Coconut Cream Tart

I broke down and bought some little 4″ tart pans. I shall be making all sorts of little tarts in the near future. For now, all I’ve made is this little coconut cream tart.

It’s made with my now standard coconut cream pie recipe which involves a homemade crust made from crushed oatmeal, chocolate, and coconut cookies. The crust is topped with a thin layer of chocolate ganache and the ganache is topped with a vanilla coconut custard and the custard is topped with lots of whipped cream which is topped by toasted coconut.

The pie we made for Easter had some serious whipped cream issues. We used a recipe for non-weepy whipped cream from Baking Illustrated. I’d made this recipe just the week before for the whipped cream part of the Black Forest cake I made. It turned out fine. When we made it for the coconut cream pie, it weeped and ran and so forth. We whipped it again and put it on ice for its trip across the state…the plan was to top the pie with the whipped cream once we got to Harrisonburg. Guess what? Yeah, the stupid whipped cream was runny again. So we whipped it again and apologized to everyone for the runny whipped cream on the pie. No one seemed to mind as it tasted good.

So, the next day I experimented with the tart pictured here. I wanted to take pictures of it and runny whipped cream would not do. So I whipped more cream and this time I added a touch of unflavored (and dissolved) gelatin to it. The trick worked and I have now conquered the weepy whipped cream. The whipped cream on this tart was still pretty solid several days later. Hooray!!

We went camping in the Outer Banks yesterday. It was a little cold and a little bit rainy but still fine. I was a bit whiny early in the day because my allergies were acting up and my eyes were itchy…but I found some Visine at a convenience store and the day got better. We used the boyfriend’s new tent (see here for our last camping misadventure) and it was fantastic. It was easy to set up, it didn’t collapse and it kept the rain away from us. What more could we want out of a camping trip? Oh, yeah…a hot shower. We got that as well as we stayed at a private campground with hot water.

We built a fire at the campsite and grilled Italian sausages for dinner. The boyfriend was amazed to learn that I was a Girl Scout for years and knew how to build a blazing fire. He kind of accused me of lying about being a Girl Scout and I could have sworn it was something I’d mentioned in the past. I guess not.

To top it all off, we made S’mores with Nutella for dessert last night…the recipe for these was found in the grilling cookbook Alison gave me for Christmas. They were delicious and much superior to using a Hershey’s bar for the chocolate as there were no unmelted chocolate pieces in the S’more. While eating these, I decided that I’m going to attempt to make a S’mores pie or tart this week. I’ll post details if I succeed.

In other news, I’m pretty excited about a picture of the chocolate and peanut buttercream cupcakes I posted on Flickr. I posted the picture to the Slashfood group and it became their Food Porn Daily picture of the day on the Slashfood website on Thursday (March 27th). Pretty cool, huh? I knew this was something that could happen because all of the pictures posted to the Slashfood group will be considered…I just didn’t actually think one of my pictures would be chosen.

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Chocolate Cupcakes with Peanut Buttercream Frosting

First, the food. These are chocolate cupcakes with peanut buttercream frosting. The recipe is from Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World. I used their basic chocolate cupcake recipe and added a little peanut butter, a little espresso powder and some Reese’s peanut butter chips to the batter. All worked well. I also used half normal cocoa powder and half Hershey’s Special Dark cocoa powder…the Special Dark stuff is why the cupcakes are soooooo dark.

The frosting is pretty much a normal buttercream…with a little less sugar and shortening and a good amount of peanut butter. The recipe also called for molasses to punch up the peanut butter flavor. I used it and my god is this good frosting.

I wanted to make some maple walnut bar cookies today but I kind of ran out of time as we’ve got plans this evening. I’ll make them soon…and I may not have had enough maple syrup anyway.

The food part is over. Now on to other subjects…

The boyfriend’s house is now in progress. Slow progress but progress all the same. They’re currently working on the foundation.

I took Easter off for the what I believe is the first time in 9 years…we drove across the state and spent the day with the boyfriend’s family. I had fun and only had to meet two new people. We spent the afternoon eating and playing games. Apples to Apples is a fantastic game that utilizes my sense of humor pretty well.. I’m going to have to get it for myself soon.

I still haven’t taken any pictures of myself wearing my Chevron Scarf. I’ve knit about a quarter of a cardigan for myself in the last couple weeks. I’ll post a picture the progress once it’s done enough to see what it is. Right now, it’s just a large knitted blob.

That’s about all from here…nothing too exciting…I’ve just been busy. We’re thinking about going camping this weekend so maybe I’ll have some wacky tales to tell about that soon. With luck, none of these tales will involve a collapsed tent.

Oh, one more thing. I don’t like the singer Jason Mraz. I kind of think he’s a twerp. But I like his new song, “I’m Yours”. I probably only like it because it’s a goofy love song that sounds a little bit like it could be a Jack Johnson song. It upsets me to like a Jason Mraz song…but I do. That’s my guilty admission of the day.

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Cheddar & Garlic Biscuits, originally uploaded by meliass.

It’s a blog entry! With a picture of food. Sorry it’s been a while.

I saw these biscuits at the blog Joyful Abode a couple of weeks ago and have wanted them ever since. I don’t like Red Lobster but their biscuits are delicious and addictive. And now I can make them myself.

I used the basic buttermilk biscuit recipe from Baking Illustrated…I didn’t have any buttermilk so I used regular milk and some sour cream in its place. They turned out fine.

I’ll post more about these soon. Along with more food pictures…but for now I wanted to say hi and let you know I’m still alive and cooking.

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Blueberry Muffins, originally uploaded by meliass.

At least I don’t think there is…one mouse is gone and with luck there are no other mice.

In the last year, I’ve started waking up much earlier than I ever have before (at least most of the time…) and as a result of waking up earlier, I’m often hungry earlier in the day. So I kind of eat breakfast now…which I didn’t even do for most of my childhood.

As a result of the kind of eating breakfast thing, I decided that I need to keep grab and go things on hand. These blueberry muffins are the result of that decision.

The recipe is from Baking Illustrated and I didn’t alter it a bit…other than I may have used slightly more blueberries than the recipe stated. The blueberries are frozen wild blueberries from Trader Joe’s. These are pretty good muffins and I’m going to go ahead and blame that on the 1 1/4 cups of sour cream in the batter. Sour cream makes baked goods delicious.

In other baking news, those molasses spice cookies I posted about in my last entry taste better today than they did when they were just a day old. I think all the spices in the cookie have had a chance to permeate the whole cookie. Yum.

i took some pictures of myself wearing the Chevron Scarf today and they were pretty dreadful. I’ll try again tomorrow.

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But before I tell you about that, how about some cookies?

These are Molasses Spice Cookies from Baking Illustrated. I’ve made them at least a few times now and they’re obviously pretty tasty. These were made for the boyfriend to take to work. He needed some baked goods for a birthday lunch for his boss on Monday. On Sunday night when we got back from DC, he didn’t particularly want to make anything. I’ve offered to bake stuff for him before so he called me on this favor on Sunday night…which was fine. I made a double batch so that I could keep half of them for myself. That reminds me, I forgot to ask him if he pretended that he baked the cookies himself. Not that they’re impressive cookies and not that I care or anything.

The recipe for these cookies is one that I’ve followed to the letter all 3 times I’ve made them. That’s kind of surprising for me. These are also the cookies that call for a 1/4 teaspoon of finely ground black pepper. Weird but good. When I made them in the past, I rolled them in regular granulated sugar which just kind of melted into the cookie…this time I used turbinado (or raw) sugar and that made the cookies a little more visually appealing. Or so I think.

With all of this cooking and baking and subsequent photography, I feel the need to buy props. Like colorful plates and bowls as pictured above. They were cheap at Target and now I’m on the prowl for more. I also plan to buy some colorful paper to use as backgrounds for some pictures…I’ll pick that up the next time I get near a Michael’s. I guess this photography thing is turning into a full-fledged hobby if I’m buying props.

I’m not sure that I’ve mentioned my homemade cheese here yet. Here it is. Homemade mozzarella rolled with thinly sliced Virginia ham. I took kind of crappy pictures of it as we were guests at someone’s apartment and there were about to be people I don’t know very well around and I didn’t particularly want them to think I was weird for taking pictures of my food. Even if I am weird and take lots of pictures of my food.

Anyway, this is my third try with the cheese and I’m definitely getting better at it. The kit I bought from cheesemaking.com was relatively cheap and contains enough supplies to make close to 40 pounds of cheese. The only cost involved beyond the price of the kit is a gallon of milk for each pound of cheese. So it’s more expensive than buying mozzarella…but it sure is fun to tell people that you made the cheese yourself. I’ve made it with both whole and 2% milk. The whole milk cheese was super rich and almost spreadable. The boyfriend loved it. As did several work people that tried it. I prefer the 2% kind…it’s more like normal mozzarella cheese. Stay tuned for more cheesemaking…I might try ricotta next.

This is a blueberry pie made by the boyfriend for our trip to DC last weekend. I claim to not particularly like blueberries. This might be a lie as this pie was pretty delicious. And I made blueberry muffins for myself last night…maybe it’s just raw blueberries I dislike?

There is a mouse in the boyfriend’s apartment. This is problematic for a few reasons other than the fact that there’s a mouse in his house. First is that his apartment is literally across the hall from mine. Meaning that I could just as easily have a mouse in my house (although I find this highly unlikely since I am so obsessive-compulsive and insist that ALL food in my kitchen and pantry be completely sealed in canisters or Ziplocs). Another problem with the mouse is that all cooking and eating is taking place in my apartment until we have a dead mouse…meaning that I have a lot of random things in my kitchen right now. But the most important problem with the mouse is that the boyfriend left this morning for a week in Seattle. Meaning that the mouse and its death are now my responsibility. Ugh.

The boyfriend first discovered the rodent last Friday morning and promptly set traps for it. We didn’t catch the mouse. The mouse apparently doesn’t like peanut butter. Or Nutella. Bread and cheese are acceptable. So, we have a picky and smart mouse capable of eating around the Nutella to get the bread. I bought some glue traps. The mouse pushed them aside. Last night I duct taped the glue traps to the floor. I also set up a mouse trap with cheese surrounded my duct taped glue traps. The mouse ate the cheese off of one trap and hasn’t touched the cheese on the trap surrounded by glue traps. If I don’t catch him tonight, I think I’m going to buy some poison. We didn’t want to resort to poison because we don’t want the thing to die in the wall he’s living in…but I’m getting desperate. I want him dead. A guy at work offered his cat…I’m tempted but that’s complicated. Wish me luck in my mouse-killing adventures. All I want to know is why we had to find the mouse when the boyfriend is going out of town?

I’m sure there’s more to write about…so I’ll do that tomorrow. I did finish my Chevron Scarf last weekend. I might take pictures of myself in it tomorrow if I feel motivated enough to set up the tripod. I started the Koolhaas hat…I’m not so sure about it. I think I’ve messed up the pattern somehow and the cabling annoys me. I need to figure out how to cable it without the use of a cable needle.

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