Cranberry Thumbprint Cookies

   

I had to make them a little smaller to make them fit in the muffin papers.  As you can see, this resulted in a boatload of cookies.

I haven't posted in ages, sorry!  I mention that because this post is technically about cookies I made for Valentines Day.  The cookie itself is a buttery vanilla cookie.  I rolled the dough into a ball and put it into a mini muffin paper.  Rather than using my thumb to make the indentation (because they were too small) I used the end of a wooden spoon.  Then I put about 1/8 of a teaspoon of cranberry jelly (real jelly, like for toast, not the cranberry jelly from a can that you eat with turkey at Thanksgiving) into the indentation.  The recipe I used called for berry jelly (strawberry, I think) but I thought the cranberry would be nice and winter-y, plus I really like cranberry.

Usually thumbprint cookies are made like regular cookies, flat on a baking sheet, but I decided to make them in mini muffin cups.  I did this because I was bringing them into my political science class and it seemed more sanitary this way.  I think they look cute this way!

Baked Apples~With Recipe!

   

A few nights ago my mom asked me to make dessert (well, whined at me to make dessert), but she wanted it to be healthy-ish.  I was tired, so I didn't want to make anything that would be too much work.  What was I to do?  Then it hit me, baked apples!  They are quite easy to make and you can really get creative with the flavors if you want.  I used walnuts and dried currants, but you can substitute other nuts, or dried fruit or leave them out all together.

Ingredients:
Granny Smith Apples-I usually allow 2 per person, but 1 is fine if you are making dessert for a lot of people or just don't want to eat a lot
Brown sugar-2 tsp per apple, or to taste
Cinnamon-1/4 tsp per apple, or to taste
Chopped Walnuts (or any other nut you want)-1/2 tsp per apple, or to taste
Dried Currants (or other dried fruit)-1/2 tsp per apple, or to taste

1. Pre-heat the oven to 400*F and grease a pyrex dish or other oven proof pan.
2. Wash, dry and core the apples.
3. Score the apples' skin all the way around the center.  This will keep the apple from exploding.  Put them in the pan.
4. Mix the sugar, cinnamon, chopped nuts and dried fruit together in a small bowl.
5. Divide the mixture evenly between the apples, packing it into the cored hole in each.
6. Cook for 35-45 minutes, depending on the size of the apple.  Until the inside of the apple is soft and the skin is somewhat browned but still shiny.
7. Serve immediately, plain or with vanilla ice cream.  Or if you are being fancy, with a vanilla creme anglais.

Dense Chocolate Loaf Cake

This is an amazing cake! It is from Nigella Lawson’s “How to be a Domestic Goddess”. As she describes it, it is rather like a chocolate version of gingerbread, dense and moist and aromatic and amazingly flavorful. I think that pretty much sums it up. That all said, I don’t make this very often because it is a bit of a pain to make. You have to add the dry ingredients a tablespoon at a time alternating with boiling water. It really isn’t hard to do, but it’s tedious.  I got over that tonight though, because I know that once I take one bite of this delicious cake it will all be all worth it. This is great served with vanilla ice cream, fresh berries and white chocolate sauce or just plain (which is what I usually do).

P.S. I'm sorry I haven't written for a while, I started the second semester of my junior year of college last week and it hit me like a ton of bricks.  But I've managed to crawl out from under them and I'll be posting plenty more soon.

New Year's Eve Trifle

This is similar to my Thanksgiving trifle, but better.  Instead of store bought pound cake, I used my home made pound cake.  (And lucky me I had a whole extra pound cake left over!)  I know I said that store bought pound cake was fine for trifles, and it is, but wow homemade pound cake is really good!  I layered the cake with raspberry jam, sliced strawberries and homemade chocolate mousse (the type made with whipped cream and melted chocolate, rather than the egg based type).  The trifle dish fit three layers of cake/jam/berries/mousse.  I just piped some whipped cream dollops on top and topped the dollops with strawberries.

Leftovers, they aren't just for casseroles!

I had left over pound cake from New Year's that was getting a little stale, so I didn't want to eat it plain.  I also had left over ganache from the anniversary cake which I needed to use for something and I didn't want to make truffles.  So I melted the ganache in a glass bowl over a pot of boiling water and added some warmed up skim milk until it was a very thin sauce.  But I decided it needed more, so I mixed in some cinnamon, cloves and nutmeg...sort of a spiced hot chocolate taste to it.  Then I cubed up the left over pound cake, put it on top of some vanilla frozen yogurt and poured a ton of the chocolate sauce over it. YUM!

P.S. I'll post a photo at some point, I promise.

Anniversary Cake, con't

 

This is the Anniversary Cake I posted photos of before.  It is a chocolate genoise cake, a traditional French sponge cake, imbibed with Frangelico, a hazelnut liquor, covered in a chocolate ganache, and topped with marzipan roses.

A genoise is nothing, I repeat NOTHING, like an American sponge cake.  It is actually quite dry and, when made properly, light.  I mention made properly, because I had some trouble in that area.  Genoise is not an easy cake to make (or at least not the easiest) and this was my first attempt.  Everything went well at the beginning.  I was able to use the bowl of my new Kitchen Aid (thank you mom!) over a pot of boiling water to heat the eggs then transfer them to the mixer.  They fluffed up just as they were supposed to.  My problem came as I folded in the dry ingredients.  I forgot to turn the bowl periodically, so when I went to pour out my nice light batter, I found a large pocket of unblended dry ingredients.  To mix them in after starting to pour the batter, I had to deflate it significantly.  This meant that my cake was a little too dense, didn't rise as much in the middle as it should have, and had large 'tunnels' in addition to the small delicate air bubbles that it was supposed to have.  It still tasted excellent and I didn't really want to make another cake, so I used it.

As I said above, I imbibed it with Frangelico.  I used it because I thought the hazelnutty vanilla taste would be a nice compliment to the chocolate cake, not to mention the marzipan roses.  I was right, if I do say so myself.  And like my cookbook said, the dry genoise sucked it right up.

I coated the cake with a layer of ganache (basically heavy cream and melted chocolate).  The trick to getting a nice even, thick layer is to freeze the cake for 30 min before you pour the ganache on it, that way the ganache hardens quickly, thus it doesn't pour off the sides too much.  To get a even and bubble free layer, it is important to mix the ganache as little as possible before you pour it on the cake.  The more you mix, the more air bubbles get trapped, which will pop on your cake when you spread on the ganache.

Finally I made the marzipan roses.  These were easier than I expected, though they were still hard.  The trick is to work with it between 2 layers of plastic wrap.  That way it doesn't stick to anything, and you can make it as thin as it can be.  Anyway, I'm not going to give a blow by blow description of making a marzipan rose.  If you want to know, post a comment telling me so, and I'll post the instructions.  Basically, I made a cone of marzipan to attach each carefully hand made petal to.  I flattened one edge of the petal more than the others to make it realistic but still stable.  Each successive row of petals had to be slightly larger than the one before it, to make the rose look like it was blossoming.   I made one open blooming rose, one slightly open bud, and one closed bud, which I arraigned on the cake.

It took many hours to make all this and so little time to eat.  If it wasn't so delicious, it would almost be sad to eat it.

Homemade Pound Cake

I have made pound cake before, but never just plain old traditional pound cake.  It was a little tedious (but mainly because the cook book I was using has all the quantities in grams/ounces, so I had to weigh all the ingredients).  It is flavored with a bit of orange and lemon zest, so it has a subtle, mild, citrus taste that was really excellent.  Interesting trick to make a good looking pound cake: about a third of the way through cooking, cut down the center almost end to end.  This will make the crack that forms along the top of the pound cake even and nice looking.  Also, if the cake browns too much before it is fully cooked, you can tent it with some tin foil.  I didn't end up having to do this, but my cook book says it will work (and experience with Thanksgiving turkeys tells me they are right!)

I made this to use in the trifle I made for my New Year's party, which I will write about later.

Cream Cheese Mints (with recipe) a.k.a Christmas Cookies, con't

I made these mints for Christmas, but I also make them year round.  They are festive, but also delicious and not specific to the holidays, so why not!  They don't taste like cream cheese at all, it just acts as a nice base for the sugar and mint.

The only problem with them is the recipe is affected by the weather.  If it is dry out it takes as much as a cup less powdered sugar than if it is humid or damp.

Ingredients:
8 oz full fat cream cheese (yes it should be full fat, the low fat just doesn’t work quite as well)
6-8 cups powdered sugar
3/8 tsp good mint extract
Food coloring (optional)

With an electric mixer fitted with a paddle attachment (or by hand with a wooden spoon if you are feeling like a work out) mix together the cream cheese and the powdered sugar, adding the sugar in 1/2 cup at a time. Once about 75% of sugar is fully incorporated, add the mint extract.  Mix well and continue to add the last quarter of the sugar.  When the dough it finished, add food coloring if you want (I often just leave them plain, they are so pretty when they are a pure, snowy white).  If you don't think they are minty enough, you can add more mint extract now.  Mix on a very low speed until the color (and extra flavor) is mixed through.  The dough should be soft enough to mold into balls but not sticky--almost like play-doh.

Here’s where it gets fun. Using a small ice cream scoop or a melon baller or your hands make shooter marble size balls of the dough. Put them on a parchment paper lined baking sheet with a little space between them (you’ll need it later). Once you have done about a dozen, flatten the mints slightly with the tines of a fork to make them a thick disk with nice little ridges on them. Continue until you have used up all the dough.

Leave them to set on the counter for at least 4 hours. Once they have hardened on the outside (not like hard candy hard...in fact hardened may not be the right word, but trust me you’ll know when it happened, even if I’m not describing it well) feel free to stack them and store them on a plate covered with plastic wrap in the fridge. Don’t worry, you don’t have to get them in the fridge right away, in fact if you have the space, leave them out over night, then you’ll know they are set properly when you go to store them.

If you don’t have time to wait, throw them in the fridge on the baking sheets. They firm up enough to eat, but they don’t get the nice coating that makes them stackable and keeps them from turning back into soft pliable balls of dough when they are out of the fridge for any length of time.

What I do, is put a dozen or so in the fridge so I can have mints soon (about 30 minutes) and leave the rest to set on the counter (about 4 hours, give or take depending on the temperature of your kitchen). That way I have the instant gratification of eating what I’ve made in less time than it takes to bake a cake and still have the nicer, properly (and patiently) prepared mints too.

Makes about 90 1-inch diameter mints

White Chocolate, Cranberry, Pecan, Oatmeal Cookies a.k.a. Christmas Cookies, con't

These are the white chocolate, cranberry, pecan, oatmeal cookies I made for Christmas.  It may seem like an odd combination, but it is darn tasty!  The tartness of the dried cranberries balances the sweetness of the white chocolate chips.  The pecans are very nice with both flavors.  The recipe called for walnuts or pecans, I personally like pecans more and I think the flavor is a little nicer with the cranberries, but walnuts work too, I'm sure.  As for the oatmeal, it is quick oats so it has a texture similar to a normal (not oatmeal based) cookie, but it still has an oat-y taste.

Orange Butter Cookies a.k.a. Christmas Cookies, con't

I flavored these buttery Christmas cookies with a hint of orange extract.  The flavor was subtle, but still distinct.  I dyed them green and coated them with egg wash to make them look like Christmas trees (of course the cookie press shape helped with that!)  They really did look green in person and even in the photo.  But for some reason when I uploaded it, it made them look lighter and browner...sorry about that.

Anniversary Cake

Details coming soon, but for now here are some photos of the anniversary cake I made for my mom and pops.

A close up of the marzipan roses

The whole cake

Cakey Chocolate Chip Cookies a.k.a. Christmas Cookies, con't

Mini cookies

These are the chocolate chip cookies I mentioned in the Christmas cookies post.  I found the recipe in Martha Stewart's Cookies.  They have less butter and brown sugar than normal chocolate chip cookies, plus they have baking powder.  All together, this makes the cookies cakey and lighter than normal chocolate chip cookies.  I have to admit I really like the cakey-ness.  If I sound surprised, it's because I am.  I love a good old-fashioned gooey chocolate chip cookie, but I love these too.  The photo above shows the mini version of these cookies I made this Christmas.  The photo below shows the normal size ones I made over the summer.  (They are the same cookie, but more than twice the size and a little less puffy.)

Normal size cookies

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.