Waffle Love

I mentioned earlier that The Delicious Life had been so kind as to send me a raffled copy of The Lee Bros. Southern Cookbook. Sarah gave me the task of finding a recipe in the book that I liked and making it for the blog. Here's to one of many, I'm hoping!

The recipe that caught my eye first off was Creamed Mushrooms on Cornmeal Waffles. Waffles? Mushrooms? What's not to like? It was a match made in heaven. The waffles were like all the best parts of a cornmeal muffin, with more of the crusty outside than ever. Yum!



Creamed Mushrooms on Cornmeal Waffles
from The Lee Bros. Southern Cookbook

Serves four

For the creamed mushrooms:

2 tb unsalted butter
1.5 tb all-purpose flour
1 small yellow onion, finely chopped
2 tb extra-virgin olive oil
6 ounces shittake mushrooms, trimmed and roughly chopped (2c)
6 ounces portabello mushrooms, trimmed and roughly chopped (2c)
1 tsp chopped fresh thyme or tarragon
2 tb Madeira or dry sherry (optional)
1 tsp salt
1 c heavy cream

For the waffles:

1 c stone-ground cornmeal
1/2 c all-purpose flour
1/2 tsp kosher salt
1/2 tsp baking soda
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp sugar
1 1/4 cups whole or low-fat buttermilk (preferably whole)
4 tb unsalted butter, melted
2 large eggs

Start by preparing the mushrooms. In a 12-inch skillet or saute pan, melt the butter over medium heat until frothy, about one minute. Add the flour, whisking to break down any lumps, and when the flour is well-incorporated, add the onion. Cook the onion until soft and not yet browning, about five minutes. Add the olive oil, mushrooms, thyme, Madeira, and salt and cook until the mushrooms have darkened and released some of their liquid, about three minutes. Add the cream and stir to distribute it throughout the pan. Once the cream begins to simmer gently, cook until it takes on some of the mushrooms' color -- a rich beige hue -- about three minutes. Remove from the heat.

While the mushrooms are cooking, preheat the oven to 150 degrees. Place a rack in the middle.

Sift the dry waffle ingredients together into a bowl. IN a separate bowl, whisk the wet waffle ingredients together. Add them to the dry ingredients and whisk until thoroughly blended.

Ladle the batter onto a hot buttered waffle iron and cook eight minutes, or until the outside is crisp and golden brown. As the waffle comes off the iron, place them in a single layer on the oven rack so they stay warm and crisp.

When creamed mushrooms are cooked and the waffles are ready, ladle the mushrooms over the waffles and serve immediately.

Moving munchies

Two of my favorite people in the world moved yesterday.

Don't worry. They didn't move away, just a few doors down from where they were before.

However, this meant a moving gala! And when I say 'gala', I mean 'enlisting friends to move things approximately fifty steps'. And also 'moving a cat'. The cat moving is always the most fun.

This was the perfect occasion for me to make something and to keep part of it. I find that the things I make for this blog sometimes go to waste, but I try to make sure they don't. Most of the time, they find a good home. In this case, half a tray of my favorite brownies ever made it to their doorstep.

This was the first time making these brownies with my baby, and they came out fluffy and over the pan. I also added in some of the leftover white chocolate chips from the Malted Mousse Cake recipe down below, because I really don't like white chocolate much at all and figured others might enjoy it better in such a rich brownie.



So, what brownie did I make? This recipe comes out moist and sickeningly rich every time. It's made from cocoa, not chocolate, so the flavor is almost too rich--but not quite. I made mine in a 9x9 pan and they were still very thick, though I used to make them in a pie pan and cut them out in small slices.

AB's Cocoa Brownies recipe can't be beat. It's even good with add-ins: Bailey's, mint extract, pumpkin pie spice. I like mine plain the best.


Sometimes while I'm photographing, I like to pretend I'm floating in a sea of chocolate batter.



Cocoa Brownies with White Chocolate Chips
adapted from Alton Brown, Good Eats


4 large eggs
1 cup sugar, sifted
1 cup brown sugar, sifted
8 ounces melted butter
11/4 cups cocoa, sifted
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1/2 cup flour, sifted
1/2 teaspoon kosher salt
6-8 oz. Ghirardelli White Chocolate Chips


Preheat the oven to 300 degrees F. Pam (for Baking) an 8- or 9-inch square pan.
In a mixer fitted with a whisk attachment, beat the eggs at medium speed until fluffy and light yellow. Add both sugars. Add remaining ingredients, and mix to combine.

Pour the batter into a 8-inch square pan worked with non-stick spray and bake for 45 minutes. When it's done (knife test), remove to a rack to cool.

A caketastic disaster

I don't procrastinate. I just don't.

However, I procrastinated on posting this Daring Bakers challenge because I wasn't happy with the end result of my cake.

I watched many an episode of Good Eats when I had access to cable. I watched as Alton recommended, among other things, a lazy susan and a cake stand in order to ensure a good-looking cake as a result of proper slicing and frosting.

I convinced myself, "It's not worth it to buy those things. I can totally do this on my tiny kitchenette table with no extra plates. I don't need a spatula for frosting!" I was kind of wrong.

I went out on a limb and tried some things that were new. I stretched myself too thin the day I made the cake. I had a guest over and the frosting and the melted chocolate and oh my gosh it was a huge mess, maybe too much for my tiny kitchen to handle.

It wasn't pretty at all, but it tasted good. That's worth something, right?

I swear there are four layers of cake in there. They didn't come out even. But I numbered them for your convenience.




So, my main changes were adding ganache and buttercream to the center layers. The ganache was still a little warm. That should have been the first sign.

So, dark chocolate and orange zest--specifically, blood orange zest and orange extract--were the additions to my version of the cake. It was very fun to watch the cakes come together (and oh, how wonderful they smelled!). The frosting scared me--it really did look like cottage cheese for a long while before it came together. The end result was a really tasty cake, though I will admit it was too rich for a single dweller's kitchen. I was scared not to refrigerate it for fear that it would go bad quickly, and I think that's what did it in at the end.




This was my first four-layer cake, and everyone's got to have some falls before they accomplish something profound, right?

Lots of people have the recipe up. Rosa's Yummy Yums is the first I found.

Thanks for the challenge!

Egg Abhorrence

I hate eggs.

I really hate eggs.

On holidays, my mother still has to sneak boiled eggs into my grandmother's prized stuffing recipe before I notice. I still pick them out.

The texture is what gets me. The rubbery, gelatinous, sulphuric protein has been a bane of my existence. When I lived with a host family in France, the father one night made a giant plate of scrambled eggs for dinner. I went hungry. (okay, that's an extreme way of putting it. I just ate bread and cheese instead.) Mr. O's mother presented me with a scrambled egg casserole for breakfast within twelve hours of me meeting his family for the first time. Not about to say no, I ate the plate-sized portion handed to me and haven't let him forget since.

But it just wouldn't be Easter without deviled eggs. My sister is the best deviled eggs constructor. I pale in comparison to hers, but mine are still pretty good.




Mr. O kept me company while I colored the eggs.



And then he kept me company the next day while I peeled and deviled them. This part makes me gag a little.




With enough mustard, I'll even eat the yellow part.

Oh, and my family recipe for most things holiday relies heavily on this stuff:



Sorry, can't share the recipe for this one. Perhaps Deviled Eggs: 50 Recipes from Simple to Sassy will help you on your journey to find the perfect devily goodness.

Yeasty Easter Rolls

My Kitchen Cafe kindly supplied the post and recipe which inspired my Easter Sunday rolls.

I like my rolls a bit undercooked. They remind me of those wonderful, yeasty cafeteria rolls. I remember crowding around the lunch line when the rolls were available, and tearing them apart. They left an amazing smell in the lunchroom whenever they came out of the oven.

The dough came together very quickly and was easy to work with. I shaped them into balls that bounced back with energy.



And oh, did they rise! I found the recipe through Tastespotting and Phemomenon had mentioned they rise in a frantic manner. The perfect rising weather left these babies looking like huge, pillowy clouds sent straight from bread heaven.




Mine didn't come out as golden as others, because of the light undercooking and the fact that I don't generally egg wash my rolls. Hey, it's an egg and I'm a student. I could totally eat that egg later instead of making my rolls look pretty.



Recipe here.

A little less malt and a lot more action

In all the years I spent in her kitchen, Mom never told me how hard cooking a holiday meal was. I always watched bemusedly as she ran around haphazardly, trying to make sure the rolls were done at the same time as the potatoes.

It all comes back to bite you, huh?

This past Sunday, let's just say I ended up with what my dear sister so kindly referenced as a 'floor ham'.

Anyway, let's focus on the more positive aspects of the meal. I made a rather complicated recipe from Better Homes & Gardens, a Malted Mousse Cake. It involved gelatin and whipping cream and malt. It came out lighter than a cheesecake, and keeps well in the fridge. I was highly disappointed at the lack of malt taste in the final product. I'd recommend doubling, if not tripling it in the final product.

In addition, for those of you who approach the Easter candy aisle with as much trepidation as I, if you go for these, assuming they are festive eggs to put on top of your lovely cake, they are not:



They will look more like candied rabbit poop than robin's eggs. After Jim Bob and his fifteen children stormed the candies in front of me, I grabbed what I thought was the best option. Whoppers, why do you deceive me so? They did not land on the final cake. Instead, sprinkles helped make a colorful Springtime nod.



I subbed the crust ingredients because Texas grocery stores generally don't carry ameretti. Nor hazelnuts. I crushed up some Pecan sandies and pecans instead. Tasty!




Recipe here.

The Lee Bros. have arrived!

I just wanted to extend a giant THANK YOU to The Delicious Life for the lovely copy of The Lee Bros. Southern Cookbook: Stories and Recipes for Southerners and Would-be Southerners. It is such amazing reading!

And behold, the amazing power of the cookbook cover:


Who the hell else could pull off a vine belt? Not me, I tell you.



And the Lee Bros. have the tenacity to put shucked oysters on their tidewater summer buffet! Maybe it's spring there, too, and they won't be stuck with salmonella.

But seriously, all their recipes come with a story or two. And they're funny, so I'd definitely recommend picking up a copy of this book online or through your local inter-library loan program.

I will most certainly be posting some fixings from this book, and though I'm interested in the boiled peanuts I don't think I can make do with ten pounds of said peanuts in my tiny matchbox apartment. Perhaps one day, right.

Thanks again, Delicious!