Chive and Gruyere Popovers

Wow!  It's been too long since I've posted.  I am still cooking, but finding time to post has been challenging.  I have a bunch of recipes and pictures saved up, so hopefully I'll be able to post a bunch of them before classes start again.

I might have to change the name of this blog to The Perfect Popover as there are now more popover recipes than dumpling ones!  I didn't grow up eating popovers, so I'm not sure why I really wanted to start making them.  The name just makes them sound delicious.  Now I have a popover pan; I need to put it to good use.  I was disappointed with my last popover outing, but I decided to try my hand at popovers again.

This time, I used a basic recipe from Epicurious because one reviewer said her 10-year-old kid made them, and they were delicious.  I added the chives and cheese to make them a bit more interesting, and everything's better with cheese!  I saw that different popover recipes had different egg to flour ratios, so I made this recipe twice in the last two weeks.  My husband voted for the ratio in the source recipe based on his excellent tastetesting skills.

Any suggestions for more popover flavorings?  I think I have to make a bunch more popovers before that pan pays for itself!

Chive and Gruyere Popovers
based on a recipe from epicurious.com


1 tablespoons unsalted butter cut into 6 pieces
2 large eggs, lightly beaten, at room temperature
1 cup whole milk, at room temperature
1 cup all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon sugar
1 tablespoon minced chives
1 ounce Gruyere cheese, shredded

1. Preheat the oven to 400° F for 20 minutes. Place 1 piece of butter in the bottom of each cup of a six-cup popover tin (or six 1/2-cup custard cups). Place the popover pan on a baking sheet.
2. In a smaller bowl, lightly whisk the eggs until they change color. Whisk in the milk.
3. In a medium bowl, whisk together the flour and salt until well blended. Gently whisk the egg mixture into the flour mixture until only small lumps are left, and set aside.
4. Place the popover tin and baking sheet in the oven for 4 minutes. At 3 minutes, give the batter a light whisk and add chives. 
5. Using an oven mitt, remove the hot tin from the oven and immediately divide the batter among the prepared cups. Evenly divide shredded cheese and sprinkle on top of each cup.  
6. Bake for 25 minutes without opening the oven door. Serve immediately.

Yield: 6 popovers

Total time: about an hour, half active

More Adventures in Baking: Applesauce Spice Cake

I'm not much of a baker. I don't have the world's biggest sweet tooth, but I think it has more to do with the precision required for baking and the inability to adjust seasonings during the baking process. You don't know if you won't like the recipe until it's done and out of the oven!

Thankfully there are a bunch of web sites and blogs out there for people to comment on what's good and bad about certain recipes, often offering ideas on how to tweak to your taste. That was the case for this applesauce cake.

I started looking for apple cake recipes back when our CSA was giving us 20 apples a week, and we were struggling to keep up. However, I was surprised to find that most apple cake recipes didn't have many or sometimes any cut apples in them! I'm guessing that cooks prefer the consistent consistency of applesauce rather than wrestling with the water and sugar contents of different varieties of apples. Anyway, now that I don't have piles of apples to consume or give away, I was tempted to try one of the recipes I came across during my apple cake recipe hunt.

Based on the comments from other cooks, I decided to do away with the icing since it sounded unnecessary and a bit of a pain. I had to do a good bit of googling before figuring out some substitutions. First, I forgot to take the butter out to soften an hour before I started, but I picked up a great tip from Simply Recipes to put the butter between two sheets of wax paper and roll/beat it soft with a rolling pin. It was warm and soft in no time! The original recipe called for turbinado sugar and rum., but I didn't have either of them. Thankfully the internet quickly found light brown sugar and rum flavoring to be appropriate substitutes.

The cake isn't very sweet, but I love the spice flavors in it. I'm going to attribute that to my efforts with the nutmeg! I went out and bought whole nutmeg for the first time rather than substituting ground nutmeg from the jar. It was kind of fun to grate the nutmeg seed, but it'll probably take me a lifetime to go through the whole jar of nutmeg seeds I bought. I better start looking for more recipes that call for nutmeg!

Happy New Year to everyone!

Applesauce Spice Cake

adapted from Fernando's Hideway in Grenadines via Gourmet Magazine via epicurious

1-1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
1 teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg
1/4 teaspoon ground cloves
1/2 teaspoon ground ginger
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 cup light brown sugar
1 stick (1/2 cup) unsalted butter, softened
1/2 teaspoon rum flavor
1 large egg
1 cup unsweetened applesauce
Confectioners sugar

Place oven rack in middle position and preheat oven to 350°F. Butter pan and set aside.

Whisk together flour, baking soda, spices, and salt in a bowl.

Beat together sugar, butter, and rum flavoring with an electric mixer at medium-high speed until combined well, then add egg and beat until pale and fluffy, 2 to 3 minutes with a stand mixer or 5 to 6 minutes with a handheld.

Reduce speed to low and add dry ingredients, mixing until combined well. Add applesauce and mix until combined well. Spread batter evenly in 10-inch springform pan and bake until a wooden pick or skewer comes out clean, 30 to 35 minutes.

Cool cake in pan on a rack for 10 minutes, then remove side of pan and cool completely. Sift confectioners sugar over cake before serving.

Yield: 8 to 10 servings
Active Time: 30 minutes
Total Time: 60 minutes

Adventures in baking: "Simplest" apple tart

I'm not a baker. I'm not that great at following recipe instructions, and I'm not sure why. I'm more of a savory cook, preferring not to measure and just play and taste; that's what I do most nights with a recipe as a guide for general ingredients and cook times.

So, why am I baking today? My fruit CSA has been giving us apples, apples, and more apples every week. My husband and I have been trying to keep up, but we've been failing miserably. I took out my faithful How to Cook Everything by Mark Bittman and looked up "apples" in the index and found "Simplest Apple Tart". That sounded promising, but somehow I forgot how much I suck at baking.

The transferring of the crust into the pan was a complete disaster. I tried to fold it onto the rolling pin, but it started breaking apart. My cries for help went unheeded as my husband was sitting 10 feet away with his headphones on playing Starcraft 2.

Here's a picture of what the rolled out crust looked like after I tried to transfer it to the pan:


Luckily, it still looked like this in the end:



Maybe baking is more forgiving than I thought.

I've highlighted in red all the steps I skipped/forgot, but luckily, it still came out okay.

Rich Tart Crust
adapted from Mark Bittman's How to Cook Everything

1-1/2 cups all-purpose flour, plus more as needed
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 tablespoons sugar
10 tablespoons cold unsalted butter, cut into 10 pieces
2 egg yolks, plus more as needed
3 tablespoons ice water, plus 1 tablespoon if needed

1. Combine the flour, salt, and sugar in the container of a food processor; pulse once or twice. Add the butter and turn on the machine; process until the butter and flour and blended and the mixture looks like cornmeal,a bout 10 seconds. Add the egg yolks and process another few seconds.

2. Place the mixture in a bowl and sprinkle 3 tablespoons of water over it. Use a wooden spoon or a rubber spatula to gradually gather the mixture into a ball; if the mixture is dry, add another tablespoon of ice water. When you can make the mixture into a ball with your hands, do so. Wrap in plastic, flatten into a small disk, and freeze the dough for 10 minutes (or refrigerate for 30 minutes); this will ease rolling. You can also refrigerate the dough for a day or two, or freeze it almost indefinitely.

3. You can roll the dcough between two sheets of plastic wrap, usually quite successfully; sprinkle both sides of it with a little more flour, then proceed. Or sprinkle a countertop or large board with flour. Unwrap the dough and place it on the work surface; sprinkle its top with flour. If the dough is hard, let it rest for a few minutes; it should give a little when you press your fingers into it.

4. Roll with light pressure, from the center out. If the dough seems very sticky at first, add a little flour, but if it becomes sticky while you're rolling, return it to the refrigerator for 10 minutes before proceeding. Continue to roll, adding flour as necessary, rotating the dough occasionally, and turning it over once of twice. When the diameter of the dough is about 2 inches greater than that of your tart pan, move the dough into the pan by draping it over the rolling pin or by folding it into quarters, then unfolding it unto the pan. Sounds easy, doesn't it? When the dough is in the pan, press it firmly into the bottom, sides, and junction of bottom and sides.

5. Before filling, freeze the dough for 20 minutes (or refrigerate it for 1 hour).

Simplest Apple Tart
adapted from Mark Bittman's How to Cook Everything

1 recipe Rich Tart Crust, well chilled
2 to 3 pounds tart apples, such as McIntosh
1 tablespoon freshly squeezed lemon juice
2 tablespoons sugar
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1 tablespoon unsalted butter
1/3 cup strained raspberry preserves
1 tablespoon water

1. Preheat over to 4325 degrees Fahrenheit. Prick the crust all over with a fork. Line it with tin foil and weight the bottom with a pile of dried beans or rice. Bake 15 minutes or until shell is no longer raw but still pale. Remove from oven, and reduce the heat to 375 degrees F, and carefully remove the weight and foil. Set the shell aside to cool.

2. Peel and core the apples, and then cut them in 1/8 inch slices. Toss them with lemon juice so they don't brown. Arrange the apple slices in concentric circles in the the tart shell, with the circles overlapping. Sprinkle with sugar and cinnamon, then dot with butter. Place the tart pan on a baking sheet and bake until apples are quite soft (a knife will pierce them easily) but still hold their shape, about 40 minutes. Cool on a rick for about 20 minutes before glazing.

3. To glaze: While the tart is cooling, warm strained preserves with 1 tablespoon water in a small saucepan over medium-low heat, until thinned. Brush the top of the tar with this mixture. Serve at room temperature.