Rookie Cookery

Black Bean Brownie Recipe

What kind of brownie lets you indulge in dense, rich chocolatey goodness, while at the same time cut back on white flour, is lower on the glycemic index,  and increases your intake of beneficial fiber in the form of black beans? Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you the Black Bean Brownie.

And it's good.  Indulgent and decadent the way a brownie ought to be, with much less of the I-really-shouldn't-eat-this reservations.

I first ran across a version of this recipe on 101 Cookbooks web site.  Since then I learned that there are quite a few variations of desserts made with beans on the internet. The moment I read the article, I knew that black beans would work as a flour substitute for a brownie recipe. And since I often cook for someone who doesn't eat sugar, I was excited to try it.

My first attempt, while successful in terms of flavor, was not a very attractive dessert. I followed the original recipe suggestion to cook the brownies on a 11 x 18 inch rimmed baking pan (also known as a jellyroll pan). The wet dough has a slurry consistency and it spread out much too thin, cooking up more like a giant soft cookie than a brownie.  The recipe also called for a decorative technique that made things complicated and didn't work well for me. What follows is my second attempt and much happier result.

INGREDIENTS

4 ounces unsweetened chocolate
1 cup unsalted butter
2 cups soft-cooked black beans, rinsed and drained (I used canned)
1 cup walnuts, chopped
1 tablespoon vanilla extract
1/4 cup instant espresso coffee
1/4 teaspoon salt
4 large eggs
1 and 1/2 cups agave nectar

DIRECTIONS
Preheat the oven to 325 degrees F. Lightly spray a 9 x 13 inch baking pan with vegetable oil.

On the stovetop, melt the chocolate and butter and blend it together thoroughly with a spoon. In a food processor, blend together the beans, half the walnuts, vanilla and a few spoonfuls of the melted butter-chocolate. The mixture should be smooth and thick.

In another large bowl, mix together the remaining half of the walnuts, the rest of the chocolate-butter, espresso and salt. Mix thoroughly with a spoon.

In a mixing bowl, beat the eggs until light and creamy. Add the agave nectar and beat together with the eggs thoroughly. Set aside.

Add the bean mixture to the coffee/chocolate mixture and blend well. Then add the egg mixture and mix until well incorporated.

Pour the batter into the prepared pan. Bake for 30 to 40 minutes, until brownies are set and a toothpick can be inserted and removed clean. Let cool completely before cutting into squares. Refrigerate to enhance firmness and prolong freshness.

Serving suggestion: Serve with a scoop of vanilla ice cream (unless you want to keep the lower glycemic value of this dessert!)

How does this dessert compare, nutritionally,  to a standard brownie? I did a little research and found this analysis: Adding up all the calories of the ingredients, and figuring 45 brownies per pan,  (using the original suggestion of an 11 x 18 inch baking sheet pan yielding 45 2-inch brownies),  the brownies are about 108 calories per serving. By comparison, the same brownies made with two cups of sugar and 1.5 cups flour, each brownie would be about 173 calories. NOTE: This is based on the math and guess work of an anonymous person who sounded reasonable to me.

Calories aside, I think the real benefit to this recipe is the fact that beans take a lot longer to digest than white flour and are thus lower on the glycemic index, which measures the rise in blood sugar after a certain food is consumed. The substitution of agave nectar for sugar is going to make this a lower glycemic index dessert.

Just remember: it is still dessert! So eat in moderation and enjoy.

A Simple Shortbread Cookie recipe

I am one of those people that go to an ice cream store offering dozens of flavors and I will usually choose vanilla.  I can't help it, I love vanilla and I love simple, pure, traditional foods.

So it is that I had to try my hand at baking the most simple, pure, and basic of cookies: the Shortbread cookie (also known as Scottish shortbread cookie, or biscuit, thus satisfying my ancestral heritage as well!)

Aside from a no-bake cookie, it just doesn't get any easier than this, and the ingredients are pantry staples you are almost sure to have around.

INGREDIENTS:

1/2 cup softened, unsalted butter (preferably organic)

1/4 cup granulated sugar

1 teaspoon orange or lemon zest

1/8 teaspoon salt

1 cup all-purpose flour, sifted through a seive.

DIRECTIONS:

Blend together all ingredients except the flour until it is smooth. Then sift in the flour, mixing continually until a loose smooth dough is formed.

Transfer the dough on to a cookie sheet that has been  lined with parchemnt paper or a silicone baking mat. Using your hands, form it into a 10 by 5 inch rectangle.

Take a butter knife and score the top of the dough into six evenly spaced 2 inch rectangles.  Then score each rectangle with a diagonal line. (This is so you can cut twelve long skinny triangle shaped cookies out of the dough after it has baked. )

Your dough marks will look like this:

Then take a fork and gently poke little indentations into the top of the dough.

Bake in a 375 degree oven for 13 to 15 minutes. Allow to cool completely and gently cut the cookies into individual sections along the score marks with a long sharp knife.

These are delicate and lovely cookies, not overpoweringly sweet, but soul cheering. Perfect for that cup of tea or coffee. These can be dressed up with a little chocolate sauce or jam, but I usually eat them plain.  They will vanish all the same.

Mint Pesto: A Dessert Pesto recipe

Prepare for an experience of olfactory bliss!

We have tons of mint growing in our garden, so I finally got around to researching a more adventurous culinary use of this fragrant herb.  What I found was a suggestion for this sweet mint pesto that is simple to make and absolutely divine when paired with chocolate.  If you love mint like I do,  you will stay awake nights trying to figure out new uses for this concoction.

INGREDIENTS

2 cups of fresh, cleaned and loosely packed mint leaves

1/2 cup of macademia nuts or walnuts (I used walnuts available)

1/3 cup of honey

1 tablespoon vanilla extract

DIRECTIONS

In a food processor, briefly chop the nuts. Then add all other ingredients and pulse into a smooth paste. Store in an airtight container and refrigerate for up to a month.

What to do with this pesto? Use it as a paste between chocolate cookies,  or  stir it into your favorite brownie mix.  You could also blend it with a favorite ice cream.  It would also be lovely stirred into a chocolate sauce or frosting for cakes or cookies.  If you have other suggestions, please leave a comment! 

Cherry Claufuti Recipe and An Infatuation with Dishware

I'm a little embarrassed to tell you this story. It reveals my lust for certain inanimate objects, namely pretty dishware.

About six months ago I was prowling a thrift store and there they were: a stack of dishes that featured a frankly cheerful and unabashedly pretty cherry pattern. I was immediately smitten. I wanted them. I wanted them the way one wants a gorgeous but superficial cook book, only it takes up more space.

I walked a few steps away. This was clearly a want, not a need.  The price, while very good, betrayed the fact that these had not been on the shelf very long. I tried to talk myself out of it.  Shouldn't I at least wait for a price reduction? But I knew these pretties wouldn't last long at any price.

I showed the dishes to my husband, and he rolled his eyes.  He did not see their charm at all. He raised several valid points about the impracticality of the purchase. I had to agree, at least in theory.

Just then, watching from fifteen feet away, I saw another woman approach the dishes I coveted. My heart stopped. She inspected them carefully. "No!" my materialistic soul wailed silently. It was then that I realized just how much I wanted them. I held my breath; a few agonizing moments passed and the shopper decided against them and walked away.  She had barely turned her back before I pounced on the prize and stacked the dishes into my cart.  Score!

I turned a deaf ear to my husband's protest. Besides, we are a family of four, and the set featured four dinner plates, four salad plates, four cups and saucers and four bowls! All for less than two bucks a piece! It was fate!

And also, besides that, what could be more perfect upon which to serve a cherry claufuti?  Surely you can see my impeccable logic.

Ever since I heard about cherry claufuti, the traditional French dessert, I knew I had to make one. It featured several of my criteria for a perfect recipe: It was easy, and it was traditional and featured seasonal ingredients easily obtained. The recipe is essentially a pancake batter poured over fruit. I could barely wait until cherry season to bake the dessert and use my plates.

I used Julia Child's recipe in Mastering The Art of French Cooking.  She has you mix it up in a blender, but you can also mix it by hand in a bowl.

First, prepare a 7 to 8 cup, lightly buttered baking or pie dish and preheat your oven to 350 degrees F.  Then pit the halve the cherries, and set them aside.

INGREDIENTS:

three cups of pitted fresh cherries
1 and 1/4 cup milk
3 eggs
1 Tablespoon vanilla extract
1/8 tsp salt
2/3 cup sifted all purpose flour
1/3 cup sugar (set aside)
Optional:  a few tablespoons powdered sugar for garnish

DIRECTIONS

Place all the ingredients except the cherries and sugar into a blender (or work bowl if hand mixing). Blend for one minute.

Pour a scant 1/4 inch layer of batter into the baking dish. Set this over moderate heat for a minute or two until a film of batter has set in the bottom of the dish. Remove from heat. Spread the pitted, halved cherries over the batter in the plate, and sprinkle it all with the sugar. Then pour the remaining batter evenly over the cherries.

Place the pan into the oven, middle position, and bake for about an hour or until the claufuti is puffed and browned on top, and a toothpick or knife inserted into the center is removed clean.

Serve while still warm with a sprinkling (use a shaker or strainer) of powdered sugar, or with a side of freshly made vanilla ice cream.

I wish I had a better picture of the finished product for you. Obviously I was much more interested in eating it than taking a careful picture. The aroma of the claufuti is heavenly, and I think it is at its best with a scoop of our home made vanilla ice cream as shown here.

True confessions: I omitted the step of baking a little film of batter on the bottom of the plate. Perhaps for that reason, the claufuti came out a little moist for my taste, although it is a custard (or "flan" as Julia Child calls it) so maybe it was just as it should have been. I shall punish myself by making this again, and soon.

One need not purchase special plates just to make a claufuti. But one could be inspired by a pretty plate. Hmmm I feel a cherry pie coming on.  Bon apetit!

Cherries

In my Ideal Pretend Life, we have a Bing Cherry tree.  That's going on my Someday For Real List, for sure.

Dough Scrap Tarts

When I was a girl, my Mom made these clever cookies (more of a tart, really) out of pie dough and jam.  To this day I can't remember if she had leftover scraps from a pie, or made the dough expressly for these tarts. All I remember is how pretty they were, and how good they tasted. 

Recently I had pie dough scraps left over from making two apple pies for my father-in-law's 90th birthday.  If ever there was a chance to make these tarts, this was it!

I had no recipe,  but I was undeterred.

First I cut out circles of dough.  Then I cut out another set of circles, and then cut a hole in the center of those circles.   This part did not go so well, because I didn't have the proper size of cutter-- a doughnut hole size would have been nice. What I ended up doing was a haphazard combination of cutting and hand-forming a little "ring" of dough, placing each ring on top of a circle, so as to create a little holder for the jam preserves.  It looked like this after they were filled:

I used rasberry jam, but you could use any of your favorite fruit preserves or I suppose even bits of chocolate.

Then I baked the tarts. I started them at 350 degrees for ten minutes, but saw that they were not browning, so I turned up the heat to 425 and they browned nicely with the jam bubbling hot in another ten minutes. Next time I would try it at 450 for ten minutes or so, as if I were blind baking a pie crust.

Warning! These come out of the oven blisteringly hot because of the jam, so fight the urge to bite one right away--let it cool! Yes, the aroma will tantalize you. 

These are so good, I think it might be worth it to make a batch of dough just for these tarts. You can try several jams at once-- rasberry, strawberry, apricot, orange marmelade-- and enjoy their many jeweled colors while they last-- which won't be long!

A Chocolate Tasting with Ginger Elizabeth Chocolates

Tell people you're going to a wine or cheese tasting and they might be interested. Tell them you are going to a chocolate tasting and they are downright fascinated!

Ginger Elizabeth is a petite, brunette spitfire of a woman (pictured above with a photo from her own web site at gingerelizabeth.com ) who has a passion for chocolate, and the talent and drive to offer her own superbly crafted artisinal chocolate confections in a highly competetive market.  When my pal Garrett from Vanilla Garlic invited a small group of us Sacramento and Davis area food bloggers to a chocolate tasting with Ginger,  I was quick to get my name on the list. 

I am not one of those people (of which there are legion) who is a fanatic about chocolate. I do enjoy the occasional chocolate extravagance however, and I do have strong opinions on the quality of the chocolate I am eating.  Nothing is more disappointing than biting into a piece of chocolate that is waxy, oily or tasteless. 

Ginger Elizabeth's chocolates make me understand why people go out of their way to track down The Good Stuff.  She works with the finest raw, fresh ingredients using the traditional methods of European chocolatiers, bringing her own keen taste and experience to the party.  Her youthful appearance and years belie the amount of actual training and experience she has under her belt-- experience and craft that becomes fully apparent the moment one of her confections begins to melt on your tongue.

Lest you think the chocolate tasting was merely an excuse to sample generously from Ginger's truffles, (which we did), the experience was also educational.  Ginger explained where chocolate comes from,  how it is cultivated and processed,  and the complex chemistry involved to transform cocoa beans into world class chocolate.  From mixing and grinding, to tempering and  blending  and adding  fresh  fruit and other flavors, Ginger  gave us an overview of the combination of science and magic that go into her art.

We ate our way around that little white plate of  chocolates, starting with the tiny chocolate nibs--the purest and unrefined essence of chocolate.  Often we broke apart the pieces and saved  tender morsels in a little plastic bag for later indulgence. This is heady stuff:  Dense, creamy, the essence of luscious ganache.  The textures were voluptuous, the flavors intense and surprising.

Ginger encouraged us to compare each uniquely crafted bite. After the nibs, we tasted two different "plain" chocolates from manufacturers who used different chocolate beans, so we could begin to discern the differences in the taste due to the "terroir" of the beans themselves (much as one does with coffee beans from different parts of the world).  We also tasted a bit of pure cocoa butter,  which, while not tasty of itself, gave us a sense of the richness it offers a quality chocolate (as opposed to the insipid taste of oil or wax in the cheap stuff).

Then we moved eagerly to the confections Ginger creates with her own unique blend of these chocolates and flavorings:

First we tasted the traditional European style Palet D'Or, with it's signature glint of gold on it's glossy surface. Found all over Europe, this is the purest essence of a chocolate ganache, without further elaboration wanted. Sublime.

Then we sampled Ginger's signature offerings: First her Meyer Lemon truffle-- her current best seller for good reason.  She uses every part of the lemon--the zest, the juice--and it's wonderful-- a lovely twist on the more common chocolate and orange combination that is so popular.

Then my personal favorite (so far)-- her Olmec Spice, which features notes of vanilla, chiles, ginger and cinnamon.  Rich, with a seductive burning finish. Spectacular!

The Passion Fruit was the only milk chocolate based truffle we sampled, and it was a little miracle the way the fruit sang through the chocolate in perfect harmony, neither too loud nor too soft.

Some of us donned a hair net so we could inspect the tiny but efficient kitchen where Ginger performs her alchemy. Here's a few snaps:

There are truffles aplenty,  sixteen different types alone named in the helpful illustrated guide that comes in each box of chocolates you can buy. I bought a sampler of six truffles to take home to my family for our own little tasting party, and there are sampler boxes available in quantities of six, twelve, twenty-four or forty-eight pieces. Ginger also makes fabulous cakes, bars, and a frozen treat that is sure to be a big hit here in Sacramento when the summer temperatures soar.

Ginger Elizabeth Chocolates is located in mid town Sacramento at 1801 L Street, Suite 60.  Stroll on in for a little indulgence or a gift for that special someone. Or visit her web site at gingerelizabeth.com  and have decadence delivered to your door. 

Baked Apple: A Classic Sugar Free Dessert

Do you have a yen for apple pie, but no time to prepare one? Take the time honored short cut and bake whole apples in your oven. These take only about 30 minutes to bake, (a little longer if you like them softer than we do), so they can be ready to eat shortly after you have eaten dinner and cleared away the dirty plates. Be careful, though, they come out of the oven hot!

Baked Apple Recipe

INGREDIENTS:

tart, firm and ripe apples such as Granny Smith, one for each person
raisins
ground cinnamon
grouond nutmeg (optional)
*brown sugar (add brown sugar only if a NON-sugar free version is desired)

DIRECTIONS: Pre-heat your oven to 350 degrees F. Using a sharp paring knife or (preferably) a coring tool, cut from the stem end down into the apple and remove the center core, and discard. Try to remove all the seeds and pith. Do not peel.

Place the apples in a baking dish that has a lip or sides. If the apple does not stand up, slice the bottom off enough to make a flat surface to sit on. (I didn't have to do this on the apples I used).

In a separate small bowl, toss a handful of raisins generously sprinkled with cinnamon and nutmeg if desired. Add a tablespoon or so of brown sugar only if a NON sugar free version is desired. Mix thoroughly. Then spoon the spiced raisins into the core cavity of each apple.

VARIATION: Recently at Whole Foods, I purchased a small jar of "Cinnamon Raisin Fool", which contains golden raisins, currants, cinnamon, vanilla and annatto. No sugar--this delicious conconction relies on the natural sweetness of the softened fruits. I spooned some of this into the apples instead of spicing my own raisins, and it was very tasty indeed.

Bake the apples in the oven for about half an hour. To check whether or not it is done, carefully pierce an apple with your fork. If the apple yields easily to the fork, it is done. Remove from oven and let the apples sit a few minutes. If you are impatient, slice into the apples so they will cool a little faster.

The fragrance is lovely, and this makes a simple but elegant dessert any night of the week.

A Belated Valentine Cookie Post

Remember those cookie cutters I lost? I found them. They were tucked away in a remote corner of a kitchen cupboard. Most of them are Christmas shapes, but I wanted the Valentine heart shaped ones. As it turns out, I cut out a few hearts and then shaped most of the rest by hand. This was your basic sugar cookie, dressed up with peppermint sprinkles I had purchased, but never used, for Christmas cookies. They were OK, not fabulous.

Can you tell I am in a bit of a blogging slump? I am. It's a serious slump, potentially fatal for a food blog, because the job I have been working since last October requires that I be working until 6 pm most nights, 8 pm on Fridays. The thing is, my family usually sits down to eat dinner at about 6 pm, which means I am no longer there to cook. I have been working at coming up with more meal ideas that include leftovers for another night. And I am using my recipes for meals that can be cooked up fairly quickly, or, by contrast, that can be cooked in a crock pot while I am away.

That's not to say the Guys (husband, sons, father-in-law) haven't stepped up to the plate (literally) and fended for themselves; they have. Indeed my husband Jim usually has a little something ready for me when I walk in the door. Part of me enjoys the break from cooking, and another part of me misses it, even grieves the loss of preparing meals for my family. For this and other reasons, (which may become another post), I'm all at sea about What's For Dinner lately. What it will mean for my blog is not clear yet, but I have been contemplating changing the focus of the blog to include things other than food. Until then, I have lots of unfinished food blog ideas to share here as much as I can-and the pictures to go with them!

So I give you these post-Valentine cookies. It's all I got right now, folks.

Food Gifts to Give Again

This is the week to bake and make last minute preparations for the holidays. Yes, I am scrambling to get things done! Blogging is not even in the top ten of things on my To Do list, and I'll bet you feel the same way.

Here are a few posts from last year, sharing ideas for home made treats to give as gifts or enjoy at home.
Blessings!

Candied Pretzels and Apricots

Hot Chocolate Mix

Date Nut Treats