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Marco's Pizzaria

I've never had thin crust Chicago style pizza before, but I have to say it's quite good. As best as I can tell the thin Chicago style pizza uses a similar crust to the famous deep dish pizza but is baked like a traditional pizza. This results in a crust that is crispy, chewey, and flakey at the same time.

Marco's is a new pizza restaurant in downtown Springfield (on Park Central West). It's fairly small (only about 12 tables), but has a nice feel. The staff is friendly and the pizza is exceptional. I think it's the best pizza I've had in Springfield.

IMBB 13: Chocolate Hazelnut Cupcakes

Every time I see an IMBB I intend to participate then I always miss the deadline (or slack off). This time I planned ahead and actually made cupcakes.

Sarah's birthday was on Sunday and we had a party on Saturday night. Birthday parties require cake of some sort and I figured that cupcakes would be perfect. Sarah wasn't so sure about the cupcakes, but I let her pick what kind they would be so she acquiesced. I think that she thought I would give up when she suggested Nutella flavored cupcakes, but I thought it would be perfect.

The recipe is a modification of my Baking is Science cake recipe (which I didn't post because I'd only made it once). I'm able to post it now though. I didn't write the recipe all that well which did cause some problems with the cupcakes, but the recipe is now great. I had intended to replace a bit of the cake flour with hazelnut flour, but I couldn't find any hazelnuts to grind into flour. We needed more than 12 cupcakes, so I made the recipe twice -- the short baking time was perfect for mixing up the second batch.

Chocolate Hazelnut Cupcakes

200g cake flour

1 1/2 tsp baking powder

25g cocoa powder

1/4 tsp salt

1/2 cup butter

70g sugar

2 eggs and 3 yolks

1/2 cup buttermilk (low fat, not no fat)

1/3 cup oil

1 tbsp hazelnut liquor

Preheat oven to 350°. Sift together the dry ingredients -- remember, sugar is wet. Cream butter and sugar. Combine with other wet ingredients and mix well. Add the dry ingredients and mix to combine.

These can be baked as 12 cupcakes or a 9" cake. Bake for 15-20 minutes as cupcakes or 35-40 minutes for a cake.

Frosting

1 container of chocolate hazelnut spread (such as Nutella), melted

2 tbsp melted butter

1/4 cup milk

powdered sugar to achieve desired consistency

The original plan was to just frost the cupcakes with the spread, but it was too thick and tore the cupcakes. The inital melting idea didn't work well either (it got grainy). The solution was to take the melted spread and combine with melted butter, milk, and powdered sugar to make a glaze for dipping the cupcakes.

We trimmed the cupcakes and made cake crumbs with the trimmings. The crumbs were sprinkled on the cupcakes before they were dusted with powdered sugar to provide some texture. I'm pleased with the outcome. The cake isn't very sweet, but the glaze is very sweet and made for a nice balance.

Homemade Blue Cheese Dressing

Last night for dinner we grilled some chicken breasts with wing sauce. It's not really wings (or my preference chicken strips in wing sauce), but it is a lot healthier with the grilling rather than the frying. We also had oven fries and some veggies. The best part though was the blue cheese dressing, made from scratch.

Blue Cheese Dressing

2/3 cup mayonnaise

1/4 cup crumbled blue cheese

1 tsp prepared horseradish

1 tsp spicy brown mustard

1/4 cup rice wine vinegar

a few grinds of black pepper

Combine all of the ingredients except for the vinegar and stir well. Make sure you get the blue cheese well distributed. Slowly add vinegar until you reach the desired consistency.

Seasons on the Square -- Gallatin, MO

Gallatin, MO is a town of approximately 1,800 people located in the absolute middle of nowhere in Northwest Missouri. It is about 30 minutes from Chillicothe (where my wife's parents live). You wouldn't expect to find an outstanding restaurant in a town like Gallatin, but stranger things have happened.

Seasons is owned and run by Sheryl Warren and Julie Critten, two school teachers in Gallatin. They had been doing catering projects together and the restaurant seemed like a logical next step in their hobby. The restaurant is only open on Fridays and Saturdays which makes sense given the duo's day jobs.

The food at Seasons is exceptional. I've eaten there several times in the past few years and never been disappointed. The artichoke cheese dip is a must have as an appetizer. It is served in piping hot in a toasted bread bowl. My guess is that it includes mozzarella, parmesan, and asiago cheeses (but they won't share the secret). The other must have at Seasons is the garlic smashed potatoes. They're made with a lot of garlic, butter and most likely cream (quite tasty). I've never been disappointed with the entrees at Seasons. Last night I had their special which was a slow cooked brisket that just melted in my mouth. Last night Sarah had the sea bass which was good, but overpriced at $24. Sarah also likes the black bean and sweet potato burrito served with homemade tortilla chips and salsa. We've also been pleased the steaks and the pork chops that are now available as either a single or double chop order -- which is a great deal, but two eight ounce chops is a lot of food.

If for some bizarre reason you're near Gallatin, MO on a Friday or Saturday night you can't beat Seasons.

Radio Kerner (or Wallstreet Squeezebox)

For quite some time now I've been pondering two things:
1. What should I do with that old Wallstreet G3 Powerbook?
2. How can I play my digital music on my stereo easily?

Until today the answer to item one has been leave it in a bag in the closet until I come up with something better. Item two always involved hooking up our iPod or a laptop to the stereo.

The easy solution to this is to get an Airport Express or something like the SqueezeBox from Slim Devices. Both of these are fine solutions, but they cost money and don't solve the what to do with the Powerbook question.

That all changed today. This morning I put together my own streaming media solution. I haven't tried video yet, but iTunes visualization works well,so streaming video shouldn't be much of a problem. The setup is quite simple -- computer with wifi hooked into stereo, music player, music streaming software, and a music library.

The Powerbook now sits with all of our AV equipment and is hooked up as video device 3 (svideo and audio from the powerbook). The Powerbook is fairly low tech (250mhz g3, 384mb ram, 4gb hd, and a Lucent wifi card) and is running OS X 10.2. The music playback and visualization is all handled by iTunes.

iTunes only has two items in the playlist currently -- Radio Kerner and Columbia, MO's 102.3 KBXR (because there isn't a AAA radio station in Springfield). We're using iHam on iRye to control iTunes remotely (basically selecting BXR or our own mix and hitting play).

Radio Kerner is powered by a computer also running iTunes (for cataloging purposes) and SlimServer 5.4 the software that powers the SqueezeBox. It provides a great web-based interface for putting together playlists. You could even stream different music to other computers in the house (with iTunes).

So far so good. To make it more radio like I may record some interstitials to litter through the music randomly.

In other news, I'm 1 person away from a free iPod, I'll post a link from the first person who completes my final offer.