That said, I did want to make something.  Betsy is from Pennsylvania originally and they have this tradition there of doing cookie tables for desserts at weddings instead of a big expensive wedding cake.  Basically you just get a few family and friends to make a bunch of cookies and people can eat as many as they can stand.

We used that idea for our wedding, but had other desserts besides just cookies.  For example, my one contribution to the wedding food was these cute little red velvet cupcakes.

How cute are these?

I really like red velvet cupcakes because well A) they are delicious but B) they are a prime example of the old motto that you eat first with your eyes.  One time I made a batch of these and ran out of red food coloring so my cupcakes were more rust colored than RED.  They somehow did not taste as good.

Red Velvet Cake (From my girl Martha Stewart.)
Makes about 2 dozen cupcakes.

- 3/4 Cup unsalted butter, room temp.
- 287 grams cake flour (not self-rising).  About 2 1/2 cups.
- 3 Tablespoons unsweetened cocoa powder
- 1 1/2 Teaspoons Baking Powder
- 2 Cups sugar
- 3 large eggs
- 1 Teaspoon vanilla extract
- 1/4 Teaspoon salt
- 1 1-ounce bottles of red liquid food coloring
- 3 Tablespoons lukewarm water
- 1 Cup buttermilk (very important)
- 1 Teaspoon baking soda
- 1 Tablespoon white vinegar

Helpful Equipment:
- Stand Mixer (Not essential, but it sure does make it easy.)
- Digital Scale (Essential if you want consistent results.)

Making the batter. I’m not a huge fan of box cake mix.  My deal with it is that if I’m going to be eating something sweet and fattening, I want it to be as good as possible and I just really feel like that the made-from-scratch version of most baked goods is substantially better than the boxed version if you have the time to do it.

The line up.

What you’ll realize after you start making stuff like this from scratch is that the whole boxed cake thing is kind of a scam.  I mean, it doesn’t take that much longer to just make it from scratch and assuming you have a decently stocked pantry, it’s not necessarily more expensive either.

Anyway, to make this batter, start by whisking your cake flour, baking powder, and cocoa powder in a bowl.  Cake flour is extremely important for any cake recipe hence the name.

Just to make sure that I have no clumps in my dry ingredients, I usually sift them once, but I’ve made these by just whisking them for a bit to combine well and it worked fine also.

A whisk is what you need.

The only other thing I’ll mention about the dry ingredients is that it’s pretty hard to measure out the flour correctly without a digital scale.  If you’re baking even occasionally, this is a kitchen tool you should have.  If you don’t have one then you’re in luck because I have a great one listed in my open sky store!

Back to the batter… once your dry ingredients are combined, add your butter and sugar to your mixer and mix on medium for about 3-4 minutes until the butter and sugar are combined and really fluffy.  This is the creaming step.

If you don’t have a stand mixer you could definitely use a hand mixer.

Light and fluffy!

Next, slowly add your eggs, one at a time and then add the water, salt, vanilla, and red food coloring.

This will stain your counters...

Be careful with the red food coloring.  It’ll stain anything it touches.  It especially stained the white shirt I was for some reason wearing while I was making these…

Once you have the base for your batter done, you just need to incorporate your buttermilk and dry ingredients.  Start by slowly adding 1/3 of your dry ingredients, then 1/2 your buttermilk, then 1/3 of your dry ingredients, then the last half of your buttermilk.  Finally, the last of your dry ingredients.  So: dry, wet, dry, wet, dry.

At the very end, you’ll want to combine your vinegar and baking soda to provide some fizz to the finished cakes.

Fizzzz.

You’re final batter should be really light and fluffy and very, very red.  If you’re using a stand mixer, remember to scrape down the sides of your bowl occasionally.  This was something that I did a kind of bad job at for this batch.

There ya go!

Baking the cupcakes. Preheat your oven to 350 degrees and line your baking cups with cupcake liners.  Fill up your cupcakes until they are about 2/3 full.  I also, without fail, overfill my first batch.

For example, these are overfilled.

I always overfill the first batch.

Assuming you fill them correctly, they’ll need to bake for about 20 minutes at 350 degrees.

These were my overfilled ones.

My cake overfloweth.

The good news about cupcakes is that even if they overflow a bit they’ll still taste good as long as you slather on some good cream cheese frosting.

The Frosting. In my opinion, there’s really only one option when it comes to frosting a red velvet anything:  cream cheese frosting.  It’s sweet and tangy and just perfect with the subtle chocolate flavor of the cake.

Basic Cream Cheese Frosting
Enough frosting for 24 cupcakes. If you have a heavy frosting hand, then maybe times this by 1.5.

- 8 ounces cream cheese, at room temperature
- 1/2 Cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, at room temperature
- 1 Teaspoon vanilla extract
- 2 Cups confectioners sugar, sifted

This frosting is about as easy at it gets to make.

A simple frosting.

Just add your butter and cream cheese to a stand mixer or bowl with a hand mixer and start mixing until the mixture is light and fluffy.  Don’t be afraid about over-whipping.  I whipped mine for 3 or 4 minutes.  Then add your vanilla and mix it in.

Next, start adding your sifted confectioner’s sugar in two or three batches.  Mixing it in well after every batch.  You should end up with a fluffy but very flavorful frosting.

I put mine in a pastry bag to pipe it onto the cupcakes, but you could definitely just smear it on.

The Most Important Thing. The most important thing to remember before frosting these guys is to make sure they’re completely cool.  I cooled mine on a wire rack for about 30 minutes before I even thought about frosting them.

I think these were sellable honestly.

These were really good.  For the wedding, I even made them two days in advance and they were still one of the first desserts to be devoured!

So if you’re in the market for a good cupcake recipe, give this one a shot!

It was a hard decision, but the thing that caught my eye the most were these mocha brownies. They have a huge layer of mocha icing on top of the brownie.  It’s basically half brownie and half frosting.  Plus it has all the major dessert food groups: butter, chocolate, sugar, coffee.

THICK.

These were so very delicious.  Betsy and I had one each and then resolved to get them out of the house as soon as possible.  I took half to work and she took half to her law clinic.

Mocha Brownies (Adapted from The Pioneer Woman Cooks)
Makes one 9×13 pan of amazingness.

- 4 ounces unsweetened chocolate, melted
- 1/2 pound (2 sticks) unsalted butter, room temp
- 2 Cups sugar
- 4 large eggs
- 3 Teaspoons vanilla extract
- 1 1/4 Cups all-purpose flour

Mocha Icing:
- 1/2 pound (2 sticks) unsalted butter, room temp
- 1 (about 4 cups) pound powdered sugar
- 1/4 Cups cocoa powder
- 1/4 Teaspoon salt
- 3 Teaspoons vanilla extract
- 1/2 Cup brewed coffee, cooled to room temp

Slight Modifications… I made changes to her recipe which I’ll be careful to disclose so I don’t get flack from The Pioneer Army.  First, the original frosting recipe calls for 5 Cups of confectioners sugar, but it doesn’t say sifted or non-sifted so who knows how much she uses.  I used 1 pound of sugar which is a full box.  This worked out to be about 4 cups of sugar for me.  She also calls for 1/2 Cup to 3/4 Cup of coffee so I just used the lower estimate and my frosting was perfect.

If you wanted to go buy a second whole box of sugar though just for that extra cup, then by all means use the higher estimate of coffee.

Second, and I think this was a legit oversight, she says to bake the brownies in an 8 inch pan.  I tried pouring my mix into an 8 inch pan and it almost overflowed.  That’s before even baking it.  I think I would’ve had a brownie explosion on my hands if I had followed the recipe exactly.  Instead, I baked it in a normal 9×13 inch pan with excellent results.

The Brownie Batter. I must say I don’t really get the fuss with boxed brownie mix.  I mean, making it from scratch just isn’t really that hard.  It’s one of those things that I definitely don’t see the appeal of taking shortcuts on.  I mean, to make really good homemade brownies, this is all you need!

The basics.

You probably have almost everything you need if you have even a halfway stocked kitchen.  You’ll probably just have to pick up some chocolate and maybe some vanilla.

To get started, add your butter and sugar to a bowl and beat it on medium speed to cream the butter and sugar together.  You can use a hand mixer or stand mixer for this.  After a few minutes, you should have a very light and fluffy mixture.

Look ma. No hands!

Next, slowly melt your chocolate in the microwave.  What I mean by slowly is that you shouldn’t zap it all at once for like 4 minutes.  That would completely burn your chocolate.  Instead, zap it in 30 second increments and stir it in between.

Once the chocolate is about 75% melted you can take it out and the rest of the chocolate should melt with residual heat.  Mine took about 1 1/2 minutes of zapping to get here.

Bitter stuff.

Back to your mixing bowl, add your eggs one at a time and then your vanilla and chocolate.  Mix this all together until it’s well incorporated.

Then slowly add your flour in a few batches.  Be sure to turn your mixer down to low for the flour part or you will just dust your entire kitchen in flour.

Mix it until your flour is incorporated but don’t over-mix it or you’ll have tough brownies!  When you can’t see any flour, you’re done.

Who wants to lick the spoon?

Baking the Brownies.  Add your brownie mix to a 9×13 inch baking pan that’s either been sprayed with non-stick spray or lightly buttered.  Bake the brownies at 325 degrees for 40-45 minutes or until the center is set.  A toothpick should come out clean.

Don’t worry if the brownies do what mine did which is inflate slightly around the edges and then crack.  Remember we are adding an inch of frosting to the top so whatever.

A little collapse is okay.

The Important Part.  The most important part of this recipe is to make sure you let your brownies cool completely to room temperature before frosting them or your frosting will just melt.  This will probably take at least an hour so plan accordingly.

The Frosting. This is actually one of the easier frostings I’ve made.  Start with these things:

That's one pound of sugar.

Add them to a mixing bowl with the salt, vanilla, and butter and start mixing on medium-low until everything is starting to come together.  Then add your coffee slowly and once it’s all added, increase the speed to medium and beat it for a few minutes until it’s very light and fluffy.

This stuff is the money.

Drop this huge amount of frosting onto your brownies and spread it out as evenly as you can.

Craziness.

Once the brownies are frosted, you could eat them right away, but I recommend sticking them in the fridge for at least a few hours so the frosting hardens a bit.  That’ll make them easier to cut.

Diabetes in a dish.

These brownies have a great coffee flavor.  Be sure to use pretty strong coffee for them.  Also, the actual brownie part is super dense and almost fudge-like which I appreciate.

Minus the baking dish mess-up, I’d say this is one of the better dessert dishes I’ve made in awhile.  It was a huge hit at my office.  And while my coworkers aren’t at all picky about free desserts, they know a good brownie when they see one.

My only issue with tiramisu is it generally uses Brandy which isn’t something I have laying around.  Bourbon, however, I do normally have and tend to like more anyway.  So I figured I’d try a version of tiramisu with bourbon instead of brandy.  It had a much stronger flavor, but was still very tasty.

You want this.

The hardest part of this recipe, if you ask me, is actually finding ladyfingers.  At least in DC, they are incredibly hard to find.  I went to three different grocery stores before finally throwing in the towel and just deciding to make them myself.

After some research, I decided to go with Julia Child’s Ladyfingers Genoise.  If you plan on making these, I’d recommend watching that video.  She makes it pretty easy to follow.

But here’s the recipe she uses:

Ladyfingers
Makes 40ish ladyfingers

- 1 1/4 Cups cake flour, sifted
- 1 Tablespoon sugar (for flour)
- 1/8 Teaspoon salt
- 2 eggs
- 4 egg yolks
- 1/2 Cup sugar + 1 Tablespoon (for eggs)
- 1 Teaspoon vanilla
- 3 Tablespoons unsalted butter, melted but not hot
- Powdered sugar (for dusting)

Making the ladyfingers. This batter is called a Genoise batter, which is actually a bit tricky.  The problem is that when the batter is finished it’s in a pretty fragile state, so you want to bake it as soon as possible.  More on that later.

First thing to do is get all your ingredients ready and preheat your oven to 400 degrees.  For your cake flour, sift it (very important for this recipe), then measure it and add 1 Tablespoon of sugar and 1/8 Teaspoon of salt to it, and then re-sift the mixture onto some wax paper which will make it easy to transfer into your batter later.

Sifting is important

Then add your eggs and your 1/2 Cup + 1 Tbsp. of sugar into a mixing bowl.  Whisk together the eggs and sugar just to make sure the sugar is mostly dissolved.  Then, with either a stand mixer or hand mixer, beat the eggs on medium-high speed for about 5 minutes until they form a light and fluffy meringue.  The key is that when you lift the whisk, it should form a ribbon of batter and that ribbon should rest on top of the rest of your batter.

The ribbon!

I think I actually could have beaten mine for another minute.  Once your egg mixture is nice and light and fluffy, you need to fold in your cake flour.  At this point your batter is in its most stable form, a meringue.  From here on out, time is working against you, but that doesn’t mean RUSH.  Just work gently but quickly.

FOLD your flour into your batter using a flat spatula, 1/3 of your flour at a time.  Do this by pushing your spatula all the way to the bottom of the bowl, turning the bowl, and gently lifting and folding.  Think of the batter like a foam and you want to keep as much of the air bubbles intact as possible.  Stirring would just pop them all!  Again, if you haven’t folded something like this before, check out this video.  At about minute six she does some serious flour folding.

Careful!

Once all your flour is folded in, gently fold in your melted butter.  It’s very important that your butter isn’t too hot or it will just melt your batter.  It should be a bit over room temperature.  Once your butter is folded in, your batter will be at its most fragile state.

At this point, we need to make the ladyfingers!  If you have a pastry bag, more power to ya.  I use a gallon-sized plastic bag and just cut off the corner.

Ghetto pastry bag.

Gently pipe these onto baking sheets that have been lined with parchment paper.  Work quickly and try to make them as uniform as possible.  One tip is to draw lines 3 inches apart on the backside of your parchment paper before you start.  That way you’ll have guides for when you are piping.

After you pipe them, dust the ladyfingers with a serious coating of powdered sugar.  This will help them stay in place!  I got better at piping as I went a long.

Hurry!

Bake these guys at 400 degrees for about 12-15 minutes, rotating the pan halfway through if necessary. They should be a nice golden brown color.  I’m really proud of the middle row of ladyfingers in the below photo.  Most of those turned out pretty nicely.  The top and bottom rows are a bit rough.

Not bad.

Honestly, I wasn’t too worried about the shape because I’m dipping them in coffee and bourbon and then layering them between layers of filling.  So whateva.

Bourbon Tiramisu (Based on a recipe from Young and Hungry)
Makes one 9×13 pan

- About 40 ladyfingers
- 2 Cups very strong coffee
- 2/3 Cup Bourbon (original recipe was 1/2 Cup but come on…)
- 1 Cup heavy cream
- 1 pound mascarpone cheese
- 1 Teaspoon vanilla extract
- 1 Cup powdered sugar
- Cinnamon (for dusting)
- Cocoa powder (for dusting)

Tiramisu is actually one of the easiest things to make once you get the ladyfinger situation worked out.  Just combine your coffee and bourbon (or brandy) in a bowl.  The only important part to remember is that your coffee is cool or at least room temp before starting.

Best dessert ever.

For the filling, add your mascarpone (or cream cheese in a pinch) and heavy cream and mix on high until it forms stiff peaks and holds its shape.  Then add in your vanilla and slowly add in your powdered sugar.  The final mixture should be pretty stiff.

I’ve done this by hand before with a whisk and it’s definitely possible.  It takes some elbow grease though and about 10 or 15 minutes.  If you have a mixer, use it.

Light and fluffy

To make the dish, dip a ladyfinger in your bourbon-coffee mixture (make sure the liquid is room temperature) for a few seconds.  Let the ladyfinger soak up some of the mixture.  Then layer them in the bottom of your baking dish.  Squeeze in as many as you can.

Bourbon and cofee soaked...

Then do a layer of your mascarpone filling mixture.  Use about half of it.  Then give the filling a generous dusting of cocoa powder and cinnamon.  I probably sifted on about 1/2 Tablespoon of cinnamon and 3-4 Tablespoons of cocoa powder.

After that, do another layer of your soaked ladyfingers, followed by the rest of your mascarpone filling mixture.  Finally, give the top another good dusting of cocoa powder and cinnamon.  The white filling should be completely covered.

This is what I mean by a good dusting:

Don't skimp on the cocoa people.

Set this all in the fridge to cool for at least 4 hours and then serve it up!  I think it’s best the next day after all the flavors meld together a bit.

Fantastic.

Tiramisu is so good.  You’ve got to try this if you’ve never made it.  If the ladyfinger situation is stressful, I’ve used store-bought pound cake in a pinch also.  You won’t really be able to dip the pound cake in the bourbon-coffee mixture though.  Just cut slices of it about 1/2 inch to 1 inch thick, make a layer, then pour over a bit of your coffee mixture.  That works also!

I’m telling you.  Tiramisu is good stuff.

That’s how much I love you guys.

Of course, you don’t have to make the filling on peppermint whoppie pies pink, but then they would just kind of look like a ginormous Oreo cookie.  Not that that would be bad, but it’s just not what I was going for here.

Anyway, these turned out perfect!

Looks good in pink.

I have a coworker (Hi Sam!) that is actually a master of the whoopie pie.  It’s a tricky balance with these guys so I decided to consult her as an expert.  She sent me a few recipes and I went to work.  I think they turned out pretty fantastic.

Pink Peppermint Whoopie Pies (Pie recipe from a Gourmet 2003 recipe.  Filling recipe from A Bon Appétit Dec. 2005 recipe.)
Makes about 18-20 pies depending on how big you make them.  You could half this recipe of course.

For cakes:
- 4 Cups all-purpose flour
- 1 Cup Dutch-process cocoa powder (high quality)
- 2.5 Teaspoons baking soda
- 2 Teaspoons salt
- 2 Cups well-shaken buttermilk
- 2 Teaspoons vanilla
- 2 sticks unsalted butter, room temp
- 2 Cups packed brown sugar
- 2 large eggs

For filling:
- 1.5 Cups (3 sticks) unsalted butter, room temp
- 3 Cups powdered sugar
- 1.5 Teaspoons peppermint extract
- a few drops of red food coloring

Making the cakes.  To me, what makes a delicious whoopie pie is a light, airy cake (and it actually is closer to a cake than a cookie or pie).  It’s not always easy to get right though, but when you do, you will definitely exclaim, “WHOOPIE!”

To start, sift all your dry ingredients (flour, cocoa powder, baking soda, salt) into a large bowl.  It’s important to sift here or whisk furiously to make sure your dry ingredients are nice and light.

Whisked or sifted please.

Meanwhile, add your butter and sugar to a mixing bowl and cream them together.  I let mine mix for about 3 or 4 minutes until it was very light.  If you are using a hand mixer you might need to go even longer.

Look ma... No hands!

Next, mix in your vanilla and eggs.  Then slowly add in your flour and buttermilk in alternating stages to your creamed butter.  As always with cake recipes like this, start with dry ingredients and end with dry ingredients.  So it goes 1/3 of your flour, 1/2 of your buttermilk, 1/3 of your flour, 1/2 of your buttermilk, and finally the last 1/3 of your flour.

Then just mix it together on low until it all is combined.  The last thing you want to do is over-mix this.  If you do that you’ll have tough, very non-whoopie worthy pies.

Very chocolatey.

Once it’s mixed well, spoon dollops of it onto a parchment paper lined baking sheet.  You could make these as big or small as you want, but just try to get them as uniform as possible.

I went for about 2 Tablespoon-sized cakes.  Keep in mind they will grow quite a bit while baking so leave an inch at least between each pie.

Kind of haphazard.

Bake these guys at 350 degrees for 11-13 minutes.  Rotate your pans once to make sure they cook evenly.  They should be slightly springy when they are done.

Let them cool on the sheet for a minute or two and then move them to a wire rack to cool.

Light and fluffy!

For some reason it didn’t dawn on me that making 20 whoopie pies is actually baking 40 individual mini-cakes.  I was able to do 8 per baking sheet so it took me 3 rounds of baking to finish them all using two baking sheets at a time.  I went ahead and reused my parchment paper even though that’s apparently a no-no.  I didn’t notice any difference in the later rounds of baking.

Cool it down. It’s very important to make sure that your cakes are absolutely cool before icing them.  Otherwise your frosting will just melt and you’ll have sad little pink pools of butter.

Anyway, while they are cooling (or baking), you need to make this bad-ass pink frosting.

Some whoopie filling recipes call for marshmallows, but I skipped that and just made a really thick butter cream frosting.  It worked great!

4 simple ingredients.

Start by adding your room temperature butter to your mixer and mixing it on medium until it is, well, creamy.  Then add in your tiny amount of peppermint.  Be careful with this stuff.  It’s very potent and too much of it will turn your whoopie pie into an Altoid (not a good thing for a huge cookie).

Once your flavoring is added, slowly add in your sifted confectioners sugar.  It’s a lot of sugar.  Go slowly or you’ll end up with a layer of the stuff all over your kitchen.

That might happen anyway, but you can at least try to avoid it by going slowly.

Once you get all your sugar incorporated, add just drops of food coloring.  Just remember.  It’s easy to add more.  It’s impossible to remove it.

And after all that, you’ll end up with this lovely product, which might win the award for most colorful Macheesmo photo of the year.

FAB-U-LOUS!

I think you can probably imagine the next step, but it involves slathering on as much of this stuff as you want between two of your baked cookie-cake things.

Heavy on the frosting.

Repeat.

From the top.

You can of course go crazy with the frosting, but a little restraint is good I think.  The frosting can be overpowering if you slather it on too thickly.

I like to go for a pretty even layer – like this:

Cross-section shot is crucial.

I brought these to a work lunch and they seemed to be popular.  I even got approval from the queen of whoopie pies, so you know they are good.

Enter oatmeal.  Oh oatmeal how I love you.  I don’t really love the instant stuff (although it is better than cereal), but real rolled oats are fantastic.  They are filling and tasty and good for you.  All of that said, recently, I’ve gotten a bit bored with the stuff.

So over the last few weeks I’ve been playing around with some oatmeal variations, and I’ve found some good options.

Greek Oatmeal with Feta

A Greek take on Oatmeal.

This was actually Jeff’s idea and was pretty good.  I tried to maybe get a bit too inventive here.  Jeff said to try Feta cheese and black pepper on oatmeal.  I thought it might be a good idea to balance out some of that savory flavor with some sweet, so I added some honey.  It was okay with the honey, but the flavors were not blending well.  If I made it again I would try just Feta and pepper.

Rolled Oats 101. There are a lot of different kinds of oats that you can buy in the store.  In my experience though, there are four basic kinds that you will run into regularly:

Instant Oats – This is what you commonly find in the little packets that you can microwave.  These taste fine in a crunch, but in the process of making them “instant” the manufacturers also tend to remove a lot of nutrients.

Quick Oats – These are rolled oats that have just been steamed a bit longer to soften more, but not cooked as much as instant oats.  They only need about 5 minutes to cook through.  Honestly, I’ve never really used these.

Rolled Oats – These are my oats of choice for oatmeal.  They usually take about 15 minutes to cook, but you end up with a really rich, wholesome grain.

Steal Cut Oats – These oats are cut so some of the outer bran husks are still intact.  These are delicious, but they usually take around 45 minutes to cook and, for me, aren’t really realistic for a weekday breakfast.

Cooking Rolled Oats.  For one person, I only need about 1/2 – 2/3 of a cup of uncooked rolled oats to have a full breakfast.  I usually do about 2.5 parts liquid to 1 part rolled oats when cooking.  So if I’m using 1/2 Cup of oats, I would use about 1.25 Cups water.  Bring your liquid to a boil over high heat in a small saucepan.  Once it is boiling, add a pinch of salt, and your oats.  Turn your heat down to low and simmer for about 15 minutes, stirring every few minutes.  If it gets too dry, feel free to add a few tablespoons of water.  When your oats are creamy and delicious, your done!

Chocolate Oatmeal

One of the first variations I thought of involves the basic workings of hot chocolate.

Chocolate Oatmeal
(makes two servings)

- 1 Cup rolled Oats
- 1.5 Cups water
- 1 Cup milk
- 1.5 Tablespoons cocoa powder
- 1.5 Tablespoons sugar
- Honey (optional)
- Cinnamon (optional)

Well hello darlings.

Get your water and milk going in a saucepan and then stir in your cocoa powder and sugar.  A whisk will be your friend.  You want everything to be mixed in well.  When the mixture starts to simmer, cook your oats as normal.

Trippy man.

You’ll end up with a rich, dark brown oatmeal that you can top with cinnamon or honey or just eat it as is.  I don’t have a huge sweet tooth, but this was really good.

I promise this was awesome.

Even though I usually prefer savory to sweet, I liked the chocolate more than the Feta version.

Pomegranate Oatmeal

This was kind of a crazy idea I had.  I like pomegranate juice okay, but I find it even better to cook with.  It can give a lot of flavor to sauces and reductions.  I thought it just might work for oatmeal.

I cooked the oatmeal normally, but substituted half the water with pomegranate.  I think all pomegranate would be overkill.

Ok to drink. Better to cook with.

After it was done, I topped it with a dollop of butter and brown sugar.

It was surprisingly delicious.  It had kind of a bite to it.  Almost too acidic, but the butter cut it nicely.  And it had a really intense, fruity flavor.

Great red oats!

If I had to rank these, I would say that the chocolate variety was my favorite (which shocked me because I don’t like sweets for breakfast normally), followed very closely by the pomegranate.  I really liked that also.  The Greek dish was third, but still tasty.

Other ideas

I started talking to people about how I was experimenting with oatmeal and came up with a few other ideas:

Ginger – I was talking to my friend Zander (@zanzanne) and he mentioned how he thought that oatmeal sometimes has like a bean curd flavor and that gave him the idea to mush up fresh ginger and add it to oatmeal.  That would definitely liven up the bowl.

Coffee – Once I realized how well oatmeal takes on whatever flavor you cook it in, cooking it in coffee was the next leap.  I didn’t actually try this, but I think it would work pretty well.

Anyone else have any fun takes on oatmeal??

And the secret ingredients that we picked for this battle are:

Mangoes and chili powder.

I think we picked two great ingredients out of the possible ingredients.  They actually go together pretty nicely and could be used in a ton of different dishes. I thought about doing something curryish, then considered using a nice piece of pork to bring the two ingredients together.  I also considered making my own chili powder which isn’t too hard, but I couldn’t easily find good dried chilies.

Ultimately, I decided to go sweet.  Dessert.

I wanted to apply the two secret ingredients to an old-fashioned recipe: cobbler and ice cream.  So I made a Mango Cobbler with Chocolate Chili Powder Ice Cream.

Let’s talk ice cream first.  I don’t have one of those nifty ice cream machines so I had to do it the old fashioned way which isn’t really hard but does take some time.  Start with these:

Ice cream deconstructed

There are a lot of recipes out there for ice cream, at the end of the day I adapted this one from David Lebovitz.  Obviously, I changed it to add the special ingredients.

Chocolate and Chili Powder Ice Cream
Make time: About 3 hours, mostly unattended.

- 1 1/4 Cups whole milk
- 3/4 Cup sugar
- A pinch of salt
- 5 egg yolks
- 2 Cups heavy cream
- 1/4 Cup cocoa powder
- 2 Teaspoons chili powder

First thing is to combine everything except the cream and eggs into a medium sauce pan.

The magic.

Whisk this together really well over medium heat until it starts to boil.  Then you need to add this mixture to your eggs to make a custard base.  Start by adding a little of your warm mixture to your eggs to temper them.  This will get your eggs up to temperature.  After your eggs are warm, you can add them back to your sauce pan without fear of making scrambled eggs.

I added about half of  my hot mixture slowly and then added the egg mixture back to the other half of hot milk.

Then return this to the heat until this thickens a bit – probably 5 minutes on low.

The smell of chili powder was in the air.

The finger test.

Once your custard passes the back of the spoon test, strain this custard mixture into your bowl of cream.  You strain it just to get out any little bits of egg that accidentally cooked.  If you are super confident in your custard abilities then you don’t need to strain it I guess.

Then chill that mixture over an ice bath until it is cool.

Nobody likes scrambled eggs in their ice cream.

Once it is chilled, pour this mixture into a 13 by 9 baking dish and put it in the ice box.  After about 45 minutes, take it out and with a whisk or fork, or electric mixer if you are a wuss, beat it up.  Your goal is to break up all of the ice crystals that have formed and make it smooth.

It's a little bit of work. Don't be a wuss.

Return it to the freezer and repeat the beating every 30 minutes until it turns into, well, ice cream.  I made mine the day before I made my cobbler and it keeps great for days.

The Cobbler. A good cobbler, in my mind, has a rich fruity filling with a thick crust.  A good cobbler also requires ice cream so it is a good thing we have that covered.

Mango Skillet Cobbler (Adapted from The Best of America’s Test Kitchen)

Filling:
- 4 Tablespoons unsalted butter
- 6 Tablespoons sugar
- Pinch of salt
- 5 Mangos (cut into 1 inch cubes)
- 1 pint assorted berries (if I made this again, I would use less berries and not raspberries.  Probably just blueberries.)

Thickener:
- 1 Tablespoon lemon juice
- 1 1/2 Teaspoons corn starch

Topping:
- 1 1/2 Cups all-purpose flour (I actually used closer to 2 Cups.  Start with less though and add more if you need it.)
- 5 Tablespoons sugar
- 1 1/2 Teaspoons baking powder
- 1/4 Teaspoon baking soda
- Pinch of salt
- 3/4 Cup buttermilk
- 4 Tablespoons unsalted butter, melted and cooled

Chili Sugar:
- 1 Tablespoon sugar
- 1/2 Teaspoon cinnamon
- 1 Teaspoon chili powder

First, peel your mangoes.  If you are good, you can do this.

Extra points for keeping the peel in one piece!

Then get a large, oven-safe skillet and add about 3/4 of your mangoes and berries and all of your other filling ingredients. Cover this with foil and let it cook on the stove over medium heat for about 15 minutes.  This will cook down the fruit so your end result isn’t too runny.  Nobody likes a runny cobbler.

Healthy!

After it cooks down for 15 minutes, I added the rest of my fruit.  This gave the final product different textures which is good.  Also, it was at this moment that I realized the berries may have been a bit overkill.

Gives a different texture.

Once the fresh fruit is mixed in and warmed, add your thickener mixture of corn starch and lemon juice.  Mix together the corn starch and lemon juice before you add it.

Ready to get a topping of deliciousness.

Ok.  Cover that so it stays warm (I just use a piece of foil) and work on your topping.  Combine all of your topping ingredients in a bowl and they should come together into a pretty wet dough.  I added a bit more flour than the original recipe called for because it was too wet to work with.  Eventually I got it into a ball.

Gooey topping.

Oh also, I made this while my cobbler cooked:

Chili sugar.

Back to the dough, knead your dough a few times on a floured surface.  Just knead it for a few seconds, you want to keep it pretty light.  Then roll it out into a 1/2 in thick rectangle and rip it up into chucks and throw it on your cobbler filling.  It’s supposed to look kind of messy.  Nobody likes a clean cobbler.

I also sprinkled it with a good amount of my chili sugar.

Cobbles added.

This goes into a 425 degree oven for 18-20 minutes or until it look like this:

This produced a great smell. The smell of VICTORY.

It will be hard, but let this cool for 10 minutes before eating.  Then serve it up!

Lookin' good.

It looks good on a plate, but I like mine in a bowl so I can mix it all together.

I like mine in a bowl.

The Verdict. I had about 10 different people try this combo I created and I think it went really well.  The only criticism was that the mangos got a little bit lost in the cobbler.  Luckily, I kept my pieces pretty large so there were still large chunks of mango.  The color of the raspberries took over the dish though.

The ice cream was a unanimous winner.  The savory chili flavor was enhanced by the cocoa powder and it worked perfectly.  It also paired perfectly with the cobbler.

Do your part!

This battle is all in good fun, but Dan and I still wanted to give our readers a way to vote.  Use the below poll to vote and as I said before, the poll on his site and mine are linked so no need to vote twice and it doesn’t matter which site you vote on.

We didn’t really think of specific criteria to judge on, so use whatever criteria you want I guess!

Hope you guys liked my sweet take on these ingredients!

Update: Dan and I decided to close the polls at Noon on Tuesday, so vote by then.

Turns out I was right:

You have to make this if you are a granola fan.

After doing some research and looking at MANY different recipes, I realized that granola is kind of like one of those “Make-a-bear” workshops. I’ve never actually been in one of those shops but I think I get the general idea. You go in and pick out your teddy bear, your outfit, and your characteristics with the goal of giving the drab old teddy bear some personality. You get to make it “yours”. Genius marketing if you ask me.

Granola is very similar. There are dozens of variations and probably hundreds of additions that you can use to give it some personal flare. You can go on the cheap with some basic rolled oats, honey, and cinnamon, or you can get extremely luxurious.

I chose somewhere in the middle, but still started with plain old rolled oats.

Rollin' with the oats.

I used Mark Bittman’s recipe from this book because I trust him. I made a few alterations, but kept the proportions the same.

Homemade Granola
- 6 cups rolled oats
- 2 cups various nuts/seeds. I used 1/2 cup of each of the following: Sunflower seeds, flax seeds, chopped cashews, sliced almonds.
- 1 Teaspoon Cinnamon
- 1 Teaspoon Ghirardelli’s cocao powder (my addition)
- 1 cup honey. I probably did closer to 1 1/8 cups. Adjust according to your tastes.
- 1 cup golden raisins
- 1 cup dried cranberries

These are a great addition to anything.

Add all of your nuts and seeds to your rolled oats and mix it up really well. Some other options you could use include walnuts, pecans, peanuts, hazelnuts, Macadamias, pine nuts, pumpkin seeds, pistachios, and on and on and on.

Don’t add more than two or two and a half cups of this stuff though or they will overpower the granola.

This bowl just got way healthy.

Then put in whatever spices you would like along with your sticky stuff. I chose cinnamon, coca powder, and honey. Again though, there are tons of options: anise, vanilla, allspice, nutmeg, poppy seed, maple syrup, or molasses just to name a few possibilities.

Again though, don’t over do it. I would choose two or maybe three spice additions and a base. If you add to many then it starts to taste like nothing at all. Choose wisely, young backpacker.

Honey makes oats into granola.

Now for really the only hard part of this recipe: stirring. This stuff will be pretty thick and you want to make sure that all of your honey and spice is evenly distributed. Stir it for a few minutes to make sure it is well-combined. Don’t worry, dude, you can’t over-stir granola.

Then pour out your mixture onto a baking sheet and spread it out to form one even layer. If you use the above recipe you will either need two baking sheets or to do it in batches. It’s a lot.

Miles and miles of granola.

You want to cook this at 350 for somewhere between 25-30 minutes. My first tray I cooked for 30 minutes and it was borderline burnt. My second tray I cooked for 27 minutes and it was spot on perfect. I think this varies depending on oven and ingredients you use.

I would start watching it pretty closely after 25 minutes. The last thing you want to do is burn a whole batch of this stuff!

Once it is done pull it out but leave it on your baking sheets to cool. Then sprinkle on all of your dried fruit or half of it if you are working it batches. It is semi-important to add the fruit while the granola is still hot so the flavors start to blend.

Then let it cool completely and store it in an airtight container. The stuff will last for a very long time which is good because it makes a bunch.

This recipe makes like 40 of these.

One reason why I like this recipe oh so much is because granola is expensive. In DC, one 13 ounce box of granola in the store costs $4.19. This entire recipe costs me $18 and made the equivalent 3.5 boxes of granola. While the cost appears to be more for the homemade version, I have nuts, seeds, and dried fruit left over to make a second batch if I wanted to. All I would need is the oats which run about $1.30/lb.

I had a bowl of this for breakfast this morning and I must say that it was very delicious. Maybe there’s something to this granola craze after all.

If you know any hippies or wilderness wanderers you might want to use the below links to share this with them.