Rescue this recipe

Okay, so I’m making meringue-based buttercream. I’ve made the Swiss kind a few times before and it’s turned out beautifully. I did a little research and found two buttercream recipes made with natural sweeteners. One, which makes about a fifth of the amount my recipe makes (based on the number of egg whites required), called for 4.5 T of maple syrup and 1/4 c of coconut sugar. I multiplied by five and got 22.5 T, equivalent to 1 1/2 c, and 1 1/4 c of the coconut sugar. I added those together (since I have no coconut sugar) and got just shy of 3 c. Since the original recipe asks for 4 c of sugar, I decided to go for 3 c of natural sweetener. I used 2 c maple syrup and 1 c honey.

First of all, I should have measured my mixer bowl. It’s not big enough for this big recipe. (I’ve made half before, and 2/3 before, but never the whole amount.) The egg whites and sweeteners heated up beautifully over a pot of boiling water, and were starting to whip beautifully in the mixer, but while I was doing something else they rose up exuberantly and spilled over.

I divided the mixture in half and continued with one half. I started to add the cool but soft butter, a cube at a time. The stuff deflated, and even after about a stick or two of butter (the whole recipe calls for ten, so this was nearly half the allotted amount for half the recipe) it remained stubbornly soupy and unemulsified, even after chilling.

So… is there anything I can make with 2 c egg whites, 2 c maple syrup, 1 c honey, and 1/2 – 1 c butter?

———

Edited to add:

I thought the problem may have been either that I didn’t whip the whites and sweeteners long enough — didn’t quite get to stiff peaks — or else that the honey was too thick / heavy / viscose (a note on one of the recipes said not to use it for that reason — which I noticed after using it).

But in a terrifying leap of faith, I decided to a) try a trick I saw after googling “save a failed buttercream,” which was to heat up 1/4 of the mixture and stream it back in, and then b) keep adding the butter. It worked.

Meanwhile I’d already set out more frozen egg whites to try again with a different recipe, the one with maple and coconut sugar (I used turbinado), so I went ahead and made that, too.

Altogether, 3 quarts from the first recipe, with a yummy rich maple flavor, and maybe 2/3 quart of the second recipe, with a lighter flavor and color. So I’m set for icing for three more cakes after this weekend’s. Good thing it freezes!

Butternut soup with bacon

1 butternut squash
2 T coconut oil
4 c chicken stock
1/4 c onion
1-2 carrots
1-2 stalks celery
2 slices bacon
1 c whole milk
1 T butter
1/4 t cinnamon
1/8 t each cloves, ginger, and nutmeg
salt and pepper to taste

Cut the squash in half lengthwise, scoop out the seeds, and roast face-down on an ungreased sheet pan at 375 for just about an hour or until tender. Allow to cool.

In a soup pot over medium heat, cook onion in coconut oil until almost translucent. Add chopped carrots and celery, including celery leaves. When vegetables are soft, add stock and squash and simmer for a while; maybe long enough to do the day’s dishes. Meanwhile, cut the bacon into bits and cook (or cook and then crumble) until as crispy as you like it. Use a blender or immersion blender to puree the soup. Reduce heat, and stir in bacon, milk, butter, and seasonings.

Molasses pancakes

This is just a serendipitous variation on the Better Homes and Gardens New Cookbook pancake recipe, provoked inspired by our current lack of honey (which I usually use to sweeten pancake batter).

In a large bowl, whisk together the following:

2 c whole wheat flour
2 t baking powder
1 t baking soda
1/2 t cinnamon
1/8 t ground cloves
1/8 t ginger

In another bowl, whisk together the following:

2 c buttermilk
2 eggs
4 T melted butter
1 T molasses

Combine wet and dry ingredients, stirring just until well-combined.

Amy says they’re even good plain, but I like them best with butter and maple syrup.

Cake

I was in the mood for cake the other day. And I’ve had this swiss meringue buttercream article bookmarked for a long while. So this weekend they came together.

First of all, icing. The stuff on the back of the powdered sugar box is NOT buttercream, despite its claim to the contrary — it’s nothing like real bakery icing. Failing that, and not having good substitutes for the otherwise lovely but shortening-based “fluffy white icing,” and Mark having no qualms against icing-in-a-can, I haven’t made icing in years. (Except the boiled icing for texas sheet cake that we make on birthdays.) The swiss meringue buttercream article inspired me to try again to make the real thing.

But what cake to put it on? As usual, I hemmed and hawed and researched too much — this buttercream, or try to find a honey- or maple-sweetened version — likewise, a regular cake, or one with healthier sweeteners — would texas sheet cake really be that bad in layers — and on and on. Here are some other buttercreams I considered — once I chose this maple-sweetened, butterless cake, I decided to go with the original swiss meringue despite the sugar.

First, the cake.

I used white whole wheat flour, substituted whole milk for the coconut milk, used coconut oil, and increased everything by 1 1/2 thinking that way I would have enough for two round layers. The store Mark went to did not have any bittersweet chocolate, so he got two giant Special Dark bars. When I make the cake again, I’ll try to get the right chocolate, and I’ll be sure to have the maple syrup and milk at room temperature — right out of the fridge they nearly solidified the coconut oil.

The cake is delicious. Rich, chocolaty. But very dense, and could be more moist. To me it seems like some hybrid between pound cake and flourless / mousse cake. Good — but maybe not the best choice for a layer cake with fluffy frosting. Too sweet to my taste, but that may be because of the Special Dark instead of bittersweet.

And now, the icing.

I divided the recipe by four, thinking since I wasn’t doing any fancy piping or other decoration I would have plenty. The egg white and sugar heating went beautifully, as did beating it until thick, glossy, and cool. Adding the butter went smoothly too, although it was no longer thick. Then it curdled a bit when I added the vanilla. I kept chilling it and trying again. Then, like magic, very suddenly, it simultaneously got very thick, slowing the mixer, and beautifully smooth instead of grainy.

Even though it’s not as cloyingly sweet as powdered sugar “buttercream,” this icing is still too sweet to my taste. I wonder if it would work with less sugar, or if the amount of sugar affects the way the meringue sets up.

I sliced the surprisingly tall layers in half to make four layers (maybe one recipe would have been enough), and barely had enough icing to cover them all. It would have been a fine amount for a normal layer cake. I think applying the frosting might have been the hardest part of the whole endeavor — what a terrible job I did.

Still — cake! (And real icing!)

Frothy treat for a hot day

Guessing on measurements again.

2-3 ice-tray blocks of peach puree
7-9 ice cubes
3-4 cups of cran-grape juice

Blend and enjoy.

Yesterday’s food

Lunch: apple slices with quinoa stew

1 c quinoa
2 c water
2 carrots, peeled and cut up
A bit of onion chopped small — not quite 1/4 cup
A few bones from leftover chicken
Meat from leftover chicken — we had maybe 3/4 cup
2-3 T butter

Combine ingredients in a pot, bring to boiling, cover and reduce heat, simmer about 10-15 minutes until water is mostly absorbed. I actually reheated the chicken meat separately in a skillet and stirred in the quinoa mixture after simmering, but I don’t see why you couldn’t do it all in the pot. Salt and pepper to taste.

Dinner: Focaccia with lentil puree and pesto

1 recipe focaccia dough

Lentil puree:
1 c red lentils cooked in about 1 1/2 c water with a clove or two of garlic chopped fine. Salt and pepper to taste. Puree with a stick blender.

Pesto:
A lot of basil and some spinach — I filled a colander from the garden.
About 1/2 c parsley
About 1/2 c shredded cheese — I had sharp white cheddar on hand
About 1/4 c chopped nuts — I had almonds
A clove of garlic
Put it all in a blender and pulse until it’s a paste; add olive oil until it’s the consistency you want.

Roll out focaccia; sprinkle pizza peel with cornmeal and put dough on it. Dimple dough deeply all over with fingertips — lift it up and sprinkle more cornmeal under it, making sure it slides freely on the peel.

Spread lentil paste first, then top with pesto, then shred more cheese over it.

Bake about 11-13 minutes on a preheated stone in a 400 oven.

Two interesting dinners

Meatballs in creamy parmesan sauce (Last night)

1 lb ground beef
1 egg
1/4 c milk
1 slice bread
Basil, salt, pepper

6 T butter
1 c milk
1/4 flour
1/2 c parmesan
Salt, pepper, garlic powder

Cooked pasta

Mix the first five ingredients. I used fresh basil from the garden — a good handful of leaves. I guess maybe a teaspoon or half a teaspoon dried basil would work. Salt and pepper to taste. Form into small balls — about an inch.

Cook in butter at medium heat until cooked through. Whisk remaining sauce ingredients and stir in. Cook a few minutes more until thickened and bubbly.

Serve over pasta.

My amounts are approximate; I used too much flour and tried to correct that here.

Bacon, Eggs, and Greens Salad (Tonight)

Five hardboiled eggs
Five strips of bacon
The rest of the head of broccoli, cut up small
Some carrot thinnings
Some peas from the garden
A lot of salad greens
Vinaigrette

Asparagus quinoa soup with ham

Since I didn’t measure anything, this is more of a guide than a recipe, but here it is!

In a medium pot, saute one pound of asparagus bits in a tablespoon or so of butter. Season with salt, pepper, and a bit of ginger — I used ground this time, but you could saute a chunk of raw ginger in the butter and remove it before adding the asparagus. Remove the asparagus to a lidded bowl to keep relatively warm.

Meanwhile, bring two cups of chicken stock to a boil and add about half a cup or three quarters of a cup of quinoa. Season this with a bit of salt, pepper, and ginger as well.

When the quinoa’s tender, toss the asparagus back in, and some shredded or diced leftover ham. Or, leave the ham out — we had it without for dinner last night and it was good, but added ham for lunch today was even better.

A bit of shredded Parmesan on top is nice as well.

Chocolate peanut butter

1 spoon cocoa powder
3 spoons natural peanut butter without sugar or salt
not quite 1 spoon maple syrup

Stir. It’s likely quite stiff — you can mold it like dough into balls or logs or just eat it out of the bowl.

Oatmeal

For background on my ideas about food, see this post.

I keep hearing more about gluten and grains and carbs in general; I’m not convinced that these things are as damaging as the primal / paleo and other groups claim. But their arguments are just one more thing starting to motivate me to rethink how I prepare grains.

In the Weston Price camp, grains are soaked or fermented or sprouted — this deals with the difficult-to-digest phytates and enzyme inhibitors and makes nutrients more readily available to the body.

I’ve been meaning to try sprouting for two years or so and just haven’t yet done it. Maybe today will be the day. I need to choose a recipe first so I prepare the right amount of sprouts. And even though the wheat berries have been in the freezer all this time, I wonder if some or all of them will be too old to sprout. We’ll see.

I tried sourdough — a ferment using natural yeast — for several years and never had a really super good bread from it — nothing suitable for sandwiches. I don’t really like the taste of sourdough for normal everyday bread — just occasionally for particular soups and the like. Sourdough english muffins are good; you can add baking soda to eliminate some of the sour taste. (I wonder what that does to the nutritional values.) And while I didn’t like fully sourdough pancakes, half a recipe of sourdough pancake batter mixed with half a recipe of regular pancake batter is decent. My sourdough starter is gone, and I really don’t miss it. In the last recipe I made I forgot to save some. I can always grow more if I want to try again.

I’ve tried soaked oatmeal at least twice — the recipe says you can soak in diluted whey, yogurt, kefir, or buttermilk. I can’t remember whether I used whey once and yogurt once, or just one or the other. It was too strange a taste for me.

I’ve been loving buttermilk for a while now — it’s essential in the texas sheet cake I’ve always made for Amy’s birthdays, and using the extra in biscuits and pancakes makes them so awesome I’ve started having buttermilk on hand all the time.

So last night I finally tried soaking oatmeal with buttermilk.

This recipe has you soak a cup of oats in a cup of warm water with two tablespoons of whatever fermented dairy you choose, and then the next morning you add another cup of water and a pinch of salt and cook it.

I added cinnamon, walnuts, a drop of vanilla, and a lot of butter. It smelled just a bit like buttermilk pancakes. It tasted bland, still; because of all the water, I suppose. (Usually I cook oatmeal in skim milk — creamier and more flavorful than cooking it in water.)

After a few bites I realized I hadn’t sweetened it — I added some maple syrup and more butter, and then it tasted just fine. Slightly tangy, but not really sour at all, and not so bland.

I wonder if it would be okay to use milk instead of water, if not for the soaking liquid, then at least for the additional cooking liquid. And a cube of peach puree from the freezer might make a nice addition as well.