Raw cacao & cashew crunch cups

[Still off on our escape, but since y'all seemed so interested in how I whipped up that homemade chocolate a few weeks ago, I experimented again, this time actually writing down what I did so I could share it with you. Enjoy!]

While last time's chocolate was tasty, I wanted to do something a bit different for this batch. The basic chocolate recipe is still in tact (so you can just use that and the toppings to make what I showed you before), but I wanted to try my hand at my own nut butter cups.

And, it only seems fitting that I post this today, since the national product of the country where we are right now that I alluded to is front and center here.

// Raw cacao & cashew crunch cups
Makes 10 cups
 
 1.5 oz  Organic Raw Cacao Powder
  65 g    Raw Cacao Butter (I bought mine on Amazon, but doesn't seem to be there anymore)
   3 oz   Organic Extra-Virgin Coconut Oil
   3 T    Maple Syrup
   2 t     Vanilla Extract
1/2 t     Himalayan Salt
4/5 oz  Goji Berries (optional topping: use whatever you'd like!)
4/5 oz  Pepitas (optional topping: use whatever you'd like!)
 10 t     Cashew Butter (Or your favorite nut butter. Make your own if you can—I haven't tried again.)

+ Melt everything together, except for the last three items, in a double boiler.

+ Once it's all silky smooth and blended and yummy, pour the "batter" into your muffin / cupcake pan, being sure to only use half of the liquid.

+ Pop your trays in the freezer for about 5 minutes to harden.

+ In the meantime, chop up your pepitas and goji berries (or whichever topping you choose).

+ Once the bottom halves are solid, remove from the freezer and scoop a teaspoon of cashew butter into each of the 10 filled cups, smushing down with a teaspoon so you create a disc of nut butter goodness.

+ Pour the rest of the chocolate into each cup, completely covering your nut butter discs and then some.

+ Sprinkle your topping(s) on the surface of each and put the trays back into the fridge to harden.

Then: enjoy!
Note: you'll want to keep these cool in the fridge until ready to eat. No storing in the cupboard!

The art of imperfection and choco-buckwheat-banana bread

I'm a bit of a perfectionist, which you might not realize from that less than perfect picture above (grumble grumble at my apartment, which I'm currently sick of with its lack of photograph-able spaces plus my general lack of certainty over how long I'll have to stay here...plus my lack of camera skills). Maybe as I get older, though, it's finally starting to sink in that not everything has to be perfect all the time, and sometimes the best stuff isn't perfect at all.

Take this bread. Which is by no means perfect. But it started with a perfect intention. R bought a huge bunch-o-bananas for post-boxing smoothies, but they were languishing on the counter top. Before they went too far, though, I came home from work and decided that banana bread must be made.

(We already had a Pyrex dish full of frozen banana slices in the freezer, otherwise I would have shoved them in there, as I'm not a fan of after-work baking.)

Now, gluten-free baking is a little tricky, especially for people like me who can't be bothered with measurements, and therefore don't really have any business being bakers at all. But, like all my other cooking and creative endeavors, I had at it and hoped for the best.

And, this came out...okay. But with a few tweaks, it's elevated all the way to super yummy:

(1) It tastes infinitely better when warmed up. Buckwheat is dense, and since I only used buckwheat flour, these loaves came out pretty compact and a little warming up helped amp up the coziness factor and tamp down the why-am-I-eating-a-brick factor.

(2) You need to serve it with either a dollop of good yogurt or swiped with a rash of butter. Either way, you'll also need a sprinkle of sea salt on top because, oopsie, forgot that below (so if you make this and add salt to the batter, no need to when serving).

// Choco-buckwheat-banana bread
Makes two 9-inch circular pan loaves

5      bananas (1 lb 5 oz)
2.5   cups buckwheat flour
2.5   teaspoons baking powder
2      tablespoons cinnamon
2      eggs
1      cup milk
2      teaspoons vanilla extract
1/2   cup chopped hazelnuts (optional)
5      tablespoons cacao powder
2      tablespoons maple syrup

Preheat oven to 375F. Whisk together your wet ingredients. Then sift together the dry ingredients before combining all together. Pour into pans and bake for 30 minutes. //

Next time doing this I'll include salt in the batter, put in a little less cacao, and perhaps use a mix of almond flour and buckwheat flour. I might also add in some coconut oil, so they have more of that traditional banana bread texture and mouthfeel.

But the thing is, even with all the changes I'd make next time, this bread is still perfect just as is when enjoyed at home, with R, after sharing a nice meal together and chatting about what comes next.

(As long as it's warmed up with the requisite toppings, of course).

Citrusy tweaks for you & your kitchen (+ a seafood tip!)

We tend to use lots of lemons and limes in the summer for slicing over fish before popping it in the oven and squeezing over avocado salads (or, to mix up a good Margarita). But rather than tossing those spent halves away, I keep a little crystal dish in the fridge to collect my used citrus bits and every few days I recycle them in the bathroom or kitchen. (Yes, crystal, because doing the mundane is so much easier—and fun!—if you do it with pretty things. Fact.)

Interested in how?

Arancini Taorminesi and how I cook

{  Arancini, before  }

The first time I bit into an arancino it was a massive disappointment. I had finally arrived in Sicily via the overnight boat train from Reggio Calabria to Messina and then down the coastline to Taormina-Giardini Naxos before taking a bus up into the hilltop perch of Taormina proper.

The view, the streets, my goodness, the people!—it was all glorious, beautiful, magical.

But that first taste of Sicily in the form of an arancino obtained from the very first tavola calda my panicky, hunger-stricken eyes set upon, was oily, gummy, and burnt.

Years later I get a huge kick out of eating proper Sicilian, nay, Taorminesi, arancini made in my own house, by my very own Sicilian (procured on that initial trip). True, the view from my apartment isn't quite the same, but crunching on these rotund pockets of bliss without purchasing a plane ticket isn't too shabby, either.

Arancini take their name from arancia, the Italian word for "orange". These adorable, portly (and portable!) little balls of rice are filled with any number of things, depending on where you find yourself. They always have cooked rice and mozzarella/pecorino tucked inside, but the ingredients that come next vary—you might find ragù (tomato meat sauce) or béchamel or peas or eggplant or some combination of those, or something entirely different. Regardless of what's concealed within, arancini are true Sicilian street food, made to munch on while standing at a bar or a vendor's stall.

Other regions of Italy have similar balls of goodness, like Rome's suppli.

The arancini from R's hometown, though, are a wonder unto themselves, being filled with rice that's run through with pesto al pistachio, a heady pesto made from the famed pistachio of Bronte, near Mt. Etna. The nuttiness is spectacular.

But, they take a quite a lot of doing to create, especially at home with our very limited counter space, so it's not often that we have them. Thankfully, R has finally seen the beauty of making extra, so now he takes a portion of the formed arancini and wraps them for safekeeping in the freezer and we can enjoy his hard work for a few more weeks.

Which is how we came to be tucking into a plate of these this past Sunday evening.

{  Arancini, after with a handmade knit cotton napkin }

There was just enough for a flirty taste, so I tossed together a salad to accompany our dinner. The fridge was a little sparse, though, so I made do, which is how I cook. I'm not one to follow recipes—I typically get ideas and inspiration from them, but hardly ever wait until I have all the right ingredients, nor do I measure the ones I do have. I'm not afraid to substitute or estimate—sometimes it works out perfectly, but there have been some rather lackluster dishes to come out of my kitchen thanks to my lack of patience and unwillingness to follow someone else's directions.

That's okay, though—this salad was one of the winners: roughly chopped romaine + red onion marinated in an olive oil and white vinegar bath to mellow its sharpness + wedges of apricot + hefts of mozzarella + a few shreds of fresh chili + a generous grind of black pepper + a sprinkle of salt = the perfect accompaniment to the enveloping crunch of a well-made arancino.

Egg custard, or how to preserve a profusion of milk

{  Eggtastic custard cups  }

I do this thing where I check the price of something against the quantity, and then buy the best value. Usually that's not an issue...except when it comes to milk. We seem to go in phases of making coffee at home daily and not making coffee at home until the weekend. Since we really only use milk for coffee and the semi-regular weekend pancake-making / dessert-baking escapade, this can lead to quite a pickle (or, curdle) when neither of the two happens and we've got an expensive bottle of milk languishing on the fridge door.

Sometimes I get it together and freeze half, but sometimes everything comes to a head and I've got a bottle of milk that only has one day of freshness left, whether it was frozen or not, and I panic.

Which is how I came across the idea of making custard (thank you, Google!). After reading a bunch of different methods (with water bath, without water bath, with more eggs, with less eggs, with a cauldron of sweetener or less so), I threw some stuff in a bowl and jammed it in the oven with (burned) fingers crossed.

And, they came out really tastily!  So, if you find yourself in the same situation, or just with a hankering for some custard goodness, here you go:

makes 10 custard cups*
3 cups of milk
6 eggs
4 tablespoons of sweetener
1/2 teaspoon of vanilla
pinch of sea salt
cinnamon to sprinkle on top
ramekins that have been buttered/oiled

+ Preheat your oven to 350F.

+ Warm the milk on the stove until it's just before the boil while you beat the eggs with sweetener, vanilla and salt. Slowly pour in the hot milk, a little at a time so as not to curdle your eggs. Take a few pauses after each pour to whisk thoroughly. When all the milk is in you'll have a deliciously scented, frothy batch of vanilla goodness. Pour the custard into your ramekins and sprinkle a little bit of cinnamon on top.

+ Once you warm up some water for your water bath (which can be done earlier), you'll be ready to assemble your custards for cooking.

+ This next series of steps I can share with you thanks to two burned fingers (you're welcome): place your custard cups in a larger pan that will hold all of them, open the oven door, ever so slightly pull out the middle rack, lean in and place the ramekin-filled pan on the rack, slowly push the rack back and only then pour your hot water into the pan itself while wearing oven mitts. Doing it this way ensures you don't burn your hands once, let alone twice, and helps prevent sloshing any pan water into the ramekins as you carefully lower it into the oven (oops!).

+ I checked my custards at 20 minutes and they weren't firm yet, but they were perfect after 30.

These adorable little munchkins are best served slightly warm or completely chilled, just not piping hot. A rosy strawberry or two on the side would not be at all out of place. 

Note: I think this would be easy to adapt depending on your milk / egg situation. Just double the number of eggs you use to the number of cups of milk you have, or vice versa. So, 3 cups of milk = 6 eggs. 4 eggs = 2 cups of milk. For an ever-so-slightly sweetened custard, add in 1 more tablespoon of sweetener than cups of milk. In my case, 3 cups of milk = 4 tablespoons of Grade B organic maple syrup, although that might not be the right proportion if you use sweetener with a different potency, like agave or stevia.

Note 2: Next time I might warm my milk up with a pod or two of cardamom. I'm already sniffing the air in anticipation of that heady scent!

* depends on the size of ramekins you use, of course. Mine are about 1/4 cup. You could also just put the batter in a cake pan for one large custard if you don't have enough ramekins (or any at all).

Almond detritus

{  Starting with the best of intentions  |  How NOT to make almond butter  }

My ears are ringing like you wouldn't believe and I'm festering in a puddle of failure.

See, I had a few cups of almonds in the freezer and I wanted to make homemade almond butter. But, I made one huge mistake—which led to, what I hope is not permanent, tinnitus.

I've been reading about the benefit of activating nuts to make them easier to digest (which calls for soaking and then drying/dehydrating). So, I soaked my almonds overnight, rinsed them this morning (at 6:58AM—why so early, I have no idea), and then foolishly, foolishly, tossed them right into my blender to begin pulverizing.

Everything I had read online about homemade nut butters say you have to be patient, but at most it will take 10-15 minutes to go from a pile of nuts to smooth, creamy almond (or whichever-nut-have-you) butter. But, a cumulative 55 minutes later, I'm here to tell you, that is rubbish.

Well, rubbish if you do what I did, and soaked your nuts first without drying them properly afterwards.

After my first, mind-splitting 20-minute session, I dumped the nuts back out, spread them on a cookie sheet and put them in the oven to try and dry them out. While they were doing the shake-and-bake in the oven, I peeled and diced up some carrots to make carrot-coconut-buckwheat muffins (which thankfully turned out okay, so at least one success this Sunday morning).

When the almonds seemed as dry as I could get them, back in the blender they went, and another few anxiety-ridden, loud-as-hell, blasting-my-ears-off sessions in the Ninja later, I still had a pile of soft, kinda oily, almond mush. Nowhere near butter.

So my sad little almond clumps are now sitting in the fridge, to be turned into some sort of baked good later this week. And once my hearing has returned, I may try this again...with dry nuts.

Pitter-patter-y weekends

{  EEek! First big project!  |  May 2013  }

This weekend was one of those rare blocks of 48-hours that were entirely mine—all mine, mine, mine! With R working Saturday and Sunday, plus a nasty weather forecast, I gave myself permission to spend my weekend doting (almost) completely on myself.

On Saturday I cleaned the apartment, organized the fridge in anticipation of a huge grocery shop that I got to lovingly arrange the way I like (those first two might not seem very "dote-y", but I can't relax until everything is pretty and clean!), talked to my needy plants and fed them and arranged two huge new bouquets of fresh flowers (pink, lilac and white tulips in the living room and huge branches of stargazer lilies in our bedroom).

Then I spent a few hours of grumble-grumble-translating-grumble-grumble, followed by another few hours starting a new knitting project. This is my first "big" one (meaning, not a baby gift, winter accessory or home good), one that I had to measure myself for and poke at a calculator to figure out dimensions and gauge in order to not completely screw it up. I'm also finally starting to use the fancy yarn I bought back in March, but was too scared to use until now.

And that was basically the extent of Saturday.

Sunday I decided to completely give myself over to even more gluttony since I considered Saturday afternoon's annoying translating work to have infringed on my weekend of decadence, so I rolled out of bed and shuffled to the kitchen to concoct a ridiculous stack of almond flour + cacao pancakes, layered with alternating (so ridiculous) schmears of almond butter and cashew butter, with chunks of banana nestled in, too. A nice mug of coffee + cream completed the picture.

{  Almond flour, cashew butter, choco-banana pancakes + mug o'coffee  |  May 2013  }

Then, there was some reading of blogs, a little working out, talking with the family and more knitting (please note: the soundtrack to this entire weekend was nonstop episodes of an array of shows on Netflix + 1 movie). I also decided to make a nice dinner for R, which involved prepping a cute little chicken in the morning (I read that if you're roasting a chicken, you can get super crispy skin by salting the birdie and letting it rest uncovered in the fridge for as long as possible, up to 24 hours).

So I did that and set a proper table—baptizing the neutral-toned cotton napkins I knit for us after envying the fresh, nautical ones I made for my friend's birthday—and marinated some tomatoes and red onion for a burrata salad over mache.

When R came home I helped him out of his wet shoes and coat (totally unnecessary, but I figured he needed some decadence, too), shooed him into the candle-lit bathroom for a shower and then welcomed him to the couch for a cocktail (I had his whisky glass waiting) and chat before we sat down to dinner, and later, a movie.

{ Place setting with my new handknit napkins! }

{ Roast chicken + burrata salad }

Most definitely a delicious weekend—in every sense of the word.