Homemade White Bread

There is nothing like eating a warm just-baked slice of bread with butter or a piece of cheese; even alone, bread is the best comfort food you could offer me. Bread baked right at home is all I need to make a stressful day melt away from my body; after mixing the ingredients and waiting hours for the yeast to do its magic , by the time the aroma of the yeasty bread begins to invade my house I can barely wait to sink my teeth into the crusty goodness.

I’ve been baking breads with my mom since she bought a Bread Machine, but we always end up baking oatmeal bread or 7 grain bread but I wanted something more basic. There are thousands of variations when it comes to bread and I still haven’t tasted one that I don’t like, but sometimes going back to the basic white bread is almost better that a fancy-schmancy fifty-ingredients loaf. For me most of the time, simpler is better.



White Bread
recipe from: The Complete Book of Bread and Bread Machines
makes: 1 Large loaf- 2 pounds

1 3/4 cups (15 fl oz) water
6 cups (1 1/2 lb) unbleached white bread flour (I used unbleached all-purpose)
2 teaspoons salt
1 1/2 tablespoon granulated sugar
3 tablespoons butter
1 1/2 teaspoon easy-blend dried yeast
unbleached white bread flour, for dusting

Pour the water into the bread machine pan. However, if the instructions for your machine specify that the yeast is to be placed in the pan first, reverse the order in which you add the liquid and dry ingredients.

Sprinkle over the flour, ensuring that it covers the water. Add the salt, sugar and butter in separate corners of the bread pan. Make a small indent in the centre of the flour (but not down as far as the liquid) and add the yeast.

Set the bread machine to the basic/normal setting, medium crust. Press start.

Remove the bread at the end of the baking cycle and turn out on to a wire rack to cool.

Mezzo-Mezzo Cupcakes

It’s been a long time since I’ve baked cupcakes, but lately I’ve missed eating cupcakes and since there are no “cupcakeries” in the Island, if I crave them I have to bake them. My mom wanted to bake and I used the opportunity to drill the idea of cupcakes into her head until convinced that cupcakes were the way to go. With my brother’s birthday approaching we used this batch as a taste test for the Mezzo-Mezzo Cupcakes from Cupcakes Galore (any excuse is good for baking cupcakes!) and they turned out to be awesome. Sadly the batch I made for my brother’s birthday didn’t turn out as moist and fluffy as the first batch. I think this might have been either because I used all-purpose flour instead of the usual unbleached all-purpose flour I use or because the flour I used was cold from being in the fridge for a few months now. Either way they were still good, but not as fluffy as the first batch. Another thing that I varied both times was that I creamed the butter and sugar instead of melting the butter and adding the sugar to the dry ingredients. In general both batches were chocolaty without overwhelming the palate followed by a slow and mellow coffee flavor. The Chocolate Whipped Cream Frosting was awesome; it was like a nice creamy cup of cappuccino melting in your mouth, it was so good I wanted to eat the frosting alone. If I could I would eat them every day.

Mezzo-Mezzo Cupcakes
Makes: 16

Cupcakes:
1 1/3 cups all-purpose flour

2 teaspoons baking powder

1 teaspoon baking soda

1 teaspoon salt

1/2 cup unsweetened cocoa powder

1 cup light brown sugar

3 tablespoons instant coffee or espresso powder

1 stick unsalted butter

2 eggs, slightly beaten

1 cup sour cream

Chocolate Whipped Cream Frosting:

1 cup heavy whipping cream, chilled

3 tablespoons sugar (I used powdered)

1 tablespoon unsweetened cocoa powder

1 tablespoon instant coffee powder

Procedure

Preheat oven to 350°F.

In a large bowl, mix all of the dry ingredients together and set aside.

In another bowl, cream butter and sugar until white and fluffy; add eggs, and sour cream together. Pour into dry ingredients, rapidly mixing with a wooden spoon until batter is smooth.

Spoon batter into cupcake papers, filling cups about two-thirds full. Cook for 15-20 minutes or until a tester inserted into the center comes out clean.

Remove from oven and cool.

To make the frosting: put cream, sugar, cocoa, and coffee powder in a large bowl. Stir, cover, and let sit in the refrigerator for about an hour, until chocolate and coffee have dissolved. Remove from refrigerator and beat with an electric beater until stiff.

Frost cooled cupcakes just before serving.

Talking about my garden

One of the things I enjoy about living in a tropical island is that plants grow throughout the year without worrying about the changes of the seasons because in PR we just have two: hot and less hot. I can easily buy a tomato plant in January as in June, as they say, the sky is the limit. I had envisioned a lush garden filled with tomatoes, cabbages, carrots and every kind of vegetable at the grasp of my hands! Only to discover that I end up killing most seedlings that I plant and the few that do survive look like they are about to expire any minute now. Therefore, I’ve come to the conclusion that I’ll leave the difficult process of nourishing seeds into beautiful plants to the professionals. A couple of weeks ago I decided to buy plants since I had grown desperate, that planting seeds takes a lot more patience than I have. Seeds grow so slow and die so easily on me that I bought a few plants, already grown… easier to take care of. This morning I went to water them and discovered that my eggplant plant (shrub?) had a delicate little flower and a few more about to bloom, so people (person? Does anyone read this?) very soon you’ll see quite a few eggplant recipes. Will I dare to make eggplant cupcakes?


The tiny eggplant flower.


Hot chile.


Commonly used in Puerto Rican cuisine.


View of the sky from my backyard.

Festival del Pastel

This past November el Festival Nacional Del Pastel was held in the town of Orocovis here in Puerto Rico. This is the 8th year of the Festival and the first year that I attended. I decided to go with my parents and my brother quite spontaneously, thinking maybe I would get to at least see some of the beautiful scenery of the Island not expecting much from a Festival I had never heard of. A pastel is something like the Puerto Rican version of tamales but using plantains, some people make it with rice instead of plantain. It is usually eaten during the Holidays but can be eaten any time of the year, for me it is not Christmas unless I eat roasted pork and pasteles with some morcillas (blood sausage). To get to Orocovis one has to drive a relatively short trip through the Ferré Expressway and interior small roads of the Island that curve from one side to the other as if dancing around the mountains.

Upon arriving there was the task of finding a place to park and knowing my parents this would take a while since they can be quite paranoid and constantly think everyone is trying to rob them, but to my surprise they parked in the first parking lot they found. Once we walked for a few minutes we finally arrived at a small parking lot where the Festival was. Even though it was a small humble affair it turned out to be quite fun.


The sky looks so blue in Puerto Rico during the cold months.


Pique is the preserve of spicy ajies (hot tiny peppers) in vinegar and oil with garlic and oregano and other herbs. It is used as a seasoning in soups, stews and meats, but can be used in almost everything you might want to make spicy. Pique Mi Madre is one of the best I've tasted, being very hot and savory at the same time.

Green papayas. They are used green to make Dulce de Lechosa a kind of sweet preserve that tastes deliscious with some white cheese.


Green plantain, perfect to be eaten boiled or as platanutre, the Puerto Rican version of potato chips.

Puerto Rican candy: Dulce de coco a candy made with coconut and hard caramel are the small round ones in red (dulce de coco covered in strawberry candy), pink (with guava), white and brown (with coffee) in the back; dulce de ajonjoli made with sesame seeds are the squares at the left; to the right is pasta de mango or mango paste, something like quince or guava paste but with mangos; in the front left is the candied dried friuts in hard caramel; Dulce de almendras or almond candy is in front, kinda like peanut brittle; and to the front right is more Dulce de coco.

Dulce de coco.

Lady serving a nice platter of Arroz con gandules (Rice with Pigeon peas).

This man was sellind that weird can with the rooster on top. When you pull the string it makes a sound like a rooster. Me and my brother heard it and thought they had live roosters in the festival and ran towards the noise excited about it only to find the man with the can.

Güiros. Typical musical instrument that is played by scraping thelined part with a kind of metal brtush, made from higueros, a type of gourd.

Maracas with the Puerto Rican flag and Taino Indian drawings.

Santos de Palo are traditional artesanal wood carving of saints and virgin marys.


The Festival del Pastel has a website that has more information and its history: http://www.festivaldelpastel.org/portal/index.htm

I love Conan O'Brien and Martha Stewart!

I've always found that Martha and Conan have a great chemistry, I wish they would do more stuff together.

Essay

In my Latino Literature class we were assigned to make a list of the places from where the produce in our local supermarket comes from and then write a short paper about it. I thought it would be nice to post it here:


The food and produce eaten by me and my family comes from different corners of the world. Since Puerto Rico is a country that depends on imported foods more than in their own produce, most of the produce and meat are from other countries. For example, most meat bought in my house comes from Costa Rica and the United States, only some poultry is from the Island (companies that are in fast danger of disappearing). When it comes to fish, it can be imported from the United States or from far off places like China, frozen and hard as a slab of wood. The apples we buy many times are imported from Washington and the Tamarind, which grows in the Island, is imported from Thailand, Mangoes many times are from here, can be bought in a “ventorrillo” ( a vegetable and fruit store), but if bought in the supermarket, it will most likely be imported from India. Plantains, which also can be grown in the Island, are imported form the Dominican Republic, just as bananas are sometimes from there too or the American brand Dole, Avocados many times are also imported from the Dominican Republic.

What I've always found terrifying about all the imported produce is the fact that Puerto Rico is an island with rich soil, capable of being used to grow many vegetables and fruits, but those lands are never used to its full potential, mostly used to build condos that sell for half a million dollars. Instead we depend on the produce brought from other places, instead of depending on our own land to feed us. It is a dependency that we have grown accustomed to, making us blind to our Island's own ability to sustain us. We stroll through air conditioned lanes picking fresh produce, meat and cans to consume, without ever questioning the origin of the food we enjoy. Before this assignment I barely ever paid much attention to the place from where my food came from; yes, I was aware of the place from where they came from, but not of what this meant. We don't give much thought to the conditions and type of life those who grow our food go through, to us it is just a nice shiny apple or a juicy pear, we know lots of ways to prepare our meat, but we have no idea about who is responsible for the produce and meat we consume. Right now I must admit that I do not have much knowledge about the conditions of life of the Thailandese people who harvested the tart Tamarinds I ate, or what kind of work policy they have in Costa Rica from where the Beef Steak I love was imported.

I sometimes think that the reason we are so detached from the process of harvesting and the people involved in it is because when our produce is imported we lose touch with them, we are not living where they live and we certainly do not experience the way they are living. By consuming imported products that connection between nature and man is certainly lost and so is the notion that someone went through the trouble of harvesting what we eat.

Coconut Layer Cake and Cupcakes

My mom's birthday was on August the 23rd, all she asked from me was A home-baked coconut layer cake. Without knowing she helped decide which layer cake to enter in the Layers of Cake event that is being held at quirky cupcakes. BUT, I have a horrible memory and forgot to submit my cake, I was lucky that I checked the site today and read that the event had been extended... therefore, I still have a chance!!

The layer cake is adapted from the Martha Stewart site and the frosting is from Bon Appetit. The cake was for a three layer cake, but instead of a third layer I used the batter for cupcakes. I got 20 cupcakes from the third layer batter. The cake was very moist with a hint of saltiness from the cream cheese frosting, great with a nice glass of milk!



Coconut Layer Cake (adapted from Martha Stewart)
Makes about 8-10 servings

* 3 cups sifted all-purpose flour
* 2 1/4 cups sugar
* 3/4 teaspoon baking soda
* Salt
* 3/4 cup canola oil
* 12 large eggs, separated
* 1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
* 3/4 cup sugar
* 1/4 cup cream of coconut
* 1 cup sweetened flaked coconut
* 2/3 cup unsweetened coconut shavings, for garnish

Procedure

-Preheat oven to 325 degrees. Butter three 8-inch round cake pans with butter. Set aside.
-Sift flour, 1 3/4 cups sugar, the baking soda, and 1/2 teaspoon salt into the bowl of an electric mixer.
-Whisk together 3/4 cup water, canola oil, egg yolks, and vanilla in another bowl. Add yolk mixture to flour mixture; mix on medium-high speed until smooth, about 2 minutes. Transfer to a large bowl; set aside.
-Put egg whites and a pinch of salt into the clean bowl of the mixer fitted with the whisk attachment; beat on medium speed until foamy. Raise speed to medium-high; beat until soft peaks form. Gradually add remaining 1/2 cup sugar; beat until stiff, glossy peaks form.
-Fold 1/4 of egg-white mixture into batter with a rubber spatula. Fold in remaining egg-white mixture in 2 batches. Divide batter evenly among prepared pans. Bake until cakes are golden brown and spring back when pressed, 30 to 35 minutes. Invert cakes onto wire racks to cool.
-Bring 1 cup water, the 3/4 cup of sugar, a pinch of salt, and the cream of coconut to a boil in a small saucepan, stirring occasionally. Boil 1 minute; let stand.
-Place 1 cake on a serving plate, and brush with 1/3 cup coconut syrup. Spread with 1 cup cream cheese frosting, and sprinkle with 1/3 cup sweetened coconut. Top with another cake layer; brush with 1/3 cup syrup and sprinkle with 1/3 cup sweetened coconut Top with final cake; brush with remaining 1/3 cup syrup. Refrigerate until firm.
-Spread 1 1/4 cups cream cheese frosting over top and sides of cake. Refrigerate until frosting is firm, about 30 minutes.
-Spread 1 1/2 cups cream cheese frosting over top and sides of cake. Refrigerate until frosting is very firm, at least 1 hour. Finish frosting cake with remaining frosting. Cake can be refrigerated up to 2 days; let stand at room temperature 20 minutes before serving.

Coconut Cream Cheese Frosting (from Bon Appetit)
Makes 3 1/2 cups

2 8-ounce packages Philadelphia-brand cream cheese, room temperature
1/2 cup (1 stick) butter, room temperature
2 cups powdered sugar
1/2 cup canned sweetened cream of coconut (such as Coco Lépez)*
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Procedure
Beat cream cheese in medium bowl until fluffy. Add butter and beat to blend. Add sugar, sweetened cream of coconut and vanilla extract and beat until well blended.