Another Year, Another Chocolate Birthday Cake

Not that anyone is complaining, mind you!

I was going to make a Boston Cream Pie for my husband like last year, but then I saw this recipe for a Guinness cake with frosting that is flavored both with whiskey and Irish Cream. It looked like fun and I'm happy to report it IS fun to make!

Yesterday I made the cake part, which went smoothly. Each layer was wrapped and refrigerated until today. Once I made the frostings, I split the cake layers (my husband was very impressed with the evenness, thank you, culinary school!) and assembled the cake. I know the recipe says to serve immediately, but I have other things I have to do for dinner that are more time sensitive than this, so this can wait in the fridge until after dinner. I will sprinkle the top with cocoa before I serve it.

At Least Something Grew This Year

We were walking on our street the other day and discovered that a neighbor had hops, in flower, growing in front of his house. That got me thinking about the hops on the bike path and so today I went down to take a look. Usually I miss the season by a week or two and the hops I find are wilted but not this time! They were perfectly ready. I picked a bagful and brought them home to oast. Which took about an hour at 275-300˚F. We have a beer kit we've been meaning to brew, an Irish red this time, so I can add these at the second rack. When we finally make the beer.

Also today I made three batches of chocolate zucchini bread - two batches to make four loaves of bread and one batch to make two round cakes (for these I left off the topping) and those cakes will be the basis for a birthday cake for Saturday. No reason it can't be remotely healthy, right?

Salsa and Beer

Today I'm home waiting for a package so I made sure I had enough projects to do. I made 2 batches of salsa. First a batch of garden salsa (red and yellow tomatoes, scallion and onion, green peppers and jalapeños) and then a batch of tomatillo salsa, which finished the tomatillos. I don't think I'm going to get much more of those from the farm so it seemed wise to start to use them up. We're going camping tomorrow and I wanted to have some salsa to take.

Last night we tasted the beer to see if it was ready for the "Homebrew Showcase" at my husband's work. Even though we bottled it last Friday it was, amazingly, ready. We squeaked in under the wire this year! The difference between the 2 half-batches is noticeable, both the aroma and the taste. The beer with the added hops is definitely a deeper hops flavor. I prefer it. He'll take 2 liters of each in tonight and we'll get some feedback from people there.

I still have some apples to contend with, as well, as beets, another monster zucchini (I took 2 the other day and made 4 loaves of chocolate zucchini bread, 1 for dinner, 1 for work, 2 in the freezer), and a whole lot of squashes. But I think I'm going to take a little break soon. After I make more apple cake.

Late Night Bottling

After dinner this evening we bottled the beer we've been brewing. We'd split the batch in half and added fresh ("wet") hops to one half. After a week, it was time to bottle. First we tasted and bottled the half-batch without the extra hops, this was about 9 liters. Then we racked the half-batch with the hops into the other carboy and bottled that. Again, about 9 liters. The half-batch with the extra hops tasted smoother, almost sweeter, than the other. It'll be interesting to taste it again when they're ready to drink.

Also today I made a batch of grape jelly using 5 of the cups of grape juice I made a few days ago. I have enough for another batch which I'll try to get to in the next few days. I still have almost a half-bushel of apples to work with and some zucchini for another batch of chocolate zucchini bread but I just don't have those big chunks of time right now.

Lovely Scents

Today was the big day:  I took my Pediatric Recertification exam. We have to do this every 10 years. And I'm tired. Afterward, I got home with enough time to do a little foraging on the bike path. Something I felt might make me feel less stressed out. The hops and black walnuts smell so lovely this time of year!

In keeping with the theme that every tree and plant (except blackberries, for some reason) has done really well this year, the hops and the black walnuts on the bike path were plentiful and easy to reach. I picked almost 50 black walnuts off the trees and didn't have to resort to picking up any off the ground. The squirrels chattered their displeasure at me the whole time but, trust me, the trees had plenty to spare. Once I ran them under the wheel of the car, only 3 were bad. They're drying in the garage.

As for the hops, I picked a bag full and I timed it just right and most were fresh and green. We had been planning on using the hops from last year, which were oasted and in the freezer, but decided instead to try the "wet hops" technique of adding them in fresh. After coming back from the Town Day Fireworks, we split the beer into 2 containers; half will stay just as the kit instructed and the other half gets the fresh hops. Next week we'll bottle them and see how they taste. I'll keep those other hops in the freezer for the next time.

Lastly, I cleaned out the basement and brought everything to my neighbor's house; we're having a neighborhood yard sale to raise money for a traffic calming study and it seemed like a good opportunity to get some things out of the house. Since I'm working tomorrow, I figured it'd be easier to drop it off today. I think it's going to be rather big.

Spent Grain Bunny Treats

The last time we brewed a batch of beer, which was, sadly, over a year ago, I attempted to make bread with the spent grain and it was a disaster. I don't really know why, but it was. The bread didn't rise or bake all the way through or something and it was a gelatinous mess. This time I'd planned to make horse treats with the spent grain, but my husband wondered if I could make treats for the rabbit as well. I did a little research and made these:

Bunny Cookies

1 cup spent grain

1 pureed carrot

1 T. honey

some raspberries and blueberries

1/4 cup flour

This was mixed up and then spooned onto a cookie sheet lined with parchment paper and baked at 350 for about 30 minutes. After they'd cooled a bit, I brought one to Mocha. He sniffed it and licked it a few times, then turned his back on me. I put it in his bowl. About 5 minutes later he went over to his bowl, dragged out the cookie, and ate some before he accidentally dropped it. It took a few minutes for him to find it again, but when he did he ate some more. I guess he likes them! However, for future reference, I think it'd be better to use dried fruit rather than fresh.

The beer itself is the "Hophead Pale Ale" kit, and when it's time to do the second rack we'll split it, so half will get the foraged hops and half won't. This way we can see what they add to the flavor. The only other difference with the kit this year is that we added Irish Moss as a clarifying agent which we hadn't done before. I also boiled about 3 gallons of water ahead of time and kept them in the fridge so we had enough sterile water to top off the brew. Starting SG is 1.042 at 72 degrees.

The rest of the spent grains are in the freezer; when I have time to make horse treats (and more bunny cookies) I'll thaw them.

Venison Pie

As has been mentioned all week, I had a plan to make a venison pie.  I was following this recipe, which I altered just a little bit.  First of all, the juniper was OUT.  (You can find out why here, in case you were wondering.)  I didn't have Scottish ale, but I had my foraged hops homebrew, which is an ale.  I used foraged Dotted-stalk Suillus mushrooms.  And I made my own pastry instead of using puff pastry.

Ah, the pastry.  I had been trying to find an occasion to make a savory pie, so I could experiment with using the rendered duck fat to make a savory crust.  Now was my chance!  Since it melts at such a low temperature, I mixed it with butter:  2/3 butter to 1/3 duck.  Even then, it was the most fragile thing I've worked with, even with putting it in the freezer frequently to keep it cold.  It broke every time I tried to put it in the dish, which was probably too deep anyway.  I finally had to press the crust into the dish.  The top crust went better.  From a taste and texture perspective it was really, really good, but just not worth that much hassle.

The filling before adding the beer

I did, however, use the scraps to make a cheese tart, having figured correctly that the 9 year old wouldn't enjoy the meat pie as much as the rest of us.  It was obviously a hit as the kids almost came to blows trying to divvy it up.

The pie was served with baked carnival squash topped with truffle butter and a stir fry of tat soi and komatsuna greens.

Homebrew Showcase

The weekly Thursday evening happy hour event at my husband's work is occasionally a themed thing and this week it was a homebrew showcase.  We chose to name our beer "Minuteman UFO" as it was, technically, unfiltered, and the hops came from the Minuteman Bikeway.  Hence the logo.  It was well received.  He said about 5-6 people brought in homebrew but there were certainly more that 5-6 people at the happy hour.  All 24 bottles were consumed pretty quickly which was good because there was no way to get it home.  We still have a few large bottles left for ourselves, but it looks like it'll be time to start another batch soon.

Forgot to Mention...

Our super-hoppy beer was ready to drink when we returned, so we chilled a bottle and tried it out.  Half the batch is slated for the Homebrew Festival at my husband's workplace, which is fine with me as it is definitely more hoppy that I'm used to.  However, I have to admit that it's good, and I'd like to think that toasting the hops changed the color and flavor just a little bit.  Now I wish I'd kept some without the extra hops for comparison, but I will just be happy with what we made and save the scientific approach for another batch!

Hoppy Beer, Bottled

Today was a day of siphoning.

Not only did we bottle the beer, but we had to clean out the fishtank.  Which was a job and a half, let me tell you!  There were mineral deposits all over it, and under it, and on the light, and the lid, and in the pump, and on the bureau it sits on.  Fortunately, the minerals didn't damage the bureau.  We'll be more careful next time.

The beer was, surprisingly, less work.  The priming sugar was boiled with a little water and poured into the bottling bucket, then the beer was siphoned in from its carboy.  The hops stayed (mostly) behind.  We bottled 24 regular bottles to share at the Homebrew Showcase coming up at my husband's workplace, and 9 of the 1-liter bottles.  We had just enough for one more 12-ounce bottle; this will be the one we use to test the beer when we think it's ready.  Should be a few weeks.

Hoppy Beer, Now with Extra Hops!

Toasted hops

As I said in the previous post, I was in Ohio over the holiday weekend.  I got back this morning; everyone else is returning this evening but I have to work and I was concerned about airport delays.  Considering the havoc that the recent storms wrought on air travel, my fears are not entirely unfounded, so it was best to give myself the extra time at home.

It was time to do the second rack with the beer and add that foraged hops.  I toasted the hops in a warm oven for about 45 minutes and they lost a bit of their hoppy smell but took on a more toasted smell that could be (hopefully) interesting.  The beer itself had a potential alcohol at this point of 1.5% so something has sure been happening in that fermenter!  The specific gravity today is 1.010, also more like beer.

Cramming the dried hops into the tiny mouth of the carboy was a pain in the neck but I did finally get it all in there and siphoned the beer on top.  Now it's resting under my desk in the kitchen, fermenting some more and, with luck, doing something tasty with those hops.

Hoppy Beer, Day One

We've been meaning to find time to brew a batch of beer in which I could use the wild hops I found last fall.  Time just keeps getting away from us.  Finally, we got the kick we needed to get started; my husband's work is having a homebrew showcase in a month or so.  We'd like to enter this beer.  We hope it's worthy.

After a lot of discussion with the proprietors of the brewing supply store my husband came home with a kit for something called "Hopehead Pale Ale."  To that we plan to add our own hops during the second rack, which will be next week sometime.  Today we steeped the grains, boiled the wort, and it's currently cooling enough to pitch the yeast.  Then it will ferment for about a week before we move to the second rack.  Initial SG appears to be about 1.042 with a potential alcohol of 5.5%.

I felt badly about throwing away all the steeped grains, and I thought about making horse treats with them.  A quick search online suggested they made a good bread.  The only problem with this is that my yeast must have been old so after mixing all this damp grain with flour, sugar and yeast and kneading and waiting, it didn't really rise.  I thought maybe I could bake it anyway, like a quick bread, but that was an epic failure.  Next time, I will either make sure I have new yeast, or just make dog and pony treats (both are possible, recipes are different).  There are enough dogs and ponies in my life that they can at least enjoy whatever I come up with.

In other news, I made strawberry-chocolate chip pancakes this morning and now we only have 1 quart of berries left.  Since this bread didn't work out, I think I will make strawberry muffins and give some to our neighbors when I return their plate which arrived last weekend with cookies on it. 

Bike Path Bounty

The hops in the wild

After receiving a tip from a friend, I went looking on a bike path for wild hops.  We thought it might be fun to make beer with them and see what happens.  We went for a ride and I found nothing, but I did see grapes, and nettles, and crabapples (the grapes and crabapples were rather tasty).  So I went back on foot, thinking I must have just been going too fast.  Turns out that was the case, and I found all sorts of wild hops.

Drying the hops

Dried hops, ready to brew

I gathered about a quart, maybe more, and at home the total weight was 97g.  Then I dried them in the oven for a while and reweighed them: 27g.  While I was out on the path, however, I found autumn olives and black walnuts.  I am not sure if I'm going to go crazy over the autumn olives this year, but this shrub was plentiful, so maybe I'll go back for them.  I also snagged 28 black walnuts off the tree, so before they fell and got all nasty.  They've been husked by me driving over them with the car (there were 30 nuts, but 2 got crushed by the car) and are now drying for a few weeks.  Then I'll crack them open and see what I get.  Last year I was disappointed that the nutmeats were dried out so I am hoping that by getting them directly off the tree that won't be the case.

I checked with another homebrewing neighbor and now have a plan for these hops - we'll add them for aroma at the end of the fermentation cycle.  They smelled wonderful while they were drying in the oven!

Chocolate Oatmeal Stout

Two weeks ago we started a batch of beer.  We're still new at this, so we used a kit, but it was of "intermediate difficulty," which meant we had to steep the grains ourselves.  Once we had the batch made it sat in the basement near the boiler and did its thing.  Last week we transferred it to the 5 gallon carboy, the second rack, and let it sit again.  Last night we felt it was ready to bottle.

Since it's only been a year and a half since the last batch, not 10+ years, it went more smoothly.  There was far less mess than the last time and no one got doused in beer.  Everything was sanitized, the priming sugar was dissolved in boiling water and put in the big bucket, and then the beer was siphoned into that.  It tastes like flat beer, like it should, but I have no idea what the alcohol content is because, apparently, I cannot read a hydrometer.  My first pass at calculations led to a result of 0.78% alcohol, which can't possibly be right.  The second pass at it yielded 13%, which also can't be right.  I gave up at that point and figured that as long as it tasted good it was ready.

At first we filled the larger bottles - we have 12 32-ounce bottles with the snap-on caps (like the ones for glass jars with the rubber gaskets) so that held most of the batch.  Then we filled regular beer bottles with the rest and capped them with standard bottle caps.  There's 9 and a half bottles of that size.  Given how quickly the beer fermented in the first place, they might be ready to drink in a week.  

More!

My work schedule over this weekend has been very, very strange.  I worked until 8 pm on Friday and until 2 am last night (but didn't really leave until 2:30, just finishing up a few things) and tonight I'm doing an overnight.  So I slept until 10:30 am, and then my husband and I spent all day working around the house:  cleaning, painting, and canning.  Oh, and laundry.  There's always laundry!

2 nights ago we transferred the beer to the big glass carboy for its second rack.  Likely it'll be ready to be bottled by next weekend.  And I added the wine to the sauerkraut and it's in its crock with the waterseal and I'll leave it for a week and then check it.

I am trying to carve out time to finish that peck of cucumbers so I hastily made another batch of the same bread and butter pickles I made the other day.  I am now out of turmeric, sugar, and mustard seed.  I guess I have to get to the store!  Oh, and I still have about half a peck left... I guess I'll see how I feel tomorrow and try to make some other kind of pickles.

Works In Progress

Generally, I like to post about completed projects but since a couple are in various stages of completion I figured I'd better write them down!

1. The blueberry season is starting, and I went the other day to my favorite spot and picked a pint of wild berries.  There are TONS waiting to ripen so we'll go back in a week and spend the morning to get more. Then I'll make a batch of jam and get some in the freezer for baking/pancakes.  I kept dovetailing with a Russian-speaking couple as we all hunted for berries on the hillside.  The weather was gorgeous for a change; it was refreshing to be out in the sun for 2 hours on a Friday afternoon!

2. My husband and I started a batch of beer last night.  This is a chocolate oatmeal stout.  The first stage of the beer-making process always takes more time than I think it will - the grain steeping took 45 minutes and the hops-boiling took an hour. The hops-cooling took even longer!  Maybe if we're going to do this more often we will need to invest in a wort chiller.  During all this we made dinner, ate dinner, and watched an episode of Sherlock.  Not a terrible way to spend a Saturday night!

3. Very soon I plan to start a batch of sauerkraut.  I have a regular cabbage and a Napa cabbage and I get to use my new crock!  I just need to get some white wine since I like that recipe best.  I might even enter this sauerkraut in the fair; if I'm going to enter some of my jams, why not other things?

4. In the past few days I also made a batch of yogurt and have been working through both the farm share and the produce from our mason's garden.  I made stuffed zucchini 2 nights ago.  The stuffing was onions and peppers sauteed with ground beef, salt and pepper, then the zucchini pulp and some parsley were added.  I stuffed these into the parboiled zucchini halves and then topped them with bechamel sauce and baked them for half an hour.  They were terrific!

Drinking Day

It's terrific!  Nice little "pffft" when you open the bottle and it's just fizzy enough and tasty.  Hooray for homebrew!

Bottling Day

This evening, while everyone else in New England was watching the Super Bowl, we bottled our beer.

After sterilizing everything (again) we siphoned a little out to check the specific gravity: 1.012.  This translates to an alcohol content of 5% or thereabouts.  We were ready!  Since we didn't have enough bottles my husband bought a case of 1 liter bottles with the snap-top caps and gaskets so we cleaned and sterilized those and decided we'd fill those first.  That's 12 liters.  That's a lot of beer.

After dissolving the priming sugar (necessary so that once in the bottles the carbonation step happens) we added it to our bucket and siphoned the beer into it to mix.  (We did taste a little.  Yep, tastes like beer.)

Filling the bottles with a flashlight to see when it's full

Then we moved this bucket up to the counter and got our bottles ready.  One of the more interesting things about siphoning is that if one of you is not paying attention, the other of you will end up spraying beer all over the kitchen and yourself.  Twice.  Heh.  Sorry....the clip is there for a reason!  It was around this time that the conversation went something like this:

Husband: Who's idea was this, anyway?
Me:  Um, yours?  Remember?
Husband:  Why didn't you talk me out of it?

Other than that, there were no major disasters, and we got all 12 liter bottles filled and capped and moved on to the standard bottles.  For this we needed a few more hands so enlisted the help of the 10-year-old to do the capping with the very large and scary looking bottle capper.  It took a few tries but eventually all went smoothly and we ended up with 12 of those bottles and then a half-bottle that we decided to cap anyway and taste it first.

For that, we have to wait 2 weeks.  Then it will be time to chill and serve!

Still Fermenting

The other day we transferred the proto-beer to the 5 gallon carboy (the second rack).  It's specific gravity was 1.015, which means it was not quite ready.  Our problem has been that we rarely see the little bubbles coming through the airlock so it feels like nothing is happening at all.  We even moved it closer to the boiler so it would be warmer, thinking that maybe the basement was too cold.  Regardless, I think we're close to bottling day so I spent this morning washing labels off a dozen beer bottles.  I have another dozen to go and then we might buy a few growlers since we don't have enough 12 ounce bottles.  (We need around 50-55 bottles for a batch.)

It's been a busy couple of weeks otherwise, so there isn't a whole lot of cooking going on.

Homebrew

We have not made beer in years.  15 or 16 years!

Yesterday we were near the home brewing store and decided to stop by.  We left with a kit for an Irish stout and a lot of plans.  You see, they sell cheese presses, cheese wax, and all sorts of other do-it-yourself foodie things.  Squeeee!

So we hauled out our well preserved brewing equipment, took a trip back to the brewing store to replace the tubing, and got started.  First we steeped the grains at 150 degrees for 20 minutes to make the wort:

Then we boiled the wort and added the malt extracts and the hops.

Once the wort was cooled to about 70 degrees (we went out to dinner while this was happening, since it was going to take a while) we added more water to make the total volume about 5 gallons and the specific gravity about 1.050.  Then we pitched the yeast and closed it all up, with the airlock to keep out the bad beasties, and put it in the basement to ferment.  More later!