More Updates From Our Quarantine Kitchen

We're still in quarantine, so we keep doing lots of cooking and baking.

My mom has made us some really special breakfasts. One of them was popovers. Some popover recipes call for a special pan, but we just used a muffin tin. They're easy to make, but look really impressive. They turn out like a cross between a muffin and a roll and an eggy pancake. They rise lots in the oven, but you don't beat the egg whites or add yeast or baking soda or baking powder. So how do they rise? I like learning about the science of cooking, so we looked up the answer. It turns out that when you put a thin liquidy batter into a really hot oven, the liquid creates steam, which gets trapped in a chemical structure created by the milk, eggs, and flour. The steam makes the popovers rise.

We always just stick my sister right on the counter when we cook! My mom pretends that she's a delicious ingredient!

See how the popovers pop?!

Another fun breakfast that we had was pancake cereal. It is just teeny tiny pancakes piled into a bowl like cereal. We put maple syrup on top, but not as much as you would use if it were milk. I would actually probably like that but my mom definitely wouldn't let me!

Doesn't this look fun to eat?

But my favorite breakfast that we have had recently was cloud eggs. For this recipe you do beat the egg whites A LOT! Then you cook them in the oven and put the yolks back in the middle at the end. My mom added grated cheese into the whites to give them more flavor. We all loved these. The whites definitely look like clouds and I thought that the yolks looked like suns!

My mom said that this is what unicorns eat for breakfast!

We've also done lots of afternoon baking. We started joking that we're becoming British and having tea time! One day we made Murder Cookies. The name is scary but the cookies are delicious!!! They are named that because somebody found this old recipe while researching a murder. My mom wanted to make them because she thought it was an interesting story and that my brother would like the name! They're molasses cookies. They have an ingredient that I'd never used before, which is mace. Mace is similar to nutmeg but milder. These were very soft and flavorful and my dad liked them with coffee.

The recipe doesn't say it, but we cooked these at 350 for 12 minutes.

We actually made two more recipes with similar flavors. The first was we made our own Biscoff cookies. Sometimes we get real Biscoff cookies when we fly on airplanes, and my brother and I love them! You're supposed to roll out the dough, but it was too crumbly so we patted it out and that worked fine. My mom let us each choose some cookie cutter shapes to use. My sister made a W because that was her preschool's letter of the week. We make K's for one of our favorite babysitters named Kelsie, and of course we made H's! I also picked hearts, butterflies, suns and flowers. My brother randomly picked a duck, which I thought was funny, but came out really cute. These tasted more like sugar cookies with Biscoff flavors than real Biscoff do, but I thought that these were even better.

Can you find my brother's duck? Quack quack!

Our third similar baking project was graham crackers. This was another dough that was supposed to be rolled, but we ended up patting out. Some of the crackers turned out thicker than others because patting makes it less even than rolling. I liked the thicker ones. We used a real graham cracker to trace and get the size right. It was fun to poke the holes with a fork. We didn't like these as much as some of our other creations. Part of the reason is that we thought they were baked for too long. So if you make these, definitely cut down on the cooking time.

This is how we made the holes.

Our lines weren't straight, but I still think they looked cute.

Finally we got off of our cinnamon molasses theme and got more colorful! My mom and I picked this confetti cookie recipe to surprise my brother with. They are cream cheese sugar cookies and tasted similar to the cut out cookies we make at Christmas. These were good cookies for us to make because we each got a job forming them. One person scooped the batter and rolled the dough into a ball. Another person got to push on the sprinkles and then the third person got to flatten them with a glass and smoosh the sprinkles in. We each took turns doing everything, but my sister couldn't really roll the balls.

I like rainbow, but you could use any kind of sprinkle.

This is how we flattened them.

Doesn't looking at these make you feel happy?

Another cookie that we made was Kitchen Sink Cookies. They're called kitchen sink cookies because you throw whatever kinds of sweet and salty mix-ins that you have into the batter. We used some m&ms and chocolate from the Easter Bunny, and peanut butter cups, and my mom bought some pretzels and chips to use, since we don't usually have those around. I learned a new technique making these cookies. You roll the dough into a log and wrap it in saran wrap and put it in the fridge to chill. Then you cut slices to put on your cookie sheets.

I thought these looked like giant cookie dough salamis!

These cookies are great if you like crispy crunchy cookies. Unfortunately, we do NOT! We like soft cookies. My mom cooked the second batch only half as long as the recipe said, and they were STILL not soft. We've been doing some reading though about how you can alter cookie recipes to make cookies softer, so I'll let you know if we try again and get it figured out. Stay tuned!

Other people liked these cookies a lot though. We've been driving around and dropping off some of the stuff that we bake for friends to cheer them up during quarantine. We started doing it as a nice gift for other people, but realized that getting out of the house and seeing our friends, even if it is just saying hi and waving from far away, cheers us up too! We gave these to my brother's swim coach and the head of my sister's preschool and I think they liked them!!

This is a good quarantine recipe because there are lots of options for what you put in them.

After all these cookies we were ready for something different and so we made a lemon coconut snacking cake. A snacking cake is a single layer sheet cake that is often served in the afternoon. I think it is a funny name though! This cake was easy to make.

I liked sprinkling coconut on top.

The hardest part of this recipe was waiting for the cake to cool and the glaze to set before we could try it. My mom thought this cake was only okay, but everyone else loved it!

Usually my mom packs us lunch boxes for school, but obviously that's not happening now, and my dad is home for lunch these days too! One day my mom was making my dad tuna salad and realized that we didn't have any mayonnaise, so we decided to make our own. It turns out that making mayonnaise isn't hard, it just takes a long time because you need to add the oil in teeny drops. My mom got a little impatient! But we used a very fancy truffle mustard and truffle salt to turn the recipe into a truffle mayonnaise. It was really good and my dad loved his sandwich!

I thought that this mayonnaise looked perfect.

I'm not allowed to eat tuna because mercury isn't good for kids' brains, but my mom gave me a taste. It was delicious!

Last night, my dad made a very fancy special dinner and we got to help him.

My parents make me put my hair back before I cook on the stove so that my hair doesn't accidentally catch on fire!

We grilled carabineros which are large deep-sea prawns. We had them when we were in Spain last year and Portugal this winter and my dad ordered some to make at home. Carabineros actually means "police" in Spanish. They were named that way because their very red shells matched the uniforms of Spanish custom police.

He served the shrimp with charred lemons and they were amazing! I even ate one plain!!

The carabineros take some work to get out of their shells and don't have lots of meat, but taste sweet and delicious. I think it takes longer to shell one than to eat it though!

The carabineros were great, but my dad made an even more special dish to go along with them. He blistered white and green asparagus and made a sauce with pureed asparagus, garlic, shallots, olive oil and a tiny bit of cream. Then he served it with trumpet mushrooms and an egg that he poached in red wine. My mom said that it was one of the best dishes she had ever had!

Isn't the purple poached egg pretty?

This is what the egg looked like split open.

One of my favorite projects from all of quarantine was garden focaccia. We used a regular focaccia recipe, but decorated it with herbs and vegetables to look like a garden. My mom saw a picture of something similar online and thought that it would be fun for us to do. This focaccia recipe was good, but it needed more oil. The recipe already had a lot more than we usually use, but it wasn't enough, so I guess that the focaccia in restaurants must have tons!!!!

My brother and sister and I each got to make our own trees and flowers.

Everything looked less vibrant once it was cooked, but it still looked pretty.

I miss my friends and my teachers, but the cooking part of quarantine is really fun!