Two of my favorite things!

My Mother-in-Law was in town for a visit last weekend. Unlike the standard mother-in-law stereotype, we actually get along very well and I think we all had a great weekend. We did some hiking in Moab and around the Grand Junction area, took Porter for many walks, and most importantly, ate our faces off.

She’s a pretty serious Macheesmo reader so I thought she’d like to try something experimental that I was hoping would be good enough to post.

These pancakes fit the bill just fine. I’ve done a number of pancake recipes over the years, but these were up there on the list for me.

Carrot Cake Pancakes

Yield: 8 pancakes

Prep Time: 15 minutes

Total Time: 30 minutes

Ingredients:

2 Cups all-purpose flour
3 Tablespoons brown sugar
1/2 Teaspoon salt
1/2 Teaspoon baking powder
1/2 Teaspoon baking soda
2 large eggs
1 1/4 Cups milk
1/4 Cup (half a stick) unsalted butter, melted (plus some for cooking)
2 Cups carrots, grated
1/4 Teaspoon ground ginger
1/2 Teaspoon cinnamon
1/4 Teaspoon nutmeg
1/4 Teaspoon ground cloves
1 Teaspoon vanilla extract

Directions:

1) Peel and Grate carrots.

2) Mix dry ingredients together in a large bowl. Add spices and carrots and stir.

3) Mix in wet ingredients including melted butter in a separate bowl.

4) Stir wet ingredients into dry ingredients until a batter forms. A thinner batter will make for thinner pancakes. Thicker batter for thicker cakes.

5) Heat a griddle or skillet over medium heat and add a dab of butter.

6) Ladle out 1/3-1/2 Cup of batter per pancake.

7) Cook until bubbles form on the top of the cake, then flip, about 2-3 minutes per side.

8) Pancakes should be golden brown on both sides, but not soggy in the middle.

9) Serve with butter and maple syrup.

Making the Batter

I used my basic pancake batter for this recipe. The only real substitution I made to the recipe itself was to use brown sugar instead of regular sugar.

Standard pancake fare.

But, of course, I added in a few key ingredients to make this like carrot cake.

For starters, obviously, we need some carrots. I used three medium carrots that I peeled and grated. It worked out to almost exactly two cups of grated carrots.

Good for ya!

I also added a whole bunch of spices that are pretty common in carrot cakes.

You don’t want to overdo the spices though. I used a very small amount of each one, but they add a nice little flavor kick to the pancakes. I would say the only essential ones are vanilla, cinnamon and ginger. If you don’t have cloves or nutmeg, you can go without.

While there are whole cloves pictured below, you should use ground cloves obviously. Finding a whole clove in a pancake wouldn’t be fun.

Standard carrot cake stuff

I mixed up all my dry ingredients first, then added in my spices and carrots. Mix the wet ingredients separately and finally stirr them into the dry ingredients.

Pancake batter is a personal preference thing. The thicker the batter, the thicker the pancakes will be.

I like my batter relatively thin so the pancakes aren’t like 1/2 inch thick.

Feel free to go heavy on the carrots

Cooking the pancakes

When it comes to pancakes, always remember two things:

1) Do a test run. Then adjust the batter if you need to by adding more milk or more flour. Typically, I tend to make my batter too thick, then I’ll do a test and decide to thin it out a bit.

2) Assume you’ll mess up the first one. This recipe makes 8 pretty good sized pancakes, but count on 6-7 pancakes that are serve-able unless you are a pancake wizard.

When you’re ready to cook add some butter to a skillet or griddle and ladle out about 1/3-1/2 cup of batter for each cake.

When the cakes start to bubble on top, it’s time to flip!

On the griddle!

The cakes should be golden brown on both sides and cooked all the way through. I usually keep my heat on about medium for pancakes to avoid scorching them and it works out to about 2-3 minutes per side.

For some reason I was in a groove on this day (I usually perform best under pressure), so all my pancakes turned out really nicely.

They look like normal pancakes from a distance, but then if you take a bite you find…

Chomp!

Serve these guys with some butter and maple syrup and a few strips of bacon and you’ll have one good brunch on your hands.

This is the kind of brunch that can impress in-laws folks.

That’s gotta count for something!

Administrative Note: While I normally do new posts on Monday, I’m taking this Monday off for Memorial Day. If this upsets you, then you are spending too much time on the Internet! Get outside during the long weekend!

I could probably sell these.

Well, it’s officially grilling season here in Colorado. The weather has been just fantastic and will hopefully continue to be amazing for the next few months before it starts getting unbearably hot.

I realize that depending on where you live you might be hating me right now. It’s still very cold in large chunks of the country, but have no fear. Warm weather is on the way.

I’ve been working on a few different rubs that go really great on grilled food and I thought you might all benefit from them. These are all really good on meat, but I think most of them would work equally well on veggies or tofu.

Three Homemade Dry Rubs

Yield: 1/3-1/2 Cup.

Prep Time: 10 minutes

Total Time: 10 minutes

Ingredients:

Coffee Spice Rub:
Makes a scant 1/2 Cup.

2 Tablespoons whole coffee beans
1 Teaspoon cardamon seeds (or pods would work)
1/2 small cinnamon stick
1 1/2 Teaspoons chili powder
1 Teaspoon garlic powder
1 Teaspoon paprika
1 Tablespoon kosher salt
2 Tablespoons sugar
1 Tablespoon pepper

5 C's Rub :
Makes about 1/3 Cup of rub.

1 Tablespoon coriander
1 Tablespoon cumin seeds
1 Tablespoon cardamon seeds (or pods)
1 small cinnamon stick
3-4 cloves
1 Tablespoon kosher salt
1 Tablespoon sugar

All-purpose Rub:
Makes 1/3 Cup.

1 Tablespoon dried oregano
1 Tablespoon paprika
1 Tablespoon chili powder
1/2 Tablespoon garlic powder
1 Tablespoon kosher salt
1 Tablespoon fresh black pepper

Helpful Equipment:
Spice grinder!

Directions:

1) If the rub you're making has whole spices, it's always a good idea to lightly toast them in a dry skillet for a few minutes to bring out the flavors. Just toast them until they are fragrant.

2) Add whole spices to a grinder. Pulse them until roughly ground. You don't want them like a dust.

3) Mix in other spices.

4) If you're using rubs on meats, coat liberally. Go lighter on veggies or tofu.

A Salty Mix

If you’ve ever looked at the ingredients on most rubs that you can buy at the store they are mostly salt. This makes sense if you’re trying to make a profit. Salt is cheap. It mixes well. It makes food taste great.

But when you’re making your rubs at home you can cut back on the salt and replace it with real spices that pack a punch. You still want a good amount of salt in the rub, but it doesn’t need to be 50% salt or anything crazy.

Let’s make some rubs!

The Whole Spice

For all of these rubs except the all-purpose one, you’re going to need a spice grinder to really get the full flavor of the rub. Sure, you can find ground versions of all of the ingredients, but it’s so much better to use whole spices. They are more flavorful, the whole spices keep longer, and they are generally cheaper.

The Coffee Rub

For this rub I wanted a dark mix that would hold up well on flavorful meats. You wouldn’t want to use this guy on light stuff like fish or chicken.

Start with whole beans, a small piece of cinnamon and some cardamon seeds. You can use pods also, but I like the seeds.

Any coffee will do.

Grind up these spices and then add in all your other spices to the mix. This rub has the most ingredients in it and the resulting flavors are pretty complicated.

It’s a very good rub though.

Lots going on here.

Once I had my rub mixed up, I coated a thick pork chop with it for testing and grilled it up.

The results were amazing:

No big deal.

The 5 C’s Rub

For some reason a lot of spices start with the letter C. Or maybe just my favorite spices start with the letter C…

In any event, I thought I’d mix them all up and see what happened.

The Five C's of delicious.

For this rub, I lightly toasted my cumin, cardamon, and coriander in a dry skillet for a few minutes until they were fragrant.

Then I just blended them up!

I think this might also be good on popcorn.

The 5 C’s Rub is the lightest of the rubs I made for this post. It has an almost sweet flavor to it that would go well on chicken, tofu, veggies, or maybe even a sturdy fish.

All Purpose Rub

While I was mixing up rubs, I thought I’d give you all the recipe for my favorite all-purpose rub. I use this stuff on everything. It’s great on steaks, chicken wings, asparagus, roasted tofu… you name it.

There’s also no grinding involved. Just take all the spices and stir them up. It takes maybe three minutes to mix up a batch!

Good on shoes!

Grilling Some Chicken

To test out the all purpose rub and the 5 C’s rub, I generously coated a few chicken breasts with both and grilled them.

The breasts on the left are the all purpose rub and the right breasts are the 5 C’s version.

Really good chicken.

I loved all of these, but I really liked the 5 C’s rub. It gave the chicken a really bright flavor that was very unique.

These rubs will all keep for a month or two without losing much flavor. I keep mine in plastic bags, but if you had a few airtight containers, they would keep even better.

Not that there’s any chance mine will last that long…

A 3 hour sauce adventure.

I was pretty relieved when Timpano didn’t win last week’s poll, mainly because I thought it was the most work-intensive dish on the list.

Oh how I was wrong. The winner, beef burgundy, or boeuf bourguignon, is an intense dish. While it looks simple enough (beef, mushrooms, carrots, onions), it’s actually a 3 or 4 hour trek through making the most delicious sauce in the world.

I stupidly decided to make this on a week night and didn’t read through the whole recipe before I started (cocky). So for those of you who are impatient like me, let me give you the summary before you embark to make this bad boy:

1) It takes 3 or 4 hours. It’s not a great dish to make on a Tuesday, unless you are a crazy food blogger or someone who likes to eat at odd hours. A lot of this time is passive though.

2) It requires brandy. Don’t forget about the brandy!

3) The sauce, which is a pain in the ass to make, is the most delicious sauce you’ll ever have. Go figure.

Beef Burgundy

Yield: Serves 5-6.

Prep Time: 1 hour 30 minutes

Total Time: 3 hours

Ingredients:

6 ounces bacon (or salt pork)
3 pounds beef chuck roast, trimmed and cut into 2 inch cubes
1 1/2 Cups shallots, about 8 shallots
2 large carrots, one diced and one cut into 2-inch chunks
4 cloves garlic, diced
2 Tablespoons tomato paste
1/2 Cup Brandy, plus 2 Tablespoons
2/3 bottle Pinot Noir (You could use the whole bottle, but I wanted some to drink.)
2-3 Cups beef stock
Handful of fresh parsley
2 bay leaves
4 whole cloves
1 1/2 Cups pearl onions, frozen is fine
8 ounces fresh mushrooms, cremini, button, or shiitake will work
6 ounces butter (4 for the beginning and 2 for the sauce)
3 Tablespoons flour (combine with the butter for the sauce)
Salt and pepper (probably won't need much salt)

Helpful Equipment:
Dutch Oven
Strainer

Directions:

1) Start by adding 1 Cup of water to a large skillet. Add your bacon or salt pork and cook on medium-high heat until the water evaporates and the bacon starts to brown, about 10-15 minutes.

2) Add 4 Tablespoons of butter to the pan and cook until the bacon is crispy. Remove bacon to a dutch oven or heavy pot.

3) Add beef cubes in batches to pan. Don't crowd the pan. Brown on all sides. It will probably take you 3-4 batches and 20-25 minutes total. Remove beef to dutch oven when done.

4) Add shallots, diced carrots, and garlic to pan where beef was browned. Scrape up as much brown bits as possible and cook for a minute or two. Then add tomato paste and continue to cook for another minute.

5) Deglaze pan with 1/2 Cup brandy. Use liquid to scrape up as many bits as possible. Add mixture to dutch oven.

6) Add wine, cloves, parsley, bay leaves, and enough beef stock to just cover the beef to the dutch oven and bring to a simmer. Simmer, covered for 1 hour, stirring occasionally.

7) Add carrot pieces (2 inches or so in length) to dutch oven and continue to cook for another hour or until carrots and beef are tender.

8) When ready, remove beef and carrots from dutch oven and set aside. Strain liquid and add liquid to a medium pot. Bring to a very slight simmer.

9) Mix 2 Tablespoons of butter with 3 Tablespoons of flour to form a paste. Stir 1/3 of the paste at a time into the sauce. The sauce should start to thicken immediately.

10) Stir in two tablespoons more of brandy for extra flavor and continue to lightly simmer sauce until it's silky smooth and thick.

11) In a large skillet, add mushrooms with a tiny drizzle of oil. Cook on medium heat until mushrooms lose their liquid, about 10 minutes. Add pearl onions and cook until they are slightly browned.

12) Serve beef, carrots, mushrooms, and onions with sauce. Serve with potatoes, egg noodles, and/or crusty bread.

Adapted from a Simply Recipes recipe.

Are you ready?

In general, this meal is just a braise. You brown the beef really well, then braise it for a few hours in wine and beef stock. Behind the scenes though there are some finicky things that go into flavoring a really intense sauce which is my view is what this dish is all about.

Browning the beef

Anytime you are braising something like this, you want to brown it really well which will develop good flavors.

To start, get your biggest skillet and fill it with about a cup of water along with the bacon. This seems weird I know, but cooking the bacon in some water will help the fat completely render out of the bacon. Put this over medium-high heat and cook it until the water evaporates and the fat is mostly rendered out.

Rendering out bacon fat.

Cook the bacon and evaporating all the water will take probably 15 minutes. Then add 4 Tablespoons of butter to the pan with the bacon. Continue to cook the bacon until it’s really crispy. Then remove it and add the bacon to a large heavy pot. A dutch oven works best.

This will leave you with a skillet filled with melted butter and bacon grease. To this add your beef cubes and let them brown nicely on all sides. Make sure to give the beef lots of room in the pan and don’t touch them while they cook.

You’ll have to do this in 3 or 4 batches and it’ll take probably 20-25 minutes which is time well spent.

Don't touch it!

Starting the sauce

And so our adventure with the sauce begins. Once all your beef is browned, move it to your dutch oven with the bacon and you’ll be left with one dirty pan.

Don’t think of it as a pan with burnt on crud. Think of it as a pan with potential.

To this messy pan, add the diced carrots, shallots, and garlic. Some people might say you need to be super-careful about your chopping here, but all this stuff gets strained out later anyway, so don’t freak out about it.

Lots of flavor going on here...

Stir this really well and the vegetables will start to pick up some of the brown bits from the pan. After this cooks for a minute or two, add the tomato paste and continue to stir.

Then for the magic. Add about 1/2 Cup of brandy to the pan and use the liquid to really scrape up all the brown bits.

Love my decanters!

The pan should be almost clean when you’re done. Who knew brandy was such a good cleaner?!

Scrape all this stuff from the pan into your dutch oven with the beef and bacon.

Starting the braise

Now we need to actually cook the beef. You’ll need these things which will give our finished sauce a lot of great flavor.

Pinot = burgundy

Add this stuff to your Dutch oven. Add just enough beef stock to barely cover the meat.

This is looking good.

Hard to go wrong with this...

Bring this to a simmer, cover it, and simmer for about an hour.

We’re not done yet.

Adding the carrots

Carrots are cooked along with the beef for the second half which makes them really soft and delicious. I actually added two carrots because I like carrots. Just peel them and cut them into 2-inch sticks. Then toss them into the mix.

More carrots.

Cover this again and cook it for another hour until the beef is really tender. It should be slowly simmering the whole time.

The Other Veggies

Assuming our sauce works out okay in the end it’s pretty much good on anything. You could dip your shoe in this stuff and charge $20 for it.

But it’s especially good on mushrooms and pearl onions. Chop up some mushrooms keeping them fairly large and get your pearl onions ready. You should be able to find frozen pearl onions without too much of a problem.

Use frozen onions people.

Once you’re about 10 minutes out from eating, throw the mushrooms in a skillet over medium-high heat with a small drizzle of oil and cook them until they release their liquid. Then add the pearl onions and cook until they are a light brown.

These are ready to serve.

Yummy.

Finishing the delicious sauce

Back to your big pot of braising beef. Once your beef is tender (it’s been cooking for two hours now), remove the beef and large carrots from the braising liquid. I used some tongs for this which made it easy to just yank out the stuff I want.

Then pour the rest of the liquid through a strainer to get out all the little stuff you don’t need. You should be left with a really rich liquid, probably about 4 cups of it. Pour this liquid into a medium pot and bring it to a slight simmer.

You don’t want it to boil, just simmer.

Now take two tablespoons of butter and mix it with three tablespoons of flour. Mix it really well and form a paste. This is called a Beurre manié which I think just means “awesome thick butter paste.”

Thick stuff.

Working with 1/3 of the paste at a time, add it to your sauce and stir it in well. The sauce will begin to thicken pretty much immediately.

After you add in all your paste, as a final touch, stir in another two Tablespoons Brandy. You’ll be left with this silky smooth and thick sauce that’s just out of this world.

Serious sauce.

For serving, I just piled my mushrooms, onions, carrots, and beef high on a platter and drizzled on the sauce, leaving some sauce to add after serving.

I served mine with some roasted buttered potatoes, but you could also serve it with egg noodles or just really crusty bread. Basically you want a starch to sop up as much of that sauce as possible. You worked hard for it after all.

Bread, potatoes, or noodles are a must.

No doubt this is an intense meal and there’s a lot easier way to make a beef stew, but seriously people.

The sauce.

It’s worth the work if you have the time.

This smelled like my heaven.

Holy Mother of Deliciousness. What have I done? This might not look like the most delicious thing, but trust me, it’s pretty up there in terms of savory brunch dishes in my opinion. This could also have something to do with the amount of beers I consumed the night before I made this.

This dish is a great example of how you can elevate the flavors in a dish by substituting store-bought ingredients with homemade. Instead of using store-bought sausage for the filling, I used some homemade breakfast sausage from last weekend. I also made my own enchilada sauce instead of using the canned stuff.

Prep time on the dish was probably a little over an hour start to finish. Totally worth it.

Breakfast Enchiladas

Yield: Serves 4.

Prep Time: 30 minutes

Total Time: 1 hour

Ingredients:

Simple Enchilada Sauce:
6 large dried chiles (I used 3 anchos, 2 new mexico chiles, and 1 chipotle)
1-2 Cups water (from soaking chiles)
2 cloves garlic, chopped
2 whole cloves, chopped really finely (or 1/2 Teaspoon ground cloves)
2 canned tomatoes (about a cup... if you use fresh you need to cook them down first)
Big pinch of salt and pepper

Filling:
8 large eggs
1 pound breakfast sausage
1/3 Cup cream
4 Tablespoons (1/2 stick) butter

You'll also need:
12 corn tortillas
8 ounces cheddar cheese
Optional toppings like avocados, hot sauce, sour cream, etc.

Directions:

1) Remove stems and seeds from dried peppers and add them to a medium pot of simmering water. Turn off heat and steep for 10-15 minutes until peppers are soft.

2) Add soft peppers, garlic, tomatoes, cloves, and about 1 Cup of water that the chiles steeped in to a blender and blend until smooth. You might need to add more water depending on consistency.

3) Add sauce to medium saucepan and keep warm over low heat until ready to use. If the sauce gets thick, add more chile water in small increments.

4) Add eggs, cream, and butter to a medium saucepan and over low heat, stir until the eggs start to cook, about 10-15 minutes. They should cook very slowly.

5) When the eggs appear to be about halfway cooked, add cooked sausage to the eggs and continue to stir until eggs are almost done, but definitely undercooked. Remove from heat.

6) To make the enchiladas, take a corn tortilla and dip it in the sauce. Remove it and top it with a few tablespoons of egg/sausage filling. Roll it up and add it to a baking dish. Repeat until all the filling is used (about 12 enchiladas).

7) Pour extra sauce over top of the enchiladas and add grated cheese.

8) Bake for 15-20 minutes at 350 degrees until cheese is melted.

9) Serve with sides like avocado, salsa, hot sauce, or sour cream.

The Enchilada Sauce

You can 100% use a canned enchilada sauce and this meal will still be plenty delicious. I just wanted to take it to the next level by making my own. It only takes a few minutes really and makes for a much more interesting and unique dish.

To start, you’ll need some dried chiles. I pulled out a few from a huge bag of random dried chiles I keep in my pantry. Just chop off the stems and shake out the seeds. It’s okay if there are some seeds left.

The only way to go.

Add the chiles to some simmering water and let them soak for about 10-15 minutes until they are soft. Don’t throw out this water! It’s like a chile stock and we can use it to add flavor to the sauce later.

Don't throw out this water!

I used a few basic other ingredients for this sauce. You can make a tomato-less chile sauce, but I really like having some tomato flavor. I used a few fire roasted whole tomatoes from a can. I also chopped up a few cloves of garlic and few whole cloves.

The cloves give the sauce a really unique flavor. I got the idea for the cloves from this Simply Recipes chili sauce recipe. Elise didn’t use tomatoes in hers though and I like the tomato flavor.

Cloves are interesting but awesome.

Add all the sauce ingredients to a blender and give them a whirl! Add some reserved water from the chile steeping in 1/4 cup increments until you get the desired consistency. I probably used about 1 cup of water for mine. Using the chile stock added a lot of flavor.

I don't think I need to tell you how good this was.

Pour the sauce back into a small saucepan and put it over low heat to keep it warm. It’ll probably start to simmer and if it starts to get too thick, just add some more chile stock to the sauce to keep it relatively thin. While my sauce was keeping warm, I probably stirred in another 1/2 Cup of water while I prepped my other stuff.

The Filling

The filling for these enchiladas is a pretty standard scrambled egg and sausage filling. I used homemade breakfast sausage and cooked my eggs using the slow method. For more details on this method (which produces the best scrambled eggs you’ll ever have), check out my how to cook scrambled eggs post.

To start, add the eggs, cream, and butter to a large pan and put them over low heat. That’s right. Low heat. You want to cook them slowly, not quickly. That keeps them silky smooth.

Good scrambled eggs.

Break up the eggs and slowly stir them. As they heat up, they will start to cook. After about 10 minutes of slow stirring you’ll have something that looks like this (you’re about halfway done).

Worth the wait people.

At this point, I added my sausage (which I reheated first) and put back on low heat. After another 5-10 minutes of slow stirring, your eggs will be done.

They should be a bit undercooked. Remember that we are going to bake this all together so the eggs will set-up at that point.

Still a bit undercooked.

Making the enchiladas

I like to use corn tortillas for my enchiladas, but flour would work also I think. I just dunk the tortilla in the hot enchilada sauce which loosens it up a bit and then set it on a plate.

Put on a few tablespoons of filling and roll it up!

The fun part!

It’s a messy job, but doesn’t take too long. I was able to get about 12 enchiladas out of this filling. I filled out two small baking dishes (or you could use one 9×13 dish). I added some extra sauce on top as well.

All lined up.

Cover this dish with grated cheese and pop it in a 350 degree oven until the cheese is melted and bubbling (about 15-20 minutes).

Then serve up the enchiladas with sides of your choosing. I went with avocados!

I wish Macheesmo had smell-o-browsing.

These were pretty sloppy but as far as enchiladas go they were awesome. There was a bit of sweetness from the sausage and the eggs were perfectly cooked.

The whole dish was just pretty scrumptious. In my opinion, this is a good example of how much you an improve a dish by taking a few extra minutes to make something from scrach. In this case, the enchilada sauce really stole the show even though the sausage was also homemade.

Given the season, I thought I would make some delicious pumpkin spice cupcakes for Betsy to bring! I topped the pumpkin cupcakes with cream cheese frosting because I’m always looking for an excuse to top something in cream cheese frosting. I also threw on some candy corns left over from my cocktail adventures.

A good vessel for cream cheese frosting.

I got this recipe from a really good baker I know who has actually contributed to Macheesmo before. The pumpkin cupcakes are simple to make and have a very interesting twist on the normal cupcake recipe: brown butter. The nuttiness of the butter with the pumpkin and spices was a pretty amazing combo.

Pumpkin Spice Cupcakes

Yield: 20 cupcakes

Ingredients:

Dry Mixture:
340 g. all-purpose flour (2 3/4 cups)
2 Teaspoons cinnamon
2 Teaspoons ground clove
2 Teaspoons nutmeg (fresh grated is best)
1 Teaspoon baking soda
1 Teaspoon baking powder
1 Teaspoon salt

Wet Mixture:
228 g. butter (1 Cup)
500 g. sugar (2 1/2 Cups)
2 Eggs
2 Egg yolks
1 15 ounce can pumpkin puree (be sure to get the 100% pumpkin puree, not the pumpkin pie filling.)

Cream Cheese Frosting:
1 8 ounce package cream cheese
1/2 Cup Butter (1 stick) at room temperature
1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract
2 Cups powdered sugar, sifted

Helpful Equipment:
Microplane (for nutmeg or buy it ground already)
Cupcake Pan
Digital Scale (Best tool you can buy to ensure consistent baking results)

Directions:

1) Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Combine dry ingredients in a medium bowl and whisk together well!

2) To make the brown butter, just put all of the butter in a saucepan over medium-high heat. Let it melt and continue to cook, stirring occasionally. It will foam some and eventually the milk solids will start to brown and even burn a little bit. This takes about 5 minutes maybe.

3) Strain this! If you don’t have a good strainer, you can use a coffee filter.

4) Then pour all the brown butter into a bowl with all of the sugar and cream it together until smooth. It will look like brown sugar and smell amazing.

5) Once cool, add eggs and additional egg yolks to sugar mixture.

6) Add pumpkin puree and finally whisk in dry ingredients in two batches.

7) Using a 1/3 cup measuring cup, fill up the cupcake pan! Anytime I’m making cupcakes, I like to use the paper inserts which make for easy transport. Fill the papers about 3/4 of the way full. Don’t fill them all the way to the top or you will have some serious overflow happening.

8) Bake for about 25 minutes in the middle rack of the oven or until a toothpick comes out clean from the center.

9) Move cupcakes to a wire rack until they are completely cooled. Take them out of the pan after a few minutes and let cool completely (approximately one hour).

10) For frosting, mix butter and cream sugar together using a hand mixer (or whisk) until the mixture is well combined and smooth. Mix it for a few minutes on medium speed until it starts to get light and airy. Then add vanilla and finally sift in powdered sugar, 1 Cup at a time.

11) Once the cupcakes are cooled you can top them which as much frosting as you can handle and decorate accordingly!

Preheat your oven to 350 degrees.

The Dry Stuff

Get all of your dry ingredients ready. I think it’s pretty important to weigh baking ingredients as my cup of flour is going to be slightly different than your cup of flour, but grams are grams no matter what.

The dry goods.

Basically, just combine all of these ingredients in a medium bowl and whisk together well to make sure everything is combined!

The Wet Ingredients

For the future detectives reading, yes, there are three sticks of butter and three eggs and three egg yolks below, but only two of each in the recipe. That’s because I needed about 30 cupcakes, not 20.

The wet goods (plus some dry goods)

Making the brown butter

Most cake recipes require that you cream the butter which involves (normally) using a mixer to beat the crap out of the butter and sugar to make sure that every little grain of sugar is coated in butter.

This recipe uses a different approach though which I immediately fell in love with. You make a brown butter and then pour that over the sugar and stir it up! It adds an awesome level of flavor to the final cake and I think it’s easier than creaming the butter and sugar together, but gives you the same results.

Update: As a few commenters have pointed out, you can’t always substitute brown butter for creaming butter. In this recipe it works well, but it’s a different physical process.

To make the brown butter, just put all of your butter in a saucepan over medium-high heat. Let it melt and continue to cook, stirring occasionally. It will foam some and eventually the milk solids will start to brown and even burn a little bit. This takes about 5 minutes maybe.

Take it off the heat when it looks like this:

In. Love.

Strain this

You don’t want those little burned bits in your cupcakes, just the lovely browned butter. Straining it is key. If you don’t have a good strainer, you can use a coffee filter!

Then pour all your brown butter into a bowl with all of your sugar and mix it up. It will look like brown sugar and smell amazing.

This one time I made brown sugar.

Finishing the Batter

The hardest part is over! Next, add your eggs and additional egg yolks to your sugar mixture. Then add your pumpkin puree and finally whisk in your dry ingredients in two batches. Don’t over mix the batter. Just make sure all your flour is incorporated well and then stop.

Very delicious. I know because I ate a spoonful of it.

Next, using a 1/3 cup measuring cup, fill up your cupcake pan! Anytime I’m making cupcakes, I like to use the paper inserts which make for easy transport. Fill the papers about 3/4 of the way full. Don’t fill them all the way to the top or you will have some serious overflow happening.

Don't overfill!

Baking the Cupcakes

These need to bake for about 25 minutes in the middle rack of the oven or until a toothpick comes out clean from the center. I would check them at 20 – my oven is a bit unreliable I’ve learned.

Look at these beauties!

I made these. You can too.

After these come out, move them to a wire rack until they are completely cooled. Take them out of the pan after a few minutes, but make sure they are not hot or even warm before you frost. I let mine sit for about an hour before even trying to frost them. If they are even slightly warm you run the risk of melting your frosting and melted frosting makes for a very sad cupcake.

Speaking of frosting, let’s make that.

Mix your butter and cream sugar together using a hand mixer (or whisk I guess) until the mixture is well combined and smooth. Mix it for a few minutes on medium speed until it starts to get light and airy. Then add your vanilla and finally sift in your powdered sugar, 1 Cup at a time.

You’ll end up with a very smooth and sturdy frosting!

Heaven.

Once the cupcakes are cooled you can top them which as much frosting as you can handle and decorate accordingly!

Yum!

I must brag a little bit (even though it wasn’t my recipe) and say that Betsy reported these guys were the first thing to sell out at the bake sale and they were gone in about 20 minutes! How’s that for market research?!

If you’re looking for a solid dessert to make for a party this weekend and don’t feel like making your own gummy worms, these guys are surefire winners.

I abandoned microwave popcorn years ago and have never really looked back. Popcorn is dirt cheap and once you know how to correctly make it on the stove you can experiment with all kinds of interesting toppings. I’ve made two other varieties of popcorn before on Macheesmo, the caramel variety in that post is especially delicious.

One of the things I’ve been trying out more recently is using whole spices and mixing my own spice mixtures. A few weeks ago I worked out a pretty solid Five Spice powder and turns out you can put it on popcorn!

Not shabby!

There are a lot of different varieties of five spice powder, but most involve something with some heat, something with an anise flavor, cinnamon, and in most cases clove. It’s normally put on cuts of meat like duck and chicken, but I figured it might work great on popcorn.

The nice thing about this spice powder is that it is pretty flexible. If you like more heat, add more peppercorns. If you don’t like anise so much, substitute the fennel seeds or star anise with something like ground ginger or maybe coriander.

Below is the mix I made and I thought it was a good start, but if you try this, taste it and adjust to your liking.

Five Spice Popcorn

Yield: A big bowl of popcorn

Prep Time: 15 minutes

Total Time: 15 minutes

Ingredients:

Five Spice Powder:
1 part ground cloves (1/2 Teaspoon)
2 part Cassia or cinnamon (1 Teaspoon)
6 parts fennel seed (1 Tablespoon)
6 parts star anise (about 8.)
12 parts Szechuan peppercorn (2 Tablespoons)

Helpful Equipment:
Spice Grinder (Nothing fancy, but this one gets the job done.)

Directions:

1) Lightly toast spices for a few minutes over medium heat.

2) Grind up in spice grinder.

3) Get a medium to large saucepan. It needs a tight fitting lid.

4) Sprinkle some popcorn kernels in the bottom of the pan until they cover the bottom in a single layer. If you do any more than that, they most likely won’t all pop.

5) Pour in vegetable or canola oil until the oil just covers the kernels.

6) Put the lid on tight and put it over medium-high heat. In a few minutes the kernels should start popping! Once they do, hold the lid on the pot with one hand and gentle shake the pan with the other hand.

7) After about a minute or two, the kernels should all (or mostly) be popped!

8) Pour the popcorn into a bowl and sprinkle some salt and five spice powder on it right away while it’s still hot.

I tried to use all whole spices for this powder. If you are interested in trying this out but can’t find some of these, I highly recommend Penzeys Spices. They sell quality stuff. Also, if you live in a metropolitan area, you can probably find most of these at an Asian market.

Smells good!

I used a good amount of peppercorns cause I wanted some heat to the powder. I think I may actually up it even more if I were to make this again. I think the ratios I listed above are a good starting point though. Adjust according to your tastes as I said.

For the whole spices, I decided to lightly toast them to bring out some of the flavors even more. The peppercorns definitely benefited from the toasting. I’m actually not sure that I would toast the others if I was making it again. I don’t know that it added much and you run the risk of burning them.

Toasting these guys is a good idea.

If you do toast them up, just keep a close eye on them. They will only need a few minutes over medium heat.

Then buzz them up in your spice grinder! You should end up with a pretty fine powder. It’s okay to have some difference in sizes though. It gives it some texture.

Be careful with the fumes!

Oh and don’t forget the fifth ingredient! I used this Vietnamese stuff because I have a mild spice addiction. It definitely is more intense than the normal cinnamon, but I think you could use the normal stuff and be just fine.

Go light with this stuff.

Making the popcorn

Making popcorn on the stove is super easy. Once you try it once you’ll never go back. It honestly takes about the same time as microwave popcorn. Ok. Maybe it takes like five minutes total, but it’s SO much better.

Get a medium to large saucepan. I’ve made popcorn in a bunch of different pots over the years and the only really important thing is that it has a tight fitting lid.

Sprinkle some popcorn kernels in the bottom of the pan until they cover the bottom in a single layer. If you do any more than that, they most likely won’t all pop.

Then pour in vegetable or canola oil until the oil just covers the kernels. For this version I tried adding a little butter also, but I think just oil works best.

Just covered is the key. I poured some of this out.

Put the lid on tight and put it over medium-high heat. In a few minutes the kernels should start popping! Once they do, hold the lid on the pot with one hand and gentle shake the pan with the other hand. The goal is to keep the kernels moving so they don’t burn while also keeping the pan on the heat. After about a minute or two, the kernels should all (or mostly) be popped!

Pour the popcorn into a bowl and sprinkle some salt and five spice powder on it right away while it’s still hot.

Adjust the spice and salt to your tastes, but that’s pretty much it!

Popcorn is one of my favorite snacks.

This isn’t exactly how five spice powder is intended to be used, but I found it to be pretty good. If I were to make it again, I think I would increase the peppercorn and maybe add some coriander or something to give it a bit more complexity. I think the real key is to go light on the cinnamon. It can very quickly overpower the spice mix.

You can store any leftover spice mix in an airtight container.

Has anyone else made this before or have any other spices suggestions? Leave a comment!

]]> http://www.macheesmo.com/2009/09/five-spice-popcorn/feed/ 10 http://www.macheesmo.com/2009/04/making-bratwurst/ http://www.macheesmo.com/2009/04/making-bratwurst/#comments Thu, 09 Apr 2009 11:28:37 +0000 Nick http://www.macheesmo.com/?p=4072 If there’s one thing that I have had in the back of my mind for the last few months that I really wanted to try it is making my own sausage. Some people may consider it gross, but I think the exact opposite. In fact, if I’m going to eat sausage I would rather it be homemade because A) I can follow the meat and B) I know exactly what went into it and under what conditions.

What more could you want? Unfortunately, my kitchen really isn’t equipped for such things so this nagging dream of mine has just sat on the back burner for awhile. That was until Rex of Savory Reviews called me up and invited me over to make some homemade Bratwurst.

My response was: “Yes. When and what time and how many beers can you safely consume?”

After about 5 hours of work, with plenty of breaks, we ended up with these beauties.

Would you buy these or what?

Obviously, I’d never done this before. Turns out that Rex really hadn’t done it before either although he did take a class at Sur La Table and we had a few tips from his Dad. We were pretty confident that we could handle it and produce something edible. We were so right.

Turns out it wasn’t hard at all, but there was a few key tricks and you need some specific equipment and about 4-5 hours.

Jalapeno Cheddar Brats (Recipe adapted from Paul Kirk’s Championship Barbecue)
This will make about 25 brats. You could omit the cheddar and jalapeno and have a great traditional brat.

- 5 lbs pork butt, try to get one not trimmed (roughly 4lbs pork and 1 lb pork fat.)

- 1 lb veal (You could substitute any lean meat.)
- 1 cup powdered milk

- 1/4 cup fine bread crumbs

- 1 Tablespoon fine sea salt

- 1.5 Teaspoons ground white pepper

- 1 Teaspoon granulated onion

- 1/2 Teaspoon mace (strong stuff!)

- 1/2 Teaspoon caraway

- 1/4 Teaspoon cloves

- 1/2 Teaspoon marjoram

- 1/2 cup jalapenos

- 4-6 ozs sharp cheddar cheese

There are a lot of spices in this recipe. If you had to buy them all it would be expensive. I suggest playing around with a few and getting creative.

The Meat. The core of any bratwurst is the pork. We used a nice bone-in pork butt for this. We trimmed off as much fat as reasonably possible. Ideally, you would have a 4-1 ratio between meat and fat. If you have very lean meat, you’ll need to buy pork fat separately which is usually packaged as pork back fat. Or just ask your butcher.

Pork butt. Which is pork shoulder. Who knows why.

Cut this meat into reasonable cubes that will fit into your grinder. We used a KitchenAid with the grinder attachment so for us this was about 1/2-1 inch cubes. Then, secret #1, freeze the meat. It doesn’t have to be frozen solid, but ideally it would be like 25% frozen. That will make it cruise through the grinder. Do the same freezing with your fat cubes.

While the cubes are cooling down, you can mix up your spices.

Spices and such.

Secret #2. Grind your fat first. This sort of lubricates the grinder. If you don’t do this, you will be there for a long time. Most grinders come with a larger plate and a smaller plate. Obviously, use the larger plate first. After the fat is ground, it goes back in the freezer while you grind the meat. Once they are both ground through the large plate you can combine the pork, veal, and fat together with all the spices. We found that hands work best as a mixing tool.

Let that chill for 20-30 minutes. Have a beer. Relax. It’s important to keep it cool.

Once it is cold, then regrind the entire mixture through the small grinder.

This takes some time... That's what beer is for.

Rex has a very cool dog name Tucker that I felt like we were torturing this entire time. After we were done, there were many belly rubs for Tucker and we even made him a mini-brat that we grilled up.

Tucker is wondering why he can't eat the entire kitchen.

Secret #3. Buy your casings from these guys, Syracuse Casing Co. Now, let me start by saying that I know practically nothing about natural casings. The ones we used for this were the only ones I’ve ever worked with. But they were very easy to handle. I’ve heard horror stories about companies just shipping casings mixed up in big bags of salt. Not these guys. They place each casing on a plastic tube which makes it easy to prep and put on your sausage stuffer. All you have to do is soak the casing in water for a few minutes to rinse the salt off and then slide it on your stuffer.

Also, Rex surprised me with homemade hot dog buns. Hell ya.

Nice buns.

Sorry I didn’t get any good photos of actually filling the brats. It requires two people and there were two of us, so no photo opp really. It isn’t very hard though. The only real thing to remember about it is Secret #4. When a brat is done, twist it in the opposite direction as the one before it. So if you twist the first one to the right, then twist the next one to the left. Not rocket science.

You can store the brats in the fridge for a few days without a problem or you can freeze them for longer. If you are freezing them, freeze them on a baking sheet first so they are not touching. This way they won’t stick together. Once they are frozen, you can bag them up and keep them for a few weeks.

Honestly, they are best to eat right away though. We boiled ours in beer for about 30 minutes and then stuck them on the grill. Yes. The mini-brat is Tucker’s. I wasn’t joking.

Boil 'em and grill 'em.

After they grill on each side for a few minutes, they are ready to be devoured. In my opinion, all these need is some mustard, but a bit of sauerkraut wouldn’t hurt.

I made this.

This was a really fun time. I would highly recommend it. If you don’t have the equipment necessary or don’t know someone who has the equipment, do some research on Amazon or elsewhere to find a model grinder and stuffer that fits your kitchen. I was going to recommend a few, but there are a bunch of different options, and I’m not familiar enough with any of them to recommend a specific one.

All in all, a fantastic way to spend half a day on the weekend and, as you might imagine, the homemade brats were amazing.

Be sure to check out Savory Reviews also. Rex does good work.

But I didn’t want to do just gingerbread cookies. I wanted to go big. So I made this:

The Gingerbread man has come down with a horrible disease.

You might think that some of the design work on this guy isn’t the most professional, but I think that it is pretty freakin’ good. I had a little helper, my nephew Ethan, for the design process. As you can see, he enjoyed the project.

You can guess where this went...

But let’s talk about the cookies. Because they are actually delicious. I got the recipe from Elise over at Simply Recipes and it is a really good. As it tends to go when I make a new dish and I’m in a hurry, I messed it up a bit, but it still turned out great.

Gingerbread Recipe
3 1/4 cups sifted all-purpose flour
3/4 cups butter (preferably unsalted) at room temp
3/4 Teaspoon baking soda
1/2 cup dark-brown sugar
1 Tablespoon ground ginger
1 Tablespoon cinnamon
1/2 Teaspoon ground cloves
1/2 Teaspoon ground nutmeg (fresh is best)
1/4 Teaspoon finely ground black pepper
1/2 Teaspoon salt
1 large egg
1/2 cup unsulfured molasses

Icing
1 egg white
1/2 Teaspoon lemon juice
1 3/4 cup powdered sugar

To start this recipe take your dry ingredients (flour, spices, and baking soda) and mix them well in a bowl. This recipe is really made by having good spices so if you have some jar of ground cloves that has been in your pantry for ten years, now would be a perfect time to replace it.

Then you want to cream your butter with your sugar. Start beating your butter for a few minutes and then add in your sugar. The sugar will help make the butter light and fluffy. After a few minutes beat in your egg and molasses as well.

Can you spot the mistake?

If you look at the above photo you will note one obvious mess up, but there is a second less obvious mess up as well. I accidentally added my sugar to my dry ingredients rather than cream it in with the butter. OOPS. That’s a pretty big mistake actually. Rather than re-do it I just added 1/4 cup of sugar to my butter to help it along. My ending cookies were maybe a bit sweeter than the originals. Nobody complained.

The second less obvious thing was that I used light brown sugar rather than dark brown sugar. I wasn’t going to go to the store just for that.

My cookies came out great even with those mistakes, but I would recommend following the recipe if you want guaranteed success.

Slowly mix in your dry ingredients with your wet and you will have a very thick dough. Near the end you will probably have to work it with your hands.

Thick dough. Awesome dough.

Divide the dough into two balls and place it in a cold place to chill for at least an hour. I chose the frigid Wyoming air for my cooler.

The barren wasteland I call home is my natural fridge.

After an hour we are ready to roll (HA!). I find this dough much easier to roll if you slap it between two pieces of wax paper. Then roll it to your desired thickness. I like mine maybe 1/4 inch thick.

Breaking tradition with various gingerbread shapes.

If you are making regular cookies, cut them out and put them on an un-greased cookie sheet. They need to cook for 7 minutes at 350. I always err on the side of undercooked for these guys. Some people like crispy ginger cookies in which case you should cook them for 8-9 minutes.

Stellar cookies.

But say you want to be like me and make one or two really large guys. Roll your dough a bit thicker (maybe 1/3 inch thick). Get an artistic friend to draw you a large dude and cut out the design. Then go around the edges with a sharp knife. Don’t worry, the dough is pretty easy to cut like this. It isn’t really sticky.

Hopefully, you have an artistic friend.

Again bake these at 350 for about 7 minutes.

The icing I made to decorate these with was just one egg white which I beat until fluffy and then I whisked in my lemon juice and powdered sugar. Super-easy and works great for decorating these guys. I put mine in a Ziploc bag and cut off the very tip of it to make a redneck pastry bag.

As you can see, we had a lot of fun.

Absolute joy.

Merry Christmas Eve everybody!