Boston Cream Pie

Mr. Chili’s favorite birthday cake is Boston Cream Pie. I believe it’s true that I’ve made him one every May 30th for the last three years in a row. While the recipe for Boston Cream Pie is a little fussy, it still qualifies as stupid-easy, so here we go.

For starters, I’ve yet to find a yellow cake recipe that I like as well as what I can get out of a box. Judge me not, my friends; I have no problem whipping up a scratch chocolate cake, but there’s something about that dense, heady vanilla flavor of a box yellow cake that I haven’t been able to adequately recreate, so Betty Crocker it is. I make two layers according to the package directions, then set them out to cool while I get on with the filling and the glaze.

I have always had a love/hate relationship with custard; I love to eat it, but I hate to make it. Well, let me amend that - I don’t HATE to make it, but it took me a long time to learn the technique of good custard-making (I failed it in home ec. classes in high school and had more than my fair share of split custards in my adulthood, too). I figured it out, though; here’s how you do it:

In a small bowl, beat two egg yolks together and set them aside. Combine 1/3 cup of sugar (I use a little more), 2 tablespoons of cornstarch (I sift the cornstarch through a little mesh strainer first, just to be sure there are no lumps that might give me trouble later in the process) and a pinch of salt in a sauce pan and stir in 1 1/2 cups of milk. Heat these over medium, stirring often, until the mixture comes just to a boil, then temporarily remove the pan from the heat (keep the burner on).

Scoop out a little of the hot mixture and, whisking constantly, drizzle it into the egg yolks. Then, scoop out a little more and repeat this process. When you’ve worked in about 1/3 of the hot stuff into the yolks, scrape them back into the saucepan and cook the whole thing together for about two and a half minutes - it should be thick and bubbly.

Remove the pan from the heat and pour the custard through a strainer into a bowl (you’ll have to coax the stuff through the mesh - it should be pretty thick by now). I stir in a little vanilla or, even better, vanilla paste at this point, then I put a piece of plastic wrap directly on the surface of the custard and stash the bowl in the fridge to chill while I get on with the glaze.

Boston cream pie is covered with a simple ganache; and when I say “simple,” I mean it. Put one cup of milk or cream in the microwave or, if you don’t have a microwave - don’t snicker; I know a LOT of people who don’t - heat it on the stove just until it’s good and hot but not boiling (three minutes in the zapper works for me, or about five minutes on the stove). In the meantime, chop up about 12 ounces of good chocolate (or, alternately, about a cup and a half of chocolate chips). Pour the milk over the chocolate and let it sit for a moment or two, then start stirring; pretty soon, the whole mixture should be smooth and glossy. Set it aside to cool (sometimes I’ll put this in the fridge, but not often; getting it to room temperature is usually sufficient).

Put one of the cake layers on a plate, dump all of the cooled custard in a pile in the center, then put the other layer on top and gently press until the custard starts to ooze out the sides. Pour the ganache over, stick in some candles, and make a wish!

The only thing you should be aware of is that once this cake is cut, it’s photogenic days are over. The top of the cake WILL slide off the bottom if given a chance (we came downstairs the next morning to find this had happened) and because the custard is made with egg yolks, it’ll go bad pretty quickly if not kept refrigerated. I don’t think this will be a problem, though; it probably won’t last that long, anyway.

YUM!

Muddy Dirt Cake *EDITED!*

Several years ago, I made a chocolate cake for my daughter’s birthday. Nothing special, really - just a chocolate cake that I was intending to frost with chocolate frosting.

You know what they say about intentions and the road to hell, right?

I’m not sure how it happened, but the cake would not come out of the pans. YES, I greased and floured the pans; I’m a Goddess in the Kitchen, remember? For whatever reason - whether the oven temperature was off or the humidity was wrong or the moon was in retrograde - those cakes dug in and hung on, and the only way I could get them out of the pans was in pieces.

There I was with a recipe’s worth of cake bits. Frustrated, but entirely undaunted (by then, I’d learned to look at challenges as just that - challenges - and to not let myself get too worked up), I came up with a plan. I further crumbled the bits and put them in a glass dish. Then I put together a couple of batches of chocolate pudding; the cook-and-serve kind because, really? Instant? Not so much. (And yes, I use pudding mixes. Like brownies, the stuff from the box just comes out consistently better.) Once the pudding had chilled, I folded it into the cake bits, blopped a little bit of whipped cream on top and voilla! Muddy Dirt Cake. Though it wasn’t PRETTY, the dirt cake went over HUGE with the under-five set. The grown-ups seemed to like it pretty well, too.

I’ve made this cake on purpose several times since then. Sometimes I use boxed cake mix, sometimes I start from scratch, but I always use Jello or Royal cook and serve chocolate pudding for the “mud” component. My family doesn’t require theatrics, but if they did, I would pretty this up by serving it in a clean (preferably glazed) flower pot and sticking either sugared or silk flowers in. You could make it more kid-friendly (as if it’s not enough already!) by mixing in some gummy worms and putting some candy bugs on the top. Either way, this is stupid-easy yumminess at its finest.

Edited to include this photo of Punkin’ Pie’s 11th birthday cake, complete with silk flowers and gummy worms.  The girls came to the table and didn’t know where the cake was until I pointed it out to them.  It was a HUGE hit:

Kwee-Chee *Edited Again*

Otherwise known as quiche.

The dictionary defines quiche as a pie-like dish consisting of an unsweetened pastry shell filled with a custard and usually containing cheese and other ingredients, as vegetables, seafood, or ham. Pretty much all of my cookbooks say about the same thing.

Since Organic Mama bought WAY more eggs than she needed for the fixings for her daughter’s bat mitzvah, she needs some good, egg-intensive dishes. For her, I’m posting my favorite quiche recipe.

I don’t fuss with crust. I find that I can never get both the quiche and the crust done quite to my liking, so I skip the crust part altogether. I make up for this by serving my quiche with some sort of hearty bread - usually a crusty French bread accompanied by a little too much butter.

If you DO want to have a crusted quiche, make (or buy) enough pie dough for a 9-inch pan. Dock the pastry (poke it full of little holes with a fork), weight it down with pie weights or dried beans, and pre-bake it in a 375° oven for about 30 minutes. Remove the crust and allow it to cool completely, and turn the oven down to 300°.

If you choose NOT to fuss with crust, butter a 9-inch pie plate and set it aside. Beat together 4 eggs with 2 cups of light cream (the dairy you use can be varied to your liking and/or what happens to be in your fridge at the moment). To this, stir in a pinch of salt and a grind or two of pepper and set aside.

In the bottom of your pie plate (or, alternately, in your pre-baked and cooled crust), put whatever extras you’d like to have in your quiche. My personal favorites are stewed tomatoes, onion and bacon (both the onion and the bacon having been cooked together over medium heat until soft and crisp, respectively), then a little too much grated sharp Cheddar cheese. Really, though, the possibilities are just about endless: spinach and goat cheese or feta, asparagus and gruyere, ham and swiss- really, let your imagination go. Here, for example, we have tonight’s offering; turkey ham, diced red onion, and chopped asparagus with Cheddar:

I sometimes use quiche as a “fridge-purge” dish; I’ll root around in my refrigerator and come up with all kinds of interesting combinations. As far as quantities for the extras go, use your best judgment. About a half cup of each (maybe a little heavier on the cheese) for a 9 inch pie pan would probably do it.

On top of your extras, gently pour over the egg and cream, sprinkle over more of your cheese (if you have any left over), and bake in the center of a pre-heated 300° oven and bake 30-45 minutes, or until the quiche is slightly browned and set (if you’re using a crust and it starts to brown too much, as it’s likely to do, make a little ring of tin foil to shield it). How long it takes will depend on how deep the pie plate is and the accuracy of your oven’s thermostat. I do a doneness test by poking the center of the quiche with a knife; if the knife comes out mostly clean, we’re in business.

Let the quiche cool for about 10 minutes - it’ll slice more cooperatively that way - and serve hot or cold. Honestly, I tend to at least double this recipe and make the quiche in a buttered, rectangular glass cake pan - one little pie never seems sufficient, especially since it fridges so well and makes for a fantastic next-day lunch.

Our favorite accompaniment to quiche is a dark green salad tossed with some sort of zingy vinaigrette, but that’s just us.

YUM!

*I changed the cooking directions from the original suggestion.  Cooking a custard too fast will cause it to split - you’ll end up with what amounts to essentially scrambled eggs floating in a puddle of water.  Low and slow is the way to go with custards.  Your patience will be rewarded, Grasshopper…*

Beanie’s Favorite Dinner

In honor of my younger daughter’s ninth birthday, I offer you the recipe for her favorite dinner; macaroni and cheese.

Once I figured out how yummy and stupid-easy it was to make mac-and-cheese from scratch, I’ve never since bought a box of the orange stuff. Seriously, you can have the sauce made in the time it takes the elbows to boil, and buying pre-grated cheese takes all of the “work” out of this process.

The recipe as it appears on the back of the Prince elbow macaroni box - my main inspiration for this dish - is as follows:

Preheat the oven to 350°.

Cook 8 oz of elbows according to package directions (boil in 3 quarts of water and 2 teaspoons of salt for 6-8 minutes, depending on desired firmness). Drain and set aside.

In a medium saucepan over medium heat, melt 3 tablespoons of butter, then stir in 3 tablespoons of all-purpose flour. Carefully stir in 2 1/2 cups milk and cook, stirring constantly, until sauce thickens. Add 1/4 cup minced onions and 2 cups of shredded Cheddar cheese and stir until cheese melts. Season with 1/2 teaspoon salt and 1/8 teaspoon of pepper. Mix sauce into elbows, pour into a buttered 2-quart baking dish, top with 1/2 cup of bread crumbs and bake for 30 minutes.

I alter that recipe quite a bit, actually. For starters, I double the sauce; there’s really not enough sauce in the original, especially if you’re going to have leftovers the next day. I cook slightly less onion than is called for in a doubled batch, minced almost to invisibility, in the butter, then I stir in the flour and cook the mess together for a good 4 minutes or so, just to make sure the raw flour taste is cooked out. I heat the milk in the microwave for a bit, too, which makes its integration into the roux much easier. I leave the salt and pepper out altogether and add about half again as much cheese as is called for (and I use the good stuff, too; Cabot Hunter Cheddar). Finally, I toast the bread crumbs (a combination of Italian-seasoned and panko) in a little butter before putting them on top of the dish and popping it in the oven. I suppose one could also sprinkle shredded cheese on top of the crumbs, but any that I save over to do that gets eaten by passing children and husbands (and the occasional kitty cat).

For reasons I can’t explain, we almost always serve green beans with anything with Cheddar as its main component. The original recipe is supposed to make 4-6 servings, but the doubled version feeds the four of us with enough left over for a healthy lunch the next day.

YUM!

First Course

I’ve been meaning to open this site for a while now; not only do I love to share recipes (and I love to receive recipes that others are willing to share), but I’ve long longed for a place where I can keep all my favorites in one easy-to-search spot.

Welcome, then, my friends, to Mrs. Chili’s online kitchen! Pull up a chair and grab a spoon!

Almost all of my favorite recipes are what I proudly call “stupid-easy.” They’re concoctions that are crazy-simple to put together but which consistently earn me acclaim and adoration and the reputation as a Goddess of the Kitchen. I sometimes feel guilty about accepting the accolades for these dishes - I’m certain that if my diners knew how easy these recipes are to throw together, they might be a little more stingy with their praise.

My plan here is to give you the recipe as I found it (if such a thing exists; often, I make stuff up as I go), then give you the modifications that I’m likely to make when I cook the recipe myself. If you come up with another way of tweaking the instructions or the ingredients, be sure to let me know!

The first recipe I’m going to share here is one of my most favorite comfort foods, and truly one of my most simple recipes - seriously; five ingredients and no special skills required. I hope that you enjoy it as much as I do.

Vanilla Rice Pudding

In the bowl of a slow cooker or a large saucepan, combine

1/2 cup of arborio rice

3 cups of milk, 1 cup of cream

1/4 cup of granulated sugar

1 tablespoon of vanilla extract.

Simmer on low, covered, until the rice is al dente and the mixture is thick.

Sometimes, I’ll go exactly half and half on the milk and cream - 2 cups of each - and sometimes I’ll go with 3 cups of actual half-and-half and one cup of milk if I’m out of heavy cream. I tend to go a tiny bit heavy on both the sugar and the vanilla, and I’ve discovered vanilla bean paste (which I buy at Trader Joe’s) which imparts a lovely speckled look to the dish. I suppose one can also split and scrape a vanilla bean and leave it to simmer in the rice, but I almost never have whole vanilla beans around my kitchen.

How quickly I want this in a bowl is going to determine which cooking method I’ll use - the stovetop is a bit quicker than the slow cooker, but the stovetop also requires a bit more of my attention than the Crock Pot. I’ve also been known to stir everything together in a lidded baking dish and put it in a 250° oven, but only if I’ve got all day.

I serve this both warm and cold though, to be honest, I only eat it cold right out of the container while standing in front of the open refrigerator door.

YUM!