Bad Idea Fridays - Rice cooker banana bread.

This is a guest posting from Mike- we've been chatting about rice cooker cuisine. He decided to take it to the next level.

Why rice cooker banana bread? Well, I like banana bread, and my current living arrangements have a communal kitchen, so we buy bananas in bulk - often resulting in extra bananas. I imagine you're probably more curious about the rice-cooker bit, though.

The reason is simple enough - I'm living in Japan, and western normal ovens are a rarity in kitchens here. I'd read of rice cookers being repurposed for non-rice dishes, however, and went looking to see if this extended to banana bread. Happily enough, it did.

The recipe I used is from here.

I've made banana bread a few times before, and this recipe is pretty standard; no complications there. Well, that would be the case except for the whole `in Japan' bit. Baking soda and baking powder are not common here (or I don't know the kanji for them). Fortunately, I know of a western-style supermarket that has them. Unfortunately, it's only halfway across Tokyo.

A friend wanted to visit the supermarket though, which was enough additional reason to go. Of course, at this point, the 'bad idea' has already began creeping in, as I've spent a couple hours and several times the worth of the bananas in other ingredients.

Still, part of it is for the challenge, so I proceed to the next step. After assembling all the ingredients (and having to purchase a measuring cup & spoons, and then look up conversions from imperial to metric), actually making the dough is simple enough. The ingredients combine fine, and the end result is within normal parameters. By this time, it's the middle of the evening, perhaps around 8:00. Now for the actual rice cooker part.

I added a thin layer of grease, dropped the dough in the cooker, turned it on and wandered off - no problem. I check back after an appropriate time later - not cooked. No worries, the recipe warned it might take another cycle. Reset the rice cooker, wander off again. When I came back, it's still warm dough. Rinse and repeat several times, until I finally had to go to bed, dough still uncooked.

After leaving it sitting in the fridge all day, the next evening I gave up on the rice cooker. Half a dozen cooking attempts had turned the dough it into bread pudding, from its original state, but it wasn't safe to eat. With nothing to lose, I took a last attempt and put it on tin foil in the toaster oven. After turning it on every fifteen minutes for an hour, it was finally done. Blacked, yes, but edible. After all it went through, I took what I could get.

I'm still not sure if the rice cooker wasn't strong enough, or if the electronics were too sophisticated, and calibrated for rice. What I do know is that I'll be getting a proper oven before I'll be using up any more extra bananas in bread.

Flourless Chocolate Cake

I made this for my father-in-law's birthday, but I'm going to use it to celebrate the end of the post every day month.

I think you could very comfortably halve this recipe; six young men bent on Dungeoning and Dragoning managed to eat only half, and eight adults had seconds and thirds and left something like two thirds of the cake. (I made a practice cake and a final cake. I am a paranoid baker.) It's a lot of cake.

(If you do halve the recipe, use a 6 inch springform. Reduce the baking time to 16 minutes.)

It's also basically the Ultimate Chocolate Cake over at cook's. It's not remotely good for you. It's really really rich. It's quite tasty.

Preheat the oven to 325 degrees. Warm 8 eggs to room temperature. Grease the sides of a 9 inch springform pan. Cut a circle of parchment paper to fit in the bottom.

Melt one pound of 70% dark chocolate and 1/2 pound of unsalted butter. (I made this with Trader Joe's groceries and I made it with Green and Black's, Strauss butter and cream, and eggs from chickens that allegedly live better than I do. The latter cake was immeasurably better. Sorry.) Break or cut the chocolate and butter into 1 inch pieces, put in a microwave safe bowl, and microwave in 30 second bursts. Stir briefly between each burst. (Yes, you can do this in a double boiler. My mother swears by them. I always burn the chocolate. Sadness ensues.)

At the same time, break all of those freaking eggs into a bowl, and whip (hopefully with a machine) for five minutes, until doubled in volume. This means that one either has a standing mixer, or one does a lot of dancing and utensil switching. It kinda sucks.

When the chocolate is fully melted, give them one more burst of microwaves for good measure. Add 1/4 cup espresso or orange liqueur. (Or nothing.) Whisk melted chocolate and melted butter until they are completely combined. Add the whipped eggs in thirds, mixing throughly between each addition. Pour into springform pan and bang against a counter to smooth the top. Bake in preheated oven for 24 minutes. It won't look done- not even close to done- but look for the crackly surface you get on top of brownies. Let cool to room temperature, and then refrigerate overnight, covered.

Unmold a few hours before serving. (Or one hour.) The edges will need to be freed with a knife. The cake will need to be flipped over to remove the parchment paper and then flipped back. Center the cake on a nice plate and make ganache.

Melt 4 oz. chocolate and add 1/2 cup heavy cream. Mix throughly, perhaps with a dash of the flavoring in the cake. Spread on the surface of the cake quickly and let set.

Just before serving, sprinkle cake lightly with kosher salt. Slice into very thin pieces and eat.

Apple Pie

There's a period of the year where apples are uniformly fantastic. This is followed by a period where apples are unevenly fantastic. I feel that there's no reason to eat mediocre fruit, so these sub-par apples kick around the kitchen, growing wrinklier and sadder, until C throws some of them into the green waste. At this point, I'm overcome by food wasting guilt; I fish them out and make a pie.

Important pie tips: use all of the weird apples you own. It may seem like too many apples, and the pie absurd in proportion, but apples shrink, and piling the pie high (stealth Clinton reference) gives you the classic "Warner Brothers" pie form. This means that when breaking the pie dough in half, allocate slightly more dough for the top crust.

Make some pie dough. (There's a more traditional- and slightly better- recipe in the comments.) Peel and core sevenish apples and slice them up. Pile them into a pie pan lined with dough. Sprinkle with the juice of one lemon, 1 tsp cinnamon, 1/4 cup sugar, 1 tsp corn starch, and 1/4 cup raisins. (You may be anti-raisin, in which case they can be safely omitted.) Cover the pie with the dough for the upper crust and seal the edges. Cut vents- either slashes with a knife or pretty shapes with a cookie cutter. Bake in a 375 degree oven for 40 minutes- or until golden brown.

Eat.

Vegan Cranberry-Orange Muffins- Bad Idea Saturday

C and I roshamboed for who got to be the DD last night, and I lost. You know what everyone loves? Hungover baking. I was gonna replace the egg in these simple and tasty muffins with ground flax seed and water, (1 tbs ground flax seed, 3 tbs water) but our food processor doesn't handle tiny amounts and I couldn't find the coffee grinder. Attempts to grind seeds by whacking them with a spoon proved ineffective. After using up my January quotient of expletives, I used egg as an egg substitute. Please try it properly and get back to me.

Makes 12.

Mix 1 cup white flour, 1/2 cup whole wheat flour, one teaspoon baking soda, and two teaspoons baking powder. (Seems like a lot of leavening, but then *you* won't be getting lifting power from the egg.) Add 1 and 1/2 cups fresh cranberries and pretty much the entire zest of one orange. Stir.

In another bowl, mix 1 cup sugar, 1 cup orange juice, 1 egg or 1/4 cup egg substitute, a dash of vanilla, and 1/2 cup vegetable oil. (I think the mention of 1/2 cup oil is a sign that the recipe used to contain butter.) Stir.

Mix the contents of the two bowls until all the dry ingredients are moist- and no further. Gluten should stay inside the flour particles when muffins are concerned. Measure into a muffin tin filled with those cute little papers. If you don't have cute little papers, the cranberries will stick to the pan something fierce. Of course, by the time they need washing, you'll have some muffins and orange juice in your stomach, and the world will not seem quite so unpleasant.

Bake at 375 degrees for twenty minutes, or until they pass the toothpick test. C said that they're better when they're a little bit burned, but C wanted to survive the morning.

Bad Idea Fridays: Red Velvet Cake

What a wreck.

I made Red Velvet Cake for my brother's birthday. It tasted like propylene glycol. (Wikipedia says Propylene glycol has no flavor. I accidentally got a face full when we were draining a cooling system, and I beg to differ.) I used the Cook's recipe, I followed it to the letter, I had my mother taste the result and confirm that it was the same cake her grandmother used to make and still I was horribly horribly disappointed. Still, I'm sure there are people out there- people who haven't had a traumatic encounter with food dye solvents- and they might enjoy the traditional cake.

Every single recipe I have ever read for Red Velvet Cakes briefly discusses the history of the cake. There's a lot of diddle-daddle about chemistry, a brief mention of Steel Magnolias, and a sneering reference to the wartime use of beets. Happily, I like beets. I am seriously considering making this week 'beet week'. Even more happily, my indestructible chocolate cake uses one cup of water as the fluid component. Beet cooking liquid is like water, except it stains everything it touches. Since the recipe has proven resilient when I muck around with the ingredients, halving the cocoa and doubling the vinegar shouldn't be fatal...

But what of the frosting? There must be a cream cheese based frosting- otherwise, there's no startling color contrast. I tripped off to the natural foods market to buy some vegan cream cheese. There a lovely woman told me that as a vegan, cream cheese was forever barred to me and that eating the vegan version would only make me crave the real stuff more. Plus, she said, it was gross. Better that I should make an icing of Crisco and powdered sugar.

Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Stir together 1 and 1/2 cups white flour, 3 tbs. cocoa powder, 1 tsp. baking soda, 1/2 tsp salt, and 1 cup sugar in a 9 inch round baking pan. (I added 1/4 cup cocoa, because my hand usually shakes when measuring out 1/3 cup) If you are using a fluted Bundt pan, do the mixing in another bowl and grease the pan. Otherwise, the cake will be removed in chunks and will look like crap.

Fill a large measuring cup with 1 cup beet water, 1/3 cup oil, and one teaspoons almond extract. (To make beet water, get some beets. Wash them, cut them in half, put them into a pan, cover them with water, and simmer them for about half an hour. Reserve the beets. Use the water. On another note; I added the almond extract on a whim. It turned out to be the best part of this cake.)

Pour the liquid ingredients into the dry ingredients and whisk vigorously until combined. Add four tablespoons cider vinegar and stir until combined.

Pop the cake into the oven and bake for 25 minutes. Remove, let cool, gently coax out of the pan, fail, end up removing cake in three large pieces. Try to talk yourself into making buttercream frosting with Crisco. Fail. I made a glaze with the juice of one lemon, 1/2 cup powered sugar, and one cup dessert wine, simmered together until I could claim the alcohol evaporated. I also added 1 tsp. grated ginger, so everyone who tasted the cake could say "Ginger. Interesting." (This is exactly what they said.)

The cake was red going into the oven, but it was only a little red coming out. It smelled exactly like beets going in, but when it was removed it smelled and tasted like cake. Since it was reddish, sourish, and tasted of almonds, everyone thought it was a cherry cake. I dub this quasi-failure "Cherry Blossom Cake" and promise to oil he pan next time. Also, fie to the people who disparage baking with beets.

I realized this morning that I could have used haupia as frosting. The color contrast would have been perfect.