Nutella Truffles + Reading Failure

This post is going to be a little different from my other recipe posts since it's a recipe off of someone else's blog and I managed to screw it up.  For the actual recipe, just follow this link. 

A few weeks ago a friend sent me a link to the blog A Beautiful Mess, specifically the post on Nutella Truffles, and said that I should try making those.  I read through the recipe and said "this doesn't sound too bad" so I went to the store and got all the ingredients together and that's when the trouble began.

The wording on the box of Baker's chocolate is covered up, but if you do much baking with chocolate, you might already know that the orange box is not bittersweet chocolate--it's unsweetened.  I realized that I had made a critical reading error AFTER I had everything all melted together.  But really, how bad could it be?  The answer is: very.  So it was time to deploy emergency confectioners' sugar!  But that just made it too thick.  Add more cream!  But now it doesn't taste very Nutella-y.  Add more Nutella!  But now it's too thick again.  More cream! 

Well, eventually I got it tasting alright again and poured into a bowl to chill in the fridge for a while.  But I think it was still probably a little thick.

Success?

After a couple hours, it was time to roll out the little truffle balls.  I'm pretty good at this part, what with all the practice from making Oreo truffles and buttercreams, so I think that went fairly well.

Success!

Back to the refrigerator they went!  It was now time for dipping them in white chocolate.  This should be easy, right?  *sigh*  I'm thinking it just was not a day I was meant to make anything.  Melting the white chocolate started out just fine, but actually dipping the truffles was another matter.  They tended to each melt a bit when I dipped them, turning the chocolate a little less white with each one that went in.  Then the chocolate decided it didn't want to stay very melty anymore and began to thicken.  They all got dipped, though!

Success...?

But that didn't look good enough for me, oh no!  I had leftover white chocolate chips, so I melted those and sent them through again!  And had the exact same problem, only worse.  But they all got dipped a second time, no matter how clumpy the chocolate got!

I am fairly certain this is not what success looks like.

So how did I manage to salvage these abominations?  Easy!  I put them in a tub so no one could actually see them and brought them to a party that had a whoooole lot of alcohol!

SUCCESS!!!!

Actually, despite their looks, these did turn out to be really tasty.  And it helps illustrate an important lesson: just because you screw up a recipe pretty badly, it doesn't mean you can't salvage what you've got and still wind up with something great (if horrifyingly ugly).

Turnovers

I got my fondness for baking from my Grammie.  She always encouraged my efforts and was the one who found that great cheesecake recipe that I still use.  Grammie used to make a lot of pies, and when she did, she'd also make some turnovers or tarts with extra dough.  I didn't feel like putting the effort into making a pie today, though, so it's just going to be turnovers for now.  To make them, you'll need 1 1/2 C flour, 1/2 teaspoon salt, 1/2 C cold shortening, 1/4 C cold water, and jam of whatever flavor you like (I used triple berry jam).

This is all you need!

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees.  In a large bowl, combine your flour and salt and add in the cold shortening in chunks.  Cut the shortening into the flour using a pastry blender, a couple of knives, or, if you're feeling particularly ambitious, your hands.  When you're done, it should look kind of like little pebbles.  Using a fork, stir in your cold water a little bit at a time until the dough kind of sticks together.  Form the dough into a ball, wrap it in plastic wrap, and stick in the fridge for about a half hour or so.  Once it's chilled for a while, take it back out and roll the dough pretty thin, on a floured surface or between a couple sheets of parchment paper or waxed paper.  Using a biscuit cutter, cut out as many circles as you can.  I managed to get nine (well, eight and one vaguely roundish one from the last bit of dough).

Now put a couple of teaspoons of jam in the center of each circle.  Fold the circle in half and seal up the edges with a fork.  Also cut some slits in the top for ventilation.  I always put a little too much jam in so it squooshes out the side.  It's not really a problem, though.

Sprinkle a little bit of sugar on top if you want and put these guys on a cookie sheet and into the oven.  Bake them at 400 degrees for about 10 minutes, then turn your oven down to 350.  Bake for another 15 minutes or so, or until they turn golden brown.  Make sure to let them cool for a while before you eat them.  Sure, they may seem like they're only a little warm on the outside, but that jam stays pretty hot for a while!

Tasty jammy goodness!

Tiny Thanksgiving Dinner

Some Thanksgivings you just can't spend with your family.  Either you're gallivanting around a foreign country or your parents are in Florida while your siblings are in New York.  And sure you got invited to a couple of different places for dinner, but socializing is hard, man, so you decide you'll just stay home this Thanksgiving.  Well, just because you're an anti-social git doesn't mean you can't have good food!  A marvelous meal!  A delectable dinner!  A fancy feast!  Actually, no, not that last one.

Probably one of the most sensible meals you can cook for one (or two if you're a little less of a misanthrope!) for Thanksgiving, while still keeping that air of tradition, is Cornish hens.  These are fairly small birds, but still good for stuffing.  Plus, you can make a small green bean casserole, cranberry sauce (a normal batch, cuz that stuff is AWESOME), and tiny pumpkin pies.  After giving it some thought, I decided to write these all down in the order that I actually made them.  So let's start with the pie and cranberry sauce, which I made the night before!

For your pie crusts, you'll need 1 1/2 C flour, 1/2 teaspoon salt, 1/2 C shortening (or lard), and 1/4 C cold water.  For the filling, you'll need 3/4 C sugar, 1/2 teaspoon salt, 1 teaspoon cinnamon, 1/2 teaspoon ground ginger, 1/4 teaspoon ground cloves, 2 eggs, 1 (15 oz.) can pumpkin, and 1 (12 oz.) can evaporated milk.

In a large bowl, combine your flour and salt.  Mix in your shortening using either a pastry blender or your hands.  You might want to put the shortening in the freezer for a little while before you do this; cold shortening is easier to work with.  Once the shortening is mixed in, stir in your water a little bit at a time with a fork until your dough sticks together but isn't too wet.  Divide the dough into two balls, wrap them in plastic, and put them in the fridge for about 30 minutes.

After they've had time to chill for a bit, take them back out and divide the balls in half again and start preheating your oven to 375 degrees.  Now it's time to roll out the dough.  Sure, you could do this on a floured surface and try to keep your dough from sticking to the counter and your rolling pin.  OR, you can roll out your little dough balls between two sheets of wax paper.

Guess which one is about a million times easier to clean up?  Once the dough is rolled out, put it into little 4 1/4" pans.  I couldn't find any tiny pie plates, so I used tart pans instead.  You should end up with four little pies.

Set those aside and start on the filling.  In a small bowl, mix together the sugar, salt, cinnamon, ginger, and cloves.  In a large bowl, whisk your eggs and stir in the pumpkin and your sugar and spices.  Then stir in the evaporated milk.

Pour the filling into your little pie crusts.  Now at this point, you might notice you still have about half of the pie filling left.  Not to worry!  You can cover it and put it in the fridge and then Sunday night cook it up as a custard that you bring to your coworkers on Monday.

Put your pies in your preheated oven on the lowest rack (I'd also put a cookie sheet under them just in case of spillage) and bake them for about 35 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted about halfway between the crust and the center comes out clean.  Let them cool on a rack and store them in the refrigerator.  And if you want some whipped cream to go on them, just beat together a cup of heavy cream, a tablespoon of sugar, and a teaspoon of vanilla.  Use chilled beaters and, if possible, a chilled bowl as well.

While the pies are baking, it's time to start on the cranberry sauce!  For this you need a 12 oz. package of fresh cranberries, 1 C sugar, and 1 C water.

Combine the water and sugar in a medium saucepan and bring it to a boil.  Add in the cranberries and bring it back to a boil.

Once it's boiling again, reduce the heat a bit and let it continue to boil for about 10 more minutes or so.  The cranberries are going to start popping and might spit a bit, so watch out!

Once it's all nice and thick, turn off the heat, pour it into a bowl and cover it until it cools down a bit and you can put it in the refrigerator.

Let's move on to the main event: the Cornish hens and stuffing!  For this you'll need two Cornish hens, around 2 C stuffing mix bread crumbs, about 3/4 C chicken broth, a small onion, some mushrooms, a couple tablespoons of butter, and some sage and salt and pepper.  Also, preheat your oven to 350 degrees.

First, chop up the onion and mushrooms and sautee them in a bit of butter until the onions are nice and tender.

In a large bowl, combine the bread crumbs (I actually used closer to 3 cups, which was a little too much), chicken broth, onion, mushrooms, and a bit of sage (I think I used about 3/4 of a teaspoon).  Make sure to taste it to see if you need to add any more seasoning.

Now rinse off the birds, inside and out, and remember to remove the little bag of giblets from each one.  Also, if you have rather small hands, you can stick a bird on each hand and have yourself a little fun using them as macabre hand puppets!  Not that I would ever do such a thing myself, mind you.  I'm just saying you could, if you were so inclined.

Time to stuff those birds!  Get as much in there as you can.  If you've got way too much stuffing, you can put the extra in an oven-safe dish and bake it for the last 30 minutes the birds are in the oven.  Put your hens in a roasting dish, pour some more chicken broth in the bottom of the pan (we don't want our birds drying out), and put parchment paper around the hens wherever they're touching the sides of the pan.  This will keep them from sticking to your roasting pan.

Brush some melted butter on them and season them with a bit of salt and pepper, and put them in the oven, uncovered, for about 15 minutes.  At the end of 15 minutes, cover them and leave them to cook for another 45-50 minutes.  Finally, uncover the hens again, brush them with some more butter, and crank the oven up to 400 degrees.  This will help brown them a little bit as well as get our oven preheated for our little green bean casserole.  When you think the hens are done (after a total cooking time of around an hour and fifteen minutes), check them with a meat thermometer.  Make sure you also put the thermometer in the center of the stuffing.  Once you're satisfied they're cooked, take them out of the pan, remove the stuffing, and cover them with a little tin foil tent to rest for a bit.

During that last 15 minutes of cooking time, you should start prepping your green bean casserole to go in the oven.  For that, you'll need 1/2 C cream of mushroom soup, 3 tablespoons milk, 1/2 teaspoon soy sauce, 1 1/3 C frozen cut green beans, thawed, 1/2 C french fried onion, and a bit of pepper.

Combine the soup, milk, soy sauce and pepper and add in the green beans and half of the onions.  Pour this into a small baking dish and top with the rest of the onions.  Bake at 400 degrees for about 15 minutes.

At the same time I was getting the green bean casserole prepped, I also put a small potato on to boil.  Nothing fancy about it, just a potato, but you can't have Thanksgiving dinner without it.

The last thing to do is make some gravy.  You should have quite a bit of liquid left in your roasting pan.  In a container with a lid on it, combine about a tablespoon of flour and a half a cup of water and shake until the two are combined.  Pour it into the roasting pan and set it to boiling on the stove, stirring frequently, until it's thickened up a bit.

Hopefully you've managed to time pretty much everything right so all of your cooked stuff is done at around the same time.  It gets a little hectic at the end there, which is why there are suddenly no more pictures.  Until this one!

Ta-da!  Enough to put you in a food coma and you didn't even have to go out an talk to anyone!  Except maybe your mom, whom you may have called about thirty times asking about how to cook your fabulous dinner.  Thanks, Mom!

Buttercreams

So what do you do when you want to get back on your coworkers' good side after not bringing anything to share at the last couple of monthly pot-lucks?  You make buttercream candies, of course!  It's also handy for making sure your weekly sci-fi night buddies don't rescind your invitation for not bringing them food lately, too.  To make these, you will need 4 cups of confectioners' sugar, 2/3 cup white chocolate chips, 1 stick of butter, a teaspoon of some flavor extract (I used raspberry for these), 1/4 cup whipping cream, 2 cups semi-sweet chocolate chips, and 2 tablespoons of shortening.

Not exactly my healthiest recipe

In a large bowl, mix together the butter, whipping cream, and flavor extract until it's kind of fluffy.

Or it looks kind of like cottage cheese

Mix in one cup of the confectioners' sugar.  Melt the white chocolate chips, either in a double boiler or the microwave, and mix that in as well.  Gradually add in the remaining sugar until it holds its shape.  I'd also taste test it at this point to see if you need to add any more flavoring.  I ended up adding in another teaspoon of the raspberry extract.  You might also want to add food coloring.

Now it looks raspberry-ish!

Cover it and stick it in the fridge for a couple of hours, or until you can form little balls out of the mixture.  When it's ready, shape it into balls about an inch in diameter and put them on a wax-paper-covered cookie sheet.

Now, back into the fridge they go!  Leave them there for several hours or overnight.  When they are nice and firm and dry, prepare your chocolate coating by melting the semi-sweet chocolate chips and shortening together in a double boiler.  You may remember this from when I made Oreo truffles.  Toss the little balls one a time into the melted chocolate to get them all nice and coated and put them back on the wax paper.  Make sure you don't leave them in too long, because they can melt pretty quickly.  If you want to make them fancy, toss on some sprinkles or colored sugar before the chocolate hardens.  And if you ended up doing this part way later than you'd intended because you were at the gym for an extra twenty minutes due to a fire alarm and then got stuck at the tunnel on your way home for another half hour, you might want to just leave them plain.

These don't have to be refrigerated at this point, but it certainly won't hurt if you do.  When the chocolate is hardened, pack them up in a pretty little box and they are ready to go!  And your coworkers and friends will love you once again!

Ta-da!

You can also make these in whatever flavor you want.  I used raspberry extract, but the only limit is really just whatever your grocery store happens to have in stock.  You can also make chocolate or peanut butter buttercreams by substituting chocolate chips or peanut butter chips.  In those cases, I'd use some vanilla extract.  Although... I bet chocolate-raspberry buttercreams would be really good, too.  You can also use different chips for the coating.  So you could make milk chocolate buttercreams with a peanut butter coating.  I bet that would be tasty too.  Have fun with it!

Easy Chicken Parmesan

I've been horribly uninspired lately, especially when it comes to food.  I just haven't felt like making anything to eat when I get home from a long day at work followed by the gym.  Last week, dinner consisted of a half a stick of pepperoni, some pretzels, and a beer.  Until I ran out of pepperoni and beer.  Then it was just pretzels and water.  Finally, I'd had enough!  I was determined to make something, just so long as it was simple.  And so I bring to you a recipe for easy chicken parm.  For this recipe, you'll need chicken breasts, Italian-seasoned bread crumbs, shredded mozzarella cheese, marina sauce, and an egg.

Easy!

I'm not even going to give you measurements on the ingredients, since it's really all dependent on how you like your chicken parm.  Now, preheat your oven to 400 degrees and grease a pan big enough for however much chicken you're cooking.  I made one, so I used my 8x8 pan.  Put your egg in a bowl and beat it and put your bread crumbs in another bowl.  I recommend making a little assembly line for your chicken to go down.

In case you weren't sure what a chicken parm assembly line might look like.

Dip your chicken breast in the egg, then toss it in the bread crumb bowl to get it nice and coated.  I then stick it back in the egg and give it another go in the bread crumbs, but if yours is good to go after the first trip through, that's fine.  Now put it in the pan and stick it in the oven!

What bread crumb-coated chicken might look like.

Bake this sucker for 20 minutes.  Take it out of the oven, pour however much marinara sauce you like on it, and cover it with mozzarella cheese.  Remember, I am a firm believer that you can never have too much cheese.

Maybe it needs some more cheese...

Stick this back in the oven for another 10 minutes, or until the chicken is cooked all the way through.  Serve this with some pasta and BAM!  You've got yourself a really easy and tasty dinner!

And don't forget the beer!

Boldt Castle

Last week I got to go to a conference for users of the Polaris integrated library system.  The conference lasted three days with a pre-conference training session on using SQL and there was much learning, networking, and alcohol (and most of it free, too!).  Luckily for me, this year's conference was held in Liverpool, NY, which is not all that far from family.  I was able to spend a few days before and after the conference doing things in the area, like visit my grandparents.  Unfortunately, the weather was generally uncooperative (stupid rain!), but I did manage to make it out to Alexandria Bay and visit Boldt Castle, which I hadn't been to in at least a couple of years.

Boldt Castle is in the 1000 Islands region (that's really a misnomer; there are actually 1,864 islands) of the St. Lawrence River.  And yes, it really is a castle.  In the very early part of the 1900s, George C. Boldt decided to build a castle in the 1000 Islands for his wife.  Sadly, his wife died in 1904 and the project was abandoned.  In 1977, the Thousand Islands Bridge Authority bought the property, has been fixing it up, and opened it to tourists.

The castle and playhouse

I've visited Boldt Castle many times and am always amazed at how well they've been fixing it up.  I remember when I was much younger, the place was a wreck filled with graffiti.  Some of it, mostly on the upper floors and below where the pool is, still are.

This is how the whole place used to look

The earliest date I saw on any of the graffiti was from the 1920s

However, thanks to a lot of time, effort, and tourist dollars (as well as donations), the castle is increasingly coming together.

The library

I think this was Louise Boldt's room

The fancy-pants dome in the main entry

There are several outlying buildings as well.  One of them is Alster Tower, or the Playhouse.

Unfortunately, this was completely closed to the public on the inside on this recent visit.  There's also the Power House.  This was going to house the electrical generating plant as well as water pumps. 

I love all the little architectural details around the castle and other buildings.  There are lots of hearts (the castle is on Heart Island).

There are also lots of harts.

Plus, there's a spectacular view.

There are lots of pretty flowers on the grounds, too.

After spending a couple hours wandering around, I decided it was time to head home.  It was starting to get cloudy again anyway.  On the way home, though, I decided to stop at the Burrville Cider Mill.  I didn't get any pictures of the mill itself (it was crazy busy anyway), but I did manage to snag some hot mulled cider and a couple of fresh donuts (and a couple of half-gallon jugs of cider) and hang out by the waterfall in the back.

That was a good day.

A Few Things That Are Making Me Happy Right Now

I've been a little bummed the last couple days, so I figured today I'd write briefly about a few different things that I've liked lately in an effort to cheer up.

First up, Muse has a new album coming out in just a week.  I love this band!  I was able to see them perform twice the last time they toured and I'm hoping they'll announce the dates for the US part of their upcoming tour soon.  Right now you can listen to all of The 2nd Law online, just go here and click on the link to be directed to the local stream.

In other music news, another band I really like, Billy Talent, released their fourth album earlier this month.  Titled Dead Silence, I think this might be their best album yet.  A little before the album came out, the band had it streaming on their Facebook page, but I think that's been taken down.  However, you can still stream a few of their songs from the audio player on their website here, including the first single off of the album, Viking Death Match, as well as some songs from earlier albums.

Turning to the local music scene, an area band that I think is pretty great is Kaboombox.  Check out their Facebook page and click on their band profile to hear a few of their songs. 

Moving on from music, I've gotten totally hooked on the tv show Fringe.  This show's pretty fantastic.  I had tried watching it when it first started to air, but the pilot episode really grossed me out.  A friend eventually convinced me to give it another shot and I'm glad he did!  The pilot still grossed me out on rewatch, but I stuck with it and have been rewarded with a show with a complex and engaging plot and interesting characters.  I just wish that Netflix had the episodes streaming, rather than having to wait for the discs one at a time.

A couple weeks ago I finished reading China Mieville's newest book, Railsea.  This is his second novel targeted toward young adults and has parallels to Moby Dick, except with a giant ivory mole and trains rather than a white whale and ships.  Kind of awesome.

Finally, I'll be heading up to Central New York for about a week starting this Saturday.  Technically it's for work, but since I'm driving myself, there will be a lot of fun wedged in there as well.  So far plans include a trip to the Thousand Islands and a visit to Boldt Castle, a hike around Ausable Chasm, a visit with the grandfolks, picking up some cider from Burrville, and at least one trip to Stefano's Pizzeria.  And, if there's time, maybe a winery or two (or maybe even more).  Plus, New York in the beginning of October?  Soooooooo pretty!  I'll have to bring my camera.

Well, I feel better now.  Stay tuned for pictures of the wonderfulness that is NNY in the fall!  (at least if I remember my camera and then remember to actually take pictures)