Welcome to the Cooking with C.C. Blog. I will be discussing all things food and travel related. Be sure to join me for information from recipes, cookbooks, restaurants and places to visit. I look forward to hearing from you!
Chocolate – Food of the gods
It's no surprise that February is National Chocolate Month - while other food items get a day or a week, it is fitting that chocolate has an entire month! So where does chocolate come from? Why it grows on trees, of course. However, nature needs a lot of help to get chocolate from the raw form on the tree to the incredible goodness of a chocolate mousse, cake, cookies, brownies or truffles. Chocolate comes from a small tropical tree - the Theobroma cacao (pronounced "ka-KOW") tree. Theobroma is a Greek word that translates "food of the gods." And since I am a chocoholic - I think it is a great name! The cacao tree grows a pod shaped like a football from the branches or directly from the trunk. These pods house 30 to 40 seeds (or beans) surrounded by a sticky white pulp. After harvesting, the magic begins... The beans with the pulp are put in pits or bins to ferment. The heat of the fermentation changes the flavor of the beans into something that is almost edible. In this pure form, the beans are very bitter. Next, the beans are spread in the sun to dry for about…
Sweet Yeast Bread – King Arthur Flour Part 2
I always enjoy seeing demonstrations or classes by other instructors. I ALWAYS learn something new or pick up some tip or trick. Thursday was no different. I was back at the Huntsville Botanical Gardens for the evening demonstration by the King Arthur Flour team. On the plan for the evening - a sweet dough which was made into a cream cheese and chocolate filled coffee cake and cinnamon rolls. When I was preparing for the Holiday Breakfast class back in the fall, I found many different approaches to cinnamon rolls and settled on two - one that was a nice yeasty bready version and one that is closer to the ones that you find at the grocery store in the prepared section (however, they were MUCH better). The recipes differed in many ingredients, so I did a very unscientific survey - I made both recipes and fed them to family, folks at work and other friends. The frustrating thing was that it came out 50-50, depending on whether you liked the really sweet style or the more bread style. I was very interested to see how the King Arthur recipe came together. The big difference was the use of yogurt…
Perfect Pies & Tarts – King Arthur Flour comes to town!
Well - Huntsville and Alabama must have finally hit the "food map." Today marked King Arthur Four's first Baking Across American demonstration for 2011 and it happened here in Huntsville. Hosted in the Arbor at the Botanical Gardens, the KAF team demonstrated how to make an apple pie (including the pie dough from scratch) and a chocolate tart. (Next stop is Birmingham - for more information, see their website.) The demonstration was excellent with many tips and tricks shared. We started off with the pie dough. One of the first topics was how to measure flour - this is a constant challenge! They use the "fluff, sprinkle and level" method as opposed to the "dip and level" method. The key point made was that you have to read in the fine print at the front of a cookbook how measurements were made for that book - I liked that they put weight in the recipe - I always weigh it if I have an option. Next were some pointer on butter - one thing I liked was that he used a bench scraper to cut the butter (at least the first stick) into the small pieces to go into the…
Very Belated Holiday Post
Well - I'm way behind and just now getting to a post about my favorite Christmas cookies and the challenge with them this year..... I'm not sure of the history of these cookies - we just call them "Greek Christmas Cookies." We've had these every Christmas I can remember. Christmas just wouldn't be Christmas without these - spice cookies with a candied cherry on top. A while back I asked my Dad to give me the "old family recipes" and of course the Greek Christmas Cookies was one of the recipes he gave me. I, of course, had to make them for Christmas. My dad retyped the recipe and when I read the instructions, I thought it was strange, but it was an "old family recipe." The recipe called for the sugar and FLOUR to be creamed with the butter. So, I figured the instructions, while strange must be right. I followed the instructions and it took forever for the flour, sugar and butter to become smooth and light. I can tell you if I didn't have the beater blade for my mixer, I don't think it would ever have come together. The dough ended up a bit drier but…