Lemon Bars with a Coconut Crust

Oh wow these were good!  They are from the Baked cookbook, which I find has slightly more complex recipes than most but is overall an excellent cookbook. Basically these are lemon bars made with a graham cracker and toasted coconut crust filled with lemon curd. Now I'm not sure what I did wrong, but the filling didn't ever fully set (it remained nice and creamy and curd-like, but not quite bar like) and the crust was a bit hard to cut and stuck to the pan.  So they didn't look beautiful, but they certainly tasted amazing. I mean really, lemon curd, graham crackers, and coconut...yum!

I made these for Pop's birthday, I think it looks really pretty with the yellow candle!

Chai Brownies

Remember the Earl Grey Brownies? These are the same recipe (from Fat Witch Brownies) but with decaf chai tea and a dash of orange extract instead of Earl Grey tea. The texture is just like the Earl Grey ones (which is good, because as I said, the texture of those was perfect), but obviously the flavor is different. I think I like the Earl Grey slightly more, probably because I like Earl Grey slightly more than Chai, but these are still great!

P.S. Sorry, I forgot to take a picture of these, but they look exactly like the Earl Grey Brownies, so really a photo would have been redundant anyway!

Dessert Pizza

I got the idea for this on Bobby Flay's Boy Meets Grill. He said a great way to use leftover pizza dough is to grill it and make dessert pizzas, so that's what I did. We had made pizza for dinner but had leftover dough. I made it into small rectangles, grilled it on our cast iron grill pan on both sides and put toppings on. I topped them with shaved dark and white chocolate, toasted almonds, and toasted sweetened coconut. The chocolate melted nicely from the heat of the grilled dough and the toasted almonds and coconut were great and added a nice crunch.

Earl Grey Brownies, con't

Oops, I forgot to post the photo of the Earl Grey Brownies, sorry.  Here it is!

Earl Grey Brownies

These are yet another Fat Witch brownie, and they are one of my favorites!  The texture is out of this world; they are fudgy but not chewy, smooth but still dense.  And the taste is perfect.  They are chocolately and distinctly earl grey-y.  The bergamot taste and scent were subtle but added a wonderful depth to the flavor. I really do think these are some of my favorite brownies and perhaps my favorite non-plain brownie.

The cookbook suggests trying this with different teas, which I will definitely be doing...I'll you know how that works out.

It's official...

I'm going to the FCI for their pastry arts course! It starts on August 19th. I can't wait! It's going to be an amazing experience. I'll make sure to tell you all about it here, so keep checking back, especially starting August 20th (I'm taking the night course, so I'd imagine I won't be able to post until the day after class.) Have I mentioned I can't wait?!

Quadruple Chocolate Brownies

Remember the Roland Mesnier brownies I kept talking about last Fall? Their ba-ack! This time they were for my cousin's baby girl's naming ceremony. (I realize I said my cousin's baby...she would be my cousin too, but you get my point!) I knew there were going to be other desserts, so I figured nice small pieces would be good. I also knew that there were going to be a lot of people I didn't know well, so I figured no nuts would be safest, multiple different chocolates would satisfy everyone, and no funky flavors (like orange or coffee).

I decided on the normal brownie recipe, except I substituted chocolate chips for the optional nuts (plus I used the chocolate chips it calls for.) I used 1/3 white chocolate chips, 1/3 milk chocolate chips, 1/3 semi-sweet chocolate chips. They were excellent!!!

French Culinary Institute

This evening I sat in on a level 2 Pastry Arts class at the FCI. I also handed in my application for the Pastry Arts course starting in mid-August. I can't believe it, I'm really doing this!

Anyway, the class was amazing. All the chef instructors were nice and welcoming, and I actually knew a couple of the answers to the questions they posed to the class! It looks like really hard work, but really fun! I can't wait!

After the class, I met my mom at L'Ecole, the FCI's restaurant, for dinner. Yum! It was good food, good portions, and great service. And the truffled mac and cheese was absolutely amazing! They gave us packages of cookies to take home as well, the perfect end to the night!

Espresso Brownies

Another Fat Witch brownie! These espresso brownies are certainly good, but not my favorite brownie. It's funny because I usually love espresso and chocolate, but for some reason these didn't knock it out of the park. That said, they are still very, very good, and I've eaten more than enough of them! What this recipe does get right is the texture--a bit cakey but still moist, light but not too airy.

Apocalypse Not

Today is May 22, 2011.  As I'm sure you have gathered, the world did not come to an end yesterday.  Perhaps I shouldn't have eaten an entire tray of brownies...  No, just kidding, I didn't really eat all the brownies I made, though had yesterday really been my last day I would have regretted not finishing them off.  Of course that's all assuming I was one of the elect who gets vacuumed up into Heaven.  God knows, I probably wouldn't have been one (I've mocked the whole idea of yesterday being judgement day far too much for Him to chose me!)  Anyway, if they had been right and I wasn't sucked up into Heaven, you know what I'd be doing right now?  Eating!  I'd be eating for the next five months.  You'd better believe that if we all really did only have five months until (as either CNN or USA Today put it) "the world goes kaput" I would spend as much of that time as possible eating.  I figure there would be no point in worrying about hardened arteries or high cholesterol or becoming morbidly obese.  Alas, the apocalypse does not seem to be upon us.  It is not the end of days; so, unfortunately, it is not the end of diets!

I'll be back tomorrow to tell you about those brownies!

Tea at the Peninsula

Day before yesterday I officially graduated! To celebrate, my mom, pops and I went to afternoon tea at the Peninsula. I love their afternoon tea. It's the best tea this side of the Atlantic. The sandwiches are excellent and very fancy (but in a good way). For example, one of them was lobster salad on a mini brioche roll...yum! The scones are good, British scones, nothing out of this world, but really nice. They serve them with real clotted cream (none of this whipped crap that American restaurants tend to use) and very nice jam. Then there are the desserts. I find that some are OK, but not amazing, and some are just perfect! What's especially nice is they will bring you extras of everything, without making you feel like a pig for asking. They are so nice, if you say "oh I really like that chocolate cake," they'll bring you a plate with extra pieces of that cake! And if you tell them that it's a special occasion when you make the reservation, they'll give you an extra dessert (because that's just what I need, more dessert...not that I'm complaining, mind you)! They gave me a gorgeous piece of chocolate cake layered with a light whipped chocolate icing or mousse, topped with a chocolate ganache and beautiful chocolate decorations.

Dessert at Cafe Luxembourg

I graduated yesterday!  The day before was the presentation of degree candidates.  So to celebrate being a degree candidate we all went out to a big dinner at Cafe Luxembourg.  It's on the upper west side of NYC and it is really good.  It's basically an upscale French bistro.  They have excellent desserts (I highly recommend their homemade ice cream, though that's not what I had on Tuesday.)  I had their special molten chocolate cake. It was excellent.  Warm and gooey on the inside, cakey on the outside, and the chocolate ice cream was creamy and delicious. They put a candle in it and wrote happy graduation in chocolate on the plate, which was very nice.  And yummy!

My mom got a chocolate mousse cake, which was also incredible. And it was topped with salted caramel ice cream that, I have to say, was slightly better than my chocolate ice cream. The cake was good too! It was two layers of good chocolate cake with a layer of mousse between and a layer of chocolate on top. The plate was decorated with caramel sauce and dark chocolate tuiles.

Brownies

Yesterday I handed my final paper.  I am officially done with all my college work!  In addition to handing in my paper, I brought some brownies into my final "class."  I put class in quotes because it wasn't mandatory and it was really more of a party than a class, hence the brownies.

The recipe is in Nigella Lawson's How to Be a Domestic Goddess.  It is one of my favorite cookbooks ever.  However, I remember I made these brownies two or three years ago and didn't really like them.  I don't know what I did wrong that time, because this time they were excellent!  They were fudgy but not overly so, and they were quite chocolaty.  They are a really good, easy to make, staple brownie.  Every single brownie I brought to class was gone by the end of the hour!

Flourless Chocolate Cookies

  

I made these to bring into my final thesis seminar meeting.  Of course we already handed in our theses, so this was just a celebration.  Since it is still Passover, I had to do something flourless and I didn't want to make macaroons again.  So I made these amazing flourless chocolate cookies from Francois Payard's Chocolate Epiphany.  They are so good I make them year round, plus they have the added bonus of being flourless for Passover (or for those who can't eat gluten).  I'm not the only one who thinks they are that good.  One of my classmates told me that they were "really good, and not just for Passover food."

Basically, these cookies are powdered sugar, cocoa powder, egg whites, and ground/chopped walnuts.  The trick is to not over mix them.  If you do the egg whites stiffen a bit too much and the cookies end up puffier and a little less brownie-like in the center.  That said, I tend to over mix them a bit, and I still love them, so don't worry too much.  Just know that they won't look as even and flat as his do in the book.  FYI, I make mine smaller than he calls for, just because I like being able to have two cookies but not be piggy.  If you do that, just make sure to check them often, as they'll bake quicker.

Chocolate Coconut Pie

Wow this was amazing!  I really wanted to try a recipe from my new Martha Stewart Pies and Tarts cookbook that I got for my birthday.  However, with my thesis due this past Monday I didn't have time before Passover to bake a pie.  I was a bit irked, because I really didn't want to wait any longer.  Happily I found this pie (Crisp Coconut and Chocolate Pie...or perhaps Coconut Crisp and Chocolate Pie), which is Passover friendly.

This is not only an incredible Passover dessert, but also a wonderful anytime dessert.  It is basically a thick pie crust made of coconut filled with chocolate ganache.  The crust is baked before you pour in the ganache and then it is just chilled.  This process, in my opinion makes it a good summer pie, because the oven isn't on for long intervals and it's served chilled.  Plus there's something summery about coconut, I think.

Anyway, my one pointer for this is do not make it too last minute.  The cookbook says to let it chill for anywhere from an hour to a day.  The one hour guideline is too short.  It's what I followed (because I'm rather impatient!) and the filling was not fully set.  That said, it was still amazing!  It had an almost pudding like texture.  Although, if I'm honest, I did like it slightly more the next day when it was fully set and chilled through to the center.  I'd suggest making it in the morning or very early afternoon if you can, then let it chill until dessert time.  That seems like it would work well.

Vanilla and Chocolate Coconut Macaroons

These are the same coconut macaroons I make a lot.  I love them anytime, so during Passover, when I can't eat the majority of baked goods, they are wonderful!  This time I made them a little differently.  I made a double batch by doubling the quantities of coconut and egg white and increasing the amount of sugar (but not quite doubling it since I use sweetened coconut).  I divided the coconut mixture in half and flavored each half separately.  In the first half, I used vanilla bean paste instead of vanilla extract in the vanilla ones to give them an extra kick.  In the second half, I added cocoa powder and a tad extra super fine sugar until it looked chocolately and delicious (not that you can taste it, since it is so eggy, but you can tell when it's chocolately enough because it looks it.)

Both flavors came out wonderfully and were big hits.  Pops liked the vanilla a bit more, mom liked the chocolate so that worked well!

P.S. I could have sworn I took a photo of these, but I can't find it...sorry!

White Chocolate, Cranberry, Oatmeal Cookies

These cookies, from Nigella Christmas, are really good.  I made them two years ago to give as gifts on Christmas cookie plates and they are a prefect Christmas cookie.  After all, white chocolate and cranberry seems very holiday-y.  However, when my professor said she loves cranberry and white chocolate cookies, I figured I had to make these for my class.  They were quite a hit.

I barely did anything differently from the last time I made them, so I won't ramble on about them too long since you can read about them here.  All I did was leave out the nuts.  The recipe calls for pecans but I have a friend who is in that class with me who is allergic to nuts.  So I just left them out.  They were really good that way!

P.S. Sorry, I forgot to photograph these.  Just look at that old post to see them, they looked the same (even without the nuts.)

Mini Cupcakes with Vanilla Buttercream

Hmm, the color of this photo came out kind-of funny.  Ah well, they still look nice.

Yesterday was my birthday, so I wanted cake.  But let's face it, I really didn't need a whole cake in the house, so I made cupcakes (that way I can give some away easily).  The recipe for the lovely fluffy white cupcakes is from Nigella Bites.  It was surprisingly easy (not that cupcakes are hard, but these were especially simple).  And gosh they were good!  They tasted sweet, but not overly so, and the texture was perfectly cakey and fluffy.

The recipe called for either royal icing (not my favorite) or ganache (I didn't have heavy cream) so I made my favorite vanilla buttercream instead.  I actually didn't use vanilla extract to flavor it, instead I used vanilla powder.  I'm not quite sure how they make it, but it's by the same company who make my vanilla extract.  It's real vanilla, but not with the alcohol and, well, powdered not liquid.  I like it because it doesn't change the color or texture of the buttercream but it still gives it a strong vanilla flavor.  I colored it pink with my new food coloring paste (a ton of fun, I can't wait to use it again) and piped it onto each cupcake with a wide plain pastry tip.  I topped them with an upside down white chocolate chip, because I thought it would be pretty and match the pink and white polka dot muffin papers that I used.  Wow they looked good...and they tasted good too!

The color came out odd on these too, but differently.  Shame, but I suppose you can still get the picture (no pun intended!)

Orange Bundt Cake with Chocolate Glaze, con't

Oops, I completely forgot to post the photo of the Orange Bundt Cake with Chocolate Glaze.  Here it is, and an extra for good measure!

Orange Bundt Cake with Chocolate Glaze

I made this quite a while ago and posted it on my old blog, and I feel bad about posting it.  Not that it wasn't excellent, and I certainly want to share it at some point.  The thing is, I've been baking quite a bit because I'm relatively stressed with end of senior year stuff (i.e. finishing my thesis), but I don't really have time to upload new photos and write about what I've made (writing anything that isn't schoolwork is getting difficult!)  Ah well, this is really all I have the time and energy for right now!

I just bought a bundt pan earlier today (when I wrote this ages ago), so I had to use it. Coincidentally, I had recently bought a really excellent new cookbook, Dessert University, which had a bundt cake recipe I wanted to try out. So I made Orange Sabayon Cake, which is really just a orange bundt cake made with with batter prepared, in part, the way a sabayon sauce is prepared. It is a really excellent cake that’s kind of like a light pound cake. The cook book recommends different ways of serving it, but most of them involve heavy cream (which I was out of), so I made a simple glaze with equal parts cocoa and powdered sugar. I just added enough water to make it spreadable and painted it on the bundt with a pastry brush. Simple, and perfect for the cake (perhaps not quite as perfect as ganache and chocolate mousse...though it won’t harden your arteries just by looking at it!)