I cook another chicken dish. And I wasn’t in the mood for red meat so I went with Pasta.

I found Penne with Tomato Prosciutto Sauce which looked easy and didn’t have too many ingredients- it was simple and looked good- but it has Prosciutto in it-

“Are you OK with Proscuitto?”

“Not my Fav. but I’ll eat it.”  OY!

Ratings- 1 to 5  (5 = excellent)

ME: 4.0 Prosciutto didn’t do much for me- maybe it’s because I didn’t add much due to picky guinea pig.  Extra points for making tomato sauce from scratch- and it was good.

Guinea Pig: 17.  Goal Achieved- It’s over the max!

Just remember that if you want to impress go with PASTA.