Wedding Reception Tea

Remember that wedding cake tasting we did? This afternoon tea was for that couple. Instead of the one cake, we catered an afternoon tea wedding reception for 30 people. For this afternoon tea, we served tea sandwiches and assorted desserts.

New Year's Eve "Party"

I was invited to New Year's parties, but I don't do New Year's parties. Ever. My family has a rule that you must wear stretch waist pants on New Year's Eve. We eat snacks and party food and go to bed at 12:01 (which is earlier than we normally go to bed, but that's not the point...) The point is, this year my mom, my friend Adriana, and myself stayed in and ate our way into the new year.

Oatmeal, White Chocolate, Cranberry Bars

These are adapted from a blondie recipe in Nigella Kitchen. I disagree with terming these (even before my adaptations) blondies. They really don't resemble a blondie in ingredients or final product. But that's okay because they are excellent anyway! I think, if you did them with raisins they'd be the perfect oatmeal cookie bar. But who wants raisins when you can have dried cranberries and white chocolate? They were delicious and the texture was excellent---chewy, think oatmeal raisin cookie chewy, but still a bit caky. Yum.

By the way, I chose cranberries and white chocolate because they seem like good holiday flavors and I was bringing these bars into class just before winter break. They weren't as big of a hit as the peppermint brownies (but what could be?), but they were certainly very well received!

Peppermint Brownies

Remember the Baked brownies? These are them, but with about two tablespoons of peppermint extract added to the batter. They were just like the usual Baked brownies--fudgy, rich, dense, chocolaty, and delicious--but with a rich yet subtle minty undertone.

Belated Birthday Desserts

In addition to the two cakes, I made quite a few desserts for my party:

Toasted coconut brownies

Mini Brooklyn blackout cupcakes with cream cheese frosting

Chocolate, chocolate chip cookies

The brownies were delicious with desiccated coconut giving them a lovely texture. The Brooklyn blackout cupcakes were delicious as usual and the zing of the cream cheese frosting was complemented the deep, dark chocolate cake nicely.

The cookies were surprisingly good. I suppose I shouldn't have been surprised, the recipe was from Nigella Lawson and she really is a domestic goddess, but I love the chocolate chocolate chip cookies from Death by Chocolate. These might actually be better than the latter. The taste was a little sweeter (which I'm not sure is better or worse...it's just different). But the texture was perfect: a little crisp around the edges but still soft and nearly gooey on the inside (without being under baked).

Milk chocolate caramels with Maldon sea salt

Chocolate, peanut butter and oatmeal candies

The caramels and the candies (which are technically no bake cookies, but I think they are more like candies) were both gluten free (as is typical for candies) and were delicious. In fact, the caramels were perfect, which made me really happy because the last time I tried making them they came out yummy but the texture was all wrong and they didn't hold their shape. The cookies/candies, which came out a little crumbly and difficult to shape, ended up richly peanutty and quite sweet with a hint of chocolate and a nice texture from the oats.

Because there were two excellent chocolate cakes, the cupcakes, cookies and brownies didn't get much attention but we sent them home with people as favors and heard good things about them after. Interestingly the candies were popular even with the cakes as everyone's focus. I suppose the small size and the complete lack of similarity to cake made everyone reach for them. Both were well received but the caramels were definitely the star (well the German chocolate cake was the star, but the caramels were the non-cake star). All in all, everything was yummy and there were plenty of leftovers to enjoy after we weren't so stuffed from the amazing food!

White and Dark Chocolate Brownies

I'm sure you recall that I love the Fat Witch Bakery regular brownie (and for that matter most of their other brownies). Well my pops was demanding chocolate brownies so I made a batch of regular Fat Witch Brownies. I wanted to make something new so I decided to make a second batch of brownies and ended up making white chocolate "Snow Witches."

The chocolate brownies were good as usual. Actually I used better quality chocolate (I've started buying Belgian chocolate in bulk so it costs about the same as Ghirardelli from the store) so they were as good as usual but a bit better due to the richer chocolate flavor. The white chocolate brownies were delicious! They look like blondies but were not really like a blondie at all, which was a pleasant surprise. They were sweet with a surprisingly strong white chocolate taste and pungent vanilla flavor. And the texture was superb. They were chewy and soft and not caky but not fudgy--just perfect

Don't they look nice together?

Chocolate, Orange, Espresso Brownies

These are based on a recipe by Marian Burros from the New York Times Dessert Cookbook. I've always liked Starbucks mocha Valencia (which they long ago discontinued, now it's just a mocha with a shot of orange syrup) so I figured these would be good. They weren't good. They were GREAT! The orange stood up for itself but didn't overwhelm the coffee flavor that stays in the background a bit. The chocolate, of course, was the predominant flavor and, because I was using really good chocolate, it was a particularly deep chocolaty flavor. They were very fudgy, I may actually bake them a little more next time--and I already baked them about 10 minutes longer than the recipe says--but as long as I stored them in the fridge they were fudgy and delicious (at room temp they started to get a little too gooey).

It was a little late for Valentine's Day, but we were having friends over and I decided what the heck, it's only a few days late! So I got out my new heart shaped cookie cutter (which I had yet to use) and cut out a dozen heart shaped brownies. I saved the scraps in the freezer for snacking on and putting on top of ice cream. A fun shape for the brownies and a good use of the scraps (who doesn't like frozen brownie on vanilla ice cream?)

Baked Brownies with No-Churn Coffee Ice Cream

Some of my favorite brownies are the Baked brownies (I think the recipe is in their first cookbook, Baked, but they have variations thereof in all of their books.) We had some bad news today (nothing terrible, but not great) and we decided we needed brownies--and people say I stress eat...humph. The Baked brownies are a relatively simple recipe, no mixer needed (meaning I can put all the equipment in the dishwasher rather than hand washing), and the recipe makes a 9x13in pan rather than a 9x9in pan (as with the recipes from my other favorite brownie brand, Fat Witch brownies). Regardless of my stress and need for an easy recipe, I love this recipe. They are chocolaty, gooey, and delicious!

I happened to have some no-churn coffee ice cream in the freezer. The recipe is from Nigella Lawson's newest cookbook, Nigellisma. It's simple and produces a surprisingly creamy, surprisingly ice cream-y result considering that you don't need an ice cream machine to make it. (And considering that I'm currently without an ice cream maker, that's great!) I'll discuss this recipe at greater length soon. The coffee ice cream was delicious on the warm, deeply chocolaty brownies. It was the perfect dessert after a stressful day. Of course it would be the perfect dessert after pretty much any day--you can't go wrong with brownies and ice cream!

Brownies--a serving suggestion

So you made brownies but you want them to look special. Brownie squares are delicious and a classic, but they are a little boring. Why not make brownie circles? All you need is a biscuit cutter. Just try to space them a close together as possible so you get a bunch of them. The exact same brownie but a slightly classier look that makes them appropriate to serve at, for example, dinner parties. They also make a nice gift stacked and wrapped in cellophane.

Obviously you'll have brownie scraps left over. If you don't end up eating them right out of the pan, I recommend putting them in a ziploc and shove them in your freezer. That way when you really want something chocolate but all you have for dessert is a pint of vanilla frozen yogurt, you now have a pint of vanilla frozen yogurt with brownie crumble topping! Yum!

Fudgy Brownies

These incredibly fudgy brownies are from the Desserts Le Champignon Sauvage's dessert cookbook. They are meant to be the base for a whole chocolate brownie bar, so they are quite thin and don't really hold together well. That's okay though, they are delicious. The texture is deliciously fudgy and the flavor is pungently chocolaty with just a hint of sea salt. I had a little left over mocha buttercream in the fridge so I put a little bit on it, topped with some raspberries and voila, a delicious plated dessert.

Cardamom Blondies

These cardamom blondies--from the Fat Witch Bakery cookbook--were incredible! They are moist and tender on the inside and cake-y on the edges with a slightly flakey crust on the top. The were sweet and tasted strongly of brown sugar and cardamom--sort of like a delicious cup of chai tea with milk and honey. I made them because thought they sounded like they would be nice, but they were really quite delicious.

As for serving them, they are great out of the pan, hold the plate. But they were also nice with a cup of coffee or (unsurprisingly) chai tea. My favorite way was with vanilla frozen yogurt and lightly toasted cashew nuts. I really like cashews and the slight Indian influence of the cardamom paired nicely with them. Yum!

Cookie Plates

I made a few cookie plates as gifts this year. They were really quite nice, if I do say so myself. They had brownies (the same cocoa brownies I made for the cookie plates last year), my own recipe chocolate chip cookies, cream cheese mints (see recipe here), gingerbread cookies with Meyer lemon glaze, and rum raisin cookies (the same ones we made in class). I wasn't a fan of the gingerbread cookies, they were too ginger-y not cinnamon-y enough, but I loved the glaze with them. I got the idea for that flavor combo from Nigella Lawson's, who does proper gingerbread (cake, not cookies) with a lemon glaze. I cut these into isosceles triangles and drizzled them with the glaze to look like garland on a tree.

Wouldn't you love to get a gift like this?

Fig Newtons

Oh wow these were good!!! They taste just like fig newtons, but better! The filling is a perfect figgy compote. The dough is tender and sweet and, well, perfect. I love them!

They aren't the easiest things to make, but they are well worth the effort. The dough is simple enough and the compote isn't too hard (though not easy either). The hard part is when you compile them. You can't add too much compote or the dough won't wrap around it all the way, but if you add too little they don't end up full enough. Plus the dough cracks a bit when you wrap it around the fig compote, which makes things harder. You also have to cut them at the right time after they come out of the oven--if they are too hot they'll break, if they're too cool they'll be too hard.

Have I mentioned that they are great and that I love them? Yes, I have. Ah well, they were just that good!

Cakey Chocolate Brownies

Another excellent chocolate brownie from Fat Witch Brownies. Not my favorite of all time, but really, really good. They were actually quite cakey, which is very pleasant, but let's face it, I prefer fudgy brownies.  Still, they were a very nice texture, and quite light and moist--like cake, not like dry brownie (which is what I find many so-called cakey brownies are). The taste was pretty darn good as well!  They were very, very chocolaty but not overly sweet.  Overall, it's a really nice brownie!

Blondies with Chocolate Chunks

I'm not a huge blondie fan. I feel like why have blondies when you could have chocolate brownies. But I do like them, and I thought it would be fun to change things up. So I tried these blondies with chocolate chunks (I figured at least I'm getting some chocolate). They are from the Fat Witch Brownies cookbook and they are as good as all their brownies! They were sweet and chewy and moist, with just the right amount of chocolate. I just have one more word to say: yum!

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!

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.

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!!!