Receipts from Cooking Night 2 (Belmont)

Look, it's the receipts from Cooking Night #2 (Belmont)!

A menu refresher: baked chicken breast, prepared mashed potatoes, stir-fried green beans, Jello cheesecake from box (with the extra crust).

Good times, but we should have used the coupons on the back.

Zucchini/ Pumpkin Bread

I got this recipe from Priya's mother. It's in the 1989 Betty Crocker's Cookbook.

Recipe

2.66 cups sugar
0.66 cup shortening
3 cup shredded zucchini (2 medium zucchini)
0.66 cup water
4 eggs
3.33 cups all-purpose flour
2 tsp baking soda
1.5 tsp salt
1 tsp ground cinnamon
1 tsp ground cloves
2 tsp vanilla
0.5 tsp baking powder
0.66 cup coarsely chopped nuts
0.66 cup raisin

Bake 350 for 60-70 minutes.

Grease bottom of 2-3 loaf pans, depending on size.
Mix sugar/shortening. Stir in zucchini, water, eggs. Mix in vanilla, baking powder. Stir in nuts, raisins.

Refrigerate for no longer than 10 days.

Pumpkin bread modification: 16 oz (1 can) of pumpkin can be substituted for zucchini. Omit vanilla. Baking time: 1 hr, 10 min

Chocolate Chip Cookie

Recipe

2.25 cups all-purpose flour
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp salt
1 cup (2 sticks) butter/margarine, softened
1 cup packed brown sugar
0.5 cup granulated sugar
1 tsp vanilla
2 eggs
1.5 cups chocolate chips

Bake 375 F for 10-11 minutes.

Beat butter, brown sugar, granulated sugar, vanilla until creamy. Add eggs gradually, beat in flour.

The best cookie ever

I really like this cookie. It's a modification of the Nestle Toll House recipe with fewer chocolate chips, more brown sugar, and less white sugar. When I made this at first, I started reading the directions to the choco-oat-chip cookies, before I realized that I had the wrong recipe. It's less sweet than the Toll House recipe, but browns better without looking anemic or tasting sticky.

Yellow Butter Cake

Recipe

2 cups all-purpose flour
4 tsp baking powder
.5 tsp salt
1.5 cups sugar
.5 cups butter/margarine, softened
1 cup milk
1 tsp vanilla
3 eggs

Back 350 F
Cupcakes: 20-25 min
2 9-inch: 35-40 min
1 Bundt: 40-55 min
1 13x9: 35-40 min

Sift flour, baking posder, salt. Stir in sugar. Add butter, milk, vanilla, beat at low speed 30 sec. Beat at medium 2 min. Add eggs, beat 2 min.

Well... I don't know

I made this cake twice, once with vanilla and once without vanilla. The first time I used vanilla, and it was awfully sticky, and had a cloying sweet taste. It was a very fluffy cake, more so than regular cake mix. My cousin then suggested that I make it without vanilla, so you get the egg taste. [In Chinese, the word for the western cake is technically "egg cake" to distinguish it from bean cake, radish cake, wheat cake, corn cake, etc. Chinese egg cakes are less sweet than American cakes and have a softer texture. You usually have to get them in a bakery because no one has ovens in their homes.]


The second time without vanilla it had a more solid feel, maybe just a bit lighter than cake mix. I actually didn't have any of it the second time because my family ate it all, so I can't tell you how it tasted. The first time it was mediocre/low average.


I'm not sure if the difference in the cakes was due to the vanilla or my poor baking skills. Things usually taste better the second time around.

Preliminaries

First, everyone needs to get a Blogger account, which should take two seconds. I will then add you on as team members so we know who posts what. Until then, you can email me material, and I will post it. Once you get an account, feel free to manipulate with the template, but keep a copy of the current template in case anything should mess up.

In terms of content, I imagine that we will have:

1. Recipes from the cooking nights, recipes that we've tried out that have worked really well, recipes and critiques, and recipes that we ought to try, like recipes other people give us or we encounter
2. Pictures
3. Stories of cooking, like maybe we can do "Three different takes on applesauce" or something

What else do we need/should we have?

Err... and for the record, can I be Pompey?