Plum Coffee Cake

Well I noticed that I haven’t done a cooking post in some time on my blog. After reading someone’s post of plans to put up recipes of gulab jamun and upside down pineapple cake I thought I would also put up a new food post. I also noticed that I haven’t yet written about one of the most successful desserts I made this summer. I made it at least 4 times because it was so popular with my family. This past summer our plum tree gave us about a dozen plums a day. As you can imagine, we were up to our ears in plums and had no idea what to do with so many of them. So I decided to do some recipe hunting online for a tasty recipe to help in using up some of those plums. I was honestly skeptical of trying out a plum cake. I’m not what you call a major fan of the plum. But I thought there has to be something out there that would be tasty and include plums. That’s when I came across this recipe on the Joy Of Baking website. For the most part when I do my recipe hunting online, I’m drawn to foodnetwork.com or recipeland.com. But I wasn’t having any luck with those websites.

This recipe asked for Italian prune plums but I have no idea what the hell kind of plums grow in our backyard. Here are some pictures of them if anyone can recognize what kind they are… (yes, i took these pics :P)

Anywho, using the plums I had, this recipe turned out perfectly.

Plum Coffee Cake
Ingredients:
1 1/4 cup (175 grams) all purpose flour
1/4 cup (30 grams) ground almonds
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup (120 ml) flavorless oil (safflower, corn, or canola)
1/2 cup (120 ml) whole milk plain yogurt
1/4 cup (60 ml) orange juice
1 tablespoon orange zest (the outer orange skin (rind) of the orange)
1 large egg
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
1 cup (200 grams) granulated white sugar
7 – 8 Italian prune plums, halved and pitted (can also use 4 – 5 red plums)

Preheat oven to 400 degrees F (205 degrees C) and place rack in center of oven.
Butter and flour pan. (Though the recipe asks for an 8 inch (20 cm) spring form pan, I used approximately a 7 x 7 aluminum square pan which was about 4 inches deep.) I would recommend any sort of brownie pan that you have at home.

In a large bowl, stir or whisk together the flour, ground almonds, baking powder and salt. I used a coffee grinder to grind the almonds down to a fine almond powder for the recipe. In another large bowl, stir or whisk together the oil, yogurt, orange juice and zest, egg, and vanilla extract. You can use a hand held cheese grater to delicately get the zest off the orange. Just make sure while doing so not to go too deep. It should just be the zest of the top most surface otherwise the zest will make your cake bitter. Stir in the sugar. Add the wet ingredients to the flour mixture. Stir until just combined. (I stirred it well since I always get paranoid that I didn’t mix in the ingredients well enough.) Scrape the batter into the prepared pan and evenly arrange the halved plums on top of the batter, flesh side facing up. The recipe says 4 to 5 halved and pitted plums. I just cut and placed them until the top was mostly filled. I usually ended up putting 9 to 11 halves on top so it wouldn’t be too loaded with fruit. I prefer a nice ratio of cake along with my fruit. As it cooks the halved plums tend to rise with the cake batter so make sure u have them pushed down in the batter enough yet the flesh side is not covered by any batter. The recipe asks that after you arrange the plums on top of the batter to sprinkle with 1 1/2 tablespoons of brown sugar. I didn’t measure the brown sugar. I just randomly sprinkled all over the top of the cake till I felt it was enough. I also sprinkled the top of the cake with slivered almonds to give it a nice look and fresh taste since the batter already has ground almond meal in it. Here are some pics of my Plum Coffee Cake before putting it into bake.

Bake in preheated oven for about 35 to 45 minutes or until a sharp knife inserted in the center of the cake comes out clean. Remove from oven and place on a wire rack to cool. Check out the pics of my finished cake below :)

as you can see though I let it brown nicely on the top it is nice soft and delicate on the inside. Enjoy people! this light is turned off..

my morning encounter

This morning I had a wonderful “surprise” waiting for me in the bathtub. A huge brown spider. It was big according to me, scary looking and very fast moving.. I could have easily just turned on the faucet and watched as it went swirling down the drain. But I don’t know what it is with spiders. Even though I am sort of scared of them I can’t bring myself to kill one if I have the choice of saving it. I awe and fear them at the same time. So the humanitarian soul in me trooped downstairs for an old edition of dad’s Wall Street Journal to scoop it out and lead it back outside into its natural world. I kept on trying to shift the one end of the newspaper underneath its legs so it could be on the newspaper and then i could throw the newspaper out the door. that’s usually my method. then i pick up the newspaper after a couple of hours when i know its gone. But my bathroom is upstairs and most of the windows have a screen on them.. so what to do.. then i remembered the window in dad’s office has no screen and it would be easy to throw the newspaper with the spider out there. (i guess i would explain to dad why there was newspaper on the roof later..) But this spider was fast moving. and it kept crawling all over the place.. and just as I was nearing the window the newspaper slipped out of my hand as the towel around me started slipping as well. In an effort to try and make sure I don’t flash my neighbors while rescuing my spider i felt it was more important to hold on to the towel rather than the newspaper!  and though I tried flipping the newspaper over carefully to see where he was. it seemed to have hidden between the pages or slipped away. As I was getting late for work I decided it was time to give up. I just hoped the spider wasnt poisonous and left the newspaper as is on the floor of dad’s office. sometimes you can’t win em’ all. but at least it’s not in my bathroom anymore. Visions of the movie arachnophobia kept running through my mind as I was lathering up my shampoo…

Arachnid by ~1969inmyhead on deviantART

I finally finished that Vampire novel “23 Hours” that I was reading. It kept me entertained but somehow it didn’t make me feel like wanting to read more of this author’s work. I feel bad saying so considering I found it appeased my craving for a vampire novel after feeling Twilight deprived. I mean that’s filling big shoes considering Twilight was such an amazing story. 23 Hours had a very interesting twist in the end which I loved but I think I wasn’t used to his style of writing. I have a Rebecca Wells book to read next which is called The Crowning Glory of Calla Lily Ponder. I am a big fan of this author after falling in love with her book “The Divine Secrets Of The Ya-Ya Sisterhood.” That’s the kind of book you want to read again and again. So it will be interesting to see how it compares to that. I’ve also got some interesting reads about the Catholic Faith, the life of Jesus and converting to Christianity so let’s see how all those turn out to be.

Now that I’ve started drawing again Gojira approached me to come up with a tattoo design for his back. He wants a cross with a spiral going around it. I have some pretty amazing ideas which I am excited about testing and playing around with. I will try and get the scanner to work so I can upload some rough drafts on here this weekend.

On the culinary front, mom accidentally bought American cheese slices thinking I like it for lunch to put in my sandwiches. Argh I hate the stuff.. In my mind they are like how Tootsie rolls are..

tootsie rolls = fake chocolate  american cheese = fake cheese

;P yes me and my attempts to seem all mathematical when im totally nottttt…pfffft :D so anyways I’m going to come up with some recipes so it doesn’t go to waste. I’ve found an interesting recipe for onion cheese soup which requires american cheese so that might be what I make this weekend to finish it off.. heres the recipe i found.

Onion Cheese Soup
Ingredients:
2 cups sweet onions chopped
3 tablespoons flour, all-purpose
1/2 tablespoon salt
1 dash black pepper
4 cups milk
2 cups american cheese grated

Directions:
Cook chopped onions in butter until tender, but not brown.
Blend flour, salt, and pepper. Add milk all at once.
Heat and stir until boiling. Remove from heat.
Add grated cheese, stirring to melt cheese.

I’m thinking of adding basil and garlic to the preparation and maybe a dash of my secret ingredient (shhh… it’s Emeril’s Creole Seasoning.) Or maybe I’ll just make some good ol’ grilled cheese sandwiches with some soup. that would be nice.. anyways i think that’s all for now.. will let you know how it turns out.. this light is turned off…

to the halloween baking whores ;)

I donno why but I just love cooking and baking.. must be my womanly instincts coming out! my mom has never been much of a cooker. I mean she cooks but for the sole purpose of supplying our meals. She is not one of those people who enjoys being in the kitchen and experimenting… I think that has turned me into a baking/cooking whore.. So for all the baking/cooking whores out there.. this one’s for you :)

Yes Halloween is practically here and there’s always something or the other that requires some food preparation. could be a party or just bringing something special and Halloween themed into work, or maybe just to bring some Halloween fun into your house.. I was first thinking of making pumpkin pie but not everyone likes that and there are some that find it to be an overwhelming flavor. So i thought the most ideal thing to make would be pumpkin cheesecake.  But I was surprised to find that on food network, ( my main source of finding recipes) they had no decent recipes for it. I mean there were plenty of Paula Deen recipes which would have enough fat/calories to induce a heart attack and a half but nothing for us normal people. lol.. (I know I’ve got a mean streak these days.. :P) But fortunately I found a great bunch of recipes on the Philadelphia Cream Cheese Website : http://www.kraftbrands.com/philly

(which is ironic considering Paula Deen represents them but anywho :S)

If you go to this website and enter in “pumpkin” in their recipe search you can browse through a number of pumpkin desserts. I made the Philadelphia 3-step double layer pumpkin cheesecake and it turned out phenomenal!! I found that the Philly site had lower calorie desserts that weren’t as fatty or complicated to make. If you guys make anything fun for Halloween let me know, holla, share what you made <3 This light is turned off..

having a blah stage…

Im going through a blah stage.. i don’t know what else to call it.. I am happy but im so dissatisfied at the amount of time its taking for me to get on my feet. I went to an interview and it went very well.. but they’re still developing a team and will be getting back to me in 2 weeks.. also the pay is not that much.. but there are no jobs out there so it’s tough.. I just don’t know what to do.. I have no friends in Cali so I don’t even have a reason to step out of the house.. I feel claustrophobic.. sigh… i’m so fed up with my job hunt that right now i just don’t care. i cook now almost everyday.. takes away a lot of the stress in my mom’s life and she’s pretty content. but she can be finicky to the point where she just won’t eat it or she won’t want to try something new. sigh.. life is very annoying right now.. i want a reason to get out of the house right now.. and i want it to be work.. work come knocking on my door please =( this light is turned off…

Do You Wash Your Mushrooms Before Eating Them?

I’ve heard a lot of people tell me that you aren’t supposed to wash mushrooms under water because they soak up all the water and it alters the taste. I’ve always been told that you’re supposed to  clean mushrooms by just brushing off the clinging dirt particles. But I just can’t get myself past the idea of eating an unwashed vegetable. Mushrooms grow in the soil and with farmers putting in fertilizer to promote their growth I can’t help but think they just HAVE to be rinsed before eating. I don’t care if it alters the taste a little bit I just need my vegetables clean before cooking them!

Apparently a book called The Curious Cook: More Kitchen Science & Lore by Harold McGee has an experiment which he did with washing mushrooms. He soaked 252 grams of mushrooms for about 5 minutes to see how much moisture they would absorb. Once he weighed them after removing them from the water he found that they had soaked up just a mere 6 grams of water. I don’t see why chefs would make such a big deal about rinsing mushrooms under water if it just makes that much of a difference. And that moisture increase was noted  after SOAKING them for 5 minutes. When I say rinse it means pouring water onto the mushrooms for a minute so the dirt particles can be washed away.

Do you wash your mushrooms before eating or cooking them? This light is turned off… 

update: this post got featured on i really like food… yay!!!!

Currently listening to Sunshine
Just Push Play
By Aerosmith

food foood yummy foodddddd….

any person who knows me well enough knows how crazy i am about food, cooking and eating… so ive decided to make a blog about my cooking, food, and recipe experiences… i think it would be fun interesting and be a chance for me to record my recipes in one place so if i lose my little scraps of paper i have my recipes written on, i have something to refer to i was thinking of starting my blog on blogger.. to try a new blog site… my boyfriend uses blogger so i was thinking of trying something different… specially since they are adaptable to html and css codes which u can insert and putting different apps and themes and so forth… so i wanted to give a hand at trying all that out and experimenting with it… but then i just realized day before yesterday that xanga has a sister site all about food called I Really Like Food so that also might be an option where i can start a food recipe and cooking blog… lets see… but anyways… for the header of my blog… instead of using a picture thats already out there… i decided to create a collage of all my fave foods and then put a title of my blog over the collage… here’s the collage i made below.. let me know if you have any thoughts.. or how i could improve it….

haha this collage contains all my favorite foods: chocolate chip cookies (the homemade, gooey chocolate chips are melting, hot in your hand, fresh out of the oven kind!), felafel, fettuccine alfredo, mocha mud pie (from TGIF’s), butter chicken, dippin dots ice cream, hamburgers, beef steak, tom kha soup, sushi (my favorite are California rolls), hummus, tacos, chocolate chip cookie dough icecream, baingan bharith ( the kind made with coconut milk or yogurt, maharashtrian dish) italian sausage with mustard and onions, Philadelphia cheesecake, guacamole, and beef chili) as you can see i’m a complete foodie and that’s all i had room to squeeze on the collage so….. I don’t know… i have some other ideas on this…  i might put up another update about my header of the new blog later on this week…. wish me luck!!! this light is turned off….

edit: i removed that blog it doesn’t exist. check out my “Puttering In The Kitchen” Category to check out my latest kitchen/cooking experiences :)

 

Currently listening to
Home Sweet Home/Bittersweet Symphony
By Limp Bizkit

my friend’s new Labrador Puppy & Reunion Dinner Plans

Well I had a blast this past weekend, so much that I didnt go to work Monday or Tuesday to enjoy the weekend some more!! I know naughty naughty me, but I just couldnt’ help it! My friend R & F (they’re boyfriend and girlfriend) they just moved into this amazing brand new 3 bedroom apartment and had invited me and my bf to the housewarming. Now with so much space they’ve been talking about getting a puppy and so the day of the housewarming they finally got a puppy. It was shoooo cute. They named him from the movie Zohan, i thought it was a cute name. He was so adorable and I got to babysit him for the days I stayed over at their apartment. It was so much fun. (besides dealing with my friends absolutely annoying drive me up the wall room mate!!! She’s the type of person you try, want to be friends with but it’s just so impossible with her nagging and annoying mannerisms..) It was adorably cute how he would wake up from a nap get up just to snuggle up closer to me. He had this thing about being comfortable when sleeping only when he was around someone. Here’s some pics of him, then you yourself can judge how cute he is and not just take my word for it.. hehe…

Well for the housewarming I made the best pasta I had ever made up until this point. One of the girls coming to the party wanted chicken in the pasta so I made it with chicken for the first time and it was a biggg hit, everyone wanted more and more  and more… Oddly enough I have to make it this weekend as well because this Saturday evening I’ve planned a dinner party at my place for all my classmates from school where I was for one year in 7th grade. It was only one year that I went to school here in India (then of course I got homesick and had gone back to the US to finish up my highschool) but It was a very special year in my life where I made some friends for life. I bump into some of them every couple of months and others I havent met in years and most of them are ready to come so Im really looking forward to this dinner. Im also making/cooking everything from scratch because Im on this cooking craze for some reason. heheh… This is the menu I planned for the reunion dinner party Im having:

White Sauce Chicken Italian Pasta
Garlic Bread (That of course will be store bought!)
Creamy Mashed Potatoes
Fresh Garden Salad with Ranch Dressing
Guacamole with Tortilla Chips
Make Your Own Sundae (for dessert, Im going to buy a big huge amount of vanilla ice cream and have different toppings like chocolate sauce, roasted almonds, butterscotch topping, sliced bananas soaked in honey, fresh cut strawberries, and strawberry sauce for people to choose what they want on their icecream)

Im super excited and drooling just thinking about it… I charged my batteries so I can take some really nice pictures of my friends and this dinner. Looking forward to this dinner. theyre very bubbly and friendly more so than my college group of friends… lalala such is life. I honestly want to add one more side dish to the menu above because I dont think this is going to be enough or just in case so there’s enough food to go around… so going to go back to my recipe hunting. wish me luck!!

Currently listening to Insane In The Membrane
Greatest Hits
By Cypress Hill