Category Archives: food porn

Candied pecans

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I made a crustless pecan pie for the holiday. The inspiration was in the right place, but it was very hard to dish up and eat. The pecans on top were truly addictive, though.

So today I thought it would be a good time to try a variation on caramel and pecans. I toasted 2 cups of pecans in the oven at 325° in a nonstick pan and melted together 1/2 cup light brown sugar, 1/2 cup dark corn syrup, 3 tablespoons butter, and 1/4 teaspoon salt. When the pecans were toasted I mixed in the syrup and popped them back in the oven, stirring every 5 minutes until the pecans stuck securely to the plastic spatula I was using. I scraped them onto a silicone sheet and stirred to break them up while they were still warm.

When cold they were quite candied, with a buttery/caramelly taste – and just a touch of molasses. Looking at them last night, I said to myself, “They’re not photogenic, being brown on brown.” But by the light of day, they looked very different, so I snapped a pic and made one of those “up close and personal food porn” links for you. It’s ok to drool over the full-sized photo linked to the bottom pic. Yep, they’re yummy.

Ebleskivers

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Today I woke up with a bit of tummy upset, and thought it would be nice to make some rice batter waffles. Unfortunately, I was unable to find the cheap little Belgian waffle iron I had used most recently. I brought up the old-fashioned one from the basement, but the grids need to soak and be scrubbed with a wire brush (not teflon).

But there was a never-been-used ebleskiver pan looking at me on the kitchen shelf. I thought about someone’s blog entry I recently read describing the ebleskiver pan (which apparently had been promoted during the 70′s as a device to make round rather than flat pancakes) as one of the 10 worst inventions of all time. In fact, the writer described the resulting pastry in words we will not use here, labeling himself as someone who has never tried anything new in his life that wasn’t junk food. So, without further ado, the ebleskiver pan:

I whipped up some batter

  • 3/4 cup rice flour
  • 1/4 cup sweet rice flour
  • 1/2 teaspoon salt
  • 2 tablespoons sugar
  • 2 tablespoons melted butter
  • 2 teaspoons baking powder
  • enough water to make a spoonable (rather than pourable) batter

Then I heated the pan, brushed the wells with butter, scooped in some batter, and cooked. I tossed the first batch in powdered sugar, and they were ok. I ate them all—well of course I did, I was hungry.

The next batch came out and I thought that they might be better with a little jam in them. So Isplit them and spread in a little dab of black raspberry jam before the powdered sugar. I ate one, and it was an epiphany of a food experience. I realized that this would be not only good enough to write about (and I’m trying to be a good girl and post regularly), but they would be photogenic enough to try to take pictures of them with my nice new camera.

After taking the photos, I wolfed down the rest of them. Oh, my! One of those photos came out great! Click the last photo for a link to the full-sized original.