Zucchini Fritters

Zucchinis are in season right now and therefore we always have some in our fridge nowadays. As I came home from work today, my mom pointed out that she had been craving these zucchini fritters for some time and suggested we make some. Normally, we make these fritters for breakfast and call them "aladushki". Typically aladushki are made with only flour, egg, baking soda, and sour cream...along the lines of a pancake. However my mom makes them with zucchini as well to add a special touch, as well as some healthiness. I agreed to help my mom on the condition that she teach me the recipe and allow me to try making them on my own.

We made two batches using the same recipe, but treating the zucchini differently. In the first batch, we didn't peel the zucchini and grated it, using the food processor, on low speed. This resulted in larger zucchini pieces that had green tips. As shown in the bottom picture, you could definitely tell that these fritters were made from zucchini. Texturally, the large pieces also kept the fritter more chunky and therefore chewy.

In the second batch we peeled the zucchini and grated it on high speed in the food processor. This made the zucchini pieces much more fine and also white. You can tell from the top picture that the fritter isn't green at all and no pieces are sticking out from the sides. Due to the pieces being so fine, they also blended together and allowed the fritter to melt in your mouth.

My mom preferred the second batch because they more closely resembled the real aladushki in their texture. I agreed, but I wouldn't mind grating the zucchini finer with the skins on so that the fritters still come out green.

Zucchini Fritters
Note: My mom has been making this recipe for a while so all of the measurements were eyeballed. The basic idea is to create a slightly runny batter similar to a pancake batter, but with little zucchini pieces in it.

Makes about 24 palm sized fritters.

•  4 cups grated zucchini (2 medium zucchinis should sefice)
• 1 egg
• 1/2 tsp baking soda
• 1 tsp salt
• 1/2 cup sour cream or yogurt
• 1 cup flour
• Pinch of pepper

1. In a large bowl, combine the zucchini, egg, baking soda, salt, sour cream/yogurt, and pepper. 
2. Add the flour and mix well. If the batter becomes too stiff, pour a little milk until it is slightly runny.
3. Heat up just enough oil to cover the bottom of a nonstick skillet.
4. Reduce the heat to medium low and drop about a spoonful of batter into the pan for each fritter. Flatten it out so that the fritter can cook through.
5. Fry each side for about 2 minutes, or until golden brown.
6. Transfer the fritters to a plate covered in paper towels to drain the excess oil.

Tips and tricks:

• Don't be afraid to add a little oil in between additions of batter to the pan. You want to make sure the bottom is always coated in oil so that the fritters don't burn.
• Pat down the fritter once you flip it to help flatten it out and ensure even cooking.
• Enjoy them while they're hot! I personally like to eat mine with some sour cream, but I have also tried salsa and it tastes great!

Chocolate Zucchini Bread

I have decided that I really like my mini muffin tins. They are actually quite convenient if you think about it. In today's diet conscious world, everyone is concerned with eating too much dessert. The mini muffin tin allows you to make perfect bite sized desserts that anyone can sample without feeling too guilty. Also, the little size makes the dessert look cuter than a big chunk on a plate.

The reason I am blogging about mini muffin pans is because I recently made this wonderful chocolate zucchini bread but had way too much batter. I didn't want to make two loaves...that would be overkill. Instead, I used half the batter in the loaf pan and then the other half to make twenty four little mini bites. It worked out great because I brought the mini bites with me to a birthday party and everyone loved them.

This recipe is perfect for chocolate lovers...it is honestly one of the chocolatiest breads I have ever tasted. The zucchini has the effect of moistening the bread though you can't taste it at all. In fact, had I not told everyone that there was zucchini in it, no one would have known. Apart from that, knowing that there is zucchini in it can allow you to trick yourself into thinking that you're being slightly healthy as you munch down the chocolatey goodness.

Chocolate Zucchini Bread
Note: I got a little overexcited when shredding my zucchini and ended up with 4 cups. This recipe is for the original amount which yields one loaf or 24 mini bites.

• 2 cups shredded zucchini (1 medium zucchini should be enough)
• 1 cup flour
• 1/2 cup cocoa powder
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 1/4 tsp baking powder
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 1/2 tsp cinnamon
• 1/2 cup yogurt or sour cream
• 1 cup brown sugar
• 2 eggs
• 1 tsp vanilla
• 3/4 cup chocolate chips

1. Beat the sugar, eggs, and vanilla together. Add in the sour cream/yogurt and then the shredded zucchini. Mix until evenly combined.
2. In a separate bowl, sift together the flour, cocoa powder, baking soda, baking powder, cinnamon, and salt.
3. Add the dry ingredients to the wet and mix until everything is incorporated. Gently mix in the chocolate chips.
4. Bake at 350 degrees Fahrenheit for 50-60 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted comes out clean.
5. If baking the mini bites, bake at the same temperature for 15-20 minutes.

Tiramisu

Today is my mom's birthday! I decided that as a gift to her, I would make her favorite dessert...tiramisu. Personally, I'm not a huge fan of tiramisu because it has such as strong coffee flavor and I'm not keen on the bitter taste of coffee. However, I thought she would appreciate my taking the time to learn how to make her a yummy tiramisu especially for her birthday.

Traditionally, tiramisu is made with eggs, marscapone cheese, lady fingers, and espresso. Of course other variations exist that substitute heavy cream for the eggs or some sort of fruit for the espresso. After making this cake, I realized that the technique itself is not too difficult and I think I will attempt to try a non-traditional variation next time. Also, due to my brother's concern over the raw eggs, I think I will switch to using heavy cream in the filling. For one, it eliminates the possible health hazard; he was quite worried after being extensively taught in his food class about the dangers of raw eggs and salmonella. Also, I think that using cream will give it a fluffier texture and make it more smooth.

I'm glad my mom enjoyed her birthday cake but I think I will try and make a different flavor next time to see how it tastes. Online there were many interesting variations involving fruits such as strawberry or raspberry. Also, many people like to add a little bit of liquor to the espresso. I personally chose to forgo the liquor because it creates an even more bitter taste, but I'm sure that when paired with the right liquor it can heighten the espresso flavor and coffee fanatics would enjoy that.

Tiramisu
Note: I made this for a 9" cake pan but you can use pretty much any dish you desire. Just make sure to trim the ladyfingers so that they fit into your pan. For example, I had to trim my ladyfingers to make them short enough to not stand over the top of the pan.

• 500 g marscapone cheese
• 400 g ladyfingers (I actually used 1 1/2 packages but it depends how the lady fingers fit into your pan)
• 5 eggs, separated
• 125 g (1/2 cup) sugar
• 2 cups espresso, cooled
• Chocolate bar (dark or milk depending on your preference)
• Cocoa powder

1. Beat the egg whites until they form stiff peaks and set aside.
2. Beat the egg yolks together with the sugar until creamy and pale yellow in color, almost white. 
3. Mix the marscapone cheese into the egg yolk and sugar mixture.
4. Fold the egg whites gently into the creamy mixture and mix lightly until evenly combined.
5. Lightly dip each side of the ladyfingers into the espresso and arrange around the bottom and sides of the pan. Make sure you don't soak them through, just a little dip to get them moist.
6. Spread half of the filling over the ladyfingers and then grate the chocolate over top.
7. Arrange the next layer of dipped ladyfingers and then spread the rest of the filling over top.
8. Grate the chocolate and then use a fine mesh sieve to dust cocoa powder over the top. Refrigerate the cake for at least 4 hours to allow all of the flavors to come together.

Roasted Tomato and Pepper Soup

I have never made soup before...until now. The other day I was watching food network and I saw a recipe for a simple roasted tomato soup. As I watched the host prepare the soup I thought to myself "hey, this isn't so hard...I can do this". It turned out the host was right; the soup was easy to make and the only difficulty was waiting for it to cool down a little before putting it in the blender. Best of all, it had a great tomato and pepper flavor and you could really feel the effects of the roasting prior to making the soup.

Roasted Tomato and Pepper Soup

• 8 Roma tomatoes, sliced in half with insides scooped out
• 4 bell peppers, sliced in half
• 8 garlic cloves
• 1 medium onion, peeled and quartered
• 6 cups vegetable or chicken stock (I actually used Clamato juice to give it even more of a tomato flavor)
• 1 can tomato paste
• Olive oil
• Balsamic vinegar
• Salt and pepper to taste
• Optional: Chili pepper flakes
• Optional: Basil or cilantro for garnish

1. Arrange the tomatoes and peppers on a shallow roasting pan, skin side up. Add the garlic cloves and onion to the pan as well.
2. Sprinkle some salt and pepper then lightly drizzle some olive oil and balsamic vinegar over the pan ingredients.
3. Roast at 400 degrees Fahrenheit for 40-50 minutes. Take the pan out once the skins are slightly charred.
4. In a soup pot, warm about 2 tbsp olive oil over medium heat and then mix in the tomato paste.
5. Add the roasted ingredients to the pot, including all the juices left on the pan, and stir well to combine.
6. Add the vegetable or chicken stock and then reduce heat to low and allow the soup to simmer for 20 minutes. Optional: you can add some chili flakes to soup to give it a little kick...just don't go overboard otherwise it will overpower the actual flavor of the soup.
7. Transfer the soup to a blender and puree. *It is important that you let the soup cool slightly before blending it and do not fill the blender more than halfway.* The best way to do this is to blend 1/3 of the soup at at time and allowing each batch to cool in the blender for 5 minutes before proceeding. Pulse it a couple of times first, then continue to puree. 
8. Pour blended soup back into soup pot and reheat. Garnish with some cilantro or basil.

Two-Bite Peanut Butter Brownies

Seeing as today is Remembrance Day and a statutory holiday, my whole family spent the day at home relaxing. I decided that I would use the opportunity to bake and revisited the idea of peanut butter brownies. This was not my first attempt; previously I attempted making peanut butter swirl brownies. I don't know what went wrong last time but somehow the brownies turned out extremely greasy. Of course my brother and his friends didn't mind, and ate up the entire pan, but I personally couldn't handle more than one bite.

Even so, I decided that I would attempt to make this tasty little treat once more. This time the brownies turned out much better, although they were quite difficult to remove from the pan. I baked them in a mini muffin tin and I didn't feel like making two batches so I kind of overfilled them. I think this contributed to the difficulty in later removing them from the pan because the edges puffed out and created little muffin tops which were kind of sticky due to the peanut butter. Still, it was yummy and that's what I was going for.

Two-Bite Peanut Butter Brownies

For the brownies:

• 5 oz. (150 g) bittersweet chocolate
• 1/2 cup butter
• 3/4 cup sugar
• 2 eggs
• 1 tsp vanilla
• 1/2 cup flour
• 1/2 tsp baking powder
• 1/4 tsp salt

For the peanut butter:

• 1/2 cup creamy peanut butter
• 8 oz. (1 block) cream cheese, softened
• 1 egg
• 1/4 cup sugar
• 1 tbsp milk
• 1/4 tsp vanilla

1. In a double broiler, heat the butter and chocolate until evenly melted and combined. For set up of the double broiler see the chocolate covered strawberries post.
2. In a separate bowl, sift together the flour and baking powder. Add the salt and mix together.
3. In a large bowl, whisk the sugar into the melted chocolate. Whisk in the eggs and vanilla.
4. Slowly whisk in the flour mixture and continue until all of the dry ingredients are well incorporated.
5. Spray the mini muffin tin with nonstick spray and then evenly divide the batter amongst the cups. I made 24, filling them quite full, but if you fill them only halfway (like you're supposed to) it actually makes close to 40.
6. Beat all of the peanut butter ingredients together until creamy. Spoon on top of the brownie mixture in each cup, covering so that you can't see any chocolate underneath.
7. Bake for 10-12 minutes at 400 degrees Fahrenheit, or until a toothpick inserted into the middle comes out clean. The tops will start to crack, making it easy to slide a toothpick into the chocolate alone.
8. Cool before removing from the pan.

Note: You can also make this in a large 8 x 8 pan by pouring out the entire brownie batter and then evenly spreading the peanut butter over top. Bake for about 40-45 minutes at 400 degrees Fahrenheit.

Chocolate Chip Cookie Cakes

I am a proud new owner of a stand mixer! My baking dreams came true last week when my mom went out and bought a Hamilton Beach stand mixer that doubles as a hand mixer as well. It's not big and fancy like the Kitchen Aids, but it's my very own stand mixer and I love it. Of course as soon as she brought it home I was dying to test it out...but I waited it out until the weekend.

Ever since our faithful hand mixer broke at the end of the summer I took to the internet to do some mixer related research. I found that overall, the Hamilton Beach hand mixers were highly rated because of their range of speeds. Not only is the mixer powerful at the highest speed but it is also gentle at the lowest, a quality that a lot of new mixers seem to be missing nowadays.

Although I have yet to test the mixer with a cake batter, my most frequent baking item, I did manage to use it to whip up some fluffy cookies. The funny thing about these cookies is that they actually don't taste much like cookies...they are so soft and fluffy that they taste like flattened little cake disks. When my brother ate one he said that it resembled eating the top of a chocolate chip muffin.

The recipe is interesting because it substitutes part of the butter with ricotta cheese, therefore giving the cookies a completely different taste and texture. The cookies tasted good but they were definitely unexpected; they felt almost like a sponge cake studded with chocolate chips all over. I would recommend them to anyone who is a fan of cupcakes or sweet muffins, but enjoys smaller portions. Also, the cookie dough is not at all like a typical cookie dough. It is extremely sticky and does not allow you to shape the cookies into balls. I used an ice cream scoop to plop down mounds of dough onto the cookie sheet and spaced them out so they would have room to spread.

In the end, I was glad I got to use my new mixer and can't wait to do so again. I hope that the standing feature will allow me to make my cake batters even faster...therefore giving me time to make even more cakes than before!

Chocolate Chip Cookie Cakes
Makes about 18-20 cookies

• 1 cup whole milk ricotta cheese
• 1/4 cup unsalted butter, room temperature
• 1/2 cup sugar
• 1/2 cup brown sugar
• 1 egg
• 1 tsp vanilla
• 1/2 tsp baking soda
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1 1/2 cups flour
• 1/2-3/4 cup chocolate chips (depending on your preference)

1.  Mix the ricotta cheese and butter together until well blended.
2. Add the sugars, egg, and vanilla and mix again until everything is fully incorporated.
3. Add the baking soda, salt, and flour and mix again.
4. Gently fold in the chocolate chips into the cookie dough.
5. Freeze the dough for 20 minutes. Using a large spoon or scoop, plop down mounds of dough onto the cookie sheet about 2-3" apart. The cookies spread quite a bit so don't be afraid to give them room.
6. Bake at 350 degrees Fahrenheit for about 15-20 minutes or until the edges are golden.