Low-fat pudding

I know I start a lot of my posts with "A couple weeks ago..." but I've had a busy beginning of the year, and am sorely behind on getting everything on here.

So again, I still start with "A couple weeks ago...". I hosted game night, and thought I'd make a couple desserts.

I know a few of my friends are health conscious, and as a dessert lover, I fully understand this conundrum. I found a good little recipe for low fat pudding, and it also makes me happy that it is vegetarian friendly (read: no gelatin).

I made a little boo boo by not getting the fat free evaporated milk when at the store (I picked up 1% instead), but it still worked out great, and has a full texture when eating, without the full calories of a home made pudding that has cream.

Also, the lactose intolerance factor. Man, life is so sucky sometimes.

My table was covered in board games, so I was lacking space to get some good photos. One of the better images I got, was when I propped up one of my puddings on my game box to get a clearer picture.

What I also like about this recipe is the ease in separating them into 2 fractions, so make a white chocolate and dark chocolate pudding.

Low-Fat Chocolate Pudding (adapted from Food Network)

1/3 cup agave nectar
2 tbsp corn starch
salt
2 12 oz cans evaporated milk, 1%
2 egg whites
1 tbsp + 1 tbsp vanilla extract
1/4 cup white chocolate chips
1/4 cup cocoa powder
1/4 cup milk chocolate chips 

1. In a saucepan, whisk together agave nectar, corn starch and salt. Add evaporated milk and egg whites.
2. Whisk over medium heat until it begins to thicken and bubble. Remove from heat and add 1 tbsp vanilla extract.
3. Pour 1/3 of mixture into a bowl and add remaining vanilla extract and white chocolate chips. Stir until melted and combined.
4. To remaining 2/3 of mixture, add cocoa powder and milk chocolate chips. Stir until melted and combined.
5. Divide milk chocolate pudding into 6 dishes, top with white chocolate pudding.
6. Cover with saran wrap and let set in fridge at least 2 hours.

Shrimp alfredo

My friends have the tendency to like to show up at my house for dinners. That I make.

I don't mind too much. I enjoy it when my friends are over. We chat, play video games, watch movies, and hang out in general.

A couple weekends ago in particular, it was a gorgeous and abnormally warm day. We reached a high of 12C and it was so balmy, I was inclined to go for a walk, even after my morning run. I called my friend up, and we hit the dusty trail. We decided to walk to our other friend's house (the one I ran with in the morning).

We hung out for a couple hours, goofing around with the guitars, youtube videos and a general discussion for the evening plans. It was decided, we would go to the mall to look for Mario Party and extra Wii controllers, pick up some stuff for dinner, and we would head to my house to eat and hang.

I made shrimp alfredo for dinner. Since we were salad-less, I added broccoli and carrots to the pasta, and made some three cheese crab puffs for a side.

I'm not one for alfredo sauces, because of my lactose intolerance, but had an odd hankering for a creamy sauce. Also, a need to use all the 35% cream that's sitting in my fridge.

Dinner turned out delicious. My friends played video games, and we watched Django as well. All in all, a pretty good Saturday night.

Alfredo Sauce

1/4 cup butter
1 cup heavy cream
1 garlic clove, crushed
1 1/2 cup parmesan 

1. Melt butter in a saucepan over medium heat. Add cream and simmer until it reaches a boil.
2. Add garlic and cheese, whisking until melted and smooth.
3. Pour over pasta and serve.

Barbari bread

The department I work in on campus has a lot of international people. Many of them are from Iran, as is one of my coworkers.

When we have lunches, she often brings barbari bread, and shares it with me as well.

For those who aren't sure what barbari bread is, it's a popular Iranian flatbread often served with a cheese similar to feta.

I've always found barbari bread very interesting, because of how it rips straight, as if the proteins have aligned themselves, for a perfect rip every time.

A few weeks ago, I told my coworker that I was going to try to make it on the weekend. Unfortunately, I never got around to making it, and I let her know it on that following Monday. Funny enough, her and a friend has gone into the city that weekend and picked up the fresh dough from the Iranian store for me. So I brought that home and baked the dough.

Although it was nice of them to buy me the dough, I wasn't quite sure what I was supposed to do with it. Bread requires rising time, and I wasn't sure if the pre-made dough had already gone through the rising stage or not.

I did a bit of research on baking temperatures and times, and decided to go with 375F for 25 minutes.

The pre-made dough was actually two balls (that melded into one big dough ball in my backpack). I separated them and made two pieces of bread on my sprayed cookie sheet.

I punched the dough down and stretched it out to fill the pan. After, I ran my fingers vertically along the bread to form the straight edge ridges that the bread seemingly perfectly rips along. With a sprinkle of sesame seeds on top, I popped those into the oven.

I forgot to get a before and after pictures of both of my flatbreads, so I pieced together a before of one and an after of the other.

I'm going to try to make the barbari bread again, because I want to try to make the dough myself. The issue with the pre-made dough was that I wasn't sure what stage the dough was at, and it didn't turn out quite the way I thought.

Although it wasn't quite the same as the bread my coworker brings in for lunch, it was still good to eat. I cut a few pieces out (as they didn't rip along the lines), and had them with my chickpea curry.

Coconut rum cake

I've been delayed on posting this due to all the seasonal baking I had done for myself and others.

My friend Owen had his birthday in early December, so I thought proper to make him a cake to celebrate.

A few weeks beforehand, I asked him what he would want:

I got quite the interesting answer, although, not anything out of what I would have expected from a rum lover:

Needless to say, I was going to make something very rum-filled.

I really wanted to make a coconut rum cake, but wasn't sure the chocolate would fit in nicely. I opted out of the chocolate, since I had made things with chocolate the weekend before.

I'll admit that I cheated a bit on this cake. I used a box white cake mix as the base, because it was easier than trying to change my white cake recipe to be as coconut-y as I wanted it to be.

The cake has 4 parts to it: the cake, the rum sauce, the coconut glaze, and the toasted coconut topping. It went over quite well too. 

Coconut Rum Cake

cake and topping
1 white cake mix
1/2 cup butter, cubed
1 can coconut milk, reserve remaining for the glaze
3 eggs
2 cup shredded coconut, 1 cup for cake, 1 cup for topping 

syrup
1/4 cup dark rum
1/4 cup sugar
1/4 cup water 

glaze
2 tbsp butter
2 cups powdered sugar
reserve coconut milk 

1. Process 1 cup shredded coconut, and cake mix until finely chopped. Cut in butter until cornmeal textured. Then add the coconut milk and eggs.
2. Bake as directed and let cake cool on a wire rack and poke holes with a fork across the top of the cake.
3. Toast the remaining 1 cup shredded coconut in a 350F oven.
4. While the cake is cooling, bring the syrup ingredients to a boil. Let cool slightly before drizzling syrup over the cake. Let syrup soak for 15-30 minutes.
5. Whisk the butter, powdered sugar, and coconut milk together until runny and smooth.
6. Drizzle over the syrup soaked cake.
7. Top with the toasted coconut.

Lemon poppyseed cake

For the Christmas season, I had a rather large order of meringues. That meant, I had an absurd amount of egg yolks sitting in my fridge slowly wasting away.

What's a girl to do with a dozen egg yolks in her fridge?

The answer: many things. One of those being a lemon poppyseed cake.

Lemon is one of those flavours that I could literally add to anything. And it certainly is a nice addition to this rich delectable cake.

There are 9 egg yolks in this cake, so it's a dense one. You'll want company over to help polish it off, because it's hard to get through more than a small slice, and that's advice coming from a sweets-aholic!

Lemon Poppyseed Cake

2/3 cup sugar
8 egg yolks
1 egg
2 lemons, zested
1/2 cup flour
1/2 cup corn starch
salt
1 cup butter, melted and cooled
1/2 cup poppy seeds 

1. Beat sugar and eggs until pale and fluffy, ~6 minutes. Beat in lemon zest.
2. Sift in flour, corn starch, and salt. Mix until just combined.
3. Beat in butter and poppy seeds.
4. Pour battery into a greased/lined pan of choice (Springform pan, Bundt pan, Angel Food pan, etc.). Bake at 325Ffor 45 minutes or until cake pulls from sides.