Porto's Bakery - (online) bakery review

Porto's Bakery - ordered March 28, 2021, received April 9, 2021

I'm shamefully late in posting this as I ordered this back in March and got it in April. But trust me, I still remember the order as it was just that good.

I'd heard about Porto's before, mainly from my cousins and friends in Southern California where they've actually gone to a brick and mortar Porto's. Cheese rolls seemed to be the popular item. I personally am not big on cheese so I felt no particular rush to join the Porto's bandwagon. That turned out to be a foolish outlook.

Unbaked cheese rolls $16.99 for a dozen

In an effort to support small businesses as much as possible, and to reward myself for continuing to work when I was trying to be retired (if you notice the dates on when I ordered this, for back story, I thought I was ending my contractor engagement at work on March 31 but got persuaded otherwise - enter the Porto's order to make it up to myself, lol), I placed an order.

The beauty and sheer brilliance of Porto's online ordering process is it tells you how much more you can order for the same shipping cost. That shipping cost is surprisingly reasonable at $9.99 for 4 items. I don't know if it would've gone higher had I added a 5th item as I figured 4 things were more than enough for 1 person, even if that person eats a lot. *cough* *looks in mirror*

Had to get the cheese rolls, of course. You'll see the other items I ordered through the pictures. But first let's talk about the cheese rolls. Namely....OMG, where have these been all my life and why didn't I get on this bandwagon sooner???

These things were freaking delicious. In my experience, few foods live up to their online hype. This one does. And this is coming from "I'm not really a cheese person". It's hard to describe why I like these so much. Could be the flaky roll itself with its large sugar crystals adding to the sweet crispness and flakiness. I even liked the mildly sweet cheese filling. YUM.

$16.99 for a dozen

The ham croquettes were to satisfy the savory end of my taste buds. It's hard to go wrong with ham and cheese in any rendition. In case you haven't noticed from the pictures, the orders are shipped in an insulated container with dry ice to keep them cold and do arrive reasonably frozen so they can go from the box to your freezer if you're not planning to bake them immediately. (But you might want to bake some of them immediately because cheese rolls....)

The ham and cheese croquettes were good as well and like everything else in my order, they come frozen in a box with a card detailing the instructions on how to bake them. Porto's even thoughtfully provides parchment paper to line your baking sheets with for baking each product.

These were good but I have to admit, a little more typical, and not the epic greatness of the cheese roll.

Besitos $16.99 for 15 pieces

If I'd had to take a bet, I thought the Besitos or Kiss Cookies filled with dulce de leche would've been my next favorite. They were good, a nice shortbread-butter cookie shaped like an oversized "kiss" with dulce de leche stuffed inside.

If you've ever watched the movie "Chocolat", these might remind you of the "Nipples of Venus" confection from the book/movie. Although these seem a little closer to the "nipples" part.

Get past that image, lol. This was a good cookie, no matter what it looks like. Porto's recommends dusting it with powdered sugar before serving. I tried it both ways and actually prefer it plain.

The fourth and final item I ordered was the chocolate twist.

Remember above when I said the cheese roll was epic and I wish I'd discovered it earlier? Double that enthusiasm to gauge my reaction to the chocolate twist. I thought the besitos would be my second favorite but the cheese roll got bumped down to second place.

Unbaked chocolate twist $16.99 for 8 (large) pieces

Because the chocolate twist was unexpectedly my favorite of the 4 items I ordered. The instructions say to brush it with egg wash before baking. That helps with the browning.

This was seriously one of the best things I've ever eaten from an online bakery order. Sure, it helps that you bake it in your own oven and can enjoy it hot/warm and flaky. But it was still extremely delicious. Like I want to order it again and again delicious. Flaky, buttery with the right amount and flavor of the filling studded with mini chocolate chips. I'd order 20 more if I didn't want to re-gain the 11 pounds I'd lost during quarantine. But don't think I haven't considered it.

So if you have a little extra budget to spare, want delicious pre-made baked goods you bake yourself for optimal freshness and want to support a small business, Porto's knocks it out of the park on all cylinders. Make sure you get the cheese rolls and the chocolate twists at a minimum and try their other offerings as well. I intend to.

Triple Chocolate Cookies

Triple Chocolate Cookies - made July 16, 2021 from Eats Well With Others 

Have you ever admired those cookies with pristine-looking white chocolate chunks studded all over the top and wonder how the heck they remained so pristine and white with no browning or burn spots?

The answer is obvious but I'm going to say it explicitly anyway. Those pristine white chocolate chunks are pressed into the tops of the cookies after baking, not before. You can tell the difference by comparing the browned ones in these pictures with the white ones. The browned ones baked with the cookies, the white ones are the ones I poked into the tops of the cookies right after I took them out of the oven.

From an aesthetic standpoint, this is the way to go for serving and presentation. From a care package mailing standpoint, it isn't so practical as the chocolate on top can melt en route to high temp locations and end up being a mess by the time your recipient gets it. Obviously it won't affect the flavor and this is another solid, fudgy, chewy, excellent chocolate cookie.

But I do like things to be a little pretty, regardless of who receives the cookies, so I tend to tuck the white chocolate inside the cookie dough before baking for the ones I'm mailing out and to decorate with pristine white chocolate chunks for the ones I'm giving out in person. Either way, you can't lose with the flavor and texture of these cookies.

Oh, and a word on white chocolate: I rarely bake with the white chocolate chips you find at Target or the grocery store. I've tried them and they taste terrible, even the supposedly higher end ones. Lately, I've been sourcing my white chocolate from Cacaoholic. No, I'm not affiliated with them and I don't make a penny even if you click on the link in the last sentence. But they make high quality products (I also buy my unsweetened chocolate in bulk from them), ship promptly and have fantastic customer service.

6 ounces white chocolate, chopped

2 1/3 cups bittersweet chocolate chips

2 2/3 cups all-purpose flour

1/2 cup cocoa powder

1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder

1 teaspoon baking soda

1 1/2 teaspoons salt

1 cup butter

3/4 cup granulated sugar

3/4 cup brown sugar, packed

2 large eggs

2 teaspoons vanilla extract

1. Melt 4 ounces white chocolate and 1 1/3 cups chocolate chips over the top of a double boiler over hot water or in the microwave. Stir until melted and smooth.
2. In a medium bowl, whisk together flour, cocoa powder, baking powder, baking soda and salt; set aside.
3. Combine the butter, granulated sugar and brown sugar in the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment. Cream together on medium speed until light and fluffy, 2-3 minutes.
4. Add eggs and vanilla, mixing until combined, 1-2 minutes.
5. Pour in melted chocolate and mix on low speed until combined.
6. Add the flour mixture in two additions and mix on low until just combined. Fold in white chocolate and chocolate chips. Portion dough into golf-ball-size dough balls, flatten slightly to thick discs, cover and chill or freeze for several hours or overnight.
7. When ready to bake, preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Line baking sheets with parchment paper. Evenly space dough balls and bake 12-15 minutes or until edges are set and middles no longer look raw. Remove from oven and let rest on baking sheets for several minutes before transferring to wire rack to cool completely.

Air Fryer Chicken Legs

Air Fryer Chicken Thighs (or Legs) - made July 20, 2021, modified from Courtney's Sweets

Every once in awhile, I'll throw in a real food recipe. This is one I've had on my pinterest board for donkey's years and never actually tried. It was time to change that.

I modified it very slightly, mostly a tiny increase in the amount of brown sugar as well as using drumsticks instead of chicken thighs, mostly because that's what I had in my freezer.

This is an easy and tasty quick meal, perfect for a weeknight when you've had a full and busy day at work and don't want to put a lot of thought into "what's for dinner?" Long live my air fryer for these kinds of meals.

6-8 boneless skinless chicken thighs (or drumsticks)
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon paprika
1 teaspoon oregano
1 teaspoon cumin
1/2 teaspoon pepper
1 tablespoon brown sugar

1. Mix together the seasonings then sprinkle over chicken. 
2. Place chicken in air fryer for 10 minutes at 350 degrees F. Flip and cook for another 10 minutes or until the thickest part of the chicken reaches 165 degrees. Serve immediately.

Chocolate Chip Cookies That Stay Soft

Chocolate Chip Cookies That Stay Soft - made dough July 11, 2021 from Nourish and Fete 

If you look closely at the pictures, you'll see some look like they have semisweet chocolate chips in them and one particular cookie has milk chocolate chips.

The milk chocolate chip one would be my taste test cookie. I make the dough, take enough for one dough ball and mix in milk chocolate chips then I stir in semisweet chocolate chips into the rest of the cookie dough.

That's because I prefer milk chocolate chips and I assume the rest of the world, or at least the deployed service members I'm sending the cookies to in overseas care packages would prefer semisweet. An easy compromise to do to tailor one cookie to the baker's needs wants and make the rest for the actual recipients of the cookies.

This was a good cookie. As advertised, they do stay soft because of the pudding mix addition. I'm not sure they're a standout out from the hundreds of chocolate chip cookie recipes I've tried in my baking lifetime but let's be honest, that's a pretty high bar.

1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter

3/4 cup brown sugar

1/4 cup granulated sugar

1 3.4-ounce package instant vanilla pudding mix

2 eggs

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

2 1/4 cups all-purpose flour

1 teaspoon baking soda

12 ounces chocolate chips

1. In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, cream together butter, brown sugar and granulated sugar until light and fluffy, 2-3 minutes. Beat in vanilla pudding mix until combined. Beat in eggs, one at a time, until combined. Mix in vanilla extract.
2. In a separate bowl, whisk together flour and baking soda. Add to butter mixture in 2 additions, mixing after each addition until just combined. Do not overmix. Fold in chocolate chips.
3. Portion dough into golf-ball-size dough balls, cover and chill or freeze for several hours or overnight.
4. When ready to bake, preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Line baking sheets with parchment paper. Evenly space dough balls on prepared sheets. Bake 10-12 minutes or until edges are set and middles no longer look raw. Do not overbake. Let rest on baking sheets for several minutes then remove cookies to wire rack to cool completely.

An apology to (genuine) commenters

 You know when you do something stupid and it took you so long to realize it that you have to do something right away to apologize for it? So even though it's 5:30 am when I started writing this, it was 4:45 am when I discovered I had done (or not done) something stupid and I have to apologize for it.

I'm talking about the ability to post comments on my blog. Awhile back - I can't remember when but it must've been at least a few years ago - I engaged the blogger feature to moderate the comments posted on my blog. I wasn't trying to censor genuine comments about my blog posts (whether you like or didn't like what I wrote, I respect people's right to comment about it) but I was trying to control the annoying amount of spam that seemed to overwhelm the comments. Nothing worse than posting about a recipe or a small business bakery one day then going back the next to find nothing but spam in the comments. So I turned on comment moderation.

When I first did it, blogger flagged comments that had been posted but awaited my moderation. As a rule, I don't get a lot of comments anyway as I don't do much to promote my blog or monetize it. I just write up the recipes I try and post foodie pictures because I like doing it. Plus I want a place to access the recipes I want to keep or an easy way to send the link to someone who asks for a recipe when I bake them something.

Then, don't ask me why because blogger keeps making changes I can't keep up with, they stopped flagging comments awaiting moderation and I stopped remembering I had engaged that feature. You can guess what happened, or didn't happen, next. Yup, turns out people have been commenting for the last couple of years and I never thought to check the comments tab to see if I needed to approve any. So I've spent the past 45 minutes "moderating" the comments from the last 2-3 years. I feel terrible about never responding to the genuine comments when people had a question or posted a compliment. Eek. So sorry!

On the one hand, engaging the moderation filter did save y'all from spam comments about online call girls, panini presses, classes in Dubai and links to diets (*eyeroll* on the last one because who are we kidding). On the other hand, for people who posted non-spam, real comments, my sincerest apologies. I wasn't ignoring you, I just didn't know you had commented. I've moderated them all now and will stay on top of the comments going forward, I promise. 

I will try to respond to the comments I just approved, even if some of them are pretty old (sorry again) but give me a few days as I'm back to work this week and need to catch up. Oops.

Melt in the Mouth Stamped Shortbread Cookies (recipe 7)

Melt in the Mouth Stamped Shortbread Cookies - made dough July 9, 2021 from Veena Azmanov 

Yes, I got new cookie stamps....again. Like the others I've recently blogged about, this set also comes from Nordic Ware. I swear I'm not affiliated with the company nor am I trying to pimp their products for any reasons than lookie, how pretty....

But they are pretty, right? If I was an actual cookie decorator, I could even get fancy with piping some icing along the patterns to really make them pop. Like following the swirls in the pattern above and putting a silver-colored dragee in the center. I saw that on another website and thought that would be pretty. You could even vary the color of the icing piping to suit the season or holiday: red and green for Christmas, blue and white for Hanukkah, orange, red and yellow for autumn, pastels for Easter and so on.

Alas, I'm not a fancy cookie decorator so I'm going to just rely on the stamped pattern. Which is the point of cookie stamps - you can make pretty cookies with relatively little effort. What I'm learned from stamping so far is to chill the dough slightly just until it's cool but not cold. You want it still pliable and not too cold or it'll be harder to make clean impressions when stamping. Portion the dough into balls, roll the balls in granulated sugar (not flour), center the ball as much as possible with the stamp and press evenly. Tada - pretty cookies.

sandwiched with cookie butter

2 2/3 cups all-purpose flour

2 tablespoons cornstarch

1/2 teaspoon salt

8 ounces (2 sticks) unsalted butter

1/2 cup granulated sugar

1/2 cup confectioners' sugar

1 egg

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

granulated sugar for rolling

1. In a medium bowl, whisk together flour, cornstarch and salt; set aside.
2. In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, cream together the butter, granulated sugar and confectioners' sugar until well combined and fluffy, 2-3 minutes. Add egg and vanilla; beat until combined.
3. Add dry ingredients in 2 additions, beating after each addition until just combined. Do not overmix.
4. Cover and chill dough for 1-2 hours. When dough is chilled, portion into golf-ball-size dough balls. Place granulated sugar in shallow bowl and roll dough balls, coating completely before stamping with cookie stamps. 
5. Cover stamped cookies and chill or freeze for several hours or overnight.
6. When ready to bake, preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Line baking sheets with parchment paper. Evenly space frozen stamped cookies on baking sheets. Bake for 8-10 minutes or until edges are light brown brown. Let rest on baking sheets for 3-4 minutes then remove to wire rack to cool completely.