It's my chocolate attack

I'll keep this brief, but I wanted to share a semi-recent discovery about those hot chocolate packets my office supplies in our kitchen.

Should you find yourself in desperate need of something chocolaty, and with only an empty pocketbook or vending machine, here is a simple solution:

1. Empty 1 packet of Nestle or Swiss Miss hot chocolate into a disposable cup.

2. Pour in approximately 1/4 cup milk.

3. Mix like hell. (It won't want to mix at first, but it will eventually acquiesce.)

4. Microwave for about 35-40 seconds.

The result is an extremely molten brownie milkshake thing. It is so good. And if I've done my math right, only about 110 calories. Mmmmmm.

Rhyming Cutlets

Sing a song of kitchens full of girls so spry,
Four and twenty flour sacks baked rising high.
When their goods were tasted the girls began to sing,
'Our sweet treats should win grand prize -- the Dough Boy crown us king!'
The girls picked through their cupboards, oils and sauce so runny,
The boys helped chop and drink and fart and tell jokes fairly funny,
They seared and boiled, grilled and broiled, but still they have not chose,
The recipe to rule them all, wow every eye and mouth and nose!

Spice President

So, it's been a while. You're probably thinking, "Man, I wish Rachel or Claire would write about something they've recently baked to make me oh-so-jealous of their wicked Pillsbury skillz." Well, my friend, your wait is over. Because this 4-day weekend wasn't just about hanging off the back of a Hobie Cat by a boogie board. No no, it also served as an opportunity for me to finally go ahead and try to rip-off Tom Colicchio's mind-blowing cookies from 'wich craft.

These cookies are seriously the best cookies in the whole world. 'Wich Craft has a variety of cookie sandwiches filled with delicious ganache. When these show up in my office, I have no qualms about taking 4 back to my desk. The one I'm absolutely gaga about has peanut butter in the middle, and some kind of ginger snap cookie on the outside. I love those spicy cookies, so I just couldn't resist trying them out myself.

Ingredients for cookies:

1 tube Pillsbury chocolate chip cookies doctored up with --

approx. 1 tbsp cinnamon, 1 tsp ground cloves, 1 tsp nutmeg, 1 tsp ground ginger, 1 tbsp cocoa powder 1tbsp powdered sugar

Ingredients for ganache:

some peanut butter, heavy cream, and powdered sugar. No measuring, just mixed until I had a happy consistency and the taste was creamy and sweet.

I baked up the cookies, making sure to keep them all fairly small and the same size. Once completely cooled, I spooned about a teaspoon of the ganache onto one cookie, and topped it with a match.

They were awesome!!! Jenny did suggest that the filling could be a pumpkin ganache. I thought this was an excellent idea, and would make for easy marketing. Who wouldn't want to whip up a batch of Pillsbury Harvest Cookie Sandwiches? Yum!!

Savory New World

This blog is a savior! Just this weekend, whilst eating some delicious Vietnamese sandwiches on the roof of the church, and discussing the P-Bury bake-off, I was presented with the question "so, do they tend to favor sweet or savory recipes?" Well, as you can probably imagine, I was able to speak quite knowledgeably on the subject given my last blog entry. Of course the conversation took a turn when another friend chimed in, "What does savory mean?"

Hanging up Christmas lights on the roof

The genesis of our topic was when I pulled out what I'm calling "cheesy spicy surprise biscuit bombs." I'd recently had what I can only assume is a normal desire to bread something in crushed-up Cheez-Its. The victim of this urge ended up being some p-bury biscuits. And to spice things up (literally and figuratively) I used the Cheez-Its with Tabasco, and tucked a wee bit of queso de papa in the middle of each one.

The result was a little odd. Ok, a lot odd. (Why is that a running theme in my experiments?) Frankly, I thought they tasted like...bleh. Some of the Cheez-Its burned, and when the biscuits returned to room temp, the queso inside re-hardened into an unsavory block.

However, it was decided that in the future, Cheez-Its would make a suitable substitute for cornflakes as a chicken breader.

Upside-Down Uprising

What a stellar statistical circumnavigation of bake-off winners past, Rachel! You have such a way with numerals.

We inhabitants at the red castle have been preoccupied with a new neighbor, who is still adjusting to his home and scratching post/box. St. George (the mouse-slayer) is not inspiring us in a culinary fashion, as his palate favors meaty-but-odd variations on brown, in "wet" and dry variety. Now that the mice have returned, we can assume, to hiding in the walls and feasting on the fall-out shelter crackers, we can again face our pantries courageously.

Last Sunday, I shared an old favorite and considered ways to fashion him for the modern age: pineapple upside-down cake. Not that I don't love him just the way he is, but he's just so retro. So McCarthy-era conscious of trying to please and fit in. Nothing untoward here, just us canned, culturally bland chunks. Dear Mr. Upside, let's get down. You are soaked with sweet. You are weighty in that ponderous Brezhnev/Yeltsin way.

While I like the density of the cake (it contains much less egg and much less flour than the standard ratio), it is one-dimensional. It could be enriched with extra yolks, or officially soaked with fruit juice (and rum?) after baking. The one standard that must be perfected is the crispy caramel topping that goes into the pan first. I let the brown sugar and butter commingle, slowly and luxuriantly bubbling, for a few minutes, but cut down the over-all baking time as the cake appeared to be brown about 15 minutes early. A fatal error, as far as the caramel was concerned. Everything tasted great, but was of mushier-than-desired consistency.

To make Mr. Upside into a Pils winner, we will have to revolutionize. I call for perestroika: abandon your out of date identity, sir! I'm imagining cardamom, cloves, a merangue topping -- or rather, bottoming, once flipped, and of course fresh pineapple, cut into practicable bite-size triangles -- a banishment of the alien-rounded donuts from the can. Are you with me, comrades?

Winner is served.

Well, my little Pillsbury groupies, in case you did not hear, the winner of the 2010 bake-off was announced. Big congrats to Sue Compton for her “Mini Ice Cream Cookie Cups.” They do look really yummy. However, this throws a bit of a wrench into our situation.

You see, our dear friend Jenny Tang had astutely observed that there had been a certain trend in P-bury winners. While history has favored sweet/dessert recipes, the last 14 years or so had suggested a new oscillating pattern.

UNTIL THIS YEAR! Now we’ve had 2 sweet winners in a row. Who knows what the committee will be looking for in 2012? I suppose we should factor in economic forces. It’s been a rough couple of years. The world is looking for a delicious, small way to treat themselves. Forget stay-cations, the real trend is baking up a batch of brownies with your kids. Pillsbury has always pulled at the heart-strings of America, knowing along with the likes of Hallmark and LoLcats, just what our sappy hearts yearn for. These are probably amazing days for Pillsbury. In fact, take a look at this analysis:

Ok, to be honest, I thought that the above chart would reveal something amazing. For the most part, it seems that when unemployment is on the decline sweet recipes tend to reign, which of course goes against my hypothesis above. Really there doesn't seem to be any tie to what kind of recipe wins and the state of our economic health. Now my faith is restored in the Pillsbury bake-off. Perhaps it really is about who has the best-tasting, best-looking food. Conspiracy theories be damned! Back to the kitchen!

Osh Kosh Ganache!

Alright, let’s leave the gimmicks at the door today. All you get in this entry is some good old fashioned bake-off straight-talk.

About a week ago, I was reading a recipe in Cook’s Illustrated for these insane chocolate cupcakes. Long story short, Claire and I baked these suckers up, complete with chocolate ganache filling. I started to wonder, what else could you fill with such a lovely concoction? How about Pillsbury Crescent Rolls?

I decided to make a peanut butter ganache, and add chocolate chips. So over a double-boiler I combined pb, heavy cream, powdered sugar and semi-sweet chocolate chips. I popped open the roll of crescents, and got to filling. The crescent rolls weren’t really shaped nicely for stuffing, so I tried a couple options – rectangular little spring rolls, and triangular purses (complete with a rose on top using the extra dough).

For a final touch I sprinkled a mixture of sugar, nutmeg and cinnamon on top, and sent them into the 375 oven.
Now let me discuss the results. My exact words upon taking a bite of one of the still warm spring rolls were “HOLY F*CK!” They were, and are delicious! Oh golly, I guess there’s not much to dislike. I’m quite pleased with the texture, too. Could this be a winning submission? I plan on taking some into the office tomorrow to get outside opinions, but hopes are high that others are just as pleased as I.