Salad Dressing Update: or, I only wanted hot Italian anyway

We at A Book of Cookrye recently featured the surprisingly easy Italian dressing. As noted, we've been using it as a marinade, cooking sauce, and for so many other things that we decided to just make it ourselves. I mean, all you do is put stuff in a bottle and shake it, right?
Wrong! It turns out the people doing it in factories add something so their Italian dressing doesn't do this in the refrigerator.

Ever wanted to spread salad dressing on your toast?

Be sure your homemade salad dressing is in a microwave-safe container, everybody!

Rice Cooker Chocolate Cake

We at A Book of Cookrye are no strangers to making things happen when we don't have what we need. We have baked cakes in saucepans and put cake pans on top of the stove. We have made cake recipes involving four mixing bowls when we had none (we used a saucepan, glass, borrowed soup bowl, and cake pan which we later baked it in). Heck, for the longest time we had only a pocket knife for all our cutting needs. (Have you ever tried to chop an entire lasagna's worth of vegetables with a pocket knife?) Which is why we are surprised we never attempted to pull a cake out of a rice cooker.

Tips 'n' Treats on Taiwan, 1981

Rice Cooker Chocolate Cake 1 c sugar 1¾ c flour 1 tsp baking soda ½ tsp salt 5 tbsp cocoa powder 1 tsp vanilla 5 tbsp cooking oil or melted margarine/butter 1 egg 1½ c buttermilk, or 1 c milk and 1 tbsp vinegar Fill your rice cooker's pot with water to the maximum line, and turn it on to heat up. Grease the pan that comes with your rice cooker. If you have a steamer basket instead, line it with foil and then grease it. Put the pan on top of the rice cooker to make sure the water isn't so high that the pan floats on it. In a medium mixing bowl, whisk together the sugar and cocoa powder until you've broken up all the cocoa lumps. Add remaining dry ingredients, mix well. Add the wet ingredients, and whisk together until well-mixed. Pour the batter into the pan, set over the rice cooker, put the lid on top, and steam for about 30 minutes or until done. If the water boils dry before the cake is done, carefully lift the cake out, shaking it as little as possible (leave the lid on it). Add more water to the pot, and put the cake back over the cooker. Note 1: If you are using a small-capacity (2-to-5 cup) rice cooker, you can cut the recipe in half. Use only the egg white instead of the whole egg. Note 2: You might think to add raw rice to the water so you can cook rice and cake at the same time, but this won't work. The rice will soak up all the water long before the cake is done, and there won't be enough steam left to finish baking. Source: Tips 'n' Treats on Taiwan, Women of Formosa Christian Mission, 1981

This recipe comes to us from a book Our Mom of Cookrye has had the book ever since we lived in Taiwan. Yep, when we were but a wee tot, our father's company transferred him from America to Taiwan for so long that both parents decided to just haul the whole family across the planet.

It has a lot of interesting recipes. Our favorites to look at now are the American recipes adapted to the locally available ingredients- like the corn casserole made with water chestnuts. The book begins with an unusually long chapter of household hints (usually in books like these, the housekeeping hints run for only a page or two). Among other tips, there's a list of things we never realized we could do with a rice cooker.

We would like to direct your attention to no. 5. This is the only point in 20 pages of household advice that expressly recommends a recipe elsewhere in the book-- and they put an exclamation point on it. On this recommendation (and because a chicken already occupied the oven and no one wants a chicken-flavored cake),  we figured this is as good a time as any to see if rice cookers are as versatile as all our friends from India purport them to be.

Incidentally, I think the only reason we have a rice cooker is because when our sister-in-law moved here from the Philippines, she was utterly confused that we didn't have one and promptly remedied our dreadful deficiency. However, since it's a tiny rice cooker, we had to cut the recipe in half. The cooker came with a strainer basket rather than a pan (easy enough to line with foil so it holds cake batter), which is so small it barely holds a pair of scissors.

At any rate, this cake batter went together very quickly. First we dumped together the dry ingredients...

Then we did a slight detour to make buttermilk. Incidentally, we at A Book of Cookrye would like to advance a new buttermilk substitute. A lot of people do that bit where you mix milk and vinegar and leave it to sit for a few minutes, which works very nicely. But did you know that you can also just mix sour cream and water until it's kinda thick but still watery? It's quick, easy, and then you have the rest of the sour cream ready for taco night.

Once the buttermilk was prepared, we could move on to step two of the recipe: dump all the wet ingredients in. As a recipe note, since we halved the recipe, we used one egg white rather than the one whole egg called for in the original. We briefly considered beating the egg uniform, measuring it, then putting half of that into the batter. Then we realized that was utterly daffy.

You know, we've seen a lot of lousy cake recipes in our time. Especially those ones that you theoretically can pour the batter into a mug and microwave it. They come out so bland. But this was actually pretty fricken delicious cake batter. And look how amazing and thick it came out!

Right, let's get this thing into the alleged cake pan!

Please note the size of the spoon relative to the size of the pan. This cake may have a place in an unintentionally depressing book about cooking for one.

You know, it's surprising in retrospect that we never attempted to put a cake in a rice cooker before. I mean, it seemed that half our friends had one we could have borrowed when the oven was already taken. There were also always two or three lurking under the counter in the kitchen with names written on them. This is closer to normal baking than putting cake batter in a waffle iron (which is so fricken delicious- you owe it to yourself).
However, this cake rose right up to the top of the cooker. We wondered if it might push the lid off.

We stared at the hot, half-cooked cake batter gluing itself to the lid of the rice cooker and asked ourselves a very important question.

While the cake glued itself to the lid, the rice cooker boiled itself dry. When we opened the lid to take out the cake, we saw... this.

We at A Book of Cookrye are not opposed to the chocolate molten lava cake. We are not opposed to eating cake batter right out of the bowl without even getting it near an oven (or rice cooker). But this recipe promised us not a lava cake but an actual, fully cooked cake. We decided to put more water in the rice cooker and see if it would actually finish cooking. This is not as easy as it sounds. We had to first remove the cake. The cake was burning hot. The rice cooker pot was burning hot. The two fit together so tightly we couldn't even jam a dinner fork in there to prise the thing out. Eventually, we somehow managed to successfully remove the alleged cake so we could put more water under it and hopefully, this time, it would actually be baked all the way through.

It's got a nasty impact crater from where the knob is screwed into the rice cooker lid, but it's actually done.

What this cake lacks in size, it makes up for in ugliness. We decided to put it upside-down to hide its shame. That didn't help.
You know what this reminds us of? There's this one scene in a Christmas special where some meddling busybody is visiting her neighbor and sees her pathetic Christmas tree. She says "Oh, I know what you need to do! You just need to turn the bad side to the wall!"
The lady then wearily looks at her and replies "We did."

We hoped some cinnamon icing on top would somehow fix this cake's aesthetic problems. If nothing else, the cake was pretty porous, so the icing would in theory soak in and imbue it with cinnamon flavor. It made the cake look... marginally better.

Anyone who bitches about the cake looking deformed didn't want dessert anyway.

But you know what? This cake may look like a child's first attempt at Play-Doh, but once we cut it, the inside didn't look half bad. Actually, it looks pretty good.

Once we tasted this cake, we forgave it everything. We forgave it for being half-cooked the first time the rice cooker boiled dry. We forgave it for looking like a malformed lump of good intentions. Who knew rice cookers actually worked for baking dessert? It didn't even come out soggy on top. This cake is divoon.

Molasses cookie sandwiches and a massive life change

We at A Book of Cookrye have just undergone a massive life change! Behold!

I borrowed a friend's robe and folder just so my parents could have a picture. There was no way I was sitting through all those boring speeches where they lie to me and say I'm going places.

That's right, we are now unemployed! (As nice as the student job we had was, they require you to be a student to remain in their employ.) I tell you, my future's so bright, I gotta wear night vision goggles. However, we did sign up for an online gift swap, and so some lucky recipient is going to get these.

Aunt Babette's Cook Book, 1889

Molasses Cookies 1 c molasses 1 c sugar 1 c butter 1 tsp baking soda, dissolved in 2 tbsp milk Spices to taste (cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg, allspice, etc) 3 c flour Extra sugar for rolling (if desired) Cream butter and sugar. Stir in molasses. When mixed, add spices. Add the baking soda (it will make the mixture look curdled). Stir in the flour. The dough should be slightly sticky, yet firm enough to shape with your hands. Roll into 1-inch balls. Roll these in sugar, then pat them slightly flat. Place into a container coated with cooking spray and refrigerate until completely chilled. (Or, you can shape it shape into logs, refrigerate, then slice and bake.) Bake at 350° until done, watching carefully because they'll burn easily because of the molasses. Aunt Babette's Cook Book, 1889 via Feeding America

We've had this recipe a while, actually. We even submitted it to the city newspaper's Christmas cookie contest and even made it to semifinals. However, we didn't make it any farther. This may be because we always have dicey luck with the recipe even though we started measuring out everything. Perhaps when the judges attempted to make their own batch, they had the same iffy luck we always seem to have with this recipe.

It looks all right so far...

Also, pouring molasses out of a bottle makes one understand the expression "as slow as molasses."

Now, we often skip adding spices to these cookies because we fricken love the taste of molasses. We pour it straight from the bottle onto pancakes and waffles. However, for the sake of other people who may not share our tastes (we do intend to give these cookies away after all), we added what one usually would expect in a shaker of pumpkin spice. You know, cinnamon, ginger, cloves, and such. As a recipe note, the molasses is really strong in this recipe, so prepare to very generously add spices before you can taste the difference.

We're still contemplating the implications of mixing milk from powder that we may dissolve baking soda in it.

As aforementioned, this recipe seems to give us varying results. Therefore we did not worry when, upon adding the baking soda, the dough suddenly got very curdled. It seems to always do that.

We didn't even worry when the dough was too sticky to roll out in our hands.

We've had worse problems and the cookies still came out fine. However, we did have to switch from rolling the dough into balls to sorta plopping it into sugar and shaping it once coated. In retrospect, we could have refrigerated the dough instead.

Fortunately, it looked like this once we were ready to bake. You'd never guess these cookies had seemed like such an iffy proposition.

And yes, we are again refusing to wash pans.

It occurred to us as we put these in the oven: should we really have decided on sending the randomly-assigned recipient in this gift swap molasses-spice cookies? Why didn't we go with a more stable recipe for the gift swap- one that comes out the same every time we make it? Or, you know, something more universally liked than molasses? We could have sent in a batch of peanut butter cookies. Everyone likes peanut butter cookies. Or chocolate chip cookies.

The molasses cookies came out flat. The previous time we made them, they came out shaped like poufs. This batch looked deflated. However, we had a minor consolation when the cookies turned out to be so well-joined that we literally lifted a sheet of cookies off of a cookie sheet.

We took the liberty of eating one to make sure these were in fact not so terrible we could not send them. And indeed, they tasted really, really good. You know those Archway cookies? These taste like a not prefabricated version of those. There was just one problem... they were so, so flat.

However, we at A Book of Cookrye had a two-ingredient solution to the sad flatness. As a bonus, the more expensive of the two ingredients we were about to use was 50% off.

We at A Book of Cookrye would like to salute cream cheese icing. There is not a dessert in the world that isn't better with cream cheese icing on top. Cream cheese icing is the magical savior of the most foul-tasting confectionery disasters. Since these cookies already tasted really good, they were now about to be fricken amazing.

Cream cheese, powdered sugar, and the farts of angels.

Incidentally, for such a simple operation, making sandwich cookies is surprisingly hard. I mean, too little and people get disappointed at such a puny ration of filling. Too much and it just squirts out the sides when you bite into it. Hopefully we got this one right.

Look! The cookies aren't flat anymore!

And so, we at A Book of Cookrye packed these up the way countless people have taken home barbecue leftovers since the dawn of disposable plates.

Well, admittedly duct tape rarely makes an appearance.

We hope whoever got these cookies liked them. As for us, we're contemplating our future now that we don't have class in the morning. Heck, we don't even live in a dorm anymore. We're seriously going to miss things like this:

We actually know the person who made this. He is a really good cook and his food is some of the least likely to induce the dire rear.

And it's blowing our minds to realize we will not be banging out projects last-minute with a setup like this:

Yes. That is an entire sheet of cookies.

However, we really are all graduated and shit. What the heck does one do when graduated? Maybe we can realize our dream of travelling around the world, meeting random people, and cooking local dishes with them in their kitchens. Or something like that.

Hump-Day Quickie: Italian Dressing goes on everything!

We at A Book of Cookrye have discovered something: Italian dressing goes on everything. Seriously. We've used it on salads. We've squirted it into skillets instead of oil. We've marinated meat in it. When we're too tired to want to do much more than sling something on the stove, a splash of Italian dressing makes it taste like we put in some modicum of effort. However, an unfortunate result of using Italian dressing on everything is... we ran out. So, we cracked open our Italian cookbook to see just how hard it is to make the stuff ourselves. If so, we just might be able to skip out on going to the supermarket when we'd rather make dinner. Turns out that not only do we have a recipe for Italian dressing in the book, it's actually pretty easy!

The Art of Italian Cooking, Maria Lo Pinto, 1948

As a brief note, you can save time by just putting everything in a bottle and shaking it.

Oil and vinegar ready to go...

In fact, the only way we messed up was misreading a certain spice container. In my defense, for some reason I only saw the French labelling on the side of the can, pronounced it in my head, and figured "close enough." Believe it or not, it actually added a nice kick to it rather than tasting utterly wrong.

And so, we had a nice, if not somewhat runny, measuring cup of dressing ready to pour into the bottle.

It was a very interesting flavor. The spices melded together very well for something so simple. In an odd way, it added up to a wonderfully complex flavor. We only wished it wasn't as thin as water; it'd be better if it could actually coat things. We then happened to see this at the other end of the counter:

That's right. The oil and vinegar still patiently awaited all the spices, and we had just seasoned and spiced our tea. It wasn't a particularly bad batch of Italian salad tea, but when we put the same spices into the oil and vinegar the recipe told us to use, it was just a little better.

And so, in conclusion, you can indeed make Italian dressing in your own house. It's a lot sharper than what you'd buy these days. We noticed immediately that contrary to what one would purchase today, there is no sugar at all in it. So where we previously dumped it in copious quantity over lettuce, we now add just a bit. Also, if you make the recipe in 1½ quantity, it just about fills a bottle to the top.

Vanilla Pudding: or, A Book of Cookrye welcomes the new year

2015 is drawing to a close, meaning in just a few days we at A Book of Cookrye will have to cross out the last digit of "2012" and replace it with a 6 instead of a 5. We at A Book of Cookrye made a very simple New Year's resolution in January:

Like many people who make New Year's resolutions, we completely forgot about it shortly thereafter. Besides, we live in an area where transit is so sparse one must make quite a detour to use it. However, as the last week of December arrived, we thought to ourselves "A whole year and we couldn't get on a train once?"

Vanilla Custard 3 eggs ¾ c sugar ¼ tsp salt 2½ c milk 1 tsp vanilla Beat eggs and sugar in the top of a double boiler until uniform. Add salt and milk. Put over hot water and cook, stirring constantly, until thick. Remove from heat and add vanilla. Press plastic wrap onto the surface (this prevents a skin forming) and let cool. Adapted from source

While many people's resolutions involve a workout regimen to forget about within two weeks or some other self-betterment to be hastily given up on, we at A Book of Cookrye made a resolution involving eggs and sugar.

SELF-IMPROVEMENT HERE WE COME!!

As we at A Book of Cookrye look back on 2015, we see hours of calculus (so many we burnt the book and poured a salt circle around the grill afterward just in case-- this is not a joke) and other classes we did our best to ignore. 2015 saw the death of our mixer, the theft of our only teacup, and the cracking of our only bowl. 2015 also saw our discovery of pink cherry-lemon cake, zucchini bread (which we've never made before), and the surprisingly good cucumber-lemon bread (because cucumbers look the same as zucchinis DON'T JUDGE ME).

This was runnier than anything purporting to turn into a custard had any right to be.

2015 was as good a year as any for us, on average. So, on this cold day on late December, we wonder what 2016 brings. We could wish for world peace and stable funding for libraries, but people wish for those every year and they have yet to happen. So instead we wish for things on a smaller scale.

In 2016, we would like any of these:

• A working dishwasher where we don't even have to pre-rinse anything
• A domicile where no one thinks our razors are community property unless we hide them
• Sudden transmission outages when news networks or websites are trying to up their ratings by fearmongering and inciting panic or outrage
• Increased transit in the United States so people only have to own a car and drive it if they want to
• A pay raise

Aside from being comparitively runny, it passes for mayo.

And here is our 2015 resolution, all ready to take on the train and go! We are pleased to note that this is a repurposed jar of light mayonnaise. (Those who worry about us chucking out the contents of an entire jar of mayo: rest assured, it was rehomed to a plastic container and returned to the refrigerator.)

By the way, Our Mom of Cookrye endorses Duke's Mayonnaise and will admit no other in her refrigerator.

However, it turns out that mayonnaise jars do not hold pudding well, as we found out when we checked the back of our bicycle upon reaching the station.

Fortunately, a few spoonfuls remained in the jar. It's hardly the experience of snarfing down a generous helping of pudding from a mayonnaise jar we hoped for. But ultimately, we did our resolution the same way we do everything else: half-assed and at the last minute.

As it is, we're ending 2015 just like we started it: blissfully stupefied on Christmas leftovers. Happy 2016, everyone!

Merry Christmas from A Book of Cookrye!

We at A Book of Cookrye wish everyone all the best this year, and wish good luck to anyone about to make a frantic early-morning grocery run!