Apple Cranberry Bread

Last week was really hectic for me.  It was one of those end of the semester weeks where you have something that you have to do every day.  I had a conference paper due to the respondent on Monday, a draft of my dissertation prospectus due to my seminar on Tuesday, an Italian translation exam on Wednesday, and was presenting/getting feedback on my prospectus on Thursday.  Needless to say, I didn't have any time to update before that and after that I crashed for a couple days and more or less did nothing.  I'll try to make up having missed last week with an extra post this week.

Friday, December 2 was my department's Advent celebration, so I decided (like I did last year and the year before) to make a dessert in the crock pot.  Because I've been trying to be healthier recently, instead of making cookies or cake like I had before, I decided to try out the Apple Cranberry Bread from the Vegetarian Slow Cooker cookbook.  Of course, the other reason I decided to make this was that the fresh cranberries were on sale when I went grocery shopping the week before, so I looked for something to do with them.

Now, the thing about these recipes that you bake in the slow cooker is that you're not really saving time because you have to do the same exact amount of work as you would baking something in the oven.  I still find it really cool, however, that you can bake in the slow cooker and the longer cooking time could still be useful if there's other things that you have to do OR you have to go out of the house and so can't leave the oven on OR if you're cooking other things and need to keep your oven free.

Before preparing the ingredients, you're going to want to do two things.  First, grease a baking dish that fits into your slow cooker, then put a large pot of water on the stove to boil.  Both of these things will be used later.  Then you mix the dry ingredients together: flour, flax seeds, baking powder, salt, and ground cinnamon.  Separately you beat together the wet ingredients, one of which, as you can see in the image above (on the right), is orange juice.  You don't have to use fresh orange juice, of course, but because the recipe also calls for orange zest and says that the amount you need is the juice of 1 large navel orange AND because my parents got me the juicer attachment for my KitchenAid for my birthday this year, I squeezed the juice fresh.

Anyway, you beat together all the wet ingredients, which include sugar, olive oil, egg, and the orange zest/juice.  Then you add the dry ingredients and stir in the apple and cranberries.  Now, I took the bowl off the mixer and "folded" in the apple and cranberries but I'd actually recommend doing it with the mixer if you can--the dough is really hard to manipulate by hand.

After everything is mixed together, you pour the mix into the greased pan and place it in the slow cooker.  Then take the water off the stove, which should be boiling by now, and pour it into your slow cooker around the pan until the water comes 1 inch up the side of the baking pan.  The bread takes about 4 hours to cook, though test it with a toothpick in the center to be sure.  I'm also a bit paranoid about the baked goods in the crock pot because the moisture of the crock pot makes the dish seem uncooked.  I actually checked it after 4 hours, then left it on to cook a little longer while I got ready for the Advent celebration.

So this is what it looked like when it was done.

The cook thing about this bread is, as the cookbook says, it can be "a great snack, a nutritious desert and can even be eaten for breakfast."  I cut it into 12 pieces and put it on a paper plate to bring to the Advent celebration--unfortunately because I was trying to get everything done and get out the door in the end, I forgot to take a picture of the final presentation.  My husband and I took a taste before we went out the door, however, and it was AMAZING.  As my husband said, "$#%^&%* bomb."

Now, the cookbook says that this dish serves 8, but clearly it matters how you cut it.  Since I cut it into 12 pieces, the calories come out to be about 205, but if you cut it into bigger pieces, obviously it would be more calories.  The really cool thing about this recipe, however, is that making this bread cost me all of $4.99 to make (so, all of $0.42 per serving)!  The only things I purchased were the fresh cranberries and whole wheat flour.  If you bake regularly, you'll probably have most of the ingredients on hand and so will only need to purchase, maybe, the flax seeds, cranberries, and an orange.  I already had the orange, via my organic produce delivery that I get each week, and the flax seeds because my mom got me to start putting some on my cereal.  Technically the recipe calls for half all-purpose flour and half whole wheat flour, but I'm sure if you didn't want to spend the money to get whole wheat flower and only had all-purpose flour (or vice versa) it'd be fine.  Anyway, to sum up: this was really good, I highly recommend it, and I'd make it again with the leftover cranberries if I didn't have some plans for chutney, which can also be made in the crock pot.

Pumpkin-Cranberry Custard

I'm going to start off by apologizing for neglecting this blog for so long.  It feels like recently that's how I've started off every single post, but one of the difficulties of the grad student lifestyle is that your life has a tendency to get busy and so other things, like this blog or, say, replying to e-mails, get put to the side.

In fact, I have a tendency to get so busy with schoolwork that my attention to other things ends up somewhat lacking, which is what I'm going to illustrate in this post.  Before I even start, let me explain that this dish was a failure.  I didn't even realize how much of a failure, however, until I reread the recipe and saw what my mistake was.  What happened was, on December 12, I decided to try out one of the desserts in my Crock-Pot Incredibly Easy Recipes cookbook for my roommate and one of her friends because I was leaving to go see my family in Massachusetts soon and therefore I didn't want to make a whole crock pot meal.

The great thing about this recipe is that it is in the "One-Step Dishes" section of the cookbook.  All you have to do is basically throw the ingredients in and mix them all together.  In this mix, as you can see to the right, the recipe calls for pumpkin pie filling, evaporated milk, dried cranberries, and eggs.  If you're looking closely at all the pictures, you might already be able to guess where I went wrong in this recipe.  Anyway, you stir the ingredients all together and cook it on high for four to four and a half hours.

This is what it looked like after stirring.

And this is what it looked like after cooking on low.

The recipe recommends two optional toppings: whipped cream and "crushed or whole gingersnap cookies."  Now, since we're talking about my lack of attention in this recipe, I should add that it was only just now as I'm looking at the recipe to write this blog post, that I realized the recipe says that the cookies can be crushed or whole.  I, as you can see from the image to the left, crushed them.  However, that said, I would probably crush them again were I to try to make this recipe again because I like the way you get some gingersnap with your custard on every bite.

So, were you able to figure out what I did wrong?  I'll give you a hint: while eating the custard, we realized that it didn't really taste sweet enough.  It was edible, for sure, but only if you drenched it with whipped cream (which was sweetened).  If you can figure out what I did wrong, leave a comment below.  I'm curious to see who the first person to get it will be... and it shouldn't be hard to figure out from the images I posted and what I wrote.

Unfortunately, I can't figure out the cost or calories per serving this time because we only ate the three servings before I left to see my family.  Thus, although the recipe says it makes four to six servings, I cannot judge the accuracy of that claim (and in this cookbook there is a tendency for the recipes to make much more than they say they do).  In terms of cost, none of the ingredients are too expensive.  I actually bought Craisins at the store and they were on sale (2 for $5.00) before realizing when I got home that I already had dried cranberries from Trader Joe's.  The remaining ingredients were just over $6.00, though I already had eggs and my roommate already had gingersnaps.  You can probably get everything you need for this dessert for around $10.00, so you could probably estimate around $2.00/serving.

So my overall thoughts on this recipe: it might not be a bad dessert.  It was bad how I made it because I wasn't paying enough attention due to end-of-the-semester business, but I think if one were to really follow the directions it would be really good.  Maybe I'll just have to try it again next holiday season...

Chocolate Chip Cookies

I have always been fascinated by the desserts in my various crock pot cookbooks, especially ones that are cake-like.  For the last two years, however, I've taken the opportunity to try out some of these desserts for my department's Advent party.  (The problem with this is that, because I have to bring it to the party, some of the really awesome ones, which should really be served warm, won't work.)  Last year, I made the Chocolate Hazelnut Pudding Cake from the Crock-Pot Incredibly Easy Recipes cookbook, but this year I tried Chocolate Chip Cookies from The Gourmet Slow Cooker: Simple and Sophisticated Meals from Around the World.

The thing about this recipe is that you're really just making cookie dough and cooking it in the crock pot instead of the oven, so in that sense it's not something I would necessarily recommend if you want chocolate chip cookies.  It was fun for me because I wanted to try out another dessert from my crock pot and keep up the tradition of bringing a crock pot dessert to the Advent party, but were I to say, "Hey, I'd like to make some chocolate chip cookies from scratch!", this is not the way that I'd choose to make them.

You begin, however, by greasing the slow cooker.  Obviously, I don't have a picture of that.  The recipe calls for using butter or vegetable oil.  To make it easier, however, I just used a nonstick cooking spray (my roommate actually bought a nonstick cooking spray especially for baking, so I used that).  You also line the bottom of the crock pot with wax paper.  I should have taken a picture of that in retrospect because I had a fun time trying to get the wax paper cut to the right size to fit the bottom of the crock pot, but oh well.

Then you make the cookie dough, some of the steps of which you can see pictures of above.  You mix the wet ingredients together (butter, eggs, regular sugar, brown sugar, and vanilla extract) and the dry ingredients together, but separately from the wet ingredients (flour, baking soda, and salt -- in this case, I did add the salt).  After then mixing the wet and dry ingredients together, you add in semisweet chocolate chips (yum).  The recipe actually calls for chopped walnuts to be added as well, but I don't like nuts in my chocolate chip cookies, so I skipped this step.

Now, what I should have done in making this recipe was to use my roommate's KitchenAid mixer, but at the time I was trying to get the cookies made and get changed before the party so I wasn't really thinking about that.  It's okay, however, because I had a good time mixing in the chips by hand.  Also, I would guess that most graduate students, especially those who are newly out of undergrad, do not own a KitchenAid mixer, so what I did is actually more in line with the graduate student spirit, even though I wasn't really thinking of that at the time.

Finally, you smooth the dough into the bottom of the slow cooker, cover it, and then let it cook for three hours on low.  The cookbook says that you should cook it "on low for about 3 hours, until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean," and that you should "set the lid slightly ajar for the last 30 minutes."  I followed these directions, but then ran into the same problem I had when I made the cake in the crock pot the year before: I got paranoid because it looked like the cookies weren't done.  My paranoia is compounded by the fact that we never have toothpicks, so I have to use a knife to test done-ness when baking, something that doesn't have quite the same desired effect as a toothpick.

So this is what the dish looked like at the end of three hours.

And this is what it looked like after I let my paranoia get the better of me and kept it cooking for another hour.

What I did in the end is just to resist my paranoia and take it out even though I wasn't sure that it was done.  To take the cookies out of the crock pot, you remove the insert and let them cool for about 30 minutes before turning it over to dump the cookies out.

So the image to the right is what the cookies looked like when I had cut them for the Advent party.  The recipe says that it serves six to eight and obviously I got more slices out of that, but I think that the recipe expects you to cut bigger slices than I did.  Now, obviously, these don't really look like "cookies," per se, and it's actually really telling that the end of the recipe in the cookbook asks you to "cut the cake" (emphasis is my own).  Regardless, it wasn't that bad and I think it all got eaten at the Advent party (or at least a lot of it did).  It might have come out a bit dry because of my paranoid over-cooking, but it wasn't really too bad there either.  Were I to make this again, I'd take it out after three hours as recommended.

Now, as my readers know, normally and analyze the recipes I review in terms of cost and calories per serving.  I'm not going to do that for this one, however.  I had all of the ingredients already except for vanilla extract and chocolate chips, so the amount I spent doesn't really reflect the cost per serving.  In terms of calories... well, they're chocolate chip cookies... they're not healthy.  I'll just leave it at that.