Regensblog

I don’t think these should really even be considered cupcakes - they’re just astonishingly rich. Which is awesome. But I think they probably work better as individually-sized flourless chocolate cakes. I imagine they would rock with some raspberry sauce drizzled on top. I found the recipe here. I bought all of the ingredients for the accompanying frosting, but I can’t imagine the sugar shock the combo of these things and frosting would induce. They’re pretty easy to make, but there’s a lot of waiting and you have to make sure you have room available in the fridge.

1/2 c water
1/4 t salt
3/4 c white sugar
18 ozs bittersweet chocolate, chopped into pieces (I used 5 100g bars of 85% cocoa content chocolate)
1 c unsalted butter, room temperature
3 eggs
3 egg whites

Heat oven to 300° F/150° C. In a small saucepan over medium heat, combine water, salt and sugar until everything is dissolved and set aside. Melt the chocolate and pour it into the bowl of an electric mixer. Cut the butter into pieces and mix it into the chocolate one piece at a time. Next, beat in the hot sugar water. Finally, beat in the eggs and egg whites, one at a time. Pour batter into lined cupcake tin (it must be lined - these will not come out without cupcake papers), filling cups about 3/4 full. Place cupcake tin in a larger pan and fill the larger pan halfway with boiling water. Bake cupcakes in their bath for 30 minutes. Remove from oven (centers will look wet) and let them rest for about 15-20 minutes, then put the cupcake tin in the fridge. Don’t remove cupcakes from the tin until they’re cold - otherwise they will lose their shape.

This was a bit of a shocker. I just wanted to make something that involved a mustard sauce. I got the recipe originally from Recipezaar, but partially due to negligence and an inborn inability to follow directions, I tweaked it. So follow the link for the original - I’m posting here what I did. It looks kind of involved, but it comes together really quickly. I served it over egg noodles, but it might work with brown rice or a dark green vegetable like broccoli. The sauce was fabulous - I suggest 1.5ing or doubling it.

1 c crème fraîche
1 T whole grain mustard
1 t dijon mustard
1 t Colman’s dry mustard
1 T butter
1 T canola oil
1 onion, sliced thin
1 medium pork tenderloin (about 1 lb), trimmed and sliced thin
1 lb mushrooms, sliced thin
1/2 c chicken broth
1/2 t cornstarch
1/2 t ground black pepper
1/4 t tarragon

Whisk together crème fraîche and all three mustards in a small bowl and set aside. In a large skillet, heat butter and oil to medium and cook onions until just soft, about 3-5 minutes. Remove onions to plate and turn skillet up to high. When the pan starts to smoke a little, add the pork and quickly stir-fry (the thinner the pork is sliced, the faster this part goes). When the pork is still slightly pink in the centers, add the mushrooms and stir frequently. When the mushrooms just start to release their juices, add the onions back in. Stir the cornstarch into the chicken broth and add it to the skillet, letting it come to a rapid boil. After it boils for about a minute, add the pepper and tarragon, then turn the heat down to medium low and add the mustard mixture. Stir until just combined and heat through, but do not boil. Serve immediately.

We’ve been on a bit of a banana kick lately, I guess. This recipe was inspired by this one, but we changed it up by using half brown sugar and half white sugar. That concept came from our pal Andrea, whose chocolate chip cookies were the perfect mix between soft and squishy and dense and crunchy.

Anyhoo, here we go:

• 1/2 cup of unsalted butter, room temperature
• 1/2 cup of sugar
• 1/2 cup of brown sugar
• 1 egg, room temperature
• 1 cup of mashed bananas (about 3 large bananas)
• 1 teaspoon of baking soda
• 2 cups of flour
• pinch of salt
• 1/2 teaspoon of ground cinnamon
• 1/2 teaspoon of ground mace or nutmeg
• 1/2 teaspoon of ground cloves
• 1 cup of pecans (walnuts and chocolate chips are fine alternatives)

1. Preheat the oven to 350°F. Cream the butter and sugar and brown together until light and fluffy. Add the egg and continue to beat until the mixture is light and fluffy.

2. In a bowl, mix the mashed bananas and baking soda. Let sit for 2 minutes. The baking soda will react with the acid in the bananas which in turn will give the cookies their lift and rise.

3. Mix the banana mixture into the butter mixture. Mix together the flour, salt, and spices and sift into the butter and banana mixture and mix until just combined.

4. Fold into the batter the pecans or chocolate chips if using. Drop in dollops onto parchment paper-lined baking sheet. Bake for 11-13 minutes or until nicely golden brown. Let cool on wire racks.

Makes about 30 cookies.

Actually for us, it made exactly 3 dozen. Not sure how that happened; our recipes generally yield fewer cookies/muffins/whatevers than promised. But these are good — really good. I think I like them even better than banana bread or banana muffins due to the ease of distribution (I’m taking a few to work tomorrow and publicizing this here and now ensures that they’ll survive the night) and greatly reduced risk of loss due to crumbs from slicing or peeling (i.e., muffin liners).

Waffnergasse 6 - 8
93047 Regensburg

Telefon +49 (0)941 / 28 04 33 - 0
http://www.fuerstlichesbrauhaus.de

Cliff likes to show off his mad baking skillz to his coworkers from time to time. The hardest part about this was waiting for the bananas to ripen.

2 c flour
1 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp salt
1/2 c butter
3/4 c brown sugar
2 eggs, lightly beaten
1 tsp vanilla
2 1/3 c bananas, mashed (about 4)
1/2 c walnuts, chopped

Preheat oven to 350° F. Combine first three ingredients and set aside. Cream butter and brown sugar together. Stir in egg, vanilla and bananas. Add banana mixture to dry ingredients until just combined. Stir in nuts. Pour batter into 9×5 loaf pan and bake for 60-65 minutes or until toothpick comes out clean.

When we lived in the U.S., we never used to go to ethnic groceries of any sort. We weren’t opposed to it, per se; we didn’t cook very much and when we did, it was rarely from scratch. And if we wanted Chinese/Mexican/Lebanese/Cajun, we went to a restaurant. As our recipe archive demonstrates, things have changed. I’m at the China Laden (Asian market) at least once a week picking up things you just can’t find in the supermarket - soft brown sugar, cilantro, good curry pastes, soy sauce, etc. This past weekend, Cliff came with me and, while looking at the noodle wall, we balked at the price of a package of ramen - 0,80€!! That’s about $1.20! Considering that legions of broke college students lived off the stuff at one time or another, that seems like highway robbery. And makes it very attractive. All of a sudden, ramen sounds delicious.

There are things that we miss every so often that are kind of cheapo, pre-fab…well, just crap really. And right now that thing is ramen noodles. With a little inspiration from a pal, some creativity and an assist from the noodle wall (package of 5 blocks of ramen noodles, sans flavor packets=1,20€), we managed to sate the craving. About half a liter of boiling water with about 1 heaping tablespoon of powdered vegetable broth, a pinch of ground ginger and half a teaspoon of dark soy added plus one block of noodles cooked for about 3 minutes is nearly a dead-ringer for Top Ramen Oriental flavor soup.

It’s considerably more expensive than the pre-packaged stuff, but it doesn’t taste like it. Which is fine with us.

Sarah got me an aspirin book several months ago (Aspirin: the remarkable story of a wonder drug) from the local half-price bookshop. It spans aspirin’s history from ancient Egyptian/Sumerian times to the present with large portions devoted to political and economic implications of scientific and market research. Fascinating stuff, if a bit dry.

We learn early on about willow bark compounds and the salicylic acid they contain which acts as a pain reliever but must be combined with other chemicals to made ingestible (for most people) without nasty side effects. But the real mind-blower comes in the last couple pages, after taking us through two and a half centuries of politics and economics and hopeful science. We come back to the salicylic acid that started it all. It’s not only found in willow bark, but also in lots of fruits and vegetables. Or at least it was — maybe it’s not so prevalent anymore. Its function is to help diseased parts of the bodies commit suicide before causing infection to the rest of the plant. But breeding crops to be resistant to disease or controlling environmental aspects through pesticides may have resulted in lower salicylic acid levels in the foods we ingest — which makes you wonder whether our industrial farming has deprived us of cancer-fighting abilities. After all, in theory, a cancerous cell is one that goes haywire and fails to commit suicide before coming a danger to the rest of the organism. Great food for thought.*

Speaking of food for thought, Sarah and I spotted this sexy loaf and were so intrigued we I just had to buy it. I’d been thinking about a loaf of this stuff before seeing the packaging, and that sealed the deal for me. It’s the kind of stuff my great-grandfather’s brother used to bake himself. It’s got so many nuts and seeds and stuff in the “dough” of the bread (if you can call it that) that a 500g package is only a few inches deep. Dense stuff.

The odd thing is, there’s nothing at all on the packaging we could find that hinted in the least as to what the embracing couple on the front has to do with the product on this inside. Weird, huh? Still, this brand was much cheaper than other similar ones in the same aisle. I made a bologna sandwich out of it (well, as much as I could — Mortadella is a close bologna approximation) and it was good, but not that good.

Yesterday the second and final day of Purim. So we made latkes! We only do this once or twice per year, and this weekend just felt right. The actual holiday of Purim coinciding with our jones was just serendipity.

Monday we’re instructing pals Andrea and Alex and Benjamin (and her parents, and their neighbors) in the fine art of Shawarma. Along with that, we’ll be preparing tabbouleh (they go so nicely together). We seldom take our show on the road, so wish us luck.