Lethally Delicious

Chocolate Mocha Inside-Out Cake

2012-02-01T00:00:00.000-08:00

More years ago than I care to admit, there was a show on public television called Cooking at the Academy. On one episode, the chef made a cake that made my jaw drop. It was two different flavors of cake layered with mocha and chocolate buttercream, but the surprise came when they cut a slice. I HAD to make that cake!

Back in the early 90's, I baked but still had a lot to learn, only I didn't realize it. Ah, youth. I made the cake for a co-worker's bridal shower and it was a huge hit. It's a bit labor-intensive so I've only made it a handful of times but it always commands the attention of my guests, and devout bakers are struck by the inside cross section and are similarly driven to make it themselves. If you make it, and I hope you will because it's delicious, here are a few things to keep in mind:

Give yourself a good solid day to make the cake. There are lots of steps that require letting the cake chill or the buttercream soften, not to mention the quality time you'll be spending with your mixer. If you need it for a special event, you can make it the day before and refrigerate it overnight. Just let it come to room temperature for about 20 minutes before serving (depending on the season and temperature in your house).
Before you start making the cake, fill your sink with hot, sudsy water. This will make the clean up much easier. When you finish with a bowl, beater, or measuring cup, just set it in the sink.
Almond paste that's old can be rock-like and that's hard to blend in with the cake batter. I've never done this but if you want the best results, I suggest you investigate making your own almond paste. Failing that, beat the almond paste-egg white mixture in your stand mixer fitted with a beater blade (the paddle with the spatula-like scraper) until smooth. I find it very difficult to do this by hand, and every time I make the cake, I end up with chunks of almond paste that I don't see until the layers are baked.
When the recipe calls for dividing the batter between the cake pans, I weigh the batter using my spare mixing bowl to tare (set to zero) the scale, then I weigh the bowl that has the cake batter in it. I divide the weight in half and write it down. Then I place one of the prepared cake pans on the scale, tare it, then measure a little less than half of the batter into the pan as directed. I'm not good at eyeballing batters and this method keeps me out of trouble.
I don't have an espresso maker, so I ask the barista at my neighborhood coffee shop how many ounces are in a shot, then I order that many shots. I get the shots for the buttercream in one cup and the shots for the brushing liquid in the other. Wasteful I know but the clean up from making this cake is daunting, kinda like running a marathon and then walking two hours to get home.
No matter how tempted you are, don't substitute butter for the margarine. I have tried on at least three occasions and my mocha buttercream broke all three times. Only when I made a note in the cookbook did I stop making this mistake.
If you don't have 10" cake pans, buy some. Seriously, this is the cake of a lifetime and it's worth the investment. If that just isn't in your budget with the other supplies you'll need, use your 9" pans. Any smaller and I'm afraid your crater will be wonky and the cake won't look right when you slice it.
The cookbook says to put the rest of your mocha buttercream in a piping bag fitted with a #4 plain tip and pipe the buttercream in a circular fashion on top of the cake, starting in the middle and working your way to the edge. It looked lovely when he did it, but he's a professional chef-instructor and I'm a piping failure. I've never done it for two reasons: One, I've never had enough extra mocha buttercream and two, the cake has enough buttercream already. Any more and it would just be too rich for most people.
To reinforce this point, more is not better with this cake. You want to brush on the espresso mixture sparingly, enough dampen the layer to get the flavor but you definitely don't want to make the cake wet. Same with the buttercream: more is not better. More is too much. Besides, it's SO much better to take that last layer and your extra buttercream and a biscuit cutter or sharp knife and make your own cake creation with it. Consider that dinner the night you're making the cake. If a friend helps, you can eat your plated desserts you make with the scraps and get very excited about cutting the cake later. It also helps to fuel up before the clean up.
I like to be nonchalant when I cut this cake so I try not to build up people's expectations. I mean, it would be awful to get them all riled up and then I cut it and it looks like a cubist Picasso painting inside. The first time especially, let them be surprised. Their surprise is better than the enjoyment you'll get from trying to explain it, plus it's almost impossible to explain without pictures.
I recorded the show on VHS when it was on, but I seriously worry about the quality and longevity of VHS tapes. Amazon has the episode on VHS, and I think I'm going to buy it and then have it converted to a DVD. I wish I had a video clip of the part where you cut out the cone and make the crater because it does help to see how it is done.

Chocolate Mocha Inside-Out Cake - adapted from Cooking at the Academy
Printer-friendly recipe
Sponge cakes
2 egg whites
10 ounces almond paste
12 large eggs, separated
1 1/3 cups/10 ounces granulated sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 3/4 cups/8 ounces cake flour, sifted
2/3 cup/1 ounce natural (not Dutch process) cocoa powder

Buttercreams
1 pound unsalted butter, softened
5 ounces margarine, softened (don't substitute butter)
1 cup egg whites (from 7 or 8 eggs)
1 pound sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
6 ounces melted dark chocolate
1/2 cup brewed espresso (not instant), cooled

For Assembly
1/4 cup brewed espresso, cooled
1/3 cup water
1/2 cup toasted sliced almonds
Dark chocolate shavings

Other
2 10" cake pans
Parchment paper rounds
Cardboard cake rounds

Prepare the spongecakes:
Mash the almond paste with the back of a spoon to break it apart and get out the lumps (see note above). Mix in the two egg whites and set aside.

Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Line two 10" cake pans with parchment rounds and set aside.

Place the egg yolks in a mixing bowl on stand mixer and add 1/2 cup of the sugar. Beat with the paddle attachment on medium-high speed until the egg yolks are pale yellow and the mixture falls in a ribbon if the beater is lifted, at least 5 and preferably 10 minutes. Add the vanilla.

Gently stir the yolks into the almond paste with a spatula and set aside.

In another mixing bowl, whip the egg whites on medium-high with the whisk attachment until they foam, then slowly add the rest of the sugar. Beat just until the egg whites form stiff peaks. Carefully fold the egg whites into the almond paste mixture. Gently fold in the flour with a spatula, being careful not to deflate the egg whites.

Pour a little less than half of the mixture in one of the prepared cake pans, smooth the top and set aside.

Sift the cocoa powder into the remaining batter and fold in to combine - don't overmix! Put the remaining batter in the second cake pan and smooth the top. Place both layers in the preheated oven and bake 23-25 minutes, until tops spring bake when touched. Remove layers from oven and cool completely on a rack.

When cool, run a thin, sharp knife around the edge of each cake layer and invert onto a rack. Peel off parchment paper and invert again (so top of layer is up).

Prepare the buttercream:
Beat together the the butter and margarine in a small bowl and set aside.

Combine the egg whites and sugar in a mixing bowl and place the bowl over a pan of simmering water and whisk constantly for about 3 minutes or until the sugar is dissolved. Be careful not to cook the egg whites!

Remove the bowl from the pan and place it on a stand mixer fitter with the whisk attachment and whip until the mixture has cooled considerably and has formed stiff peaks. Lower the speed of the mixer and add the vanilla extract. With the mixer still on low, gradually add the butter mixture and whip until combined.

Divide the buttercream (you'll have about 6 cups total) into two bowls. Add the melted chocolate to one bowl and stir with a spatula to combine, and add the 1/2 cup expresso to the other bowl, similarly using a spatula to combine. Set both bowls aside.

To assemble the cake (the fun part):
Cut the almond sponge into three even layers. Reserve the top layer for another use (you'll only need two almond layers). Cut the chocolate sponge into three even layers.

Combine the 1/4 cup espresso and water in a small bowl. Place one of the chocolate layers, cut side up, on a cardboard cake round. Using a pastry brush, lightly moisten the layer with the expresso mixture. Spread a layer of mocha-flavored buttercream and shave it down to about 1/4" thick, bringing it to the edge of the layer.

Place an almond layer on top of the mocha buttercream. Moisten the almond layer with the espresso mixture, then spread a layer of the mocha buttercream and shave it down to about 1/4" thick, bringing it to the edge of the layer.

Repeat with another chocolate layer, brushing the chocolate layer with the espresso mixture and adding the buttercream and then ending with an almond layer on top. Don't brush the almond layer or top it with buttercream. You will have one chocolate layer left. Chill the cake for 15 minutes to set the buttercream.

To cut the cake, dip a sharp, thin knife (I find a boning knife works better than the serrated knife that the recipe calls for) in hot water and wipe dry. Holding the knife at approximately a 30 degree angle approximately 3/4" in from the edge of the cake, carefully and gently cut a cone-shaped section from the center of the cake, about 8" wide at the top and and 2" wide at the bottom (or "tip"). Think of it as the crater of a volcano. Wipe your knife clean. Place your hand flat on the top of the cone-shaped wedge and using the knife or an icing spatula, remove the wedge and invert it onto your hand. Place the cone-shaped wedge, flat side down, on a cardboard cake round or a plate lined with parchment paper and set it aside.

It's kind of wonky but here's the cone for this one

Working inside the "crater," spread a layer of chocolate buttercream, about 1/4" thick, lining the inside of the crater.

Place the reserved chocolate sponge layer on top of the cake (almost like putting a roof on top of the crater).

Place a cardboard cake round on top and invert the cake so the new chocolate layer is now on the bottom and the first almond layer is on the top.

Cover the cake and set it aside (not in the refrigerator) to let the buttercream soften in between the layers.

Now, reconstruct the crater. To do this, gently press on the center of the top of the cake, gently pushing the inverted crater down to meet the bottom layer. In this new crater, spread a layer of chocolate buttercream all the way around and to the edge, making sure the buttercream is about 1/4" thick. The crater won't seem as deep or as sharp around the edges, and that's OK.

Still wonky, but the buttercream will help hide the flaws

Invert the cone-shaped wedge and set it, pointy side down, flat side up, in the crater, and gently press it into place (if needed). Using a chef's knife, trim the sides of the cake to the original shape (in the event reconstructing the cake has made bits stick out, you can trim it a little to make it round again).

Spread the remaining chocolate buttercream on the top and sides of the cake. Press the toasted almonds around the side of the cake. Top the cake with dark chocolate shavings if desired.

Serve immediately, or refrigerate until needed. Set out at room temperature 20-30 minutes before serving.

Orange Berry Muffins with Crumb Topping

2012-01-31T00:00:00.000-08:00

In my continuing quest to bake every recipe from Baking From My Home to Yours, this week I'm catching up with the orange berry muffins. Practically every time I pick up this cookbook looking for something quick and spontaneous to bake, I look at these muffins, see the blueberries and turn the page. I've written before about the reason for my blueberry aversion here, but the time was here to put on my big girl apron and do it.

To get around my lack of true love for the blueberry, I also added some raspberries I froze last year when they were plentiful at the farmers markets, I included walnuts AND I topped them with a crumb topping. They were spectacular, and I didn't even care that they had blueberries in them.

This is not what I'd call a fast recipe, and you will dirty a few bowls, measuring cups, etc., but it will be totally worth it. It's much easier if you have the crumb topping pre-made in your freezer.

Orange Berry Muffins with Crumb Topping - adapted from Dorie Greenspan
Printer-friendly recipe

Crumb topping:

1 cup all-purpose flour
1/3 cup granulated sugar
1/4 cup light brown sugar, lightly packed
1/2 teaspoon kosher salt
1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/4 pound (1 stick) cold unsalted butter, diced

Muffins:
Grated zest and juice of 1 orange
About 3/4 cup buttermilk
2 large eggs
3 Tablespoons honey

1/8 teaspoon Fiori di Sicilia extract (from King Arthur Flour, optional)
1 stick (8 Tablespoons) unsalted butter, melted and cooled
1/3 cup sugar
2 cups all-purpose flour
2-1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt

1 cup raspberries – fresh or frozen (not thawed)
1 cup blueberries – fresh or frozen (not thawed)

2/3 cup chopped walnuts

Center a rack in the oven and preheat the oven to 400 degrees F. Butter or spray the 12 molds in a regular-size muffin pan or fit the molds with paper muffin cups. Place the muffin pan on a baking sheet.

Make the crumb topping:

Combine the flour, granulated sugar, brown sugar, salt, cinnamon, and the butter crumb topping ingredients in the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with a paddle attachment. Mix on low speed until the butter is the size of peas. Rub the mixture with your fingertips until it's in big crumbles, then set aside in the refrigerator, tightly covered, until ready to use.

Make the muffins:
Pour the orange juice into a large glass measuring cup or a bowl and pour in enough buttermilk to make 1 cup. Whisk in the eggs, honey, melted butter and Fiori di Sicilia (if using).

In a large bowl, rub the sugar and orange zest together with a spatula until the sugar is moist. Whisk in the flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt. Pour the liquid ingredients over the dry ingredients and, with the whisk or a rubber spatula, gently but quickly stir to blend. Don’t worry about being thorough – the batter will be lumpy and bubbly, and that’s just the way it should be. Stir in the blueberries. Divide the batter evenly among the muffin cups. Sprinkle on the crumb mixture (you may have some leftover - just freeze if for another time).

Bake for 22 to 25 minutes (mine were done at 21 minutes). When fully baked, the crumb topping will be golden, the muffins springy to the touch and a thin knife inserted into the center of the muffins will come out clean. Transfer the pan to a rack and cool for 5 minutes before carefully removing each muffin from its mold.

Programming note: Check back tomorrow because I'm posting a cake that will amaze you and is a lot of fun to make. In a very tortured way that leads to a lot of dishes.

Spicy Roasted Romanesco Cauliflower

2012-01-26T00:00:00.000-08:00

Beautiful and brightly colored, Romanesco cauliflower showed up in my CSA basket for the first time several weeks ago. Confused, I looked at the list of what they were sending us and figured out what it was, then turned to the internet for recipe inspiration.

I'm not a fan of cooked cauliflower, but after trying this method of preparing Romanesco cauliflower, I am in love. The tips get browned and caramelized and the chili oil and salt transform the flavor. I was alone for dinner that first night and ate the whole head myself. Truly. It was a small head, but still.

Roasted Romanesco Cauiflower - adapted from Brooklyn Farmhouse
Printer-friendly recipe
One head Romanesco cauliflower, core removed and cauliflower broken up into florets
2-4 tablespoons chili oil
1/2 teaspoon flaky sea salt (smoked sea salt is especially delicious here)
Freshly ground black pepper

1/2 lemon

Preheat the oven to 425 degrees F.

On a baking sheet, toss the cauliflower florets, chili oil and salt together. Add several grinds of black pepper.

Roast in the oven for 20 - 30 minutes, or until the cauliflower is softened and is brown in places.

Remove from oven and squeeze the lemon over the cauliflower. Serve immediately.

Perfection Pound Cake and Lemon Curd

2012-01-24T00:00:00.000-08:00

Whenever I hear a claim of perfection in a recipe, I get concerned. That means it's been tested and loved by many, and the off chance that someone can screw it up looms over me. My kitchen takes on a dingy hue, no, wait, the kitchen lights are on the dimmer. Scratch that. But it makes me leery of A. failure and B. disappointment.

I wouldn't say this pound cake was a failure, but I was a teensy bit disappointed. I've been to the oven with a pound cake or two, tried probably a dozen recipes, and the one I return to is Rose Levy Beranbaum's from The Cake Bible. That pound cake is moist with the finest crumb. Maybe this was operator error.

In fairness, Dorie says for best texture, wrap the cake up and put it away for a day. I didn't do that, and it may have made a difference. I also didn't add the eggs one at a time and beat well before adding the next egg. I had broken two of the yolks when cracking the eggs and three eggs fell into the bowl at the same time. See what I mean about operator error?

I used cake flour, hoping for a nice crumb but I'm not sure it made any difference. The outside was crisp, and the inside soft, but it was just a plain cake. That's why I made lemon curd to go with it. And brown sugar caramel, but I'll make that for you another time.

I was thrilled to win the latest Cook's Illustrated cookbook in a giveaway on Tracey's Culinary Adventures (thanks, Tracey!). It's a huge book, and it's been sitting on my counter asking to be used since it arrived. I cracked it open and found the lemon curd, perfect because I had a bag of Meyer lemons from my friend's huge tree. If you'd like the recipe for it, you can find it here on the Cook's Illustrated website (you'll have to sign up for a 15 day free trial, but the lemon curd is worth the trouble!)

If you're still test driving pound cake recipes, this is a good one to try (you can find the recipe here). I have a limited attention span with things that are plain, perfect or not, so it's a tough sell for me. Nonetheless, I did mark off another recipe in my quest to bake all the recipes in Baking From My Home to Yours. Score!

Programming note: If you check back around February 1st, I'm going to have a cake that will amaze you and is a lot of fun to make. In a very tortured way that leads to a lot of dishes.

Buttermilk Cheddar Biscuits

2012-01-19T00:00:00.000-08:00

I love a good biscuit, and I love cheese, so a cheesy biscuit already has my attention. I found this Ina Garten recipe while I was looking for something else and it is yummy. I added smoked Spanish paprika, though you could certainly leave that out, or replace it with cayenne, or a bit of garlic powder.

I also love Ina's method for making scones and biscuits. She has you put the dry ingredients in the bowl of the stand mixer, toss in the cold butter, and let the machine do the work. I added aged white cheddar and the aforementioned smoked paprika. Although the color is a little muddy, the flavor was great.

These biscuits are great as a do-ahead recipe. Simply make the dough, cut out the biscuits and put them on a sheet pan and stick in the freezer. Once frozen through, toss them (carefully) in a ziploc bag and freeze. You can pull a few out and bake them to go with soup or chili or eggs. Just add a minute or two to the baking time.

I skipped the egg wash the recipe called for and sprinkled them with a little shredded cheddar and they were great. Did I mention they were delicious? And yummy? Good. Just wanted to make sure I mentioned we loved them.

Buttermilk Cheddar Biscuits (adapted from Ina Garten, found on Food Network)
2 cups plus 2 tablespoons all-purpose flour, plus more for flouring the board
1 tablespoon baking powder
1 1/2 teaspoons kosher salt

1 1/2 teaspoons smoked Spanish paprika, optional
12 tablespoons (1 1/2 sticks) cold unsalted butter, diced
1/2 cup cold buttermilk, shaken
1 egg, cold
1 1/2 cups grated extra-sharp Cheddar, plus extra for sprinkling

Preheat the oven to 425 degrees F.

Place 2 cups of flour, the baking powder, salt and paprika in the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the paddle attachment. With the mixer on low, add the butter and mix until the butter is the size of peas.

Combine the buttermilk and egg in a small measuring cup and beat lightly with a fork. With the mixer still on low, quickly add the buttermilk mixture to the flour mixture and mix only until almost moistened. Turn off the mixer. In a small bowl, mix the Cheddar with the 2 tablespoons of flour and, with the mixer on low, add the cheese to the dough. Mix only until roughly combined (I find it's better to do this part with a spatula so I don't over mix the dough).

Dump out onto a well-floured board and knead lightly about 6 times. Roll the dough out to a rectangle 10 by 5 inches. With a 2" biscuit cutter, dip the cutter into some flour then cut out biscuits, keeping cuts close together. Don't twist the cutter in the dough, which can keep your biscuits from rising. Transfer biscuits to a sheet pan lined with parchment paper. Sprinkle the tops with the extra cheddar and bake for 20 to 25 minutes, until the tops are browned and the biscuits are cooked through. Serve hot or warm.

Quintuple Chocolate Brownies

2012-01-11T00:00:00.000-08:00

I have news for you.

There is such a thing as too much chocolate.

I know, I never would have believed it could be true but it is. I'm not sure if it was the milk or white chocolate (or maybe the combination) that sent these over the top, but I could only take a tiny corner. Two bites. People who I relayed this to looked at me like I was an alien life form, and told me I was crazy. Just another day at the office.

These brownies, from Baking From My Home to Yours, contain cocoa powder, unsweetened chocolate, bittersweet chocolate, milk chocolate chips and a white chocolate glaze.

Bottom line, if you like milk chocolate and sweet brownies, you'll love these. If not, I would suggest replacing the milk chocolate chips with semisweet or even bittersweet, and forgoing the white chocolate glaze entirely. They'd be quadruple chocolate if you did that, which is still pretty special.

I was feeling lazy and didn't toast the walnuts and the world didn't end. At least not yet. But I would recommend toasting the nuts, unless you're trying to bang out as many recipes as you can so you can write lots of posts during your non-existent down time at a conference. Like I am.

You can find the recipe all over the blogosphere, or you can find it in the original post when these were picked for TWD here.

Nut-Crusted Chocolate-Banana Swirl Cake

2012-01-09T09:55:00.000-08:00

My friend Hanna at Hanaa's Kitchen has been encouraging me to join ABC Bakers for a while. I thought the last thing I needed was another group (true), but this time she caught me at a weak moment. I had a week off from work so I was relaxed and, at the time, had finished Tuesdays with Dorie with no intention of continuing on with the group when they moved to Baking with Julia, nor of finishing the recipes I had missed.

Fast forward and a lot has changed. I've decided to continue on to BwJ, and I'm joining Nancy and a few other baking buddies in making up the recipes I missed in Baking From My Home to Yours. We're starting with the recipes picked in the very beginning and working through we get to the point where we had joined and were baking with the group every week.

But when Hanaa asked me again if I'd like to join ABC (Avid Bakers Challenge), I took a look at the book they would be baking from in 2012 (The Weekend Baker by Abby Dodge) and was very impressed with what I found. Virtually all of the reviews on Amazon are 5 star. It has the weights for the ingredients (yippee!) The recipes are interesting and approachable and are organized by how long they take.

The first recipe the group is making is the nut-crusted chocolate-banana swirl cake. During the winter, it can take a week for a banana to ripen in my cool kitchen, and it did. In fact, I didn't make these with fully brown bananas, but they were spotty. I was running out of time before I left for a conference so I hoped for the best.

I made this one morning in one of my pre-coffee stupors, and I completely forgot to mix in the buttermilk in between additions of flour. By the time I remembered, I had already divided the batter (by eye, instead of my usual obsessive weighing to get exact quantities of the two batters) and started spooning the melted chocolate into one bowl of it. I put half of the buttermilk in each batter. Turns out I had way more chocolate batter than plain so the plain was a little runnier than the chocolate, but it all worked out in the oven. A few things to keep in mind:

Preheat your oven really well. I used to stick cakes in when it went ding but now I give it an extra 10 minutes, and I believe that gives cakes a little more oven spring.
One of the things I liked about the recipe is she gives the weight for the bananas peel and all. Another is you don't have to mash the bananas. I dropped banana chunks into the mixer while it was running. A real time saver!
I used 70% bittersweet chocolate and added it to probably 2/3, not half of the batter. It gave the finished cake a very pronounced chocolate flavor that people loved.
After going to the trouble of buttering and nut-and-sugar-coating the pan, I was convinced that it just wasn't worth it and I would skip that step if making the cake again. After tasting - no way. It gives the cake a very special element.
I used pecans rather than walnuts because we love them and because my buddy Margaret had sent me some (thanks, Margaret!)

Hanaa had said her cake stuck a little bit (find out the beautiful way she remedied that here), but mine popped right out. It looked a little odd because it was predominantly chocolate batter, but my tasters were ecstatic with praise of the finished cake. People who don't normally indulge in the sweets I bring to work were having some because the word in the office was that this one was fantastic. And I have to agree. I'm not a huge fan of baked bananas or banana-flavored things, preferring to peel and eat my bananas. But even I couldn't believe how good this one was - super moist, crunchy on the outside and totally luscious. I'll definitely be making this one again. And again. And again.

If you'd like to see what the other bakers thought of the cake, you can find them here. We're not posting recipes from the book, but you can find the recipe on Fine Cooking.

Brown Sugar Pecan Shortbread

2012-01-03T00:00:00.000-08:00

I know it was just last week that I was sniffling and bidding farewell to Baking From My Home to Yours, but my friend Nancy came up with a great idea that I'm grabbing hold of, too. Nancy is determined to make every recipe in the book, starting with the very first recipe chosen, and she's doing the recipes in the same order. That means the first recipe is brown sugar pecan shortbread.

Over the years, I looked longingly at these cookies, but I don't think I've ever made them. I've said many times that I love Dorie's method for rolling out shortbread: pile the dough in a gallon size zip top bag and roll it out to the right dimensions. That ends up being the width but not length of the bag. To avoid repeated measuring, I draw a little line on the bag with a Sharpie.

Although the recipe doesn't call for it, I toasted the pecans before grinding them into a flour in my food processor. I find this really enhances the nutty flavor and especially the aroma. I also left out the cloves.

The comments from the Tuesdays with Dorie bakers who made this recipe indicated the cookies spread a lot. I froze half and refrigerated the other half 15 minutes before baking and there wasn't an appreciable difference. I think you'll want to do one or the other since these have so much butter.

They were done (even a touch overdone) two minutes earlier than the recipe indicated, so if you make them definitely check them way before they are supposed to be done. If you'd like to give them a try, you can find the recipe here.

I have 78 recipes to go in order to make every recipe in the book, and I'd like to do it before the end of this year. That takes into account recipes I made, but never posted. On the weeks where I've made the corresponding recipe, I'll substitute another one from my list. This will give me the opportunity to make fruit desserts in season.

I've also reconsidered and will be jumping into Baking with Julia when the group starts that book next month. I probably won't make every recipe. I hope!

Roasted Sweet Potato and Apple Soup

2012-01-02T13:27:00.000-08:00

This velvety soup is the best guilt-free pleasure I know. Packed with sweet potatoes (a super food!) and apples (to keep the doctor away), it's a snap to make and is forgiving of whatever holiday excesses you're wanting to undo.

I make it many different ways depending on what I have in the house (sweet potatoes, butternut squash, potatoes, apples past their prime), but it never contains any cream or milk. I usually dose it with cayenne pepper, though you could skip that and top it with some sizzling almonds or toasted pistachios. If you have a lot of apples to use, add a teaspoon of apple cider or balsamic vinegar to balance the sweetness.

This batch had a 1:1 ratio of apples to sweet potatoes by volume because I had quite a few apples past their eating prime, making this soup the ideal hiding place.

I'm fortunate to have a VitaMix to blend it all up in, but you can just as easily use an immersion blender. If you use your blender or food processor, blend it in batches, and add extra liquid if you hear the engine straining.

You can swap out the chicken broth for vegetable broth, water or apple juice. If you go with apple juice, add at least one teaspoon of cider or balsamic vinegar to taste. If you don't like things spicy, leave out the cayenne. You can also replace the cayenne with 1 teaspoon curry powder, or use both.

Roasted Sweet Potato and Apple Soup
Printer-friendly recipe

Olive oil
2 1/2 pounds sweet potatoes (or butternut squash), peeled and cubed
2 large or 4 small apples (or Russet or Yukon Gold potatoes), cubed (peel potatoes if using)
1/2 teaspoon cayenne, or to taste (optional)
6 cups chicken broth
1 teaspoon apple cider or balsamic vinegar (or to taste), optional
Salt and pepper to taste

Preheat oven to 450 F. Lightly oil two sheet pans or baking sheets. Add the cubed sweet potato and drizzle on another tablespoon or so of olive oil. Using your hands, make sure all of the sweet potatoes are coated lightly with the oil. Season with salt and pepper. Place pans in oven and roast sweet potatoes for about 15 minutes, or until edges are getting brown and larger cubes are tender when pierced with the end of a sharp knife. Remove from oven and set aside to cool before proceeding.

If using a blender or food processor, add 1/4 of the apple, 1/4 of the sweet potatoes, 1 1/2 cups of broth, 1/4 of the cayenne and 1/4 of the vinegar to the container and process according to manufacturer's instructions. Pour into a 4 quart saucepan or Dutch oven, and add another batch of the ingredients to the container and process. Repeat for remaining ingredients.

If using an immersion blender, place ingredients in a 4 quart saucepan or Dutch oven and using immersion blender, puree ingredients until desired consistency.

Place saucepan over medium heat and heat, stirring occasionally, until heated through.

Kid's Thumbprint Cookies, a Big Hug and Then I Cry

2011-12-27T00:00:00.000-08:00

You know how sometimes you have something you need to do that weighs on your mind, nagging nagging nagging you to DO IT so you can cross it off your list and feel the elation of procrastination overruled?

This is not one of those moments.

This is the last recipe in Baking From My Home to Yours for the group of bakers known as Tuesdays with Dorie. As much as I've itched to do my own thing these last few months, I've been dreading this day because of its last-ness. And because I have no words without tears about this, it's best that we proceed to the recipe.

I can only assume that as we neared the end of the book, our fearless leader Laurie asked Dorie Greenspan if she'd like to host the last pick, and what she would like that to be. And Dorie's pick this week is one of those crazy technique recipes that I used to scratch my head over in the early days and now I just go with without questioning. Dorie wasn't done teaching me, showing me new ways to do things.

These cookies are a peanut butter thumbprint cookie rolled in egg white and then peanuts. The dimple is filled with jam or chocolate chips. I opted for bittersweet chocolate chips. The recipe wasn't fussy until it came to dipping the balls of dough in frothy egg white before rolling them in chopped peanuts. In honor of Dorie, I didn't alter the recipe this week because I always tweak it. My balls of dough were a tiny bit bigger than they were supposed to be, but they were done in 11 minutes not 15-18 as the recipe suggested.

The cookies were good, though I didn't swoon the way I did over the other thumbprint cookies in the book. Maybe my tastebuds were depressed about it being the last recipe. Dunno, but I needed a big hug after finishing the last recipe from a book and a group that has been, well, a big hug for me these last few years.

To Dorie, your book changed my life. Truly. You taught me how to BAKE, and to make things I never would have attempted. That confidence seeped into other areas of my life, and opened me up to greater personal and yes, even professional success. The creative yearning I felt inside finally had an outlet, and I no longer had to stifle it in pursuit of my career. I always feel your presence and hear your calm encouragement in the kitchen, especially when the going gets tough. I have had failures, but I learned from them, and I have had successes, and I learned from them, too. It all added up to a strong and stable foundation of dozens of things a baker knows by instinct. I no longer assemble recipes; I am a baker. My heart is full and my eyes overflow with tears of joy, sadness and gratitude. Thank you.

To Laurie, whose personal mission to bake her way through the book started this group, I am forever grateful. You invited us on your journey, never complaining when hundreds of unruly individuals made managing the group more of a labor than a labor of love. That generosity hasn't gone unnoticed, and we love you for it.

I am not an easy person to get close to and yet I have made many friends in this group, and the entire group has been warm, welcoming and supportive. To my buds Margaret, Nancy, Kayte, Tracey and Di - I love you all. Anytime, anywhere.

Tuesdays with Dorie will continue on with another of Dorie's books, Baking with Julia. I contemplated staying on to explore that book, but it didn't speak to me the way Baking From My Home to Yours or Paris Sweets does. I want to return to some if not all of the BFMHTY recipes I missed, revisit old favorites, and take what Dorie taught me to other books, other projects. And so the sadness of the ending merges with the excitement of new beginnings. I can hardly wait to get back into the kitchen.

"The reward of a thing well done is to have done it" - Ralph Waldo Emerson

UPDATE: Due to overwhelming pressure from a few friends (you know who you are!) I took another look at Baking with Julia and decided to stick with the group when they start the new book in February. I'll also be revisiting the 78 recipes I skipped or that were made before I joined the TWD in October 2008. Look for the first one soon!

Hazelnut Chocolate Chip Scones 2.0

2011-12-20T00:00:00.000-08:00

I don't generally repeat a recipe I've previously posted but this is a rewind week for Tuesdays with Dorie so I'm making an exception. The first time I made these scones, I didn't post the recipe because it was a bit of a mess. It's taken a few tries, but I finally got it to the point where it's almost too good to share.

These scones are oh-so-light. Normally, when I pick up a scone it feels substantial. These are feather light, and they are fluffy and tender without being like eating cake. The hazelnut flour gives them a neat flavor and texture. The chocolate chips are a nod to loving chocolate for breakfast and wanting these to be evocative of Nutella. They're perfect to enjoy in the afternoon with a cup of tea, or in the morning for breakfast. You can leave them out if chocolate chips in your scones is not your thing.

The rest of the TWD bakers have chosen other recipes to rewind in this, the next to the last week for us. You can see what they made here. Next week we will be making the last recipe in the book, which was chosen by Dorie herself. Every time I think about writing that post, I tear up.

*******

Hazelnut Chocolate Chip Scones - adapted from the chestnut scones in Baking From My Home to Yours
Printer-friendly recipe

1 large egg
3/4 cup cold heavy cream
1/2 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
1 1/4 cup plus 2 tablespoons/210 grams all purpose flour
3/4 cup/84 grams hazelnut flour
2 tablespoons sugar
1 tablespoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
8 tablespoons/112 grams unsalted butter, cut into bits and chilled

3/4 cup/128 grams semisweet chocolate chips

Line a baking sheet with parchment or a silicone mat.

Stir the egg, cream and vanilla extract together.

Measure the dry ingredients into the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment. Turn the mixer to the lowest speed and let run for a minute or so to combine the ingredients. With the mixer still on low, drop in the butter and mix on low speed until the mixture is pebbly. You’ll have pea size pieces, pieces the size of oatmeal flakes and everything in between.

With the mixer still on low, pour the liquid ingredients over the mixture and mix for five seconds then add the chocolate chips and mix until the dough almost comes together; it may be sticky.

Lightly flour a work surface, and place the prepared baking sheet nearby. Before turning the dough out of the bowl, gently press any stray flour into the rest of the dough with a flexible bowl scraper if you have one or a spatula if you don't. Turn the dough onto the floured work surface, dip the bowl scraper in flour and use it to coax the dough into a neater circle about an inch high. Using a 2" round cutter, dip the cutter in flour and cut out the scones, keeping your cuts as close together as possible to minimize waste. Gather the scraps and cut as many scones as you can. Place the scones 2" apart on the prepared baking sheet and place in freezer while you preheat the oven (at this point, the scones can be frozen on the baking sheet, then wrapped airtight. You don’t need to defrost the scones before baking - just add about 2 minutes to the baking time).

Center a rack in the oven and preheat the oven to 400F.

Bake the scones for 17-19 minutes, or until their tops are golden and firmish. Transfer the scones to a rack and cool for 10 minutes before serving, or wait for the scones to cool to room temperature. Makes about 14 scones.

Caramel Cheesecake Bars

2011-12-18T13:36:00.000-08:00

I know what you're thinking...and yes, we did just have cheesecake bars recently, but these are as different from the lemon cheesecake bars as a dog is from a cat. Both have four legs, fur and can be domesticated to varying extents. But that's where the similarity ends. And so it is with these cheesecake bars.

Like so many good things I make, I found these on Tracey's Culinary Adventures.

And also like so many things I find on Tracey's website, the recipe was in a cookbook I own. For those of you who mastered the lemon cheesecake bars, these will be very familiar. I really like Alice's crust: it's almost a batter you spread in the pan...no fussy crust, no stress.

They're so easy, especially if you have the caramel already made, and although cheesecake isn't a favorite, these were otherworldly due to the salted caramel swirl, in spite of being a tiny bit overdone. Next time, I'll probably use my own caramel recipe (you can find my caramel 101 here) and add flour de del to it.

Caramel Cheesecake Bars - adapted from Chewy Gooey Crispy Crunchy thanks to Tracey
Printer-friendly recipe
Crust
14 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted and still warm
1/2 cup (3.5 oz) sugar
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
3/8 teaspoon salt
2 cups (9 oz) all-purpose flour

Filling
3/4 cup caramel sauce (recipe below)
1 1/2 lbs cream cheese, at room temperature
1/4 cup (1.75 oz) sugar
1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract
2 large eggs, at room temperature

To make the crust: Preheat oven to 350 F with a rack in the lower third of the oven. Line a 13x9 baking pan with parchment paper, leaving an overhang so you can lift the bars out after they've baked.

Combine the melted butter, sugar, vanilla and salt in a medium bowl. Stir in the flour until just incorporated - the mixture will be soft, that's fine. Transfer the mixture to the prepared baking pan and press into an even layer on the bottom of the pan. Bake for 20-25 minutes, or until the crust is golden brown. Let cool completely. Turn the oven down to 325 F.

To make the filling: In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, beat the cream cheese on medium speed until smooth, about 30 seconds. Scrape down the sides of the bowl then add the sugar and vanilla, beating until smooth and creamy, about 1-2 minutes. Add the eggs, one at a time, beating just until incorporated and scraping down the sides of the bowl in between. Transfer 2 tablespoons of this batter to the 3/4 cup of caramel sauce and stir to incorporate. Pour the remaining cheesecake batter over the cooled crust and spread evenly.

Dollop the caramel sauce mixture over the filling. Use a toothpick to gently marble the caramel, being careful not to scrape the crust while you are doing it. Bake for 20-25 minutes, or until the edges are puffed and the center is just barely set.

Transfer the pan to a cooling rack and let come to room temperature. Cover and refrigerate for at least 4 hours, but preferably 24. Use the parchment sling to lift the bars out of the pan and transfer to a cutting board. Cut into squares with a long sharp knife. The bars can be refrigerated in an airtight container for up to 4 days.

Salted Caramel Sauce - adapted from Cook's Illustrated

2 cups sugar
1 cup heavy cream
2 tablespoons cold unsalted butter
1 teaspoon flour de del or grey sea salt

Add 1 cup of water to a 2-qt saucepan. Gently add the sugar to the center of the pot - it will mound, that's fine. Cover the pot and bring to a boil over high heat. Once boiling, uncover the pot and insert a candy thermometer. Continue cooking until the mixture registers 300 F and is just starting to develop some color, about 15 minutes. Reduce heat under the pot to medium and cook until the syrup is amber and registers 350 F on the thermometer, about another 5 minutes. Meanwhile, pour the cream into a small saucepan and bring to a simmer. If it simmers before the syrup is ready, just take it off the heat and set aside.

Remove the caramel from the heat and add about 1/4 of the warm cream to the pot. It will bubble furiously so be careful. Once the bubbling subsides, add the remaining cream. When it stops bubbling, whisk gently to incorporate fully. Add the butter and the salt and whisk to combine.

Set aside 3/4 cup of the salted caramel sauce for the cheesecake bars. The remainder can be refrigerated for up to 1 month.

Makes about 2 cups

Red Velvet Cupcakes

2011-12-13T21:38:00.000-08:00

The other day, a coworker bought red velvet cupcakes at one of those fancy cupcakes stores and shared them with the office. Amid the oohs and aahs, no one seemed to notice that the frosting was overly sweet, the cake blah, and the general experience disappointing. This isn't a complaint directed at this kind gentleman, but an indictment of what passes as a good cupcake (hint: looks matter).

I was so disappointed in what felt like false advertising that I was determined to find a red velvet cupcake recipe that would make people swoon, that deserved the acclaim, and that we could all eat and feel like it was worth the calories.

I didn't have to look far to find what I wanted. Deb at Smitten Kitchen posted this red velvet cake back in 2007, and she noted many people had made it quite successfully as cupcakes.

The recipe didn't disappoint. For red velvet lovers, the cupcakes were swoon-worthy. For the rest of us, they were a pretty darn good cupcake.

Note: You're working with red food dye here, so be careful not to splash it all over your kitchen. I have very porous light granite countertops and was careful to the point of paranoia. I think next time I'll just spread newspapers on the counter and not worry so much about making a mess. Be careful when you put the bowl, etc. in your sink. If the water splashes the batter around, you could have quite a mess.

Red Velvet Cupcakes - Adapted from "The Confetti Cakes Cookbook" by Elisa Strauss by way of Smitten Kitchen
Printer-friendly recipe
Yield: 36 cupcakes (I got 24 standard cupcakes and 24 minis)

3 1/2 cups/450 grams cake flour
1/2 cup/47 grams unsweetened cocoa (not Dutch process)
1 1/2 teaspoons salt
2 cups canola oil
2 1/4 cups/450 grams granulated sugar
3 large eggs
6 tablespoons (3 ounces-3 standard bottles) red food coloring or 1 teaspoon red gel food coloring dissolved in 6 tablespoons of water
1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1 1/4 cup buttermilk
2 teaspoons baking soda
2 1/2 teaspoons white vinegar

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Whisk cake flour, cocoa and salt in a bowl and set aside.

Place oil and sugar in bowl of an electric mixer and beat at medium speed until well-blended. Beat in eggs one at a time. Turn off mixer, add the food coloring and drape an old (but clean) kitchen towel over the mixer to control splashes. Turn mixer on lowest setting, wait ten seconds then turn off the mixer. Remove towel, turn mixer to low and add the vanilla. Add flour mixture alternately with buttermilk in two batches. Scrape down bowl and beat just long enough to combine.

Place baking soda in a small dish, stir in vinegar and add to batter with machine running. Beat for 10 seconds.

Fill cupcake papers 3/4 full, place in oven and bake until a cake tester comes out clean, 20 to 25 minutes. Let cool in pans 2 minutes, then remove cupcakes to cool on a wire rack. Cool completely before frosting.

Cream Cheese Frosting-Adapted from Smitten Kitchen

1 pound cream cheese, room temperature
2 sticks unsalted butter, room temperature
6 cups/684 grams confectioner’s sugar, sifted
2 teaspoons vanilla extract

Beat cream cheese in the bowl of a stand mixer on medium speed (or use a hand mixer) for 5 minutes. Turn off mixer and add butter, then beat on medium speed until light and fluffy, about 2 minutes. Turn mixer to low and slowly add the sugar and vanilla. Continue beating on low speed to combine. If too soft, chill until slightly stiff, about 10 minutes, before using.

Chocolate Espresso Cookies

2011-12-04T17:41:00.001-08:00

Everyone is searching for meaning in their lives. The one true love, deepest calling, and perfect job absorb many of us well into our 50s and beyond.

Me, I've been fortunate to tie down all the above, so my searching is now directed to something more mundane but just as elusive: the most ethereal chocolate treats. A couple of weeks ago I posted another chocolate cookie, and I wondered if this recipe could come close or even surpass the perfection of the Jacques Torres Mudslide Cookies. I'm sure M. Torres wasn't losing any sleep because the Mudslide cookie is in a league of its own.

I made these cookie's for Di's Second Annual Virtual Cookie Exchange. Some of my favorite bakers are participating (I am, ahem, late as usual). Di will post a round up on her blog, Di's Kitchen Notebook.

These cookies, which I saw in Chewy Gooey Crispy Crunchy Melt-in-Your-Mouth Cookies by Alice Medrich, have a similar truffly interior, but I missed the sprinkling of flour de del on the tops. M (who was traveling when I made the Mudslide cookies) proclaimed these "excellent" in waves of "mmmm" sounds. They were best while still warm so the crunch of the edges contrasted more sharply with the soft interiors. When cooled, the inside was chewy and the border lost some of its crispness, but was delightful for the aforementioned truffle-like interior.

I made quite a few changes to Alice Medrich's recipe, which you can find in the book, but here is my version, which I think is a little easier but loses none of the flavor or texture that makes these great.

Chocolate Espresso Cookies (adapted from Chewy Gooey Crispy Crunchy by Alice Medrich)
Printer-friendly version

6 ounces unsweetened chocolate, chopped

1/3 cup unbleached all-purpose flour
1/4 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
4 tbsp unsalted butter
2 large eggs
1 1/3 cups/9.33 ounces sugar
1 1/2 tsp espresso powder (optional)
1 tsp vanilla extract
4 ounces bittersweet chocolate discs (or substitute chopped bittersweet chocolate)

Whisk together the flour, salt, and baking powder. Set aside.

In a heatproof bowl set over a simmering pan of water, melt the butter and unsweetened chocolate. Stir until the butter and chocolate are melted. Remove bowl from the pan and set aside while preparing the rest of the recipe.

Beat together eggs, sugar, espresso powder, and vanilla until pale, about 5 minutes. Fold the chocolate mixture into the egg mixture and then add the flour and bittersweet chocolate discs. Refrigerate for 30 minutes.

Preheat oven to 350°F. Line 2 cookie sheets with parchment paper or silicon liners. Drop the dough in heaping tablespoons about 2 inches apart. Bake for 8-10 minutes, or until the tops are cracked and the edge resists collapsing when pushed lightly with your finger but the center is still softish. Let the cookies cool for a couple of minutes before transferring to metal racks.

Turkey Soup with Mushrooms & Wild Rice

2011-11-30T12:36:00.001-08:00

I don't know about you but I looked through dozens of use-up-leftover-turkey recipes before throwing up my hands, getting out a pot and doing it my way.

After Thanksgiving, the last thing I want to do is make a casserole with a block of cream cheese, or a soup with a pint of half and half. I want something easy that uses my leftover turkey, tastes fantastic, isn't over the top in calories and doesn't make me feel like I'm eating Thanksgiving dinner again.

If you have leftover rice, toss it in instead of making wild rice. Don't have leftover turkey? A rotisserie chicken would be great here. Just remove the skin and strip the meat from the bones. Save the carcass for making stock later!

This soup is easy, earthy, healthy, and deeply satisfying on a cold, rainy (or snowy) night. I like to cook my carrots, onions and celery down so they're lightly browned and very soft. Otherwise, I think the vegetables are too vegetal and they detract from the mellow flavor of the soup. To make it even faster, look for mirepoix (a combination of chopped celery, onion, and carrot) and cleaned sliced mushrooms in your produce section, and cook your wild rice before work, or the night before. Otherwise, you can start the wild rice, then chop your vegetables and make the rest of the recipe. By the time you finish with the rest of the recipe, your wild rice will be done and ready to add to the pot.

Turkey Soup with Mushroom & Wild Rice
Printer-friendly recipe

1 cup wild rice, uncooked

Prepare the wild rice according to package directions. Then chop the vegetables and prepare the rest of your soup:

3 tablespoons olive oil (plus additional if your pan gets dry)

10 ounces mushrooms, sliced

3 ribs of celery, chopped

3 medium carrots, chopped

1 medium-large onion, chopped

3 cloves of garlic, crushed or grated on a Microplane

1/8 teaspoon (or to taste) cayenne pepper (optional)

3 leaves of sage, finely minced

4 sprigs of thyme

Salt and pepper to taste

6-8 cups chicken broth

4 cups cooked turkey, chopped

Add 1 tablespoon olive oil to a large, deep saucepan (I made this in a 12" non-stick sauté pan, so you can go that route, too) over medium heat and add the mushrooms. Allow the mushrooms to soften and give off their juices, stirring only occasionally, for about 5 minutes. Transfer mushrooms to a plate and set aside.

Add remaining 2 tablespoons olive oil to the pot, and add the celery, carrots and onion. Stir to coat with the oil and cook for about 5 minutes, until the vegetable have started to soften but are still firmish. Add the garlic and stir into the vegetables. Continue to cook, stirring occasionally, for another 5-8 minutes, until the vegetables are quite soft, medium brown and cooked down considerably. Stir in the cayenne, sage and thyme branches, add salt and pepper to taste. Pour in 6 cups of the broth and cook until mixture is bubbling around the sides, stirring occasionally. Once all is hot, add your cooked wild rice and chopped turkey. If needed, add more broth (I like my soups to be more stuff than broth, but it's totally up to you). Heat through, then remove the thyme branches before serving.

Makes 8 servings

Normandy Apple Tart

2011-11-29T07:24:00.001-08:00

This week, the Tuesdays with Dorie bakers are making Dorie's Normandy apple tart, selected by Tracey at Tracey's Culinary Adventures. More than any other individual blogger, Tracey's site is the one I check first when searching for something to make on a whim. She's a sweet, generous person and has helped me so much in the past with questions I've had about blogging and photography. I simply couldn't miss her final pick, one of the last ones we'll make with the group.

I was fortunate I had a tart shell premade in the freezer. I don't know if it's Dorie's recipe but it was there and that made this recipe even easier. So too for the apple sauce (I actually substituted apple butter). I used a recipe I learned when I went to canning school at Happy Girl Kitchen last month. I had made it a few weeks ago and I was so pleased with myself that I left the jars out on the counter to bring me a smile whenever I passed through the kitchen.

With the two most time consuming steps already out of the way, this recipe came together in minutes. I made a mini, because that was what the crust in the freezer was, and because I didn't have time to peel a couple of apples. I took the cheek off of one Gala apple, peeled that, thinly sliced it, arranged the slices on top of the apple butter, brushed it with some egg wash and off to the oven it went.

Mine baked quite quickly because the tart shell was still hot when I loaded it up with the apple butter and apple slices, so I had to cover it with foil to keep the edge of the crust from browning too much. After just 25 minutes, it came out of the oven and I brushed it with a little quince jelly (which was one of the recipes Jordan made at the canning workshop). It gave the apple slices a lovely glow, and the combination of apples and quince is such a natural.

This was a delicious and, yes, even easy dessert with a little advance planning. The mellow tang of the apple butter contrasted nicely with the crisp-tender apple slices and the crunch of the tart shell. The star was truly the apple butter, so I encourage you to use a good quality filling.

If you'd like the recipe as Dorie intended it, Tracey has the recipe posted for you here. And be sure to check out what the other TWD bakers thought...you can find their tarts here.

Bittersweet Brownies

2011-11-15T00:00:00.000-08:00

I joined Tuesdays with Dorie with the expectation that I would become a better baker, that I would enjoy working through a massive cookbook with many fabulous recipes, and the self discipline that comes with that would be a bonus.

Somewhere on the road of Become a Better Baker my journey changed, almost imperceptibly. See, I never set out to form friendships. Indeed, I liked the behind-the-scenes nature of the closet blogger. An insanely private person, I had no desire to get close to people.

Yet in spite of my best attempts at standoffishness I found friends, yes friends, whom I've never met. That is until about a week ago.

Enter Nancy of The Dogs Eat the Crumbs and the Nancy pan. Nancy was on the West coast and we arranged to meet up. In an opportune twist, Nancy hadn't baked these brownies yet, and neither had I, so she came to the house and we made them together.

It's always interesting to meet someone whom you know and yet don't. The voice, the face, the mannerisms all fill out the impression you have of that person. Nancy already had my sincere admiration (she seemingly never sleeps, rarely misses a week baking with the group even when traveling, and is among the kindest and most solicitous of a very kind group of gals) but getting to know her was like staying up late talking with a friend at summer camp.

Baking together was a joy (especially for me since Nancy is a champion nut chopper). We traded tips and ideas as we attempted to focus on the recipe and remember to take photos. Because we're coming to the end of the book, we were less concerned about being perfect and more comfortable enjoying the process.

It is bittersweet that our days of Baking From My Home to Yours are coming to an end. I have loved this book, loved 95% of what I've made from it, but the sweeter gift has been the friendship of a group of women whom I love and respect.

And so it was that the recipe that I had chosen for this week became the perfect metaphor. The sadness of finishing the book and knowing that many of the TWD bakers will be going their own way was sweetened by the friendships that have eclipsed the book. Bittersweet indeed, yet the perfect opportunity for two friends to share a brownie.

Bittersweet Brownies - from Baking From My Home to Yours by Dorie Greenspan
Printer friendly recipe

2 sticks (8 ounces) unsalted butter, cut into 16 pieces
9 ounces bittersweet chocolate, coarsely chopped (we used Ghirardelli 60% bittersweet chips)
1 1/2 cups/150 grams sugar (we cut it back to 125 grams)
4 large eggs
2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract

1 tablespoon instant espresso powder (optional)
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 cup/140 grams all-purpose flour
3/4 cup pecans, chopped (my choice, optional)

Getting Ready: Center a rack in the oven and preheat the oven to 325 degrees F. Line a 9-x-13-inch baking pan with foil, butter the foil and place the pan on a baking sheet. (we used parchment paper, which doesn't need buttering)

Set a heatproof bowl over a saucepan of simmering water. Put the butter in the bowl, top with the chopped chocolate and stir occasionally until the ingredients are just melted - you don't want them to get so hot that the butter separates. Remove the bowl from the pan of water.

With a whisk, stir in the sugar. The mixture might get grainy, but it will even out. Whisk in the eggs one by one, then add the vanilla and whisk enthusiastically to smooth the batter. Finally, gently whisk in the espresso powder, if you're using it, salt and flour, stirring only until incorporated. Scrape the batter into the pan and smooth the top with a rubber spatula. Sprinkle the pecans (if using) on top of the batter and lightly press into the batter, just enough to anchor the nuts.

Bake the brownies until the top is dull and a knife inserted into the center comes out clean, usually about 40 minutes. Transfer the pan to a rack and cool the brownies to room temperature.

When they are completely cool, turn out onto a rack, peel away the foil and invert onto a cutting board. Cut into 32 slender rectangles, each roughly 2 1/4 x 1 1/2 inches.

Jacques Torres's Mudslide Cookies

2011-11-10T00:00:00.000-08:00

If ever there was the perfect chocolate cookie, this is it. If I stopped my search for the perfect chocolate experience with this cookie, I wouldn't feel like I was missing anything.

I've tried a lot of chocolate cookies in my time. Many I've baked but I've also bought. Some were mediocre, some good, some delicious, a few fabulous.

This is an extraordinary cookie.

I found them on the Crepes of Wrath (great name!) and I knew I had to make them pronto. I dreamt about them. I daydreamed about them. I plotted to have a free evening to make them. And finally, I managed to put together a few hours (not that they take that long, I just wanted to be able to savor them when not in a work-induced freak out).

I pulled out my Valrhona chocolate and flaky Malden sea salt to get the best result I could. Use the very best chocolate you can afford. You'll use a lot of it, but you won't mind a bit once you've had that first bite. Promise.

Chocolate Mudslide Cookies - adapted from Jacques Torres
Printer-friendly recipe

1/2 cup plus 3 tablespoons all-purpose flour
1 tablespoon baking powder
1/8 teaspoon kosher salt
6 ounces unsweetened chocolate
2 pounds chopped bittersweet chocolate, divided
6 tablespoons unsalted butter, cubed and room temperature
2 1/4 cups plus 1 tablespoon granulated sugar
5 eggs, room temperature
1 1/4 cups plus 1 tablespoon walnuts, chopped
fleur de sel or flaky sea salt, for sprinkling
parchment paper, for lining the baking sheets

Preheat your oven to 350 degrees F. Whisk together the flour, baking powder, and salt and set aside. Melt 16 ounces of the bittersweet chocolate with the unsweetened chocolate in a medium pan over medium-low heat, stirring frequently. Set aside to cool while you prepare the rest of the recipe.

Beat together the butter and sugar for a few minutes, until it has the texture of wet sand. Add in the eggs, one at a time, scraping down the sides of the bowl as necessary. Add in the flour mixture, and mix on the lowest speed until just moistened, then beat in the melted chocolate, until just combined. The dough will seem very wet at this point, but it will come together.

Fold the walnuts and remaining 16 ounces of bittersweet chocolate into the batter. Refrigerate the dough for 15-30 minutes before scooping the cookies.

Use a 2-tablespoon sized scoop or two spoons to drop the dough onto the baking sheets (it will be too wet to actually handle with your hands), then sprinkle with a bit of fleur de sel or sea salt. Bake at 350 degrees F for 10 minutes or so. Allow to cool completely before removing from the sheets. Also delicious warm if you can't wait.

Madeleines

2011-11-08T21:00:00.000-08:00

If you follow the goings on of the Tuesdays with Dorie bakers, you know these are supposed to be mini madeleines. But you also know I have a hard time following instructions.

I had something of a madeleine epiphany a while back when I mentioned my disgust with my silicone madeleine pan to my friend Kayte, and she gently referred me to her seminal post on madeleines (you can find it here). She won the blue ribbon at the county fair for her madeleines, and the post she wrote was the equivalent of a thesis on the delightful little cakes made famous by Proust. She eschews all mad pans other than the classic tinned steel, and I promptly bought two and donated my silicone madeleine pan to Goodwill.

These were a last minute project before work this morning and took longer than I thought they would. Of course, everything is taking longer now that I have my buddy with me again:

So yeah, I needed a little something something to cheer me up today. I was a bit preoccupied, and when the recipe said "whisk," I put the whisk attachment on my hand mixer and beat the poor batter like crazy. Oh, and I forgot to add the butter until the very end. But I buttered and floured my pans to the extreme and my exceedingly fluffy but bumpless madeleines popped right out of their pan. They were light, fluffy, crispy on the outside and did I mention they were fluffy? Nothing at all like the dense madeleines you may be used to from your neighborhood coffee shop.

This week's first recipe was selected by another buddy, Di of Di's Kitchen Notebook. I play Words with Friends with Di, and every once in a while she feels sorry for me and lets her eldest daughter fill in for her so I stand a chance of winning a game. If you'd like the recipe for these madeleines, Di has it for you here.

This week's second recipe was chosen by Valerie of Une Gamine dans la Cuisine. She chose Fall Butternut Squash Pie, which I'm sorry I didn't get to. Her pie is GORGEOUS. You can find it here.

Lemon Cheesecake Bars

2011-11-03T00:00:00.000-07:00

My recent windfall of Meyer lemons paid another dividend when I decided to adapt a recipe I originally saw on Tracey's Culinary Adventures. Tracey made hers with caramel but they were screaming to me to be the destination for my leftover lemon curd.

The recipe is from Alice Medrich's book Chewy Gooey Crispy Crunchy, which I own, but as with so many of my cookbooks I needed Tracey to point me to the right recipe. This is one of my favorite crust recipes, more like a thick batter that you spread in the pan rather than struggling with crumbly pastry. I use a piece of plastic wrap to tease it into place.

For me, cheesecake and lemon are a natural together as so many classic cheesecake recipes call for lemon zest. These bars, with their easy crust and no nonsense filling, are super simple. With the lemon curd swirled in they were delicious. The lemon was a lovely surprise in the creamy filling, with the crisp, buttery crust coming together in the perfect bite.

Lemon Cheesecake Bars - adapted from Chewy Gooey Crispy Crunchy, thanks to Tracey
Printer-friendly recipe

Crust
14 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted and still warm
1/2 cup (3.5 oz) sugar
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
3/8 teaspoon salt
2 cups (9 oz) all-purpose flour

Filling
1 cup lemon curd (homemade or jarred)
1 1/2 lbs cream cheese, at room temperature
1/4 cup (1.75 oz) sugar
1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1/8 teaspoon Fiore di Sicilia (optional)
2 large eggs, at room temperature

To make the crust: Preheat oven to 350 F with a rack in the lower third of the oven. Line a 13x9 baking pan with parchment paper or foil, leaving an overhang so you can lift the bars out after they've baked. If using foil, spray it with nonstick cooking spray.

Combine the melted butter, sugar, vanilla and salt in a medium bowl. Stir in the flour until just incorporated - the mixture will be soft, that's fine. Transfer the mixture to the prepared baking pan and press into an even layer on the bottom of the pan. Bake for 20-25 minutes, or until the crust is golden brown. Let cool completely. Turn the oven down to 325 F.

In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, beat the cream cheese on medium speed until smooth, about 30 seconds. Scrape down the sides of the bowl then add the sugar and vanilla, beating until smooth and creamy, about 1-2 minutes. Add the eggs, one at a time, beating just until incorporated and scraping down the sides of the bowl in between. Pour the remaining cheesecake batter over the cooled crust and spread evenly.

Dollop the lemon curd over the filling. Use a knife to gently swirl the lemon curd into the cheesecake mixture. Bake for 20-25 minutes, or until the edges are puffed and the center is just barely set.

Transfer the pan to a cooling rack and let come to room temperature. Cover and refrigerate for at least 4 hours, but preferably 24. Use the sling to lift the bars out of the pan and transfer to a cutting board. Cut into squares with a long sharp knife. The bars can be refrigerated in an airtight container for up to 4 days. Mine weren't in an airtight container and they cracked but were still delicious.

Honey Pecan Scones

2011-11-01T00:00:00.000-07:00

Just like a book you read which you come to with no expectations yet end up falling in love with, these scones are a sleeper hit. I made a couple of changes, used my favorite easy mixing technique, and they were a knockout. Absolutely a top three scone, maybe top two.

I might never have gotten around to making these if Jeannette at The Whimsical Cupcake hadn't chosen them for Tuesdays with Dorie. I made them when the November recipes were first announced, and I've been craving one ever since. Try them and you will to.

Honey Pecan Scones - adapted from Baking From My Home to Yours
Printer-friendly recipe

1 large egg
2 tablespoons honey
1/2 cup cold whole milk
1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 cup whole wheat flour
1 tablespoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
3/4 teaspoon cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 stick cold unsalted butter, cut into small pieces
3/4 cup chopped pecans, toasted

Center a rack in the oven and preheat to 400F. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper or a silicone mat. Lightly flour a counter.

Stir the egg, honey and milk together in a measuring cup or small bowl and set aside.

Measure the flours, baking powder, baking soda, salt and cinnamon into the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment. Drop in the butter and mix on low speed until the mixture is pebbly. With the mixer on low, pour in the liquid ingredients over the dry ingredients and mix until the mixture is not quite combined. You should have some streaks of flour but no pools of milk. Stir in the chopped pecans with a spatula. The flour should now be almost entirely worked in though streaks are fine (better in fact than no streaks).

Turn the dough onto your lightly floured counter and shape it into a circle about 1" high. Using a 2" biscuit or cookie cutter, cut out the scones, dipping the cutter in flour before each cut and making each cut close to the previous one; place on the baking sheet. Gently gather the scraps together and cut out the remaining scones. You should have about 12 scones.

Bake for 18-20 minutes or until the tops are deeply golden and firmish to the touch. Transfer them to a wire rack. Best served warm, still delicious at room temperature.

Note: My favorite way to make scones is to cut them out, put them on baking sheets, wrap well with plastic wrap and freeze them. To bake, place a few on a parchment lined baking sheet and bake them, still frozen, for 20 minutes.

Lemon Curd Ice Cream

2011-10-20T00:01:00.000-07:00

I've been doing a lot of lemon desserts since a friend at work gave me a bunch of her ginormous end-of-crop Meyer lemons. They sat in my fridge for a couple of weeks before I decided what I wanted to make with them, but I've been making up for lost time ever since.

I started by making lemon curd using my favorite recipe (you can find it here). I made a double recipe, so I had plenty of luscious lemon curd to play with. First up were lemon curd scones and now this ice cream.

Some people confine ice cream to the warmer months (I lean in this direction myself), but others enjoy it year round. That's great news since lemons are a winter fruit and it would be a shame to miss out on this ice cream because the seasons don't cooperate with the fruit.

This ice cream starts with a basic custard, to which you add lemon curd. Yowza, how great does that sound? I doubled the amount of lemon curd since what is lemon curd but a custard with lemon in it, and what is vanilla ice cream but a custard? The mad scientist in me thought of dumping the entire bowl of lemon curd in the ice cream maker but I resisted. Maybe next time.

I heard about this ice cream from some of my Twitter buddies. Kayte was almost in a state of rapture (she L-O-V-E-S lemon). I read Tracey's post about it, and she loved it, then Margaret raved about it. Three for three, so I simply had to make it, even though fall weather had definitely arrived.

When I made it, I didn't read the recipe before I made it and thought it was a typo that the cream wasn't added with the milk, so I tossed it in too. So I missed the part of the recipe where you're supposed to whip the cream and add it to the chilled custard. And it was so fabulous that I'll do it exactly the same way next time I make it. I can't imagine it being any lighter or creamier.

The true test of how good this was is that we have chocolate gelatto in the freezer, and this lemon ice cream is the one we go for every time. Yes, it's that good.

Lemon Curd Ice Cream (adapted from Murphy's Ice Cream Book of Sweet Things by way of Tracey's Culinary Adventures)

Printer-friendly recipe

2/3 cup/130 g sugar
5 egg yolks
1 cup heavy cream
1 cup milk
1/2 cup lemon curd
zest of one lemon

Bring the milk and cream to a low simmer in a saucepan. In a small mixing bowl, whisk together the egg yolks and sugar until thick and pale yellow. Temper the eggs by pouring in the milk in a slow, steady stream, whisking constantly.

Pour the mixture back into the saucepan and place over low heat. Stir continuously until the custard thickens slightly and just coats the back of a spoon (about 170 F). Immediately remove pan from the heat.

Add the lemon curd and lemon zest to the warm custard, stirring to incorporate fully. Cover the custard with plastic wrap and refrigerate overnight.

Remove the custard from the refrigerator and strain it to remove the lemon zest (unless you like it in there). Churn mixture in ice cream maker according to the manufacturer's instructions. The ice cream will still be fairly soft after churning so transfer it to a freezer-proof container and freeze until solid.

Making Jam at Happy Girl Kitchen

2011-10-13T16:30:00.000-07:00

There are many benefits to living in Northern California. There's the fabulous weather, stunning scenery, lively food scene, numerous farmers markets, and countless small businesses that use the abundant produce that is grown here, much of it organic.

I enjoyed a muesli with maple yogurt and a Blue Bottle Coffee latte before the workshop

I discovered one of these businesses when I went to Pacific Grove last month. Happy Girl Kitchen is a cafe with a difference: the business is focused on sustainable practices and is single-handedly trying to revive the art of preserving the harvest. Jordan and Todd partner with local family farms, connecting the harvest with home preservation advocates. To further their efforts, they offer canning workshops. Five hours long, attendees learn several recipes hands-on, and get to take home a couple of jars of each recipe they make. They throw in a delicious lunch to boot.

Jordan uses the oven to make the apple butter, eliminating hours of stirring

Happy Girl recently opened a store in San Francisco's Ferry Building, yet all of the products they sell there, in Pacific Grove, and the farmers markets they sell at are made in a relatively small kitchen in their Pacific Grove location. It was here that I recently attended a workshop on apples, quince and pears. We learned how to make apple butter, apple chutney, quince jelly and can pears in a honey syrup.

Many hands make light work - ten of us were able to cut up pounds of quince in minutes

One of the reasons I've never canned is I'm afraid I'd do it wrong and kill someone. It turns out I'm not alone in that fear, but there's not too much danger of that if you follow some simple rules. We learned the importance of having a perfectly clean rim on the jar (a tiny bit of fruit or an herb interferes with the sealing of the lid), of processing the filled jars in a hot water bath for a long enough time to heat the center of the jar to a safe temperature.

Even the quince cores are used for their pectin. Wrapped in a cloth, they boil with the fruit.

Quince were new for me, and although they have a lovely aroma, they are tough to love. They're a bit wooly on the outside, and taste a bit too tangy. They're best when cooked and they are ideal for jelly. Jordan told us how to make membrillo with the quince pulp after we cooked it down and strained the juice for the jelly. She even let us take it home so we could make membrillo ourselves.

Straining the pulp to extract all the juice to for the quince jelly

That was something I enjoyed about my day at Happy Girl. When Jordan grabbed a jar of pickled beets to serve with lunch, she poured out the pickling liquid, ditto with the bread and butter pickled zucchini. The mixture smelled amazing, and Jordan explained that she'd save it for making a vinaigrette. At Happy Girl, they strive to use, and reuse, everything they can. Food scraps and paper products are composted so very little goes to waste.

The whole time we were there, Jordan was an enthusiastic and knowledgeable ambassador for canning. She encouraged us to experiment with herbs and spices by dividing a batch in several parts so that if something wasn't successful, you haven't spoiled the whole batch.

We've already sampled the pears (preserved in a bath of honey syrup with a cinnamon stick) and the quince jelly, and both were fabulous. Even the quince pulp (for the membrillo) was delicious. If the byproducts of the canning process are delicious, what's stopping me from taking up this almost lost art? Not a thing now that I know how to do it without victims.

I plan to make the trek to Pacific Grove in a few weeks for another canning workshop. Jordan and Todd will be doing one more tomato workshop and I plan to be there to learn to make their fabulous salsa.

A Rant (with a Side of Cream Biscuits)

2011-10-11T13:54:00.000-07:00

Even though I come from Florida, the land south of the South, when I was a child no self respecting cook would be without a box of Bisquick. As far as I knew, that was where biscuits came from, period. Home cooks (mostly moms in those days) had been freed from the enslavement of preparing food "from scratch" and convenience products, frozen dinners and instant breakfast (and orange juice!) were all the rage. I didn't know food came from another source that wasn't a can.

Having knocked out the basic biscuits from Baking From My Home to Yours just before my morning shower, I can scarcely understand the appeal of "instant" biscuit mix. How much more instant can it be compared to measuring out flour, salt, baking powder, butter and milk? We all fooled ourselves back then by saying things tasted just as good as homemade, but does any kid long for their mom's frozen waffles?

When I saw that Jennifer of Cooking for Comfort had selected these biscuits for Tuesdays with Dorie, I didn't intend to write a screed about convenience foods, but I can't help myself. As a society, the US has an appalling rate of obesity among children (and adults) and convenience foods aren't helping us. For all the bad press butter got even a few years ago, it turns out it's healthier for us than margarine (shudder) or that stuff in the tub. Eggs, shunned because they have cholesterol, aren't bad for us at all, and we're now told we can include them in a healthy diet. It turns out that food, the real stuff that we buy and cook ourselves, is good for us, even when it contains things we once thought were bad for us. That's because our bodies seem to find it easier to process things that are food rather than things born in a chemistry lab.

Convenience foods frequently contain ingredients that aren't nutritive, but they give the products the shelf life of plutonium. If I pull some lettuce out of the fridge that got neglected and turned brown and icky, I expect that. When I let some engineered dreck sit on the shelf for two years, then I open it and it tastes just as it would have two years earlier, that's a little scary.

I know people are busy, I get that. I am too, in fact I work two jobs myself, one of which is VERY full time. I'd rather make my own convenience foods and freeze them than buy engineered anything, so when I made these biscuits (which were great, I may have forgotten to mention that) I put a bunch in the freezer. One day when we're having chili or soup or an omelette for breakfast, I'll pull a few out of the freezer and bake them fresh. The house will smell amazing, they'll taste amazing, and all will be good in our world.

Now that's a convenience food.

Lemon Curd Scones

2011-10-07T11:27:00.000-07:00

The old saying that necessity is the mother of invention was definitely at work for these scones. Inspired by my favorite DISCONTINUED scone at Peet's Coffee, they make use of that extra lemon curd lurking in your fridge. What, you don't have a problem with leftover lemon curd taking up valuable space? Me neither, which is why I made my go-to recipe (you can find it here) the night before I made these, but a good quality jarred lemon curd would be just fine.

My favorite Peet's lemon scone had a lemon icing, which I made, but I served some with a dollop of lemon curd instead. They were yummy and lemony without being too sweet. For me, the secret of a good drizzle is to cut out as much sugar as possible. I hate it when the taste of the sugar overtakes the flavor of the lemon.

Things you should know if you make these:

Flour your board (or counter) liberally as the dough is VERY wet and sticky.
I use Ina Garten's mixer method to mix my scones, but you could use a pastry blender, two forks or your fingers if you prefer.
Don't mix the dough until it's combined, stop when it still looks a little clumpy and floury.
Use a bowl scraper to transfer the dough to your WELL FLOURED work surface. Then flour the bowl scraper and use it to press the dough into a circle that's about 1 1/2 inches thick.
I like to cut my scones with a 2" biscuit cutter (flour it before each cut) but you can cut your dough into wedges if you like triangular scones (I find the triangular ones too large).
Brush the scones with a little cream before baking for a nicer finish, but that's unnecessary if you glaze them.

Lemon Curd Scones
Printer-friendly recipe

1 egg
1/3 cup cream

1/2 cup lemon curd
2 cups all-purpose flour
1/4 cup sugar
1 tablespoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
5 tablespoons cold butter, cut into small cubes

Extra cream for brushing (optional)

Lemon glaze (recipe follows)

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper, a silicon baking mat, or butter it lightly. Set aside.

In large mixing bowl, combine the flour, sugar, baking powder and salt together and set aside.

In a small mixing bowl or 2 cup measure, beat together the egg, cream and lemon curd and set aside.

Working with a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, drop the butter into the flour mixture and mix on low speed until the mixture resembles a combination of oat flakes and pea-sized pieces of butter. Still on low speed, pour in the liquid mixture and mix until flour is mostly worked in. Turn off mixer, and with a few swipes of a spatula, mix in any flour remaining on the bottom of the bowl. Dough will be very wet!

Flour a counter liberally and coax your dough onto the floured surface (a plastic bowl scraper is ideal for this). Flour your hands and/or the bowl scraper, and gently pat the mound into a somewhat cohesive disk about 1 1/2" high. Flour a 2" biscuit cutter and cut out scones, flouring your biscuit cutter before each cut. Place each on the prepared baking sheet. Brush with cream if desired.

Bake the scones for about 20 minutes (check after 18 minutes if your oven runs hot), until they are nicely browned. When cool, spoon on the glaze and serve immediately.

Lemon Glaze

Juice of 1 lemon

Approximately 2 cups of powdered sugar

Combine lemon juice and 1 1/2 cups of powdered sugar in a bowl, stirring and mashing any lumps until the glaze is smooth. Add additional powdered sugar to get the desired consistency. Set aside until scones have cooled, then spoon on to scones.

Apple Pecan Muffin Cake

2011-10-04T00:00:00.000-07:00

Few things are more evocative of autumn than the smell of apples cooking, warm with cinnamon. The smell that wafted from the oven when I made this made me want to pull out the fall coats (such as they are in northern California) and warm sheets. Even better, we had our first seasonal rain as I was baking this cake, and the gentle sound of the rain reinforced the feeling. Fall is here, and this cake is the perfect way to celebrate.

I mixed up the recipe a bit, doubling it as I usually do, and I omitted the raisins. Not a fan, and I didn't think dried cherries would be as good. The cake came together easily, the crust was crusty and the center fluffy, just like a terrific muffin. The flavor was delicious and the pecans made it extra special. A few ideas if you make these (Katrina has the recipe for you here):

I like to measure the brown sugar into the bowl, break up the lumps, then add the rest of the dry ingredients
I substituted quick cooking Irish oats since that's what I had
I omitted the almond extract and added 1/2 tablespoon of boiled cider (which I ordered from King Arthur Flour) for extra apple flavor
Toast your nuts for extra flavor
Although I didn't go in this direction, this cake would be great made with white whole wheat flour replacing all or some of the all-purpose flour
I almost added chopped candied ginger but I was afraid my tasters wouldn't like it
Add the apples, nuts and dried fruit (if using) before all the wet and dry ingredients are incorporated to help avoid over mixing

Katrina of Baking and Boys selected this recipe from Baking From My Home to Yours as this week's Tuesdays with Dorie recipe. I haven't posted for TWD in a long time, though I've baked along. I was home from work early to the other day, and realized with a thrill that I could bake for TWD and post on time. That's what people who aren't working 12 hour days do. Note to self...come home early more often!

Brown Butter + Cinnamon = Killer Cookie

2011-09-19T07:37:00.000-07:00

Yes, I know. I've been gone a few weeks, but I'm back. A hectic month at work kept me away. Out of the kitchen? No way.

These dangerous cookies and a comment from my dear friend Margaret were what it took to get me back to blogging. They start with one of my favorite ingredients, brown butter. Now, when I make brown butter, I'm not content with some lightly colored solids at the bottom of my pan and pale butter. No, I take it to dark brown solids and a very brown butter. I think you get more of the brown butter flavor that way. They contain no chocolate or nuts so they're perfect for those who don't like "things" in their cookies.

These cookies were inspired by the Cook's Illustrated recipe for Brown Sugar Cookies, but I took them in an entirely different direction. They're easy, don't require you to have room temperature butter (a perfect last-minute cookie), and there's no chopping involved. Sweet! You can start the butter, and then measure the other ingredients while the browned butter is cooling. I scooped them out, left for two hours before I baked them, and they were fine.

Lethally Delicious Cinnamon Cookies
Printer-friendly recipe

14 tablespoons unsalted butter (1 3/4 sticks), divided
1 3/4 cups packed dark brown sugar (12 1/4 ounces)
2 cups plus 2 tablespoons unbleached all-purpose flour (about 10 1/2 ounces)
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon baking powder

1 1/4 teaspoons cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon sea salt (table salt is fine, too)
1 large egg
1 large egg yolk

Heat 10 tablespoons butter in a deep medium saucepan over medium-high heat until melted, about 2 minutes. Continue to cook, stirring with a heat proof spatula until the butter is medium to dark brown and has a nutty aroma, 3 - 5 minutes. Remove pan from heat and transfer browned butter to a large heatproof bowl. Stir in the remaining butter into hot butter to melt; and set aside for 15 minutes.

Adjust oven rack to middle position and heat oven to 350 degrees. Line 2 baking sheets with parchment paper. Whisk flour, baking soda, baking powder, cinnamon and salt together in medium bowl and set aside.

Add the brown sugar to the bowl with the butter and mix until no sugar lumps remain, about 30 seconds. Scrape down the sides of bowl with a rubber spatula; add egg and egg yolk and mix until fully incorporated, about 30 seconds. Scrape down bowl. Add flour mixture and mix until just combined, about 1 minute. Give dough final stir with rubber spatula to ensure that no flour pockets remain and ingredients are evenly distributed.

Scoop out the dough into 24 portions, and set on prepared baking sheet, spacing dough about 2 inches apart, 12 dough balls per sheet.

Bake one sheet at a time until cookies are browned and still puffy and edges have begun to set but centers are still soft (cookies will feel well formed on the edge but centers will still be soft), 12 to 14 minutes, rotating baking sheet halfway through baking. Do not overbake.

Cool cookies on baking sheet 5 minutes; then transfer cookies to wire rack to cool completely (they are also delicious slightly warm).

German Chocolate Ice Cream

2011-08-15T07:04:00.001-07:00

What do you get when you combine toasted coconut and pecans, deep, dark chocolate, cream and eggs?

German chocolate ice cream. Not the ooey gooey confection that sits on the eponymous cake, but an irresistible bowl of crunchy, chewy, chocolaty goodness.

My friend Margaret of Tea and Scones talked me into making this ice cream with her. The original recipe called for German chocolate, which I don't have because it's just too sweet for me, so I substituted semisweet. Margaret suggested toasting the coconut (she didn't but thought it would enhance the coconut's flavor). I was hesitant to use whole eggs in a "custard" but since you strain and process the custard in the blender, the risk of cooked egg bits was close to zero. I might try making this with all egg yolks next time to get an even more luscious ice cream.

Because of the straining, blending and multiple bowls and appliances required for this one, it isn't a low maintenance dessert but I think you'll agree it's worth it.

German Chocolate Ice Cream - adapted from Blue Ridge Mountain Ice cream Maker Store
Printer-friendly recipe
4 ounces semisweet chocolate
1 cup heavy cream
1 cup milk
1/3 cup sugar
2 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
½ cup sweetened flaked coconut, toasted
½ cup toasted chopped pecans

Make an ice bath: fill a large mixing bowl with ice water and place a 2 quart bowl on top, resting in the ice bath. Set aside.

Melt the chocolate in the microwave on medium, stirring every ten seconds or so, or in the top of a double boiler. In a medium saucepan over low heat, combine the cream, milk and sugar. Cook until bubbles form around the edge and mixture is warm to the touch.

Whisk the eggs in a small bowl and slowly whisk in several spoonfuls of the hot milk mixture to the eggs to gradually warm them, then slowly add the rest of the hot milk, whisking constantly. Add the mixture to the same saucepan and continue to cook over low heat, whisking constantly. Mixture will thicken slightly and reach a temperature of 160 degrees on a candy thermometer. Stir in the warm melted chocolate and vanilla.

Pour the mixture into the bowl in the ice bath to cool the mixture. When cool, pour the mixture through a strainer into a 1 quart measuring cup and then into the container of a blender, cover and process until well combined. Chill in the refrigerator until ready to freeze.

Pour into the ice cream maker and follow the manufacturer's instructions for freezing. Just before the ice cream is completely frozen, stir in the 3 coconut and pecans and stir to combine ingredients. Transfer to a container and freeze until ready to serve.

Makes about 1 quart

*******PLEASE NOTE: Lethally Delicious is on hiatus for the month of Ramadan. I will be responding to comments but not keeping up with my Google Reader or visiting bloggers other than those who leave comments. I'll be back around August 31st with a spirit refreshed by this blessed month of fasting and prayer. Peace.

Carrot Spice Muffins/Cocoa Meringues

2011-08-09T00:01:00.000-07:00

The Tuesdays with Dorie bakers have been exploring Baking From My Home to Yours one recipe at a time since January 2008. With the majority of the recipes in the cookbook chosen up to this point, one would expect the remainder to be the less desirable ones.

Not so. Last week, we had a light, easy cocoa meringue cookie made with almond meal and peppered with chocolate chips. It was knock-your-socks-off delicious, too good to eat just one, wildly popular with everyone who had one. Mike of Ugly Food For an Ugly Dude chose this one and I am forever grateful. I probably never would have made this one on my own even though there is a photo in the book and I love chocolate. These were fantastic and I'll definitely make them again.

This week, my buddy Nancy of The Dogs Eat the Crumbs picked the carrot spice muffins, an erstwhile morning glory that I made with carrots, pecans, coconut and dried cherries. I was excited to make these and made them the day after the recipes for this month were announced. Muffins are usually easy to put together as they require minimal mixing, but these were a little labor intensive. I shredded the carrots in my food processor, and toasted the coconut and nuts in the oven while I measured the wet and dry ingredients.

I normally double most recipes since I take most everything in to work but this time I made the recipe as written. When I make muffins from this book, I always get a higher yield than Dorie specifies in the recipe. With this recipe, I forced myself to pile all the batter into 12 muffin cups and was rewarded with 12 large, perfectly baked muffins. They were crunchy on the outside and moist and flavorful inside, all elements of a perfect muffin in my book. And they were great the following day, and the day after that. Definitely a repeater around here. Nancy has the recipe for you here.

*******PLEASE NOTE: Lethally Delicious is on hiatus for the month of Ramadan. I will be responding to comments but not keeping up with my Google Reader or visiting bloggers other than those who leave comments. I'll be back around August 31st with a spirit refreshed by this blessed month of fasting and prayer. Peace.

Revisiting My Dirty Little Secret

2011-08-04T00:01:00.000-07:00

Back when I first told you (and showed! yikes!) my dirty little secret, I can admit now that I was frightened and overwhelmed by the prospect of where to start. It seemed so daunting. I was paralyzed.

If the longest journey starts with a single step, then the messiest pantry clean up starts with a single shopping bag.

What?

That's right. It was the little shelf stuffed with shopping bags that got me off the sofa and into toss it/give it/use it mode. I literally couldn't jam one more shopping bag into the narrow vertical shelf most use for storing cookies sheets but I use for shopping bags. One weekend afternoon, I looked at it with exasperation and thought "Enough is enough!" I pulled them all out and piled them on the ottoman, then I sat down and got brutally honest with myself.

What exactly am I planning? To be nomadic, with all our possessions in shopping bags? I hope not, but the truth is even if we were, there's a limit to how many we can carry at one time. I love seeing the shopping bag from the duty free shop in the New Delhi airport, the one from the grocery store in Gilleleje, Denmark. Multiples from bakeries, chocolate shops, and cookware stores both here and abroad. They bring back memories. It would be one thing if I used them, but I seldom do. Ruthlessly, I cut handles off, recycled paper bags, and limited myself to just one or two of my favorites (Pierre Herme, Laduree and La Maison du Chocolat). The rest - gone. Bye bye.

The resulting look of order and restraint in that little slot in my big pantry was an epiphany. IF I DO MORE OF THAT, THE WHOLE PANTRY COULD BE TRANSFORMED!

So I did, and still am.

It's a work in progress, but everything is off the floor, unused serving pieces have a new home at the thrift store or Salvation Army, and like things now live together.

I did the majority Sunday evening of the July 4th weekend, and I stood there for about half an hour staring at the transformed space. Don't get me wrong, there's still work to be done, but I can easily get to things. I don't have to move the stack of bundt pans and a large serving tray to access the sheets of parchment paper.

Baking is now easier, packing lunches is easier and I'm not embarrassed any more when someone comes over and the pantry door is open. There aren't enough shopping bags to contain the great feelings I got from doing this.

Another benefit of my pantry epiphany is it carried over to the kitchen cabinets. I used to collect old Spode china, and I still had several sets that I never use because it doesn't go in the dishwasher, yet my formal china was still in boxes in the garage where it had lived since it was boxed up for the kitchen renovation. I felt ready to let go of this beautiful old china so it could be enjoyed by someone who would use it. That made enough space to bring in our formal china.

A few things I learned:

I had eight shopping bags from some stores, mostly small or impractical shapes. I kept the two I was most likely to use and recycled the rest.
We rarely entertain large scale because our home is small. The large serving dishes I had for that once-in-a-decade party were taking up valuable real estate. I can borrow from friends the next time we have 30 people over.
Keep the things you use all the time in a convenient spot. I put my steel cut oatmeal (fabulous overnight recipe here) in wide mouth Mason jars, but stashed the jars way back in the pantry and frequently knocked them over when reaching for other things. They're now in a cabinet, directly over the spot where I prepare my oatmeal each week.
Consider how you use your kitchen. I bake a lot, so having a variety of mixing bowls easily accessible is more important to me than a variety of sippy cups, but if you have kids, put the sippy cups directly over where you prep your child's drinks.
If letting go of something you've collected is hard, keep one or two pieces that you particularly prize and let the rest go with love. Imagine someone's thrill at finding that perfect object they've been searching for. I kept one place setting from one of my sets, and a simple square luncheon plate from the other.
When you're packing things up and letting go of something just feels wrong, allow yourself to keep it. Just don't feel that way over every single object. When I was boxing up my Spode, I couldn't make myself give up the third set. It turned out that was the favorite of the seven patterns (yes, seven) that I used to collect. I couldn't bear to let it go, so I didn't. I may at some point decide I'm ready but for now I look forward to using it on weekends when I don't mind hand washing as much.

Because I didn't acquire this stuff in a day, the pantry won't get cleaned in a weekend. This is a project that, for me, has to be done over time. I still have two ice cream makers and more containers for storing leftovers than any three families can use. Those things will change in time, but for now I am thrilled to open the pantry door, reach for something, and not have to cover my head. We'll revisit the pantry when it's done. And now if you'll excuse me, I want to go sneak another peak.

*******PLEASE NOTE: Lethally Delicious is on hiatus for the month of Ramadan. I will be responding to comments but not keeping up with my Google Reader or visiting bloggers other than those who leave comments. I'll be back around August 31st with a spirit refreshed by this blessed month of fasting and prayer. Peace.

Daring Bakers - Fraisier

2011-07-27T11:01:00.000-07:00

Jana of Cherry Tea Cakes was our July Daring Bakers’ host and she challenges us to make Fresh Frasiers inspired by recipes written by Elisabeth M. Prueitt and Chad Robertson in the beautiful cookbook Tartine.

I completely changed my approach this month, not just making the recipe (the first I've made since March) but making it EARLY in the month. Thanks to the long weekend for Independence Day, I got this baby done early. I think we need a long weekend every month.

It was stinking hot here that weekend, and the thought of turning on the oven filled me with dread. So I made the lemon chiffon cake layer before the sun was up when I could have the window open and the fan bringing in what little cooler air there was. And that's when I ran into a problem.

Let me just say I think Daring Bakers needs to have a reading skills test for new bakers. I read the recipe carefully and REPEATEDLY and saw "8" cake pan" every time. Except the time when I read it as I was about to prepare my 8" cake pan. Whuuutt, 8" springform pan?!?!? Who changed the recipe on me??

I have three springform pans, none of them 8". So do I make it in a 9" (have two of those) or the 8" cake pan? Since it's a chiffon cake, with parchment in the bottom I figured it would be easy to get out of the pan, so I went with the 8" cake pan. (Why I didn't think of my 8x8 with 3" sides I'll never know, but a square frasier would have been cool). Then I realized the 8" springform was so all the cake batter would fit in the same pan. So I quickly prepped two 4" springform pans and scooped the excess batter into them and baked the 8" for a few minutes less than the recipe called for, and it was glorious, puffy and lightly browned.

Other than the pan trauma, the recipe was uneventful. The pastry cream was easy. I made my simple syrup with POG (passion fruit-orange-guava juice) to temper the sweetness of the fruit. Loved the technique of lining the ring from a springform with plastic wrap before assembling the fraisier. Assembly was not a big deal, no trauma, nothing to mar my enjoyment of making this lovely dessert. I did bypass the thin topping of almond paste because, well, I hate the stuff. So my fraisier is no doubt less beautiful as a result, but it's something I enjoyed eating. So much so that I took the leftovers to work.

This was a fun challenge, and a recipe that I imagine I'll return to in the future, but with different fruit. Thanks, Jana, for a great recipe that even I could make!

Basic Chiffon Cake:

Ingredients:

1 cup + 2 tablespoons (270 ml) (5½ oz/155 gm) all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon (5 ml) (4 gm) baking powder
3/4 cups (180 ml) (6 oz /170 gm) sugar
1/2 teaspoon (2½ ml) (1½ gm) salt, preferably kosher
1/4 cup (2 fl oz/60 ml) vegetable oil
3 large egg yolks
⅓ cup + 1 tablespoon (3.17 fl oz/95 ml) water
1 teaspoon (5 ml) pure vanilla extract
3/4 teaspoon (3¾ ml) (3 gm) lemon zest, grated
5 large egg whites
¼ teaspoon (1¼ ml) (1 gm) cream of tartar

Directions:

Preheat the oven to moderate 325°F (160°C/gas mark 3).
Line the bottom of an 8-inch (20 cm) spring form pan with parchment paper. Do not grease the sides of the pan.
In a large mixing bowl, stir together the flour and baking powder. Add in all but 3 tablespoons (45 ml.) of sugar, and all of the salt. Stir to combine.
In a small bowl combine the oil, egg yolks, water, vanilla and lemon zest. Whisk thoroughly.
Combine with the dry ingredients and mix thoroughly for about one minute, or until very smooth.
Put the egg whites into a stand mixer, and beat on medium speed using a whisk attachment on a medium speed, until frothy. Add cream of tartar and beat on a medium speed until the whites hold soft peaks. Slowly add the remaining sugar and beat on a medium-high speed until the whites hold firm and form shiny peaks.
Using a grease free rubber spatula, scoop about ⅓ of the whites into the yolk mixture and fold in gently. Gently fold in the remaining whites just until combined.
Pour the batter into the prepared pan. Bake for 45 to 55 minutes or until toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean.
Removed the cake from the oven and allow to cool in the pan on a wire rack.
To unmold, run a knife around the sides to loosen the cake from the pan and remove the spring form sides. Invert the cake and peel off the parchment paper. Refrigerate for up to four days.

Variations to the Basic Chiffon Cake:

Lemon Chiffon Cake

Ingredient Alterations:
Reduce water to 1/4 cup (60 ml)
Add 1/8 cup (30 ml) lemon juice
Increase lemon zest to 1½ teaspoon (7½ ml) (5 gm)
Remove the vanilla from the recipe

Direction Alterations:
Follow the directions, same as above, adding the lemon juice and zest to the oil, egg yolks and water in step 4.

Orange Chiffon Cake

Ingredient Alterations:
Replace the full amount of water with orange juice
Replace lemon zest with the zest of one orange
Remove the vanilla from the recipe

Direction Alterations:
Follow the directions, same as above, adding the orange juice and zest to the oil, and egg yolks in step 4.

Coconut Chiffon Cake

Ingredient Alterations:
Add ¼ teaspoon (1¼ ml) (1 gm) freshly ground nutmeg
Reduce oil to 1/8 cup (1 fl oz/30ml)
Reduce water to 1/8 cup (1 fl oz/30ml)
Add 1/3 cup (2 ⅔fl oz/80 ml) unsweetened coconut milk
Remove the vanilla from the recipe

Direction Alterations:
Follow the directions, same as above, adding the nutmeg to the flour mixture in step 3, and the coconut milk to the oil, water and egg yolks in step 4.

Chocolate Chiffon Cake

Ingredient Alterations:
Reduce all-purpose flour to ¾ cup + 1 tablespoon (195 ml) (4 oz/110 g)
Add 1/4 cup (60 ml) (3/4 oz/20 g) cocoa powder

Direction Alterations:
Follow the directions, same as above, adding the cocoa to the flour mixture in step 3.

Pastry Cream Filling:

Ingredients:
1 cup (8 fl oz/250 ml) whole milk
1/2 teaspoon (2½ ml) pure vanilla extract
1/8 teaspoon (1/2 ml) (¼ gm) salt, preferably kosher
2 tablespoons (30 ml) (10 gm)cornstarch
1/4 cup (60 ml) (2 oz/55 gm) sugar
1 large egg
2 tablespoons (30 ml) (1 oz/30 gm) unsalted butter
3/4 teaspoon (3¾ ml) (4 gm) gelatin
1/2 tablespoon (7½ ml) water
1 cup (8 fl oz/250 ml) heavy cream

Directions:

Pour the milk, vanilla, and salt into a heavy sauce pan. Place over medium-high heat and scald, bringing it to a near boiling point. Stir occasionally.

Meanwhile, in a stand mixer add the cornstarch and sugar. Whisk to combine

Add the eggs to the sugar and cornstarch and whisk until smooth.

When the milk is ready, gently and slowly while the stand mixer is whisking, pour the heated milk down the side of the bowl into the egg mixture.

Pour the mixture back into the warm pot and continue to cook over a medium heat until the custard is thick, just about to boil and coats the back of a spoon.

Remove from heat and pass through a fine mesh sieve into a large mixing bowl. Allow to cool for ten minutes stirring occasionally.

Cut the butter into four pieces and whisk into the pastry cream a piece at a time until smooth.

Cover the cream with plastic wrap, pressing the plastic wrap onto the top of the cream to prevent a skin from forming. Chill in the refrigerator for up to five days.

In a small dish, sprinkle the gelatin over the water and let stand for a few minutes to soften.

Put two inches (55 mm) of water into a small sauce pan and bring to a simmer over a medium heat.

Measure 1/4 cup (2 oz/60 ml) of the chilled pastry cream into a small stainless steel bowl that will sit across the sauce pan with the simmering water, without touching the water.

Heat the cream until it is 120 F (48.8 C). Add the gelatin and whisk until smooth. Remove from the water bath, and whisk the remaining cold pastry cream in to incorporate in two batches.

In a stand mixer, fitted with the whisk attachment, whip the cream until it holds medium-stiff peaks. Immediately fold the whipped cream into the pastry cream with a rubber spatula.

Simple Syrup:

You may choose to flavor the syrup. One way is to use flavored sugar (for example: apple cider sugar, orange sugar, or vanilla sugar) or to stir in 1-2 teaspoons of flavored extract. You may also infuse with herbs or spices, if desired or add four tablespoons (60 ml) of fruit juice while the syrup is cooling.

Ingredients:
1/3 cup (2⅔ fl oz/80 ml) (2⅔ oz/75 gm) of sugar, flavored or white
1/3 cup (2⅔ fl oz/80 ml) of water

Directions:

Combine the water and sugar in a medium saucepan.

Bring the mixture to a boil and let the sugar dissolve. Stirring is not necessary, but will not harm the syrup.

Remove the syrup from the heat and cool slightly.

Transfer syrup to a lidded container or jar that can be stored in the refrigerator. Simple syrup can be stored for up to one month.

Fraisier Assembly:

Components:
1 baked 8 inch (20 cm) chiffon cake
1 recipe pastry cream filling
⅓ cup (80 ml) simple syrup or flavored syrup
2 lbs (900 g) strawberries
confectioners’ sugar for dusting
½ cup (120 ml) (5 oz/140 gm) almond paste

Directions:

Line the sides of a 8-inch (20 cm) spring form pan with plastic wrap. Do not line the bottom of the pan.

Cut the cake in half horizontally to form two layers.

Fit the bottom layer into the prepared spring form pan. Moisten the layer evenly with the simple syrup. When the cake has absorbed enough syrup to resemble a squishy sponge, you have enough.

Hull and slice in half enough strawberries to arrange around the sides of the cake pan. Place the cut side of the strawberry against the sides of the pan, point side up forming a ring.

Pipe cream in-between strawberries and a thin layer across the top of the cake.

Hull and quarter your remaining strawberries and place them in the middle of the cake. Cover the strawberries and entirely with the all but 1 tbsp. (15 ml) of the pastry cream.

Place the second cake layer on top and moisten with the simple syrup.

Lightly dust a work surface with confectioners' sugar and roll out the almond paste to a 10-inch (25 cm) round 1/16 inch (1.5 mm) thick. Spread the remaining 1 tablespoon (15 ml) of pastry cream on the top of the cake and cover with the round of almond paste.

Cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate for at least 4 hours.

To serve release the sides of the spring form pan and peel away the plastic wrap.

Serve immediately or store in the refrigerator for up to 3 days.

Mine, Mine, Mine

2011-07-26T22:19:00.000-07:00

Even preschoolers know that sharing is caring.

They haven't tried this chocolate sorbet. As much as I love chocolate ice cream, this sorbet is ten times better. With no egg yolks and no custard, the flavor of the chocolate dominates in a very good way.

Start with your best quality bittersweet chocolate (I used Valrhona 70% bittersweet). If you have a scale, put your pan on it and turn it on, then add all of the ingredients. Fewer dishes to wash!

This recipe was selected by Steph at A Whisk and a Spoon for Tuesdays with Dorie. It's so delicious I may never go back to traditional chocolate rice cream. Fortunately I made it within a few days of when I made this mango sorbet (which M. loves), so I don't even have to share with him. Sweet!

Deepest, Darkest Chocolate Sorbet (adapted from Baking From My Home to Yours)
Printer-friendly recipe
7 ounces/200 grams bittersweet chocolate, coarsely chopped

1 cup/232 grams milk
1 cup/222 grams water
3/4 cup/150 grams sugar

Stir the ingredients together in a 3- to 4-quart heavy-bottomed saucepan. Put the pan over medium heat and bring the ingredients to a boil, stirring frequently.

Lower the temperature and boil for 5 minutes, stirring constantly with a heatproof spatula.

Pour the mixture into a heatproof bowl (a one quart measuring cup is perfect) and refrigerate until chilled before churning the sorbet.

Scrape the chilled sorbet mixture into the bowl of an ice cream maker and churn according to the manufacturer’s instructions. Pack the sorbet into a container and freeze for at least 2 hours, until it is firm enough to scoop.

Mango Sorbet for Sundae Sunday

2011-07-24T18:56:00.000-07:00

Cool, refreshing and slightly exotic, this mango sorbet is the perfect healthy treat on a hot summer afternoon.

Sundae Sunday is the brainchild of my buddy Di of Di's Kitchen Notebook. She challenged a group of us to make an ice cream and post together today. She's doing a round up and will post it later this week.

With the weather sizzling around the U.S., I wanted to make something light and refreshing. I first had this sorbet when I spent the night at a coworker's house in the Napa Valley. A friend and I drove up to have dinner at the French Laundry, and Karen served us this treat when we got in. Although I thought I didn't like mangos, I loved it. M. adores mangos, and I've made it for him dozens of times since. I've tweaked it over the years, so that it is all about the mango. I hope you like it.

Notes:

Don't make this unless you can find really good mangos. How can you tell? I am the woman sniffing each and every mango I buy. If I can't smell its perfume, I don't buy it. One way to tell: find the ripest mango in the bin and smell it. If it's fragrant, the unripe ones will be, too.
Large markets will sometimes have mangos from a couple different distributors in the same bin. If you find a fragrant ripe one, make sure the others you select have the same sticker.
Leave mangos to ripen at room temperature in a paper bag.
You want your mangos to be a tiny bit riper for this recipe than perhaps you'd want them to be for eating. And by a tiny bit, I mean a day, maybe two. Overripe mangos have an offensive flavor (to me anyway) that tastes like eating perfume. Blech!
Some mangos have a lot of flesh and small puts, some have giant pits and little flesh. I buy an extra mango or two in case I end up with the giant pit variety.
You can freeze simple syrup. Try putting it in an ice cube tray, then transferring to a zip top bag when frozen.
Add only enough simple syrup to the mixture as you need to highlight the mango. We're not making candy here.
The lime is only to make the flavor of the mango more prominent: you don't want your sorbet to be at all tart.
Start with a small quantity of the simple syrup and lime, adding small amounts to fine tune the flavor until it's perfect for you.

Mango Sorbet - adapted from Gourmet Magazine
Printer-friendly recipe
Makes about 1 quart

1/2 cup sugar
1/2 cup water
6 ripe mangos (see Notes)
1 lime

Make the simple syrup:
Boil the sugar and water in a small saucepan until the sugar is dissolved. Let cool completely before using (I make this the day before and store in the fridge).

Make the sorbet:
Extract as much fiber-free flesh from the mango as possible, and put it in the jar of your blender. Add a couple tablespoons of simple syrup and the juice of half a lime. Blend until the mixture is smooth, then taste it. The mango should be predominant - not sweet, not tart, but somehow better than the fruit was by itself. When you reach that point and the mixture is perfectly smooth, transfer it to the canister of an ice cream maker and churn until the consistency of soft-serve ice cream. Transfer to a freezer safe container and freeze. Use within one week.

Gianduja Brownies

2011-07-21T00:01:00.000-07:00

As fabulous as these brownies are, I hesitated to post them. Gianduja is a specialty item that I order online, and I don't know if I've ever seen it in a store. Definitely not at Safeway.

In the end I decided to share this recipe with you for one reason: it's very hard to find easy, quick recipes with gianduja that you and I can make. Pastry chefs and dedicated elite home bakers, plenty of recipes for them. People who want to throw a few things in a bowl and end up with a wonderful treat, nothing for us.

Gianduja is a confection made with hazelnuts and chocolate. If you like Nutella, you'll like gianduja. It has a creamier mouth feel than bar chocolate, and it's greasier when melted. The last recipe I made with it was these truffles. I think these brownies might even be better because they're easier and the gianduja stays in chunks, so you get brownie and then, pow, a nugget of gianduja.

A few tips:

I cut each "bar" in half lengthwise, then each half in half again lengthwise, then cut the chunks from the four narrow pieces.
Chunks the size of 3/4" dice are a good size, big enough to be detected but not so big that they stick out a lot.
These definitely need to cool completely before eating so the gianduja can become solid again.

If these brownies make you want to get your own stash for munching and baking, I get gianduja at Chocosphere.com.

Gianduja Brownies

Printer-friendly recipe here

6 oz bittersweet chocolate, chopped (I used Ghirardelli 60% bittersweet chips)

2 oz unsweetened chocolate, chopped

12 tablespoons (1 1/2 sticks) unsalted butter

1 1/2 cups/10 oz sugar

2 teaspoons vanilla extract

4 large eggs

1 cup/5 oz all-purpose flour

1 teaspoon salt

10 ounces gianduja, chopped

Line a 13" x 9" pan with parchment paper (or butter and flour the pan) and set aside. In a metal bowl, combine the butter, bittersweet and unsweetened chocolates and set the bowl over a pan of simmering water. Stir until the chocolates and butter are melted and combined, then remove from the heat. Let the mixture cool until it is lukewarm, then stir in the sugar and the vanilla. Add the eggs one at a time, stirring until incorporated. Add the flour and the salt, stirring until just combined (a few flecks of flour are OK), then mix in the gianduja. Spread in the prepared pan pushing in any chunks that are lying on top, smooth the top and bake at 350 for 25 minutes, until a tester comes out with moist crumbs adhering to it. Cool completely before cutting.

Hazelnut Chocolate Chip Scones

2011-07-19T00:01:00.000-07:00

Even a trip that is ill-conceived, poorly planned, and plagued with wrong turns can get you to the right destination.

This week, the Tuesdays with Dorie bakers are making the chestnut scones from Baking From My Home to Yours. I couldn't easily find chestnut flour, so I decided to sub hazelnut flour, which I have in my freezer. I was all psyched about it once I realized I could add chocolate chips and make these taste like Nutella. That was the last good idea I had.

I weighed my dry ingredients, set them aside and went to bed. The next morning, I happened to check Twitter and read that Nancy thought almond flour was more suitable since it's fine like the chestnut flour was. Uh oh. So I quickly piled the dry ingredients (double batch) in the dry blending container for my VitaMix. I kept checking it and tamping it down. Not much was happening, so I dumped it back in the bowl. It was then that I realized I stopped just this side of making hazelnut butter. So I tried redistributing the pasty hazelnut flour with the all-purpose flour and hoped for the best.

I carefully measured out the cream, added the egg and vanilla. Then I added the butter to the flour and turned on the mixture. Then it seemed like a good idea to chat on Twitter with my Twitter buddies. By the time I remembered that the mixer was on and grinding the butter into the flour, it was too late. The butter lumps were gone. It was pretty well incorporated into the flour. Was I in the next room, unable to hear the mixer? No, I was about four feet away.

So I dumped in the wet ingredients and to my amazement/horror, the "dough" was VERY wet. Like, almost a batter. I added 1/4 cup of all-purpose flour and the chocolate chips, mixed it with a spatula and hoped for the best. Cutting out circles from a dough that is two steps away from being a puddle is challenging, but I managed to get all the scones on the sheet pans and into the freezer. I figured it would all work out if they weren't practically a liquid when they went into the oven.

The approach seemed to pay off as they came out resembling scones, though they cooked a little longer than I normally cook Dorie's scones. I took them to work, where the lovely people I work with said kind things about them. They were crumbly, but the flavor was amazing. Definitely reminiscent of Nutella. So good in fact, that I just added hazelnut flour to my grocery list. I'm going to give them another try, and hopefully not mess up the recipe quite so much this time.

I have Andrea of Andrea in the Kitchen to thank for choosing the chestnut scones this week. Although I didn't make them the way Dorie intended, I know Dorie's a fan of making do with what you have. The other TWD bakers are better at following directions than I am. You can find them here. Andrea has the REAL recipe for chestnut scones here.

Bal's No-Butter Chicken AND a Giveaway

2011-07-12T00:01:00.001-07:00

There is a small group of my baking and blogging buddies that enjoys Indian food, and every so often we're all able to make the same recipe on the same day. Given our different time zones, it rarely works out that we all make it at the same time, but we take turns picking the recipe and it's fun to compare notes. Kayte (of Grandma's Kitchen Table) and Margaret (of Tea & Scones and more importantly my 24/7 Words With Friends friend) make up the core team when we cook Indian, but they were able to recruit a few new participants, ladies we know well from their blogs and Twitter: Peggy (of Pantry Revisited), Abby (of Stir It! Scrape It! Mix It! Bake It!) and Katie (of Making Michael Pollan Proud).

Last week was my turn to pick and I went to a fabulous new book I have, Everyday Indian by Bal Arneson. She has a show, Spice Goddess, on Cooking Channel and her enthusiasm is infectious, plus I think she's absolutely adorable. She tells stories about growing up in her village and learning how to cook from her mother and I find myself mesmerized.

Butter chicken is a classic Indian recipe, but Bal has lightened it up by using yogurt in place of the cream and oil in place of the butter. Since I'm in California, the other ladies had already made this and raved about it by the time I got home and started cooking. A recurring theme was how easy it was, which is hard to believe since most of the Indian dishes we've cooked start with measuring 1/4 and 1/2 teaspoons of endless spices. The prep on this one was easy, quick, and it was ready fast. The house smelled amazing (as long as you don't mind your house smelling like a curry, and we don't), but the real test was tasting. It was sooo delicious. I served it on plain basmati rice and it was fantastic, as were the leftovers. I'm definitely making this one again. If you'd like to give it a try, you can find the recipe here.

The reason I wanted to pick a recipe out of Bal's book is because I accidentally purchased it twice, so I have an extra copy to give away. To enter, just leave a comment on this post telling me what interests you about Indian cooking, and if you have a favorite Indian dish let me know that, too. The deadline to enter is Monday, July 18th at 9 PM Pacific time. I'll pick the winner using the random number generator. Good luck!

UPDATE:
We have a winner! My friend the random number generator at Random.org chose comment number 10.

True Random Number GeneratorMin: Max: Result:10Powered byRANDOM.ORG

Number 10 is Margaret of Tea and Scones. Congrats, Margaret!

Blueberry Cream Scones

2011-07-12T00:01:00.000-07:00

Behold, the scone. So few ingredients, so ethereal when executed well, so leaden when executed poorly. I speak from experience because my first batch was a comedy of errors. I was doubling the recipe, but forgot to double the flour until I was about to cut them out. Noting the dough was extremely wet, it dawned on me that I had left half the flour out. I mixed it in with golden raisins and all seemed fine. Knowing scones bake in the blink of an eye in my oven, I set the timer for 18 minutes, 2 less than the recipe called for. When my nose told me they were done, I peeked in at them, thought "but it's not 18 minutes yet" and left them in. Duh! They were browned and smelled done. Why didn't I pull them out??? When I did take them out, they were very brown and the golden raisins were little black knobby things. Accustomed to leaden coffee house scones, my coworkers thought they were pretty good. Tasting one, I knew all my errors cost me the fluffy, flakey texture I was seeking.

So even though I overslept yesterday morning, I was determined to make these scones again. I'd leave out the raisins, sub blueberries instead, add all the flour at the correct time, and take them out when they were done, no matter what the timer said.

This time, I was rewarded with the crispy outside and fluffy inside I was hoping for. These were fabulous, even to a non-blueberry lover like me. And who can beat a recipe you can prepare on a morning when you sleep an hour later than you planned and still make it to work in a respectable time?

Here's what I did that made these such a success this time:

I cut the butter into small cubes and stuck in the freezer for 10 minutes.
Add the butter to the dry ingredients and turn your mixer on to the lowest setting. When your mixture looks partly like small peas and partly like oats, pour in the cream mixture.
When mixture still looks wet and floury, remove bowl from the mixer, and using a spatula, gently mix in the berries
My triangular scones are never the same size, so I cut mine with a biscuit cutter.

These fabulous cream scones were chosen by Lynne of Cafe LynnyLu as this week's Tuesdays with Dorie recipe. I'm so glad I gave these another try because if I hadn't I never would have found the perfect scone recipe. Thanks so much, Lynne! Here's my version of the recipe, but if you want the original as Dorie wrote it, Lynne has it for you here. You can find the other TWD bakers and what they thought of these here.

Cream Scones with Blueberries - adapted from Baking From My Home to Yours
Printer-friendly recipe
3 tablespoons sugar

Grated zest of one lemon

1 large egg
2/3 cup/155 grams heavy whipping cream
2 cups/280 grams all-purpose flour
1 tablespoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
5 tablespoons unsalted butter, cut into small pieces and frozen for about ten minutes
3/4 cup blueberries (or raspberries, chopped cherries, strawberries, or peaches, etc.)

Center a rack in the oven and preheat the oven to 400°F. Line a baking sheet with parchment or a silicone mat.

In a small bowl, add the zest to the sugar and with your fingers or a spoon, rub the zest and sugar together to bring out the oils from the zest.

In a measuring cup or small bowl, stir the egg and cream together.

Add the flour, baking powder, salt and the zest and sugar mixture to the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment and turn it on to the very lowest setting. Drop in the butter and mix until the mixture is a combination of pea sized pieces and pieces the size of oats.

Pour the cream mixture over the dry ingredients and when there is still both liquid and flour visible, stop the mixer. Remove the bowl from the mixer and add the blueberries. Gently mix them in with a rubber spatula. Your mixture should have bits of flour peeking out and look pretty shaggy.

Lightly dust a work surface with flour and turn out the dough. Pat the dough into a rough circle that's about 1 1/4 inches in high, and using a biscuit cutter dipped in flour, cut as many scones as you can, keeping the cuts as close as possible (a little divit on one side will disappear in the oven) and place each scone on the baking sheet. (At this point, the scones can be frozen on the baking sheet, then wrapped airtight. Don't defrost before baking- just add about 2 minutes to the baking time.)

Bake the scones for 16 to 19 minutes, or until their tops are golden brown and firm. Transfer them to a rack and cool for 10 minutes before serving, or wait for them to cool to room temperature.

Makes about 12 scones

Chocolate Chunk Muffins

2011-07-10T14:15:00.000-07:00

I know not everyone feels the same way, but I believe that most days are better with chocolate, and some days require chocolate. I've had a lot of the latter at work these last few weeks, so you've undoubtedly noticed chocolate popping up more frequently here. My coworkers have been fine with the extra chocolate, which is good since I goofed on a part of this week's Tuesdays with Dorie recipe and could only fix it by tossing (no way) or doubling it.

People always ask me what the difference between a chocolate cupcake and a chocolate muffin. I usually start by saying that a chocolate cupcake you choose to have for breakfast is a muffin, but then I explain the different mixing methods (cupcakes are cakes, so they usually are beaten more where as muffins are mixed sparingly, the lighter crumb, number of eggs, etc.) and before long their eyes roll back into their heads and they resolve never to ask me about baking again.

These muffins were so good that none of my coworkers minded me babbling about them, as long as they had one in their hand. I may have baked them a minute too long, and I wished I added more chocolate chunks. I'm my own worst critic, and I was the only one with the above complaints. Even so, you may want to consider the following:

When making muffins, I always add the chocolate chunks before I finish mixing in the dry ingredients. It helps me avoid over mixing.
I included espresso powder to boost the chocolate flavor. I usually add it to the buttermilk, so lumps are less of a problem.
These cupcakes don't rise much, so I overfilled my muffin liners. A lot.
If looks matter to you, you'll want to smooth the tops of the muffins before baking.

Bridget of The Way the Cookies Crumbles was our host this week. I would have posted these Tuesday but I wanted to add the weights to the recipe. I plan on making these A LOT so I weighed everything, even the buttermilk. Fewer dirty dishes that way.

Chocolate Chunk Muffins - adapted from Baking From My Home to Yours
Printer-friendly recipe
6 tablespoons unsalted butter
6 ounces bittersweet chocolate, coarsely chopped
2 cups/280 grams all-purpose flour
2/3 cup/133 grams sugar
1/3 cup/32 grams unsweetened cocoa powder, sifted
1 tablespoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 1/4 cups/320 grams buttermilk

3/4 teaspoon espresso powder
1 large egg
2 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

Center a rack in the oven and preheat the oven to 375 degrees F. Butter or spray the 12 molds in a regular-size muffin pan or fit the molds with paper muffin cups. Place the muffin pan on a baking sheet.

Melt the butter and 2 ounces of the chopped chocolate together in a bowl over a saucepan of simmering water (I used the microwave). Remove from the heat and set aside.

In a large bowl, whisk together the flour, sugar, cocoa, baking powder, baking soda and salt. In a large glass measuring cup or another bowl, whisk the buttermilk, espresso powder, egg and vanilla extract together until well combined. Pour the liquid ingredients and the melted butter and chocolate over the dry ingredients and, with the whisk or a rubber spatula, gently but quickly stir to blend. Stir in the remaining chopped chocolate. Divide the batter evenly among the muffin molds.

Bake for 18-20 minutes, or until a tester inserted into the center of the muffins comes out clean. Transfer the pan to a rack and cool 5 minutes before carefully removing the muffins from the tin.

Sour Cream Chocolate Cake Cookies

2011-07-01T07:41:00.000-07:00

The rest of the Tuesdays with Dorie bakers made these sour cream chocolate cake cookies earlier in the week, but I've been working a little extra time (our fiscal year-end was yesterday). I've done other baking, so it wasn't really a lack of time that led to my procrastination, it was the ho-hum feeling I had about these. Sour cream in my cookies? Really?

By now I know better than to judge a recipe from Baking From My Home to Yours by the name or ingredients. So I finally made these last night, sour cream and all.

I'm not a huge fan of raisins, but I had some golden raisins in the pantry which I'm trying to use up (look for an update on my dirty little secret soon).

These cookies are not the first from this cookbook that were cake-like. In fact, I dubbed these jam cookies cakies for their cake-like texture.

Mine rose nicely in the oven and didn't deflate. They were moist, chocolaty and the raisins added a nice little chew that even I had to admit was a nice change of pace. Overall a good cookie, though one that could only get better with a little ganache sandwiched in. I didn't have time for that, but it would be goooood.

Many thanks to Spike of spike bakes for hosting this week. If you'd like the recipe, she has it for you here.

Date Nut Bread Extraordinaire

2011-06-21T07:21:00.000-07:00

The beauty of baking your way through a cookbook is that you routinely discover recipes you never would have chosen on your own, and you absolutely and unexpectedly fall in love with them.

Even though this has happened to me many times with Baking From My Home to Yours, I really couldn't imagine it would happen with this recipe. I've never liked date bread and scarcely ate dates until about six years ago when I gave them another try and found I liked them. But a lifetime of not liking something takes time to reprogram, so my initial reaction to this pick was "great...date bread...ugh." But it was picked by my friend and blogging buddy Mary of Popsicles and Sandy Feet. If Mary had chosen brussels sprouts pudding, I would have gamely attempted it.

The recipe calls for 3 ounces of cream cheese, and cream cheese is something I never buy unless I'm making a cheese cake. It might be the secret weapon that gives this bread its lovely texture and makes it an excellent keeper. The preparation is typical quick bread except that it bakes for a long time. It smelled great while it baked and made me curious (I wouldn't say eager, nope).

Once it cooled, I sliced off a piece and took a tentative bite. It was incredibly delicious, crusty on the outside, soft and tender on the inside, little pockets of sweet, chewy dates contrasted with the crisp crunch of the walnuts. Absolutely fabulous. It was even better the next day. I was in love, so much so that I promptly bought more dates so I could make it again.

If you'd like to try this recipe, Mary has it for you here. She made two versions, one with dates and one with apricots, and they both look scrumptious. As much as we love apricots, I can't imagine making this bread with anything other than dates, my new favorite fruit.

Oatmeal Fudge Bars

2011-06-16T20:05:00.000-07:00

If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, then Tracey of Tracey's Culinary Adventures must be blushing. Whenever I'm trolling for a new recipe, her blog is my first stop. Tracey made these bars earlier in the week and like so many things I see there, I had to make them pronto.

That the bars worked in spite of my best efforts to screw up the recipe is a testament to their versatility. Indeed, I added the dry ingredients with the chocolate and still ended up with a sinfully delicious but easy bar cookie. They're flavored with a healthy dose of espresso powder, and I snuck in some cinnamon as well as I learned with this pie that chocolate + espresso + cinnamon = bliss. They're rich, so cut them in tiny little pieces.

Oatmeal Fudge Bars
from America's Test Kitchen Family Baking Book by way of Tracey's Culinary Adventures
Printer-friendly recipe

Crust/Topping
1 cup (3 oz) quick-cooking oats
1 cup packed (7 oz) light brown sugar
3/4 cup (3 3/4 oz) all-purpose flour
1/4 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
8 tablespoons (1 stick) unsalted butter, melted

Filling
1/4 cup (1 1/4 oz) all-purpose flour
1/4 cup packed (1 3/4 oz) light brown sugar
2 teaspoons instant espresso
3/4 teaspoon cinnamon (I used Vietnamese for its flavor & spice)
1/4 teaspoon salt
9 oz bittersweet chocolate chips
2 tablespoons unsalted butter
1 large egg

To make the crust: Preheat oven to 325 F. Line an 8-inch square baking pan with parchment paper, leaving an overhang on opposite sides to lift the bars out after they're baked.

In a large bowl whisk together the oats, brown sugar, flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt. Add the melted butter and use a rubber spatula to stir until all of the dry ingredients are moistened. Set aside about 3/4 cup of the crust mixture for the topping. Press the remaining crust mixture into the prepared baking pan in an even layer.

Bake for 8 minutes, or until light golden brown. Transfer the pan to a wire rack and cool the crust completely, about 1 hour. Maintain oven temperature.

Make the filling: In a medium bowl, whisk together the flour, sugar, espresso powder and salt. Add the chocolate and butter to a medium microwave-safe bowl. Heat in 30 second intervals at 50% power (stirring in between each interval) until the chocolate and butter are melted and smooth. Let cool slightly. Add the egg to the chocolate mixture and whisk to combine. Use a rubber spatula to fold in the flour mixture just until combined (the mixture will be thick).

Spread the filling over the cooled crust. Smooth the top, then sprinkle the reserved oat topping over the filling. Bake for 25-30 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out with a few moist crumbs attached.

Transfer the pan to a wire rack and let the bars cool completely in the pan. Use the parchment overhang to lift the bars out of the pan and cut into squares.

Chocolate Almond Biscotti

2011-06-13T09:16:00.000-07:00

My first attempt at biscotti was, shall we say, less than perfect. A lot less. My inexperience led me to follow the recipe exactly without listening to my instincts.

Fast forward a couple of years. I know a lot better and I still make mistakes, but blindly following the recipe is rarely one of them. So I was eager in a nervous sort of way to try this recipe.

What are biscotti? The Italian name roughly translates as "twice baked" because the dough logs are baked, cooled slightly, then sliced. The cookies are then returned to the oven for the final baking, yielding the dry and crumbly texture that makes them so perfect for dipping in coffee or milk.

These were easy to mix up and the scraps (after slicing) were yummy to snack on. In fact, these would be fine cookies without the second baking. I set them out to cool, and then it happened...

They fell in a bowl of melted chocolate.

We gamely ate them anyway, and I must admit that, shockingly, the chocolate dipped biscotti were even better than the plain ones. The plain ones were good, but the chocolate dipped ones were top 10 worthy. Truly.

If you want to make these yummy cookies, visit Jacque of Daisy Lane Cakes. She has the recipe for you here. And it you'd like to dip yours in chocolate, melt about 5 ounces of the very best bittersweet chocolate you can afford, along with 1/2 tablespoon of corn syrup. Tap the biscotti against the plate before dipping (to dislodge any crumbs), dip one side, allow it to drip, then set it down face up on a parchment lined baking sheet. Once dry, your biscotti will keep for a week in a ziptop bag. But they won't last that long.

Bittersweet Decadence Cookies

2011-06-09T00:01:00.000-07:00

Unless you don't like chocolate (and not everybody does), the name of this recipe alone should be enough to send you to the kitchen. But if it isn't, check this out:

These cookies have been a favorite here for years. We love the slightly crackly outside that covers a soft center with chunks of walnuts and chocolate chips. There is no wrong temperature to serve them at, no wrong time of day to eat them, and no wrong event to take them to. They're always the star of the cookie tray, no matter how enticing you make the shortbread and peanut butter cookies. They're like the friend who has so much personality that no one notices she's a bit homely and everyone wants to sit next to her at dinner.

Bittersweet Decadence Cookies - adapted from Alice Medrich

Printer friendly version

1/4 cup/70 grams all-purpose flour
1/4 tsp baking powder
1/8 tsp salt
1 1/3 cups/225 grams bittersweet chocolate, chopped (I use Ghirardelli 60% bittersweet chips)
2 tablespoons/28 grams unsalted butter
2 large eggs
1/2 cup/95 grams sugar
1 tsp vanilla extract
2 cups/200 grams walnuts or pecans, roughly chopped
1 cup/175 grams bittersweet chocolate, chopped into chunks (I use Ghirardelli 60% bittersweet chips)

Position the racks in the upper and lower thirds of the oven and preheat the oven to 350℉. Line two cookie sheets with parchment or wax paper.

In a small bowl, combine the flour, baking powder, and salt and stir with a small whisk to combine. Set aside.

Place the 1 1/3 cups of chocolate and the butter in a large heatproof bowl in a wide skillet of barely simmering water (you can also use a double boiler) and stir frequently just until melted and smooth. Remove the chocolate from the skillet and set it aside. Leave the heat on under the skillet.

In a large heatproof bowl, whisk the eggs, sugar and vanilla together thoroughly. Set the bowl in the skillet and stir until the mixture is lukewarm to the touch. Stir the eggs into the warm but not hot chocolate. Stir the flour mixture, then the nuts and chocolate chunks.

Scoop slightly rounded tablespoons of batter 1 1/2 inches apart on to the cookie sheets. Bake until the surface of the cookies looks dry and set but the center is still gooey, 12 to 14 minutes. If you used parchment paper, carefully slide the cookies, still on the parchment, onto racks or set the pans on the racks. Otherwise, let the cookies firm up on the pans for a minute, then transfer them to racks with a spatula. Let cool completely. Store in a tightly sealed container.

Blueberry Brown Sugar Bundt Cake

2011-06-07T23:23:00.000-07:00

Blueberries and I have a uneasy peace. Ever since I was a little girl on vacation with her parents in Mexico, we've not been on great terms. I know they're good for me, high in anti-oxidants, etc. But I can't help remember how violently ill I was after eating blueberry pancakes at IHOP, something I've never forgiven them for.

So this week's Tuesdays with Dorie recipe, chosen by Cindy of Everyday Insanity, had me skeptical. And something as straightforward as a "plain" blueberry cake had to do cartwheels to get my attention. So it did.

Made in a bundt pan, it was just so beautiful I shamelessly showed it off to a few coworkers, hoping to elicit enough oohs and ahhs to lure me into tasting it. It worked. It was so lovely (not that you can tell with my iPhone photos) that I broke down and ate a slice.

The verdict? The brown sugar lent a caramel note to the cinnamon scented cake, and it was incredibly moist. It didn't turn me into a blueberry lover, but it did turn me into a brown sugar bundt cake lover. I will definitely make this one again, but will probably skip the blueberries in favor of another fruit.

If you'd like the recipe, Cindy has it for you here. Just double the recipe if you want to bake it in a standard bundt cake pan. It will bake for 55-60 minutes.

My Dirty Little Secret

2011-05-27T00:01:00.000-07:00

Although I'm basically a person who thrives in a neat, organized environment, that's not always how my world looks. In the past year, I've made a concerted effort to tame my propensity for letting a little clutter gather. My desk at work has been organized (and completely free of paper each night before I leave) since July. The kitchen counters have been clear and the sink has been free of dishes for a couple of months. Even after Thanksgiving's pie production, I cleaned the kitchen completely before I fell into bed.

This kind of self discipline isn't easy for me but it reduces my stress level and makes it easier to keep the rest of my world in check. And so it is that this area of my home is still a train wreck. Behold, my pantry (think dramatic horror movie music):

Well, this is what it looked like a few months ago. I've been slowly whittling away at it, taking boxes to charity and trying to use up what I have before buying more. I now run out of the things that I used to buy multiples of, but it is helping me reclaim my pantry and my sanity. In time, it won't be a dirty little secret anymore, and I can once again enjoy opening the pantry door to grab ingredients for baking.

I never appreciated how much my surroundings impact my mood before I started cleaning off my desk before leaving work each night. I find I am more productive because the open space on my desk encourages me to work rather than seeing the mounting pile of unfinished work and feeling hopeless. It's that epiphany I hope to carry to other areas of my life (home office desk - check; kitchen counters - check).

What area of your home is getting you down? Could you spend an hour or two this weekend to recapture that closet or desk and reclaim your inner peace? I encourage you to do it. It has helped me to be focused and calm at work, no matter what is swirling around me, and I am already reaping the rewards at home as well. Give it a try!

Chocolate Cupcakes with Orange Cream Cheese Frosting

2011-05-26T00:01:00.000-07:00

Take the deepest, darkest chocolate flavor. Add a soupçon of coffee. Crown with cream cheese frosting with a hint of orange zest. Devour.

Only one thing could unseat a coworker's favorite birthday treat and it was these cupcakes. The cupcake is moist and flavorful and the frosting is lightly orange, sweet enough but not cloyingly. You can make them a day or two in advance without compromising the texture, just store them in a sealed container in the fridge.

They're easy to make but the batter is exceedingly thin, so the first time I made them, I poured the batter into a large measuring cup. That was fine, but my measuring cup dripped all over the muffin tins. The second time I made them I experimented with using a piping bag. This is what happened:

Maybe that wasn't the way to go.

Chocolate Cupcakes - adapted from Ina Garten, inspired by Jamie at My Baking Addiction
Printer friendly recipe
Makes 24 cupcakes

1 3/4 cups/245 grams all-purpose flour
2 cups/190 grams sugar
3/4 cups/72 grams unsweetened cocoa powder
2 teaspoons baking soda
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon kosher salt
1 cup buttermilk, shaken
1/2 cup vegetable oil
2 large eggs, at room temperature
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1 cup freshly brewed hot coffee

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Line standard muffin tins with paper liners; set aside.

Sift the flour, sugar, cocoa, baking soda, baking powder, and salt into the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with a paddle attachment and mix on low speed until combined. In a 2 cup measure, combine the buttermilk, oil, eggs, and vanilla and stir with a fork to blend. With the mixer on the lowest speed (I use the Stir speed on my KitchenAid), slowly add the wet ingredients to the dry. With mixer still on the lowest setting, add the coffee and stir just to combine, scraping the bottom of the bowl with a rubber spatula. The batter will be very thin. Don't worry if you have a few lumps.

Using a large piping bag or measuring cup, fill the muffin wells 2/3 full. Bake for 18 to 22 minutes, or until a cake tester comes out clean. Cool in the pans for 10 minutes, then remove to a cooling rack and cool completely.

Orange Cream Cheese Frosting - adapted from My Baking Addiction

16 ounces cream cheese, room temperature
zest of one large orange
9 tablespoons/4 1/2 ounces unsalted butter, room temperature
1 1/2 pounds confectioners’ sugar
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

1/4 teaspoon Fiori di Sicilia (optional but soo good)

In a the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, beat the softened cream cheese at medium speed for about 3 minutes. Add the softened butter, orange zest and beat until well combined, about 2 minutes.

With the mixer on low, gradually add the powdered sugar until thoroughly incorporated and smooth. Add the extracts and mix to combine.

Put the frosting in a piping bag fitted with a star tip (or use a knife or small offset spatula) to swirl frosting on each cupcake. Store cupcakes in a sealed container in the refrigerator. Remove to room temperature 30-45 minutes before serving.

Oatmeal Cinnamon Scones

2011-05-24T00:01:00.000-07:00

These days, when I flip through my copy of Baking From My Home to Yours I think, I've made that, this one was good, I need to make this one again, or I had to skip this one but I really want to make it soon.

There aren't that many pages left that have recipes we haven't made yet for Tuesdays with Dorie and on some days that makes me sad but on other days excited. Excited for the ones we have left and sad because Dorie's book and this group have changed my life, and by the end of the year we will be done with the book. I have formed so many close friendships and let loose my inner baker. I get endless rewards from baking, blogging and testing my limits through this group. I will never forget the fear I felt before making the coconut-roasted pineapple dacquoise and the euphoria I felt when it was completed. That post brought me my first comment from Dorie, and words can't express how meaningful it was for me.

There are still times I don't listen to my instincts and this week was one of them. My scones were just this side of burned. Yes, I admit I didn't watch my scones (hard to do when you're in the shower) and they baked up into crispy critters. But my coworkers still enjoyed them (maple butter helped moisten them up). Although they were good, I think they would have been a lot better if I took them out of the oven two minutes earlier.

Patricia of Life with a Whisk chose this week's recipe for us. I was very grateful for an easy and adaptable one. Here's what I did:

I used cinnamon instead of nutmeg, and it was perfect.
Scones don't like to be handled--shaggy dough is preferable. If the dough is cohesive, your scones will be less flaky and light.
I made one giant disk of dough instead of two, laid it on parchment instead of flouring the counter and cut it on the parchment before lifting the scones onto a prepared baking sheet. I liked the easier clean up, but this was a very moist dough and needed a little extra flour. My suggestion: go with the parchment, but give it a good dusting of flour.
I cut my scones a little thicker than the recipe called for, which is good since they were a little overdone.
Make sure you check your scones early. I checked them one minute before they were supposed to be done and it was already too late.

Thanks to Patricia for hosting this week. If you'd like the recipe, Patricia will have it for you here. And if you want to see what the other bakers thought, you can find them here.

Chocolate Sour Cream Bundt Cake

2011-05-19T00:01:00.000-07:00

When I read this post from my buddy Di, I new I had to both buy the pan and make the cake. Di proclaimed it moist and delicious and that was enough to send me to the kitchen.

This pan (the Nordic Ware heritage bundt pan) is the perfect pan for this cake! The exaggerated sharp peaks get extra crunchy (though not in a bad way) which is a striking contrast with the moist interior. I was glad I shared this one with my coworkers or it could have gotten ugly around here.

Chocolate Sour Cream Bundt Cake
Printer friendly recipe
1 tablespoon butter, melted
1 tablespoon cocoa
3/4 cup natural cocoa (not Dutch-processed, 2 1/4 ounces)
6 ounces bittersweet chocolate, chopped
1 teaspoon instant espresso powder (optional)
3/4 cup water (boiling)
1 cup sour cream, room temperature
1 3/4 cups unbleached all-purpose flour (8 3/4 ounces)
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon baking soda
12 tablespoons unsalted butter, room temperature
2 cups packed light brown sugar (14 ounces)
1 tablespoon vanilla extract
5 large eggs, room temperature
confectioners' sugar, for dusting (optional)

Using a pastry brush, coat all interior surfaces of a 12-cup Bundt pan with the butter. Dust with the cocoa, being sure to coat the entire pan thoroughly. Adjust oven rack to lower-middle position; preheat oven to 350°F.

Combine cocoa, chocolate, and espresso powder in a medium heatproof bowl; pour boiling water over and whisk until smooth. Cool to room temperature; whisk in the sour cream. In another bowl combine the flour, salt, and baking soda and whisk to combine.

In a standing mixer fitted with the flat beater, beat butter, sugar, and vanilla on medium-high speed until pale and fluffy, about 3 minutes. Reduce speed to medium and add the eggs one at a time, mixing for 30 seconds after each addition and scraping down bowl with rubber spatula after each addition. Reduce speed to medium-low (batter may appear curdled); add about one third of flour mixture and half of chocolate/sour cream mixture and mix until just incorporated, about 20 seconds. Scrape down the bowl and repeat using half of remaining flour mixture and all of the remaining chocolate mixture. Add the remaining flour mixture and beat until just incorporated, about 10 seconds. Scrape bowl and mix on medium-low speed until the batter is thoroughly combined, about 30 seconds.

Pour the batter into the prepared Bundt pan. Bake until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out with few crumbs attached, 45 to 50 minutes. Cool in the pan 10 minutes, then invert cake onto a wire rack with a piece of parchment on it; cool to room temperature. Dust with confectioners' sugar if desired before serving.

Maple Cornmeal Biscuits

2011-05-17T00:01:00.000-07:00

Some months I make all of the Tuesdays with Dorie recipes for the month within a week of when they're announced, giving me the luxury of time to write my posts, comment on my friends blogs and generally enjoy the process.

These days, not so much. I've been working a ton (lots of 8 and 9 PM nights) and generally feeling like I'm living one of those nightmares where you run faster and faster but seemingly run in place, unable to escape the monster. It's not even my "busy" time of year yet, that time when we're closing the books for the year and getting ready for the audit, and getting through the audit, and the year-end reporting, yadda yadda.

When things ~~are a pressure cooker~~ get busy at work, I bake. My coworkers call it stress baking and while they are simpatico about my palpable stress, they've started tremulously asking the question "So, you're working a ton. When does the stress baking start?" For while they wouldn't wish my year-end (that's June 30th for us) workload on anyone, they don't mind that I blow off steam by getting out the flour, butter, sugar, eggs and frequently chocolate.

Let me say I am extraordinarily lucky to work with a great group of people who whole-heartedly embrace my baking. I never hear complaints. In my last job, I was confronted in the elevator by a woman who found baked goods irresistible and really wanted me to stop. So I appreciate having an audience who eats it all, without complaint, and gives me good feedback to boot.

So when the stress baking question started surfacing, I resolved to bake more (hard to do when you're getting home at 9:30 and going back to work at 8-ish). Fortunately, the May TWD recipes had been announced and they were almost all easy, portable and suitable for breakfast.

I'm dubious about recipes that call for cornmeal if it's a departure from the norm, so I was a little wary about this one. In my pre-coffee stupor, I messed up measuring the wet ingredients and added too much maple syrup. My batter was much wetter than normal, but I went with it. It turned out just fine as the biscuits were moist, tender, flakey and delicious. I made a little maple butter to serve with them and that made the butter lovers happy.

I can't say how these keep since they disappeared in the blink of an eye. Like any biscuit, I think they should be consumed while still warm from the oven, and they taste extra yummy when shared with people you love.

Lindsay from A Little Something...Sweet is our host this week. I can't thank Lindsay enough for picking something easy and delicious to get this year's stress baking off on the right foot. If you're looking for a foolproof spin on the classic biscuit, Lindsay will have the recipe for you here.

Browniepalooza Day 5 - Sweet and Salty Brownies

2011-05-15T09:11:00.000-07:00

Sorry to say, we've reached the last day of Browniepalooza, delayed a bit due to the Blogger outage, but I'm not sad. Nope, not sad at all because I have one of these

Yes, it's the sweet and salty brownie that won my personal tasting. I bought the Baked Explorations cookbook so I could have this recipe, and you should too. In fact, I'm not going to give you the recipe so you'll go out and buy this cookbook. Unless that's not in your budget. In that case, you can find the recipe here.

For all of us who love the sweet and salty flavor profile, these are a revelation. There is a layer of salty caramel, but it mostly melts into the brownie, making it moist, fudgy, sweet, caramelly. Then there is the coarse sugar and fleur de sel sprinkled on the top right after they come out of the oven.

A few observations:

If your brownie audience isn't in love with sweet and salty desserts, reduce the salt on top to just a light sprinkling, or none at all. The saltiness of the caramel won't be enough to make them wrinkle their noses.
The recipe counsels not spreading the caramel all the way to the side for fear it will burn. Au contraire. The caramel along the edge of the pan gets a little crispy/chewy and my tasters LOVED that part. Just make sure you line your pan with parchment (and I love that with parchment, there's no need to butter and flour the pan).
You can make the caramel several days in advance. Keep it in the fridge and let it sit out for an hour or so before using it.
I use my favorite Ghirardelli 60% bittersweet chips to make these. No chopping chocolate and I don't think a premium imported chocolate would add anything.
After making these several times, I think it's best to sprinkle on the coarse sugar right when they come out of the oven but the fleur de sel after slicing. The knife cuts can cause the salt to bunch up along the edges and that can be a little too much salt for some of us.

I know I can be prone to hyperbole, but these really are the best brownies I've had. Please try them, and give some of the others a chance, too. They are:

Palm Beach Brownies

Triple Chocolate Brownies

Best Cocoa Brownies

Browned Butter Brownies with Walnuts

Browniepalooza was so much fun (really!) that I think I'll do it next year. Maybe you'll join me. I already have my eye on a couple of recipes that I missed on this go round, plus someone is always coming up with a new spin on our old favorite. So many brownies, so worthy, that one week hardly seems enough!

Browniepalooza Day 4 - Browned Butter Brownies with Walnuts

2011-05-12T00:01:00.000-07:00

We're celebrating Browniepalooza this week at Lethally Delicious. Yes, it's a made up holiday, but I believe brownies deserve their own week in the spotlight.

Today, I give you the brown butter brownie from the February 2011 cover of Bon Appetit. If you've done the rounds in the blogiverse you've probably seen them, and the feedback is wildly positive. The recipe is from Alice Medrich, whom I love love love, and the brownies have the taste of a classic brownie, but with a tiny, subtle twist. You can't figure out what it is, so you eat another, and another and another... Brownie bliss. No shame. No remorse. Make another batch and do it again. I won't judge.

These had several things to recommend them. Browned butter, chocolate and nuts, specifically walnuts. Walnuts aren't my favorite but I went with it.

Ever since I read the Cook's Illustrated tip for putting nuts ON the brownie batter (they toast in the oven and get crunchy rather than getting wet in the batter), that's how I've done it. But I made these exactly as the recipe stated, including the nuts, and was pleasantly surprised that the nuts retained their crunch.

Brown Butter Brownies with Walnuts (adapted from Bon Appetit)

Printer friendly recipe

20 tablespoons unsalted butter, in chunks (it's faster with room temperature butter)
2 1/2 cups sugar
1 1/2 cup natural unsweetened cocoa powder (spooned into cup to measure, then leveled)

4 teaspoons water
2 teaspoons vanilla extract

1/2 teaspoon salt
4 large eggs, chilled
2/3 cup plus 2 tablespoons unbleached all purpose flour
2 cups walnut pieces

Position rack in bottom third of oven; preheat to 325°F. Lightly spray a 13x9" metal baking pan with cooking spray then line with parchment paper, leaving an overhang if possible. Melt butter in a deep medium saucepan over medium heat. Continue cooking, stirring constantly with a heatproof spatula until butter stops foaming, browned bits form at bottom of pan, and butter smells nutty, about 8 minutes. Remove pan from the heat; immediately add the sugar, cocoa, 4 teaspoons water, the vanilla, and salt. Stir with your spatula until blended. Let cool for 5 minutes (mixture will still be hot). Add eggs to hot mixture 1 at a time, beating vigorously to blend after each addition. When mixture looks thick and shiny, add flour and stir until blended. Beat vigorously 60 strokes. Stir in nuts. Transfer batter to prepared pan.

Bake brownies until a toothpick inserted into center comes out almost clean (with a few moist crumbs attached), about 25 minutes. Cool in the pan on a rack. Using the parchment sling handle, lift brownies from pan and cut as desired.

Browniepalooza Day 3 - Cocoa Brownies

2011-05-11T00:01:00.000-07:00

All this week we're having Browniepalooza at Lethally Delicious. Each day features a different brownie recipe, culminating with my favorite on Friday. The brownie that won the popular vote was featured yesterday. But I had a different favorite so stay tuned for the rest of the week to find out which one I loved best.

Today's brownie comes from an Alice Medrich recipe that I found on Smitten Kitchen. I could have found it in one of the many cookbooks of hers that I have, but I was at work when I was doing my brownie research (while eating my lunch...really!) Seeing the photos reminded me of the brownies she served at a demonstration she did back in March at Draeger's.

These brownies were delicious, very deeply chocolate, very unusual. The quality of your cocoa matters here as that is where your chocolate flavor is coming from. You could add nuts, but I think that would detract from the flavor and texture of the brownie. I second Deb's advice to refrigerate them after cooling in order to make them easily sliceable.

Best Cocoa Brownies (adapted from an Alice Medrich recipe spotted on Smitten Kitchen)

Printer friendly recipe

20 tablespoons (10 ounces or 280 grams) unsalted butter
2 1/2 cups (1 pound, 3 3/4 ounces/560 grams) sugar
1 3/4 cup (5 3/4 ounces/165 grams) unsweetened cocoa powder (I used Valrhona)
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
4 large eggs, cold
1 cup (130 grams/4 3/4 ounces) all-purpose flour

Position a rack in the lower third of the oven and preheat the oven to 325°F. Line a 13x9" (I used a quarter sheet pan and it was perfect) baking pan with parchment paper or foil, leaving an overhang.

Combine the butter, sugar, cocoa, and salt in a medium heatproof bowl and set the bowl in a wide skillet of barely simmering water. Stir occasionally until the butter is melted and the mixture is smooth and hot enough that you want to remove your finger fairly quickly after dipping it in. Remove the bowl from the skillet and set aside until the mixture is only warm, not hot. It will look fairly dodgy but it will even out once the rest of the ingredients are added.

Stir in the vanilla, then add the eggs one at a time, stirring vigorously after each one. When the batter looks thick, shiny, and well blended, add the flour and stir until you cannot see it any longer, then beat vigorously for 40 strokes with a wooden spoon or rubber spatula. Spread evenly in the lined pan.

Bake until a toothpick plunged into the center emerges slightly moist with batter, about 25 minutes. Let cool completely on a rack. (Deb refrigerates the brownies to ensure clean cuts.)

Lift up the ends of the parchment or foil liner, and transfer the brownies to a cutting board. Cut into squares.

Browniepalooza Day 2 - Triple Chocolate Brownies

2011-05-10T07:30:00.000-07:00

It's Browniepalooza this week at Lethally Delicious. I'm trying a different brownie recipe each day, building up to my very favorite one on Friday. Wonder what it could be?

Today is a bit of a rerun. I've made these brownies hundreds of times, and this has been my go-to brownie recipe for years. In the five way tasting, this beat out all the other brownies on M's tasting sheet and it narrowly topped my favorite in a tasting at work. Maybe it's the toasty pecans on top, or the chocolate chips inside. Whatever it was, this brownie has its fans.

I make these with Ghirardelli 60% bittersweet chips. It's my favorite every day chocolate, and not even I dip into the expensive French chocolate when I make brownies.

Triple Chocolate Brownies
Printer friendly recipe

6 oz bittersweet chocolate, chopped (I use Ghirardelli 60% bittersweet chips)

2 oz unsweetened chocolate, chopped

12 tablespoons (1 1/2 sticks) unsalted butter

1 1/2 cups (10.2 ounces) sugar

2 teaspoons vanilla extract

4 large eggs

1 cup (5 oz) all-purpose flour

1 teaspoon salt

1 cup (6 ounces) semi-sweet chocolate chips

3/4 cup (3 1/2 ounces) chopped walnuts, pecans or almonds (optional)

Butter and flour a 13" x 9" pan and set aside. In a metal bowl, combine the butter, bittersweet and unsweetened chocolates and set it over a pan of simmering water. Stir until the chocolates and butter are melted and combined, then remove from the heat. Let the mixture cool until it is lukewarm, then stir in the sugar and the vanilla. Add the eggs one at a time, stirring until incorporated. Add the flour and the salt, stirring until just combined (a few flecks of flour are OK), then mix in the semi-sweet chips. Spread in the prepared pan, smooth the top and scatter the nuts over the top, pressing very lightly.

Bake at 350 for 25-30 minutes, until a tester comes out with crumbs adhering to it. Cool completely before cutting.

Brown Sugar Hazelnut Bundt Cake

2011-05-10T00:01:00.000-07:00

A perfect bundt recipe is a good friend when one needs an easy dessert that looks a lot more special than the combination of butter, sugar, flour and eggs would seem.

I chose to leave out the fruit (pears and prunes) and go the nut route, so I used a stash of hazelnuts languishing in my pantry and hazelnut flour from the freezer. I swore "never again' as I was skinning the hazelnuts and chopping them (oh how they do love to roll around), but as soon as I tasted the finished cake, I forgot my oath. Moist, nutty, luxuriously tasty, this is one perfect bundt cake. It was perfect in spite of my efforts to screw it up...I forgot to add the chopped hazelnuts until I had put the cake in the oven. I immediately grabbed it, dumped the nuts on top, and swirled them in with a knife. I think I'll do it that way every time I make this cake as I didn't have any nuts sticking out to mar the beautiful crust.

The recipe comes from Baking From My Home to Yours by Dorie Greenspan, and was selected as this week's Tuesdays with Dorie recipe by my blogging buddy Peggy from Pantry Revisited. Peggy and I have several groups in common. She has a wonderful sense of humor and is a dear person besides. She'll have the recipe for you here. You can find out what the other bakers thought (many of whom made the original recipe with dried fruit) by checking them out here. Thanks, Peggy, this one was a home run!

Browniepalooza Day 1 - Palm Beach Brownies

2011-05-09T00:01:00.000-07:00

It's Browniepalooza this week at Lethally Delicious. I'll have five different brownies for you to try, so plan to stop back every day to see what treat is in store. My favorite brownie will be on Friday. Hmm...wonder what it could be???

Palm Beach Brownies are from a Maida Heater recipe. I first learned of this recipe when my Twitter buddies were making Nick Malgieri's Florida Brownies from Bake! I didn't have Bake! so I looked for the recipe online. I didn't find it, but I did find the recipe it was based on, Maida Heater's Palm Beach Brownies.

This recipe uses unsweetened chocolate and a LOT of sugar, but it yields a brownie that is fall apart fudgy when warm but is transformed to a dense fudgy brownie when chilled. We liked the crunchy outer shell that encased the fudgy middle. This one had many fans (especially lovers of milk chocolate), but it was too sweet and not chocolaty enough for me so I forged on in my search for the quintessential brownie.

Palm Beach Brownies (adapted from Flora's Recipe Hideout, originally from Maida Heater)
Printer friendly recipe

8 ounces unsweetened chocolate
2 sticks unsalted butter
5 large eggs
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon instant espresso powder

3 3/4 cups sugar
1 2/3 cups all-purpose flour

Adjust an oven rack in the lower third of the oven and preheat oven to 375 degrees. Line a 9x13" pan with parchment paper. Melt the chocolate and butter in heat proof bowl set over a saucepan with an inch or so of simmering water, stirring occasionally. When combined, remove from heat and set aside.

In the large bowl of an electric mixer, beat the eggs and the vanilla extract, salt, expresso powder and sugar at high speed for 10 minutes. On low speed, add the chocolate mixture and beat only until combined. Remove the bowl from the mixer and pour the batter into the prepared pan.

Bake for 35-40 minutes, turning the pan halfway through to insure even baking. When done the cake will have a firm crust but will appear underbaked when tested with a toothpick.

Remove the pan from the oven and cool completely on a rack. Remove the brownies from the pan and remove the parchment. Wrap well and refrigerate for a few hours or overnight before cutting into bars. Makes 32 brownies.

Chocolate Orange Marbled Loaf Cake

2011-05-03T07:05:00.000-07:00

This week's Tuesdays with Dorie pick comes to us from Carol of The Bake More. This one was on my short list when it was my turn to pick the recipe, and I was eager to make it. Dorie gives us a basic marbled loaf cake recipe with multiple variations, and since we love chocolate and orange together, I knew which one I would make.

Not surprisingly, I used 70% cacao chocolate to get the biggest chocolate flavor, and it actually made the chocolate part of the dough quite stiff, so my swirling left a lot to be desired. I baked my loaf in my Nancy pan (click here to read the story behind my Nancy pan) and it was done in an hour. I loved the more slender shape of the loaf, and especially loved the dramatic crowning of the loaf.

I find many marbled loaf cakes to be dry, but this one was moist and delicious. The orange was the perfect foil to the chocolate. I served this one on its own, but it could be dressed up with a chocolate ganache, whipped cream, vanilla ice cream or sliced berries. It was an easy yet impressive cake to whip up. Dorie's other flavor combinations sound delicious, too, and the other TWD bakers loved the white chocolate mint combo (you can find out what they thought here).

Thanks to Carol for choosing this recipe for us to discover this week. It's a winner that I will make again and again. If you'd like to add it to your short list, Carol has the recipe for you here.

Lemony Cornmeal Shortbread

2011-04-26T08:08:00.000-07:00

One thing I've learned as a member of Tuesdays with Dorie is to expect the unexpected. Even if I think I know how a recipe will taste, this isn't always the case. Take this week's pick, cornmeal shortbread cookies, picked by Valerie of Une Gamine dans la Cuisine. My last experience with cornmeal in cookies was with these biscotti, which I made when I first joined the group. I was still pretty clueless, I just didn't know it.

The crunchiness of the cornmeal in the biscotti was texturally challenging for me, and this time I wanted to overcome that issue. So I made the dough two days ago and let it rest - and hydrate - in the fridge. I rolled it a little too thin, and baked the cookies a little too long, but they were delicious. The lemon zest lent a lovely floral back note. The cornmeal added a pleasant crunch without being distractingly hard, a real win-win.

If you'd like to make these unusual cookies, Valerie has the recipe (and cookies look the way Dorie intended!) for you here. And you can see what the other TWD bakers thought by checking them out here.

Maple Oatmeal Wheat Bread

2011-04-25T08:19:00.000-07:00

Not to overstate it but this recipe underscores the beauty of the recipe sharing that happens among bloggers.

I first saw this bread on my buddy Margaret's blog Tea and Scones (recipe here). I made it and my coworkers flipped for it. Mags saw my post, and she reworked the recipe to use whole wheat flour (you can see her post here). When I saw her version, I wanted to make it but I wanted to make it even better.

In this case, better means easier. I am in love with Dan Lepard's kneading technique, which involves three 10 second kneads, each followed by a rest period. I wanted to revise this recipe so it would be easy for yeast phobics (I used to be one of you!) to make a flavorful, healthy bread without a stand mixer or big muscles. Although I think this version is just about perfect, I hope you'll make the recipe your own just as Mags and I did.

This bread is wonderful while still warm from the oven, great dipped in a little maple syrup or with maple butter, and makes a spectacular turkey sandwich.

Maple Oatmeal Bread
Printer friendly recipe
2 1/2 cups boiling water
1 cup (80 g) rolled oats
2 1/4 cups (300 g) whole wheat flour
2 3/4 cups (415 g) unbleached bread flour
2 teaspoons instant yeast
2 teaspoons salt
2 tablespoons vital wheat gluten
1/3 cup (50 g) dried milk powder
3/4 cup maple syrup, at room temperature
2 tablespoons butter, melted

Maple syrup for brushing (optional)

Oatmeal for sprinkling (optional)

In bowl of stand mixer, combine boiling water and oats. Cover and let sit for one hour. It's OK if you leave it a bit longer.

In a medium sized bowl or large measuring cup, whisk together the whole wheat flour, the bread flour, yeast, salt, wheat gluten and dried milk powder. Set aside.

When the oats have cooled for one hour, add the flour mixture and mix in with a wooden spoon or spatula. Pour in the maple syrup and stir together with your wooden spoon or spatula then with your hands to bring together as a soft, sticky dough. Pour the warm melted butter over the dough and mix into the dough with your hands. Cover the bowl and let stand for 10 minutes.

Grease a flat clean surface with olive oil (or, use a Silpat as I do). Remove the dough from the bowl (it will be a bit damp and very sticky) and knead for ten seconds, then form the dough into a smooth round ball. Wipe the bowl clean and grease with olive oil, then return the dough ball to the bowl and leave for 10 minutes. It's OK if you leave it a few minutes longer.

Repeat this ten-second kneading and resting process every 10 minutes twice (a total of three kneadings), then let the dough rest for 30 minutes.

Grease two loaf pans (you can use 8 x 4 or 9 x 5). Divide the dough into two equal pieces, shape into two loaves (which I do by dividing half the dough into two pieces and forming each into a ball, placing them side by side in the pan) and place each in a loaf tin. Lightly cover with plastic wrap and let rise for about one hour, or until the dough crests about an inch over the top of the pans. If using the larger loaf pan, your dough may not crest as much. It should feel lightly springy to the touch.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. If desired, brush tops of loaves with maple syrup and sprinkle with oatmeal. Place loaves in oven and bake for 40 minutes, rotating pans 180 degrees halfway through the baking time. Remove loaves from the pans and cool on a cooling rack for one hour before slicing. Warm bread is pretty irresistible, but your loaf will have the best texture if you wait until it cools completely. That said, if you cut off a few slices to try, only the cut end will be a little moist, the rest of the loaf will completely normal.

Wheat Berry Salad

2011-04-21T12:51:00.000-07:00

When you're as big a fan of chocolate and cookies as I am, you need to eat a healthy meal that reverses the effects of too many brownies. I can always count on recipes from Ellie Krieger to be delicious in a way that "healthy" becomes an afterthought. That's what I had in mind this week when I made this because this week's Craving Ellie in My Belly recipe was chosen by me!

I love wheat berries and yet I'd never prepared them at home. The preparation is easy - cover with water and boil for about an hour.

I changed up the recipe a bit, substituting toasted pine nuts for the walnuts, cilantro instead of parsley (which I hate), and I added some chopped red bell pepper for color. This one needed a lot of tinkering, which may be a result of using 1 3/4 cups of wheat berries because that's how much I bought.

Here are a few suggestions:

When making this recipe, you can do as I did and cook the wheat berries one day and assemble the salad the next.
I salted the water the wheat berries cooked in. One thing I've learned from making Ellie's recipes is that they always need salt - and I'm not a food salter.
My dried cherries weren't old but they weren't as soft as I wanted. You could substitute chopped dried apricots, quartered grapes or diced mango for a completely different twist.
If you have walnut oil, it would be a great substitution for the olive oil if you're using walnuts.
Speaking of the walnuts, toast them in the oven or in a skillet. It will intensify the flavor.
The completed salad needed a lot of seasoning. And more lemon juice. An maybe a tiny clove of garlic smashed into a paste and combined with the oil and lemon juice before adding to the salad. Or 1/2 teaspoon of curry powder or smoked Spanish paprika.

Can you tell I found this a little lacking in flavor? Sad but true, this one was a little boring for me. I'll probably play around with it before I serve it for dinner tonight, just because it needs something else to keep from being blah. If you'd like to see what my fellow Ellie cooks thought, you can find them here.

Wheat Berry Salad - serves 6
1 1/2 cups hard wheat berries
3/4 cup chopped walnuts (I used pine nuts)
2 stalks celery, finely chopped

1/2 cup chopped red bell pepper
1/2 cup tart dried cherries, chopped
1 scallion, white and green parts, chopped
1/2 cup finely chopped parsley leaves (I used cilantro)
3 tablespoons olive oil
2 tablespoons lemon juice, more to taste
Salt and freshly ground black pepper

In a large pot combine the wheat berries and enough water to come 2 inches over the wheat berries. Bring to a boil and cook uncovered for 1 hour, or until tender. Drain and let cool. Toast the walnuts in a medium dry skillet over medium-high heat until fragrant, 2 to 3 minutes.

In a large bowl, combine the wheat berries, walnuts, celery, dried cherries, scallions, parsley, olive oil and lemon juice. Season, to taste, with salt and pepper.

Per Serving:
Calories 360; Total Fat 17 g; (Sat Fat 2 g, Mono Fat 6 g, Poly Fat 8 g) ; Protein 9 g; Carb 46 g; Fiber 8 g; Cholesterol 0 mg; Sodium 15 mg

Excellent source of: Fiber, Vitamin K, Manganese

Chocolate Chip Pecan Banana Bread

2011-04-18T09:29:00.000-07:00

As the weather gets warmer, I am often left with spotty bananas as my warmer kitchen makes them ripen faster than we can eat them. Sometimes they get cut up for smoothies, but often they get made into banana bread.

This recipe is adapted from the Flour Bakery recipe. I recently bought the Flour cookbook and I'm discovering the wonderful recipes, which include many of the measurements in grams as well as cups.

This banana bread was delicious. The chocolate played well with the banana, pecans and slight hint of cinnamon. Healthy and delicious don't always go together but this one was a winner. Here's my take on Flour's recipe.

Chocolate Chip Pecan Banana Bread (adapted from Flour Bakery)
Printer-friendly recipe
1 1/2 cups/210 grams all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon kosher salt
1 cup plus 2 tablespoons/230 grams sugar
2 eggs
1/2 cup/100 grams canola oil
3 1/2 bananas, very ripe, mashed (about 1 1/3 cups/340 grams)
2 tablespoons creme fraiche or sour cream
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2/3 cup/75 grams pecans, toasted and chopped

3/4 cup/125 grams semisweet chocolate chips

Preheat oven to 325 degrees. Spray a 9x5" loaf pan with cooking spray.

Sift together the flour, baking soda, cinnamon and salt. Beat sugar and eggs with the whisk attachment of your mixer on medium speed until light and fluffy, about 5 minutes. Reduce the speed to low and slowly drizzle in the oil. Add the mashed bananas, sour cream, and vanilla. Fold in the flour mixture, pecans and chocolate chips. Pour into the prepared loaf pan and bake for about 1 hour to 1 hour 15 minutes or until it tests done. Cool in the pan on a rack for 10 minutes before turning out on the rack to cool completely (unless you don't mind if your banana bread looks as mangled as mine, which was cut 10 minutes out of the oven.)

Chocolate Pudding Cake

2011-04-13T07:23:00.000-07:00

It's Wednesday. Time for some chocolate. Chocolate so deep and dark that it made a frantic workday muuuuch better. It was much easier to eat that it was to get a decent photo against the darkness of my desk.

This chocolate cake is so easy that the steps are melt, whisk, stir and bake. It came from a cookbook that has multipage recipes for grand concoctions. And this humble, moist in the center, crunchy on the outside, melting chocolate cake. Topped with a simple chocolate glaze that had as many fans as the cake did, it was a wonderful way to scratch a midweek chocolate itch.

My dear blogging buddy Peggy of Pantry Revisited chose this recipe for Chocolate with Francois last month. I'm late posting (I'm late in almost everything these days) and I was so grateful to her for choosing such a simple and delectable recipe. If you'd like to make it yourself and scratch that chocolate itch, Peggy has the recipe for you here.

Espresso Ice Cream Tart

2011-04-05T00:01:00.000-07:00

When life gets busy, I head to the kitchen. Lots of you do rational things (like laundry), but I'm driven to bake and share the bounty of my stress.

When I saw this week's TWD recipe, I thought "This one's easy!" Naturally I had to make it harder, so I pretty much revamped the recipe to suit my whims. This didn't exactly fit in with the time I had available. Oh well!

It seemed like a good idea to make my own coffee ice cream, and when I went to buy the coffee for it, expresso seemed even better than coffee. Making hot fudge seemed like a better idea than melting chocolate over the bottom of the warm tart shell. And making a chocolate shortbread tart shell seemed like an upgrade over the crust in the recipe. The embarrassing photo at the top of this post is proof that this tart made my afternoon (and that of lots of my coworkers) much better. Although it was hard to serve, it was happily attacked and disposed of before it could melt. All of our happy tummies thanked Jessica of Domestic Deep Thought of the Day for her timely pick for Tuesday with Dorie. Jessica has the recipe for you here, and you can find what the other bakers did with this one here.

Salted Butter Break-Ups

2011-04-01T08:31:00.000-07:00

What are salted butter break-ups? Easy, fabulously delicious butter cookies. They're also addictive. Make them and you will find it impossible to pass up breaking off a piece every time you pass through the kitchen. The recipe, which is from Around My French Table by Dorie Greenspan, couldn't be easier. The dry ingredients get pulsed in the food processor, then you add the butter pieces and pulse, then a little cold water to bring it all together. Pat the dough into a disk, refrigerate, then bash it into a roundish, thinish giant cookie. Brush with egg wash and score with the back of your longest knife (I used my slicer). The scoring is optional if you're in a rush.

I've made these twice and have a few of tips to share:

If you like the sweet/salty flavor profile, you could up the salt or even use fleur de sel. I love how these taste with fleur de sel.
I roll mine out on a sheet of parchment on the BACK of a sheet pan. I use the plastic wrap I stored the dough in on top, and never have to clean my rolling pin. Yes, I am lazy. Using the back of the sheet pan offers a few advantages: no repositioning to roll around the lip of the pan and it's easier to score the dough when the lip isn't in your way. If I need the cookies to cool quickly, I can very easily slide the parchment and giant cookie off the back of the pan onto the cooling rack (or my granite counter top, if I'm in a big rush).
Make sure you roll them thin enough, or the middle will be more like a bread than a cookie. Still good, but the star of these cookies is the crispy edge.
Experiment with flavors! You could use Dorie's method of rubbing citrus zest into the sugar for lightly lemony cookies (or orange, lime or grapefruit!) Dip them in melted chocolate before serving. Finely chopped nuts or, gasp, cocoa nibs, would take these in an entirely different direction. So would finely chopped rosemary or thyme leaves.
My blogging, Twitter and Words with Friends buddy Di suggested dividing the dough in half to make two smaller giant cookies. Her rationale is you would end up with more edge area, and the best part of these cookies is their edge.
Let them cool completely before eating them. The cookie needs cooling time to crisp on the edges. Are you sensing that we like the edges?

Guess I should have taken the photos before sampling the cookie. Next time.

I made these for French Fridays with Dorie. The group made them a couple weeks ago, but I am so behind I'm just getting to posting them. If you want the recipe (after all, who doesn't need an easy butter cookie??), you can find the recipe here.

Daring Bakers (or How I Baked a Hot Mess for My Coworkers)

2011-03-28T13:12:00.000-07:00

The March 2011 Daring Baker’s Challenge was hosted by Ria of Ria’s Collection and Jamie of Life’s a Feast. Ria and Jamie challenged The Daring Bakers to bake a yeasted Meringue Coffee Cake.

Even though we know the challenge recipe a month before the posting date, I invariably wait until the day before to bake the Daring Bakers recipe. Or I make it early in the month but wait until the 27th to write my post and can't remember much about the process. Neither of these approaches is recommended. They are called challenges for a reason.

This month, I waited until the day OF the posting to bake, and things went downhill quickly. It was our anniversary and I was a bit scattered. In fact, I forgot to add the yeast until the dough was two thirds through being kneaded. I tossed it in the mixer and hoped for the best. It took twice the usual time to double, but it did. Then M. announced we were going to the coast for lunch. I tucked the dough away in the fridge and off we went. It was a beautiful day after so many rainy days in a row, and Capitola, the little beach town we drove to, had had flooding from the rains. But we managed to find an open restaurant with a patio on the water, and we had lunch. After a bit of walking around (I just got my boot off a few days ago), we came home.

Last night, I pulled the dough out of the fridge and resumed the prep. I rolled out the dough, made the meringue and sprinkled on the filling. Rolling it up was a challenge in itself. The meringue didn’t want to roll up so I folded it more than rolled it. After forming into a roundish shape, I cut the slits, not being afraid to cut too deeply as the recipe instructed. I covered the pastries with plastic wrap, tucked them back into the fridge and went to bed.

When I woke up this morning, I turned on the oven and pulled the pastries out of the fridge. THEY WERE SITTING IN POOLS OF GOO. I knew this would happen. I know that meringue tends to weep, but this meringue cried buckets. And I wanted to cry buckets, too. After sopping up the goo with paper towels, I stuck them in the oven and hoped for the best.

They baked up nicely. I’ll never know if they were supposed to have a different flavor or texture, but my coworkers seemed to enjoy this treat. The meringue mostly melted into the pastry, and the chocolate, pecans and cinnamon gave it a lovely flavor. While it was a success in spite of my neglect, I can only imagine how it was supposed to turn out.

Many thanks to Jamie and Ria for challenging the Daring Bakers to make this coffee cake. Next month I really, really do plan to make the recipe earlier in the month. Really.

*****

I made Jamie’s version of the recipe but I’m also including Ria’s because it sounds so yummy.

FILLED MERINGUE COFFEE CAKE
Makes 2 round coffee cakes, each approximately 10 inches in diameter
The recipe can easily be halved to make one round coffee cake

Ingredients
For the yeast coffee cake dough:

4 cups (600 g / 1.5 lbs.) flour
¼ cup (55 g / 2 oz.) sugar
¾ teaspoon (5 g / ¼ oz.) salt
1 package (2 ¼ teaspoons / 7 g / less than an ounce) active dried yeast
¾ cup (180 ml / 6 fl. oz.) whole milk
¼ cup (60 ml / 2 fl. oz. water (doesn’t matter what temperature)
½ cup (135 g / 4.75 oz.) unsalted butter at room temperature
2 large eggs at room temperature

10 strands saffron for Ria’s version (Saffron might be hard to find and it’s expensive, so you can substitute with ½ - 1 teaspoon of ground cardamom or ground nutmeg. Or simply leave it plain like Jamie’s version)

For the meringue:

3 large egg whites at room temperature
¼ teaspoon salt
½ teaspoon vanilla
½ cup (110 g / 4 oz.) sugar

For the filling:

Jamie’s version:
1 cup (110 g / 4 oz.) chopped pecans or walnuts
2 Tablespoons (30 g / 1 oz.) granulated sugar
¼ teaspoon ground cinnamon
1 cup (170 g / 6 oz.) semisweet chocolate chips or coarsely chopped chocolate

Ria’s version:
1 cup (130 g / 5 oz.) chopped cashew nuts
2 Tablespoons (30 g / 1 oz.) granulated sugar
½ teaspoon garam masala (You can make it at home – recipe below - or buy from any Asian/Indian grocery store)
1 cup (170g / 6 oz.) semisweet chocolate chips ( I used Ghirardelli)

Egg wash: 1 beaten egg
Cocoa powder (optional) and confectioner’s sugar (powdered/icing sugar) for dusting cakes

**Garam (means “hot”) masala (means “mixture”) is a blend of ground spices and is used in most Indian savory dishes. It is used in limited quantities while cooking vegetables, meats & eggs. There is no “one” recipe for it as every household has a recipe of their own. Below, I am going to share the recipe which I follow.

4 or 5 sticks (25 g) Cinnamon Sticks (break a stick and open the scroll)
3 ½ tablespoons (25 g / less than an ounce) Cloves, whole
100 g. (3.5 oz.) Fennel seeds
4 tablespoons (25 g / less than an ounce) Cumin seeds
1 ½ tablespoons (10 g / less than half an ounce) Peppercorns
25 g (less than half an ounce) Green Cardamom pods

In a small pan on medium heat, roast each spice individually (it hardly takes a minute) until you get a nice aroma. Make sure you stir it throughout so that it doesn’t burn. As soon as each spice is roasted, transfer it to a bowl to cool slightly. Once they are all roasted, grind into a fine powder by using a coffee grinder, or pestle & mortar. Store in an airtight container and use as needed.

Directions:

Prepare the dough:

In a large mixing bowl, combine 1 ½ cups (230 g) of the flour, the sugar, salt and yeast.

In a saucepan, combine the milk, water and butter and heat over medium heat until warm and the butter is just melted. Ria’s version: add the 10 saffron threads to the warmed liquid and allow to steep off of the heat for 10 minutes. This will give the mixture a distinct aroma and flavor and a yellowish-orange hue.

With an electric mixer on low speed, gradually add the warm liquid to the flour/yeast mixture, beating until well blended. Increase mixer speed to medium and beat 2 minutes. Add the eggs and 1 cup (150 g) flour and beat for 2 more minutes.

Using a wooden spoon, stir in enough of the remaining flour to make a dough that holds together. Turn out onto a floured surface (use any of the 1 ½ cups of flour remaining) and knead the dough for 8 to 10 minutes until the dough is soft, smooth, sexy and elastic, keeping the work surface floured and adding extra flour as needed.

Place the dough in a lightly greased (I use vegetable oil) bowl, turning to coat all sides. Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and a kitchen towel and let rise until double in bulk, 45 – 60 minutes. The rising time will depend on the type of yeast you use.

Prepare your filling:In a small bowl, combine the cinnamon and sugar for the filling if using. You can add the chopped nuts to this if you like, but I find it easier to sprinkle on both the nuts and the chocolate separately.

Once the dough has doubled, make the meringue:
In a clean mixing bowl – ideally a plastic or metal bowl so the egg whites adhere to the side (they slip on glass) and you don’t end up with liquid remaining in the bottom – beat the egg whites with the salt, first on low speed for 30 seconds, then increase to high and continue beating until foamy and opaque. Add the vanilla then start adding the ½ cup sugar, a tablespoon at a time as you beat, until very stiff, glossy peaks form.

Assemble the Coffee Cakes:

Line 2 baking/cookie sheets with parchment paper.

Punch down the dough and divide in half. On a lightly floured surface, working one piece of the dough at a time (keep the other half of the dough wrapped in plastic), roll out the dough into a 20 x 10-inch (about 51 x 25 ½ cm) rectangle. Spread half of the meringue evenly over the rectangle up to about 1/2-inch (3/4 cm) from the edges. Sprinkle half of your filling of choice evenly over the meringue (ex: half of the cinnamon-sugar followed by half the chopped nuts and half of the chocolate chips/chopped chocolate).

Now, roll up the dough jellyroll style, from the long side. Pinch the seam closed to seal. Very carefully transfer the filled log to one of the lined cookie sheets, seam side down. Bring the ends of the log around and seal the ends together, forming a ring, tucking one end into the other and pinching to seal.

Using kitchen scissors or a sharp knife (although scissors are easier), make cuts along the outside edge at 1-inch (2 ½ cm) intervals. Make them as shallow or as deep as desired but don’t be afraid to cut deep into the ring.

Repeat with the remaining dough, meringue and fillings.

Cover the 2 coffee cakes with plastic wrap and allow them to rise again for 45 to 60 minutes.

Preheat the oven to 350°F (180°C).

Brush the tops of the coffee cakes with the egg wash. Bake in the preheated oven for 25 to 30 minutes until risen and golden brown. The dough should sound hollow when tapped.

Remove from the oven and slide the parchment paper off the cookie sheets onto the table. Very gently loosen the coffee cakes from the paper with a large spatula and carefully slide the cakes off onto cooling racks. Allow to cool.

Just before serving, dust the tops of the coffee cakes with confectioner’s sugar as well as cocoa powder if using chocolate in the filling. These are best eaten fresh, the same day or the next day.

Irish (Sort of) Soda Bread

2011-03-20T20:05:00.000-07:00

I'd never made Irish soda bread up until a month ago, when I made a very traditional recipe from the back of the King Arthur Flour wheatmeal flour package. This recipe from Melissa Murphy's The Sweet Melissa Baking Book wasn't as traditional so I took it in a different direction. I didn't have currants and don't like cloves, so I went with golden raisins, dried cherries and pistachios, plus cinnamon.

Irish soda bread is so easy to make that it was in the oven in 10 minutes and came out at the perfect time to serve with some lentil soup for lunch. It was delicious with the cinnamon, fruit and nuts...not traditional but just perfect.

Julie of A Little Bit of Everything chose this recipe for Sweet Melissa Sundays. Thanks, Julie, for selecting this recipe for us. We enjoyed it a lot.

If you'd like the original recipe, Julie has it for you here. And you can how the other SMS bakers liked it here. If you'd like to make it the way I did, here's the recipe my way.

Irish (sort of) Soda Bread - (adapted from The Sweet Melissa Baking Book)

Printer friendly recipe

1/2 cup golden raisins
1/2 cup dried cherries

1/2 cup shelled pistachios
3 cups all-purpose flour
1 tablespoon baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/3 cup sugar
1 1/2 teaspoon kosher salt
1 teaspoon Vietnamese cinnamon
6 tablespoons cold unsalted butter, cut into 1/4 inch pieces
1 large egg
1 cup buttermilk

Position a rack in the center of your oven. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper or aluminum foil.

In a medium bowl, combine the raisins, dried cherries and pistachios and set aside. In another bowl, whisk together the egg and buttermilk and set aside. In a bowl of of electric mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, combine the flour, baking powder, baking soda, sugar, salt and cinnamon. Add the cold butter pieces and mix on low speed until the butter is the size of small peas.

Add the buttermilk mixture to the flour mixture and mix on low speed until just combined. Be sure to scrape down the sides and the bottom of the bowl to combine thoroughly. Do not over mix. Add the fruit and nuts to the dough and mix on low speed for 20 seconds.

Turn the dough onto the lined sheet pan. Kneed the dough lightly, pressing the dough into one large round - or divide it in half to form two small rounds. Don't over handle.

Using a sharp knife, cut the traditional "X" cutting about 1 1/2 inches deep into the top. Bake for 20 minutes, reduce the oven temperature to 325 degrees and bake for an additional 20 minutes for the large loaf, or 10 minutes for the smaller loaves. The loaves will be golden, and a wooden skewer inserted into the center wil come out clean. Remove to a wire rack to cool. It's best the day you make it, but it can be tightly wrapped and stored for a couple of days, or frozen for one month.

Yield: One 3-pound Loaf

Citrus Currant Sunshine Muffins

2011-03-15T00:01:00.000-07:00

What, no chocolate?

It happens. I've been making Meyer lemon bars and corn muffins and this savory bread, but nary a decadent chocolate recipe. Fear not. I haven't forsaken chocolate. But in the spring (or after an entire week of chocolate), my thoughts turn to fruits and vegetables and I really want it to be spring. So this week I'm willing it to be spring with this aptly named, sunny muffin.

The sunshine in this muffin refers to the generous amount of orange juice, supplemented with a touch of lemon to make it extra perky. I was prepared to be meh about these, but they were actually quite nice. One secret I can share with you is using butter to grease the muffin tins. This made the outsides crunchy, which was a perfect counterpoint to the orangy middles. I know using paper liners is easier, but the crunchy crust stole the show for me. The currants were nice, but don't make a special trip to Whole Foods as I did. Dried cranberries or chopped dried cherries would be lovely as well. I also toyed with chopped crystalized ginger, but that would take these in an entirely different direction.

Lauryn of Bella Baker chose this recipe for the Tuesdays with Dorie bakers to make this week. It's from the epic book Baking From My Home to Yours by Dorie Greenspan. Lauryn will have the recipe for you (I just realized I overbaked mine when I saw her lovely muffins), and you can find the other TWD bakers here. Thanks, Lauryn, for choosing a recipe so evocative of the warmer weather we're all hoping for.

Savory Cheese & Chive Bread

2011-03-11T00:01:00.000-08:00

Last week's French Fridays with Dorie recipe was one of the things I made in my flurry of baking two weekends ago. I was celebrating my return to baking (wrist is 98% pain free-yay!) and with the restraint typical of addicts, I was impossible to separate from my kitchen. This bread, with its flavors of chives, Ementhaller cheese and spices was actually my lunch that day. I changed up the recipe quite a bit, using spicy olive oil, substituting pine nuts for walnuts and adding sun-dried tomatoes. It was delicious, though M. and I agreed a little roasted garlic would have made it even better.

The recipe for this loaf came from Dorie Greenspan's book Around My French Table. Every recipe I've tried from this book has been successful and a surprise, either for the flavors or the ease of preparation (or both). Amazon has it for $25. Sweet! But if you're not up for buying the book, you can find the recipe here.

Cheesy Spicy Corny Muffins

2011-03-08T00:01:00.000-08:00

Sometimes, you need to trust your instincts in the kitchen. I know that sometimes that results in massive fails, but more often than not, it gives you a great new recipe or helps you avoid disaster.

This week's Tuesdays with Dorie pick was made by Jill of My Next Life. She chose Dorie Greenspan's corniest corn muffin recipe (she'll have Dorie's original recipe for you), but it underwent a transformation in my kitchen. I'm technically from the south (though Miami is its own region) and I don't love sweet cornbread. Strike one. My corn kernels smelled like the freezer. Strike two. And I love cheese...and she lays down a bunt and gets on base!

So I knew I wanted cheddar and I knew I wanted them to have a smoky flavor but not so powerful that it drowned out the corn flavor. Enter my old friend, smoked Spanish paprika. With a couple of tweaks, these little babies were transformed to can't-get-enough savory muffins. They were easy and soooo delicious, so please make them soon.

Cheesy Spicy Corny Muffins
Printer friendly recipe
1 cup all-purpose flour
1 cup yellow cornmeal, preferably stone-ground
2 tablespoons granulated sugar
2 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt

1/2 teaspoon smoked Spanish paprika
1 cup buttermilk
6 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted and cooled
1 large egg
1 large egg yolk
1 cup shredded cheddar cheese

Center a rack in the oven and preheat the oven to 400 degrees F. Butter or spray the 12 molds in a regular-size muffin pan or fit the molds with paper muffin cups. Place the muffin pan on a baking sheet.

In a large bowl, whisk together the flour, cornmeal, sugar, baking powder, baking soda, salt and paprika. In a large glass measuring cup or another bowl, whisk the buttermilk, melted butter, egg and yolk together until well blended; stir in the cheese. Pour the liquid ingredients over the dry ingredients and, with the whisk or a rubber spatula, gently but quickly stir to blend. Don’t worry about being thorough – the batter will be lumpy. Divide the batter evenly among the muffin cups.

Bake for 15 to 18 minutes (12 minutes for minis), or until the tops are golden and a thin knife inserted into the center of the muffins comes out clean. Transfer the pan to a rack and cool for 5 minutes before carefully removing each muffin from its mold.

Yields 12 muffins

Chocolate Pudding

2011-03-06T21:58:00.000-08:00

As I mentioned on this post, this is chocolate pudding week at Lethally Delicious. It started a week ago with chocolate panna cotta, then we had chocolate pots de creme on Tuesday, and finally good old chocolate pudding today for Sweet Melissa Sundays.

This recipe is from The Sweet Melissa Baking Book by Melissa Murphy. As you can tell from the odd appearance of my pudding, I had a few problems. I didn't have the 6 ounce ramekins the recipe specifies so I used my 4 ounce ramekins. The recipe didn't instruct us to poke holes in the foil so I didn't. My puddings steamed (or was that the intention?) When I checked them after 40 minutes, they were the ugliest little over cooked, water logged desserts I've ever seen!

However, even though they were a bit curdled, they were tasty once they chilled. I debated making them again but couldn't bear to go through another-gasp-three cups of heavy cream. So promise me you won't make them the way I did when you make them!

Chocolate Pudding
3 cups heavy cream
1/4 cup plus 1 tablespoon sugar
2 1/4 ounces best-quality semisweet (58%) chocolate, finely chopped (about 1/2 cup) (I used 70%)
5 large egg yolks
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

Before you start, position a rack in the center of your oven. Preheat the oven to 300 degrees F. Place six 6-ounce ramekins in a 9 x 13-inch roasting pan.

In a medium, heavy-bottomed saucepan, bring the cream and about half of the sugar to scalding, or until the milk is steaming and tiny bubbles have formed along the edges. Do not boil.

Place the chopped chocolate in a medium-sized bowl. Pour enough scalding cream over the chocolate to cover. Let sit for 5 minutes and then whisk until smooth. Pour the remaining cream over the chocolate and whisk until smooth.

In a large bowl, gently whish together the egg yolks, the remaining half of the sugar, the salt, and vanilla until smooth. Temper the chocolate cream into the yolk mixture, pouring it little by little and whisking all the while. Strain the mixture into a clean pitcher and skim off any bubbles with a spoon.

Pour the mixture into the prepared ramekins. Fill the roasting pan with hot water until it reaches halfway up the sides of the ramekins. Cover the pan with aluminum foil. Bake 50 to 60 minutes, or until just set. Begin checking after 45 minutes. When gently shaken, a pudding should no longer look liquidy; it will move as one mass (albeit somewhat jiggly) and register 150 to 155 degrees F on an instant-read thermometer. Remove to a wire rack to cool to room temperature in the water bath. Remove the ramekins from the pan and refrigerate, uncovered, until cool. Cover with plastic wrap and chill for several hours to overnight before serving.

Chocolate Pots de Creme

2011-03-01T05:11:00.000-08:00

I didn't plan it this way, but it's shaping up to be pudding week at Lethally Delicious. We started with chocolate panna cotta (Italian chocolate pudding to me), are moving on to chocolate pots de creme (French chocolate pudding) and I'll have another chocolate pudding post on Sunday.

And while I never would have chosen to consume so much heavy cream in one week, it has presented an interesting opportunity to compare and contrast different methods for making what is basically an emulsion of chocolate in heavy cream.
While the panna cotta was thickened with gelatin, these pots de creme rely on egg yolks and cook in a water bath.

I used Valrhona 70% bittersweet chocolate because I was searching for deep chocolate flavor and with only 4 ounces of chocolate for 3 cups of cream and milk, high percentage chocolate was a must. Although the custard seemed like the flavor would be light weight, the finished pots de creme were lushly chocolate and creamy. Very dangerous, I must somehow share the rest...

Check out what the other Tuesdays with Dorie bakers thought here. And please visit Christine of Black Cat Cooking for the recipe. She's our host this week and I have her to thank for finding this week's best pudding recipe!

Cracaos

2011-02-28T07:01:00.000-08:00

When I saw that Astheroshe at Accro had chosen cracaos for this month's Chocolate with Francois recipe, I had no idea what it was. Cake, tart, confection? No clue.

It turns out that cracaos are slice and bake chocolate nut cookies. They're easy to mix and bake and rely on Dutch process cocoa, cinnamon, walnuts and pistachios for their personality. I made the dough ahead and sliced off a few to bake fresh when we wanted a cookie. After a few days I baked the rest of the dough and shared the cookies at work.

They were good, though not overly exciting. The first time I made some I baked them 10 minutes (the lower end of the range) and they ended up very crisp though not overdone. After that experience I pulled them out at 8-9 minutes, while they were still chewy with crispy edges. Much better.

If you'd like the recipe, Astheroshe will have it for you here. The other Chocolate with Francois bakers are here. Thanks Astheroshe, for hosting this month and picking an easy, do ahead recipe!