Baking: Week 6 - Love - Chocolate Pudding

Week: 6

Theme: Love

Dish: Chocolate Pudding

I got the idea of making pudding while we were shopping in the grocery store and Ofer said that he wanted to try a pudding, but couldn't find an indulgent one. (ie, one that was full flavored and not marketed as trying to be healthy or less guilty) So I scoured the internet (well, I googled and clicked the first link) and found this recipe from Smitten Kitchen.

It's supposed to be a super simple recipe, but I messed up pretty badly. The end result was still really good, but now I know how to measure correctly.

From Smitten Kitchen:

Silky Chocolate Pudding Adapted from John Scharffenberger, via Wednesday Chef
Serves 6
1/4 cup cornstarch
1/2 cup sugar
1/8 teaspoon salt
3 cups whole milk
6 ounces 62% semisweet chocolate, coarsely chopped (I used good quality semisweet chocolate chips; use 70% bittersweet if you want more of a dark chocolate kick)
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

1. Combine the cornstarch, sugar and salt in the top of a double boiler. Slowly whisk in the milk, scraping the bottom and sides with a heatproof spatula to incorporate the dry ingredients. Place over gently simmering water and stir occasionally, scraping the bottom and sides. Use a whisk as necessary should lumps begin to form. After 15 to 20 minutes, when the mixture begins to thicken and coats the back of the spoon, add the chocolate. Continue stirring for about 2 to 4 minutes, or until the pudding is smooth and thickened. Remove from the heat and stir in the vanilla.

2. Strain through a fine-mesh strainer (or skip this step if you’re a slacker like me who is absolutely certain that there is nary a lump her puddin’) into a serving bowl or into a large measuring cup with a spout and pour into individual serving dishes.

3. If you like pudding skin, pull plastic wrap over the top of the serving dish(es) before refrigerating. If you dislike pudding skin, place plastic wrap on top of the pudding and smooth it gently against the surface before refrigerating. Refrigerate for at least 30 minutes and up to 3 days (ahem, good luck with that).

You're not actually supposed to mix in the milk while on the double broiler. Just mix it up on the counter. I misread it so that's why I have a picture of my bowl on top of the pot. I took it down after I reread it, but forgot to snap a new picture. At least this way, you know where I messed up, lol.

3 cups of milk.

Whisked it in.

This is where I found all sorts of problems. I was only supposed to heat the milk for 15-20 minutes before it's supposed to start thickening up, but it was still super liquidy. So I kept boiling it down for 10 more minutes. After 30 minutes, it was ridiculous as to why it wasn't thickening up. Ofer looked into the sink and saw that I had a 1/8 cup measuring cup in the sink and asked if I only added in 1/8 cup. Sure enough, I did. That's why it didn't thicken enough. I added a bit more corn starch and it thickened up right away.

Added the chocolate chips.

Mmmm, looked pretty good. I didn't bother running it through a sieve because I only had fine meshed sieves and wasn't sure if it was gonna be able to go through. And I was lazy. There was a lot of spoon licking to be done.

This isn't the prettiest picture, but it's hard to make pudding look glamourous. We fridged them for an hour (since we were busy eating dinner) and it came out okay. There were some chunks in it, but I wasn't sure if that was because I wasn't diligent enough in scraping the sides, if I boiled down too much milk, or if the sieve really would have been worth it.

Baking: Week 4 - Filling - Scones

Week: 4
Theme: Filling
Dish: Scones

This was a failed attempt. I had originally wanted to make clotted cream for my filling, but it's quite labor intensive. Then I thought I would just fall back on whipped cream, but then I realized that my cream had gone bad -- it was chunky! :( So I just filled it with jam.

Here's the recipe from Jamie Oliver's Jaime's Food Revolution:

Ingredients:

• 1 cup mixture of raisins and/or dried cherries (I used raisins)
• Orange juice for soaking
• 4 cups of self-rising flour, plus a little for dusting
• I made my own rising flour with this mixture: 1 cup flour, 1 1/2 tsp baking powder, 1/2 tsp salt
• 2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1/2 cup butter
• 2 large eggs
• 1/3 cup milk
• Jam
• 2/3 clotted cream or heavy cream, whipped (failed on my part. :( )

Steps

To Make the Dough

• Preheat the oven to 400 degrees F.
• Soak the cherries and raisins in a little bowl with just enough orange juice to cover them
• While they're soaking, you can either pulse the flour, baking powder, and butter in a food processor just until the mixture starts to look like breadcrumbs, or you can blend them together by hand.
• Transfer to a mixing bowl and make a well in the middle
• In another bowl, beat the eggs and milk with a fork
• Drain your cherries and raisins in a strainer and add them to the beaten eggs and milk with a good pinch of salt
• Then pour your beaten eggs.milk, cherrie and raisin into the well in the flour mixture and stir well, adding a splash more milk of necessary, until you have a soft dry dough
• If your dough feels a little dry and doesn't come together, add an extra splash of milk

To Make the Scones

• Dust a clean work surface and your rolling pin with flour
• Roll out the dough until it's 3/4 in thick
• Using a 2 1/2 in round biscuit cutter or the rim of a glass, cut out 10 circles from the dough and place these on a non-stick cookie sheet
• You may have to roll your dough out again in order to get all 10 rounds out of it, but try not to knead it too much
• Dip a pastry brush into some milk and brush the top of each scone
• Bake in a preheated oven for 12 to 15 minutes, until risin and brown
• Take them out of the oven and transfer to a wire rack to cool

To Serve the Scones

• Cut each scone in half across the middle
• Spoon a dollop of jam on the bottom half of each one followed by a dollop of clotted or whipped cream and put the tops back on
• Don't forget the tea!

I didn't have a food processor so I just broke things up with a wooden spoon and when I realized things weren't working out with the spoon I just broke up the big pieces of butter with my hands.

I didn't get a picture of me mixing the flour, but I found that mixing it a bit with a spoon and then following it up with mixing by hand the most useful method. Also try to get a huge mixing bowl. Mine was way too small and it made mixing a real pain. 

After I pulled it out, I realized that I should have added a bit more milk. My dough didn't have a smooth texture and was prone to crumble. Next time I will definitely mix in more milk. I think I also had a bit too much dough because I didn't account of the extra amount of baking powder and salt when I made my self-rising flour.

My glass ended up being a bit too big and my 10th scone had to be smaller and formed by hand. I put it on parchment paper to keep clean up easy.

I didn't have a pastry brush, hence the messy milk splatter. Time to put it on my to buy list.

I ended up cooking these longer than 15 minutes because they didn't seem brown enough.

Of course, who eats scones without some tea? I made some English Breakfast. :)

In the end, the scones came out crunchy on the outside and soft on the inside. It's a bit crumbly, but very good. I've only had scones like once so it's hard for me to say if this was a tasty scone, but it's certainly a tasty something!

I don't know if the jam counts as a filling since I didn't make the jam, but I really tried to make the clotted cream. Sometimes you just have to deal with what you have.

Baking: Week 2 - Miniature - Irish Creme Liquor Balls

Mmm, balls.

Week: 2
Theme: Miniatures
Dish: Irish Creme Liquor Balls

Hi again! I have to admit, I feel like we cheated this week. After last week, we had a ton of brownies left over and because we don't have friends (FOREVER ALONE TOGETHER) we weren't able to finish them all. So I decided to repurpose the brownies into Chef John's Rum Ball recipe!

We looked at our sizable college stash of booze, but we realized that we didn't have enough rum to do this recipe, so we opened up our new bottle of Bailey's Irish Creme (Costco sized!) and went to work.

I may or may not have added more alcohol than what was needed. :)

We didn't follow the recipe very exactly, but it was a fun template to follow. I added about 6 brownies into the mix and mixed in a couple of swigs of Baileys till it looked like paste. Then, I used a tablespoon measuring spoon and scooped out the contents, using a chopstick to help maneuver it out. It smelled nice and alcoholic! I ended up scooping them beforehand and placing it in the freezer, but I wonder if I could just place the whole thing in...

 I didn't have good dark chocolate like he had suggested so I went back to the Costco sized bag of semi-sweet chocolate chips. I swear I'll start buying the good stuff once I finish this bag! I feel like learning how to melt the chocolate via the steaming method was my real learning point of this week. I've never been able to successfully do it -- well, I've done it twice -- so having it work is quite nice.

My kitchen seems inadequately equipped because I couldn't find a heat-resistant (i.e. not plastic) bowl that would fit over a pot without it touching the bottom so I had to fashion one out of a deep metal bowl and a stock pot. Thank god that it was just wide enough to fit.

Here are the rolled balls. I took them out a little early and rolled them and it looked like I smeared poop all over my hands.

Our chocolate didn't melt as nicely as Chef John's. It was thicker and didn't coat the balls as nice, but it was still really tasty and I had a hard time forcing myself not to stick my face into the concoction. Because the consistency of my chocolate was thicker, our balls didn't come out nice a smooth. But, it's okay, I want to say that it has character.

In the end, the ball was actually more mushy than I would have expected. I may have been heavy handed with the alcohol. But they were still quite tasty! You feel the kick after you finish it and after a few, it's gets nice. :)

Baking: Week 1 - Brownies - Simple Brownies

Week: 1
Theme: Brownies
Dish: Simple Brownies

This week has been hectic. We've been off on winter break so we haven't started our baking or cooking challenges. We had planned to come back to Davis yesterday so we would have all day to do our challenges, but it didn't work out so we ended up only having a few hours to get everything done.

This is my second ever batch of homemade brownies. I used the same recipe as the first one. It's really simple and I love how there's not much of a clean up. After I had put the brownies into the oven, Ofer started looking over. He had puppy dog eyes and asked if there was a bowl for him to lick. Then he complained that I left too much batter and that he could have had an extra brownie from it.

Anyways, here's the recipe: