Ipso Fatto

I Want Meringues Now, I Mean It... Maybe It's the Spanish Peanuts?: Peanut Dacquoise with Peanut Butter Mousse

littlebakerbunny@yahoo.com — Tue, 18 Jun 2013 04:19:00 +0000

I recently wrote about a lemon cloud tart that I served at a backyard BBQ, and I mentioned that I chose the dessert because it seemed perfect for a hot summery day. That's absolutely true, but I had more than one reason for deciding to make the tart. Namely, I had already planned to make a Peanut Dacquoise with Peanut Butter Mousse. It's a dessert that produces six extra egg yolks -- and the lemon tart would neatly use up five of them.

The dacquoise consists of peanut meringues layered with peanut butter mousse and chocolate glaze. The recipe specifically calls for Spanish peanuts in their skins, and I had to visit more than one grocery store to hunt them down (I finally found some private label Spanish peanuts at Harris Teeter). To make the meringue, you whip egg whites with cream of tartar, salt, and sugar until stiff, and fold in ground and chopped salted Spanish peanuts (skins and all). You spread the meringue out into rectangles and bake at low temperature until dry. I had some leftover meringue batter and I scooped it out into cookies (because there were chopped peanuts in the batter, I could not pipe out the meringue cookies into nice shapes because the nuts would have clogged a pastry tip).

While the meringues were in the oven, I made the peanut butter mousse. I mixed together crunchy peanut butter (the recipe calls for natural style but I only bake with Skippy), brown sugar, and salt, thinned out the mixture with cream, and folded in more heavy cream that had been beaten with sugar and vanilla to stiff peaks. To make the chocolate glaze, you simply heat cocoa powder, sugar, water, and heavy cream to a boil, add chocolate chips, and stir until melted.

When it was time to assemble the dacquoise, I used a sharp serrated knife to trim the three meringue rectangles to a uniform size. I spread cooled chocolate glaze on two of the meringues and chilled them until set, and then I spread peanut butter mousse on top of the glaze and stacked the layers, topping them off with the third meringue. I put a thin crumb coat of glaze over the top and sides of the dacquoise and chilled it until set (this was necessary because mousse was squeezing out between the layers and the mousse was getting mixed into the chocolate glaze); then I spread the remaining glaze over the crumb coat and sprinkled on a bit of fleur de sel. Because the crumb coat was cold, the remaining glaze set very quickly after coming into contact with it; the glaze didn't run or drip at all.

I assembled the dacquoise a day in advance, and when I took it out to serve it, it sliced easily and cleanly. The layers were neat and even, and it was an impressive-looking dessert. The dacquoise tasted delicious, although it was basically a nondescript mix of peanut butter and chocolate flavors. It was difficult to make out the individual components and the meringue had lost all of its crunch, so you couldn't really tell that meringue was even a component of the dacquoise (I'm not sure if this was because I assembled the dacquoise a full day in advance; the recipe says it can be made three days ahead).

There was a little bit of dacquoise left after the party and I stuck it in the freezer. It is equally delicious frozen! While this was a great dessert and our guests really enjoyed it, I was disappointed about the soggy meringue; the dessert looks like a showstopper, but the taste doesn't quite meet the same high standard. I think a textural contrast of crunchy meringue would improve the dacquoise immensely, so if I make this again, I would try to assemble it shortly before serving.

In contrast, the cookies I had baked with the leftover meringue batter stayed crisp and crunchy for days afterwards. And they were unbelievably delicious. Tom could not believe that the meringue contained only egg whites, sugar, cream of tartar, salt, and peanuts -- the Spanish peanuts imparted remarkable flavor and the meringues tasted like caramel peanuts. I will definitely be making the meringue portion of this recipe again, because the peanut meringue cookies are awesome.

I'm thinking that if you wanted to shortcut this dessert, you could simply make Spanish peanut meringue cookie sandwiches and fill them with chocolate ganache or peanut butter filling. Or just make the cookies by themselves and call it a day -- because they are delicious enough to hold their own.

Recipe: "Peanut Dacquoise with Peanut Butter Mousse" from epicurious.com.

A Cloud that Really Shines: Lemon Cloud Tart with Rhubarb Compote

littlebakerbunny@yahoo.com — Fri, 14 Jun 2013 12:29:00 +0000

When I needed some desserts to serve at a casual backyard BBQ last weekend, I thought that a Lemon Cloud Tart with Rhubarb Compote would be a perfect summery dessert for a hot day in June. Plus, I've sort of been in the mood to make something with rhubarb since I recently started seeing it at the farmer's market.

I was able to get a head start on the tart by making a few components a day ahead: the rhubarb compote, the lemon curd, and the dough for the tart crust. The compote is incredibly easy -- you simply cook cut rhubarb with sugar and lemon juice until the fruit softens; it only takes a few minutes. The tart crust was also straightforward. You just beat softened butter, powdered sugar and lemon zest, add an egg yolk, and then beat in ground hazelnuts, flour, and salt. I wrapped the dough in plastic and chilled it overnight.

The method for making the lemon curd is a bit different than what I'm accustomed to -- usually I just make it over direct heat, but this recipe calls for a double boiler. You heat lemon juice, butter, and sugar in a double boiler until the sugar dissolves, add in tempered eggs and egg yolks, and cook until thickened. I put the curd through a sieve and noticed that there were still white specks of albumen in it, so I put it through a second, super-fine sieve to make sure it was completely smooth before putting it in the fridge overnight.

The following day, I rolled out the tart dough between two sheets of parchment paper, without using any flour. After a quick chill, I blind baked the crust. Even though I didn't use any pie weights (the recipe doesn't instruct you to use any), the crust remained perfectly flat and didn't shrink. Unfortunately, the crust turned out too dark and I didn't want to use it. But I had enough time to mix up another batch of tart dough. I watched it like a hawk in the oven and it came out the perfect shade of golden brown.

Of course, making the new crust -- with all of the required chilling and baking time -- put me a few hours behind my original schedule. As a result, I had to fill the cooled crust after our guests had already arrived. To make the filling, I beat whipping cream, crèam fraîche, sugar, and lemon zest to stiff peaks, and marbled the mixture with the lemon curd. I poured the resulting filling into the crust, used an offset spatula to make some decorative peaks, and put the tart in the refrigerator to chill before serving.

Because of the delay with making the second crust, I was only able to chill the filled tart for a little over an hour before serving it. As a result, when I cut the tart, the filling was not set firm and the slices looked a little messy. The rhubarb compote was a bit watery and so I briefly drained it in a sieve before spooning it onto the plates.

This tart was wonderful. The filling had the intense flavor of lemon curd, but with a totally different texture -- completely smooth and silky, and somehow simultaneously light and rich. The crust did not have as much hazelnut flavor as I was expecting, but it was perfectly textured and deliciously buttery. And the rhubarb compote -- although a bit on the sweet side -- was a lovely complement.

I ate a piece of leftover tart the next day and the crust wasn't soggy at all. Also, the filling was nicely firm and cut cleanly. Overall, making this tart is not difficult, although it does require a lot of time -- but it's time very well spent. This cloud tart is dreamy indeed!

Recipes: "Lemon Cloud Tart" and "Rhubarb Compote" from epicurious.com.

Baked Sunday Mornings: Cream Cheese Chocolate Snacking Cookies

littlebakerbunny@yahoo.com — Sun, 09 Jun 2013 16:17:00 +0000

This week's Baked Sunday Mornings recipe is "Cream Cheese Chocolate Snacking Cookies," a cookie Matt and Renato describe as a departure from the traditional Baked repertoire. It's an easy recipe to make. Beat cream cheese, butter, sugar, and brown sugar; add eggs, cream, and vanilla; add dry ingredients (flour, baking soda, salt, cocoa powder); added melted bittersweet chocolate and chocolate chips; chill, scoop; and bake. I used a #24 scoop and I got 32 cookies from each batch of dough.

I have made these cookies before and the first time I thought I had not baked them long enough -- they were fully cooked, but quite soft and crumbly. So this time I made a deliberate effort to bake them for a bit longer. Still, my cookies ended up soft and crumbly. The texture is strange -- it's like there simply isn't enough holding the cookie together. When I layered the cookies neatly between sheets of wax paper in a rigid container, I didn't have any problems. But when I put one in a Ziploc bag and threw it in my lunch bag, it arrived at the office broken into bits.

The cookie tastes like straight chocolate, and while it was tasty, I thought the flavor was one note and not that interesting. I found myself wishing that these were mint chocolate chip cookies instead (fortunately, Baked Elements has a recipe for Chewy Chocolate Mint Cookies!). The chocolate chips add a lot of interest and if anything, I think the recipe would probably benefit from more chocolate chips.

While these cookies have been very warmly received both times that I've made them, I don't see the appeal of this recipe. The taste is flat. The texture is just odd. I had some leftover cookies and I stuck them in a Ziploc bag so I could stash them in the freezer for a future occasion when I need chocolate cookie crumbs; I gently kneaded the bag with my hands and the cookies just fell apart. But I'm looking forward to the time when I get to use the crumbs for a delicious chocolate cookie crust!

Recipe: "Cream Cheese Chocolate Snacking Cookies" from Baked Elements: Our 10 Favorite Ingredients, by Matt Lewis and Renato Poliafito. Recipe available here at Baked Sunday Mornings.

This Zest is the Best: Grapefruit Bavarian with Caramel Sauce and Candied Peel

littlebakerbunny@yahoo.com — Sat, 08 Jun 2013 00:45:00 +0000

I recently needed a dessert to bring to a dinner hosted our friends Jim and Colleen, and because I got a request for something fruity, I decided to go with a grapefruit Bavarian. I've become a big fan of Bavarians since I added several cake rings to my collection of baking equipment; Bavarian cream is not difficult to make but it gives you a lot of bang your for buck.

The recipe is written to be made with tangerines, but since it's not tangerine season, I went with a mix of citrus for the different components; red grapefruit for the Bavarian itself, orange for the caramel sauce, and a mix of grapefruit and orange for the candied peel garnish.

I made the candied peel a day in advance. While I normally use a microplane for zest, I also have one of those zester tools that removes citrus peel in perfect narrow, even strips. Because I used the zester, my strips of peel didn't have any bitter pith attached, but I still went to the trouble of blanching them in three changes of boiling water as the recipe specifies. Then I cooked the zest in a 1:1 mixture of sugar and water until it turned transluscent.

The process of de-tangling and separating the thin strips of zest from each other before laying them out on an oiled rack was tedious, but necessary so that the zest wouldn't dry in massive clumps. Because the sugar syrup began to crystallize as it cooled, I had to work quickly and handle the zest while it was still very hot, ending up with some burnt fingertips. After the zest cooled, I tossed the strips in granulated sugar.

Making the Bavarian was quite easy. I softened some gelatin in a bit of grapefruit juice; whisked together egg yolks, sugar, lemon juice, and more grapefruit juice, and heated the mixture to a simmer; stirred the gelatin mixture into the egg yolk mixture and cooled it in an ice bath until thickened; and folded in whipped cream that had been beaten with grapefruit zest until it held stiff peaks. I poured the Bavarian mixture into an 8-inch cake ring with a cake circle on the bottom, and chilled it overnight.

The last component I made was the caramel sauce. First, you make a caramel from sugar, water, bay leaves, and orange zest. When the caramel turns dark amber, you add in orange juice, cook until the caramel dissolves, and then add lemon juice and a bit of salt. The first time I tried making the sauce, the mixture of sugar, water, bay leaves, and zest foamed furiously; there was so much foam that I couldn't see the color of the the liquid underneath and I was worried that I might not be able to tell when it turned amber. As it turned out, it didn't matter. The mixture completely dried out and crystallized into a solid chunk, with the bay leaves trapped inside. I had to throw it out and start over.

I had used up my last two bay leaves in my first attempt, so when I made the caramel the second time, I had to skip the bay leaves. But the second time was the charm, and I ended up with a fairly thin golden brown sauce the color of honey. It thickened a bit after chilling.

It was easy to unmold the Bavarian from the cake ring, but not that easy to serve it. The slices were short and not very firm, so as you can see in the photo above, the slices tended to list to the side, especially at the tip. I spooned a good amount of sauce onto each plate before placing the slice of Bavarian on top; the plate in the picture is actually white in the middle with a yellow rim (it's the same plate as the one in this picture), so the bright golden color under the Bavarian is solely from the sauce. I threw a bit of candied zest on top to complete the dessert.

The Bavarian was lovely and light, with a beautiful grapefruit flavor. The sauce was unusual, with a bit of tartness from the citrus, and it was a nice accompaniment. But my favorite part by far was the candied zest. I could easily eat it plain by the handful; it tasted like the most delicious gumdrop ever. The zest flavor was sweet, intense, and pure, and the chewy texture was the perfect contrast to the Bavarian.

I was delighted with the way this dessert turned out -- but if I make this Bavarian again, I would definitely add some more gelatin to get a firmer texture. I also might either make a bigger batch or pour it into a smaller cake ring, so that the slices would be a little taller. And of course, I would make a lot more candied zest!

Recipes: "Tangerine Bavarian," "Tangerine Caramel Sauce," and "Candied Tangerine Peel," from epicurious.com.

Previous Posts:

"I Should Have Stayed Out of the Liquor Cabinet: Pomegranate Bavarian," August 31, 2012.
"It's All about the Bavarians: Chocolate Raspberry Bavarian Cake," April 3, 2012.
"I Liked It and I Put a Ring on It: Chocolate Bavarian Torte," January 18, 2012.

Baked Sunday Mornings: Meringues

littlebakerbunny@yahoo.com — Sun, 02 Jun 2013 07:28:00 +0000

I can't believe this day is actually here -- I've finally reached the final recipe in Baked Explorations! The last recipe on the Baked Sunday Mornings schedule is the Mississippi Mud Pie (A), aka Coffee Ice Cream Tart -- but I already made the tart a while ago, at the same time I made the coffee ice cream recipe. However, even though I've faithfully followed the Baked Sunday Mornings schedule for two and a half years, there was one recipe that managed to slip by. Namely, I have made the Stump de Noël (more than once, actually), but I never made the meringue mushroom garnish. So it's meringues this week for me!

Of course, since I wasn't using the meringues as garnish, I didn't see the need to go to the trouble of making them into mushroom shapes. The recipe is easy. You whisk together egg whites and sugar in a double boiler until they reach 140 degrees, beat them until stiff, and then add cream of tartar and almond extract. You pipe out the meringue, bake it a low temperature for 90 minutes, and then turn off the oven, crack open the door, and leave the meringues in the oven overnight.

I happened to make the meringues when we were having a spell of very hot and humid weather here in D.C., and the finished meringues were slightly tacky to the touch. I had to put them in individual paper candy cups so that they wouldn't stick to each other. But stickiness aside, the meringues were fantastic. Crunchy on the outside, chewy on the inside, light as air, and the strong almond flavor was delicious. The fact that they're fat free made it possible to eat them with abandon and still feel guilt free.

I also made a batch with coffee extract instead of almond extract. (The picture above shows the coffee-flavored meringues; they were ecru because of the dark-colored coffee extract, while the almond meringues were a bright lily white.) The coffee versions were also tasty (and they were not sticky like the almond ones), but I preferred the almond. I'm sure other flavors would be delicious as well.

What a wonderful high note to close out Baked Explorations. Being a part of the Baked Sunday Mornings group has been an incredibly fun experience, and I'm glad it's not over yet -- we're still baking our way through Baked Elements. Baked Explorations might be the first cookbook I've baked through in its entirety, but I'm glad it won't be my last!

Recipe: "Meringue Mushrooms, or Shandi's Candies" from Baked Explorations: Classic American Desserts Reinvented, by Matt Lewis and Renato Poliafito. Recipe available here at Baked Sunday Mornings.

Previous Post: "Baked Sunday Mornings: Coffee Ice Cream (and Tart!)," August 28, 2011.

The Shape of Deliciousness: Chewy Chunky Broundies

littlebakerbunny@yahoo.com — Fri, 31 May 2013 04:56:00 +0000

There's a lot of truth to the adage that we eat with our eyes first. I'll admit that I am heavily influenced by the way food looks when I decide whether or not I want to taste it -- or bake it!

As a case in point, I have flipped through Dorie Greenspan's cookbook, Baking From My Home to Yours, countless times. Thus, I have seen the full-page photo of her "Chewy, Chunky Blondies" on numerous occasions -- but I was never tempted in the slightest to try the recipe, because the blondies just did not look very interesting. But then the Bon Appétit website featured a photo with a round version of the blondies (Dorie calls them "Broundies"!), as well as directions for baking the blondies in round rings. The photo instantly changed my mind about wanting to make the recipe.

To make the blondie batter, you beat room temperature butter until smooth, add sugar and brown sugar, mix in eggs and vanilla, incorporate flour and salt, and then stir in chocolate (I used semisweet chips), toasted pecans, and sweetened coconut. If you are baking these in a 9-inch by 13-inch pan, the recipe calls for baking soda and baking powder as well, but you omit the leavening if you are baking the blondies in rings. I used a #16 scoop to portion out the dough and used 3-inch rings; I got 18 broundies from each batch of dough. My broundies finished baking in 23 minutes at 350 degrees; if you are baking the recipe in a rectangular pan, the baking time is longer, but at a lower temperature.

I tried to save time by fitting as many rings as possible on a baking sheet, so in some cases, the rings were actually touching. I think this is what caused my broundies to brown very unevenly during baking. On the same baking sheet, some broundies browned much more (both around the edges and on the bottom) than others, and sometimes even a single broundie would have dark golden edges on one side and pale edges on the opposite side. At least all of the broundies popped out of the buttered rings with no problem after baking.

Whether they were pale or golden brown, all of the broundies were delicious! They had a wonderful sweet and deeply caramel-y flavor, a very chewy interior, and a firm and crisp exterior (especially the more browned portions). I thought that they probably could have used some more chocolate chips, but that might have pushed them out of the blondie camp and into chocolate chip cookie territory. The coconut added some nice texture, but the coconut flavor was pretty subtle.

The version of the recipe in the cookbook calls for walnuts instead of pecans, and an additional cup of butterscotch chips or Health Toffee Bits. I think that toffee bits would be amazing in these broundies, and next time I will definitely throw those in as well! I absolutely plan on making these again, and I think I will probably stick with the round versions instead of the pan version. I have always preferred the edge and corner pieces of brownies and bars, and by baking the broundies in rings, every one is an edge piece. Plus, how could I ever turn my back on the gorgeous round broundie, when it was love at first sight!

Recipe: "Chewy Chunky Blondies" adapted from Baking From My Kitchen to Yours by Dorie Greenspan, recipe available here at bonappetit.com.

The New-Fashioned Way to Classic Doughnut Taste: Doughnut-Muffin Doughnuts

littlebakerbunny@yahoo.com — Tue, 28 May 2013 03:37:00 +0000

A while ago I bookmarked a recipe from King Arthur Flour for doughnut muffins; I'm not generally a fan of muffins, but doughnut flavor in a muffin seemed like a delicious idea. But now that I own some doughnut pans, the recipe seemed like an even better idea!

This recipe is quick and easy. You cream butter, vegetable oil, sugar, and brown sugar; add eggs; stir in baking powder, baking soda, nutmeg, salt, and vanilla; and alternately add in flour and milk. While you can pour the batter into a muffin tin, you can also use a doughnut pan. I find that putting the batter into a piping bag (no tip necessary) is the easiest way to neatly fill the circular molds. After a quick 10-minute bake, I turned the doughnuts out of the pan and shook them in a bag with some Penzey's cinnamon sugar while they were still warm. The doughnuts were a light golden color coming out of the oven, but the cinnamon-sugar coating made them a darker brown (and, not surprisingly, almost identical looking to the baked pumpkin doughnuts that I tossed in the same cinnamon-sugar).

I tried a doughnut warm from the oven and it was absolutely delicious. A gentle touch of nutmeg in an incredibly soft and tender cake, with a lovely light crunch and warm cinnamon flavor from cinnamon-sugar coating. Fantastic! I was delighted that the doughnuts kept well and were equally delicious the following day. I'm not going to pretend that you can't tell the difference between a fried doughnut and baked one. That said, I honestly think that these doughnuts -- like the baked pumpkin cake doughnuts from King Arthur Flour -- are every bit as delicious as a fried doughnut and just as satisfying.

Recipe: "Doughnut Muffins" from King Arthur Flour.

Previous Posts:

"Out of the Frying Pan, Baked Goods Inspire: Pumpkin Cake Doughnuts," October 31, 2012.
"Baked Sunday Mornings: Farm Stand Buttermilk Doughnuts," January 16, 2011.
"A Piece of Cake: Baked Doughnuts," September 26, 2010.

Baked Sunday Mornings: Malted Madeleines

littlebakerbunny@yahoo.com — Sun, 26 May 2013 14:52:00 +0000

I love madeleines. I have to admit that I even have a weakness for the packaged ones sold by the register at Starbucks. It was a revelation when I first tried making them a few years ago and realized how quickly and easily I can bake my own.

So I was happy to see that Baked Elements includes a recipe for Malted Madeleines -- and it's on the schedule for Baked Sunday Mornings this week. Making the batter is simple: beat eggs, sugar, and salt until frothy; drizzle in cooled melted butter; and fold in the sifted dry ingredients (flour, malted milk powder, cocoa powder, baking powder). The recipe instructs you to cover the bowl with a dry cloth and let it sit for an hour before baking.

After sitting for an hour, the batter had developed large air bubbles and looked spongy, but the air bubbles collapsed after I gave the batter a stir. I tried two methods for baking the madeleines. First, the "standard" method of buttering the pans, filling them with batter (I used a #50 scoop) and baking. Second, the method suggested in the recipe notes and intended to "cheat" a crunchy exterior -- heavily butter the pan, heat the pan in the oven for three minutes until the butter melts and sizzles, and then fill the molds with batter and bake.

I found that the latter method resulted in a crisper madeleine, but only around the edges. Otherwise, they yielded basically the same result and neither produced a crunchy exterior. As the recipe instructs, I dusted the baked madeleines with a sieved mixture of cocoa powder and malted milk powder, but I found that using too much resulted in a chalky taste -- so I took a dry pastry brush and brushed off all of the excess powder.

These madeleines tasted fine, but they did not impress. The malt flavor was surprisingly subtle. Unfortunately, so was the chocolate flavor -- I thought that they were lacking flavor in general. Although the cake was moist, I thought it was a bit too spongy for a madeleine (or perhaps this was just my perception because they did not have a crunchy exterior). Basically, I thought the madeleines were small mediocre chocolate cakes.

Perhaps I'm just a traditionalist. I have made several different types of madeleines and my favorites so far are still the classic lemon flavor.

Recipe: "Malted Madeleines" from Baked Elements: Our 10 Favorite Ingredients, by Matt Lewis and Renato Poliafito, recipe available here at Baked Sunday Mornings.

Previous Posts:

"Episode of the Chocolate Madeleine: Chocolate Orange Madeleines," April 1, 2012.
"For the Hostess with the Mostess: Madeleines," July 24, 2010.
"Stuck in the House with a Bunch of Pistachios: Nut Brittle and Madeleines," December 28, 2009.

Cracks that Shine and Sparkle: Ginger Cracks

littlebakerbunny@yahoo.com — Sat, 25 May 2013 03:53:00 +0000

I recently restocked my supply of Penzey's crystallized ginger and decided that I should try out a new ginger cookie recipe. I thumbed through the "Ginger" chapter of Lisa Yockelson's Baking by Flavor -- where I also found her wonderful recipes for Ginger Butter Balls and Ginger Brownies -- and selected "Ginger Cracks." She describes the cookies as spicy and chewy-crisp, brightened by the intense and radiant flavor of crystallized ginger.

To make the cookie dough, you cream shortening and softened butter (Yockelson says that "the shortening creates a well-developed cookie with a crunchy shear to it, while the butter adds flavor"), add sugar, beat in the liquid ingredients (egg, molasses, and vanilla) followed by the sifted dry ingredients (flour, baking soda, baking powder, salt, ginger, cinnamon, nutmeg, and allspice), and blend in the crystallized ginger. You need to chill or freeze the dough until it's firm enough to handle before forming the cookies (I used a #40 scoop), rolling them in sugar (I used sanding sugar), and baking.

The cookies puffed and cracked during baking, and I took them out of the oven before they were fully set. They were fantastic -- crisp on the outside, superchewy on the inside, and chock full of amazing spicy-sweet ginger flavor. I think the cookies might have been even better with some more crystallized ginger, but otherwise, the appearance, taste, and texture were perfect.

These cookies are as delicious as the double-ginger chocolate chunk cookie, which has been my go-to ginger cookie. Each has its own advantages; the double-ginger chocolate chunk cookie is not as chewy as the ginger crack cookie, but then again, it features the wonderful combination of chocolate and ginger. You can't go wrong with either one!

Recipe: "Ginger Cracks" from Baking by Flavor by Lisa Yockelson.

Previous Posts:

"A Silly Name, But Seriously Delicious: Ginger Butter Balls," May 15, 2012.
"A Creamy Chocolatey Ginger Treat: Ginger Brownies," August 3, 2010.
"Ipso Fatto Instant Photo: the New and Possibly Improved Ginger Chip Cookie," December 6, 2009.

Ready for the Fiesta!: Margarita Chiffon Cake

littlebakerbunny@yahoo.com — Wed, 22 May 2013 03:40:00 +0000

A couple of weeks ago I was looking for a dessert to make for a colleague's Cinco de Mayo party, and I decided that a Margarita Chiffon Cake was in order. I know that chiffon cake has absolutely nothing to do with Mexico, but I figured that the margarita flavor of the cake, glaze, and accompanying strawberry compote made it appropriate for the occasion.

I only recently discovered chiffon cake, and I think that it's pretty wondrous stuff -- light, delicate, and yet incredibly moist. This cake was no exception. You make the batter through the standard chiffon cake method: add dry ingredients (flour, sugar, baking powder, salt) into the wet ingredients (egg yolks, vegetable oil, lime juice, Cointreau, tequila, lime zest); fold in egg whites beaten with sugar and cream of tartar; and bake.

After fully cooling the cake upside down and releasing it from the pan, you drizzle on a glaze made from powdered sugar, lime juice, tequila, Cointreau, and lime zest. Even though I let the cake stand for 2 hours after applying the glaze, the glaze did not set totally firm. I served the cake with the strawberry compote made from strawberries, sugar, lime juice, Cointreau, tequila, and lime zest.

Given that the cake, glaze, and compote each contain tequila, Cointreau, lime juice, and lime zest, you will not be surprised to hear that this cake tastes exactly like... a margarita. It is pretty darn boozy, especially the strawberries; for a teetotaler like me, it was too much to bear.

Still, I could not help but appreciate the exquisite texture of the chiffon cake, which was simultaneously weightless and rich. I would love to make this recipe again as a straight lime chiffon cake without the booze. And while I personally was not a fan of the alcoholic strawberries (although drinkers certainly had no problem with them), I recognize that berries are the perfect accompaniment to this cake, and I might go with balsamic strawberries instead. But if you're a fan of margaritas, this cake is for you!

Recipe: "Margarita Chiffon Cake" and "Strawberry Compote with Tequila and Lime" from epicurious.com.

Previous Posts:

"Baked Sunday Mornings: Lady Praline Chiffon Cake," September 9, 2012.
"Sky High Expectations: Chocolate Chiffon Cake," September 28, 2012.

Baked Sunday Mornings: Cornmeal Griddle Cakes

littlebakerbunny@yahoo.com — Sun, 19 May 2013 05:47:00 +0000

I've never had a cornmeal pancake before, so I wasn't sure what to expect from this week's Baked Sunday Mornings recipe, Cornmeal Griddle Cakes. The recipe is simple enough: pour boiling water over cornmeal and stir until cooled to lukewarm; add brown sugar; alternately add in sifted dry ingredients (flour, salt, baking powder, baking soda) and liquid ingredients (eggs and buttermilk); and stir in melted butter. I used a #20 scoop to drop the batter into a skillet and cook the griddle cakes in butter; they did not rise much and weren't fluffy at all, but they browned nicely.

As suggested in the cookbook, I did not serve these with maple syrup, but with butter, which was definitely the right choice (I think honey butter might be even better). Matt's description in the recipe headnote is spot on: "It's like a fresh, hot, buttery, flat, crunchy corn muffin." The wonderful browned surface of the griddle cake reminded me a lot of the grilled lemon pistachio cornmeal muffins from Baked Elements; my favorite part was the very crunchy edges.

If I was in the mood for pancakes, I would probably stick with the lacy panty cakes from Baked Elements; they are amazing and the best pancakes I've ever had. But these cornmeal griddle cakes were delicious and I truly enjoyed them. I never knew that a corn muffin -- even if it's really a pancake and not a muffin at all -- could taste this good!

Recipe: "Cornmeal Griddle Cakes" from Baked Explorations: Classic American Desserts Reinvented, by Matt Lewis and Renato Poliafito; recipe available here at Baked Sunday Mornings.

Previous Posts:

"Baked Sunday Mornings: Lacy Panty Cakes," February 17, 2013.
"Baked Sunday Mornings: Lemon Pistachio Cornmeal Muffins," January 20, 2013.

Baked Sunday Mornings: Alfajores

littlebakerbunny@yahoo.com — Sun, 12 May 2013 13:39:00 +0000

I was thrilled about this week's Baked Sunday Mornings recipe for Alfajores. I love alfajores (who doesn't?), and my husband Tom -- who lived in Argentina as an exchange student -- was psyched about having a homemade alfajor.

Before making the cookie dough, I started the dulce de leche. The cookbook provides stovetop, microwave, and oven options. I decided to go with stovetop because we don't own a microwave, and because that's the method I've successfully used before for the Millionaire's Shortbread recipe in Baked: New Frontiers in Baking. (Tom is accustomed to seeing dulce the leche being made either by heating condensed milk in the can while submerged in water, or heating the milk over direct heat; he asked me why I wasn't adding marbles to make sure the mixture was stirred constantly.) After two and a half hours in a double boiler, my condensed milk had transformed into what was essentially caramel; it was thicker than store bought dulce de leche and also lighter in color.

While the dulce de leche was in the double boiler, I made the cookies. The method for mixing the dough is pretty standard: cream butter and sugar; add lemon zest followed by an egg and egg yolks; add rum and vanilla; and incorporate the dry sifted ingredients (flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt, cornstach). You need to chill the dough for at least 90 minutes before rolling and cutting it. I found that the dough was still very sticky after chilling and I had to use a lot of flour to roll it out. I used a 2-inch round cutter and got 58 cookies.

After the cookies were cool, I tried one plain and didn't like it. The bright lemon flavor was terrific -- I only had Meyer lemons on hand, so I had used Meyer lemon zest in the batter. But the cookie was very dry, and I had a definite Marco Rubio moment after I took a bite; I desperately wanted a glass of water. I thought that filling the cookies with dulce de leche would solve this problem, but it didn't.

I was quite disappointed with the alfajores. I don't think it's possible to get the dark color and intense flavor that dulce de leche should have in a double boiler; next time I'll try direct heat. What I got was essentially a light caramel, and while it was perfect as the middle layer of Millionaire's Shortbread, it was not the right filling for an alfajor. And the dry, sandy texture of the cookie was not enjoyable. ¡Que lástima!

Recipe: "Alfajores" from Baked Elements: Our 10 Favorite Ingredients, by Matt Lewis and Renato Poliafito, recipe available here at Baked Sunday Mornings.

Previous Post: "Lifestyles of the Rich and Caramel-y: Millionaire's Shortbread," May 29, 2012.

Delayed Gratification Tastes So Good: Butterscotch-Glazed Coffee Shortbread Bars

littlebakerbunny@yahoo.com — Fri, 10 May 2013 03:46:00 +0000

Last December when I was planning out the menu for our annual holiday party, one of the items that was on my list of possible desserts was Flo Braker's Butterscotch-Glazed Coffee Shortbread Bars. I own a couple of Braker's cookbooks and have a high opinion of her recipes; plus, the bars can be stored for a week, so they would have been a good choice for our holiday party because I have to make a lot of things in advance. The bars got dropped from the party menu, but I finally got around to making them last week.

The base layer is a shortbread made from butter, sugar, vanilla, salt, flour, and ground espresso beans (I used regular ground coffee). You press the dough into a pan, bake, and cut the shortbread into bars while it's still warm. After the cut bars are cool, you pour on a butterscotch glaze made from butter, brown sugar, espresso, corn syrup, and salt. The glaze set rather quickly, so I had to work quickly to spread it into a thin layer that covered all of the bars.

I am now kicking myself for waiting so long to make these bars, because they are delicious! The shortbread is rich and buttery with a beautiful coffee flavor that isn't harsh or overpowering in any way. The butterscotch glaze is deeply flavorful, sweet, and smooth; the combination of the shortbread and glaze is sublime.

My only complaint is that the glaze remained sticky even after I let it set, so I couldn't stack the bars for storage (I tried separating the bars with sheets of wax paper, but the glaze stuck to the paper). This minor detail means that these bars will probably never make an appearance at our holiday party, because there would be no convenient and efficient way to store a large quantity of them. But fortunately that's not an obstacle to savoring this scrumptious shortbread all year round, one delectable batch at a time!

Recipe: "Butterscotch-Glazed Coffee Shortbread Bars" from Flo Braker, available at foodandwine.com.

Baked Sunday Mornings: Chocolate Hazelnut Spread (and Hazelnut-Nutella Sandwich Cookies)

littlebakerbunny@yahoo.com — Sun, 05 May 2013 12:41:00 +0000

I. Love. Nutella. I love it so much that I have never been tempted to try to make my own -- after all, why should I when the store-bought version is already perfection? But I finally gave it a try, because this week's Baked Sunday Mornings recipe, "Chocolate Hazelnut Spread," is a homemade version of Nutella.

I had some raw blanched hazelnuts, so I got to skip the step of peeling the nuts (but I still had to toast them). Once the hazelnuts are ready, the recipe only takes a few minutes of quality time with your food processor. First, you grind the hazelnuts until they liquefy. Then you add sugar, cocoa powder, vanilla, salt, and hazelnut oil. The recipe says to use three tablespoons of hazelnut oil (remarkably, I happened to have hazelnut oil on hand), and add more if needed to thin out the consistency. I ended up adding another tablespoon of oil to get a creamy spread.

I tasted the homemade spread head-to-head against real Nutella and I was reminded of Jeffrey Steingarten's ketchup taste test described in The Man Who Ate Everything. Using Heinz as his touchstone, he tasted 35 ketchups (including homemade) and assigned them to one of four categories: Worse Than Heinz, Heinz, Better Than Heinz, and Not Really Ketchup. I was thinking that there were only going to be three options for my chocolate hazelnut spread: Worse Than Nutella, As Good As Nutella, and Better Than Nutella.

Texturewise, the homemade spread was slightly gritty because grinding the hazelnuts in the food processor did not eliminate all of the tiny pieces of nuts in the finished spread. I definitely give the texture advantage to real Nutella, which is velvety smooth and creamy, with a luscious mouthfeel. Tastewise, real Nutella is more chocolate-y and the homemade spread was more hazelnut-y, but the homemade version is delicious. While I would happily eat either, I have to give the edge to the store-bought version because of its smooth texture. (The fact that the homemade version requires refrigeration is also a bit of a bummer.)

I wasn't quite sure what we would do with a large batch of homemade chocolate hazelnut spread, especially since the recipe said it would only keep for a couple of weeks. I thought about using it in Bill Yosses' recipe for Chocolate Chunk Cookies with Nutella, but then thought it would be a waste to mix into a dough where the taste of the spread might be lost. So I thought about using it as the filling for some sandwich cookies. I found a Food and Wine recipe for "Hazelnut-Nutella Sandwich Cookies" that was perfect.

I generally avoid roll and cut cookies because I find them to be a huge pain. But I would make roll and cut cookies all day long if they were as easy as these. I was a little worried when the dough looked dry, but after a quick chill (only 15 minutes!) I was able to effortlessly roll out the dough between two sheets of parchment, using no flour at all. Re-rolling the scraps was also a breeze.

I used a 2-inch diameter round cutter and got 64 cookies from the recipe. The recipe says to bake the cookies for 20 minutes, but I pulled my cookies after 13 minutes, when they were already golden brown. The cookies spread a little during baking (to a 2.5-inch diameter), but maintained their round shape. The cookies were all uniform and matched up perfectly to form beautiful sandwiches.

The sandwich cookies are the bomb. The cookies on their own are unbelievably delicious -- they taste like a sweet, toasted, crispy hazelnut. When sandwiched around the chocolate hazelnut spread, the cookies were over the top. These are some of the most delicious cookies I have ever made, and they taste as good plain as they do with the filling. I plan to make these amazing hazelnut sandwich cookies often -- although I will be skipping the step of making my own spread and filling them with store-bought Nutella from now on!

Recipes:

"Chocolate Hazelnut Spread" from Baked Explorations: Classic American Desserts Reinvented, by Matt Lewis and Renato Poliafito. Recipe available here at Baked Sunday Mornings.
"Hazelnut-Nutella Sandwich Cookies" from Food and Wine.

Previous Posts:

"The Baked Bake Along Begins: Nutella Scones," November 21, 2010.
"This Cookie Is a Contender: Chocolate Chunk Cookies with Nutella," September 13, 2010.

A Culinary Craft Project: Peanut Butter and Chocolate Galletas

littlebakerbunny@yahoo.com — Sat, 04 May 2013 14:35:00 +0000

While I consider myself to be a skilled home baker, I also recognize my baking weaknesses and do my best to work around them. For instance, pie crust is my Achilles heel and I avoid making pies with pastry crusts if at all possible. I also shy away from roll and cut cookies, or attempting anything beyond the most rudimentary types of cake and cookie decorations.

But recently I saw a recipe that made me want to run to the kitchen to make roll and cut cookies with elaborate decorations. Namely, the website for Sweet Paul Magazine featured a recipe for Peanut Butter and Chocolate Cookies from Sandra of La Receta de la Felicidad, and the cookies were so incredibly gorgeous that I knew I had to make them myself. Sandra used cookie stencils to create beautiful designs in chocolate, a technique I had never seen before. I went to Designer Stencils, purchased a few stencils, and was ready to give the recipe a try.

As fancy as the finished product looks, the cookie itself is straightforward. You make the batter from butter, peanut butter, sugar, brown sugar, egg, flour, and salt; roll out the dough between sheets of parchment; freeze the rolled dough; cut the cookies; and bake. I used a 3.5-inch round cutter, and I got 18 cookies from the recipe. The cookies stayed nice and round during baking, although some of them developed air bubbles; I pressed these cookies down while they were still warm to flatten them out.

While the tops of the baked cookies were relatively flat, they were not perfectly even. I tried stenciling designs on the top side of the cookies, but the minor undulations in the surface made this quite difficult. So I did what Sandra did, and I turned the cookies upside down so that I could stencil the flatter bottom side. This definitely worked much better, although my stenciling work was no where near as neat as hers. The stenciling was also extremely time consuming, because I needed to wash and dry the stencil between each and every cookie.

The final step after doing all of the stenciling work was to dip the edges of the cookies in melted chocolate, followed by a coating of chopped peanuts. Even though I need a lot more practice with stencils, I thought the cookies looked impressive.

The cookies had a nice peanut butter flavor (which of course went very well with the chocolate), but they were a little dry. Overall, they tasted fine but were nothing remarkable. I have definitely made better peanut butter cookies. But I have never made cookies that looked like this. I was happy with the way these turned out, especially for my first attempt at using stencils. It definitely won't be my last!

Recipe: "Peanut Butter and Chocolate Galletas" from Sandra of La Receta de la Felicidad. Recipe available at Sweet Paul Magazine.

Baked Sunday Mornings: Triple Rum Black Pepper Cake

littlebakerbunny@yahoo.com — Sun, 28 Apr 2013 05:19:00 +0000

I was definitely not optimistic about this week's Baked Sunday Mornings recipe, the "Triple Rum Black Pepper Cake." I don't drink alcohol at all, and rum in particular is a flavor I despise. But I'm committed to baking my way through the Baked cookbooks and following each recipe faithfully, so I embraced the opportunity to make this cake even though it contains copious amounts of rum in the cake batter, the syrup used to soak the cake, and the glaze on top.

You make the cake batter by beating room temperature butter and dark brown sugar until light and fluffy, adding eggs and an egg yolk, and then alternately adding the dry ingredients (flour, baking powder, baking soda, freshly ground black pepper, salt) and liquid ingredients (buttermilk, dark rum, vanilla). You pour the batter into a buttered and floured Bundt pan and bake. The raw batter was quite fragrant and the cake smelled amazing while baking.

The cake rose quite a bit in the pan and released cleanly with no problem after cooling for 30 minutes. When the cake was fully cooled, I put the cake back in the (washed and dried) Bundt pan, poked holes in the bottom of the cake with a skewer, and brushed on rum syrup. You make the syrup by heating butter, sugar, and water; boiling the mixture for three minutes; and adding dark rum. While the mixture was boiling on the stove, it started to make the popping noise that is the characteristic sound of butter browning. Before adding the rum, the mixture was golden but cloudy; it was thin and looked like it had bits of butter suspended in it. I was worried until I added the rum, at which point the mixture became a homogeneous dark amber color with a thicker syrup-like consistency. The recipe produced seven fluid ounces of rum syrup and I used about half.

After I let the syrup soak into the cake overnight, I turned the cake out of the pan and topped it with a buttered rum drizzle made from powdered sugar, melted butter, and dark rum. The recipe instructs you to whisk the ingredients together until glossy and almost pourable. I found that the mixture was quite thin to start with and thickened as I continued to whisk it. The glaze set enough to keep its shape but never became completely firm.

I couldn't believe how much I liked this cake. The texture was wonderful: dense, moist, and soft. The unusual flavor is difficult for me to describe -- mild, warm, sweet and caramel-y, with a bit of an edge from the black pepper. It reminded me of another cake I've had before, but I couldn't quite place it -- maybe the Burnt Sugar Bundt Cake with Caramel Rum Frosting or the Brown Sugar Pound Cake with Caramel Glaze? The rum flavor was surprisingly subtle and I didn't mind it at all (I used Flor de Caña seven-year old Grand Reserve rum).

This cake was simply delicious, but above all, it was unexpected -- it made me a fan of rum cake!

Recipe: "Triple Rum Black Pepper Cake" from Baked Elements: Our 10 Favorite Ingredients, by Matt Lewis and Renato Poliafito, recipe available here at Baked Sunday Mornings.

Previous Posts:

"The Caramel Is the Icing on the Icing: Burnt Sugar Bundt Cake with Caramel Rum Frosting," August 14, 2012.
"The Booze Plays Top Banana: Rum Cake," February 29, 2012.
"A Delicious Sugar and Frosting Bomb: Brown Sugar Pound Cake with Caramel Glaze," November 19, 2009.

Butter at Its Best: Brown Butter Cookies

littlebakerbunny@yahoo.com — Sat, 27 Apr 2013 20:05:00 +0000

I am always happy to see a dessert recipe featured in the Los Angeles Times Culinary SOS column, and it was no exception when I saw the recipe from "Brown Butter Cookies" from Bittersweet Treats earlier this month. Not only that, but this recipe is incredibly quick and easy; you can make the dough in a few minutes and you don't even need a mixer.

In short, all you need to do is brown butter and let it cool; mix the butter with dark brown sugar, salt, egg, egg yolk, and vanilla (the recipe says vanilla paste; I used the scraped seeds from one vanilla bean instead); and then stir in the sifted dry ingredients (flour, baking soda, baking powder). That's it; you can use the dough immediately. I used a #24 scoop and got 16 cookies. The cookies baked up perfectly round, with a beautiful cracked top.

This cookie is everything it was promised to be: crunchy on the outside, and super chewy and sweet on the inside. Many tasters thought it was a molasses cookie because of the texture and all of the dark brown sugar. There was also a distinct nuttiness from the browned butter -- Tom said the taste reminded him of a graham cracker. I thought these were just fantastic, and the fact that they are so easy to bake makes them seem all that much sweeter!

Recipe: "Brown Butter Cookies" from Bittersweet Treats, recipe printed in the April 6, 2013 Los Angeles Times.

Previous Posts:

"Baked Sunday Mornings: Buttermilk Pie/Brown Butter Snickerdoodles," November 4, 2012.
"What's With All the Hype?: Cocoa Brownies with Browned Butter and Walnuts," February 2, 2011.
"Fruit Fest, Phase III: Brown Butter Almond Torte," June 30, 2009.

Pure Almond Joy: Almond Cake with Kirsch

littlebakerbunny@yahoo.com — Thu, 25 Apr 2013 03:55:00 +0000

Even though I was very satisfied with the flourless almond cake I recently made during Passover, I was intrigued by one of the lukewarm recipe reviews that indicated a preference for a different recipe on epicurious.com, "Almond Cake with Kirsch." I can never get enough almond cake, so I decided to try this recipe as well.

The list of ingredients and the recipe directions are both short. Beat butter and sugar until creamy, then add almond paste, eggs, kirsch, almond extract, salt, flour, and baking powder. Pour into a pan and bake. I did have some difficulty incorporating the hard bits of almond paste (even though I used my 1.3 horsepower Kitchenaid stand mixer); in the future, I would grate the almond paste instead of just breaking it up into chunks.

When I checked the cake after 35 minutes of baking, the top was so dark that I thought it might be burned and I immediately pulled it out of the oven -- even though the cake seemed a bit soft when I pressed it in the center and I wasn't sure if it was cooked through. Thankfully, it was, and the interior was very dense, damp, and even slightly malleable. Eating this cake evoked the sensation of eating marzipan with regard to both flavor and texture. In other words, it was freakin' delicious.

I have to say that I did like this cake slightly better than the flourless almond cake I recently made. Although I appreciated the bright flavor from the orange and lemon rind in the flourless cake, I adore almonds and this cake delivers amazing pure almond flavor. The ultra-moist texture is also unusual and wonderfully decadent. I would happily eat either cake, but this one is really truly special.

Recipe: "Almond Cake with Kirsch" from epicurious.com.

Previous Post: "Passover Cake that Passes: Almond Cake," April 11, 2013.

Baked Sunday Mornings: Black and White Cookies

littlebakerbunny@yahoo.com — Sun, 21 Apr 2013 06:57:00 +0000

Four years ago, I made a lot of black and white cookies for a party with a "Jewish New York" theme and I haven't revisited the cookie since. At least not until the black and white cookie recipe from Baked Explorations showed up this week on the Baked Sunday Mornings schedule.

This recipe is pretty straightforward. You cream butter and sugar, mix in eggs and an egg yolk, alternately add dry ingredients (flour, baking soda, baking powder, salt) and buttermilk, and then stir in vanilla and lemon zest. You scoop out the cookies (I used a #24 scoop and got 30 cookies per batch) and bake. Once the cookies are cool, you spread on black and white frosting. The white frosting contains powdered sugar, milk, cream, and vanilla; the black frosting is the white version plus some cocoa powder and water.

I thought that the plain, unfrosted cookies were quite delicious. These cookies are basically small cakes, and they were soft, moist, and had a lovely lemon flavor that reminded me a bit of a madeleine. The cookie itself was definitely tastier than the base cookie from the black and white recipe I made four years ago; that recipe has a vanilla cookie with lemon frosting, so the cookie on its own doesn't have the same bright lemon taste. Honestly, I would happily eat these cookies plain.

That said, the frosting adds a lot and I loved both the vanilla and chocolate halves. I had to thin out the chocolate frosting with a lot of water to get it to the proper consistency where it would dry smooth and glossy. The vanilla frosting appeared to harden as it dried, but the following morning when I packed the cookies between sheets of wax paper to take them to work, I discovered that it was not actually completely set. As a result, the white frosting got a little dented during transport, but the damage was fairly minor and cookies still looked okay. The chocolate frosting was firm and held up perfectly. In the future, I would thin out the vanilla frosting a little to make sure it fully sets, because not being able to stack cookies for storage is a huge pain.

I cannot say enough good things about these cookies. Their wonderfully soft and moist texture, combined with the lemon, vanilla, and chocolate flavors, makes for an absolutely delightful treat. And besides being delicious and beautiful, they're easy to make. You really couldn't ask for more!

Recipe: "Black and White Cookies" from Baked Explorations: Classic American Desserts Reinvented, by Matt Lewis and Renato Poliafito. Recipe available here at Baked Sunday Mornings.

Previous Posts:

"Black and White Cookies: Ready for the Party!," February 6, 2009.
"Can Anyone Help Out an Asian Girl from Nebraska?," January 26, 2009.

A Soft Spot for Pastry: Raspberry Linzer Bars

littlebakerbunny@yahoo.com — Sat, 20 Apr 2013 15:48:00 +0000

A couple of months ago when Tom and I were in New York City, we made a wonderful find while wandering on 1st Avenue: the Dual Specialty Store. We went in the shop on a whim and came away with a sizable haul of spices and ethnic foods, all at very reasonable prices. I was particularly excited to get some blanched hazelnuts, given how much I detest the messy and time-consuming chore of removing hazelnut skins.

With blanched hazelnuts in hand, I turned a recipe that's been on my to-bake list for a while: John Barricelli's "Raspberry Linzer Bars" from The SoNo Baking Company Cookbook. These bars have a base and top crust of hazelnut pastry, sandwiched around a layer raspberry preserves.

You need to make the Linzer pastry a few hours in advance so that it can be sufficiently chilled before making the bars. You cream ground hazelnuts, room temperature butter, sugar, and salt until light and fluffy, add in eggs and vanilla, and then incorporate the dry ingredients (flour, baking powder, cinnamon, and nutmeg) until absorbed. You divide the dough into two parts and chill them until firm. (Oddly enough, the recipe headnote mentions that at SoNo Baking Company, they save the sliced tops from chocolate cakes and incorporate them into the Linzer dough to add flavor and color. Who knew?)

Even though I chilled my dough for longer than the two hours specified in the recipe, it was still very sticky and difficult to handle. You are supposed to roll out one of the portions of dough between two pieces of parchment and then fit it into the bottom and up the sides of a 9-inch by 13-inch pan. But I had so much difficulty trying to transfer the dough that I simply rolled it out directly on a piece of parchment that I had cut and folded to fit, and I transferred the dough and paper together into the pan.

I spread raspberry preserves into the bottom crust and then set about rolling and cutting lattice strips to lay across the top. Again, the stickiness of the dough presented some difficulty. I ended up rolling the dough between two sheets of parchment and putting the rolled dough in the freezer for a few minutes before cutting it with a pastry wheel and arranging the strips on top of the jam. Finally, I brushed the pastry with beaten egg white and sprinkled on some coarse sugar before baking.

I was surprised at how much the dough expanded during baking. I had laid out the top strips of pastry with quite a bit of open space between them, but the dough spread to leave relatively little exposed jam. Also, I had crudely pinched together the ends of the lattice strips with the crust on the side of the bars, but the top and sides grew together into a pristine seamless whole.

The smooth flavor of the hazelnuts with the raspberry was quite delicious, but I was not happy with the texture of these bars. While the top crust was perfect, the bottom crust was soft. Not undercooked, but still soggy enough to make handling them a bit difficult. I tried putting the bars in the fridge to see if chilling would firm up the bottom, but it only helped a little. I think the bottom layer of a bar like this should be sturdy and firm, like pie crust. Despite the fact that these bars had great flavor, the soft crust and the hassle of struggling with the sticky Linzer dough are enough to dissuade me from ever making these again.

Recipe: "Raspberry Linzer Bars" from The SoNo Baking Company Cookbook, by John Barricelli.

Baked Sunday Mornings: Sunrise Key Lime Tarts and Brewer's Blondies

littlebakerbunny@yahoo.com — Sun, 14 Apr 2013 13:09:00 +0000

This week's Baked Sunday Mornings recipe is Sunrise Key Lime Tarts, individual key lime tartlets with a pretzel crust. I made these delicious tarts (pictured below) back in October and you can read my post about them here. I didn't have time to make the tarts again -- but since it is Baked Sunday Mornings, I'll write about another recipe from the Baked boys that I happened to make last week: the Brewer's Blondies from Baked: New Frontiers in Baking.

I'm generally not a big fan of blondies, but I thought this recipe looked interesting because it includes malt powder and malt balls. It's also one of the quicker and easier recipes from the Baked books. All you have to do is beat softened butter and dark brown sugar; add eggs and vanilla; incorporate the dry ingredients (flour, baking powder, salt, malted milk powder); and stir in chopped malt balls, chocolate chips, and walnuts. You spread the batter into a pan and bake. While the recipe says that these taste great warm, I let mine cool fully before cutting them.

The blondies had a nice golden color and were chock full of chocolate and nuts. They also had a nice moist, chewy texture. They tasted fine. But I found them disappointing; they didn't have much malt flavor. I had even purposely chopped my malt balls by hand instead of putting them in the food processor so that I could keep the pieces larger and hopefully get more crunch and malt ball flavor, but you couldn't even tell the bars had malt balls in them.

The recipe headnote says that at the bakery, Matt and Renato use brewer's malt (malted barley) from a local brewery to make the brewer's blondies, and that there is a vast difference between brewer's malt and malted milk powder. It does make me wonder what a real brewer's blondie tastes like, but the homemade version didn't do much for me.

Recipes:

"Sunrise Key Lime Tarts" from Baked Elements: Our 10 Favorite Ingredients, by Matt Lewis and Renato Poliafito. Recipe available here at Baked Sunday Mornings.
"Brewer's Blondies" from Baked: New Frontiers in Baking, by Matt Lewis and Renato Poliafito. Recipe available here.

Previous Post: "Salty-Tart-Creamy-Crunchy-Sweet: Sunrise Key Lime Tarts," October 23, 2012.

Passover Cake that Passes: Almond Cake

littlebakerbunny@yahoo.com — Fri, 12 Apr 2013 03:57:00 +0000

Even though I'm not Jewish and I don't observe Passover, I usually bring unleavened baked goods to the office during the holiday. This year, I decided to try a recipe for a Spanish Almond Cake that I found on epicurious.com.

The recipe is not difficult. You beat egg yolks and sugar until smooth and pale, add in lemon zest, orange zest, almond extract, and ground almonds, and then fold in egg whites that have been beaten to stiff peaks. I don't have the 11-inch springform pan specified in the recipe, but the headnote advises that the recipe works fine as a thicker cake, so I used a regular 9-inch pan instead. I lined the pan with parchment, buttered it, and dusted it with almond meal to keep the cake flour-free.

When the cake was cool, I tried to turn it out, but it was stuck. After a bit of a struggle and many efforts to loosen the cake around the edges, I was able to get it out in one piece; I think there would have less of a sticking issue if I had coated the buttered pan with flour instead of almond meal. As the recipe suggested, I dusted the cake with (cornstarch-free) powdered sugar before serving.

The cake was moist, with a very bright citrus-almond flavor. It had a tight crumb and the texture was indistinguishable from regular cake; the ground almonds were so fine that they didn't produce any crunch. (I think this was because I used Bob's Red Mill almond meal instead of grinding the almonds myself, as I can never get the almonds as fine as store-bought almond meal.)

I thought the cake was delicious, and tasters gave it enthusiastic reviews as well. But I knew it was truly a success when I found out that it was passing as a non-Passover cake. One of my colleagues who was observing Passover had a piece and then felt terrible about it afterwards. Apparently she had a momentary lapse and forgot it was Passover when she ate the cake. Of course, the funny part is that she only felt badly because she thought it was a regular cake. It had never crossed her mind -- and she was truly surprised when I told her -- that it was a Passover cake. I think that makes this recipe an unqualified success.

Recipe: "Almond Cake (Tarta de Santiago)" from Food of Spain by Claudia Roden, recipe available here on epicurious.com.

Previous Posts:

"Who Knew Clouds Are So Chewy?: Almond Cloud Cookies," April 19, 2012.
"A Cloud of Coffee Cream on a Slice of Heaven: Sybil's Pecan Torte with Coffee Cream," April 17, 2012.
"A Culinary Misdemeanor?: Flourless Fudge Cookies," April 14, 2012.
"This Cake Is All Wet: Clementine Cake," April 22, 2011.
"Reveling in No Leavening: Flourless Chocolate Cake with Coffee Liqueur," April 19, 2011.
"Bake One for the Gipper this Passover," March 30, 2010.

Baked Sunday Mornings: Aunt Sassy Cake

littlebakerbunny@yahoo.com — Sun, 07 Apr 2013 14:03:00 +0000

I made this week's Baked Sunday Mornings recipe, the Aunt Sassy Cake, back in January. I loved the sweet pistachio cake with decadent honey-vanilla buttercream. After I blogged about the cake, my cousin Cindy sent me an email telling me she thought the cake looked delicious. I knew the cake would be coming up on the Baked Sunday Mornings schedule, but I couldn't believe it when I saw the date -- today is Cindy's birthday. So I said I would happily make the cake again for her birthday, and I asked her to take a few pictures so that I could use them in this post.

You can read my previous post about this cake here. Happy Birthday, Cindy! I hope you have a wonderful day and enjoyed the cake!

Recipe: "Aunt Sassy Cake" from Baked Explorations: Classic American Desserts Reinvented, by Matt Lewis and Renato Poliafito, recipe available here at Baked Sunday Mornings.

Previous Post: "Sweet Pistachio Perfection: Aunt Sassy Cake," January 29, 2013.

A Slice That's So Nice: Chocolate-Caramel Slice

littlebakerbunny@yahoo.com — Fri, 05 Apr 2013 03:58:00 +0000

I came across a Bon Appétit recipe for Chocolate-Caramel Slice when I needed a dessert for an office party and I put the phrase "chocolate caramel" into the epicurious.com recipe search engine. I only recently became familiar with Australia/New Zealand concept of dessert slices, after making a wonderful ginger slice recipe featured on David Lebovitz's blog. How could I resist the idea of a slice with caramel, chocolate ganache, and a sprinkling of salt?

I did not have the 11-inch by 7-inch pan specified in the recipe, so I decided to make a double batch in a 9-inch by 13-inch pan, even though I knew that my all of my layers would be about 30 percent thicker as a result.

You make the crust in the food processor from flour, brown sugar, cornstarch, salt, chilled butter, ice water, and an egg yolk. The resulting dough was so stiff that it was difficult for me to press it evenly into the bottom of a pan; I eventually resorted to getting out my rolling pin for an assist. Since I always line my pans with parchment, I rolled out the crust on top of a piece of parchment I had already folded to fit inside the pan, and then just dropped the parchment with the dough still on it into the pan. I docked the crust, baked it until golden, and cooled it completely.

The caramel layer is a mixture of condensed milk, brown sugar, butter, golden syrup, and vanilla cooked to 225 degrees. After pouring the caramel over the crust and letting it set at room temperature for about 15 minutes, you spread on some chocolate ganache (chocolate and heavy cream), sprinkle on some coarse salt, and chill the pan to allow the bars to firm up. I put the pan in the refrigerator overnight.

I was able to cut the bars easily and cleanly the following morning. It was only after I saw the cut slices that I realized how similar the base + caramel + chocolate combination was to the Millionaire's Shortbread from Baked: New Frontiers in Baking -- although the shortbread had a crumbly crust prone to breaking off when I cut the bars, while the crust of the chocolate-caramel slices stayed intact.

The crust layer was sturdy but tender, and it had a strong brown sugar flavor. The caramel layer held its shape, but it was quite soft and had just a little bit of chew. The thin chocolate layer was mostly overshadowed by the caramel, but the overall flavor of the bars was wonderful and addictive. The major difference between these slices and the millionaire's shortbread is that the shortbread had a very crunchy base layer, so that eating it evoked the sensation of eating a Twix bar. But I loved both recipes and I would have to taste them side by side to be able to pick a favorite.

Recipe: "Chocolate-Caramel Slice" from epicurious.com.

Previous Posts:

"From the Land Down Under: Ginger Crunch," January 22, 2013
"Lifestyles of the Rich and Caramel-y: Millionaire's Shortbread," May 29, 2012.

Baked Sunday Mornings: Cheddar Corn Soufflé

littlebakerbunny@yahoo.com — Sun, 31 Mar 2013 05:07:00 +0000

I'm not sure if I've ever come across a dish that can be served as a dessert, appetizer, side, and main course. But that's exactly how Matt and Renato describe this week's Baked Sunday Mornings recipe, the Cheddar Corn Soufflé. I decided to offer it as a dinner side; I thought it would be a nice accompaniment to to Nueske's ham that Tom was serving as the main course.

This recipe is not difficult, but it does require dirtying quite a few pans and bowls. To make the soufflé base, you make a roux of butter and flour, whisk in warm milk and cook until thickened, add in spices (salt, pepper, nutmeg, cayenne), and incorporate egg yolks. Then you fold in egg whites that have been beaten with cream of tartar to stiff peaks, shredded cheddar cheese, and corn. You pour the batter into a 1.5-quart soufflé dish that has been buttered and coated with shredded Parmesan cheese (we didn't have any, so I used Pecorino Romano).

The recipe says that you should preheat the oven to 400 degrees and turn it down to 375 degrees before baking the soufflé for 30-35 minutes. I preheated the oven to 400 degrees, but I got a little distracted when all of our dinner guests arrived as I was finishing up the batter. I forgot to turn the oven down to 375 and I baked the soufflé at 400 by mistake. As a result, when I checked the soufflé at 30 minutes, the top was very dark brown.

The soufflé rose quite a bit above the rim of the dish; before baking the batter was right beneath the wide band at the rim. I had to quickly snap the photo above after I took the soufflé out of the oven because within a few minutes, it had deflated significantly (although it remained above the rim of the dish).

I have made a lot of sweet soufflés, but this was my first savory version. I was surprised at how light and airy it was, while still being very flavorful from the cheese (I used our favorite cheddar, English Seaside) and corn. My only complaint is that the soufflé was a touch salty, although that often happens when you make a dish containing a lot of cheese. The sides and bottom of the soufflé had a very dark and firm crust that came out cleanly from the dish and reminded me of the outside of a popover; I'm not sure if this prominent crust was the result of baking the soufflé at the wrong temperature, but I thought it was tasty and it made the soufflé easy to scoop and serve.

I would definitely make this dish again, although the à la minute aspect of it makes the timing a bit tricky (as opposed to a sweet soufflé, because I usually have a bit more leeway to decide when I want to serve dessert, and am unlikely to have anything else competing for oven space after dinner is served). I didn't calculate the timing correctly and the soufflé finished baking just a few minutes after I had served the first course, so it had to sit around for a while. Nonetheless, it was very good even by the time we got around to eating it. That said, I think it's odd that Matt and Renato suggested serving this as a dessert; even though I love having a cheese course after dinner, there is nothing about this very savory dish that reads like dessert to me.

Recipe: "Cheddar Corn Soufflé" from Baked Elements: Our 10 Favorite Ingredients, by Matt Lewis and Renato Poliafito, recipe available here at Baked Sunday Mornings.