The first time I made candied pecans was while visiting a friend of mine, and they were so amazing I had to make more once I was back in my own kitchen! I started this recipe for Sweet Coated Pecans from Allrecipes but made just a couple of modifications.
Here's the final product, which I will call Spiced Candied Pecans:
Ingredients
1 egg white
1 tsp. ground cinnamon (Next time, I think I'll double it to 2 tsp., though!)
1/2 cup white sugar
1/2 cup brown sugar
3/4 tsp. salt
1 Tbsp. vanilla extract
12 oz. pecan halves
Instructions
Beat egg white until foamy, then stir in cinnamon, sugars, salt and vanilla extract until well-mixed:
Stir in pecans until they are thoroughly coated with deliciousness.
Spread the coated nuts on a greased baking sheet, foil or parchment paper and put them in a preheated 250 deg. F oven.
Bake them for an hour, but for every 15 minutes, stir the nuts. Here are mine after the first 15 minutes:
After 30:
After 45:
When they're done, pop them out of the oven and let them cool off before popping them into your mouth!
Hunting for potential sugar-coated pecan bits amongst the crumbs in the pan was like panning for gold. Luckily, this prospector found one:
However, the bounty of the day had already been collected:
Next time, I'm going to try doubling the cinnamon and adding cayenne. Yum!
I have to admit, my life would be grand if I could just bake and eat, and bake and eat... and not get fat. As a result, I'm also a runner. So my life ends up being more like: bake, eat, run, repeat.
Not too long ago (mid-November of this year), I ran my first 10K in San Francisco with a few friends from UC Berkeley. We were representing our school (or alma mater, in my case) for the first annual Rival10 College Challenge in San Francisco. Proceeds went towards the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation and the participating schools. Getting up at 6 am was totally worth running the race, as the weather was beautiful by the time we started at 9 am.
The course was equally gorgeous, taking us right near the Golden Gate Bridge:
I finished in 1:00:33, much sooner than I thought I would! Here I am doing a cartwheel to celebrate:
Afterward, we went out to eat at Tartine Bakery in San Francisco. Words can't describe how delicious the food was, so I'll let the pictures do the talking.
You see those apples on the side? Yeah, we never got to those.
I couldn't believe how soft and flaky their morning bun was inside... I mean, just look at that!
Lastly, we dug into their chocolate pudding, which I swear tasted so much better because it was served in a cup instead of a bowl.
It was hard to refrain from inhaling the chocolate pudding in order to take this picture, but I managed:
Sadly, that is the end of my delicious Tartine adventure. Until next time?
A couple of weeks ago, I made these delicious cookies from Baking Illustrated (pg. 463):
First, I started by making the dough: 2 c. chopped pecans, 2 c. flour, 3/4 tsp. salt, 2 sticks unsalted butter (softened but still cool), 1/3 c. sugar and 1 1/2 tsp. vanilla. You've probably got everything except for the nuts in your kitchen, so pick up a bag of pecans or walnuts the next time you're at the grocery store because these are SO worth making!
The dough turned out to be THE most crumbly cookie dough I have ever made:
Naturally, I was super skeptical, but when I started rolling the cookies between my palms they came together nicely. I chose to form crescents, but they can be made into snowball shapes as well.
Into the oven they went. The directions said 17-19 minutes at 325 deg. F, but I had to bake them an extra 15 minutes before the bottoms just began to brown. They kind of plumped out while baking, but that was okay... it just meant more 'cookie' per cookie!
The recipe was for 48 cookies, but I only ended up with 30 crescents. Maybe 48 is for if you make snowballs.
Now, the best part. After they cooled to room temperature, I dusted them with confectioner's sugar and took a bite.
Notes:
- YUM. Hecka delicious, in fact. I will definitely make these again.
- Perfect proportions for ingredients. The right amount of nuttiness, butteryness, and sweetness.
- Coarse texture. This was my fault, though. The recipe called for superfine sugar, which I didn't have, and I didn't feel like food processing regular sugar for 30 seconds. As a result, the crumb of the cookie was somewhat coarse, and less melt-in-your mouth. Next time, I'll try superfine sugar or a mixture of granulated and confectioner's for even more delicious cookies!
- Extra baking time. 15 minutes more at 325 deg. F.
- 30, not 48 cookies.
- 1/4 c. of confectioner's sugar was all I needed for double-coating the cookies. The book calls for a whopping 1 1/2 cups.
- Work quickly with the dough. If you wait too long, the butter starts to soften further and they start falling apart when you form them.
"To prevent leakage and for best results, we strongly recommend using a tube pan made of one piece of metal (rather than a two-piece angel food cake pan, which has a removable bottom)."
Well, I didn't have a one-piece tube pan. So I lined my two-piece angel food cake pan with parchment paper instead:
Next, I prepared the streusels for the top and inside of the cake:
Then I prepared part of the batter, which contained copious amounts of butter and sour cream:
And the other part of the batter, which contained 4 eggs and more sour cream:
...then mixed them together:
Now, the fun part... layering!
After I was done, I put it in the oven. The tricky transition from cake-out-of-the-oven to pretty presentation is (gasp) double inversion. Here we are with inversion #1:
So far, so good. Time to invert it again... beautiful!
Time to dig in!
The Recipe:
Lemon-Blueberry Sour Cream Coffeecake (Serves 16)
Source: Baking Illustrated, pg. 340
Ingredients:
Streusel:
-
3/4 cup (3 3/4 ounces) unbleached all-purpose flour
-
3/4 cup (5 1/4 ounces) granulated sugar
-
1/2 cup packed (3 1/2 ounces) dark brown sugar
- 2 tablespoons ground cinnamon
- 2 tablespoons cold unsalted butter
- 1 cup pecans, chopped
Cake:
- 12 tablespoons unsalted butter (1 1/2 sticks), softened but still cool, cut into 1-inch cubes
- 4 large eggs
- 1 1/2 cups sour cream
- 1 tablespoon vanilla extract
-
2 1/4 cups (11 1/2 ounces) unbleached all-purpose flour
-
1 1/4 cups (8 3/4 ounces) granulated sugar
- 1 tablespoon baking powder
- 3/4 teaspoon baking soda
- 3/4 teaspoon salt
- 1 teaspoon lemon zest
- 1 cup frozen blueberries
Directions
-
For the streusel: Place the flour, granulated sugar, 1/4 cup dark brown sugar, and the cinnamon in a food processor and process to combine. Transfer 1 1/4 cups of flour/sugar mixture to small bowl and stir in remaining 1/4 cup brown sugar; set aside (this will be the streusel for the inside of the cake). Add the butter and pecans to the remaining dry ingredients in the food processor bowl. Process the mixture until the nuts and butter have been broken down into small pebbly pieces. Set aside. (The streusel with the butter and nuts will be for the top o the cake).
-
For the cake: Adjust oven rack to lowest position and heat oven to 350 degrees. Grease a tube pan (10-inch diameter, 10-cup capacity). Combine eggs, 1 cup of the sour cream, and vanilla in a medium bowl.
-
In the bowl of a standing mixer, combine the flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda, and salt at low speed, about 30 seconds. Add the butter and remaining 1/2 cup of sour cream and mix at low speed until the dry ingredients are moistened. Increase to medium speed and beat 30 seconds. Scrape down the sides of the bowl with a rubber spatula. Decrease the mixer speed to medium-low and slowly incorporate the egg mixture in 3 additions, beating for 20 seconds after each and scraping the sides of bowl as necessary. Increase speed to medium-high and beat for 1 minute (the batter should increase in volume and become aerated and pale in color).
-
Toss 1 cup frozen blueberries with 1 teaspoon grated lemon zest in small bowl. Add 2 cups of the batter to the prepared pan. With an offset metal spatula or rubber spatula, smooth the surface of the batter. Sprinkle with 1/2 cup of blueberries and 3/4 cup streusel filling (without butter or nuts). Drop 2 cups of the batter over the streusel and blueberries, spread evenly, and then add the remaining blueberries and streusel filling. top with remaining batter and then the streusel topping (with the butter and nuts).
-
Bake until the cake feels firm to the touch and a toothpick or thin skewer inserted into center comes out clean (although there may be bits of sugar from the streusel clinging to the tester), 50 to 60 minutes. Cool cake in pan on for 30 minutes. Place a rimmed baking sheet over the top of the cake and invert the cake onto the pan (the cake should now be upside down, with the streusel on the bottom). Remove the tube pan, place a wire rack on the cake, and reinvert so the streusel is facing up. Cool for 2 hours and serve or cool completely and wrap the cake in aluminum foil.
Notes:
- I used a two-piece angel food cake pan but lined the bottom with parchment paper to prevent leakage. Cake turned out fine.
- I made the inside streusel without a food processor by simply whisking the ingredients together. Similarly, I made the butter and nut streusel by finely chopping pecans and butter before whisking them in with the flour, sugar and cinnamon.
- I had to bake my cake for an hour and a half--not 50-60 minutes--before it was done.
- There's a chance I didn't grease the pan enough, because the bottom two layers of batter, blueberries and streusel look rather squished in the final slice pictured above...
- There weren't enough blueberries in this cake for my liking. For a similar and equally--if not more--delicious recipe, try Dorie Greenspan's Blueberry Crumb Cake.
- The cake tastes WAY better on the second day, in accordance with BI's assessment: "We were pleased to find that if stored well, this cake actually improves with age."
It's been a while. Here's a quick update: I am back from Vietnam, safe and sound. I do not have Japanese Encephalitis, my biggest Vietnam trip fear. It's a scary thing to get, people--the mosquito-borne disease does not have a cure, and the majority people who contract it either die (30%) or suffer brain damage (another 30%). OK, maybe it's a one in a million thing, but still.
Another update: I just started using my Twitter account that I got a year and a half ago.
For all updates less than 140 characters, I will be using Twitter. Anything more lengthy is still fair game for the blog.
As always, thanks for reading!
One of the benefits to being unemployed (although technically I have a part-time job doing graphic and web design) is that I am free to travel anywhere at at any time, for any duration. I had an amazing time in Colorado (8 days) in June, and on Monday I am leaving to go to Vietnam for a month. I was told not to drink non-bottled water or eat any of the ice over there, and not to buy food from vendors or cart pushers who come knocking on your door at night, all for good health and sanitary reasons. And to beware of thieves who will cut your purse from the bottom or side if you're not paying attention so that they can steal your cash or other belongings. And to slip a $5 or $10 in my passport to airport security so that I don't get charged taxes for bringing electronics into the country. And that it will be very hot and humid.
All of that aside, it should be a fun trip, and I'm pretty excited about it. The last time I went was when I was 7, and I don't remember much except for that I got food poisoning, tasted some exotic fruits, got bitten a lot by mosquitoes, didn't have access to a flushing toilet most of the time, and that everything was super cheap. All of these will probably hold true for my trip 17 years later, but I'm hoping that I will have some other, more memorable experiences as well. If Internet access is available and cheap or free, I'll try to post photos and/or stories. If not, I'll have to update my blog when I get back!
LIFE-CHANGING:
Thank you to Brent for linking me to such an amazing video. I hope you thought it was amazing, too.
The actual variation on sugar cookies from Baking Illustrated calls for lime zest, but I didn't have that. Excuse my non-flattering photo of the results:
1. Do not oversmoosh the cookies! I was zealous (smooshing cookies with the bottom of a glass is fun) but really, when they say flatten them to three-fourths of an inch thick, they mean it. My cookies were not as soft and chewy in the middle as I would have liked, and they pooled together as a result. I am definitely a cookie n00b.
2. Too much sugar. I loved the crinkly texture of the cookies on the outside that came from rolling them in sugar before smooshing and baking them, but the overall result was way too sweet for me. Next time, no sugar rolling for me.
Other than that, they were great. I loved the lemon zing, and the proportions of sugar, butter and vanilla were just right.
Every morning as of late, I have a hot, hearty bowl of deluxe oatmeal that takes 3 minutes to prepare. Here's how to start your day with an awesome breakfast that's healthy and delicious.
* Trader Joes and Quaker Oats make similar products:
...with the only noticeable difference in taste coming from the Trader Joe's brand having one less gram of sugar per packet than the Quaker Oats brand:
I can't believe I just posted about what I eat for breakfast. Um, I'll just categorize this under 'recipe' instead of 'mindless blather'...
Although I have been running three to four times a week for the last two months, I had never run in a timed race prior to last weekend. For my first race, I signed up for a 5K just to see how things would go, but the results were posted tonight and I was so excited to see that I ended up placing 7th for women in my age group and 21st out of 259 women... wooooo!! My average pace was 9.35 minutes per mile, or about 6.4 mph.
I thought running with a huge group of people was a lot of fun, definitely a lot more exciting than running solo in a park full of territorial geese and navigating around goose poop, which is how I normally roll.
In the photo below, on the left you'll see the obligatory Runner Crosses Finish Line photo, and on the right you'll see the many hands attacking me shortly after I finished as evidence of how efficiently the race was coordinated:
