The principles of guacamole dip are really simple.

1) Buy Avacados. make sure that they are a bit ripe.
2) Cut them in half. Scoop out the innards with an ice cream scoop.
3) Put the seed on a paper towel in a cup until it sprouts. Plant it in the ground but only if you live in Florida, California or the Carolinas.

To make a guacamole dip that tastes like anything, you have a few alternatives. Stir in a half a cup of pre-made or store bought salsa. For the more adventurous, try starting with freshly mashed avocado innards from 2 avocados, then sprinkle 1 tsp of chili powder, a smattering of slivered celery, a bit of diced onions and a tbsp of lemon juice.

If you don’t like avocados or want a fat free version, Recipe4Living suggests substituting 2 cups of split green peas and a bit of Tabasco sauce. Well…you may not want to go fat free with this recipe as you eliminate all the benefits of the HEALTHY fats in avocados which eliminates the entire point of even eating the dip. I should be fair and try it before casting judgement, but why not just skip the Tabasco and slap a picture of a baby on the the jar at that point? If it is your very, very favorite version, write in or call in and set me straight. I’d love to hear your side of the story.

Here is the premise:

Ingredients List:
1 Cup Sugar
1 Cup Peanut Butter
1 Egg

Mix the three ingredients in a bowl. With a spoon or whisk.

(Aside #1: Now, this is where the recipe went south for me once. I successfully cracked the egg and measured out very level and accurate one cup portions of the other 2/3 of the ingredients. Where I erred, is that I thoroughly mixed the egg and peanut butter. After I created he promising mix, I realized that my chemistry was off. I should have started with the egg and sugar.

What resulted, were dough balls that were reminiscent of gumdrops, with the sugar as the exoskeleton. A slightly gritty consistency. Okay…back to the recipe.)

Now, divide the portions up into 8-12 portions, depending on how large you would like to make the cookies. Although, I might add, nothing is stopping you from making one huge cookie. Place them on a cookie sheet.

I forgot to add that you need to preheat the oven or the toaster for this. DO NOT USE THE MICROWAVE. (I will say it again. Just don’t do it.) I *think* you would want to set the temperature at 350 or 450, but I really don’t remember. If you are used to baking, you will know what temperature it is supposed to be on.

(Aside number #2: A common mistake is to bake at the wrong temperature. Unless you check them every five seconds. They can quickly turn from mush to crispy in an instant so be careful.)

When they are all baked, take them out to cool.

(Aside number #3: I have to admit that half the time, the cookies turn out soggy and half the time they turn out like a hockey puck. There is a fine balance between leaving them very soft knowing that they will continue to bake on the inside while they cool, and taking them out too soon and basically eating peanut butter with raw egg drippings on it)

If my luck is on your side, you will get 5 really nice cookies out of these, 1 unfit for consumption, and 6 others that you would never serve, but you eat yourself out of mercy. You don’t want to waste food, after all.

Look on the bright side: It is a great way to fill up Grandma’s cookie platter and add the inviting smell of fresh baked cookies to your home.  Buy a cookie dough scented candle to cover up the evidence.

You will need:

The innards of your pumpkin
4 eggs
1 2/3 cup sugar
2 cups flour
1 cup oil
1 (16 oz) can pumpkin
2 tsp baking powder
2 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp salt
1 tsp baking soda

Combine baking powder, flour, salt, and baking soda in a mixing bowl. Take another mixing bowl and combine and beat egg, canned pumpkin, sugar and oil until fully mixed and when it starts to get a little fluffy. What does fluffy mean? When it is not a big gloppy heavy mess. Then, you combine all together. Put the combination in muffin tins. This is the same recipe for pumpkin bars, but you are making it in muffin tins so people will think it is a whole new recipe.

Now, it comes time for the the pumpkin guts. First, clean your spatula and whisks thorughly. Then, take some pumpkin innards and spread it on the spatula and the beaters. Leave on the counter or return to a dry sink. Put a few little pumpkin innard droplets here and there on a cutting board or a little on the oven. Throw the rest away. Afterall, the pumpkins we carve are not good pumpkins for pies or desserts. It is pretty flavorless. The smaller pumpkin varieties are the most flavorful and are what are used for pies and recipes.

Take the muffins out to cool after you have baked them on 350 degrees. Optionally, you can put frosting on them if you like.

Invite people over and make sure they come through the kitchen. Make a big deal out of forgetting to wash out your spatulas, etc. Make sure they see them and comment on how valiantly you wrestled that Jack-o-Lantern and how proud Martha would have been that you used up all the pumpkin innards. The muffins came out perfect. They weren’t spongey or mushy at all!

1 Devil’s Food Cake Mix
1/2 cup vegetable or canola oil
2 eggs (not hard boiled or Cadbury)
1/2 cup to 3 cups of semi-sweet or dark chocolate chips.

1) First, make sure that you have at least 2 eggs in the fridge.  You’ll need vegetable oil too, but you probably bought it 6 months ago and forgot it was there.

1) Go to the store and get a Super Moist Devil’s Foodcake cake mix.  This can be any brand that you want to get or is on sale.  Then come home.

2) Pour 1/2 cup of vegetable or canola oil in a bowl.  Get the eggs out of the fridge. Notice that they are now gone. Someone is home that is not normally home at this time and decided to make themselves scrambled eggs because there were “just two eggs in there and didn’t want to waste them.”  Root around in the cupboards for Egg Beaters.  Turn up empty.  Go back to the store.  Get more than two eggs.  Trust me, don’t use just one. You will make some pretty mean hockey pucks that way, but they’ll also be a powdery mess.

3) Crack the eggs and put only the contents of 2 eggs in the bowl with the vegetable oil.  Make sure the eggs are broken and everything is mixed in evenly.

4) Slowly pour the cake mix in the bowl with the other two things. But actually there are three things because there are 2 eggs.  Oh yeah, since they are scrambled up, its just one mass of egg innards.  Appetizing, huh?  Do this gradually.  I made the mistake of plopping the whole thing in there and then mixing it is like mixing cement.

5) Mix contents with a hand mixer, unless you are a really fancy person and have a stand mixer and you put flame decals on it or decalse of a B-52 Bomber on it.

6) Once everything is thoroughly mixed up, portion them out into balls on a cookie sheet.  I heard this recipe is supposed to make 24-36 cookies.  There is just NO WAY.  You are lucky to get 24.  I actually only got 20 cookies.  Because I ate them.  DO NOT eat the raw cookie dough. You can do it with peanut butter cookies but don’t do it with these.  It’s runny and soft and has raw eggs in it…unless you buy the pasteurized kind that are for Caesar Salads.  Then its okay.  But it might feel weird.

7) Bake for 10-12 minutes at 350 degrees.  The cookies won’t look done, but they are.  No hockey pucks, people! Unless you really want them that way.

You want pictures?  Sorry. I ate them all.  Not all at once.  I assure you, it was in moderation.

Lately, I have been pondering about how healthy tuna and other fish is for my diet. By diet, I don’t mean that I am on a diet. Oh yeah. The See Food Diet. I see food. I eat it. It is not really that bad. I really have only fluxuated five pounds since high school. You can hate me for that, but then again, I didn’t tell you how much I weighed in high school, did?

There is much flap about mercury in seafood, but in fact, the tuna that is labeled “light” is actually not tuna at all. Occasionally it is yellowfin rather than albacore. At any rate, actual tuna is safer than long lived large fish such as shark and sword fish. It has been found, that if there is risk, the benefits outweigh the possibility. Removing Omega 3 fatty acids provided by oily fish puts a damper on skin and brain health. I know from my own experience that when a lot of fish was removed from my diet due to circumstance rather than conscious choice, skin issues resurfaced. Sure, there are Omega 3 acids in flax oil, but I did not receive nearly the same results.

When I was a kid, I hated tuna. The main reason was because my mom slathered it with mayonnaise.

Here is a recipe for tuna salad without the icky white stuff.

3 celery stalks
2 cans of tuna
Ground black paper to taste
1 tablespoon sweet pickle juice
1 1/2 cups pickles, bread and butter style.
5 eggs.

Hard boil and peel the eggs.
Chop eggs and pickles in the food processor.
In a medium bowl, combine mush made in the food processor with tuna and celery, gently folding everything in.
Add pepper to taste.
Stir in pickle juice.

Now, don’t get carried away with the food processor.  This isn’t the Bass-O-Matic.  You just want to chop everything up just a little bit.  We aren’t going for Tuna Puree.  If you want, you can get out some crumpets or put it on crackers.  I really haven’t seen too many crumpets on this side of the pond, but I am just saying that its possible as its much more hoity-toity looking than plain old mayo, tuna and pepper.

Me (standing with a packet of chocolate chips in my hand):   (My brain thinks: Okay.  I put 2 cups of chocolate chips in a bowl, but I actually say:)  I found this tape at my parents house.  I think I taped War of the Worlds, the radio show, on one side.   On the other, I think I have a tape where I put the tape recorder up to the phone.  I called this number when I was in 6th grade where you could listen to the noise that a satellite picked up inside a comet’s tail.

My Favorite Guy: That answers my question, then.  There IS sound in a vacuum.

Me (eats some chocolate chips. Of course, now there are less than 2 cups of chocolate chips in the bag): So the whooshing noise wasn’t just the satellite then?

Luckily, this recipe can be made with less than 2 cups of chocolate chips as long as the ratio is the same.

Basically, here it is:

Chocolate Ganache Frosting:

2 cups bittersweet or dark chocolate chips
2 cups heavy whipping cream

Place chocolate in a mixing bowl and set aside.

Place 2 cups of heavy whipping cream in a sauce pan and when it starts to boil, take it off the burner.  Oh yes, I forgot to tell you that you are supposed to put the saucepan on the burner and also turn the stove on.  I just thought that was assumed. But since people have to write on the Potato Buds box that the plate the spuds are shown on and the family around the table are not included, then I guess I have to be a little more explicit.

After you turn the stove OFF and take the sauce pan off the burner, slowly pour the hot whipping cream over the chocolate chips.  Stir the mixture as you pour it on.  Stir the chocolate and cream until the chocolate melts (NOT on the stove, it is just melting from the heat of the whipping cream.)  Stir with a spatula until it becomes smooth.

Let the brand new concoction cool to room temperature.   Once it has cooled, take out your electric mixer.  Put the beaters in (sorry if I am being remedial, but this is for the Potato Buds or the Healthy Choice frozen entree people like me), and turn the mixer on.  Wait, plug it in first.  Okay.  You got it.

Now,  mix the mixture until it starts to stiffen or ripple ever so slightly.  Be careful.  You don’t want it as stiff as when you beat straight whipping cream, so it won’t break. The aim is to put some air in it, so you have the consistency of a frosting rather than a drizzly

After it thickens slightly, spread it on an already cool cake.  Unlike pouring the ganache straight onto the cake before beating, it will have the consistency of a frosting rather the drippiness of a pre-cooled ganache.  Of course, pre cooled ganache is awesome for dipping strawberries in.  I even made a cake where I poured it on and the cake came out looking like a giant Ding Dong when it cooled off in the fridge.  Of course, I had to cut around and get off all the extra chocolate blobs all over the plate.  It kind of stinks to do with a bundt cake because it seeps in through the hole in the middle and you can’t exactly scoop it out of the middle with a knife.  You end up screwing up the ganache that is SUPPOSED to be there.  You usually do have leftover frosting, but by that time, it has thickened so patching holes just looks like you took a wall and filled a spot with that foam stuff in a can and it just got all bumpy and nasty.

With that lovely image of spray foam in cake, which is certainly quite toxic, you can serve the cake in smooth ganache form an hour after ganaching and the cake that you spread the frosting with air in it approximately 30 minutes after frosting.

Enjoy.

Every weekend for the past few months I have been baking a cake.   I have been doing so for several reasons.  Firstly, I seem to be invited to many occasions where I am asked to bring a cake.  Maybe they have never read this column, where I outline very specific cooking disasters, and are understandably delusional about my skills.  The other possibility is that cakes are less frightening to transport than something that will immediately spoil or curdle on the journey.  The other reasons is that I have a Favorite Guy, and we both have a particular preference for all things chocolate and we must try a variety of chocolate cakes.  Yup, you read it right.  We must.

This past week, I made something that was partly of my own creation, and something I faked very well.

The original inspiration involved going downtown and spending $7.00 on a slice of very decadent cake.  The other half of the inspiration, was a few weeks back, making the Orange Chocolate Torte recipe on the back of a Ghirardelli Ultimate Fudge Brownie mix. It suggested preparing the mix, and adding orange zest. The part of the recipe that intrigued me was actually the idea of using a round pan and how mirror shiny the frosting looked.   The idea of making two and stacking them on top of each other entered my consciousness.  Of course, they needed to have whipped cream in the middle.  The real stuff.  That for sure would give me a cake that might be as good as that $7.00 a slice number, but for less.

Then, I could use that frosting stuff that they give you on the whole thing, and the desired result would be like making a giant Hostess Ding Dong, or King Don, or whatever they are calling those now.  Oh, there is another important aspect of this. It is not supposed to be orange this time.   So, just get the idea of orange out of your head.

After the mix was prepared exactly according to the instructions on the box, I did it all over again and made a second one.  Some people would suggest making things together and doubling the recipe, then splitting them into two different pans.  They forget who they are talking to, as I would probably be the one to get less egg in one and more in the other just by attrition.

This is how they looked, entering the fire pit of doom:

Then, I FREAKED. I took one cake out, and the other one was lonely for a short time.

You see, I had a temporary meltdown. I usually crack eggs in a mug. One mug had a suspiciously yellow tinged liquid in it still. I couldn’t have forgotten to have added the egg to one of them, could I? What would happen? Would it be an unqualified disaster? I then took a breath, and decided not to panic. What will be, will be. I inspected both cakes for loft and air bubbles and they both appeared to be the same.  Perhaps the yellow liquid was just the result of rinse residue.

Okay, back to the show. The two cakes baked on 350 degrees for exactly 38 minute.  Actually, I think I left them in for 40, and then worried if they were over baked.  No matter. Through the magic of television, both cakes had cooled and had stacked themselves. Whipped cream was even in the middle.

Actually, in the meantime, I beat the whipping cream senseless with a hand mixer, until it had the consistency of concrete. I wish I had taken more photos, or at least could find them. The whipping cream was so heavy that when I filled half of the cake, both layers were completely parallel. I could have made a little diorama on the one side. The photo shows the cake put together, and with whip cream present. It is before I cleaned it up and dripped the frosting on it. it did not look like a big Hostess thing because I didn’t warm up the frosting enough and instead of just letting it drip, I spread it a bit too eagerly with the spatula.

How did it turn out, in the measurement of body count?  Actually, it was liked!  I think this is about the best cake I’ve ever made.

How did it tastes?  Don’t go cutting the cake in half and shoveling it down your gullet.  This is a very rich cake.  You could do well with a smaller piece, unless you want your stomach to twist in a knot, feeling like it all sunk to the bottom like a big rock, develop a temporary case of gout and not want to eat for a week. Of course, I am being facetious, but that’s one rich cake. If you don’t tell anyone, it tastes like a rather decadent, fancy cake, as long as you can keep it together.

How ’bout you try this “fake” recipe?  It isn’t really fake, but it is from scratch.  Let me know how you do.   A cake like this was $7.00 a slice downtown, and this cost about $6 a mix, plus $3 for a medium whipping cream.  So, that’s $15.00.   That would buy us two slices of the cake downtown.   Being that we got twelve slices out of the cake, we would have paid $84.00 if we brought all of our friends out.   Wowee…we’re rich!

Stay tuned for next week’s cake!

When I was a kid and my mom baked peanut butter cookies.  I would eat the cold raw dough on a spoon.  Looking back, I wonder if that recipe included raw egg.  If so, the queen of tacking Dear Ann Landers articles to my bedroom door warning parents about turtles and salmonella slipped a little bit.   By the way, I never had a turtle.  I had lizards and they never came downstairs to make cookies with me.

The cookies, when they were baked, didn’t seem as interesting to me as the cookie dough for some reason.  Imagine my delight (I can’t really do “delight” first thing in the morning, especially when I have a black eye from a home improvement injury that I will explain in a future post) when I saw what David’s Cookies sells.  They sell a set of tubs of COOKIE DOUGH.   I kid you not, LOOK RIGHT HERE!.   You get two 3 lb tubs of cookie dough to make cookies with to economize.  The site does nothing to warn people about eating raw cookie dough, so I am just going to ignore the “serving suggstion” of forming the dough into cookies and baking.  I will get in to less trouble that way.

Anyway, wth two tubs you can make 96 1 ounce cookies.  Or one giant 6 pound cookie.  You would have to use Gordon Ramsey’s oven for that, or go to the pizza parlor and use their big oven.  That would be one crispy chocolate chip.  I wonder how big those cookies are that they have at the mall that they write a birthday greeting on. You could make one of those, or a few, out of the dough.

David’s Cookies has many other offerings, of course.  All of the items are kosher, so you can be sure you will not be wedged inside of a faux passe when giving a gift to your Jewish friends.  Also, I was always under the impression that if something was kosher it was somewhat healthier or had less preservatives, then I realized some stuff isn’t that healthy for you whether it is kosher or not.   However, in my mind these cookies are healthier and have less calories than their standard counterparts, and it is all about mind over matter, isn’t it?

Oh, yes, the worst part about it was that she was in the hospital.  It was really tough being there the one year because she missed Halloween and had Thanksgiving at the hospital too.  That bites.

When she was feeling better and was released, she came home with a big trauma.  She had post traumatic stress about jello. Whenever she saw it, she wouldn’t merely say that she had to much of it at the hospital every single day.  She would sometimes cry, or often scream “Get it out of here! I hate Jello!”  It was similar to someone with a deathly fear of spiders.

There was a strange phenomena, though.  While she had an aversion to the jiggly wiggly stuff, she was okay with Pretzel Jello, a staple of family gatherings.   I am not quite sure why.

Here is the recipe:

Ingredients

2 Cups of broken or coarsely chopped pretzels (That is for normal people. My family uses whole mini pretzels)
1 1/2 sticks butter
2 (8 oz.) pkgs. cream cheese
2 cups of. sugar
2 (3 oz.) packages of  Jello. Normally anything red, but be creative!
2 cups of  pineapple juice
2 small boxes of frozen strawberries

Put the pretzels and the melted butter in a pan, bake 10 minutes at 400 degrees.  It usually looks better with broken pretzels, but our family is “special.”  In that case the butter just sort of coats them versus it looking like some sort of mixed up spread. Then, you mix up the cream cheese with the sugar IN A DIFFERENT CONTAINER and then you spread this over the pretzel/butter combo.   But oh, yeah, you have to take it out of the oven first. The pan with the pretzels and butter i mean.

Then, you take the pineapple juice and boil it and then dump the jello in there. Don’t already make the Jello, you just want whatever powder that is in the package to go in. Then, you take the frozen strawberries and out it in there with the juice and jello.  Once that is all mixed up, you go back to the pan and put that stuff on top of the cream cheese layer.

Now things get really dicey.  You are supposed to put Whipped Topping on top of it next.  My family, as I say, is a little different, so you just go ahead and ad ANOTHER layer of whole pretzels to the top of it. After you went through all the steps, stick it in the fridge. The Jello that has been violated by the strawberries and pineapple juice needs to set up.

I think I discovered why my sister can eat this. It may contain Jello but it doesn’t look like Jello. I didn’t know why I didn’t think about pouring Jello powder into a cup and saying it was Kool-Aid mix to see if she would figure it out when we were kids. Oh, that probably would have been mean, just like someone baking bugs from the yard in Brownies and asking you to try it, but not telling you there were bugs in it.

You will need:

The innards of your pumpkin
4 eggs
1 2/3 cup sugar
2 cups flour
1 cup oil
1 (16 oz) can pumpkin
2 tsp baking powder
2 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp salt
1 tsp baking soda

Combine baking powder, flour, salt, and baking soda in a mixing bowl.   Take another mixing bowl and combine and beat egg, canned pumpkin, sugar and oil until fully mixed and when it starts to get a little fluffy.  What does fluffy mean?  When it is not a big gloppy heavy mess.   Then, you combine all together.  Put the combination in muffin tins.   This is the same recipe for pumpkin bars, but you are making it in muffin tins so people will think it is a whole new recipe.

Now, it comes time for the the pumpkin guts.  First, clean your spatula and whisks thorughly.  Then, take some pumpkin innards and spread it on the spatula and the beaters.  Leave on the counter or return to a dry sink.  Put a few little pumpkin innard droplets here and there on a cutting board or a little on the oven.  Throw the rest away.  Afterall, the pumpkins we carve are not good pumpkins for pies or desserts.  It is pretty flavorless.  The smaller pumpkin varieties are the most flavorful and are what are used for pies and recipes.

Take the muffins out to cool after you have baked them on 350 degrees.  Optionally, you can put frosting on them if you like.

Invite people over and make sure they come through the kitchen.  Make a big deal out of forgetting to wash out your spatulas, etc.  Make sure they see them and comment on how valiantly you wrestled that Jack-o-Lantern and how proud Martha would have been that you used up all the pumpkin innards.  The muffins came out perfect.  They weren’t spongey or mushy at all!