Getting down to business

Generally, I don't watch cooking shows. I'm in too much trouble collecting recipes already. Oh, sure, I'll stop and watch an episode of "Good Eats" if it happens to be on opposite a "CSI: NY" episode I've already seen. I might pause in my champion channel surfing if I hear someone utter a magic phrase such as "now add the melted chocolate..." or there's an immensely appealing visual. But I never actively seek them out, which is why this next recipe is an anomaly in my collection.

A few years ago, on a dreary Sunday afternoon, I lay on the family room floor, aimlessly flipping channels and avoiding all sense of productivity. It was that awful time of year, when football season was over and baseball hadn't started yet. I was giving each of our 107 channels approximately two seconds to catch my attention when I heard the magic phrase: "homemade pasta."

This magic phrase coincided with both an immensely appealing visual of fresh eggs being cracked into a large pile of flour, and my recent receipt of a pasta machine. I hadn't tried the machine out yet and I was more than happy to get a televised demonstration from what appeared to be an Italian grandmother. It was: The show was "Ciao Italia" and the host was getting a fettucine lesson from her mother. At the end, they tossed the pasta in a walnut-parsley sauce, the mom sent the host (and probably the crew) off with plenty of noodles to take home, and I copied down the show's Web address.

I have made fresh egg pasta many times since, usually a mixture of 4 c. flour and six eggs. This makes about 2 pounds; it takes forever, but it's too good to make only a pound at a time, and the results don't suffer any if I use the food processor to make the dough (I do it in two batches). The walnut-parsley sauce, however, was on the back burner until this weekend.

The original recipe for the walnut-parsley sauce dressed a pound of fettucine. As I mentioned, I make 2 pounds at a time, and we cook at least 1.5 right away. My first thought was to double the recipe, then I realized that might be too much sauce. Then I took a closer look at the ingredients and decided I was just going to have to mess with it.

The original started with 2/3 c. extra-virgin olive oil, which didn't seem like a big deal until I measured it out. But doubling it brings you to 1 1/3 c., which is insane, even for heart-healthy olive oil. So I went with just under 1 c. The garlic I upped from three to five cloves -- well, four, but one was gigantic, a big, big clove -- and the walnut and parsley I increased to 1 1/3 c. each.

I sauteed the garlic in the olive oil, then Will stirred in the walnuts and parsley. At this point, the fresh pasta went into boiling water elsewhere on the stove; it cooks in about three minutes, so it's done just before the walnut-parsley sauce, which cooks in five. Drain the pasta and toss with the sauce.

THE VERDICT: Fast. Simple. Tasty. But, too much oil and not enough garlic -- I pressed it instead of mincing and I think the flavor got lost. Keith, who apparently had his heart set on tomato sauce, wouldn't eat it until we offered him Parmesan on top. Alex, with the unfathomable logic of the 6-year-old, said, "I don't know about this sauce... This pasta is tasty because the sauce is so good." He also liked Parmesan on top. Will said he likes walnuts with pasta and said he'd eat it again. I have to make some more adjustments for next time. An easy keeper.



Walnut-Parsley Sauce
adapted from "Ciao Italia"
3/4 c. extra-virgin olive oil
5 large cloves garlic, finely chopped
1 1/3 c. chopped walnuts
1 1/3 c. minced parsley
grated Parmesan (optional)

Heat oil in deep skillet or wide saucepan. Saute garlic until golden. Stir in walnuts and parsley. Cook five minutes, stirring occasionally. Toss with pasta.

O Canada

It's an emerging tradition in our household that we celebrate the start of the Olympics with food from the host country. This officially started in 2008, with sesame noodles to kick off the Beijing Olympics. I don't remember doing anything specific for Torino in 2006, but then again, we eat a lot of pizza and pasta so it's possible.

So here it is, 2010, the Winter Games are in Vancouver, and I have no idea what would be considered Canadian food. The problem, I think, is that like the United States, Canada is a melting pot of cultures and it is as hard to identify a quintessentially Canadian dish as it is to name one that is strictly American. To make it more difficult, I wanted something from the western provinces to keep as close to the Vancouver theme as possible. This ruled out the only dishes I could think of -- tourtiere and maple syrup pie -- because they were from Quebec and too far east.

After trawling the Internet, I came to a few conclusions: our entree might have to rely on indigenous ingredients (something like bison burgers); fiddlehead ferns are probably unattainable in the Mid-Atlantic states; and if I wanted a truly Canadian dish, I needed to focus on desserts. Desserts like Nanaimo bars, a three-layer no-bake treat that not only originated in British Columbia, but made an Ontarian friend's mouth water when I mentioned I was thinking of making them. Maybe this was a quintessentially Canadian dish.



I started out crushing some graham crackers -- I needed 10 to get the required 1 1/4 c. -- and then chopping the almonds in the food processor. Chopping nuts is always tricky, because if I go too fast I end up with nut paste, but careful pulsing yielded excellent results this time.

I also added a cup of shredded coconut and set it aside.






Then I melted a stick of butter, 1/4 c. sugar, and 5 Tbsp. of cocoa powder in my makeshift double boiler. I don't own a real double boiler, so I usually stack a bowl or a small saucepan on top of another small saucepan and it does the trick. Eventually, I'll get a real one, but this works pretty well.

Next, I needed to combine the melted chocolate with a beaten egg. I followed the advice of The Eclectic Cook, who suggested adding the chocolate to the egg instead of the other way around to avoid curdling. I was still a little worried about whether the egg would be heated enough, so I added a little melted chocolate to warm the egg and then returned it to the makeshift double boiler. This was a mistake: It didn't curdle so much as it mysteriously separated, and after some cursing I scrapped it and started again. This time, I added all the mixture to the egg and used a thermometer to check it was at a safe temperature to proceed. It did make a nice custardy chocolate mix (which also tasted excellent).


Said custardy chocolate mix was then combined with the graham crackers crumbs, finely chopped almonds and coconut. This smelled great, kind of like Girl Scout Samoas.

It also turned into a nice, thick dough, which pressed so easily into an 8 x 8 baking dish. So easily, in fact, that there wasn't any left over to sample.

On to the second layer. I was at first baffled: I had it in my head that this was a custard-like layer, probably because one of the ingredients is 2 Tbsp. of vanilla custard powder (or pudding mix, in the States). But I wasn't thinking straight. Because what do you get from a stick of butter, roughly 3 Tbsp. cream, pudding mix and 2 c. icing (confectioner's) sugar? Holy buttercream, Batman!

I'm not crazy about frostings with lots of confectioner's sugar, so I had some doubts as I spread the buttercream across the base. Keith and Alex, however, were busy licking the frosting off the beaters and assuring me that it was very good.

The last step was to melt 4 oz. of semisweet chocolate with 2 Tbsp. of butter and pour that on top of the buttercream layer, then throw the whole thing in the fridge to chill. Some recipes said for an hour, others said for several. I went with several.

THE VERDICT: An excellent, tasty combination of flavors. I couldn't taste the confectioner's sugar at all. The bottom layer may have smelled like Samoas, but it tasted even better. Four thumbs up. And, when the kids weren't looking this morning, I snuck another one for breakfast. A gold medal winner, indeed.

Having coffee cake and eating it, too

Lately, I've had a craving for coffee cake. I blame this mostly on Keith, who tends to choose coffee cake as a treat at the shop where I regularly buy coffee beans. He usually lets me have a bite, and it's good.

But a bite just isn't enough. Nor is it any good on a quiet morning at home, when there's just enough snow on the ground to delay school and you really want baked goods with your cup of coffee. It was time to pick out a new recipe.

Of course, by the time I got it baked, I would be long done with my morning java, but there was always the afternoon cup. And the next day. And, maybe, the day after that.

I decided to test a toffee bar coffee cake out of the December 1999 Bon Appetit, mainly because it looked straightforward and I was intrigued by the toffee topping. I also had all the ingredients at home, except the toffee and buttermilk, which I picked up after dropping the kids off at school.

Step one was mixing butter, flour, dark brown sugar, regular sugar and salt together until it resembled coarse meal. Then, I scooped out 1/2 cup to reserve for the topping.










 After setting aside the topping mixture, I added some baking soda to the batter mix. I didn't want to add in the liquid ingredients until just before pouring the batter into the cake pan (9 x 13 x 2 Pyrex), because I didn't want the buttermilk and baking soda to react too quickly and keep the cake from rising in the oven.

So I finished up the topping mixture by adding in some broken up pecan halves and some Heath bar bits. The actual recipe calls for breaking up toffee bars, but it was easier to buy the brickle bits the grocery store stocks next to chocolate chips.

I went back to the batter bowl and beat in the egg, vanilla and buttermilk. Then I quickly poured it into the baking dish ...

... and sprinkled toffee topping all over it. Then I baked at 350 degrees for 35 minutes.

On the surface, the final version did not look appreciably different from the pre-baked version until you cut into it. Then, it looked like cake.

THE VERDICT: This cake has a wonderful texture. If I could get that texture in a chocolate layer cake, I'd be thrilled. It was perfectly moist and spongy. At first, I wasn't too crazy about the flavor: I didn't get as much of a sense of the pecans or toffee as I hoped, and was surprised when Will raved about it. But the flavor improved immensely overnight and tasted better the next morning. It was an excellent complement to a morning cup of coffee. Keith ate several pieces, and Alex snuck himself a piece at snack time. A definite keeper.

Mmmm.... minty cookies

It happens to be that excellent time of year known as Girl Scout Cookie Time. Last week I ran into a cookie stand manned by a couple of Brownies I know, and well, a sucker for Thin Mints and her money are soon parted.

I love chocolate. I love mint. I love chocolate mint, and Thin Mints, well... I have been known to eat an entire box of Thin Mints in one sitting, and I think that was the fate I subconsciously planned for the box I bought last week. Alas for me, Alex discovered the box and it turns out he is also a sucker for Thin Mints. Sigh.


That was last week. Today's dilemma: I really wanted to bake something, but was feeling just enough under the weather that it had to be simple, not too hands-on, with just a few ingredients. Maybe a bar cookie, I thought, flipping through one of my binders. Maybe brownies. Maybe... hello! Chocolate mint cookies!

Not just any chocolate mint cookies.... these were billed as homemade Thin Mints. And, fancy that, we just happened to have all the ingredients in the house. And the recipe was pretty straightforward, so it was a deal.

I started by beating some vanilla and peppermint extracts into softened butter. Evidently when I first saved this recipe, I read through some online reviews that strongly recommended increasing the amount of extract given, so I went ahead and used 1 1/2 tsp. of each. Whoa, overwhelming peppermint scent. Then I creamed it with some sugar.

 

Then I beat in an egg, and added some flour, Dutch-processed cocoa and a little salt and beat until just blended. Mmmm... tasty dough.

 

 

I took the dough out, rolled it into logs and refrigerated it for four hours. While Will put the finishing touches on dinner, I sliced the dough into roughly 1/4-inch thick rounds -- well, OK, they were a little flat on one edge -- and put them on parchment-lined cookie sheets. These baked at 350 degrees for just over 12 minutes.

 

They came out looking OK, but one of them er, just happened to break a little bit while I was testing for doneness, so Will and I had to taste it. Mmmm. Pretty good, and a little soft, coming straight from the oven. 

The recipe called for cooling the cookies and then drizzling them with melted chocolate. But truthfully, the cookies were pretty darn good without the chocolate. In the end, I decided to mix things up. Some I left alone. 

Some, I haphazardly drizzled with plain melted chocolate.

And some, I smothered with mint chocolate.

THE VERDICT: Mmmm... minty cookies. They're good. They crisp up pretty quickly as they cool. They're rich enough to require a glass of milk with them. Chocolate coating is excellent, but not necessary. I think, next time I make them, that semisweet chocolate might be better than bittersweet for the topping. A definite keeper.

Come to the dark side

Will and I are a little like Jack Sprat and his wife: When we roast a chicken, he sticks to the leaner white meat and I go straight for the dark. I think it has more flavor and is far more tender than breast meat, and it's my favorite part of the bird. Still, I concede that the taste benefits are the result of more fat and as a result I rarely cook with chicken legs.

However, I do have a handful of recipes that call for thighs or whole legs. One of them, Moroccan braised chicken, has been lurking near the front of my recipe testing folder since I reorganized it in October. This recipe, out of Martha Stewart's "Everyday Food," appealed to me on two fronts: the Moroccan-inspired flavors and the fact that it's part of a menu with couscous and roasted carrots with lemon dressing. One of my many cooking flaws is I tend to forget to make side dishes, especially vegetable ones, so anything that incorporates the sides for me is a good thing. (Pun intended.)

The first thing to do was get Will on board. For one thing, he was doing the grocery shopping. He agreed pretty quickly, noting that he could always eat triple helpings of couscous. So I sent him off to buy the six whole legs the recipe required, along with carrots, prunes and couscous, and figured all was well.

Or so I thought, until he came back with a 12-pack of drumsticks. This baffled me, as we had discussed what "whole leg" entailed. For a little while, I considered using just the drumsticks, but decided the thighs might be a crucial part in flavoring the recipe (read, I like them better) and ran back out.

The first part of cooking involved removing the skin from the bird and then browning the meat in olive oil in two batches. In this case, that meant six drumsticks first and four thighs second. Either I put in too little olive oil the first time or too much the second, because the drumsticks stuck to the bottom of the pan like crazy and the thighs almost looked like they were deep frying.

Once the thighs were browned, it was time to drop in the large onion, halved and thinly sliced, and a 1/4 c. of water. The onion was no problem, but adding water to spitting hot oil? Are you kidding me? I decided to remove the pot from the heat first. Water in and pot back on the heat, I scraped up the browned chicken bits and added 1 tsp. turmeric, 1 tsp. ginger and 1/2 tsp Ceylon cinnamon.

Then I put the chicken back in the pot, managing to fit it all in one layer. At this point, I was pretty glad I wasn't dealing with six whole legs, because I wasn't sure they would have fit as neatly. I poured in two more cups of water and a large handful of pitted prunes. Once the water came to a boil, I reduced the heat, partly covered it, and turned my attention to the carrots.

The recipe called for 3 pounds of carrots, cut into 2 inch pieces and tossed with olive oil and cayenne pepper. I didn't want to weigh out the exact amount, so I just prepared two large carrots per person. I tossed everything on a baking sheet as instructed and popped it in the oven to roast for 30 minutes. By some miracle of timing, I also had 30 minutes left on the braising chicken. Was this actually coming together smoothly?

No, it wasn't. Because now was the time to zest the lemon for the lemon dressing and my zester had disappeared. It took 15 minutes and two adults searching to find it shoved to the back of a drawer where it doesn't belong. This is the sort of thing that presages a temperamental kitchen organization. Still, I got the lemon zested and juiced and only needed to add 2 tablespoons of honey...

... which had pretty well crystallized in the bottom of the honey bear. I didn't have time to properly warm and liquefy it, and was also at the point where the carrots were out of the oven (they could cool and the dressing could wait) and I had to remove the chicken to a platter, thicken the sauce and start the water for the couscous. Once I had that under control, I scraped out what looked like 2 tablespoons of honey, dropped it in the bowl I was mixing the dressing in and threw it in the microwave for 30 seconds. Worked like a charm.

Meanwhile, the sauce was very thick, perhaps too thick. I took it off the heat and poured it in a bowl. I finished the couscous and Will mixed in a little chopped cilantro. I tossed the carrots with the lemon dressing and miraculously, a complete meal was on the table.

THE VERDICT: This was pretty darn good. I don't know that the cilantro made much difference with the couscous, but the rest of the meal was great. The chicken was just right and the sauce was a little sweet, but a forkful of carrot in lemon dressing was a fantastic foil. Will was in favor of keeping it as a once-in-a-while dish, and Alex rated it a "Yum" -- but he wouldn't eat his carrots ("The lemon makes it too sweet," he said.) Keith, as usual, cleaned his plate. A definite, but once-in-a-while, keeper.

Fall favorites

Mmm. Molasses cookies.

One of my favorite things about fall is cooking with warmer spices, like cloves and cinnamon, nutmeg and allspice. One of my favorite things to make with them is molasses cookies.

To some extent, I am on a quest for the perfect molasses cookie. My freshman year of college, I had a roommate who worked with a woman who made wonderful molasses cookies, soft and chewy with just enough spice to enhance the cookie without overwhelming it. Rumor has it said roommate has the recipe, hidden somewhere in her own overflowing recipe file. If it turns up, well, I'm hoping to get my hands on it, but in the meantime I've got plenty of recipes to test.

This recipe for Sugar-Topped Molasses Spice Cookies comes from Bon Appetit, Nov. 2006.

In a bowl, whisk together 2 1/3 c. flour, 2 tsp. baking soda, 1/2 tsp. salt, 2 tsp. ginger, 1/2 tsp. cinnamon, 1/4 tsp allspice and a very small pinch of coarsely ground pepper.

Then in my trusty electric mixer, I beat 12 tablespoons room temperature butter until smooth, then creamed in 1/2 c. of molasses and 1 c. of light brown sugar. When it was blended, I beat in an egg and scraped down the sides:

Next, I gently added the flour mixture on low, low speed. Adding flour to doughs and batters always makes me yearn for my mother's mixer, or rather, the pouring shield on her mixer. It's just a big plastic ring, with a sort of funnel on one side, but it keeps all the flour from foofing out when you try to mix it in. I have a pouring shield, but sometime between the late '70s and the late  '90s, some idiot decided it would be better if the shield came in two pieces. I think the idea was to make it easier to add ingredients, but it actually means the shield doesn't fit correctly and if you're not careful, it will fall into the batter. So now I rarely use the darn thing and just add flour very, very slowly.

When the flour and spices are just mixed in, the dough will be very soft and smooth. The next step was to divide it into two pieces, wrap each with plastic wrap, and chill for at least an hour. Then I let the kids lick the dough off the beater.

After an hour (or more), I took out the smaller of the two hunks of dough. I preheat an oven to 350 degrees and lined a baking sheet with foil. Then I rolled small pieces of dough into balls and rolled those in a bowl of sugar.





Once I had a dozen balls of dough placed on the baking sheet, I flattened them with a juice glass. They didn't look very sugar-topped anymore, so I sprinkled some more sugar on them.

These were supposed to bake for 12 to 14 minutes; since I like my cookies on the chewy side I went for the minimum. They came out a little crunchy on outside and a little chewy on the inside.

THE VERDICT:  Not quite as chewy as I was hoping for, but not bad. That pinch of ground pepper adds a unexpected pfefferkuchen-like kick. Will and Keith enjoyed them, assuring me that I make a mean molasses spice cookie. These would go great with some vanilla ice cream. A keeper.

Ambition, 2.1

One of the reasons I got so het up about the idea of making homemade ricotta was I found a recipe for ricotta gnocchi. Said recipe was part of an article about using homemade ricotta and sure, I could have just bought a tub of cheese at the store and called it a day, but I got ambitious.

Ricotta recipe one failed miserably. Ricotta recipe two turned out splendidly, and now that I had the main ingredient, I could turn it into gnocchi. The actual recipe was for ricotta gnocchi with some kind of mushroom sauce (serves six), but I skipped the mushroom part and figured on substituting my own tomato sauce.

Per the instructions, I weighed out a pound of ricotta and dutifully drained it until it had the texture of wet clay. I mixed in a half cup of flour, an egg, a tablespoon each of olive oil and melted butter, a 1/4 c. of Parmesan
and some salt and pepper. It felt very sticky, so I added another tablespoon of flour. After the fourth (do not add more than four! the recipe said) it was still pretty sticky, not slighty sticky, but, do not add more than four tablespoons!

I did pause a moment to consider that this was the same guy who wrote ricotta recipe one, and maybe, just maybe, he was wrong. Then I decided to follow what was written and play around another time, if necessary.

I covered and chilled the dough. A half hour later, I took the dough out again and tried to divide it into four parts, but it was awfully sticky. I ended up with three. Using copious amounts of flour, I rolled the dough into 3/4-inch-wide logs. Here, the recipe said to cut them into 1-inch pieces, but I thought they would look more, well, gnocchi-like if I pinched off pieces instead. They were still remarkably sticky, so I rolled them in flour before placing them on a baking sheet to chill some more.

At this point, I had to turn the operation over to Will while I took Keith to soccer practice. Shortly before we were due home, he put the gnocchi on to cook. They boiled in water for a few minutes, floated to the top, and he cooked them about two minutes longer and drained them. Keith and I weren't home yet, so Will kept the gnocchi warm by tossing them with some melted butter in a saute pan over low heat. When we finally got home, he served the gnocchi with tomato sauce.

THE VERDICT: Reaction one -- Serves six? I don't think so. We didn't have enough for four servings, with two of them kid-sized. Granted, I didn't do the mushroom sauce business, which might have had something to do with it, but we still should have had enough for four bowls.
Reaction two -- WOW. Wow, wow, wow. These were really good. The gnocchi were extremely light, with a nice texture and flavor. They also went well with the homemade tomato sauce. So next time, I double the recipe.

23 years of procrastination

Old habits die hard, really, really hard. To wit, it took me something like 23 years to make the pecan pillow recipe I clipped from Seventeen magazine way back when I was learning to cook. Then it took me another week to post about it.

To be honest, it was a very busy week and I've been so exhausted I didn't watch any of the Red Sox's first two playoff games, and therefore I blame myself for both losses. (Again, old habits die hard -- 23 years of baseball-watching superstition are not wiped out even by two World Series wins in the last six years.)

At any rate, last week I hauled out the Seventeen magazine album of recipes and makeup tips (for a glamorous look, try frosted vanilla eyeshadow with electric blue mascara!) and turned to the pecan pillows recipe. It is, as so many of the teen magazine recipes were back then, ridiculously easy. It also relies on convenient packaged crescent roll dough.

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. The first step is to take 2 cups of pecans and chop them in the food processor. This explains the first 10 years or so I didn't make this recipe: I didn't have a food processor until some time after I got married.

Then you throw in 2 tablespoons butter, 2 tablespoons dark brown sugar and 1 teaspoon of cinnamon, and blend until smooth. This step used up the last of my Cassia cinnamon, which pretty much negated any more baking until the replacement order arrived.

The next step told me shopping has changed in 23 years. At this point, I was supposed to crack open two cans of crescent roll dough -- got that -- and separate them into eight rectangles, which meant pinching two triangles of dough together along the hypotenuse sides. This was not difficult. There should be eight triangles in a can, or four rectangles.  However, the cans of dough I bought made six "large and buttery" crescents each, meaning three rectangles per can. Either I wasn't paying attention when I was shopping and bought the wrong version, or the crescent roll company completely changed the product.

No matter, it was still (kinda large) rectangles of crescent dough waiting to be filled. The recipe said to use 2 tablespoons of pecan butter filling; I adjusted to 2 1/2. I placed the filling in the center of the dough rectangles, and then folded the corners of the dough over the filling. These didn't look like neat little pillows, more like dim sum gone rogue, but as long as all the sides were pinched closed and nothing was going to leak out, I didn't care.

At this point, I was supposed to quickly brush the pillows with an egg wash. I skipped this step (read, forgot) and just put them on a baking sheet and popped them in the oven for 18 minutes.

VERDICT: These were surprisingly good. They were the sort of thing that makes you drink your milk because they go so well together. Keith and Alex loved them. I don't know that they were worth waiting 23 years to make them, but they were very tasty, and a nice quick dessert/breakfast treat. A keeper.

Time for an upgrade

I keep forgetting that I need a Bundt pan.

Many years ago, when we were helping downsize somebody's kitchen on Will's side of the family, I acquired a nifty little springform pan with a Bundt insert. It was pretty cool. I could make cheesecakes, I could make Bundt cakes, and I could make a deadly flourless chocolate cake courtesy of Rose Levy Beranbaum. What else did I need?

As it turned out with my nifty little springform pan, the emphasis is on little: The pan in question is maybe 8 inches diameter and not particularly deep, either. I could make small cheesecakes. I could still make my flourless chocolate cake. And an occasional small Bundt cake.

Eventually, I realized I needed a larger springform pan and duly acquired one. But the Bundt pan keeps getting shoved to the back burner. Then things like apple spice cake with brown sugar glaze turn out to be a tasty mess.

Last weekend we made our annual trip to the pick-your-own apple orchard and loaded up on Jonagolds. Some years, this leads to debate about what to do with the fruit as Will and I usually have different ideas. This time, while he went straight to work on a crisp, I lazed around a bit before finally deciding to test out a cake recipe.

The recipe calls for Granny Smiths, but since that wasn't what we had, it wasn't what I used. I grated and drained three Jonagolds -- the boys sampled the resultant juice, and assured me it was a keeper recipe -- and had just a bit more than the 2 c. apple called for.

The cake batter beat up very thick, looking almost like a dough. At this point, I was supposed to transfer it to a greased 12-cup Bundt pan. Of course, what I had was a prepared 8-inch springform pan with a Bundt insert. My guess is it holds 8 or 9 cups. The batter filled the pan most of the way. I thought briefly about putting a cookie sheet on the baking rack under the cake pan, but decided I was OK and just popped the cake into the oven.

Twenty minutes later, I detected the distinctive scent of cake batter that had overflowed the pan and started burning on the bottom of the oven. I mentally kicked myself for not using the cookie sheet, and put one in to catch any other drips. And boy, were there more drips coming.


The cake also took about 10 minutes longer to bake than expected, and the sides of the pan were covered in drips. Once I removed the pan, however, it did look good, a nice even golden brown. While the cake cooled, we nibbled on the cooked drips, which tasted like a nice, slightly crunchy cookie.

The glaze presented no problems: Just melt some sugar, butter, cream and flavorings together and pour over the top of the cake. It was getting on toward dessert time, so we didn't wait too long to let the glaze set.

THE VERDICT: The cake was very moist and the glaze was pretty good. Will, Keith and I all liked the cake OK the first day, but preferred it the second day, after the glaze soaked in more and the flavor deepened. Alex liked it every day. The cake was sturdy enough to travel in lunchboxes. It also went well with coffee. A keeper, but I won't be making it again until I get a real Bundt pan.

Short-order cooking

Thorough disclaimer: I did not cook this recipe. I got stuck in traffic (read: had to stop and buy coffee beans) and my husband got home well before me, so he kindly consented to make the dinner I had planned.

I had picked a penne with bacon, tomato and cheese sauce, largely because it looked like it could be made in 25 minutes, give or take a few. It did take a fairly short time, making it good for busy weeknights. We used turkey bacon, which didn't quite yield the 4 Tbsp. pan drippings the recipe called for, so we threw in a little olive oil.

We ran into a little snag when we tried to open the red wine: Our corkscrew mysteriously disappeared. I was just starting to gauge whether our kitchen scissors would fit in the cork when my husband remembered the never-used wine picnic tote I got a decade ago at a holiday party at work. Like my recipe collection, it's one of those things I just can't part with because someday, we might actually get a babysitter and go do the loaf of bread, jug of wine thing. Anyway, the tote also comes with a handy portable corkscrew, and I knew exactly where to find it.

THE VERDICT: It was a pretty fast cooking recipe, as I suspected. The sauce was tasty enough -- we used Parmesan for the cheese, incidentally -- although a little on the thin side. But as my husband pointed out, he cooked more penne than the recipe called for, so that may have had something to do with it. The bacon added a little variety to an otherwise straightforward sauce. Worth making again, perhaps with a smokier cheese.