Buttercrunch Melt-a-ways

Buttercrunch Melt-a-ways - made 3.21.10 from Baking by Flavor by Lisa Yockelson

Think of this as similar to a Mexican Wedding Cake (also on my blog as Buttery Tea Balls) - melt-in-your-mouth texture, rolled in powdered sugar but instead of nuts, it has toffee bits inside. It's also rolled in almonds before baking then rolled in powdered sugar - twice - after baking. I didn't have Heath bars to chop up so I used half a bag of the Heath toffee bits. Not sure I would've liked chocolate in these anyway but I may try them again properly with actual chopped-up Heath bars. The cookies don't spread so you can rely on the size of dough you roll out is the size of cookie you're going to get. Don't make these big. They have a high butter content relative to the sugar and flour so these are rich. A bite-size cookie is the perfect size to enjoy these.

2 ¼ cups unsifted bleached all-purpose flour
¾ teaspoon baking powder
1/8 teaspoon salt
½ pound (16 tablespoons or 2 sticks) unsalted butter, melted and cooled
1/3 cup plus 1 tablespoon unsifted confectioners’ sugar
1 ½ teaspoons pure vanilla extract
1 teaspoon pure almond extract
4 packages (1.4 ounces each) milk chocolate-covered toffee bars (Heath Milk Chocolate English Toffee Bars), finely chopped
About 1 ½ cups finely chopped almonds, for rolling the balls of cookie dough
About 2 ½ cups confectioners’ sugar, for dredging the baked cookies

1. Preheat the oven to 350˚F. Line the cookie sheets with cooking parchment paper; set aside.
2. Sift the flour, baking powder, and salt onto a sheet of waxed paper.
3. In a large mixing bowl, stir the melted butter, confectioners’ sugar, and vanilla and almond extracts, using a wooden spoon or flat wooden paddle. At this point, the sugar will form small speckled clumps in the butter mixture, but as soon as you add the flour, the sugar will disperse.
4. Stir in half of the flour mixture and the chopped candy. Stir in the remaining flour and mix to form a cohesive dough. Let the dough stand for 5 minutes to allow the butter to be absorbed into it. The dough will be moist but reasonably firm and manageable.
5. Place the almonds into a shallow bowl. Spoon out scant tablespoon-size quantities of dough and roll into balls. Roll the balls into the chopped almonds, pressing the nuts in lightly as they are rolled. Arrange the cookie dough balls about 2 inches apart on the lined cookie sheets, placing 12 to 16 on each baking sheet (depending on the size of the sheet).
6. Bake the cookies in the preheated oven for 13 to 15 minutes, or until set, with light golden bottoms. There will be a few thin cracks in the tops. Little bits of chopped candy will puddle at the base of the cookies, here and there.
7. Let the cookies stand on the sheets for 30 seconds, then remove them to cooling racks, using a sturdy, offset metal spatula. As you are removing them, detach any melted bits of candy from the base of the cookies, using a flexible palette knife or tip of a teaspoon. Cool the cookies for 5 to 8 minutes.
8. Line a work surface with waxed paper. Place the confectioners’ sugar in a shallow bowl. Wearing food-safe rubber gloves to protect your hands, carefully roll the cookies, a few at a time, in the sugar to coat, and place on the waxed paper. After 30 minutes, coat the cookies again.

Yield: 2 ½ to 3 dozen cookies

Ultimate Fudge Brownies

Ultimate Fudge Brownies - made 3.19.10 from The Brownie Experience by Lisa Tanner

This is another brownie recipe from my old brownie cookbook from college. This couldn't be simpler to make if you want a straightforward, basic, fudgy brownie. I chopped up Snickers Almond bars and added them to the batter for a little texture instead of nuts (of course). Otherwise you can make this plain. For a recipe that uses 5 ounces of unsweetened chocolate, I expected this to be a little more, well, chocolaty. Lately my brownies haven't had as much of a dark chocolate taste and I wonder if it's because I've been using the 99% cacao bars from World Market. That shouldn't make that much of a difference from regular unsweetened chocolate that's 100% cacao but it seems like I can taste the difference. Oh and I never sift powdered sugar over the brownies like the recipe says - why would you want to interfere with pure chocolate?

5 ounces unsweetened chocolate
1 cup butter, softened
1 ¾ cups brown sugar, packed
5 eggs
1 ½ teaspoons vanilla
1 cup flour
1 cup coarsely chopped pecans
Powdered sugar

1. Preheat oven to 350˚F. Butter a 13 x 9 x 2” pan.
2. Melt chocolate; set aside to cool. With wire whisk or hand mixer, cream together butter and sugar. Beat in eggs, one at a time. Add vanilla. Blend in melted chocolate, then flour. Stir in pecans. Spread mixture in pan.
3. Bake 20-30 minutes, or until toothpick inserted in center comes out clean. Cool in pan.
4. Sift powdered sugar lightly over top before cutting into bars.

Makes 32 brownies

Milk Chocolate Brownies

Milk Chocolate Brownies - made March 16, 2010 from The Brownie Experience by Lisa Tanner

The first brownie baking book I ever remember owning was The Brownie Experience by Lisa Tanner. I can't remember if I discovered it on my own or if my then-college housemate and baking partner in crime, Caroline, had brought it to my attention. But at the time I thought it was a marvelous thing - an entire cookbook just on brownies. The world was such a good place. I've made a fair number of recipes from this book but not lately. Having been on a nostalgia kick lately, brought on by looking for old family pictures, I decided to dust off this baking book that I've owned for more than 20 years and resurrect some of the recipes. I don't know if this is even still in print or not.

The one I made last night were the Milk Chocolate Brownies. Funny thing about milk chocolate - I love it in cookies and as chocolate chips and candy. But for a rich, decadent, fudgy brownie, I prefer to use dark chocolate or unsweetened chocolate. The milk chocolate is good and these brownies are fudgy and chewy but they're (logically enough) more sweet and somehow less chocolaty. Only a truly dark chocolate makes my brownie of choice.

However, these aren't bad - I just have a high bar for brownies. They disappeared fast enough from the communal kitchen at work so people must've liked them. The recipe calls for baking in a 9" pan but I made them in an 8" pan to make them a little thicker. Watch the baking time on these. I didn't go by what the recipe said and baked them a little longer since I used a smaller pan. You'll know they're done when a toothpick inserted at the edge comes out clean but inserted in the middle it comes out with moist crumbs clinging to it, not raw batter (unlike what the recipe says). The edges rise higher than the middle as the middle will sink once you take it out - that's okay. You don't want to overbake them to the point that the middle is as done as the edges.

¾ cup flour
¼ teaspoon salt
¼ teaspoon baking soda
1/3 cup butter
¾ cup sugar
2 tbsp milk or cream
2 cups milk chocolate chips
1 teaspoon vanilla
2 eggs
1 cup chopped nuts
powdered sugar

1. Preheat oven to 325˚F. Butter a 9” square pan.
2. In a small bowl, combine flour, salt and baking soda; set aside.
3. In a small saucepan, melt butter, sugar and milk or cream together over low heat, stirring constantly. Bring mixture just to boiling them remove from heat and immediately stir in 1 cup of the chocolate chips and vanilla. Stir until chips melt and mixture is smooth. Transfer to a large bowl.
4. Beat in eggs, 1 at a time. Blend in flour mixture. Fold in remaining chips and nuts.
5. Spread batter evenly in pan. Bake 30-35 minutes or until toothpick inserted in center comes out clean.

Snickerdoodles from the Sweet Melissa Baking Book

Snickerdoodles - made March 15, 2010 from the

Sweet Melissa Baking Book

A recipe for Snickerdoodles first caught my eye when I was a teenager and I had to make them just because I liked the name. Then I kept on making them because I liked the cookies. Like the chocolate chip cookie, snickerdoodle recipes are generally the same sugar cookie variation with the addition of cream of tartar and then being rolled in cinnamon sugar before baking. I have several good recipes for snickerdoodles and I like them all but my main problem with the recipes I've tried is they've all spread out too much. They've all tasted great but the better ones tend to spread too thin. So does this one. I made the cookie dough balls a little big (hey, go big or go home) and they spread and puffed out nicely but then they also fell flat once I took them out of the oven. It could be because I underbaked them slightly but they tasted better that way. Don't crowd these on the baking sheet or they will just run together. Give them at least 2-3 inches of breathing room when you bake them.

My favorite "store-bought" snickerdoodle is from Specialty's - theirs are not only big but they stay thick. Someday I'm going to have to figure out how they do that.

For the dough
½ pound (2 sticks) unsalted butter, softened
1 ½ cups sugar
2 large eggs
2 ¾ cups all-purpose flour
1 ½ teaspoons cream of tartar
1 teaspoon baking soda
¼ teaspoon kosher salt

For the cinnamon sugar
1 ½ teaspoons ground cinnamon
½ cup sugar


1. In the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, cream the butter and sugar until smooth, 2 to 3 minutes. Add the eggs and mix until combined.
2. In a separate bowl, whisk together the flour, cream of tartar, baking soda, and salt. Add to the butter mixture and mix on low speed until combined. The dough will be soft and too sticky to roll. Refrigerate until firm, about 1 hour.
3. Position a rack in the top and bottom thirds of your oven. Preheat the oven to 350˚F. Line two cookie sheets with parchment paper or aluminum foil.
4. For the cinnamon sugar: Combine the cinnamon and sugar in a small bowl.
5. Using a 1-ounce cookie scoop, or a tablespoon, shape the dough into balls and then roll them in the cinnamon sugar.
6. Place the cookies 2 inches apart on the prepared cookie sheets. Flatten them slightly with your fingertips so that they stay put. Bake for about 12 to 13 minutes, or until the bottoms are slightly golden in color. These cookies are supposed to be chewy so do not overbake. Remove to a wire rack to cool.

Cream Cheese Sugar Cookies

Cream Cheese Sugar Cookies - made March 13, 2010

My friend Karen sent me the link to this recipe from a blog

http://beneathmyheart.blogspot.com/. Karen loves cream cheese and feels "it should be its own food group". I'm not as avid a cream cheese fan and one thing you'll likely never find on this blog is a recipe for cheesecake since I don't care for it. However, I can take cream cheese in small doses and mixed with other ingredients so this recipe seemed like a good candidate to try.

I don't normally make sugar cookies or cut-out cookies that often, simply because they're a PITA to make. All that rolling, flouring, cutting, re-rolling, cutting some more, flouring again - you get the picture. Most doughs also hate me when I roll them out and try to stick to the rolling pin and the cutting board so I end up having to use more flour to prevent sticking and then the said dough can get tough or dry from too much handling and too much flour. I hate that. So I cheat when it comes to cut out cookies and instead of rolling out the dough to some impossibly consistent thinness/thickness all around, I roll into a (fairly) uniform log, freeze it, then cut into round slices. Voila - instant cookies all ready to bake. Okay, yeah, the Pillsbury dough boy had the idea first but imitation is the sincerest form of flattery after all.

The recipe for this says to bake it for 7-10 minutes until the bottoms are golden brown and that the trick was to take them out when they were slightly underdone and let them finish baking on the hot cookie sheet. I left these in there for 15 minutes and they were still underdone. I should've left them in longer until I did see them turn slightly golden brown on the bottom but I was paranoid about following the directions. However, once they were cool, turns out I was right and they were underdone. You can even tell by the picture because the cookies still look doughy. The taste was pretty good and the texture was nice and chewy. You can't really taste the cream cheese. But the next batch I'm going with my instincts and leaving them in the oven until I feel like they really are done.

Chicken Breasts With(out) Grapes

Chicken Breasts with Grapes - made March 10, 2010

We’d gotten some good news about my uncle today so I’m finally feeling up to updating my blog once again so I’m now caught up with this entry.

This is another recipe back from my undergrad days where I probably cooked once in a blue moon and wasn’t good at it so I needed the simplest recipes possible. This is one of them. I have it written out on a recipe card so I have no idea where the original recipe came from. You’ll notice that although the title is Chicken Breasts with Grapes, there are actually no grapes in the picture. For one thing, it’s not grape season so they probably wouldn’t taste good even if I had included them. For another, I generally don’t like fruit mixed up in savory dishes so I wouldn’t have added them anyway. A simple way to describe this dish is chicken breasts in an orange-flavored cream sauce. I don’t eat marmalade “straight” but like it well enough added to the cream. The beauty of this recipe is its ease of preparation. Pound the chicken breasts with a meat mallet to tenderize them, sprinkle with the salt and nutmeg, brown, cook, make the sauce, serve. The nutmeg and tarragon complement each other well with the cream and marmalade. I didn't cook down the sauce as much as it was still a lot liquidy when I took it off the heat because I didn't want to reduce it too much and be left with little sauce. Next time I would brown the chicken breasts a little more. I might've had a bit too much light butter to fry them in as they just bubbled but didn't really brown before I added the wine, tarragon and marmalade.

3 whole chicken breasts (6 halves, about 3 lbs) (I used 2 whole chicken breasts for 1 sauce recipe)
2 tablespoons butter or margarine
1 tablespoon orange marmalade
¼ teaspoon crumbled tarragon
1 green onion, thinly sliced
1/3 cup dry white wine
1 cup seedless grapes
¼ cup whipping cream

1. Sprinkle chicken breasts with salt and nutmeg. Brown lightly in heated butter in a large frying pan.
2. Cover, reduce heat and simmer 10 minutes; add grapes, cover again and continue cooking about 10 minutes longer, until chicken is cooked through.
3. Using a slotted spoon, remove chicken and grapes to a warm serving dish; keep warm. Add cream to liquid in pan. Bring to a boil, stirring, and cook until reduced and slightly thickened. Salt to taste. Pour sauce over chicken.

Serves 4-6

Pralines and Cream Pecan Caramel Muffins

Pralines and Cream Pecan Caramel Muffins - made March 9, 2010 from A Passion for Baking by Marcy Goldman

When I first read this recipe, it had a dream-like quality of ingredient combinations. You fill the muffin tins half full with the muffin batter, add a squirt of butterscotch topping (in my case I used dulce de leche), cover with a cream cheese batter and top with a brown sugar butterscotch pecan streusel. Yum.

Their appearance isn’t exactly magazine-cover worthy. I think the dulce de leche was too heavy, even though I only scooped a small amount to rest in the middle. It sank into the muffin batter, creating a “black hole” that was followed down by some of the cream cheese batter and definitely a lot of the streusel. That concentration of the streusel actually makes it almost too sweet so if you don’t have a sweet tooth, I’d advise making only half the streusel amount and sprinkling sparingly. Despite that though, these were delicious. The muffin part had a tender crumb, the cream cheese part wasn’t too overwhelming and I’m a sucker for the dulce de leche and the streusel. The recipe calls for filling large muffin tins but I used the regular size muffin tins and was able to make 21 muffins from it. I ran out of cream cheese batter for the last 3 muffins so consider that these would make a dozen and a half normal muffins. If I make these again, I wouldn’t fill the muffin cavities so much since this isn’t something you want to overflow and make a big muffin top of since the cream cheese part doesn’t rise that much. I might actually try them in the molten chocolate cake pan where I make my little basque cakes – they might come out a little prettier.

Lastly, I didn’t bake these as long as the recipe said. I think I had them in the oven 20 minutes max. They didn’t need to bake as long since I was making them in the regular muffin pan, not the large size ones.

Pecan Streusel Topping
1 cup finely chopped pecans
2 tablespoons white sugar
½ cup firmly packed brown sugar
3 tablespoons butterscotch or caramel chips, optional
2 tablespoons unsalted butter, cut into chunks

Cream Cheese Batter
6 ounces cream cheese
1 large egg
¼ cup sugar
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

Muffin Batter
½ cup unsalted butter, softened
1 cup firmly packed brown sugar
½ cup white sugar
1 large egg
2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract
1 cup buttermilk or plain yogurt
2 cups all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
½ teaspoon baking soda
¼ teaspoon salt
1/3 cup very finely chopped pecans
12 squirts of butterscotch or caramel sundae topping, optional

1. Preheat oven to 375˚F. Arrange oven rack to middle third position. Line a 12-cup large muffin pan with paper liners and generously spray liners with nonstick cooking spray. Place pan on a parchment paper-lined baking sheet.
2. For Pecan Streusel Topping, in a food processor, grind nuts, both sugars and butterscotch chips, if desired, to make a fine meal. Add butter and pulse to blend. Put mixture into a mixing bowl. (This is a fine, gravelly streusel.)
3. Without cleaning food processor bowl, blend Cream Cheese Topping ingredients well and then spoon out into another bowl.
4. For Muffin Batter, blend butter with both sugars in food processor until well blended; then add egg and vanilla and mix well. Add buttermilk, flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt and nuts and blend well, making sure no unblended sugar or butter is stuck in bottom of bowl.
5. Scoop some batter into each muffin cup, filling about half full. Squirt on some sundae topping. Spoon on some Cream Cheese Topping and then carefully add streusel.
6. Bake 30 to 35 minutes until muffins seem firm to the touch when gently pressed with fingertips. Let cool 5 minutes before removing from pan.

Honey-Lime Marinated London Broil

Honey-Lime Marinated London Broil - made March 8, 2010 from The Most Decadent Diet Ever by Devin Alexander

This is probably one of the easiest recipes from Devin Alexander’s The Most Decadent Diet Ever which makes it just right for me. I took a few liberties with it though. First I didn’t have limes but had plenty of lemons so I substituted that ingredient. Second, I couldn’t find London broil at Trader Joe’s last weekend so I got NY tenderloin instead. Third, I don’t have a grill so I ended up pan-frying it. Overall, it was pretty flavorful. I’m ignorant about most cuts of meat other than instinctually recognizing that the more expensive it is, the more tender it’s likely to be. The tenderloin wasn’t as tender as the name would imply but it was fine. I didn’t feel like I was chewing leather or anything. The hard part for me when it comes to frying steaks is I don’t like them bloody rare but it’s hard to tell how done they are without cutting into them and letting all the juices run out. This ended up a bit more rare than I would like but that was okay since when I reheat it as leftovers, it cooks a bit more. The marinade gave it some nice flavor as well.

Next time I make this, I’m going to slice the beef into strips before hand, tenderize them with a few whacks of the meat mallet, then marinade them overnight. Then it’s more a matter of a quick stir fry.

¼ cup fresh lime juice
2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
1 tablespoon plus 1 teaspoon honey
2 tablespoons minced fresh garlic
1 teaspoon salt
1 ¼ pounds trimmed London broil (top round steak)

1. Whisk the lime juice, olive oil, and honey in a small bowl. Stir in the garlic and salt.
2. Place the steak in a large resealable plastic bag. Pour in the marinade. Seal the bag and rotate it so the steak is covered with the marinade. Place the bag in the refrigerator and marinate the steak for at least 6 hours or overnight, rotating it occasionally, if possible.
3. Preheat a grill to high.
4. Remove the steak from the marinade and place it on the grill. Grill for 4 to 6 minutes per side for medium-rare or until the desired doneness is reached. Place the steak on a plate or cutting board, cover loosely with foil and let stand for 10 minutes. Slice into thin slices against the grain and serve immediately or refrigerate the uncut steak in an airtight container and slice it just before serving.

Serves 4

Rosie's Chocolate Chip Cookies

Rosie's Chocolate Chip Cookies - made dough February 27, 2010, baked at random times, from All-Butter, Fresh-Cream, Sugar-Packed Baking Book by Rosie's Bakery

One of my top comfort foods is a warm chocolate chip cookie, 10 minutes out of the oven, preferably eaten with a scoop of vanilla ice cream melting over it. Last week I needed all the comfort I could get so it was no surprise that I chose to try yet another chocolate chip cookie recipe. This is from Rosie’s Bakery book so I figured it would be pretty decent. It was, although it really is just another variation to the standard Tollhouse chocolate chip cookie recipe. I made the dough and froze it into rather generous-sized cookie dough balls for baking later. The cookies spread more than I would consider successful and their taste was the typical chocolate chip cookie taste. Nothing against it but it’s not a standout. I’d file this under “ramekin” cookie, meaning I’d bake future batches one dough ball at a time in a small, individual-size ramekin and have for dessert whenever I needed one.

2 cups plus 1 tablespoon all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
¾ teaspoon salt
1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter at room temperature
1 cup plus 1 tablespoon (lightly packed) light brown sugar
½ cup plus 2 tablespoons granulated sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 large eggs, at room temperature
1 ½ cups semisweet chocolate chips

1. Preheat oven to 375˚F. Line several cookie sheets with parchment paper or grease them lightly with butter or vegetable oil.
2. Sift the flour, baking soda and salt together into a small bowl and set aside.
3. Using an electric mixer on medium speed, cream the butter, both sugars, and the vanilla together in a medium-size bowl until light and fluffy, 1 ½ to 2 minutes. Stop the mixer twice to scrape the bowl with a rubber spatula.
4. Add the eggs and beat on medium speed until they are blended, about 30 seconds. Scrape the bowl.
5. Add the dry ingredients and mix on low speed for 15 seconds. Scrape the bowl.
6. Add the chocolate chips and blend until they are mixed in, 5 to 8 seconds.
7. Drop the dough by generously rounded tablespoonfuls (the equivalent of 3 level teaspoons) 2 inches apart onto the prepared cookie sheets.
8. Bake the cookies until the edges are dark golden and the center is light and slightly puffed up, 11 to 12 minutes. Remove the cookies from the oven and allow them to cool on the sheets. These are best eaten the same day they are baked.

Makes 24 large cookies.

Rhondalyn's Italian Cream Cake

Rhondalyn's Italian Cream Cake - made March 2, 2010 from Rhondalyn (pugw)

One of my fitness friends, Rhondalyn, shared this recipe with me for Italian Cream Cake. The traditional Italian Cream Cake is apparently generally a three-layer cake with cream cheese frosting, unlike the version I posted earlier baked in a Bundt pan. I still don’t know what the difference is between an Italian Cream Cake and a coconut layer cake with cream cheese frosting. Perhaps it’s a regional nomenclature thing?

In any case, I tried out Rhondalyn’s recipe and it came out pretty well. The cake itself has a nice texture – more dense than a sponge cake but not as dense as a pound cake. I adore coconut so I loved the taste.

I made this on a day I was heavily distracted by my uncle’s situation (this was after we’d been told by the doctors that he was likely so brain damaged that he wouldn’t wake up or respond to anything and would need life support and before he woke up when they took him off life support later that same day). So I can be excused for mixing up this batter and was about to pour it into the pans when I realized I’d forgotten to add the coconut. Sigh. I did leave out the nuts but that was deliberate. I also did a bit of a whack job on the frosting as you can tell from the picture so I didn’t make this on a good baking day. Despite my neglect though, this came out well.

Note that Rhondalyn’s ingredient list calls for oil but the directions mention shortening, not oil. I asked her which one it was supposed to be and she said it could be either but that she prefers the shortening version. I made this one with shortening but am interested in trying it with oil to see if/how that would affect the taste and texture. This is actually similar to my Coconut Cake recipe from the Mrs. Fields' baking book.

Cake
½ cup butter, softened
½ cup oil
2 cups sugar
5 large eggs, separated
1 Tbsp vanilla
2 cups all purpose flour
1 tsp baking soda
1 cup buttermilk
1 cup flaked coconut
1 cup nuts

Frosting
8 oz cream cheese
½ cup butter, softened
1 Tbsp vanilla
16 oz powdered sugar

Cake
1. Beat butter and shortening on medium until fluffy. Gradually add sugar, beating well. Add egg yolks one at a time, beating until blended after each addition. Add vanilla, beating until blended.
2. Combine flour and soda. Add to mixture alternating with buttermilk, beginning and ending with flour mixture. Beat on low until blended and stir in coconut and nuts.
3. Beat egg whites until stiff peak forms and fold in batter.
4. Pour batter into 3 greased and floured 9 inch round cake pans. Bake at 350˚F for 25 minutes.
Cream Cheese Frosting
1. Beat cream cheese, butter and vanilla a medium speed with an electric mixer until creamy.
2. Add powdered sugar, beating at low speed until blended. Beat frosting at high speed until smooth.