Baking for Child's Play

I have finally almost recovered from PAX East. While a three day convention of gamer geeks is always one level of exhausting, this year I decided to take an extra step to get involved with the Cookie Brigade.  The cookie brigade is a group of, essentially, guerrilla fundraisers for Child's Play. Child's Play is a charity that provides toys, games, and books to children's wards in hospitals.  Essentially it's gamers coming together to fight the stereotype that video games are a force of evil, and do an awful lot of good in the process.  Child's Play also just happened to be founded by the same guys who run PAX. I know it's somewhat circuitous, but it makes sense in the end, right?

Volunteers will bake an insane number of cookies, candies, and other types of baked goods.  Some people will bake thousands of cookies for this three day weekend, and there's even an achievement of the dozen dozen dozen. Yup, that is 1,728 cookies baked by one person, for one three day weekend. Then, other volunteers (and sometimes some of the same ones) will give out all of these treats for free, while being exceptionally grateful for all the donations to child's play that we receive.  Every cent goes directly to the charity.

I actually took a couple of days off of work before PAX just to have more time to bake. There were some oatmeal raisin cookies, chocolate chip cookies, rice krispy squares, raspberry meringue kisses, and some other bake sale-esque standards, but I thought I would share some of the lesser known things that I made:

Kirby Marshmallows

If you ever played video games in the 90's, you will probably recognize Kirby.  The marshmallow to the left is somewhat simplistic, but hey, so is the design of the character.

Marshmallows are fairly easy to make, in the realm of candy, and I've found that there are two different types.  Those that contain egg whites, and those that don't.  It isn't a question of being vegetarian, as they still contain gelatin.  So unless you choose to use a purely plant based gelatin, they will not and cannot be vegan.

Other than the egg whites, the recipe is basically the same.  Sugar, corn syrup, water, gelatin, vanilla, and then a "marshmallow mix" of powdered sugar and corn starch.  If you have tried any of my gummy candy, the basic ingredients aren't that different. 

Alton Brown has a reasonably good marshmallow recipe that does not contain egg whites.  I've tried the recipe, and it's not bad.  I don't, however, think that the result creates quite as light and fluffy an end product as what I could get in a store.  So as much as they look cool, and I could impress people by saying that I've made marshmallows, or go ahead and make all sorts of interesting flavors, they don't make it all the way to "oh my god" good.

If I want to get to that level, I have to turn to David Lebovitz. His is my go to recipe. Instead of weighing out my gelatin (as it's between 2-3 envelopes of standard gelatin), I will usually just use the 3 whole packets. I've done it both ways, and there is enough flexibility in the execution that they turn out great.  If I'm feeling lazy, or if I don't have an immediate use for the egg yolks, I will just use meringue powder/dried egg whites. 

Now the question, why egg whites?  If you've ever made a meringue or an angel food cake, you can probably guess.  Thinking about food science, what is an egg white and what does it do? If you said that it is a source of protein, and adds structure to whatever it is in, you get a gold star.  When baking, protein creates the scaffolding to provide form and structure.  This is the reason why bread (which uses a high protein flour) is chewier and can support larger air bubbles than a cake, which uses a low protein flour.  Another way to consider it is to think of bubble wrap.  Bubble wrap is a strong structure that will trap air inside.  In this case, the egg whites (along with the gelatin) is the 'plastic' from the bubble wrap that will hold the air.  If the plastic is weak, the bubbles will break, and the air escapes, leading to a dense, flat marshmallow.  If the plastic is too strong, however, there would be a lot of air, but it would be way too chewy.  Because of the huge amount of air that are in store bought marshmallows, I want to be able to maximize the air inside.  The egg whites help me do that. 

Because I wanted Kirby his traditional pink, I added a few drops of red food coloring until the mixture was the right color, and poured it out to set in cake pans.  Once the marshmallows set, a cookie cutter and some cake decorating gel brought his cheerful face to life.

Chichi Dango Mochi

Tri-Colored Chichi dango mochi

This is a type of rice cake that I came to learn about from people who grew up in Hawaii.  It not only has a coconut flavor to it, but also happens to be both gluten free and vegan, just by accident.  While friends of mine consider anything that's not at least 2-3 color mochi substandard (as it is traditional in Hawaii to do 2 or 3 colors) it is equally as tasty if it is just plain white.  The recipe I use is a blend of a few other recipes I've found, so I will put it here.  But virtually any chichi dango recipe will be pretty much the same.

Ingredients:

1 Box (1 lb.) of  Mochiko 

1 12 ounce can of Coconut Milk

2 cups sugar

1 teaspoon baking powder

2 cups water

1 teaspoon vanilla
1 teaspoon salt

Kinako (optional)

Food coloring (optional)

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit.
2. In a bowl, combine the Mochiko, sugar, and baking powder.
3. In another bowl, combine the coconut milk, water, and vanilla.
4. Add the wet ingredients to the dry and mix until combined, making sure to scrape the bottom of the bowl.
5. If making single colored mochi, pour into a greased 9x11 inch pan, cover tightly with tinfoil, and bake for 60 minutes, or until the top appears fully set.  Let it cool fully in the pan.  Slice into small squares (1-2 inches) and eat.  If desired, roll pieces in Kinako before eating or storing.
   
   If making tri-colored mochi, separate batter into 3 equal parts.  Add food coloring to achieve desired colors.  Grease a 9x11 cake pan, and pour the first part in the bottom.  Cover tightly with tinfoil, and bake for 10 minutes, or until the cake has set (there are no puddles on the top).  Pour the second color on top, re-cover with aluminum foil, and return to the oven for 20 minutes, or until the layer has set.  Finally, add the third layer, cover with aluminum foil, and bake for an additional 30 minutes, or until the final layer has set.  Let it cool fully in the pan.  Slice into small squares, roll in kinako if desired, and eat.  

Peanut Butter Fudge

I previously did a post on my peanut butter cookie fudge here, but even the basic peanut butter fudge is so good that it bears repeating. While the peanut butter cookie fudge is quite good, the original recipe is just about perfect, and can be found on the Marshmallow Fluff Page.  I tend to use a candy thermometer when I make it, but it is not necessary.  The ingredients are all very basic, with the only potential difficulty being marshmallow fluff.  Outside of New England I've heard it can be a little harder to find.  On occasion I've substituted regular marshmallows for it if I was running short.

There are also variations to try if you're being adventurous.

• The peanut butter cookie fudge linked above
• After pouring out into the pan to cool, mixing in swirls of Nutella, or other peanut butter friendly spreads
• After pouring out into the pan to cool, add a thin layer of chocolate to the top.

This fudge is fun because it is relatively easy to mold (for the larger silicone molds).  I did one batch as the portal companion cubes.  However, I have found that the molds tend to dry out the edges of the fudge, so there is a give and take there.  The molds make the pieces adorable, but the quality is a touch higher with just the squares.  I did have an idea during the craziness of baking, but I haven't had the opportunity to try it out yet. If it works, it will warrant its own post, so you'll just have to check back.

Blog Recommendation: Michael Ruhlman

I have recently developed a love for Michael Ruhlman.  I originally discovered him via the iPhone app Ratio, but have not yet picked up the book that it is supposed to accompany.  And It wasn't until very recently that I started reading his blog. There are recipes, cocktails, food rants, and all sorts of fun stuff. It's a very easy read, the photography on the blog is fantastic, and I often learn something while reading it.  The perfect combination!

I was originally just going to share it on the Puritan Therapy Facebook page, but there were too many posts to really pick just one.  So here is the list of where I think you should start.

1. America- Too Stupid to Cook: Ten thousand times yes! Over the decades marketing has convinced us that many life tasks are just too difficult.  Cooking is not hard.  Cleaning (while obnoxious) is not hard. Sewing is not hard. But marketers have spend millions of dollars and many years trying to convince us otherwise, so that we will buy whatever it is that they are trying to sell.
2. The "No Nitrates Added" Hoax: Another giant "boo!" to marketing. The moral of the story, if you don't understand how food works, you can easily be manipulated by deceptive marketing.
3. Food Fascism: This is one that I experienced myself when I was in Portugal doing my massage training.  I was the black sheep because, not only did I not aspire to be a macrobiotic vegan, but I actually ate RED MEAT! (I would also like to point out that even if you are smoking "organic" cigarettes, it's still highly likely you will end up with a smoking related illness... but I digress)
4. Bacteria! Run Away! Run Away!: This article even has delightful images drawn by Alton Brown! This article addresses the concerns about washing chicken. While I am much more prone to agree with Harold McGee with regards to the chicken stock argument, there is definitely an overreaction with regards to "germs", at least in the US. 
5. Cook Your Own Food Eat What You Want Think For Yourself: Where common sense trumps the most recent news story of what common food will kill you this week.  See, for example, the poor, maligned egg.
6. Friday Cocktail: The old-fashioned with homemade bitters : This gets me on multiple levels.  I do love me a good cocktail, but I also like knowing how to make random things.  I may now need to try making bitters...
7. In Love with French Onion Soup: Lastly, here is one of his food recipes, to give you a taste (pardon the pun) of what they are like.  I have not tried this recipe, but it holds up to what I have come to believe about very old school peasant food recipes.  It is very simple, does not have a lot of complicated ingredients, and does not involve a lot of fancy techniques.  It reminds me of challenges on shows like Top Chef where the chef has been asked to make the judges "last meal".  Inevitably the chef who wins is not the one who composes a highly technical and complicated plate.  The one who wins is the chef who makes the requested dish like their grandmother would make.  Simple, comforting, and well executed.

Not that Michael Ruhlman needs any help from me to gain readership, but I like to promote people who I think are doing good things.

Science and Cooking at Harvard

I saw this link multiple times on my Facebook feed, and even had two people send it to me directly.  My reaction when I saw it was something akin to "aw crap".  I've been going to the lectures throughout the series.  They are after work, and the lines have been getting long enough for me to really not want anyone else to show up, lest I not get in.  I'd heard about the first one from a friend of mine, and when I heard that Harold McGee was going to be speaking, I jumped at the chance. You may not know who he is.  My friend, who invited me to the first lecture, didn't know who he was. He is, essentially, the father of modern food science.

Ever wonder why toast turns brown? Why milk will curdle when mixed with lemon juice? What's the deal with water and chocolate?  Why are beans, in fact, the musical fruit?  Harold McGee knows. His first book "On Food and Cooking" is not a cookbook.  It's much more of a textbook, but about the science of food.  On his blog, Curious Cook, he recently did an article on the required heat for making caramels.  He has also been inspiration for people like Shirley Corriher and Alton Brown. Yes, I may be a little excited about the fact that I now have a signed copy of "On Food and Cooking".

The evening that he spoke, he split the time with Dave Arnold from Cooking Issues. He had some really neat demonstrations with regards to the heat transference of oil vs. water, the effect of liquid nitrogen on marshmallows, and the process of infusing substances with flavor (during which I made the mental connection with why drip coffee is more bitter than espresso, and why the proper steeping time for black tea is only 2-3 minutes). He also brought in a new toy he had for making popcorn. I think the point with this (other than being able to paly with his new toy) was to further demonstrate the ideal gas law in respect to cooking (PV=nRT). But back to popcorn.  If you watch Mythbusters, you may have seen this work before.  If not, here's a clip of how it should work.  Got it? Now let's take a look at what should NOT happen.

It doesn't matter who you are, you can still clear a building with burnt popcorn

This would be what happens when you don't pay close attention to how your valves are sealed, and just keep adding heat to try to get your pressure up.  This photograph, taken by Nate Holstein, captured the moment just after the fire alarm went off. Yes, this professional chef, highly successful restaurateur, and one of the founders of the Museum of Food and Drink set off the fire alarm and evacuated the entire science building at Harvard.

Jose Andres at Harvard University

The best combination of science and entertainment thus far has been the lecture by Jose Andres. Yes, the picture on the screen is of Jello, he was talking about diffusion and  spherification. If you search for images of his food, he composes these absolutely beautiful plates, where he has concentrated flavors, and encapsulated them into a liquid ball with a gelatin skin. Or you can watch even better videos.  The video of him building a Chihuli salad to the right is kind of amazing.

The "Reverse" Cappuccino

This is done by a professional chef.  But, like virtually any form of cooking, with a little science, and the right ingredients, you can do versions at home.  This encouraged a friend of mine and I to do a "sphere" dinner.  For a starter we had olives, then we made spheres of a roasted vegetable soup, had 4 types of meatballs (Italian, Asian, middle eastern and Mexican flavors), and spheres of yogurt served with fresh raspberries and macerated strawberries for dessert.  To top it off, we did a "reverse cappuccino".  This entailed spheres of a yogurt/milk mixture combined with some honey, and some espresso balsamic vinegar caviar on top.  Everything was exceptionally tasty, but nowhere even remotely near as pretty as a world famous chef can do.  Even without having any catastrophic failures, only the reverse cappuccino was pretty enough to even try to photograph.  So now that you've seen the best, here is the layman's attempt.  It was very tasty, but I think that I could use some more practice...

Why am I telling you all this today?  Today is the first day of the Massively Open Online Course (MOOC).  Registration is still open, and it promises to be a lot of fun.  I'll be taking it, and I recommend that anyone else does as well.

You can find the course at: https://www.edx.org/course/harvard-university/spu27x/science-cooking-haute-cuisine/639

Boston Festival of Indie Games- Game Reviews

I'll be the first to admit, I'm a geek.  I'm the third generation in my family to work with computers (do the math, that's actually rather impressive), I was raised on Star Trek and Doctor Who, and currently own at least 10 working game systems (including the computer and ipad).  My first video game that I remember was Logo, and the first time I stayed up until midnight on New Years was thanks to Buck Rogers, on Atari. And as I spent way too much time with video games over the weekend, I thought that I'd share.

Boston Festival of Indie Games

The second indie games festival was this weekend at MIT. Last year it was scattered in a couple of different classrooms, and people were packed into those rooms like sardines.  The odor was... impressive.  There were some games for the computer, but there were also a lot for phones and tablets.  I found two that were really unique, and later picked them up for my ipod touch.  Girls Like Robots, and Agent Higgs.

This year they had much more space, so it was a lot easier to get a look at the games on display. To a certain extent it was much less a con, and more a live action kickstarter event. Many games were in various levels of completion, but usually at a point where they could be tried out. I am not a stickler for top of the line graphics, especially for a game on a phone; however, if you want me to pay attention to your demo, at least have something that would be appealing to look at while I'm playing it. And if graphics is what your kickstarter is going to fund, at least have a static image of what you want the game to look like in the end. While I played a lot of games in the 80's, and still have a great love for some of them, it is a really hard sell to convince me to play something that looks like Space Invaders now. After the festival, there were three games that I was intrigued enough to actually download.

Wobbles

 If you ever played lemmings, this is a similar idea. You have 5 little cartoon guys to get from point A to point B. Unfortunately, they are not too bright. They will just walk off of cliffs, into water, probably straight into the jaws of a hungry Tyrannosaurus rex if you let them (note: I have not yet seen any dinosaurs in the game). So your job is to use tools to guide them from A to B, using tools like fire (to make them jump), fountains (to survive a fall), etc. On top of that, there are stars to collect to get a perfect level.

The game manages to balance cute without making you feel too badly if one of your little guys dies. I adored Pikmin as a game, but could never finish it. The Pikmin were just too cute, and I felt horrible when they got eaten, or worse, left behind. Wobbles are plenty cute, and their sound effects are well done, but I wouldn't worry about creating emotional attachments to them. The $1-$2 price range on this seems about right. It isn't a game that will change your life, but it can definitely fill up a few entertaining bus rides. It is available on Android and iOS.

Color Zen

The concept behind Color Zen isn't groundbreaking either. It is a color based puzzle game in a similar vein as Globs, one of my favorites. By matching colors, you change the color of the background. The goal of the game is to finish up with a solid block of color. It starts out really easy, and some of the levels do get rather challenging later on. It is a good thing that the basic game is free, because I have some issues with it. The game seems to have come out of the 90's. There are a lot of glaring neon colors, and the soundtrack seems to have been created on an old synthesizer.  Conveniently, one of those things can be corrected, by playing the game on mute. Unfortunately, I don't think that buying the extra levels would get rid of ads. As much as this was a neat concept, I would have to recommend giving it a pass. It is available on iOS and android.

Pombie Zong

Pongie Zong is a single player pong game with a rotating saw blade as the ball, and you use those saw blades to kill zombies. It's a pretty standard brick breaking type game, where you can unlock bonuses such as having more than one saw blade at a time, and there are toughier zombies that require multiple hits to kill. If you have a few minutes to kill and are looking for a quick twitch game, this is a solid contender.

I do have two issues with it though. First, the name was virtually impossible for me to remember. I remembered that it was a play on zombie pong, but I couldn't remember what. Yes, this may just be me, but I never consider myself that special. If you're a small name company, and people can't remember the name of your game, you will run into problems.

Secondly, zombies? Really? Zombies are currently a bit overdone. This game could have easily been gophers (even mutant evil gophers if you wanted to appease animal rights groups), and still would have the same appeal. If you have a game where you are protecting your lawn from zombies, sorry, it's kind of a thing. Honestly, I could see this as a mini game in Plants vs. Zombies. Of course, as this game is only available on android, it could always fill your need for zombie death while waiting for popcap to release plants vs. zombies 2 on anything other than iOS.