Intoducing Grover

Meet Grover.  Grover is a the newest addition to my kitchen.  I have watched him grow up.  Above is a picture of him taken when he was just about 5 days old.  Take a look him now. 

He has outgrown his first home and is nice and bubbly.

I decided that I would begin a new starter.  This one only contains 2 ingredients, water and flour.  I followed the advice from here. I followed it exactly up until day 9.  For those that want the short version, basically all I did was was start with about ounce of water and and an ounce of flour and stirred them together.  Everyday since I repeated the process and stirred the jar a few times a day.  Since my apartment is never above 60 degrees, my starter was slow to develop, so Grover had not developed enough to harvest, but now he is ready.  I have continued to feed it one ounce of water and one ounce of flour everyday.  Grover is read for action.  As soon as I use him, I will report the results.  I am excited to try him because I will not use any yeast at all.  With my other starter, I not only used yeast in the starter, but I also added more to the bread recipe.  Not next time.  Grover will do all the work.  Stay tuned.

Mini chocolate cupcakes

I was asked to make mini cupcakes for a three year old's Birthday party.  I was happy to assist.  I adapted an Ina Garten recipe for a chocolate cake.  Of course, I did not follow the recipe.  I tend to kinda make up stuff as I go along.  Here is my version of it.  Also note that if I weight an ingredient I will list the grams.


Ingredientsnocoupons

• 1 3/4 cups (210 g) AP flour
• 2 cups (384 g)  sugar
• 3/4 cups (60 g) cocoa powder
• 2 tsp baking soda
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 1 tbl salt
• 1 cup of Cappuccino Kefir (original recipe called for buttermilk, but I did not have any)
• 1/2 cup canola oil
• 2 eggs, at room temperature
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1 cup hot water mixed with 3 tsp's of instant espresso powder

Your first question might be what in the world is Kefir.  Here is a link so you can read up about it. I have tried many of the flavors and they are all good.  I am still searching for the Birthday Cake, so if you know where I can find it let me know.  Anyway, I am getting off subject.  Back to the cupcakes.  The batter is very liquidy, so don't panic.

Directions:

I used a stand mixer to make this, but you really could just use a whisk and two bowls.  First I mixed all the dry ingredients together.  I find it easy to place the bowl of the mixer on a scale and weigh out the first 3 ingredients, then add in the remaining dry ingredients.  Next, combine the Kefir, oil, eggs and vanilla in another bowl and mix them together.  Slowly combine the wet ingredients with the dry ingredients.  Finally, add in the espresso and mix just to combine.  That's it, the batter is complete.

From here you could go in many directions.  I wanted make them standard cupcake size, but since I was asked to make mini one's, I did.  I found the best way to do this was to pour some of the batter into a measuring cup and fill each up about 3/4 of the way full.  I baked them at 375 for 15 minutes.

My next task was deciding what to frost them with.  I was debating between a peanut butter frosting or a ganache.  I choose ganache.  Normally, ganache is made with 2 parts chocolate to 1 part heavy cream.  Well I did not have any heavy cream, so I thought I would give evaporated milk a try.  Turns out it worked pretty well.  To make it all I did was combine 1 cup of evaporated and 2 cups of semisweet chocolate chips.  I placed them in a double broiler and stirred until melted.  I then spooned a little ganache on each cupcake.

I thought they turned out really well.  I got many compliments and no complaints, so I say overall the operation was a success.

Paciugo

Here a place you might not have heard of.  They have the best gelato and they let you sample as many flavors as you want.  They usually have like 40 to choose from and they rotate them constantly.  The one pictured was taken last weekend in Madison.  I had eggnog, peanut butter mocha, hazelnut chocolate swirl, and caramel mocha.  Eggnog gelato in March.  You can't beat that!  Check out their website.

Buzzard Billy's

With Mardi Gras ending this week, Leslie and I went to Buzzard Billy's yesterday.  It's the New Orleans of La Crosse.  As always, it did not disappoint.  I had the chicken and sausage gumbo with a side of hush puppy's.  Leslie had her favorite a shrimp po-boy with a side of red beans and rice.  Good stuff.