As most of you know, I recently moved to Gettysburg, PA for a job at the College. I’ve made a handful of friends and continue to meet people, but my office is somewhat isolated from the rest of the psych department. I don’t really know the people in the psych department that well, so what’s the best way to make friends…..? Why, bake cookies for them, of course! I decided that I would bake cookies and put them in the mail/supply room with a little note: “Please take a cookie, but if you do…come say hello to the baker!”

I’ve had this bottle of molasses that I use occasionally for my vegan banana bread, and I always wanted to make something else with it but California wasn’t really the place to make molasses cookies. The weather just was never right. Now that I’m in a place where it actually feels AND looks like fall, I think it’s appropriate for me to make this type of cookie. Besides, one of my friends here really likes molasses cookies so he’s going to judge these for their tastiness.

I bought Ann Hodgman’s cookbook, “Beat This!” from Borders this summer just before they closed (waaah), and I want to make 90% of the recipes in here. She has a recipe for “even better molasses cookies,” but it called for many ingredients that I didn’t feel like buying, so I used hers as a skeleton and tweaked it to make it my own. The biggest differences with my recipe are that I used butter instead of shortening, I used a mixture of darker sugars instead of white granulated sugar, and I added some cocoa powder. You could probably come up with your own blend of sugars and anything would work well….I’m guessing. It was my first time baking molasses cookies and I think they turned out awesome, so maybe it’s just a flexible cookie. Only screwed up one pan because I tried baking two sheets at a time, and the cookies on the bottom tray just wouldn’t crack. Then they burned. It’s hard to tell that they’re burning because the dough is so dark. That is probably a result of the sugars and type of molasses that I used.

Anyone ever heard of blackstrap molasses? Apparently some folks say that its only commercial use is in cattle feed, but I beg to differ. Molasses comes in different varieties, and blackstrap is what remains after the 3rd boil. It is the darkest kind of molasses and has a bittersweet flavor to it. I personally like that it doesn’t add much extra sweetness to the cookies, which makes them perfect for this kind of weather and to have with a glass of cider. I got the unsulphured kind, and I’m not even sure if they sold sulphured blackstrap molasses at Sprouts. I googled molasses cookies to compare mine to others, and mine have a richer, darker hue.

Anyways, these cookies were easy to make, and will probably turn out even better if you have more patience than I do:

Molasses Cookies

1 1/2 c. unsalted butter (at room temp)

1 c. dark brown sugar

1/2 c. demerara or turbinado sugar

1/4 c. golden brown sugar

just less than 1/4 c. raw agave nectar

3 medium (or 2 large) eggs

2 T. blackstrap molasses

3 c. all-purpose white flour

1 c. all-purpose whole wheat flour

4 t. baking soda

1/2 teaspoon salt

2 T. ground cinnamon

2 T. cocoa powder

1/2 t. allspice

1/4 t. ground nutmeg

1/2 t. ground black pepper

3/4 c. demerara or turbinado sugar (for rolling the cookies)

In a large bowl, cream together the butter and sugars. Add the eggs and molasses and mix well.

In a separate bowl, sift together the flour, baking soda, salt, spices and pepper. Slowly add the flour mixture to the molasses mixture and beat together.

Cover the dough with plastic wrap and stick in the fridge for at least an hour, up to 24 hrs.

10 minutes before you start placing the dough on the cookie sheet, preheat the oven to 375°F and line cookie sheets with silicon mats or parchment paper.

Roll the dough into balls the size of walnuts and dip (don’t roll) each one into the large-crystal sugar. Place the cookies 3 inches apart, with the sugar side facing up.

Bake for 9-12 minutes, or until the outsides of the cookies crack and the insides are still soft. You can tell the cookies are done when you go to slide the spatula underneath them and the entire cookie moves cleanly and keeps its shape.

Cool on racks and store in an airtight container.

Yield: about 6 dozen cookies

I think my trip to the farmer’s market in Gettysburg was doomed from the get-go. I came home from work, planning to leave directly for the market so that I could get some good produce before it was gone. Well wouldn’t you know it, I was tired when I got home….so I fell asleep for about 20 minutes. I woke up and realized that I was going to miss the farmer’s market, grabbed my stuff, hopped in the car and drove over. I almost biked, but it’s a good thing I didn’t. Because I forgot my wallet.

Went home, got my wallet, headed back to the farmer’s market, and I got quite the haul for only $10: half gallon of cider, 2 candy onions, 3 green peppers, 4 red peppers, 3 roma tomatoes, a pint of orange cherry tomatoes, and an eggplant.

Ahh, the eggplant. I know that I like eggplant, but I’ve never cooked it before. Apparently it’s a berry, and it goes bad pretty quickly if you don’t do anything with it. It has been sitting on my counter since Wednesday night, vexing me. What the heck am I going to do with this eggplant? I stopped thinking about the eggplant.

Dinnertime rolled around tonight and I was all set to eat a delicious peanut butter and jelly sandwich. I still have some early glow strawberry preserves from American Spoon Foods in my pantry, so I got pretty excited about this sandwich. And then I remembered the eggplant. It was sitting on my counter, a plump little demon, staring me down. Goodbye delicious PB&J, hello eggplant.

I took the least-effort approach and cubed the eggplant, then roasted it with some olive oil and black pepper in my ginormous toaster oven. Then, I diced some green peppers and onions and sauteed them real quick in some olive oil. Cooked up a half cup of couscous, added some dried basil, and threw everything together with a roma tomato and a tablespoon of AMAZING fig balsamic vinegar from Fustini’s. For all the whining I did about the stupid little eggplant, it actually turned out well. It was tasty, and now I have enough left for 2 or 3 more meals.

Here’s the recipe if you ever find yourself stuck with a devious eggplant in your kitchen.

Roasted Eggplant with Couscous

1 eggplant, cubed

1/2 c. chopped green pepper

1/2 c. chopped red onion

1 roma tomato

2 T. olive oil

1/2 c. couscous

1 c. water

1 T. butter

splash of fig balsamic vinegar (from Fustini’s! cherry would probably be good, too)

salt, pepper, basil to taste

Preheat oven to 425°F. Cut the eggplant into small cubes and lay out on cookie sheet lined with aluminum foil. Brush the eggplant with olive oil and sprinkle with ground pepper. Roast in oven for ~25 minutes, moving them around occasionally so they cook evenly.

Chop the onions and peppers and sautee in olive oil until done. Set aside.

While vegetables are cooking, bring 1 c. water and 1 T. butter to a boil. Add 1/2 c. couscous, stir, cover, and remove from heat. Let sit for 5-7 min, or until couscous has absorbed all the liquid. Sprinkle in chopped or dried basil and fluff with a fork.

Combine all the veggies in with the couscous and stir together. Add a splash of fig (or other) balsamic vinegar and mix together. Season to taste with salt and pepper.

Strawberries! Strawberries! More strawberries! I went to a BBQ just after I graduated, and I was looking for something easy and delicious to make. I found this recipe on smitten kitchen, who said “I hope this will be your summer cake,” and it absolutely is. It turns out, this batter works for great muffins, too. Thanks, smitten kitchen — I love this cake. The cake takes a long time to bake because it’s at such a low temp, but the strawberries turn to jam and it’s the most amazing thing ever. I feel like most baked goods need cinnamon in them because cinnamon makes everything better, so I added that, and then substituted turbinado sugar for the granulated sugar. I used a wooden spoon to cream together the butter and sugar instead of whipping it with an electric mixer. Here’s my version of the recipe, adapted from smitten kitchen with the few changes. I recommend the muffins.

Strawberry Summer Cake

6 T unsalted butter, room temperature
1 1/2 c flour
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1 T cinnamon
1 c plus 2 T turbinado sugar
1 large egg
1/2 c milk
1 tsp vanilla
1 pound fresh strawberries, hulled and halved

Preheat oven to 350°F. Butter a 9-inch deep-dish (or larger) pie pan or a muffin tray.

Whisk flour, baking powder, cinnamon and salt together in a small bowl. In a larger bowl, cream together the butter and 1 c sugar. Stir in the egg, milk and vanilla until combined. Add dry mixture gradually, mixing until just smooth.

Pour into prepared pie plate. Arrange strawberries, cut side down, on top of batter, as closely as possible in a single layer. I pressed mine into the batter a little bit and tried to jam as many of the strawberries in there as I could. Sprinkle remaining 2 T sugar over the berries. **Don’t forget to do this step! I almost forgot, and this is what turns the strawberries into delicious goo.

Bake cake for 10 minutes, then the oven temp to 325°F and bake until golden brown and a toothpick or knife comes out clean, anywhere from 50 min to 1 hr 10 min. Leave in pan and cool for as long as you can stand on a cooling rack. Cut into slices (or remove muffins) and enjoy!

I haven’t posted anything in my blog this past year because there has been no time. Between finishing up research and writing my senior thesis, there was no time to write blog posts, that is. Plenty of time to bake, though! I just graduated from Pomona, and now I’m back at it! While I apply for jobs and catch up on my reading this summer, I’m also cooking up some awesome stuff.

There is an abundance of strawberries this summer. It’s getting ridiculous — 97 cents for a pound of berries…I just can’t help myself! I’ve made strawberry cake twice already, strawberry muffins, strawberry milkshakes, and strawberry souffles (3 times!!!)

My friend Rachel was talking about souffles the other day, and so I got inspired. She is a very generous person and often lets me use her kitchen to bake things. I love friends like that! I had never made souffles before, so this could either fail miserably or be extremely delicious. Luckily…and maybe skillfully…it turned out to be the latter. I tried my luck again up at my godparents’ house up near San Jose – the pictures feature these souffles, because they were the prettiest. You guys have been nagging me to post the recipe for strawberry souffles on my blog, so here goes:

Strawberry Souffles

12 oz. fresh strawberries, about 3/4 of a pound package (trimmed, cored, cut in quarters)

1/2 c. granulated sugar (1/4 c + 1/4 c)

1 T. cornstarch

4 large egg whites

pinch of salt

Preheat the oven to 400°F. Butter and sugar (use powdered sugar) six small ramekins and put them in the fridge. In a food processor or blender, combine the strawberries, 1/4 sugar and cornstarch. Blend until smooth.

In a large bowl, beat the egg whites to soft peaks. (You will know the egg whites are ready when they get really fluffy and start to stick to the sides of the bowl. They won’t be foamy anymore, and when you pull the beaters up from the mixture, the peaks will set up, but the tops will fold over.) Now, add the 1/4 c sugar and pinch of salt, and continue beating the egg whites just until they form stiff peaks. Do not overbeat the eggs! They’ll become too dry. Whisk 1/3 of the strawberry mixture into the egg whites, and gently fold in the rest until evenly incorporated. Don’t overmix!

Fill the ramekins to the top (a small ladle works great), and use the back of a butter knife to level them. Discard the rest of the batter unless there is enough to fill another ramekin completely. Place the ramekins on a cookie sheet.

Bake for 14-17 minutes until the tops of the souffles are golden brown. They will puff up in the oven. Let the entire tops of the souffles turn golden brown, else when you pull them out of the oven the centers will sink. Use your oven light to keep an eye on the souffles — don’t be tempted to open the oven door! When they are done, carefully remove them from the oven and serve them immediately. Be gentle taking them out so they don’t fall. They will sink down a little bit as they cool.

I love strawberries — not just any strawberries, though…ripe strawberries.  Do you ever bite into a strawberry and find that it’s white in the middle?  The best thing you could ever do is pick your own strawberries, because you know they will be fully ripe.  Those berries are so delicate that it’s nearly impossible to ship them when they’re completely ripe.  They would just mush all over the place! Pomona has a small farm on campus, and during the summer the strawberry plants are just dripping with fruit.  I was able to pick some extremely ripe strawberries with a friend, and rather than eating them like candy I decided to whip up a few strawberry desserts.  Unfortunately, I do not own an ice cream maker at school, so I had to make do without.  Here is a great recipe for strawberry sage sorbet without a machine!

Strawberry Sage Sorbet

1 lb. (approx) strawberries, hulled and quartered

1/2 c. sugar

small handful of sage, chopped

1/2 c. water

Put 1/2 c water, 1/2 c sugar and sage in a small saucepan on stove. Bring to a boil, stirring occasionally. Let the sage syrup simmer for 10 minutes.  Meanwhile, puree the strawberries (I used an immersion blender).  Strain the blended strawberries into a mixing bowl to get rid of some of the seeds.  This will give the sorbet a smoother texture.  Pour the sage syrup through a strainer and into the strawberry puree so that you don’t have bits of sage in your sorbet.  Use the blender again to finish your unfrozen sorbet.  Pour into a shallow container, cover, and stick in the freezer.  After a few hours. your sorbet should be starting to freeze.  Stir the sorbet every few hours, and even blend again if you wish.  Overnight, the sorbet should freeze completely and you’re ready to enjoy!

I headed to the Santa Monica beach and farmer’s market with my friends over the weekend for the Summer Soulstice Festival. We got to hear some lovely bands (Woodstock and Tom Petty tribute bands) and see plenty of weirdos at the music festival. Before we went to hear the bands play, we sat by the water to get some sun and have a bite to eat. I’m a fan of packing lunch and paying $1-2 on ingredients versus waiting in line to spend more on a meal, so pasta salad was perfect.

Pasta salad is a great dish for picnics and potlucks as well, because it’s so easy! A wonderful summer meal because the veggies are crisp and, if chilled, it can really cool you off.  I didn’t use a recipe for this, but here are the ingredients I used in mine.

Whole Wheat Veggie Pasta Salad

1 c whole wheat rotini pasta

sliced black olives

broccoli

carrots

Roma tomatoes

green bell peppers

green onions

tossed in Newman’s Own balsamic vinaigrette

Pretty much my new favorite place in the village, with Yogurtland at a close second.  They’re located near 4th and Yale, across the street from Walters.  Elaine and Liz were walking around the village and found that CHEESE CAVE HAD OPENED!!!!  Thankfully, they called me right away and I biked down there as fast as I possibly could.  One of the owners (Marnie or Lyddie, I don’t remember) let us taste some delicious cheeses, and I even tried two blue cheese.  Let me just say that I had NO IDEA blue cheese could actually taste good.  My mind was blown.  I felt like Ratatouille tasting a multitude of different flavors in one little tiny bite of cheese!  To quote a friend who once stated this so eloquently on Top Chef Masters, it was “like an adventure in my mouth” =P

Of the cheeses that we tried, we purchased this Fromager d’Affinois, a French double-cream made from cow’s milk. It reminds me of brie, but a bajillion times better (who knew that was even possible).  We took it to Santa Monica on our beach trip to eat with a fresh baguette purchased from the farmer’s market, and we still haven’t finished it.  It spreads like butter, so a little bit goes a long way.  We bought 1/3 of a lb. and it ended up costing $6.  You can see in the pictures that it’s so oozy and gooey that it just sticks to the paper….***drool***

This was the first omelette I ever made!  Typically, I’m not a breakfast person, but I have a carton of egg whites and my own kitchen this summer, so why not?

Veggie Egg White Omelette

3 large egg whites

2 T. milk

salt, pepper and basil to taste

chopped green peppers, mushrooms and green onions

handful of shredded cheddar

Whisk together the egg whites, milk, salt, pepper and basil.

Lightly coat or spray skillet with oil and put on medium heat for one min.

Pour egg mixture into pan and sprinkle veggie and cheese filling either on one half or the middle 1/3 of the egg.  Cook until egg lifts easily from the sides of the pan.  Fold the omelette, let cook until cheese is melted, then slide off the pan onto plate.

Yummy!!!!!

I honestly don’t remember why I wanted to make mayonnaise.  I don’t have any in my house, but I didn’t really need it…..  I just felt like doing it. Recipes online call for different techniques — some are done by hand, some involve letting all the ingredients sit at room temperature for a while.  Because I have the power of an immersion blender, I attempted a quick and easy mayo, and let me tell you: it was a piece of cake!

Quick Mayonnaise

1 large egg

2 t. dijon mustard

1 T. lemon juice

200 ml (3/4 c + 1 T) canola oil (or another oil)

pinch of salt

Add ingredients into immersion blender container.  Blend until thickened.

So once I had the mayo, I didn’t know what to do with it.  I decided to make some chicken salad with this tasty mayo, but I didn’t have any grapes.  If you’ve read my previous posts, you know how much I love cherries (!!!).  They were cheaper than grapes at Sprouts last week, so I decided to get them and make myself some cherry chicken salad.

These were the ingredients I used in the chicken salad:

chicken (sauteed in olive oil, salt and pepper than cut up small), cherries (pitted and quartered), green onion sliced thin, half of a granny smith apple diced (I just like a little bit of crunch to the salad – celery would taste good too!), and my homemade mayonnaise.

The chicken salad tasted great on top of some lettuce, and it’s a nice, refreshing summer lunch!  Good on whole wheat toast, too.

If you don’t like mayo, I’m sorry.  Don’t hate on the mayo!

The peanut butter cupcakes and frosting were all gone, so naturally, my friends and I decided to make peanut butter fudge!  I couldn’t find the rest of my brown sugar, so we improvised and adapted it from this recipe for fudge from allrecipes.com.

Peanut Butter Fudge

1/2 c. butter

1 1/4 c. brown sugar

1 c. granulated sugar

2 T. molasses

1/2 c. milk

3/4 c. peanut butter

1 t. vanilla

3 1/2 c. confectioners’ (powdered) sugar, sifted

Melt butter in a medium saucepan over medium heat.  Stir in brown sugar, granulated sugar, molasses and milk.  Bring to a boil and boil for 2 minutes, stirring frequently.  Remove from heat.  Stir in peanut butter and vanilla.  Pour over confectioners’ sugar in a large mixing bowl and beat until smooth.  Pour into a 9×9 dish and chill for 1 hr 20 minutes, or until firm.  Cut into squares (or little slices, if you don’t want to end up eating it all in one night) and serve  NOM!