It bothers me to waste food. Sometimes, you need to make a larger batch of one component than what the recipe needs because it doesn't make sense to make a miniscule portion. Other times, despite my best effort, not everything that I make turns out visually perfect. The taste may be phenomenal but the appearance just doesn't cut it. I ran into both situation this week. I am happy to report that after a bit of tweaking, nothing went to waste. In fact, they reincarnated into a couple of beauties.
First, there was a batch of Sweet & Salty Brownies. The recipe specifically stated that it yields more salted caramel sauce than it needs. I know from past experience that cooking a tiny batch of caramel can be tricky at best so I went ahead with the original recipe. An hour later, I was the proud owner of a pan of brownies and a cup of delicious smokey caramel sauce. Of course there's nothing wrong to approach this dilemma with a straw but I saw other opportunities. See, it's not everyday that I bother to cook caramel and I immediately thought of one recipe on my to-bake list that could benefit from this situation. David Lebovitz posted a recipe of Peanut Butter Cookies with Caramel Peanuts a while ago. The multiple components of this recipe did not inspire me to jump into the kitchen but I really wanted to taste those enticing cookies. Having those salted caramel sauce in the fridge meant I was already half way done! The peanut butter cookie was tender but the filling of caramel and roasted peanuts truly made this cookie memorable. It added just enough gooey crunchy to an otherwise ordinary peanut butter cookie. I was happy that cup of caramel sauce found a good home.
Recently I've had very good karma in the kitchen and dishes generally turned out great. However, when I made a Fresh Ginger Cake earlier this week, it was a qualified disaster. I expected the cake to be moist and delicate but I did not anticipate it torn to pieces when I unmolded the cake! I took a few delicious bites and mourned the sorry looking mess in front of me. I could potentially nibble it away a little everyday but there must be a better option. Why, rum balls of course! Rum balls always seem old-fashion to me but they truly embody thriftiness. Bakeries make them to turn cake scrapes into yet another tasty source of revenue. I have not really tasted rum balls before but the gist is to bind cake or cookie crumbs with enough alcohol to form into bite-size balls. You can add in toasted nuts, dried fruit, spices, or cocoa to make it more interesting. If it sounds familiar, you're not imagining things. The very fashionable cakepops is just a riff on good ol' rum balls! I made mine with ginger cake, toasted walnuts, and dark rum in a food processor. Since the cake was so moist, it came together into a cohesive ball pretty quickly. I let this mixture age a bit for the flavours to mellow out. When it was ready, I rolled the dough into bite-size balls (1 tbsp) and coated with spiced sugar. The rum balls were air dried overnight to give it a thin crust. The gingery boozy flavour of these rum balls sure tastes like Christmas to me!
