Meat Cupcakes!

And my posting continues to slip... so first, some life news. I have a string of certification tests over the next couple of weeks with the first one tomorrow so I may be distracted and posting may suffer. My apologies in advance.

But to make up for it... meat cup cakes!

Rachel: I think we should make meatloaf this week.
Me: What about meat cup cakes?
Rachel: ... what?
Me: It's meatloaf... but CUP CAKES! We can use mashed potatoes as frosting!
Rachel: ... OK, I'm in.

So, we (and by we I mean Rachel, thanks honey!) made meat cup cakes... which it turns out is actually EASIER to make than meat loaf.

Step 1: find a meat loaf recipe
Step 2: make meat loaf mix
Step 3: put mix into cupcake wrappers and/or into cupcake tin. REMEMBER: meat doesn't rise, so if you want a dome shape, you have to make it!
Step 4: bake for 1/3-1/2 the normal meatloaf time
Step 5: Profit! I mean, Cup Cakes!

The little red bit on top is ketchup, but you could probably also put that in the core for molten goodness. Add other toppings like mashed potatoes, cheese, etc. as desired.

Plus, our meat cup cakes were actually HEALTHY. Did you hear that? HEALTHY MEAT CUP CAKES.

My mind, is blown.

Until next time...

"But when the time comes that a man has had his dinner, then the true man comes to the surface."
- Progress in Medicine speech by Mark Twain, 1902

How to Bake Heffezopf

So, for those long-time readers of mine (hrmmm... that makes pretty much all of you, doesn't it?), you may remember this post from way back at the beginning, where I told you all how to make my Oma's delicious Heffezopf (jeez I hope I am spelling that right...)

Anyway, a few of you remarked that those instructions, umm, kind of sucked. And you were right. Looking back at it I couldn't remember how to make the sweet bread for the life of me and had to call my Oma up just to make sure I was on the right track.

So I'm here to rectify my mistake. This past Friday I usurped Mr. Lurie's kitchen and went about baking Heffezopf Oma-style, i.e. in one huge batch. Here's how I did it:

Ingredients:
4-6 lbs flour (lower for whole wheat, higher for white, though I'd recommend non-whole wheat flours until I get the peculiarities of the WW recipe down)
4-5 yeast packets
2.5 cups of sugar
2.25 sticks of butter
2 cups of milk
5 eggs
Salt to taste

Oven preheat: 375. Do this after the dough has risen.

This should make 4-5 loaves, depending on how large the loaves are.

Step 1:
Pour about 2/3s of the flour into a large mixing bowl. Make a small impression on the peak of the flour pile, not unlike a volcano:

Step 2:
Mix the yeast packets into hot water and pour on top of the flourcano. It should look like the volcano has spewed forth liquid hot magma:

Step 3:
In a sauce pan mix up the milk, sugar and 2 sticks of butter and put on mid-low heat. Stir to make the sugar/butter dissolve into the milk and continue to heat until the butter has completely melted. Save the butter wrappers for a later step.

Step 4:

While the butter is melting beat 4 of the eggs. When the butter is melted pour the beaten eggs into the sauce pan and let it heat for a bit on medium.

Step 5:
EDIT: because I am an idiot sometimes and forgot that really hot things and yeast don't mix, PLEASE COOL THE EGG/BUTTER/MILK DOWN BEFORE POURING ON THE FLOUR. Make sure it is luke warm before pouring!

Step 6:
Now we stir the dough, letting the flour absorb all of the water. Add flour as needed until it gets firm enough that you can use your hands.

Step 7:
Once it is firm enough, coat your hands in flour and pounding it with the heel of your hand, flopping it over, and pounding it again until it has a smooth consistency.

Step 8:
Once the dough has been beaten into smootheness, gather the dough into a hemisphere and then cover to let it rise for about an hour.

Step 9:
After it has risen, eat some of the dough. It is delicious.

Step 10:
Tear/slice out a loaf-sized chunk of the dough from the rest, then tear/slice that into two equally sized halves.

Step 11:
For rectangular bread pans: Roll the two halves into long pieces roughly the length and combined width of your baking pan. Then braid the two loves together, like so:

For round bread pans you can simply make a glob of dough in a hemispheric shape. You can also add details to these kinds of breads by cutting with a knife, like this:

Step 12:
Using the butter wrappers and the quarter stick of butter grease the sides and bottom of your bread pans. You don't have to use all of the butter, but make sure that all surfaces are greased.

Step 13:
Place your braided/glob of dough into it's bread pan. Repeat steps 10-13 as needed to use up the rest of your dough.

Step 14:
Beat another egg, then using a basting brush (or a spoon if necessary) coat the top and sides of your doughs with the beaten mixture. This will keep your bread from burning and give the crust nice coloring and texture.

Step 15:
Place your loaves in the oven and let them bake for 45 minutes to an hour. Check in every so often- if they look like they are drying too much brush them with more beaten egg.

Step 16:
Once they look like below, take them out to cool. Fresh, warm Heffezopf tastes the best, so be ready to sacrifice one to the ravenous hordes!

Storage:
Make sure to wrap your Heffezopf to prevent it from drying out and going stale. You can also place them in Ziploc bags and freeze them for later consumption or for mailing to friends and family.

Eating:
Heffezopf is great by itself or covered in a variety of toppings, my two favorites being butter and maple cream sugar. I would recommend against toasting as the moistness of the bread is one of its selling points, so reheating in a microwave is recommended. Try out your own combinations, and enjoy!

Pizza, Playing, and Perforation

So, in the past five days I have been playing a lot of board games with my free time, in particular Arkham Horror, Heroscape, and of course the old stand by, Magic. These were the main activities of my Thursday and Friday, and on Saturday I continued the theme by going to pester Pechous at his game store, Chaos Games. They have a pretty cool selection (though their Magic stuffs are a bit overpriced), and they have some really cool promotions. On Wednesdays they have an open board game night with a ten dollar buy in. The store people then take a game off the shelf, open it, and the participants play a game of it. Whoever wins gets to take the game home. Pretty awesome, eh? I might go to Friday Night Magic in the future, though I will probably wait until Shards of Alara comes out... yay exalted critters! Also, later that night Jason, Caroline, Brandon, Rachel and I all went out to the Chatterbox Pub in St. Paul, which not only has a wide selection of classic video and board games but also has homebrewed ginger ale, rootbeer, and several microbrew beers. Plus, awesome sweet potato fries and reasonable prices.

Continuing the theme on Sunday I participated in the first session of our Vampire game. I, Massimo, a glassblower on the lam from Venice in Granada arrived in town with my twin mortal brother Niccolo and managed to glean all sorts of information about the city from my many contacts, learn about my competitors in the lead business, meet a man who calls himself the Prophet of Sin, and successfully woo the associate Prince of the city, a lovely lady who styles herself as the "Lady of Shadows" because I am a)damn good looking and b) awesomely rich and c) know how to make gifts for the ladies, such as a black glass dagger doped lightly with silver and gold with the arabic word for shadow written in silver inside the blade. Damn straight.

But I've been doing some non-geeky stuff as well. On Friday night I went with Rachel to hang out with her Admission Possible people at a party. It was pretty fun, they had good beer, and amazing munchies (best spinach dip ever!). We went from there to Brandon, Carl, Peter and Hillary's apartment to watch 21 (baaad movie is baaad) and chat for a while. Apparently Brandon, peter and Hillary are moving to a place that is 3 blocks from ours, so that's pretty cool.

On Sunday I went to see Tropic Thunder. That was a fairly ridiculous movie that had the right amount of ridiculousness but needed two things: more Robert Downey Jr. and less Jack Black... especially less almost-naked Jack Black.

Today I went to my first day of CTEP work, which was just orientation. I signed a lot of forms, learned about the organization, and ate a lot of good food. At the end of the session therewas still a lot of food left, and since we had gyros for lunch I got to take home two huge serving trays full of onions, lettuce, tomatoes and lamb. Of course the only thing I could do with these heaping helpings of food was to make pizza, which thanks to Mr. Food's Pizza 1-2-3 I know how to do!
I decided to do a variation on the traditional cheese pizza by whipping up some wheat dough with crushed red peppers and placing spaghetti sauce, lamb, mozzarella, onions, and tomatoes on top of the pizza. After cooking I put lettuce on top of the pizza for ambience and to give the false impression of nutritional value. This pizza, like the stuffed eggplant one, received rave reviews from the house, and was compared to "heaven in pie form" by at least two different house mates.

Yeah, I've got a bit of an ego- so sue me.

The recipe for the dough is as follows:
Take 2 1/4 cups of flour (all-purpose) and mix it with 1 package (1/4 ounce) of yeast and 1 teaspoon of salt in a non-stick bowl. Then, in a seperate glass, mix 1 cup of very warm water, 1 teaspoon of sugar, and 1 tablespoon of olive oil. Pour the mix into the flour mix and mix it all together (yay mixing!) Knead the dough until it is fairly uniform in texture and appearance and leave it in the bowl to rise for 35 to 40 minutes.
After this time punch the dough down and let it sit for another 10 minutes. Now you should be ready to spread the dough onto your baking sheet (coated with some non-stick substance hopefully!) and make your pizza.

To make wheat dough, replace 1 cup of all-purpose flour with wheat, and to add crushed red peppers just add 1 1/2 teaspoons of crushed red pepper to the flour mix.

For cheese pizzas, I recommend baking for 15-17 minutes at 450. For stuffed pizzas, like my eggplant pizza (which has two crusts draped around the filling), bake for 35-45 minutes at 400. And speaking about that recipe, why don't I give it to you?

Take some olive oil and heat in a large skillet on medium. Add 4 minced garlic cloves and saute for about 1 minute, then add a large chopped onion and the peeled and cubed contents of two eggplants. Saute this for 15-17 minutes, then pour in 1 1/4 cups of pizza or spaghetti sauce, 2 teaspoons of salt and 1/2 teaspoon of pepper and stir well. Pour this mix on top of one pizza crust, then place the other crust on top of the mixture and pinch the edges together. Now bake as above and enjoy!

That's about it for now; tune in later this week for more Americorps postings and delicious recipes for lamb! Until next time...

"When I'm playful I use the meridians of longitude and parallels of latitude for a seine, and drag the Atlantic Ocean for whales. I scratch my head with the lightning and purr myself to sleep with the thunder."
- Life on the Mississippi

State Fair, New Deliciousness, and Pi

So, on Friday night Rachel, Becky, Becky's friend Dan, Jason, Caroline and I all went out to the Minnesota State Fair. And let me tell you, the place was packed.
It seemed like everyone had come out for the same purpose as us- to pay a lot of money for really tasty food that we probably shouldn't have eaten. My tally for the fair was:
an apple cider float with cinnamon ice cream
buffalo and peppers on a stick
wild rice corn dog on a stick
garlic french fries
deep fried cannoli
mini doughnuts
peanut butter gelato
and, by far the most ridiculous of all (even more ridiculous than spaghetti and meatballs on a stick) was the following. So, we were walking down one street trying to get to our meeting place, and we began randomly naming off foods on a stick that would never work. There was peanut butter on a stick (I believe it can work!), soup on a stick, etc. As we turn the corner, I jokingly name hotdish on a stick. Of course, the first thing that greets my eyes is this:
What it is is potato and meatball hotdish that has been deep fried, put on a stick, and served with mushroom bisque dipping sauce. It was quite delicious, and the same place offered something called an Uffda treat as well. For those not in the know, "uffda!" is the word said by stereotypical Minnesotans as an exclamation of surprise, enjoyment, disgust, etc. What an Uffda treat is is cheesecake placed inside a waffle bowl, smothered in caramel and drizzled with pecans. I ordered one at the same time as another guy, so the entire booth was soon yelling out "Uffda, Uffda Uffda!" pretty regularly and raucously. Needless to say, it was pretty good.

We didn't do much else at the fair besides walk around, pet the goats, and take a glorified ski lift from one section of the park to another. Still, it was pretty fun, and my body almost died. Yay!

The next day I didn't do much; just sat around the house and tried to complete a webcomic that I was reading. It's really good, and I suggest anyone who's into those to check it or its sequels out, as both are definitely entertaining. What I did do, however, is make macaroni and cheese!
What you do is take 1/2 + pounds of mild cheddar, 1/2 + pounds of extra sharp chedder, and cut them into cubes. While doing this boil a pound of pasta and cook to al dente. Once that's cooked, pour in the cheese, some salt, some pepper, tomatoes (preferably a small can of them with juice), mixed vegetables, 4 tablespoons of butter and 2 tablespoons of sugar. I would also recommend stirring in some amount of cayenne, chipotle, or other spices to taste. Mix these in the pot, then pour them into an oven safe dish that you have greased somehow (I used a 3 quarts Pyrex dish that I greased with butter). Bake for about 45 minutes or until golden brown, and serve! You may want to use more cheese than listed depending on how many veggies and tomatoes you add.
Yay house! Unfortunately that's all the time I have now, but I'll have another post up tomorrow. So, until next time...

edit: Oh, and one more thing: Teagle, Pechous, Ben, his boyfriend, Rachel, Zoe and I went out with Anna Duane to celebrate her last nights in Minneapolis by going out to a club called Pi for dancing. Apparently it is mostly a lesbian club, but the people there were welcoming and it was a lot of fun.

Foreigners cannot enjoy our food, I suppose, any more than we can enjoy theirs. It is not strange; for tastes are made, not born. I might glorify my bill of fare until I was tired; but afer all, the Scotchman would shake his head, and say, "Where's your haggis?" and the Fijan would sigh and say, "Where's your missionary?" - A Tramp Abroad, by Mark Twain

Excursions in Baking!

Hey all, thanks for the huge response to my e-mail! I guess prizes really are the way to convince people to do something... *jots things down in journal*

So, today was a wonderfully warm and clear day here in Elmira, with barely any clouds in the sky and not ridiculously hot for once. I got to bike down to our weekly farmers' market and pick up a steak salad in an edible bowl (yay America- even our place settings are edible!)

The other major thing that I did today was help my Oma (that's Deutsch for grandmother for all of you Deutschefremden out there) bake Heffenzopf! Heffenzopf (pronounced heff-ehn-tsupf) is one of my favorite dishes and can be most closely described as a Teutonic challah that's a bit more on the moist and sweet side. My Oma has been baking it since she was 5 back in the Vaterland, but it wasn't until recently that I learned to perform this magical art.

The first thing you do is get all of your ingredients together in a big bowl, and then add in the yeast. Then we move to this step:

That's my Oma mixing in more flour to make the dough drier and give it more consistency. You have to do this for a while, but remember that the dough is still pretty liquid, or else you'll do something like this:

Yeah, not one of my prouder moments. Anyway, you have to keep on adding flour until you can't stir anymore and the fun begins. Using flour to keep your hand from sticking to the dough, you reach in on the side, lift and mush into the center repeatedly with the heel of your hand, continually adding more flour.

After a while, when the bread starts feeling less sticky you perform the same motion, but only until the top is fairly even; then you just beat the crap out of it with your hand.

Finally, we leave it in the bowl with the top flat, cover it and let it rise. It is important to put a bit of olive oil around the edge of the dough; not much, but just enough to make sure that it doesn't stick to the bowl.

Next, we take the dough out and hammer it some more with the heel of the hand, just like before, until it is all smoothed out. Now we can cut the dough apart and knead that as well.

Next, we place the dough in pans and cover them with mished up eggs to keep them from burning in the oven, as well as giving them an eventually nice golden-brown color.


You can even put initials into the dough at this stage; for instance, here's an M!

Finally, we put them in the oven for about an hour, and we have awesome breads!


This bread is amazingly delicious, and the best part is you can just freeze it for months on end with little loss of flavor! So just make a huge batch all at once and you can be eating Heffenzopf all year round!

So, you may be wondering why I told you how to do everything but not how much of everything to use. First, my Oma doesn't actually know how much of anything she puts in there; she just knows that some amounts are right and others are wrong. Fortunately, I have the amounts necessary to make a nice big loaf... though I do need to find it first.

SO, as a prize to all of you who posted before midnight, I will e-mail out a copy of the recipe to each of you when I find it/ bother my Oma to tell me the recipe for the umpteenth time. Yay prizes!

That's about it for now; tomorrow I'm heading up to the Granite State to do some hiking with my mom and the dog. Until then, remember this:

"Do you wanna come with me? 'Cause if you do then I should warn you, you're gonna see all sorts of things. Ghosts from the past; Aliens from the future; the day the Earth died in a ball of flame; It won't be quiet, it won't be safe, and it won't be calm. But I'll tell you what it will be: the trip of a lifetime. "
-The Doctor