Today I Made:

[PAstrychef]

Just finished churning a batch of malted chocolate frozen custard. Now it gets to ripen in the freezer for a few hours.

[Sheikh al-Majaneen]

Spiced potato enchiladas, from a vegan mexican cookbook. But with real cheese.

[Nath]

Shoyu ramen with:

• Chicken/kombu/dried fish/shiitake broth
• Soy/kombu/dried sardine tare
• Aroma oil, made by browning garlic and scallions in rendered chicken and pork fat
• Topped with marinated roast pork belly, soy-marinated soft-boiled egg, sliced narutomaki (fishcake), bean sprouts, scallions, nori, and minced crispy chicken skin

We used store-bought fresh noodles (Sun brand).

[freezeblade]

alright, now I'm starving. *Stares at breakfast oatmeal*

That sounds positively amazing.

Shoyu ramen with:

• Chicken/kombu/dried fish/shiitake broth
• Soy/kombu/dried sardine tare
• Aroma oil, made by browning garlic and scallions in rendered chicken and pork fat
• Topped with marinated roast pork belly, soy-marinated soft-boiled egg, sliced narutomaki (fishcake), bean sprouts, scallions, nori, and minced crispy chicken skin

We used store-bought fresh noodles (Sun brand).

[jobriath]

Panzanella and reverse-seared bone-in chicken breasts.

Three things I didn't know were a thing in one tiny sentence. (Panzanella? Reverse searing? Breasts have bones?!) "Reverse searing" in particular sounds like uncooking something!

[Sandry]

On Tuesday night I made okonomiyaki for the first time with a couple friends. It was good, and not too difficult! Holy heck, nagaimo is really disturbing to grate, though. >_<

Last night I just boringly roasted some potatoes and cauliflower with spices and onions. Oh well. Basics are also nice sometimes.

[Liri]

Successfully broiled some catfish. Breaded with random spices (the recipe called for powdered garlic and onion, which I don't have, so I used garam masala, in addition to the oregano, red pepper, and cumin - not exactly Creole, as advertised).

Update: it was delicious

[Peaceful Whale]

Oooh, I flashed retro pi to me zero, got it a screen, battery, and a cardboard case. (Until I can 3D print one). I'll post pictures later.

[PAstrychef]

Garlic-herb cheese stuffed park chops, and sweet potato cranberry pecan strudel for dinner. The pork chops idea I lifted from the Tasty YouTube channel.

[Bakemaster]

I made a sweet red lentil porridge this morning with masala chai, fruits, nuts, and pumpkin chunks. Served with cream. The texture was too crunchy, those lentils must have been quite stale - I should have pressure cooked them, I suppose, but 45 minutes on the stove is usually more than long enough for masoor dal.

And I have a khoya burfi in the fridge that I threw together with a spare brick from my gulab jamun batch a while back. Mixed in fresh peaches, we'll see how that works later today; the moisture might be keeping it from setting entirely. I've never had burfi before so I probably won't even know if it's wrong.

[Zohar]

Made a simple spinach pie yesterday (well, two) - spinach, onion, garlic, parsley, dill, feta cheese, cottage cheese, and eggs. Used store-bought pie crust since that's what the in-laws have at their place and I was instructed to use. It was nice to cook.

[Moo]

Ooooh that sounds good. I love spinakopita, sounds similarly delish.

[Nath]

And I have a khoya burfi in the fridge that I threw together with a spare brick from my gulab jamun batch a while back. Mixed in fresh peaches, we'll see how that works later today; the moisture might be keeping it from setting entirely. I've never had burfi before so I probably won't even know if it's wrong.

How'd it turn out?

[Bakemaster]

Too soft but I did enjoy it and it held together enough to pick up a piece and eat it.

One thing I'm not sure about was cook time/temp. I pretty much just heated the khoya enough to dissolve the sugar and make a smooth batter. No bubbling. The recipe wasn't sugary enough to actually form a proper syrup or I'd have made more of an effort to look up a proper temperature?

The peach was fine as far as texture but did make the set time quite long and the flavor mostly didn't jump out. So I think a better approach with fresh fruit might be layering with a prepped sweet.

[Moo]

Friday night I made: 100 cupcakes and tens of pouches of buttercream icing for a neighbourhood market on Saturday. I iced the cupcake on the spot with the kids' choice of icing and then they could go mad with toppers and sprinkles. It was fun.

The Mooling with one of his creations

[PAstrychef]

That's a great idea!

[Zohar]

That does sound very fun, though I'm wary of the prospect of baking a hundred cupcakes. (guess who's never had to bake something for a kid's birthday)

[Thesh]

Yeah, especially given that all the cupcake pans I've seen have 12 molds. 96 or 108, sure, but not 100.

[Sandry]

Made peanut butter peanut butter cup ice cream (with dark chocolate peanut butter cups from Trader Joe''s, rather than Reese's). I think I put in too much peanut butter. It tastes fine, but the texture isn't ideal, IMO. I'll probably try again in the future, but with a bit different proportions.

Also made sunflower butter chocolate cookies, tried making peanut butter chocolate cookies and was a failure face. This is a real shame, 'cause the sunflower ones turned out great, but I don't like the taste as well. Sigh. My fault for being haphazard about ratios when baking, most likely.

Also made lentil soup and a curry; I swear I'm not just subsisting on desserts. They're less exciting, though. Though I will admit to being excited to make soup again, as the weather's been not totally inappropriate for it, and I like soups.

[PAstrychef]

Yeah, especially given that all the cupcake pans I've seen have 12 molds. 96 or 108, sure, but not 100.

But not all cavities have to be filled.

[Liri]

Yeah, especially given that all the cupcake pans I've seen have 12 molds. 96 or 108, sure, but not 100.

But not all cavities have to be filled.

Well, they should be, really. They're only going to get worse.

[Moo]

I made my usual 24-cupcake recipe but multiplied 2.5 times, in 2 batches; then baked 3 batches of 30 using 2x12 pan and 1x6 pan at a time, and one last batch of 24 (but we also ate some before the market and I left some at home for the next day; I took exactly 100 with me). I used about 3kg of icing sugar in three batches for buttercream in all the different colours.

It wasn't sooo much work - it would have been a lot more if I also had to ice all those cupcakes in one go. I started on Friday after I got home from work and finished at 10pm but that also included getting everything together I need for the market and I also didn't clean up AT ALL until the next day (that was by far the worst part).

[Bakemaster]

In my admittedly limited and amateur experience baking in large batches, you want to plan to overshoot anyway so you can throw out any culls and reserve some for yourself/family at home. What goes smoothly in a batch of one or two dozen can easily go awry when quadrupled or quintupled (I cussed so much while cooking the first 20 or so gulab jamun of my 100+ batch).

[PAstrychef]

It started out as a fairly conventional corn chowder, but then I remembered the cooked artichoke hearts in the fridge and added them in.
Somehow, I ended up with a lot of soup. Just the thing for dinner after a brutal dentists appointment.

[freezeblade]

Last night I baked and Vienna pan loaf (flour, water, milk, honey, and butter, with beer yeast instead of bread yeast) made the house smell amazing.

[Bakemaster]

I made such a nice urad dal, ooooooh baby. Pressure is magic for flavors. And I have finally converted to tube ginger; I just can't cook from scratch often enough any more to keep fresh ginger root from spoiling before I've used it up, and I have never been happy with the results of freezing it in peeled chunks. I have to say, being able to mash up a real quick garlic ginger paste from peeled garlic cloves and tube ginger is so nice.

I've been using this Tiger XXL aged basmati, it has a strange aroma and flavor that kind of turns me off. I'm glad I tried a smallish bag first, as I'll try another brand after it's gone; I feel forced to cut it 50/50 with jasmine just to tone down that flavor. It's one of those flavors/smells that I feel like I recognize from somewhere else, but can't identify.

[cephalopod9]

I tried making pastry cream out of a failed ganache.
I do not know how ganache is a thing that I find difficult; it's got 2 ingredients and barely a recipe.

It came out about 30 percent lumps. I don't think I mixed the egg yolks and dry ingredients well. Tastes good though, and I might make some eclairs tomorrow.

[Zohar]

Wha? Ganache is chocolate and cream, where did you get the egg yolks from?

[PAstrychef]

The pastry cream remake of the ganache is where the eggs came in.
What goes wrong with your ganache? There are a few simple problems you can learn to avoid, making a perfect ganache every time a high probability outcome!

[Zohar]

Oh yeah, sorry, reading fail.

[Quercus]

Fig and peanut energy balls. Given the price of those bounce things, I must have achieved at least a five fold price reduction, even factoring in my time.

Interesting texture - crumbly out of the blender, but became putty-like as soon as pressure was applied to form into balls. Quite a dramatic shift.

[cephalopod9]

The pastry cream remake of the ganache is where the eggs came in.
What goes wrong with your ganache? There are a few simple problems you can learn to avoid, making a perfect ganache every time a high probability outcome!

This time I did it in a hurry, and I added a little 2% milk because I was low on cream. That kept it from whipping up the way I wanted it to.

I'm not good at estimating the heat, and then I'm kind of impatient, and I tend to wind up with a lot of little bits of chocolate that don't mix in.

[PAstrychef]

Ok, here's the way to perfect ganache:
Start with equal amounts by weight of cream and chocolate.
By hand-chop up your chocolate pretty small and out it in a bowl.
Heat your cream until it just begins to bubble at the side of the pot.
Pour hot cream over chopped chocolate and wait three minutes.
Whisk briskly until smooth.

In a food processor-put chocolate in work bowl and chop fairly small.
Heat cream as above.
Turn on food processor and pour hot cream in through feed tube. Let run for about a minute, until the ganache is smooth and shiny.

[Sandry]

Last week we had a no-bake-off at work, so I made fudge (with and without pecans). Then this weekend I apparently was feeling inspired or something, so made mint chocolate chip ice ream with crushed thin mints in it, my fake vegetarian version of Cincinnati chili (plus spaghetti to go with it), a tomato chickpea soup with spinach and rice, roasted garlicky cauliflower, a Moroccan lentil and pumpkin tagine and then pumpkin bread (and baked off the pumpkin seeds).

The stupid thing? I didn't use half the produce I really need to use, so I clearly have to cook more stuff in the next few days. I definitely need to use up my asparagus and a bunch of bell peppers, at minimum.

I'm going to have to put some of this in the freezer, but I'm pretending this is all part of the plan, since I'll be gone the whole weekend in another week or so, and won't have time to cook for that week's lunches. So uh. Planning?

[Zohar]

That all sounds delicious.

I finally got to cook and bake this weekend! Saturday I made some simple pasta with tomato and cream, but we also prepared for Sunday dinner and some Rosh Hashana stuff.

We were planning to make pizzas, and my in-laws made their own dough and got some ready-made tomato sauce and asked us to take care of toppings. So we roasted a bunch of veggies - zucchini, onion, bell peppers, garlic. They turned out great on the pizzas last night. For dessert I made Portuguese egg tarts - they turned out great! I'm going to make a bunch more for Rosh Hashana dinner.

[Sandry]

Ooh, I'm headed to a friend's to celebrate Rosh Hashana soon and had been looking for inspiration for things to bring. I might try that, yay!

[Zohar]

It's not very Rosh Hashana-y, but it's good! If you want an elaborate and delicious recipe with a bit more relation to the holiday you could try a bee sting cake, which uses a bit of honey.

This recipe wasn't too hard - you make a simple puff pastry dough, and you have to make a custard so need to be careful with temperature when heating it. Other than that there aren't big hurdles. Try to be careful when filling the dough with the custard. If you drop any around between the dough and the pan, it will be that much harder to take out. Usually I could just slightly wiggle them with my hand and pull them out easily.

[PAstrychef]

Braised some pork butt with citrus, cumin, cilantro, a few chili peppers and an onion, then browned it under the broiler. We made burritos with it, some refried beans, lettuce, rice, avacado and sour cream.

[Moo]

Tried to make these brownie bowls on Saturday; they turned out as these flat round brownie disks but at least they were still delicious.

Made some Sprite scones today; weirdly and unrelatedly they were also flat and still delicious.

[PAstrychef]

I bet a weight on top would solve the problem. I suspect the batter was dense enough to push up the upper pan.