Christmas Baking

This year's Christmas baking was very successful, if I dare say so myself. Every year I aim to try out a few new recipes - it's my thing. I like trying out new things, and since I don't have that much time during the year, the holiday season seems like a good time to finally do it. Besides, home-made cookies and candy make for great Christmas gifts.

I always enjoy home-made gifts so much. It's both the gift itself and the fact that the person took time out of their daily schedule and routine to make it that makes it twice as precious as a normal gift, in my opinion. I have so little free time that I always appreciate when someone just as busy has made something for me.

But back to this year's baking - the recipes I tried out turned out to be amazing - coffee crinkles and Oreo truffles with black and white chocolate. They were sooo tasty, I almost kept them for myself instead of giving them as gifts to my team at work.

The coffee crinkles were soft and chocolaty and coffee-tasting and completely amazing - they are easily a contestant for the title of my favorite cookies ever. The recipe is from A Baker's House.

The Oreo truffles were also quite nice and creamy, and I used some nice cooking chocolate for dipping, which totally made a difference. My advice is to use good quality chocolate for such things whenever you can. The recipe is from here: Cooking Classy.

All in all - a good holiday baking haul and an excellent selection for this year's Christmas gifts.

Soft Pumpkin Cookies and Goodbye Vacation

Like I said in my slice-and-bake cookies post, I have decided to let loose during the holidays and indulge in making and eating some homemade sweets. This year I made a ton of tikvenik (pumpkin pastry with cinnamon and walnuts) for our Christmas and New Year celebrations, but I ended up with a piece of leftover pumpkin that I didn't use. I was wondering what to do with it (it was not enough for my favorite baked pumpkin soup) when I came across a recipe for soft pumpkin cookies on Food for the soul. It just so happens that I do usually like my cookies soft, even chocolate chip cookies, so I though I'd give the recipe a go. I changed the filling a little bit, though: instead of cream+sugar+butter+curds+mascarpone, I did a simpler cream+a little bit of powdered sugar filling, and for the marmalade filling, I used my homemade quince marmalade without much added butter. I liked the recipe, and the cookies turned out very delicious indeed. I will enjoy them on my last day of freedom before the work week and the work year officially starts :)

The Sweet Side of the Holidays

The holidays are usually my time to take a stab at new recipes, especially if they involve baking and sweets. I have given myself a free pass from my healthy diet for the month of December, so cookies were definitely on my agenda. I even had the grand plan of making big batches of cookies as Christmas treats, but between reunions with friends, collage making, and cooking for dinners and parties, I never found the time. Which is why these are not Christmas cookies, but New Year's Eve cookies :)

I seem to have a habit of trying out recipes from Smitten Kitchen around Christmas (two years ago it was the clementine cake, for example), and this year was no exception. The challenge was making slice-and-bake cookies, and I dare say that they turned out pretty good. I haven't been the best at making cookies in the past; I seem to be so afraid of having them be raw that I end up overbaking them and having to eat a batch of close to "break your teeth" hard cookies. Not this time. I have learned my lesson. I left them in the oven for just the right amount of time, and I took them out even when they still looked a bit soft to me, but it was the correct thing to do. They turned out just right.

I modified the recipe a little bit by making the cranberry version of the cookie with coconut, and I also made a chocolate cookie with mini chocolate chips and walnuts, which turned out very tasty. There is a fancy hotel close to my office where we usually have work events, and they always serve cookies like these at coffee breaks. Now I can make my own coffee break at home. Since I don't drink coffee, it will be more of a tea break. With cookies.

Happy holidays, everyone!

Rainy Afternoon and Homemade Popovers

After the beautiful weather that we had yesterday, it's been pouring down rain all day today. It's the kind of day where you are better off staying inside and cuddling with a warm blanket and a book, or perhaps seeing a friend over tea and treats.

Back when I was graduating from Colby, I went to Acadia National Park with my parents. We spent a couple of days on Mount Desert Island touring Bar Harbor and Acadia, and it was gorgeous. I remember we were almost done with our tour of the park and we were about to head to Jordan Pond House when it started raining cats and dogs, so we hid inside and enjoyed some lobster stew and popovers with tea. Everything was so delicious, and it was nice to enjoy the rainy afternoon in such a cozy and pretty place.

So this morning when I saw the rain I thought back to that afternoon in Acadia National Park and decided to try and make some popovers. I used a recipe on marthastewart.com, which turned out pretty great. Check it out here. It is for about a dozen popovers, which is quite a lot for me, but they are truly delicious. I had them with butter and French apricot jam, as well as with my homemade quince jam. Yummy!

Cooking New Recipes

I love cooking, but because I'm usually quite busy, I often end up cooking the same old recipes from my trusty recipe book. I make stuff that's quick and tasty, so that I can have a warm meal and not spend hours in front of the stove. However, I like playing with new recipes as well when I have time, so I was looking forward to the holidays as a time when I can try out some recipes that I got online.

This time I tried a bunch of recipes from a really nice cooking blog called smitten kitchen:
- The clementine cake, which sounded weird at first when I read I had to boil clementines, but ended up being quite moist and delicious: http://smittenkitchen.com/blog/2009/01/clementine-cake/ . One advice from me is to either buy organic clementines and boil them with the peel and everything, or otherwise peel them and then boil them. It's just that regular clementines have all kinds of nasty chemicals in their skin, so I wouldn't recommend using it in your cake if that is the case.
- Red pepper cream soup: http://smittenkitchen.com/blog/2007/07/at-last-this-soup/.  My recommendation for this recipe is to serve the soup warm and sprinkle it with crumbled feta cheese and freshly chopped parsley instead of using creme fraiche.
I have my eye on several other recipes from this lovely blog, but I'm not sure I'll have enough time to try them before the new year comes.

I also tried two pancake recipes from Martha Stewart, because I was craving some American-style thick pancakes. Both turned out quite delicious, so I'll be making them again.
- Cottage cheese pancakes with lemon: http://www.marthastewart.com/314486/cottage-cheese-pancakes-with-lemon
- Chocolate-pecan pancakes: http://www.marthastewart.com/314990/chocolate-pecan-pancakes. Because it's not very easy to find pecans in Bulgaria, I used walnuts instead.

All in all, the internet is full of great cooking blogs and recipe websites, and I like to explore. Four new recipes is not bad for this holiday, and hopefully I'll be able to try more new stuff once I finish my degree and have more free time in the evenings and weekends.
 

SAVORY MUFFINS

I have caught the muffin craze, which means that I have been making muffins like crazy. Turns out, muffins are very easy to make!
I've already written about the Triple Chocolate Chunk Muffins, which were mouth-watering. I've also tried a recipe for Banana Walnut Muffins, which were also great; unfortunately, I wasn't able to photograph them. However, I did photograph these delicious savory Spinach, Feta, and Baked Pepper Muffins that you see below. Believe me, they are very very tasty. I got the recipe from the First Cook, Then Look blog, so head over there to learn how to make them and enjoy!

A CHOCOLATE BOMB

Triple chocolate chunk muffins! Yes, you heard that right - triple chocolate chunk muffins. I don't care how many calories these have, they are amazing. Now that's what I call delicious! The recipe for these beauties is from the same cookbook that has the Nutella Cinnamon Almond Cake. It's an awesome book, full of decadent desserts...

PANCAKES!!!

I treated myself to some blueberry pancakes! Yum, yum, yum!
They came out really tasty, so I devoured them in record time :)

COOKBOOKS

After my cooking post last week, I got quite a few questions about recipes, cookbooks and food. It's always nice to know that people are reading the blog, even if they prefer to post comments on Facebook or send me e-mails instead of commenting here.

Anyway, I decided to write a little something about the cookbooks/books about food that I own for those of you who enjoy cooking and/or reading mouth-watering fiction and need some suggestions. And if you are not one of those people? Well, it's always nice to try new things! I enjoy cooking immensely - something about the mixing of ingredients and all the luscious flavors - and maybe after trying it out you'll love it too.

1. The Book of New England Cookery is a very nice book that, curiously enough, I picked up at the Colby College campus bookstore one day after classes. I am really happy that I got it because it contains a ton of delicious recipes that remind me a lot of my Colby days in the US. Whenever I get nostalgic or start craving something like American-style pancakes, muffins or clam chowder, I turn to this book. I haven't been disappointed yet.

2. Cooking in New England. Now this is kind of a touristy cookbook that I bought from Boston, but it has such nice photos of New England that I couldn't resist. Actually, the recipes in it aren't bad at all, so buying it was definitely worth it.

3. 101 Cakes and Cookies is that little gem of a book that had the Nutella Cinammon Almond Cake recipe and has a 100 more very tasty looking dessert recipes that I'm determined to try out. Of course, converting from the American measurements can be annoying at times, but I've almost gotten used to it. I often resort to jotting down the metric equivalents of the measurements in the margins, so half of the pages are filled with notes :).

4. The Бон Апети cookbook collection is a must-have in my opinion. I've tried many recipes from the Бон Апети cooking show or from the various Бон Апети cookbooks, and I have never been disappointed. In fact, my famous tiramisu recipe is a very slight variation of the Бон Апети recipe. I have a bunch of small cookbooks devoted to different kinds of food and one big cookbook with 1500 recipes that I bought as a present to myself this past Christmas. I recommend these to anyone who can read Bulgarian.

5. Нови и класически коктейли. I have other cocktail books, but this one is actually my favorite. It might not have as many fancy photos as the other books, but it has the highest number of cocktail recipes, and they are very well organized. Also, it has a couple of intro chapters on types of drinks and ingredients and the kinds of glasses and various other tools used in mixing cocktails.

6. The Bulgarian classics: Българска национална кухня and 1585 от най-добрите и изпитани рецепти от Пенка Чолчева (pictured on the third photo). These books are a must for every Bulgarian who cooks! They are priceless with their great authentic recipes for traditional Bulgarian meals. One of my specialties - "peppers with colorful stuffing" is what it's actually called, no kidding - is from Penka Cholcheva's book, and everyone who's ever tasted it has always loved it. I guess Penka Cholcheva is our equivalent of Julia Child :).

5. Last, but not least: fiction about cooking and food!
- Crescent by Diana Abu-Jaber: lovely, lovely book about exile, being an immigrant, finding your home, falling in love and letting go of the past, all infused with the lush scents and flavors of Middle Eastern food.
- Aphrodite by Isabel Allende: the Sheherazade of Chile presents a book about love, lust, and the aphrodisiac that is food, and she even gives us a bunch of recipes to experiment with.
- Chocolat by Joanne Harris (not pictured, but a vital part of my collection): don't read this book without a stash of chocolate nearby, as it will make your mouth water with every page.
- Like Water for Chocolate by Laura Esquivel: a book about frustration, love and hope, all mixed in with Mexican food in every sense of the word. It can be a bit melodramatic at times, but it is magical nonetheless.

NUTELLA CINAMMON ALMOND CAKE

So, after a month and a half of not really having any time to cook for pleasure, I was feeling a little adventurous on Friday (and also hungry for chocolate), so I tried a new dessert recipe from a cookbook I bought from a little bookstore in Boston. Nutella Cinnamon Almond Cake!

Yes, it's just as yummy as it sounds!

1. Mix a cup of brown caster sugar, three eggs, a cup of flour, 4-5 tbsp of milk, 3/4 cup of butter, baking powder, cocoa, and cinnamon in a large bowl until the batter is smooth.
2. Butter a cake pan and sprinkle with flour, so that the cake doesn't stick.
3. Pour 3/4 of the mixture in the pan. Add four large blobs of Nutella and pour the remaining batter on top. Swirl a few times with a skewer and add almonds or walnuts.
4. Bake until nicely browned and springy.

The result - pure deliciousness!