Family picnic - June 19, 2010

(thanks to Camille for the cake)

June 19, 2010 - We had a family picnic with my mom's side of the family to celebrate my maternal grandfather's centennial. He died in 1986 at the age of 76 but had he lived, he would've been 100 last month. To honor him, we gathered together. My mom's family turned out several good cooks and when we get together to eat, we eat. And it's all good. I didn't cook except for a few desserts but here's the pictorial of some of the dishes just to give you an idea. There were 24 of us and we made a good dent in the food.

My cousin Christine brought appetizers - these were filled with cream cheese and artichokes.

My mom made ribs

And pancit palabok

In addition to the centennial cake, Camille & family brought fried chicken

And chow mein

My cousin Ellen brought chicken satay that we grilled

And Korean barbecue beef that she grilled

Ellen's dad, Tito Mimil, grilled an 8-lb trout he had caught in the lake of the same park we were picnicking at - marinated in lime, cilantro and other good things

And there was more but I didn't get a picture of it all: Tita Helen made a peanut-sauce noodle dish, Tito Lito brought Goldilocks mamon and cupcakes, someone brought bibingka, Tita Girlie and Ken brought pecan pie tarts, and I made red velvet cupcakes with cream cheese frosting, Best Big Fat Chewy Chocolate Chip cookies, and the aforementioned pecan tassies. Which, according to everyone else, I was wrong about those being just "okay". Everyone who tried them liked them and the only complaint I got was there either wasn't any left to parcel out after the picnic or they went home with someone and the others didn't get a taste. My parents liked them better than my butter pecan tarts (huh) and I had to make another batch this morning to bring for them since demand exceeded supply. Fortunately I still had the leftover filling so it was just a matter of making more tart dough and toasting more pecans.

All in all, a good day and lots of good eats.

Pecan Tassies

Pecan Tassies - made June 18, 2010 from The Practical Encyclopedia of Baking by Martha Day

We have a family picnic tomorrow and naturally, I'm bringing desserts. I made red velvet cupcakes with cream cheese frosting already and I'm going to bake chocolate chip cookies first thing in the morning tomorrow. I asked my cousins what they'd like me to bring and my cousin Christine asked if I made "those pecan tarts with the cream cheese crust." As soon as she said cream cheese, I knew she meant pecan tassies. They're like my butter pecan tartlets but with cream cheese in the crust. I'd never made them before so this seemed like a good opportunity to try something new.

Unfortunately I've been packing up my baking books in preparation for a move sometime this summer so I didn't have a lot of books to sift through looking for a recipe. Fortunately, one of the baking books I hadn't packed yet was the Practical Encyclopedia of Baking. I've had this book for so long that I don't remember when and where I got it or even why. Come to think of it, I don't think I've ever made anything from it. Not that I recall anyway. But it did have a recipe for pecan tassies so this was my chance to finally use the book.

They were easy enough to make. I didn't bother rolling out the dough since I'm used to making tarts and it was easy enough to shape by hand in the mini muffin cups. The dough recipe makes the right amount of tarts but the filling recipe makes too much filling - you could probably halve the filling recipe and still have enough for 24 tarts. I toasted the pecans first like I always do when I bake with nuts then let them cool while I chilled the tarts. The recipe said to bake them for 20 minutes but I confess I forgot and left them in for an extra 4 minutes (I was blow drying my hair and lost track of time - oops). But the tarts survived my neglect and were a nice golden brown when I took them out.

I have to admit I was a little disappointed in them though. They tasted okay but my butter pecan tartlets are better. The crust was light on these and the filling wasn't too sweet. Which is fine unless you like a more dense shortbread crust (which I do) and a sweeter filling (which I do). They're not bad and hopefully they'll be all right for tomorrow's picnic. But I have to tell Christine someday I need to make her the butter pecan tartlets and see if she likes them better.

4 ounces cream cheese
½ cup (1 stick) butter, at room temperature
1 cup flour

For the Filling
2 eggs
¾ cup dark brown sugar, firmly packed
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/8 teaspoon salt
2 tablespoons butter, melted
1 cup pecans

1. Place a baking sheet in the oven and preheat to 350˚F. Grease 2 12-cup mini-muffin tins.
2. Cut the cream cheese and butter in pieces. Put in a mixing bowl. Sift over the flour and mix to form a dough.
3. Roll the dough out thinly. With a fluted pastry cutter, stamp out 24 2 ½-inch rounds. Line the muffin cups with the rounds and refrigerate while making the filling.
4. For the filling, lightly whisk the eggs in a bowl. Gradually whisk in the brown sugar, a few tablespoons at a time, and add the vanilla, salt and butter. Set aside.
5. Reserve 24 undamaged pecan halves and chop the rest coarsely with a sharp knife.
6. Place a spoonful of chopped nuts in each muffin cut and cover with the filling. Set a pecan half on the top of each.
7. Bake on the hot baking sheet until puffed and set, about 20 minutes. Transfer to a rack to cool. Serve at room temperature.

Gooey Baby Ruthy Brownies

Gooey Baby Ruthy Brownies - made June 15, 2010 from Brownie Mix Bliss by Camilla V. Saulsbury (or as I call them: Peanut Butter Cream Cheese Snickers Brownies)

I'm diametrically opposed to brownie mixes. I used to bake with them when I was first learning how to bake and thought they were great. But once I started baking from scratch, I turned up my nose at mixes. When my friends tell me how much they're enjoying a Duncan Hines brownie, my baking soul shrivels up (yeah, Kendra and Rebecca, I'm referring to you two). So why, you ask, did I buy a book called Brownie Mix Bliss when all of its recipes use a brownie mix as a base? I don't know. Something about it being a baking book and I have a sad addiction to cookbooks.

In any case, I have tried a few recipes from this book and they've been okay. Nothing spectacular so far and they all have the same basic ingredients with the recipes varying by the add-ins. In this particular case, the add-ins were a cream cheese swirl and Baby Ruths or Snickers. I used Snickers. I also substituted buttermilk for the water and, since I was out of milk and wanted more of a peanut butter flavor to complement the Snickers, I added a few spoonfuls of smooth peanut butter to the cream cheese layer.

It all sounds like it should make a killer brownie, right? Unfortunately it didn't quite turn out the way I had hoped. The peanut butter add-in to the cream cheese layer wasn't enough so there wasn't that strong of a peanut butter taste after all. The Snickers chunks were a little too heavy with the texture of the brownie as the texture was soft and almost cakey as opposed to something more dense that would go well with Snickers. So for me, this was just okay. People at work seemed to like them but we know how picky I am. These were just average to me.

1 19.5 – 19.8-ounce package brownie mix
½ cup vegetable oil
¼ cup water
3 large eggs
3 2.1-ounce chocolate-covered peanut-caramel nougat candy bars (e.g. Baby Ruth or Snickers), coarsely chopped
1 8-ounce package cream cheese, softened
3 tablespoons packed brown sugar
2 teaspoons milk

1. Preheat oven to 350˚F (325˚F for dark-coated metal pan). Position a rack in the lower third of the oven. Spray the bottom only of a 13 x 9-inch baking pan with nonstick cooking spray (or foil-line pan).
2. In a medium mixing bowl, mix the brownie mix, oil, water and 2 of the eggs with a wooden spoon until just blended and all dry ingredients are moistened. Stir in chopped candy bars. Reserve 1 cup of the batter. Spread remaining batter into the prepared pan.
3. In a medium mixing bowl beat the cream cheese and brown sugar with an electric mixer set on medium until blended and smooth. Beat in milk and remaining egg. Spoon and spread over brownie batter in pan (need not cover completely). Dollop reserved brownie batter over cream cheese layer. Use the tip of a knife to swirl the batters for a marbled effect.
4. Bake 30-35 minutes or until toothpick inserted 2 inches from side of pan comes out clean or almost clean (do not overbake). Transfer to a wire rack and cool completely. Cut into squares. Store in refrigerator.

Makes 24 large or 36 small brownies

Cookie Jar Oatmeal Raisin Cookies

Cookie Jar Oatmeal Raisin Cookies - made 6.14.10 from The Family Baker by Susan G. Purdy

Trying to make some time to bake, especially as I'm trying to use up ingredients before I move sometime this summer and because I have some dinners coming up and baking for friends that I'm meeting is as natural as breathing. This is a quick and easy oatmeal cookie recipe from Susan G. Purdy that turned out pretty well. The edges are crisp, there's a hint of cinnamon in each bite and it's chewy with oatmeal like a good oatmeal cookie should be. With my aversion to raisins, I left them out and added semisweet chocolate chips instead. Chocolate and oatmeal are a great combination. Although let's face it, chocolate and cardboard would probably be a good combo too. As would chocolate and anything. You get the picture.

I substituted 1/2 cup of butter-flavored shortening for 1/2 cup of butter. That kept the cookies from spreading too much and gave them crisp edges. The taste wasn't really altered but you could make the recipe as is with all butter and I'm sure they would taste good like that too.

1 ½ cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon salt
½ teaspoon baking soda
½ teaspoon ground cinnamon
1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter, slightly softened
1 cup granulated sugar
½ cup packed light or dark brown sugar
2 large eggs, at room temperature
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
3 cups uncooked old-fashioned or quick-cooking oats (not instant)
1 cup packed seedless raisins

1. Position the racks to divide the oven into thirds and preheat it to 350˚F. Leave the cookie sheets ungreased or cover them with baking parchment or wax paper. In a medium bowl, whisk together the flour, salt, baking soda and cinnamon.
2. In a large bowl using a sturdy spoon or an electric mixer with paddle attachment if available, beat together the butter and sugars until smooth and well blended. Beat in the eggs and vanilla. Stirring slowly or with the beater on the slowest speed, work in the flour mixture completely, then the oats and raisins. The batter will be very stiff. You can make the batter several hours ahead, cover and refrigerate it at this point.
3. Drop the batter onto the cookie sheets by heaping tablespoons about 2 inches apart and bake 12 to 16 minutes, or until the cookies are golden brown (the longer they bake, the crisper they will be). Cool the cookie sheets on a wire rack for 2 or 3 minutes, then use a spatula to transfer the cookies to the rack to cool; or slide the baking parchment onto the wire rack to cool the cookies. Store in an airtight container.

Yield: 50 to 55 cookies (2 ½-3-inch diameter)

Chocolate Making: From Conching to Tempering to Molding - then Eating

Things have been crazier than usual lately so I haven't had much time to keep up with this blog. But I want to finish the chocolate making process I started writing about. I left off at the milling stage. After milling (or juicing as Julie from Cotton Tree Chocolate called it), the chocolate paste is transferred to a conching machine which kneads and smooths the chocolate, improving the texture and flavor. Here's what a conching machine looks like sans the chocolate:

But of course it looks better with chocolate in it:

Chocolate is typically conched for 2-3 days at a temperature between 140 - 167 degrees, depending on the company's process. ETA: oops, forgot to note that this is the step where the other ingredients are added to make the final chocolate product: emulsifiers, sweeteners, milk products for milk chocolate, etc. It isn't just pure chocolate that gets conched.

After conching, the chocolate must be tempered in order to work with it properly. Tempering refers to bringing chocolate to a certain temperature in order to stabilize the crystals. From conching, you'd need to cool it down to 104 degrees. If you're starting with solid chocolate bought from retail, you'd need to melt it first, get it to the proper temperature then cool it down to its working temperature. Dark chocolate has a higher working temperature than milk and milk higher than white. When I was in culinary school, we would melt the chocolate and heat it to the proper temperture then stir it to cool it down and add the "seed" chocolate which was a solid piece of the same kind as the melted chocolate (i.e. semisweet chocolate seed into melted semisweet chocolate). The melted chocolate "copied" the stable crystals in the solid chocolate and aligned themselves correctly.

Chocolate has to be tempered correctly in order to keep its smooth texture and avoid bloom. If you ever see a grayish-white film on chocolate, it's not mold but likely the chocolate has bloomed, meaning it melted at some point and when it hardened again, the chocolate was out of temper so the fat rose to the top - that's the grayish stuff.

At Cotton Tree, they had a small tempering room that was kept chilly and boy did it feel good to be in there out of the heat and humidity. Annika (pictured below) works at Cotton Tree Chocolate and showed us what to do with the tempered chocolate.

This is the melted chocolate in the chocolate tempering machine. The machine keeps the chocolate in motion by stirring a paddle through it and keeping it at its working temperature. It's at the right temper for it to be molded into bars without blooming when it solidifies.

Annika gave us a "syringe" that we plunged into the pool of tempered chocolate in the chocolate tempering machine and once we filled the syringe, we emptied it into the molds. Each syringe had to contain a certain amount so that each bar is made with the same amount of chocolate. The molds are placed on a vibrating machine so as they're filled, the vibrations even out the melted chocolate so the molds fill evenly.

Once the molds are filled, they're left to cool then are packaged up. As part of our tour, we each got to fill 3 chocolate bars worth of molds which we marked with our names. Annika packaged them up once they were cool and we got to take them home with us.

The finished product - Cotton Tree Chocolate. I was hot and sweaty so clearly I wanted to go back into the tempering room :).

Chocolate - Fermenting to Roasting to Milling

To continue about fermentation - in our demonstration, Alex, from Taza Chocolates, lined a wooden box that had holes in the bottom with banana leaves and we all helped crack open the cacao pods and empty the beans into the box. The banana leaves "contain bacteria that enhance the fermentation process, liquefying the mucilage [that slimy white stuff covering the beans] so it can drain away, leaving the beans." (Source: The Chocolate Connoisseur by Chloe Doutre-Roussel)

When the beans were first put in the fermentation box

How they looked 2 days into fermentation

Once the beans are fermented, they’re then dried. Drying prevents them from getting moldy and enables them to be shipped and stored without spoiling. The dried beans are what farmers like Eladio take to market to sell. At the time we were there, they were getting $1.15 USD per pound of beans. Doesn't sound like much, does it? That's because it isn't. Eladio said a few years ago he was selling up to 800-900 lbs of cacao beans but in recent years, he's only been able to harvest around 400 lbs of beans. He wasn't really clear about why the drop in production but I think some of it had to do with a bad tornado that blew through his farm and damaged his cacao trees.

We were given demonstrations of what to do with the dried beans both at Eladio’s farm and at Cotton Tree Chocolate which had a little “factory”, aka a room, a back porch and a small tempering room. First you roast the beans. At Cotton Tree, they roasted the beans in a coffee roasting oven. And yes, they smelled as good as you might imagine.

Second, you take the (cooled) roasted beans and grind them to break up the shells and the nibs within the shells. You only want the nibs and not the shells so to separate them, Cotton Tree winnows the shells by blowing through the bowl of cracked nibs and shells with a hair dryer. Yes, a hair dryer. It was pretty effective too, once you know how to do it. There’s a certain skill in having the hair dryer in one hand aimed at the bowl and mixing up the nibs and shells with the other hand. Done properly, the hot air blowing from the hair dryer will blow out the lighter shells while keeping the nibs in the bowl. Done improperly, Kendra and I discovered our hair blowing (or nibs/shell blowing) techniques were metaphoric for our lives and personalities. Kendra was told by the Cotton Tree chocolate maker than she was blowing too hard and therefore causing the nibs to fly out of the bowl along with the shells. I had the opposite problem in that I was so afraid of losing the nibs that I wasn’t aggressive enough and left some of the shells in the bowl. Hmm, read into that what you will of each of our personalities.

Me with my careful, cautious dryer blowing

Kendra going for it with the hair dryer - nibs, shells and all :)

Once we had the bowl of shelled nibs, we put them in what was essentially a juicer and fed the nibs into it at one end and out the other came a wet mass of processed cocoa nibs, aka cocoa liqueur, which more or less had the consistency of peanut butter. Nibs have a lot of fat (cocoa butter) in them and you could see the oil as it was being processed through the juicer. Julie, the Cotton Tree Chocolate manager, called it juicing. My chocolate books refer to it as milling.

The last remaining steps to follow....

Chocolate - from Bean to Bar

I haven't posted in a couple of weeks, partly because I've been too busy to bake and partly because I was out on vacation. I spent last week in Belize on a chocolate tour sponsored by Taza Chocolate, a chocolate maker in Boston, MA. It was one of those things on my bucket list that I wanted to do “someday” and, thanks to my friend Kendra (Kendra's blog) who told me about the trip and talked me into teaming up with her in the Jungle House cabana at Cotton Tree Lodge near Punta Gorda, Belize, I got the opportunity to experience chocolate making from bean to bar.

When most people think of chocolate making, they picture vats of warm melted chocolate swirling around before pouring them into candy bar molds and cooling. It’s a nice visual but that’s actually the last two stages of chocolate making: tempering and molding. Or last 3 stages if you count eating as the final step. Further up the chocolate making chain, you actually need to start with the cacao bean itself. This is where chocolate ultimately comes from.

Cacao beans grow within cacao pods which are from the cacao trees. The pods grow directly out of the tree trunk and there’s some fancy flora and fauna name for that kind of plant but I can’t remember what it is from the tour and am not trying to be uppity in knowing what it’s called.

We visited a cacao farm in Belize owned by a 51-year-old man named Eladio Pop. The “Pop” part of his name was pretty accurate as Eladio is the father of 15 children. His oldest is 31 and has 5 kids of her own. His youngest is 2 years and 4 months. Eladio split open a cacao pod to show us the cluster of beans inside and we each got to taste one. Let me assure you it’s a far cry from the ultimate finished product of chocolate that the beans produce. Hence why the processing is so important.

After the beans are removed from the cacao pods, they’re put in containers and set to ferment in the heat and humidity of their native country, be it Belize, the Dominican Republic, Bolivia, etc. Beans can ferment anywhere from 2-6 days. The longer they ferment, supposedly the more developed the flavor. Some chocolate makers, such as Taza, only source beans that are 90% fermented while more common and large-scale operations like Green & Black only require 70% fermentation. Everyone’s tastes are different but for the chocolate snob in us all, they traditionally favor the more fermented beans. You don’t let the beans just sit there fermenting either. You have to mix them all around to get the fermentation going.

To be continued in the above post.....(have to go workout now)

Quintuple Chocolate Brownies

Quintuple Chocolate Brownies - made May 11, 2010 from Fearless Baking by Elinor Klivans

These brownies are so-named because it’s supposed to use 5 different kinds of chocolate. However, I was missing the heavy cream to put in the white chocolate layer on top so I improvised by skipping the white chocolate layer altogether and adding chopped up Toblerone bars in the last 5 minutes of baking to soften them slightly over the top of the brownie. I knew from reading the recipe that this would yield a dark chocolate brownie and I was right, especially since I use a dark cocoa (Pernigotti) in the brownies. The texture on these was good and fudgy but these are probably a little “too dark chocolate” for me as a milk chocolate lover. But dark chocolate lovers should like this one.

Funny thing about brownie taste and fudginess – my first preference is milk chocolate but not when it comes to brownies since milk chocolate as a brownie base (as opposed to as an add in) is actually too sweet. But if it’s too dark of a chocolate, I don’t like it either. I guess you can safely say my brownie preferences lean towards semisweet or bittersweet and if you have to lean towards more of a dark chocolate base, I like to do milk chocolate add-ins, such as with the Toblerone bars to offset the dark chocolate.

If I had stayed true to the original recipe and used the white chocolate layer on top, I have a feeling that would’ve worked really well since white chocolate is pretty sweet and would’ve offered a nice contrast to the dark chocolate brownie base.

Brownies
½ cup all-purpose flour
¼ cup unsweetened cocoa powder
½ teaspoon salt
1 stick (8 tablespoons) unsalted butter, cut into 8 pieces
3 ounces unsweetened chocolate, coarsely chopped
3 ounces bittersweet chocolate, coarsely chopped
2 tablespoons strong coffee
1 cup sugar
3 large eggs
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
6 ounces premium-quality milk chocolate, chopped into chips or 1 cup store-bought milk chocolate chips
1 cup chopped nuts

Glaze
6 ounces premium-quality white chocolate, finely chopped, or 1 cup store-bought white chocolate chips
1/3 cup heavy cream

1. Center a rack in the oven and preheat the oven to 325˚F. Line a 9-inch square baking pan with foil, butter the foil and place the pan on a baking sheet.
2. Sift together the flour, cocoa, and salt.
3. Set a heatproof bowl over a saucepan of simmering water and add, in the following order, the butter, two chocolates and the coffee. Keeping the pan over low heat, warm just until the butter and chocolates are melted – you don’t want the ingredients to get so hot they separate, so keep an eye on the bowl. Stir gently, and when the mixture is smooth, set it aside for 5 minutes.
4. Using a whisk or a rubber spatula, beat the sugar into the chocolate mixture. Don’t beat too vigorously – you don’t want to add air to the batter – and don’t be concerned about any graininess. Next, stir in the eggs one at a time, followed by the vanilla. You should have a smooth, glossy batter. If you’re not already using a rubber spatula, switch to one now and gently stir in the dry ingredients, mixing only until they are incorporated. Finally, stir in the milk chocolate chips and the nuts. Scrape the batter into the pan.
5. Bake for about 35 minutes, or until a thin knife inserted into the center comes out streaked but not thickly coated. Transfer the pan to a cooling rack and let the brownies rest undisturbed for at least 30 minutes. (You can wait longer, if you’d like.)
6. Turn the brownies out onto a rack, peel away the foil and place it under another rack – it will be the drip catcher for the glaze. Invert the brownies onto the rack and let cool completely.
7. To make the glaze: Put the white chocolate in a heatproof bowl. Bring the heavy cream to a boil and pour it over the chocolate. Wait 30 seconds, then, using a rubber spatula, gently stir until the chocolate is melted and the glaze is smooth.
8. Hold a long metal icing spatula in one hand and the bowl of glaze in the other. Pour the glaze onto the center of the brownies and use the spatula to nudge it evenly over the surface. Don’t worry if it dribbles over the edges, you can trim the sides later (or not). Refrigerate the brownies for about 20 minutes to dry the glaze.
9. Cut into 16 squares, each roughly 2 ¼” on a side.

Shirley's Fudgy Brownies

Shirley's Fudgy Brownies - made May 9, 2010 from Bakewise by Shirley Corriher

A few months ago, I blogged about how the copy of Bakewise I had bought off eBay had been stolen when the mailman left the package by my garage door. It soured me on getting Bakewise which had nothing to do with the book but I had looked forward to getting it for so long and having it ripped off like that left a bad taste in my mouth literally. But the seller, upon hearing what had happened to my package, sent me another brand-new copy (this time to my office address so there'd be no repeat chance of another theft) free of charge and even offered to refund me my shipping cost of the original package. Which was an amazing affirmation of the goodness in people and one for which I was exceedingly grateful.

I'm way overdue in trying out recipes from my new copy of Bakewise but to rectify that, I tried one of the brownie recipes last night. Oh. My. If you've followed my blog with any regularity, you'll know how much I prefer brownies for quick and easy baking, not to mention my enjoyment of rich, fudgy brownies in general. You might even recall that I was in ecstasy over Rosie's Award Winning Brownies from the Rosie's Bakery baking book. Hmm, move over Rosie, Shirley has won me over and taken first place in the Best Brownie I've Ever Eaten category. This was dense, fudgy, chocolaty but not overwhelming in a sickly sweet way. It was just good.

The funny thing is, most brownie recipes are very similar but this one was different enough that I didn't expect it to be so good. For one thing, in my experience, the best-tasting, fudgiest, richest brownies start with unsweetened chocolate. This one has almost all semisweet and what wasn't semisweet was sweet chocolate. Immediately I thought it would be an overly sweet brownie and not be rich-chocolate tasting enough. Not so. For another thing, it uses confectioners' sugar more than granulated sugar, another unusual ingredient that I thought would make the brownie more cakey than fudgy. Wrong again. Which goes to show Shirley Corriher is smarter than I am and knows her brownies.

In typical fashion, I omitted the nuts from this and left the brownie plain. Didn't even add chocolate chips. But I did chop up some Snickers bars and cover half the brownie pan with them after they had finished baking. The recipe calls for baking the brownies for an hour but I took mine out after 45 minutes as the toothpick in the edges came out clean and towards the middle came out with moist crumbs. Then I turned the oven off, topped half the brownie with the chopped-up Snickers and left them in the hot oven for a few minutes, just long enough to soften the Snickers so that when I took the brownie out of the oven, I could smear some of the Snickers into the top of the brownie with a small spatula. Genius.

I brought these into work for a staff meeting today and they were a hit. My boss even poked me in the shoulder during the meeting to gesture to the brownie he was eating and gave me a thumbs up. Success.

1 ½ cups pecans
1 ½ cups plus 2 tablespoons unsalted butter, cut into 1-tablespoon pieces, divided
Nonstick cooking spray, optional
12 ounces semisweet chocolate, finely chopped
1 ounce German’s Sweet Chocolate
4 large eggs
3 large egg yolks
1 ½ cups dark brown sugar, packed
1 cup confectioners’ sugar
2 tablespoons granulated sugar
3 tablespoons light corn syrup
1 tablespoon pure vanilla extract
¾ teaspoon salt
1 ½ cups spooned and leveled bleached all-purpose flour

1. Arrange a shelf in the middle of the oven and preheat the oven to 300˚F.
2. Spread the pecans on a baking sheet and roast for 10 minutes. While the nuts are hot, stir in 2 tablespoons of the butter. When cool, coarsely chop and set aside.
3. Line a 13 x 9 x 2-inch pan with parchment sprayed with nonstick cooking spray or Release foil (nonstick side up), allowing overhang on both long sides to make removal easier.
4. Place the remaining 1 ½ cups butter around the edge of a microwave-safe glass bowl. Place the semisweet and sweet chocolate in the center. Melt the butter and chocolate in the microwave on 100% power for 1 minute, stirring at least 2 times, and then 15 seconds more, stirring 1 time. Or, place the chocolates and butter together in a stainless-steel bowl. In a large skillet, bring water to a simmer. Set aside until the water is no longer steaming. Place the bowl of chocolate and butter in the hot water, being careful not to get water or steam into the chocolate. Stir the chocolate every few minutes until melted.
5. In a large bowl, beat the eggs with a fork just to blend whites and yolks. With a minimum of hand stirring, stir together the eggs, egg yolks, brown sugar, confectioners’ sugar, granulated sugar, corn syrup, vanilla and salt.
6. By hand, with a minimum of stirring, stir together the egg mixture and the chocolate mixture. Stir in the flour. Pour the batter into the prepared pan and smooth out.
7. Place the pan on the arranged shelf and bake until brownies just begin to pull away from the edge of the pan, about 1 hour. Err on the side of undercooking rather than risk drying out the brownies.
8. Cool completely in the pan or a rack. Remove the brownies from the pan, using the parchment or foil overhang to help lift out the brownies. When completely cool, wrap the brownies well with plastic wrap and refrigerate overnight.
9. Place the brownies on a cutting board and move the parchment or foil. Place another cutting board on top and turn over so that the brownies are right side up. Trim the edges and cut into 2-inch squares. Wrap individually in plastic wrap and store refrigerated.

Orange Buttermilk Cake

Orange Buttermilk Cake - made April 17, 2010, original recipe

I invented this recipe – sort of. If you look closely, it’s a variation of the Kahlua Cake recipe but I just changed some components to get a different flavor. But the texture and moistness are approximately the same. I changed it up because I wanted to use up some buttermilk and oranges I had. Past experience has taught me the basic elements of this cake (cake mix, vanilla pudding mix, eggs, oil and liquid flavoring) are pretty forgiving and bake up into a nice cake even if you do get creative with the add-ins.

1 18.25-oz package of yellow cake mix
1 4-oz package vanilla pudding mix
4 large eggs
1 cup buttermilk
Zest of 1 orange
Juice from 1 orange squeezed into a 1 cup measure, then top off the measuring cup with oil for a total of 1 cup orange juice & oil

1. Preheat oven to 350˚F. Grease Bundt pan.
2. Sift the cake mix to get rid of any lumps. Combine remaining ingredients in the mixing bowl of a freestanding electric mixer and mix with the paddle attachment until smooth, 2-3 minutes.
3. Pour batter into greased Bundt pan and slide into preheated oven.
4. Bake until top is firm and toothpick inserted in center of Bundt ring comes out almost clean or with a few moist crumbs. Make sure you do the toothpick test in the most moist-looking part of the cake.
5. Let cool in pan for 5 minutes then invert onto serving plate and let cool almost completely before glazing.

Glaze
I made up this glaze recipe – the thing with glaze is it’s really a matter of personal preference. Some people like runny glazes and others want their glaze to have the firmer consistency of frosting. For this one, I combined 5 tablespoons of softened butter, some powdered sugar, the zest from 1 orange and the freshly squeezed juice of 1 orange. How much orange juice and how much powdered sugar is up to you. Add more juice if you want a runny glaze and more powdered sugar for a thicker glaze. Use an electric mixer to combine the ingredients as that’ll show you the consistency you have fairly easily and you can add juice or powdered sugar to your taste.

For this particular glaze, I waited until the cake was still a bit lukewarm or just barely cool and I spread half the glaze over the cake. It melted slightly into the cake. Let the cake cool completely then cover with the rest of the glaze. That first layer of glaze will harden slightly as the cake cools and the sugar crystallizes and the second layer will remain softer like a frosting. I like to have both textures against the soft crumb of the cake.