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!

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!

Summer's Last (Foodie) Hurrah

Though I imagine summer is already long gone in most places, in my part of the world it was still in the 90s last week and has only just dipped into chillier temperatures. So for the last hurrah of warm weather and a long-due food-related post, I thought I’d revisit some of my cross-country dining spots on the road trip this past summer that took me to the Laura Ingalls Wilder Museum in Walnut Grove and the Betsy-Tacy Houses in Mankato, among other places.

Now, I love the TV show Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives on the Food Network. I think it’s so cool that there’s a show that highlights the local mom-and-pop, something-different eateries around North America. It’s even cooler that the show helps bring these places more business—people write in to the show to suggest their favorite local spots, the powers that be choose ones for host Guy Fieri to showcase with his unique blend of jovial humor, foodieism, and respect and appreciation, and people watch the show and are inspired to go try out these places for themselves. So after discovering the nifty Flavortown USA website, with its lists and maps of all the places featured on Triple D, my ma and I decided to hit up a few of the joints in the course of our summer road trip odyssey. We also visited a couple tasty places that, while on our own local food radar, have yet to be featured on the show. Who knows? Maybe you’ll find yourself driving on the long highway through open country USA, when a belly-rumblin’ hits and you find yourself in the vicinity of one of these fine establishments. Even if you’re not, the Flavortown website is good for helping to break out of the fast food routine and find nearby Triple D locations, or to inspire an adventure to discover your own local treasure. Feeling hungry yet? All right people, let’s look at some foodstagramming!

Mama E’s Soul Food, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. We relied on cell phone navigation to guide us to this place slightly off the beaten path, in a more residential area without many other restaurants or shops around. This no-frills establishment is located in a bright yellow structure that reminded me a bit of the portable buildings at my elementary school, but the food was darn tasty! It was my first ever chicken and waffles experience, and the Guy Fieri special was written right on the menu chalkboard displayed in the ordering area. With our meal we got chicken, a waffle, a side salad, yams, a brownie, and all-you-can drink Kool-Aid for about $14 (if I remember correctly). It was more than enough for food the both of us, and we ended up tucking the yams and brownie in our cooler for a car snack later. It looked like many a visitor had left their mark on the restaurant’s walls, but I was too shy to ask for a marker and add mine! Located at 3838 Springlake Dr., Oklahoma City, OK.

Crispy chicken + soft waffle = texture heaven!

Smokin’ Guns BBQ, Kansas City, Missouri. Our next Triple D stop was BARBECUE. Can’t go through Kansas City without trying it, right? As we are deviled egg aficionados, we ordered those to start with—they were pretty standard, with the restaurant’s “sweet heat” rub to liven up the classic a little bit. (They were nommed too quickly for me to get a photo.) Ma got a turkey sandwich, which she expected to be smoked turkey (since it is, y’know, a bbq place), but if it was smoked she couldn’t taste it. I, however, went all in with the spare ribs and sweet potato fries, which were also speedily nommed, as you can see in the photo. The barbecue sauce didn’t make me get up and do a jig, but it was tasty. Overall, while not the best barbecue I’ve had in my life, it was good, and a sure sight better than the fast food options that we were blowing by on the highway. Located at 1218 Swift St., North Kansas City, MO.

OMNOMNOMNOM. I mean, yes, delicious ribs!

Lola’s Larkspur Market, New Ulm, Minnesota. Lola’s is a nice little hipster café in downtown New Ulm. The design/décor inside is comfy, eclectic, and cool. You can eat inside or on the patio, which at the time of my visit was covered in pretty flowers in full bloom (see above photo). I ate here many times during the course of my visit. My first experience there was a disappointing pupusa that was the day’s special (I think maybe the masa had gone wonky?), but I’m happy to say things only went up from there. One day I had a Cuban sandwich with some really delightful homemade pickles (honestly, the pickles were probably my favorite part of every meal I had there…slightly sweet and spicy! Yum!). The café also has a full menu of coffee and tea drinks, along with other beverages (I think alcoholic as well?), and some tasty-looking desserts and ice cream. A wide range of drinkables and eats to suit all tastes and cravings—if you find yourself in New Ulm, stop in for a bite before heading to the Wanda Gág House, the Laura Ingalls Wilder Museum in Walnut Grove, or some other nearby literary destination. Located at 16 North Minnesota St., New Ulm, MN.

The Cuban sandwich with fantastic pickles!

Cousin had a chicken potpie with a nice, flaky crust on top.

All this, while enjoying one of the best views of the main street downtown! Lovely architecture.

The Valpo Velvet Shoppe, a.k.a. Brown’s, Valparaiso, Indiana. While searching for this restaurant’s website, I was a having some difficulty because I couldn’t find one. Everyone in my family always refers to it as “Brown’s”—that’s the name of the family who owns and runs it, my relatives know them (indeed, many of aunts worked here in their youth!), and thus we always call it Brown’s and that’s what I was Googling. Turns out the real name is the Valpo Velvet Shoppe, after the ice cream which they are so famous for! They’ve been making ice cream since 1947, and there are all sorts of memorabilia and info about the history of the place decorating the colorful parlor. But ice cream’s not all they’re good at—they make some darn good soups and sandwiches, too. Ma and I each had a different type of breakfast sandwich, which were both so good they had disappeared by the time it occurred to me to take a picture. We also had a tasty cheesy potato soup, but strangely enough, no ice cream. Highly recommended for a light lunch or a sweet treat! Located at 55-57 W. Monroe St., Valparaiso, IN.

Soup and a bright, welcoming atmosphere.

Even the menu is colorful!

Dressel’s Public House, St. Louis, Missouri. Dressel’s is located in a very hip-seeming neighborhood in St. Louis, and though we had to pay to park nearby, it was well worth it. Funnily enough, I had just been watching Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives the night before, and it was an episode featuring this place. The coincidence was too much to ignore, so we stopped here for a very yummy dinner. Although the place was hopping, we were seated immediately. But oh, what to choose from the menu of locally-sourced, sustainable goodies…

We had no choice but to start things off with the fancy deviled eggs, and from there we decided to go with the dishes Guy Fieri sampled on Triple D. The Dressel’s pretzel with rarebit cheese dip was very tasty (although I could’ve done with a higher cheese-to-pretzel ratio), and the porchetta Louie sandwich with pork, rapini, and melty cheeses on a baguette that Guy raved about was very good, too. Of the three, though, I think my favorite was the deviled eggs! Yum. Great atmosphere, friendly staff, and awesome housemade food. Located at 419 N. Euclid Ave., St. Louis, MO.

My photography didn’t quite capture the porky-cheesy tastiness of the sandwich, but I assure you it was great!

Standard Diner, Albuquerque, New Mexico. For our final Triple D stop before making it back home, we gorged ourselves at the Standard Diner. Located in a remodeled Route 66 gas station from the ‘30s in downtown Albuquerque, this diner puts a modern spin on comfort food classics. Having recently discovered that the only way I like Brussels sprouts is if they’re roasted, we decided to start the meal off with some of those tossed with walnuts, capers, and I believe a bacon vinaigrette. It was phenomenal, and I will be attempting to recreate it in my own kitchen sometime soon. We also tried the day’s soup, which I think was a roasted red chile concoction? Regardless of my poor memory where soup names are concerned, I do remember that it was scrumptious. We really didn’t go wrong with the starters.

Damn good Brussels sprouts and SOUUUUUP!

At this point we may have already been starting to feel full, but we saw that as no good reason to stop. For dinner proper, Ma went with the bacon-wrapped meatloaf that Guy recommended when the restaurant was featured on Triple D, but I was having trouble deciding between the country fried tuna and the smoked salmon + green chile mac ‘n cheese. When I explained my dilemma to the waiter, he suggested ordering the tuna and a kid’s portion of the macaroni. Best. Idea. EVER. Thanks, waiter! (Like I said, it was a decadent meal.) We shared and tried bites of everything (the lemon risotto cake with the seared country fried tuna was quite good!), and boxed up the rest to put in the hotel mini-fridge and eat for breakfast the next morning. But did we stop there? Of course not! When you’ve come that far you might as well go the whole nine, so we shared a cute little cake (seen above) for dessert. And with our bellies full and happy, we rolled ourselves back to the hotel for a nice, restful food coma. And I already have my next meal at this place picked out for whenever I find myself in Albuquerque again—huevos rancheros with hashbrowns. YUM. Located at 320 Central Ave. SE, Albuquerque, NM.

All meatloaf should be wrapped in bacon.

Country-frying tuna would not have been my first thought, but whoever dreamed that one up knew what they were about.

Spicy, decadent macaroni and cheese.

The Cookbooks

So far there are three Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives cookbooks written by Guy Fieri in conjunction with Ann Volkwein, and they’re full of recipes adapted from ones provided by the proprietors of some Triple D alum restaurants. There are also lots of stories from Guy and the show’s crew about some of the behind-the-scenes things that went on and other stories from on the road, along with funny photos from filming and stories from restaurant owners about how being on the show changed their life and their business. The recipes aren’t super-detailed and the photos included are more of the good times had in making the show than in helping you to prepare the dishes, but it’s enough to teach you how to make some of the good stuff that’s graced your TV screen. And if you’re a fan you might already have an idea of how things should look and how to make them from watching the show! The printing is done in black and white with either blue or red ink thrown in (depending on the book) to liven up the pages a little. Of course I prefer full-color given the option, but this makes them a little more affordable than their color-printed brethren, with a list price of about $20 each. Ann Volkwein and Guy seem to have collaborated really well to end up with a finished product that captures Guy’s personality and way of speaking in a book that makes you feel like one of the crew. They read a little like scrapbooks of the show with recipes included, and there is a handy checklist in the back of each with the addresses and phone numbers of all the restaurants featured on the show at the time of publication. Especially enjoyable for fans of the show, but still interesting for other Triple-D-uninitiated, food-interested folk, these are a lot of fun. Fun fact: Standard Diner’s bacon-wrapped meatloaf and Pok Pok’s Vietnamese chicken wings are featured in the most recent one!
Rating: 3.5 Red Convertibles

Diners, Drive-ins, and Dives: An All-American Road Trip…with Recipes!
by Guy Fieri and Ann Volkwein
Published by William Morrow Cookbooks (2008)
Read in Fall 2013; Got it at the library

More Diners, Drive-ins, and Dives: A Drop-Top Culinary Cruise Through America’s Finest and Funkiest Joints
by Guy Fieri and Ann Volkwein
Published by William Morrow Cookbooks (2009)
Read in Fall 2013; Got it at the library

Diners, Drive-ins, and Dives: The Funky Finds in Flavortown: America’s Classic Joints and Killer Comfort Food
by Guy Fieri and Ann Volkwein
Published by William Morrow Cookbooks (May 14, 2013)
Read in Fall 2013; Got it at the library

What are your favorite local dining gems?