Weekend Bake-O-Rama

If my weekend had a theme beyond “over way too fast,” I guess it would be baking, with a little cooking thrown in for good measure.

On Saturday I made an attempt at creating vegetarian bangers, a type of British sausage. If you’re ever looking for a cooking challenge, try coming up with a vegetarian version of something you’ve never eaten and never will eat, and which isn’t even typically served in your country. Thank goodness for the Internet. I read a bunch of vegetarian sausage recipes, and then a bunch of banger recipes, and somehow managed to do a bang up job (sorry, couldn’t resist) on the first try. The spicing wasn’t exactly right – too much white pepper and too much mace – but according to John, I got quite close to the real thing.

Vegetarian Bangers:
2 packages Smart Life Gimme Lean soy sausage one “pork” one “beef”
1 egg
3 teaspoons banger seasoning

Banger seasoning (adjusted to have less white pepper and mace):
4 tsp white pepper 1 ½ tsp mace
2 tsp salt 2 tsp sage
½ tsp nutmeg ¼ tsp thyme
¼ tsp marjoram ¼ tsp cloves

Mix all the ingredients together, roll into sausage “links” and fry up in olive oil until brown on all sides.

Traditionally, bangers are served with mashed potatoes and gravy, but John prefers to make them into sausage sandwiches.

Then I had an idea for an Indian baked rice pudding made with Basmati rice that I wanted to try. It turned out to be delicious.

Baked Rice Pudding
1 cup cooked basmati rice 1 tsp vanilla extract
1 cup milk 1 tsp (poss. 1 ½ tsp) apple pie spice
1 cup half and half ½ tsp salt
¼ cup honey 2 tbsp cornstarch

Start with the milk and cream in a medium saucepan. Dissolve the cornstarch in the milk and stir until smooth. Stir in the rice, honey, vanilla, apple pie spice and salt, and simmer over low to medium heat until thickened, stirring constantly. This should take 10-15 minutes. Pour thickened pudding into loaf pan (I used a heavy enameled one) and bake in a 325 degree oven for 20-25 minutes. The top will crust over and get a little brown, while the inside will remain creamy. You can slice and eat it still warm, or chill it in the fridge.

Today I made a practice version of a lemon fruit tart I was thinking of taking to a barbecue next weekend. John says it is tasty, but I am not sure it is ready for public consumption just yet. I think the lemon curd was too lemony and the tart crust was too thick. It seemed like the perfect summery dessert, but now I’m not sure. I’m taking the leftover tart in to work tomorrow, so we’ll see what those folks think.

I did make some excellent meringue cookies almost by accident. I had 6 egg whites leftover from the lemon curd, and a bag of chocolate chips, so I thought what the heck? I have this awesome little hand blender/whisk tool that John gave me for my birthday, so I whipped up the egg whites with some sugar, salt and cream of tartar, and threw in the chocolate chips. I was kind of annoyed at the meringue as I glopped it on to the cookie sheets, but it was really very easy to make and turned out yummy.

And that’s it. Funny, it felt like a lot more work than it looks like when I write it out like that. Although I did manage to get plenty of other stuff done too. Vacuuming, cleaning the kitchen 17 times, movie watching, book reading, continued obsessing over real estate prices, hiking, and even working out. Of course, I kind of had to work out, what with all the baked goods I've been producing. Never fear! All leftover baked goods will go to work, where they can make my co-workers fat instead of me.