Top Favorite: Alton Brown's Chocolate Chip Cookies

Alton Brown's Chocolate Chip Cookies - made May 20, 2013 from Kitchen and Trial Error

This is my other top favorite recipe for chocolate chip cookies and also went into the goodie bags I brought to my work conference last week.  Not much more to say about them other than they're made especially good when you use high quality milk chocolate chunks for them.  The brown butter adds a nice flavor to the cookie and the bread flour makes them chewy.  But no matter how good your ingredients are and how faithfully you follow the instructions for mixing them together, if you overbake them, they still won't be as good as they should be.

I've mentioned repeatedly that the most common mistake I see people make with cookies is they overbake them.  Overbaking means baking until the middles are puffy and brown.  You want to bake cookies only until the edges are golden brown and the middles are just barely past the stage of looking shiny or raw.  Once you take them out of the oven, the middles will sink - they're supposed to.  When they're completely cool, they'll be moist.

1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter
2 1/4 cups bread flour
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 cup granulated sugar
1 1/4 cups brown sugar
1 egg + 1 egg yolk
2 tablespoons milk
1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract
2 cups semisweet, milk or white chocolate chips or any combination (your choice)

1. Melt the butter in a saucepan over low heat and keep stirring/cooking until butter has turned brown and has a nutty fragrance.  Pour in a large mixing bowl (or bowl of your stand mixer) and set aside to cool to lukewarm.
2. In a separate bowl, sift the flour, salt, and baking soda together. Set aside.
3. Add the sugar and brown sugar to the melted butter and cream on medium speed, about 2 minutes. Add the egg, yolk, milk, and vanilla extract and mix until combined.
4. With the mixer on low, slowly add the flour mixture until combined. Stir in the chocolate chips.
5. Portion into cookie dough balls using an ice cream scoop and chill the dough balls at least two hours or overnight.
6. When your dough is chilled, preheat oven to 375 degrees F and line a baking sheet with parchment paper.
7. Place dough balls on the cookie sheet, leaving ample room between them, as they spread while baking.
8. Bake for about 15 minutes, or until golden brown. Cool for a few minutes on the baking sheet before transferring to a rack to cool. Store in an airtight container.

Top Favorite: Butter Toffee Crunch Shortbread

Butter Toffee Crunch Shortbread - made (again) May 20, 2013 from In the Sweet Kitchen by Regan Daley

Happy Memorial Day and a heartfelt thank you to all the men and women who serve their country so faithfully and the families who support and sacrifice right along with them.  We couldn't do what we do and be who we are without your service - thank you!

I love shortbread.  It falls into the category of I don't bake or buy it very often because I would want to eat more of it than I should so it's easier not to have it on hand in the first place (Sun Chips, Doritos and French fries fall into this category as well).  But every once in awhile it's a nice treat.  And if I'm going to indulge in shortbread, this is my favorite one.

I was at my company conference last week and, prior to meeting up with my colleagues, asked if they had any special requests for me to bring.  I typically make the offer, "just look through my blog and let me know if there's anything on there you want me to make".  Of course, there are some limitations - pies, anything with ice cream or mousse, lava cakes, etc aren't practical for me to pack up and travel with. And I had used up all of my overripe bananas on the Banana Bread Brownies so anything with banana was out as I didn't have enough time to let bananas ripen.  But I was pleasantly surprised by the request for this shortbread since it gave me an excuse to make it again.

The challenge with this shortbread is you'll want to take it out too soon.  Don't.  Because if you do, it won't have the "snap" of good shortbread and instead will be too chewy because it hasn't baked long enough.  It looks done in my oven at 45 minutes.  That's when I get twitchy and want to take it out because it's already brown all over and I don't want it to burn.  My underbaking tendencies are not well served with shortbread.  But it has a much better texture when it's baked for long enough so I managed to keep myself from taking it out until it had been in there for at least 55 minutes

2 1/3 cups all-purpose flour
2/3 cup rice flour or substitute cornstarch if rice flour is unavailable
½ teaspoon salt
1 ½ cups (¾lb) fresh unsalted butter, at room temperature
6 tablespoons fruit sugar or superfine sugar
6 tablespoons tightly packed light brown sugar
¾ cup miniature butterscotch chips
¾ cup English toffee pieces (available in the baking sections of most supermarkets)

1. Preheat oven to 325°F. Line a 9 x 13" baking pan with foil and spray lightly with nonstick cooking spray.
2. Sift the all-purpose flour and rice flours together with the salt and set aside.
3. In the bowl of an electric or stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, beat the butter until very smooth. Gradually add the sugars and cream the mixture until it is very light and fluffy. Transfer the creamed butter-sugar mixture to a large mixing bowl. Add the flour mixture, about ½ cup at a time, fully incorporating each addition before adding the next. Use your fingers to knead the final portion of dry ingredients into the dough, keeping your palms off the dough as much as possible, so the warmth doesn’t turn the butter oily. When the last of the flour is fully blended, add the butterscotch and toffee bits and knead them into the dough until they are evenly distributed.
4. Press the dough firmly into the prepared pan and use the back of a metal spoon to smooth the surface. Prick the dough all over with a fork and set the pan in the center of the oven. Bake the shortbread for about 45 minutes, then prick the dough again to release any trapped air. Return the pan to the oven for another 15 or 30 minutes, or until the edges are light golden brown, and the center feels just firm to the touch.
5. The shortbread will set to a very firm biscuit as it cools, so it must be cut while it is still warm. Cool the pan on a wire rack for 7 or 8 minutes, then run a sharp paring knife around the outside of the dough to loosen the edges. Make two long cuts in the shortbread, dividing it evenly into three rectangles, each cut beginning and ending at a short side of the pan. Cutting from long side to long side, cut the rectangles into about ¾-inch wide fingers, wiping the knife on a clean towel between each cut, as it gets sticky and can pull and tear the cooling shortbread.
6. Leave the fingers to cool completely in the pan, then re-cut and transfer them to airtight tins.

These are the goodie bags I brought to the conference with me

Pecan Praline Cookies

Pecan Praline Cookies - made May 11, 2013 from My Own Sweet Thyme

Since I didn't use up all of the icing from the Caramel Bundt Cake, I needed to repurpose the remainder so I tried out these cookies that I found on pinterest from My Own Sweet Thyme.  I'm including the original frosting recipe though for future use. I omitted the pecans from the cookie dough since nuts in cookies typically aren't my thing unless the cookies are more crisp like shortbread. 

If you like pralines, you'd like these cookies.  If you find pralines too sweet, you'll like these cookies even better.  I had genuine pralines (pronounced prah-leens) when I was in New Orleans, made by a local woman at the farmers' market, but I found them much too sweet for my taste.  However, these cookies are a wonderful representation.  They're brown sugar cookies, the frosting was a nice penuche-like touch and the single pecan on top brought the flavors together nicely. 

1 cup butter, softened
½ cup firmly packed brown sugar
½ cup white sugar
1 egg
1 teaspoon vanilla
2 cups flour
½ teaspoon baking soda
¼ teaspoon salt
½ cup finely chopped pecans, optional
Brown Sugar Frosting (see below)
Pecan halves for garnish

1. In a large mixing bowl, beat butter at medium speed with an electric mixer. Gradually add sugars, mixing well. Add egg and vanilla; beat well.
2. In a medium bowl, whisk together the flour, soda and salt. Gradually add the dry mixture to the creamed mixture, stirring after each addition. Stir in the chopped pecans, if using.
3. Chill dough for 30 minutes. 
4. When chilled, remove from the refrigerator. Shape dough into 1-inch balls. Place the balls of dough on cookie sheets lined with parchment paper.
5. Bake at 350 degrees for 10 - 12 minutes. Cool on wire racks. 
6. When cool, spread Brown Sugar Frosting over the tops of the cookies. Top each with a pecan half before the icing sets.

Brown Sugar Frosting
1 cup firmly packed brown sugar
½ cup half & half
1 tablespoon butter
1½ cups sifted powdered sugar (plus a little more if needed)

1. Combine brown sugar and half & half in a saucepan. 
2. Cook over medium heat, stirring constantly, until mixture comes to a boil. Boil 4 minutes. 
3. Remove from heat. Stir in butter. Add 1½ cups powdered sugar. Beat at medium speed with an electric mixer until smooth. Add a little more powdered sugar, if needed, to achieve a desired spreading consistency.

"Best" Brownies

"Best" Brownies - made May 14, 2013, recipe adapted from allrecipes.com

This was the name on the allrecipes site but I put the "best" in quotation marks since "best" is a relative term.  I needed to make another rendition of my Peanut Butter Crunch Brownies and I couldn't resist trying a different brownie recipe for the base.  Usually I can scan a recipe and predict how it'll turn out.  Because this one gets its chocolate flavor only from cocoa powder, I figured this would make a dark chocolate base that would pair well with the lighter and sweeter peanut butter crunch topping.  The baking powder would also make a lighter texture than a brownie without any chemical leavening.

I was actually right on how this turned out.  It was good but I wouldn't consider it particularly memorable.  If I had made it as a standalone brownie, I'd probably be more critical of it but since I paired it with the topping, it served its purpose nicely.  Sometimes I think I make the brownie just so the Snickers, peanut butter cups and peanut butter crunch topping will have something to sit on.

1/2 cup butter
1 cup sugar
2 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/3 cup unsweetened cocoa powder, sifted
1/2 cup flour
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon baking powder

Peanut Butter Crunch Topping

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.  Line an 8 x 8" pan with aluminum foil and spray lightly with nonstick cooking spray.
2. In a small saucepan, melt butter.  Remove from heat and stir in sugar, eggs and vanilla extract.  Beat in cocoa, flour, salt and baking powder until batter is smooth and glossy (do not overmix).  Pour batter into prepared pan.
3. Bake for 25-30 minutes or until a toothpick inserted near the center comes out with a few moist crumbs.
4. A few minutes before brownies are done, sprinkle top with chopped peanut butter cups and Snickers.
5. Prepare Peanut Butter Crunch Topping and spread over baked brownie, covering peanut butter cups and Snickers completely.  Let cool, cut into squares and serve.

Cocktail Buns

Cocktail Buns - made May 12, 2013, recipe adapted from allrecipes.com

I love the cocktail buns from the Asian bakeries.  I first had them at dim sum: they're the oblong sweet bread rolls filled with a coconut-butter-sugar mixture and sprinkled with sesame seeds on top.  Not to be confused with custard buns that are the same sweet bread rolls but filled with pastry cream or custard. I don't go to dim sum that often so I never had them that much but then I discovered they sold them at the Asian bakeries and sometimes places like Ranch 99 in the hot-food-to-go section.  Like anything else that I enjoy from bakeries and restaurants, I like trying to make my own version at home.

I got this recipe from allrecipes.com and it was pretty simple to make.  The main mistake I made though was not rolling the dough out thinly enough.  I ended up with too much filling and not enough dough.  Which meant my cocktail buns, once they had gone through the second rising, were too much bread with not enough filling.  So I know what to adjust for next time.  I liked this recipe a lot though and the filling was almost exactly like what you could get at the dim sum places.  There was just a tad too much of the dry ingredients so I would recommend cutting both the flour and the powdered milk from 1/2 cup each to 1/3 cup each.  Otherwise, the flavor was just like what I buy at the Asian bakeries.

1/3 cup sugar
2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour, more if needed
1 cup milk
1/4 cup softened butter
1 tablespoon active dry yeast
1 egg, beaten
up to 1 additional cup of all-purpose flour for kneading, if needed (I ended up using 3/4 cup instead of 1 cup)

Filling
1/4 cup softened butter
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 cup nonfat dry milk powder (I would recommend cutting to 1/3 cup)
1/2 cup all-purpose flour (I would recommend cutting to 1/3 cup)
1 cup finely grated fresh coconut
1 tablespoon sesame seeds, for garnish (optional)

1. Place 1/3 cup sugar and milk in a small saucepan, and stir until the sugar is dissolved. Add 1/4 cup softened butter, and gently warm the mixture until the butter melts and the mixture is warm but not hot (no warmer than about 100 degrees F (40 degrees C)). In a large bowl, stir together the yeast with 2 1/2 cups flour until well blended, and pour the milk mixture into the flour-yeast mixture. Stir in 1 beaten egg, and mix until the mixture forms a sticky, wet dough.
2. Turn the dough out onto a well-floured surface, and knead for about 10 minutes, gradually kneading in 1 cup of additional flour or as needed to make a smooth, elastic dough. Form the dough into a round ball, place into an oiled bowl, and turn the dough around in the bowl a few times to coat with oil. Cover the bowl with a cloth, and allow dough to rise in a warm place until doubled, about 1 hour.
3. Cream 1/4 cup softened butter with 1/2 cup of sugar in a bowl until the mixture is light and fluffy, and stir in dry milk powder, 1/2 cup flour, and the coconut until the mixture is smooth and well blended. Set the filling aside.
4. Working on a floured surface, punch down the dough, and cut into 2 equal pieces. Cut each piece into 8 equal-sized pieces (16 pieces total). Form each piece into an oblong bun, and flatten the bun with a floured rolling pin. Scoop up about 1 tablespoon of filling with a spoon, and place in the center of a bun. Pull and pinch the edges of the dough together to enclose the filling in the bun. Repeat with all dough pieces, and place the filled buns, seam sides down, onto the prepared baking sheets. Cover the buns with a cloth, and allow to rise in a warm place 1 hour.
5. Preheat an oven to 375 degrees F (190 degrees C). Line baking sheets with parchment paper.
6. For a glossy coating, beat 1 egg in a bowl, and brush each bun with a little beaten egg. Sprinkle each bun with a few sesame seeds.
7. Bake in the preheated oven until the buns are golden brown, 10 to 15 minutes. Allow to cool before serving. If the bottoms are too pale but the tops are golden brown, reduce heat to 350 degrees and bake an additional 5 minutes.

Banana Bread Brownies

Banana Bread Brownies - made May 12, 2013, recipe adapted from Life's Simple Measures

So....you remember how I always say I only eat 1 taste test piece of whatever I make and give the rest away, even if it turned out and I like it?  If something is really good, I might indulge in a second piece the next day but it would have to be pretty fantastic to warrant a second taste. So it might be something of an endorsement if I tell you I ate THREE pieces of this in the same afternoon.  Yup, three.  The first piece practically made my eyes roll to the back of my head in gastronomic bliss.  The second piece also went down easy.  I was probably a little sick by the time I finished the third piece a couple of hours later and I remembered why I usually eat only 1 (or 2) pieces of something really good.  But still....no regrets.

If you like bananas in any way, shape or form, you must make these bars.  I don't usually endorse something so wholeheartedly as I know we all have different tastes but seriously.....try these.  If you don't have overripe bananas on hand, go out right now and buy the most ripe bananas you can find then let them sit on your counter until they turn black.  The wait might be tortuously long  but let that be a lesson to you to have overripe bananas on hand for baking emergencies like this.  Although now that I've used up all my overripe bananas, I have to start the cycle over because I am so making these again.  If anything non-chocolate could be fudgy, that's how I would describe the texture of these bars.  Don't overbake them or else they'll be more cakey than "fudgy" but don't underbake them too much either since bananas already add a lot of moisture to whatever they're baked in and you don't want it mushy or gooey but "fudgy".  I baked mine to the point that the bottoms were still a bit dense but the top half was just perfect.

And once again, I have to say the frosting was perfect for these bars.  Even if you don't like frosting, don't skip it!  I ended up using only 3 cups of powdered sugar rather than 4 since I didn't want the frosting to be too sweet.  When you make the frosting, be sure to whisk it well over the stove to emulsify the brown butter in with the rest of the ingredients.  When you spread it over the hot banana bread brownies, the butter will tend to separate as the frosting sets.  Just blot it carefully with a paper towel to absorb it.  It'll look better once it cools not to have pools of separated butter on top.  I didn't try these until they were completely cool.  If I'd had a piece when they were warm, they might've been a bit gooey for me.  But once at room temperature, they were perfect.

The frosting does set once the bars are cool.  If you want to stack pieces on top of each other, separate the layers with wax paper or else the moist bottoms of the bars on top will stick to the frosting of the bars beneath them (I discovered that the hard way so you don't have to - you're welcome).

Banana Bread Bars:

1 1/2 cups sugar

1 cup sour cream

1/2 cup butter, softened

2 eggs

1 3/4 cups (3 or 4) ripe bananas, mashed

2 teaspoons vanilla extract

2 cups all purpose flour

1 teaspoon baking soda

3/4 teaspoon salt

1/2 cup chopped walnuts (optional, I left them out)

Brown Butter Frosting:

1/2 cup butter

3-4 cups powdered sugar (I only used 3 cups)

1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract

3 tablespoons milk

1. Heat oven to 375 degrees F.  Line a 9 x 13 pan with aluminum foil and spray lightly with nonstick cooking spray.  For the bars, in a large bowl, beat together sugar, sour cream, butter, and eggs until creamy.  Blend in bananas and vanilla extract.  Add flour, baking soda, salt, and blend for 1 minute.  Stir in walnuts, if using.
2. Spread batter evenly into pan.  Bake 25 to 30 minutes or until golden brown and a toothpick inserted near the center comes out clean. 
3. Meanwhile, for the frosting, heat butter in a large saucepan over medium heat until boiling.  Let the butter fat solids turn a delicate brown and remove from heat immediately.
4. Add powdered sugar, vanilla extract and milk.  Whisk together until smooth (it should be thicker than a glaze but thinner than frosting).  Using a spatula, spread the brown butter frosting over the warm bars (the frosting will be easier to spread while the bars are still warm). If the butter separates from the frosting, blot carefully with a paper towel.  Cool completely before cutting.

Shrimp with Garlic and Cilantro

Shrimp with Garlic and Cilantro - made May 12, 2013, recipe adapted from Cooking Melangery

The original recipe called for using parsley but I needed cilantro for another recipe and I didn't want to buy both when I only needed a little of each.  So I substituted cilantro in this recipe.  I thought I had a dusty bottle of white wine in my pantry but it turns out it was a dusty bottle of red wine from the last time I needed a couple of tablespoons for cooking so I also substituted that in as well.  The good thing about cooking is it's a lot more forgiving than baking on substituting random ingredients. And while I have the pickiest taste buds when it comes to desserts, I'm less picky about savory foods, especially when I have to cook it myself.  Then I'm a lot more flexible.

This is another quick shrimp stir fry that took mere minutes to throw together.  It was good and it was simple, making it a contender for an easy weeknight meal when you're short on time.  Plus healthy and low calorie when you have it on a bed of salad greens which is what I did.  I saved my calories for dessert.

4 to 5 tablespoons olive oil
4 garlic cloves, finely minced
1 teaspoon red pepper flakes
1 teaspoon sweet paprika
1 pound medium shrimp, peeled and deveined
1 to 2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
1 to 2 tablespoons dry white wine
salt and freshly ground black pepper, to taste
2 tablespoons chopped fresh cilantro

1. In a sauté pan over medium heat, warm the olive oil. Add the garlic, red pepper flakes and paprika and sauté for 1 minute until fragrant. 
2. Increase the heat to high, add the shrimp, lemon juice and dry white wine, stir well, and sauté until the shrimp turn pink and are opaque throughout, about 3-5 minutes. 
3. Season with salt and black pepper, sprinkle with the cilantro and serve.