$10? For a piece of Cake? Well, maybe...

My friend Charles tells me this cake should be worth $10 per cupcake - I don't know how that translates to slices. Anyway, that's what he says, but I don't know. I do know, it's some unbelievably delicious cake. Last year for St. Patrick's Day, I made Smitten Kitchen's car bomb cupcakes. Though the cupcakes are based on a drink created in the US, there was a significant discussion in her comments regarding the name's cultural insensitivity. Deb changed the name to Chocolate whiskey & beer cupcakes, which I think was nice of her. I won't use the insensitive term, but find the rename to be a little uneventful. Since this version is adapted to make cake and uses a different ganache recipe, I'll call this Guinness, Jameson, & Bailey's Cake. To Ireland, and all the deliciousness produced there thus enabling this recipe to exist - I salute you. And this cake. I definitely salute this cake. Amazing. Happy belated St. Patrick's Day, the day for a cake like this.

Guinness, Jameson, & Bailey's Cake. Adapted from Deb at Smitten Kitchen

You should know, this cake is not for the faint of heart, either in taste, or in preparation. This cake is a two day ordeal to put together, or a long, long one day ordeal. It takes a lot of time, so be ready to spend some time in the kitchen. When I was finishing the cake on St. Patrick's Day after work, I was in a crabby mood, and I was having some challenges with flying bits of chocolate & sugar. I had to regroup and remember that you can only bake with love, or your baked goods will turn out terrible. So I took deep breaths, and baked with love, and it turned out awesome. Remember this, it really does matter.

I made this with two 8" rounds, and had enough for a baby cake too, so I'd say this recipe is perfect for two 9" rounds. Above, the fun of adapting.

Preheat that oven to 350 degrees. Pam or butter your 9" rounds, then lay a piece of parchment paper in the bottom. Why, you might ask? To prevent the cake from sticking for one, and to prevent it from burning or getting crispy on the bottom. I think parchment makes for beautiful cake bottoms myself. To make these, trace the bottom of the cake pan on the parchment, then cut out, and place in the bottom of the pan. Pam or butter the bottom & sides before you do this. I like Pam, it's quick and easy, and it works.

Next make your cake. Here's your recipe: 

1 and 1/3 cup Guinness. Allow the beer to defoam and fill to the top of the measuring cup. If you have a 12 oz bottle of Guinness, as I did, you end up with about 2 oz left in the bottle, maybe slightly less.

Hey, did you know that all cake ingredients should, as a rule, be at room temp? I suggest it for this cake too. To bring your very cold eggs down to room temp, run them under warm water for a bit. Works like a charm. Your sour cream can come out when you start combining ingredients to let it get a little warmer.

1 and 1/3 cup butter (for that third stick, that's 5 and 1/3 Tbsp, but 1/3 cup is listed on the wrapper)

1 cup cocoa. I use Hershey's. You use whatever you want, and if you want to, buy some Omanhene, which I truly believe is the best cocoa ever in the history of the world. No, really.

2 and 1/3 cups all purpose flour

2 and 1/3 cup sugar

2 tsp baking soda

1 tsp salt 

3 large eggs (size matters people. large.)

1 scant cup sour cream. Just use the entire 8 oz sour cream you get at the store. I use Daisy. I'm sure you could use reduced fat, but I'd suggest you don't, as the cake will have more richness with the full fat sour cream.

Cake prep: In a small pot on the stove, add the butter and Guinness and bring it to a simmer. Add in the cocoa powder, whisk in, and let cool a bit. You should know that this mixture looks a little funky, even after completely mixed. Never fear, it will come completely together later when you combine everything.

While that's cooling, combine your dry ingredients and whisk together - flour, baking soda, salt, and sugar (sometimes a wet, in this case, a dry) in a small bowl. 

In a large bowl, use an electric beater to bring the sour cream and eggs together.

Then add the beer chocolate butter mixture to this. If you're impatient like me, you're going to want to temper this mixture a bit with the chocolate beer mixture before adding it all, to prevent cooking the eggs. So that means, add about a spoonful of the chocolate beer mixture to the bowl with the egg / sour cream mixture, mix, then do that again, then again, then again. What you're doing is slowly raising the temperature of the batter, so you don't cook the eggs. After doing that a few times, add in the rest of the mixture and combine.

Then add in your flour mixture, while mixing. Get a friend (or Alex) to help. Just get that mixture to completely combine, but don't get too crazy and over mix.

Pour into your cake pans, rap on the counter a few times to help air bubbles escape and encourage a denser cake (a win in this situation, though not all) and bake about 32 minutes. This was the perfect time for 8" rounds, so you might need a little more time for 9" rounds. 

 At 32 minutes, you should check your cakes with a cake tester, skewer, toothpick (I've used all of these), and if it comes out clean, they're done. I think that your nose tells you when cakes are done as well, but I think that may in part come with experience. Trust your tester over your nose, maybe. 

When your cakes come out, let them cool for ten minutes on a cooling rack, run a knife around the outside of the cake, flat side to the edge of the pan. Turn out with one hand on the top of the cake and the other hand with a pot holder holding the pan, which will be hot still. Peel off the parchment paper, turn right side up, and cool completely on the racks. After the cakes cool, if you're two daying it like I did, store them under a cake carrier separated by parchment paper. That's part one! And below, that's a piece from the baby cake I made. The cake makes an incredible chocolate cake in and of itself. So moist! It will probably be a new go to. I think it would make an extraordinary black forest cake, but that's another post...

Part two: We're making Jameson Whiskey Ganache!

I went with the Cake Bible ganache recipe for this, modified slightly to use Jameson. p 269 in my copy. Can I just say for two moments, the Cake Bible is awesome. Alex's mom gave it to me, and it is filled to the brim with awesome recipes and excellent explanations and techniques.  

12 oz  bittersweet chocolate. I use 3 of the 4 oz bars from Ghiradelli's at the grocery store. You could get fancier, if you want. 

1 and 2/3 cup heavy cream. Everyone I know and read is very anti ultra-pasteurized, so if you can find some that isn't, use that. Here in Portland, you can find it at New Seasons. 

1/4 c unsalted butter

Jameson, lots. I started with two Tbsp, but that wasn't nearly enough. So I added in another two, and then a little more. The next day, when I was getting ready to fill the cake, I added a little more. I wanted to taste the whiskey, which is difficult over the chocolate. I think a heavy hand in this case is good. I'd say I probably used a 1/3 cup total, just to give you a figure. Buy a small bottle instead of the baby bottles.

 

Pulverize the chocolate, after breaking it into pieces, in your food processor (you can chop by hand if you don't have a food processor, but it's very tedious). 

 

Heat the cream to the boiling point on the stove, about a 6 on electric stove. 

With the motor running on the food processor, add the cream in a stream to the chocolate. This will whip out of the top of the processor a bit, so prepare yourself. Keep processing a few seconds until smooth. Again, you could do all this over the stove, then use a whisk to combine, but it's going to take more time. 

Pour ganache into a bowl, let cool a bit, then whisk in the butter (room temp butter will make this much easier) and 4 Tbsp whiskey. Let cool completely. At this point for me it was late, so I let it cool enough that it wasn't sweating, then covered it and put in the fridge overnight. Then, I slept.

The next day, when I got home from work, I promptly took the ganache out of the fridge, as it was hard as could be. It also had a couple bits of water damage on top from condensation, so I scooped that out with a spoon. I microwaved it a bit (20 seconds, at most) to make it more pliable, then whipped the ganache with an electric mixer, briefly, which lightened up the color quite a bit. 

Oh yes, I also added more Jameson's at this point, about 3 Tbsp more, beating it in with the mixer. You don't want to whip this too long, because you risk making the ganache get chunky in a bad way - separated because of the cream that's in there - think about what you get when you overwhip cream. Not pretty. So just enough to aerate it. It's not going to be very soft, and it's probably going to go many places in your kitchen. Pro-tip, choose a tall sided bowl. Set this aside for part three!

Bailey's Irish Cream Buttercream

Yum. If you don't have one, as I don't, borrow a Kitchenaid from a friend, or Alex. Makes making buttercream 100 times easier. 

You need: 

two sticks of unsalted butter

about 7 cups powdered sugar

two baby bottles (2oz each) Bailey's - no substitutes! If you do, you'll be sorry.

a little heavy cream to get the icing to your preferred consistency. 

So you definitely cannot do this by hand, but if you don't have a Kitchenaid, you could use an electric mixer, which is how I usually make icing. Cream the butter, then add in the powdered sugar slowly, start with about 4 cups, then add in one of the bottles of Bailey's. Let it keep coming together, turning off the machine and using a spatula to push down the sides if you need to. Add more powdered sugar, then the other Bailey's, then a little cream until you get the consistency you want. I wanted light and fluffy and easy to spread. If you're planning to pipe it, you might want it a bit stiffer. If you want to pipe some and spread it too, remove some of the stiffer icing, then add a little cream to whip the rest into a spreadable consistency. If you add too much cream, never fear, a little more powdered sugar will fix everything. This section is a little under-photoed, no? It's just that combing butter and powdered sugar and Bailey's is not very exciting. However, if you could taste it, that would be an entirely different story...

Okay, so everything is prepped! Time to assemble the cake. Take out those two cake layers, and if you're brave like me, take a bread knife, and cut through the center of each layer, to make 4 total layers. I find that if you turn the cake as you cut through, you can easily keep it level. Remove the cut layers to additional parchment paper. Put the first layer on the cake platter, or whatever you're putting the cake on.

 

Spoon the ganache into a cake decorating bag, with only the inside attachment fit in the bag to stabilize the tip. You're not using an actual tip, you just want to have something to control the amount of ganache you put on the cake, and it doesn't hurt for it to be in the bag for a bit to help soften it with the heat of your hands. Pipe some onto a layer, then use a spatula to smooth out, making sure you don't go all the way to the edge, or you'll have a disaster when you ice the cake later. So stop the ganache about an 1/2" before the outside edge, although in this photo it's kind of too close to the edge in places. I fixed that. You could avoid piping the ganache, and just spread it right on, but it's not super soft, and you risk ruining your layers. That's why I pipe it on, and use the spatula to push down and spread slightly.

Place another layer on the cake, and repeat, two more times, then top the cake with the last layer, trying to keep everything as even as possible.

Grab your frosting, and pile a giant pile on top of the cake, and start spreading it out to the edge of the top. Add more on top and spread it so it starts falling over the sides of the cake... you're basically pushing it down the sides of the cake. Do this while turning and spreading until the cake is covered, taking care not to get too many crumbs into the icing. This is something that takes practice, so if you're new to this, don't fret if it's a mess. You'll get better at it.

So, once you've iced it, you're done! Unless you want to get fancier, and top it with something. I had leftover icing and ganache, so I quickly combined them in the Kitchenaid, the piped shamrocks on top. 

I wish I had had time to get sugar shamrocks from the Decorette Shop, but alas. At any rate, the cake was a hit. I hope you love the cake too, complex though it is. Let me know if you think it's worth ten bucks a slice. I'd probably need to work on making the look of it a little (or a lot) less rustic. But if you find Charlie's price is right, I'm definitely in the wrong business.

It's worth all the work! Make it for a crowd, a small slice goes a long way. Enjoy! -T

I'm back ... with Whoopie Pies ... but not just any whoopie pies.

Hello there. You might wonder where I've been, what with my grand claims of posting here more in the new year and whatnot. Well, I'll tell you. I gave up sugar and beer for the month of February, no small feat for a sugar fiend like me. And lover of beer. End result, I could totally give up sugar for another month, but why would I want too? It sucks much of the joy out of my life. I think instead, I will perhaps be more moderate in my sugar choices in the future. But at any rate, that's a partial reason why I've been away. But I'm back! I gave up my fast a couple days early to celebrate a friend's birthday. This friend loves the rum and coke like none other. Alex gave me a lovely little book called Booze Cakes for Valentine's Day, which just happened to have a recipe for rum and coke whoopie pies, and so, I knew the friend would have to have them for his birthday celebration. He thought he wanted key lime pie. He might get that next year, but this year, he got whoopie pies. 

These pies are serious. Seriously sweet, and good, but not nearly as coke-flavored as I would have hoped, their flavor is much more chocolately. Because you couldn't increase the soda in the recipe without affecting its outcome, I would suggest if you try this at home, you get some cola extract from your local decorator's shop to punch up the flavor. I think it would be worth it. You do *not* need to punch up the rum. Whew. I added a bit more than was called for, but I'll get to that. So here we go.

Rum and Coke Whoopie Pies from the book Booze Cakes, with very light adaptations, and suggestions for learning from my experience.

This is a fairly complex recipe, in that there are three separate recipes, and then assembly. It's really not too difficult, but it is time and space and bowl consuming. Make sure you have a lot of time, and bowls, and space.

Step one: make the cakes. Preheat the oven to 375 degrees.

Slightly soften one stick of butter - 1/2 cup. I put the butter in the microwave for 10 seconds to get it to the consistency I'm looking for. Alternately, you could leave your butters (you need more later) out on the counter for a few hours to soften. Beat together with one cup of sugar. You want this to whip this to make it fluffy, so beat on high for a few minutes. Add two eggs and 1 & 1/2 teaspoons vanilla. (the recipe calls for 1 tsp, but I always add a little more). Beat some more. 

In a little bowl combine 1/2 cup buttermilk and 1/4 cup cola. I used Mexican Coke, as I wanted sugar instead of high fructose corn syrup in my batter, but as I mentioned, the flavor did not stand out. I do think you should put in a drop or two of cola extract for a more robust flavor. Then combine this with the batter above. It gets kind of gross looking and separated here for a second, but fear not, it will come together when you add in your dry ingredients.

Mix in your flour - 2 & 1/2 cups, about a cup at a time, then add 5 tablespoons cocoa powder (I used plain old Hershey's but I think this would be a good recipe to fancy it up a bit, if you want to use something different. If I had some right now, I would be using Omanhene, which is my favorite cocoa ever),1 tsp baking soda, 1 tsp baking powder, and 1/2 tsp salt (I like kosher salt). Mix!

Get out two cookie sheets and lay down parchment paper on them. You need this to prevent the cakes from sticking. You could use your silpat too, if you have that, but I just use parchment. The recipe says it makes 8 pies, but those pies would be huge, and these are seriously sweet, so I'd say, make more than 8. I made 16 total, 12 small and 4 big, on three total cookie sheets. Drop them into little round balls on the tray. I use my finger to shape them slightly. Bake them for ten minutes (I did two sheets, then one sheet), for ten minutes. Let them cool. they'll come right off the parchment without sticking. That's part one.

While part one is baking, you can get started on your homemade marshmallow fluff, or you can open your pre-bought can of marshmallow fluff and take a load off! I did not do this so... beat 3 egg whites, 2 cups of light corn syrup (I had not quite two cups and so used a little dark, because, yes, I also had dark, and it was fine) and 1/2 tsp salt forEVER. 

Well, okay, it just seems like forever, but really, it's ten minutes. Here's where you should learn from me. One, buy a kitchenaid mixer so you don't have to do this by hand, and two, when you think it's really thick at 5 minutes, you need to still beat it for another 5 minutes, or you will have some consistency issues when you make your filling for the pies. So after all that blending and thickening, add 2 cups powdered sugar and blend some more. The finished product is in the picture below, and I think it's not thick enough at about 6 minutes. Remember to beat for ten minutes *before* adding the powdered sugar.

At this point, this stuff does *not* taste like marshmallow fluff, but miraculously, when you add 1 Tbsp of vanilla extract, it suddenly does. Here's something to think about at this point. Say you want to make peppermint patty whoopie pies... I'd say add peppermint extract here. Or had a reason for your filling to be orangey, or almondy (wedding cake whoopie pies?), I'd add that extract instead. Maybe 2 tsps of that extract to 1 tsp vanilla? Just a thought. So, the recipe says this makes 2 1/4 cups, but no, it makes like 6 cups! Those egg whites really whip up. So, if you're just making this for the pies, halve it!

Okay, so you've made and or opened your fluff. Now you must make the filling. Would you believe you add additional sugar? Like I said, these pies are serious. So, add one cup fluff to 1/2 cup slightly soft butter (unsalted!! unless you like your sweet filling salty instead) and beat like crazy. Again, your kitchenaid would come in handy here. Then add your rum - 3-4 Tbsp. Beat. Then add in 2 cups of powdered sugar. I found I had to add a lot more sugar than was called for - about another cup - to get the consistency I wanted - so I also had to add more rum to keep the flavor strong - about 1 to 2 more Tbsp. I suspect that if you whip your fluff longer than I did, or buy store bought, you probably won't have this problem. Let me know. 

So - assembly time! I found cakes that were roughly the same size, used an icing spatula to add a little filling (leaving a little space around the outside, knowing I was going to smush it), and then, I had whoopie pies. I still wasn't super wild about my filling consistency, so I stuck the cakes in the fridge for about an hour, and they held up very well - they made it to the bar, where the birthday fellow gave me the thumbs up for his birthday treat. The friends all approved. So glad to be back on the sweets! --T

Vegetarian Chili for January grayness

I spent a lot of time this afternoon flipping through cookbooks and the interwebs in search of something to make for dinner. At first I thought I wanted to make another bread and a soup, but nothing struck my fancy. I was thinking of things I had in my cabinets and remembered I brought back cans of Brooks chili hot beans from St. Louis, and thought, chili! However, I am tired of meat chili, so I wanted to branch out a bit and go for health! It is January after all, month of resolutions, not quite yet fallen by the wayside ... so I looked at the Joy of Cooking veggie chili recipe but wasn't inspired, so took my search ("veggie chili" and also "vegetarian chili") to the interwebs. I like to browse through Google images to find a picture of what I have in mind ... in this case I was thinking really hearty, vibrant in color, spicy, and with lots of vegetables. I came upon two recipes (1 & 2) which I ended up drawing from to make mine. How reductive is it to be making your chili from Epicurious (Bon Appetit, 2002) and a blogger's chili, which is adapted from two cookbooks' recipes for chili? Very. But you know, that's the awesome thing about chili, it is a recipe in constant flux, to the benefit of eaters everywhere.

Brooks chili hot beans might just be the most delicious prepared chili beans in existence, and very sadly, are not available in the PNW. I love them despite the dreaded HFCS listed on the label, they're just that awesome. At any rate, I wanted to use them in the chili. So at the store I purchased a can of 15 oz. black beans and a can of dark red kidney beans, which I love. I learned something by reading the label at the store; some dark red kidney beans are prepared in sugar and salt, and others, just in salt. Even though they were .30 more, I went with the sugar free variety, because it just seems like a weird thing to include sugar in a can of beans. In that aisle I also picked up a 28 oz can of diced tomatoes, a small can of tomato paste, and a small can of corn . . . Do I need to walk you through my entire grocery experience? Perhaps not. Let's proceed to the cooking.

So, okay, here is what I did, which is adapted from the recipes above.

Food processored to fine dice two yellow onions, one red pepper, and one orange pepper.

Measured out all my spices: 3 & 1/2 T chili pepper, 1 & 1/2 T cumin, 3/4 tsp red pepper flakes (I just heaped a 1/2 tsp and it was plenty), 1/8 t cayenne pepper (for me, this is about two or three shakes from the jar), 1 and 1/2 tsp coriander (I don't know exactly what this does for flavor, not too familiar with it in cooking), 1 tsp oregano, and 1/2 tsp salt. Later I threw in a few shakes of cinnamon, but I say include it with this group of spices, as it will get soaked up with everything else. I just tasted the chili (it's in progress as I write, and it's rather spicy - in a really great way. I think it needs just a little more salt, which I will throw in when I'm done cooking).

Alex recently reminded me that I do actually own a garlic press that he gave me, and so, in his honor, I used it to press out six cloves of garlic. Fun!

So, I threw a few tablespoons of olive oil into my stock pot, then added in the veggies, the garlic, and the spices, and cooked them until soft. Ten to fifteen minutes does this. I cook this kind of stuff on 5 or so on the electric stove, stirring frequently so it doesn't stick or burn, which is gross, and also, *not* delicious.

I drained and rinsed the black and kidney beans, and just added in the chili hot beans as is (was?). Then I threw in the 28 oz can of tomatoes, a small can of tomato paste, 6 oz I think (I really like this in chili), and because it was way too thick, nearly an entire 28 oz can of water to get the consistency I wanted. Add in batches if you don't want your chili to get too thin. 

Bring this up to a boil. Then taste to be sure the chili is doing what you want it too, and if not, add more spice to your needs. Then reduce the heat to low and let it come together for about an hour. Kill time. Check facebook, write blog posts, read people's reviews of the above mentioned recipes, and so forth. About ten minutes before you finish this cooking, add in a small drained can of yellow corn - or white, if you prefer, I like yellow in chili.

In the end, I hope yours looks as good as this:

 The sour cream and cheese cool down the spiciness a bit, plus, the taste! The cinnamon gives this chili kind of an extraordinary fragrance. I also decided to whip up some sweet corn muffins while I waited, they make a nice side. I hear it's a LOT colder in other parts of the country right now ... hope this warms you up.

**After eating note: this chili is freaking awesome. A definite keeper. Also, mine made about 13 cups, so this is great for leftovers.**

-T

Goals: 2011 and White Bean Soup

Post here more often. Make more food, spend more time in the kitchen. I realize how much peace it brings me to cook, to produce delicious foods, to share those foods with others. Mostly it is Alex and me sharing food, but this year, I want to have more dinners more often, work towards a regular day of the week when people are openly invited to stop by for dinner, something simple and delicious. I want to create more of a home this year, and to me, feeding people is so much of what home is. This last Christmas, my mom and I made over fifteen different cookies and candies to share with neighbors, friends, and family. We had a potential fudge disaster, which with some quick thinking turned into the best fudge we've ever made. Being in the kitchen, working together, was so wonderful. I baked with my mom, cooked Christmas dinner with my dad, made tapas with my sister Angie, and just enjoyed food and togetherness. Today, for the first time in 2011, I'm truly returning to the kitchen - sure, I've made new year's appetizers, huevos rancheros, and other small every day meals, but tonight I'm making split pea soup, fresh white bread, and vanilla bean pudding. I feel peaceful and happy. This is a feeling I wish to have more often. I hope that this feeling in turn creates more desire to post what's happening in my kitchen here.

But to begin, while I wait for my soup to come together and my bread dough to rise, I'll tell you about a lovely, simple and hearty soup I made late last year.

White Bean Soup with Kale, Tomato, and Andouille Sausage

 I found this recipe in the free Oregonian, which is distributed every week to my doorstep, and has its hits and misses. It's slightly adapted from the original. The soup was a hit, though I think it could be improved by a spicier a less generic andouille than I used. It would have been brighter and more fiery, a good balance to the mild beans and kale. But it was still delicious. I suggest getting a spicy andouille from your local meat counter instead of buying something pre-packaged from the deli case. Here in Portland, try Otto's or Gartner's. I don't think you could go wrong either of those places.

You need a large soup pot. If you're still reading here and you don't own one of these, really, give yourself a late Christmas present (or early Groundhog's day present) and go get one. Alex gave me one last year and it is one of my most used kitchen items. You also need to know you're going to make this a day in advance, as you will need to soak your beans overnight. Remember when you are soaking beans to add more than enough water to cover, as the beans will soak it up a bit, and also expand. Use a large enough bowl so that you don't come home to overflow.

I'm getting ahead of myself a bit. How about a list of ingredients? You got it:

you need to have these on hand the night before to soak: 1 lb great northern beans (white beans, dried)

8 oz andouille sausage, and really, get something fresh, homemade, and spicy - you want to create 1/4 inch-ish half moons from the sausage, so you'll cut it down the middle lengthwise, then across to create those half moon shapes.

1 small white onion, 1 and 1/2 carrots, 1 and 1/2 stalks celery (I think we might consider this soup's holy trinity) diced finely. Have a food processor? If so, you'll save yourself large amounts of time and energy by cutting the above into chunks and pulsing to finely dice (though I have a pretty picture of them separated below, doing this altogether is fine, and much more efficient). I love using mine for this purpose. So fast and so finely diced.

1 clove minced garlic

1 and 1/2 quarts chicken broth. It's easier for me to think in ounces. So if it is for you too, that's 48 oz. I use low-sodium from the store. Maybe I will start making broth, but not today.

1 28 oz can crushed tomatoes.

8ish oz kale - stems and ribs removed and chopped. Consider how much you'll be removing and discarding when you buy this at the store, and buy more than 8 oz.

olive oil / tabasco / balsamic vinegar / kosher s & fresh ground p / brown sugar.


This soup takes time, so shoot for making this on Saturday or Sunday afternoon, or getting home from work early to prepare and eat by 8:30 or so. Rinse the beans that have been soaking in a colander.

Fry up the andouille sausage in a pan to brown on all sides, add just a smidge of olive oil so it doesn't stick. Though this didn't occur to me at the time, I think it would be a great idea, to impart more sausage flavor and save a pan, to simply brown it in your soup pot, then remove to a plate while you saute the vegetables. Try that, let me know how it goes.

 In the soup pot, heat about a tablespoon of olive oil over medium high ish (6-7) heat, then saute the trinity until it is soft. Don't burn it. If you need to add a little more oil, do so. This takes about 5-7 minutes - in the last minute, add the minced garlic.

 Next! Add in the beans, the sausage, broth, and tomatoes. Bring it to a boil.

 After the soup boils, cover and reduce the heat to simmer the mixture for-ever. Forever being two or three hours. I think I was happy with the cooked yet firmness of my beans after about 2 and 1/2 hours. So when you think you'll need about a half hour more cooking time, add in your kale. Cook it for another 1/2 hour to soften the kale. I received commentary from soup eaters that it wasn't quite soft enough, so dependent on how soft you like your greens, maybe you'll need 45 minutes.

 At the very end of the cooking add in about a teaspoon and a half of balsamic vinegar, a few shakes of Tabasco, dependent on your vinegar-y, spicy desires, a heaping packed teaspoon of brown sugar, and salt and pepper to your taste. By the way, do you have a pepper grinder? If not, promptly go out and get yourself one! No cook should be using black pepper out of a jar. Feel free to play around with these suggestions to your taste, as all they're all doing is finishing (brightening, spicing up, sweetening) the soup. The recipe suggested using a smoked salt at the end too, so I threw in a little smoked sea salt. I didn't notice it, but have at it if you have the desire. Eat with delicious crusty bread, butter, beer, and friends.

Hope to send more posts out in 2011 - Here's to a new year. -T