Oye Cookie!

February's Daring Bakers Challenge

The February 2009 challenge is hosted by Wendy of WMPE's blog and Dharm of Dad ~ Baker & Chef.
We have chosen a Chocolate Valentino cake by Chef Wan; a Vanilla Ice Cream recipe from Dharm and a Vanilla Ice Cream recipe from Wendy as the challenge.

I had a few friends over and lured them with the prospect of having flourless chocolate cake and ice cream. For the ice cream I decided to go with David Lebovitz’s Salted Caramel Ice Cream.

 Let me just say that this man is a genius. He must be. The ice cream was the creamiest and probably one of the most amazingly rich and delicious ice creams I’ve ever had. Seriously! It wasn’t hard to make though there are a few steps.

 The cake was alright. Honestly I have a better flourless chocolate cake I like to make with a raspberry coulis that is phenomenal. This cake seemed gritty to me. No likey. I used Scharffenberger chocolate. Bittersweet and semi-sweet. It was a gorgeous color. The texture was just not great.

 Overall the dessert was good. The ice cream didn’t quite harden enough by the time it was time to eat, but it was all good. The taste way outweighed the fact that it was a little bit loose.

 Everyone devoured both the cake and the ice cream. I got lots of oooohs and aaaaahs. Personally I thought the cake was meh, but when you’ve got a few glasses of wine in you like most of my guests did, it was better.

 The picture certainly isn’t the best that I’ve put on the site, but someone else took it with a different camera than I usually use.

 In short, I was pleased with this challenge. It was totally up my alley. Thanks Wendy and Dharm!

January's Daring Bakers Challenge: Tuiles

This month's challenge is brought to us by Karen of Baking Soda and Zorra of 1x umruehren bitte aka Kochtopf.

They have chosen Tuiles from The Chocolate Book by Angélique Schmeink and Nougatine and Chocolate Tuiles from Michel Roux.

So, I had a brilliant idea for my tuiles. (Is that plural? What's the singular for tuile, is it tuile??)

I totally didn't want to do butterflies cause everyone was going to try butterflies and butterflies are so tramp stamp. So instead I went with something waaaaaaaaaaaay more sophisticated. Kitties.

Yeah. Totally.

So to start I had to figure out how I was going to make my stencil. See the tuile batter is pretty thin and you have to spread it over a stencil to get the shape you want. The option was given to make it free form and I did that too, but the kitty face is more interesting so I'm going to tell you the story of that instead.

I went over to Michael's to get a piece of something to make into my stencil. I knew I would need something flexible and plastic. I thought about vellum, but after talking to the very knowledgeable sales associate at Michael's, she brought up the good point that vellum, as a paper product wouldn't really stand up to liquid very well and the chance of reuse would be slim to none. Plastic it was. But what!?!? She suggested I go across the street to Office Depot to buy a overhead transparency sheet, but I really wasn't feeling up to another stop so I walked around and scoped out the store.

What to get? What to get?

I went with this brilliant find in the scrapbooking section:

Huzzah! Plastic! Durable! Best part: in the sale rack for $1.00

A dollar!

With my purchase in hand I came home and got started. I took my little Craft Keepers envelope and cut it up.

Once I had my two sheets, I could trace out my design. I figured the two sheets were good cause if I totally messed up one sheet, I still had another one to work with.

At work I had Googled "cat outline" and prited out a cute shape of kitty face I wanted to use. I know I know, not a great way to spend my work time, but I needed a good printer for this.

Above you see how I used a pen to trace out the kitty face. When I cut out the shape though I made sure to cut outside the pen line so as to leave no pen ink on my stencil and thus no pen ink in my cookies.

Using Ken's X-acto knife, I cut out the shapes using this month's Real Simple magazine (which I've still not read) as a pad.

So that was that! I now I had my stencil. Woo hoo!! And since I didn't really mess up my sheet, I now have another sheet to use in the future. All for a dollar!

It then came time to make the cookies. And here's where I messed up. Yeah I know, I totally rawked that stencil and my cookies were just meh. The problem my friends was two fold.

1. I didn't get my butter soft enough. Therefore my batter was lumpy with cold butter pieces. This presented a problem during baking as the little chunks of butter heated up and smeared some of my kitty faces. Sad sad kitties.

2. I didn't flavor them enough. They gave a couple recipes one for sweet and one for savory. I used the sweet, but when it said a dash of vanilla, I guess I took them too literally and so my cookies had little to no flavor at all.

I was able though to make two kinds like I said. I made the kitty faces, using melted dark chocolate in a little ziplock to make the eyes, nose and whiskers.

Not bad huh? Better than a dumb ol' butterfly. Meow! Meow!

I paired the tuile with pistachio gelato from Ciao Bella gelato. Nom nom nom! I love pistacio gelato and the best is when they put big chunks of the nut or fruit in it. Delish!

So finally, in an effort to try out shaping the cookies as was suggested in the challenge, I put a little orange juice glass upside down, put the cookie on top and sandwiched it over the glass with another o.j. glass.

The result was a little bowl which I then used to put a scoop of the pistachio gelato in.

Sweet! To showcase both the kitty face and the bowl, I used my nicest French-inspired plates and linens. Voila! Cest fini!

Rugelach

Thanks to Claire over at Loobylu I found out about an amazing retrospective by Gourmet magazine on their favorite cookies from 1940's to today. From the section on the 2000's I made their rugelach made with apricot preserves, raisins and walnuts.

Amazingly this complicated looking cookie is actually really easy to make! One thing I did *not* do was chill the dough for 8 hours. I was just lazy. I took the dough, made the square and put it into the freezer. I then mixed and prepped the fillings and baking sheets. By that time the dough was stiff. I cut it into the four pieces and worked with each piece individually while freezing the remaining pieces again until all four pieces were done.

The result was a very cream cheese-y dough and a mince meat-like filling. Tasty and not at all dry like most rugelach I've had. I am curious though to know what the difference would have been had I chilled it for the 8 hours they recommend.

Not terribly Hannukah-y, but  special nonetheless.

Happy Holidays everyone! (pictures to come)

Rugelach

Makesabout 44 cookies

• Active time:40 min
• Start to finish:9 3/4 hr (includes chilling dough)

May 2004

This very homey recipe for rugelach was handed down through 4 generations of food editor Melissa Roberts’s family; though rugelach is typically rolled, then sliced and baked, these are scored first, baked, and then broken into individual cookies afterwards, for a wonderful variety of textures from top to bottom.

This is just one of Gourmet’s Favorite Cookies: 1941-2008. Although we’ve retested the recipes, in the interest of authenticity we’ve left them unchanged: The instructions below are still exactly as they were originally printed.

Learn how to roll out thin cookie dough—with no mess and no extra flour.

• 2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 2 sticks (1 cup) unsalted butter, softened
• 8 oz cream cheese, softened
• 1/2 cup plus 4 teaspoons sugar
• 1 teaspoon cinnamon
• 1 cup apricot preserves or raspberry jam
• 1 cup loosely packed golden raisins, chopped
• 1 1/4 cups walnuts (1/4 lb), finely chopped
• Milk for brushing cookies

• Special equipment:

  parchment paper; a small offset spatula

• Whisk together flour and salt in a bowl. Beat together butter and cream cheese in a large bowl with an electric mixer until combined well. Add flour mixture and stir with a wooden spoon until a soft dough forms. Gather dough into a ball and wrap in plastic wrap, then flatten (in wrap) into a roughly 7- by 5- inch rectangle. Chill until firm, 8 to 24 hours.
• Put oven rack in middle position and preheat oven to 350°F. Line bottom of a 1- to 1 1/2-inch-deep large shallow baking pan with parchment paper.
• Cut dough into 4 pieces. Chill 3 pieces, wrapped in plastic wrap, and roll out remaining piece into a 12- by 8-inch rectangle on a well-floured surface with a floured rolling pin. Transfer dough to a sheet of parchment, then transfer to a tray and chill while rolling out remaining dough in same manner, transferring each to another sheet of parchment and stacking on tray.
• Whisk 1/2 cup sugar with cinnamon.
• Arrange 1 dough rectangle on work surface with long side nearest you. Spread 1/4 cup preserves evenly over dough with offset spatula. Sprinkle 1/4 cup raising and a rounded 1/4 cup walnuts over jam, then sprinkle with 2 tablespoons cinnamon sugar.
• Using parchment as an aid, roll up dough tightly into a log. Place, seam side down, in lined baking pan, then pinch ends closed and tuck underneath. Make 3 more logs in same manner and arrange 1 inch apart in pan. Brush logs with milk and sprinkle each with 1 teaspoon of remaining granulated sugar. With a sharp large knife, make 3/4-inch-deep cuts crosswise in dough (not all the way through) at 1-inch-intervals. (If dough is too soft to cut, chill until firmer, 20 to 30 minutes.)
• Bake until golden, 45 to 50 minutes. Cool to warm in pan on a rack, about 30 minutes, then transfer logs to a cutting board and slice cookies all the way through.

Recipe by Melissa Roberts

Happy New Year!

This past Tuesday was Rosh Hashanah and to celebrate, Ken and I entered The Jew and the Carrot's Green Rosh Hashanah Dinner Challenge!

The challenge was simple: make your Rosh Hashanah dinner as green as possible. We decided to try and make it a zero waste dinner and we were pretty successful. The only waste we had were peels and beet greens, both of which could be composted. 

I made a round challah as my part of the dinner, and Ken made a super awesome Roast Root Veggie Soup. Deeeelish!

Wedding Time Cupcakes

Just a quick post to letchoo all know about the wedding I did this past weekend. Lovely couple Sera and Julius were married on Saturday and graciously they asked me to do their cupcakes.

They selected a chocolate cake cupcake with a lime-flavored cream cheese frosting. 70 cupcakes. No pressure, right???

Well, it was nerve-wracking but completely worth it after hearing that guests were pilfering the cupcakes and hording them before it was even time to eat them. My good friend Heidi was flown up from L.A. to take the pictures. I have to say that I'm very proud of both of us. Here's a pic she took of the deeeelicious cupcakes (yes, totally tooting my own horn on this one).

I also candied the lime peel on top. Yum

   

August Daring Bakers Challenge: Eclairs

This month's Daring Baker's Challenge was Eclairs! Exciting! There have been months when I've been less excited about the challenge, but I have to say that as soon as I read what it was I was very happy. I instantly relished the thought of making a Pâte à Choux, a pastry dough that I've yet to try.

The challenge this month was brought courtesy of Tony Tahhan and MeetaK. The recipe, by the infamous (and beloved by various food bloggers) Pierre Hermes, was pretty simple really. Three components come into play with an eclair: pastry dough (pate a choux), pastry cream, and chocolate glaze.

The only restrictions in this month's challenge

 1.      The dough used for the eclairs must be a pâte à choux from the recipe given.

And

 2.      Keep one chocolate element in the challenge. The recipe below is for a chocolate glaze and a chocolate pastry cream. You choose which chocolate element you want to keep.

Given that Ken and I had a 5 pound bag of Gravenstein apples from the Gravenstein Apple Festival, I decided to make my filling apple cinnamon pastry cream. I figured apples and chocolate go together, cinnamon and chocolate go together...apples, cinnamon and chocolate must all be friends. Why not invite them all to the party??

I started out with making the apple cinnamon mixture for my pastry cream. I chopped up about 3 apples really really small and cooked that with 1/4 cup of brown sugar and 1tb & 1/2 of cinnamon and about 1 tsp water. I ended up with a delicious and thick apple cinnamon caramel which I let cool. I made my pastry cream as per Mr. Hermes' instructions and then added the apple mixture and beat furiously to incorporate. Turned out yum.

Next I went on to my pâte à choux. Super easy to make. I really thought this would be the most difficult part to get right, but it came together extremely fast both times.

Both times?

Yes.

The first batch of eclair shells came out cute. Small, but cute. They were puffy and seemed "golden and firm". However the second I put them on the counter and turned around they totally flattened. I'm not talking about a little bit here folks, I'm talking about pan.cake.

I later read that I could have just put them back in the oven and they would have puffed up...but I didn't know this at the time, so I trashed the first batch and started again.

The second batch of dough came out the same, I piped them differently though since I had seen the first batch and how small they had come out. I wanted big puffs, so I made fewer but larger puffs.

This time I baked them as per the instructions, turning them half way through, but instead I baked them for about 10 minutes longer than instructed and without leaving the door of the oven open. Additionally, when the final 10 minutes were up, I poked a small hole in each of them with a skewer and left them in the oven to cool with the door open.

I nervously kept looking at them in the oven, but they turned out perfectly. I thought about piping in the filling, but seeing as it had little pieces of apple in it, I didn't want to clog my piping bag. I followed Pierre's directions and dutifully cut them in half.

I spooned in my apple cinnamon pastry cream and dipped the tops in the chocolate glaze. Even though the recipe says to use an offset spatula, I wanted complete coverage and while the glaze was still warm, it seemed smarter to dip.

The final result was pretty good. Not bad for my first time making eclairs! Hopefully next month's challenge will be as fruitful and fun!

Chocolate Peanut Butter Cookies

I have a confession to make. I don't like peanut butter cookies. Yeah I know.

Patrick though looooooooooves peanut butter cookies. After having him buy me presents at Comic-Con I was starting to feel like a bad friend. So I made cookies. And sent them. Maybe this will redeem me a little.

The recipe I used is from a great new book I got called The Weekend Baker. Now, I'm not one to shy away from baking, but this book is great for people who do. It's basically written for those who don't have much time but would love to bake up delicious treats. Recipes are broken down into what you can do ahead and what you can freeze.

It seriously took me less than 10 minutes to put together this cookie dough and get it in the oven. Another 12 minutes in the oven to bake and they were done. I made a chocolate glaze and dipped the cookies in it and voila! Chocolate covered Peanut Butter Cookies!

Big-Time Peanut Butter Cookies

1 1/3 cup smooth or crunchy peanut butter at room temperature

3/4 cup firmly packed light brown sugar

1 large egg

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1/4 cup all-purpose flour

 

1. position an oven rack on the middle rung. Heat the oven to 350*. Line 2 cookie sheets with parchment or nonstick baking liners.

2. In a large bowl, combine the peanut butter and brown sugar. Beat with an electric mixer (stand mixer fitted witht eh paddle attachment or handheld mixer) on medium speed until well blended. Add the egg and vanilla and beat until blended. Pour in the flour and beat on low speed just until blended.

3. Using a small ice-cream scoop or 2 tablespoons, scoop up rounded tablespponfuls of the dough and using your hands, shape into balls. Arrange on the prepared cookie sheets, spcing them about 2 inches apart. Using the tines of a fork, press on each ball to flatten slightly.  If ncessary, lightly coat the tines in flour to prevent them from sticking.

4. Bakuntil cookies look dry on top, about 12 minutes.  Transfer the cookie sheet to a rack to cool for about 10 minutes.  Using a spatula, lift the cookies from the sheet onto the rack and let cool.

They can be frozen upto 3 months.

 

Chocolate Cardamom Cake

Did you know that cardamom is used for its medicinal properties around the world? I sure didn't! I just knew it was in my chai tea and that it was deeeelicious.

In some Middle Eastern countries cardamom is cooked with coffee, in Asia it's used in cooking sometimes in rice dishes or masala dishes, in Europe and Nordic countries though it's primarily used in baking. Mmmmmm....baaaaking.

I made chocolate cardamom though cause Ken asked for it, and I think Ken got the idea cause our friend Sam had RAVED about the chocolate cardamom ice cream he got recently at Ici.  

I made my regular standard chocolate cake recipe and added a teaspoon and a half of ground cardamom. Holy moly did the house smell good! If you think baking a chocolate cake makes your house smell awesome, try adding a little cardamom!

I made two layers of cake and then cut them both in half making a four layer cake. The buttercream is courtesy of my amazing teacher Richard at Baking Arts. I took a private buttercreams class a couple of weeks ago which included instruction on Swiss Buttercream and Italian Buttercream. I learned a lot in my class and I hope he's proud of what I made with one of the buttercreams.

The sad part of putting my cake together was that after a little while, my buttercream got a little warm and like a dope, instead of just letting it rest and cool for a little bit in the fridge, I kept on keeping on and decorated the cake anyway.

 

In between each layer of cake I had a layer of chocolate buttercream and sliced strawberries. The result really was amazing flavor even if my layers squished a little.

Have you used cardamom in your baking?

Slow Food Nation '08

I'm super excited about this event at the end of the month in San Francisco. I want more than anything to be able to participate because it really is a fantastic event. However, my mother, grandmother and aunt will be in town that weekend and I don't think I'll be able to make it. I encourage all of you to check out their website, attend and volunteer your time if possible.

We've been eating a Locavore diet for almost two weeks now and not only do I feel great, but I really feel I'm making a difference. I'm lowering my carbon footprint, supporting local farms and feeding myself and my household fresh foods.

Slow Food Nation is an event that I'm sure will encourage hundreds of thousands to eat more locally produced foods and be more conscientious about where their food comes from.

 

Apricot Ginger Scones

I don't like scones to be too dry. I think some people like super dry scones they can schmear stuff on and that's fine, but if I'm going to have a sweet scone that has chunks of stuff in it, I think it should be moist.

There's a Berkeley institution called The Cheeseboard Collective that we like to frequent (sometimes waaaay to often) that has the most amazing ginger scones in the fall/winter. Not too dry and full of flavor. During the summer they have blueberry or corn cherry scones but no ginger. Having some candied ginger pieces at home I thought that might go well with some apricots Ken brought home from work.

The Cheeseboard has a cookbook that features a great many of their most famous recipes. Sadly, the ginger scones I love so much aren't in it, so I used one of their other scone recipes and messed with it a little.

Apricot Ginger Scones

3 1/2 cups flour

1/2 tsp baking soda

1 Tb baking powder

1/2 tsp salt

3/4 cup sugar

1 cup cold butter

1 cup chopped apricots

1/2 cup candied ginger pieces

1 1/2 cup heavy cream

Preheat oven to 375*. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper.

Sift flour, baking soda, baking powder, salt in bowl. Cut up butter into small cubes and add to flour mixture. Using a pastry cutter, cut butter into dry mixture til butter is incorporated and is size of small peas.

Drop in apricot pieces and coat well with flour mixture. Add candied ginger pieces.

Making a well in the center of the dry ingredients, add the cream. Mix briefly just until eveything is mixed well. Dough will be pretty moist.

Shape scones into balls of about 2 inches or so in diameter. Drop onto prepared pan about 2 inches apart. Bake for about 25 to 30 minutes.

Half way through the baking brush with egg wash and sprinkle with sugar. Bake the remaining amount of time.