Monday, February 3, 2014
Chocolate Hearts
I wasn't planning on making anything for Valentine's Day, but I decided to try out a variation on my cutout cookie recipe this weekend. Since we are only a few days away from February 14th, I thought why not use a heart shaped cookie cutter.
Friday, January 31, 2014
Loganberry Mallomars
It's time for more marshmallow fun! This time it's a Buffalo-themed marshmallow. Don't worry, I'm not making you chicken wing flavored marshmallow, that might be a little weird. Today I'm introducing you to Loganberry!
I have lived in several different places around the United States and have only ever seen Loganberry in Western New York. Is it a unique item to the Buffalo region? Do you have Loganberry soda in your town? When I asked some of my coworkers, they asked if it was the stuff you can get at Ikea. No, that's lingonberry. Surprisingly, this soda is bottled by PepsiCo. Though since it's a WNY drink, I suppose I should call it "pop".
Loganberry soda is a completely impossible flavor to explain. It's incredibly sweet and tastes like some sort of berry. According to the smidge of internet research I did, a loganberry is an actual berry that was cultivated in California in the 1880's. It's a cross between a raspberry and a blackberry. Californians hated it, but it found success as a soda at the Crystal Beach resort in Buffalo. I visited Crystal Beach as a child and have a photograph of my mom and I riding these umbrella gondolas over the beach. Crystal Beach closed years ago, but loganberry lives on.
I wanted to celebrate my hometown and create a mallomar that incorporates one of it's most unique flavors. In one of my BuffaloFoods.com purchases, I bought a case of Loganberry soda (along with so many of my favorite hometown foods!). I wasn't sure what I was going to do with the soda, I just knew I wasn't going to be drinking it. It's sooooo sweet!
To use the Loganberry soda, I poured six cans of the soda into a wide pan and boiled it, for about thirty minutes, until I had 2 cups of syrup. I used the syrup as the flavor base for my marshmallows. The finished marshmallows have that distinct Loganberry flavor that I wanted. My only problem with these? The Loganberry is made with high fructose corn syrup. These marshmallows are a combination of sucrose, glucose and fructose. But seriously, they are sugar bombs any way you make them. I ate a whole bunch and didn't regret a single pink marshmallow!
One Year Ago: Yogurt Protein Smoothie
Two Years Ago: Tart au Chocolate au Lait
Three Years Ago: Buttermilk Cornbread
1 stick butter, room temperature
3/4 cup powdered sugar
1/4 tsp salt
1/4 cup almond flour
1/2 tsp vanilla
1 egg
1 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
In a large bowl, beat together butter, powdered sugar and salt until smooth. Add almond flour and vanilla and beat until combined. Using a rubber spatula, scrape down the edges. Add egg and combine. Finally, add flour slowly until completely mixed.
Scrape batter out of the bowl and onto a large piece of plastic wrap. Fold over plastic wrap and press dough out a little. Using a rolling pin, roll out dough to 1/8-inch thickness. Place dough sheet on a baking sheet and set in the fridge to chill for 1 hour.
Remove dough sheet from the fridge and peel back the top layer of plastic wrap. Stamp out 2-inch circles with a cookie or biscuit cutter. Place dough circles on a baking sheet and chill for 30 minutes. Collect dough scraps and re-roll between the plastic wrap. Chill if necessary and continue stamping out 2-inch circles.
Preheat oven to 350 F and bake cookies for 10 minutes. Remove from the oven and allow to cool for 5 minutes on the cookie sheet on a wire rack. Remove from the baking sheet and allow cookies to cool completely before adding marshmallow.
6 cans loganberry soda
4 tablespoons powdered gelatin
1/2 cup water
3/4 cup corn syrup
1 1/2 cups sugar
Pour loganberry soda into a large skillet and heat over medium-high heat. Bring to a boil and cook until reduced to 2 cups.
Combine gelatin with 1 1/4 cups loganberry concentrate in the bowl of your stand mixer. Let bloom while you prepare the marshmallow syrup.
Combine 3/4 cup loganberry concentrate, water, corn syrup and sugar in a 4-quart pot. Clip on candy thermometer and bring to a boil over medium-high heat. Do not stir the sugar solution while it boils. Let the temperature rise to 250 ºF. Remove from the heat.
Using the whip attachment, turn on the stand mixer to low speed. Slowly stream in sugar syrup. Once all of the syrup is added, increase the speed to medium-high and beat for 5 minutes. Increase speed to high and whip for another 5 minutes. The marshmallow batter should be fluffy, shiny and pink. If your marshmallow batter has reached soft peak stage, transfer some of the batter to a piping bag (or ziploc bag).
Almond cookie rounds
Loganberry marshmallow in a piping bag with a 1-cm round tip
Pink sanding sugar
Pipe blogs of marshmallow on top of your cookie rounds. Let set for 15 minutes. Pour sanding sugar into a bowl. Dip marshmallow topped cookies into sanding sugar, coat all of the marshmallow so it's not sticky anymore! Enjoy!
I have lived in several different places around the United States and have only ever seen Loganberry in Western New York. Is it a unique item to the Buffalo region? Do you have Loganberry soda in your town? When I asked some of my coworkers, they asked if it was the stuff you can get at Ikea. No, that's lingonberry. Surprisingly, this soda is bottled by PepsiCo. Though since it's a WNY drink, I suppose I should call it "pop".
Loganberry soda is a completely impossible flavor to explain. It's incredibly sweet and tastes like some sort of berry. According to the smidge of internet research I did, a loganberry is an actual berry that was cultivated in California in the 1880's. It's a cross between a raspberry and a blackberry. Californians hated it, but it found success as a soda at the Crystal Beach resort in Buffalo. I visited Crystal Beach as a child and have a photograph of my mom and I riding these umbrella gondolas over the beach. Crystal Beach closed years ago, but loganberry lives on.
I wanted to celebrate my hometown and create a mallomar that incorporates one of it's most unique flavors. In one of my BuffaloFoods.com purchases, I bought a case of Loganberry soda (along with so many of my favorite hometown foods!). I wasn't sure what I was going to do with the soda, I just knew I wasn't going to be drinking it. It's sooooo sweet!
To use the Loganberry soda, I poured six cans of the soda into a wide pan and boiled it, for about thirty minutes, until I had 2 cups of syrup. I used the syrup as the flavor base for my marshmallows. The finished marshmallows have that distinct Loganberry flavor that I wanted. My only problem with these? The Loganberry is made with high fructose corn syrup. These marshmallows are a combination of sucrose, glucose and fructose. But seriously, they are sugar bombs any way you make them. I ate a whole bunch and didn't regret a single pink marshmallow!
One Year Ago: Yogurt Protein Smoothie
Two Years Ago: Tart au Chocolate au Lait
Three Years Ago: Buttermilk Cornbread
Almond Cookies
A Wilde Original
1 stick butter, room temperature
3/4 cup powdered sugar
1/4 tsp salt
1/4 cup almond flour
1/2 tsp vanilla
1 egg
1 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
In a large bowl, beat together butter, powdered sugar and salt until smooth. Add almond flour and vanilla and beat until combined. Using a rubber spatula, scrape down the edges. Add egg and combine. Finally, add flour slowly until completely mixed.
Scrape batter out of the bowl and onto a large piece of plastic wrap. Fold over plastic wrap and press dough out a little. Using a rolling pin, roll out dough to 1/8-inch thickness. Place dough sheet on a baking sheet and set in the fridge to chill for 1 hour.
Remove dough sheet from the fridge and peel back the top layer of plastic wrap. Stamp out 2-inch circles with a cookie or biscuit cutter. Place dough circles on a baking sheet and chill for 30 minutes. Collect dough scraps and re-roll between the plastic wrap. Chill if necessary and continue stamping out 2-inch circles.
Preheat oven to 350 F and bake cookies for 10 minutes. Remove from the oven and allow to cool for 5 minutes on the cookie sheet on a wire rack. Remove from the baking sheet and allow cookies to cool completely before adding marshmallow.
Loganberry Marshmallows
A Wilde Original
6 cans loganberry soda
4 tablespoons powdered gelatin
1/2 cup water
3/4 cup corn syrup
1 1/2 cups sugar
Pour loganberry soda into a large skillet and heat over medium-high heat. Bring to a boil and cook until reduced to 2 cups.
Combine gelatin with 1 1/4 cups loganberry concentrate in the bowl of your stand mixer. Let bloom while you prepare the marshmallow syrup.
Combine 3/4 cup loganberry concentrate, water, corn syrup and sugar in a 4-quart pot. Clip on candy thermometer and bring to a boil over medium-high heat. Do not stir the sugar solution while it boils. Let the temperature rise to 250 ºF. Remove from the heat.
Using the whip attachment, turn on the stand mixer to low speed. Slowly stream in sugar syrup. Once all of the syrup is added, increase the speed to medium-high and beat for 5 minutes. Increase speed to high and whip for another 5 minutes. The marshmallow batter should be fluffy, shiny and pink. If your marshmallow batter has reached soft peak stage, transfer some of the batter to a piping bag (or ziploc bag).
To Assemble Mallomars
Almond cookie rounds
Loganberry marshmallow in a piping bag with a 1-cm round tip
Pink sanding sugar
Pipe blogs of marshmallow on top of your cookie rounds. Let set for 15 minutes. Pour sanding sugar into a bowl. Dip marshmallow topped cookies into sanding sugar, coat all of the marshmallow so it's not sticky anymore! Enjoy!
Wednesday, January 29, 2014
Wilde Week #39
It's been a while since I posted a WW update. I've been busy! This week I'll give you a quick update since my last Wilde Week post, almost two months ago...
1. I started my new job. I've been there for just over a month and have really enjoyed every minute! My new company is small, there are just 15 of us, so I've been wearing many hats. I'm doing a combination of research & development and business development. I look forward to seeing where the company goes and being there to help it grow.
2. It's been seriously cold over here in the Tri-state. Granted, we didn't get any days off due to it being -15 ºF, but I have been bundling up like crazy for my morning commute. It's been so cold that the trains are late because the doors of the train keep getting stuck open!
3. It's also been so cold that one of the pipes in our apartment building froze and burst. You can see the resulting aftermath from the river of water that came rushing down the hallway. Lucky for us, we live on the top floor and most of the water went down. We only lost our doormat.
4. This time of the year I tend to avoid going to the city. January brings cold and windy weather which just whips down the avenues. I've been staying local and visiting New Jersey on the weekends. Or my couch. I like to visit with my couch when the temps don't rise above freezing.
5. I visited my family over the Christmas holiday. I actually had a white Christmas for the first time in years! The past few December 25ths have been rainy or warm, it's about time I got a white holiday! The only problem? I spent Christmas Eve at my brothers house and he doesn't like to use his furnace. I woke up in the middle of the night to find myself in a room that couldn't have been more than 55ºF. I needed more blankets, but had no idea where to find more blankets.
6. I've been diving into my new challenge for 2014. Going through all my cookbooks has been lots of fun and I came across a few that I had forgotten about. My only question with this challenge is, What if I get a now cookbook this year? Do I add it to the list? Anyways, get ready for some recipes involving chia seeds, recipes I've translated from many foreign languages and so many cookie and cake recipes! Apparently, I have lots of baking cookbooks.
7. I am apparently a bag food blogger. I have no Super Bowl or Valentine's Day related recipes. Sorry. Kinda. Not really. How many red, heart shaped cookies or cakes do you really need for one day a year? How many cheese dips does one person really need? Okay, nevermind. All I want for dinner is cheese dip.
1. I started my new job. I've been there for just over a month and have really enjoyed every minute! My new company is small, there are just 15 of us, so I've been wearing many hats. I'm doing a combination of research & development and business development. I look forward to seeing where the company goes and being there to help it grow.
2. It's been seriously cold over here in the Tri-state. Granted, we didn't get any days off due to it being -15 ºF, but I have been bundling up like crazy for my morning commute. It's been so cold that the trains are late because the doors of the train keep getting stuck open!
3. It's also been so cold that one of the pipes in our apartment building froze and burst. You can see the resulting aftermath from the river of water that came rushing down the hallway. Lucky for us, we live on the top floor and most of the water went down. We only lost our doormat.
4. This time of the year I tend to avoid going to the city. January brings cold and windy weather which just whips down the avenues. I've been staying local and visiting New Jersey on the weekends. Or my couch. I like to visit with my couch when the temps don't rise above freezing.
5. I visited my family over the Christmas holiday. I actually had a white Christmas for the first time in years! The past few December 25ths have been rainy or warm, it's about time I got a white holiday! The only problem? I spent Christmas Eve at my brothers house and he doesn't like to use his furnace. I woke up in the middle of the night to find myself in a room that couldn't have been more than 55ºF. I needed more blankets, but had no idea where to find more blankets.
6. I've been diving into my new challenge for 2014. Going through all my cookbooks has been lots of fun and I came across a few that I had forgotten about. My only question with this challenge is, What if I get a now cookbook this year? Do I add it to the list? Anyways, get ready for some recipes involving chia seeds, recipes I've translated from many foreign languages and so many cookie and cake recipes! Apparently, I have lots of baking cookbooks.
7. I am apparently a bag food blogger. I have no Super Bowl or Valentine's Day related recipes. Sorry. Kinda. Not really. How many red, heart shaped cookies or cakes do you really need for one day a year? How many cheese dips does one person really need? Okay, nevermind. All I want for dinner is cheese dip.
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