Store-bought Hacks

For those of you who are unfamiliar with the term, a 'hack' is taking something that already exists, and modifying it into something better, but still maintaining the integrity of the original design (as opposed to an 'upcycle', which would modify the original purpose of the product and make something completely new).

Hacking store-bought products is a popular trend right now, one of the most prevalent that I've seen being Ikea Hacks. People take bookcases, tables, or anything else they can get their hands on, and they improve them through different degrees of painting, cutting, glueing, etc. One person went so far as to order 60 bookcases and lined an entire landing with them, making a built-in library.

However, my hacks that I will be talking about today, revolve a bit more around food. We will be talking about how to buy something from the grocery store, and turn it into something much better, with just a few ingredients.
If you're unclear on what I'm doing still, keep reading. You'll catch on.

First up: canned soup. Mmmmmm, soup. This is what inspired me to write this post actually. A few days ago, Matt was home early from work and I was exhausted with a splitting headache. I hadn't made supper, or even thought about supper, but now was the time to do so. So, I started rooting through my cupboards and found a can of cream of potato soup. I'm not even sure why I bought it in the first place, but there it was. I threw the soup in a saucepan and heated it on the stove. I'm not gonna lie - it didn't smell good. It didn't really look good either. Okay, I was dreading eating it. But I never give up that easily on a recipe. So I did what I always do: keep adding things until it tastes good. Turns out, it didn't take much! I added about half a cup of aged cheddar cheese and sprinkled bacon bits on top and suddenly there wasn't enough soup to go around! Matt adored it and I was more than a little surprised at how good it tasted (especially compared to how it tasted at the beginning). He welcomed me to make that any time, and I suddenly felt the need to keep cream of potato soup as a pantry staple in our house! Don't believe that it was that good? Try it for yourselves! And while you're at it, try these varieties:
Smokey Gouda - 1/2 c. grated smoked gouda and 1/2 tsp paprika (or chili powder if you prefer)
Loaded Baked Potato - 1/2 c. grated cheddar, 1 big spoonful of sour cream, top with chives and bacon bits
Stuffed Potato - 2 tbsp french onion cream cheese (whisk to make sure it mixes in properly!) and chives

Don't like potato soup? Here are some ideas for cream of chicken:
Ranch - 2 tbsp ranch dressing
Waldorf - 1/4 c. plain yogurt, chopped celery, chopped apple

Next: Cake mixes! My mom always made these most fantabulous (that's a word) cakes, usually in bundt pans, and they were beyond moist. And everyone would always ask her for the recipe and she would sheepishly say, "Well, you start with a cake mix..." Cake mixes come in lots of varieties, and many degrees of quality - it's true. Some add more questionable ingredients than others, and some just don't taste quite right. But there are some many things that you can do with them, besides the basic eggs, oil and water that can redeem nearly any box of cake mix. For example - my mom's 'secret' recipe - Company's Coming's Almost-a-Scratch Cake. Take 1 box of cake mix, 1 box (4-serving size) of instant pudding, add 1 cup water, a 1/2 cup of oil and 4 eggs. Mix and bake in a bundt pan at 350 degrees for 45-50 minutes. The moistness is most remniscent of a chiffon cake, and you can do this in a variety of flavors - chocolate cake and chocolate pudding, lemon cake and lemon pudding, or mix it up a bit - white cake and lemon pudding, spice cake and butterscotch pudding, chocolate cake and banana pudding... All would taste amazing!
If you want more ideas, check out the testing that Hungry Girl did - they made up cake mixes by adding things like yogurt, pureed pumpkin, and even diet pop, so see how each one tasted!

And then: Coffee! Do you pay extra for flavored coffees that taste stale or have a funny aftertaste? You really shouldn't... Coffee is a super-simple thing to play with. By simply adding fresh ingredients directly into the coffee grinds in the filter, you can make some very yummy java without any funny aftertastes.
Ideas:
Festive Brew - 1/4 tsp pumpkin pie spice for 8 cups of coffee
Chilly Morning Brew - 1/4 tsp cinnamon and a 1/4 tsp cloves
Toasted Nut - roast a few hazelnuts in your oven, crush fine
Mocha Java - add 1 tsp cocoa (make sure you stir the cocoa into your grinds, and don't use dutch process to avoid clogging issues)
Christmas Orange - add 1 tsp cocoa and 1 1/2 tsp orange zest

Lastly: Pasta Sauce! I hate jarred pasta sauce :) I've only found a couple that have intruiged me, but none of them have ever wowed me before. There is, however, one pasta sauce that I could eat every day for the rest of my life and I would die happy: my Uncle Doug's pasta sauce. The secret to the sauce is the add-ins, and while you can make it from scratch, the traditional recipe is 1 jar of original flavored Ragu. The secret ingredient? Brown sugar. Now, I could never remember the actual amounts or ingredients so I kind of made up the rest of the ingredients over the years, but the brown sugar makes it. Oh, and make sure you put in the Bay leaf.
Uncle Doug's sauce - 1 jar Ragu, 1 lbs ground beef (optional), 1 - 2 bay leaves, 3 tbsp brown sugar, 1 tsp chili powder, 3 splashes of tobasco sauce.

I'm only posting one Pasta Sauce hack because, well, I've never had a desire to try any others!

Are there any things that you improve by adding a couple of ingredients? Let me know!

Mrs. VanderLeek ;)

Catching up!

I know, I know, I know... it's been forever since I posted, and I left everyone hanging about that Mac and Cheese I was going to make! I'm a horrible person, I know, but I hope that, in time, you'll forgive me, and we'll be able to move on.

I did get around to making that Mac and Cheese, and it really was epic. I hard to pare down some of the elements of grandeur, but overall, it was a surprisingly elegant meal, considering it was, well, Mac and Cheese.
I used my original Mac and Cheese recipe (you can find in my post "Quarantine") and I stirred in some crab meat that I'd had in the freezer. I reheated the crab in clarified butter first to bring out more of its own distinctive flavor. While I had originally planned on doing a separate cheese sauce of parmesan and goat cheese poured overtop, my parmesan stocks were getting low, so I instead stirred in the goat cheese in place of the sour cream in my recipe. Fantastic results! Actually, I think I might permanently change my recipe to include the goat cheese - the sour cream is a nice touch in a pinch, but the goat cheese is just that much better, you know? Matt was thrilled with the end result and so was I, partly because now I know what to do whenever I have leftover crab in my fridge! (Which happens more often than you might think...)

Besides the Mac and Cheese, I also managed to whip up my first "cake-mix" cake. I experimented in a number of ways (using skim milk powder, fine sugar vs. granulated sugar, etc) and the end result was fine except... I threw in instant coffee to add some flavor to the chocolate cake, and the coffee was so smokey that it made my cake taste burnt. Great. So the cake rose nicely, had a very nice crumb and a deep reddy-brown color, but it tasted like it had smoke in it. Fantastic.

While the cake wasn't perfect, it was a fairly good start, and actually, I had intended on it not being perfect. I'm working on learning the actual effects of ingredients in baking, and so I wanted to see first-hand what certain things would do. While my cake rose nicely, it did sink in the middle. Apparently, that indicates too small of a liquid-to-sugar ratio, so that the sugar couldn't all dissolve. I had tweaked the liquid amounts slightly because I was using skim milk powder instead of milk, but the fine sugar I subbed in was too much for the cake. Actually, fine sugar really shouldn't be used in normal sheet cakes, period. Sugar makes your baking crispy, so the top was too hard instead of light and airy, and the liquid ratio was off so it didn't stay up in the center... just stick with granulated. I was happy with the gluten content, that's the real trick to making mix cakes that you can just throw water, oil and eggs into willy-nilly and still get a good cake. Different fats and different mixing techniques either relax or strengthen glutens, making for either fluffy cakes, or tough and dense cakes. I had to do some special add-ins, but I did pretty well I think.
All in all, it was a fine first attempt, and I'm confident that the second will produce even better results.

I also made eclairs last week! It's been such a long time since I made those! I first made them back in high school and really enjoyed making the pate a choux. There's something so satisfying about stirring eggs in one at a time, and each time you drop one in thinking, "What a goopy mess", but as you stir more you can see it, almost miraculously, transforming into a nice, sticky dough. Funny thing, I made the eclairs because I was low on ingredients in my house and they were an 'easy' plan B. Who doesn't always have flour, eggs, butter and water in the house? True, I needed Matt to pick up whipping cream on the way home so I could fill them (I totally copped out there and didn't make a cream, but they were still yummy!) but the puff itself was simple enough to whip up even though I didn't have a lot of ingredients in the house.

This week I will be developing at least one recipe with the stone ground whole wheat, and I'm still playing in my head with what exactly that recipe will look like. I think a good whole wheat bread will be ideal, but I can't decide if I want to make it a rustic loaf or a sandwich loaf, if I should do exclusively whole wheat flour or throw in a bit of white flour, and whether or not I should make it a plain loaf or an herbed or honeyed loaf. I have yet to see the flour itself, and that may determine alot of those questions for me when I finally do, but until then, I suppose I can just keep tinkering with my regular whole wheat flour here at home and hope for the best - although I just had this beautiful picture in my head of rosemary infusing in a pot of warmed milk with butter melting in it, and now I want to eat that... so I think I'm currently leaning towards an herbed sandwich loaf.

Well, this has been fun catching up, but I really must dash. My crazy-busy life has been the reason that I've been unable to post more frequently, and unfortunately, life still hasn't slowed down that much yet, so back to the grind I guess!

Mrs. VanderLeek ;)

Beet-Carrot Cake

Dear friends,
Let's do a little exercise, shall we? Let's pretend it's Spring.
It's easy if you look at your calendar and don't look outside. And if you live in Alberta, whatever you do, don't look at the weather forecast.

For those of you who haven't looked at the forecast, there is snow in it. Lots of snow, apparently.
I spent a large chunk of Friday morning talking with the girls at my Mommy Play Date about moving our meeting to a local playground as soon as all this wretched snow is gone, and now they're calling for more of it! Ugh.

I was feeling a bit un-Springy this weekend as a result. I was sleepy, I was more than a little grumpy, and I didn't have much drive. Now that I think about it, however, my tired state may have been moreso due to the fact that I only slept 3 hours Thursday night... I didn't fall asleep until 2:30 (last cup of coffee was at 11:30), the baby woke up at 4 and stayed awake until 5, I got up at 6 to start the dough for some pretzel bites for the Play Date group, and then when I tried to lay down for a bit while my dough rose Matt's alarm started going off every 10 minutes.
Anyway, as a recap, and regardless of the reasons, I've been tired, I've been grumpy, and I haven't felt up to much of anything.
Enter the need to bake something. Not just anything, mind you, but a birthday cake for my one-and-only Mother. Oh, and thanks to allergies and other odd sensitivities right now, the cake could not contain chocolate, citrus, strawberries or coffee. Again, UGH.

I did have a list of potential cakes that I could have made. There were some mousse cakes that I could have subbed out the citrus and replaced with raspberries, or vanilla. And then there's the whole realm of crepe cakes, not to mention baked alaskas and ice cream bombes. But my Mother - my dearest, darling Mother - she's an interesting one. An odd duck if you will. An odd duck in the sense that she has no desire to eat anything like duck. If it doesn't come from a pig, a cow, a chicken or a turkey, she would prefer not to eat it. And she'd appreciate if you didn't point out that her bacon came from a pig while she's eating it.
My mother is the reason that I had never tasted a vegetable that began with the letter 'a' until I was well into High School. She's the reason that I thought every meal needed to be served with potatoes. She's the reason I put ketchup on stew and scrambled eggs, that I put pickles on peanut butter and that I put applesauce on pork chops. The only cheese we had growing up was cheddar, mozzarella if there was a lasagna to be made, or plasticy yellow facsimiles that were spelled 'cheez'. She taught me that chicken was supposed to be dry, steaks should never be pink and that everything should be cooked, "at 350 for about an hour." (Something which she still holds to to this day)
Now, my dearest, darling mother has come a long way for my sake. She's tried sushi, rice paper rolls, duck and wine jelly all for the sake of pleasing me. She's been seen buying avocados and asparagus lately, and has even been known to buy parmesan cheese that doesn't come in a shaker. However, my Mother is still the same person she has always been - a woman who enjoys the plainer things in life. My mother would a million times over rather have a good cup of tea and a fig newton than a good glass of wine and a goat cheese crostini. All that to say - I had a feeling that the baked alaskas would be wasted on someone of her more simplistic tastes. Not to say that she wouldn't enjoy it, but she would so much more enjoy something that tasted homey and comfortable, and that she knew I didn't have to defy any laws of physics to make.
And so we come to the Beet-Carrot Cake with Toasted Coconut Topping.
I love this cake. Everyone who has even had it loves this cake. You may not like beets, you may not like nuts, you may not like carrot cake, coconut or cake of any sort - but you will like this cake. The cinnamony-coffee cake taste of the beet cake is perfectly complemented by the sugary-chewy toasted coconut topping, and a dollop of slightly sweetened whipped cream makes it a perfect treat.
And the best part? This is a recipe I can actually share!

Beet-Carrot Cake with Toasted Coconut Topping:
1 c. oil
1 1/2 c. sugar
3 egg yolks
3 tbsp hot water
1 tsp vanilla
2 tsp baking powder
2 c. flour
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp cinnamon
1 c. grated beets (about one good-sized beet)
1 c. grated carrot (about one good-sized carrot)
1/2 c. walnut pieces
3 egg whites - beaten stiff

Beat first five ingredients together until light. In a separate bowl, mix together dry ingredients. Stir in grated beets and carrot with a fork. Add the dry mix to the egg yolk mixture. Mix just until blended. Stir in the nuts.
Fold in stiff egg whites until well mixed. Pour into a greased 9x13 pan and bake at 350 for about 35 minutes.

Topping:
1/3 c. margarine
1 3/4 c. brown sugar
1/4 c. cream (milk works too)
1/2 c. walnut pieces
3/4 c. medium coconut (unsweetened preferably)

Heat all of the ingredients in a small saucepan over medium, just until combined. Pour over baked cake and brown at 450 degrees until golden (5 - 8 minutes)

Now as I mentioned above, this cake is a hit, and it certainly was with everyone at my mom's birthday party. But, while the beet cake with the coconut topping is fantabulous, don't let that stop you from dividing the two! That coconut topping is great on everything from a basic white cake to a dark Devil's Food. And that beet cake would be wonderful with a raw sugar sprinkle or a cream cheese icing. But do promise me that if you ever make one or the other, at least give them the chance once to show off how great they go together!

Mrs. VanderLeek ;)

p.s. No pic - it got eaten too fast!