Christmas Cookies

Last week I baked a ton of Christmas cookies to give as gifts (and to eat).  I will write more about each type of cookie and post photos of each later, but I have to go bake for my New Year's party, so I don't have time right now.

I baked 5 different types of cookies:

Cakey chocolate chip cookies--Yummy chocolate chip cookies that are cakey rather than gooey.  I've made these once before, but this time I made them miniature.

Chocolate brownies--I know these aren't technically cookies, but I cut them into small pieces, so that counts, right?

Cream cheese mints--This is my own recipe, I don't think I've posted it yet, I'll add it later.

Orange butter cookies--These are made with the same basic dough that I used for the almond cookies that I made for my cousin's bridal shower, except I used orange extract instead of almond extract, dyed them green instead of purple and shaped them like Christmas trees instead of flowers.

White chocolate, cranberry, pecan, oatmeal cookies--These were really excellent, the cranberries added a little tartness to the otherwise sweet cookies.

Stay tuned for photos and more details!

Biscuits

I made these biscuits for Thanksgiving dinner, but I've been so busy writing papers since then that I am only just posting them...sorry!

Anyway, they were really good buttermilk biscuits.  They were particularly yummy with cranberry jelly, turkey and mashed potatoes layered on it.  I love Thanksgiving food!

Interestingly they aren't baked in the oven but are actually cooked on the stove in a skillet.  Ideally it should be a cast iron pan of some sort, but I had to make do with a normal pan.

Pumpkin Ice Cream with Chocolate Sauce

I made this in lieu of pumpkin pie this Thanksgiving.  It tasted almost exactly like pumpkin pie filling but creamier.  Actually it really was like pumpkin pie filling but creamier...after all it was ice cream.  The chocolate sauce added a really nice touch.  The chocolate sauce accented the seasoned pumpkin ice cream...but then again I'm someone like me who thinks everything should have chocolate on it!

By the way, I'm so sorry it has taken me so long to post this, I know Thanksgiving was almost three weeks ago.  I have been writing papers and studying for exams.  I still have two exams left, but I will bake something this week and post it, I promise!

Stovetop Baked Apples~With Recipe!

I used brown bread here, it's not quite as good as white bread
for this, but you can fool yourself into thinking it's healthy
since you are eating fruit and whole grains!

This amazing dessert can be eaten as breakfast as well. I cook thinly sliced Granny Smith apples in a frying pan over medium heat with some butter until they are soft and the skin is slightly discolored. Then I scoop them out, leaving as much butter in the pan as possible and fry up some white bread squares in the left over butter (and some extra if you want to add it). I pour some heavy cream over the apples, top them with the croutons and finally sprinkle a little sugar over the whole thing. If you want this for breakfast (something I highly recommend), just leave off the sugar and heavy cream and use whole grain bread instead of white bread. It also makes a great midnight snack, just leave off the cream and sprinkle about 1/2 tsp of cinnamon on the apples in the pan just as they start to get soft.

Ingredients for dessert version:
1 Granny Smith Apple, or other crisp apple, cored and thinly sliced
1 tablespoon unsalted butter for pan (plus extra if needed to add before the bread)
1 slice white bread, cut into small pieces
1/2 teaspoon sugar (or to taste)
2 tablespoons cold heavy cream (or to taste)

Serves 1 greedy person or 2 normal people for dessert and midnight snack, 1 for breakfast.

These quantities can be doubled easily (don’t double the butter), however if you do more than double you may need to make it in batches unless you have an exceptionally large sauté pan.

Earl Grey Cookies

This is the frozen dough, just like store bought slice-and-bake cookies, only much better!

These cookies, from Martha Stewart's Cookies, are a homemade slice-and-bake cookie.  Once the dough is made you roll it into a log and freeze it.   Then you can slice it and bake as many or as few cookies as you want.  (I actually made this dough about a month ago - I made some as a gift for a friend, and froze the rest - and just sliced and baked some more last night.) A whole batch makes about 80 cookies so it is great to keep in the freezer and just slice and bake a few whenever you want them.  The cookies get their name from the addition of earl grey tea leaves to the dough.  They also have orange zest in them, which brings out the bergamot flavor of the tea and makes the cookies taste a bit citrus-y.

Apple Spice Coffee Cake

This is from the Williams Sonoma cookbook Muffins.  It is a really great cookbook, and I highly recommend it.  This also happens to be a great cake, that I also highly recommend.  Unfortunately I cooked it 10 minutes longer than the recipe said to and it was still gooey in the center.  That didn't stop me from eating about half of it, but still, it would have been a bit better fully cooked through. The problem was all the apple (not that it was a problem for the taste, just for the cooking).  There are 4 apples chopped up in the batter which is absolutely delicious, but it is makes it hard to use a toothpick to see if the cake is cooked, because it comes out with apple on it but not batter or crumbs.  

The cookbook suggests making a glaze with heated condensed milk, but I didn't want to open whole can to use a few tablespoons, so I made my own vanilla glaze.  I used powdered sugar, mixed with a few drops of vanilla extract.  I added water a little bit at a time until it was smooth and spreadable (but not too runny).  I spread it on when the cake was still warm, so it got nice and smooth and shine-y.

Caramel Apples

In addition to the two types of cake I baked for Halloween, I made caramel apples.  I don't just mean I melted some pre-made caramel from a package and dipped apples in it, I mean I actually made the caramel.  I've made caramel before, but I've never made this kind before.  It wasn't hard, it was just tedious.  It is important to get the temperature right at each stage, and it takes quite a while to get to the temperatures.  But it was all worth it, because it came out really good.  One last thing, I decided that it is too hard to eat a big caramel apple and that the caramel to apple ratio isn't idea.  So I used lady apples to great effect!

Halloween Desserts

Devil's Food Pumpkins:  These are what I mentioned last night.  I was going to ice them, but unfortunately I ran out of time.  They still tasted amazing and looked good, and no one seemed to mind that they were plain.

Pumpkin Bundt Cake:  This tastes like the filling of a pumpkin pie...probably because it is made with pumpkin puree, cinnamon, nutmeg, and cloves.  Also, there is some flour, a couple of eggs and a bit of sunflower oil, but that really isn't what gives it its flavor.  It was also much better than pumpkin pie because it was not pie, it's cake.  (I like pie, but it isn't my favorite.)  When I say it's cake, that doesn't do it justice - it is moist and soft and absolutely delicious.  By the way, this recipe is from a cookbook of mine, Dessert University by Roland Mesnier with Lauren Chattman, that I bought this summer and have barely used, so I'm very excited that I got to make this.  One last thing, I forgot to take a photo of this before I cut it up...the slices look good but it did look a little nicer as a whole cake.

Devil's Food Cupcakes

Tomorrow is Halloween.  It is one of my favorite holidays, so I'm having a party.  And what's a party without desserts?  I figured I'd get started on the baking tonight, so I made some devil food cupcakes in the shape of pumpkins.  (I had some left over batter so I made some regular cupcakes as well.)  By the way this isn't the same devil's food cake as I used for my mom's birthday cake, but it tastes similar (and just as good) and is much easier to make.

To flatten out the bottoms of the pumpkins (so they sit flat and look like pumpkins) I cut off what would be the tops of normal cupcakes.  My mom and I ate the cut off bits, just to make sure the cake was OK to serve...it was.  I'm going to frost the remaining pumpkins so they look like pumpkins and I'm not sure what I will do with the plain cupcakes...maybe I'll just frost them normally with the left over orange and green frosting from decorating the pumpkins.

I'll post photos of the finished pumpkins as well as the other desserts tomorrow or Sunday, so stay tuned.

Orange Chocolate Cake

This is the orange version of the cake I made Monday.  I made it last night and I like it a little more, I think.  The orange is slightly subtler than the raspberry and I added some extra chocolate to the batter so it was a little more chocolate-y which I like.  What is interesting about this cake (in its orange and raspberry forms) is it is actually better the next day.  I don't know exactly why.  I think it is in part that it is slightly better cool and also that the flavors blend as it sits.  In any case, yum!

Raspberry Chocolate Cake

I was really tired and stressed when I got home today and I just couldn’t face doing the pile of work I should have been doing. So I decided the best way to relieve stress would be to bake. Yes, I know it isn’t the healthiest way (since I eat what I bake), but it makes me feel better and it is productive, so why not!

Anyway, this is a recipe I found in Nigella Lawson’s How to be a Domestic Goddess. She described it as a great and easy cake to make after work. I figured that fit the bill. Her recipe was actually for Orange Chocolate Cake, flavored with orange marmalade, but I only have the very end of a jar of marmalade, so I substituted good quality raspberry jam. It was a good choice! The cake is incredibly moist (possibly because I was tired and wanted to eat it already so I took it out 5 or 10 minutes before I should have) and really interesting. As my pops said, “you expect chocolate and you get raspberry”. You do taste some chocolate, but the overwhelming flavor is the raspberry jam. Don’t let that scare you off, it isn’t overly sweet and even pops who isn’t a jam fan LOVED it. It really is excellent and simple to make (you don’t even need a mixer). I can’t wait to try it with marmalade and let you know how it is.

Almond Cookies

Another dessert I made for my cousin’s bridal shower. Since they had to be purple, I added some food coloring and and purple sprinkles to a classic almond spritz cookie. The really fun thing about spritz cookies is the base is so versatile. You can add vanilla or orange extract instead of almond, or even substitute coco powder for some of the flour to make different flavors. Plus, the dough works very well in cookie presses, so you can make different shaped cookies, like the daisies and hearts I made for the shower.

P.S. These looked purpler in person.

Birthday Cake

I made this cake for my mom’s birthday this past August.  It took me a grand total of 6 hours to bake. It is comprised of three 9-inch devil’s food cakes, which as it turns out are not easy cakes to bake. As they say, “the devil is in the details,” and clearly that is where the devil in devil’s food cake comes in, because it is the most detailed cake recipe I have ever followed. After close to an hour preparing the batter (melting chocolate, frothing egg yokes and whipping egg whites to soft peaks by hand are just some of the highlights), the cake bakes for close to an hour and then have to cool for a full hour before it will come out of the pans (which have to be properly prepared beforehand, of course). By the time I turned out the cakes onto the cooling racks, it was close to 2 in the morning. After a short sleep, I got up at 7:30 so that I could have the cake finished before my mom woke up. Unfortunately I didn’t anticipate another 3 hours of work, so my mom was up well before I finished, but I digress. To dress the cake (so to speak) I first sliced each of the 3 cakes in half. I then imbibed the bottom halves of each of the cakes with black raspberry liquor. I didn’t drown the cake in the liquor, but I was certainly liberal with it, because it is a very strongly flavored cake it overpowers the liquor unless you use quite a bit. Then I went about making a dark chocolate ganache filling for the cakes (I will post the ganache recipe next time I make truffles.) I filled each cake with the ganache and put all the halves back together. Then came the fun part, buttercream. I made a triple batch of the vanilla buttercream. I didn’t dye it because I thought the white contrasted so well with the deep brown chocolate cake, plus I had planned on decorating the top. I iced what became the bottom layer, then put the middle layer on top of it, and iced that. Finally I placed the top layer on and covered it with icing and filled in any spots on the sides that I missed earlier. I had every intention of decorating the cake with purple and pink flowers (I just got a new pastry bag I’ve been itching to try out) but it was so late by then and the cake looked so amazing (not to mention it would have meant making another batch of icing) that I let it be.

And let me just say that it was worth those six hours! It is honestly the best cake I have ever eaten, if I do say so myself! Yes, I know it is rather presumptuous to declare a cake I have baked to be the best cake I have ever eaten, but it is the truth. The cake itself was moist, rich and sinfully chocolaty. The imbibing added a subtle taste of black raspberry and vanilla. The ganache made it all the more sinfully chocolaty. And the icing was fluffy and thick and sweet and, most importantly, buttery. It is impossible to have just one slice. Perhaps that is another reason why it is called devil’s food cake, because it is evilly addictive and quite fattening (but who cares about fattening, it is a birthday cake and calories don’t count on your birthday, right?)

Orange Blossom Cake~With Recipe!

I had a whole 9-inch white cake left over from making the practice cake. It was such a good soft, sweet, vanilla cake that I couldn’t let it go to waste. So I iced it. But I figured I might as well have a little fun with the icing, since I was practicing new recipes and techniques. I made a buttercream but instead of flavoring it with vanilla, I used a little orange extract. The icing is sweet with a subtle orange undertone. Making the icing is a piece of cake! Just cream the butter and powdered sugar in an electric mixer on medium speed (or by hand with a wooden spoon). Once the butter and sugar is combined and fluffy looking, mix in the milk, flavoring and food coloring. Make sure everything is well combined. Put most of the icing on top of the cake. Using an offset icing spatula (or a butter knife) start to smooth out toward the edges of the cake. When you get icing to the edges, let some start to fall over to the sides and start smoothing it out. Turn the plate to get all around the cake and bringing more icing down onto the sides as you do. Add the rest of the icing to the top or sides as needed.

Buttercream Icing:
1 1/3 sticks (5/6 cup) butter
2 1/2 cups powdered sugar
1 tbsp of milk mixed with
1/8 tsp good quality orange extract (or to taste)
To make a more classic vanilla buttercream add 1/4-1/2 tsp good quality vanilla extract instead of the orange extract.
food coloring (if desired)

Enough to liberally ice 1 one layer 9-in cake, to ice an average two layer cake, just double the quantities

Practice Cake

My mom's birthday was over the summer. I planned on making her a big cake with icings I’d never made before. So I made a practice cake. It is homemade white cake (not the same cake as her official b-day cake) with vanilla buttercream icing. I imbibed the bottom layer of the cake with black raspberry liquor. Between the imbibed layer and the plain layer is a semi-sweet chocolate ganache. I had left over ganache so I used it to make the dots on the top of the cake.

Orange Pound Cake

I made this for my cousin’s bridal shower.  The theme was purple, so everything (even the food) had to be purple.  Someone else was making a purple cake, so I was in charge of making something else.  I really didn't want to make things purple that weren't normally...large amounts of food coloring isn't appealing. So, I cubed my favorite homemade orange pound cake, the recipe is from one of Ina Garten’s books, and made a mixed berry dipping sauce for it. Even though the sauce was purple-ish I felt it needed more, so I made purple royal icing flowers (they look kind-of pink in the photo, but they were quite purple in person, I promise) to top the cakes. The flowers weren’t the tastiest things, but they looked really pretty, if I do say so my self!

Moroccan Onion Dessert

I made this interesting dessert a while ago. I made it one day when I was trying to make an entire meal, including dessert, with onion. It is loosely based on a Moroccan chicken dish made with coco and filo dough. I cooked the onion with unsweetened coco power and layered it with squares of puff pastry.  It was surprisingly good!

Thanksgiving Trifle

While I get my blog up and running, I am going to post some old desserts I’ve made.  I made this last Thanksgiving.  It is a delicious variation on a traditional trifle.  It is marble pound cake (I admit, it is store bought pound cake...you can make your own, but there isn’t much point for a trifle) layered with seedless raspberry jam, fresh raspberries and blackberries, chocolate mousse, and fresh vanilla whipped cream. Each layer is repeated, to ensure that everyone gets a scoop with all the layers.

By the way, I really have no reason to call this a Thanksgiving Trifle other than that I made it at Thanksgiving.  Really it isn't Thanksgiving-y at all.  In fact, it would make a great summer dessert...you could substitute angel food cake for the pound cake to make it really light and summery.

Welcome to my blog!

Hi!

As I say above, I have started this blog to share my baking with, well, the world. I love baking. I have loved it as long as I can remember. One of my favorite things about baking (aside from the actual baking and eating) is sharing what I bake. I love the look on my friend's faces when the see I've baked for them. Since I can only share with so many people, and since it is hard to transport homemade ice cream or chocolate mousse or a gigantic iced cake, I have decided to start this blog. I hope you enjoy looking at the food, even if you can't eat it. But more than that, I hope it inspires you to get off your computer and bake something. To that end I will sometimes post my own recipes along with a description of what I baked or point you to a cookbook with the recipe in it.

I hope you enjoy my blog and my baking!