Waffles for Christmas

For Christmas, I got a waffle iron! So, New Year's weekend, I decided to tackle the waffle iron and my ongoing whole wheat flour experimentation in one fell swoop. I settled on a recipe for Nutty Whole Wheat Waffles that was in the Cuisinart instruction booklet.


It was so much fun! I've never made waffles before, unless you count in the cafeteria at UT in college (where the waffle irons imprint a UT logo on your waffles). I thought it might get sort of boring, like the time I made pancakes, but it was really fun. It took some experimentation to get the batter amount right, as you can see below.


But, overall, they turned out amazingly. I didn't bother trying to keep them warm in the oven while I went, because I was just planning to eat the last one and freeze the rest. I loved how the nuts made the waffles sort of crunchy. You can use several different types of nuts, but I love almonds and already had some on hand. I honestly couldn't tell that there was whole wheat flour in them, but it did make me feel sort of superior for eating it, and isn't that the point? I felt like this was a success all around.

Nutty Whole Wheat Waffles
makes eight 6 1/2 inch round waffles

Ingredients:
1 1/2 cups all purpose flour
1/2 cup whole wheat flour
2 tablespoons sugar
1 tablespoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 cups reduced fat milk
6 tablespoons vegetable oil
2 large eggs
1/2 cup finely chopped pecans, walnuts, almonds, or hazelnuts

Place ingredients in a large mixing bowl and combine until well blended and smooth. Let batter sit 5 minutes before using. Preheat your waffle maker.

Pour 1/2 cup batter (in my case less, unless you love cleaning waffle batter off the counter) onto the center of the lower grid; spread evenly using a heat proof spatula. Close cover. (My waffle iron has an indicator light to let me know when they're through. If yours doesn't, just play with it, but don't leave it more than a few minutes at first I'd say.)

Open cover and carefully remove baked waffle. I used a spatula for this, but it did split a couple of the waffles through the middle, so emphasis on "carefully" I think. Repeat with remaining batter.

Serve immediately or keep waffles warm in a 200 degree oven until ready to serve.

Random Blog Thoughts

I've decided that part of the problem with my food blog is that the photos are awful. I blame this mostly on the lighting in my kitchen. But, I don't quite know what to do about it.

How do other people with food blogs take such fantastic photos? Maybe their kitchens just aren't as poorly lit as mine. Perhaps I need some sort of secondary light source. Thoughts would be appreciated.

Now, I have to go fix some dinner. I just looked at too many other food blogs for inspiration, and now I'm starving.

Smores Cookies

I made these cookies for New Year's Eve. They were really tasty; the cookie has a nice cinnamon flavor, and anything with marshmallows is fantastic in my book. They were best the first day, but they actually still tasted really good a few days later when I took the last few to work. I would definitely recommend giving this a shot. Just be sure that you keep a close on them during the broiler step - you can see that a few of the ones in the back of the photo are a bit on the dark side! I believe that the recipe came from Everyday Food magazine.

This is also part of my experiment in using whole wheat flour, which is working pretty well so far. You really can't tell in these, other than the whole wheat offering sort of a nutty flavor, which I love. Although, that could also have been the oats.

Ingredients:

1/2 Cup old fashioned rolled oats
1 Cup all-Purpose flour (spooned and leveled)
1 Cup whole wheat flour (spooned and leveled)
3/4 Teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/2 Teaspoon baking soda
1/2 Teaspoon Salt
1 Cup unsalted butter, room temperature
3/4 Cup light brown sugar
1 Large Egg
8 Ounce bittersweet chocolate or semisweet chocolate, cut into 30 squares
15 Large marshmallows, halved horizontally

Instructions: Preheat oven to 350. In a food processor, pulse oats until finely ground. Add flours, cinnamon, baking soda, and salt; pulse to combine. In a large bowl, using an electric mixer, beat butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Beat in egg, scraping down side of bowl. With mixer on low, beat in flour mixture until just combined.

Drop dough by tablespoons, 1 inch apart, onto two baking sheets. Top each with a chocolate square. Bake just until lightly golden 11 to 13 minutes, rotating sheets halfway through. Remove sheets from oven, heat broiler. Top each cookie with a marshmallow. One sheet at a time, broil until marshmallows are lightly browned, 1 to 1 1/2 minutes. Transfer cookies to wire racks to cool.

Eggnog Pound Cake, Version Two

This cake is wonderful, even if the photo is not so much. It's fluffy with a little crunch from the almonds around the outside. The eggnog taste isn't too in your face. Also, it's cooked in a bundt pan which is always fun and exciting. The recipe is here. If nothing else, the first cake-tastrophe led me to find this new recipe, which I like even more.

one of those update blogs

I haven't blogged in ages. It's not just this I've been neglecting... it took me three months to finish a book, I'm reading comics from September, and I just uploaded a few Halloween photos to Flickr. But, I have still been cooking a bit - it's just been quite hectic here. Since I last posted a blog, I applied to graduate school, and I've nearly finished up by two classes (only a statistics project and final left). My Christmas shopping is done, and my packages are mailed to their appropriate destinatitons. Cards are out, tree is up... I've been baking...

Okay, well clearly the first baking did not come out as planned. I was making an eggnog pound cake recipe that I found in Southern Living last year. It's actually a delicious cake. Last year I made it at Travis's parents house, and it was delicious. But, it turns out my loaf pan was too small. I smelled something burning while watching Walking Dead (which is sort of funny, like 4D TV if you've seen the finale), and when I went to check on the cake, it had risen at least 5 inches above the top of the pan.

Cake was oozing EVERYWHERE... it was in giant stalactite looking blobs on the bottom of the oven... such a mess. I couldn't finish it, even after I fished out the blobs, the burning from the oven floor kept making my smoke alarm go off. So, the picture you see above is after it settled again, with a few pieces missing from the done side where I decided to give it just a little taste.

More successfully, I made this for dinner one night. I used a frozen shrimp scampi to make some shrimp and grits for myself. It was actually pretty tasty.. I used some parmesan cheese grated into the grits as well. With it is braised bacon cabbage, which was also quite delicious. I actually finished up the leftovers of that tonight.

These pumpkin pancakes are soooo good, I still have a few in the freezer. The recipe is from Martha Stewart.

And finally, I made this lovely roasted chicken and butternut squash soup back before Thanksgiving. Honestly, I think I should've just eaten the roasted chicken and squash separately. I cut up a butternut squash (not an easy feat) and roasted it on a cookie sheet with some oil and chicken thighs. I ate quite a bit of it off of that pan before I managed to get it in the soup. If I can bring myself to cut up another butternut squash, I will definitely roast it that way again. The soup was okay, but for some reason I never like soup when I make it. I think I must be doing something wrong.

Baked Chicken with Potatoes, Onions, and Garlic

I was so excited to finally cook a proper dinner that I thought I wouldn't be able to decide what to make. But, I have been craving roast chicken recently, and autumn is the perfect time of year for lovely roast dinners. There was a one pan chicken dinner in Everyday Food a few months ago would do nicely.

I had a whole chicken cut up in the freezer, so I thawed that out. Put it in a pan with one cut up red onion (in big pieces, like eighths), a quartered lemon, about a pound of halved or quartered (depending on their size) white new potatoes, six springs of thyme, and a head of garlic broken up into cloves but not peeled. Drizzle with 3/4 cup olive oil and 2 tablespoons balsamic vinegar (whisked together). Salt and pepper, then roast for 50 minutes.

The recipe called to roast it 450, but that was too high for my oven. I ended up around 375. I suppose it actually could have been 450 in real temperature - I suspect that my oven runs hot, but I keep forgetting to check it. Also, my roasting pan was a little too big. I needed 12x16 but only had a bit smaller and a bit larger than that. I settled on the larger one, but some stuff on the edges burned. I think it was too exposed to the heat.

Overall, this was really great. The potatoes (especially the ones that burned a little on the outside actually) were delicious - soft and creamy in the middle and crispy on the outside. The chicken was juicy, and the garlic was sooo good. I actually just ate a couple of cloves of it, but I love roasted garlic. It was good to squeeze out the cloves from the peel and spread it on some bread.

I also had made Paula Deen's marinated tomatoes, which are really easy and tasty. I make them quite a lot actually, they're really good for company because you can do them early in the day and just put them out to get to room temperature.

A Decline in Food Adventures

Recently, I decided to go back to school. So, this fall I decreased my work schedule, signed up for two classes at Santa Monica College, and started focusing on studying for the GRE and preparing the various essays, etc. that are required for the UCLA graduate admission application. All of this has lead to a sad decline in cooking here recently.

That's not to say I don't cook at all, just that I've been incredibly lazy about it. For example, tonight we had macaroni and cheese (the kraft gourmet kind) and some pre-cut and pre-seasoned fresh brussel sprouts (that were actually pretty tasty).

However, that's not to say I haven't had any food adventures at all. And hopefully, after I take the GRE this week I'll have a bit more time again. Anyway, here is a summary:

This is some ice cream Travis and I got at the new Santa Monica food truck lot. His is cake donut flavored (it tasted exactly like a cake donut, oddly enough) and mine is a Salty Scotty - it's a lightly salted butterscotch. If you've ever had a salted caramel (which is sooo good, if you haven't), it tasted like that but in ice cream form.

I really wanted to bake cookies, but without the time, I just grabbed a thing of refrigerated cookie dough. It is clear to me now that I should've used a larger pan.

Had these great shrimp and chips with remoulade sauce from the Shrimp Pimp truck a few weeks ago. So good!

Saw an enormous freaking pumpkin at the LA County Fair!

And we also shared a giant turkey leg. There are pictures of me eating too, but I look sort of demonic, like I might eat the person taking the picture next or something.