Chocolate Pecan Caramel Shortbread

Chocolate Pecan Caramel Shortbread - made September 2, 2013 from Godiva.com

I found this recipe on godiva.com years and years ago.  It's no longer on their site as they refresh and rotate recipes around hence why I don't have a link to the specific recipe in the blog title and instead am just linking to the Godiva site above.  I'm glad I snagged this when I did. 

I suppose you could call this a Turtle Shortbread since it has all the key turtle elements: nuts, caramel and chocolate.  Actually, I've been on a turtle kick lately (the confection, not the sea creature) as you'll see with this shortbread and (upcoming) Turtle Cookies and Turtle Cake.  Coincidence, I assure you. Or simply my love of caramel and chocolate together.

Now I did change the recipe to make it more turtle confection-like because the original recipe called for baking this as a round shortbread, filling it with the pecan filling, baking it, then covering with ganache, and piping white chocolate decoratively on top.  I even remember the original picture of this from long ago where it looked very pretty and professional.  Yeah, I didn't choose to go that route.  Instead, I put the shortbread dough into a rectangular tart part instead of a round one for easier portioning out to give away and par-baked the shortbread layer so it would brown and bake first.  The reason for that is I was afraid that if I filled the unbaked shell with the caramelized pecan filling, the time the shell would need to bake would be longer than I wanted to bake the filling.  I wanted a soft caramel filling, not a hardened caramelized one.

That turned out to be a good call as I got some nice browning on the shortbread by par-baking and only needed another 15 minutes to bake it with the filling before the pecans achieved the toastiness I wanted.

I left the original recipe below for anyone who does want to make this as a round confection and go the pretty route with the white chocolate piping on top.  Me, I'm of the belief you can't go wrong with caramel paired with chocolate so after I spread the ganache over the cooled pecan shortbread tart, I also dolloped salted caramel (from Trader Joe's but you can also make your own if you're inclined) on top then sprinkled with mini chocolate chips.

The beauty about baking is you can't really go wrong with what you choose to mix and match.  Yes, you should follow the recipe to make the crust, the filling and the ganache so each element will turn out properly but you can choose to do what I did and add a caramel layer or leave it out and go with white chocolate.  Either way, I'm going to guess it'll be pretty good.

I brought these into work and they went fairly quickly.  Because I couldn't stack the pieces (the ganache was too soft), I brought them in on two paper plates.  Both plates emptied before the morning was over. And I had coworkers mentioning them to me the day of and days later as being good so that's a good sign.

Shortbread crust

1 ½ cups sifted all-purpose flour

¼ teaspoon salt

¼ teaspoon double-acting baking powder

6 tablespoons unsalted butter, softened

3 tablespoons granulated sugar

1 large egg

¼ teaspoon vanilla extract

Pecan filling

8 tablespoons unsalted butter, cut into tablespoons

2 tablespoons honey

2 tablespoons granulated sugar

½ cup light brown sugar

1 cup pecan halves

2 tablespoons heavy cream

Chocolate topping

½ cup heavy cream

1 tablespoon granulated sugar

2/3 cup semisweet chocolate chips

Garnish

1 ounce white chocolate, coarsely chopped

1.     Make the shortbread crust: Position a rack in the center of the oven and preheat to 350˚F. 

2.    Into a medium bowl, sift together the flour, salt and baking powder

3.    In a medium bowl, using a hand-held electric mixer, cream together the butter and sugar until light and fluffy.  Add the egg and vanilla and mix at low speed until combined.  While continuing to mix at low speed, add the flour mixture in three batches, mixing just until the dough starts to come together.

4.    Scrape the dough into a 9 ½” fluted tart pan with a removable bottom.  Using your fingertips, press the dough evenly into the bottom and up the sides of the pan.  Set the crust aside.  Alternatively, you can choose to parbake for 15-20 minutes or until crust is very lightly golden brown before you add the filling.

5.    Make the pecan filling: In a small saucepan, place the butter, honey, sugar and brown sugar.  Cook over medium-high heat, stirring constantly, until the mixture comes to a boil.  Continue to boil the mixture for 3 minutes.  Remove the pan from the heat and stir in the pecan halves.  Stir in the cream.  Pour the pecan mixture into the prepared crust and bake for 30 minutes (15-20 minutes if you've parbaked the crust first).  Cool the tart on a wire rack for hour.

6.    Make the chocolate topping: In a small saucepan, combine the cream and sugar.  Cook over medium-high heat, stirring occasionally, until the mixture comes to a boil.  Remove the pan from heat and stir in the chocolate chips.  Whisk the mixture until smooth.  Set aside 1/3 cup of the topping in the refrigerator for garnish.

7.    Garnish the shortbread: Pour the warm chocolate topping over the top of the tart and spread it evenly with a small metal cake spatula. 

8.    Place the tart uncovered in the refrigerator for 15 minutes to set the chocolate.  Melt the white chocolate.

9.    Fill a small parchment cone with the melted chocolate.  Pipe the chocolate in fine lines across the top of the tart in a crisscross pattern.

10.  Fill a pastry bag fitted with a medium star tip (such as Ateco #5) with the reserved chocolate topping.  Pipe 8 rosettes around the edge of the tart.  Top each rosette with a pecan half.

Restaurant Review: Dish Dash

Dish Dash - lunch on August 20, 2013

Every couple of months or so, I take my team out for lunch.  It's a chance for us to look up from the never-ending stream of spreadsheets and emails and talk to each other about topics other than work.  To get out of the office, relax and do that team bonding thing.  Oh and to eat good food and have dessert.

Inside Dish Dash Grill

We rotate the duty of scheduling the lunch and booking the restaurant but I think I've been slacking lately in having these so I took it on this time and asked for suggestions.  Someone suggested Dish Dash and meant their original location in Sunnyvale but I discovered they opened a new location that was closer to the office so that's where we went.

Hummus

I've never been to either location before and whenever someone hears I've never been to Dish Dash, invariably I get a "what, were you raised by wolves, you've never been to Dish Dash"? sort of reaction.  Every single person not only thought it was good but was baffled by someone who's never been there.  Honestly, it got to the point that I couldn't help my own eye roll and think "seriously, how good can this place be?" I usually find when something's hyped that much, that it rarely lives up to the propaganda. 2029 reviews on yelp adding up to a 4.5-star rating?  Really?

Okay, this is the part where I confess there was something in those 2029 reviews that averaged out to 4.5 stars. Yes, it was good.  We started off with hummus as an appetizer.  I didn't partake since I don't like hummus; they're made from chickpeas - cough, garbanzo beans, cough - so I passed.  But I did indulge in the flatbread that came with it for dipping into the hummus and I thought that was good.  Oddly enough, French fries were a menu option so I ordered that too.  Not that I had to have fries but it was so unexpected that I couldn't help but wonder what they'd be like.  I don't know much about Middle Eastern food but I assume French fries were not a regular part of their culinary offerings. The fries were good (hard to go wrong with anything deep-fried) but still a head scratcher for me as being on the menu.

French Fries

The kebabs, however, not only properly belonged on the menu but they were sublime.  I ordered the beef kebabs and they were chunky and tender.  Served on a bed of saffron jasmine rice, they were perfectly seasoned (but not spicy) and delicious.  I can understand the Dish Dash love on yelp.  Service was a tad bit slow but we were there at the height of the lunch rush so perhaps that was to be unexpected. I probably felt the timing crunch more acutely than normal because I was on call for a 1 pm meeting and we didn't get there until after 12.

Beef Kebabs

They also have vegetarian offerings and even if someone is leery of trying Middle Eastern food, there are enough "Americanized" offerings that it's a good choice even for people with cautious palates.  You might want to get there before noon though or go on a day when you have time for a more leisurely lunch.  Such was my rush that I didn't get to order dessert (insert lament here) so I have no commentary on that.  I will probably have to go back to Dish Dash and try a few different entrees before I join the incredulous "what, I can't believe you've never been to Dish Dash" crowd but based on the beef kebabs, that kind of research will be no hardship.  And next time, I'm getting dessert.

Caramelized Sweet Potatoes

Caramelized Sweet Potatoes - made August 27, 2013 from MarthaStewart.com

The food blogging world is much like the retail one in that it advances the season - you know, it's not even Halloween yet and the Christmas stuff is already up.  You can't find a winter coat in February but all the swimwear is on display. In food blogging, the goal is to get the seasonal stuff up before the season so people have time to find it, try it out, talk about it, blog their own version, etc. I mean, who makes heart-shaped baked goods in March or Easter baskets in June? I started noticing pumpkin baked goods on pinterest around the 4th of July that nearly freaked me out because I was still doing flag brownies.  I'm still writing up foodie places I've eaten at from August and I'm probably a good two weeks behind in posts about baked goods I've made.  So I'm typically perpetually behind.

But not this time - I'm ahead of the game with a Thanksgiving recipe, woot!  Okay, okay, it didn't start out being for fall or any holiday at all.  I was simply hankering for sweet potatoes last month and trying to talk myself out of buying some sweet potato fries which would in turn lead to a burger because you have to have something to go with the fries. To prevent myself from wandering down that path, I decided to buy sweet potatoes and make something with them. The funny thing is, I never used to like sweet potatoes at all.  I think the first time I had them was in mashed form and someone must've added a lot of sugar to them because all I could taste was over-sugared mush. No thanks.

My palate has evolved a little since then.  I still don't like mashed sweet potatoes but I do like them baked and, of course, fried.  For this experiment, I thought I'd try caramelizing them.  Yes, that would be adding sugar to sweet but I was really going for crunch as in, the sweet potatoes being caramelized in brown sugar would form a bit of a crunchy crust.  I've had them that way before (ironically it was on a tour of China and they were THE BEST I'VE EVER HAD) and they were stupendous.  I sniffed around on the web and came across this recipe from MarthaStewart.com. 

Martha usually knows her stuff and she wasn't wrong this time either.  I loved this recipe.  You can't taste the orange juice and I forgot to zest the orange to sprinkle on top of the caramelized sweet potatoes but they were good nonetheless.  They didn't really get crunchy but that could also be because I was afraid of cooking them too long and setting off my smoke alarm from burnt sugar (why yes, I do know what that's like).  But I did get some nice browning and caramelization before I took them off the burner.  The texture was just right, not overcooked or mushy and not undercooked or tough and I didn't think it was too sweet but just right.  I usually don't make any part of the Thanksgiving meal except for dessert but this year I think I'm going to shoehorn this in as a side dish. I'll take these over mashed potatoes any day.

2 tablespoons butter
2 medium sweet potatoes, peeled and cut into wedges
3 ounces freshly squeezed orange juice
1/4 cup light brown sugar
2 tablespoons granulated sugar
salt and freshly ground pepper
Zest of 1 orange

1. In a large saute pan over medium-high heat, melt butter. Add potato wedges to the pan, and stir until coated with butter. Add 1 cup water and the orange juice; cover, and cook until potatoes are fork-tender, about 5 minutes.
2. Remove cover, reduce heat to medium, and continue cooking, tossing occasionally, until most of the liquid has evaporated, 3 to 4 minutes more.
3. Combine sugars, and sprinkle over potatoes; toss until coated. Continue cooking until the sugar starts to caramelize and potatoes have a brown glaze, 5 to 6 minutes, tossing occasionally to prevent potatoes from burning. When caramelized sugar bubbles and browns around the edges, remove potatoes from pan. Season with salt and pepper, garnish with orange zest, and serve immediately.

Restaurant Review: Amarin Thai

Amarin Thai - lunch on August 22, 2013

Amarin Thai has three locations in the South Bay and the peninsula and, fortunately for me, one of those is within walking distance of my office.  I went here for lunch with a coworker when we both had time between meetings for the 10-minute walk. I prefer to walk here as they're in a small strip mall and parking is dicey during the busy lunch rush as they have to share the spots with other small eateries.  Walking is better.

This particular location is pretty humble as it's essentially a small room crowded with as many tables as they can fit in there.  I don't advise coming here with more than 4 people in your party as their largest tables only appear to fit four.  You can put tables together, of course, but seriously, this place is small.  The interior shot above was taken from the doorway and there are only 3-4 small tables to the left  that aren't in the picture.  Otherwise, there are also a few 2- or 4-top tables outside which can be utilized in good weather.

Like all places that cater to the business crowd at lunch, Amarin Thai has a lunch special menu along with their regular menu and they serve your order within a few minutes.  The longest I might have ever waited for an order was 7-8 minutes.  Each order comes with a cup of soup: a clear, spicy broth with chopped vegetables.  I almost always get the pad thai (of course), no bean sprouts with chicken and shrimp.  I'm a big fan of pad thai and Amarin Thai serves a good one.  Not quite as good as the one from my favorite Thai place (Krung Thai) but still decent.  It isn't fancy but if you want a quick lunch for $10, it's a good place to go.

Cashew Butter Cookies

Cashew Butter Cookies - made August 24, 2013 from Land O Lakes Cookies

I have certain prejudices when it comes to cookies.  The biggest one I've mentioned before is I don't like nuts in my cookies, especially in the thick, fat, chubby, chewy cookies I typically prefer.  Nuts are meant to be crisp and I don't like them in cookies because they steam and soften during baking.  Notable exceptions are macadamias as in white chocolate macadamia cookies or coconut macadamia cookies or other types of nuts (except walnuts) where they're part of a crisp cookie like almonds in the Lemon Chip Cookies or the Pecan Butter Shortbread or something like Mexican Wedding Cakes where the pecans are the star of the cookie.  I also don't mind nuts on top of cookies or brownies as long as they stay crisp and provide a texture contrast.

But every once in awhile, I try out a recipe that will challenge my prejudice, just in case it turns out so fantastically well that I'll be glad I kept an open mind. Hmm, this recipe didn't quite do that but for an unexpected reason.  It turns out I didn't mind the cashews in the cookies as I have a soft spot for cashews in my cookie-eating heart.  But I didn't like the honey.  I don't care for honey in sweets because I don't like the flavor of honey that much and most of the time, it's a little too sweet for me. I do like it in savory dishes, like when it's paired and offset with something salty like soy sauce.  But I've never been into baked goods like baklava because the honey makes it too sweet. These cookies weren't necessarily overly sweet but the honey flavor was definitely present so I didn't like these cookies as much as I had hoped.

However, I always maintain everyone's tastes are different so while I may not like something, it doesn't mean others won't like it.  I brought a plate of these to work and left them in our communal kitchen one morning.  A few hours later, I walked by and found this:

So someone must've liked them :).

¾ cup butter, softened

½ cup firmly packed brown sugar

½ cup honey

1 egg

2 cups all-purpose flour

¾ teaspoon baking soda

½ teaspoon baking powder

1 cup chopped salted cashews

1.     Heat oven to 375˚F.  In large mixer bowl combine butter, sugar, honey and egg.  Beat at medium speed, scraping bowl often, until well mixed (1 to 2 minutes).  Reduce speed to low.  Add all remaining ingredients except chopped cashews and cashew halves.  Continue beating, scraping bowl often, until well mixed (1 to 2 minutes).

2.     By hand, stir in chopped cashews.  Drop by rounded teaspoonfuls onto cookie sheets; top each cookie with cashew half.  Bake for 6 to 9 minutes or until golden brown.

Restaurant Review: Pho 99

Pho 99 - lunch on August 18, 2013

This is another go-to place my parents and I lunch at after church on Sundays.  Similar to Li Zhou, it seems to be a small, independently-owned restaurant that doesn't have its own website so I'm linking to the yelp reviews.  The inside is simply furnished so don't expect fancy but they're clean and they're quick.

We like to get the fried Vietnamese spring rolls as an appetizer - they're 5 for $5.95 and come out fast, hot, crisp and just a little greasy.  I always blot with a paper napkin first then just enjoy them.

They do a good pho here if you're in the mood for hot soup that comes out almost as soon as you order it.  This particular Sunday I was more in the mood for an entree than soup so I ordered the grilled beef and shrimp rice plate.  The shrimp is rather sparse (you get 3) but the beef is tender and has good flavor. They also give you a fair amount of rice so it's a pretty good value for under $10.

As with most pho restaurants, they're fast, cheap and filling so they're the perfect place for a quick lunch.

Almond Butter Chocolate Chip Cookies (Chickpea Cookies)

Almond Butter Chocolate Chip Cookies - made August 24, 2013 from Texan Erin

Let me start off by saying if I had titled these "Chickpea Cookies", you probably would've skipped this entry and kept on going. I would have too.  Chickpeas?  In cookies?  Heck, I had to google "chickpeas" and see exactly what they were.  Then I was even more turned off to discover they're just another name for garbanzo beans.  I have no love for garbanzo beans.  Just bad memories of my parents trying to make me eat them when I was a kid and me spitting them out into my napkin, excusing myself from the table on the pretext of having to go to the bathroom and flushing that napkinful of garbanzo beans down the toilet.  Ick.

So why on earth am I using chickpeas (less traumatizing for me to think of them as chickpeas instead of the garbanzo beans of my childhood) in something as sacrosanct as cookies?? If you've seen the picture of these from Texan Erin's blog, you'll understand why I felt compelled. Some people might want to try them because they're gluten-free, dairy free, and contain no white sugar. I made them because her picture of them looked so good. And a friend as good as dared me to make them.  So I did.

The only change I made from the original recipe is I used almond butter instead of natural peanut butter, mostly because I prefer almond butter and the recipe said it was okay to make the substitution.  So that's what my cookies came out darker than hers.  Otherwise, I followed the directions to the letter, including weighing out all my ingredients to the last gram.  I didn't want any excuses on this recipe and wanted to be able to judge it on its own merit, chickpeas and all.

Baked for 10 minutes

They actually turned out better than I expected.  As with the limited number of things I've made that are gluten-free, they're rather dense, soft and "fudgy".  There are no crisp edges to this one and I'd advise you to let  the cookies cool completely before tasting them or else they might be too gooey.  I baked the first batch for the 10 minutes directed in the recipe and it was a little too gooey.  I baked the second batch an extra 5 minutes with no discernible difference in taste and the texture was just as soft but not as gooey once it had cooled. I think these would be hard to overbake but you definitely don't want to underbake them either.  Taste-wise, you can't taste the chickpeas at all; it seems they just contribute to the texture and give the cookies some body.  The honey was also not prevalent which was good for me since I don't like the taste of honey.  I liked these cookies but I don't know if I could say I loved them.  If someone wanted something with no flour, no sugar and no dairy, this cookie is a good choice.  I don't know that I would add these to my holiday baking list but if I did need to bake for someone who's gluten free, I'm going with these cookies.

Baked for 15 minutes

1¼ cups canned chickpeas, well-rinsed and patted dry with a paper towel
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
½ cup + 2 tablespoons (165 grams) natural peanut butter (don't use regular peanut butter) or almond butter, room temperature
¼ cup (80 grams) honey 
1 teaspoon baking powder
a pinch of salt if your peanut butter doesn't have salt in it
½ cup (90 grams) chocolate chips

1. Preheat your oven to 350°F / 175°C. Combine all the ingredients, except for the chocolate chips, in a food processor and process until very smooth. Make sure to scrape the sides and the top to get the little chunks of chickpeas and process again until they're combined.
2. Put in the chocolate chips and stir it if you can, or pulse it once or twice. The mixture will be very thick and sticky.
3. With wet hands, form into 1½" balls. Place onto a Silpat or a piece of parchment paper. If you want them to look more like normal cookies, press down slightly on the balls. They don't do much rising.
4. Bake for about 10 minutes (or up to 15 minutes). The dough balls will still be very soft when you take them out of the oven. They will not set like normal cookies.
5. Store in an airtight container at room temperature (or in the fridge) for up to 1 week.

Restaurant Review: Howie's Artisan Pizza

Howie's Artisan Pizza - dinner on August 16, 2013

I had never heard of Howie's Artisan Pizza before but the night I met my cousin and Vanilla King for dinner at Mayfield Bakery & Cafe, we passed by Howie's on our way to the Palo Alto Cream as Howie's was located in the same Town & Country Village just outside the Stanford campus.  They had a menu posted on the outside of the restaurant so we ventured a look.  Despite already being full from dinner and trying to save room for ice cream sandwiches for dessert, the menu looked mouth watering and we resolved to come back and try out Howie's.

Garlicky Prawns appetizer

I ended up trying it out first because when I met Lisa, one of my oldest friends from high school, for dinner last month, I suggested Howie's. Lisa was up for it and we have compatible eating tastes so it was easy to agree on Garlicky Prawns for the appetizer and we split the Baked Potato Pizza.  I don't have a picture of the inside of the restaurant because we never went in.  Howie's has outdoor seating and it was nice summer night with perfect weather so it was an easy choice to make to be seated outside.

Baked Potato Pizza

The Garlicky Prawns were delicious. As someone partial to shrimp, I really enjoyed them. It comes with garlic bread which can also be ordered as a separate appetizer but I'd go with the two-fer and get the prawns instead so you can have both.  The Baked Potato Pizza had scalloped potatoes, grueyere cheese and bacon.  It was also tasty although our choice of toppings was probably a bit more carbo-loading than I needed.  Potatoes aren't a typical pizza topping for me so I thought it would be interesting to try. Uh, tasted just like sliced potatoes on a pizza :). The crust was also good.  It wasn't as thick as Premier Pizza's but still a decent thickness with a crisp edge if you don't want to gorge on too much bread. Think of it almost like a perfect blend of flatbread and deep dish pizza.  It's got the crunch of flatbread pizza at the edges but also the satisfying chewiness of deep dish in the middle.

Price-wise, Howie's is inline with specialty, mom-and-pop places with good pizza so I didn't mind paying it. I'm always of the mindset that I'd rather pay a few extra bucks for good food made well than get the mass-produced cheap stuff which isn't very good or is only "okay". From their website, Howie's looks like they've been in business since late 2009 and, 4 years later, they appear to still be thriving by the crowd there on the Friday night we went.  It's also very family friendly (lots of kids in action) if you wanted to bring your family out for a good pizza night.