Orange Meringue Cupcakes

Are you ready for some blogoversary treats?!? How about some cupcakes with a surprise inside? I’m not completely sure where the idea for these came from. My mother had been talking about making an orange meringue pie, and with that as my original inspiration, my brain somehow popped out the idea of putting orange curd inside a cupcake and using meringue instead of icing. I used the Better Homes and Gardens New Cookbook’s basic recipes for yellow cake, orange curd, and meringue topping as my general guidelines in creating the three main components of this recipe, and modified them as I thought would best fit my purposes as I went along. I had no idea if I could execute the idea I had in mind, but I figured I’d give it a go.

What resulted is an experience I’ve been affectionately calling “baking night from hell,” but that was mostly due to outside factors and not any inherent hellishness on the part of these cupcakes. My old-school stove that doesn’t heat evenly scorched the orange curd, I discovered mid-baking at 10 p.m. that the milk in my fridge that was to be a batter ingredient had gone bad, my cream of tartar for the meringue was probably at least 2 decades old and prevented the egg whites from setting up correctly…it was fun. But I persevered, and though the results may not have been as pretty as I would’ve hoped, I think the cupcakes turned out to be very tasty. The orange zest in the batter gives the cake a nice citrus punch, while the orange curd hiding inside is more sweet than tart. The meringue is a lighter alternative to icing, and it feels kind of liking you’re biting into a soft cupcake cloud. Yum!

Happy birthday, it's RTET's birthday!

...happy, happy birthday to us. Hey RTET! (To get the full effect, and perhaps more importantly, the tune, you’ll need to watch the video below.)

Ahhh, my favorite birthday song. I can pretty much guarantee it’ll be stuck in your head the rest of the day. But why dwell on that when it’s our FIRST blogoversary?! That’s right, we’ve been tooling around writing silly reviews and subjecting you to our kitchen experiments for one full pass around the sun now. Hard to believe, isn’t it? It seems like just yesterday that A tentatively proposed the idea for a book-and-food blog to S, and S brilliantly invented our catchy name (if we may call it such ourselves), and we fired texts back and forth with ideas for theme posts, books to read, things to cook… March 26th, 2013 was the day our first post went live (we’re not counting the one that only says “testing, testing, 1, 2, 3”), and since then we have written 133 more posts, composed 1352 tweets, pinned 4.7k things on Pinterest, created Facebook and Google+ pages, had Lev Grossman temporarily follow us, Jane Yolen accidentally follow us, and Adam Roberts continue to follow us on Twitter.

Now is as good a time as any to remind you of all the ways you can connect with us via social media. You can follow us on Twitter @ReadThisEatThat, check out our sporadic Instagram photo postings here, like us on Facebook here, and visit our Pinterest home here. If Google+ is more your style, you can find us here. You can also sign up to get our posts delivered to your inbox by submitting your email address where it says “Follow us by email!” in the sidebar of this page (if you’re reading on your smartphone or tablet, you may have to switch from mobile version to web version at the bottom of the page to be able to see the sidebar). Sign up and never miss a thing going on here in the world of RTET! (Because believe us, bookworms and moths, that would pain us just as much as it would you.)

But what is a birthday celebration without treats? Since the correct answer to that question is “nothing,” we decided to invent some tasty goodies to share with you on this occasion. Though nothing would please us more than to be able to send each and every one of you something good to eat in the mail, our financial analysts alerted us that that would be both time- and cost-prohibitive, so you’ll have to settle for recipes and photos instead. A decided to attempt orange curd cupcakes and S thought she’d give funfetti creampuffs a whirl, so look for those coming soon.

We thought it would be a good idea to extend birthday into birthweek (that’s what everybody does, right?), and so we’ve also got some other blogoversary celebratory posts coming up involving books we’ve loved so far in 2014 and ones we’re looking forward to that are publishing later this year. Keep your eyes on the horizon for two times the treats and some ideas on books to consider reading, and thank you so much for your readership and encouragement in our first year as bloggers! It means the world to us, and we hope you enjoy reading our posts as much as we enjoy writing them.

And now, without further ado, let the festivities commence! ::throws confetti::

Pineapple Golden Layer Cake

Inspired by my recent reading of The Beekman 1802 Heirloom Dessert Cookbook and my desire to eat something sweet and springy (for it is indeed springy in this part of the world, believe it or not!), I decided the next recipe to appear here at RTET would be this delectably tropical pound cake, an heirloom dessert from my own family. This is one from my maternal grandmother, in all likelihood adopted from the label on a can of pineapple back in the ‘60s, but it is SO much more delicious than a glance at the ingredients would lead you to believe. On top of that, it is fast and simple to make. Like the Baked Manhattan recipe in the abovementioned cookbook, this one is more about assembly than actual cooking, resulting in a tasty and impressive dessert ready to be nommed in record time. The pound cake is buttery without being heavy, somehow, and the Cool Whip creates an icing substitute that is light and fluffy. Pretty to look at, delicious with tea or milk…you’ll be hard-pressed to stop at just one slice.

Cookery Bookery: The Beekman 1802 Heirloom Dessert Cookbook

Title: The Beekman 1802 Heirloom Dessert Cookbook: 100 Delicious Heritage Recipes from the Farm and Garden
Author: Josh Kilmer-Purcell, Brent Ridge, & Sandy Gluck
Publisher: Rodale Books
Publication Date: September 10th, 2013
Read: February 2014
Where It Came From: eARC from publisher via NetGalley*
Genre: Cookbook
Rating: 3.75 Rocky Road Potstickers

This charming dessert cookbook, written by two New Yorkers who left the city and moved upstate to run a farm/restaurant/I’m-not-really-sure-what in Sharon Springs, is sweet vintage eye candy. “Beekman 1802” is apparently the name of authors Josh Kilmer-Purcell and Brent Ridge’s farm, not a year or a family name, and the seasonality of life there is a big part of their offerings in this book. As they explain in their introduction, they believe an heirloom recipe is not simply one that has been passed down through generations, but one that has its own sort of mythological place in the imagination and family history. For me, an example would be the Watergate Salad of my grandmother’s that evokes so many memories of holidays spent around her big dining room table. As you read this, maybe you’re thinking of some similar types of treats that you associate with family, friends, and contentedness. This book seeks to gather heirloom desserts from the authors’ own memories, along with some new ones they’ve created, to pass on to readers and hopefully aid in creating more food-memories around the table to be passed down to future generations. Pretty neat.

For our first recipe of 2014, I thought it would be appropriate to showcase a specimen of my very favoritest favorite dessert, cookies! My original plan had been to get this posted before Thanksgiving since they’re kinda autumn-y, but then time slid away from me. So then I thought I’d post it in December since a lot of people make cookies for Christmas (ask Susan about her Christmas cookie sweatshop some time), but that darn time slid away again and next thing I knew, it was January! So here we are at last with my recipe for kabocha chocolate chip cookies. Better late than never?

I came up with the idea for this recipe while I was living in Japan as an English teacher. For a taste of home one November, some other English teachers in the area and I decided to have a Thanksgiving potluck. However, some traditional Thanksgiving treats are challenging to make in Japan due to ingredients that aren’t available, available ones that are a little unfamiliar, and the fact that most people don’t have ovens of the kind that Westerners are used to in their homes. One of my favorite things about Thanksgiving is anything involving pumpkin, and I became acquainted with its cousin the kabocha squash during my tenure in Japan. Similar in taste and texture, I thought it would be tasty to incorporate it into a chocolate chip cookie and that it would be a nice Japanese-inspired riff on pumpkin pie to take to our little Thanksgiving dinner. Looking back now, I can’t remember how I baked them—I know for sure I didn’t have an oven in my apartment. I think maybe I discovered that my microwave had a function that made it double as an oven? Or I borrowed my neighbor’s? However I ended up cooking them, I started in the morning and made them in small batches until I had enough to take over to the festivities that evening.

I used this recipe from Allrecipes.com as the base from which I worked to create my own interpretation, subbing in kabocha for the usual canned pumpkin and adding my favorite autumnal spices, along with some other adjustments. The use of a lot of vegetable oil instead of butter results in a dense, cake-like cookie with a nice hint of the kabocha flavor. I used walnuts because that’s what I had in my house when I decided this would be a good blog post candidate (same for why I used the hacked up baking chocolate that you’ll see in the pictures—I thought it’d be better to use up what I had on hand rather than buy chocolate chips), but I think using pecans instead could add to the decadence. Alter the spices to your tastes, and you can always use normal canned pumpkin if you can’t track down a kabocha!

Kabocha Chocolate Chip Cookies

Ingredients:
1 kabocha squash
3/4 C. white sugar
1/4 C. brown sugar
1/2 C. vegetable oil
1 egg
1 Tbsp. vanilla
2 C. flour
2 tsp. baking powder
2 tsp. ground cinnamon
1/2 tsp. ginger
1/4 tsp. allspice
1/4 tsp. cloves
1/2 tsp. salt
1 tsp. baking soda
1 tsp. milk
2 C. semisweet chocolate chips
1/2 C. chopped walnuts

1. See that photo up there? That’s a kabocha, a kind of Asian winter squash that is sweet and reminiscent of the pumpkin that we enjoy in pie and for jack o’ lanterns in North America. Since I hain’t never seen no such thing as canned kabocha, we’re going to have to make our own kabocha mush the hard way. Don’t worry, it’s easier than it sounds!
2. First things first—you need a kabocha. I got mine at the local Asian market, but Whole Foods seems like another likely purveyor of this veggie. The kabocha’s skin is edible (and full of nutrients), but I didn’t really want that texture in my cookies, so we will be peeling it off eventually. Even so, give it a good scrubbing before you cut it in half, like so:
   
3. Cut each half in half again. Now, we want to get all the seeds and goop out of the middle. Take a spoon, scrape it along the inside of the kabocha, and scoop out the gunk until all the stringy stuff and seeds are gone. You can save the seeds to bake as a snack if you want!
   

   Your hollowed out kabocha quarters should now look something like this:
   

   
4. We are going to steam the kabocha, so cut it into smaller chunks to help it soften up faster.
   
5. On to the steaming! Add about an inch of water to a saucepan, and then place the steaming thingy on top. Add the kabocha pieces until the basket is full, leaving enough space for the lid to fit on. Heat on the stove on medium high and steam the kabocha for about 15 minutes, or until it’s soft when you stick a fork in the orange part.
   
   Before!

   
   After!

6. After it has cooled enough for you to be able to handle it, use a spoon to burrow under the edge of the green skin and remove it. Toss the orange part into a bowl and mash it up with a fork until a soft, smooth consistency is achieved. You’ll want about 1 cup of this.
   
   
7. Next, add the sugars, vegetable oil, vanilla, and egg to the bowl with the mashed up kabocha.
   
8. Stir to combine.
   
9. Put the flour, baking powder, spices, and salt into another bowl and stir together.
   
   
10. In a small bowl, dissolve the baking soda with the milk. (This is something retained from the Allrecipes.com recipe—not sure of the purpose of this step. If you have any ideas, please enlighten me!) Once it’s dissolved, stir the solution in with the dry ingredients.
    
    
11. Add the flour mixture to the bowl with the pumpkin mixture and mix until combined.
    
    
12. Stir in the chocolate chips and walnuts until they are evenly distributed in the dough.
    
    
13. Drop by teaspoonful on a greased or cooking sprayed cookie sheet, then bake at 350° F for about 10 minutes, or until firm and lightly brown around the edges.
    
    
14. Immediately transfer the cookies to a cooling rack. When they are no longer finger-scaldingly hot, enjoy them with a tall glass of milk. Yum!
    

I do indeed love me some cookies! What are your favorite varieties? Anything you’d like to see us try our hand at on the blog? Hit up the comments and let us know, and happy eating in the new year!

I had the pleasure of tasting this delicious tart-like concoction for the first time about a week ago, when my aunt made it for my cousin and me while we were in Minnesota (for more info regarding those adventures, explore here!). It was so delicious—sweet and mildly tangy blueberries atop a buttery, lightly sugared crumbly crust taste just the way summer should. My aunt doesn’t remember where she originally came across the recipe, but I am very grateful to whomever and whatever was involved in the chain of recipes, people, and events that led to this one appearing in my family cookbook. So stop by the farmer’s market or you-pick patch and take advantage of the blueberry bumper crop, if you can! This one’s a real crowd-pleaser.

In my recreation of the recipe I did a few no-nos (which you will see in the photos and instructions below)… But it still turned out tasty, so it must be a recipe that’s difficult to truly mess up! Woot!

Aunt Molly’s Blueberry Kuchen

Dough
1 C. all-purpose flour
2 Tbsp. sugar
Pinch of salt
1 stick butter, softened
1 Tbsp. white vinegar

Filling
1/2 C. sugar
2 Tbsp. all-purpose flour
Dash of cinnamon
3 C. blueberries
Powdered sugar (optional)

1. Preheat the oven to 400° F.
2. Combine the flour, sugar, and salt for the dough in a medium bowl.
   
3. Then, work in the softened butter. No-No No. 1: I was in a hurry and had to soften my butter in the microwave, and ended up melting half of it. As a result, my dough was more dough-like and less crumb-like, but it tasted fine, so I guess all’s well that ends well.
   
   Sad melted butter.
4. Add the vinegar to the dough, and mix well.
   
5. Spread the crumbs (if you softened your butter correctly) or dough (if you’re no-no prone like me) in the bottom of a 9” springform pan, tart pan, or casserole dish. As you’re pressing it in, press it a little bit up the sides of whatever baking dish you end up using.
6. In another mixing bowl, combine the sugar, flour, and cinnamon for the filling, and then stir in 2 cups of the blueberries. No-No No. 2: Perhaps not technically bad kitchen technique (I really don’t know), but I dumped in some fresh berries that had been frozen the day before and put them in the oven without defrosting. But they burst and got all gooey and delicious, so it turned out fine. Yay!
   
7. Pour the filling over the crust and spread it out evenly with the back of a spoon. Bake it in the oven for 45-60 minutes.
   
8. When the edges of the crust start to brown, you can take it out of the oven and top with your last cup of blueberries before letting it cool.
9. After it has cooled, you can dust it with powdered sugar, which looks really pretty and I imagine tastes particularly good if you have a tart batch of berries. Alas, I had no powdered sugar, but the kuchen was sweet enough on its own. Slice and serve, and be the envy of your friends!

Recipe Challenge: Chocolate Strawberry Tarts

It’s pretty obvious what my experience with tart-making has been that when I was reading The Selection, I pictured the strawberry tart as a Strawberry Toaster Strudel. Not a Pop Tart though, because Pop Tarts are absolutely not fancy enough for young women wearing dresses (possibly gowns) all the time.

But when I looked in the Martha Stewart cookbook Alyssa gave me I saw pictures of tarts with crinkled circumferences or stretching sides. And I wanted to eat one of my own.

Such was my desire to eat one of these pastries that I bought mini tart pans (cuter and easier to store than the 11” pan I saw), pulled out my food processor, and read a slew of recipes for our Selection Recipe Challenge.

I went to my garden to pick some strawberries too, but this was about a month ago, and my berries weren't quite ripe yet. (Though they were still pretty!)

Recipe Challenge: Strawberry Basil Tart-Pouches

In our recent fascination with Kiera Cass’ The Selection, we came across a mention of strawberry tarts:

I picked up a strawberry tart from the basket in the center of the table. [other random thoughts] I mulled this over as I bit into the strawberry tart. It was so sweet and the dough was so flaky, every millimeter of my mouth was engaged, taking over the rest of my senses entirely. I didn’t mean to make the little moan, but it was by far the best thing I had ever tasted. I took another bite before I even swallowed the first. (135)

I don’t think we were necessarily inspired by the description, but Susan and I were talking and decided we needed more recipes on the blog, and wanted to do another challenge, and were both in possession of strawberries at the time, and remembered there were strawberry tarts in a book we had read recently. Ergo, we both invent strawberry tart recipes!

I decided I wanted to make little ones (since in the book the prince sends a bunch of them to the heroine’s family—doesn’t make much sense to send lots of full-size tarts, so I interpreted that to mean that they were mini), and quickly decided on a dough-purse construction rather than the traditional tart crust. I also remembered I have basil plants proliferating in the garden, and thought basil would add a little something different to the strawberries.

I realized this was probably going to end up being a little apple dumpling-like (only with strawberries) and I wanted to have a nice, flaky crust reminiscent of the family shortcake, only in dough form. I adapted the dough from this Cook’s Country apple dumpling recipe to surround the strawberry-basil filling. The result is 8 cute little strawberry tart-dumpling-turnover-shortcake-pouches! They taste nice with, a) extra strawberries added on top, (b) a little milk poured over them, (c) some whipped cream, or (d) all of the above.