Thursday, March 11, 2010

Curried Spinach Side or Snack

The hubs and I treated ourselves to delicious sushi at Origami a few weekends ago up in the Twin Cities. It was so yummy and made me miss living in a bigger town where I can get sushi regularly. One of the appetizers we had, Spinach Goma Ae, was a surprisingly sweet cooked spinach dish with sesame and soy flavors. It was absolutely delicious. Chris and I bought some spinach in order to try to recreate the dish ourselves, but when he decided to attempt it, he became inspired with more Indian curry flavorings. The result is a mild dish with subtle but deep flavors that is super healthy! I definitely enjoyed it, and hope you will, too!

Recipe here!

Monday, March 8, 2010

Chocolate Pudding Cake

My girlfriends and I had a virtual dinner this past weekend. It's so nice to share meals together despite being far away. We had cream of tomato soup, 'wedding' salad, grilled cheese, and pudding cake. All were delicious, but this particular post will focus on dessert.

I'm a big cake lover, but unless I've set aside the time to do it, I hate spending time making frosting and then frosting the actual cake. Although it's fun to spend time decorating, I just think its a lot of work for not that much taste reward, and I'm all about taste rewards. That's why I love this chocolate pudding cake. When it comes out of the oven, it's ready to be eaten! No frosting or other work necessary to perk up this cake. Plus, I really think this cake is magical: before going into the oven, you pour chocolate chips, brown sugar + cocoa powder, and boiling water on top of the cake batter, and after it bakes, the pudding is on the bottom. Magic!


Whisk together all the dry ingredients.


Add in the dry and whisk until smooth. The batter is almost a frosting-like consistency.


Pour the batter into a 9-inch pan.


Layer on the chocolate chips and then the brown sugar + cocoa powder mix.


Unlike this picture indicates, the next best move would be to put the cake on the oven rack and then pour in the boiling water just before you close the oven door. Otherwise, you're going to have to carefully carry a very full pan topped with boiling water to your oven, which is not a fun task.


After baking, magic! Cake on the top!


Once you cut into the cake, though, you discover the delicious warm chocolate pudding hiding. It's definitely not the prettiest cake ever, but I promise you that it's tasty.

Recipe can be found on cookingfriend: right here.

Thursday, March 4, 2010

Chocolate Bread



The best grocery store in the world, Wegman's, started to make chocolate bread around Valentine's Day a few years ago, and I got hooked. It just smelled, looked, and tasted delicious. They paired with a coffee infused marscapone cheese, and the combination was just *wow.* Anyway, I sadly moved away from the land of Wegman's, but this past week, came across the coffee marscapone cheese in Minnesota! Unfortunately, there is no amazing bakery that offers chocolate bread here, so I had to resort to my own skills to make it. The recipe that I used for this bread was adapted from one online by NPR. The final result is just wonderful!

This bread is not a sweet bread, like banana or zucchini, but rather more of a classic doughier bread, flavored with chocolate.


So, here's how I made it.
I truly hate sifting things, so to get around that little 'problem' I simply whisk together all the dry ingredients when I am baking before adding any liquids. Here, I am whisking together the flour, sugars, cocoa, and salt.


Meanwhile, the yeasts were happy sitting atop some sugar water and doing their thing, aka creating some foam.


Yeast and coffee were then combined with the dry ingredients, and the dough was kneaded. Butter was added tablespoon by tablespoon into the dough until it was glistening.



Then, I added in the chocolate chunks!


The dough had to sit overnight in the fridge, but today after work, I rolled out the dough into balls and arranged them in the bread pan.


After rising and then being baked, here's the final result. Mmm.


Coffee flavored marscapone cheese is the perfect spread to pair with this bread!

Full ingredients and recipe here!


Monday, March 1, 2010

Swoon!!

So, I have a med school semi-formal coming up, and I went to the mall here in Minnesota attempting to find something that would look fabulous. As I learned, shopping here is less than stimulating. How can that be?!! Why are the no cute dresses that make me swoon here?! Anyway, to remedy this, I went on etsy to look at some of my faves. Aww, to have $400 to donate to a dress...

Look at these beauties from Timeless Vixen Vintage. Mega swoon.


Love love love.