Damp Lemon Almond Cake

This is from one of Nigella Lawson's cookbooks, I don't remember which (either Domestic Goddess or Nigella Express).  I made it the week before I left for England, so it's been a while.  However, I still remember how good it was!  It was incredibly moist, not too sweet, and quite lemony (but not tart) with a subtle but distinct nutty flavor.  It was a big hit, even with my boyfriend who doesn't have as much of a sweet tooth as I do.

P.S. Sorry, I forgot to take a picture...oops!

Artsy Nectarine Tart

    

The fully cooked tart.  Isn't it pretty?

This is not my favorite tart, but it is still darn good! The problem is, as much as I like them, nectarines are not my favorite fruit.

It really was fun to make, if a little tedious.  I made the tart shell from the Williams Sonoma tarts and pies cookbook but the pie itself is from Martha Stewart's Baking Handbook.  I would have made her tart shell but it called for heavy cream, which was the only thing I would have needed to get from the store, so I went with the Williams Sonoma one because I had all the ingredients.  It worked very well.  It was an easy recipe and made a very tasty shell.  Plus, I have left over tart dough sitting in my fridge waiting to be made into cookies!

The filling was the tedious part.  I had to slice six nectarines into very thin slices.  Unfortunately, they were slightly bruised so they were mushy enough that I couldn't cut them thin enough to make the really pretty rose decoration that Martha does.  But I still made it really pretty and slightly abstract (which is why I'm calling it an 'artsy' tart).

Just the nectarines in the tart shell.

Then I poured in the filling mixture, which was a really yummy mixture with Chambord, which tasted so good with the nectarines.  What was great is that it sort-of puffed up when it cooked so it was very light tasting with a really nice creamy, custardy, but still slightly fluffy texture.  To put it more simply, yum!

The tart with the filling, but not baked yet.

Molassesy Chocolate Chip Cookies, con't

 

 

Here is the photo of the chocolate chip cookies that I promised.  I don't think it does them justice.  They look like any other chocolate chip cookies, but (as I said) they are much, much better.

I'm not the only person to think these are amazing, by the way.  My mom, pops and next door neighbors all agree that these may just be the best chocolate chip cookies ever!

Stone-Fruit Crostada

This is kind of like a sweet dessert pizza, or perhaps it’s more of a free-form fruit crumble. Either way, it is very good! Basically it is a basic sweet pastry dough crust, which I made and rolled out into a rectangle on a large baking sheet, topped with peaches and plums (which I had sliced thinly and then tossed in a bit of sugar and orange juice and zest.)  Then I just spread them evenly over the crust and folded the edges of the crust over to make a bit of a lip. I topped it with a crumble of butter and sugar and baked it. Yum! I served it with a dollop of almond whipped cream (heavy cream to which I added almond extract, vanilla extract and sugar).

Molassesy Chocolate Chip Cookies

These may be the best chocolate chip cookies ever.  I do not take this statement lightly.  Up until this point I held the firm conviction that my chocolate chip cookies were the best ever, so it is not easy for me to admit that another cookie may be taking the top spot.  I have not baked my cookies in many, many months, therefore it could be that I'm just blinded by the greatness of these cookies and am forgetting just how great mine are and thus unfairly bumping them down to second place.  As such, I will be doing a chocolate chip cookie showdown at some point soon (perhaps over my election day holiday) to compare these and maybe a few other recipes.  Until then, I will have to consider it a tie between these cookies and my own, but darn they are good!

I digress.  The cookies really are excellent.  They have a much stronger brown sugar taste than normal chocolate chip cookies because (as the name suggests) they have molasses in them rather than just brown sugar.  My cookie recipe calls for dark brown sugar (as opposed to light brown sugar, which is used typically) to give them a stronger flavor.  I have to say I was a little hesitant when I added an entire 1/4 of molasses to the cookie dough, but it isn't overpowering.  Instead, it is absolutely amazing!

The recipe called for 1 cup of walnuts.  I'm not a huge fan of nuts in my chocolate chip cookies, so I used an extra cup of chocolate chips instead: that meant 3 cups of chips!  I used half semi-sweet and half bitter-sweet.  Yum!

What puts these over the top is that these cookies don't end up crispy (I prefer soft, gooey cookies) but they don't seem undercooked either.  They are firm and golden on the outside and soft on the inside.  That is a balance I try to get with mine, but have not yet achieved.  The recipe explains that this consistency is achieved by baking them at a higher heat for a shorter time.  I think I will have to try this with my dough and see if it works and improves them enough to put them bake on top!

Oh, I forgot to say, the recipe is from Roland Mesnier's cookbook Dessert University, which is a really good cookbook that I highly recommend (and not just because of this recipe).

P.S. Photo coming soon.

Apple Pie

 

My friend Sophie wanted to try out her new pie cookbook, but she didn't really want to make her first pie alone.  So she came over on Saturday so we could bake it together.  We were going to eat it at the games night she was having that evening.  We were planning on playing the game Apples to Apples (which was very fun, by the way), so we decided on apple pie.  Both of us are huge fans of cinnamon so we wanted a pie with lots of it and I wanted to make a double crust pie.  Only one of the three apple pies in the book fit both requirements, so that's the one we made.  It was very, very good!  And surprisingly easy to make.

The pie crust dough was simple enough.  Although it didn't call for chilling before rolling it out, so we didn't chill it...that was a mistake!  It made it much harder to roll evenly and to transfer to the pie plate.  Ah well, it still turned out really well (all buttery and flakey and buttery).  And we learnt from the issues and chilled the top crust before we rolled it out.

The filling was tedious but easy to make.  It just involved a lot of peeling and chopping. It was very tasty before it went in the pie (we had to test it before we used it!) and even better cooked. Oh, by the way, we doubled the amount of cinnamon in the filling.

We put the top crust on and instead of pleating the overlap, we decided to pinch the edges together for a more traditional, neat look.  Rather than piercing the top to start, the recipe called for it to be left alone until it is firmed up, then you cut it into a checkerboard pattern.  It was a little unusual, but turns out it looked great.  We topped the pie with sugar and shoved it under the broiler until it caramelized.

To sum up: the pie looked and tasted amazing!

Frozen Greek Yogurt~With Recipe!

  

Served on top of an oatmeal coconut cookie

I wanted to make frozen yogurt, but I only had greek yogurt in the house, so I gave that a try.  It is great, relatively healthy (as desserts go) and oh so simple!  It does use an ice cream maker, which I highly recommend investing in.  There are relatively inexpensive and good quality ones out there and they are soooo much fun to have!

A note on the ingredients: make sure you use good quality, natural extracts, if not they aren't as strong and can make it taste a little chemically.

Ingredients:

- 3 cups fat free greek yogurt (you can use higher fat content greek yogurt if you'd prefer)
- scant 3/4 cups sugar
- 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
- 1/4 tsp almond extract

Instructions:

1) Mix the ingredients together in a large glass bowl

2) Refrigerate the mixture for at least 30 minutes (an hour is better)

3) Put the mixture in an ice cream maker and freeze according to the ice cream maker's instructions.  Note: it took about 5 minutes less than making regular ice cream.

4) Put frozen yogurt into an air tight container (I use that flimsy grocery store tupperware that is sold next to the ziplocs) and keep in the freezer.  Note: the consistency will thicken up a bit.

Oatmeal Coconut Cookies

 

The non-chocolate batch

These cookies are from on of the Magnolia Bakery cookbooks.  They are very easy to make and very good.  I'm not a huge oatmeal raisin cookie fan, but I really do like oatmeal cookies.  These are great because they have the texture of an oatmeal raisin cookie and a similar taste, but without the raisins.  The coconut replaces the sweetness of the raisins and enhances the already nice, chewy texture of the cookies.  Now I have to say, I did improve on the recipe a little.  After the first few batches (I made the cookies much smaller than they were meant to be, but actually used a bigger scoop than the recipe called for...weird...anyway this is the long way of saying there were a lot of batches), I decided that they were really good, but could be made better with the addition of some chocolate!  (What doesn't chocolate make better?!) So I mixed in mini chocolate chips with the remaining batter and made the last two batches of oatmeal coconut chocolate cookies.  They were very good too!

Strawberries and Cream Puffs

   

I found these lovely wild strawberries at a local farmer’s market and I wanted to come up with a recipe to use them. My first thought was strawberries and cream, but I wanted to do something more complex than whipping some cream with vanilla extract. Then it hit me, cream puffs! I made a batch of choux puffs (choux paste is the pastry that is used to make cream puffs, eclairs, etc). Cut them in half and filled them with vanilla whipped cream. In the center of of the plate is a mound of whipped cream topped with the slightly tart strawberries. The combination of the lightness of choux puffs, the sweetness of the whipped cream and the tartness of the strawberries was just wonderful, if I do say so myself!

Almost Flour-less Chocolate Cake

   

This was meant to be a flour-less chocolate torte.  Unfortunately, it was really humid here today and the 8 egg whites that I was supposed to whip to soft peaks wouldn’t hold their shape at all (that’s why you should never make meringue based baked goods on humid days).  So I whisked the almost completely liquid egg whites into the rest of the batter (made of melted chocolate, butter, egg yokes and sugar).  But I was afraid that because the batter had little air in it (because the egg whites weren’t airy) the torte would be a flat, dense disk.  So I winged it (or as I like to say, wung it), and added in some self rising flour.  I figured that the flour and the baking soda (that is mixed in with the flour) would make the torte rise a little and be slightly lighter.  I was right.  It was still a very, very dense crumb, like a torte.  But it is also distinctively cake like, in that as a whole it is domed on top and dryer than a torte (not dry by any means, just less moist than a torte). Overall, this turned out to be a cross between a cake and a torte...and better for it!

The recipe I was loosely following suggested a glaze to top the cake, but I didn’t like the sound of the glaze that it called for.  So I made a thin-ish chocolate ganache and poured it on top.  Yum!

I'm back!

Ok, so I was gone for six weeks because I was studying at Oxford.  I'm back now.  I had planned on posting while I was gone.  Not that I was making new things--but I admit I'm quite behind on posting desserts I made before I started this blog (and even some I've made since) and I was going to blog about those.  I didn't.  And I asked myself, why?  I had enough free time.  I enjoy reminiscing about past dishes.

Then it hit me like a ton of bricks: I just don't like blogging.

Yes, I know that is a strange thing to write in a blog.  Perhaps I should just give up and stop blogging altogether since I feel that way.  But I don't want to give up.  I like the idea of blogs, you see.  I like the idea that I can keep track of what I've baked, how it comes out, where the recipe was (or what it was if I made it up), etc.  And this seems like a good way of going about that.  I also like the idea that friends and family (and, while I'm sure this is wishful thinking, strangers) can read about what I've made.  The problem is, I don't like blogging itself.  I'm not sure I enjoy writing about something I've just done--I did it, I don't need to spend 30 minutes writing about it.  I find the process of uploading pictures tedious (it isn't blogger's fault, it is a combo of my internet connection being a bit sluggish, my camera taking very high quality photos, and my insane perfectionism that compels me to take 20 photos and then sort through carefully to pick the best pic.)

I think that the reasons I started a blog (which are the reasons I like the idea of blogging) are strong enough to overpower my dislike of blogging in practice.  We shall see if this is true.  So I will keep plugging away at this blog and hopefully blogging will grow on me.

The Great Blueberry Muffin Showdown of 2010-Results

    

Batch Three

Batch 5

The votes have been tallied and the gift muffins were delivered, so I can now announce the results of the Blueberry Muffin Showdown.

And the winner is................a tie between batches 3 (Martha Stewart) and 5 (Nigella Lawson)!

We just couldn't narrow it down any further.  Batches 3 and 5 were in all the judges top 3 lists and had an equal amount of first place votes.  We just couldn't decide between them, so I made them both.

Now I did know my cousin prefers a muffin with a sugar topping, so I added on to batch 5 (batch 3 had one already).  Since batch 3 has normal sugar on it, I used sanding sugar (which is much coarser than regular, granulated sugar).  It was very good and, if I do say so myself, an improvement.

The Great Blueberry Muffin Showdown of 2010

   

Clockwise from top left: batch 2, batch 4, batch 5, batch 3, batch 1

This showdown was a little different than last year's brownie showdown.  Instead of searching for my favorite brownie, I was trying to find the best blueberry muffin recipe as a gift for my cousin even though I don't like blueberries and, as such, never eat blueberry muffins.

I made 5 batches of a dozen full size muffins each (plus a few mini muffins) using recipes from 5 different cookbooks.

The contenders:

• Batch 1: From the French Culinary Institute cookbook.  Medium difficulty.  No topping.  Makes 12.
• Batch 2: From Culinary Institute of America cookbook.  Complex recipe.  (Note I substituted walnut oil for vegetable oil, because I was out of the latter).  Sanding sugar topping. Makes 12 normal plus 12 mini.
• Batch 3: From Martha Stewart's Baking Handbook. Plain sugar topping.  Relatively easy.  Makes 12 normal plus 7 mini.
• Batch 4: From Williams Sanoma Muffins cookbook.  Relatively easy, but with the added step of making the topping.  Crumble topping.  Makes 12.  
• Batch 5: From Nigella Lawson's How to be a Domestic Goddess.  Easy.  No topping.  (Made in muffin papers.)  Makes 12. 

The judges:

• Myself: I admit I was slightly biased towards muffins that were less blueberry-ish, so I may not have been the best person to judge this showdown.
• My mom: loves blueberries and baked goods, so she was quite helpful.
• My pops: a bit (and only a bit) picky when it comes to sweets, which is helpful for a showdown, but also biased toward crumble topping which probably hurt his objectivity.
• My friend, Adriana: I wanted one extra person outside the family to get a wider sample.  She took her task as a taster very seriously!

The results:

• Batch 1: A basic, staple, buttery blueberry muffin.
• Batch 2: Very nice, simple, cakey muffin.  The sanding sugar on top is a plus.
• Batch 3: Sweet, dense muffin.  The crust of sugar on top is a plus.  
• Batch 4: Great crumble.  Basic muffin with a nice flavor from the spices.
• Batch 5: Buttery, soft, very nice.

The winner has been announced!

The Great Brownie Showdown of 2009

  

(I wrote this for the blog I was keeping back in 2009, so it is mainly written in the present tense, but was, in fact, written in summer of 2009.)
The Challenge: I LOVE brownies! But as it turns out, I have yet to find a good brownie recipe. I have recently purchased two new cookbooks and between them they have 3 plain chocolate brownie recipes (not to mention swirled and flavored brownies). So my goal is to compare the 3 different types of brownies and see which I like the most. To do so I will make all 3 brownies today. On a rather related quest, I have always wanted to make brownies that can transport easily. Then it hit me, they don’t have to be made in a pan and cut up, they can be individual sized to start with. So now I just have to find the right pan to do that in. I am going to try mini muffin and regular muffin pans. Hopefully this will work.

The Contenders:
Batch 1: Ghirardelli Fudgy Chocolate Brownies. These were quite simple to make and only use one bowl and no electric mixer, so clean up was a breeze as well. They bake on a low heat for a long time, so they seem like they will stay very moist even in the minis, always a good thing.
Batch 2: Ghiradelli Classic Chocolate Brownies. These were slightly harder to make. Still no mixer, but you have to sift the flour before you mix it in, which isn’t hard, but an extra step none the less. I substituted bittersweet chocolate chips for semisweet, because the batter seemed overly sweet. In future, I’ll have to use dark brown sugar instead of light brown (the recipe says you can use either, and I am currently out of dark brown, so I used light brown which seems to have made the batter a little too sweet). But you never know, an overly sweet batter doesn’t always mean an overly sweet brownie.
Batch 3: Martha Stewart Double Chocolate Brownies. The double chocolate part had to do with using melted semisweet chocolate AND unsweetened coco powder. Even though these use less chocolate than batch 1 (and more than batch 2), the coco powder should make them the most chocolate-y of all the batches. It’s important to note that these are the hardest to make, I used 3 bowls, and an electric mixer, but still they’re not difficult and the batter tastes the best, though that doesn’t always indicate the best final product...

The Outcome:
Batch 1 is indeed fudgy. They are slightly cake-y, but only around the edges, the center is fudgy, almost to the point of gooey. Not too sweet, quite chocolate-y. It made 6 regular-sized muffins and 12 mini-muffins.
Batch 2 is definitely more my cup of tea than batch 1. They aren’t too sweet. And even though the batter is slightly less chocolate-y, the chocolate chips added enough chocolate to the mix. They were cake-ier than batch 1 but were still soft and a little fudgy in the middle. It made 6 regular-sized muffins and 18 mini-muffins.
Batch 3 is my favorite. They are chocolate-ier than batch 2 and cake-ier than batch 1. Really, they are the perfect balance of cake-y and fudgy through out, rather than cake-y around the edges and fudgy in the center. The only downside, is I do miss the chocolate chips from batch 2. I think in future I’ll make these with chips added in. That will make them close to perfect! It made 6 regular-sized muffins and 18 mini-muffins.
As for the muffin sizing, it worked great! The regular size muffins cooked almost as long as the brownies would cook for normally, but the minis cook for significantly less. They all came out moist and delicious. Maybe they all would have been slightly better baked normally in a brownie pan, but I don’t mind. The convenience of the little 2 bite brownies out weighs any imperfection making them mini might have caused.

The Votes are Tallied:
Batch 3 was my favorite with batch 2 a close second and batch 1 bringing up the rear with a bronze metal. But I’m only one person, I wanted to know what other people think. I happen to be lucky enough that my mom, pops and 4 family friends were all willing to taste them! 3 of the 4 adults agreed with me that batch 3 was the best, however one voted for the dark horse in the competition, batch 1. Both kids preferred batch 2, they loved the oozy chocolate chips. I also asked another friend his opinion, and while he liked batch 1 the most, I believe his exact words were “but I’d eat another of any of them!” I also received one last round of results which added three to batch 1. So, batch 1 was the favorite with the public, followed closely by batch 3, with batch 2 as the favorite of all the kids but coming in third among adults.  (Note: all but that first vote for batch 1 were from later days, perhaps that means that batch 3 is still the best on the day of baking, but that batch 1 ages better.)

Clockwise from top: Batch 1, Batch 2, Batch 3

Sorry I've been gone so long...

I know, I promised when I got out of classes I'd get back to writing.  I didn't, sorry!  However, after some delay, I'm ready to get posting!

As you may have noticed I finally published a my mincemeat pies, which I accidently saved as a draft (instead of posting it) way back in January.  I will definitely be posting some more tonight and tomorrow, including the Great Brownie Showdown of 2009 (held before I started this blog).  So check back soon!

Mince Pies

I somehow never published this post, even though I wrote it quite a while ago, oops!  Anyway, here are my very belated mini mince pies.

These miniature mince pies are as delicious as they are adorable (albeit, a bit rustic looking).  I found the recipe in one of Nigella Lawson's cookbooks, I believe it was in her new Christmas cookbook, but it might have been in How to Be a Domestic Goddess.  They both have mince pie recipes.  Anyway, the mincemeat is made with cranberries, which I love in almost anything, so it has a nice tartness along with the sweetness.  Plus, the cranberries give the mincemeat a lovely red color.  I found the dough (also from Nigella) a bit hard to work with, but it tasted wonderful, so it was worth it.

By the way, I tagged this as a dish involving 'fruit'.  I realize that might be a stretch as the fruit is stewed with sugar and liquor as does not really resemble its original form anymore, but too bad, it does have fruit in it, so it is getting that label!

Flourless Apple Almond Cake

   

I found the recipe for this cake in Nigella Lawson's cookbook Feast.  There is a whole section with Passover recipes.  What I love about this cake is it is actually flourless.  I have found that many Passover cakes and cookies use matzo meal instead of flour, rather than going completely flourless.  This is inconvenient because I don't keep matzo meal in the house and because it doesn't tend to make a great cake.  Anyway, this cake, made ground ground almonds and applesauce, is deliciously moist and tasty.  In fact it is so tasty it would be a good cake to make anytime of the year (especially if you can't eat gluten).

P.S. I apologize for the bad picture, I completely forgot to take a photo before I cut it up last night, so I had to take one today with the leftovers.  Oops!

Charoses/Charoset/Haroset~With recipe!

Ok, I realize that this is not a dessert, it is actually the apple nut mixture that is part of the Passover seder.  That said, it is really yummy and makes a good snack or even dessert.  Every year I ask, "why don't we make this during the year, not just at Passover." My mom replies, "I don't know, we should make it more often."  And then we don't.  We should though.  It's really quite good.  You can eat it on matzo or crackers (when it isn't Passover) as a nice afternoon snack.  It also works well on top of vanilla frozen yogurt (or ice cream).

My ingredients are just a starting point.  Play around with quantities and even different flavors if you want (for example a pinch nutmeg might add a nice taste).

Ingredients:
5 cups of chopped apple-this translates to about 4 apples, a mix of crisp green and red apples works nicely, but whatever you have lying around is fine.
1 1/2 cups of chopped walnuts-you can cut back by about 1/4 cup if you'd prefer, but I like it nutty.
9 tbsp red wine-we used a Rioja, because that is what we had.  If you use something sweeter, you might want to cut back on the sugar.
6 tsp sugar
5 tsp cinnamon
Zest of one small lemon, or to taste-or none at all if you'd prefer.

Mix all the ingredients together in a large glass bowl.  Taste it.  If it is too dry add a little more wine.  Too tart or winey?  Add more sugar.  When you have adjusted it to your liking, cover the bowl with plastic wrap and put it in the fridge.  Let it sit for at least 2 hours before you eat it.  This give the flavors time to blend together and the apple to soak up some of the wine.

Cinnamon Sugar Muffins

  

The day I brought the Thumbprint Cookies into my class, one of my classmates brought in amazing cinnamon and sugar coated mini(ish) muffins from a local bakery.  They were so good that I ate two.  I had to figure out how to make them.  Turns out that my Williams-Sonoma Muffins cookbook has a recipe for cinnamon muffins topped with cinnamon sugar.  I made them, and I think they turned out just as yummy!  (Although the coating to muffin ratio wasn't quite as good...the ones from the bakery were fully coated in cinnamon sugar and these were only topped with it.  Next time I'll make them mini muffin size and roll them in the sugar.)

Basically these are a heavy, cinnamon and nutmeg flavored, buttermilk and baking soda leavened dough.  It is almost a doughnut dough, but the taste of the final product differs from doughnuts quick significantly, since it is baked instead of fried.  The key is, once they are cool, dip the top of the muffin in melted butter, then in a cinnamon sugar mixture.  This makes the top beautiful and sparkly and really tasty!

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!