poached eggs

I love eggs. I love them in the morning or at lunch or at night. I love them poached, scrambled, and fried. I love them any time. This isn't a new Dr. Seuss rhyme I'm trying out (but what do you think, is it a hit?), but it is really the truth. I eat a lot of eggs, from breakfast tacos to eggs on toast to scrambled eggs with polenta (cheesy grits?), they are my go-to meal option. It's got good cholesterol, protein, some fat, and it always tastes good.

I think poached eggs are a somewhat intimidating way of cooking eggs that a lot of people either don't know how to do or don't want to do for some reason. It's so easy! and healthy! and takes pretty much the same amount of time as normal eggs. Yes, you have to boil water first but seriously? Anticipate your meal by 5-10 minutes and fill a skillet with water. You can handle this, I'm sure of it. Plus you get a nicely cooked white (important to me) with a deliciously runny yolk (also important to me) an no guilt!

I have a new cooking guru, thanks to my boyfriend's obsession with him, and it's Chef John from Food Wishes. Here's his entry about poached eggs and below, the video! I'm excited to know that I recently learned that you use some vinegar to help them stay together. I still love Alton Brown as my official on all things cooking. Plus he's quirky and nerdy and goofy. I love him. I will say that I just crack mine in and they look the same, so don't stress if you don't have the ramekins, etc. Both Chef John and Alton Brown say pretty much the same thing in their videos and it's along the lines of what my dad always did when poaching my eggs, thus the way I do it. It's simple! Give it a try. I did learn from them both, though, that you can save them up to 8 hours in cold water! Who knew?!

Tonight, I made a little sandwich for myself with a poached egg, avocado, tomato, and cheese on an english muffin. It was good but to be honest the hot and cold mix wasn't the best. It was sort of pretty though. I still loved it anyway.

strawberry banana breakfast cake

This is SO DELICIOUS! I'm super excited about it. I made this recipe several times before - the strawberry summer cake - and I recently made it as cupcakes for my boyfriend and I and added bananas. YES, PLEASE! They caramelized a bit on top and were so incredible that I just had to make it again as soon as we ate the cupcakes. I decided to do it as a cake because the cupcakes didn't quite have the surface area I wanted/needed and the bananas caramelized a bit onto the cupcake pan and that was not as much fun to clean up. So I just used the same strawberry cake recipe as before, wedged the strawberries in first (all over the place), and then put the bananas on top. I think we got about 10 slices of this, but I seriously could eat it all in one sitting, happily.

6 tablespoons unsalted butter, at room temperature, plus extra for pie plate
1 1/2 cups (188 grams) all-purpose flour
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon table salt
1 cup (200 grams) plus 2 tablespoons (25 grams) granulated sugar
1 large egg
1/2 cup (118 ml) milk
1 teaspoon (5 ml) vanilla extract
1 pound (450 grams) strawberries, hulled and halved

Preheat oven to 350°F. Butter a 10-inch pie pan or 9-inch deep-dish pie pan (what I used). This cake would also work in a 9- or 10-inch springform or cake pan. The 10-inch would make a thinner cake than pictured.

Whisk flour, baking powder and salt together in a small bowl. In a larger bowl, beat butter and 1 cup sugar until pale and fluffy with an electric mixer, about 3 minutes. Mix in egg, milk and vanilla until just combined. Add dry mixture gradually, mixing until just smooth.

Pour into prepared pie plate. This time, I wedged the strawberries into it because the cake rises more than you'd think and this way there is fruit throughout. I laid my banana slices on top of the cake and strawberries and then the cake rose around them. Sprinkle remaining 2 tablespoons sugar over berries. [I'm not sure whether or not I think the sugar is necessary with the bananas on top - I did it for the cake but not the cupcakes and couldn't tell a difference, so why bother?]

Bake cake for 10 minutes then reduce oven temperature to 325°F and bake cake until golden brown and a tester comes out free of wet batter, about 50 minutes to 60 minutes [significantly less for cupcakes]. (Gooey strawberries on the tester are a given.) Let cool in pan on a rack.

strawberry white chocolate cookies

My boyfriend found this recipe via reddit (looking at pictures of food), and we decided to give them a try. I really liked the flavors and the fact that it was a healthier cookie (the blog with the recipe claims less than 90 calories a cookie). The texture was a bit strange - never really got crispy and thinned out a bit, though the blog pictures make them look like hers were normal so I'm not sure why ours didn't turn out that way. We followed the recipe, so I can't really figure out what happened. Anyway, let me know what happens if you try them!

I did really like cooking with strawberries. The more I do it, the more I like it - my strawberry cake and these cookies and at work we have strawberry muffins that are delicious. I really like the way they sweeten as they bake and moisten the bread around them really nicely. Throw them in something and hopefully you'll like them too!

1/2 cup all purpose flour
1/4 cup whole wheat flour
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1 cup oats (not instant)
dash of salt
3/4 cup packed dark brown sugar
2 tablespoons butter, softened
2 tablespoons unsweetened applesauce
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 egg, large
3/4 cup chopped fresh strawberries
1/3 cup white chocolate chips

In a large bowl, whisk flours, oats, salt and baking soda together. Set aside. In another bowl, beat applesauce, butter and vanilla with a handheld mixer on low speed. Add in egg and beat until full mixed.

Gradually add the flour mixture to the wet mixture and stir well. Gently fold in strawberries (so they don’t mash) and chocolate chips. Mix until fully combined. Cover the dough with plastic wrap or foil and let chill in fridge for at least 2 hours.

Once chilled, remove dough from fridge. Preheat oven to 350F and grease a baking sheet with nonstick cooking spray. Scoop about 1 tablespoon of dough onto the sheet, about 1/2 inch from each-other.

Bake for 10 – 12 minutes, or until cookies are golden brown. Chill on a wire cooling rack and then enjoy!

applesauce cake

I haven't baked anything in a couple weeks, so I was sort of itching for it a bit yesterday. I decided to do something a little different and I.... well, I made a video. On the one hand, it was fun to make and edit and what not. On the other hand, it is a little embarrassing - to have made it, to see myself in it, to watch myself stumble a bit. But oh well, I think I'll live. And when I try it again, hopefully it is all a little better. It is definitely longer than it probably needs to be, so next time I'll work on getting shorter clips to put together to use so it doesn't drag on as long (unless you're just into me chatting away).

[video is still saving/exporting/uploading, so I'll add it in later]

In terms of the recipe itself, I liked it. The final product doesn't have much of a strong flavor at all, but it is good. Like I said in the video (when I very gracefully tried it - note: learn how to eat on camera better), it tastes like a simple breakfast cake. If you wanted to add a bit more spice to it to bump up the flavor, that could be good, and as the recipe suggests, you can add in some nuts or raisins to make it a little more exciting. Or you can frost it and make it more of a sweeter dessert cupcake.

1 3/4 cup all purpose flour
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp ground cinnamon
1/2 tsp ground cloves
(1/4 tsp ground all-spice)
(1/4 tsp ground nutmeg)
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter
1 cup white or packed light brown sugar
1 large egg
1 cup lightly sweetened or unsweetened thick applesauce
(1 cup finely chopped walnuts or pecans)
(1 cup raisins or dried currants)

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Have all the ingredients out at room temperature.

Mix flour, baking soda, cinnamon, cloves, spices, and salt together.

In a large bowl, beat the butter until creamy, about 30 seconds. Beat in the sugar for 3-5 minutes until lightened in color and fluffy. Then beat in the egg.

On low speed, add the flour mixture in 3 parts, alternating with the applesauce in 2 parts, beating after each addition until just incorporated. Then mix in nuts/raisins if desired.

Bake until a toothpick comes out clean:
12 muffins for 15-20 min
8-in square pan for 25-30 min
8-in fluted tube pan for 40-45 min
8.5 x 4.5-in loaf pan for 60-70 min

Frost with caramel frosting, quick butterscotch frosting, or quick brown butter icing, or dust with confectioner's sugar.

Nutritional information (for 1/12 of recipe)
200 calories
8g total fat
31g total carbs
1g protein

pizza and calzone

Last week, my boyfriend and I made pizza for dinner. I used a basic recipe for the dough from the pizza kit that I gave him and substituted a bit of whole wheat flour for the regular all-purpose flour. I think it was supposed to make 4 pizzas but we made 1 pizza and 1 calzone with it, and the crust definitely was quite thick. So I should certainly work on my pizza skills and rolling out the dough or tossing it or whatever. We watched this video of Jamie Oliver making a calzone. It is dubbed in German (almost wrote Deutsch), so we just muted it and watched how he did it in terms of folding it over and sealing it shut. We brushed ours with egg to make it brown a bit more. I think if it had been a thinner crust for the calzone, it would have been slightly more successful as it was a bit doughy/bready.

To prep the pizza crust, we seasoned it with a mix of herbes de provence, basil, salt, black pepper, and red pepper flakes and then put it in the oven for a few minutes to crust a bit. For both, we used a basic Ragu tomato sauce (I forgot to get stuff at the store and so had to run to a corner grocery at 9 pm and just get whatever they had), though I normally would like to make a tomato sauce by hand (or just do a white pizza, but my boyfriend thought that was a crazy idea). Then we grated mozzarella across the pizza, put on some sliced tomatoes, and added some globs of ricotta. We added a bit of chopped bell peppers to the calzone as well.

french fries

My dad bought a little fryer recently, and while I was home last weekend, we made some french fries to go with our burgers. We got three regular potatoes and peeled them, then we cut them into long strips and let them soak in water. We used peanut oil in the fryer, and once it was really hot and bubbling, we threw in batches of the potatoes (note: first dry the potatoes otherwise the water will make the oil spit out at you - yikes!). It said to let them cook about 13 minutes, but just keep an eye on it. Interestingly enough, the potatoes that we threw in plain were really dark, and the potatoes that we tossed in a flour and pepper mixture turned out lighter. I don't really know the science on that, but I liked the flour ones a little better. After they were done, we let them dry a bit on newspaper before transferring them to parchment paper on a baking sheet, seasoned them (some with just salt and some with creole) and letting them crisp up a bit in a 350 degree oven.

Note: these were just some phone pictures I took because I thought it would be nice to share this even though it wasn't really a recipe per se.