How to Make Butter from Scratch

See that dreamy yellow stuff up there? Well, it’s butter! And I made that! It didn’t even occur to me that I could make it myself, but it’s actually pretty simple. The only ingredient is cream. Unless you salt your butter, in which case, you also need salt.

The difference between fresh, homemade butter and store-bought is amazing. This stuff just tastes fresh! I don’t know how else to describe it. Of course, any butter is good butter, but homemade is the best butter.

A note about cream: you don’t want to use ultra-pasteurized. Ultra-pasteurized is heated to a higher temperature than “regular” pasteurized cream to get rid of harmful bacteria. It tends to have a more chemical and cooked flavor and it’s harder to whip up. I used an organic, pasteurized cream from Whole Foods. They also had raw milk (not pasteurized) from grass-fed cows, but a quart was $14! I wasn’t ready to pay that kind of money, but I would love to try it some day. There’s a great article at Chow comparing flavors of different kinds of milk if you want to learn more.

Anyway, butter is made by beating cream until it separates. You need either a hand mixer or a stand mixer with a whisk attachment. If you are going to salt it, try about 1/3 to 1/2 teaspoon per half pound of butter. I like to keep mine unsalted. Read the rest of the post for a step-by-step photo tutorial on how to make butter from scratch.

Chocolate Thumbprint Cookies with Chambord-Mascarpone Filling – also known as my favorite cookies of all time

My mom found the recipe for these cookies in our local newspaper’s holiday cookie contest. When she makes them, they look like they came out of a professional bakery. When I make them, they look like they were a 5-year-old’s first baking project. But it doesn’t really matter because, lucky for us, they’re delicious either way.

I’m not going to lie to you; they’re a lot of work. You have to make the dough, chill the dough, roll the dough and coat in sugar, make the filling, fill the cookies, and then melt and pipe chocolate over the top. But, again, these are my favorite cookies ever and I will gladly put in the work because the end product is just so fantastic.

The cookies are flavorful and crunchy on the outside. The filling is creamy, sweet, and full of berry flavor. The chocolate topping is deep and rich and perfectly complements the cookies. They are ideal to serve to company because they have the right combination of fancy-schmancy and homemade rustic-ness about them.

The combination of Chambord and mascarpone is a winner. The Chambord gives the filling a rich berry flavor. You can substitute any berry liqueur or brandy. I bet cherry brandy or creme de cassis would be great here. Or you can leave out the alcohol altogether and add a teaspoon of raspberry extract. Mascarpone is awesome – creamy and fresh and yummy. If you can’t find any at your local grocery store, you can actually make your own. You could probably also substitute cream cheese, but I haven’t tried that so I don’t know how it would taste.

But you have to make them! I’ve never had anything like these cookies before. The flavor combination is unbelievable.

Mom’s Turkey Meatball Soup

My mom is great at making soup. I, like many people, will never be able to cook quite like my mother. She came up with this recipe for a quick weeknight meal and it’s been in regular rotation at our house for some time now. I tried making it the other day and let me just say, it wasn’t as good as when mom makes it.

I love the recipe though, because it comes together quickly and uses a hunk of frozen spinach that you don’t even have to thaw ahead of time. I also like that the meatballs get thrown in the soup raw, although if you have the time and don’t mind getting another pan dirty, you can certainly brown them before adding to the stock pot.

With this recipe, I’m going to include notes from my mom. I’m not going to edit them because I love her Ukrainian take on the English language.

Buckwheat Cake with Sea Salt

The recipe for this cake sounded very unusual: buckwheat flour, rum, salt?! I did have a bottle of dark rum just begging to be used up, and for some reason, I also had buckwheat flour in the pantry. So I figured, why not? And I’m so glad I did!

Everything in this cake is so perfectly balanced: lightly sweetened and a kick of salt, not too airy or too dense, no distracting frosting or toppings, a deep and interesting but not over-the-top flavor. It goes great with a cup of tea or an after-dinner drink like Frangelico. The salt provides a really nice contrast to the sweet cake. It highlights the flavor without being overwhelming.

My photos certainly don’t do it justice. It was really difficult taking a good photo of this cake. I even made it twice and tried to make the pictures look better on the second pass, but no luck. You’ll just have to take my word for it. This cake is divine. And all the family members who tried it loved it. Even my little cousin, who was confused about why it was salty, still gave it a thumbs up.

New Site Feature – How to Stock Your Pantry

First of all, happy new year to everyone! I am kicking off 2010 with a new page on the site – How to Stock Your Pantry. I discuss the items I keep in my own pantry and the uses for them. For so many of us, it’s a huge struggle to keep well-stocked without running out of space. I try to keep a limited supply of the bulkier things — like only having one type of short pasta and one type of long — to save space. I also try to clean it out regularly and throw out anything that’s expired or that I don’t plan on using anymore. I would love to hear what you all have to say about the topic. You can access the page by the link in the right-hand menu, or click below.

So click here to read my tips on stocking your pantry and let me know what you think!

Lemon Oregano Chicken

I was looking for a simple and quick dinner for a week night. I had some chicken thighs in the fridge and I was craving lemon. Luckily, I found a recipe that called for ingredients I had in my pantry. The chicken came out moist, flavorful, lemony, and delicious. Searing it in a pan before baking it in the oven really locked in the juices and made the skin nice and crisp.  I used bone-in, skin-on thighs, but you can certainly use boneless, skinless. (I just don’t think the chicken will be as moist). For a side dish, I just boiled some egg noodles and broccoli and then drizzled the remaining lemon sauce over the top.

I found that the original recipe called for too much fat, so I reduced it in the one given below. I also increased the amounts of garlic, lemon juice, and chicken broth so I had enough sauce for the noodles. Next time, I’ll use about a teaspoon of lemon zest in the marinade to increase the lemony flavor.

Turkey Burgers

Happy Thanksgiving everyone! Other bloggers out there are talking about stuffing or cranberry sauce or glazed carrots or roasting a whole turkey. I’m not an expert on any of those those things, but I would like to be somewhat topical with this post. So I started thinking about Thanksgiving and then it came to me — turkey burgers!

I am always in search of a good turkey burger. In my experience, most turkey burgers out there are bland and dry. To combat this, I like to buy dark meat ground turkey and mix seasonings right in to provide more flavor. Ground dark meat has more fat so it has more flavor and is less likely to dry out than white meat. You can also buy a white meat/dark meat mix. I don’t recommend the white meat only since it’s the driest and least flavorful. This is one of my favorite turkey burger recipes. It’s pretty simple and uses few ingredients, but they really shine and dress up a normally boring meal!

Vacation

I wanted to apologize for the lack of new posts lately. I took a road trip from New Jersey to California and have have been too crazy to post on the blog, not to mention the fact that I haven’t cooked anything in two weeks because most hotel rooms don’t have kitchens! Fortunately, I will be back to New Jersey and back to cooking shortly so look for new posts coming in less than a week!

Shortcut Baklava

My mom and I were making some spanakopitas the other night and we had a couple of sheets of leftover phyllo dough. I thought it would be a good idea to cut the dough into squares, stick them into a muffin tin and bake them to make little cups for a dessert. I then made a less-complicated version of baklava filling on the stove top and spooned it into the pre-baked cups. It was so easy and tasty!

You can make it even easier by buying already-made phyllo cups at your grocery store. But for those who like working with phyllo, I’ve included directions below on how to make these.

I love desserts that use nuts and honey and the wonderful thing about this shortcut baklava is that you can taste as you go and adjust flavors to your liking. Don’t like cloves? You can substitute allspice instead. Only have pistachios in your pantry? Just use a cup of those! This would also be tasty with some lemon zest or some almond extract. Experiment and see what you get! I promise you won’t be disappointed.

Orange-Soy Chicken

I love Asian flavors; I love mixing and matching them and creating my own recipes.  This soy-garlic-green onion-ginger chicken was created on a pantry-raid. I had some chicken thighs in the fridge and threw some things together into a bowl. The flavors are pretty subtle and the marinade is cooked down and turned into a glaze for the chicken at the end. I suggest serving this chicken with some jasmine rice or some sautéed snow peas and carrots on the side.

I had leftovers the next day, so I chopped up the chicken and tossed it with some greens, red onions, peppers, bean sprouts and sesame vinaigrette. It was light and satisfying and yummy.