Cinnamon Chips and Fruit Salsa

For a party to kick-off our final Spring Fling weekend at Penn, we baked homemade cinnamon chips and created an accompanying fruit salsa. Given the reviews for the recipe, we expected it to be good, but I don't think anyone anticipated how unbelievably delicious this snack would be -- it is absolutely our new all-time favorite party food. My love for this dish reminds me of Green Eggs and Ham: It would eat it in a car, I would eat it at a bar. I would eat it by the pool, I would eat it after school. I would eat it on my way, I would eat it every day.

I've always loved cinnamon pita chips, and I became completely hooked on these with my first bite. I couldn't stop eating them, and I wasn't the only one. They had a perfect crunch, and tasted amazing with and without the fruit salsa. I loved them as a late-night snack, but I don't think there's a time of day when these wouldn't be appropriate. I can't say enough wonderful things about these, so just make them and you'll see what we mean.

We found the recipe here on All Recipes, and we substituted the variety of apple, as well as blackberries for raspberries due to high costs. We used strawberry preserves, which turned out great. I'm posting our slightly modified version below. They are so good.

Ingredients:
2 kiwis, peeled and diced
2 Fuji apples, peeled, cored and diced
8 oz. blackberries
1 lb. strawberries
2 tbsp white sugar
1 tbsp brown sugar
3 tbsp strawberry preserves (or other fruit flavor)

10 (10 inch) flour tortillas
butter flavored cooking spray
2 cups cinnamon sugar

Instructions:
In a large bowl, mix kiwis, apples, blackberries, strawberries, sugars and preserves. Cover refrigerate at least 15 minutes. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Coat one side of each tortilla with cooking spray. Cut into wedges and arrange on a large baking sheet. Coat wedges with desired amount of cinnamon sugar. Spray again with cooking spray. Bake 8 to 10 minutes. Repeat with any remaining tortilla wedges. Allow to cool approximately 15 minutes. Serve with chilled fruit mixture.

Dessert Kebabs

For the 2nd Philadelphia food bloggers meet-up, we made dessert kebabs. We didn't intend for them to look as gaudy as they did (for evidence of absurdity, visit this picture of one on Foodaphilia -- Mark is a super model). In fact, we envisioned them much smaller, and, um, subtler. In fact, though we'd definitely remake dessert kebabs in some form again, I doubt that we'd use this version unless the event called for extravagance.

It's kind of silly to post a recipe for dessert kebabs, since you could really add anything you like. We chose chocolate-dipped rice crispy treats (from the crispy-treat recipe on the side of the box), chocolate-covered strawberries (self-explanatory), brownie cakes baked into mini-muffin tins and star fruit. For the brownie cakes, we used a recipe from Cooks Illustrated that I will not post, since I do not recommend it. In fact, they were supposed to just be brownies, but we had to call them brownie cakes when they turned out less fudgy than expected.

Our only main instruction is to skewer the chocolate-dipped items immediately after dipping to prevent cracking. Also, star fruit are delicious, and you can swipe your extra pieces through chocolate as well for some pre-kebab snack.

Tofu Chocolate Mousse

Tofu and Chocolate. It's no dream combination, and we fully disclose that you should not try this unless you actually like the taste of tofu. But for the super health-conscious and those who just want chocolate with everything, this actually wasn't so bad.

In the interest of experimentation, we went with a random recipe from the internet for "healthy" tofu chocolate mousse. Sadly, we were led astray. Following the directions, we ended up with a mousse that tasted like chocolate-flavored tofu. It was gross. We fixed it by adding more sugar and chocolate, and we posted the recipe with our own ratios below. We decided to layer ours with the graham cracker crumbs leftover from our homemade marshmallows, and it resulted in a delightful texture contrast and crunch.

The final verdict? Probably wouldn't do this again, but definitely glad we tried it.

Ingredients:
1 package (15 oz.) soft tofu
5 oz. dark chocolate (about 1 1/2 bars), chopped
2/3 cups cocoa powder
1 1/2 cups confectioner's sugar
1/3 cup water
2 tsp vanilla
graham cracker crumbs and whipped cream (optional)

Instructions:
Drain the tofu, and food process it until smooth. Boil the water, and pour it over the cocoa powder and chopped chocolate. Stir until smooth. Mix in the vanilla and sugar. Add the chocolate mixture to the tofu and process again until the entire mixture is chocolate-colored. Serve with graham bits and whipped cream.

Crispy Baked Latkes with Cranberry Applesauce

We are equal-opportunity holiday cooks. We don't discriminate against holidays based on religious affiliation, season, Hallmark-saturation, or any other means of bias. Has food, will celebrate.

Given this policy and the fact that we've been celebrating Hanukkah anyway by opening presents (thanks Mommy, thanks Hanukkah Dog), we thought it would be shameful if we didn't make a solid effort at frying up some shredded potato.

Neither of us had cooked latkes without parentnal guidance before, so we spent some time reviewing recipes and conceptualizing the perfect potato pancake. If you are an experienced latke eater, you know that when cooked poorly, latkes taste both burnt and raw, flavorless and oily. When cooked well, however, they taste both fluffy and crisp, savory and light. Among foods, there are few things worse than a bad latke, and few things better than a great one. We decided that our safest and healthiest bet would be searing the latkes quickly in a bit of oil to give them a strong latke flavor, but then baking them to crispy perfection in the oven. We knew that this would mean making our latkes thin, and working quickly. Also, we knew that since the latkes wouldn't have much time to cook in the oil, we needed a recipe that ensured our pancakes would hold together well. We chose this one with matzo meal from Smitten Kitchen, and I've reposted our baked, modified version below.

For toppings, we decided go festive with a barely modified cranberry applesauce from Epicurious that was unbelievably easy to make (30 minutes, tops), and absolutely delicious. Sour cream is a must, and though we chose scallions mainly for color contrast, they added a great flavor as well.

Latke Ingredients (makes about 50 laktes):
10 golden russet potatoes
5 onions
1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
5 tbsp matzo meal
5 eggs
7 1/2 tsp salt
2 1/2 tsp pepper
oil for frying (we used Smart Balance oil, which blends canola and olive oil)

Latke Instructions:
Line a large baking sheet with paper towels and set aside. Preheat the oven to 400. Peel the potatoes. In a food processor or with a grater, shred the potatoes and onions, and transfer them to a colander. Squeeze dry. Wait two minutes, and squeeze dry again. Transfer the mixture to a large bowl, add flour, matzo meal, eggs, salt and pepper. Stir to combine. Pour about 1-2 tbsp oil in a large frying pan, and turn the heat on high. When the oil is hot, drop teaspoon-sized balls of latke mixture into the pan, and press to flatten with the back of a spoon. Cook latkes for about 1 minute on each side, until the outside is lightly browned, then transfer to the baking sheet. When you have enough latkes to fill a baking sheet, press a paper towel on the top side of the latkes as well to soak up extra oil, then remove the paper towels and assemble latkes on the sheet. Bake for about 10 minutes on each side, until crispy. Repeat (adding oil to the pan as necessary) until you've used up the mixture, we made about three batches.

Cranberry Applesauce Ingredients (makes about 6-7 cups):
7 large fuji apples (about 5 pounds), peeled, cored and chopped
2 cups fresh cranberries
1 cup sugar
1/2 cup water
3 cinnamon sticks
6-inch strip of lemon zest, finely chopped

Cranberry Apple Sauce Instructions:
Cook everything together in a large pot for about 25 minutes on moderate hat, until the apples are very soft. Remove the cinammon sticks and mash the mixture together with a potato-masher until it is as mushy as you want it. Serve warm or cool.

Challah

Before this week, my most recent attempt at challah was in pre-school, when I stood in line with 10 other kids for the chance to brush a stroke of egg yolk over the ready-to-bake loaf. But having graduated ourselves from the school of kneadless bread, Alex and I felt determined Saturday morning to try something more challenging and hopefully more rewarding. We chose challah, a Jewish sabbath bread, because it was the only recipe that didn't require a trip to the grocery store.

Now I just said that baking challah is more challenging than baking kneadless bread which is true, but that doesn't mean that the recipe is actually difficult -- it's not. The recipe calls for hours of waiting, so while the entire process takes a while, the actual work time is minimal. And each ounce of effort put into creating a challah will be rewarded x10 when you see how beautifully the dough rises into a golden loaf. We each gave a little yelp of joy when we first peeked into the oven.

Soft, sweet and eggy, challah begs to be lathered in honey, reborn into french toast, and pulled from the loaf in handfuls for mindless snacking.

Ingredients:
5 cups all-purpose flour
2 tsp salt
2 tsp instant yeast
1 tbsp honey
3 eggs, plus 1 yolk
1 1/3 cups milk, warmed slightly
butter or non-stick spray for greasing a pan

Instructions:
Mix flour, yeast and salt together. Add honey, eggs and milk to the mixture, and knead together. Knead the dough for about 10 minutes, using additional flour if necessary. Form the dough into a ball, and let it sit in a covered, greased bowl for at least 1 1/2 hours to rise. When you are ready to prepare the dough for baking, divide it into three pieces, and role each piece out into a long rope, about 15 inches. Braid the pieces, pinching the dough together at each end. Preheat the oven to 375, and let the dough sit while the oven heats. Before putting the dough in the oven, brush egg yolk over it. Bake for about 40-50 minutes, until golden.

Gnudi

After tasting some delicious gnudi during brunch at Philadelphia's London Grill on Sunday, we decided to attempt a re-creation.

Gnudi? You may be thinking. What IS that? A google search links to a thread on Chowhound.com entitled "gnudi- what is it, exactly?" and answers range from "I don't know, but gosh it sounds like fun" to "A dish that is precisely ravioli without the pasta wrapper."

We're still confused. Even while eating them, we likened them to mozarella sticks, dumplings and spinach cookies. But here's what we've devised: Gnudi are essentially dough balls of cheese and spinach. The recipe we found online called for boiling them, but skeptical, we divided the batch and baked half in the oven with far better results. These would make a great appetizer, but preparing them for dinner left us slightly wanting. Also, we dunked them in pasta sauce, but you could also dress them with pesto.

We found our recipe from the food network, but there are a few others floating around the interwebs as well. If you do use this one, instead of boiling the gnudi, bake them for about 30 minutes at 350. Additionally, to get the beautiful, round shape, put the each piece dough into a wine glass with a bit of flour and shake it around until it forms a ball. Happy gnuding!

Gnudi dough (egg, cheese, spinach, spices)

Forming gnudi in a wine glass...

Well-shaped gnudi, ready for baking

The final product! Crispy, savory gnudi