Brian Cooks

For cake layers

• 3 ounces fine-quality semisweet chocolate such as Callebaut

• 1 1/2 cups hot brewed coffee
• 3 cups sugar
• 2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 1/2 cups unsweetened cocoa powder (not Dutch process)
• 2 teaspoons baking soda
• 3/4 teaspoon baking powder
• 1 1/4 teaspoons salt
• 3 large eggs
• 3/4 cup vegetable oil
• 1 1/2 cups Sour cream
• 3/4 teaspoon vanilla

Pre heat your oven to 300f

Sift the flour, cocoa, baking powder, baking soda, and salt together.

Chop the chocolate and place in a glass bowl. Add the FRESHLY BREWED HOT COFFEE to the chocolate and stir until well melted.

In your mixer beat the eggs about 3 minutes. Add the oil continuing the mixer for another 90 seconds. The eggs will act as an emulsifier and keep the oil from separating out of the rest of the ingredients. Add the sour cream and vanilla.

Add the chocolate/coffee mixture.

Add the dry ingredients and blend for 30-60 seconds until mixed.

Pour into 2 9″ round cake pans that have been greased and floured.

Bake for 60 minutes and check for doneness. This cake may take up to 90 minutes to cook. Once a knife inserted into the center comes out MOSTLY clean remove the cakes. They will continue cooking another 5 degrees or so once removed.

Allow the cakes to cool for at least an hour before trimming and stacking them.

I hate canned cranberries, I love cranrasins. I love this cranberry sauce and it’s easy and super fast to make.

You’ll need:

1 bag of fresh cranberries

1 med/large orange

1 lemon

1c sugar

1c water

6qt pot

Splatter guard, seriously if you don’t have a splatter guard don’t try to make this.

Put your water and sugar in the pot. Stir well and zest the lemon into the pot, juice the lemon and orange into the pot. Fish out any seeds you dropped in. Add the cranberries. Turn the heat on to about medium 5 on my stove and stir constantly until you start hearing the berries whistle. You’ll understand that when you hear it.

This is a splatter guard. Shortly after the berries start to whistle they will explode violently splattering molten sugar all over you. You will need to stir your cranberries through this phase, keep your splatter guard between you and the pot or you can end up wearing cranberry sauce.

When the sauce gets to this phase, lots of foam, most of the berries have burst open. Turn the heat down to Low-2 and stir. The splatter guard is no longer necessary. Stir like crazy until most of the foam is gone, If you don’t the foam can spill over and make a GIANT mess.

Om Nom Nom Nom. Kill the heat completely and let it cool until it’s just warm. Then stash it in a tupperware container or something and refrigerate at least over night. It will thicken the longer it’s allowed to cool.

1c peas, frozen

1/4 of the paneer you made from the last recipe

2 med onions, one sliced

6 cloves of garlic

1T grated ginger

3 Serrano chillies

1/2lb tomatoes, chopped

1t salt

1c plain yogurt

1t turmeric

1T coriander seed

4 bay leaves

2c water

1T Garam Masala

1/2c coriander leaves, chopped (Cilantro….)

1/4c oil or clarified butter

Start by pasting 1 of the onions, the garlic, and coriander seed. I used a food processor, you could certainly use a mortar and pestle.

Put the oil in the pan, over medium heat. Add the oil and onions and ginger and bay leaves. Cook until the onions have browned.

Add the turmeric and paste! Cook for 5 minutes or so, during which you should be dicing your tomatoes and your peppers.

A rubber glove can be a good idea when cutting peppers if you plan to touch your, or any one elses, naughty bits for the next day or so. Or your eyes.

Add the tomatoes and peppers, cook for about 4 minutes then add the water and peas. Peas are an interesting veggie, as soon as they’re picked they start converting their sugar into starch, which makes them taste horrible. They do this conversion until they are cooked, which peas are cooked before they’re frozen. This makes peas one of the only veggies that is better frozen than fresh most of the time.

Simmer for as long as it takes to reduce the liquid to a thick paste, usually 15 minutes or so. Make sure you get all 4 of your bay leaves out, they’re gross if you bite one. Cut the cheese into squares and sprinkle with a little salt then broil them until they firm up and brown a little bit.

Serve over rice, top with the cheese, garam masala, and cilantro. Eat naan with it.

1/4oz active quick rise yeast

1/4c sugar

1c warm water

3T milk

1 egg, beaten

2t salt

4 1/2 c flour

2t garlic, minced

1/4c butter, melted

Dissolve  the yeast in the water, let sit for 10 minutes, it should get foamy. Stir in the egg, milk, salt, and about 4c of the flour. I did not have milk, because I used it all to make the cheese, I used yogurt, plain yogurt, and the naan tastes good but it’s very chewy

Kneed the dough on a floured surface, place it in an oiled bowl, cover it with a damp cloth and allow to raise for 1 hour.

Once the dough has doubled in size punch it down, add 2t of garlic and kneed the dough again on a floured surface until well incorporated. Heat a skillet, I use a non-stick one as you don’t have to grease it. Pinch the dough into small balls and stretch/pound/roll into pita like shapes. Cook over medium heat, you can brush them with melted butter to make them brown better if you like.

1/2 gal whole milk

about 1 yard of cheese cloth

Strainer

Pot to boil the milk in

Parchment paper

a Plate

some weight

Start by putting the milk in the pot over medium high heat. For this cheese you bring the milk to a boil.

I took a big pan to catch the whey as it drained off. Put a small dish upside down inside it with my strainer on top, cheese cloth in the strainer.

See the foam? The milk is nearing a boil. It will go from this to boiling VERY quickly and as it does the foam will triple in size and over flow the pot if you are not very quick in removing it from the heat. Milk does have sugar in it, so if it spills when it’s hot like this it will make a sticky mess. When you achieve boil dump in 2-3T of some acid, I used distilled vinegar. Stir like crazy.

When you’re done stirring it will look like this, cheese curds in clumps floating in whey.

Drain into your cheese cloth and squeeze as much of the whey out as you can.

Once you squeeze as much as you can out of it place a piece of parchment paper on a plate. Place the cheese on the paper, fold the paper over the cheese and weigh it down on top. This will help the cheese firm up and squeeze more moisture out of it.

Preheat oven to 375

1.5c unbleached flour (any flour would work)

1 over-ripe banana (i used 2 for extra banana-e-ness)

1t coarse salt

1/2t baking soda

3/4c unsalted butter (softened)

1/2c sugar

1/2c light brown sugar, packed

1 lg egg

1.5t vanilla

1c old-fashioned rolled oats

8oz chocolate chunk or chip

1/2c crushed walnuts

Start by creaming the butter and sugar together. Add egg and vanilla.

Banana

Add the banana all squashed up. Mix.

Combine flour, salt, and soda then add to the mixer and allow to just barely combine but don’t over mix.

Oats

Add the oats, chocolate, and walnuts and fold in by hand.

Wooo

Using an ice cream scoop is the easiest way to dish this stuff out onto the pan. Bake for 11-13 minutes. I found 13 minutes to be ideal.

done

Yum

2 beets, washed, peeled, and sliced

4oz baby carrots

1/4 red onion sliced into thin rings

1T olive oil

1T balsamic vinegar

1t rubbed sage (optional)

1t crushed red pepper (optional)

Whisk the olive oil, vinegar, and herbs if used together. Pour over the veggies and toss by hand.

Food

I haven’t had beets in a while and I picked up some the other day with the intention of making a cold beet and carrot salad, and I thought to myself “I wonder if beet greens are edible”. Rather than just nibble on some and see what happens I googled them first and it turns out, yes they are edible. I decided to cook these greens.

1 bunch of beets with attached greens

3 slices of bacon

1/2 red onion diced

about 1 beet was washed, peeled, and sliced up for this dish

1T honey

1T white vinegar, cider vinegar would have been better but I appear to not have any.

1/4t crushed pepper flake

1t minced garlic

I started with one bunch of beets (3) and trimmed the stems. I tossed the stems and all the leaves that were severely wilted or bug eaten. You’ll want to wash the greens very well, they will be extremely sandy. Starting from the stem end of the leaf tear away from the stem, the leaves will tear into pieces along veins naturally. Wash, peel, and slice the beets up to desired size and set aside.

Fixings

Cook the bacon in a large skillet on medium to medium low, you don’t want to vaporize the grease, you’ll need it for later.

Onion added

When the bacon is almost done, add the onion.

Beets

Add the beets and cook for 5 to 7 minutes, or until the onion and beets are tender. Add the honey, pepper flake, and garlic.

Greens

Add the greens and toss. Allow to simmer for another 3-5 minutes until the greens are done, add the vinegar. Kill the heat and allow to rest before serving.

To make this bread you’ll need:

1 1/4c AP flour

1t baking soda

1/2t salt

2 large eggs, room temperature

1/2t vanilla extract

1/2c unsalted butter, room temperature

1c sugar

3 very ripe bananas (black skin)

1/2c walnuts

This recipe makes 1 loaf, I roughly doubled it to make 2 loaves.

Start by mixing the flour, soda, and salt in a medium bowl and set aside. The recipe called for sifting it but we’re making bread not a cake, so I didn’t sift.

Grease your loaf pans with butter, I have teflon coated loaf pans so I just used a light spray of Pam with flour.

Preheat your oven to 350f

In a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment cream the butter and sugar until light and fluffy.

Buttah

While that’s creaming, put the eggs and vanilla in a bowl and whisk until they’re well combined.

Eggs

Set those eggs aside and mash up the bananas. Mine were liar bananas, the skin was black but the bananas were barely ripe inside.

bananas

If you get liar bananas like mine, shuck the skins off, sprinkle a little sugar on them, mash them, and set them aside for about 30 minutes. They’ll get good and mushy and brown quickly.

Mashed bananas

30 minutes later

Add the eggs to the butter in a slow stream, beat until well incorporated. Remove the bowl from the mixer, scrape the blades and fold in the bananas. The batter will be very lumpy. Add the flour all at once and fold until there’s no noticeable flour. Add the walnuts and fold them in.

Batter

Pour batter into prepared loaf pans and bake for about 55 minutes or until a knife inserted into the center comes out mostly clean. Cool for 5 minutes on a rack, then dump the loaves out and cool out of the pan on a rack until mostly cool. Wrap in plastic and serve the next day. You can wrap the plastic covered loaf in foil to freeze it.

Bread

Serve with some good butter.

For this you’ll need

1 oz cream cheese (About 1T, a bar is 8oz), room temp

1/4t honey

a couple grinds of orange rind

thin sliced wheat bread

2 large strawberries, sliced.

Mix the cheese, honey, and rind together until well incorporated.

Cheese

Smear some of the cheese on both slices of bread.

Bread

Add strawberries and eat.

sandwich