Oh. My. Gosh.  This was amazing.  I have never had better hot fudge, seriously.  And I love me some hot fudge, so that’s saying something.  The perfect time arose for me to make this ’30 while 30‘ recipe when I was actually on my way to my co-blogger Beth’s house for dinner.  I offered to bring dessert – but it was just too darn hot to bake, so I thought ice cream sundaes would be the perfect sweet treat to end our evening.  I could have just stopped at the multiple grocery stores between our houses to pick up a jar of hot fudge – but where would the fun in that be?!  Instead, I decided to knock one more item off of my list and make it myself.  It took me about 10 minutes, start to finish – but if I don’t say so myself, tasted like I spent hours slaving over the stove with a candy thermometer.  Let me tell you friends – this recipe is about my favorite recipe ever.  It uses things most people (well, most insane blogging-bakers) have in their pantry – items such as cocoa powder, chopped chocolate (in my case, chocolate chips), and corn syrup.  Why stop and buy the mass-produced variety when in just 10 minutes you too can look like Ms. Betty Crocker herself!!

Homemade Hot Fudge

from: thatssoyummy.com

Ingredients

• 1/4 cup unsweetened Dutch-processed cocoa powder
• 1/3 cup packed dark brown sugar
• 1/2 cup light corn syrup
• 2/3 cup heavy cream
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 6 ounces chocolate chips (or bittersweet chocolate, finely chopped)
• 2 Tablespoon unsalted butter, cup into 1/2 Tablespoons
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Directions:

In a heavy sauce pan, combine the cocoa, dark brown sugar, corn syrup, cream and salt, along with about half of the chocolate chips.  Heat over medium heat until the chocolate melts and the mixture appears smooth.  Cook for 5 minutes more at a low boil, remembering to stir intermittently so it doesn’t burn!  Remove from the heat, and stir in the remaining chocolate chips, the butter, and the vanilla.  Let cool slightly before serving.  Enjoy!

This 30-while-30 recipe came out much better than the last one.  (What can I say, no one bats 1000 all the time!!) And, it is another favorite dish that for some reason I had never cooked until age 30!   Italian Wedding Soup has comfort food written all over it in my house, but usually we get it out of a can.  After making this recipe, I am not sure why - Italian Wedding Soup from scratch was incredibly easy and fantastically tasty!  It is also decidedly more healthy – it has only a fraction of the sodium, as is pretty much true when you compare any homemade soup to a canned soup. 

We used spinach fresh from our garden and used ground turkey rather than ground beef but otherwise followed the recipe pretty closely.  I personally loved the fact that the meatballs were not browned before cooking - they came out like tasty little meaty clouds that melted in the mouth - but you certainly could choose to brown your meatballs before you put them into your soup for even extra flavor. 

Italian Wedding Soup

Adapted from LikeitLoveit via Food.com

Mix together turkey, egg, breadcrumbs, parmesan and spices.  Roll into small (3/4 inch) meatballs.  In a stockpot, combine chicken broth, water, and boullion cube and bring to a boil.  Stir in chopped spinach, meatballs, and pasta.  Cook for at least 10 minutes, or until the meatballs are cooked through and the pasta is done.  Enjoy!

They still looked pretty tasty.

Now, if you insist on trying this - I would highly recommend using a beer that is very light on hops, and heavy on the malt.  Perhaps if you have a good belgian beer you wouldn’t mind sacrificing, that would work. (Maybe this was our problem??  We tend to drink our good Belgian beers.)  We used a porter, which I thought would be okay – turns out, it just sort of tasted like we made our pancakes with beer.  The flavor was rather…frat-house on a Sunday morning.  If you really must, though, here is the recipe I used.

Beer Pancakes

Adapted from chubbylittletoro, via Allrecipes.com

Combine flour, sugar, baking powder and salt in a large bowl.  Stir in the egg, beer and butter until well combined.  Head a skillet over medium heat, and drop about 1/4 cup at a time onto the griddle.  Cook on one side until bubbles start to appear on the pancake surface, then flip and cook until golden.  Serve with butter and maple syrup.  Enjoy…?

Ok kids, it’s crunch time.  I turn 31 in just 23 days, so I am going to make a strong effort to finish up with my 30-while-30 list before the official deadline.  I actually have made a bunch of items off of it, but just haven’t gotten around to blogging about them yet.  Get set for some rapid fire blog posts.

I love all kinds of Sangria, but I realized last summer when constructing my 30-while-30 list that I had never made it!  Weird.  Anyway, I figured that this summer I would have to go ahead and take the Sangria plunge.  I was particularly excited about giving a white wine Sangria a try as I figured it would look very pretty in a nice wine glass sitting on our porch.  I meant for this to be a July 4th post, as my concoction was very red, white & blue given the ingredients, but…well, that’s how summer goes I guess!  You can make it any day, really – it was that delicious.

I made a number of modifications to this recipe – first, I was assembling this drink down on the Jersey shore at my in-laws summer condo, and all of my kitchen appliances were not on hand – so adding pureed and strained watermelon was out of the question.  I just added cubed melon and it was great.  Also, sangria, turns out, typically calls for fortification with hard alcohol; I personally think my wine contains just enough ethanol as it is for a summer-time drink, especially on a hot day, and opted not to add any other liquors.  I think it came out great.  If you do try adding something stronger, I would recommend something like triple sec or a fruit-infused drink of some sort.  I also do not like carbonated drinks; some people would argue for adding a seltzer or tonic to sangria, but again this was not really up my alley.  The long and short of sangria is – it’s the fruit punch made with wine, so add whatever tickles your fancy, and enjoy!

Watermelon Sangria

adapted from bewitched via Allrecipes.com

Place watermelon into a large pitcher.  Over top, pour white wine and simple syrup.  Add in the remaining fruit ingredients.  Stir gently, and refrigerate for about 4 hours before serving.

Making clam chowder at home has always seemed like a tall task to me.  Somehow you have to get clams, cook and chop them, and then make a smooth creamy base.  Getting the seasoning right, adding the right vegetables…I always figured I would need to get clam chowder at a restaurant to really enjoy it.  I got this recipe from a cookbook, “Recipes from Historic New England,” by Linda & Steve Bauer, which I got as a 30th birthday gift from my good friends Mike & Anne who know about my fondness both of New England and of cooking.  The cookbook is really cool – all the recipes come from famous New England restaurants and historic bed and breakfasts.  There are some really awesome looking dishes in there – but I chose to try a clam chowder recipe from the Chatham Bars Inn section.

As it uses canned clams and clam juice it was super easy.  Both of these ingredients previously had kinda creeped me out…something about canned mollusks just didn’t seem right to me…but, I figured if it’s good enough for the Chatham Bars Inn, it would be good enough for me.  It also introduced me to another new ingredient, salt pork – this is kind of like bacon, only fattier and saltier.  I would highly suggest you not try to eat it as a side dish with your morning eggs, but it really lends a tasty smokiness to the Clam Chowder – which I think is what all my previous attempts at Clam Chowder lacked.   I also omitted the ‘clam boullion cubes’ this recipe called for – because who has clam boullion cubes in their pantry, really – but it came out perfectly clammy despite this omission.  I served it with some delicious buttery biscuits, and it was fantastic.

Clam Chowder

Ingredients

• 1 stick unsalted butter
• 1 cup diced Vidalia onion
• 1 cup chopped celery
• 1/3 cup flour
• 3 x 6.5oz cans of chopped clams in clam juice
• 4 x 8oz bottles of clam juice
• 2oz salt pork, sliced
• 2 cups diced potato, cooked
• 1 pint half-and-half, warmed
• Salt and pepper to taste

Directions

In a dutch oven, or a deep heavy saucepan, melt the butter over medium heat.  Saute the onion and celery for about 5-10 minutes, or until the vegetables are translucent.  Stir in the flour, cooking for about 5 minutes.  Drain the clams, reserving the juice.  Add the reserved and the bottled clam juice to the saucepan, whisking until smooth.  Add the sliced salt pork and the chopped clams to the soup, and cook for about 20 minutes over low-medium heat.  After 20 minutes of cooking time, add the cooked potato.  Turn off heat and let the mixture stand covered for 20 minutes.  Remove the salt pork from the chowder.  Stir in the warmed half-and-half to the chowder.  Season with salt and pepper to taste.  Enjoy!

Don’t get me wrong, my husband makes me pulled pork all the time – his recipe is just ‘put a pork shoulder, a can of Coke, and a bottle of barbeque sauce in a slow-cooker and turn it on.’  Not that there is anything wrong with his recipe – it actually tastes fantastic – but, I couldn’t bring myself to blog about adding Coke to pork and cooking it.   As pulled pork was part of my 30 while 30 mission the recipe I picked had to be a bit of a challenge.  I settled on this recipe for Chipotle Barbeque Pulled Pork, as it sounded different and spicy and delicious.  Also, it’s fantastic for a working woman like myself, as it’s also a slow cooker recipe – throw it in and a few hours later dinner is done!  It came out great – certainly it has a bit of a bite, but the chipotle also brings a smoky sweet taste to the party.  Chipotle peppers in adobo sauce are my new favorite special ingredient for Mexican dishes – the flavor is complex, smoky and spicy while at the same time sweet, and gives any Tex-Mex dish you’re making some great additional depth.  We served our pulled pork atop plain hamburger buns, which were perfect for sopping up the delicious sauce.  Alongside an ear of corn, this would make a fantastic summer-time dinner!

Chipotle Barbeque Pulled Pork

Ingredients:

• 1 bone-in pork shoulder, approximately 4-5lbs
• 2 medium yellow onions, diced
• 2 tablespoons chili powder
• 1 tablespoon cumin
• 2 teaspoons paprika
• 2 teaspoons cayenne pepper
• 2 teaspoons garlic powder
• 1/2 cup brown sugar
• 4 canned Chipotle Peppers in Adobo Sauce (reserve the sauce) *
• 2 tablespoons Adobo Sauce *
• 12oz dark beer (I used a porter)
• 1/4 cup ketchup
• 3/4 cup apple cider vinegar
• 1/4 cup dijon mustard
• Olive oil
• Salt & Pepper

* Adjust to taste depending on whether you like more or less spice!

Directions:

Rinse and dry the pork shoulder.  Season the meat with salt and pepper to taste, and sear on medium-high heat on each side in a large deep skillet, or a dutch oven.  Remove the pork from the pan to your slow-cooker.  Add the diced onions to the pan, cooking until translucent, about 5-10 minutes.  Add the spices to the pan, heating until they are aromatic.  Add brown sugar, chipotle peppers and adobo sauce, beer, ketchup, vinegar and mustard to the pan.  Simmer until the sauce thickens, about 15 minutes.  Pour the sauce over the pork shoulder in the slow-cooker and cover.  Turn the slow-cooker on low heat for 7-8 hrs, or until the pork is tender and falling off the bone.  Remove the pork from the sauce and shred the meat using a fork.  Serve on rolls with sauce spooned over top.  Enjoy!

Finally, a return to my 30 things to make while I’m 30.  Starting to run out of time, here – I’ll be 31 in only 4 months from tomorrow!  I have a lot of the recipes ready for blogging, but things have been a little crazy ’round here lately, and I’ll admit I’ve been slacking off a bit.  Thankfully, I have an afternoon off, and a long weekend to follow – so here I go.  Sauerbraten is a fantastic, slow-cooked German roast beef.  I will warn you if you plan to make this it’s important to plan far ahead, as it takes a week to marinate.  Yep, that’s right, a week.  When we finally got around to cooking it though – the dish was worth every marinating minute.  It’s sweet and tangy and complex all at the same time.  This recipe I got from my lovely mother-in-law who is a fantastic cook – it’s tough following in her shoes, but my husband seems to think I’m doing alright so far at least!  I love snagging her recipes and trying them out for him whenever I can.  I made a few minor changes, mostly related to what I happened to have on hand vs. what the recipe called for – but it came out great.  This sauerbraten would be lovely on a cool fall night with a delicious German beer – although it was similarly awesome when I made it this spring too.  I served it with Kartoffelknoedel – I just love saying that word – or traditional German potato dumplings, but it would also taste great with spaetzle or egg noodles or frankly I’d imagine on any other plain base.

Sauerbraten

From my mother-in-law’s personal recipe collection

Ingredients

For the marinade -

• 1 medium onion, thinly sliced
• 1 cup cider vinegar (increase if needed in same proportion to the water)
• 2 cups of water (increase if needed in same proportion to the vinegar)
• 2 and 1/2 tsp salt
• 12 whole peppercorns
• 3 bay leaves
• 1 4-5 lb boneless roast, tied

On cooking day -

Black & White Cookies are amazing - there’s the soft, cakey cookie part and the rich smooth frostings – the combination makes me pick them up as often as I can.  As I never thought about baking them before, I thought they would be the perfect addition to my list of things to make while I’m 30!  It’s just over halfway for me to 31 now, and I’ve been slacking off a bit on my list in favor of other things that have come to mind, like homemade (wal)nutella and buffalo chicken dip, which is I suppose the peril of making a list of things you plan to make over the course of the next 365 days.  Of course when I made the list, I didn’t really think that I should probably keep my pastry intake to a minimum – but, well, one has to do what one has to do when it comes to making all 30 things on my list.  So here I am, catching up and baking Black and White Cookies.  The recipe I made was adapted from a few places – but primarily from Smitten Kitchen, and from David Lebowitz’s latest cookbook, Ready for Dessert.  I wasn’t sure about the recipe for the frosting from the Smitten Kitchen one – it just seemed like it would be too liquidy to me – and my frostings usually tend to err on the liquidy side to begin with.  I opted instead for the Lebowitz frostings, using the Smitten Kitchen cookie.  These cookies were fantastic: soft and chewy with creamy frosting – I can’t get enough of them!

Black and White Cookies

adapted from Smitten Kitchen and Ready for Dessert, by David Lebowitz

For the cookies:

• 1 scant cup granulated sugar
• 1 stick unsalted butter, at room temperature
• 2 large eggs
• 3/4 cups milk
• 1/4 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1/8 teaspoon lemon extract
• 1 and 1/4 cups cake flour
• 1 and 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
• 1/4 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/4 teaspoon salt

For the frosting:

• 2 cups, plus 2 tbsp powdered sugar or more if needed
• 2 tsp, plus 2 tsp light corn syrup
• 1/4 tsp lemon extract
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 3 tbsp water, plus more if needed
• 3 tbsp Dutch process cocoa powder

Preheat your oven to 375 degrees, and line 2 cookie sheets with parchment paper.  In a stand mixer cream together butter and granulated sugar until fluffy and light.  Add in eggs, milk and extracts, mixing thoroughly.  In a separate bowl, sift together the flours, baking powder, and salt.  Gradually stir the dry ingredients into the wet ones, until the dough is formed.  (Be careful not to overmix, so the cookies don’t become tough.)  Drop by the tablespoon onto the parchment lined pans – these will bake into approximately 2 inch cookies.  Bake for 18-20 minutes in the preheated oven, or until cookies are lightly golden at the edges.  Cool completely on a wire rack.

For the frostings – mix together 2 cups of powdered sugar, 2 tsp of the corn syrup, extracts, and 3 tbsp of water until smooth.  Divide this mixture into two portions.  In one of the portions, stir in the cocoa powder until smooth – if this is too dry, add water in very small increments (1/2 teaspoon at a time) stirring after each addition until smooth.  To the other portion of frosting, stir in the remaining 2 tbsp of powdered sugar.  Spread chocolate frosting on one half of the cookie, and the white frosting on the other half.  Enjoy!

Now this my friends brings me back to my childhood.  I grew up in southeastern Massachusetts where every year at Christmas, there was a fantastic Christmas Light display at LaSalette shrine – my family would go every year, and as part of the fun we’d have a hot toddy, and perhaps a nice slice of French Meat Pie.  Also known as a Tourtière,  this is a dish popular in French Canada and is in fact a traditional part of the Christmas dinner in Quebec.  Of course, it’s also delicious on any other night of the year as well!  As my co-blogger and her husband can attest to, many families have their own traditional recipes (sometimes more than one per family even!) for this dish that are passed down generation to generation, however given my Irish-Italian heritage, we do not have our own recipe so I had to go finding one on my own.  I put it on my list of 30 things to make while I am 30 because it combines two of my favorite things – pie, and meat. 

This recipe I found is very easy (particularly if you use a premade crust – I won’t tell if you won’t!) and makes a wonderful meal to eat on a snowy New England night – which we’ve had enough of these days to know all to well!  I did substitute the spices a bit because I am not a big fan of allspice, and it came out fantastic – just as I remembered from when I was 7 or 8 wandering around looking at Christmas lights.  The light flaky crust with the warm spicy filling goes quite well with a glass of red wine, a movie, and a lovely night in watching frozen precipitation accumulate.  It also is quite filling – but reheats very well in case you are unable to finish it all on the first attempt.

French Meat Pie

adapted from TasteOfHome, via allrecipes.com

Ingredients

• Cooking spray
• 1 large onion, thinly sliced
• 1 pound ground beef
• 1 pound ground pork
• 1 cup mashed potatoes
• 2 teaspoons poultry seasoning
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1/4 teaspoon pepper
• 1 Pastry for double-crust pie (9 inches)
• 1 egg, beaten

Directions

Preheat oven to 375.  Coat a large skillet with cooking spray and saute the onion until translucent.  Remove from skillet.  Brown ground pork and ground beef together in the same skillet.  Drain all the drippings.  Mix together the browned meat, onions, mashed potatoes, poultry seasoning, salt and pepper.   Line  a pie plate with one crust, and place filling inside.  Top with the second crust.  Crimp the edges of the crust together, and cut several small slits in the top crust to let steam escape.   Bake at 375 degrees for 30 minutes, or until the top crust appears golden brown.  Enjoy!

This year for Christmas, I got a fantastic cookbook for any Harry Potter-phile who knows their way around the kitchen - The Unofficial Harry Potter Cookbook.  It’s got plenty of great recipes for the treats found on the Hogwarts Express, dishes prepared in the kitchen by house elves, and all kinds of other tasty bites popular ‘across the pond.’  Coincidentally, on my list of 30 things to make while I’m 30, I happened to include the popular British tea-time snack the crumpet which expectedly is included in this book filled with British recipes. 

When I told my husband I was going to be making crumpets, he said…”what’s a crumpet?”   Crumpets are, in fact, a very tender and delicate cake similar to an English muffin in shape, but decidedly different in flavor and texture.  They are light and tender, as well as both sweet and savory.  My first crumpets were bought from a grocery store, wrapped in plastic and with a shelf life that probably rivals Twinkies.  I had always enjoyed them even if they were mass-manufactured, but I figured they couldn’t be that hard to make and sure enough, that’s true.  The most challenging part is that they require a circular mold to ensure they have the perfect circle shape – certainly you can go purchase a set of English Muffin rings like I did, but if you have a 3 or 4 inch round cookie cutter, or even a (well washed) tuna can with both ends cut off, these would work just fine.   Enjoy your crumpets toasted with butter and jam alongside a hot cup of tea – like Harry did, with the Minister of Magic.

Crumpets – from ‘The Unofficial Harry Potter Cookbook’ by Dinah Bucholz

Ingredients:

• 1 cup flour
• 1 teaspoon yeast
• 1 tablespoon sugar
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1 cup milk
• 2 tablespoons of melted butter

Whisk together dry ingredients.  Slowly mix in milk and butter until the mixture is smooth.  Let sit in a warm place for about 90 minutes, or until the mixture becomes bubbly and increased in size.  Grease English Muffin rings, and a griddle.  Preheat over low heat.  Scoop 1/3 of a cup of crumpet batter into each ring.  Cook for about 5 minutes, or until the top appears bubbly.  At this point remove the rings (They will be hot, so be careful!  Use tongs or an oven mitt.)  Flip the crumpets, and cook for another 4-5 minutes.  Cool completely on a baking rack, and store in an airtight container.