Baked goods

Happy Fridayy Everyone.
Since you were all so thrilled about last weeks post, i figured we would stick with something more practical this week. Lets make some food, shall we?

This week we will cover some baked goods, both sweet and savory. Some slow roasted short ribs are super simple to make, as is Coq au Vin, which is something like "chicken in wine" in french. To top it off ill show you some equally as flavorful dessert items to end our slow cooked feast.

Lets jump straight into it shall we? We will start with the short ribs.

The kind you get at your favorite supermarket will do. While youre there, we will also need:

Onions
Carrots
Celery
A red wine to cook with
Beef broth
Some bayleafs
Fresh thyme

That about sums it up. The fresh thyme is optional, but one must never under estimate the power of fresh herbs. They offer such a richness in flavor to what ever you add them too. As far as red wine is concerned, use whatever you feel like. They say you should never cook with a wine that you wouldnt drink, but lets face it, we dont all have 100 bucks to drop on a bottle of wine. just to throw some shit in it(although the end product will be damn good if you go that route).
So as far as equipment goes, youll need a pot or pan deep enough to cover your short ribs in liquid. But before we do that we will cut our vegetables up. Carrots. onions and celery together are known as mirepoix(meer-a-pwah), and is traditionally one part carrots and celery to two parts onions. For this, depending on how many ribs you are cooking, you want enough to cover the bottom of whatever vessel you plan to cook in. But first, lets rough chop them. you can cut them into roughly one inch pieces(peel the carrots first, obviously). Once thats done, place those in the bottom of the intended cooking vessel. Pull out a sautee pan and get some oil. Coat the pan with the oil and get it hot. We are going to brown our short ribs before we put them in the oven. What we want to do while the pan is getting hot, is lightly dust our ribs in flour. Knock off whatever excess you can, and if your pan is hot, start placing them in your pan. We want the heat medium high so we get a nice brown, without letting our ribs burn easily. If need be, you might want a lid, cause the grease might spatter alot and we wouldnt want to make too big a mess. Just let the steam vent out, or we will end up steaming our ribs instead of browning them. While your ribs are browning, go ahead and sprinkle a little bit of salt and pepper on them. Once all sides are browned, place them in the pot/pan/tray you will be cooking them in, on top of the veggies.

Once all your ribs are browned and in your pan with your veggies, go ahead and season them again with a bit of salt and pepper. Before you discard your saute pan though, if the pan his hot still, shut the heat, and pour about a half a cup of wine in there. This is called "deglazing the pan" and helps remove all that flavor thats stuck to the bottom of the pan from the meat. All that good stuff is flavor! Fire the heat up once more, and once the wine starts to reduce, pour the whole thing over your ribs and veggies in their pan. Now you can get rid of that skillet. From here its pretty easy. I usually like to use equal parts of red wine and beef broth. Add enough liquid to cover the ribs, and then add two or so bay leaves, and if you bought the fresh herbs like thyme, throw the whole thing in there stem and all. Now were gunna wanna wrap this really tight in foil, and throw it in a 325 degree oven for a good three hours at least. You cant really over cook these things. I say three hours cause depending on the size of your ribs and what kind of oven you have, it could cook quicker. I usually check them after three hours, and if they arent super fork tender, then let them go another half hour to an hour. They are done when they melt in the forks arms.

Now for the most savory part. How ever you want to tackle it, strain the broth out of the pan, and place it in an appropriate sauce pot. Crank the heat and let this reduce down untill its thick enough to coat the back of a spoon. The term for this is Nappe(Nap-pay). As this reduces down the flavors concentrate and poured over anything its like PURE GOOOOOOOOLLLLLDDDD. I once used a 60 dollar bottle of wine becaus thats all my grandfather had in the wine cooler to make the chicken version of this, and the sauce was just absolutely fantastic. Like you could drink it. 10/10 would reccomend.

Anyway, once its reduced enough, by around half, then you are ready to serve. They go great with mashed potatoes, but a buttered pasta has also worked well for me. Make use of those vegetables too! They should be cooked nice and tender and soaked in wine and beef broth. Delish.

Speaking of the Chicken version of shortrbs, Coq au Vin is an equally as delectable, and just as simple. In stead of beef broth we will use chicken broth, and i usually go more like 60-40 on the wine to broth ratio. The other difference is they dont take as long to cook. After about 2 hours ill check them. They still want to be fork tender, so if it does take that long, then let them cook. I still use the same herbs(thyme is my favorite herb), and we still brown our chicken before we cook it. Also, you will want to use dark meat instead of white. Chicken breasts dont like to be cooked for long, while thighs and legs like to take their time. I like to use rice for these, but the other starches as mentioned above work just fine.

Lets move on to dessert. Over the past week, Ive made some fresh from scratch cakes that were so tasty. A number of years ago I learned a very good chocolate cake recipe which im told is origionally a Hersheys recipe. It has a few more steps than your box cake option, but the fact that its 100% from scratch makes a huge difference when people come to you with the compliments.

You will need the following(Makes three 9 inch pans):
4 cups CAKE flour
4 cups granulated sugar
1.5 cups cocoa powder
3 teaspoons baking powder
2 teaspoons baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
2 cups whole milk
1 cup canola or vegetable oil
4 eggs
4 teaspoons of vanilla
2 cups of boiling water

Seems like alot right? Its really not as intimidating as it looks. In a nutshell you mix the dry goods together, mix the wet goods together, then mix them both together and add the water in the end. But lets go over it step by step so we get it perfect.

First we will start off preheating our oven to 350 degrees. After that we should get our cake pans sprayed with pan spray so the cakes dont stick. If you were so inclined, you could make cupcakes, or use two bundt pans(the ring shape ones) and get two small bundt cakes out of this recipe.

Okay, now for the fun part. First start off by putting about three cups of water in a pot and on the stove to boil. Then combine all your dry ingredients in to a small bowl and using a whisk give them a quick stir. Using some sort of sifting device(a mesh strainer will do if you dont have a sifter), sift those mixed try ingredients into a larger bowl. Once thats done set that aside. Next, combine the wet ingredients minus the water into a large enough vessel to hold them. If you have a 4 cup measuring cup, this works perfectly, because all together everything comes out to 4 cups. (two for the milk, one for the oil, one for the eggs and the vanilla is just a few teaspoons). Once those are combined, add them to your dry ingredients, mixing until combined. Then, carefully, you will want to add the two cups of boiling water. I had you put about 3 cups in the pot, because if we put two cups in the pot and it was boiling, by the time we got back to it it would have boiled down to less than two cups, right? So anyway, add the two cups we need, and mix to combine again. The boiling water is intended to boost the flavor of the cocoa. When everything is mixed the batter will look very loose, not thick like the box cake stuff. Split the batter into your preferred cake pans of choice, and place them in your oven.

We will set the timer for 20 minutes. This recipe tends to cook fast, so I set the timer that short so i can check and give more time if need be. Remember, not everything has a set time to cook. Hence the reason we use the timer as a reminder and not a guide.

You know your cakes are done when the toothpick comes out clean, or, if the cake starts to pull away from the sides of the pan. Pull them out, let them cool for about 20 minutes, and then flip them out onto a cooling rack.

From here you can top them however you want. If you went the 3 round pan option, fresh whipped cream works wonders. The frosting you get in stores works great too(and should be your option for cupcakes), and if you made bundt cakes, a simple orange glaze works well.

For whipped cream, you will need a quart of heavy cream, half a cup of sugar, and vanilla. Combine all three, and whisk it. When whipping cream, you want to whisk it on the highest speed you can(without it going all over the place, you probably have to increase speed gradually), until "stiff peaks" form. Stiff peaks are when you pull the whisk out, the cream holds its shape. If you decide to do it by hand..... God bless you.

A glaze is simple to do, and easy to correct if you mess up. Its basically powdered sugar, and a small amount of liquid. I use orange juice for orange glaze. Start out with a cup of powdered sugar. Start off with a teaspoon of juice, and mix untill the glaze starts for form. At this point its up to you. Add more juice to make a thinner glaze, and if you go too far, add more powdered sugar to thicken it. Pour it over your bundt cake, grab a glass of milk, and dig in.

Thats all for this week. If you live alone, theres probably enough food here to last you a few days. Especially the cake. It stays moist for a pretty good amount of time. This time, the cake is indeed not a lie.