Cat and Sue Cook Together for Once,Volume 8: Lemon Cake with White Chocolate Swiss Buttercream Frosting and Blueberries

These were actually Sue’s birthday cupcakes (which was now over a month ago, and we’re still writing about it, because we cooked a lot and because we are blogging slackers apparently), but the title was already really long.  I made the cake part, and frosted them and decorated them, but Sue made the frosting which was hands down the best part.  It’s kind of a high-touch frosting, as my boss might say; part meringue which requires you to temper the eggwhites and whatnot, it seems like a lot more work than I would ever, ever do.  Which is why Sue made it, because she’s better at complicated cooking.  These were a classic Sue choice; one of the things she has in common with my mom is that she never met a lemon-flavored thing she didn’t like.  Another thing is a fairly nasty right hook.

So, the cake.  The truth is, I was in a hurry when I made these, so I found a recipe online, with the caveat that it include real lemon juice (I was going to put in a whole mess of lemon zest either way) and that it have buttermilk, because I like what buttermilk does to cake.  For the record, I gave not one iota of attention to the whole “baking at high altitude” concern.  Because I forgot.  But they turned out fine, so, eat that Betty Crocker.  Here it is:

Lemon Cupcakes, adapted from Sweet Cheeks in the Kitchen

1 1/4 cups all purpose flour

1/4 tsp salt

1/2 tsp baking powder

1/2 cup butter, room temperature

zest of 2 lemons

1 cup sugar

2 large eggs

1 cup buttermilk (or 1 cup milk with 1 tbsp white or apple cider vinegar if you don’t have buttermilk, which I never do)

2 tsp fresh lemon juice

1 tsp vanilla

Preheat oven to 350 degrees, and prepare a muffin tin with cupcake papers.  Cream together the butter, sugar, vanilla, lemon juice and lemon zest until fluffy and pale.  In a separate bowl, sift together the dry ingredients.  Mix in each egg, one at a time, making sure each is fully incorporated.  Alternate adding the buttermilk and dry ingredients like this:  add 1/3 of dry ingredients, then add 1/2 the buttermilk, then add another 1/3 of the dry ingredients, then the rest of the buttermilk, then the final 1/3 of the dry.  Mix until JUST combined, and fill the cupcake papers about 3/4 full.  Bake for 20 minutes or until the tops are pretty and golden brown.  You can do the toothpick-insertion test, but the  best test is the color and poke one with your finger- if it feels like cake, it’s done.  Cool completely before frosting.

White Chocolate Swiss Buttercream Frosting

Let me say, before Sue goes forward with her recipe, that it was flingin flangin delicious.  It was fluffy, light (a total manipulation, because there was about 14 pounds of butter in it) and beautiful to look at.  Most importantly, it wasn’t overwhelmingly sweet like a lot of frosting can be; you know, when you leave the frosting in big gobs on the edge of the plate, only eating a little bit at a time as you eat the cake part, and then you try to throw the whole plate away really quick before anyone notices you didn’t eat any of the frosting.  Her frosting was NOTHING like that.  I ate a whole bunch with a spoon after I was done frosting the cupcakes and realized that I, sadly, had some leftover.

This is Sue now. Everything she said about this frosting is right; this is hands down my favorite frosting ever. Not only to make, but also to eat. Towards the end of the evening, someone found the icing bag in the kitchen and was giving people icing shots- that’s how good this icing is. Yes, it’s not exactly a beginner icing, but you can do it, I swear.

This is a classic recipe from the buttercream family. What makes this kind wonderful is that you are mixing the butter with a meringue which lightens it up significantly. The other kind of frosting that is similar to this is an Italian Meringue buttercream, the big difference with that is you have to cook the sugar, (using a candy thermometer) basically its a big huge process….this one is much easier. Italian meringue is supposed to be a bit more stable…but I wouldn’t know since I always just make this. Do keep in mind though, that this frosting will never set, it will always be soft and shiny (things I like in a frosting, but something to keep in mind for storage and travel).

Swiss Meringue Buttercream with white chocolate

Ingredients:

makes enough for 28 cupcakes, or a two layer cake

2 1/2 cups sugar

10 egg whites

4 cups of unsalted butter (8 sticks), cubed

2 tsp of vanilla

12 oz of white chocolate*

candy thermometer

Method:

Melt chocolate slowly in a metal or glass bowl over a pot of simmering water. Set aside.

Place egg whites and sugar into a metal bow,l (if you are using a stand mixer, you can use that bowl) place the bowl over a pot of simmering water (making sure the bottom of the bowl does not touch the bottom of the pot). Whisk gently until the sugar has been dissolved and the mixture has reached 160 degrees. You test if the mixture is ready by rubbing a bit in between your fingers. If it feels smooth it’s ready, if it is grainy the sugar hasn’t completely dissolved. Transfer the bowl back to the stand mixer (or have your hand mixer ready). Using the whisk attachment, whisk until the mixture comes to glossy stiff peaks, about 10 minutes.

With the mixture whisking on medium, add the butter one tablespoon at a time. Don’t worry if the mixture appears curdled, this is common with buttercreams, it will come together. Once all the butter is added, mix on high for 1 minute. Add vanilla and chocolate and beat on medium until combined.

A note about the chocolate: Make sure the white chocolate is real white chocolate, this means that cocoa butter is one of the first ingredients. If you use a imitation version, the oils will separate and will not be good in this frosting. You could also use bittersweet chocolate to make this a chocolate swiss meringue buttercream.

Frost the cupcakes, top with blueberries and serve.

- Cat and Sue

Cat and Sue Cook Together for Once, Volume 6: Oven Fries and Dipping Sauces

Soooo it’s been awhile since we posted, turns out life is busy and being a grown up takes away a lot of your free time. Anyway, this will be the last day of this series (finally).

Oven French fries.  Since we made these while Cat was visiting I have probably made them about 5 more times, everyone LOVES them. That’s right, fries not cooked in grease, and people love them. It shocked me too. The key to these are good spices, and a long cooking time. We also made a few dipping sauces to go on the side (both of which we didn’t take pictures of, who is surprised?) But they were really easy and went really well with the fries, even though Cat thought the chipotle ketchup would be gross. (Note- not gross, just unnecessary, but I was 100% wrong, which is why I owed her an apology for that, because it was totally delicious.)

Ingredients:

Potatoes

Spices

Olive oil

Yes, that’s the ingredients, there are no measurements, this is just a method. I have used both Yukon potatoes and russet potatoes, and I know that sweet potatoes would also work.

So here is the method and a few tips:

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.

Slice the potatoes into small wedges. Soak the wedges in water for at least 15 minutes and up to 1 hour. Soaking the potatoes helps remove some of the starch, which will help them crisp up in the oven better (it will also prevent them from turning pink if you aren’t going to cook them right away).  Drain the potato wedges and place in an even layer on a rimmed baking sheet (one or more depending on how many potatoes you are making). Liberally drizzle with olive oil, and sprinkle with spices. Toss with your hands, and then season again. You want each potato to be lightly covered with the spice mixture. You don’t want the potatoes to be sitting in a pool of olive oil, but a little bit of excess is ok.

Put the potatoes in the oven for 20 minutes, then flip the potatoes, and place back in the oven. Look at the fries after the first 20 minutes, if one side looks more done than another, rotate the pan, or if you have two pans on two racks, rotate which one is on top. Cook for at least another 15-20 minutes, checking to see when the fries are crispy. This could take up to an hour depending on the thickness of your wedges, and the amount of fries you are cooking at once.

So you want to know about what spices to put on them? Anything- you and literally put ANYTHING on these. You could just put salt and pepper, or you could put a little bit of cumin, some chili powder, maybe even some curry (<–that would be especially good on sweet potato fries). The spice mixture I love to use is by Frontier Spices, you can order it here or I have found it at places like Sunflower Market, and Whole Foods. It’s called garlic and herb blend, I love this blend on potatoes.  I have also made this at other people’s houses with other spice blends. Just look at the label, if it says things like garlic, onion, black pepper- it’s probably going to be delicious on fries. Just be sure to spice liberally, no one likes bland fries.

Dipping sauces:

Faux Sour cream and onion dip:

1 cup of greek yogurt (that’s where the faux part comes in, and the healthier part)

One small bunch of green onions, chopped, including some of the whites and the green

1 tsp of vinegar (anything but white would work, but even white will work in a pinch)

¼ tsp of garlic powder (optional)

Mix all ingredients together. Cover and refrigerate for at least one hour to let the flavors marry.

Chipotle Ketchup:

1 can of tomato paste

¼ cup brown sugar

¼ cup apple cider vinegar

¼ tsp of garlic powder

½ tsp of salt

½ tsp of chipotle powder

Dash of Worcestershire sauce

Whisk all ingredients together. If the mixture is too thick add a splash of water. Taste and adjust spices to your own liking (for instance, I tend to use more vinegar because I like the tang).

- Sue

Cat and Sue Cook Together for Once, Volume 6: Caramelized Onion Dip, or How Sue Owes Cat an Apology

Sue and I cooked a LOT the weekend I was in Denver.  We spent most of Sunday in the kitchen, and all of Monday as well.  This dip was one of the things we planned for her birthday party/Labor day BBQ , and it came together pretty quickly and spontaneously, by which I mean: “it was 3:30 and people were starting to arrive, and we kind of forgot about this dip and Sue still needed to shower and get dressed, so I looked at the caramelized onions as though they had personally offended me, drank half a glass of wine, and threw a bunch of ingredients into a bowl while shouting at Sue to wear the pink dress”.

There are two reasons Sue owes me an apology for this dip: A, she didn’t trust me to just throw ingredients together and have it turn out well, and B, because I wanted to put mustard in the dip and she didn’t like that either, but it was delicious, so there.

Caramelized Onion Dip (I think, because it was awhile ago when I made it, and I didn’t use a recipe, and, well, the wine…)

2-3 big sweet or yellow onions, chopped

1 stick of butter (yeah, a whole stick, butter is what makes things taste good)

1 cup Greek yogurt

1 cup low-fat sour cream

1/4 cup mayonnaise

1/4 cup Miracle Whip

1 tsp dry mustard

2 tbsp brown mustard/sweet mustard/garlic mustard/whatever fancy mustard you have in your fridge

1 tsp worcestershire sauce

2 tbsp apple cider vinegar

1/2 tsp onion powder

1/2 tsp garlic powder

salt and pepper

Put the onion and butter in a dutch oven or deep saucepan.  Saute on medium heat until the onions are golden brown, probably 45 minutes or so.  When the onions cool, put them in a bowl with all the other ingredients and mix well.

it would have looked like this, if we would have remembered to take pictures.

- Cat

Cat and Sue Cook Together for Once, Volume 5: Heirloom Tomato and Corn Salad

For this,  Sue and I went to Whole Foods (I normally find Whole Foods to be too far up its own ass to warrant visitation, but in this case I deigned to make an exception) and came back with 4 pints of heirloom cherry tomatoes. Alright. So here’s the thing: if you’ve never had a $6 pint of organic, heirloom tomatoes, you’ve not only never eaten a real tomato, you’ve never lived. We got two pints of reddish/greenish/purplish ones, and two of these tiny, perfect orange ones. These orange tomatoes were the most beautiful color, were so tiny and perfect and sweet and juicy. They were like candy that’s good for you. They were like sitting on the couch that burns calories. They were like a 4th cocktail that doesn’t turn you into an idiot.  They were a symbol for all that is good and right in the world.

I sang a song while washing these: one for me, one for the salad. One for me, one for the salad.

We put some other stuff in the salad, sweet corn, cotija cheese, green onion, and we dressed it somehow.  Who cares.  The tomatoes were the best thing in the entire world.  Sue slapped my hand more than once for sneaking them from the pint before we made the salad.  And we all cried a little when someone rinsed the bowl out with a few tomatoes still lingering in the bottom.

Heirloom Tomato and Corn Salad

6 ears fresh corn, boiled until tender and cut off the cob

6 green onions, chopped

3-4 pints of HEIRLOOM CHERRY TOMATOES, I halved the big ones and put the orange ones in whole, though admittedly I ate like half of them before they made it to the salad

1 block cotija cheese, crumbled (cotija is a hard, white, salty, goat’s milk Mexican cheese, kind of like feta but not as tangy, it’s GREAT)

Dressing: 1/4 cup red wine vinegar, 1/3 cup olive oil, salt and pepper

the one we actually made was a lot prettier than this picture. but it was like day 14 of cooking, and we forgot to photograph.

- Cat and Sue

Cat and Sue Cook Together for Once,Volume 4: Disaster Edition

For our delicious scallops dinner, we decided to make peach ice cream, with blackberry sauce and dulce de leche shortbread for dessert.

Yeah.

Let me start by telling you the things that went perfectly: the blackberry sauce.

Now the things that went not so perfectly: everything else.

We blanched and peeled the peaches, pureed one half, and the other half I chopped into a beautiful tiny dice on one of Sue’s nice bamboo cutting boards.  We set the peaches to macerate in a little honey and lemon juice while the custard cooled in the fridge.

For the blackberry sauce, we put a pint of blackberries, a 1/4 cup of sugar and the juice from one lime in a sauce pan and brought it to a bubble.  When a nice sauce appeared, we pureed it and strained it.  Done.

For the shortbread- we baked it in a round cake tin (the recipe is a Croal family secret, sorry) with the idea that we’d cut it into wedges.  We heated some pre-made dulce de leche and drizzled it, very prettily, over the shortbread when it was nearly done baking.  It was really attractive, and Sue and I spent some time admiring it until we realized that to get the shortbread out of the pan required turning it upside down onto a plate or something.  And we had just drizzled it with a lot of sticky caramel.  Well- we turned it out anyway.  And the entire top layer of shortbread and drizzle stuck to the cutting board.  Amidst much laughter and scraping of dulce de leche/shortbread bits from the cutting board into our mouths, we agreed that we could just drizzle them again and no one would notice.  And they didn’t.

Post-dinner, Sue and I came in from the roof deck to get the peach custard/peach chunks mixture going in the machine (it takes 15-20 minutes), went back outside for another drink, and came back in a bit later to find the ice cream machine exploding everywhere with peach ice cream.  Laughing, freaking out, covered in ice cream, we scraped ice cream out of the machine into a bowl, and got to tasting.

Ensuing conversation:

Me, to myself, in my head: Hmm, I must have much garlickier fingers than I thought from that garlic I chopped earlier, this ice cream is peachy and fantastic but also tastes kind of like garlic.

Sue, to me, aloud: “Hmm, I must have much garlickier fingers than I thought from that garlic I chopped earlier, this ice cream is peachy and fantastic but also tastes kind of like garlic.”

Me:  …… “WHAT?  I was just thinking the same thing, and also, you didn’t chop any garlic, I did.”

Sue:  ….  “Oh shit.”

Me:  ……

Sue: …….

….10 minute interlude for helpless-roll-on-the-floor-pee-your-pants laughing as we realize we chopped garlic on the same cutting board as the peaches I cut up and the resulting ice cream definitely took on a distinct garlicky flavor.

So, we made peach-garlic ice cream.  Hundreds of jokes were borne of that ice cream- this is taking the wacky sweet/savory ice cream thing way too far…this would be great with some grilled pork…next ice cream idea: raspberry and salmon…

We served the ice cream anyway, and everyone agreed it was gross.  And hilarious.  Luckily the shortbread was fantastic, and there was lots of wine, so nobody cared.  But here’s the lesson: wood absorbs flavors, no matter how well you wash it.  I think it’s best to get a plastic cutting board for garlic and onions, like you have for raw meat, or at least a wooden one you ONLY use for garlic and onions.

- Cat