Recipe Friday

[st_aurafina]

Tonight's Monster of the Week X-Files rewatch is Teliko, aka the one with the melanin vampire. It is dire.

I bought some ginger cordial to mix with vodka tonight. Genius. That's not a recipe, as such. More like life advice.

Something I cooked recently:


Chargrilled zucchini

[Rounds of zucchini on a barbecue, with chicken skewers and steak.]


We brushed it with olive oil and grilled it until it was soft in the middle. It was very tasty!


Panini bread

Honestly, I didn't see much difference in this to my regular pizza recipe, despite it being a long and complex recipe involving a starter sponge and a whole lot of mess. I was anticipating something with a more open texture, like a ciabatta. I wouldn't bother with all the mess of the very sticky dough again, for what I got out of it. It tasted okay, though. But my pizza recipe would have worked just as well.

Mergatrude's Super Easy Butter Cake

[Disclaimer: the recipe is good. The baker suffers under a curse.]

I followed the recipe faithfully, and it all looked good when I put it in the oven. After the alloted twenty five minutes, it felt suspiciously liquid, so I left it for another ten. By then, it had cooked on the outside, and smelled amazing, but still felt a bit... sloshy. I used a skewer, which came out clean (OH TREACHEROUS SKEWER!!), and it was getting very brown on top, so I took it out. I let it cool in the pan, then I turned it out, and like the Titanic, it broke in half. Unlike the Titanic, it oozed raw cake batter. Oh, the humanity. It was a terrible caketastrophe. No, actually, the bits that cooked were really freaking tasty. But my shame and disappointment left a bitter aftertaste.

I think that either my oven is misbehaving (in which case, I've got a thermometer to check what the actual temperature is) OR I had it on the wrong temperature. The markings on the dial are getting smaller and smaller as time goes by. (Solution: get lilacsigil to check the setting, because according to the optometrist, she has the eyes of a ten year old.)


Something I have solid plans to cook soon:

The before mentioned butter cake. I WILL NEVER SURRENDER. ALSO THE COOKED BITS TASTED GOOD.


Strawberry Cream Cheese Ice-Cream, only with mangoes. Because I walked into the greengrocer this week, and the mangoes smelled amazing. I think it should work well? All of the ingredients taste good on their own, and that's usually a good sign.



Something I'm idly thinking about cooking in the future:

The zucchinis are coming. I think we're going to get four or five this week. Big ones. Hence:

Double Chocolate Zucchini Muffins


Zucchini Bread, which is more like a spice bread than a bread bread. It makes a good teacake.




We're going out to dinner on Sunday night with my brother and sister in law, and our two nephews. I am trying to be less socially anxious about things. I wish I knew how to go about being less socially anxious about things.

Comments

[frayadjacent]

Ooh, ginger cordial with vodka does sound lovely! I wonder how it would taste with whiskey...

[st_aurafina]

It was nice! Much the nicest mixer I've tried. I don't know about whiskey - might be nice? It's very tart and tangy, so maybe.

[musesfool]

Yeah, the oven temperature thing is really annoying. I've had that happen to me, where I thought the cake was cooked but it was not. And the opposite, where it seemed not-done for so long it ended up overdone.

In addition to checking the oven temp, I've found changing the type of pan can help - a cake I was unsuccessful with in two eight inch layers cooked perfectly as a 9 x 13 sheet cake. *hands*

[st_aurafina]

Argh, ovens, why do they lie? I'm going to try a different pan. I baked a perfectly good gingerbread cake in my glass roasting dish.

[kindkit]

You've given me barbecue envy--everything in that photo looks delicious!

The cake thing is weird. It does sound like your oven temperature is off, though. Or could you be using a different kind/color of pan than the recipe recommends? For example, things bake in dark pans a lot faster than they do in shiny pans. *cheers you on to triumph over the cake curse*

[st_aurafina]

I am enjoying discovering my inner barbecue-phile!

I think the pan might factor in - I was using a silicone loaf pan, and now that I'm thinking of it, it's always been a part of my dodgier cake efforts. I'm definitely going to try a different one next time. I made a zucchini chocolate sheet cake in two pyrex roasting dishes and they were a little better. Still a bit weird and spongy but it's hard to tell if that's zucchini or bad baking.

I will succeed!

[lostdragonfound]

You're awesome zucchini looks so good! I am jealous, we're knee deep in a super cold and snow filled winter over year and awesome fresh veggies are just a memory now ;)

I've got a really nice and easy and awesome tasting basic butter cake in a cookbook here. It's my go to recipe for cake and cupcakes (which I make more often). I'll try and get it typed up and I'll post it when I do.

[st_aurafina]

I keep telling myself that summer is worth it for the produce! We're going to try to keep the veggies going through winter this year - last year we just bedded it sll down and skipped the winter growing period.

I've had a bit more luck with a zucchini sheet cake recipe in a different pan, so I'm thinking it was the loaf pan, maybe? It's one of those silicone ones, and to be honest, I don't think I've ever got a good cake out it. Bread, yes, but not cake.

[torachan]

Wow, that is a really huge zucchini. Do they regularly get that size there or is that a particularly big one? Here they are usually quite small (more the size around of those chicken (?) skewers).

[st_aurafina]

They're not meant to be that huge. That's what happens if it's almost big enough to be picked, and then you forget to check on them for a couple of days. They grow really fast!

In this pic, you can see one that's almost ready to pick, and one that should have been picked a couple of days ago. I always forget how fast they can grow in the heat!

[torachan]

Wow, monster zucchini! O_o

[mergatrude]

OM NOM NOM!!

I failed at Recipe Friday this week, but I made this fantastic Chocolate Slice today?

And it does sound to me like something wrong with your oven. You could try using a ring pan or a bunt pan, thus eliminating the tricky middle of the cake.

[st_aurafina]

That slice looks good - like a Golden Rough in cake form!

I'm going to try a square pan - it's shallower than the loaf pan, even if the centre is further in. And get lilacsigil to consult on the oven temperature. I will triumph, eventually.

[monanotlisa]

Life advice?

<3

[st_aurafina]

BAD LIFE ADVICE.

[lark_ascends]

We're going out to dinner on Sunday night with my brother and sister in law, and our two nephews. I am trying to be less socially anxious about things. I wish I knew how to go about being less socially anxious about things.

This. A weekend or two ago I went to my first 'meetup' event, to try and get out there a bit more. Was very anxious about it beforehand. New people I don't know. How am I going to talk, how am I not going to come across as an idiot, etc. It's people!!!! And what did I mostly end up doing? Talking about my work, because that's my comfort zone. Oi. *headdesks*

Hope it goes well tonight.

[st_aurafina]

It went okay - I really like them, and I really do want to spend time with them, but the build-up of anxiety before hand is such an energy suck. I am trying to figure out some kind of twelve step program I can set myself to try and build up some coping strategies and tolerance to the idea of mixing with people - I do enjoy it once I get there, generally. Or at least, my discomfort at the actual event is far outweighed by my dread of it.

Brains. So messed up.