Buttermilk Beignets

Buttermilk Beignets - made March 7, 2011 from Dam Good Sweet by David Guas and Raquel Pelzel (book #54)

Do you have a foodie bucket list?  Every foodie I know has some sort of foodie bucket list - you know, both the food you want to eat before you die and where you want to eat it.  Some people want to eat at French Laundry, some want to take an Italian cooking course in Tuscany, etc.  I've done a fair number of things on my foodie bucket list - eaten a fresh baguette while strolling down the Champs Elysee in Paris, had gelato in Florence, lobster in Maine, fresh pineapple in Hawaii, noodles in Beijing, and pavlova in New Zealand, gone to the Ghirardelli Chocolate Festival, done a chocolate week in Belize, etc.

I still have a fair number of items on my foodie bucket list still to do, eat and visit.  Just below attending the National or World Pastry Championship, next on the list at the moment is to have beignets at Cafe du Monde in New Orleans.  Beignets are deep-fried dough but don't think they're doughnuts.  They're French.  They have to be more uppity than that.  The dough is usually not as sweet as doughnuts and their sweetness comes from the confectioners' sugar normally sprinkled on top.  I've done deep-fried bread concoctions before, my favorite being zeppoles (fried Italian dough balls made with ricotta cheese), but have never made beignets.  In honor of tomorrow being Mardi Gras or Fat Tuesday, I thought I'd give it a go.  The advantage of having 200-something recipe books is I likely have a recipe for everything.  It also helps that this particular recipe book has a sub-title of "Desserts to Satisfy Your Sweet Tooth, New Orleans Style".

It was a last-minute decision to make the beignets as I didn't even realize it was Mardi Gras tomorrow until I got an email from a friend about it.  Fortunately I had most of the ingredients on hand so when I came home, I could throw it together.  Unfortunately, what I didn't have on hand was bread flour so I had to substitute all-purpose flour in this recipe.  I hate doing substitutions that may be key to the recipe but I thought I'd take a chance with it, especially since I had just come from the grocery store and didn't want to go back, not with the price of gas these days.  The problem with substitutions is it's hard to judge the original recipe itself or if it was the sub that threw it off.  The dough for this turned out to be pretty soft, almost more like batter than dough.  I ended up adding an extra 1/2 cup of flour to the mixture just to make it more the consistency of dough.  I don't know if it's because of the all-purpose flour or if even with bread flour, it would've still been soft.

In any case, this rose nicely but trying to roll it out, even with added flour for kneading, was almost impossible.  The dough was just too sticky and soft to manage well.  I ended up hacking some random chunks of dough to throw in the fryer but didn't try to shape or knead it any further.  It fried pretty well and turned a nice golden brown fairly quickly.  I turned them a few times to ensure even browning, drained them on paper towels, and sprinkled with powdered sugar before trying them.  I have to say, you almost can't go wrong with fried anything, especially warm fried dough.  I should've cooked it a little longer as the middles were a bit doughy but overall, these weren't bad.  The beignets themselves weren't that sweet.  Instead, the sweetness came from the powdered sugar sprinkled on top.  Having never made beignets before and the rare times I've tried them before they weren't warm, I'm not sure how this recipe stacks up.  I'm just going to have to go to Cafe du Monde and try their beignets so I can gauge the bar.

¾ cup whole milk

1 ½ cups buttermilk

4 teaspoons active dry yeast

2 ½ tablespoons sugar

3 ½ cups bread flour plus extra for flouring work surface

½ teaspoon baking soda

¼ teaspoon salt

Peanut oil for frying

Confectioners’ sugar for serving, as much as you think you’ll need – then double that!

1.    Heat the milk in a small saucepan over medium-high heat until small bubbles form at the surface.  Remove from the heat, add the buttermilk and then pour into a stand mixer bowl.  Whisk in the yeast and the sugar and set aside for 5 minutes.  Add the flour, baking soda, and salt, and mix on low speed, using a dough hook, until the dry ingredients are moistened, 3 to 4 minutes.  Increase the mixer speed to medium and continue mixing until the dough forms a loose ball and is still quite wet and tacky, 1 to 2 minutes longer.  Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and set the dough aside in a draft-free spot for 1 hour.

2.    Pour enough peanut oil into a large pot to fill it to a depth of 3 inches and bring to a temperature of 375⁰F over medium heat (this will take about 20 minutes).  Line a plate with paper towels and set aside.

3.    Lightly flour your work surface and turn the dough out onto it.  Sprinkle the top of the dough with flour, gently press to flatten, fold it in half, and gently tuck the ends under to create a rough-shaped round.  Dust again and roll the dough out into a ½” to 1/3”-thick circle.  Let the dough rest for 1 minute before using a chef’s knife, a bench knife, or a pizza wheel to cut the dough into 1 ½” squares (you should get about 48).

4.    Gently stretch a beignet lengthwise and carefully drop it into the oil.  Add a few beignets (don’t overcrowd them) and fry until puffed up and golden brown, turning them often with a slotted spoon for 2 to 3 minutes.  Transfer to the prepared plate to drain while you cook the rest. Serve while still warm, buried under a mound of confectioners’ sugar, with hot coffee on the side.

Chocolate Chunkers

Chocolate Chunkers - made March 7, 2011 from Rosie's Bakery Delicious and Decadent Dessert Book by Judy Rosenberg (book #53)

I've been stepping up the baking experiments over the past few days.  I have more time to bake now but fewer people to eat my baking since I'm not going into the office anymore or working at the moment.  So I have to leverage when I do see people and can pawn off, er, share, my baking experiments.  Sometimes I email one (or two) of my ex-coworkers to see if they're around so I can do a dropoff of baked goods that they can share with the rest of the office. No way am I eating all this by myself.  I'm also finding I have a dismaying tendency these days to lose my sweet tooth.  Sometimes even a bite or two already satisfies.  While that may be good for the waistline, it's a little (frankly) irritating when my greedy taste buds wants something but the rest of me says, "hey, that's enough.  I'm good."  I almost feel betrayed.  By myself.

When I can, I like to make up cookie doughs and put them in the freezer for when I need them.  Sometimes I'm in the mood to bake and sometimes I'm not.  It's so much easier to always have cookie dough on hand ready to bake at a moment's notice when the occasion arises.  This one's a bit impractical to do that with since it calls for a glaze and you don't want to hang onto glaze too long.   However, I exercised a little creative license and instead of making the glaze, I frosted these with some nutella.  I bought the Costco-sized jars so it's almost inevitable that I'm going to be focused on making things with nutella in the immediate future.  I'm not big on ganache-type glazes anyway and nothing is simpler than warming up a little nutella for easier spreading.  It also has the added advantage that you can use as much or as little as you need from the jar without fussing over making a ganache and using it all at the same time.

The dough for this was pretty soft, almost the consistency of a brownie batter.  Let the melted chocolate and butter mixture cool slightly but not too much before you add the rest of the ingredients.  You want to add the flour before the chocolate sets or stiffens up and makes mixing harder.  The more you have to mix in the flour, the tougher your cookies will be so minimize the mixing as much as possible.  Once you have it mixed, let it sit for a few minutes to cool into more of a cookie dough texture then when you scoop it into dough balls, it'll hold its shape better. Lastly, I also omitted the nuts and substituted Heath milk chocolate toffee bits for the raisins.  There's no need to ruin a perfectly good chocolate cookie with raisins.  Seriously.

This came out pretty fudgy-moist, chocolaty and rich. I don't think I really needed to add the toffee as just chocolate chips would've done. For serious indulgent decadence, let these cool to just slightly warmer than lukewarm so that they're not so fragile but still warm enough to melt the nutella, top with a spoonful of nutella and enjoy blasting into the chocolate stratosphere.

The Cookie

3 ½ ounces unsweetened chocolate (I used 4 ounces)

8 tablespoons (1 stick) unsalted butter

1 cup plus 2 tablespoons all-purpose flour

1/8 teaspoon baking powder

1 ¼ cups sugar

2 whole large eggs

1 large egg yolk

1 cup raisins (I substituted Heath toffee bits but you can omit entirely or add more chocolate chips)

¾ cup chopped pecans (optional)

4 ounces (¾ cup) semisweet chocolate chips

The glaze

½ cup heavy whipping cream

2 tablespoons sugar

8 ounces bittersweet chocolate, chopped small

1 tablespoon unsalted butter

1.     Preheat the oven to 325˚F.  Line several baking sheets with parchment paper.

2.     Melt the unsweetened chocolate and the butter in the top of a double boiler placed over simmering water (don’t let the bottom of the top half of the double boiler touch the boiling water).  Remove the pan from the heat and allow to cool slightly.

3.     Sift the flour and baking powder together into a small bowl and set aside.

4.     Place the sugar in a medium-size mixing bowl, add the melted chocolate mixture, and blend for 10 seconds.  Scrape the bowl with a rubber spatula.

5.     Add the eggs and the yolk and mix until blended, stopping the bowl once to scrape the sides with a rubber spatula.

6.     Add the flour mixture on low speed and mix until blended, stopping the mixer once to scrape the bowl.

7.     Add the raisins and blend 5 seconds.  Then add the nuts and chocolate chips.  Finish the mixing by hand. (If the dough seems too soft, let stand for a few minutes and it'll cool to more of a dough consistency that'll hold its shape when you scoop into dough balls.)

8.     Scoop heaping tablespoons of dough and form them into mounds with your hands.  Arrange them 2 inches apart on the prepared baking sheets.

9.     Bake the cookies until they form a thin crust, 20 to 25 minutes.  Allow them to cool on the sheets.

10.   Meanwhile, prepare the glaze: place the cream and sugar in a small saucepan and bring to a boil, whisking occasionally.  Remove from the heat immediately.

11.   Add the chocolate and butter to the pan, cover, and let sit about 5 minutes until the chocolate melts.

12.   Stir the mixture with a whisk until it is shiny and velvety.

13.   Dip each cookie, upside down, in the glaze, coating the entire top.  Place right side up on cooling racks or on a sheet of parchment paper to set for several hours.

14.   Store the cookies in an airtight container, with parchment paper between the layers, for a couple of days in the refrigerator.  After that, store them in the freezer for up to 2 weeks.

Makes 24 cookies

Quick and Easy Chicken Soup

Janelle's Quick and Easy Chicken Soup - made March 6, 2011 from The Devil's Food Cake Murder by Joanne Fluke (book #52)

Technically this isn't a real recipe book but rather the latest in the Hannah Swensen mysteries by Joanne Fluke where Hannah finds a dead body, solves the mystery and juggles her love life between Mike, who's a rake and Norman who's too perfect to be real except he needs to grow a pair when it comes to the women in his life.  But it does come with a variety of recipes so I consider it fair game for my baking challenge.  While I wasn't captivated by the storyline (it was the usual formula and I'm getting tired of the Hannah/Mike/Norman love triangle), I did find several recipes I wanted to try from it.

Given the title of the book, you'd think I'd make the Devil's Food Cake recipe first.  All in good time.  This chicken soup recipe looked so easy that I figured it was just my speed.  Like Sandra Lee's semi-homemade cooking, this is just opening cans and boiling stuff together.  I can do that.  Plus on still-chilly March evenings, nothing beats a bowl of hot soup.

What I liked best about this recipe is it doesn't have a lot of "stuff" in it.  Meaning, as a carnivore, I appreciated that it's just noodles, chicken and soup.  I even left off the parsley but mostly because I didn't have any on hand.  I don't have the most discerning taste buds when it comes to "real food" so I thought this was just fine.  The soup part was a bit creamy, more like a chowder consistency than a clear soup. Some of you with fancier palates might like to add some peas, carrots, onions and other stuff.  The only thing I would do differently next time is make half the recipe.  This is going to keep me in soup for at least a couple of weeks.

ETA: once the soup had cooled down, the liquid thickened from the consistency of clam chowder to more like a creamy pasta sauce.  As in, it wasn't really soup any longer or even soupy pasta.  If you want this to remain soup, I'd advise cutting back the amount of pasta by at least a third to half or increasing the amount of chicken broth.

8 cups chicken broth or 2 quarts water (8 cups) and 8 chicken bouillon cubes

6 ½ cups uncooked wide egg noodles

2 cans (10 ¾ ounces each) condensed cream of chicken soup, undiluted

3 cups cubed cooked chicken

1 cup (8 ounces) sour cream

Minced fresh parsley

1.    Bring broth or water and bouillon to a boil in a large pot.

2.    Add the noodles and cook, stirring occasionally, until the noodles are tender.  Do not drain the noodles.

3.    Lower the heat to medium and add the two cans of condensed cream of chicken soup.  Stir well.

4.    Add the cubed chicken and stir.

5.    Heat everything through, 5 to 10 minutes.  When the soup is hot, remove it from the heat.  Stir in the sour cream, sprinkle with fresh parsley and ladle into soup bowls.  Serve immediately.

White Chocolate Macadamia Cookies

White Chocolate Macadamia Cookies - made March 6, 2011 from Cookies, Brownies and Bars by Elinor Klivans

This doesn't count towards my baking challenge since I've already tried a recipe from this book (the awesome Caramel-Glazed Blondies) but I had some white chocolate and macadamias to use up and this recipe has been in my "Still Need to Make" file for months so I thought I might as well try it and knock it off the list, especially since I needed something to bring to my parents for the week and they prefer white chocolate cookies to regular chocolate chip cookies. 

Oh and remember how much I recommend a nut grinder for its time saving capabilities when you need to chop nuts?  I never use it with macadamia nuts because just about all the recipes I make with macadamia nuts calls them for to be big and chunky.  My nut grinder, even on the coarse grind, would make them too small.  The beauty and taste of the macadamia nuts is their size so I usually just do a (very) coarse chop.

I was a little concerned when I made the dough as it seemed rather soft.  I never bake cookie dough right after I make it but I always portion them into dough balls and freeze them first, preferably overnight.  That's to help with minimizing the cookie spread when they're baked.  But if your dough is too liquid, no matter how frozen the dough is to start with, some will still spread thin.  Of all the cookies I don't want to spread thin, anything with macadamia nuts is one of them because even coarsely chopped macadamia nuts can be sizable enough to stick out from a flat cookie.  You want the macadamia nuts to peek out shyly from the cookie, not wave their hands shrieking, "here we are!".

Unfortunately, I was right to be concerned about the soft cookie dough spreading.  Despite freezing the dough first and using the convection setting on my oven, these spread out more than I would've liked.  They baked more like a normal, soft-dough chocolate chip cookie and they were okay (crisp edges, moist, chewy middles) but not anything that different or special from a normal cookie.  With my jaded taste buds, these don't make the cut.  And yes, I can practically see my friends' rolling their eyes at me and saying, "I'm sure they're fine."  Maybe but in the white chocolate cookie category, I have to give the nod to Martha Stewart's recipe for White Chocolate Butterscotch cookies.  Now that's a cookie.  Next time, if I want to have less spread, I'd use half shortening, half butter for the recipe and go with dark brown sugar for a deeper flavor.

2 cups all-purpose flour

1 teaspoon baking soda

½ teaspoon salt

1 cup unsalted butter, room temperature

¾ cup firmly packed light brown sugar

¾ cup granulated sugar

2 large eggs, cold

2 teaspoons vanilla extract

2 cups white chocolate chips

¾ cup unsalted roasted macadamia nuts, coarsely chopped

1.     Position a rack in the middle of the oven and preheat to 350˚F.  Line 3 large cookie sheets with parchment paper.

2.     In a bowl, sift together the flour, baking soda and salt; set aside.  In a large bowl, combine the butter, brown sugar and granulated sugar.  Using a mixer on medium speed, beat until well blended, about 1 minute.  Add the eggs and vanilla and beat on low speed until the eggs are completely incorporated, scraping down the bowl occasionally with a rubber spatula.  Slowly add the flour mixture and beat on low speed just until incorporated.  Add the white chocolate chips and nuts and beat just until distributed.

3.     Place heaping tablespoonfuls of the dough 3 inches apart on the prepared cookie sheets.  Bake, 1 sheet at a time, until the cookie tops are lightly golden in the center, 10-12 minutes.

4.     Let the cookies cool on the cookie sheet for 5 minutes, then, using a wide metal spatula, transfer to wire racks to cool completely, about 30 minutes.  Repeat to bake and cool the remaining cookies.  Store the cookies in an airtight container at room temperature for up to 3 days.

Fudge Ball Cupcakes

Fudge Ball Cupcakes - made March 4, 2011 from Cupcakes by Elinor Klivans (book #51)

You can also call these little chocolate bombs.  Because they are the bomb.  This recipe calls for making these as 24 mini cupcakes. Once they're baked, you peel them out of the cupcake liners and all but the top is dipped in melted chocolate.  The cupcakes are turned upside down so that the uncoated top is the bottom then lightly dusted with cocoa powder once the chocolate coating is semi-firm and still sticky but not liquid.  Think of it as a truffle version of a cupcake.  For serious chocoholics.  Of which I am one.

The tricky thing with mini cupcakes is they bake quickly because of their small size so watch the timing on these and take them out when they're just barely done.  It's too easy for mini cupcakes to come out dry if they're left in the oven even a minute longer than necessary.  A dry cupcake is just a waste of calories and chewing time.  I took these out when there were still moist crumbs clinging to the toothpick but it wasn't liquid batter.  And curse me, but I forgot to time it.  I baked them for maybe 20 minutes?

They don't have any chemical leavening in them and you don't beat a lot of air into the batter so it's safe to fill the mini cupcake liners to the top and the cupcakes won't overflow.  They're more dense than the typical cupcake but that helps them stay moist as well.  I actually ended up with a little extra batter so I baked the extra in a small ramekin.  That's the tester piece below.  I didn't dust the tops with cocoa powder as the recipe suggested since they were plenty chocolate enough for me.  I did make only 2/3 of the melted chocolate coating because past experience has taught me following the normal recipe usually creates too much coating.  I was right.

Cupcakes

½ cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, cut into pieces

4 ounces unsweetened chocolate, chopped

2 large eggs

1 ¼ cups sugar

¼ teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

¾ cup unbleached all-purpose flour

Coating

2 cups (12 ounces) semisweet chocolate chips or chopped semisweet chocolate (I only used 8 ounces)

3 tablespoons canola or vegetable oil (I only used 2 tablespoons)

1.     Make the cupcakes: Position a rack in the middle of the oven.  Preheat the oven to 325˚F.  Line 2 mini-muffin tins that have 12 cups each with mini-paper liners.  Spray the paper liners with nonstick spray.

2.     Put the butter and unsweetened chocolate in a heatproof bowl or the top of a double boiler and place it over, but not touching, a saucepan of barely simmering water (or the bottom of the double boiler).  Stir the butter and chocolate until melted and smooth.  Remove from the water and set aside to cool slightly.

3.     In a large bowl, whisk the eggs, sugar and salt to blend them thoroughly, about 1 minute.  Whisk in the slightly cooled chocolate mixture and vanilla to incorporate them.  Whisk in the flour just until no white streaks remain.

4.     Fill each paper liner with about 1 ½ tablespoons batter, to just below the top of the liner.  Bake just until the tops feel firm and a toothpick inserted in the center comes out with a few moist crumbs clinging to it, about 24 minutes.  Cool the cupcakes for 10 minutes in the pans on wire racks.

5.     Using a small knife, loosen any cupcake tops that might have stuck to the pans.  Carefully place a wire rack on top of one pan of cupcakes.  Protecting your hands with pot holders and holding the pan and rack together, invert them to release the cupcakes onto the wire rack.  Turn the cupcakes top side up to cool completely.  If any cupcake tops separate from the cupcakes when you unmold them, simply press them back on; they will stick to these moist cupcakes. Repeat with the second pan of cupcakes.

6.     Make the chocolate coating: Put the chocolate and oil in a heatproof bowl or the top of a double boiler and place it over, but not touching, a saucepan of barely simmering water (or the bottom of a double boiler).  Stir until the chocolate is melted and smooth.  Scrape the chocolate coating into a small bowl.

7.     Remove the paper liners from the cooled cupcakes.  Holding the top of a cupcake with your fingers, dip all of the cupcake except the top in the chocolate coating.  Gently roll it in the chocolate to coat it thoroughly, then hold it over the bowl to let any excess drip off and return the cupcake to the wire rack, uncoated top down.  Repeat with the remaining cupcakes; do not let the coated cupcakes touch one another.  Let sit until the chocolate coating becomes just sticky to the touch but is no longer liquid.

8.     Use a strainer to dust the tops of the cupcakes lightly with cocoa powder.  (If the chocolate is at the semifirm, sticky stage, the cocoa powder will remain on the surface, not dissolve into it.)  Let the cupcakes sit at room temperature until the coating is firm; about 1 ½ hours.  Or, to speed the firming of the chocolate, refrigerate the fudge balls on the wire racks for about 10 minutes.

9.     When the chocolate is completely firm, put the fudge balls in clean paper liners.  Cover and refrigerate.  Serve cold or at room temperature.

10.   The cupcakes can be refrigerated for up to 5 days.

11.   Choices: Instead of cocoa, sprinkle 1 cup toasted coconut, ½ cup chocolate sprinkles, or ¾ cup finely chopped pecans or walnuts over the chocolate-covered fudge balls.  To toast coconut, spread shredded, sweetened coconut on a baking sheet and bake in a preheated 325 F oven until golden, about 11 minutes, stirring the coconut twice to help it toast evenly.

Yield: 24 mini cupcakes

Double Chocolate Toffee Brownies

Double Chocolate Toffee Brownies - made March 1, 2011 from The Brownie Experience by Lisa Tanner (book #50)

The original name for these brownies was Double Chocolate Peanut Brownies but I couldn't bring myself to add peanuts to the batter, even though they do go on top.  Instead, I substituted Heath Milk Chocolate Toffee Bits.  They add some crunch as well as the toffee flavor.  Because I skipped the peanuts which normally contain salt, I did add a pinch of salt to the batter itself to compensate.  The nice thing about baking basic brownies is you can dress them up or down as much as you please.

There isn't much batter to this brownie recipe so don't bake it in anything bigger than an 8" pan.  You might even want to go smaller if you want thicker brownies.  There's no chemical leavening in these so you can pretty much count on them being flat and fudgy. I baked these for just under 25 minutes since the toothpick came out clean then.  If I had baked them as the recipe suggested, I think they would've been dry.  Check them early since baking time will also depend on your oven.  These brownies are fudgy in texture but more sweet than rich chocolaty.

The Brownie Experience has the distinction of being the first all-brownie recipe book I remember buying and hails back to my college days so it's over 20 years old.  I'm now at book #50 in my baking challenge. It sounds like I've made a lot of progress but I think I'm only at the 25% mark in going through all my baking books and baking a recipe from each one.  And I've been at this for more than 4 months.  Oy.

½ cup butter, softened

2 ounces unsweetened chocolate

1 cup sugar

1 egg

½ teaspoon vanilla

½ cup flour

1/3 cup chopped toasted peanuts

1/3 cup chocolate chips

1.     Preheat oven to 350˚F.  Lightly butter an 8” square pan. 

2.     In a small saucepan, melt butter and chocolate together over low heat.  Remove from heat and beat in sugar, then egg and vanilla.  Stir in flour until well combined.  Spread in pan.  Combine peanuts and chocolate chips; sprinkle evenly over top of batter, pressing down lightly.

3.     Bake about 35 minutes, or until top springs back when lightly pressed with fingertip.  I baked for less than 25 minutes.  Check them at 20 minutes and make the judgment call.

4.     Cool completely in pan.  Cut into squares.

Makes 16 brownies

Double Chocolate Cookies

Double Chocolate Cookies - made March 1, 2011 from The Dessert Bible by Christopher Kimball (book #49)

There are times when you just need a decadent chocolate cookie.  Why?  Well...why not?  I have several good recipes for chocolate cookies and the two things they have in common in how I make them are:

1) use the best quality chocolate you can.  I've said this before and it bears repeating.  Most chocolate cookies have chocolate in such high proportion to the other cookie ingredients that they can make or break a cookie.  If you have a great recipe, give it the honor it deserves by using great ingredients.  For this particular one, I used a combination of Lindt bars and Guittard chocolate buttons for the 8 ounces of melted chocolate.

2) Always underbake chocolate cookies.  Don't bake them longer than the recipe calls for and don't be afraid to take them out even if they look underbaked.  Chocolate will set once it's cool and you'll have a nice, fudgy chocolate cookie.  Think "baked fudge" more than "cookie".

This particular recipe is from the Dessert Bible by Christopher Kimball who's one of the editors of Cook's Illustrated.  I don't use this book as much as you'd think, perhaps because I've had mixed results from the few I've tried.  But the lead in to each recipe, like in Cook's Illustrated, is always informative and worth reading.  And this recipe is one of the good ones.  Fudgy and rich - that's all I ask from a chocolate cookie.

The only thing that surprised me about this recipe is it didn't call for adding chocolate chips.  It's an individual choice, I suppose, but to me, a chocolate cookie without chocolate chips is like making oatmeal cookies without any oatmeal.  Just incomplete.  Because the cookie dough was already a dark chocolate cookie batter, I added milk chocolate chips, both because I prefer milk chocolate and to add a bit more sweetness to the rich chocolate taste.

Another recommendation: despite my infamous love and devotion to warm chocolate chip cookies 10 minutes out of the oven, I actually prefer chocolate cookies to be completely cool before I eat one.  You can taste the richness of the chocolate better that way and I like the fudgy texture when cool, not liquidy when warm.  These didn't spread much so they made a nice thick cookie.  In fact, it's the only time I'd sanction the word "chubby" when used to describe these cookies.  Bring on the chub.

8 ounces semisweet chocolate, coarsely chopped

1 cup all-purpose flour

¼ cup Dutch-process cocoa powder

1 teaspoon baking powder

½ teaspoon salt

5 tablespoons unsalted butter, softened but still firm

¾ cup packed light brown sugar

¼ cup granulated sugar

2 large eggs

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1 teaspoon instant espresso powder

2 cups milk chocolate chips (you can use semisweet or white chocolate if you prefer)

1.     Melt chocolate either in a saucepan in a 250˚F oven for 15 minutes or in a glass bowl in a microwave oven at 50% power for 3 minutes, stirring after 2 minutes.  If you like, the chocolate can also be melted in the top of a double boiler.  Set aside.  Sift together the flour, cocoa, baking powder, and salt onto a piece of waxed paper.  Set aside.  Heat oven to 350˚F.

2.     In a large bowl, cream the butter with an electric mixer on high speed for 4 to 5 minutes or until very pale and fluffy.  Add the sugars and beat an additional 2 to 3 minutes, or until light and fluffy.  Scrape down the sides of the bowl.  Lightly whisk an egg with a fork and then add to the creamed butter, beating 30 seconds.  Repeat with second egg.  Add vanilla and espresso powder and beat to incorporate for about 20 seconds.  Add the melted chocolate and beat another 30 seconds.  Scrape down the sides of the bowl.  Add the dry ingredients and beat on the lowest speed until well mixed. Note: once you add the melted chocolate, work quickly to incorporate the dry ingredients or the batter will stiffen up too much and make incorporating all of the dry ingredients more difficult.

3.     Using a small ice cream scoop or a large soup spoon, make balls of dough about 1 ¾ inches in diameter (the size of a golf ball).  Place them on a parchment-lined cookie sheet.  Bake about 10 minutes, rotating the cookie sheet halfway through cooking.  The cookies should be very soft and appear undercooked when they are removed from the oven.  Do not let the cookies become too browned on the bottom.  Remove to a cooling rack to set and cool.  Repeat with a new sheet of parchment paper until all the dough is baked.

Tri-Chocolate Brownies

Tri-Chocolate Brownies - made February 25, 2011 from Brownies to Die For by Bev Shaffer (book #48)

The only thing better than 2 kinds of chocolate in a brownie is 3 kinds of chocolate.  And the only thing better than that is some gianduja added in. Gianduja is a creamy chocolate hazelnut mixture or spread.  The one people are probably most familiar with is Nutella. Some folks use nutella like peanut butter and spread it on bread.  I like to bake with it (naturally).  The creamy texture in a fudgy brownie adds more flavor and texture to an otherwise plain brownie.

I took this basic brownie recipe and added a thin layer of the crema gianduja I bought from the little Italian grocery store on Lygon St in Melbourne's Little Italy. I layered half the brownie batter in the pan first, then the gianduja then the rest of the batter, covering the gianduja layer completely.  I needed a quick recipe to bring on a trip this weekend and of the dozens/hundreds of brownie recipes I have, I figured this one would do.  My palate is rather jaded when it comes to brownies.  People always ask me what my favorite recipe is or which one is the best or fudgiest.  I don't know that I have a favorite - that implies choosing one over another and I don't like to limit myself, haha.  I like certain types of brownies (fudgy as opposed to cakey, chocolaty as opposed to sweet) but I also love playing around with different variations of them and adding ingredients I like such as dulce de leche, caramel, and/or gianduja.  I'm on a gianduja kick at the moment so I'm looking for other desserts I could try that uses it.

One note on the directions - it says to cool the melted chocolates for 15 minutes then "whisk" in the softened butter.  I don't think butter can be successfully whisked in anywhere, especially in a somewhat solid form.  So I actually added the butter to the chocolates to be melted together.  I didn't wait 15 minutes after melting them but added the rest of the ingredients immediately.  Yes, living dangerously I am.

Overall, this was a decent brownie recipe.  It has more of a dark chocolate taste and is nicely fudgy.  The gianduja flavor didn't come out as much as I had hoped but it's still there.  Next time I may add some directly to the batter and mix it in then be a little more generous with the gianduja layer itself.  Some toasted chopped hazelnuts on top would also bring out more of the hazelnut flavor but I didn't have any on hand.  Next time....

2 ounces bittersweet chocolate, coarsely chopped

2 ounces unsweetened chocolate, coarsely chopped

6 tablespoons unsalted butter, softened to room temperature

¾ cup granulated sugar

1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

2 large eggs, lightly beaten

½ cup unbleached, all-purpose flour

½ teaspoon salt

½ cup semisweet chocolate chips

1.    Heat oven to 350⁰F.  Lightly grease an 8” square pan.  Sprinkle bottom with cocoa powder, tapping out any excess.

2.    Combine the bittersweet and unsweetened chocolates in a double boiler set over simmering water.  Stir often, over low heat, until mixture is melted and smooth.

3.    Remove top of double boiler from heat, carefully wipe bottom, and set mixture aside to cool for 15 minutes.

4.    Whisk in the butter, sugar and vanilla until blended (note: I added the butter to be melted with the chocolates).  Whisk in eggs, beating until smooth.  Gently add in flour and salt just until mixture is combined.  Stir in chocolate chips.  Spread into prepared pan.  Bake for 20 to 30 minutes or until a cake tester or toothpick inserted near the center comes out with a few moist crumbs attached.  Cool pan completely on a wire rack.  Cut into squares.

Makes about 1 ½ dozen

Dulce de Leche Duos

Dulce de Leche Duos - made February 24, 2011 from Baking From My Home to Yours by Dorie Greenspan (book #47)

I love this baking book, no two ways about it.  The sometimes lengthy directions are mainly geared for novices so I tend to skim them and do my own thing but if you're a beginning baker, this is a great recipe book to talk you through the steps of baking each recipe.  Nearly every recipe I've tried from it has turned out and they're straightforward to make and taste great.  Don't let the size of the book intimidate you.  As far as I'm concerned, the more recipes, the more pages and the more pictures it has, the better.  This one book alone could probably keep me busy baking for a year, not only trying new recipes but going back to the ones I've already made from it that have turned out well.

This is another sandiwch cookie recipe and has dulce de leche as the star ingredient, both mixed in the cookie dough itself and as the filling for the sandwich cookies.  I used up the last of the dulce de leche that my friend Jenny brought me from South America for the cookie dough itself so I substituted nutella for the sandwich filling.  Dulce de Leche and chocolate hazelnut?  There's a duo I can get behind.

The dough for this is pretty soft, even after I froze it for a couple of hours.  I ended up giving up using my small ice cream scoop for the dough rounds since it was a little too soft to be scooped properly.  So I used two small spoons to shape them in roughly spherical shapes. Follow the sandwich cookie rule and make each one small and approximately the same size (which is a little harder to do without an ice cream scoop). It bakes like a chocolate chip cookie with crisp edges and chewy middles so it's a little fragile when used as a sandwich cookie (be careful when you handle them to spread the filling and sandwich them).  It tastes great as a standalone cookie even without the filling but do try some with the filling, whether you use dulce de leche, nutella or something else.  Just make sure that whichever filling you use, it's a soft, spreadable consistency.  I had to warm up the nutella slightly as it was too firm to spread over a fragile cookie.  15 seconds in the microwave and a good stir and it worked fine.

This is a tasty little cookie, not too sweet, despite the dulce de leche in the batter.  It's not crisp all the way through like most cookies used for sandwich cookies but not cakey soft like whoopie pies.  Rather, it's a nice middle ground between the two.  You neither want to underbake it (too soft) or overbake it (too crisp/brittle).  Instead, Goldilocks it to "just right" with golden brown edges while the middle is still a lighter tan color.

2 ½ cups all-purpose flour

1 teaspoon baking soda

¼ teaspoon salt

2 sticks (8 ounces) unsalted butter, at room temperature

¾ cup store-bought dulce de leche, plus more for filling

¾ cup packed light brown sugar

½ cup sugar

2 large eggs

1.    Preheat the oven to 350⁰F.  Line two baking sheets with parchment paper.

2.    Whisk together the flour, baking soda and salt.

3.    In the bowl of a stand mixer with the paddle attachment, beat the butter at medium speed until soft.  Add the ¾ cup dulce de leche and both sugars and continue to beat until light and fluffy, about 3 minutes.  Add the eggs one at a time, beating for 1 minute after each addition.  Reduce the mixer speed to low and add the dry ingredients, mixing only until just combined.

4.    Spoon the dough onto the baking sheets, using a heaping teaspoon of dough for each cookie and leaving 2 inches between them.

5.    Bake the cookies for 10 to 12 minutes, turning around halfway for even browning.  The cookies should be honey brown with a light sugar crust, but they will still be soft, so remove the sheets from the oven but let cookies sit for another minute or two on the baking sheet.  Then, using a wide metal spatula, transfer the cookies to a rack to cool to room temperature.

6.    Repeat with the remaining dough, making sure you cool the baking sheets before using them again.

7.    When the cookies are completely cool, spread the flat bottoms of half the cookies with a small amount of dulce de leche, and sandwich with the flat sides of the remaining cookies.

ETA: Every Saturday I try to participate in a "Sweets for a Saturday" post on a blog Lisa started up.  Go check it out - it's worth it:

White Chocolate Butterscotch Cookies

 White Chocolate Butterscotch Cookies - made February 22, 2011 from Martha Stewart's Baking Handbook (book #46)

When I first saw the title of this, I almost skipped right by it.  I wasn't sure how I felt about combining white chocolate and butterscotch together in a cookie.  It doesn't contain real chocolate - how good could it be?  But a closer look at the recipe showed the butterscotch flavor doesn't come from butterscotch chips as I had first assumed but rather from the dark brown sugar flavoring the dough.  Essentially it's a chocolate chip cookie with white chocolate instead of milk or semisweet chocolate chips.  Which is exactly what I had been looking for as I had brought back some white chocolate bars from New Zealand to make cookies with.  I like butterscotch but a little bit of butterscotch flavor can go a long way and make something too sweet.  This had a more subtle butterscotch flavor and was quite good.  Don't substitute light brown sugar for the dark brown sugar - it's the dark brown sugar that gives it the butterscotch-iness.

Side note on white chocolate - white chocolate is a misnomer as good-quality white chocolate isn't white but more like a cream color from the cocoa butter.  If it's white, it's vanilla or fake but it isn't white chocolate.  White chocolate isn't chocolate either but I've already expressed my dismay over that in prior posts.

I also had my doubts about this recipe at first because it mostly used shortening rather than butter and I'm not a fan of shortening.  But I've had good success with Martha Stewart's recipes before so I had to give it a try.  I'm glad I did because this actually makes a pretty good cookie.  Because it's got more shortening than butter, it doesn't spread as much so it makes cookies of a nice thickness.  It also has a bit more crunch than an all-butter cookie and there's just enough butter in it that you can taste it rather than the shortening.  Thumbs up all around.

1 ¾ cups all-purpose flour

½ teaspoon baking soda

½ teaspoon salt

2 tablespoons unsalted butter, room temperature

¾ cup vegetable shortening

1 ¼ cups packed dark brown sugar

1 large egg

1 tablespoon pure vanilla extract

8 ounces best-quality white chocolate, chopped into ¼” pieces

1.     Preheat the oven to 350⁰F.  Line two large baking sheets with parchment paper.

2.     In a medium bowl, whisk together the flour, baking soda and salt; set aside.

3.     In the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, beat the butter, shortening and brown sugar on medium speed until light and fluffy, about 3 minutes, scraping down the sides of the bowl as needed.  Beat in the egg and the vanilla until combined.  With the mixer on low speed, add the flour mixture in two batches, beating until just combined.  Stir in the white chocolate.

4.     Drop 2 tablespoons of dough at a time about 2 inches apart on the prepared baking sheets.  Bake, rotating sheets halfway through, until lightly golden brown around  the edges, about 15 minutes.  Let cookies cool on sheets for 2 minutes, then transfer parchment and cookies to a wire rack to cool completely.

Cookies can be kept in an airtight container at room temperature for up to 4 days.