Dessert Disappointment

Sometimes, Gentle Reader, I wonder if my disasters are my own fault or the fault of, well, a bum recipe. Let's face it--not all recipes are winners. If they were, dear Christopher Kimball and his posse in America's Test Kitchen would be out of work. But, alas, dud recipes lurk out there, and may the FSM bless dear Christopher Kimball and his crew for developing and testing never-fail recipes. And we all know....

I Heart Christopher Kimball

But where the hell is Christopher Kimball and his posses when a faudie really needs them? I really could have used them when making key lime cookies recently.

Not Quite Rolling With the Changes
I came across the key lime cookie recipe over on Allrecipes.com. It's not my BFF when it comes to finding new recipes, but every now and then I find something that intrigues me. The user comments are sometimes insightful, sometimes potentially helpful, sometimes bizarre but usually entertaining for a few minutes.

Perhaps I should have taken the time to read through the comments for this recipe before making it. I do recall seeing that it had earned largely good reviews and multiple stars, but I didn't pay attention to the actual comments. Even now I haven't gone back to see if anyone else had the same problems I had.

And what problems did the Faudie have with this recipe? Let me tell you....

First off, back-to-back recipes with citrus zest is, in a word, painful. At least for me. As you may recall, Gentle Reader, I abraded the pads of my left and right thumbs and index fingers while making zucchini-orange bread earlier this week, marking my first attempt at making fresh zest a literally bloody experience. Naturally, being the utterly brilliant faudie that I am, I was back at the zester less than 24 hours later.

This time, though, I attempted to employ the kitchen tip I'd read in a recent issue of CI for easy zesting, but I didn't find it saved me time or precious zest. While I spared my fingertips further injury simply by scraping off the stuff stuck to the box grater with a bamboo skewer (smart girl, yes I am), I couldn't find any means that I liked of holding the lime while zesting to protect my injured fingers from juice. Oh well, sometimes you must suffer for your passions, right?

The second problem was really the biggest. You see, Gentle Reader, this recipe sells itself as a rolled cookie recipe. Like snickerdoodles and thumbprint cookies. I haven't made a rolled cookie recipe since I made snickerdoodles waaaay back when the husband (before he was the husband and, in fact, before he was the fiance) and I had our apartment in The City Different, so I was looking forward to making some again. Plus I'm a sucker for key lime.

Perhaps using white wheat flour in lieu of all-purpose was my downfall. But in my experience, using this flour tends to make batter and dough drier, but that was exactly the opposite of my experience this time. Instead of dough I could roll, I wound up with, well, pancake batter. There was no way in the FSM's beautiful, bountiful spaghetti bowl that this stuff was ever going to roll.

I whipped out the cookie scoop I first used when making the spicey chocolate chip-zucchini cookies and made the best of the situation as I could. I had visions of the dough running all over the pan as I attempted to scoop it out, but luckily it didn't do that:

Then I had visions of the dough running all over the pan once it went into the oven so that I'd wind up with one big baked mess. Luckily, that didn't happen either:

So while the dough didn't roll, I did end up with decent-looking cookies.

And decent-looking is about all I can say for them. Despite using the fabulous key lime juice that has yielded great key lime flavor in other things (such as our favorite key lime frozen yogurt), these cookies didn't have a distinctive key lime flavor. I'm going to chalk it up to the conflict between the nuttier flavor of the white wheat flavor and the key lime juice, but I really thought that between the zest and the juice, enough key lime flavor would be mixed into the dough. But I was wrong.

If you're interested in trying these cookies out for yourself to prove you're not an idiot like me, here's the recipe.

Rolled Key Lime Cookies1/2 C butter
1 C sugar
1 egg
1 egg yolk
1 1/2 C all-purpose flour
1 t baking powder
1/2 t NaCl
1/4 C fresh lime juice
1 1/2 t lime zest
1/2 C powdered sugar (for decoration)

1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.
   
2. In a large bowl, cream the butter, sugar, egg and egg yolk until smooth.
   
3. Stir in lime juice and zest.
   
4. In a smaller bowl, combine the flour, baking powder and NaCl, then blend into the creamed mixture.
   
5. Form dough into half-inch balls, and arrange on a cookie sheet sprayed with cooking spray.
   
6. Bake 8 to 10 minutes or until lightly browned. Cool on wire racks.
   
7. Sift powdered sugar over cookies while still warm.

Nutrional Info
Calories: 74
Fat: 2.9 g
Protein: 0.8 g
Carbs: 11.4 g
Cholesterol: 19 mg
Fiber: 0.2 g

The Faudie's Futzings

• I used fat-free butter, which might have contributed to the pancake batter-like texture to the dough. However, I really figured that the drier white whole wheat flour would balance out the additional moisture this butter provides.
  
• I used Clabber Girl Sugar Replacer in lieu of regular 'ol sugar. I've never had a problem with this substitution before, but perhaps these rolled cookies need the grainier texture of regular sugar; the Clabber Girl stuff is very powdery, much like, well, powdered sugar.
  
• As I mentioned a few times now, I used white whole wheat instead of good 'ol Gold Medal all-purpose.
  
• Because I used whole wheat flour, I increased the amount of baking powder by half. I don't know enough about baking powder to determine if this might have screwed up the texture of the dough, but I somehow doubt it. But, hey, I'm just a faudie, so what do I know?
  
• Instead of an egg and an egg yolk, I used the equivalent (1/3 cup and 1 tablespoon, I believe) of egg substitute. Perhaps here was my downfall. I understand vaguely that yolks are a thickener, so its absence might have hurt me. Since space in my crummy refrigerator is at a premium thanks to its penchant for freezing anything placed in the back half of it, I don't think I'll be buying real eggs anytime soon. I'll stick with my egg substitute, thank you. Otherwise, I wouldn't have anything to screw up and blog about, eh, Gentle Reader?

Frightening Food Finds

Words fail me.

Does anyone know how to set up a rule in Outlook so that I don't have to see vomit-inspiring images such as this one in my inbox in the morning?

UPDATE -- 7 August
After reading my initial post, the husband alerted me to some possible xenocannibalism. Could Hermie Odle and his kind be subjected to harvesting to satisfy the questionable palates of certain humans out there? You decide, Gentle Reader.

Hermie Odle



Steak Saltimbocca--or is it Steak Odle?

Zest for Life

Hobbled by a (for the love of the FSM, let it be a minor) hamstring injury and not one for Spinning with a sub, I stayed my butt at home for the majority of Tuesday, which meant I got two dozen monographs edited pretty quickly, leaving me plenty of time to have some misadventures in the kitchen. Woohoo!

Zucchini Rocks
I've mentioned my zest for zucchini a few times now, I believe, Gentle Reader, and have even shared with you the questionable-looking but still quite yummy chocolate chip-zucchini cookies of my own making (er, merging of recipes). Since I had four zucchs left over after from my first brush with zucchini desserts and still aching to make some zucchini bread of some sort, I decided to make the most of my Tuesday late afternoon and make the most of my leftover zucchini by whipping up some zucchini-orange bread.

Pan de Vida
Sad to say, but this culinary misadventure was my first attempt at making any kind of bread from scratch. Yep, my bread-making adventures have been limited to loafs out of a Krusteaz box. But that's not terribly surprising, Gentle Reader, since we're not big breakfast/snack/dessert bread eaters here at Chez Boeckman-Walker. We love banana bread, but aside from the boy, we're not banana eaters, thus we never have mushy, icky bananas around from which to make banana bread. If I'm going to make some kind of breakfast/snack/dessert carb thing, it's going to be in the form of muffins. And Krusteaz fat-free muffin mixes are easy and taste pretty darn good.

The challenge with this recipe would be making it true: Yes, that would include whipping out the 'ol box grater (because my Microplane zester I'm supposed to get as a gimme for previewing the 2007 CI annual is on back order, darn it all) and zesting one of the two big oranges we bought last night when we took Joy to an HEB so she could get some boo-boo supplies for her step-son, who hurt his leg in a bizarre golf cart-tipping accident. In addition to one tablespoon of fresh orange zest, I needed one whole tablespoon of freshly squeezed orange juice. Naturally, I chose the larger of the two oranges since I had no idea how much juice and how much zest I'd get from a midsize orange.

Now I'd read in one of my issues of CI a quick kitchen tip that involves wrapping one's box grater/zester with some plastic wrap to better collect zest or not make it such a pain in the butt to scrape off the box grater/zester. Did I dig out the tip and follow it? Hell no. I didn't want to take the time to track down the issue, nor did I want to make my first use of the zesting side of the box grater so...fancy schmancy. No, I was determined my first go would be the old-fashioned way.

And the old-fashioned way is crappy and painful.

"Painful?" you ask, Gentle Reader?

Yes, painful. While attempting to salvage as much zest as I could, I scoured the skin off the pads off my right and left thumbs and index fingers. So when I went to squeeze half the zested orange, its juice slid right into my abraded fingertips. Ouch!

Ahh, the stupid things I do just to provide you, Gentle Reader, with quality culinary misadventures....

I Love My Food Processor, But...
...I wish its grater/shredder disc did a better job. Or perhaps not such a good job. My lovely Queasy Art three-cup food processor really is a time-saving device (it whipped out a cup of grated/shredded zucchini in, like, 3 seconds), but because the grater disc works so well, I wind up with really, really long strands of grated/shredded zucchini. That don't break up when you add them to batter or dough. And don't break up when you cook them. So you wind up with these icky-looking green strands in your desserts that look really, really unappetizing--but really aren't noticeable when you're chewing and swallowing.

Thus this late afternoon I wound up with bread dough that looked like this:

Just like my chocolate chip-zucchini cookies,, my zucchini-orange bread dough looked like something that came out the business end of this wiener dog my older sister once had who loved to eat my uninflated balloons. (Ahh, but Noodle was a great dog.) Did I let that deter me? Hell no. But am I now on a quest to figure out how to grate/shred zucchini in my food processor without the long-stranded end product and still enjoy its time-saving goodness? You bet your ass!

If It's Nice, Do It Six Times
The original recipe calls to split the dough between two 8" x 4" loaf pans, but (A) I don't think I have two pans of that size and (B) I didn't want that big of a loaf, let alone two of 'em. So I dug out the half-dozen mini-loaf pans I'd bought three years ago or so to make a train cake for the boy's second birthday and put them to use (for something other than taking up space in my baking utensils drawer, although the topmost one does hold all my measuring spoons, so I guess the do serve a purpose in there).

Because I used such small pans, I was pretty sure the loaves wouldn't need the full 50 minutes of baking time called for in the recipe. And The Faudie was right! Woohoo! I set the timer for 25 minutes, figuring that after half the baking time, I could get a good idea of how much longer the loaves might need. Sure enough, 25 minutes was exactly how much time they needed.

After ten minutes of chillin' out in their pans, I dumped each loaf out and let them chill completely naked on the wire rack. Mmmm...six times the amount of loafy love!

Of course, the smell of freshly baked bread appeals to damn near everyone, and the residents (human, that is) of Chez Boeckman-Walker were helpless to resist its allure. Shortly after I dumped the loaves from the pans, I cut into one so we could all have a taste.

If only I could upload scratch-and-sniff pictures for you to enjoy, Gentle Reader! But, alas, you'll just have to make some for yourself. Here's the recipe, as it appears in the July 2008 issue of Cooking Light:

Zucchini-Orange Bread
3 C all-purpose flour (about 13 1/2 oz.)
1 t NaCl
1 t baking powder
1/4 t baking soda
1 C sugar
1/2 C egg substitute
1/3 C canola oil
1 T orange zest
1 T fresh OJ
2 C shredded zucchini
1/2 C coarsely chopped walnuts

1/2 C powdered sugar
2 T fresh OJ

1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.
   
2. In a large bowl, combine the flour, NaCl, baking powder and baking soda. Whisk to mix well, then make a well in the center of the dry ingredients.
   
3. In a second bowl, combine the sugar, egg substitute, orange zest and OJ.
   
4. Pour the liquid mixture into the well in the flour mixture, stirring just until moist.
   
5. Fold in the zucchini and walnuts.
   
6. Divide the batter between two 8" x 4" loaf pans coated with cooking spray.
   
7. Bake at 350 degrees for 50 minutes or until a wooden pick inserted in the center of each loaf comes out clean.
   
8. Cool the loaves 10 minutes in their pans on a wire rack, then remove them from their pans to continue cooling on the rack.
   
9. If desired, combine the powdered sugar and two tablespoons of OJ with a whisk to make a glaze to drizzle over the still-warm bread.

Serving size: 1 slice

Nutritional Info
Calories: 145
Fat: 5.1 g
Saturated fat: 0.4 g
Protein: 2.8 g
Carbs: 22.5 g
Fiber: 0.7 g
Na: 142 mg

The Faudie's Futzings

• In lieu of all-purpose flour, I used 1 1/2 cups of whole wheat and 1 1/2 cups of white whole wheat, as I so often do. Sure, the whole wheat flour gives the end product a nuttier flavor, but I like it and so does the husband. (The boy has yet to complain, but just as he has with cilantro, I'm sure he'll make his enmity known soon enough.)
  
• Because I used whole wheat flour, I had to increase the amount of baking powder by half (for 1 1/2 teaspoons) and used a wee bit more OJ since whole wheat flour tends to make things more dense and dry.
  
• Because my knife skills suck, my coarsely chopped walnuts were more like powdered and pulverized walnuts. Oh well. One of these days I swear I am going to sign up for one of the knife skills classes Central Market and Whole Foods offer.
  
• As I mentioned previously, I used much smaller loaf pans and halved the baking time with absolute success.

Final Verdict
The bread is quite tasty, don't get me wrong. However, it's missing something. Cinnamon, perhaps. Or nutmeg or clove or some such similar spice.

Or perhaps the whole wheat flour obliterated whatever sweetness the orange zest and OJ might have imparted--which is highly unlike, I know, Gentle Reader, since only fake orange flavor is sweet. And no, I didn't make the glaze. I was too busy eating supper to remember the glazing bit. Bad me.

While I had the food processor out, I went ahead and grated/shredded up the remaining three and a half zucchini, bagged 'em and set 'em up to freeze for later use. I might just start thawing one of those two-cup bags so I can whip up the zucchini bread recipe my dear friend the world's greatest Spin instructor made and shared with me (and got me started on this zucchini kick).