Tag Archives: st. patricks day

Mariette’s Sausage Buns

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mariettes1As you can see, I’ve been branching a little bit (just a weensy bit) out of my regular sweets-baking comfort zone for the last few posts, but I guess this particular recipe can fall under the “baking” category. As with the last recipe from a book I checked out at the library that is definitely going on my “to buy” wishlist, Home Made Winter by Yvette van Boven’s latest wonderful cookbook is going to, as well. Unfortunately I have to return the book tomorrow, so I thought it might be wise to share the recipe beforehand!

Nearly every recipe in this book is one you’d want to make. At least I think so. I freaked out over every recipe as I turned the pages. This one in particular though caught my eye as St. Patrick’s Day was nearing–something hearty and meaty to dip into a spicy mustard sauce paired with a nice tall glass of Guinness. It’s not normally a recipe I think I’d usually make. Come to think of it, I don’t think I’ve ever posted any other meat-based recipes before! My blog started on a vegan baking craze and I haven’t branched off too far from that tree. It’s good to spice things up a bit though, right?

My baking plans for St. Patrick’s Day kinda went on hold though. I finally got that nasty cold bug that’s been going round and was totally not in the mood to step foot in the kitchen (you have those days too, right?). But it’s chill. I made em the next day and had a Guinness despite the bug. No biggie.

They turned out fantastically well. I was rather surprised, actually. Puff pastry, if you haven’t heard, works wonders. Not only can you use it for baking with sweets, but it goes great with savory dishes as well. Literally all I did was unthaw the pastry sheets in the fridge overnight, and sliced up the two big squares of dough into 6 pieces each (yielding 12 total). Not as many as I expected to make from the recipe (originally said it would make 15) but for two people it was plenty. There was a bit of meat filling left over and I even halved the recipe, using 1 lb of ground sirloin than 2. So I’m not sure if the proportions are off or what, but regardless, this would make a great appetizer for a party! They’re comforting, hand-held, and great with a Guinness.

Mariëtte’s Sausage Buns

Adapted from Yvette van Boven’s Home Made Winter

Makes 12 buns

For the Filling:

  • 1 lb ground sirloin
  • 1 egg
  • 2 tbsp ketchup
  • 1/4 cup tamari or soy sauce
  • 2 tsp Worcestershire sauce
  • 2 tsp cinnamon
  • 2 tsp allspice
  • 1/2 tsp nutmeg
  • 1 tbsp prepared mustard
  • handful of dried bread crumbs
  • dash of hot sauce
  • 1/2 tsp salt

To Wrap & Bake:

  • 1 package puff pastry sheets (should have 2 in package)
  • 1 egg, beaten
  • oil or butter, for greasing
  1. To make the filling: combine all the ingredients for the filling in a big bowl and mix thoroughly with your hands. Add as many bread crumbs as necessary to make the filling nice and consistent–not too moist but not too dry or sticky. 
  2. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Line two sheets with parchment paper or grease.
  3. Cut each pastry dough square into 6 individual squares yielding 12 total. For every pastry square, form a “sausage” of the ground meat mixture and fold the pastry up and over the meat, pressing the edge firmly with your fingertips, then crimp with a fork. Continue until all the meat and puff pastry sheets are used.
  4. Arrange the rolls on your prepared baking sheets and brush them with the egg. Bake 25-30 minutes, or until golden brown.
  5. Eat with your mustard or a chutney of some sort! Enjoy!

Mint Chocolate Crème de Menthe Bundt Cake

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I created this cake based on the inspiration from two main things:

1. My grandfather on my dad’s side used to drink straight up Grasshopper’s every evening after dinner while watching the telly, and I swore I’d never forget the scent that wafted through the room. Nor would I ever forget the bright green food colored liquid resting in the vessel he would raise to his lips. I was frightened and intrigued at the same time. I thought the stuff was cough syrup.

2. My grandmother on my dad’s side would make the classic Crème de Menthe “Grasshopper” sheet cake, full of preservatives with a Betty Crocker cake base mix, the liqueur, hot fudge, and cool whip. An ice-box cake, if you will. It was effing amazing. I can’t assure you at what point of my childhood I finally put two and two together and realized the yummy green minty stuff in the after dinner dessert cakes she’d make was the same stuff I was horrified my grandfather was poisoning himself with. It looks something like this:

Crème de menthe liqueur comes in the clear liquid form, and also in the green-dyed form. As tempting as it was to go without the food coloring, it just isn’t the same experience if it isn’t green, right?! Ok, you feels.

I Googled to the moon and sun and back and couldn’t, for the life of me, find a from-scratch crème de menthe/”grasshopper” bundt cake. At all. So, once again, I took matters into my own hands and found a way to adapt to the “Naughty Senator” bundt cake from All Cakes Considered. No preservatives or trans-fats here. No pistachio pudding mixes. This is straight up hard-core crème de menthe bundt cake purity.

It was super fun to make. Dye-ing things green, separating batter, swirling things together (as shown above). And it smelled incredible. The chocolate is a nice touch to balance the pure mint green batter out. And the swirling effect looks uber pretty, too.

I hope it isn’t too late for your St. Patrick’s Day baking plans to make this. I promise, it’s super easy, you really just need a bottle of that green stuff and you’ll be fine. Promise. You won’t regret it.

Mint Chocolate Crème de Menthe Bundt Cake

Adapted from All Cakes Considered, Food & Wine Magazine

Makes one 12-inch bundt cake

For the cake:

  • 2 1/2 cups sugar
  • 1/4 cup unsweetened cocoa
  • 2 sticks unsalted butter, at room temperature
  • 4 large eggs
  • 3 1/2 cups sifted all-purpose flour
  • 3 teaspoons baking powder
  • 1/2 teaspoon salt
  • 1 cup sour cream (or milk)
  • 3/4 cup Crème de Menthe liqueur, plus 2 teaspoons
  • extra green food coloring gel (optional)

For the chocolate ganache glaze:

  • 3 ounces semi-sweet/bittersweet chocolate
  • 1/3 cup heavy cream
  • 1/2 teaspoon corn syrup
  • 1/2 tablespoon unsalted butter
  1. Center an oven rack and preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Prepare your bundt pan by spraying with cooking oil, and flour. Remove excess by tapping out the rest.
  2. In a small bowl, whisk together 1/2 cup of the sugar with all of the cocoa powder. Set aside.
  3. Using a mixer on medium speed, in a separate bowl, cream the butter then gradually add in the remaining 2 cups of sugar. Add the eggs one at a time, beating after each addition.
  4. In another separate large bowl, dry whisk together the flour, baking powder and salt.
  5. Add 1 cup of the flour mixture to the creamed butter and sugar bowl, beat, then add 1/3 cup of the sour cream and beat again. Repeat until all of the flour mixture and sour cream are blended into the batter.
  6. Pour half of the batter into a clean medium bowl. Add the 3/4′ths cup of menthe liqueur. Mix together well. If you’d like the batter greener, just add some gel coloring.
  7. Pour 2/3rds of the now green batter into the bottom of the cake pan. Set aside the remaining green batter.
  8. Clean off your beaters, dry, and return them to the mixer. Add the cocoa and sugar mixture to the plain “yellow” batter and add the remaining 2 teaspoons of menthe liqueur. Beat until smooth.
  9. Using your spatula, pour the chocolate batter over the green batter in the pan.
  10. Layer the remaining 1/3 of green batter over the chocolate batter and marble (using a small spatula or plastic knife, cut through the middle of the batter ring to the bottom of the pan. Bring the utensil toward you and then up toward the side of the pan. Rotate the cake pan with your other hand and repeat. Do about 2 rotations total, no more).
  11. Bake for 45-50 minutes. When the cake tests done (check with toothpick), let cool for at least 30 minutes, then invert and unmold onto a cake rack.
  12. To make the chocolate ganache glaze: In a small saucepan, bring the cream to a boil. In a heatproof bowl, combine the remaining 3 ounces of chopped chocolate with the corn syrup and butter. Pour the hot cream over the chocolate and let stand until melted, about 5 minutes. Whisk until smooth. Let the ganache glaze cool until thick but still pourable, about 5 minutes.
  13. Pour the ganache over the cooled cake. Let the cake stand until the glaze is set, at least 30 minutes, before serving.

Mint Chocolate Macarons with E+E

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Last Friday afternoon, all of the EYES + EDGE gals had a fun get-together to celebrate our collaborations with one another. Delia and Holly had the brilliant idea to do a little baking demo, have some drinks, and hang out to get to know one another a bit more. Since most of what we do for EYES + EDGE is online-based, through many email and text exchanges, it was nice to meet up in person for a change and have a great time together. Lauren brought ingredients to make blood orange mimosas, and Margaret Jacobsen, the beautiful, sweet and incredibly talented Portland photographer, was kind enough to document the whole process with her creative and artistic eye. Her children are the absolute cutest, also!



With St. Patrick’s Day coming up, of course my mind was onto something green, with mint, perhaps. Since a few people have dietary restrictions, something gluten-free was the best route to take. And what better baking expedition to do a demo on than homemade French macarons? So we made Mint Chocolate macarons, and they were delicious!


I started on my big macaron baking obsession at the beginning of 2012. I purchased this book and went crazy buying all kinds of equipment I thought I needed, obsessing over trial-and-error horror stories on baking blogs, and finally tackled a few recipes of my own. Fortunately, macaron baking, as it turns out, tends to be less complicated than one might think. I’ve found that the more uptight I get about measuring ingredients on a kitchen scale, sifting my almond flour, heating the sugar prior to whisking the egg whites… it just makes it all way more complicated necessary. The best macarons I’ve made that have actually turned out successfully have been the ones I haven’t stressed out too much over, AKA the less steps and the simpler it is, the better (like many other lessons in life, right?).



So if you are a big macaron lover and as fascinated by them as I am, have always wanted to learn how to make them but too intimidated to try, hopefully this little instruction/demonstration will help you a bit to get up the courage to tackle them!



I always like to start out with a few important key points, tips I feel that have helped me the most, things that I’ve learned and found out the hard way. So to make things easier for ya:

  1. Make sure you set out your egg whites (on average, from 3 large eggs) at least 24 hours prior to making your macarons. I like to put mine in a mason jar with a tight lid to make sure it doesn’t get contaminated. Also, I’d like to emphasize that they stay out of the refrigerator (they need to be at room temperature without any extra moisture!). And no, you won’t die from salmonella. Trust me on this.
  2. Whatever color you are making your macarons, dye them with gel food coloring. It’s not the typical stuff you can get at Safeway in the 4-pack, they look more like this. They have less liquid and are a higher concentration of color so a little goes a long way.
  3. Having high-quality, thick insulated cookie sheets = greater results. You don’t want anything thin and dinky (example). No jelly-roll pans, basically. Otherwise your macaron won’t bake through completely and may be still moist in the center.
  4. Just like with the “I Heart Oregon” sugar cookies, you’ll need piping bags and tips. I prefer the larger tips for piping macarons (#10-12, 1A or 2A, depending on the size of the macarons and the control you’d like to have with the tips).
  5. A food processor to process the almond flour and powdered sugar together so the particles are as fine as possible.
  6. Parchment paper.
  7. I love stainless steel mixing bowls as I’ve found I achieve the best results whipping up my egg whites in those, but more than likely enamel or Pyrex should work fine (I just don’t know for sure).


Ok! Let’s get started with a few photos to demonstrate.

What “macaronage” looks like–the joining of the egg whites and almond flour/sugar mixture with food coloring.


Some examples of tip sizes.


Filling up your piping bag. Having help is super helpful at this step but you can do it yourself!


Piping out the macarons. Try to make them the same size, as much as possible. This is an art in itself, I know it isn’t easy! But it gets easier over time, I promise.


What they should look like when you open up the oven! Oven temperatures will vary, so it’s best to experiment with a lower temperature than usual (unless you know your oven runs hotter or cooler). The recommended temperature was 375 degrees F, but we brought it down to 350 degrees, baked for about 8 minutes and these turned out perfect, with a shell, foot and all! And they didn’t stick to the parchment.


There are a zillion different fillings you can pipe between your macarons, but for this we went with a mint chocolate ganache. It was super easy to make! Just put ½ cup of chocolate chips in a heat-proof glass (such as a Pyrex measuring cup), and pour ⅔ cups heated cream (almost to a boil) on top, let sit for a few seconds, stir, and add 2 tablespoons butter (slightly softened). And of course about 2 teaspoons of peppermint extract.


Put this in the freezer to harden up a bit (about 30-40 minutes) as it makes it easier to spoon onto the cookies.


A few are a bit burned on the bottom, but that’s ok! They’re still soft and delicious on the inside. It also makes it a bit easier to match similar sized cookies together (once they’ve cooled) so filling them with ganache is a cinch!


Viola! All done. The only photo I wish I could have demonstrated is what “stiff peaks” looks like if you’ve never tried to achieve those with egg whites and granulated sugar before, but it took us about 10 minutes or so with a hand-held mixer to achieve the consistency we needed. You have to whip the egg whites for awhile to get all the air and moisture out. If in doubt, Google it, or refer to the “I Heart Oregon” cookies, although those are soft peaks. You’ll want something that holds up a bit more “stiff” looking than those.

Here’s a peek at the finishing product:
They turned out so well! Honestly I was a bit nervous as the cold, damp weather of Portland might have affected the egg whites and outcome, but it was a beautiful sunny day and I think it was the good vibes of the entire group that made them all happen and turn out as beautifully as they did! And yes, they were absolutely delicious!

They’re kid approved, too!

 

Mint Chocolate Macarons

Makes approximately 12-18 macarons, depending on the size you make them

Ingredients:

  • ⅔ cup almond flour
  • 1 ½ cups powdered sugar
  • 3 large egg whites at room temperature, left out overnight
  • 5 tablespoons granulated sugar
  • 2 teaspoons peppermint extract
  • green gel food coloring
  • ½ cup semi-dark chocolate chips
  • ⅔ cup heavy cream
  • 2 tablespoons unsalted butter, softened at room temperature
  • 2 teaspoons peppermint extract


Instructions:

  1. Line two baking sheets with parchment paper. Set aside.
  2. Process the almond flour and powdered sugar in a food processor to ensure the powders are very fine and no lumps remain. Set aside.
  3. In a medium bowl, begin to beat the eggs. When the egg whites start to foam, add 1 tablespoon of the granulated sugar at a time (5 total). Beat until you achieve “stiff peaks”, about 5-10 minutes (not liquidy).
  4. Add the almond mixture to the egg whites and begin to fold with a spatula. Add in the peppermint extract and food coloring. Once the flour mixture is completely incorporated, you have begun the “macaronage”. Using your spatula, continue to fold, smearing the batter against the bowl.
  5. Using a piping bag with a round tip, pipe out the batter onto the baking sheets. Pipe straight down, flood the area, then pull up quickly. Try to make them uniform, but don’t worry too much about it. In the end, they will find their equal match.
  6. Preheat your oven to 350 degrees F (may be 25 degrees higher or lower depending on how your oven runs) but in the meantime let the macarons sit for at least 15-30 minutes to settle and let the air bubbles dissipate.
  7. Bake the macarons for about 8-9 minutes. The foot appeared at minute 8, but then we let the oven still cook with the door open for about 2 and then pulled them out. You don’t want them to be too brown, just enough so that they are firm and have a “foot”.
  8. Let the macarons cool for several minutes. They should release easily.


To make the ganache:

  1. Pour your chocolate chips into a heat-proof measuring cup. Set aside.
  2. Heat your cream over medium heat, until a slight boil begins (about 3-5 minutes).
  3. Pour the cream on top of the chocolate, let sit for a minute, then add the butter and extract. Stir until completely smooth.
  4. The ganache may be a bit runny so place in the freezer for about ½ hour to achieve spreading consistency.
  5. Match like-sized cookies and fill with approximately 1-2 teaspoons of ganache.
  6. For the filling to set, place the macarons back on the baking sheet into the freezer to solidify for several minutes (at least 15-20). That’s it! You’re done! High five! As always, let me know if you have any questions!

Photos by Margaret Jacobsen & Kylie Antolini

Guinness Chocolate Cheesecake

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guinness chocolate cheesecake

As I’m sure you’re well aware, St. Patrick’s day is just around the corner and we all know what that means pretty much two things: the color green, and a nice frosty glass of Guinness stout. Two things I absolutely love: green is my favorite color, and stouts (especially the Guinness extra stout) are one of my favorite beers. The next baking recipe will include some green hues in it, but for now I’m going to focus all of my attention of the Guinness and present you with this delectable Guinness Chocolate Cheesecake.

I’ve baked with Guinness quite a few times in my life. Not to mention vegan chocolate stout cupcakes (for some reason I didn’t get around to posting that recipe a few years ago… I should fix that). Stout can do such amazing things once it is incorporated into baked goods. Obviously it pairs well with chocolate, hence chocolate chips, cocoa powder, and in this cheesecake. It’s absolutely insane. Almost like a flourless and dense chocolate cake, very fudgy, creamy, but also light like a chocolate souffle. But better.

Honestly, does it look like it could get any better? This is the ultimate chocolate dessert. It’s especially enhanced with a squeeze of whipped cream on top and a few sliced strawberries or raspberries. What more could you want? If you’re looking for a dessert recipe to take to a potluck St. Patrick’s party or to host at your home, look no further. This is all you’ll need. (And a few more bottles of Guinness…) Just make it ahead of time the night before!

Guinness Chocolate Cheesecake

From: Closet Cooking

Ingredients:

  • 1 cup honey graham cracker crumbs
  • 3 tablespoons cocoa powder
  • 1 tablespoon sugar
  • 2 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted
  • 12 ounces 56% semisweet chocolate, chopped
  • 2 tablespoons heavy cream
  • 3 (8 ounce) packages neufchâtel cream cheese
  • 1 cup sugar
  • 1/2 cup fat-free sour cream
  • 3 eggs
  • 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
  • 3/4 cup Guinness Extra Stout

Directions:

  1. Mix the graham cracker crumbs, cocoa powder, sugar, and butter and press into the bottom of a 9 inch spring form pan.
  2. Melt the chocolate in the cream in a small saucepan over medium heat.
  3. Cream the cream cheese in a large bowl with a hand-held mixer.
  4. Mix in the sugar, chocolate, sour cream, eggs, vanilla, and Guinness.
  5. Pour the mixture into the spring form pan.
  6. Bake in a preheated 350F oven for 55 minutes.
  7. Turn off heat and leave cheesecake in the oven with the door slightly ajar for 60 minutes.
  8. Let cool completely and chill the cheesecake in the fridge overnight!