My first candy making attempt

I bought myself a candy/frying thermometer a couple months back.  I got the idea to make candy after watching a few episodes of Good Eats where Alton Brown made some candy.  He has a sweet and salty episode where he made salty caramels and the idea hasn't left my head since I watched it.  

I researched the recipe and it seems...interesting.  I decided to try it another time after getting a little more candy experience I found a fairly easy starter caramel recipe on a new food blog that I read: The Chic Life. The recipe was for pink salted caramels.  I didn't use any pink salt.  I'm not that fancy I guess.

It took me forever to get around to making these.  Not because I didn't have time, but because I kept forgetting to buy a key ingredient.  First it was butter, then it was corn syrup, and then heavy cream.  Once I finally got all of these ingredients I had to find a recipe that incorporated them all.  Yes, I got the ingredients before I actually had a recipe to follow.  Silly, but I found one.  

The nice thing about this recipe was I as able to add all of the ingredients into the pot all at once.  So all I needed to do was to make sure the ingredients blended well and then watch to make sure the temperature didn't get too high.  Easy-Peasy for my first candy attempt! 

Everything blended well and I watched carefully to make sure it reached the right temperature.  This pot made my kitchen smell like absolute heaven.  I kept a close eye on the temperature, but some of the temperatures aren't clear on my thermometer.  I watched to make sure the temperature reached 245 degrees, but I'm pretty sure I thought the wrong area was that number.

I poured the mixture into my cake pan....I know I REALLY need something square to put this stuff in.  I was so excited for this stuff to settle.  They wouldn't have been perfectly shaped, but I was okay with it.

While I waited for the mixture to cool, I feasted on what was left on my wooden spoon and the pot it was cooking in.  This stuff was so good.  I don't think I'll ever be able to buy store-bought caramels any more.  As I was eating the scrapings of caramel from the spoon and the pot, I noticed that the caramel was getting harder than I thought it should have been.  It seemed to be getting to the point of being a hard candy.  Unfortunately, I had to go to work and leave my creation to finish hardening.  

And of course when I got back and attempted to cut my caramels into squares, I could not cut through the candy.  I actually broke my pizza cutter in the process.  The plastic handle shattered and I almost sliced my finger.  Only ended up leaving a small mark though. I  tried several knives and in fear of breaking them too, I gave up.  I had a circular slab of caramel.  I didn't really want to waste it though since it still tasted amazing.  So, I did my best to nibble away at the edges.  It was tasty, but not fun to eat.  I'd have to warm the candy with my hand for a while to get a small chunk of it to come off when I bit into it.  It was a hassle, and eventually I just threw it away.

I plan on making these again soon and making sure they do not get this hard again.  I want them nice and chewy.  I'm waiting though until the boyfriend gets his braces off.  I want him to be able to enjoy these chewy delights as well.  I'll give you an update once I make them and let you know if they turned out alright!

On a final note, I recommend making these.  You'll never go store-bought again.  Want the recipe?  Here it is!

A First Experience: Shallots

Shallots were a foreign food item to me for the longest time.  I would see them used all the time on the food network, but this was something my mom would never use in her cooking.  I've cooked with plenty of garlic and onions, but never a shallot.  I would always see them in the supermarket.  I would eye them curiously, but would always end up walking past them.  

A few weeks ago I went to a farmer's market that is right next to where the boyfriend lives.  I've wanted to go for a while, but I was never around in the morning when it was happening.  But, eventually it happened.  It was awesome.  There was so much there I wanted to buy, but I had to control myself.  I ended up buying a whole wheat cinnamon bun for breakfast, apple cider bread, string beans, and a big bag of tiny shallots.  

They look like a different colored garlic.  I was actually wondering for a bit if that's what I ended up getting.  I was proven wrong when I started cutting them.  They make my eyes water like every other onion does when I chop them open.  I decided to do something simple with them just to experience the taste.  

I cooked them with some chicken in some coconut oil with some chili powder, oregano, and cumin.  I did kind of overcook the shallots, but they were still really tasty.  I do think they have are a cross between an onion and garlic.  Despite the overcooking, the dish was REALLY good.  I am now in love with cooking with coconut oil.  And shallots definitely add to a dish.  I've used them several times since then and will probably use them again tonight.  

All in all, use shallots in your cooking.  You won't be disappointed.  

I love when it's sweet, fatty AND good for you!

This is what was left of a super tasty treat I made when I finally got around to snapping a picture of the final product.  It was super delicious and apparently fairly good for me.  Ben, the boyfriend, bought a recipe home for me to make.  His physics professor gave the recipe to his class and he was raving about it and was all excited when I decided to make it.  It's fairly pricey for a treat, but it's worth it every once in a while.

It looks like regular chocolate fudge, but it's actually made with cacao instead of cocoa, and it's apparently the most chemically complex food that has ever been studied.  It's also the highest antioxidant food in the world.  It also contains the most vitamin C of any seed or nut, and one of the most vitamin-C rich foods in the world.  And on top of all the other good things I've told you, it's also the highest natural source of magnesium, chromium, and iron and is also extremely high in zinc, copper, and manganese.  Thank you David Wolfe for all the useful information.  

Cacao isn't the only ingredient I used in this tasty contraption.  I had to buy some coconut oil as well.  I bought this stuff once, but it was in a tiny bottle and when I went to use it and nothing came out.  I didn't want to heat the plastic bottle it was in...so I never got around to using it.  I was excited to finally use it, and now I have lots left over to use for cooking...which I've done already.  That's for another post though; a short one.

The recipe is for making bars, but I have nothing square sadly.  Soooo, I just used one of my nine inch cake pans.  I lined it with plastic wrap so I didn't have to worry about the bars sticking to my pan.  The shape wasn't perfect, but I'm not too worried about it.  Still tasted great.

Another ingredient was some kind of nut butter!  The recipe calls for cashew butter, but you can use anything.  The store I went to only had a bunch of varieties of peanut butter and almond butter, so I bought some organic natural peanut butter to do the trick.  I'm not obsessed with organic stuff or anything, I just figured I'd give it a try.  I like the sweetness regular peanut butter has, but I must say I'm also a big fan of the natural stuff.  The fresh, nutty flavor is quite pleasant. 

I mixed the peanut butter with the coconut oil and it made mixing with the other ingredients much easier.

After you mix the peanut butter and the coconut oil together, you mix in the cacao powder and the final ingredient....

Honey!  I used an entire bottle of honey for this recipe.  I didn't get anything fancy for this.  I just went to Walgreens and bought a bottle of the generic stuff.  I do want to try different kinds of honey one day.  Watermelon honey has definitely caught my interest.  

All you do is add the ingredients together and mash it into a pan!  Of course, you should shape it and make it look semi-decent.  But even if you just spooned it out and ate it, it'd be just as good.  I also premarked where  I was going to cut the bars to make it easier when it was ready.  Then, I stuck it in the freezer for an hour and moved it into the fridge after that. 

The final result was super tasty, as I've already said plenty of times throughout this post.  The bars didn't hold together very well.  Once you hold them to eat them they start to melt in your hands.  Ben said when he sampled them the first time when his professor made them that didn't happen.  I'll probably use a little less honey next time.  All in all, it was a huge success.  Not going to lie, I had it for breakfast a few times.

And now, here's the recipe:

-16oz cashew butter (peanut butter is also good)

-2 tbsp liquid coconut oil (heat it slightly to liquefy if necessary)

-About a cup of honey, use your own judgement.

-A cup of cacao powder

Mix the cashew butter and the coconut oil until fully blended.  Add the honey and stir until fully blended.  Once the honey is combined with the cashew butter mixture, add the cacao powder a little at a time while stirring.

Dump into plastic wrap (you can use a baking pan lined with plastic wrap to get a nice shape) and press flat until it's about 3/4 inch thick.  Mark serving squares on top of plastic wrap.  This will make separation easier.

Cool in the fridge until firm.  This will take a couple of hours (I put it in the freezer because I wanted it to be ready by the time Ben got out of work and I made it pretty late).

Separate the squares and eat!  I used a pizza cutter to fully cut the squares. 

An alternative to regular chocolate milk

I love milk.  I used to hate when my mom would make me and my brother drink it every night with dinner.  Now that I'm older, I make sure I drink it at least once a day.  I've always been curious about other kinds of milk: non dairy.  I've tried soy milk, but about a month ago I decided to pick up a few new forms of milk to try.  

I decided to pick up some vanilla Rice Dream and Silk's Dark Chocolate Pure Almond milk.  The rice dream caught my eye while I was at Wegman's picking up some food.  I had actually heard of rice dream before in the TV show Scrubs.  J.D. and Turk are eating rice dream ice cream out of sake cups...I love that show.

I had to try it the second I got home.  It has...a very interesting flavor.  It really does taste like drinking vanilla flavored rice.  As gross as that sounds, it actually wasn't bad.  The milk wasn't super thick, and the rice flavor went oddly well with the vanilla flavor.  I really want to try the ice cream now.  As much as I liked this though....

This milk was like heaven in my mouth.  It was like a thin milkshake.  The dark chocolate taste was perfect.  I love almonds, and the faint taste in the milk just made me smile.  I love them in solid form and can now love them in liquid form as well.  I'm addicted.  Unfortunately, it is a bit pricey.  It runs between $3.50 and $3.90 for a half gallon.  I'll definitely be treating myself to this milk often though.  

I figure this milk can be my healthy alternative to ice cream on hot summer nights.  I didn't copy the nutritional facts or anything, but I'm pretty sure there's only around 90 calories per serving.  Definitely a lot better for you than a big bowl of ice cream.  I may have to try freezing it as well and making a delicious dark chocolate almond milk ice pop.

I tried the vanilla flavor too, which was also very good.  The almond flavor was much more noticeable in that one.  They have other varieties as well that I'll have to try.  If the original is as thick as the flavored kinds, I can't see myself using it with cereal or anything.  I'll have to try it out at some point to see.

I recommend both milks as a nice alternative to the fatty after-dinner desserts.  It's the perfect treat to soothe the sweet tooth.

Strawberry Lemonade Cupcakes

Who doesn't love cupcakes?  You get the satisfaction of eating an entire cake without actually scoffing down a full sized cake and wallowing in self pity for the next few days.  I work at Kohl's department store and we occasionally sell cookbooks for the Kohl's Cares for Kids charity.  So, I spent $5 and bought Crazy About Cupcakes by Krystina Castella.  

Anything you can possibly do with a cupcake is in this book.  I decided to make lemon cupcakes with strawberry frosting.  The combination just sounded amazing in my head.  I love lemon anything...if you couldn't guess that seeing as it's part of the name of my blog.  

I followed all the instructions and the cupcakes came out normal.  Not too wet or too dry.  The icing however gave me some issues.  The recipe said I could use either fresh or frozen strawberries, and I decided to go with fresh.  I don't know which would work better for this kind of thing.  If you have any tips, please feel free to fill me in.  The recipe also said to have lemon juice handy in case the frosting was too dry, so I was nervous that it was going to come out badly.  I definitely had nothing to worry about.

The recipe made waaaaaaaaaaaaaaay more frosting than I needed for the 24 cupcakes I made.  I didn't end up using most of the frosting either.  I put it in my fridge hoping I could end up using it on anything, but in the end I just threw the rest away.  Huge waste.  The icing also did not need any lemon juice since it was pretty soupy with just using the fresh strawberries.  Even though I let my cupcakes cool down before I frosted them, the icing was still wet and sloppy.

Even though the strawberry icing did not turn out the way I expected it to, it still tasted really good.  The cupcakes came out really well too.  They weren't super sweet and they were nice and moist.  I wish they had a little more lemon flavor to them.  I'll have to add a little more zest next time.  I kept some of them, gave a few to my boyfriend, and brought the rest of them to work.  They were gone from work between the time I got there and the time I went on my first break (around 2 hours).  They must have been pretty good.  The truck team was there though, and they devour anything that people bring in from home.

There's so much I want to do from this cookbook.  If you dig cupcakes, I highly recommend this book (just make sure you make less than the recipe calls for with icing unless you're making 60 cupcakes).  My family will be coming up mid-May for my commencement ceremony, so I'm thinking I'll make them a little treat from this book.  How do root beer float cupcakes sound?

Mmm, Starfruit.

Isn't it pretty?  I've been trying to broaden my horizons in the food world for some time.  I used to be super picky with whatever I was eating.  In high school, I would have dance class later in the day as well as work, so my meals would usually consist of hot pockets and whatever junk was around the house.  I didn't eat nearly enough food that grew out of the ground.  All in all, I had terrible eating habits.  

Somewhere in college, I decided I wanted more out of my food experiences.  Unfortunately, I didn't have a kitchen and had to settle for crappy food court meals.  Now, I have a choice.  Choice is good.  

I saw some starfruit at Wegmans one day and decided I hadn't tried anything new in a while.  It looked cool and I couldn't resist.  I bought it home and wanted to eat it, but I realized I didn't really know what to do with it.  Sadly, I googled how to eat this bad boy.  

Turns out, it's a lot like a star-shaped apple, both in texture and taste.  I sliced off the ends and cut the tips of the corners off since they were starting to brown a bit.  After that, I sliced them all up into awesome little stars.  Then, I picked the seeds out of the center which are also very similar to apples.  

This fruit is super tasty.  It's nice and juicy and has a taste similar to a sweet apple.  I'm usually really weird about textures and certain fruits are always what I have a problem eating.  This I was able to handle though.  Sadly, I probably won't be seeing this fruit around much in stores for too long.  Tropical fruit usually comes and goes from Wegmans.  

I definitely need to broaden my fruit horizons.  There are three things I REALLY want to try:

Dragonfruit

Young Coconuts

Blood Oranges

...Anyone have any suggestions?

First Experience with Coconut Milk

I remember a few months ago my cousin Megan was back home on Long Island and so was I.  It was either for Thanksgiving or Christmas...but that doesn't matter.  I remember her talking about making a meal with coconut milk and red curry sauce and I was automatically intrigued.  I picked up a can of coconut milk months ago...but didn't know what to do with it.  So it sat in my counter until this week when I was  once again food shopping.  I found a jar of red curry paste and decided it was finally time to try out the meal my cousin was talking about over the holidays.  

I've never cooked with coconut milk before.  I opened the can without looking and reading all the wonderful words on the can.  I was very confused when I opened it to find a white paste that looks like Elmer's glue.  I poked at it, thinking that maybe the looks were deceiving.  I was wrong.  I shrugged and got a spoon.  This is what went into my pan.

I decided to read the can after pouring the weird paste and water mixture.  Turns out, coconut milk separates naturally.  Now, I'll forever read all boxes/cans/jars of foreign cooking ingredients I use in the future.  After stirring it, the liquid became a lot more milk-like.

I put a tablespoon of the red curry paste in with the 16 ounce can of coconut milk.  I let that combine on medium heat, then added two chicken thighs.  I decided not to add any extra herbs or spices to the mixture, just so I can take in the taste of the two alone.  I figured there was enough in the paste to add enough flavor to the meal.  

I let it cook until the chicken was done.  I made some white rice to go along with the meal (I prefer brown, but it can be pricey and the places I normally shop don't seem to like to keep it in stock).  I know it's lacking in the veggie department, but I didn't have anything that would have really gone well with the meal.  It doesn't look pretty, but it tasted alright. It was nice and creamy, but it was missing something in the taste department.  I'll definitely need to play with some spices and add a little more paste to the coconut milk the next time I make this meal.  I think I'll use a different part of the  chicken, or a completely different meat all together . 

I'll definitely make this again, but next time I'm adding a lot more to it, along with some additional colors to make it looks more appetizing.  I've only had Indian food a few times in my life, but I want to experiment with it a lot more.  Boring meals are no fun.