Schofferhofer Grapefruit Beer

So I don't really like beer. I'm not a fan of the hoppy flavor and it tends to make me feel bloated. However, I've found that occasionally I do enjoy a flavored beer. The problem with this is that flavored beer can wither be really excellent or really shitting, and you don't want to buy a 6-pack and find yourself with 6 bottles of crap. Fortunately, I've found a solution. World Market has this thing where you can make your own 6 pack for $12. World Market has a really great alcohol section with beers and wines from all over the world. This means that I had the chance to buy a 6-pack with beers and ciders that I wanted to try without inadvertently wasting them. This Grapefruit Beer is the first of this pack to be tasted. I was really pleasantly surprised. It tasted strongly of grapefruit, and only had the faintest of beer aftertastes. It's only 3% alcohol so it's nice if you want a refreshing mildly alcoholic drink. I was pleased that I liked the first of my stash and can't wait to taste the other flavors that I bought!

Labor Day Meal

My mom always makes a huge cookout on Labor Day, so I decided I wanted BBQ style food too! I made myself 3 of my favorites (all things I've previously made on this blog) A black bean burger, with sweet potato fries, and sweet spicy veggie salad. I also had a bottle of cider (Angry Orchard is my preferred American brew). This time around I had my black bean burger with guacamole, bbq sauce, sautéed red onions, and smoked gouda cheese. Yes it was amazing. I've also gotten so much better at making sweet potato fries. I've stopped steaming the potato in the microwave first, also I've gotten better at cutting them cleanly. Cook around 400F for 25 minutes and they're perfectly crispy. 

All in all a really fun and yummy meal of old favorites. Nothing really special to report, other than this was my first kinda involved meal in the new apartment. Our kitchen is much smaller, so that has taken some getting used to. Good thing I got to practice by sharing a kitchen with limited surfaces with 6 other people in Oz! 

Amaretto Tiramisu

 So I decided to make some Tiramisu. I've never made this dessert before, and the fact that it is no bake, combined with it being boozy made me want to try it out. It took me awhile to find the ladyfingers, but I finally found them at United Provisions on the Loop. I make this I ended up basically following the instructions on the package of said lady fingers. I mixed egg yolks with sugar, and combined that with whipped egg whites and marscapone cheese. That made the creamy stuff. Then I dipped the lady fingers in a mixture of brewed coffee, Amaretto, and Bailey's. I dipped each side for about a second. My roommate cautioned me not to dip them too long or the dessert would be overpowered by alcohol and get super soggy. It was really good advice. I layered the ladyfingers, lining the pan with them. Then I sprinkled coco powder on top then layered on the cream filling. Then more coco, then more lady fingers, then coco, then filling, you get the idea. I did this until the pan was filled. Then I stuck it in the fridge to settle. The recipe said that it would need 3 hours to settle, but realistically it needs about 24 to harden to the right consistency. Also I noticed that it tastes better the second and third days, because the flavors have time to permeate the cookies and really blend extremely well.

Thoughts on this Dessert:

• For a first try I was really happy with this. I'd love to make it in a larger portion so that it is easier to share with lots of people.
• Construction doesn't take very long, but waiting for it to settle obviously does.
• The longer it sits the better, I'm glad that I now know this. I felt bad because I had friends waiting to eat it the night I made it and they had to come back to taste it the next day.
• The combination of coffee, and liquors was great! I'm particularly partial to both Bailey's and Amaretto so I loved it, but my friends agreed that the flavors meshed extremely well.
• I'd love to try this with different flavor profiles! Matcha Tiramisu anyone haha? Also though I could see myself doing this in an orange chocolate variety. I would put orange zest in the filling and use Grand Mariner as the alcohol to soak the cookies in. 

A fun first time dessert. I'm glad it turned out so well!

Jake's Wrap

So I am back in St. Louis!!!!! Which means that I once again have access to the culinary experience that is Wash U. To celebrate being back I decided to indulge in getting one of my favorite wraps of all time. The Jake's Warp. This is pure bliss, and I was surprised to find that I had not blogged about it on here yet. This wrap is unusual in that it is fruit rather than veggie based. It is peanut butter, strawberries, banana, raisins, dried cherries, granola, and honey. It is a sweet lovers dream, and is a wonderful yummy and filling meal. I've made them before myself, but somehow Dining Services just makes them better. They are available in the cases in Whispers, Stanley's and Holmes, and make for a super easy quick lunch on the go. 

The reason that I said I "indulged" in a Jake's Wrap, is even though there is not anything super horrible for you in here, they are extremely calorie heavy, and fairly sugary (though its mostly natural sugars). So this isn't something that I eat everyday, but I will have one every month or so. And now… I'm realizing that I only have a year left at Wash U, better make sure to have one at least every month then!

Bundaberg in STL?!

So Bundaberg Ginger Beer is an Aussie Staple (one I never actually did a blog post about). I generally don't like soda, but I actually do enjoy Bundaberg (especially as a mixer), since it is sweeter than typical American ginger beer, and it also comes with a sweet pull top! I wasn't something that I drank a lot in Australia, but it was such a comforting site to find in in St. Louis!!!! There is a soda and candy shop, called Soda Fizz that opened up on the loop this summer. One of my friends took me there when I got back and I scoured the store until I found this treasure! Since returning to the states I've been frantically searching to see if I can find any Aussie staples around. So far I have found that "Arnnett's Biscuits" (aka snooty american Tim Tams) can be purchased at World Market. Violet Crumble can be found there too. There is a new specialty grocery store on the Loop that sells tins of Milo and jars of vegemite. And Soda Fizz sells Bundaberg. I have not been able to find Boost chocolate bars :,(, Just Right Ceral, or Aussie Strongbow Cider anywhere. 

It's funny how seeing Aussie brands and foods has become a very comforting sight. I've made myself vegemite on toast/cheddarmite sandwiches about once a week since returning to St. Louis, and I've already run through one of my two boxes of Just Right, much to my dismay. As Australia starts to feel farther away, seeing these little things make feel sadly nostalgic. On the flip side, seeing an Aussie food item in a store brings happy memories and stories to the forefront of my mind. I've shared these stories with friends to explain my enthusiasm for these little things, and doing so makes me feel a lot closer to being back Down Under!

Baked Cinnamon Apple Cider Donuts

This is a very delayed post about my Donut adventures with my mom and sister. My mom bought donut pans about a year ago and had yet to try them. So one afternoon the three of us decided to make donuts together. We agreed on apple cinnamon donuts, since we loved the homemade ones from our local apple orchard. We used spiced apple cider to give the donuts the apple flavor. Also my sister came up with the awesome idea to shake the donuts in a paper bag of cinnamon sugar to coat them. These donuts ended up tasting good… but not like what we expected them to. They were less cakey and less sweet. We still aren't really sure why. They did taste amazing dipped in coffee though. And them not meeting our expectations didn't stop them from disappearing from the house in a couple of days, as they were devoured for breakfast and late night treats. Goes to show that while you can be disappointed in something, doesn't mean that you don't also like it. Regardless, it was really fun to bake with my mom and sister, they are 100% the experts so I usually just do what they tell me to, and everything works out fine. 

Homemade High Tea

One of the fun food things in Australia is that like England, they have a tea time/afternoon snack culture. Now, this isn't really as prevalent as it is in Britain, but it made me start thinking about High Tea. And this lead me to he idea of making a fancy high tea once I got home. And naturally, this sort of genius had to be shared with my baker of a sister. So we resolved to make ourselves a fancy homemade high tea when I got back to Chicago. For those of you that don't know, High Tea is a multi-course afternoon meal, usually consisting of finger sandwiches, pastries, and scones. My sister and I carefully planned out our tea, bought the ingredients, and spent an entire day preparing this meal. It was an ambitious endeavor, but really it turned out wonderfully. We even had menus (below). 

We had this wonderful fancy chocolate rose tea that my sister had gotten in London. We tried to make some fun tea treats to go along with it. We basically divided and conquered the cooking, but I had a couple of minor difficulties so my sister ended up helping me out some, especially with making things look nice. Our first course was a platter of fruit salads, which we decided to call the amuse bouche. I rolled cantaloupe balls in procuitto (yes it's a meat, but it's the only part of this meal that is), the saltiness of the procuitto and the sweetness of the melon go amazingly together. I also this crazy watermelon/feta salad. I constructed a cube of rectangular pieces and then garnished it with mint. It didn't turn out quite was pretty as I hoped for, but it tasted amazing. The winner of this salad was the mint, it brought out the freshness of both the fruit and the cheese. Can't wait to make this one again (though maybe not in cube form).

Our second course was the savory finger sandwiches and deviled eggs! This was fun to make because we got to choose what flavors we wanted to use. I ended up making 4 types of sandwich, and 2 kinds of deviled eggs. For the sandwiches we ended up making all vegetarian ones. I used two types of bread: light rye and honey wheat. I cut off the crusts and then cut the bread into the fun shapes of triangles and rectangles. I did 3 sandwiches on the rye and one on the honey wheat. The honey wheat one was pears and goat cheese. The first of the rye sandwiches were cream cheese and cucumber (classic tea sandwich). Next I made some eggs salad and made egg salad sandwiches. I tried not to use too much mayonnaise, but then didn't use enough and the egg salad didn't stay together all that well. We garnished those sandwiches with fresh chives (see below). The last sandwich was a pickle cheddar, and dill butter sandwich. This one was probably my favorite. The pickle and cheddar went together amazingly, but the dill butter really made this one. I actually infused the butter with dill and salt. This made it really dill tasting and fresh and it added another dimension to the sandwich.

Okay the deviled eggs. My mom gave me this wonderful book full of deviled egg recipes for a present. My sister and I decided to try two kinds of deviled eggs from the book. The first was Sunrise eggs (below left) and the second was Boursin Garlic eggs (below right). The Boursin ones were the winners! The sunrise eggs were infused with orange juice and sundried tomato pesto. I really wanted to like these eggs, but they just tasted a little too weird. The boursin ones on the other hand were out of this world. We added roasted garlic and herbed boursin cheese. We then garnished them with fresh chives. The creaminess of the boursin and the flavoring of the garlic and herbs made these eggs taste gourmet. We loved them, I will definitely make them again.

                         

Our next course was a tea time classic. Scones! I while I would have preferred Australian/British scones we instead used the awesome scone mix from World Market. We got the plain flavor, and I have to say these were absolutely amazing. While at World Market we found mini jams and clotted cream! So we got that to eat with the scones in the traditional manner. They were delicious and really fun.

After scones we got to the pastries, specifically cookies and cakes. We had Earl Grey Lavender Cupcakes (below left), made by my wonderful sister. She infused the cake with earl grey tea and the frosting with lavender extract. These were the perfect thing to go with tea, tea cupcakes! Next we had Petit Fours! Okay, these are my absolute favorite thing that my sister makes. They are her own invention of cake, call blush cake. This is almond cake with rose and orange extracts. And it's brilliant. For these petit fours she makes strawberry buttercream frosting for the middle layer and then dips them in orange glaze. They. Are. The. Best. And they take her a long time to make because they have so many components. She doesn't make them often, but did them for me as a back from Australia treat. Also they were a perfect addition to high tea. The last dessert in this course was Raspberry frosting sugar cookie sandwiches. These were also outstanding. We found this wonderful soft sugar cookie recipe, and used that for the cookies. My sister then made this wonderful raspberry buttercream that was  heavenly. Lastly she sugared the cookies with raspberry sugar. Is your mouth watering yet?

Our last course was Midgardises, little ending sweets. For this we made Lemon shortbread dark chocolate truffles… and we also bought some meringues from Trader Joes (below). The Truffles were made in a very similar fashion to my Tim Tam Truffles. We used shortbread cookies, lemon curd, and cream cheese frosting to make these. Also we used food coloring to make sure that the filling had a nice lemon yellow color. This time we stuck them in the fridge to harden for a hour or so before they were dipped in the chocolate. Also my sister did the dipping so they turned out pretty!

This tea was such a fun and exciting thing to do with a summer day!! Almost everything (looking at you sunrise eggs!) turned out excellently! It was also really fun to spend the day cooking and baking with my sister. She's the master dessert baker and watching her work reminds me that I have a ton to learn when it comes to baking and cooking, thankfully I have access to a wonderful teacher :D