Homemade Junk Food with Ingredients You Can Pronounce

My faithful readers may recall that I spend the last weekend of every March in a monastery with my spinning friends from Moscow. This year was no exception. Usually, I report back to you on any food related incidents that occur as soon as I return. However, this year I didn’t have time to write about my adventures when I got home.

Until now.

My girlfriends and I have been going to St Gertrude’s for retreat for six years now. We have a system down. We bring plenty of snacks to tide us over between meals with the Sisters. We bring plenty of wine to ensure juicy conversations and some whiskey for a change of pace if we tire of the wine. We bring more than enough yarn and fiber for a year’s worth of knitting and spinning. And we bring birthday cake for Laura.

Laura’s birthday doesn’t always fall exactly during retreat but it’s when we always celebrate it. Her birthday cakes have included flourless chocolate tortes and seven-layer cake. One year she got a cake with powdered sugar for decoration (spoiler and warning: this is not a good way to decorate birthday cake). I don’t remember what the cake was. I can only recall the cloud of sugar that flew off it as she blew out the candles (we still giggle about this, in fact, I can’t help giggling as I type).

This year she got junk food. Not just any kind of junk food, homemade junk food. Twinkies and Hostess Cupcakes to be specific, although I’m sure I can’t call them that, Hostess might sue me.

I’d wanted to make homemade Twinkies for years. I was inspired by Michael Pollan and his book “Food Rules”. One of his rules is “Eat all the junk food you want as long as you cook it yourself”, and Grist.org had published a recipe for organic Twinkies soon after his book came out. Considering the book came out two years ago, I’d been stewing over this recipe for quite some time. I just needed the right excuse to make them.

When my dear friend and fellow birthday cake baker, Rochelle, called to figure out what we were making Laura for her birthday this year, and suggested that she might like to make a Hostess Cupcake knock off, I had found my excuse. What could be better than an assortment of organic homemade junk food for a birthday celebration?

It was not until this point that I actually looked at the recipe.

There is a reason that Michael Pollan advocates only eating junk food you make yourself. It’s hard to make junk food. It’s not something you’d do everyday. You’d really have to crave a Twinkie and have a bunch of free time on your hands before you would endeavor to make them. You would not blindly eat them without a thought to what they contain or how they are made. You would have to plan.

And plan I did.

First, I had to construct some Twinkie pans. Somewhere in foodie-land there are pre-made Twinkie pans but I wasn’t planning on making Twinkies a part of my regular baking schedule so, rather than add another pan that I only used once to my collection, I made them out of aluminum foil.

This takes some time and practice. None of the sixteen little tin boats I made were the same size or shape but they would have to do.

Once I had my pans all lined up and ready to go, I had to figure out how to construct the Twinkies so I would have time to make them in my busy schedule and that they wouldn’t be stale or soggy when I got down to Cottonwood.

I decided to make the cream filling first. It turned out to be so delicious that I had to swat both my hand and my husband’s away from the bowl to make sure there’d be enough filling. I refrigerated it under lock and key for a day.

The following day (the day before I left) I made the sponge cake. These were relatively easy. They puffed up beautifully in the oven and looked vaguely like the real thing when they came out of the pan. They did shrink an alarming amount and I wasn’t sure how all that filling was going to fit. I needn’t have worried. Getting the filling in was half the fun.

Right before I headed south, I filled my pastry bag and went for it. Those shrunken cakes puffed back up when I squeezed the filling in. This did take some practice and I did have to lick a lot of filling off my hands as I got the hang of it, but it was all worth it.

As Rochelle and I presented our organic junk food to the oohs and aahs of our friends (confident in the fact that we could identify and pronounce every ingredient in them) I knew all the hard work was worth it. They tasted so much better than their shelf stable counterparts. We savored every bite. And then I began wondering if I could make pink Snoballs for next year.




Organic Twinkies
adopted from Grist.org
makes 6-8 cakes depending on the size of your homemade pans

Sponge Cake:
3 organic eggs, separated
1/3 c. organic sugar
1/3 c. organic unbleached flour
½ t baking powder
½ t organic vanilla extract

Cream Filling:
4 oz. Mascarpone cheese
1 vanilla bean
3 organic egg whites
2/3 c. organic sugar

Make 8 Twinkie shaped boats out of aluminum foil. Butter and flour the pans and set aside in a baking dish that they fit snuggly in.

Preheat the oven to 325 F.

Make the sponge cake:
Beat the 3 egg yolks on medium speed in a stand mixer. Add the 1/3 c of sugar slowly to the yolks and beat for 5 minutes or until the mixture is thick and light colored. In a separate bowl, beat the egg whites until they form medium soft peaks. Fold the egg whites into the egg yolk-sugar mixture. Mix the flour and baking powder together. Sift the flour mixture into the egg mixture and fold it in carefully to just incorporate. Fold in the vanilla extract.
Divide the batter among the Twinkie pans. They should be half full and, depending on how big you made them, you may only have enough batter for 6 or 7.
Bake the cakes until golden brown and a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean, about 20 minutes.
Remove from the oven and allow to cool for 5 minutes. Remove from the pans and let cool completely. Depending on how well you greased the pans you may need to run a sharp knife around the edge to loosen the cake. The cakes will deflate quite a bit as they cool
Meanwhile, make the cream filling:
Combine the cheese and the seeds scraped from the inside of the vanilla bean in a small bowl until smooth.
Combine the egg whites and sugar in the top of a double boiler. Whisk the mixture continuously over simmering water until it reaches 110 F, about 2-3 minutes.
Place the egg white mixture in a standing mixer and beat with a whisk attachment until it has doubled in volume, about 5-7 minutes. The mixture should be glossy and hold a soft peak. Add the cheese mixture and beat until just combined and smooth. Cover with plastic wrap and chill until ready to use.
To assemble:
Place the filling mixture into a pastry bag with a medium plain tip. Make three holes in the bottom of each cake using either a straw or skewer. The holes should go about half way into the cake. Be careful not to puncture the top.
Insert the pastry bag tip and squeeze filling into each hole. The cake will re-expand with the filling. If it is hard to squeeze the filling in, try making the holes slightly bigger or try moving the tip around until you find a void to fill.
Once the Twinkie is filled, turn it over and serve.

No Lenders for Me

Jon and I recently returned from a trip to the East Coast, Atlantic City to be precise. We went to celebrate my cousin’s wedding. The wedding was delightful. Happy occasions with the whole family are always a treat. And it’s a good thing that it was such a blast since it completely took my mind off the fact that we had to spend two days on the East Coast.

I grew up in New Jersey so I’m no stranger to that right hand coast, but I left as soon as I could for many reason that I won’t go into here. Suffice it to say, the West Coast kicks the East Coast’s butt. However, there are things that the East Coast has that are not easy to find out here. Specifically, I’m talking about a decent bagel.

Yes, you might be able to buy bagels in just about any grocery store here, but they aren’t really bagels. I like to refer to them as buns with holes.

Real bagels are not airy and light. They are dense and chewy with a thick, shiny crust. Real bagels do not contain any form of fruit; no blueberries, raisins or cranberries. Real bagels are not big and fluffy. They are not made with whole grains or rye. They have a noticeable seam where the long, thin piece of dough is joined into a ring. The top of the crust can be covered in seeds, salt, onions, garlic or a combination of these or all of them, but never melted cheese. And they are definitely not a sandwich bread substitute. They should be eaten with cream cheese (butter is acceptable but looked down upon) and maybe some type of smoked fish. Capers, onions, and tomatoes may also be added but that’s where the allowable toppings end.

By now you are probably thinking I am just another East Coast snob, and you may be right (at least when it comes to bagels) but I feel I owe much of my early upbringing to this humble bread. In fact, without bagels, I may never have made it to adulthood.

You see, when I was just a babe, every Sunday my grandparents would bring bagels with all the fixings to my parents and exchange them for me. They would take me away for most of the day so Mom and Dad could have some down time. My parents soon learned to associate bagels with the peace and quiet of not having to deal with a difficult child (and I’ve been a difficult child since birth). As long as there were bagels in the house, even if I was there too, the bagels’ calming influence insured that I was in no danger of being kicked out or left on the curb to fend for myself. And the added benefit was there were always bagels in the house for me to eat.

I’m probably not the only one who owes my life to bagels. Although originally bagels were available only to the wealthy (since white wheat flour was a luxury in the 14th century), eventually they became know as peasant food and were sold in the streets, skewered on sticks or tied through with string. There were probably quite a few people who subsisted on bagels alone in the old days (and there probably still are people who choose to do so today) or made their living selling them.

Strangely enough, bagels were given as gifts to pregnant women so they could bite down on them when the contractions started. A good, chewy bagel may have been just the thing to pull a woman through a difficult birth.

Bagels are often considered a Jewish food, even though there is no evidence that Jews invented them. Poland seems to be the birthplace of the bagel and it was purportedly invented as Lenten bread. Jews were permitted to bake them at a time when only Christians were allowed to bake bread because bagels must be boiled before they are baked (and I guess boiling took away any cooties the anti-Semites of the time thought they might catch).

The long rise time required to make a true bagel also allowed Jews to have fresh bread at the end of Sabbath, during which they could do no work. If they mixed up a batch of dough Friday and let it rise in a cool place on Saturday, they could boil and bake the bagels quickly when Sabbath ended.

These two disparate influences made bagels quite popular with Eastern European Jews and when they came to New York in the late 1800s they brought bagels with them. Bagels thrived in New York for years until industrialized food production got to them and made them soft and puffy.

To understand what went wrong, you have to understand how a good bagel is made. First, you mix up a lean dough (one with less water than regular bread dough), which you let it rise in a cool place for at least 12 hours. Then you form it into a long thin snake that you join into a ring and let it rise again briefly. When it has risen, you boil the dough for a minute or two then bake it until it’s brown and crisp.

Industrial production figured out how to make bagels without the long rise time or the boiling, which makes it cheaper and faster to crank out lots of bagels. Modern bagels are steamed and then baked. Steaming makes the bagels puff up and doesn’t give them the thick chewy crust. That thick crust is the sure sign of a real bagel.

I’ve been living in the Northwest for over 20 years now. When I’m on the East Coast I try to eat at least one bagel a day, if not more, thinking this will somehow give me a reserve for when I head back West. I’ve smuggled dozens and dozens of bagels in the overhead compartment on flights back from my visits to New Jersey (this is only a problem if they are all onion bagels and the smell wafts out when the compartment is opened during flight). Unfortunately, they never lasted and I was left dreaming of bagels.

And then I discovered Bear and his bagels from Icehouse Pizzeria and Bakery in Hope. Bear makes real bagels. You can’t buy cinnamon raisin bagels from him but you can buy salt bagels. The bagels are chewy and dense and delicious and they are even better than some of the bagels I’ve had back east. Why it took me so long to figure this out I’m not sure, but I’m glad I did. I will schlep bagels no more.

Now if I could just find a local source of smoked sablefish.

The Whole Grain and Nothing but the Grain

This is the trilling conclusion to last month’s article about grains.

I hope you all haven’t been holding your breath, waiting for the answer to the mystery I left you with a month ago. I really intended to let you in on the secret two weeks ago but I was called away to the Monastery in Cottonwood to have a glorious weekend with my friends and figured you could wait.

As you may recall, I left off my last article with a cliffhanger, the unanswered question of why, if it’s so unhealthy, do we refine much of the grains we eat. The answer is pretty straightforward, but lengthy, and I should have told you then but I had exceeded my word count. Plus I wanted to pique your interest so you would come back and read more of the interesting stuff I had learned about grains that definitely wasn’t going to fit in the previous article.

First, the reasons why we refine so much of the grains we eat:

Refined grains are prettier. Humans prefer their food white and not brown. The reason we still want our food white is not clear. Historically, white food was very expensive so only the rich could afford it and everyone else coveted it. White also symbolizes purity and I guess it’s easier to spot contaminants in white food than it is in brown food.

Refined grains cook faster. Removing the outer seed coat, whose purpose in life is to regulate the passage of water into the seed so that it germinates but doesn’t drown, makes the seed cook much faster. This is well illustrated in the cooking times of brown versus white rice; white rice takes half the time to cook.

Refining also extends the shelf life of grains. Most of the fats in grain are stored in the germ and aleurone layer (which I know you remember from last month is the layer just under the seed coat). Removing these reduces the risk that the fats will oxidize and become rancid, allowing for much longer storage times.

And lastly, refined grains are easier to chew and easier to digest. Maybe too easy. Refined grains are almost all starch. The vitamins, minerals, fiber and enzymes have been removed. During digestion, all this starch is converted to sugar, which quickly raises blood sugar levels and may contribute to increased risk of diabetes.

I’m not sure any of these reasons is good enough to make up for the lack of nutritional value in refined grains. You can always pretty up brown grains with bright colored vegetables. You can cut down on cooking time by planning ahead and soaking your grains overnight. Modern refrigeration takes care of storage issues. And you’re probably better off chewing your food longer and dealing with a bit of flatulence than eating a bunch of empty calories.

Besides, there are way more interesting whole grains than there are refined grains.

Take wheat for example.

There is the most ancient form called Einkorn. It has two chromosomes and has a flowing form of gluten that makes it sticky. It’s great for porridge but not so good for bread.

When Einkorn crossed with a wild goat grass about a million years ago, it led to various species of four chromosome wheat including Emmer (also known as Farro), and Durum. Durum is still one of the most important species of wheat and is used to make bread, bulgur, and couscous. If you want to eat local Durum wheat you could try Kamut, which is a registered name for a variety of Durum that originated in Egypt but was developed in Fort Benton, Montana.

Then about 8000 years ago, a four chromosome wheat crossed with goat grass again and yielded a bunch of six chromosome wheats that include modern bread wheats, and Spelt.

All of these varieties of wheat are available in their whole grain form (only bread wheat is readily available in a refined form).

If you think that’s a lot of different kinds of wheat, it’s nothing compared to the diversities in rice. There may be as many as 100,000 different varieties of rice in the world.

There are four major categories of rice: Indica, Japonica, Aromatic and Glutinous. Within these categories the size, shape and color range from tiny, thin, blond grains to fat, short black grains with pink, purple, red and green colors in between. Unfortunately (or maybe fortunately, since we might not have time to try any other grains), we don’t have access to all 100,000 in the US but there is still a wide selection to choose from (I especially recommend trying forbidden black rice, it’s delicious and beautiful).

While corn, the last of the big three grains, does have lots of unrefined varieties, in this country we feed almost half of what we grow to animals (5.25 billion bushels in 2008 as compared to feeding only 325 million bushels to humans) and it’s mostly one variety.

I’ll just skip over corn and move on to the lesser known but no less delicious minor grains.

Amaranth, buckwheat, millet, quinoa, sorghum and teff are not widely eaten or available in the US. When they are available they are not refined and therefore can make an interesting addition to your whole grain repertoire.

My favorite of the bunch is quinoa, which cooks as fast as white rice and can be used anywhere you would use rice. It’s high in protein, cool looking, and quite tasty. All of them are worth trying and are a great way to get yourself out of a grain cooking rut.

I could go on and on about grains (and you may, at this point think I already have) but instead I’ll leave it to you to do more exploring and next month I’ll talk about making organic Twinkies instead.


Millet Patties
Makes 6-8 patties

If you've tried millet before and been disappointed, give these patties a try. They will change your mind. They did mine.

1 c. millet
3 T. olive oil, divided
2 c. water
1 T. minced garlic
¼ c. finely chopped red pepper
2 T. finely chopped green onion
¼ c. peanut butter
1 T. soy sauce
2-3 dashes of Brother Bru Bru (other hot sauces will suffice but the Brother is the best)
1 T. chopped pickled ginger

Heat a small saucepan with a tight fitting lid over medium-high heat. Add the millet and stir constantly until it is lightly toasted and fragrant. Add 1 teaspoon olive oil and the water. Bring to a boil. Reduce heat to low, add the chopped garlic, and cover. Simmer for 20 minutes until the millet is soft and somewhat creamy. Remove from heat and let cool slightly.

Place still warm millet in a bowl and add the peanut butter. Stir to combine. Add the pepper, green onion, soy sauce, hot sauce and pickled ginger.

Heat the remaining olive oil in a large frying pan over medium heat. Form the millet mixture into 3” patties, about ½” thick. Saute the patties, browning them well on both sides. Serve immediately.

Serve straight up or as a substitute for a burger patty or like falafel with a tangy sauce.