Vanilla Cupcakes, tried and true

This recipe I have tried out a few times, and as listed below makes a really nice birthday type cupcake.

Vanilla cupcakes
makes around 24 - 30
Ingredients
1 1/2 sticks unsalted butter (3/4 cup)
1 1/2 cups sugar
2 eggs
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
2 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
2 1/2 cups flour
1 1/4 cups milk
1 zest of 1 lemon

Turn oven on to 375 degrees F.

Put butter in mixer and beat at medium speed until somewhat smooth. Pour in sugar and beat well. Add 2 eggs. Mix well. Add vanilla, baking powder, salt, flour, and milk. Beat until smooth and pour into individual baking cups, until they are about 2/3 full. (Note: Don't overfill, they puff up quite alot!)

Bake for 20 minutes or until golden brown. 24 - 30 cupcakes.

Optional raspberry Version:

Additional Ingredients
1 pint fresh raspberries
1/3 cup raspberry jam

For variety, try adding a thin layer of raspberry jam. Cream cheese frosting and decorate with fresh raspberries.

When filling the baking cups, add 1/3 batter, then a teaspoon-sized layer of jam, then the remaining 1/3 batter. *Note: Spread the jam (don't dollop, it will sink to the bottom).

Bake for approximately 20 minutes as stated above.

Ice with cream cheese frosting and decorate with fresh raspberries.

Hi again

Long time no post. I guess there's not so much to update. We're working quite a bit. Dan spent a month in Tampa helping them finish up the second simulator for that project we both worked on. He's spent many many hours on them so it's fitting.

I spent last month in Stolberg (missing him) but keeping very busy with work (at least it was productive). I'm pretty excited about the project I'm on now, we are just now getting the lab working well, coding at our desks, finishing off interfaces between software and hardware.

The weather has been not so pleasant, but not bad for winter. Doesn't matter so much because we haven't been traveling really. We'll get out to see some things when we have some company this year. It's nice to feel comfortable at home here now. I would say it takes a good six months to feel like your new place is home, foreign country or not.

Ciao for now.

Oh, and I do post more regularly at the KathyBou blog. It's more random over there though.

Biscotti, grown up cookies

So yeah, I know that biscotti just means cookie in Italian. But they seem much more sophisticated, especially the recipes with poppy seeds and ground almonds like the one Dan and I made this weekend. This was my first attempt at biscotti and it won't be my last. This cookie has depth, it's good but also interesting to eat at the same time.



Pistachio Biscotti
Ingredients:

• 1½ cup all purpose flour
• ½ cup ground almonds
• ½ cup ground hazelnuts
• 1 cup brown sugar, packed
• 1 tsp. baking powder
• 1 tsp. cinnamon
• 1/4 tsp. salt
• 1 tsp. finely grated orange or lemon zest
• 2 tbs. poppy seeds
  

• 8 tbs. (1 stick) unsalted butter at room temperature.
• 1 large egg
• 1 tsp. vanilla extract
• 1/2 cup shelled pistachios
  

Instructions:

Preheat oven to 350°F [325°F Convection].

Combine first group of ingredients well using wooden spoon OR with a mixer on slow.

Add butter & mix well. Add egg, vanilla, pistachios. Mix until dough has consistency of wet sand.

Turn out onto cookie sheet & form into 2 firm logs, about 2x8-inches & 1-inch deep. Don’t be afraid to use your hands to shape form.

Bake for 20 minutes until golden. Remove from oven & cool to room temperature.

Lower oven to 325°F [300°F Convection]. Cut into ¼-½ inch slices with a serrated knife: thick slices makes a chewier biscotti, at an angle if desired. Lay out on cookie sheet cut side down, like toasting bread. Bake 20 minutes until lightly golden.

Cool until crisp & store in an airtight container.

P.S.
This recipe is courtesy of my friend Lucy. She's an amazing baker, and also Italian, and I love following in her lead.

Also, I ended up adding 2 tbs. of apple sauce to make my wet sand texture more wet. Also, the poppy seeds could be optional, but the orange/lemon zest is really important for finesse.

And what not

We need an inspiration for our next destination. I think we'll go somewhere in February or March, a weekend trip, but I don't know where yet. Maybe Amsterdam. I want to go to Italy but not until we have a real trip planned and at least a week we don't mind taking off. In Germany, we get 4 or 5 days of public holidays around April/May, so maybe somewhere around then.

There is a big carnival at the beginning of February in Maastricht, in the Netherlands. Maastricht is only 15 minutes from Aachen so it's very close for us. It's a costume in the streets sort of thing, bright and colorful and crazy from what I have heard. We're going to probably go with Francois, Gerry and the other Dan (guys from work).

Pictures posted

on our picasa page. New web albums for Christmas 2007 and our trip to Boston in January.


.

Is it any wonder

that Florida is a big winter destination?

Image from weather.com

Still on Break(!!)

Dan and I have been lucky enough to have quite a long break over Christmas this year to enjoy some time with our family and friends. We took 3 weeks off from work and as of now still have another week to enjoy ourselves - then it's back to Deutschland. We may not be back until next Christmas so we are trying to make the most of our time here.

It's fun to see both sides of the family, the climate extremes makes it almost comical. In Florida, we were clipping tangerines off my grandmother's tree, playing basketball by the beach, and eating key lime pie for dessert. In Quebec, we got to listen to some traditional French-Canadian music at a Gregory Charles concert, go glissading (sliding) at a snow park, and help prepare/eat all the amazing Quebec/non-Quebec food that Dan's mother and sister are masters at creating. We had some amazing food this holiday, example - dinner last night was scallop, shrimp and lobster in a white wine creme sauce wrapped in a crepes, sprinkled with cheese and baked (soo good!), followed by rack of lamb with port and raspberry sauce along with rice and broccoli, and cake with tea for dessert. It takes time, but with the whole day to relax, it's fun to make something nice. Especially on the last night of the year.

I miss hanging out with my sisters more often than we do, but we do keep in contact while Dan and I are away - we have alot of books to discuss in the coming year after the all book gifts we exchanged at Christmas. What's really great now that we've been together for over a year, is that I really look forward to seeing Dan's family too. I'm pretty sure Dan feels the same way.

Tonight we are going to St-Ephrem for New Years dinner with Dan's mothers side of the family. Will be nice to see his cousins and aunts/uncles again. We're here in Quebec until Saturday, then we're flying to Boston to see Dan's sister's place there. Should be fun. I'm excited about meeting their petit(?) chat, Morris. He sounds tres gentile.

We'll probably post photos here and on our picasa, once we have it all straightened out.

Hope everyone is enjoying their day off!

Hair cuts

Buttermilk and eating the whole refrigerator

I didn't know much about buttermilk in the past, when I saw it in the dairy case I assumed it was in line with heavy whipping cream or the yogurt you can't actually eat. You know, one of those ingredients you get for making one recipe and then you have this fattening cream leftovers in your refrigerator that you feel too guilty to eat, and just as guilty throwing out a week later. So, not so long ago I looked up buttermilk, and found this amusing explanation by Mr. Breakfast. Buttermilk is lower fat than milk, thick like yogurt, and great for making things soft and fluffy.

So back to this morning, Dan and I are going home for the holidays we are trying to clean out the freezer. We had trouble about 3 months ago when we were out of town and one of the circuit breakers popped and so our electricity was off for a least a couple of days. The refrigerator and freezer were full of spoiled food, it was a real mess. The freezer never fully recovered. We had the maintenance man look at the circuit breakers but he wasn't able to see any problem. So we are going to do our best to eat everything we can before we leave, just in case it happens again while we're gone.

For the frozen blueberries in the freezer, I made these this morning. The only changes I made was to substitute 1/2 cup canola oil for the butter, added 1 tsp of vanilla, and the blueberries are what really make it great, so I used closer to 2 cups instead of 1.5 cups. It made roughly 16 normal muffins (with big tops). This recipe is nice because it really is just a vehicle for blueberries, not overly sweet or too oily like store-bought blueberry muffins.

To go along with

what seems like a news blog turning into a food blog, I have further resigned to myself the fact that I'm scared to cook red meat. Also, the fact that red meat, can in fact, smell fear.

Friday night I tried to make this sirloin tips over pasta recipe, and it really was almost un-salvageable. Luckily, Dan is tall, and was very hungry after driving back from Buckeburg, because the smell (it was too much red wine or something) after two hours of me standing around it and giving it the occasional stir, was almost too much. It ended up being ok, but it looked like something they would serve at the cafeteria at work here, not really a compliment. Perhaps I used the wrong type of beef.

Tonight we are hopefully redeeming the Katherine & Daniel Kitchen's culinary standard - we bought everything to bake salmon, an easy favorite.

Other than that, we have been doing typical weekend stuff, with a few preparations for the holidays thrown into the mix. It's right around the corner already!

More cookies!

Hooray! Dan's back this weekend. Okay, he's back every weekend, thankfully, but it's the holidays and I like making him stuff, so there. I like this recipe, I make the cookie batter, then I divide it, then add white chocolate and cranberries to half, dark chocolate and walnut to the other. Everybody wins.

CRANBERRY WHITE CHOCOLATE COOKIES
CHOCOLATE WALNUT COOKIES

INGREDIENTS

• 2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
  
• 3/4 cup white sugar
• 3/4 cup brown sugar
  
• 1/2 cup butter
• 1/4 cup vegetable oil
  
• 2 eggs
  
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 cup walnuts
• 3/4 cup cranberries
• 1 bar good quality white chocolate (candy bar)
• 1 bar good quality dark chocolate (candy bar)
  

DIRECTIONS

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C).
2. In a medium bowl, cream the shortening, white sugar, and brown sugar together. Add eggs and vanilla, mix well. Sift together the flour, baking soda and salt, stir into the creamed mixture.
   
3. Divide in two. Stir in the cranberries and the white chips to one half, walnuts and dark chocolate chips into the other half.
4. Drop cookies by heaping spoonfuls onto unprepared cookie sheets. Bake for 7 to 15 minutes (dependent on cookie size) in the preheated oven. Take cookies out of the oven when they are light brown and not yet set. It creates a softer cookie. Allow cookies to cool for a few minutes on the baking sheet before removing to cool on wire racks.

I used 1/2 butter and 1/4 oil to make the fat more healthy. This time I used about 3/4 whole wheat flour as part of the flour, just to see how it would taste.

Marketing

For the last month or so I have been looking forward to Christmas markets in Germany. Everyone said they were impressive, so yesterday I decided to drag Daniel out to Aachen. Aachen was supposed to have a big market, in the open area around the cathedral in the dead center of town.


A little introduction, since I was relatively unaware before we ended up here:
Every year, for centuries, cities and towns all over Germany celebrate Advent (the Sundays after Nov. 26 leading up to Christmas Day) with Christmas markets in their city-centers. The tradition originates with Dresden, Christmas 1434. The markets range in size and slightly in theme, the bigger ones drawing thousands of visitors. There are even vacation packages offered for "Christmas market touring", with hotel and transportation. Visitors enjoy the traditional atmosphere, the hand-made crafts, Christmas decorations and warm food and drink.

So we took the train, had some trouble at the station with the normal train schedule, strike-related we think, but we finally got into town and walked into the market on foot. At first I thought it might be quiet, it being only the second day open, but there were lots of people.














We wanted to try some Gluhwein, the hot spiced wine that is made just at Christmas time here, but the wine area was completely squashed, so we just pushed farther in. There were lots of Christmas decorations and hand-made stuff (that I never seem to be very good at buying), and music and great food.

It was actually a lot of fun, Dan was happy to go after all. Up til now, all the festivals we have seen were beer and sausages and fried potatoes and German songs we didn't understand. Christmas is pretty straight forward.

We'll have to try the Gluhwein this coming weekend when the market comes to Stolberg!

Happy

Happy (U.S.) Thanksgiving everyone!!

PB Cookies

So I guess we should have a section called 'Basic Baking 101', we tried yet another simple recipe over the weekend. All of these ingredients everyone probably has at home. These are good with a glass of milk. Enjoy.

PEANUT BUTTER COOKIES

INGREDIENTS

• 1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 cup white sugar
• 3/4 cup peanut butter
• 1/2 cup butter
• 2 eggs
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/4 teaspoon salt

DIRECTIONS

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C).
2. In a bowl, cream together the butter, peanut butter, and sugar. Beat in the eggs, one at a time, then stir in the vanilla. Combine the flour, baking powder and salt; stir into the peanut butter mixture. Roll into balls and place onto a unprepared cookie sheet. Press with fork to flatten cookie and to create criss-cross pattern.
   
3. Bake for 10 to 15 minutes in the preheated oven. Shorter time window for cookies will be soft and chewy, longer for crispier cookies. Allow cookies to cool on baking sheet for 5 minutes before removing to a wire rack to cool completely.

Super Sonntag

Saturday, I ran around all day - doing errands, cleaned the apartment, got my hair cut finally. Dan got back from France around 8:30 p.m. Good day. Today we did pretty much the opposite, got up late, and hung around the apartment, laundry and cooked and watched tv. Here is a picture of me with dinner that Dan thought would be nice to post (apartment hair and all).

My books came

only a month late. My Halloween-scary-book spirit has departed, I'll still take the books.

We have honest neighbors; the mailbox disarray at the apartment complex:

Weekend review

I forgot the camera (boo) but the weekend was really great. We went shopping on Saturday. I like shopping in France more than Germany because I understand more of the signs, and of course I have Dan to translate.

Biggest oddity, new for both of us, was at the biggest store we went into, Auchan (think French Walmart). As people enter the store, there is a machine which seals any bags you are bringing into the store. It is just a press with heat, and if you wish they provide clear bags you can put over your bag, if it's not plastic or you don't want to ruin it. I guess this is to assure the cashier that you didn't slip anything into your other shopping bags.

Dinner on Saturday was terrific, had dinner at a Thai place near the water in Cergy. Dan had garlic shrimp and I had chicken curry. The dishes were excellent, I would definitely go back, too bad it's in Cergy not Stolberg. We tried another place for dessert, also by the harbour.

Sunday we relaxed, until the mad car ride to the train station. Paris is the worst place to drive that I've seen - I'm sure there are worse, but it was maddening yesterday. We had ourselves an hour cushion and still needed more time. There was some outdoor street market going on, about 2 km outside of the Gare du Nord train station where I was leaving from. We drove a total of 200 m in 30 minutes time. There was only one train running to Aachen on Sunday, so if I had missed it, that would have been it until Monday. So with about 5 minutes left before the train leaves, Dan gets pretty gutsy and pulls into the bus lane, and then over into a delivery parking spot. He grabs my bag and we run, literally, as fast as my cowboy-booting feet can boogy, the last 500 meters to the front and inside, down the station where they are waving me to get on because it's leaving NOW. I leap inside, and that's it. I don't think it can be any closer than that. I was on the wrong part of the train, and had to switch in Brussels about 1.5 hrs later so I could have a real seat. Oh la la, Paris!

No, but seriously, we have decided we'll try the Metro/RER subway route next time. As long as there is no strike, it should be a more sane way to get in and out of that train station.

Tourist side note:
According to my googling, Gare du Nord train station is quite famous, as train stations go, it is the busiest train station in Europe and is in the Bourne movies 1 and 3, and in Ocean's Twelve.

Paris this weekend!

Taking the train to meet up with Dan in France at the end of the week. I'm excited. I was somewhat anxious about the big train to Paris when I did it the first time. Worried I would do the wrong thing, like there were unwritten rules about traveling by train that I was never taught. And I think there are these rules, but like most things, you watch and listen and learn. So anyway, I'm so excited to be seeing Dan, and it is also a good 3 hours I can put into a book of my choosing.

Side note: The Thalys (the train company doing runs from Germany to Paris-Nord) website, really needs some work. It doesn't work with Firefox (you can look for tickets but some functionality currently isn't working), and even in IE, it shows there are errors on the pages. Doesn't exactly exude clean and safe to me.

Cupcakes

I made these cupcakes and Dan and I both like them quite a lot so I'm sharing the recipe:

VANILLA CUPCAKES

INGREDIENTS

• 1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 cup white sugar
• 1/2 cup butter
• 2 eggs
• 1/2 cup milk
• 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
• 1 3/4 teaspoons baking powder

DIRECTIONS

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Grease and flour 9x9 inch pan or paper cupcake pan.
2. In large bowl, cream together the sugar and butter. Beat in the eggs, slowly, then the vanilla.
3. Combine flour and baking powder, add to the creamed mixture and mix well. Finally add the milk to the batter, it should become smooth. Pour batter into the pan.
4. Bake for 30 to 40 minutes in the preheated oven for the cake. For cupcakes, bake 20 to 25 minutes. Cake is done when it springs back to the touch and turns a golden color.

Boots on the brain

Newly acquired: