Peanut Butter Cream Cheese cookies

I was suddenly seized by a twelve year old memory of the peanut butter pie at the Glacier Brew House.  I believe I have only eaten it once and it was so rich I could not finish it.  Suddenly I had to duplicate the experience of the tangy peanut butter cheese cake  swathed in ganache ... in a cookie? 

I don't know why my brain seized on a cookie as the appropriate medium for conveying the experience.  There are recipes for peanut butter pies.  There are no recipes that I could find for peanut butter cream cheese cookies.  I know, I spent a couple of weeks looking.

This afternoon I went and bought cream cheese (and more peanut butter, I was running out).  I forgot to buy chocolate for melting and dipping the cookies in.  I may go back and rectify that, but only after I bake the cookies and find out how they are.  The dough is currently chiling in the fridge.

Experimental Peanut Butter Cookies

3/4 c cream cheese, room temperature -- not the spreadable kind in the tub, they add oil to make it spread.
3/4 c creamy peanut butter, room temperature
1 c sugar
1 egg
1 tsp vanilla
3/4 c flour
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp baking powder

Beat cream cheese, peanut butter, sugar, vanilla and the egg together, until lightened in color, two or three minutes.

Add dry ingredients, and beat on low speed until just combined. 

Cover and chill in fridge freezer (after an hour in the fridge the dough was insufficiently solid)for a couple of hours.

Preheat oven to 350.

Roll heaping tea spoon fulls of dough into balls.  This will be sticky but possibly less so if you keep your hands damp.  Place on cookie sheets, flattening to around 1/2" thick. 

Bake for 10 - 12 minutes until puffed and golden brown.

Or something like that.  As previously mentioned, I'm only at the chilling the dough phase now.  I will be editing with the results this evening.  The dough tastes like Reese's Pieces.

Edit: These turn out to be rather... inoffensive.  Peanut buttery, but not overwhelmingly so.  Nice texture.  But they need something.  So for the next round, I've put dark chocolate chips on top of the cookies on the theory that the chips might melt and and spread into a nice topping.  If that doesn't work, I may have ganache based frosting in my future.  Which would be okay, and truer to my memory of the peanut butter pie.   To be continued...

Edit again:  I never did get around to dipping the cookies in chocolate, because they got eaten.  The cookie victims, my design classmates were universal in their approbation, so these will probably get made again after all.  

Ginger Ale, Mk. 2

I'm starting my weekend off by blending up the remaining chunks of ginger and putting them to boil with a third of a cup of honey and some powdered ginger because I didn't have enough fresh.  Why the boiling?  It's my impression that ginger is hotter when it has been exposed to heat, and I like ginger heat.*

The last ginger ale was enough of  a success that I'm trying it again. It lacked the straight forward fire that I was expecting from a quarter cup of ginger puree.  Instead it was complex and floral.  Altogether lovesome but not hot or what I had expected.  Also, it took longer to ferment than I expected, and while very nice it was a bit... flat, mildly bubbly rather than exuberantly so.  I responded at the time by adding more yeast.  However my excellent brother, who brews a better than acceptable ale, made some suggestions in his inimitable way: 

Yo, for future experiments with Ginger Ale you might want to add more sugar instead of additional yeast to make it bubble more. If the yeast doesn't have enough sugar to eat it wont make enough CO2 or it will take forever. Knowing you and your need for instant gratification- this will not do, sugar Sarah sugar. 

So I am punching up the sugar content.  I'm going for a third of a cup honey and half a cup of sugar.  Certainly this will be a sweeter effort, but hopefully worth while.

Hopefully such trifles will keep me from deciding that I need to start experimenting with real brewing until I have a bigger kitchen.**

Edit:  After the Saturday afternoon grocery run (the fall back after The Present Deluge made me think twice about an expedition to the park to take pictures), I suddenly owned a lemon.  As the juice of same had been suggested in the original ginger ale recipe, I squeezed it and poured the juice into the current ginger ale batch. 



*I am not really a chili head.  I don't feel a need to casually snack on habaneros or make bean dips hot enough to afright bachelor uncles.  However, I adore hot ginger things, especially ginger ale or ginger beer.  At an impressionable age I bought a six pack of Cock and Bull that was strong enough to make me feel as though my head were about to explode into a cloud of ginger vapor.  I've been seeking out such mind expanding experiences ever since.

**Curious phenomenon, everyone I know who brews their own is without exception nice.  Really nice.  Nice enough that when I worked at Summit, and brewers were coming in regularly, it was remarked upon by my coworkers as well.  Possibly only high quality people can brew good beer.

And since I haven't fallen over yet...

I guess I'll write a bit more about things food. I will probably come back tomorrow and discover my prose loaded with homophone errors and incoherent.

As mentioned previously, I was running on very little sleep, and I was an easy target when La Peliroja suggested we go down to the culinary arts program's Bistro for lunch. The Bistro is apparently what CA fondly believes that fast food ought to be.  Yes, food arrived rapidly, but trout almondine, Brussels sprouts, and something that may have been a timbale  -- it was definitely divine -- for six dollars are the apotheosis of the idea of a value menu.  That was La Peliroja's lunch.  I NEEDED coffee, and intended to eat my chicken sandwich later, so I ordered a cappuccino, and then upon intolerable temptation a chocolate hazelnut brioche -- my snack was both perfect and cost less than a mocha at Starbucks.*

The portion of trout almondine along with everything else on on La Peliroja's plate was heroic.  She offered to let me help her with it.  I helped in a helpful fashion.  It was perfect -- so perfect that I liked it even though trout is a fresh water fish. (Browned butter and lemon makes up for most things.  Crunchy almonds don't hurt either)  The probable timbale too got shared.  Then I was eyeing my companion's Brussels sprouts.**  I asked her, "may I taste the Brussel sprouts?"

She looked down at her plate and looked at me, than back at her plate.  "I'm feeling kind of territorial, but I suppose I could let you have that one," she said pushing one of the smaller ones towards me. 

"I'm sorry," she said, "but these are so good." 

When I finished thoughtfully chewing my sprout, I had to give my wholehearted though sad assent to her territoriality.  Fortunately disaster was averted when more sprouts were discovered beneath the giant fillet of trout (there may well have been a half pound of fish on that plate), so I got to have another. 


*I do not expect cappuccinos in America to be perfect.  I'm always delighted when I'm taken by surprise.  This was one of the delightful surprises.  There may have been moaning upon my first sip.

**With apologies to William Carlos Williams. 

so much depends
upon

a green Brussels
sprout

flecked with black
pepper

beside the trout
almondine.

The Spirit of Blog Posts Yet to Come

I am falling over early tonight owing to an unwise moment of weakness in the face of a long awaited library book last night.  I have some how not fallen over yet today, despite running on about four hours of sleep. 

On the otherhand, I hope soon to write a short essay about how I came to love iceberg lettuce, post a recipe for peanut butter/cream cheese cookies (as soon as I can invent one, which will hopefully be before Monday*), and quite possibly some pictures of various things, for I have a good camera this weekend (ostensibly for taking pictures of poultry).

Edit:  After a minor debate about whether this article about food and the Interesting Events in Egypt should be a separate post, I decided to fold it in here. 


*In addition to being Giant Cephalopod Awareness Day-- which may merit a post of its own -- my subconscious has also decided that it's Take Cookies to Classmates Day, a moveable feast which reoccurs on a schedule that baffles me.

Hmmmm

There ought to be a really good name for a cocktail comprised of two parts homemade ginger ale, two parts cranberry juice, and a shot of gin (at least, I think it ought to be gin -- there is at the moment no hard liquor in the house to experiment with). 

Nappa Cabbage and Carrots

A friend asked for vegetable recipes and this one was the first one I thought of.  I need to make this again sometime.  

This comes originally from Savoring Spices and Herbs by Julie Sahni (I omit a couple of things, and add others, but credit where it's due).  It's quick.  It's easy.  It's cheap.  I usually serve it dumped over rice. 

Nappa Cabbage and Carrots with Caraway

1 1/2 tsp caraway seeds

1 T olive oil

1 large carrot shaved to ribbons with a vegetable peeler

1/4 medium onion diced finely (optional, unless you are me)

1 smallish head of nappa cabbage sliced  1 -1 1/2 pounds

1/3 cup water or chicken or veggie stock 

Kielbasa or reindeer sausage* (also optional -- leftover chicken or pork are alright as well -- don't use raw it takes too long to cook) 

1 tsp cider or red wine vinegar

salt and pepper to taste

1/2 cup nuts (I've used pine nuts -- the recipe called for walnuts or pecans -- I've also skipped them entirely, particularly if I'm using meat for my protein)

You need a large skillet with a close fitting lid. 

Toast the caraway seeds in the olive oil over medium high heat until fragrant.  

Add the carrot shavings and quarter onion.  Cook until the carrots are tender.

Add the water or stock, the vinegar and the sliced cabbage, if my dad is around, you might also want to slice up some sausage and toss that it.  Cover the skillet and let the cabbage steam for 10 minutes (longer if using regular cabbage), uncover and let some of the liquid evaporate.  

Toss nuts with the veggies before serving.   

Devour.  Makes 3-4 servings depending on appetites and enthusiasm for cabbage.

*You can add reindeer sausage to the list of things I really miss about Alaska. 

In Media Res

1) The 2L bottle of ginger ale was not quite as hard as a rock when I cracked the seal on it this evening, but my intense curiosity could stand it no longer -- I had to know.  I can report that I should have let it wait longer, because it was not as intensely bubbly as I felt it should be -- although there was definite fizz.  On the other hand, the flavor is amazing -- complex, rounded, layered, and mellow(?!?).  Yes, folks, mellow.  It is very nice, and I will be glad to drink the entire bottle, but I was not shooting for mellow.  I was shooting for intense, fiery, flirting with the edges of my ginger tolerance, punch myself in the nose flavor. 

On the theory that I could address at least one of those problems by adding more yeast, I did.  The bottle is back to hanging out on top of the fridge.  I keep squeezing it every fifteen minutes in the hopes that fermentation is fermentating faster than I expect. 

2) The banana ginger cake, despite containing a third of the ginger in the ginger ale is much spicier.  I think this means that the next time I make ginger ale, I will briefly boil the ginger puree before proceeding, on the theory that heat releases some of ginger's more volatile compounds.  It is also excellent if you like that sort of thing.  Or even if you don't.  The Piephile who greatly prefers pie to just about any other human vice, except for dancing (maybe), conceded that the cake in question was very tasty even though it was not a pie or dancing. 

3)  Some salad in a bag is at the end of it's lifespan as salad-in-a-bag qua salad.  Waste annoys me.  I may attempt to make lettuce soup or at least vegetable stock. 

Finally the Banana Upside Down Cake

Today has been a day of thwarting.  I wish I could say that I was off thwarting the powers of evil and corruption and mundane unpleasantness.  Alas, instead I was being thwarted by the powers of the laundry room.  I have a hate hate relationship with the little machine that sucks my cash into it's depths and theoretically puts money on a card that can then be used to pay for my laundry.  Theoretically.  Usually it just refuses to acknowledge that I have put a correctly formatted card into the appropriate slot.

In an excess of despair -- for clean socks are a basic human need -- I stomped off and decided to bake another banana upside down cake to address the imbalance of pleasant things in my personal universe.

Since I had leftover fresh ginger from last night's ginger ale experiment (it appears to be fermenting right along nicely), I decided that since bananas and ginger are both tropical crops they obviously went together.  I also had some pineapple orange juice which I dumped on the topping in the hopes that the extra liquid would make for a less impermeable layer of caramel.

So this is what I did this time.  (Except for the things that I know I did wrong, which I will not tell you to do.)

Banana Ginger Upside Down Cake

 I bake upside down cakes in a ten inch cast iron skillet.  I understand that there are different approaches, but that's what I do. 

Topping
1/4 cup unsalted butter
3/4 cup well packed brown sugar
1 or 2 sliced bananas depending on size
3 Tbsp orange pineapple juice or orange juice or pineapple juice

Cake
 1/3 cup Crisco shortening -- I don't know why Crisco and not butter, but I theorize that because this recipe contains so much liquid already, that the person who invented the recipe I've messed with substantially wanted a fat with less water in it than butter has.  Anyway, I liked the idea of a smidge less cholesterol in the dessert
1/2 cup white sugar
1/4 cup brown sugar
2 eggs
1 1/2 cups all purpose flour
3/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 cup mashed ripe bananas (about 2)
A peeled and chopped 1"x 2" chunk of fresh ginger
1/2 cup buttermilk*
1 1/2 Tbsp vanilla extract (or less, but in my thwarted state I was feeling decadent)


 
Preheat the oven to 350.

Over low heat, melt the butter in your skillet.

Attempt to sprinkle the brown sugar evenly over the surface of the butter.  This will probably fail, I have never known well packed brown sugar to sprinkle readily.  That's okay, grab a wooden spoon and smooth it out.  Allow to cook unmolested for 3 minutes.

Remove the skillet from the heat, and arrange the bananas over the face of the caramel.  Be careful, the bubbly brown stuff is hot and irascible.  Cover the surface as well as you can without overlapping the banana slices

Cream the Crisco and the sugars together, beating until light and fluffy in texture. This takes a few minutes.  (I use my stand mixer, and mix up the dry mixture and the wet mixture while creaming and beating in eggs is going on.)


Add two eggs, beating well after each.




In a 2 cup pyrex measuring cup (you can use other things -- but this is the perfect size) mix the buttermilk, the  bananas, the vanilla, and the chopped up ginger.  Take your immersion blender and puree.  (One could of course mash the bananas by hand and grate the ginger, but this is nice and easy.)

In a medium size bowl, mix together the flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt.  

Add the dry ingredients to the egg mixture in three parts alternating with the banana mixture.  Mix until just combined, and scrap into the skillet, trying not to disarrange the bananas too much.  Smooth out the cake batter, and pop into the oven.

Bake 40-50 minutes, or until golden and a tester comes out clean.

Allow to cool in skillet for fifteen minutes, before running a knife around the cake.  Placing a plate of suitable size face down over the top and invert.  Hopefully the cake will end up on the plate and not the floor. 

*  One can -- and this one does-- make a buttermilk substitute (or use 1/2 cup of plain yogurt). 
1/2Tspp (or 1 1/2 teaspoons) vinegar
enough milk to then make half a cup when combined with the vinegar
Leave it alone for five minutes and then stir.

Zeno's Casserole and Ginger Ale

I know how to spell Zeno, but I keep double checking because my inner sense of orthography autocorrects to Xeno as the obvious masculine form of Xena... as in Warrior Princess.  Xena's Casserole probably ululates, flies through the air, and has sharp edges.  This is merely the casserole that I've been eating on and off for a week. 

Yes, the black bean casserole is what's for dinner again.  Someday I will learn to cook in quantities suitable for one person, or at most two.  Not two adults and two starving teenagers which was my standard portion when I was learning to cook.  I swear that casserole is regenerating when I turn my back.  (The real problem is that I discovered that the casserole goes from very good to scrumptious when dumped on top of tater tots, thereby halving the amount of casserole that I think I'm eating.)

Never mind.  It was funnier in my head.

Anyway, after finishing my Friday afternoon face plant (somewhat accentuated by the fact that my body is not as certain of my convalescence as my brain) around 8:30, I thought,"I told the nice people in Blogland that I would experiment with making my own ginger ale when I was back on my feet."  So off I ran like a good little blogger and bought a chunk of ginger root. And then I made ginger ale which was as easy as I thought it would be. Now I just need to wait a day or two for it to ferment into what will hopefully be the wildly fiery ginger ale of my dreams. 

It should be noted that I have a touching faith in ginger, and particularly ginger ale as a panacea for most human ills.  I treat stomach upsets, colds, sinus infections, and the existential blahs with ginger ale, or a hot tissane of ginger and honey.  So far I haven't died, so my faith is validated. 

Anyway after the most recent round of yuck, which was something like the flu (the real one, not the stomach flue) and something like a cold, when I was reduced to drinking ginger and honey several times a day, the discovery of the ginger ale recipe seemed fortuitous.

A quick survey of the recipe suggested that it would not be gingery enough for my taste and probably too sweet as well.  So some changes have been made.  Likewise the original called for a box grater and a funnel.  I don't own either of those things so more changes have been made.

Ginger Ale (Slightly Tweaked)

1 clean 2L soda bottle
1/4 tsp bakers yeast
1 largish chunk of ginger (approximately 1.5 inches in diameter and about 4 inches long -- when I chopped it up roughly it appeared to be between 1/4 and 1/3 of a cup.  I'm nuts, you do not have to use that much.)
2/3 cup sugar
enough water

Pour a little cool water in the bottom of the soda bottle, drop in the 1/4 tsp of yeast.

Peel and roughly chop up your ginger.  Place it in the bottom of a pyrex measuring cup, add enough water so that an immersion blender will blend when immersed in the measuring cup.  Puree the ginger.  So much nicer than futzing with a box grater and taking the skin off your knucles.  Add more water and the sugar.  Give it a good stir to make sure everything is more or less liquid.  Pour it into the bottle.

Continue to fill the measuring cup with cold water and pour into the bottle, until the cup is rinsed clean and the bottle is full to about an inch below the beginning of the neck. 

Cap the bottle tightly, and shake vigorously until anything not heretofore dissolved is rendered aqueous. 

That all went fairly slickly.  Here is where I venture into the realm of trusting my informants.

Leave the capped bottle out on the counter for 24-48 hours.  Check regularly.  When you cannot dent the bottle by squeezing it, place it in the fridge and chill for eight hours or so.  Be very careful to open it slowly and bleed off pressure when you open it.  Under no circumstances use glass bottles. 

I will, of course, let you know how it comes out. 

That Must Have Been Disappointing

Two people apparently found the blog today after doing a Google search on "shrubbery + cheap".

I was deeply bemused.  Deeply.  Especially as this blog is nowhere to be seen in the top ten pages of google results.

However in checking this out I did discover in the website snippets that Google posts a reference to "a dance troupe wearing bustiers and exotic shrubbery."  My bemusement is now as the void of interstellar space compared to the void inside a peanut shell now.   Especially since, judging from the rest of the snippet and the url, the site is a Chinese pimp's web presence.*  So now we have men paying for the privilege of spending time with women in uncomfortable underwear and agricultural products?**

What's next inappropriate fixations on hedge shears? 

I don't think I want to know. 

*I did not click through, but s/he does promise virgins, though s/he makes no mention of what sort of plant life they are afflicted with.  Probably aspidistras. 

** How do you wear a shrubbery anyway?  Do you root it in the cups of the bustier?  Do I really want to go on thinking about this?