Pistachio Cake with Chocolate Ganache- AKA "MaMa's Green Cake"

A few years ago my mom randomly surfaced a cake recipe that my grandmother used to make…except my mom decided to top said cake with chocolate ganache [naturally]..  She served it for a family holiday dinner and our entire family fell in love with this cake. My brother & I wanted to know why it had not been served for holidays for the past 20 years.  This is now the “go to” standard for birthday cakes & holiday meals in our family and it might be the first dessert that we all agree on, request and enjoy.  Normally my brother & I will race each other to the pool of ganache that collects in the middle of the cake [he frequently wins].  This cake has lovingly been relabeled “MaMa’s Signature Green Cake” for our holiday feasts. MaMa is what my niece calls my mom.

The best things about this cake is that it is EASY to make, holds over well to serve the day after you make it, is pretty, & is delicious.  It has a very vibrant green color from the pistachio pudding that is used in the cake.

Delicious

MaMa’s Green Cake (Moist Pistachio Pudding Cake with Chocolate Ganache)
Prep time- 6 min, Cook time- 50-60min, Cooling time- 1-2 hours, Serves 10+

Ingredients

Ingredient Lineup

• 1 cup vegetable oil
• 1 cup warm water
• 4 eggs, lightly beaten
• 1 box yellow cake mix (Betty Crocker preferred)
• 3- 3.5 oz boxes of Jell-O brand instant Pistachio pudding
• chocolate syrup (approx 3T)
• [optional] Chocolate ganache, recipe below

Directions
1. Preheat oven to 325.

2. Grease & flour a Bundt shaped pan.

I always do this the old-fashioned way with butter & flour,
Never with those ready-made sprays.

3. In a large mixing bowl with an electric mixer, beat the oil, water & eggs until combined. Add the cake mix & pudding to the egg mixture. Beat slowly at first to gently mix ingredients & then mix for 2 minutes on medium speed (the slowly part is important—or you will get a green powder cloud that escapes the bowl & coats your counters). The batter will be thick.

I forgot to pre-beat my eggs this time...it really
didn't make a difference.

Mix the eggs, water & oil well.

Add the cake mix & 3 boxes of pudding

Mix per directed

4. Pour half of batter into the Bundt pan. Drizzle chocolate syrup on top of batter. Layer in remaining batter & add an additional drizzle of syrup.

Add batter

Layer on a swirl of syrup

Put in the rest of the batter & then add another swirl of syrup

5. Bake for 50-60 minutes. Let the cake cool in the pan for 10-15 minutes, & then invert onto a serving plate. Let the cake cool for 1-2 hours on the countertop, then top with chocolate ganache [optional]. When the cake is cool, store covered on the counter overnight.  Once the cake has been cut, or if you are planning on storing it longer, store it covered in the refrigerator.

What the cake looks like without the ganache topping

Topped with shiny, delicious ganache

Here is a picture to illustrate the "inside color"
of the cake...this was basically all that was left
after sending leftovers home with people...and
I was left without a "pretty slice" shot of the cake.
Use your imagination. :-)

Basic Chocolate Ganache

Ingredients

Ingredient Lineup

• 1 cup heavy whipping cream
• 5-6 ounces semi-sweet chocolate, chopped (milk chocolate or your “degree of chocolate” of choice can be substituted. I use Baker’s chocolate squares for this typically…but I have also used chocolate chips out of my pantry…)

Directions
1. In a small, non-stick saucepan or in a double boiler, slowly warm cream over low heat until the cream is warm to the touch. Stir/scrape frequently with a rubber spatula.

2. Add the chocolate pieces & continually stir/scrape frequently with a rubber spatula until chocolate melts.

I forgot to chop my chocolate :-/...but it still worked.

3. Continue stirring/scraping the mixture until sauce thickens & gets glossy appearance (do not allow the ganache to get boiling hot or let it burn to the pan- you will either get a ganache with a white coating or one with a funky taste if you let this happen).

See how this is grainy & runny-looking?...It's not ready

Slowly getting there (those aren't bubbles from boiling, those
are from stirring...do not let it boil/simmer!)

Ah, yea...that's the stuff.   Remove it from heat & continually
stir until it cools down a bit.

4. Remove pan from heat & continue stirring/scraping the mixture for 3-4 minutes to lower the temperature of the ganache.

5. While ganache is still warm to the touch, drizzle over the top of the cake until desired chocolate glaze level is reached.  Let the ganache cool on the cake, then store as directed above. Store leftover ganache in the refrigerator.

Yum.

Leftover ganache is delicious on graham crackers, in macaroons, on ice cream, or eaten directly from the bowl as a midnight snack. To soften it up after storing in the fridge, microwave in 5 second increments until desired thickness & temperature.

Warm ganache is a yummy ice cream topping

Boozy Bourbon Ice Cream

One of my fabulous Christmas presents that my husband got me this year was the ice cream maker attachment for my Kitchenaid Stand Mixer.  This is probably the most awesome thing ever…but was probably the most dangerous thing we could have brought into our household. In the first 5 days of 2012, we made 4 batches of frosty treats. Yea... 

Yay ice cream maker!

We have now kicked this habit back to 1 batch of deliciousness a week.  The recipe for this week was a special request from my husband.  The past few months we have seen several boutique ice creams that use either bourbon or whisky as a flavor element.  His special request was for “bourbon ice cream.”  I modified a recipe that I found online…

A note on adding alcohol to ice cream.  Ice cream “batter” tastes super sweet, but the sweetness calms down when it is frozen. I thought maybe the same thing was true about alcohol…but it’s not.  If you add more booze, it’s going to taste boozier.  So stick to the ratio of alcohol listed below, don’t let your husband talk you into adding 2-3 more tablespoons of Makers Mark. [true story] I want to try this recipe again using Amaretto…yum. We served this when it was "half-set" with warm, soft snickerdoodle cookies.

Enjoy!

Bourbon Ice Cream (modified from David Lebovitz on Finecooking.com)

Ingredients

• 2 cups heavy cream 
• 1 cup whole milk 
• 3/4 cup granulated sugar
• 5 large egg yolks* [see note below]
• 3-4 tablespoons bourbon 
• 3 teaspoons vanilla extract

Ingredient Lineup

Directions

1.  Prepare an ice bath by filling a large bowl with several inches of ice water. Set a smaller metal bowl (1.5 quarts or larger) in the ice water. Pour in 1 cup of cream in the inner bowl. Set a mesh strainer on top.

Cream in the ice bath

2. Whisk the egg yolks in a medium bowl.

3. In a medium saucepan, warm 1 cup of cream, the milk, & sugar over medium-high heat until tiny bubbles begin to form around the edge of the pan (1-2 min).  In a steady stream, pour half of the warm cream mixture into the egg yolks, whisking constantly to prevent the eggs from curdling. Pour the egg mixture back into the saucepan and cook over low heat, stirring constantly and scraping the bottom with a heatproof rubber spatula until the custard thickens. Don’t let the sauce overheat or boil, or it will curdle.

Slowly streaming the hot cream mixture into the beaten eggs.
Stir constantly, or you will end up with runny scrambled eggs.

Custard that is not ready yet...

Custard that is ready to cool down. Do you
see the difference?

4. Immediately strain the custard into the cold cream in the ice bath.

Strain the custard to remove any curds or lumps.

5. Cool the custard to below 70 degrees Fahrenheit by stirring it over the ice bath. Stir in the bourbon and the vanilla into the cooled custard.

Swirling in vanilla and [too much] bourbon

6. Refrigerate the custard until completely chilled, at least 4 hours. Then freeze the custard in your ice cream maker according to the manufacturer’s instructions. Transfer the just-churned ice cream to an air-tight container and freeze for at least 4 hours or up to 2 weeks.

Ice cream whirling away

Semi-set ice cream...pop it in the freezer for a few hours

Warm snickerdoodles with semi-set ice cream

My husband's bowl of bourbon ice cream...

He decided to round it off with some caramel sauce.  I've been
challenged to make bourbon caramel next...

*A note on what to do with the egg whites generated from this recipe: make meringue cookies, make a meringue pie, add one whole egg & make an omelet for two (to make it super fluffy, use a mixer to infuse air into the eggs), egg whites will also freeze for future use-just mark the bag with the date you are freezing them and how many egg whites are in the bag.


My recommendation for seperating egg yolks is this method.


Line up 3 bowls-- 1 to store egg whites, 1 to crack eggs into, & 1 to put the egg yolks in. The bowl for the middle is to catch each individual egg white. That way, if you accidentally break a yolk, you are not ruining you bowl of egg whites or egg yolks.  Crack an egg on the counter & strain it through your fingers, keeping the yolk from slipping into the bowl. Gently roll the egg yolk around your fingers until it gets slightly sticky, indicating that the majority of the egg whites are removed.

Whites on the left, newly cracked white in the middle, clean yolks on
the right. Then I put the shells in a grocery sack for disposal
or adding to compost bin.

Gross, but is the way to get the "cleanest"
egg yolks in my opinion.

Snicker-doodle-do!

[Please forgive the formatting issues on this post] My favorite cookie will eternally be the soft, semi-baked blissfulness of a chocolate chip cookie straight from the oven.  That cookie’s too soft to remove from the cookie sheet, you say?  That’s ok, I’ll stand here in my kitchen & eat one with a spoon straight off of the cookie sheet until they set up a bit [true story].

However, the cookie that ties for #2 in my heart is a perfectly made snickerdoodle.* I think my affinity for the snickerdoodle comes from the fact that I rarely had it as a kid, mainly as a result of my love of chocolate-chippers per previously discussed. Snickerdoodles were something I only had at school, since you didn’t get a choice of cookie flavor, or on the rare lunch outing at Shapiro’s where my parents would let me pick out a cookie from the bakery after our meal.

But in my previous attempts at baking snickerdoodles, I have been unhappy with the results. They were too crunchy, too blah, or just didn’t live up to my standards of snickerdoodle’dom.  Last week in a recipe e-newsletter that I receive, it listed a user-submitted recipe for “Soft Snickerdoodles.”  I was intrigued. Maybe it was for my craving for sugar at that time, or maybe it was the back of my brain still feeling dejected from my prior snickerdoodle failures…but I pinned the recipe in my “recipes to try” board & sat on it for a few days.**

Enter the weekend—I had some time to kill while a batch of bourbon ice cream I was making for my husband was spinning…so I randomly decided that warm snickerdoodles could be a good dipping vessel for bourbon ice cream. Plus, I had all of the ingredients.

I made the recipe per instructed, minus the step about chilling the cookie sheet.  I didn’t do that step for a couple of reasons 1) I don’t have room in my fridge to randomly set a cookie sheet in it. I cook—I have ingredients & leftovers, it’s full.  2) It’s January & my kitchen island is made of stainless steel.  I could store meat on that thing & it would stay at a safe temperature.   The other small variation I had is that my cooking time ended up being about 2-3 minutes longer than the recipe instructs. My first attempt to “immediately remove from the baking sheet” per the instructions, resulted in a cookie falling straight through the cooling rack with a loud ‘plop.’*** But that could also be due to our cruddy, uneven heating oven.  If you were using a convection oven, or one that could consistently maintain a temperature, this might be a non-issue for you. 

Overall, I was pretty happy with the recipe. A few suggestions:

• Next time, I would make a half batch.  This recipe says it only makes 24 cookies, but my total estimated number would have been closer to 3-4 dozen w/ 1 inch balls of dough (had I made them all…I ended up reserving part of the dough to cook later, & then forgot to cook it the next day :-/).
•  I would also vary the spice level a bit. I used my “sweeter” cinnamon, instead of my “hotter” cinnamon, and I think in future attempts I would either use a combination of the two or solely the “hotter” cinnamon. I am also tempted to toss in a little dash of ground ginger & allspice in the next attempt.
• Next time I would use my stand mixer to make this dough. My stand mixer was occupied with spinning down the ice cream, so I attempted to mix with a spoonula. The dough is pretty stiff, & I finally had to use my hands to incorporate it all.  I don’t like getting my hands messy if I can help it…

Soft Snickerdoodles (submitted by Food.com user JuJu Bee)

Servings: “24” [see note above]

Prep time: 10 min. Wait time: 10 min. Cook time: 10-14 min [see note above]

Ingredients

• 1 cup butter, softened (2 sticks)
• 2 eggs
• 1 ½  cups sugar
• 2 ¾ cups flour
• 2 t. cream of tartar
• 1 t. baking soda
• ¼ t. salt
• 3 T sugar
• 3 t. cinnamon

Ingredient Lineup

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 350

2. In a large bowl mix the butter, eggs & sugar together. In a medium bowl, mix the flour, cream of tartar, baking soda & salt together. 

Flour mix on the left, butter mix on the right.

3. Gradually mix the flour mixture into the butter mixture (I do it in thirds)

I had to get my hands dirty :-/...next time I'm using the stand mixer

4. Chill dough & chill an ungreased cookie sheet in the fridge for 10-15 minutes.

5. In a small bowl, mix 3 T of sugar & cinnamon.

6. Scoop small balls of dough & roll them in the cinnamon mixture to evenly coat the whole ball (I use a melon-ball scoop for uniformity).

A melon ball scoop = uniform cookies

Next time, I'm making a half batch. Too much dough!

7. Place on chilled baking sheet & cook for 10 minutes (10-14 minutes)

8. Move from pan to cooling rack immediately.

Soft & Delicious

We had them with some half-set Bourbon Ice Cream

*My other tie for #2 favorite cookie will be made & discussed for a future blog entry…2 batches of cookies at 1 time in our house = bad idea.

**Hello Pinterest. I now understand why the logical, responsible side of my brain resisted you for so long. You are ‘e-crack’ of an extreme magnitude…and I love you & don’t know how I lived without you for so long.

***Dear Santa & Birthday Elves—I need these cooling racks for my birthday next year. Our wide-wire ones don’t cut it. You can check out my “kitchen stuff I want board”* for additional ideas.

Sugar Cookies that Keep their Shape--and are fun to decorate!

Sometimes it is incredibly fun to kick back on a Friday night & do the things you liked to do as a kid...like decorate cookies.

We've been running the family reunion gauntlet these past couple weeks.  For our dessert contribution both weeks, we have taken sugar cookies that we decorated, giving us the excuse to decorate cookies two weeks in a row. Fun times!


A couple weeks ago at Ikea we picked up a fun set of cookie cutters that I couldn't wait to use.  It's not everyday that you come across hedgehog, squirrel & snail cookie cutters. 


For making the cookies I could have taken the easy way out & bought a roll of Pillsbury pre-made dough...but in my experience, that dough spreads WAY too much when baking the the cookies lose their fun shapes.  So I did a little Google searching and came across this cookie recipe from KittenCal.  I combined these cookies with a standard royal icing recipe...and overall I think we were pretty successful in our cookie making skills.


These cookies were a hit with children & adult alike at both family reunions.  More pictures are at the end of this post.


The verdict--This is a pretty good sugar cookie recipe and the cookies mostly retain their shape while baking.  I anticipate playing with the flavoring & sugar ratios in the future, and can't wait to make a batch that has small-flake unsweetened coconut added to the cookie dough.  Yum.


Additional Suggested Tools:  plastic bags, food dyes, icing tips [optional], synthetic bristle paintbrushes [optional], toothpicks [optional]

Buttery Cutout Sugar Cookies by KittenCal
Recipe source: food.com, Prep time: 8 min, refrigeration: 1-2 hours, Cook time: 4-6 min/batch

Ingredients

Ingredient Lineup

• 1 cup butter, softened (2 sticks, no substitutions)
• 1 cup sugar
• 2 eggs
• 1/2 t. vanilla
• 1/2 t. almond extract
• 3 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
• 1/2 t. baking soda
• 1/2 t. baking powder
• 1/2 t. salt

Directions

1.  In a medium bowl, stir together flour, baking soda, baking powder & salt.  Set aside.

2.  In a large mixing bowl, combine the butter, sugar, eggs, vanilla and almond extract.  Mix with electric mixer on medium speed until light & fluffy.

Dry ingredients on the left, butter/egg ingredients on the right.

Fluffy butter/egg/sugar mixture post mixing.

3.  Using a rubber spatula, fold the flour mixture into the butter mixture in small increments, until all ingredients are combined.  Press the dough down into the bowl & cover with plastic wrap.  Refrigerate for 1-2 hours to let the dough cool back down & set. 

Assembled dough.  Cover it up & pop it in the fridge to cool
back down & let the butter fat re-solidify

4.  Preheat oven to 400 degrees.

5.  Line cookie sheets with parchment paper.  

6.  Lightly flour your work surface & rub a rolling pin with flour.  Move the cookie dough to your work surface & roll out until approximately 1/4 inch thick.  Cut cookies with cookie cutters.  Place cookies approximately 1-2 inches apart on the cookie sheets. 

Roll it out  Don't forget to put flour on your rolling pin.

Stamp out the cookies.

7.  Bake 4-6 minutes until done & edges get slightly golden brown.  Remove cookies from oven & move to cooling racks.  When cool, ice cookies with the frosting of your choice.

Tanning cookies

Cooked cookies...Move to a rack & let them cool.

Royal Icing
Prep time: 3 min

Ingredients

• 3 T. meringue powder or powdered egg whites*
• 4 cups confectioners' sugar
• 6 T. water
• Lemon juice

Directions


1.  In a large mixing bowl, mix the egg whites, sugar & water on medium speed until icing gets thick and glossy (approximately 3-5 minutes).  Add lemon juice until icing reaches desired consistency (I add lemon juice until the icing is still thick, but has a little bit of fluid movement to it).

Powdered sugar, powdered egg whites & water

Glossy royal icing (with half of it already moved to bags
before I thought of taking a picture)

 2.  Using a large rubber spatula, move spoonfuls of icing to individual plastic bags (with or without icing tips). Color with food dye and ice cookies.  Be very careful to not expose the icing to too much air, as it dries very quickly.  Ice & set cookies aside to dry.  When dry, cookies can be stacked on a platter.  Keep covered with plastic wrap. (*You can use the equivalent of fresh egg whites, however powdered egg whites have been pasteurized so you are not running a salmonella/e.coli risk.)

Add an icing tip to a plastic zip top bag, or cut the corner off
of the bag.  It works both ways (I personally prefer the ease of
control with icing tips)

Spoon 1-2 spoonfuls of icing into each bag

Add food dye & squeeze to mix

Our icing lineup

Blue bear (Hubs creation)

Hipster waffle-shell snail (my creation)

Harry Potter Snail (Hubs Creation)

Roadkill Fox (Hubs Creation-- this guy got smushed while cooking)

Tie-dye Hedgehog (Hubs creation)

Happy Snail

Polar bear cookie & a hedgehog with sunglasses

Hipster hedgehog

Tripped out snail

Toothpicks and paintbrushes help a lot

Moose in leg casts (Hubs creation--the poor creature's legs broke off)

Lippy Snail (Hubs creation)

Purple Squirrel (Hubs creation)

Happy Hedgehog