The Munchies Blog

After reading a posting on Chocolate & Zucchini about a cookie baking mix that is sold in glass jars, layered up like those “colored sand in a pictureframe” things, I decided that this would make a good present.

The cookie recipe I used is this one (I basically used the first one from allrecipes.com that looked okay and didn’t ask for raisins or anything like that).

Of course I had to try the cookie recipe first. What a good opportunity for my new cookie jar (from IKEA). I just fear they won’t last long — I really like them. Andreas doesn’t, though (”too much salt, too much butter”). But maybe that’s a good thing ;)

I don’t know if it’s actually going to work out with making cookies from this mix. After all, the original recipe says to mix the butter with the sugar first and add the other ingredients afterwards. But I guess with a food processor that doesn’t matter too much.

If I ever hear what happened to the jar I gave away, I’ll write about it.

I’d seen a biscotti recipe on Cooking for Engineers a while ago, but I didn’t feel like trying it out. One problem is that it’s difficult to get hold of untreated oranges here, and in addition to that I’m not too fond of aniseed. When I stumbled over a recipe for Chocolate Biscotti a few days ago, I decided to give it a try. “Everything’s good if it’s made of chocolate”, after all ;)

I followed the recipe, with one exception: I didn’t have much time when I made them, so I baked the slices standing upright, thus saving the “flip slices over and bake for another 20 minutes” step. The biscotti were fairly nice, but I think I made the slices too thick (about 1.5 cm, should be 1 cm). As I used the food processor to mix the dough, I might have overmixed it a bit (I hadn’t seen the warning about that on Cooking for Engineers until it was too late). I’m definitely going to make them again, but then I’ll add almonds or walnuts to the dough. Chocolate is nice, but the biscotti would be even better with a bit of texture variation, I think.

I’ve wanted to make panna cotta ever since I first tasted it. My only problem with the recipe I had was that it requires gelatin, which I do eat but prefer to avoid in my own cooking. Fortunately, I recently spotted an Agar-based gelatin replacement in a local supermarket, so I decided to give it a try.

Panna cotta as I know it is usually served with berry compote. Unfortunately, it isn’t exactly berry season at the moment. I was thinking about using frozen berries, but then I remembered the blood oranges that were lying around in the kitchen and decided to go for blood orange sauce instead.

The panna cotta turned out really well, and the combination with the blood oranges proved to be a good one. As usual with panna cotta, everyone would have liked larger servings (knowing full well it was better for them that they didn’t get more). The fruit sauce itself was so nice that people finished off the sauce leftovers with the rest of the grated white chocolate.

Vegetarian Panna Cotta
5 servings of 100 ml each

• 200 g cream (30% fat)
• 300 ml milk (3.2% fat)
• gelatin replacement (or gelatin) for 500 ml liquid
• 1 vanilla pod
• 50 g sugar
• pinch of salt

Pour the cream and milk into a small saucepan. Slit open the vanilla pod lengthwise and scratch out the seeds. Put the seeds and the pod into the saucepan. Stir in the sugar. Refer to the gelatin replacement’s packaging for usage instructions and use accordingly. The stuff I had could just be stirred into the mixture (the only requirement was that it had to boil for at least 2 minutes). Bring the mixture to a simmer and let it simmer for some 15 minutes. Stir occasionally.

Prepare 5 small molds (capacity 100 ml) by washing them out with cold water (I’m not sure why this step is required, but my original recipe included this. It might make it easier to flip the panna cotta out of the molds before serving). Fill the cream mixture into the molds, let cool down a bit, then refrigerate for at least 2 hours, better overnight.

Take the panna cotta out of the fridge about an hour before serving. Flip them out of the molds if you like (I didn’t). Serve with (warm or cold, I used warm) blood orange sauce and grated white chocolate (from about 15 g white chocolate).

Blood Orange Sauce
enough for 5 servings and some leftovers

• 5 blood oranges
• 1/2-1 Tsp sugar
• 2 tsp cornstarch

Put the orange juice and pulp into a small saucepan. Stir in the sugar and the starch and bring to a simmer. Let simmer for a few minutes. Taste and add more sugar if required. I had added too much sugar and tried to rescue things with about a teaspoon of lemon juice. I don’t think that made any difference though.

I just found a not-quite-serious Periodic Table of Desserts — “A Scientific and Rigorous approach to patisserie — in Full Color”.

That page also has links to flavor wheels to describe the taste of several foods and drinks, for example beer, wine, coffee, cheese, chocolate and, of all things, maple products.

On a related note: I just added Cooking for Engineers to our link section. The recipes there are written in a fairly “scientific” way, with pictures of the ingredients as well as of the finished food. One special thing on the site is the special tabular recipe layout (”patent pending”). This is difficult to describe, so head over and check it out, for example on today’s “Recipe File of the Day”, Simple Tiramisu.