Girl Cravings & Genmai Cha Snickerdoodles...

I wouldn't call myself a sweet tooth. I mean, I like a good sweet for sure. But when someone calls themselves a sweet tooth, I assume they crave sweets far more often than I do, which is probably once a week or so, and almost never when I'm grocery shopping. Which explains why I never seem to have sweets around when I'm craving them. Which is probably a good thing in a way. Because I have a feeling I could learn to crave them more if I ate them more, if that makes any sense.

A girl's got needs...

When I do want something sweet, the fact that I am a crap baker (by neglect to some extent), means I rarely have the ingredients to bake anything too complicated. While I have been thinking about baking green tea sugar cookies for a while, when it comes to *baking*, unlike *cooking*, *thinking*, rather than *doing*, is usually the operative word. Add in the fact that I'm an hour and a half away from anywhere I can buy matcha, and the green tea sugar cookies are just gonna have to wait another month. or two. or three...

On the other hand, if I'm taking inventory of the foodstuffs that need to be consumed before we move at the end of the month and happen to find a box of genmai cha in the cupboard, and I have everything I need to bake a basic cookie, and I'm mad hormonal jonesing for something that resembles those sugar cookies I've been thinking about for way too long, I really don't have a choice but to bake these Genmai Cha Snickerdoodles.

green tea + toasted brown rice = genmai cha.
*Cha*, btw, means *tea* in 
Japanese, Korean and Chinese.

A lightly sweet cookie with that little bit of fluff and chew that I love in a snickerdoodle, paired with a hint of roasted, nutty genmai and mild green tea flavor. A little East meets West kind of treat that's extremely easy to make, and perhaps a little too easy to eat. It's a good thing the Man's good at disappearing cookies.

As with most cookie recipes, it's a good idea to bring your butter and eggs to room temp (20 minutes or so out of the fridge - less if it's a blistering hot summer day) before starting.

GENMAI CHA SNICKERDOODLES
Makes about 3 dozen 2-inch cookies

This recipe is essentially Martha Stewart's 2005 Holiday Cookie recipe, minus the cinnamon sugar, plus some genmai cha thrown into and atop, and with a few minor adjustments to size and bake time. But the concept would work well with any basic drop sugar cookie or snickerdoodle recipe. 

My notes/additions in italics.

• 2+3/4 cups all purpose flour
• 2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 2 sticks unsalted butter, softened
• 1+1/2 cups sugar
• 2 large eggs
• 4 Tablespoons (about 8 packets) genmai cha for the batter
• 2 Tablespoons (about 4 packets) genmai cha to sprinkle atop

1) Preheat oven to 350F.

2) Sift together flour, baking powder and salt; set aside (if you have a stand mixer, you can do the sifting while the butter and sugar are beating). Put butter and 1 1/2 cups sugar in the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the paddle attachment. Mix on medium speed until pale and fluffy, about 3 minutes. Mix in eggs. 

3) Reduce speed to low; gradually mix in flour mixture and 4 Tablespoons genmai cha.

4) Shape dough into 36 1-inch balls. Space 2 inches apart on baking sheets lined with parchment paper (or a Silpat / silicone baking sheet) and sprinkle the tops with a pinch of genmai cha. (My silpat and baking sheets are in storage. I used the Man's scratched and banged up cookie sheet, and it worked just fine after I very lightly buttered and floured it.)

roasty, toasty sprinkles...

5) Bake cookies, rotating sheets halfway through, until edges are golden, 12 to 15 minutes. Cool for 3 to 5 minutes before removing from cookie sheet to avoid breakage.

I saved half the dough to bake off another time, and though it is hot as Hades up in this place, I think I'm going to make me some more cookies tonight. What's a little extra heat from the oven when you're sweating like a pig from making dinner anyway?

*oink*,

shinae

DEEPLY FRIED - Lemon Vanilla Fritters With Fresh Strawberry Jam

Living in a desert clime since January, I’ve been enjoying the past few days of relative cool, some clouds and even a bit of rain in the mornings. While most people seem to perk up with the rays of the sun, I find there’s nothing like a little gray to give me pep. Maybe it’s because I’m a water sign (Fish) that the prospect of precipitation always gives me extra ambition for the day.

 
These days, while *working* from home (that’s what we’ll call it for now, my little pipe dream of making a modest living as a literal hermit turned virtual cooking teacher without flashing my white meat and/or being a vapid famewhore) extra ambition often means an extra experiment in the kitchen to see if I can make something delicious with whatever I’ve got on hand. When a rainy day coincides with the experiment, I find myself thinking about what I’d like to make for my kids with the hot chocolate they love to drink on just such a day.

So yesterday, I set out to make a deep-fried something sprinkled with powdered sugar and came up with these Lemon Vanilla Fritters using my Can't Bake For Shit mix (aka Bisquick). The fritters fry up quickly and taste like a lighter, crisper, fluffier miniature buttermilk bar with hints of lemon and vanilla. I purposely made them lightly sweet in anticipation of the powdered sugar dusting.

Deep fried delicious...

A quick strawberry jam from a handful of reject berries in the basket made a really delicious accompaniment, the leftovers to top a scoop of vanilla bean ice cream some day soon.

LEMON VANILLA FRITTERS WITH FRESH STRAWBERRY JAM

Makes about 20 two-bite fritters

It’s a good idea to make the strawberry jam first, as you don’t want to have to wait too long after the fritters are done to eat them.

Strawberry Jam

- 1 Cup sliced strawberries (5 to 6 medium)

- 1/3 Cup sugar

- 1 teaspoon fresh lemon juice

- 2 teaspoons water

- pinch of salt (a gentle shake’s worth)

1) Combine all ingredients in a small saucepan and cook over medium low heat for 10 minutes, stirring occasionally. 

2) After 10 minutes, mash large strawberry bits with a fork. This will release more of the pectin from the fruit and help thicken the jam.

3) Simmer another 3 to 5 minutes, stirring occasionally, until the liquid is the consistency of thick syrup.

Fritters

- 2 Cups Bisquick

- 2 Tablespoons sugar

- 1 Tablespoon butter, melted

- 1 teaspoon finely chopped lemon zest (If  you don’t have a microplane or zester, just run your vegetable peeler over the lemon, removing 2 or 3 strips of the rind, and chop into fine pieces. Try to avoid getting the bitter pith (white part) with the rind.)

- 1/2 Cup + 1 Tablespoon milk

- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract

- 2 Cups oil for frying (canola, vegetable or light olive work)

- Powdered sugar for dusting

1) Combine all dry ingredients (Bisquick, sugar and lemon zest) in a bowl and stir to incorporate.

2) Add wet ingredients (milk, vanilla extract and melted butter) and stir just enough times to incorporate all the dry ingredients with the wet.

3) Preheat the oil over a slightly higher than medium flame until a small piece of batter thrown in fries and bubbles gently.

4) Using two teaspoons (the ones you eat with, not the dainty little ones that came with your mother's china set), form a heaping teaspoon of batter into a football shaped fritter, and gently lay into oil, frying no more than 4 at a time. (After 3 or 4, you need to start flipping.) 

These should take about 1 minute per side to reach a golden brown color and ensure the batter is cooked all the way through. If they are browning too quickly (which they did with my first batch), turn the heat down a touch and wait a minute or two before frying again.

5) Rest fried fritters for 2 to 3 minutes on a double layer of paper towels to absorb oil and cool a bit.

6) Dust with powdered sugar and serve with strawberry jam.

frittery...

...goodness.

Oh, and coffee. NEVER. FORGET. COFFEEEEEEE...

shinae

Baking For Dummies (Why Cobbler Is Like Concealer...)

There is a short list of things I do well in this life: cooking, singing, dancing, reviewing contracts, listening, and, on a good day, making my friends and family laugh.  Note this list does *not* include BAKING.

It's not that I don't love baked goods, but I grew up in a home where dessert most days was fresh fruit - peeled, cut just so, and neatly arranged for company, or just peeled and/or cut and taken directly from the hand of the handler and munched indiscriminately if no one was watching. We would pick up the occasional napoleon or fruit tart from the patisserie, but bake we did not.

The other thing is that I am a practical kind of gal, and cooking was, if nothing else, a very useful pursuit that allowed for efficiency, substitution and improvisation.  Baking, on the other hand, always seemed to me an exercise in folly what with all the precise measurements and mise en place and list of ingredients and equipment I never seemed to have on hand and all that BAKE time...

But then one day I had all this leftover bread that had gotten too stale to eat, and conservationist that I am, I resolved to make bread pudding.  At last a baking recipe after my own heart: short and practical ingredient list (Who doesn't have milk, eggs, butter and sugar on hand?), short prep time, and of course the very efficient idea of repurposing an ingredient that would otherwise have gotten canned. 

From that day, I realized that there were indeed baking recipes for pragmatists like me, and every once in a while, when inspiration (sweet tooth) and situation (main ingredient already in pantry or fridge) collide, I will bust a Betty Crocker and bake something like this here cobbler:

What to do with a week old basket of blueberries
and a handful of frozen strawberries.

Berry Cobbler

Serves 4-5 over ice cream, 2-3 eaten by itself

Berry Mixture

- 1 small basket of blueberries (I think it was 4.4 ounces.)

- 6 strawberries cut in quarters (fresh or frozen)

- 1 teaspoon sugar (2 if berries are extra tart)

- 1/8 teaspoon salt

- 2 teaspoons flour

Stir gently until berries are
coated with dry mixture.

Streusel Topping

- 2 Tablespoons butter cut into cubes

- 3 Tablespoons flour

- 5 Tablespoons brown sugar

- 1 teaspoon cinnamon

- 1/4 teaspoon salt (or 1/2 if using unsalted butter)

Get in there with
your hands...

...and mush it up til it
looks like cookie dough.

1) Preheat oven to 425F.

2) Make streusel topping and put in freezer while mixing berries in a baking dish, 5 - 10 minutes. This gives the butter a chance to re-solidify before baking, otherwise the topping will spread too much in the baking process.  I used a Pyrex bowl, but if you're using a pie dish, stack the berries in the middle of the dish, leaving about a 1.5 inch margin around the sides.  (It's a small recipe.)

3) Spread streusel topping over berries:

4) Pop that sucker in the oven for 25-30 minutes or until it looks like:

Bubbly berry juices thickened by the flour. Sweet,
lightly salted and slightly crunchy streusel topping.

5) Serve over vanilla bean ice cream (or don't).

And THAT, folks, is how berry cobbler makes a crap baker like me appear a little less crappy.

shinae