valentine’s day – AT-AT Everywhere

Molten Mocha Cakes for Two

I finally just watched Chef, written and directed by Jon Favreau, which I was super excited to watch when I found out it would premiere and screen at South by Southwest last year. I didn’t get a chance to watch it there, and then I somehow just forgot about it during it’s actual release a few months later. For anyone that hasn’t seen it that loves Jon Favreau’s overall writing/directing/humor, chef Roy Choi, great editing, or just good ol’ fashioned food porn, do yourself a favor and see this movie as soon as you can. For those that have seen it, yes, this post is about the “dreaded” molten lava cake. You can find the trailer here, aaaand then I’m done shamelessly promoting. Sort of. With this movie top of mind and Valentine’s Day being less than a month away, it’s the perfect time to share this recipe.

And yes, this post is from last year’s Valentine’s Day. It’s always dangerous baking for two because most recipes will make at least 12-15 servings, and when you have the snacking discipline that we do, that doesn’t last very long for two people. When thinking about a Valentine’s Day dessert, what is more stereotypical than a rich and chocolate-y lava cake? Fortunately, Kevin loves chocolate too, and since I was charged with making V-Day dinner last year, trying out Martha Stewart’s Molten Mocha Cakes for Two recipe was a no brainer. There is something so delicious about chocolate and coffee paired together, and these mini cakes were no exception.

This recipe is perfect for two people, or for a small dinner party. If you double or triple the recipe, just add a couple minutes to the baking time. Be sure to keep an eye on the cakes in the oven, and make sure not to overbake or you won’t get that amazing gooey center.

INGREDIENTS:

2 TBSP unsalted butter, plus more for ramekins (I don’t have ramekins so I used two 6-oz glass Pyrex containers)
1/3 C confectioners’ sugar, plus more for ramekins and serving
2 oz semisweet chocolate, broken into pieces
1 large egg
1 large egg yolk
1 tsp espresso powder
Pinch salt
3 TBSP all-purpose flour
Ingredients

DIRECTIONS:

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Butter two 6-ounce ramekins, then dust with sugar. Place butter and chocolate in a microwave-safe bowl. Microwave on high in 20-second increments, stirring after each, until melted. Let cool slightly.

Whisk the Espresso Powder
Meanwhile, in a small bowl, whisk together egg, egg yolk, sugar, espresso powder, and salt. Add chocolate mixture; whisk to combine. Add flour, and whisk just until combined (do not overmix). Pour batter into prepared ramekins. (Recipe can be made ahead up to this point.)

Don’t Over-Baked the Batter
Bake until a toothpick inserted 1/2 inch from edge of ramekins comes out clean, and a toothpick inserted in center comes out wet, 10 to 12 minutes (Do not overbake – I can’t emphasize that enough!). Cool 10 minutes on a wire rack. Run a knife around inside of ramekins to loosen the cakes. Invert cakes onto serving plates. Dust with powdered sugar; serve immediately….preferably with ice cream!

Molten Mocha Cakes a la Mode

I made a graduation dinner for one of my cousins a few months later and doubled the recipe to make 4 total (for three of us). I didn’t have vanilla ice cream at the time, so I paired the cakes with some delicious matcha green tea ice cream that we had just bought.

Are molten lava cakes adventurous? No. But they were damned good.

Mario Batali’s Porcini-Rubbed Rib-Eye

For Valentine’s Day (YES…still backlogged!), I was charged with making dinner for Kevin and I, and wanted to make something a little out of the ordinary. I remember really being wowed by the porcini-rubbed delmonico that I had at a work dinner at The Capital Grille a couple of years ago. After some googling, I found a video tutorial on how to make the porcini rub Mario Batali uses at his amazing restauraunt, Osteria Mozza. The sugar in the rub helps develop the char and “steakhouse” crust you want while cooking, and the porcini powder adds a divine earthy flavor.

The original recipe calls for one 3 1/2 pound steak, but I decided to do two 1 pound steaks (which was still pretty aggressive). Here is a recipe as adapted from Mario Batali, Food & Wine magazine, and several gchat sessions with my dear friend Chef Seong. I had always made steaks using a nonstick frying pan and had gotten by just fine, but for a rib-eye, I really wanted those steakhouse-style char marks. We don’t have room for a real grill, but after a number of persuasive conversations with Shirley and Spencer, I decided to buy a cast iron grill pan to try and cook these steaks with. I also had been thinking of getting a kitchen scale for some time, and read that this compact Tanita one had great reviews. What better excuse to buy it than for weighing the porcini mushrooms for the rub! Okay it ended up being a more expensive dinner than originally intended.

Brand New Scale

INGREDIENTS:

2 oz dried porcini
1/2 T red pepper chili flakes
1/4 C sugar
2 T kosher salt
2 T freshly ground black pepper, plus more for seasoning
good quality olive oil
Two 1 pound bone-in rib-eye steaks (about 1″ thick)

PORCINI RUB DIRECTIONS:

Roughly chop the porcini, and then grind in a blender – slowly at first, and then gradually increase the speed.
Add in red pepper flakes and blend to mix. Mix salt, pepper, and sugar together and then add the porcini-chili flake mixture together. You will have plenty of rub left over to make these steaks again – and you will want to!

RIB-EYE DIRECTIONS:

Dust your rib-eye with the rub. Wrap a piece of kitchen twine around the steak, and drizzle on some olive oil and rub that in too. The rub will turn into more of a thick paste with the consistency of wet sand.
Flip the steak and repeat. Tie a piece of kitchen twine tightly around the perimeter of the steak. Wrap it tightly in plastic wrap and refrigerate 12 hours or overnight.
About 1 hour prior to grilling, remove the steak from the refrigerator. Brush off the excess marinade paste with a paper towel (THIS IS IMPORTANT). Place on a plate and let come to room temperature. I forgot to do this and my steak ended up pretty spicy from the chili flakes.
Pre-heat a gas grill or grill pan. If you are going to use a charcoal grill, preheat that but use enough coals to keep the fire going for about 20 minutes.
Put the steak on the hottest part of the grill, cover and cook, turning every 5 minutes, for about 12-13 minutes for medium-rare doneness. The internal temperature should be 127-128°F (thanks Seong!). Transfer to a carving board and let it rest for 30 minutes or more. The steak will continue to cook another 5-7 degrees internally once it’s off the grill, and if you cut into it too soon, you’ll let all of those delicious juices out.
Almost done!

Steak newb’s note: If you use a meat thermometer, make sure the end is smack dab in the middle of the steak. I think I stuck the point in a little too deep so it measured the temperature closer to the grill pan than it should have. Our steaks were actually a bit undercooked when all was said and done, though still tasty.

I paired these with some “smashed potatoes”. Quick recipe is as follows: Boil a pound of small potatoes (yukon gold in my case) for 8 minutes (until fork tender) in generously salted water. After draining and cooling the potatoes slightly, brush some oil onto a baking sheet lined with foil. After lightly crushing each potato on sheet with your palm into 1/2″ thickness, brush potatoes with oil. Roast until golden and crisp about 25 minutes, rotating the baking sheet about halfway through the cooking time.

Mario Batali's Porcini-Rubbed Rib-Eye — Mario Batali’s Porcini-Rubbed Rib-Eye

For an appetizer, we had a DELICIOUS beet and burrata salad atop some prosciutto and arugula. I found the easy recipe on The Organic Kitchen and admittedly this was more of a me dish than Kevin because it had all of my favorite things in it – roasted beets and burrata, prosciutto, and it even called for pistachios to be sprinkled on top! And thank you Thomas for our lovely serving dish!

Beet and Burrata Salad with Prosciutto and Arugula!

So… I probably bit off more than I could chew making everything in between work and dinner time. I admittedly did not make the perfect steak (overspiced, undercooked), but with less ADD next time I’ll get it right. In all it’s imperfect glory, the steak was still delicious and there were no leftovers. Most importantly, we topped off the meal with mini molten chocolate lava cakes a la mode that I will for sure post separately about at a later time. They were too good not to!

Martha Stewart’s Ultimate Chocolate Chip Cookies with a Twist

I’m several months backlogged on posts (literally still trying to catch up on Christmas baking), but here’s a little something from February…

I’ve never been a huge fan of chocolate chip cookies. I’ve made them before, but they’re always too sweet for my taste, and they tend to be redundant after a while. Feeling intrigued by the “Ad Hoc at Home” Chocolate Chip Cookies I made last December in Seattle which used two kinds of dark chocolate, I decided to give it a go again with my own taste buds in mind.

I like cookies the same way I like brownies – slightly crunchy on the outside and chewy in the middle. I found a recipe for Martha Stewart’s “Ultimate Chocolate Chip Cookies”, and decided to give it a whirl for Valentine’s Day. I added a wee bit more salt than what Martha’s recipe called for, and also added a cup of pecans which complimented the chocolate and cookie dough nicely. I also used two different levels of dark chocolate, rather than the combo of milk and dark that Martha recommended.

Here’s my take on Martha’s recipe:

Ingredients:

3 1/2 cups all-purpose flour (spooned and leveled)
1 1/4 teaspoons baking soda
1 1/4 teaspoons baking powder
2 1/4 teaspoons coarse salt
1 1/4 cups (2 1/2 sticks) unsalted butter, room temperature
1 1/2 cups packed light-brown sugar
1 cup granulated sugar
2 large eggs
1 1/2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract
1 1/4 cups semisweet chocolate chips (53% dark)
8 ounces semisweet chocolate, chopped (65% dark or higher)
1 1/2 cup chopped pecans

Directions:

1. In a bowl, whisk together flour, baking soda, baking powder, and salt. Set aside.

2. In a large bowl, using an electric mixer, beat butter and sugars on medium-high until light and fluffy, 6 minutes. Reduce speed to medium-low and beat in eggs, one at a time. Beat in vanilla. Mix in dry mixture just until incorporated; fold in chocolate chips and pecans.

3. Drop dough onto cookie sheet lined with parchment paper in 2 rounded tablespoons, leaving 2 inches around each cookie (trust me – they will spread). Refrigerate 1 hour – this is necessary for the chewy outcome of the cookies!

4. Preheat oven to 350 degrees, with racks in upper and lower thirds. Bake until the edges are light golden brown, 17 to 18 minutes, rotating sheets halfway through. Transfer cookies to a wire rack and let cool.

Martha Stewart's Ultimate Chocolate Chip Cookies with a Twist — Martha Stewart’s Ultimate Chocolate Chip Cookies with a Twist

This is definitely my new go-to chocolate chip cookie recipe. I love the crispy outside and chewy center, with the rich dark chocolate chips. It’s definitely not too sweet, but not bitter at all since it still uses relatively low levels of dark chocolate.

MS Cake Stand Showcasing My MS Choc Chip Cookies!

Thank you again, Melo, for my cake stand!

Valentine’s Day Cookies (Heart-Glazed Cornmeal Sugar Cookies)

In the spirit of said corporate faux holiday, I decided to bake in celebration of the pink and the hearts and all that other crap that Valentine’s Day is all about. I like things with cornmeal (i.e., cornbread, …can’t think of anything else) so I thought a sugar cookie using cornmeal would be a fun and different spin on your everyday sugar cookie. I got the recipe from Martha Stewart, of course.

After shaping the cookie dough into 1″ balls and rolling them in sugar, I used the bottom of a small dish to flatten them into 1.5″ discs. Jamie (being the goddess of a good bargain) bought me a set of heart-shaped cookie cutters from a garage sale a few months ago, and I used the smallest one to cut partway through the cookie discs.

As the cookies baked in the oven, the shape took a more defined form as the dough rose. I then glazed the hearts using the back of a spoon and a glaze made of powdered sugar, a wee bit of water and vanilla, and couple drops of food coloring.

So what did I do with all of these cookies? I ended up sending them to some Valentines that I declared my own, and some as thank you gifts to Leslie, Tri, and Annie for being their ridiculously awesome selves. The rest went to work with me on the actual day right before I left for Indianapolis and Grand Rapids on a whirlwind of a trip. I spent my V-Day evening aboard two planes to Indy, closing the night with this charming fellow at my hotel in Indianapolis. I probably would have gone on a date with Spalding had I been in LA.

Valentine's Day Cookies (Heart-Glazed Cornmeal Sugar Cookies)

2.5 days and six planes later (there were NO direct flights), I’m happy to say I survived the snow and icy roads of the Midwest. I had asked work to reserve a car with 4-wheel drive, since both states were forecasted to receive snow during my stay. My flights to both destinations got in pretty late at night, so all of the economy SUVs were taken by the time I arrived at the Enterprise counter. They graciously upgraded me to a Lincoln Navigator in Indy. While I always insist that I’m of near-average height, I concede that I was way too short for this car. I had to sit on one of my legs to see over the steering wheel because there were no booster seats included with the car.

Oh! I also made some Peanut Butter Thumbprint Cookies using dark chocolate Dove hearts (instead of the typical Hershey’s Kisses) because everyone is supposed to have chocolates or something classy on V-Day, right?

The hell if I know. Until next year, Cupid!

Glaze – Powdered Sugar, Water, Vanilla, and Food Coloring, and Food Coloring

Peanut Butter Thumbprint Cookies with Dove Hearts

Raspberry Mini Cheesecakes

I somehow managed to get sick AGAIN last week, thus the surge in posts (2 posts within a week is a lot!). It all started on Valentine’s Day – the day I was planning to surprise Kevin with a new cheesecake recipe I came across back in January. However, we miraculously must have channeled the germ gods at the same time because we both ended up feeling fatigued and sniffly by the end of the day. After almost a week straight of feeling congested, unquenchably dehydrated, and tired, I finally regained my energy over President’s Day weekend – enough energy to cook-up a storm.

The way to a man’s heart is through his stomach, or so the cliché goes. However, the object of my affection has a bottomless pit for a stomach and peculiar taste preferences, so I’ve really had to change up my game in the last few months. While my food staples are quinoa, fresh produce, and lean proteins, Kevin’s are Party Pizza, Carl’s Jr. western bacon cheeseburgers, chicken nuggets, and hot sauce. While I like to think I’ve always been a decent cook (considering my parents don’t cook so I pretty much figured it out on my own), it’s been a challenge to meet halfway between an “obsessively healthy” cooking style to cuisine that has a lot of flavor additives. The man even said STEAK doesn’t have enough flavor…to which I replied, “That’s because you haven’t had mine yet”. Challenge accepted. I said I was going to make steaks for dinner.

After an hour’s worth of time at Ralphs and Trader Joe’s followed by a 3-hour (yes, THREE HOUR) stint in the kitchen, I’m glad to share with you my well-rounded (albeit not calorie-friendly) dinner featuring a dinner salad, my favorite homemade steak, mac and cheese (Kevin’s pick), and raspberry mini cheesecakes. The raspberry cheesecakes really are the main event to this post, but I was taking tons of photos for the cheesecakes anyway so I figured why not do the same for the meal as a whole.

Who can resist a medium-rare filet mignon rubbed with a little fresh ground pepper and kosher salt? I topped it with some fried garlic and grilled onions on the side. Nom.

Next up, we have baked mac and cheese, utilizing a recipe I borrowed from Alton Brown.

Last but not least, sweets for my sweet. I made a raspberry puree sauce with my “hand-y” food processor. That is, I don’t own a food processor so I mashed a container of raspberries with a fork and separated the seeds from the fruit. I didn’t need the raspberry seeds/guts for this recipe, but it made a nice pseudo-jam for my almond butter sandwich the next morning.

Raspberry Sauce (right) and Seeds (left)

The hardest part about making these guys was dealing with the water bath situation. I drowned one or two mini cheesecakes in water every time I took a batch out of the oven. The other difficult step was drawing the hearts, while taking a photo in one hand and keeping my other hand steady while doing the heart. I didn’t have any toothpicks handy, so I improvised by using an uncooked soba noodle to draw the hearts.

I thoroughly enjoyed this particular recipe… dare I say even better than the Peanut Butter Chocolate Mini Cheesecakes I made for his birthday in August. As fluffy as I thought those were, these were much more delicate and light, but still had a velvety rich taste to them. Voilà!