Snow Day

 On Tuesday, we had a normally rare snow day due to the freezing rain/sleet the night before, followed by freezing temperatures which resulted in the roads turning into solid sheets of ice.  Being from the Midwest, this type of thing never used to phase me, but since they don't have salt trucks down here (and barely even have sand), it makes driving pretty hazardous.  So E and I took advantage of the lazy day at home to hang out, do some craft projects and bake!

First, I made my friend Jacki's super yummy bread recipe.  Basically, you toss all the ingredients into a bread machine and let it mix and rise, but then take it out to form it into loaves and bake it in your regular oven.  Works like a charm and it's a great, no-fuss no-muss way to have freshly baked bread almost anytime.  I bought a cheap used bread machine pretty much just for this purpose. 

One minor change I make: since I substitute slightly less than half the white flour for whole wheat, I've found that it tends to rise a bit less than I'd like, so I compensate by increasing the yeast to 1 full tablespoon.  Both Troy and the kiddo go crazy for this bread whenever I make it and usually we manage to plow through an entire loaf in less than a day.  Luckily, the recipe makes enough dough for 2 loaves. ;)

 

After the bread was done, I let E help me mix up a batch of Congo Bars from Bakerella's website.  As per her recommendation, we mixed them completely by hand, but I'm not sure it made much of a difference in the texture since they came out so underbaked, even after I added about 5 minutes to the bake time. I think next time I will bake them for longer at a lower temperature.  

 

Even underbaked, they are still sinfully good and so easy to make with ingredients I keep on hand. I added a cup of butterscotch chips, just because I had them handy, and it might have been a bit over the top since they are already so sweet.  I may also try cutting the sugar next time by a couple ounces and see what happens.

Chocolate-Sour Cream Bundt Cake

 

Have I mentioned that I love the new bundt pan I got for Christmas from my lovely sister-in-law?  It's not often that I will bake twice in the same day, let alone using the same pan, but I couldn't resist trying out the recipe that came on the back of the box last night.

You can also find a slightly different, scaled-down version of this recipe on the Williams-Sonoma website that's geared towards fitting a 10-cup pan.  It leaves out the chocolate chips and uses a glaze in lieu of ganache. I think it's probably pretty close to this recipe, but having never made it, I can't vouch for it.

Ingredients

1 c. non-alkalized cocoa powder, sifted; plus more for dusting pan

7 1/2 oz. semisweet chocolate, finely chopped

1. c boiling water

2 1/4 c. all-purpose flour

1 1/2 tsp baking soda

1 1/4 tsp kosher salt

2 1/2 sticks unsalted butter (room temperature)

2 1/2 c. packed light brown sugar

5 eggs, lightly beaten (room temperature)

4 tsp. vanilla extract

1 1/2 c. sour cream (room temperature)

1 1/2 c. semisweet chocolate chips

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 325 degrees.  Grease a large bundt pan and dust with cocoa powder, tapping out excess.

2. In a small bowl, combine the cocoa powder and 7 1/2 oz chocolate.  Add boiling water and whisk until the chocolate melts and the mixture is smooth.  Set aside to cool.

3. In a separate bowl or over parchment paper, sift together flour, baking soda and salt.

4. In the bowl of a stand mixer, cream the butter and sugar together until light and fluffy.  Add the eggs a little at a time, stopping occasionally to scrape down the sides of the bowl.  Add vanilla and beat in.

5. On low speed, alternately add the flour mixture and the sour cream in 3 parts, beginning and ending with the flour, beating until just combined.  Slowly pour in the chocolate-cocoa mixture and beat until no white streaks are visible, occasionally stopping the mixer to scrape down the sides and bottom of the bowl.  You want to mix until no white streaks are visible.  Then, using a rubber spatula, gently fold in the chocolate chips.

6.  Pour the batter into the prepared pan, spreading the batter so that the sides are about 1-inch higher on the sides than in the center.  Bake until a toothpick or skewer inserted in the center comes out mostly clean, approximately 60-70 minutes.

7. Transfer the pan to a wire rack and let the cake cool upright in the pan for 15 minutes.  Invert the pan onto the rack and lift off the pan.  Let the cake cool completely, at least 1 hour.

Notes

This recipe makes a LOT of batter.  Seriously, a crazy amount.  Like, it filled most of my mixer bowl, most of my 15-cup bundt pan, and puffed up and over it during baking.  You either need to have a BIG bundt pan to make this, or be prepared to make cupcakes on the side.

I made a few very minor changes.  I didn't have enough cocoa powder left to dust my pan, but it didn't end up being an issue since my fancy new pan is still super nonstick.  I did, however, substitute white sugar for a cup of the brown since I ran out.  And I used regular old table salt instead of kosher, which I find to be a pain to measure as accurately.  The original recipe also called for you to return the cooled cake back to the pan so that you could "gently saw off" any excess than extended over the edge of the pan and have a level bottom, but honestly, I didn't bother.

Also, when it says to scrape down the sides (steps 4 & 5), make sure you do a thorough job.  I thought I had, but when it came time to pour the batter into the pan, I found a pool of batter at the bottom that had not been mixed properly with the chocolate mixture.  If this ever happens to you, you basically have two options.  If you've already poured most of the batter out, just leave it.  Mixing it in now is only going to make your cake all streaky and weird.  Otherwise, you can try to mix it in with the rest of the batter by hand.

The original recipe also called for a ganache topping (6 oz chopped semisweet chocolate, 2 Tbsp unsalted butter, 1/2 c. heavy cream; heat cream to boiling and pour over butter & chocolate, whisking until smooth), but it really doesn't need it.  It is probably one of the most insanely chocolate-y cakes I have ever baked or eaten in my life.  The combination of cocoa powder, melted chocolate and then chocolate chips too bordered on unnecessary, and coming from me, that's saying something.  I think next time I may use mini-chocolate chips or leave them out altogether.

All in all, this earned raves.  It was rich, moist, super chocolatey and delicious. We all ate the cake with a generous scoop (or two) of vanilla ice cream to cut the intensity a bit.  SO good.  In fact, this might be my new favorite cake recipe.  But like I mentioned before, it's enormous, so you may want to save it for really special occasions or large gatherings.

Decorated cookies - part 3

(In case you missed them, here are links to part one and part two.)

After you have what is more or less a base coat of icing on your cookies, you can do all your detail work. For me, this includes doing the outlines too. For these cookies, I pretty much just winged it and piped mostly straight lines and dots. The nice thing about snowflakes is that they can be as simple or as intricate as you want, and either way, they look good. Especially if you use sanding sugar. Sprinkles/jimmies will work too, but I prefer Sanding Sugar because of the fineness of the grains. It gives it a sparkly, snowy look.  I also meant to put on some Sugar Pearls, but I because I fell behind, I had to skip it this time.

Here's a pic of the finished cookies. Apologies for the picture quality. I dropped my DSLR the other day and it seems to be acting up now.



I think this one was my favorite:


I sprinkled the sugar on pretty much immediately after piping so that it would stick. Be generous with the sugar; it looks much prettier that way. I usually decorate the cookies on a small cooling rack with parchment underneath to catch the overflow. This way you can pour off the excess sugar and reuse it, if necessary.

After that, give them some more time to dry. I waited about 6 hours, but overnight would have been better. Then I bagged each cookie in an individual cellophane bag and tied with ribbon. They make great favors and teacher gifts.

Decorated cookies - part 2

(In case you missed it, here's a link to Part 1)

Today I'm going to talk about the most fun part - icing and decorating the cookies! I won't lie, this part requires a fair amount of dedication because the real key to making beautiful, elaborately decorated cookies is time and patience. As I mentioned in part one, you want to allow yourself at least 3-4 days to make decorated cookies. These are definitely NOT something that can be whipped up the night before a big party. Why so long? Because the icing can take up to a full 24 hours to dry, and depending on how you want them decorated, you may have to wait for one color to set before you can start on another.

For the icing, I stick with the standard royal icing, which is basically egg whites and powdered sugar. You can use real egg whites, but I prefer meringue powder because it's less hassle to deal with, and it's also been pasteurized, which makes it a little bit safer. You should be able to find meringue powder in the cake decorating aisle at places like Jo-Ann, Michael's or Hobby Lobby. It pretty much lasts forever, so it's worth springing for.

Anyways, I pretty much just mix the powder according to directions, which in my case was 1/4 c. powder beaten with 1/2 c. water until peaks form, then add 4 c. sifted powdered sugar. This makes for a pretty stiff icing, but don't worry about that for now. You'll be able to thin it out later as needed. Next, you'll want to start breaking your large batch of white icing down into smaller colored ones.

Let me add a word here about food coloring: most of what you can buy at the regular grocery store is crap. Don't bother. For one thing, you'll likely have to use half a bottle to get even remotely close to the shade you want. And for another, most of that stuff is water-based, which means it's going to thin out your icing and make it very difficult to pipe.

Gel-based coloring is the way to go. Again, you should be able to find these in the cake-decorating aisle of your local craft store. Wilton is probably the most readily available. In a pinch it'll do, but honestly I don't care much for the Wilton-brand colors. For one thing, they come in these annoying little pots with screw on lids, which makes them super messy to use (not to mention that they tend to leak if they're not upright), but again, the colors just aren't very deep and I find myself having to use a lot to get the bright reds and greens for Christmastime.

If you can, find a cake supply store or go online and buy the professional ones. They're more expensive, but worth it. I use these AmeriColor Soft Gel Paste Food Colors, and one drop goes a loonnngg way.


OK, done with the plugs, now back to the tute.
Now here's one thing you need to be aware of: royal icing turns to cement when it dries. It is a total pain in the arse to clean up, and you really don't want to spend the next few days soaking and scraping it off of a million various bowls and spoons. So here's my tip: save a bunch of plastic containers, preferably with lids. I've been hoarding sour cream and yogurt containers for the past 2 months, along with plastic knives and spoons from takeout places, etc. Or if that's not an option, use plastic cups. This way, when you're done, you can just chunk everything into the trash. When you're not using any particular color, lay a damp paper towel on the surface of the icing and then cover with the lid or plastic wrap. This will keep the icing from drying out in-between uses.

Most people start by piping the outline of the cookie with the stiff icing and then thinning it down and "flooding" the outline to fill it in. Because my entire background is going to be one color and also because I don't like waiting for the outline to dry before I can flood, I usually just glaze the entire cookie with the thinned out icing and then go back and do the outline later. If you prefer a crisper look, then you can pipe the outline first. It all comes down to personal preference.

So after scooping some icing into a separate container and coloring it (one little drop of blue gel for about 1 1/2-2 cups of white icing), I thinned it down with a little water to make it more spreadable. There's no real formula to this - just add a couple teaspoons of water at a time and keep stirring until you reach the desired consistency.

Then I just spooned the icing on and spread it around a bit until the entire cookie was covered. Like I said, I don't mind it if the icing goes off the edges.



Another word of warning: there is such a thing as thinning your icing out too much. I glazed about 6 cookies (and sprinkled them with edible glitter), then watered down my icing a LOT more to glaze the rest. I foolishly (and lazily) thought it would be faster if I could pour the icing instead of spreading it around with a spoon. Well because of all the moisture in the icing, this decision cost me an extra TWO DAYS in drying time. Gah! They were so tacky after the second day that I honestly thought they were never going to dry, and I almost threw them all in the trash. Have I mentioned that I'm a bit of a perfectionist when it comes to these things?

Anyhow, they did eventually dry, and this is why it's a good idea to start way ahead of time. The extra water also gave the icing a more shiny and translucent look which I wasn't particularly fond of. Here are the two different versions, side by side:


The cookie on the left also has some edible glitter that I sprinkled on while it was still wet. I let the clerk at the store convince me that it would be pretty, but I was rather unimpressed by it. I probably won't use it again unless I'm going to use a LOT all over the entire face of the cookie.

I'm running short on time today, so I'm going to go ahead and post, and I'll show detailing and finishing touches in part 3. :)

Holiday baking

Well, I suck. I can't believe it's been over a month since I last posted. Sincere apologies for my lameness, although in my own defense, I spent the better part of November (including Thanksgiving) sick. And since then...well, I guess I've just been lazy.

To make up for it, I thought I'd post a step-by-step of how I do my decorated sugar cookies. I absolutely LOVE baking and decorating. It's easily one of my favorite things about the holidays - a built-in excuse to make tons of goodies and then give them all away so I don't have to eat them.

Because this is a bit of a long process (generally, I try to allot at least 4 days for decorated cookies), I'm going to break it up into parts. For part one, I thought I'd share my sugar cookie recipe. I got it at a cookie decorating demo in Austin a number of years ago from the owner of Penny's Pastries. It is far and away the best recipe ever for decorated cookies. The edges stay very clean during baking, and the best part? You don't have to refrigerate it before using! You can mix it up and immediately start rolling, cutting and baking. Also, according to Penny, once iced/glazed, these cookies are shelf-stable for up to a month! This makes it a lot easier to get a head start when you have a huge batch to make.

Butter Cookie Dough
from Penny's Pastries in Austin, TX

Ingredients
1 c. salted butter
1 c. granulated sugar
1 large egg
2 tbsp whipping cream
2 tbsp vanilla extract
1 tsp almond extract
3 c. unbleached flour
1 1/2 tsp baking powder

Directions
1. Preheat oven to 325 degrees.

2. In a mixer combine butter and sugar. Mix until just incorporated - do not cream until light.

3. Add egg, cream, vanilla, and almond extract all at once and thoroughly blend. It may look curdled, but don't worry, the finished dough will be fine.

4. In a separate bowl stir together flour and baking powder. Add the dry ingredients to the wet ones and blend.

5. Roll out to a thickness of about 1/4 inch and cut with a cookie cutter.

6. Bake on a greased cookie sheet 8 to 12 minutes (depending on size) and cool on a rack. Makes about 3 dozen cookies.

My changes:
I only ever use unsalted butter when I bake (in fact, I don't even keep the salted kind in my house), so I added about a 1/2 tsp of salt to compensate. I also despise almond extract, so I replaced it with orange extract/oil. Also, if you don't have whipping cream, half-and-half or whole milk will work just as well. But don't use skim. You want that extra fat. ;)

I also skipped the greased cookie sheet in favor of parchment paper. If you have the option, try and find light-colored cookie sheets. Dark ones will make the bottoms brown too quickly. My favorites are these AirBake sheets- I've had the same two sheets since college and they still yield perfect cookies every time.

This year, I'm making giant snowflake cookies (using this Snowflake Cookie Cutter Set that I absolutely LOVE) to give as favors at a holiday playdate. Because my cookies were gigantic, and I needed to make a lot of them, I doubled this recipe. It pretty much filled my stand mixer bowl to capacity.

I generally only like to re-roll the scraps once. I feel like after that, the dough gets difficult to work with and the cookies end up tough. So that being said, I ended up with 16 snowflakes, plus a couple dozen or so smaller random cookies cut from the edges and in-between spaces.

Coming in part two - icing!

More non-cookbook cooking

Per the request of a friend, I made the lemon-raspberry swirl ice cream sandwiches from this blog yesterday. And let me just say, they are freaking super delicious. Totally worth the effort.

My very minor variations:
I did not have two 8-inch square pans, so I used one 9x12 baking sheet to make the cookie crust. Doing that meant my crust turned out smaller but thicker, which I don't really think is a bad thing, but it did make for fewer and/or smaller sandwiches. However, I do think that having the 8-inch pans would have made for more uniform-looking sandwiches, if you care about that sort of thing.

I also used a half-gallon of one of my favorite store-bought vanilla ice creams, instead of homemade and I think it worked out just fine. I'm not really sure I'd go to all the trouble to make homemade ice cream for something like this. I also left out the Limoncello, since A) I didn't have any; B) I hate having to purchase a $30 bottle of liqueur so that I can use 2 tablespoons in some recipe; and C) the friend I made these for is pregnant and can't consume alcohol. I'm sure it would have added some nice lemon flavor, but again, I thought they were pretty dang good anyways. I especially liked the touch of ginger in the cookie.

Oh, last minor thing was that I just used my microplane to zest the lemon for the raspberry compote instead of using big strips.

I will more than likely make these again. I think they'd make an excellent dessert for company. Another friend suggested I use cake pans to make what would look like one GIANT ice cream sandwich, which I thought would be funny. I may try the original blueberry version from Gourmet Magazine that this one is based on, just for kicks.

Two words

Un-freaking believable! Or is that considered three words? Either way, the salted caramel ice cream turned out absolutely AMAZING. Smooth, rich, creamy, buttery, caramel-y goodness on a spoon. I shared a bowl with Troy last night, and I'm currently resisting the urge to go dig into it with a spoon right this second because once I start, I don't think I'll be able to stop. This is up there with Haagen Dazs Sticky Toffee Pudding ice cream, which is pretty much my all-time favorite (non-chocolate) ice cream.

I only have a few very minor critiques. I think making the salted caramel praline a day ahead is a mistake. By the time I went to break it up and mix it in with the ice cream, it had absorbed moisture from the air and it was sticky and hard to work with. I lost a fair amount to the aluminum foil that I'd covered the pan with. In retrospect, I probably should have sprayed the foil with oil and/or used parchment. So rather than smushing it up into confetti-like pieces with a rolling pin, I ended up breaking the caramel up as best as I could by hand, and chunking them in all willy-nilly. Next time, I'll make it while the ice cream base churns.

I'm also not super happy with how the salt did not distribute very evenly, so I had some pieces that had large chunks of sea salt and others that had none at all. I did use Sel Gris (French sea salt), but I'm wondering now if maybe I should have pulverized it so it was finer and dissovled more easily in the finished caramel.

I churned the ice cream base until it was slightly softer than soft-serve consistency. I've found that with my machine, that's about as firm as it ever gets and I did not want to overmix the base. Then I quickly poured the whole thing into a wide, shallow tupperware (I usually go for a deeper one, but it was the largest clean one I had on hand), and let it chill in the freezer some more.

When I served it about 4 hours later, it was still pretty soft, but had a very silky smooth texture (thank you, mesh strainer). I had expected the candy pieces to soften up into ribbons of gooey caramel (as mentioned in the recipe), but I'm not sure they had enough time to absorb moisture. Instead, they were more like crunchy shards. Not terrible, and in fact I sort of dug the texture it added, but it was not quite what I expected.

T loved the ice cream too and pronounced the flavor "very intense." I had mentioned the option of adding some espresso powder to the mix (as suggested by the author), but he thought that would be overkill. I think it'd be really good that way though. And I wouldn't mind adding nuts next time as well, just to add another layer of texture, especially if the caramel bits do end up going soft, as they're supposed to. This would be super killer on an apple pie or tart, and if I weren't trying to clear out my fridge in anticipation of going on vacation soon, I'd be baking one right now.

If you own an ice cream maker, you must make this.

Random recipes

I love food/cooking blogs (surprise). There are a few I follow pretty regularly, but I also happen upon a lot of others at random. I know this blog is supposed to be for one specific cookbook at a time, but I'm occasionally going to post other stuff I make from recipes I've found online. And the bonus for me is I don't have to type in the whole recipe, just link. Yeah, I'm lazy like that. In fact, here are two recipes that I made just last week, from my other blog:
Summer Squash Gratin
Chocolate Matcha Cake

Today, I decided to bust out my ice cream maker for the first time this summer and make this recipe I've had bookmarked for Salted Butter Caramel Ice Cream. How freaking good does that sound?! I absolutely love combinations of sweet and savory, so this is right up my alley.

It's a little bit more involved than your average ice cream recipe since it involves making caramel - twice. It also has to chill for several hours, so I won't be able to churn it until either late tonight or maybe even tomorrow. But so far, I think it's going to be worth all the extra work. The mix tastes absolutely heavenly!

If you've never made caramel before, it's really not very difficult - essentially, you just put sugar in a pan and let it melt, adding butter or cream or whatever. Although, I will warn you that caramel can be a little dangerous. Melted sugar is the culinary equivalent of molten lava - no exaggeration. When I was in cooking school, I actually burned my hand very badly with caramel, to the point where I had to take a trip to the hospital. Not fun. So be forewarned, no matter how temptingly delicious it looks, do not stick your finger in for a taste!

I'll update with pictures and a review once it's totally done.

Melon & Strawberries in Honey Sauce

Ingredients:
1/4 c. honey
1 tbsp grated orange rind
2-3 tbsp orange juice
1 tbsp Grand Marnier
1 large cantaloupe (about 1 1/2 lbs), seeded, peeled, and cut into 1-inch pieces (2 1/2 cups)
1 cup strawberries, washed, hulled, and halved or quartered, depending on size (about 3/4 cup)

1. Combine the honey, orange rind, orange juice, and Grand Marnier in a bowl large enough to hold the melon and strawberries. Add both fruits and toss thoroughly.

2. Refrigerate until serving time (can be assembled up to 6 hours ahead).

3. At serving time, divide the fruit mixture among 4 goblets.

I used a "Tuscan Extra Sweet" Cantaloupe. It looks pretty much like a regular cantaloupe, except for greenish ridges on the outside that are supposed to fade in color as it ripens. It really was quite sweet and the rind was very thin. I think because of that, I didn't end up needing the whole thing - half of the melon yielded close to 3 cups, diced.

I also ran into some issues with my honey, which had crystallized. Running the bottle under hot water melted it enough to get it out of the container, and I even zapped the sauce in the microwave after mixing to try and get all the honey dissolved but I still ended up with some gritty bits in the bottom. By the time we ate the dish though, it either all disappeared, or we just didn't notice since I strained out the liquid as I served.

Cheats & Changes:
I left out the Grand Marnier since we had small children eating with us. I also once again used my handy microplane to zest the entire orange, which I think came out to more or less 1 tablespoon. I juiced half of the same orange which yielded just over 3 tbsp.

The Verdict:
Like most of the rest of this menu, I thought this was good, but not a knockout by any means. And like the cole slaw, this was also a dish that benefited from having some time to marinate/macerate before serving. The melon I bought was so so sweet that I'm not sure the honey sauce really added anything. I think this would be better with either just the strawberries, or perhaps some melon that hasn't quite ripened. However, the kids loved it and had at least 3 (toddler-sized) helpings each. But I suppose they'll scarf down anything that's marinated in sugar or honey.

Blueberries au Citron

Ingredients:
1 lemon
1/4 c. maple syrup
1 pint (12 oz.) blueberries, preferably small wild ones

1. Using a vegetable peeler, remove 4 pees from the lemon and set them aside. Cut the lemon in half, and press it to obtain the juice (about 2 tbsp).

2. Mix the lemon juice and maple syrup in a bowl large enough to hold the blueberries.

3. Rinse the blueberries well in cool water, removing and discarding any damaged berries or foreign matter. Drain the berries well, and add them to the syrup mixture, along with the lemon peel. Mix well and refrigerate for at least 1 hour before serving.

I made this recipe once before, when I first got this book. I'm embarrassed to admit, it was kind of awful, in large part because I think I used Mrs. Butterworth instead of real maple syrup. Gag. Thankfully, I now know better.

Cheats & Changes:
I zested the entire lemon with my handy microplane grater rather than shave a few slices with a vegetable peeler, as stated in the recipe. I think you get more lemon flavor, plus it looks nicer than having these large, inedible hunks of peel.

The Verdict:
T & I both really loved this. In fact, we snarfed it down so quickly (and straight out of the serving bowl, no less) that I forgot to take pictures before it was all gone. Oops. Just picture fresh blueberries, in a light syrupy glaze. And pretend that the picture is perfectly lit and in-focus.

The lemon juice and maple syrup was a surprisingly nice combo - very light and sweet and refreshing. I think it'd actually be a nice glaze for other fruits as well. I will definitely be making this again, in fact probably tonight since I have about a pound of blueberries still.