As part of the lore of baking, I had always heard or read that once you combine the baking leavening agent (baking powder or baking soda) with any wet ingredients, you’ve got to bake it right away. Because the leavening will do its thing and die otherwise. Well, there’s something wrong with that reasoning, because this recipe, for a make-ahead coffee cake – WITH both baking powder and baking soda contained in it, can sit overnight in the refrigerator and in the morning it bakes and rises just fine. How come? I don’t know. Maybe somebody with more of a cooking chemistry background can answer the question!

Over the years that my DH has been in his men’s Bible study group, whenever it’s his turn to host, I scramble to find something that will work. Usually I have to bake something the day before and Dave reheats it in the oven for a short time in the morning, or I’ve gotten up at some really unreasonable hour in order to prepare and bake something so it’s ready to serve by 6:45 am. But neither option has been ideal. So when I saw this recipe online recently I knew I’d make this the next time Dave hosts the group.

This makes two 9-inch (round or 8-inch square ones) pans of coffeecake. You can halve it, as I did, but the other option is to freeze one of them in batter form (up to a month) and just add 10 minutes to the baking time when you bake it from a frozen state. I mean, is that easy, or what?

Leave it to the folks at Cook’s Illustrated (aka America’s Test Kitchen, Cook’s Country) to develop a make-ahead bakery item that works. I subscribe to an email from Cook’s Illustrated (although I don’t pay for an online subscription, just the magazine) and it was sent out with one of them, and the recipe was available then. Not now. I printed it out back then, but did find it online at another site also. But, back to how the make-ahead part works. I pulled out my favorite reference book On Food and Cooking: The Science and Lore of the Kitchen by Harold McGee. It says that using cream of tartar releases 2/3 of its leavening power within 2 minutes of mixing. But if the acid (whatever it is in the batter that provides acid – like buttermilk, yogurt, brown sugar, molasses, fruit juices, vinegar and even chocolate) is not very soluble (so that would likely be yogurt, brown sugar, molasses – not the more liquid of the acids), then it can be held for awhile and only when it’s baked does the leavening begin to work.  Baking powder, on the other hand, is called “double-acting” because it does have some part of it that activates when you mix the batter together, but the other part doesn’t release until it’s in the oven. The book also says that in the restaurant business there is a type of baking powder that contains slow-release acids just so the leavening action doesn’t dissipate while the batter sits, before it’s baked. I’ll have to look at Surfas, the mostly pro cookware and foodstuffs store in Los Angeles, to see if they carry such a thing. Probably in 10 pound boxes. Uhm, no thank you.

So, back to this coffee cake. It was simple enough to prepare, really. I made half a recipe because my freezer is full to the brim. I found the batter to be stiffer than expected, so had a hard time spreading it. In the picture at left – the dough layer in the left-hand photo – you can see where I had to use my fingers to kind of spread it out. On the right side shows the nut streusel on the top. I ended up using my finger to kind of chop off  little globs of batter all over. Then I dampened my fingers with water and spread it out (the water helps the batter from sticking to your fingers). Then you spread the non-nut streusel in the middle. Then the other half of the batter goes on top. I did the same thing with dampened fingers to spread it out. Then the nut enhanced streusel goes on the top and it’s refrigerated. My DH got up at 5:30 so he could bake this. He just had to take the foil cover off the top of the cake pan and pop it in the oven for 45 minutes. It does need to cool for at least 15 minutes before serving. One interesting note about the streusel – the recipe has you make the sugar-flour-cinnamon combo and divide it in half. Half of it gets nuts, which goes on the top only. The info says that in their testing of this recipe they found that the steam the nuts produced in the oven made the batter/dough around them soggy. Interesting, I thought.

And the taste – really good! There are crusty parts on it (from the streusel), which made for good taste contrast. Next time I think I’ll add some cocoa powder in with the streusel – just because I like it. The cinnamon was subtle and I think it could be pumped up a bit. The cake rose perfectly in the oven – amazing! It didn’t look like it was in any way stunted because of overnight refrigeration. Yes, I’d make this again if only because of the ease of it!

A year ago: Leek & Turnip Puree
Two years ago: Shiitake-Crusted Chicken

Maybe you don’t need another breakfast idea. Maybe you always – every day – make time for a balanced breakfast, so if so, you don’t need to read this post. Most mornings we eat the same breakfast. But on an occasional morning Dave is out and I don’t usually feel like “cooking,” so if I have the ingredients, here’s what I make:

What’s in there? Diced up peeled apple, cottage cheese, some sweetener (I use Splenda but you can use sugar or honey, or nothing at all), some chopped walnuts (or any kind of nut, but walnuts are my favorite) and a little sprinkle of cinnamon. That’s it. Simple. Takes about 5 minutes to make it, and about 5 or more minutes to eat it. I’m getting some protein (cottage cheese and nuts), some dairy (cottage cheese) and some fruit. It’s good on fiber, low on carbs (the apples provide both), and quite satisfying. The idea came from a former employee, Nancy, who used to eat this at her desk first thing in the morning. She’d make it at home, then start working at her desk and would dip into her bowl nearby. I don’t make it often, but it’s certainly easy.

So, I was filing the other day. Filing recipes. You see, running a food blog gives the writer/owner free license to save infinitely more recipes than she ever did before. My stack of to-try recipes continues to explode, and if I don’t keep on top of it it would be out of control in a matter of a few months. At least I have a system. About 2 years ago I started a new regime – a recipe just HAS to jump out at me telling me it needs to be prepared. If it doesn’t yell at me that way, it doesn’t get clipped, copied or saved. I go through all the cooking magazines with scissors, pen and Scotch tape near me. If a recipe makes the cut, it’s clipped right then and put into the to-try pile. And the magazine goes out in the trash bin right away. The only exception to that rule is around holiday time when I might want to look at the magazine for ideas.

But, it’s only every couple of months that I get around to putting all those saved recipes into some binders I keep here in my kitchen. I save recipes from food blogs too. Lots of them, actually. This cooking community of food bloggers is a veritable treasure trove. And one learns that if you like one blogger’s recipes, you may like many from that blogger. I subscribe to Cook’s Illustrated, and one thing I really like is reading the commentary by the food developer about how he/she came to the final result. Like less salt, omit the sugar. Bake 5 minutes less. You know what I mean. And I like to read the final descriptive phrase about every recipe. If there’s not one – like “gee, this was a sensational dish at my dinner table,” “the final result was just perfect,” or “I’ll be making this again and again,” then I may go right on past.

Therefore, I’ve learned that I really like a lot of the recipes blogged by Cheryl Sternman Rule, over at 5 Second Rule. Cheryl is a food pro, and a very interesting and entertaining writer too. I always enjoy her stories. (I also admire her photography, but that’s another story.) So when I read this particular story last year I immediately saved the recipe. It went into the to-try file. So wouldn’t you know it, I was filing and this recipe just popped up in my hands and said “fix me today.”

What appealed to me about this recipe was that although these are pancakes, they’re composed mostly of protein (eggs and cottage cheese). The batter contains next to no binder (flour), so it’s a higher protein meal than a carb one. And the story, about how Cheryl came by this recipe (from a family acquaintance who attended her wedding, but it was passed on to Cheryl’s mother-in-law who prepared them often) just made these pancakes all the more endearing to me. They’re an Eastern European invention, called siriniki.

So, here’s the gist: you whip egg whites to stiff peaks with some cream of tartar, then set it aside. Then you mix the egg yolks, full-fat cottage cheese, a pinch of salt and a tiny bit of flour, then you combine the two. Carefully, since you don’t want to deflate the soft, tender stiff peaked-egg whites. Then you gently scoop small amounts of batter out on a nonstick skillet, slightly elongating each glob (you don’t want them to be too thick or they won’t cook properly) and cook them for 2-3 minutes per side. Then serve immediately with maple syrup.

You don’t have to use any butter in the nonstick pan. You don’t need any butter on the finished pancakes either. They’re perfect just as they are, but add some real honest-to-goodness maple syrup and you’ll be transported. Cheryl calls these Cottage Cheese Pancakes, but I added the souffle part because these pancakes are ever-so light in texture. They rise quite a bit, actually, but they’re SO tender. These are a must-fix. So there’s my analysis. And if you read my blog regularly, then you can take my word for it. These are worth making, even though you’ll use more than a few bowls and things in the making. Well worth the effort. We had them for lunch, actually, but ideally they’d make a delightful family breakfast anytime.

Aren’t these cute? I bought a new silicone pan the other day – I probably should have placed something in the picture so you could see the relative size of these little guys. They’re small – about 1-inch square. A little bigger than bite-sized. These are lemon and ginger mini-muffins. With a tart lemon glaze on top. The recipe is from an old Bon Appetit, but is credited to the Baldpate Inn in Estes Park, Colorado. I made a couple of changes to the recipe – I added some minced crystallized ginger to the batter and I added the lemon glaze on top. An easy recipe, really. A mixer is not needed, as everything is stirred up by  hand. They’re good. Maybe not sensational, but tasty. My only caution is to not overwork the batter – you know how muffin batters are – they don’t like to be over-handled. Just mix it up until the streaks of flour have disappeared. You can make these in regular muffin tins (in a paper liner) too – that’s how the original recipe makes them.

A year ago: Turkey Meatballs
Two years ago: Gingerbread Pudding Cake

Does that look yummy, or what? It’s so pretty. Extra flavorful. Easy to make, although you must concoct three different mixtures – the cake batter, the pumpkin and dried cranberry middle and the nut streusel for the top. They’re layered in a springform pan and that’s all there is to it.

Reading Canela y Comino’s blog, she raved – with lots of superlatives – in the write-up about this coffeecake. Since pumpkin in just about anything is “my cup of tea,” there was no question I’d be making it. My DH was having his Bible study guys here, so it was a perfect occasion to make it. Festive for the holidays.

The cake batter is a normal type – this one contains buttermilk (I used whole-milk yogurt because that’s what I had on hand). The recipe calls for pumpkin pie spice. I don’t keep that combo in my spice pantry, so just added my own mixture of cinnamon, nutmeg, allspice and cloves, in descending quantities. If you make your own as I did, do note that there is pumpkin pie spice in both the cake batter and the streusel.

The pumpkin was Libby’s canned. And I used walnuts in the streusel, just because I didn’t have any pecans on hand.  I didn’t take photos of all the different processes (but if you go to Gretchen’s blog, she has photos of every step). The pumpkin layer, although not all that much quantity, really (it starts with a cup of canned pumpkin), does give you almost a pumpkin-pie type consistency. But it’s thin as you can see in the photo above and right. You place half the cake batter on the bottom, the pumpkin in the middle, blobs of the cake batter on top of that (which must be carefully spread out to the edges) then the nut streusel generously sprinkled on top. The recipe indicated the cake should be baked for about 60-65 minutes. I did 60, poked my cake tester in it in several places. What I didn’t do was poke the tester right in the center. Once the cake cooled, I discovered it was still doughy in the middle, so it likely should have baked another 10 minutes. The other option would be to bake this in a bundt pan for about 50-55 minutes (my guess on time).

So, if you’ve still got some pumpkin lurking in your pantry, this is a winner. Try it! Gretchen says the recipe came from a cookbook (magazine maybe?), Holiday Baking, 2009.

A year ago: Panettone bread
Two years ago: Salmon with Maple Syrup and Thyme

This was SO good. And it looked like more work than I’d ordinarily want to do. I didn’t make this myself, but it was served to me at a recent cooking class. A class with nothing but Julia Child recipes. Phillis Carey taught the class, and made only a couple of tiny changes to Julia’s recipes, but this was just delish. It’s ideal for a sit-down lunch, if you do such things, or probably a brunch would be perfect. Could be done for a dinner, but it’s rich and filling, so you wouldn’t want anything else very substantial in addition to this. My friend Cherrie and I talked about doing it for a brunch, but it would be best if somebody else could/would help you with some of the work. Either with the soufflé, or with the other parts of the meal, like the fruit plate you might want to have, or the champagne cocktails. How’s that sound?

So what’s a fallen soufflé? Nothing but a soufflé that’s allowed to fall, which it will do all by itself if you just leave it alone. You do do the whipped egg whites folded into your egg mixture, it’s baked flat on a large baking sheet, turned out of the pan onto a flat surface. In that short time, the soufflé falls some – not so flat as scrambled egg-like, but it’s not as high as it is when it first exits the oven. Once briefly cooled, it’s stuffed with a Béchamel-rich spinach sauce (a Béchamel sauce is really just a cream sauce) and rolled. Then cut and served immediately, while it’s hot. In the photo above, there is an egg part underneath the spinach, it’s just that there was so much spinach it kind of rolled out the side. Notice how nice and fluffy the egg layer is.

If the meal didn’t require too much other work (like maybe a green salad and bread) this could be accomplished easily enough. The spinach and sauce can both be made ahead of time and reheated. It’s the soufflé part that can’t be even mixed ahead. Eggs are temperamental things – once they’re puffed up with air, they need to be cooked right away. Everything could be mis en place (ingredients put together on a tray, all ready). The baking sheet, buttered, parchment papered and buttered, all the whisks, whips bowls and mixers ready.

The Béchamel sauce is thicker than usual – in order to hold together the filling. Half of it goes into the soufflé, and the other half is used for the spinach filling. So there’s really only one sauce to make. The filling is not all that difficult – it uses frozen spinach, and you buy the Black Forest ham and cube it up quite small. So this dish is really do-able as long as you plan the menu accordingly.

A year ago: Goat Cheese Potato Gratin

Last weekend I enjoyed spending time with my friend Linda. She lives in Carlsbad, about halfway between where we live and San Diego, the town where I grew up. She has an adorable condo with an ocean view. We talked and talked and talked. She loves to travel, and has accompanied us on a trip to France and one to Italy (both times we rented villas for about 10 people and had a fun group, fun time). She just returned from a safari trip to Africa, and had exciting tales to tell about her adventures. She brought me a gift – a set of giraffe salad tongs and some cute giraffe small spoons for appetizers. Really useful and a conversation piece!

Other than shopping and having a nice dinner out one night at a place in Hillcrest, we just enjoyed one another’s company and talked. Linda’s a very good cook – I have several recipes of hers on this blog, including Bombay Chicken, Corned Beef & Cabbage, and her delish Carrot Cake. Now I have another one. Linda had prepared a pasta dish for us on Friday night, and on Saturday morning we lazed around for awhile enjoying several cups of coffee.

On her recent trip to Africa, she purchased an espresso set that just is SO adorable. I covet this little set. I’m going to hunt around on the internet and see if anybody has such things. She paid about $70 for the set in Capetown. As you can see, it’s decorated in bright, vibrant colors, with pictures of a guinea fowl on the side of each. Heaven knows what it would cost to ship, but I’m going to look anyway. In this picture, that little cup on the left full of espresso was consumed moments after I snapped the picture.

So, back to breakfast. Linda whipped up this nice egg dish for us on Saturday morning, and we had the leftovers the next morning, just reheated in the microwave. I know I’ve had this before, some years ago. It’s not a new recipe, or anything unusual. Just canned green chiles, eggs, cheese, butter and cottage cheese. Also a bit of flour and baking powder. It doesn’t take long to whip this together, but it does need to be prepared just before baking. You can’t let a baking powder mixture get wet and then sit. Once it gets wet, it needs to do its thing soon, otherwise it just gives out, dies.

A year ago: Salmon with Parsnips
Two years ago: Butternut Squash Fries

When our son, Powell, met Karen (now his wife), his cooking mostly went onto the back burner (pun intended), since Karen is a VERY good cook. But on special occasions (like Mother’s Day, for instance) he prepared one of his now family-popular dishes, the above pictured coconut french toast. He came up with the idea himself – he’s quite innovative about cooking, when he puts his mind to it. And we, the family, get to eat the benefits of his creativity on those occasions when he does the cooking.

First off, he uses King’s Hawaiian Bread for this. In case you live in King’s-deprived areas, it’s just a very rich, tender eggy bread. And quite sweet as sliced bread goes. King’s also makes dinner rolls (I use the rolls for beef sliders, and the sliced bread for a pineapple upside down baked french toast dish I’ve been making for years for holiday breakfasts). But if you can’t buy a similar kind of sugar-sweetened sliced bread, use whatever you CAN get and I’m sure it will be fine. You might just add a bit of sugar or sweetened to the milk-egg mixture, where he uses a combination of light coconut milk and sweetened condensed milk. He dips the bread into this mixture, browns the slices on a stovetop grill and serves them with a mango sauce he makes using fresh mangos and lime juice. Then he sprinkles some sweetened coconut on top. Although this dish is sweet, it’s not overly sweet. And it’s gosh-darned good. Thank you, Powell, for sharing the recipe!

A year ago: Steamed Pureed Cauliflower
Two years ago: Hashed Brown Casserole

Oh, are these a winner. Exceptional breakfast or brunch food. Easy. And amazingly delicious with the pesto and mozzarella, and the little cooked tomato, and the ham. Well, just everything about it is good. I read about this over at Proud Italian Cook, a blog I read regularly. Marie found it in a new cookbook called Gale Gand’s Brunch. Gale Gand used to have a series on the Food Network, years ago, called Sweet Dreams. She’s primarily a pastry chef, and owns (I think) the restaurant called Tru in Chicago.

But, seeing a picture of these on Marie’s blog, I was smitten. I haven’t spotted this new cookbook yet, but may have to go check it out at the local bookstore. If this recipe is any representation of what’s in the cookbook, I’ll have to buy it!

Right out of the oven, without the pesto topping (yet)

Here’s what you do: buy some thinly-sliced deli ham. At my Italian market, the big round ham was Black Forest. Perfect. You need fairly big (not thick, but big in diameter) slices of ham. The recipe indicated making these in ramekins, but Marie had altered it for muffin cups, which worked fine for my needs anyway. So, you butter the ramekins or muffin tins, then gently fan the ham slice in the muffin cup, pressing it out so there’s a nice big hollow in the middle (it’s a little hard to do this, but you don’t have to be precise about it). You smear a bit of pesto in the bottom, then add in a couple of nice-sized cubes of mozzarella cheese, a small cherry tomato, then crack in an egg. Sprinkle with salt and pepper, bake. The recipe indicated 20 minutes or more, but in a 350 oven (lower than the recipe indicated), when I did them it took 27 minutes. Just keep checking and jiggling the muffin pan a bit. Pull them out when they still jiggle just a small amount. If you wait until they no longer jiggle, they’re overdone.

Once baked, you merely add another dollop of pesto on top. Serve immediately while they’re still perfectly cooked. The ham I bought was quite big, so you notice that the upper edges burned a bit. Next time I’ll trim them down. But I’ll definitely be making these again – great for a brunch with guests. It takes very little time to put it all together, and if you had another pair of hands, it would come together in a jiffy.

Note added later: I made these again – for dinner one night. I still had two slices of ham leftover from the Mother’s Day brunch, and was able to put this together in no time flat. The ham worked much better in ramekins rather than the muffin tin. I also used 2 eggs each. I cut up the cheese in slightly smaller pieces and put them around the outside edges as best I could. I also used two tomatoes, both cut in half and stood them up with the cut sides against the ham (looked nicer), on opposing sides. Then I dropped in the pesto and the raw eggs. The eggs baked in slightly less time, but I removed them BEFORE they got too done. This was a winner the second time around.

A year ago: Molten Chocolate Cake with Caramel Sauce
Two years ago: Baked Onions with Thyme (another family favorite)

Needing to make something for my DH’s men’s morning Bible Study group last week, I scanned through some new possibilities and spotted this one. We have chives in the garden, I had sharp cheddar, and a new stash in the freezer of some good, thick bacon. These scones came together very quickly. You can substitute green onion TOPS for the chives if you’d prefer. I might reduce the amount of bacon next time, but make sure you chop up the bacon into very small pieces – I didn’t, so had bacon pieces kind of sticking out the sides.

The dough is a very basic scone dough – this one done by hand rather than in a food processor. I chopped up the butter into cubes and mashed them into the dough as instructed. It’s a rich dough – made with heavy cream and a little bit of butter, then you mix in the add-ins and pat it out on a floured surface. I used some new square biscuit cutters I purchased recently, baked them in nothing flat and froze them overnight so they’d be super-fresh in the morning. These were delicious, particularly so if you like bacon. If you don’t, don’t add it in. The cheese and chives or onions would be sufficient. These would go well with a brunch AND would be downright wonderful with a big bowl of soup or chili. Each scone is very large (and the calories indicate such) so if you’d like smaller, that should be no problem. Just bake a minute or two less time. I’ve made a change to this recipe – one important line about mixing in the butter was missing. Below is the correct version.

A year ago: Mashed Potatoes with Shallots & Truffle Oil
Two years ago: Ribeye Steaks with Amazing Glaze(a real fav at our house – my DH’s favorite way with grilled steaks)