Taste Odyssey #9 - Thanksgiving Edition

This entry is woefully late if you're in Canada and woefully early if you're in America, so frankly I feel it is timed as perfectly as is possible.  The two events don't have a great deal of similarity beyond the name; we have far less smallpox involved in ours and only during Yanksgiving do you run the risk of being trampled to death the day afterward.

However, both revolve around turkeys and pumpkins, and while I'm not sure what I'd do with the former, the latter certainly presents us with some unique ideas...

Recipe #1 - http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/grandmas-gingersnaps/detail.aspx

But first some ginger snaps!  This is going somewhere, don't worry.  Ginger snaps are a breeze to make, taste delicious, and are always handy to have to snack on.  My only suggestion with this particular recipe is to make sure you mix the ginger well.  I didn't do as good a job as I'd hoped and some cookies ended up way more ginger-y than others.  This is where the hand mixer would have been a huge help.

No, the  dough picture doesn't sell the cookies at all, but once they're cooked?  Oh yes.

I wouldn't eat too many though, as I nearly learned to my great dismay after I switched over to the second recipe...

Recipe #2 - http://allrecipes.com/recipe/marbled-pumpkin-cheesecake/detail.aspx

Yeah, it's a pumpkin cheesecake, just in time for next year's holidays!  With a ginger snap crust!

I nearly made my first big mistake by grossly underestimating how many gingersnaps would have to be crumbled to make 1.5 cups.  I went with what I assumed to be three times as many as I needed, just in case, and it turned out to be exactly enough.  So don't go spreading them around until you make sure you have enough for the crust.

My only other issue with the crust is that it was very hard to spread into the springform pan.  The bottom was obviously fairly simple, but getting it an inch up the sides was rather tough.  I think with more gingersnap it would have been easier, but the melted butter made it difficult.  It came out okay in the end but I think more care with the sides would have helped.

The rest of the recipe is pretty simple, with one major caveat.  I highly recommend doubling the amount of nutmeg and cinnamon used.  I noticed a couple of people suggested that this would help the taste of the pumpkin and I have to agree that it was just right with twice as much as suggested.

Beyond my first encounter with a springform pan, the act of marbling a cheesecake (or even making a cheesecake, but that turned out to be reasonably easy) was the big neat trick I learned.  I followed the instructions in the recipe exactly and I think it turned out pretty good.  It certainly tasted like it.

Taste Odyssey #8 - Milk Chocolate Chip Graham Cracker Bundt

This recipe comes courtesy of the fantastic book "Piece of Cake!" which is full of delicious recipes like this for pretty much every occasion.  I won't be reproducing their recipes every time, but I figured they wouldn't kill me to just list this one since the cake it made was fabulous and really sells the whole book in my opinion.

Prep work:

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit
2. Make sure you have a 10-inch Bundt pan, sprayed with nonstick baking spray and then floured

Ingredients:

• 2 cups graham cracker crumbs
• 1 cup all-purpose flour
• 3/4 cup packed light brown sugar

• 1/3 cup granulated sugar
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 3 large eggs (room temperature)
• 1 cup buttermilk
• 1/2 cup unsalted butter, melted and cooled slightly
• 2 tsp vanilla extract
• 1 and 1/2 cups milk chocolate chips

Process:

1. Whisk together graham cracker crumbs, flour, brown sugar, granulated sugar, baking powder, baking soda, salt.

2. Add eggs, buttermilk, butter and vanilla to flour mixture, beat for 1 minute with an electric mixer until blended.  Scrape sides and bottom of bowl with a spatula.  Beat on high speed for 2 minutes.  Gently stir in chocolate chips.

3. Spread batter evenly in pan.
4. Bake for 45 minutes.  Cool in pan on a wire rack for 10 minutes, then invert onto rack and cool completely.

Thoughts:

One bowl, no waiting.  I love this book to bits, and simple recipes like this are pretty much the reason why.  This cake is delicious.  It's milk chocolate chips instead of semi-sweet and the graham crackers set it off nicely, or some equally important food-person speak.  It just tastes good, dammit!  There's nothing in it that requires any grand skill or forethought beyond paying attention, but the results speak for themselves. 

My one tip is to really heed the scraping the sides and bottom part.  Once the batter starts getting mixed some of the powdery stuff likes to settle to the bottom and won't make it out without a little encouragement.

This was my first recipe that really got me into using a mixer.  Previously I'd been doing everything by hand.  This time I used our hand mixer and got very impressive results.  On the one hand, doing it all by hand is cool.  On the other, it's bloody stupid and the batter gets much more evenly mixed with the mixer.

I do notice for Bundt cakes that they tend to come out very dry on the outside, due to the nature of the pan.  This worried me at first, but it's just how they roll.  The inside was soft and moist and so, so good.

No major food warnings on this one either.  Buttermilk was really the only thing I hadn't had experience with but it was not an issue at all, thankfully.  Just bake and enjoy!  Next time we'll be back with my Thanksgiving project, which is two recipes and pretty much a caloric slab.