recipe not!Friday
Jul. 30th, 2014 01:43 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kindkitA while back I bought three jars of knock-off Nutella (not quite as good as the real thing, but not bad) at the dollar store, so I've been looking for ways to use it besides spreading it on Lattemiele cookies from Trader Joe's (highly recommended, by the way) or, um, eating it with a spoon. This morning I baked some Peanut Butter Nutella Swirl cookies. They're nice, but the Nutella kind of disappears among all the other ingredients (the fact that I added a bunch of chocolate chunks probably didn't help) and the cookie dough is quite dry, creating a crumbly, shortbread-like cookie whereas I wanted something softer.
If anybody has Nutella recipes that highlight the Nutella itself, please link me. I know crepes with Nutella are the obvious thing, but I don't have the right kind of pan to make crepes and I'm not going to try.
For lunch, I used some frozen corn to make corn pakoras. I omitted the green chile because I didn't have one, omitted the fennel seed, and went for the medium onion option instead of the green onions. I didn't have enough oil to deep fry them, so I poured maybe 3/4 inch of oil into a saucepan and that worked very well, much better than when I've tried frying things like this in a skillet, where because of the size of the skillet you have to use a ton of oil to get any oil depth, and the shallowness of the skillet means you splatter oil everywhere, plus whatever you're frying often sticks. A key thing is not to make the pakoras too big--a gently rounded tablespoonful of dough works well--so that you can use nicely hot oil but the outside won't brown before the inside is cooked. I ate some of the pakoras with sweet mango chutney and sweet-and-sour lime pickle, and now I have lots of cooked pakoras to freeze and reheat in the oven.
And returning to baking, a while back I wanted to use up a bag of pecans I'd bought on sale, so I made Chocolate-Glazed Toffee Bars:
2/3 cup all purpose flour
1 1/2 tablespoons sugar
1/8 teaspoon salt
4 tablespoons (1/2 stick) cold unsalted butter, cut into pieces
2 teaspoons milk
1 1/2 cup chopped pecans
5 tablespoons unsalted butter, cut into pieces
1/2 cup packed brown sugar
2 tablespoons honey
1 tablespoon milk
1/8 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon vanilla
1/4 cup chocolate chips or chopped chocolate
Thoroughly mix the flour, sugar, and salt, then cut in the butter. (I did this in a food processor using very cold pieces of butter). Mix in the milk. This should make a dough that just barely holds together--you may need a little more milk. Pat the dough into a greased 8x8 inch pan, making an even layer. Refrigerate for fifteen minutes.
Preheat oven to 350 F. When the oven has come to temperature, bake the chilled dough for 10 minutes and set aside.
Toast the pecans lightly in a baking pan in the oven, or in a skillet on the stovetop. Set aside to cool.
In a medium sized, heavy saucepan, combine the 5 tablespoons butter, brown sugar, honey, milk, and salt, bring to a boil, and boil uncovered for 3 minutes. Remove from heat and stir in the pecans and vanilla. Spread the mixture evenly over the dough in the pan. Bake until the topping is bubbly, golden brown, and darkening slightly at the edges, about 17 to 20 minutes. Remove the pan to a rack and let cool for a minute or so. Sprinkle the chocolate on top. The heat from the pan will melt it and then you can spread it over the pecan layer. (I probably used more chocolate than the recipe calls for and did not regret it at all).
This has all the luscious goodness of a pecan chocolate pie but is quite easy. The bars can be refrigerated in the pan, covered in plastic wrap, and will keep very well that way, as I know because I got sick and ended up leaving the last few bars in the fridge for over a week. They were still delicious when I felt well enough to eat them.
If anybody has Nutella recipes that highlight the Nutella itself, please link me. I know crepes with Nutella are the obvious thing, but I don't have the right kind of pan to make crepes and I'm not going to try.
For lunch, I used some frozen corn to make corn pakoras. I omitted the green chile because I didn't have one, omitted the fennel seed, and went for the medium onion option instead of the green onions. I didn't have enough oil to deep fry them, so I poured maybe 3/4 inch of oil into a saucepan and that worked very well, much better than when I've tried frying things like this in a skillet, where because of the size of the skillet you have to use a ton of oil to get any oil depth, and the shallowness of the skillet means you splatter oil everywhere, plus whatever you're frying often sticks. A key thing is not to make the pakoras too big--a gently rounded tablespoonful of dough works well--so that you can use nicely hot oil but the outside won't brown before the inside is cooked. I ate some of the pakoras with sweet mango chutney and sweet-and-sour lime pickle, and now I have lots of cooked pakoras to freeze and reheat in the oven.
And returning to baking, a while back I wanted to use up a bag of pecans I'd bought on sale, so I made Chocolate-Glazed Toffee Bars:
2/3 cup all purpose flour
1 1/2 tablespoons sugar
1/8 teaspoon salt
4 tablespoons (1/2 stick) cold unsalted butter, cut into pieces
2 teaspoons milk
1 1/2 cup chopped pecans
5 tablespoons unsalted butter, cut into pieces
1/2 cup packed brown sugar
2 tablespoons honey
1 tablespoon milk
1/8 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon vanilla
1/4 cup chocolate chips or chopped chocolate
Thoroughly mix the flour, sugar, and salt, then cut in the butter. (I did this in a food processor using very cold pieces of butter). Mix in the milk. This should make a dough that just barely holds together--you may need a little more milk. Pat the dough into a greased 8x8 inch pan, making an even layer. Refrigerate for fifteen minutes.
Preheat oven to 350 F. When the oven has come to temperature, bake the chilled dough for 10 minutes and set aside.
Toast the pecans lightly in a baking pan in the oven, or in a skillet on the stovetop. Set aside to cool.
In a medium sized, heavy saucepan, combine the 5 tablespoons butter, brown sugar, honey, milk, and salt, bring to a boil, and boil uncovered for 3 minutes. Remove from heat and stir in the pecans and vanilla. Spread the mixture evenly over the dough in the pan. Bake until the topping is bubbly, golden brown, and darkening slightly at the edges, about 17 to 20 minutes. Remove the pan to a rack and let cool for a minute or so. Sprinkle the chocolate on top. The heat from the pan will melt it and then you can spread it over the pecan layer. (I probably used more chocolate than the recipe calls for and did not regret it at all).
This has all the luscious goodness of a pecan chocolate pie but is quite easy. The bars can be refrigerated in the pan, covered in plastic wrap, and will keep very well that way, as I know because I got sick and ended up leaving the last few bars in the fridge for over a week. They were still delicious when I felt well enough to eat them.
no subject
Date: 2014-07-30 08:25 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-08-01 01:46 am (UTC)