London Fog Cookies & Earl Gray Buttercream

I saw a recipe for a crepe cake that had 20 layers of crepes with each crepe having a layer of earl grey buttercream. While it looked delicious, it also looked like a lot of work. Also, I've never had a tea-based frosting. I didn't want to make the crepe cake and be met with a mouthful of disappointment. I based these cookies off of a cookie recipe I already had (because I wanted to utilize a box of cake mix) and my favorite Swiss buttercream recipe. The result was fantastic. The tea was subtle and paired amazingly well with the chocolate cookie. Neither flavor was dominating the party and the end result was sweet, buttery, subtle, and delicious.

London Fog Cookies

Cookie Ingredients:
2 boxes of devil’s food cake mix
4 large eggs

2 teaspoons of vanilla extract
2/3 cups of vegetable oil
Confection’s Sugar for rolling

Directions:
Mix the cake mix, eggs, vanilla, and oil into a mixing bowl and mix very well. Cover with cling wrap and refrigerate for one hour. While the dough is chilling now would be a good time to start the butter for the Earl Grey buttercream as shown below! Preheat the oven to 375. Roll cookies into small balls about the circumference of a nickel. If you weigh them, they should be about 15 grams. Roll them into confectioner’s sugar. Bake on an ungreased cookie sheet for 8 minutes. Remove from the oven and tap the tops of the cookies to flatten slightly. Let cool on the pan for 5 minutes before moving to a wire rack to cool completely. Once cooled, pipe a dollop of Earl Grey buttercream on the bottom of one cookie and top with a second to make sandwiches.

Earl Grey Buttercream

Frosting Ingredients:
2 egg whites

1/2 cup granulated sugar
1/8 teaspoon of cream of tartar
2 and 1/2 sticks of unsalted butter (separated!)
5 bags of Earl Grey tea

Directions:
Gently melt 2 sticks of butter in a saucepan and bring to a slight boil. Steep the tea bags into the butter and let them sit for 15 minutes in the melted butter. Squeeze the tea bags to extract any butter absorbed into the tea bags. You should notice some dark brown liquid coming out of the tea bags. This is the butter infused into the tea. Make sure to get as much of it out of the bags as possible. Discard the used tea bags. Stir the melted butter and pour into a bowl and put into the fridge for 30 minutes. This will firm up the butter but keep it soft/spreadable like room temp butter. When the cookies are cooling, put the egg whites, sugar, and tartar into the bowl of a stand mixer. Mix very well. Place over a double boiler. Gently cook the mixture until it comes to 160 degrees, whisking often. Immediately place the bowl onto the stand mixer with the whisk attachment. Beat well for about 8 minutes until heavy peaks form. This takes 5 to 8 minutes. Change the whisk attachment to the paddle attachment. At this point, the melted butter that was in the fridge should NOT be melted but spreadable like room temperature butter. Give it a good mix. If it’s still melted and not the consistency of spreadable butter, put it back into the fridge or freezer to firm up some more. The other half a stick of butter should be room temperature. Slowly add a tablespoon or two of the butter (doesn’t matter if it’s the infused butter or the regular butter) to the frosting beating well after each addition. After all the butter is added, beat the hell out of it until it’s the consistency of frosting. Should only take a few minutes.

Soft Pretzels

This will probably be a short blog post as I am supposed to head out to Cleveland to visit my in-laws for a Very Pandemic Memorial Day Weekend. This is the first time since March that we have gone out to see anyone, so it's a needed reprieve. So how does this relate to soft pretzels? Every year, my husband and I have an annual cookie party that people go nuts over. Usually, my in-laws come over and stay the night before the cookie party so they don't have to make the hour and a half hour long trip two times in one day. At our cookie party, we always have a few savory appetizers and a cocktail of choice for our guests. We also put out a veggie tray. I think the rule is: If you have a piece of celery dipped after every cookie, the calories from the cookies don't count. I'm not a scientist, but that seems right. 

On this particular cookie party, I was making soft pretzels the night before and I was going to serve it with beer cheese (not included on this page). My father-in-law, John,  saw the large pile of dough I was working with and said, "That's going to take you all night to make pretzels!" I looked at my watch and said, "No... probably under 2 hours." I was right. Now, here is the thing about my husband, he is a bit of a food vulture. We all have these in our families. They circle around the bowl of cookie dough or frosting and try to steal bits and pieces of it. While my husband refuses to think he's anything like his father, his father is almost as bad as he is. Once the pretzels came out of the oven, there John was, hovering. Now, in my direct Italian family, if someone wants something, we'll just tell you. "I want a pretzel," they'd demand. My in-laws are WASPs and tend to infer they'd want something. For example, John said, "Boy.... those look good." That his way of saying, "I want one." I was happy enough to oblige. 

This recipe is wonderful because you can make pretzel shapes, pretzel bread sticks, or pretzel nuggets. Whatever your heart desires. They freeze well and reheat easily by simply wrapping them in a damp paper towel and heating at 50% power for a minute. 

Soft Pretzels

Ingredients:

4 teaspoons of active dry yeast

1 teaspoon of white sugar

1 ¼ cups of warm water (about 110-Degrees F)

5 cups (600 grams) all purpose flour

½ cup (100 grams) of white sugar

1 ½ teaspoon of salt

1 tablespoon of vegetable oil

½ cup of baking soda

4 cups of hot water

Pretzel salt (or coarse sea salt) (for topping)

Directions:

In a small bowl, dissolve yeast and 1 teaspoon sugar in 1 1/4 cup warm water. Let stand until creamy, about 10 minutes.

In a large bowl, mix together flour, 1/2 cup sugar, and salt. Make a well in the center; add the oil and yeast mixture. Mix and form into a dough. If the mixture is dry, add one or two more tablespoons of water. Knead the dough until smooth, about 7 to 8 minutes. Lightly oil a large bowl, place the dough in the bowl, and turn to coat with oil. Cover with plastic wrap and let rise in a warm place until doubled in size, about 1 hour.

Preheat oven to 450 degrees F (230 degrees C). Grease 2 baking sheets.

In a large bowl, dissolve baking soda in 4 cups hot water; set aside. When risen, turn dough out onto a lightly floured surface and divide into 12 equal pieces. Roll each piece into a rope and cut into 2 inch pieces. Once all of the dough is shaped, dip each pretzel into the baking soda-hot water solution for about 5 to 10 seconds and place pretzels on baking sheets. Sprinkle with kosher salt.

Bake in preheated oven until browned, about 8 minutes. Remove and brush with melted butter. Once cooled, they can be frozen and reheated in the microwave. Simply wrap your frozen soft pretzel in a damp paper towel and heat for 1 minute at 50% power. Warning, it's been a while since I've had to reheat these as they never last. You may need to adjust the time or power setting depending on your microwave. 

Dalonga Coffee

Coffee plays an essential role in any Italian-American household. For any major holiday, my grandmother would put on a "pot" of coffee for everyone. I use the word pot in quotations because it was an actual pot. Like something you would see at a catering event. EVERYONE would have a cup, or two or six. It can be 8 at night and my mom will ask me for a cup of coffee. Whenever my twin brother comes over he asks, "Can I get some coffee, Man?" Most of the family enjoys their coffee black, though some do like cream.

Over the last few months, I kept seeing images of something called Dalonga Coffee. I had no idea what it was. As someone who prefers black coffee, I thought it was going to be gross, but after I tried it, I loved it. Essentially, it's an instant coffee cream that is enjoyed over a glass of milk and ice. I thought it might be good on coffee, but it's quite strong and bitter on it's own and I think coffee would enhance that bitterness. It might be good though! The flavor (with the milk) reminds me of a Rhode Island drink called coffee milk. If you liked that, you'd really appreciate this.

This recipe only takes 2 minutes to make and is a 1:1:1 ratio which makes it VERY easy to scale whether you want 1 cup or 10 cups. The recipe below serves 4 people. If this black coffee loving Italian-American can love this drink, you probably will too.

Ingredients:

4 Tablespoon of instant coffee
4 Tablespoon of granulated sugar
4 Tablespoon of near boiling water
Milk or Brewed Coffee

Directions:
Put the instant coffee, sugar, and water into a bowl or container. I use a 4 Cup Pyrex Liquid measure. Using a hand mixer set on medium-high, whip until very thick. Should take only a minute or so. 

Fill a glass up with some ice and add milk until 3/4 filled. Top with a few heaping spoonfuls of the coffee "cream." Let your guests stir it in as it's part of the fun. You could also add it directly to hot coffee or iced coffee, but be warned, I never tried that and I can't vouch for the flavor/taste.

Big Buttermilk Biscuits

As I am writing this post, it's 7:45AM, and I have two biscuits in the oven right now baking. I LOVE breakfast, especially savory breakfasts. I love biscuits with gravy or just some sunny side up eggs. What makes this biscuit so great is lard. Yes, lard. Sure, you could substitute something else but it won't taste the same. There is a unique taste and texture that lard brings to the biscuits. I've tried all shortening, all butter, a butter-shortening mix, a butter-lard mix, and a lard-shortening mix. None are as good as ALL lard in this recipe. I understand that lard may not be everyone's cup of tea, but it's easy to find, cheap, and adds flakiness to the biscuits and pie dough. 

If you choose another recipe, let me give you two other pieces of advice. For any biscuit recipe, roll your biscuit dough to an inch, not a half-inch like other monsters on the Internet tell you. Also, crowed them together while baking. I put them in a round cake pan and place them in like petals on a leaf, with one central biscuit in the center. There is maybe a half inch between them. When they bake and rise, they will rise UP instead of out. They pull apart with little to no effort. When you cut them this thick, the baking time will probably be closer to 25 minutes like my recipe says instead of 15. 

Useful tools (but not required): Bench scraper and pastry blender

Big Buttermilk Biscuits

Ingredients:
2 cups of all-purpose flour (Plus more for dusting)
1 tablespoon of baking powder
1 tablespoon of white sugar
1 teaspoon of salt
1/3 cup of lard
1 cup of buttermilk (2% or whole works well too)
A few tablespoons of melted or very soft unsalted butter for brushing on top

Directions:

Preheat the oven to 425-degrees. In a bowl, mix together the flour, baking powder, baking soda, sugar, and salt. Add the lard and cut in using a pastry cutter until it resembles a coarse meal. Add the milk and stir with a fork until it comes together. The dough will be very wet - that's what we want. Heavily flour a work surface and dump the dough out. Using a bench scraper, I fold the dough over itself 20 times, lifting the dough and adding flour to the bottom and to the top as needed. You will find the dough will come together and will be much easier to work with after the 10th fold over. I pat the dough out to about 1 to 1.5 inches. Using a 3-inch biscuit cutter (or a drinking glass if you don't have a cutter), cut out your biscuits. When cutting out your biscuits, don't twist the cutter as that can seal the edges and limit its rise. Just press down firmly.

I then place the biscuits into an ungreased 10" cake pan into a flower petal pattern. So, one biscuit in the center, with the other biscuits circling it like petals on a flower. I put them fairly close, but not touching. Why do this? When they bake, they will bake out, until they touch each other (or the side of the pan), and then they will bake up. This will result in a tall biscuit. Brush the tops of the biscuits with butter. Bake for about 22 to 25 minutes (sometimes they need an extra minute, but not usually) until they are golden on top. They make about 6 to 8 biscuits depending on the size.

Freezing: 

These biscuits are pretty damn good frozen and reheated as well. Once your biscuits are baked and cooled, put them into a Ziplock bag and freeze them. When you want to reheat them, set the oven to 350-degrees and wrap each biscuit INDIVIDUALLY with aluminum foil. Once the oven is preheated, place the foil wrapped biscuits directly on the middle oven rack. Bake for 20 minutes.

This is a pastry blender or pastry cutter for those who may be unfamiliar with one. 

Italian Wedding Soup

I have moments where I say, "I'm going to do a thing," and I do it once and never go back to it. Several years ago, I said, "I'm going to do a food blog" and "I'm going to go back to school in my 30's and get a degree in accounting and then get a Masters." I did one of those things, and from the date of my last blog post, I think you can guess which thing I did and which I didn't do. I still have 6 weeks of class before I get my MAcc, but I wanted to start trying to share some recipes with everyone and, unlike the many diets I have been on, try to stick to it.

I have never been a fan of blogs that drone on and on. I also don't like recipes that show a million pictures of the food with secret steps hidden within the wall of text that is NOT included in the recipe. I don't take a ton of pictures, so some of my recipes won't have them (but I'll add them the next time I make them). The recipe I am sharing with you is from my Aunt Kathy. In my family, she's one of the best cooks and her and my mom secretly compete for Cooking Queen. The recipe calls for a noodle called Acini di Pepe or as my Sicilian grandmother called them (forgive the spelling) "Boumbanines"" (pronounced: Boom-Bah-Neens). I was looking for them in the grocery store using the name my grandmother called them and everyone was looking at me like I was insane. Finally, a stocker held up a box of Acini di Pepe and asked, "Is this it?" Yes... that was it. If you can't find them, any very small pasta will do, but they are a lot more common to find now. 

A note on the ingredients and measurements:

You can use homemade stock if you're feeling fancy, but I use box stock, line Swanson, or Better than Bouillon fairly regularly. A "box" of chicken stock is not a common measurement, but a "box" is four cups. You want your onion and garlic to be fairly fine since the meatballs are on the small-size and big chunks won't work well when forming. So, smaller is better here. The recipe calls for half a bag of spinach. What kind of measurement is a "bag?" In the pre-made salad aisle of the grocery store, there are many different bags of greens. You've probably seen a "romaine mix" or an "ice berg mix." That is the bag I am referring to. Sometimes, I can only find a box of spinach. I weighed the amount of spinach I usually use and it came to about 3 ounces. Alternatively, two large handfuls works too. Finally, the noodles. They are easy to find in any International aisle, but the boxes (or sometimes bags) they come in are small and can be easily overlooked. if you can't find it, don't sweat it, just use the smallest pasta you can find. A friend of mine used pasta stars and the world didn't explode. 

Aunt Kathy’s Italian Wedding Soup

Ingredients:

1 pound of bulk Italian pork sausage (I use Bob’s Evans Italian)

½ cup of Italian breadcrumbs

1 egg

1 small onion, finely minced

3 cloves of garlic, finely minced

1 box (approx. 4 cups) of chicken stock (we use Swanson)

½ bag (about 3 ounces) of baby spinach

½ cup of acini di pepe noodles.

Salt and pepper to taste

Directions:

Preheat the oven to 400-degrees. Mix together the sausage, breadcrumbs, egg, onion, and garlic. Using your hands is probably the best way to ensure everything is thoroughly mixed. Form into small meatballs, slightly larger than a nickel in diameter. Bake the meatballs on a cookie sheet for 10 minutes. Turn, and bake for another 10 minutes. In a large stock pot, add the chicken stock and add 4 cups of water. Add salt and pepper to taste keeping in mind that the meatballs will probably bring some salt into the recipe. Bring to a boil. Add the meatballs, spinach, and acini de pepe. Cook for 20 minutes. Adjust seasoning if necessary and serve. This recipe can be easily scaled up to serve as many people as desired. As a dinner, I would say this serves 4 people, maybe 5 people.