Sometimes, I set out to cook thinks that are completely reasonable and not remotely related to my southern upbringing, and most of the time I succeed. Other times, without even realizing it, I make barbecue sauce.

That’s what happened here.

The recipe Jennie and I agreed upon was a simple chicken marinade. I did some research; I planned some options; I came up with a nice simple option that is probably familiar to many of you. It involved olive oil, lemon, honey, dijon mustard, and soy sauce. Then I decided that was boring. That’s when I got carried away, and what I ended up with, completely unintentionally, was barbecue sauce.

But you know what? I don’t even care. Because this barbecue sauce is seriously THE. MOST. DELICIOUS. EVER.

Basic ingredients: Tomato Paste, Worcestershire Sauce, Apple Cider Vinegar, Olive Oil, Cumin Seed, Brown Sugar, Lemon Juice, Thyme, Garlic, Salt, Chili Powder

Mix the spices, and be sure to grind the cumin seed with a mortar and pestle if you’re lucky enough to have one around. (Thanks Mom)

MMMMM. If you don’t have a mortar and pestle, you probably want to purchase some ground cumin.

Mix with the wet ingredients, and you’ll have barbecue sauce. Oops!

I’d like to start a new kind of post on our site, for recipes that either just didn’t hit it or didn’t explain the recipe enough. I’m sure you’ve all been there before: in the kitchen, recipes ready, ingredients in a row, re-reading the recipe a second, third time. Simple enough. Until you get to a step that requires you to, “Add salt to taste,” and the ingredients are something you’re not going to be able to taste. Here’s a clip of me explaining my rage of this step, found in many recipes:

Anyways, so our friend Megan turned twenty-five last week, and to celebrate Rebecca and I set out to make a delicious cake. Megan mentioned that she’d had – and loved – and so I was off Googling, finding a similiar recipe to make.

This is the recipe I found. It’s called Blackout cake. Which just sounds wonderful.

Now here are some ideas I had right off the bat with this recipe. And I don’t mean to pick on this recipe, specifically. Now that I’ve been writing recipes for a few years I know it’s hard. But recipes in general need a standardization they just haven’t found, yet.

Take, for example, this recipe. All three of the sections have some overlap as far as ingredients go. Coffee in two sections, chocolate in two sections, eggs in two sections, etc. The way this recipe is presented to me is not grocery-store friendly. In addition, there doesn’t seem to be a standard for listing ingredients. I’ve seen wet ingredients listed first, then dry. I’ve seen them listed in order of quantity. I’ve seen them listed in order of use. I think there should be a standard! When I was researching for my zucchini bread recipe, I found similar recipes ordered completely differently from the same site, even!

Now, let’s dive in.

Now, the directions from the blackout cake’s recipe are a little different than what I would have done. The recipe wants you to start by putting your milk and sugar on to just under a boil. To this, I say why don’t you mix your dry ingredients first so you’re not racing the clock?

So first, you’re going to mix together the dry ingredients for the pudding. These are your sugar (minus 2 tablespoons), your salt, your cocoa, and your cornstarch.

Now whisk in 1/2 cup of milk.

It’ll look like this. Now go ahead, onto the stove…

You’re going to take some milk and some sugar.

A cup of milk, and two tablespoons of sugar, to be exact. Heat until just under boiling. Then, add gradually to your other bowl of dry ingredients plus one-half cup of milk.

Perfect. Whisk that together. Now put back on the heat, and Add your egg, and your egg yolk. I am sorry, but I didn’t have time to take a photo of the egg-adding. Salmonella and cameras and heat and pudding don’t exactly mix.

Now, remove from heat and add your chocolate (I used chocolate chips, so sue me.)

Now add your butter.

Now you have to strain it. Strain away. I didn’t do a great job, because I felt like it was a silly step, but I did as I was told.

Then you have pudding! Cover with plastic wrap and through it in the refrigerator.

Now it’s time to make the cake. You’ve spent about twenty minutes doing this step, by the way.

So now, you’re going to start by buttering and flouring two baking sheets. I used nine inch pans because that’s all I had. Don’t forget to line with wax paper or parchment paper, because this cake is a sticky mess, and you’re going to need it.

Sift together your flour, cocoa, baking soda, baking powder, and salt.

Put aside.

Take your eggs, and your sugar and beat until lemony yellow.

Add your oil, and your buttermilk alternatively with your dry ingredients. See PW for notes about buttermilk.

Now you add your coffee. You’ll have a thin batter, but make sure to stir it ALL together. I didn’t, and ended up with a thin batter over a thicker batter, and it wasn’t so pretty. Luckily, the cake was delicious anyways, but be warned.

Let the cake bake for about 40-45 minutes.

Whilst it’s in the oven, go break up some Oreos. Or have a good friend do it for you.

Then, cool on a baking rack for 15 minutes before you attempt to get them out of their baking pans. Then let them cool completely (or stick them in the freezer for a few minutes if you’re in a rush.)

A note: by the time the cakes were cooled, it was clear there was no way I was going to be able to slice them into layers. The cake was just too moist. I usually freeze my cakes before I slice them, but I didn’t quite have that time. I’m open to suggestions, however.

Moving on.

Take the cake out of the freezer, and put one layer wherever you’re planning to serve the cake from.

Take the pudding you made earlier and put a generous layer on.

Now you take the next layer, put it on. And…for the frosting.

The frosting must be made right when you’re going to ice, because it gets thick quickly. Which, if you ask me, is a pain, but it was delicious.

Weigh your chocolate.

You’ll need a double boiler. Or…two sauce pans. Melt the butter with the chocolate.

Remove from heat, add your other ingredients, and whisk over an ice bath until it’s the right consistency. You’ll know.

Ice away.

Well, I didn’t say it was the prettiest cake I’d ever made.

Sorry for the dark photo. If you can’t tell what I’m doing, I’m using crumbled up Oreo cookie to cover the sides of the cake.

And covering the top with a container of chocolate sprinkles.

Look at that messy delicious cake.

Clean up your cake plate. Transport it to the drive in. Serve to your friends. They’ll love you.

Note: I started this cake at 1:00 pm. It was ready to go around 4:30, with relatively short breaks. Yes, I photographed, but keep this in mind when you make the cake. It does NOT take only 2 hours 20 minutes.

Thanks to Rebecca for helping bake, as well as photograph, and Paul for photographing the icing situation!

Hello again!  The recipe that I’ll be sharing today was taught to me long ago by my friend Stef.  It is an excellent cold weather choice as it will heat your house by way of the extended use of the oven and also lets you enjoy an underutilized vegetable.  This is also a pretty passive recipe as it just spends a bunch of time in the oven, so it is a good one to whip out when you need to multitask.  Say, for example, editing your first graduate school paper.  A medium size spaghetti squash will make about two meals worth of food for a single person or a solid single meal for two people.  My general rule of thumb is the larger the squash, the more meals I’ll be eating. In any case, the recipe below turned out to be vegan, but it is easily adapted toward non-vegan persuasions, by adding feta (delicious) and/or bacon (double delicious).

Cut the spaghetti squash in half.  Carefully.  The squash is very difficult to cut when it is uncooked, so please don’t hurt yourself. Proceed with caution!  This is also a good time to start preheating the oven to 425 degrees (if you believe in that sort of thing…).

Once your squash is carefully cut in half you’ll want to scoop out the center, with the seeds and such, with a spoon.  Feel free to save the seeds and roast them like you would with pumpkin seeds.

Lightly grease a baking sheet and place the squash flat side down.  Bake at 425 degrees for 35 minutes.

While your squash is roasting, prep your other vegetables.  I used grape tomatoes, broccoli, and onion.  Divide your cut up veggies into two medium bowls or a large bowl if you have one.

Carefully (and with two hands as spaghetti squash is heavy) remove the squash from the oven.  At this point I moved the squash halves to a glass baking dish with sides to prevent them from squirming around.  Take a fork and rake it back and forth through the squash.  It should shred easily and will sort of look like spaghetti!  Be careful to not slice through the skin of the squash and to leave it structurally sound, as you will be putting all the veggies back in the shells to bake for a little longer.

Take the newly shredded squash and mix each halve into a bowl with the other veggies (or one large bowl, whatever the case may be). Some of the strings tend to stick so I usually give it a quick once through with a knife to cut off any of the stragglers.  Once the shredded squash and veggies are mixed, place back in the squash shells.

Place the squash back in the oven for about 15-20 minutes.  This allows you to cook the other veggies.  I would also recommend turning your oven down slightly so you don’t burn the ends of your broccoli; 375 degrees will do.

Take out of the oven (with both hands!) and enjoy!

[Optional]  When there is about five minutes left for roasting the second time, pull out the squash and carefully mix in some feta and/or bacon.  Then stick it all back in the oven to finish baking for those last five minutes.

Please note: I like my cooked veggies crunchier than the average person, so if you like your cooked veggies softer, lower the heat and extend the cooking time.

Until next time!

I am including this recipe as a Cucina Fresca recipe because I think that people should know it’s super easy to make, and doesn’t need to be so fancy like it is over at Foodnetwork.com. It’s not that I don’t like a fancy soup, but sometimes I need a simple soup made of some half-bags of pasta leftover from dinners.

My mom used to make pasta fagioli now and then, except my dad doesn’t like it. So not always. But it’s so delicious, and as I’ve gotten older realize it’s also a) really easy to make and b) not everyone knows it exists. Another Italian-American thing, I am learning.

In my family, it’s pronounced Pasta Fa-zchool. Forgive me for not knowing the correct phonetics for that, but basically it’s slang from the Italian-Americans. Just think of Dean Martin, in the song “That’s Amore.”

When the stars make you drool just like a pasta fagiole
That’s amore

Did that help? I think it should.

Anyways. Here we go.

You begin like you would a good sauce. Some olive oil, a few cloves of garlic.

Add your tomato sauce. My grandmother uses Hunts. I used Trader Joe’s because that’s where I was. This, by the way, is a double batch. Then you add double the amount of water you added of tomato sauce. For example, I used about sixteen ounces of tomato sauce, so I added thirty two ounces of water. You can also use chicken broth or vegetable broth. Since I was with Rebecca, we used vegetable broth.

Now add your cannellini beans. You can also use Great Northern beans if your local store doesn’t have cannellini. For a double batch, you need four cans of beans. Add four cans of water from the beans, too.

Now at this point, let your delicious stuff simmer for about an hour.

Now, after about an hour, add your pasta.

Now, because I was also making zucchini bread and cake at this point, I didn’t get a picture of adding the pasta. But after an hour, you add your pasta. I used about a pound of pasta (remember, double batch) and used whatever pasta I had half-bags of. Grandma Grace says to use elbows and ditalini, if you want to do it the authentic way ;). I used farfalle, orecchiette, and circle pasta.

Cook until the pasta is done, then serve with Italian bread, and some parm cheese. Amazing. Delicious. Perfect soup.

Zucchini bread is one of those lovely versatile foods that you can eat with breakfast, lunch, or dinner, and still have it be the perfect thing to eat. You can eat it with soup, salad, butter, you name it, it’s delicious!

I used to make banana bread all the time, but when I stopped eating non-local fruit, I had to switch, and I’m glad I did!

Last week I made two loaves from a recipe adapted from a few sources I found.

You take your zucchini. You need about 2 cups of zucchini, grated.

Use a cheese grater, rather than a food processor. I feel like the food processor makes it too watery.

Please note the shredded zucchini bread. Not the two cup measurers, the teaspoon measure, the knife dangerously close to flame, and the Pasta Fagioli in the background. We’ll get to that later.

After you grate your zucchini you’re going to want to put all your dry ingredients in a separate bowl and mix them up. For this recipe I used half whole wheat flour and half all-purpose flour. And then you know, a plethora of spices…cinnamon, nutmeg, coriander.

Now you’re going to want to put the olive oil in with the eggs, add a smidge of lemon juice, then add your zucchini. Give it a spin, then add your dry ingredients.

Delicious.

Bake in a loaf pan. Eat it warm, or eat it for breakfast. Or bring it to work and your coworkers will love ya!