Food Highlights: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly (Part 1: The Sweet Stuff)

I am starting with food as I found it the easiest for collecting my thoughts and getting back into the rhythm of writing. I am going to break it down into separate blogs to keep it from being too lengthy.

These days, I tend to find most of my recipe inspirations through the gazillion of food blogs I follow (yes, I know I have a problem!). In fact, I have been feeling a little guilty about neglecting my gazillion of cook books (yes, I know… problem… let’s move on now). Anyways! We have had some great finds along the way and some not so great successes. Sometimes it just doesn’t seem to turn out exactly how we thought, and sometimes, especially with baking, it seems to be the curse of the high altitude. And, I really don’t have many pictures cuz we suck and don’t think about it at the time. Hopefully my descriptions and amazing word crafting will make up for the lack of visuals… And if you really need pictures, most of the links have pictures for ya!

Brownies and Bars Goodness, Sort of…

One summer find and success was this Grain Free Brownie recipe, and I just recommend the Food Renegade website for some interesting reading in general. My mother-in-law was recently diagnosed with Coeliac’s disease, so I was excited to share my find with her while they were staying in Flagstaff this summer. I have made them with and without the cream cheese swirl, and think they are yummy both ways. More and more people are gluten free either by choice or necessity, so these are great baked good solution that will be a crowd pleaser. I promise you, no one is going to miss the gluten!

A recent attempt at Bourbon Pecan Pie Brownies (what is there not to love in that mix, eh?) has great potential, I think… The flavors were there, but they did suffer from some underdoneness despite cooking both layers past the recommended temperature times. I am starting to wonder if it was a high altitude thing. If I can figure out the baking times, I envision these being the PERFECT dessert to recommend for Kentucky Derby parties. Oh, and Jessica is pretty darn hilarious. I recommend subscribing to her How Sweet It Is blog.

I impulsively bought some Meyer lemons at the CSA store as I have often read rave reviews about this type of lemon and its flavor differences. I decided I really wanted to embrace the lemonyness (according to spell check, I just made this word up), so I determined lemon bars would be the way to go. I have made them before, but it has been a while, and of course I tried a new recipe. Again, I ended up with an underdone custard despite leaving it in the oven for quite a bit longer than the instructed baking time… so I am thinking there just must be something to custardy type desserts at this altitude. However, I struggled to find any good insight in my high altitude baking cookbook, so this is just speculation on my part. They were tasty, but I was not particularly over enthusiastic with the results and there was no Meyer lemon flavor epiphany for me.

Caramel Conundrums

Anything of a caramel type attempt seems to always be a crapshoot… as you may recall from my attempt for Robert’s birthday (link) last year. My friend R asked for caramel cupcakes for her birthday this summer, so I went with a triple caramel cupcake: caramel cupcake with a caramel filling and caramel frosting. They were not a complete failure, but the idea for a caramel filling didn’t work out so well as it just sort of absorbed into the cake instead of being a gooey center surprise. I splurged and bought icing tips and pastry bags. I figured perhaps I should try making my frosting look fancier. Kind of a hot mess (literally and figuratively). It is harder than it looks! I also decided to ix-nay the sugar sculptures.

This winter we decided we wanted to make caramel candies. You know, the almost gooshy, perfectly chewy ones that you wrap in wax paper. Robert diligently cut out 60 squares and helped me stir the caramel to the correct temperature. So, you would think smooth sailing, right? Nope. We ended up with this weird texture that was crunchy when you bit into it and then turned into this pull your fillings out, chewy glob in your mouth. They tasted good, but the texture just sucked. So, fail number 1. I did get creative and mix bits of it into a chocolate cookie batch.

Onto fail number 2. Many years ago, my friend introduced me to this candy/cookie that I call Victoria’s Addictive Cookies and she calls “Crack.” It is always a crowd favorite at parties and potlucks, and ridiculously easy to make except, apparently, at 7000 feet. Although, I swear I made it once this summer with no trouble. However, this winter, we had two complete fails, which was frustrating since I was making it to send home to my family as part of my Christmas package. However, I have since conducted some online research and learned a little more about candy making at high altitude, so at least now I know I am not completely crazy or inept. Many people mentioned they are unable to successfully make caramel or toffee without the use of corn syrup. It also has to do with the fact that water evaporates out at a lower boiling point at higher altitudes.

Here is a pretty helpful chart I found for those who are also trying to make candy at high altitude:

Sugar cookery
For sea level:
215-230 degrees: thread stage
240 degrees: soft ball
245 degrees: firm ball
250-260 degrees: hard ball
265-270 degrees: soft crack
295-310 degrees: hard crack
320-360 degrees: caramel
For every 500 feet. of altitude over sea level, the temperatures drop 1 degree..
For 5000 feet elevation:
205-220 degrees: thread
230 degrees: soft ball
235 degrees: firm ball
240-250 degrees: hard ball
255-260 degrees: soft crack
285-300 degrees: hard crack
310-350 degrees: caramel
Source: Amy DeWitt, Culinary School of the Rockies

The other important detail I learned is that several people recommend calibrating your candy thermometer by identifying at what temperature your water boils and then adjusting cooking times accordingly. Oh. Of course. Lower boiling points. I knew about that. Sooo, I am not giving up!

Here is an cool sounding blog that I may have to add to my list that also explains this: Handmade in High Places

So you are probably wanting the recipe now, right? Here you go!

Victoria’s Addictive Cookies, aka Crack, aka, Saltine Toffee Candy

Ingredients

1 cup of brown sugar

1 cup of unsalted butter

Saltine crackers

2 cups of chocolate chips

Directions

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Line a jelly roll pan with foil. Place a layer of saltine crackers in the pan. Break up crackers if necessary to fill in empty spaces. Combine sugar and butter in pan and bring to a boil. Stir and cook at the boiling level for about 3 minutes (although clearly, I would now increase this time at my higher altitude). Pour the butter and sugar mixture over the crackers and place in the oven for 6 minutes (again, I am thinking I will extend this time by a few minutes in the future). After you remove from the oven, sprinkle the chocolate chips on it and let sit for a few minutes. After the chocolate has softened, spread the melted chocolate over the pan. Let cool completely (I suggest putting in the refrigerator). After cooled, break into pieces. Store leftovers in the refrigerator.

Remember, share wisely. Crack is addictive…

Sweet Semester Endings and High Altitude Baking

For the end of the semester, I agreed to make some fun desserts for my staff’s last meeting as a thank you for their hard work. I asked for suggestions and got a request for brownies and for dessert pizza. One of my staff, who was transferring to another school, is vegan, so I also decided to experiment and try to make several vegan desserts. As usual, I forgot to take pictures. One of these days I will actually get in the habit of remembering to do so.

With regards to high altitude baking, we really didn’t have any problems with this other than that the sugar cookie crust spread a little more than I anticipated. I actually picked the brownie recipe because someone who commented on it was a high altitude baker and said it worked well. We did treat ourselves to this great cookbook, Pie in the Sky, since we both like baking and wanted some extra guidance. This one is nice because it has tables for different altitudes and has some nice stories about her journey to create all these recipes. We have used it for reference several times already with pretty good success.

Ultimate Vegan Brownies

These brownies were pretty tasty. They were very rich and fudgy, and yes, I really couldn’t tell they were vegan. I had never cooked with coconut oil before, but we had been wanting to try it as we had heard it was a good alternative for butter for some baking. I will warn it is pretty pricey, but we found it on sale so we decided to splurge and try it. I found it made the brownies a little oily or greasy, so I might try a little less. I also discovered that my instant espresso powder was REALLY old and concluded it might be best to not use it.We ended up just grinding up some coffee super fine and letting it sit in hot water. I found the coffee taste to be a bit bitter and strong. In the future I would probably brew the coffee or make sure I had fresh instant espresso. Other than that, we followed the recipe as given. The flax as a substitute for egg worked well, as creepily had the consistency of eggs after it sat as instructed. So they were good, but I would like to give them another go and see what I think with a little less oil and brewed coffee. The recipe follows, but if you click on the title above it will link you to the original recipe.

1 cup coconut oil
4 oz. (or 112 grams) bittersweet chocolate or to be even more strict just use unsweetened chocolate with 70% (or more) cocoa solids.
1 tsp vanilla
2 tsp instant coffee or espresso powder
1/2 cup hot water
2 cups sugar
1 cup cake or pastry flour
1 cup whole wheat flour
3/4 cup dutch process cocoa
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp salt
2 Tbsp flax seeds (ground)
6 Tbsp hot water

Preheat oven to 350°F and grease an 8 x 8 pan.

• In a double boiler or a bowl set atop a pot of gently simmering water, melt the coconut oil, chocolate squares and vanilla together.
• Mix the coffee (or espresso) powder with the 1/2 cup of hot water and stir into the coconut/chocolate mixture. Add sugar and remove from heat. The sugars will dissolve a bit but you don’t need to completely dissolve it.
• In another bowl, sift together the flours, cocoa, baking powder, baking soda and salt. Whisk to combine.
• In yet another bowl (small one), mix the flax seeds and 6 Tbsp of hot water, allow to sit for 2-3 minutes.
• Combine the chocolate/coconut oil mixture with the flour mixture and stir to incorporate. Add the thickened flax and stir that in as well.
• Pour the batter into the greased baking pan and bake for 30-40 minutes. Start checking the brownies after the first 30 minutes to ensure it is baking evenly.
• When finished, remove the brownies from the oven, set atop a cooling rack and get busy somewhere else. These babies need to be utterly cooled before consuming. If you attempt to eat them before they are properly cooled, they will crumble. When they are properly cooled, you can’t even tell they are eggless, I promise!

Banana Bread French Toast Cupcakes

These you MUST try. Robert tried these on a whim for us to take to a friend’s house for dinner one night, and they disappeared in minutes. Since then, they have made multiple appearances. They go together ridiculously easy and are addictive. The first time, we made them with cow milk, but then decided to experiment making them vegan. We both dislike soy milk, so we decided to try almond milk. We leave out the almond extract because we do not like it, however that is why we decided to try using almond milk. I don’t like nuts in baked goods, so we also left those out. We found the almond milk worked well. They seemed a little stickier than the first time with cow milk, but we really didn’t notice the difference, otherwise. We like to use our mini-muffin pan along with couple of muffin tops. Again, click on the recipe title to follow a link to the original recipe. What follows is our adaptations.

1/2 cup mashed over ripe banana

1 & 1/4 cups all-purpose flour

1/4 tsp baking soda

1 tsp baking powder

1 tsp cinnamon

1/2 tsp salt

3/4 cup granulated sugar

1/3 cup canola oil

2/3 cup milk (dairy or non-dairy)

1 tsp vanilla extract

Then you:

• Preheat oven to 350 degrees and line pan with paper liners (or spray with baking spray).
• Throw your mashed banana in a blender or or just smash it with a fork.
• Sift the flour, baking soda, baking powder, cinnamon, salt and sugar into a large bowl, mix well. In a smaller bowl, whisk together the oil, soy or rice milk, vanilla, almond and mashed banana. Stir or fold the wet ingredients into the dry. Small lumps are fine.
• Fill liners 2/3 full (we didn't use liners, and just sprayed the muffin tins with cooking spray). Bake 20-22 minutes or until tops spring back when lightly touched. Cool in pan on wire rack for 10 minutes, then remove from pan and cool completely.

Really Yummy Oat Bars

The inspiration for these is this amazing strawberry cookie bar that I had at Macy’s Coffeehouse. My friend came across this recipe in a macrobiotic cookbook she has, so she passed it on to me since the ingredients sounded very similar to what we had assessed as we ate one of the bars. It is not quite the same, but they are still really yummy as the recipe title promises! With the pan that I used, I decided to put all the oat mixture down and make a second half batch of the oat mixture to put on top of the preserves. I didn’t measure it, but I know I also used more strawberry preserves than it called for. I just spread it out until it made a full layer across the full pan.

• ½ c. whole wheat flour
• 1 ½ c. rolled oats
• 1 t. cinnamon
• ½ t. nutmeg
• ½ t. baking soda
• ¼ t. sea salt
• 1/3 c. maple syrup
• 1/3 c. oil
• ½ t. vanilla
• 1/3 c. fruit spread

Preheat oven to 350 F. In a bowl, mix the dry ingredients. Add maple syrup, corn oil, and vanilla mixing thoroughly. In a small baking pan or Pyrex dish, press half the mixture like a thick pie crust. Spread the fruit jam onto it and cover with the rest of the oat mixture. Bake for 25 minutes. Let cool before cutting into squares.

Dessert Pizza

For as common a dessert recipe as this one is, I had actually never made one. After researching lots of recipes I went with this one. I let the cookie bake for about 25 minutes. I found I really had to whip the cream cheese and whipped topping for a long time, and it still had a somewhat lumpy texture. Next time, I think I would whip the cream cheese with the milk first before adding whipped topping in hopes of getting an overall smoother texture. For fruit, I used a can of mandarin oranges, kiwis, red raspberries, and blueberries. I think this was my staff’s favorite. There were no leftovers!