Fahrenheit -451

I have a confession to make, my dear readers: I actually made this recipe before the Hostess fiasco detailed below. In my vanity, I chose to post the pocket pie disaster before this one so that I could swiftly cover up my failure with a subsequent success. I'd be ashamed, but somehow, I think I'm OK with it. That said, this recipe is not a complete success, so consider this my way of easing you back into my usual batches of perfection incarnate. I like to try and make things easy on all involved.

As many folks know, with the purchase of a KitchenAid stand mixer comes the opportunity to purchase a myriad of different devices to attach to said mixer in order to perform a variety of different tasks. When the mixer is upgraded with said attachment, one can grind meat, make pasta, juice veggies, and (presumably) produce quality food products by day and fight the forces of evil by night under the psuedonym "Voltron". (Note that I haven't attempted that last one yet, but it is indeed advertised in the KitchenAid attachment catalog. Go ahead! Check for yourself.)

This overly-verbose intro is my long-winded way of saying that, despite my resistance to spend additional money on products to continue cluttering up my kitchen, I decided to succumb to temptation and buy the KitchenAid ice-cream maker add-on kit (and for approximately the same price I paid for the mixer itself, I might add). As of late, The Kitchn has been running an ice cream making contest, asking readers to submit their best recipes, and after a week or two, I could no longer resist. At this point, I needed a maker, and rather than pay for an additional appliance, I figured getting the expansion for the mixer was a savvier (and more space-conservative) purchase.

Naturally, I was eager to get my device up and running, so after waiting the appropriate 24 hours to freeze the bowl, I readied up my first trial recipe, selected mostly because I'm well-known for having a penchant for all things peanut butter and chocolate oriented.

Peanut Butter and Chocolate Ice Cream
(as adapted from Joy the Baker, although hers looks significantly prettier than mine)

Ingredients
2c 1% Milk
1c heavy cream
1c sugar
1/3c natural cocoa powder
1/4tsp salt
3tbsp Corn starch
1/2c semisweet chocolate chips
1/4c bittersweet baking chocolate chunks
1/2c organic smooth peanut butter

As you can see, I took some creative liberties with the recipe, none of which had any adverse affect on the end result, in my opinion. I still recommend reading Joy's entry, as she does a much better job of it than I do.

Procedure
1) Place a sauce pan on medium heat and add 1.5c of the milk and half of the cream. Allow the liquid to warm up (although do not bring it to a boil).

2) Add the sugar, cocoa powder, and salt, and whisk to combine.

The mixture will take some time to get incorporated.

3) Whisk steadily until the powder dissolves completely (although some chunks are always going to remain).


4) In a separate bowl, mix the remaining milk and the corn starch until it is smooth. Note that you can't let this sit for very long or else it'll solidify, requiring further mixing.

5) When the heated mixture begins to steam, add the corn starch mixture and bring to a low boil. Whisk steadily until the solution reaches a pudding-like consistency.

Note: Do *not* eat the pudding. It'll be much better as ice cream anyway.

6) Turn off the heat and mix in the remaining cream, chocolate chips, and baking chocolate. Stir until the chunks melt and are incorporated into the mixture. Pour the mix into a bowl and chill, covered, for at least 4 hours.

The chilling process allows for a creamier ice cream.

7) Once the mixture is well-chilled, assemble your ice cream maker and follow its instructions. Note that it's important to have the churner moving before adding the ice cream base, or else it may not incorporate properly.

...Yeah, so it was harder to pour in than I had anticipated. Look at how little clearance I have between the bowl and the beater!

8) After the mixture has thickened (generally about 30 minutes), disassemble the device and move the ice cream into a freezer-safe container.

9) Use a spatula to fold in the peanut butter. Do not overmix, as you want a nice streak of peanut butter running through it, not total incorporation.

10) Place your ice cream in the freezer and allow to freeze (or "cure") overnight. Yes, it takes that long (depending on your freezer--mine sucks); I only gave it 4 hours and it was still "pudding-y". Delicious, but not ice cream.

An example of improperly-cured ice cream. Yes, it was great, but it wasn't very well frozen, and was basically like eating frozen pudding.

Lessons Learned:
Contrary to Joy's instructions, I feel that adding the peanut butter during the churning process (even at the end) caused too much incorporation of my peanut butter. While this recipe tasted fantastic, as you can see from the images above, pouring something that's pudding-like in consistency into a very small opening can be difficult. As such, I don't know that corn starch-based ice cream recipes are my favorites; next time, I'll try a custard-based chocolate recipe and simply fold in peanut butter at the end. Still, this made for a very delicious semi-failure; one can only hope all my mistakes taste this good.

Mutiny on the HMS Hostess

Who would've thought such a simple device could cause such trouble?

As my few readers have no doubt noticed, thus far I have posted recipes that have been considered more or less successful. Even in the instances where the finished product was not something I was looking for, the experience was informative and it ultimately brings me a greater understanding of the product I *do* want. Well, lest you all think that my kitchen is a wonderland of magical materials that render ever attempt perfect, I present what is quite possibly the greatest culinary disaster my kitchen has ever seen: pocket pies.

As a child, I grew up gorging myself on Hostess products, just as my father had before me and so on through generations. The passing down of the Hostess craving was something of a time-honored tradition in our family, and I often found I could make a meal out of nothing more than 2-3 of their handheld fruit pies. (Yes, one would be enough, but one wants a little variety in a meal!) Naturally, as my metabolism has slowed and my fat reserves grown, I have thankfully steered myself out of the fast lane towards diabetes and back towards more conservative eating habits (my lingering bulk notwithstanding). However, when I discovered an episode of Good Eats dedicated solely to reproducing these little delicacies from my youth, there was little doubt in my mind that I would have to at least attempt the recipe and simply hope that I could bring the things into work and thereby spread the guilt joy amongst my coworkers instead.

Be not ye fooled; the photo at the top of this post, if you haven't guessed already, is most certainly not the end result of this experiment. Indeed, this recipe has convinced me that as gods were those who created the Hostess fruit pie, for it is certainly beyond my mortal abilities to recreate my beloved confection. Perhaps this is for the best, as my experience with this recipe has not only convinced me to halt any pie pastry-related endeavors in my near future, but it may have also soured me to the Hostess products I had once adored. Read on, my faithful viewers, and behold the horrific tale that unfolds.

Chocolate-filled Pocket Pies
Recipes adapted from various sources, as listed in each section below.

Pastry Dough:
Recipe appropriated from Laylita's Recipes
3c flour
1/2c sugar
Pinch of salt
2 eggs
8 tbsp butter
8 tbsp shortening
2-4 tbsp cold water

1) Mix the flour, sugar, and salt in a large bowl with a fork or whisk until well mixed.

2) Add the butter, eggs, and water and mix until a dough forms.

Funny note: From the looks of things (and upon reflection), I don't think I added the damned eggs!

3) Form the dough into a large mound and flatten out somewhat. Refrigerate the lump for around 30 minutes.

This is what it looked like *before* entering the fridge... However, I let it sit overnight out of laziness.

... yes, there's more to Laylita's recipe, and no, I didn't get there. Due to a combination of complications (including the lack of eggs I mentioned above... damn it), the dough came out of the fridge a powdery mess that refused to coalesce back into the lump shown above. Now, after much reflection, I came up with several reasons for this:

a) Too much sugar in the dough: adding too much sugar can cause the sugar to lay claim to water intended for the flour, thus leaving the flour to be a powdery mess.
b) Too much time in the fridge: combined with the excessive sugar, the extra time simply allowed the sugar to mug the flour particles for their water for an extended period.
c) Lack of eggs: Obviously, the eggs would help as both a binder and a liquifier. With this revelation in hand, the dough recipe might actually be worth trying again sometime. Sometime later.

Regardless of the reasons behind it, I threw out the dough, as I was tired of fighting with it. I decided to roll back to the original recipe's dough instead. But in the meantime, I decided to create the chocolate goo that I was going to fill my pastries with. After all, it's chocolate filling--I couldn't possibly screw it up!

Chocolate Filling:
Recipe appropriated from Good Eats
2.5c sugar
1/4c + 1tbsp cocoa powder
1/4tsp salt
10oz butter

1) Dump the sugar, powder, and salt into a zip-top bag and shake vigorously.

At this point, my shaking was most vigorous, as I was already in a mood.

2) Add the butter to the bag and squish the crap out of it.

Squishing is also a good activity when frustrated.

While this recipe looks fairly innocent, it actually ends up being a huge pain simply because it takes a hell of a lot of squishing to get a uniform distribution between that much butter and that much not-butter! Nonetheless, this was obviously the more pleasant portion of my experiment. Since I did my squishing immediately after placing my pastry dough in the fridge, I refrigerated it until I was ready to pipe it out. Note that if refrigerated, this stuff needs to sit out to return to room temperature before it's easy to pipe out of the bag. So, now that that's taken care of, we can move onto the final portion of this god-forsaken recipe--my second batch (grr...) of dough.

Pastry Dough (Second Incarnation):
Recipe appropriated from Good Eats
2c flour
2tsp baking powder
3/4tsp salt
6tbsp shortening
3/4c milk
1 egg mixed with 1tsp of water (for sealing)

Preheat oven to 350F

I should note that while preparing this dough, I was already irritated with my previous experience, and as such, was not necessarily planning on publishing the recipe. Thus, I didn't take any pictures until the end. I'll have to try to fill in the blanks with my masterful wordsmithing instead.

1) Mix the flour, baking powder, and salt in a large bowl with a fork or whisk. The recipe calls for a food processor, but I really don't see the need at this point, and I don't own one anyway.

2) Knead the shortening into the mixture with your hands until it is crumbly, much like when making a pie dough.

I think the thought "pie dough" is what screwed me up with the first recipe; I never add eggs to pie dough, so I didn't think about it when I blindly omittted them.

3) Add the milk and mix it in with a spatula until the dough comes together. Note that since this isn't actually going to be a pie crust, you don't need to worry about overmixing the dough as excess gluten will not hurt the end texture here.

4) Lightly flour the countertop and your hands and slam the dough onto it. Flour the top of the dough as well.

5) Roll out the dough until it is about 1/3 of an inch thick. I strongly suspect I rolled mine out too thin--yet another bad omen.

6) Cut out rounds of the dough with a biscuit cutter (or other ring approximately 2 inches in diameter). Re-roll the dough as many times as necessary after cutting rounds out of it.

7) Roll each round out slightly to make it ovular in shape and pipe out a small blob of the chocolate filling into each one. Note that this step can (and probably should) be performed one round at a time, rather than all of them at once.

8) Brush the egg mixture across one side of the oval using the tip of a finger or pastry brush.

9) Fold the dough over and try to press out any excess air.

10) Use the tines of a fork to crimp the edges of the pastry and to pierce some ventilation holes in the top of the pie.

11) Repeat steps 7-10 for all the pastry rounds. Place the finished pastries on a baking sheet and bake for 25-30 minutes.

Seems relatively straightforward, if a little long in the steps, right? Well, here we are:

Stupid pies.

As you can see, I took the liberty of placing the damned things on a wire rack, as I figured that would provide better ventilation around all sides of the pie. Even though it would *probably* leave wire rack indentations on the pies themselves, I could live with that. Right? Ha! I bet these things exploded after the first minute, and spent the rest of the baking time laughing at me for my audacity.

Lessons learned:
That I probably won't be trying this again for the time being? I can't say never, as I'll give them another shot at some point, but certainly not for now. Perhaps the best lesson to take out of this is that $1 for a Hostess pie suddenly seems a lot more reasonable.

Meringue Cookies

Ok, perhaps not the prettiest meringues, but also not the least tasty.

I have been told on multiple occasions by a friend I trust that meringue cookies are some of the greatest culinary creations on the planet, as they combine the sugary goodness of pure sucrose with a pleasantly crisp texture that melts in your mouth upon hitting saliva. Combine these traits with the fact that they're actually not horrible for you (by cookie standards, anyway) since they contain mostly air and protein and you've got a recipe for a dessert that won't make you sick from overindulging.

That said, my previous experiments with meringues (which have thankfully not been documented) produced less-than-stellar (and in my opinion, less-than-edible) results, and the treats remain something that seems to stymie my culinary adventures. Many cooks have their various versions of kryptonite, be it cheesecake, soufflés, fried dishes, or edible brussels sprouts (admittedly, that last one is impossible), we all come across stubling blocks in our advancements in the kitchen. Of course, that's part of the appeal; what fun would it be if every dish came out perfect? ... Well, that'd probably be tasty, but then I would also know I'm in the wrong industry. Nonetheless, these little challenges can and must be attempted time and time again in order to produce the perfection that every chef strives for until they actually reach it.

This incarnation of my meringues actually didn't come out too poorly; my previous attempts were ruined by the fact that I generated cookies that were far too large for such a light texture and the flavor balance was off. In this attempt, I stuck to the recipe (which I heisted and adapted only slightly from The Kitchn) in hopes of finding a happy base camp from which to start in my next attempt.

Meringue Cookies
Ingredients:
3 egg whites, at room temperature
1/4 teaspoon cream of tartar
3/4 cup fine white sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla

Procedure:
Preheat oven to 300F
1) Place the egg whites in a large mixing bowl (ideally, the bowl of the stand mixer you will be using to whip the things into a froth) and mix them with a whisk for a few moments to get some starter bubbles going. I prefer starting out by hand as opposed to using the mixer at this point, but your mileage may vary.


2) Start beating the whites on medium speed and add in the cream of tartar. Continue mixing until something resembling sea foam starts to form.

I was actually rather proud of this image, as it was taken when the mixer was in motion. I was very surprised the beater came out clearly.

Note: The cream of tartar raises the acidity of the mixture, which helps sustain the bubbles produced. It's worth noting that other recipes similar to meringues (such as pavlova) call for vinegar instead, which has a similar effect.

3) When it reaches the "sea foam" stage, start slowly drizzling in the sugar. I used a 1/4c to scoop and then gradually poured it in; the idea is to ensure that the sugar dissolves gradually and completely, as if you dump it all in at once it can come out somewhat grainy.

Note that since the last image, the mixture has just about doubled in volume.

4) After adding the sugar, turn the mixer to high and whip away until the foam has a glossy finish. You'll know it is done when it reaches the "stiff peaks" stage, or when it will stand up on itself (see below).

The mixture should resemble very shiny whipped cream, depending on how you like your cream.

Note: The stiff peaks term refers to a common means of describing meringue structures. To determine the meringue's peak status, scoop the beater into it and pull away--a point will form on the end. Turn the beater upside-down to determine the level of the peaks: soft peaks means the foam bends to form almost a mound, medium peaks it bends but leaves a loop of air underneath, and stiff peaks means the peak remains a point (or slightly bent).

At this point, you can certainly scoop spoonfuls of the meringue onto a silicone mat (or very very well greased baking sheet--these things can stick!) using a spoon if desired. However, many recipes call for using a piping bag and making very pretty formations with the aid of a piping tip set. Now, I have neither of those, but the spoon method has never paid off for me either, so I had to get creative:

The ghetto-fabulous piping set, for cooks who don't want to spend money. I snipped off the corner to allow piping.

5) Use your newly-created piping bag to squeeze out small piles of meringue (imagery obviously very much intended, judging by my photo below). Make sure the piles don't get too large, as the bigger ones will simply crumble under their own weight during cooling.

Aww, aren't they cute? I added some mint leaves to a dozen or so simply out of curiosity.

6) Bake at 300F for approximately 2 hours; the idea is to bake all the moisture out of the cookies, as any remaining water can cause a cookie collapse during cooling.

Lessons Learned:
As an afterthought, I would recommend allowing the cookies to cool in the oven for at least an hour after baking; this will aid drying somewhat and allowing the steam inside to settle slowly (as opposed to cooling rapidly outside the oven) could help the cookies retain their structure. I haven't tested this, but I wish I had this time around, as some of the meringues still had moisture left and the ones with mint leaves collapsed a bit. That said, the mint lent an interesting flavor to the end result; I wouldn't try it again, but it was worth a shot.

A final note for the recipe: I don't think I like meringues. They tend to be a bit too sweet for my tastes, and to be honest, I like more substance from my cookies. But they're at least easy to make!