Tag: college problems

The New Adventures of Old Shortbread & the Arrival of Adulthood…

CarmenLeave a comment

 

…but mostly upperclassman-dom and off-campus living. Welcome to my new living abode, and more importantly, my new kitchen. It’s quite small; I feel a bit like Smitten Kitchen, minus a few years and a book tour. This little thing is shared among 4 girls. The home of new creations, old family recipes, and college-edition Chopped competitions…we’ll see about that one.
I’ve already made some meat stew for my rice, for the first time all myself. It…tastes great! But I’m gonna have to refine the texture a bit, making fewer chunks and thicker soups. So once I’ve made it to my satisfaction you can expect a post on that, hopefully soon.
But, of course, in the first week of my habitation in an APARTMENT OOOO, I’ve baked cookies. And I…wait for it…created another recipe!…though it’s hard to screw up shortbread. Crunchy, buttery, flaky! What could be better? I know! Add peanut butter, naturally. I got really excited when I tried Wegmans’ organic peanut butter because it was just as peanut buttery as inorganic peanut butter. If you’ve ever tried organic peanut butter expecting the same texture as Skippy’s, you likely experienced a rude shock when you had trouble unclenching your teeth. In short, organic peanut butter is thick as fudge and the point of any of this is that I added peanut butter to your basic shortbread recipe and it was great. The end.
Due to short-notice/impromptu dinner guests, I was stuck to figure out what to make with what was in the kitchen already. This is what went through my head and hands for 20 minutes upon entering the kitchen:

  1. It’s me we’re talking about, if I present a baked good, people will neither be surprised nor complain
  2. No chocolate chips again, no problem. Time for that handy dandy peanut butter!
  3. Ok, sugar and butter in bowl…why do I have a feeling there’s no baking powder…
  4. …there’s no baking powder. Okay, okay…cookies without baking powder?
  5. Shortbread. Done. Wait that’s boring. Peanut butter.
  6. Honey.
  7. Bag of pretzels on fridge…yeah let’s use that.
  8. Should make double this….nah.

They were a massive hit (as if the combo of shortbread and peanut butter weren’t completely revolutionary!). In the meantime, I’ll be needing some baking powder. Look forward to more baking and cooking adventures of Carmen and circle apartment xxxxx. Here are some mean peanut butter pretzel shortbread cookies while we wait.

Peanut Butter Pretzel Shortbread
Makes about 45 cookies

1 cup butter
1 cup sugar
4 tablespoons peanut butter
2 tablespoons honey
2 teaspoons vanilla
2 cups flour
5 large twist pretzels, or 10 mini twist pretzels

Preheat oven to 350 and grease two baking sheets
Cream the butter and sugar. Add the peanut butter, honey, and vanilla. Gradually mix in the flour.
Refrigerate the dough for at least one hour.
Flatten the dough onto baking sheets. Crush pretzels and press into dough. Cut dough into pieces with a knife. Or, roll out onto flat surface and cut out shapes with cookie cutter(s), then press in pretzel pieces.
Bake for 10 minutes, or until top of dough browns.

I had the foresight to write out a recipe that was already doubled;
don’t worry about small masses of dough like this one!
I’m getting excited about the windows in this apartment and their positioning
relative to the sun. #photonerdprobs #cantdealwithartificiallight
This is a cookie dough you I need extra self-discipline to not eat
because there’s no egg

 

So I may have burnt them a bit…keep an eye on them because I’m not 100%
on the 10 minutes…someone try them and let me know (this was 15).
A nice golden hour comes through our dining room every night.
Very okay with this (may need to work on this lighting for food, however)

#collegeproblemzzz: Chocolate Chip Cookies

Carmen1 Comment
Typical dorm life issue: You want to make cookies (make cookies), so you get out all your non-perishables from the closet, and forget you don’t have any butter or eggs.
Rats! Or, maybe that’s not generally a problem because why would you have flour, sugar and chocolate chips without butter and eggs?  If you’re anything like me, then you enjoy baking from scratch and won’t know when the urge will hit you. In these cases, it would be convenient to use eggs regularly enough that they don’t expire before you finish, and…well I guess you don’t have the same problem with butter. But I had no eggs, I had no butter, and I wasn’t about to drive to Wegmans in order to make cookies.
For whatever reason, however (specifically doughnuts…), I had some vegetable oil hanging around. There was hope yet! After Googling something like “no egg butter chocolate chip cookies” I eventually came across the Post Punk Kitchen, advertising their expertise on vegan cooking. I generally steer clear of vegan and gluten-free things, as a byproduct of their ingredients (or lack of) is more healthy, less dangerous and delectable. But I really didn’t have a choice since nothing I had to work with was/came from something that ever had legs. You know when they say don’t judge a recipe by its picture? That’s right – they don’t, because it’s surefire way to predict your success (totally).
I’ve attacked this recipe twice now, and let’s just say practice makes perfect. If you are missing butter from your fridge If you are a college student living in a dorm, then there’s a fair chance you won’t have tapioca flour hanging around like this recipe requests. If you are thus concerned for your cookies’ integrity, then you can replace the tapioca flour with something sticky like peanut butter or bananas. As long as you follow the instructions, and take care in catalyzing the “chemical reactions”, you should be good to go. Don’t be like me and assume efforts to mix the oil into the sugars are for naught. They’re not. Your cookies will taste better than the tube of dough your neighbors are buying from the campus convenience store.
Disclaimer: This, of course, depends on your substitute for the tapioca flour; not sure you even need one. If you use half a pinkie’s length of banana, you will have banana cookies with some chocolate chips. You’ve been warned.
Pools of oil: BAD
Homogenous velvety smooth “dough”: GOOD
Your cookies should look more like this
Less so like this: they may slip out of your fingers

Chocolate Chip Cookie (no eggs, no butter)

1/2 brown sugar
1/4 white sugar
2/3 cup canola oil
1/4 cup unsweetened almond milk (or your favorite non-dairy milk)
1 tablespoon tapioca flour
2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract
1 1/2 cups all purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
3/4 cups chocolate chips

Preheat oven to 350 F. Lightly grease two large light metal baking sheets.
Mix together sugars, oil, milk and tapioca flour in a mixing bowl. Use a strong fork and mix really well, for about 2 minutes, until it resembles smooth caramel. There is a chemical reaction when sugar and oil collide, so it’s important that you don’t get lazy about that step. Mix in the vanilla.
Add 1 cup of the flour, the baking soda and salt. Mix until well incorporated. Mix in the rest of the flour. Fold in the chocolate chips. The dough will be a little stuff so use your hands to really work them in.
For 3 inch cookies, roll the dough into about ping pong ball size balls. Flatten them out in your hands to about 2 1/2 inches. They will spread just a bit. Place on a baking sheet and bake for about 8 minutes – no more than 9 – until they are just a little browned around the edges. I usually get 16 out of these so I do two rounds of eight cookies. Let cool on the baking sheet for about 5 minutes then transfer to a cooling rack.
For 2 dozen two inch cookies roll dough into walnut sized balls and flatten to about 1 1/2 inches and bake for only six minutes.
Brought to you by PPK

To Ramen or to Ramen

CarmenLeave a comment
You’re a poor college student getting ready to replenish your stash of instant ramen cups – don’t do it! Let me suggest a more healthy and more taste-bud-thrilling option. You’ll still get your ramen, but you won’t get the unpronounceable ingredients list in your body. You have a couple options, but one main path to success.
1. Go to a grocery store and get a packet of ramen noodles, not pre-packaged to just nuke&go, but to boil in hot water or a microwave for a while.

Okay okay, not ramen per se, but I’ll tell you a secret – it doesn’t actually matter
2. Steal vegetables from the salad bar in the dining hall Go get vegetables to add to your noodles, in place of the vegetable flavoring powder. Peppers, tomatoes, carrots, onions, broccoli etc will do. Also mushrooms.
3. You can either cook the vegetables in oil until they smell good or leave them to put on top after the noodles are done. If you want to cook them, you can add some oil to whatever you can put on the stove — pot, skillet etc (hopefully you have a pot for the noodles, though)

If this counts as sautéing, then do that.
4. Boil water in a pot and then put the noodles in for 4ish minutes, or as long as the directions say. Yeah, don’t throw out the package.

Good to practice your guesstimating
5. Make sure the noodles as soft as you want them, then drain the water and place in a bowl. Add the vegetables with whatever other fixings you want like soy sauce, that red rooster sauce, salt/pepper etc.
Doesn’t that just look so much healthier?

That’s the basic rundown if you are culinarily challenged. Other variations include making a broth with the miso soup packet things (significantly less unhealthy than styrofoam noodle cups) with the water, cooking the vegetables with the noodles, and making a real broth with meat and everything (lol).
If you’re hard up for real cookware, you can put the noodles in a bowl with water and microwave them until the water is boiling, and add a miso packet to have soup. Anything like this is better than the Maruchan Ramen in the campus convenience store. Sure, it’s “convenient”, but if you take 7 more minutes, you can make a real meal and have some for tomorrow. Read that essay while the noodles cook.
*Special thanks to Tommy for being as good a cook as I am a baker 😛