Cast Iron Skillet Corn Bread

I'd been wanting a cast iron for a really long time, and last weekend, my mom bought one for me! I hefted its weight gleefully in my hands, imagining all the recipes I could finally make, the ones I'd been drooling over for the last couple of years.

Let me tell you something: the cast iron skillet does not disappoint. I've used it twice already, and it makes your food look beautiful and all the more delicious.

Or maybe that's just because I've been so excited about the novelty of the thing.

I made some cornbread molasses rolls on Thursday, which, while I didn't take a picture because it was too dark (and I was stressed about having to write a seven-page paper), I will definitely make again and share with you. Today, after waking up hungry at one in the afternoon, I went for some good old fashioned corn bread.

Here's just a hint. This recipe isn't very healthy. I've been in the mood for fatty things lately.



(There's another picture if you read more.)

Chocolate Rum Cake

We had some rum left over from the Tiramisu, and as we didn't really want it sitting around, we decided to turn it into a Chocolate Rum Cake. I was a bit skeptical at first, because I don't like a strong rum flavor. However, after letting it sit overnight, I was pleasantly surprised to find that the rum flavor had, indeed, mellowed out, and made a lovely complement to the almond extract.

Unfortunately, this is the best picture I was able to get. I forgot to take a picture of the cake while it was whole, and by the time I got to it to take a picture, there were only a couple of pieces left.

Hobbit Food: Mushroom Stroganoff

If you've read Lord of the Rings, you may have picked up on the fact that hobbits absolutely love mushrooms. I suspect they'd choose mushrooms over a chocolate cake any day. If I'm remembering correctly, early on in the first book, Frodo and company are given a basket of mushrooms to carry on their journey like blueberry muffins.

I don't have as much of a vibrant passion for mushrooms as hobbits do. I think, more than anything, I want to like mushrooms more than I actually do. For the sake of the hobbits, you know. I am enough of a mushroom fan, however, to know that mushrooms cooked just right are absolute bliss.

When I came home from class today, I was absolutely starving. I had a late breakfast, which, after sitting through class and running off to some tiny, hidden used bookstore to fetch a book I need for a class tomorrow, meant that I would be having lunch around three o'clock. Which meant, of course, that I was starving. I wasn't sure what I wanted until I remembered that my mom had given me the leftover mushrooms from the Quick Chicken Fricassee. Then I knew. Oh, I tried to play coy by Googling mushroom recipes, but I knew deep down that I already had the perfect recipe saved.

As it turns out, it was more than perfect. It was absolutely heavenly.

Mushroom haters, get thee back! (Or get thee to a nunnery. You choose.)

Quick Chicken Fricassee

This weekend, I went home to my mom's house for the first time since Christmas (oops). Despite the Amtrak delays that seemed determined to thwart my journey home, and the couplet of blackouts on Saturday that nearly destroyed our Kinders-soaked steaks, it was relatively relaxing. My brother and I drove up to our local mountain – everyone should have a local mountain, don't you know? – and hiked about in the patchy yet miraculously low snow. My mom and I shopped a bit. I read a bit.

I also finally got a chance to look through the Cook's magazines I had left at home, to which my dad got me a subscription months ago, but which I keep forgetting to browse. I was missing out, ignoring them for so long! They do marvelous things with snow peas.

One recipe caught my eye immediately: Quick Chicken Fricassee. Even though I was supposed to be home relaxing, I just had to make it.

I apologize in advance for the abhorrent quality of the following photograph. We were all hungry, and had no patience to hold still and take pictures in the rapidly-fading light. This, sadly, was the best of the lot.

Tiramisu

Two of my roommates have been on a rigorous diet for the past few weeks in order to lose weight for their Judo tournament. Or rather, they had to lose weight to get to a specific weight for their weigh-in, so they could be in a lower weight class. (How many more times can I use a form of the word "weight"? Any bets?) Their weigh-in (that's one more!) was on Thursday night. If you recall, Thursday is my night to cook; so they asked me to make something fatty and delicious for dinner.

I admit, I panicked at this. I've been trying to cook healthier lately – healthy, and more inclined to vegetarianism, as one of my roommates is a vegetarian. So we all came to the conclusion that I could make something unremarkable (my words, not theirs) for dinner, and something spectacular for dessert. I told them they could have any dessert they wanted in the world. They chose tiramisu. (If you're curious, we had Spinach Lasagna Rolls for dinner.)

After Googling for a bit, I found a tiramisu recipe that doesn't use store-bought ladyfingers. I don't like using store-bought things like that if I can help it, because it feels a little bit like cheating. I knew this would make it one of the more complicated recipes I've made, but I was excited for the challenge.

An Old Favorite: Lemon Poppy Seed Muffins

I seem to have a penchant for cooking on Saturday mornings. (I also seem to have a penchant for the word penchant. Although, every time I use it, I get paranoid, and am reminded of that scene in The Princess Bride with Inigo, Fezzik, and Vizzini, where Vizzini keeps crying, "Inconceivable!" And Inigo says, "You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.")

This Saturday morning, I decided to go for an old favorite: lemon poppy seed muffins. The recipe I usually use is meant for making bread, instead of muffins, but lemon poppy seed bread takes forty-five minutes to bake, whereas their muffiny counterparts take about twenty. And I was hungry.

Due to a shortage of normal-sized muffin tins, and a surplus of muffin batter, I ended up getting twelve normal-sized, albeit overflowing, muffins, and twelve mini muffins. I was a bit overzealous on the filling up of the normal muffin tin, and filled each cup almost to the top. So theoretically, I might have gotten another batch of mini muffins if I'd been a bit less careless. I was also out of muffin-tin liners. As a consequence, we are really now almost out of PAM.*

* We were only almost out of PAM before. Not really almost.

Whole Wheat Pear Pancakes

I love treating myself to a pancake breakfast every once in a while. Whether it's on a Saturday morning like today, or in the quick half hour before I have to catch the next bus to class, pancakes are always worth making. Pair them with scrambled eggs, or just a simple bowl of yogurt, in the end, you'll feel full and satisfied.

A few days ago, in that 'quick half hour' mentioned above, I tried out a recipe for whole wheat pancakes, which were surprisingly good. I decided, though, that they could be even better if I combined them with another recipe I'd found, which adds grated pears to the batter.

This morning seemed like the perfect time to try them out.

Rosemary Crackers

Thursday night is my night to cook for my roommates. I peruse food blogs the week or weekend prior, hungrily scrounging for something to feed them. Nothing is too elaborate or too simple; I'm willing to try anything.

Tonight, I made a double batch of Garlic Soup, based on this recipe, a salad (with added pears and thawed, once-frozen strawberries that, combined with balsamic vinegar and olive oil made a kind of sweet vinaigrette), and Rosemary Crackers.

The soup turned out pretty well (it uses French bread to make it creamier, instead of using a lot of cream), and the salad was delicious (we ate the entire thing). The pictures didn't turn out so wonderful, since it was already dark, and my camera sadly couldn't work its magic.

Maybe it's just because I baked them earlier in the day, when I could set them on my windowsill in full sunlight, but I feel that the Rosemary Crackers were something special. So that's what I'm going to share tonight.