Think about Reese’s cups.  Now think about them with dark chocolate. Really good dark chocolate. And real, creamy peanut butter.

Now imagine that you could make them with things you probably have in your cabinets right now.

See?  Dangerous.

Fortunately for those of us who prefer not to overdose on sugar, they can be a pain to make in large quantities, mostly because they require working slowly.  But they’re still well worth the effort, and if you’re more concerned with taste than appearance, you can skimp on some of the detail without ill effects. With Halloween just around the corner, there’s really no reason not to make them right now.

For this batch, I decided to make my own peanut butter.  It was entirely unnecessary, but it was something I’d been meaning to try, so this seemed like the ideal opportunity.  In retrospect, I could have done better with the consistency if I’d used store-bought, but it was tasty nevertheless.  To make peanut butter: first, put some peanuts in the food processor.  Then, grind them up.  And grind them more. Maybe scrape down the sides, if it’s piling up. Then grind them some more.  Then, you’ll have peanut butter.  Stop while it’s still chunky, or keep going until it’s smooth – it’s up to you.  If it’s going slowly, you can do what I did, and add a bit of vegetable oil to speed things up.  That’s where I went wrong, in this case.  The oil made it smooth and spreadable… perfect for sandwiches, but too soft to hold its shape while I covered it in chocolate. If you have a choice of nut butters when you’re making these, pick one that’s on the firm side.

These are easy to make in cupcake wrappers, either full-size or mini ones.  I used mini this time, but the large ones are easier to fill.  They are also larger when you eat them (and you still can’t eat just one).  Consider yourself warned.

To start, melt your favorite kind of chocolate in a bowl in the microwave.  Go slowly – heat until it’s mostly melted, and stir until the last bits melt away.  That will help keep it at the proper temperature.

Formally, you’d want to temper the chocolate, which involves keeping it at a specific temperature as you work. Tempering is a bit annoying, I find, and the main benefit is that it gives the chocolate a nice, shiny, non-cloudy color when it cools. Otherwise, you’ll get a “bloom”: white fats rising to the surface.  It’s harmless, and if it discourages other people from eating your candy, that means more for you. But if you’re making these for a gift, or a party like I was, you should temper the chocolate.  If you’d rather not bother with thermometers, my rule of thumb is that if the chocolate is almost too thick to pour or drip off a spoon, it’s properly tempered.

Set out your wrappers on a plate or tray.  One at a time, drip chocolate into each wrapper and spread to form a layer across the bottom.  Let them cool – either on the counter for 10 minutes, or briefly in the fridge, until the chocolate is solid.

Using a small spoon (for my little wrappers, I used a half-teaspoon), scoop the peanut butter on top of the chocolate.  Don’t let it touch the edges of the wrapper.  This is where the big wrappers are easier to work with.  You will almost certainly use less peanut butter than you’d expect.

Finally, cover the peanut butter in more melted chocolate.  You may need to warm up your chocolate, just a little.  Tilt the wrappers so the chocolate makes its way all around the sides, and traps the peanut butter.  Then, just let them sit until the chocolate cools and turns solid.  (While you wait, you can “clean”  the chocolate-melting bowl: the best part of any candy-making project!)

I used half a pound of chocolate and perhaps a quarter pound of peanut butter to make 30 small cups.  You can use plain peanut butter, or mix in a spoonful of powdered sugar to make it just a bit sweet.  They will be gobbled up, until your friends start begging you to hide them.

Unprocessed food is any food that could be made by a person with reasonable skill in a home kitchen with readily available, whole-food ingredients.

You don’t necessarily have to make them yourself, at home – but you should only eat things that you could theoretically have made.  Beer is okay: plenty of people brew beer at home, even if you don’t.  Same with cheese, some varieties of which you can make at home without any special equipment.  But chocolate is only okay if it doesn’t have additives, and cookies could be okay, if you used whole grain flour (which could be milled at home) and a natural sweetener (unlike sugar, which requires too much processing).  Anything with corn syrup is right out.

Isn’t that cool?  The rules are somewhat arbitrary (and certainly open to bending), but the whole project is an exercise in consciousness, a new awareness about what goes into the foods we eat, even things we cook ourselves. There’s an incredible amount of processed foods, chemicals and preservatives in almost everything you buy at the store.  If you’re buying something with an ingredient list, odds are that list contains at least one processed ingredient, something that could only be made in a lab or a factory. Reading labels is a scary, dangerous business!

While I won’t be going unprocessed for the whole month, I’d love to participate in a small way, by making some things from scratch that I wouldn’t normally.  Perhaps I’ll make cheese, which I haven’t done in a long time.  I will almost certainly make homemade peanut butter cups for Halloween, and will share the recipe.  I’ve never made peanut butter by hand, but this would be a good excuse to try.  And I’d love to experiment with different sweeteners – at the link above, there’s a great discussion of how sugar, agave, honey, and other sweeteners are processed.

Is there something you’ve always wanted to try making from scratch?  Consider this a good excuse to try it.

Or, is there something you’d like to see me make from scratch, and tell you about?

The more revolutionary idea was a big shortcut in the process.  I wish I could remember where I read this one. Usually, when you make tomato sauce, it’s a lot of work. Before you even start you have to prep the tomatoes in the way Deb at Smitten Kitchen describes, by blanching them, peeling them, squeezing out the seeds, and chopping them.  It means working over a big pot of boiling water before you even start cooking the tomatoes. It requires a big assembly line set up in your kitchen, and if you’re making a big batch, it takes some time.

Here’s how you make it easier: don’t do any of that.  Instead, just puree them.  Rinse the tomatoes off, cut out the cores and any bad spots, and stick them in the food processor. A few pulses, and you’ll never know the skin and seeds were there (but you’ll still get all the added nutrition). That’s it. Then you make sauce.

The problem with this approach is that you retain a lot of extra liquid, much more than if you squeezed out the seeds and juice. That’s why the traditional process is, well, traditional.  But there are solutions.  You can aim for a thinner sauce.  You can cook it a couple extra hours.

Or, you can add mushrooms, like I did.  Because the second idea I found was making a vegetarian version of bolognese sauce (usually made with lots of meat).  I saw suggestions for making it with lentils, or with mushrooms.  I picked mushrooms for this because, frankly, I like them better, and because mushrooms are amazing at absorbing liquid. And what did we need in this sauce? Less liquid.  So I ground up a box of mushrooms, and tossed in some finely-chopped dried porcinis, and it worked just right. Even better, all the extra mushrooms made the sauce taste rich and “meaty” – as meaty as you can get without beef.

You can scale this recipe up, or even down, as you see fit.  As with most of my “recipes”, you can adjust most ingredients to taste. The amounts below made enough sauce for about 3 meals for the two of us, and it keeps well.

Easy Vegetarian Bolognese Sauce

3-4 large, fresh ripe tomatoes – they don’t have to be in perfect condition, but should be good quality
1 onion
1-2 cloves garlic
1 tbsp butter
One 10-oz box of mushrooms (I used baby bellas)
Oregano & basil
Salt & pepper

Melt the butter in a large saucepan or pot (large enough to hold everything). Chop the onion, and saute until lightly browned.  If you feel ambitious, cook until it’s carmelized. When the onion is almost done, add the garlic and cook a few more minutes.

While the onion cooks, finely chop the mushrooms, to about the consistency of ground beef.  When the onions are done, add the mushrooms and saute for a few minutes.

Rinse the tomatoes. Cut out the cores and any bad spots.  Process them in batches in a food processor (if yours is like mine, it may help to cut the tomatoes in quarters first). When they are pureed, add them to the pot.  Add herbs, and bring to a simmer.

Simmer the sauce over low heat until it’s reached the desired consistency. This could take 1-3 hours, or possibly more.  It needs little attention, but stir it every 15 minutes to keep a skin from forming on the top.

Whipped cream is one of those things.  Contrary to popular belief, whipped cream doesn’t naturally come from a can. It comes from cream, which comes from a cow. And if you’ve never made whipped cream from scratch, you won’t believe how good it tastes.  It tastes like cream, while the kind from the can… doesn’t really taste like anything. On top of that, it’s among the easiest things in the world to make. Any kid old enough to use an electric mixer could make whipped cream from scratch.

So it seems strange to me that you almost never see real whipped cream.  Maybe you can find it at a really nice restaurant, or at the better sort of ice-cream shop, but 95% of the time, if you order something that comes with whipped cream, it’s the stuff from a can. And to that, I usually say “no, thanks” because it’s just not the same.

It’s also easy to make flavored whipped cream (though I usually don’t). By coincidence, I read this morning about a company that’s making boozy whipped cream – but with liqueur-flavored additives, not the real thing. If you make it yourself, you can flavor it however you want. Just add a splash of liqueur, or vanilla, or melted chocolate, or orange zest… the possibilities are endless. My only caution is not to add too much of anything, because the end product will be softer.

It’s so simple that it almost doesn’t merit a recipe. But here it is, anyhow.

Real Whipped Cream

1-2 cups of heavy cream (depending on desired amount)
sugar, to taste
other flavorings, to taste, as desired

Before you start, the cream should be nice and cold. If you put the bowl and beaters in the freezer for a few minutes, that will make things go faster.

Put the cream into a medium bowl. With an electric mixer, beat the cream on medium until it just begins to thicken.

Add a spoonful or two of sugar, and your flavorings. Blend it in, then taste, and add more if needed.

Then, just keep mixing, on high.  Stop when it’s as firm as you want it. It will take about 5 minutes, or less. Serve it on just about any dessert, and don’t forget to lick off the beaters!  It’s best eaten right away, but it’ll keep in the fridge for a few days.

Christmas is right around the corner now, and if you’re in a sudden panic realizing that you haven’t gotten all your gifts, never fear: there are a lot of quick, easy, and thoroughly impressive-looking foods you can make as gifts.  I was snowed in on Saturday, and made a stunning amount of food (which I then had to find room in my suitcase to transport).

Our crazy machinations included peppermint bark (see recipe below), and these delicious rosemary-maple glazed nuts from Marisa at Food in Jars.  You could also try chocolate covered orange candy, or truffles (neither are hard, though they’re more time-intensive.

You should also check out Smitten Kitchen’s list of gift-able recipes – warning, do not drool on your keyboard while reading the list.

The ingredients for all these recipes are simple and easy to come by.  I like Trader Joe’s for finding large quantities of nuts and decent-quality chocolate at really good prices.

The trick for this peppermint bark (and for the truffles and candied orange peels, and anything else involving melted chocolate) is a process called tempering.  Tempering means letting chocolate harden at the right temperature and rate.  And it is a little tricky.  You know when chocolate gets old, and it sometimes gets a layer of white stuff across the surface?  That’s called blooming, which means that some of the fat has separated out to the surface.  It’s harmless, it won’t affect the taste, but it’s not so pretty to look at.  If you melt the chocolate down and temper it, no more bloom.  If you melt chocolate and let it harden at the wrong temperature and speed, it will invariably bloom.

This is my current favorite tempering method, courtesy Mark Bittman’s blog, Bitten.

To be honest, tempering is kind of a pain in the ass.  It’s time consuming, requires close attention, and if you spend to long working with it, it’ll get too cool and have to start over.  I find that when it’s properly tempered, it’s already too thick to work with.  Mark Bittman points out that bloomed chocolate can have pretty, swirly patterns, which actually look kind of nice.  So, if you’re feeling a little lazy, or the tempering doesn’t quite work out, just pass it off as an artistic choice.

This recipe is, I suspect, very adaptable.  You could try nuts, other candies, whatever you like in place of the candy canes.

Peppermint Bark

• Several pounds of good quality, semi-sweet chocolate
• About a dozen medium, peppermint-flavored candy canes (or other topping of your choice)

1. Break the candy canes into small pieces.  The best way I found to do this is to start by breaking them by hand, then put the pieces a few at a time into a mortar and pestle.  Instead of grinding them, as you usually do with a mortar and pestle, use the pestle to smash them to bits.  Be careful – pieces may go flying.  Another way to do this might be to put the pieces in a plastic bag, then go at them with a rolling pin or even a hammer.  Take care not to damage your furniture, smash your fingers, or frighten small animals.
2. Line a couple edged cookie sheets with waxed paper.  We used 2 sheet for 2-3 pounds of chocolate.
3. Melt the chocolate carefully in a double boiler (or a bowl, set over a saucepan with a little hot water in the bottom).  Don’t let any moisture get into the chocolate or it won’t harden properly.
4. Temper the chocolate.
5. Pour the chocolate into the prepared pans, smoothing it with a spatula.  Sprinkle the candy canes over it.  You can carefully tamp down the candy cane bits if desired.
6. Let it cool for several hours until completely hardened.  Peel off the wax paper, break the bark into pieces.  No need to make neat and tidy pieces – jagged edges make a nice effect.

The compromise?  A fancied-up version of our standby favorite: burritos.

Fresh tortilla with all the fixin's

There’s probably a “right” way to do Tex-Mex, and I’m pretty sure my way isn’t it.  The typical quick-and-dirty Tex-Mex dinner in my house is: can of refried beans, jar of salsa, grated cheese, bag of chips.  Not so impressive.  But last night it was much, much better: homemade salsa, homemade refried beans, homemade tortillas (plus non-homemade cheese… what can you do?)

The salsa was the easy part, and I followed a pretty standard pattern: fresh tomatoes (I used Cherokee Purples), garlic, onion, red pepper, cilantro, lime juice, all chopped up fine and mixed together.  As a general rule, you should chop everything more finely than I did, or use a food processor, or else you’ll have very chunky salsa. But sometimes that’s nice.  I still haven’t figured out the trick of keeping salsa from getting too watery – I even squeezed out (and saved) the juice from the tomatoes, but it was still very wet.  Any of you know how to deal with over-juicy tomatoes?

Fresh tomato salsa

I learned a few months ago that you can make refried beans from scratch, and it was a revelation.  No more canned refried beans for me!  I’ve been waiting and waiting for a chance to share this one with you.  It’s fast and easy, and much tastier than the processed kind.  It has a pleasing, chunky texture, and you know exactly what’s in it. (I always felt there was something a little… odd… about refried beans.  Not sure why, except that they kind of look like dog food.  Am I the only one who’s noticed that?  The homemade kind definitely don’t!)

I had never made tortillas before last night (except maybe at some long-forgotten, ambitious co-op lunch), but I’d always kind of wanted to try.  It turned out to be nearly the easiest bread I’d ever made.  I say nearly because you do have to roll them out.  It’s not that arduous for a small batch, but it would give me pause if I were throwing a party.  It is easier, of course, if you have a willing cooking partner, which I did, so I can’t honestly speak to how long it took.  (Incidentally, both of the cookbooks I referenced suggested “if you have a tortilla press…” which I’d always thought was a silly single-purpose gadget.  After last night, I can imagine that if you made these with any regularity, you would really, really want to have a tortilla press.)  But the cooking is incredibly, delightfully quick: toss the tortilla on the frying pan, wait about 30-60 seconds, flip it, wait another 30 seconds, remove and repeat.  These tortillas were so well-behaved I couldn’t believe it.  They didn’t stick at all, firmed up quickly enough that you could flip them just with tongs, and yet stayed soft enough (mostly) that you could make a burrito out of them.  The hardest part was just getting them into the frying pan without letting them double over – as you can see, most of ours ended up rather misshapen.  But that didn’t affect their usefulness or deliciousness!

What do you like to make from scratch that you’d normally buy in a store?  Comment and tell me!

Mash the simmering beans against the side of the pot until they get nice and thick

Refried Beans

• One can (or a couple cups) of black or pinto beans
• 1/4 of an onion, chopped
• 1-2 cloves garlic, chopped
• 1 tablespoon vegetable oil
• A few tablespoons of water or (better yet) stock
• salt, pepper, and other appropriate seasonings

Heat the oil in a medium saucepan, over medium heat.  Add the onion, then the garlic, and stir occasionally until they’re beginning to brown.  You could add cumin or other seasonings now if you wanted.

Add the beans and liquid, bringing them to a simmer.  Once they’re warm, start stirring and mashing the beans against the side of the pan.  As you mash, they’ll slowly become smooth and thick.

That’s all there is to it!  Keep stirring and mashing until you like the consistency.  Don’t let them dry out – if they start to, add more liquid.  The end product should be thick but easy to spoon and spread.  Towards the end, add salt and pepper to taste.

A stack of fresh, hot tortillas

Tortillas

• 2 cups flour (white or whole wheat)
• 3 tablespoons oil
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 2/3 c warm water (plus or minus)

Stir the flour and salt together.  Drizzle in the oil and mix until it’s well blended.  Add water slowly, stirring, until you have a soft-ish dough that holds together well.  (One book I read described it as “the texture of your earlobe” which I think is great.)  Cover it with plastic or a damp cloth, and let it sit about 20 minutes.

Divide the dough into 8-10 pieces and form them into balls.  Let them rest a few more minutes, then roll them into flat, round disks.  They should be very thin, about as thin as you can get them without them falling apart.  We found that the thinnest ones had the best taste when cooked, but were more likely to crack when we rolled them – slightly thicker ones were more pliable but tasted kind of doughy.  So, experiment and look for a happy middle ground.

The tortilla will start to form bubbles on the skillet, and cooks very quickly!

To cook them, put a large, dry (unoiled) skillet over medium to medium-high heat and let it get nice and hot.  Add the first tortilla and let it cook for less than a minute, until there are nice brown spots on the underside.  Then flip it, and cook another 30 seconds for the second side to get browned.  Then remove to a napkin-covered plate, and start the next one.  Don’t multitask or get distracted!  They cook (and burn) quickly.

Our very own burrito bar, (almost) all made from scratch: beans, cheese, tortillas, salsa