A cheesy post

An old friend of mine and regular blog-stalker (*waves at Kim*) and I were recently discussing the picky eating habits of certain children in our lives (in particular, her daughter and one of my nieces). Macaroni and cheese was, of course, on the short list. My complaint: my niece prefers the blue-and-yellow box over Auntie's homemade mac and cheese. (Confession: Auntie also likes the boxed stuff, when she's in the right mood for it, but would generally choose homemade if given a choice.) Kim thought that her little one would probably be open to trying homemade, so I am hereby posting my recipe, which is, of course, the America's Test Kitchen recipe.

If you're happy with no toasty breadcrumbs on the top of it, it is perfect straight from the stovetop, and saves a couple of steps and a bunch of dishes! It's crucial to cook the pasta until tender – just past the "al dente" stage. In fact, overcooking is better than undercooking the pasta. Whole, low-fat, and skim milk all work well in this recipe. This makes enough for an army, but the recipe can easily be halved and baked in an 8-inch-square, broilersafe baking dish.

Classic Macaroni and Cheese
From America’s Test Kitchen

Serves 6 to 8, or 10 to 12 as a side

Bread Crumb Topping
6 slices white sandwich bread (good-quality, about 6 ounces), torn into rough pieces
3 tablespoons unsalted butter (cold), cut into 6 pieces

Pasta and Cheese
1 pound elbow macaroni
1 Tablespoon salt

5 tablespoons unsalted butter
6 tablespoons all-purpose flour
1 1/2 teaspoons powdered mustard
1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper (optional - I generally omit this)
5 cups milk
8 ounces Monterey Jack cheese, shredded (about 2 cups)
8 ounces sharp cheddar cheese, shredded (about 2 cups)
1 teaspoon salt


For the bread crumbs:
Pulse bread and butter in food processor until crumbs are no larger than 1/8 inch, ten to fifteen 1-second pulses. Set aside.

For the pasta and cheese:
Adjust oven rack to lower-middle position and heat broiler. Bring 4 quarts water to boil in Dutch oven over high heat. Add macaroni and 1 tablespoon salt; cook until pasta is tender. Drain pasta and set aside in colander.

In now-empty Dutch oven, heat butter over medium-high heat until foaming. Add flour, mustard, and cayenne (if using) and whisk well to combine. Continue whisking until mixture becomes fragrant and deepens in color, about 1 minute. Gradually whisk in milk; bring mixture to boil, whisking constantly (mixture must reach full boil to fully thicken). Reduce heat to medium and simmer, whisking occasionally, until thickened to consistency of heavy cream, about 5 minutes. Off heat, whisk in cheeses and 1 teaspoon salt until cheeses are fully melted. Add pasta and cook over medium-low heat, stirring constantly, until mixture is steaming and heated through, about 6 minutes.

Transfer mixture to broiler-safe 9x13 inch baking dish and sprinkle evenly with breadcrumbs. Broil until crumbs are deep golden brown, 3 to 5 minutes, rotating pan if necessary for even browning. Cool about 5 minutes, then serve.

Faith and begorrah!

Or something. I'm of Scottish and English extraction, mostly - not a whit of Irish, to my knowledge. However, I made my very first Irish soda bread this year, and I'm pretty pleased with it.

Let's get something out of the way right now: I hate caraway with the fury of a thousand suns. There's not much I don't like or won't try, but caraway falls under that first category. Don't even give me seedless rye that has ground caraway in it. I can taste it, and it completely ruins the sandwich for me.

That being said, I will sometimes bypass a piece of Irish soda bread for one of two reasons. One, of course, is the caraway that seems to be omnipresent. The other reason is that Irish soda bread is often dry. It's nothing a little butter won't help, I suppose, but why fix it with butter when one can just fix the bread?

When my friend Sandra posted a link the other day to a recipe for Irish soda bread, I decided to try making it. The recipe intrigued me due to its inclusion of sour cream; I thought that might moisten things up a bit, and by George, I was right. It's lovely. I also added a very small splash of milk to mine, as the flour wasn't incorporating as well as it should.

The bonus, of course, to making my own Irish soda bread: I can make it sans caraway. Huzzah!

Irish Soda Bread
based on Irish Rosie's Irish Soda Bread, from Recipezaar

3 1/2 cups flour
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
1 pint sour cream
2 eggs
1-2 tablespoons milk, if needed
2 tablespoons caraway seeds (optional) (BLEARGH)
3/4 cup raisins

Preheat oven to 350ºF, and grease 9" springform pan.
Combine dry ingredients - flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda and salt - in a large bowl.
In a small bowl beat eggs until sunny yellow, and stir in sour cream. Combine well.
Add the egg and sour cream mixture to the dry ingredients and stir with a wooden spoon. If flour is not incorporating completely, add 1-2 tablespoons milk. Batter will be very thick and sticky.
Add the raisins (and caraway seeds, if you are using them). Stir well with wooden spoon or knead in with your hands.
Place batter in prepared springform pan.
Dust the top of the batter with enough flour so that you can pat the batter like a bread dough evenly in the pan without it sticking to your hands. With a knife make a shallow crisscross on the top.
Bake for 50-55 minutes in a preheated 350ºF oven.

Happy Pi Day!

Among other things that you may or may not (yet) know about me, I am a math geek.  At this time, I would like to wish you all a very happy Pi Day.  Why?  Because today is 3.14, of course!  (In six years, it will be 3.14.15.  I think I will have to eat pie all day long in celebration.)

If I didn't have plans to go out to dinner tonight, I think I'd make a chicken pie, and some other kind of pie for dessert, probably the peanut butter pie I've made recently, but that my husband has yet to try.  I'm going to have to see if there's any pie on the dessert menu tonight, and save some room.

What's your favorite kind of pie?

These are not your mother's oatmeal cookies...

...unless you happen to be my brother. *waves at Dan, if he's reading this*

It's been well established on this blog that I love oatmeal. Some of you may have even discovered Throwing Spoons by doing a web search for "different types of oatmeal," which brings you to The Oatmeal Dissertation. I mentioned in that post that quick oats are the ingredient of one of my favorite cookie recipes, and that I would post it here sometime.

That time is NOW.

I'm headed over to my sister-in-law's house later for Girls' Night, and promised to bring some goodies. The peanut butter pie, sadly, was out of the question, as Number One Niece is allergic to peanut butter. I rifled through my recipe box, and this recipe jumped out at me. My husband and I have been together for over seven years, and I have never, not ONCE, made these cookies in that entire time. That should be a criminal offense. I had all of the ingredients in the house, so that decided that.

These are not dry oatmeal cookies, studded with raisins. These are thin and chewy, with a bit of a caramel flavor to them, and not a raisin in sight. I will warn you here and now: they are addictive. A single batch makes around three dozen; I recommend doubling the batch, if you have a stand mixer.

Let me take this one brief moment, before I get to the recipe, to recommend some tools that I never really gave much thought to, until I bought them: cookie scoops. They look rather like small, old-fashioned spring-loaded ice-cream scoops.

I have them in small and medium sizes, and I sometimes wonder what I did without them; I'll never go back to using a spoon! Mine are from Pampered Chef, but you can get them in other kitchen goods stores; Amazon has plenty available. The small one is about a tablespoon, and the medium one is about two tablespoons. The medium one is perfect for chocolate chip cookies, but I used the smaller one for these, as they spread quite a bit.

Fred's Oatmeal Cookies

1/2 cup brown sugar

1/2 cup granulated sugar

1/2 cup butter or margarine, softened (I use a combination of the two)

1 egg

1 teaspoon vanilla

1 tablespoon milk

1 cup flour

1/2 teaspoon baking soda

1/2 teaspoon baking powder

1/2 teaspoon salt

1 cup quick oats (if you only have old-fashioned, give them a quick whirl in the food processor)

Preheat oven to 350˙F.

Cream together brown sugar, granulated sugar, and butter/margarine.

In a separate bowl or glass measuring cup, combine eggs, milk, and vanilla, and then beat into butter/sugar mixture until smooth.

In a separate bowl, sift or whisk together flour, baking soda, baking powder, and salt. Gradually mix into butter/sugar/egg mixture. When this is a smooth dough, mix in the quick oats.

Drop onto cookie sheets, about 2" apart. Bake until edges are turning golden brown. In my oven, on my cookie sheets, this was about 11 minutes; my mom's recipe card says 6-7 minutes, so start checking then!

Makes about 3 dozen.