What is Cooking with Anna?
I put together several 'episodes' of Cooking with Anna back in 2003. I had a small, crappy kitchen, but it was mine-all-mine for the summer before my roommates moved in. The episodes are basically photo documentaries/recipes, although they're more for fun than actual following. I made a total of five episodes, with a sixth done by my very funny friend Erin -- only three have been uploaded into the new blog format (I'll get around to the rest eventually), because I have to reformat each episode, and I'm lazy. That laziness might also explain why I haven't made a new episode in years. Also, I have a digital SLR that I'm a bit precious about, whereas I never hesitated to cover my 5-year-old digi-HP in flour and batter. Also, I'm less funny.
* Episode Three: Pineapple U-D Cake
Today, on COOKING with anna: Pineapple Upside-Down Cake! It's called that because it's UPSIDE-DOWN!! WHOA!
Again, finding a kitchen is the first step.
Preheat your oven to 350F.
Today, we're listening to the Barenaked Ladies on this wee stereo. Pineapple Upside-Down Cake is fairly light-hearted and fun-loving, as is BNL.
Here are the ingredients you'll need. Not all of all of that, of course. Here's a list. And ingredients list, if you will:
-- 1/2 cup butter/margarine, melted
-- 2/3 cups brown sugar
-- 2-ish cups pineapple (I used one can crushed and one can chunked)
-- 1 1/2 cups flour
-- 1 1/2 tsp baking powder
-- 1/2 tsp salt
-- 1/2 tsp cinnamon
-- 1/2 cup butter/margarine, softened
-- 2/3 cup white sugar
-- 2 eggs
-- 1 tsp vanilla extract
-- 3/4 cup milk
Butter a pan. Is this pan starting to look familiar?
Stir the brown sugar into the melted butter. Mmmmmm. . . butter-y sugar.
Pour the butter-y sugar into the buttered pan. Lots of butter. Obviously, this is a low-fat recipe.
Drain the pineapple. DRAIN IT VERY WELL! After draining most of the juice, I dumped the pineapple onto several layers of paper towel and then squeezed out the rest. If you like, you can save the juice and drink it or mix it in with your orange juice during breakfast, but I do not like, so I didn't.
Put the pineapple in the pan with the butter-y sugar. Press it down a bit, and make sure the bottom of the pan is evenly covered.
Mix together the flour, baking powder, salt, and cinnamon.
Put the softened butter and the white sugar into a bowl and cream it together to make. . .
MORE BUTTER-Y SUGAR! Man, why even bother with this dumb cake? Just give me a stick of margarine and a bowl of sugar to dip it in.
Pour half of the flour mixture into the bowl of butter-y sugar. Mix it together.
Then pour in the milk. Mix some more
Aaaaand. . . the rest of the flour. Continue mixing.
Once it's sufficiently mixed, pour the batter over the pineapple-y, butter-y sugar in the pan.
Place the pan in the middle of the oven. Close the door.
Set your free 409 kitchen timer that you got from work to 45 minutes. It might take longer if you don't have a state-of-the-art gas oven, like me. Forty-five minutes is a long time to wait. First, I did all the dishes, because it's easier to enjoy your taste-y delight if you're not worrying about the mess you made. That only took ten minutes, though.
So I sat in front of the oven for a bit, eagerly waiting for my cake to be done. I quickly tired of that, however. It's hard to look eager for extended periods of time.
I still had a good half an hour to go, so I made some lunch. Isn't it precious? There's mozzarella, lettuce, and egg-free ranch dressing in that wrap. It's my favourite thing to eat. Ever. I have about four a week.
When forty-five minutes are up, poke the cake with a toothpick. If the toothpick comes out clean, your cake is done. Take it out of the oven, turn the oven off, and let the cake cool in the pan for fifteen minutes. Up until this point, the cake has been fairly right-side up. Not for long, though!
UPSIDE-DOWN!! There's the finished cake. Mine turned out pretty darn well. You can really taste the upside-down-ness in every bite.
Fried Quorn-Chicken
1 package Quorn chicken-style pieces
1 cup buttermilk
1 tsp rosemary
3 tsp paprika
2 tsp crushed chilli
1 tbsp sea salt
1 tsp freshly ground black pepper
1 cup all purpose flour
1/4 cup rice flour
vegetable oil
Mix all the flours and spices and heat the oil (enough to generously cover the bottom of a large pan). Microwave the 'chicken' for three minutes, if it's been in the freezer. Dump it all into the buttermilk and then into the strainer so the 'chicken' is wet, but not dripping. Mix it around in the dry mixture and put that back into the (rinsed and dried) strainer again, to tap away all the loose flour. Into the hot oil, and let it sizzle away for about five minutes. Easy peasy. Great in sandwiches, wraps, and salads.
French Toast
There's nothing clever to my recipe, but:
some butter
6 slices of bread
3 eggs
1/2 cup milk
1 1/2 tsp cinnamon
Mix the ingredients together and dunk both sides of a piece of thick bread in the mixture. Melt a small amount of butter in a hot pan and fry until golden brown and crisp on the outside. The mixture should coat about six pieces of bread.
My Comments: This is best when served smothered in maple syrup, but yogurt and raspberries make a nice alternative.
* Episode Two: Oat Bars
Today, on COOKING with anna: Oat. . . um, well. . . Bars, kinda. I mean, if you leave them in the pan. Sure.
As always, you must first find a kitchen. I'm using the same one as last time. I suggest you do the same, unless you're too good for that.
Unlike last time, though, we don't need an oven! I know!! It isn't necessary to remove it from your kitchen -- just don't turn it on.
Make sure you turn on some Queen before you start this project. I refuse to be held responsible for any cooking mishaps that occur due to improper music usage.
Here's what you need.
-- two cups of oats (or one cup oats and one cup Rice Krispies or similar cereal)
-- a quarter cup raisins (or currents, if you just happen to have those)
-- a quarter cup packed brown sugar
-- a quarter cup light corn syrup
-- a quarter cup peanut butter
-- about a quarter cup chocolate/peanut butter chips
-- half a teaspoon vanilla
Got it? Ready? GO!
Mix the raisins/currents with the oats in a big bowl. Currents are smaller than raisins (that's the only difference I can detect), making them look more like bugs.
Combine the corn syrup and brown sugar in a small sauce pan. Place it over medium heat until it starts bubbling. It doesn't take very long at all. STIR CONSTANTLY! I don't even want to know what happens if you don't.
Take the mixture off the burner and add the peanut butter and vanilla. Stir with vigor.
Pour the mixture over the other mixture. Stir some more. I ended up using my hands again, as I'm wont to do. It was terrifically messy, and I really wanted to take a picture of my hands, but I also wanted my camera to work in the future, so I opted not to coat it with syrup and oats.
Dump in the flavour-of-your-choice chips and. . . STIR! Woo, look at me go.
Put the oat-y mixture into a pan. I'm using the same pan as I used for the shortbread. I don't have so very many pans.
Tamp down the oats.
Put the pan somewhere it can cool off (the syrup will probably still be a bit warm). I used the fridge, because my entire house is a bit like an oven.
Once cool, cut the oat pan into oat bars. My bars tend to resist being shaped, preferring to gather in oat clumps when removed from the pan. If you keep them in the fridge, they'll hold together in bars. See how easy that was? SO EASY!!!
Except for the dishes. Corn syrup is sticky. A bit.
* Episode One: Shortbread
Today, on COOKING with anna: Shortbread, everybody's favourite Scottish treat. Here we go.
First, find yourself a kitchen. The kitchen plays a fairly important role in cooking. It doesn't have to be as small or charming as mine, but it must have. . .
an oven and. . .
A CUTE LIGHT OVER THE SINK!! Okay, no, that's not really necessary. The Dixie Cup holder is, though.
Go back to the oven and turn it to 350F. You'll notice that my oven has neither a light to indicate when preheating has finished nor temperature markings on the dial. It adds an element of mystery to cooking. Also, you should always check to see if there's a baby in the oven before you turn it on.
Find everything you need and set it out on the counter. I don't actually do this, but it looks pretty nice, doesn't it? For my shortbread, use three-quarters of a cup of butter (or corn oil margarine, as I did), one-third of a cup of sugar, and one-and-one-half-cups flour (I use whole wheat graham flour because it makes me snootier). I'm putting some bonus cinnamon in this batch, because I think it will taste good. Make sure you have a nice bowl and wooden spoon at the ready.
Put your butter/margarine into the bowl. Stab at it with your wooden spoon.
Pour the sugar over the butter. Sometimes it can be fun to pretend the sugar is snowing down on the butter village, but don't go overboard.
Put the cinnamon in the bowl, if you're using cinnamon. You might have to shake the spoon to make it fall out, thus shaking the camera. Watch out for that. I ended up using about three-quarters of a tablespoon. I don't know yet if that will be enough or too much.
Pour the flour in. Some people say you should put a portion of the flour in, mix the ingredients, and then put the rest of the flour in. I, however. . .
. . . prefer to dump it all in at once.
The wooden spoon was just for show (and margarine stabbing). I use my hands to mix shortbread, and my reasoning is two-fold. One: I don't think using a hand beater would be very easy. It's a fairly dry dough. Two: My sink isn't draining very well, so the less dirty utensils, the better.
Pour the dough into your square 8X8 pan. Did I forget to mention the pan? Make sure you have one of those. You're supposed to butter it, but I forgot to. I don't think it will matter, seeing how much margarine is in this stuff. The dough looks like dog food, but it's much dryer. Imagine if you took some butter and flour and sugar and mixed it all together. It's a lot like that.
Press the dough into the pan. This makes it look less like dog food. Unfortunately, this picture makes my wrists look fat. But that's neither here nor there.
Put the pan in the preheated oven. I'm not really sure how long I usually bake this for. Twenty-five or thirty minutes, maybe. It's hard to tell when it's done, because it'll be squishy until it cools. Just go with your best guess.
When you're satisfied with its done-ness, take it out of the oven, and cut it into squares while it's still warm. Math majors will probably want to measure the sides and mark off equal distances; English majors should feel free to just eyeball it and get it right anyway.
When your shortbread has cooled off a little, take it out of the pan and arrange it in an attractive fashion on a small plate. Try not to eat it all in one sitting -- that's a stick and a half of margarine there, my friend.
Now that I've tried some of this batch, I'd suggest using half whole wheat and half all-purpose flour. A cup and a half of whole wheat flour is just a little TOO snooty! The cinnamon is good, though. Enjoy!
Pumpkin Muffins
So, you bought a can of pumpkin filling, and now you don't know what to do with it, huh? Make some muffins! Here's the recipe:
2 cups sugar
1/2 cup butter
3 eggs
1/2 cup milk
1-1/2 cups pumpkin
1-1/2 cups raisins
3 cups flour
1-1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon nutmeg
1/2 teaspoon ground clove
one package dino cupcake papers
Mix 'er all together real nice like and cook in a 350F oven for about half an hour. You could possibly frost these with cream cheese frosting, but they're sweet enough that you don't need to.
What is Cooking with Anna?
* Episode Three: Pineapple U-D Cake
Fried Quorn-Chicken
French Toast
* Episode Two: Oat Bars
* Episode One: Shortbread
Pumpkin Muffins
Vanilla Cheesecake
