All posts in Cooking

Homemade Chai Ice Cream

by readmakedo on October 23, 2012 in Cooking, Recipes with No comments


With all the rain we’re having in SF this week, I think it’s safe to say: It’s officially Fall. I’m pretty pumped about Fall, since the season brings the best clothes, best bike riding weather (who wants to ride bikes when it’s 90 degrees out? Not me.), and I can use the fireplace. Still, there is one trapping of Summer that I am never ok with letting go: ICE CREAM. Which is how I came up with the idea for a recipe that uses my favorite fall flavor, Chai Tea, to make ice cream socially acceptable for Fall.

The Chai is adapted from a recipe by  SolBar at Solage Calistoga. You’ll also need some sort of ice cream maker. I used a KitchenAid Ice Cream Maker Attachment that my friend Sue gave me (Thanks Sue!!!). It worked like a dream.

 Ingredients

For the Chai Tea

  • 1 1/2 teaspoons of ground ginger, or 1 oz fresh ginger
  • 2 Tablespoons of Baker’s Sugar
  • 2 Tablespoons of honey
  • 1/2 vanilla bean, split
  • 1/2 cinnamon stick
  • 1 Tablespoon cardamom pods, crushed
  • 3 ea whole cloves
  • 1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg
  • 16 oz cold water
  • 2 Tablespoons (roughly 2 bags) Assam tea
  • (Optional) Milk or Soy Milk – if you want to have some leftover Chai tea for yourself
For the Ice Cream 
  • 1 cup 2% milk (or whole milk, if you like really rich ice cream)
  • 2 cups heavy cream
  • 3/4 cup granulated sugar
  • Pinch of Kosher salt
  • 1/4 cup of Chai Tea from previous recipe (refrigerated)

Make it

Make the Chai 

  1. First you need to make the Chai tea. Combine the ginger, sugar, honey, vanilla bean, cinnamon, crushed cardamom pods, cloves, ground nutmeg, and water into a large pot.
  2. Bring the pot to a simmer, and cook for 5 minutes. Remove the pot from heat, and add the Assam tea. Let sit for 10 minutes.
  3. Strain the tea, making sure all the large clumps from your chai brew have been removed. Let the tea cool, then cover and refrigerate. If you’d like some chai for yourself, you can have it hot or cold with an equal amount of milk or soymilk.

Make the Ice Cream

  1. In a large bowl, gently whisk together your granulated sugar, milk, and heavy cream until the sugar is just dissolved. Cover, and refrigerate for 1-2 hours.
  2. Add your milk mixture to the ice-cream maker (note: if you’re using a kitchen-aid mixer like I did, you need to freeze the attachment bowl 2 days before to make sure it is SUPER cold), and slowly churn your mixture. As it begins churning, add the 1/4 cup of chai.
  3. Allow to churn for 20-30 minutes. You can enjoy your ice cream now, or for an even better texture, put your mixture in the freezer for an additional 2-3 hours.

Tips:

  • Be careful not to over churn your ice cream, as it will actually begin to start melting over time.
  • For long-term storage of your ice cream, use waxed cups. Disposable coffee cups are great, or if you can find soup containers at a restaurant supply store that would be great too.

That’s it! Super easy, and the whole recipe takes very little time at all (in between all the waiting…but hey, good things come to those who wait!). I’m super excited to share this recipe with my friends and family. I feel like it would be AWESOME with some Pumpkin Pie at Thanksgiving. Srsly.

The Chocolate Coconut Dream Cake

by readmakedo on July 31, 2012 in Baking, Cake Decorating, Cooking with 2 Comments

Sometimes I joke this blog should be renamed Read Cake Do, or Read Make Cake. Probably because of my undying love of cake. Which is why I wanted to share one of my very favorite cake recipes. This is the cake that inspired me to start this blog in the first place, this is the legend: The Chocolate Coconut Dream Cake.

The thing that makes this cake so awesome is probably my favorite “secret” ingredient: Buttermilk. It is one of those things that you never usually would buy otherwise, but it makes ALL the difference in the world in creating a really moist, fluffy cake. Don’t have Buttermilk? Can’t get any at your local store? Try plain yogurt instead, it works great too.

Cake Ingredients

1 cup (2 sticks) butter
2 1/4 cups sugar
2 eggs
1 tsp. vanilla
2 cups buttermilk
1/4 cup Kaluha Liquor
1/2 cup cocoa
3 cups sifted cake flour
2 tsp. baking soda
1 tsp. salt

Frosting Ingredients

2 sticks butter
6 cups powdered sugar
4 Tbsps whole milk
1 tsp coconut extract
1/2 cup shredded coconut
3 drops pink food coloring

Cake Recipe

  1. Preheat oven at 350 degrees. Prep three 9-inch round cake tins with cooking spray, and then dust with cocoa powder.
  2. Cream together sugar and butter until fluffy. Then, add eggs one at a time, followed by vanilla and Kahlua until just mixed.
  3. In a separate bowl, sift together the dry ingredients.
  4. Add the dry ingredients and buttermilk to the main batter alternatively, always ending with the buttermilk.
  5. Distribute the batter evenly between the three cake tins. Bake at 350 degrees for 25-30 minutes, until you can insert a toothpick and it comes out clean.

Frosting Recipe

  1. Beat together butter, powdered sugar, coconut extract and milk until very fluffy and smooth.
  2. Place the shredded coconut in a plastic ziploc bag and add 2-3 drops of pink food coloring. Shake it up! Keep shaking! Cool. Now the coconut is pink and ready to go on top of your cake (after you apply the frosting from step one).

So that is how you make my current favorite cake creation, which we have come to call the Chocolate Coconut Dream Cake. I hope you enjoy it!

 

Happy Fifth!

by readmakedo on July 5, 2012 in Cooking with No comments

HAPPY FIFTH OF JULY! Or to those of you who had a little bit too much fun,

happy fifth of july.
shhh, soothing.

Anyways, just a short post and what I made for our 4th of July party. It’s Red, White, and Blue Velvet!

Enjoy your weekend, and I will see you on Tuesday!

- Kate

 

Chocolate Chip + Potato Chip Cookies

by readmakedo on July 3, 2012 in Cooking, DIY, Recipes with No comments

Best. Recipe. Ever.

Just in time for Fourth of July, I wanted to share my famous Chocolate Chip + Potato Chip cookie recipe. What could be more American than adding Potato Chips to something that is already bad for you?? NOTHING could be more American. It brings a tear to my eye.

I came up with this concept based on Momofuku’s famous Compost Cookie. EWWWW, Compost Cookie! you say. Relax, it’s not what you think. Really, it should be renamed “Snack Cookie” or “Everything I impulse bought when I was hungry and now don’t know what to do with” Cookie. The concept is, it’s basically a chocolate chip cookie, but you just put a little bit of whatever sounds good to you. I’ve put pretzels and rolos in them before, coffee grinds, heck I think I even put Doritos in there once and it wasn’t bad.

But, sometimes you gotta go big or go home–and that’s why I like to take it to the limit with potato chips. The chips make the cookie perfectly crunchy and salted–if you didn’t tell people they were in there, you might never know.

So don your best red, white and blue apron and get crack-a-lackin’, this is the perfect thing to bring to that BBQ tomorrow!

Smoosh those chippies.

Ingredients

  • 2 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
  • 1 teaspoon baking soda
  • 1 teaspoon salt
  • 1 cup (2 sticks) butter, softened
  • 3/4 cup granulated sugar
  • 3/4 cup packed brown sugar
  • 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
  • 2 large eggs
  • 1 1/2 cups chocolate chips
  • 1/2 – 3/4 cup crushed Lays Potato Chips
  • 2 tablespoons light corn syrup

Directions

  1. Pre-heat your oven to 375 ° F.
  2. Crush up those potato chips in a ziploc bag. Make sure that your final crushed amount is 1/2 cup or around 3/4 cup, if you really like your chippies.
  3. In a small bowl, combine flour, baking soda and salt.
  4. In a separate bowl (preferably with a hand mixer or Kitchen-Aid if you’re fancy), beat the butter, granulated white sugar, brown sugar, and vanilla until everything is smooth.
  5. Add the eggs one by one, making sure everything is well combined.
  6. Gradually add the flour mixture until combined. Take it slow, or else it will fly up EVERYWHERE.
  7. Now the fun part. Add the chocolate chips and potato chips, and the corn syrup. Yum.
  8. Drop dough with rounded tablespoon onto ungreased cookie sheet. Bake for 9-11 minutes.

Yields about a million cookies.  And by a million I mean 60. Dang.

These freeze great too, so throw half that million in the fridge and save them for your next BBQ (or late-night snack. I won’t tell).

Lemon-Lemon Ombre Cake

by readmakedo on June 14, 2012 in Cooking with 6 Comments

Even though our wedding was a total cake-fest, I barely had time to eat any. I was too busy cutting a rug out on the dance floor, chatting with all our guests, and attempting to shuffle.

The one cake I really wanted to try, but didn’t get a chance was the Lemon cake. What’s a girl to do? Read about it > Make it > Do it. Obvz.

I’m always trying to improve my cake-baking skills, and I wasn’t satisfied with how my attempt at an ombre cake turned out last time. This time, I decided to make a true ombre-colored cake, but also try to ombre the flavor a bit too. Girl, what??? You’re thinking. Chill, I got this.

My goals for this latest ombre cake were to:

1) Make it even more delicious (and try ombre flavoring).

2) Cut the layers to fit (which I’ve always been too scared to do before, which has led to some wonky cakes)

3) Improve my icing skills. (Read tips here).

To start, I based my recipe off of one from Martha Stewart (because let’s be real, Martha knows what’s up), but I skipped the part about coating it with a lemon glaze and used a lemon curd filling instead. You can find Martha’s recipe here. Then I made icing from my own recipe. For a great, super easy icing recipe, check out this classic one from Magnolia Bakery. (For this recipe, sub out the vanilla for lemon curd!).

In order to achieve an “ombre flavor” effect, I divided up the lemon zest into 1 tsp, 3/4 tsp, 1/2 tsp, and then just a pinch. I added the zest to bowls of divided up ingredients. I also washed a lot of bowls after this project was done.

Then I mixed the “wet” ingredients, and divided them into 4 parts (for 4 layers, if you haven’t caught on yet..). I also added proportional amounts of lemon juice to the wet mixtures, and food coloring. The most food coloring went into the layer that had the most lemon flavoring, which was my bottom layer. Again, lots of bowl washing.

Stir stir stir. Bake bake bake. Cool cool cool.

After allowing the cake layers to thoroughly cool, I cut the tops off so they would be even. Then I cut a round template out of cardboard, and used that as a guide to help me trim the edges of the cake.

I assembled the cake layers with lemon curd as the filling (delicious), and then popped it in the fridge for 30 minutes to let the filling set. (This was something new I learned!)

Next, I lightly covered the cold cake with room-temperature icing. This layer is called a crumb layer, and it is meant to trap all the crumbs, then you chill the cake again before putting the final layer of icing on. This explains why every single one of my previous cakes has been hella covered in crumbs. Knowledge is power.

Do your thang, crumb layer. I ain’t gonna rush you. 

After giving the crumb-layer of icing a while in the fridge to set (I gave it about an hour), I applied my final layer of icing. *ANOTHER COOL TIP* – I used a cup of hot water to dip my icing knife into every time before I loaded it up with icing. This encourages the icing to melt a little bit and go onto the cake smoothly.

DANG! So smooth! Okay not perfectly smooth, but considering how janky my previous cakes looked, I was pretty proud. Now time for the money shot:

HELLO LEMON CAKE! <3

Not to hype this cake up too much (I know, I hype cake up a lot), but everyone who had some said it was my best cake yet. The flavor-intensity effect really came through, and was definitely a success. The cake had the perfect amount of lemon-y goodness, without being too sour or overwhelming.

It was such a hit, my friend Empe asked me if I’d make one for her graduation party that’s coming up. Really excited to see how I can continue to improve this recipe. GO CAKE!

Veggie Lunch Wraps

by readmakedo on March 15, 2012 in Cooking, Recipes with 1 Comment

I’ve been in a bit of a lunchtime food funk lately. Maybe because it’s winter, or because I’ve recently divorced my work-husband Mr. Goodbar, but these past few months I haven’t been inspired by any recipes. Until today. I was on the Kitchn and saw this awesome post about Lunches to eat on the run.

The Apple-Arugula salad wrap was strikingly similar to my standby lunch at work, (I frequently make an apple, arugula and cheddar salad in my office’s kitchen. This is no easy feat, considering the kitchen is about the size of one that would be in an RV).  I also stumbled upon this Vietnamese sandwich recipe. Have you ever had Vietnamese sandwiches? They are possibly the world’s most perfect food.

While I happily would eat an entire baguette for lunch, I decided to opt for the lower-carb option. I wanted to make my own veggie wrap, but one that also had some of the same flavors of a heavenly Vietnamese Sandwich. So here’s how it went down:

I actually had almost all of these ingredients in my fridge (who doesn’t like tofu and cabbage?), but I picked up some fresh Dill, carrots, and some whole wheat lavash (not pictured). I diced the tofu, and threw it in a hot skillet with oil, 1/4 teaspoon of cumin and 1/8 teaspoon of chili powder.

While the tofu was cooking, I mixed together the cabbage, radish, carrot, and added some seasoned rice wine vinegar and olive oil (2:1 ratio). I wanted it to be tart, but not overwhelming. If you’re feeling crazy, you could throw some peanut sauce or Sriracha in there.

Then you just assemble the wrap! I put some parchment paper underneath, so I could actually “wrap” it up and take it with me for lunch. You could also totally do this with tinfoil, brown paper, whatever else you have around.

And there you have it! I’m bringing this with me to work tomorrow for lunch, even though it’s pizza day. Yep, even free pizza can’t beat the deliciousness of this bad boy.

Any suggestions for other easy-peasy lunch recipes?