Vanilla Bean Sugar Cookie Cake

Vanilla Bean Sugar Cookie Cake - made March 25, 2012 from Dreaming of White Chocolate blog

I have seen various versions of this around the blogosphere for the past few months, most having rave reviews and leading me to wonder "what am I missing?"  I like vanilla so I wanted to make it too.  And I did attempt it a few times, including my Valentine Sugar Cookie Cake that I made up on the fly.  The most common version was the Lofthouse Sugar Cookie Cake which contains cream cheese and butter.  The first 2 variations of the same recipe that I tried didn't include cream cheese so for my third attempt, I decided to stick to the more common version that had it.

Why was I trying so many (for me) times?  Because I have to admit, I was underwhelmed with the results of the cookie cake.  I liked the flavor but not the texture.  But so many people raved about them, not just liked them but raved about them, that I convinced myself I must've done something wrong on the previous tries.  And if I could just hit on the right recipe and technique, I too would rave.  I went with this version from Dreaming of White Chocolate's blog because her picture showed a fluffy, moist cake and that was what I wanted (click on the title above to go to her recipe).  What I hadn't liked about my previous attempts is they always seemed a little dry to me.  Part of that was my own perception - if it's made in a 9 x 13 pan and looks like a cake, it should be moist like a cake.  But it's meant to be a "cookie cake" and cookies aren't as moist and fluffy as a cake.  But still, I wanted a moist cake.

I followed the directions for the cake but made up my own frosting recipe.  I was a little concerned when I cut the frosted cake because mine didn't look fluffy like the Dreaming of White Chocolate blog picture.  It looked.....dry.  Gads.  Been there, did it again.  Once again, I had made a decent bar cookie but a slightly dry cake.  The only thing that really saved it was the frosting.  And I'm not even a frosting person!  So when the frosting is the best part of the piece, well, as I said, I was underwhelmed.

But wait, you know what you can do with a dry-ish cake?  That's right, pop it into the microwave for 10 seconds.  The frosting gets a little melty on top and the cake softens up to the perfect texture.  So I actually ended up loving these when they're warm to lukewarm.  So that's a good tip to remember: if you like the flavor of something but not the texture, try warming it up just a bit.  For cakes, I wouldn't go more than 15 seconds in the microwave, 10 seconds if it's got frosting.  Same with cookies.  I liked this warm but no, I wouldn't eat it at room temperature.

Vanilla Frosting

1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter
2-3 cups confectioners' sugar (depending on the consistency you want the frosting to be)
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 teaspoon vanilla bean paste
1-2 tablespoons whole milk, as needed

Beat butter until soft and creamy.  Add 2 cups confectioners sugar and vanilla extract and paste.  Alternately add milk and confectioners' sugar until you have the desired consistency and taste.

Homemade Whatchamacallits

Homemade Whatchamacallits - made March 23, 2012 from Inside BruCrew Life's blog

Remember Whatchamacallits?  I used  to love these candy bars when I was a kid - crisp rice, caramel, peanuts and chocolate, a no-fail combo.  I don't know if they even make these anymore since I don't shop the candy aisle unless I'm buying them on sale after Halloween for brownie add-ins but I don't recall seeing them in recent years.  This recipe from the blogosphere caught my eye and the pictures looked so yummy, I had to try them for myself.  Click on the recipe title to go to the original recipe and blog.

I did modify this though; instead of caramel topping, I used dulce de leche and instead of making the chocolate topping, I melted some milk chocolate candy melts and enrobed bar-size pieces to make a more authentic-looking whatchamacallit bar.  After having tasted these, they were good but to make them a little closer to the original whatchamacallit bar, I would consider cutting back on the flour and adding more rice krispies to get the crunch.  Modified recipe below.

2 cups brown sugar
1/2 cup butter
2 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla
1/4 cup dulce de leche
1 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 3/4 cups flour
3/4 cup caramel bits
3/4 cup chopped peanuts, toasted
2 cups rice krispies

Milk Chocolate Candy Melts (I used Wilton's Premium)

1. Line a 9 x 13" baking pan with foil and spray lightly with nonstick cooking spray.  Preheat oven to 350 degrees.  
2. Cream the butter and sugar until creamy. Add the eggs, vanilla, dulce de leche and salt and beat on low until fluffy.
3. Sift the baking powder and flour and slowly add to the butter mixture. Stir in the caramel bits, peanuts and rice krispies (in this order) by hand.   Batter will be thick.  Smooth top with small metal spatula.  Bake for 28 minutes. Cool on a wire rack.
4. Cut blondies into bar-size rectangles (your choice on how big or small you want them to be.  Melt candy melts over low heat, stirring smooth.  Spread over bars, using small metal spatula, encasing top and sides with the melted chocolate.  Set on wax paper and let cool until chocolate is set.

Best Snickerdoodles

Snickerdoodles - made March 23, 2012 from Dessert Now, Dinner Later

I'm always on the lookout for a good snickerdoodle recipe.  My normal ideal cookie is thick with crisp edges, chewy middles, and great flavor.  Most really delicious-tasting snickerdoodles spread thin.  The ones that stay thicker are more cakey yet sometimes lack flavor from too much flour and not enough butter.  But if I had to choose, I would pick flavor over cookie thickness any day.  Snickerdoodles are also tricky because it's very easy to overbake them and then they'll not only be flat but dry.  So I'm a bit of an oven nazi, ready to pounce on the cookies to take them out when they're just barely past the "not doughy-raw" stage and before they're fully baked.  Remember, cookies will continue to bake on the hot cookie sheet even after you take them out of the oven.  This recipe, from Dessert First, Dinner Later (great name) makes a a very tasty snickerdoodle.  It was really good and although it still spread, the edges were crisp, the middles were chewy and the flavor was perfect.  Please click on the recipe title above to take you to the original blog I got the recipe from.

I made these cookies for dinner with my cousin and her non-chocolate-eating son whose moniker is Vanilla King because vanilla is his favorite flavor.  The cookies were a hit, judging by the 3 he ate after dinner.  Good thing I packed enough in the goodie bag for his parents too :).

Chocolate Chip Cookie Tarts

Chocolate Chip Cookie Tarts - made March 23, 2012 recipes adapted from The Last Course by Claudia Fleming with Melissa Clark (book #206) and Perfect Light Desserts by Nick Malgieri and David Joachim (book #207)

I still had my mini tart pans out from the Banana Coconut Tart so I wanted to make more tarts - cuz, you know, it would be so much effort to put those pans away in the cupboard instead of letting them sit on the counter.  Added bonus that I thought to combine 2 recipes from 2 more books in my baking challenge.  Plus I wanted to use up the last of the jar of dulce de leche from Williams Sonoma.....so that I could buy more.  So all the stars aligned to make this creation - a chocolate chip cookie tart with a layer of dulce de leche between crust and filling.  YUM.

Make the chocolate tart dough and chill for 20 minutes

Spread a layer of dulce de leche on the bottom

Cover with chocolate chip cookie dough

In 3 of the stages

Tart dough recipe makes 4 individual-sized tarts but there's enough cookie dough for 6 tarts (bake the extra in ramekins)

Bake until cookie filling is golden brown

This was pretty good.  Be warned, the tart shell is pretty dark chocolate so a sweet filling makes a nice complement for it.  If you went with a dark chocolate filling, it might be a bit much.  But I liked the combination with the dulce de leche and the chocolate chip cookie.  I underbaked it slightly and that made for a nice chewy texture with the filling.  In fact, I might prefer this chocolate chip cookie recipe as more of a filling rather than a standalone cookie.

Chocolate Tart Dough

½ cup unsalted butter, softened

½ cup plus 1 tablespoon confectioners’ sugar

1 large egg yolk

¾ teaspoon vanilla extract

1 ¼ cups all-purpose flour

¼ cup unsweetened Dutch-processed cocoa powder

1.      In the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, cream the butter and confectioners’ sugar until combined, about 1 minute.  Add the egg yolk and vanilla and beat until smooth.  Sift in the flour and cocoa powder and beat on low speed until just combined.  Scrape the dough onto a sheet of plastic wrap and form it into a disk.  Wrap and chill until firm, about 1 hour, or up to 3 days.

2.      Preheat oven to 325°F. On a lightly floured surface, roll the tart dough to an 18 x 12-inch rectangle 3/16 inch thick.  Using a 2 ½-inch round cutter, cut out 24 rounds of dough and press them into mini muffin tins or 2-inch tart pans, trimming away any excess dough; prick the dough all over with a fork.  Chill the tart shells for 20 minutes.

3.      Spoon a thin layer of dulce de leche at the bottom of each tart shell.  Fill with chocolate chip cookie dough.  Bake for about 20 minutes or until cookie filling is golden brown.  Do not overbake.

Chocolate Chip Cookie Filling

1 ¼ cups all-purpose flour, spooned and leveled

1 teaspoon baking soda

½ teaspoon salt

4 tablespoons unsalted butter, softened

½ cup light brown sugar, firmly packed

6 tablespoons granulated sugar

1 large egg

2 tablespoons whole milk

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1 ½ cups chocolate chips

1.      Preheat oven to 350°F. Line cookie sheets with parchment paper.

2.      Mix the flour, baking soda and salt together and set aside.

3.      Beat the butter and sugars together with the paddle attachment of a stand mixer on medium speed until well combined, about 1 minute.  Beat in the egg and milk until they are absorbed and then the vanilla.

4.      Scrape down the bowl and beater and beat in the flour mixture on low speed.

5.      Fold in the chocolate chips by hand.  Spread the filling in the tart shells over the dulce de leche layer.  Bake as directed above.

French Toast

Baby French Toast - made March 18, 2012 from Just a Bite by Gale Gand (book #205)

I almost made the bread pudding recipe from this book but I decided to do something a little different.  I managed to find challah at my Trader Joe's (they restocked, yay) so I'm not even going to pretend I didn't buy a loaf.  I love French Toast but rarely make it.  Probably because I rarely have breakfast food for breakfast and when I have it for dinner, I usually feel like pancakes or waffles instead.

French toast is easy to make but really good French toast is a bit trickier.  Start with your favorite bread.  The egg and cream mixture you soak it in can hide a lot of sins but if I don't like raisin bread, for instance, making raisin bread French toast isn't going to make me like it any better.  I like to cut my bread slices thick but be warned, if you do, you need to soak it a bit longer in the mixture and fry it over lower heat for a longer time to make sure it cooks all the way through.  Otherwise your French toast will be soggy on the inside while the outside can look done or be burned.

Gale Gand's recipe calls for cutting the crusts off the bread slices.  I did that for picture taking purposes of the finished product but truthfully, I don't believe in cutting crusts off bread.  It seems wasteful unless you do something else with the crusts.  Bread cannot be made without a crust so it should be eaten with it too.  I ended up soaking the crusts too and frying them separately because I couldn't bear to let them go to waste.

This was a basic French toast recipe.  It was good but I can't say it stood out in any way from how I normally make French toast which is with egg, low fat or whole milk, a little sugar and a little vanilla.  I think what was supposed to make this a little more special was the blueberry compote recipe that came with it but I didn't make that.  Butter melting over warm French toast was good enough for me.

8 slices store-bought brioche, challah or soft white bread

1 egg plus 1 egg yolk

Pinch of salt

¼ cup sugar

¼ teaspoon pure vanilla extract

½ cup half and half

½ cup milk

2 tablespoons unsalted butter

1.     Cut the crusts off the bread slices and cut each slice into quarters to make squares, about 1 ½ inches on each side.

2.     Whisk the egg and yolk in a medium bowl.  Whisk in the salt, sugar and vanilla.  Gradually whisk in the half-and-half and the milk.  Pour the mixture into a shallow baking dish.  Working in batches if necessary, place the bread pieces in the egg mixture and let them soak, then turn them and soak on the other side.

3.     Melt the butter in a skillet until it is foamy and very hot.  Working in batches, brown the soaked bread on both sides.  Serve warm.

Banana Coconut Tart

Banana Coconut Tart - made March 17, 2012 from Sweety Pies by Patty Pinner (book #204)

Do you like the caramelized taste and soft gooey texture of the inside of a fried banana?  If you do, you need to make this recipe.  And bonus if you love coconut like I do because it adds a great chewiness to go with the gooey-liciousness of the banana filling.  The only thing I had trouble with was the tart crust.  I'm insecure about my pie-crust-making abilities so I followed the directions to the letter, including not adding too much liquid as the author warned the crust would be soupy if too much liquid was added.  But although I added a little more than 3 tablespoons of heavy cream, I don't think that was enough.  The dough held together when I gathered it into a ball and smooshed it together to chill but it fell apart when I tried to roll it out.  As in, it fell apart and mocked me.  So I gave up on rolling it out and ended up patching pieces together and smoothing the dough into each mini-tart pan.  It was filled with the banana-coconut filling so it turned out okay and you couldn't tell my Frankenstein job with the dough.  Plus it was nice and flaky and a perfect complement to the filling.  Thumbs up.

The pie crust recipe ended up covering 4 individual-sized tart pans and the filling recipe was enough for 5 so I made the 5th one crustless in a ramekin I normally use for creme brulee since it was approximately the same size and shallow depth as my tart pans.

Flaky Pie Crust

1 1/3 cups all-purpose flour

1 teaspoon sugar

¼ teaspoon salt

½ cup chilled vegetable shortening

3 tablespoons ice-cold heavy cream or evaporated milk, more or less as needed

Filling

¼ cup (½ stick) unsalted butter, softened

1 cup sugar

1 large egg, slightly beaten

½ cup milk

1 ripe banana, mashed and peeled

1 ½ cups sweetened shredded coconut

1.     Make the pie crust: Sift the flour, sugar, and salt together in a large bowl.  Cut in the shortening until the mixture resembles a bowl of sweet peas.  Tossing the mixture with a fork, sprinkle in the cream or milk 1 tablespoon at a time.  Continue tossing until the dough holds together when lightly pressed.

2.     With lightly floured hands, loosely gather the dough into a flat ball, wrap in plastic and refrigerate for at least 30 minutes.

3.     Preheat the oven to 350⁰F.

4.     Make the filling: In a medium-size bowl, beat the butter and sugar together until light and creamy.  Beat in the egg, milk and banana until smooth.  Stir in 1 cup of the coconut.

5.     On a lightly floured surface, roll out the dough until 1/8” thick.  Cut the dough into 12 circles about 1 inch larger than the mini tart pans you’ll be using.  Line the pans with the circles of dough and trim the edges even with the top of the pan.

6.     Spoon the filling into the shells and bake until the tarts are a light toasty brown, about 20 minutes.  During the last 5 minutes of baking time, sprinkle the remaining ½ cup coconut on a cookie sheet. Put in the oven with the tarts and let brown, watching so it doesn’t burn.  When the coconut is toasted, about 5 minutes, take out of the oven.  Take the tarts out of the oven and sprinkle the toasted coconut on top of each one.  Let cool completely on a wire rack before serving.

Bread Pudding "Cupcakes"

Bread Pudding "Cupcakes" - made March 16, 2012, recipe adapted from Cupcakes from the Cake Mix Doctor by Anne Byrn (book #203)

A bit of a whackadoodle "bread pudding" when the custard doesn't go all the way to the bottom

Yes, that's right another bread pudding recipe.  I wanted to make another one because, let's be honest, I wanted an excuse to buy more challah.  But alas, when I went to Trader Joe's they were out of what I had bought before and only had a seeded version.  I didn't want sesame seeds in my bread pudding so I opted to go to a different Trader Joe's when I was in a different area the next day.  Only to be thwarted when I discovered this one didn't carry challah at all or else they were completely out.  I would've felt pathetic trying a third store for challah so I settled on buying a pack of brioche instead.  This one didn't look as tempting as the challah I had before so it was easy for me to let it sit, unmolested, on the counter to stale.

I did modify the recipe though as the original called for currants and brandy, neither of which I care for.  So I made it as a straight up bread pudding then added my own touch of cinnamon to give it a bit more flavor.  Unfortunately, while the addition of cinnamon was really good, this bread pudding didn't turn out as well as Dorie Greenspan's recipe.  I followed the directions as is but that meant the custard didn't soak down to the bottom of the "cupcake" so the bottom half was slightly dry bread while the top half was custard - you can see what I mean in the picture.  So I modified the directions below on what I think would work better so that the custard soaks all of the bread.  And the brioche I used?  Not as good as the challah.

5-6 ounces brioche or challah, cut into ¼” – ½” cubes

2 1/3 cups milk

2 large eggs

½ cup sugar

1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

¼ teaspoon ground cinnamon

1.     Lightly grease an 8-cup cupcake pan (each cup 2 ½ inches in diameter) with soft butter and divide the bread cubes evenly amongst the cupcake cups, filling only halfway full and reserving the rest of the bread cubes.

2.     Heat the milk over medium heat until it just comes to a boil.  While the milk is heating, beat the eggs in a medium-size bowl.  Whisk in the sugar until the mixture is lemon colored, 1 minute.  Add vanilla and ground cinnamon. When the milk is hot but not boiling, remove the pan from the heat.  Temper the egg mixture with ½ cup of the hot milk, whisking.  Gradually whisk the egg mixture back into the hot milk in the pan.  Place the pan back over medium heat and whisk the entire mixture until it begins to thicken, about 2 minutes more.  Remove the pan from the heat, stirring constantly for another minute.

3.     Pour the custard mixture over the bread in each cup, completely covering the bottom half of bread cubes. Let custard mixture soak into the bread 5-10 minutes, then place the rest of the bread cubes to fill the top half of each muffin tin.  Gradually add more custard until all custard mixture is gone.  Let stand another 10-15 minutes.

4.     Preheat the oven to 350⁰F.  Place the cupcake tin on a baking sheet and place in the oven.  Bake until the cupcakes rise up and the bread cubes are golden brown, 20 to 25 minutes.  Remove the pan from the oven and place on a rack to cool for 5 minutes.  The mixture will fall slightly.  Run a small spatula around the edges and lift up the cakes from the bottom.  Serve warm.