The Long Cut ...we'll get there eventually

The Current Chip Leader

Still too busy to blog regularly, but I didn't want the start of the Christmas cookie baking season to go by unacknowledged - especially not when my first batch looked this good, if I do say so myself (and they look even better in person - the photo makes them look darker and shinier than they really are).

Actually, I don't even have to say so myself - both the Missus and the Ten-Year-Old agree that these are the absolute best tollhouse cookies (a request by the Five-Year-Old) I've ever made. The Five-Year-Old really hasn't been around long enough to have a good enough sample size to have such a strong opinion but he, too, seemed to like this year's model just fine.

I usually hate making plain-old chocolate chip cookies because they never come out right - usually too crisp, always too flat. This time around I stuck my electronic thermometer into the butter before I started, to make sure it was around 68 degrees before mixing (a recent tip from America's Test Kitchen). I think that that, along with some attempted solutions from past years that I've accumulated - like a digital scale for more-accurate measuring and an oven thermometer for more-precise baking - did the trick. A lot of work, but mmm-mmm.

I also made the batter for my raspberry linzers (a request by the aforementioned Ten-Year-Old), oatmeal raisin (a request by me), and some cookie-cutter-ready sugar cookies (requested by no one, but I figure I could have the Five-Year-Old help me cut these). I'll bake all those up tomorrow night, hopefully.

Every Christmas I like to attempt a cookie that I haven't made before, so if you have any suggestions let me know.

[The title of this post tells you what I have found time for lately - watching poker shows. Lots and lots of poker shows (just ask the Missus). But that's a story for another post.]

Simma Down

Not long after his ninth birthday party - and after being informed that his tenth birthday party would be his last big birthday bash (or at least the last one thrown by his parents) - the nine-year-old ten-year-old asked for a slumber party sleepover to celebrate.

A year ago, having six ten-year-old sleep over didn't sound like a bad idea. Six months ago it still didn't seem like too bad of an idea. Three months ago - when party planning kicked into high gear - it didn't seem like that awful an idea. Last weekend it finally started looking like what it was - a terrible, terrible idea.

We tried to limit the damage by not having the boys come over until 7pm Saturday and having them packed up and out of our house by noon Sunday. But for the seventeen hours in between there was never less than two boys talking their heads off. I took the 10pm-2am shift of yelling at them to shut the hell up settle down and get some sleep (this after letting them officially stay up until midnight) and the missus took the 2am-6am shift.

Soon after the sun came up, I got up to make the boys some monkey bread for breakfast (another not-so-brilliant promise made to the ten-year-old - can I get you hyperactive boys anything else, say, pre-packaged biscuits drenched in brown sugar?). Needless to say, I was a little burned-out.

Just how burned-out? Well, while making breakfast I was listening a story on NPR's Weekend Edition about a big problem Russia's having with people poaching salmon. Igor, who won't give his last name, says everyone on Kamchatka poaches fish.

My reaction? Who cares how the Russians prepare their fish? I don't care if they poach it, fry it, bake it, or eat it raw. Why is this a story?

So, yeah, of course they were talking about the fish being caught illegally, not being cooked in a simmering liquid. Whoops.

You can imagine just how well I did with Will Shortz.

[If, even after reading this, you should decide to make monkey bread for a birthday party, you should know that candles will not stay up in molten hot bread. See photo, above.]

Fare Pressure

Much like New Yankee Workshop with Norm and his million dollars worth of tools, cooking shows can be fun to watch but impractical to emulate due to the specialty hardware all those TV chefs use. Even Alton with his multi-tasker rule uses some pretty expensive equipment from time to time - finding multiple uses for them is great, but it doesn't make them any more accessible to the average cook. And I'm not even talking about $300 stand mixers and ovens that actually heat up correctly. I'm talking about the smaller things - all those saute pans and double boilers and wand mixers and food processors.

So when my mother-in-law offered me her never-been-used set of pressure cookers, I quickly took her up on it (I think my enthusiasm might have even scared her a bit, but she should be used to my peculiarities by now). As soon as she mentioned them I knew what I was going to make first - Alton's Pressure Cooker Chili. It took some time to get all the ingredients together, but I finally got around to making it for dinner yesterday.

So many new experiences! Braising, deglazing, fond. Fond!

Braising three pounds of stew meat (see recipe below) was a bit frantic (not to mention exhausting), but other than that all the prep work had gone as planned. Then on went the lid and the mysterious world of pressure cooking began.

Twenty-five minutes later, feeling a little like Geraldo Rivera, I opened the lid (after safely releasing all that steam, of course) to see the results and ended up with what could only be called "chili stew." I thought that the chunks of stew meat were a bit big when they were going in, but I assumed that they would break down under all that pressure. Nope. Maybe I didn't keep the temperature under the cooker at high enough of a simmer or maybe I didn't let it cook long enough, but I wasn't happy with the results.

So I took all the meat out and cut the cubes into quarters and popped everything back into the pressure cooker for ten more minutes of mystical cooking. When I opened up the second time, the chili looked more like chili, but some of it was stuck to the bottom of the pan. I quickly rescued what I could, which luckily was most of it.

After all that trouble I forgot to take a pre-dinner picture of the results, but chili isn't very photogenic anyway. The important thing was how it tasted, and it tasted pretty darn good - even to the missus and nine-year-old, both of whom aren't as huge of fans of chili as I am. It was a bit too spicy for the four-year-old, so he'll have to wait a while before he gets anything more than a taste - which seemed fine by him.

And the best thing about cooking up such a large quantity? Leftovers!

Pressure Cooker Chili
courtesy Alton Brown, 2004

3 pounds stew meat (beef, pork, and/or lamb)
2 teaspoons peanut oil
1 1/2 teaspoons kosher salt
1 (12-ounce) bottle of beer, preferably a medium ale
1 (16-ounce) container salsa
30 tortilla chips
2 chipotle peppers canned in adobo sauce, chopped
1 tablespoon adobo sauce (from the chipotle peppers in adobo)
1 tablespoon tomato paste
1 tablespoon chili powder
1 teaspoon ground cumin

Place the meat in a large mixing bowl and toss with the peanut oil and salt. Set aside.

Heat a 6-quart heavy-bottomed pressure cooker over high heat until hot. Add the meat in 3 or 4 batches and brown on all sides, approximately 2 minutes per batch. Once each batch is browned, place the meat in a clean large bowl.

Once all of the meat is browned, add the beer to the cooker to deglaze the pot. Scrape the browned bits from the bottom of the pot. Add the meat back to the pressure cooker along with the salsa, tortilla chips, chipotle peppers, adobo sauce, tomato paste, chili powder, and ground cumin and stir to combine. Lock the lid in place according to the manufacturer's instructions. When the steam begins to hiss out of the cooker, reduce the heat to low, just enough to maintain a very weak whistle. Cook for 25 minutes. Remove from the heat and carefully release the steam. Serve immediately.

French Benefits

Since Valentine's Day was spent chipping three inches of ice off our sidewalks, the missus had to wait until Saturday to get her V'day breakfast-in-bed.

The nine-year-old and I, with some supervision from the four-year-old, made her Alton's French Toast:

1 cup half-and-half
3 large eggs
2 tablespoons honey, warmed in microwave for 20 seconds
1/4 teaspoon salt
8 (1/2-inch) slices day-old or stale country loaf, brioche or challah bread
4 tablespoons butter

In medium size mixing bowl, whisk together the half-and-half, eggs, honey, and salt. You may do this the night before. When ready to cook, pour custard mixture into a pie pan and set aside.

Preheat oven to 375 degrees F. Dip bread into mixture, allow to soak for 30 seconds on each side, and then remove to a cooling rack that is sitting in a sheet pan, and allow to sit for 1 to 2 minutes.

Over medium-low heat, melt 1 tablespoon of butter in a 10-inch nonstick saute pan. Place 2 slices of bread at a time into the pan and cook until golden brown, approximately 2 to 3 minutes per side. Remove from pan and place on rack in oven for 5 minutes. Repeat with all 8 slices. Serve immediately with maple syrup, whipped cream or fruit powered sugar and raspberry syrup (raspberry jam and a little water warmed up in the microwave).

It took a lot of work (and time), but it was definitely worth it. Mmmm, mmm, mmm.

[The raspberry syrup heart was my idea. Awwwww...]

The Island Of Misfit Cookies

I finally got around to starting my Christmas baking today. A batch each of Oatmeal-Raisin, Choc-Oat-Chip, Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip and Rolled Sugar.

Ate breakfast, went to church, ate lunch, mixed up and refrigerated all the batters, raked the back yard, ate dinner, baked all the cookies.

They all tasted pretty good, but only the Oatmeal-Raisins looked presentable. The chocolaty one's were flat and the Rolled Sugar (which the nine-year-old and I cookie cut) expanded more than expected (I was using a new recipe from the back of the flour bag) and ran into each other.

The batter looked real good, though.

Mild Turkey

Happy Thanksgiving!

Any Resemblance To Poultry Living Or Dead Is Purely Coincidental

Here's what you get when you let a nine-year-old decide what you're bringing to Granny and Pop Pop's for Thanksgiving dessert:

Now do this:

1. cover up the right side of that image with your hand and tell me if the first thing you think off when you see those things is "turkeys."
2. tell me where I'm supposed to find candy corn three weeks after Halloween (and I've already looked behind the server and all that's back there are a couple dusty m & m's).

And be sure to stay tuned for the results!

Next Week: Sugar Boogers

Two words: "Pumpkin" and "Muffin." Taken separately, they're just two saccharine terms of endearment; put them together, and you've got a great way to get rid of a half-can of pumpkin (left over from, say, some homemade ice cream).

Pumpkin Muffins (from the excellent Wild About Muffins)

Preheat oven to 400 degrees and prepare muffin tins.

In large bowl add and combine:

• 1 egg
• 2/3 cup brown sugar
• 1/3 cup butter, melted
• 3/4 cup milk
• 3/4 cup canned pumpkin
• 1/2 cup raisins

In smaller bowl combine well:

• 2 cups all-purpose flour
• 2 tsp. baking powder
• 1/2 tsp. baking soda
• 1/2 tsp. salt
• 1/2 tsp. ground cinnamon
• 1/2 tsp. ground nutmeg
• 1/4 tsp. ground ginger

Combine wet and dry mixtures and fold together gently until just mixed. Spoon into prepared muffin tins. Bake at 400 degrees for 20 to 25 minutes. Remove from muffin tins and cool on rack. Makes 12 medium-sized muffins.

Frost On The Pumpkin

What do you do when you're excited about autumn but not quite ready to give up summer?

Three words: Pumpkin. Ice. Cream. (Okay, technically it's called Spicy Pumpkin Ice Cream, so that's four words. Whatever).

Spicy Pumpkin Ice Cream (from From Your Ice Cream Maker)

• 1/2 cup canned pumpkin (Oops! I misread that and used half a 15 oz can. Still came out all right.)
• 1/2 cup (4 oz) Egg Beaters
• 1/2 cup sugar
• 1/4 brown sugar
• 1/2 cup nonfat dry milk
• 2 cups half-and-half
• 1/4 tsp. cinnamon
• 1/4 tsp. ground ginger
• 1/8 tsp. grated nutmeg
• 1 dash salt

Combine all ingredients in a blender container or food processor workbowl. Process until smooth. Chill in the refrigerator until ready to freeze. Pour mixture through a strainer into the ice cream maker and follow the manufacturer’s instructions for freezing (two hours for my ice cream maker).

Serve with sugar cookies or use to fill a ginger cookie crust. (I combined these two suggestions and simply mixed in a bunch of broken ginger snaps into the ice cream before putting in the freezer).

This stuff should hold me over until eggnog ice cream season begins.

[Update to add: the ice cream didn't look as radioactive as it does in that photo up there.]

Lazy Sunday

Okay, if you're looking for that "Photo of the Week" thing - just give me a little more time. Kinda busy today. Busy doing what, you ask?

Well...

... I made my first ever banana bread...

... I acted even less mature than a four-year-old (mighty dump.. huh-huh)...

...I made some of Karen's Peanut Butter Chocolate Chunk cookies (and some of my Oatmeal Raisin, of course)...

...I contemplated putting our cd's away....

... I made (and packed up) some M&M cookies for the new 4-year-old to take to school with him tomorrow...

... I took time to kinda enjoy the be-a-u-ti-ful weather (actually, I did get in a pretty sweet seven-miler this afternoon)...

...and I researched some fuel alternatives with the boy.

Not a bad day. Sure beats falling on your face.

Hyperglycemia

Please,

Food Network,

enough...

with...

the...

pastry...

competitions.

Batter Up!

Last night the missus was looking for something simple for dinner. I've been wanting to make something from my brand new copy of The New Best Recipe. And we all love us some pancakes.

So "Light and Fluffy Pancakes" it was. I've had a copy of Alton Brown's pancake recipe on the fridge for years, but it calls for buttermilk. Buttermilk. As much as I usually love Alton's know-it-all food snootiness, buttermilk's just not very practical. The Best Recipe people realize that pancakes are often made on the spur of the moment, and replaces the buttermilk with regular milk with some lemon juice in it for that tangy kick. Sorry, Alton.

The results were probably the best pancakes I have ever made - very close to what you (or at least I) expect from a diner. And I added some thawed blueberries to them while pre-flip, which only increased my self-satisfaction.

I've experimented with other from-scratch flapjack recipes before, but lately the closest I had come to scratch has been using box mixes that weren't the "just add water" type. I'm so happy that I can finally skip all of those bland mixes for the real thing, and without much time or effort.

Below is pretty much what appears in the Best Recipe cookbook. I copied it from Recipezaar since America's Test Kitchen has it hidden behind its pay wall and I'm way too lazy busy to type out the whole recipe myself.

Enjoy!

• 2 cups milk
• 1 tablespoon lemon juice
• 1 large egg
• 3 tablespoons melted butter
• 2 cups flour
• 2 tablespoons sugar
• 2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon salt

4-6 servings of 2 pancakes each / 20 minutes to make

1. Whisk milk and lemon juice in a medium bowl and set aside to let thicken.
2. In a separate bowl, whisk dry ingredients together - flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda, salt.
3. Whisk the egg and melted butter into the milk mixture.
4. Create a little "well" in the center of dry ingredient bowl and pour the milky mixture in the center.
5. Whisk gently until just combined, there should still be lumps.
6. Heat a pan or griddle to medium heat and coat with butter or vegetable oil.
7. Pour pancake mixture by 1/4 cups and heat until large bubbles come to the top (about 1-2 minutes).
8. Flip the pancake and wait another 1-2 minutes.

D'oh, I forgot to take a picture! Can I assume that you all know what pancakes look like?

[Photo credit: Barb Henry (flickr)]

Mashing To The Oldies

My entire evening consisted of making three batches of my famous baked potato soup for my neighborhood's progressive dinner tomorrow. My soundtrack for soup-making was WXPN's excellent Land of the Lost, which shows up the last Friday of each month. It's four hours of eighties music hosted by the highly unappreciated deejay Robert Drake. Drake doesn't play the usual eighties mix. Instead, he digs up vaguely familiar songs from some forgotten bands and some forgotten songs from some vaguely familiar bands (got that?).

It's a great show, but these songs are all twenty, twenty-five years old. Whether I want to admit it or not, they're now oldies. When I was growing up, you know what I thought of people who still listened to music from the fifties? They were L-A-M-E. But what I did tonight was the modern day equivalent, wasn't it?

Someone please help me rationalize this boomer-like behavior. I don't want to stop listening to this show, but I'd rather not be considered lame (or at least any lamer than I already am - I did, after all, spend my Friday night making soup).

And now, from one of the songs played on Land of the Lost tonight, the spoken-word interlude of ABC's "Poison Arrow":

He: I thought you loved me but it seems you don’t care.

She: I care enough to know I can never love you.

Now really, who can blame me for wanting to continue listening to this stuff?

[And yes, the masher in the picture is the very same model that I use.]

I Baked My Ass Off Today

...and then I went to a live nativity.

Well, I said that if the weather gods gave me a day off I would spend it making more acceptable cookies for the missus' cookie exchange, and that exactly what I did. A sloppy, slushy, nasty morning gave me the opportunity to make a whole bunch of litzer cookies to replace the Italian wedding cookies that just didn't look good. I needed to make six and a half dozen for the exchange, but I ended up with about twelve dozen, so these will also be the cookies I take to work for cookie day - and the cookies my family will be eating quite a bit of this holiday season.

I'm very very happy with how these cookies turned out, and I'm proud of the fact that I tweaked a recipe that didn't work out last year and ended up with a better cookie. When it comes to recipes I'm usually too much of a wimp to veer from the instructions, but this time I did and it worked out (I made the cookies smaller and thinner than the recipe called for, which meant a change in the cooking time and a larger yeild, which is why I ended up with so many extras).

Right now I am just so wiped out. I still have to make a batch of ricotta cookies this weekend (I promised the eight-year-old) and then THAT"S IT. No more baking! ...unless someone's got a really really good recipe for me to try.

Exchange Fate

A week after I asked for recipe ideas for the missus' cookie exchange, someone finally asked what I chose to make. Well, I told the exchange organizer that I would make Mexican Wedding Cookies (using a recipe from Karen). But as you can see from the photo above, when I made them last night I had trouble getting the powdered sugar to stay on them. This photo is from the fist batch and later batches went better, but I'm still not real crazy about how they look. I'm also afraid that any sugar that has decided to stick will come off in transit on the way to the exchange.

So the plan is this: If we get as much snow as they are predicting for Philly on Friday (up to 8 inches) and I end up having off from work, I will make more cookies. If not, I'll stick with what I have.

Right now I'm thinking if I do end up making different cookies for the exchange, it will be Austrian Litzers. I attempted these last year and they came out too big, but they tasted alright. I've picked up the right size cutters and want to try them out. I also picked up some ricotta cheese for some ricotta cookies, a request from the eight-year-old.

Yesterday I took the day off to help the missus get the three-year-old his Santa picture taken (which went extremely well), then I spent the rest of the day baking. In addition to the Mexican Wedding Cookies, I made another recipe of Karen's, Peanut Butter Chocolate-Chunk, which went over well with the family - probably because they're the size of hockey pucks! (Luckily they don't taste like hockey pucks). I also made some old favorites - choc-oat chip, oatmeal raisin, and sugar cookies. Those three I could make in my sleep (in fact, by the end of the night I think I was making them in my sleep). If you doubt just how hard I baked yesterday, take a look at what my cookie scoop looked like at the end of the night:

I killed it!

Thanks to everyone for their cookie suggestions, I kept all the recipes and plan on attempting each of them sooner or later (probably sooner than later).

Cookie Quest

In my post on Saturday I put out a plea for recipe ideas for my neighborhood's upcoming cookie exchange. So far I got a couple suggestions from Luna, a request for more information from Karen, and the usual wise-ass comment from my sister Donna.

To answer Karen's questions (Chocolate? Nuts? Any favorite flavors, or particular dislikes?): I'm pretty cool with anything but shellfish. Oh, and I'm not too crazy about rich stuff. The missus would prefer chocolate and the eight-year-old complains about nuts, but they're fuddy-duddies, so don't mind them.

The cookies I'll be baking must be pretty simple to make, must travel well (ideally they would not stick together if stacked into a container), and both their looks and taste must impress the other neighborhood bakers (women all) to the point that they continue to quietly question my sexual orientation.*

I've got a pretty good mixer, an so-so oven, but no food processor (yet --- hint-hint - Christmas-is-coming --- hint-hint).

In past years I've made oatmeal-raisin cookies (my specialty), ricotta cookies, raspberry bars (last year), and something else (I think candy cane cookies?). I've also made hazelnut pinwheels, sugar, thumbprint, linzer, choc-oat-chip, and butter cookies (among others) for the family in past years. For the exchange I like making something I've never attempted before.

Luna suggested Italian wedding cookies and chocolate crickles. The Italian wedding cookies are a definite possibility - can anyone point me to a good recipe? If the chocolate crinkles are the same thing as chocolate crackles, I made them last year and wasn't that crazy about them.

So, any more suggestions? Anyone? I need to let the organizer know what kind of cookies I'm making by December 1, so hurry!

* It's understood by the women on the block that a certain husband enjoys baking - not that there's anything wrong with that. Their tolerance, however, ends there - the exchange is ladies only.

Pie Gie

Sunday I finally got the nerve to make that apple pie I'd been threatening to make ever since we went apple picking last Wednesday. The first pie I've ever made.

Here's what I learned: Even with a recipe that has you cook the apples before putting them into shell, pie baking is still all about the crust.

I used a Cook's Illustrated recipe for both the pie and the crust (neither of which are available online, and neither of which do I feel like typing out right now). The crust recipe called for using butter instead of shortening and told you to cut the butter into the flour mixture using a food processor. I don't have a food processor, but a neighbor told me a electric blender should work just as well. Uh-uh. The butter just sat onto of the flour, which was the only thing spinning around. This, sad to say, pissed me off so bad that I dropped the f-bomb in front of the two young-uns.

I called another neighbor, who didn't have a food processor either but did have a hand-held dough blender, which - in the olden days - is what they used to use to blend butter into flour for dough. It was a workout for my arms, but it did the job.

Next was rolling out the dough, and I'm no good at rolling out dough evenly. So it came out uneven, which caused part of the crust to burn cook faster than others (oddly, it was the thicker parts of crust that burned cooked faster). After a little scraping everything turned out pretty nice looking.

The only other problem was that the apples we had were all Gala (that's all that were picking), which aren't real flavorful. But, c'mon, homemade apple pie is still homemade apple pie, so it might not have tasted as good as it could have but it was still pretty good (if I do say so myself).

If I ever sell these things that's the slogan I'm using: "They're not as good as they could be, but they're still pretty good!"

Another thing I learned: Homemade pie is a treat. No way am I making these things as much as I make cookies. The eight-year-old can just stop taking about that homemade Thanksgiving pie right now.

Plus I want a food processor, but I knew that already.

Just Peachy

It's still too early for Jersey peaches, but I did have some very ripe out-of-state peaches that were in danger of going bad, so I did what any health-conscious fruit-eater would do - I got out the ice cream maker. I haven't made ice cream in months, but I did have enough foresight to save a peach ice cream recipe from the May 26 edition of the Philadelphia Inquirer.

This was the first time I attempted a fruit-based ice cream (and my first non-chocolate recipe, too). I didn't realize the prep-work that would be required for this. Having to boil, peel, cool, and puree the fruit took some time. I also seem to be stuck with making more of this since I only used 1/4 cup of a pretty big (and pretty pricey) bottle of peach nectar - unless someone out there has a good cocktail recipe that calls for the stuff.

The end product came out pretty tasty, but it was a little icy and it's consistency was a little too fluffy. I think the fluffiness came from letting it spin too long, but I don't know what causes the iciness. I'm still a novice, but I don't mind eating my mistakes.

Note: The bowl in these pictures was the missus' Christmas gift from the boys last year. We bought it in downtown Ocean City (NJ) last July while the missus' was taking a vacation nap and hid it from her until Christmas (almost forgetting all about it). The second time it was used, it got chipped... twice (click to enlarge the photos and you might be able to see one of the chips). And I can't believe how lush my lawn looks in that first shot. Believe me, it looks nothing like that in person!

Philadelphia-Style Peach Ice Cream
(Adapted from The Ultimate Ice Cream Book by Bruce Weinstein)
Makes 6 small servings, about 1/2-cup each

3 ripe peaches (about 1 pound)
1/3 cup plus 1 tablespoon sugar, divided
1/2 teaspoon almond extract
11/2 cups heavy cream
1/4 cup bottled peach nectar or more as needed
1/4 teaspoon vanilla extract

1. In a medium pot, bring water to a boil. Add the peaches and boil for 1 to 2 minutes to loosen the peel. Remove peaches with a slotted spoon and, when cool enough to handle, slip off the peel. Cut the peaches in half, remove and discard the pits, and chop the fruit. Sprinkle the tablespoon of sugar and the almond extract over the peaches. Set aside.
2. Prepare a cold water bath by filling a large bowl halfway with ice and cold water. Set aside.
3. Heat the cream in a heavy medium saucepan over medium heat until small bubbles form around the edge. Do not let the cream boil. Remove from the heat and add the remaining 1/3 cup sugar, stirring until the sugar dissolves completely. Pour the cream into a bowl, set the bowl in the cold water bath, and let cool to room temperature.
4. If you like smooth ice cream, puree the peaches with the nectar, adding a bit more nectar if needed. If you like some chunks in ice cream, puree half the peaches with the nectar. Stir the peach puree (and chunks, if using) and the vanilla into the cooled cream. Chill until cold or overnight.
5. Process the cold cream in an ice cream machine, as directed by manufacturer. When done, the ice cream will be soft but ready to eat. For firmer ice cream, transfer to a freezer container and freeze for 2 or more hours.

Official Partee Animul

That's what it says on the t-shirt my two three-year old got at Chick-fil-A today (it's got one of those "Eat Mor Chikin" cows on it). I have to say I was very impressed with the Chick-fil-A (or as he says "Chickie Fay") birthday party. The place was very clean and the workers were super nice. We had a few McDonald's parties for the seven-year old when he was younger, but ever since Super Size Me we try to avoid Mickey D's. I know that Chick-fil-A is still fast food, but it offers a lot more healthy stuff than McDonalds. The missus and I also know that fast food birthday parties aren't the greatest party you can give your kid, but trying to host parties at home just gets us too worked up and trying to have an "event" party, like at the local childrens' museum, is just too expensive. Once he gets older we'll get the three-year old's parties out of the fast food joints and into the bowling alleys and skating rinks and pool halls.

Dessert for the party was provide by yours truly. I spent Thursday night making six dozen cupcakes (three dozen for the party at his nursery school, three dozen for the real party). Actually, I made nine dozen cupcakes, but the first batch was bad because for some reason they insist that you remember to put eggs in the batter. Making the batter for cupcakes is easier than it is for making cookies. That's because I use box cake mix (Alton Brown said I could - he said cake mix companies have access to certain helpful ingredients that home bakers do not and he is never wrong). And since a batch of cupcakes takes twenty minutes to cook, you don't have to run around the kitchen as much as when you're making cookies. Still, I prefer the cookie baking. That's either from my satisfaction in making the cookies from scratch or my liking raw cookie batter a lot more than raw cake batter.

After the party was another Little League game. We finally got to play against the seven-year old's best friend/arch-nemesis (who's team was undefeated going into the game). We squeezed in four innings before the thunder started rumbling, and came out ahead, 7-4. The seven-year old walked twice and didn't get hit by any pitches. He also finally got to field a ball and did a great job of getting the ball back into the infield. I'd call that a good game.

Busy day today, but somehow our calendar is miraculous and thankfully blank for tomorrow.

Souped Up

Sunday night I made homemade soup for the very first time. The missus had hung onto a recipe from a recent Life Magazine (which now comes with my Friday Philadelphia Inquirer as a Parade-like insert). She was hoping I could replicate the Baked Potato soup she used to get at Houlihans. I think I did pretty well. The two-year-old wouldn't touch it, but he's been extra finicky lately. The seven-year-old liked it, and he's not normally a soup eater. The missus desire to go back to Houligans (which I try to avoid) seems to be satisfied - for now.

Everyone was happy with my dessert - homemade Chocolate Chip Marshmallow ice cream.

The soup recipe comes from Pat Solley, described by Life as the chief of online/print media operations for FBI public affairs and author of An Exaltation of Soups. She also runs the website Soupsong.

BAKED POTATO SOUP (serves 4-6)

For the soup:
4 large russet potatoes (the floury, mealy kind for baking)*
½ cup butter
6 cups milk
Concentrated chicken stock or bouillon cubes (enough that would make 2 cups of stock)
1 small onion, grated
Salt and white pepper, to taste
½ cup to 1 cup freshly grated Cheddar cheese

For the garnish:
6 slices bacon, crisp
¼ cup fresh chives, sliced into 2-inch lengths
½ cup sour cream

1. Bake well-scrubbed potatoes in a 400-degree oven until fork tender, about an hour. No foil wrap and no microwaving - the potato skins should stay dry.

2. In a large saucepan, heat the milk and butter; stir in stock or bouillon (undiluted) until it dissolves.

3. Stir in the grated onion, salt, and white pepper; simmer the mixture over low heat.

4. When potatoes are finished baking, cut them in half lengthwise, scoop out the potato meat, reserving skins, and stir the potato meat into the hot milk mixture, mashing it as you go; the soup should look thick and creamy. Simmer over low heat for another 10 to 15 minutes.

5. Put potato skins back into oven to crisp (for 5 more minutes). Stir grated Cheddar cheese into milk-and-potato mixture**. While cheese is melting, chop up the crispy potato skins***. Toss chopped skins into soup, and ladle portions into individual bowls.

6. Swirl a dollop of sour cream into each serving****, then sprinkle chives and crumble bacon on top – just as you would a real baked potato. Serve immediately.

My notes:

* I couldn’t judge what a “large” russet potato was (nothing in my bag looked large), so I added what I thought was 8 mediums. These smaller spuds didn't take the full hour to cook - closer to 45 minutes. I think the soup ended up a little too thick so I’m going to cut back to 6 mediums next time.

**I held out some cheese for a garnish.

***Kitchen shears worked well.

****We didn’t have sour cream so I skipped this. Still tasted good and was healthier for me.

Sugar Mountain

I wanted to write a nice little post about my Christmas cookies yesterday and ended up so ticked off about Dubya that I forgot completely about it. So anyway, as you can see from the above picture, I made cookies. A lot of cookies. And that doesn’t include the Raspberry Squares I made two weeks ago or the Thumbprint Cookies I made with (read: for) my seven-year-old last week.

I started with two batches of my old standby, Vanishing Oatmeal Raisin Cookies, and got to use my Pampered Chef Medium Scoop for the first time. The scoop made things go a lot quicker. While it made cookies a little bigger than I usually make no one seemed to be complaining.

Next up was a batch of the missus' favorite, Choc-Oat-Chip Celebration Cookies. I’ve always had a problem with these things spreading out too much, and I still do. Putting the cookie trays into the freezer to cool before re-using them seemed to help a little but not completely.

Then I moved on to the cookie-cutter cookies. I always make sugar cookies but this year I tried a new recipe from Good Eats guru Alton Brown. Mine have always come out dry and uneven. Alton’s tip is to use confectioners (10X) sugar instead of flour when dusting the rolling pin and work surface. Flour removes moisture from the dough, while the sugar just makes the cookies sweeter. I took another tip from Alton and bought quarter-inch trim from Home Depot and made “rails” for the rolling pin to ride on. That way everything was exactly a quarter-inch. The result was my best sugar cookies ever, if I do say so myself.

The last cookie I attempted wasn’t as big of a success. Using a recipe I had from a Philadelphia Inquirer Food section from last December, I tried to make Austrian Linzer cookies. I don't know if there was something wrong with the recipe or what, but I had to adjust the size of the cookies (they were the size of hockey pucks) and the baking time. I still wasn't happy with the results. The missus took them into work with her and said they were a hit, but the missus also works with Learning Disabled kids, so there you go. The recipe went right into the recycle pile.

And I'm still not sure if this is going to be enough cookies to get us through the holidays. I would appreciate any suggestions (other than eat fewer cookies).