Edible Antics - Having Fun With Food

Flourless Chocolate Cake Recipe Makes Most Decadent Dessert For Birthday and Valentine's Day

Imagine the richest, most deeply decadent, chocolate cake possible. In your  mind, replace the flour with more gourmet chocolate. Make it luxurious and silky with eggs; make it sweet with white sugar and vanilla. Make it adult with liberal quantities of brandy. Make it sinful with heavy, whipping cream. Now you're imagining the flourless chocolate cake served at Fyfe's Corner Bistro in Madison, Wisconsin.

Unfortunately the cake pictured here is not from Fyfe's, but it was made with their recipe. And with this recipe I can make this chocolate dessert any time I want! True, at Fyfe's they serve it on an elegant platter decorated with a dusting of powdered sugar and abstract designs painted in chocolate. But although my plate is plain, and my topping buttercream frosting from a spray can, the flourless chocolate cake inside is a perfect match to Fyfe's.

How lucky is the recipient of this flourless chocolate cake. This marvelous person, a confessed chocoholic, will soon receive this cake as a birthday gift. If the birthday were to fall this Sunday it could be a Valentine's Day gift as well, for the denseness of chocolate inside is akin to the richness of truffles. So now answer this, do you ever crave chocolate but live too far from Fyfe's Corner? Then get Fyfe's flourless chocolate cake recipe by clicking on "continue reading..."

Grandma's Swedish Meatballs: Wisconsin Winter Comfort Food And Party Food

I always like those little meatballs in gravy on buffet tables. I think they're called Swedish meatballs, but I've seen them in Chinese restaurants so perhaps they're a global, mystery meat. There must be lots of different recipes for them because they don't all taste the same. Some buffet meatballs are definitely superior to others. Maybe it's the gravy I like so much, -it's warm, slightly thick, and tasty. Of course it's fattening, - it's comfort food. But that's okay, it's January in Wisconsin. We need comfort food, and little round meatballs in brown gravy fit the bill.

And since February is just around the corner, I decided I'd try to make my own buffet-table meatballs for the super-bowl party I might have. So I turned to my cookbook, Grandma's Home Kitchen: Where lessons and life were mixed with love, because the great-grandma of that cookbook came from Sweden. And her grand-daughter, Wanda Peterson Mango who wrote the cookbook, is mostly Swedish too. And their whole family is mostly Swedish, except for Wanda's maternal grandmother who was German. But together all these daughters, mothers and grandmothers ran Grandma's Swedish Bakery in Door County, WI while nearly 20 of Wanda's nieces and nephews ran underfoot. So if anybody would know how to make Swedish meatballs, I was sure it would be the Peterson family. Keep reading for Grandma's recipe and more of the story.

Wisconsinmade.com Post-Season Party Raises Spirits When Green Bay Packers Fumble

How to find comfort when the Arizona Cardinals bump the Green Bay Packers out of the play-offs: gather with good friends to eat fine food. That's what we who are Wisconsinmade.com did last evening at the home of Linda Remeschatis, founder of our 10-year-old Internet company. The party was a celebration of the hard work we all did to get gourmet Wisconsin foods, books, art, music, crafts, and Wisconsin clothing to people across the country who value the high-quality products created by Wisconsin artisans. 

Even though initially planned as a post-holiday season, company party, the party fell on a Packer Sunday, so in true Wisconsin-fashion when we entered the house Sunday afternoon, we took our seats in front of the TV. Ready to recreate with beer, wine and pickled herring rollmops, we fixed our eyes on our team. Not all of us were true Packers fans, however. An Illinois-transplant was present; he's the spouse of one of our newest, prized Wisconsinmade.com co-workers. He's a die-hard Bears fan and initially stood uncommitted to either Packers or Cardinals. But our pro-Packers exuberance rubbed off on him so that at the game's final heart-breaking fumble, he too felt our pain. 

I'll tell you now, it's a good thing we had all that great, gourmet, Wisconsin food to eat. It was prepared by the Wisconsin artisans with whom we partner. The smoked pheasant, duck, and salmon raised our spirits despite the Cardinals' repeated scoring. We savored the Wisconsin, artisanal cheeses, summer sausages, creamed herring, and cranberry chutney delivered to our tongues on Potter's amazing organic crackers. We dined on salads, party meatballs, and shrimp. With such a scrumptious spread, nobody could get too down about the fate of our Green Bay Packers. Yes, it was the great food and fine company which kept our spirits high during that roller-coaster of a football game.

Old Family Recipes Bring Passed Loved Ones Alive At The Holiday Table

Following one of Mom's recipes is like surfing; only the feel of your feet gets you to shore. Mom was a great surfer, - in the kitchen. And me? Last night I dog paddled as Dad stood over me at the stove reading the list of ingredients that I dutifully added to the pot. He came to the spices. "Marjoram, thyme, salt, pepper."

"How much?" I asked. Dad looked confused. "Oh, yeah," I shrugged, "it's one of Mom's recipes. There are no proportions," I told him. So I guessed that a 1/2 teaspoon of both thyme and marjoram would be about right for the 3 lbs of meat I was cooking. "Whoa!" I said after getting a strong whiff of my brew. "The kids aren't going to like this," I thought. I should probably have used 1/4 teaspoon. Who knew? Mom hadn't even specified the amount or type of meat to use. My instructions read, "Add meat to pot."

So why was I making this mystery dinner? My dad and brother had arrived from out of town to join the kids and me for Christmas. So this week I've been making our family's favorite recipes that Mom used to make. Last night was "Chicken Yum-Yum", tonight it's "Beef Bourguignon". Where Mom got either recipe, I've no clue. But these meals are like souvenirs. They bring back memories of years passed that in retrospect now feel safe, secure, warm, and happy, - just the kinds of feelings we all coax alive at the holidays. As our family enjoyed Mom's cooking, - a la me, - it was easy to imagine her spirit smiling as our little family carried on.

Read on and I'll give you my mom's recipe for beef bourguignon; it was a favorite dinner she cooked especially for company. It tastes wonderful, looks elegant, and can be made ahead of time. I even make it in the crock pot. But you probably have your own family-favorite recipes. So perhaps it's best if you dig out one of those. It's in sharing traditional holiday meals that we revive our cherished times and weave our generations together. In years to come, perhaps my own children will make beef bourguignon in memory of me, that is of course unless I added too much marjoram and thyme to the pot.

So here's Mom's beef bourguignon recipe. I tried to give some of the proportions, but believe me, they're all relative. Increase or decrease as suits your taste. Prep the dinner the night before, then cook it in the crock pot or oven the next day, and you'll have a wonderful meal waiting for you when you return home.

Wisconsin Danish Kringle Is A Traditional Christmas Food Made By Serious Pastry Chefs; The Rest Of Us Bake Cranberry Bars

A long-time, Wisconsin tradition is enjoyment of a Danish kringle on Christmas morning. Danish immigrants began the tradition when they settled southeastern Wisconsin in the 1800's. Visit the Racine, Wisconsin area and you'll find Danish bakeries laden with kringles handmade of light, flaky, layers of pastry dough wrapped around of all varieties of sweet fillings: fruit, nut, cheese, and chocolate. Pastry doesn't get tastier.

But few Wisconsinites bake their own kringles. The labor and skill-intensive pastry is not for the novice baker. You won't find a kringle recipe in Mom's Updated Quick Meals Recipe Box: 250 family favorites in thirty minutes or less. You have to look in the Wisconsin Country Gourmet to find a kringle recipe. No Wisconsin cook can claim the title of chef if s/he hasn't mastered the art of the kringle; and for this reason, I offer a recipe for cranberry bars instead. But more on that later.

So most Wisconsinites purchase their Christmas kringles and an extra one or two to freeze for later. Kringles are one of those remarkable foods that freeze incredibly well. Even when thawed after six months in the freezer only a Danish baker might know the kringle hadn't been baked that morning. It's a custom here in Wisconsin to keep a frozen kringle on hand to serve when friends drop in to visit.

Enjoying Danish kringle is such a strong Wisconsin tradition that Wisconsin culinary guides have to include a stop at a kringle bakery. When writing Wisconsin's Hometown Flavors: A cook's tour of butcher shops, bakeries, cheese factories, and other specialty markets, culinary historian, chef, and travel writer, Terese Allen, had to stop by the O & H Danish Bakery in Racine. Allen describes the family-history of the bakery and gives their recipe for kringle. But thankfully she also includes the bakery's recipe for cranberry slices.

O & H Bakery's recipe for cranberry bars is easy and taste bakery-wonderful. Okay, they're not kringle. But when I served them to company my guest left with the recipe and my daughter said, "YOU MUST BAKE THESE AGAIN!" The recipe made so much that I even had enough to make a generous Christmas gift for a favorite neighbor. Click on "continue reading..." for O & H Bakery's recipe for cranberry bars. 

A Wisconsin Gourmet Thanksgiving Dessert: Apple Mincemeat Pie

Wisconsin gourmet chefs Marge Snyder and Suzanne Breckenridge introduce their recipe for Apple Mincemeat Tart by writing, "Our family's traditional Thanksgiving dessert, it will make a lovely presentation at any holiday gathering." I think their introduction is an understatement. They could have made more of the fact that this pie recipe is a grand compromise between two traditonalist Thanksgiving camps. One camp wants mincemeat pie and the other cries, "No, not mincemeat, apple!" But you the chef wants to bake only one extra pie, (you've alreaady got a pumpkin in the oven). Going beyond compromise, this pie recipe goes a step further in luxurious flavor by dousing the mincemeat and apples in brandy and glazing the whole pie over in apricot preserves. This pie is no ordinary Thanksgiving dessert. Click on "continue reading..." for the recipe.

Home-spun, Wisconsin Tips About Cooking and Baking Pumpkin Pies

Helen Myhre, Wisconsin farm woman turned restaurant owner and 13-time winner of the national pie-baking championship, gives these tips about cooking and baking pumpkin pies:

"As I must have said a million times in my life, tasting is the key to good cooking, and stirring up pumpkin is a perfect example. If you stick your finger in it, and it's bitter, you know you've forgotten the salt. You can stand and add sugar till the cows come home, but if you've forgotten the salt, pumpkin'll still have an edge of bitterness.

"Whatever you're making, tasting can prevent a lot of failures; at the restaurant, I've even found lemonade in the gravy. One of the cooks reached for potato water when a same-size jug of lemonade was standing alongside, and in went the lemonade. No one realized it until I stuck my finger in. So even if you're an expert, you gotta taste. And don't underestimate salt when it comes to pumpkin."

These cooking tips introduce Helen's recipe for pumpkin pie in her cookbook: Farm Recipes and Food Secrets from the Norske Nook: The Midwest's #1 Roadside Cafe. I prepared Helen's recipe for pumpkin pie filling when my daughter and I embarked on a crazy project to create pumpkin pie cornucopias. In doing so, I discovered my own tips about cooking with pumpkin. To find out what I learned and to get Helen's pumpkin pie recipe, click on "continue reading..."

Recipe For Relaxation: Taking Time To Cook Gourmet Food And Saving Money Too

"The food you cook at home is better than the food you get a restaurant," asserted Kay.

"Some is," I nodded in agreement, but inwardly I was not so sure. I'd had some wonderful meals at restaurants. And I still felt bad about burning the kids' grilled cheese sandwiches the night before.

"How did that happen, Mommy?" my six-year-old had asked as he'd watched the smoke rise.

"Hm, I wasn't paying attention," I frankly answered him. "I was busy doing something else." I had looked at this small person and could tell he was thinking about the butter and bread crumbs I'd burned the previous night. This is the topping I always recommend to parents to bury vegetables under so kids will unwittingly eat them. That night, dirty dishes drew my hands and eyes from the stove top, the butter had smoked, the pan scorched, and the kids fussed about eating naked zucchini. But back to the burned grilled cheese. The secret to rising from the ashes from this charred meal is to only grill two sandwiches at a time. You see, never does the entire grilled cheese sandwich burn, well nearly never. So you can salvage the meal by cutting the sandwiches in half, giving the less-burned halves to your offspring while you make one more sandwich to which you now can direct your full attention because your children are busy at the table scrutinizing their half sandwiches. You make this third sandwich pretty well, cut it in half, give each child a half, and then you join them at the table with the left-over, burned halves from the first two sandwiches. True, the black charcoal is poor in taste, but it's high in charred carbon. And such carbon does a magnificent job at sopping up excess stomach acid, which you no doubt have, given that you were so frantically busy you burned the grilled cheese in the first place. So just quickly eat the burned grilled cheese then rush everyone off to the dog's puppy class.

But this evening with Kay was different. My kids were away with their dad, her daughter is grown and her husband working. The two of us were taking time to relax with my home-cooked gourmet meal. I'd bought the beef tenderloin on sale, so I was saving money too. With quiet music playing, candlelight on the dining room table, and a bottle of wine, Kay and I were pretending we were luxuriating at the White Gull Inn. The White Gull Inn is a famous Wisconsin restaurant on the Door County peninsula. People with money and well-behaved children make pilgrimages to the White Gull Inn to feast on fine Wisconsin food. In truth, I've never been there, but I have their cookbook, which is a blessing in itself. So for this relaxing evening with Kay, I prepared the White Gull Inn's recipe for stuffed tenderloin filet. Click on "Continue reading..." for the recipe.

Devil Dog Strikes Halloween Party Cake: Pumkin Changes Into Midnight Moon; Get The Recipe

All right dogs, LINE UP! Reader can you guess which transgressing hound pilfered the pumpkin cake? Was it old dog, Sam or puppy Tao? If you've read previous posts, you'll remember that Tao's aka is El Diablo. Yes, it was the devil himself, caught red-handed, with paws on the counter and full muzzle in the cake. Perhaps it was fitting that the devil visited my kitchen as I baked party food for Halloween. The devil distracted me with his own dog hair he had shed across the carpet. Busy vacuuming, I had left the pumpkin cake on the counter to cool. El Diablo duped me into thinking that my little pooch was actually on the way to good behavior. Minutes earlier he had seemed to obey my "Leave it" command and ceased lunging at and biting the vacuum cleaner bag. But that gesture in doggie decorum was just a ploy to conceal his nefarious intentions. Satisfied that I was busy elsewhere, he struck at the cake.

My pumpkin cake was going to be frosted to look like a pumpkin. But now, once again I'd have to chant my life's mantra, "It's not how far you fall, it's how well you bounce." I'd have to come up with an alternative Halloween cake. And so this was the simple story of how my pumpkin cake turned into a midnight moon cake on Halloween. Click on "continue reading..." for the pictures and cake recipe which is really a recipe for pumpkin bars.

Frosted Sugar Cookies Add Fun To Children's Halloween Party

"If I were on a desert island and could only eat two foods, I'd choose these Halloween cookies and vanilla ice cream," said my 10-year-old. And she said this while nibbling an un-frosted cookie that was brown and crispy as opposed to the majority which turned out that wonderful creamy color of the classic sugar cookie.  Children love sugar cookies! And this is why this sugar cookie recipe is introduced with, "Norwegian, Scottish, Irish, Bohemian, German --just about every European ethnic group that settled Wisconsin had some version of the sugar cookie." The recipe, simply titled, Sugar Cookies, came from the cookbook, The Flavor of Wisconsin: An informal history of food and eating in the Badger state, written by Harva Hachten and Terese Allen.

To make these simple and delicious cookies fun for our children's Halloween party, I frosted them with Helen Myhre's "basic powdered sugar frosting" recipe from her Wisconsin cookbook, The Norske Nook: Farm recipes and food secrets from the Norske Nook, the Midwest's #1 roadside cafe. Click on "Continue reading..." for these sugar cookie and frosting recipes.