Chocolate Cookies

Double Chocolate Cookies - February 4, 2009

Tonight's baking is Double Chocolate Cookies from Baking with Julia by Julia Child. I've made these cookies before but I forgot to take a picture of them the first time I made them so I had to make them again and take a pic for posterity and my next tastebook. I'm bringing them into work tomorrow for a coworker lunch. These are pretty good - they don't spread that much and are really rich.

The trick to pure chocolate cookies is to use the best quality chocolate possible. It doesn't have to be super high end but don't use the no-name generic, cheap stuff either. It won't be worth making if you do. So many people ask me for recipes and I give it to them but when they make it on their own, they say it didn't turn out like mine. Most of the time, using the right ingredients is the difference. You know you've made chocolate cookies right when you taste them at room temperature and the chocolate flavor really comes through. Also, it's better to underbake cookies rather than overbake them, especially chocolate cookies. The cookies may not look done yet when you take them out of the oven but remember, the chocolate "sets" as it cools. Overbaking will make a dry, tough cookie and those simply aren't worth the calories.

½ cup all-purpose flour

½ teaspoon baking powder

½ teaspoon salt

12 ounces bittersweet chocolate, cut into larger than chip size chunks

1 stick (4 ounces) unsalted butter

4 ounces unsweetened chocolate, coarsely chopped

4 large eggs, at room temperature

1½ cups sugar

1. Whisk together the flour, baking powder, and salt in a medium bowl and set aside until needed. Divide the bittersweet chocolate in half and set half aside.

2. Place the butter, the remaining bittersweet chocolate, and the unsweetened chocolate in the top of a double boiler over, but not touching, simmering water. Heat the mixture, stirring occasionally, until the butter and chocolates are melted and smooth. Remove from the heat.

3. Meanwhile, put the eggs, sugar, coffee and vanilla in the bowl of a mixer fitted with the whisk attachment and beat at high speed for about 10 minutes, until the mixture is very thick and forms a slowly dissolving ribbon when the whisk is lifted and the mixture is allowed to drizzle back into the bowl.

4. With the mixer on low speed, very gradually add the warm butter-chocolate mixture. Scrape down the sides of the bowl and work your rubber spatula around the bottom of the bowl, then continue to mix just until the chocolate is thoroughly incorporated. Add the dry ingredients and the remaining bittersweet chocolate chunks and mix thoroughly. The mixture will look like a thick, marshmallowy cake batter.

5. Chilling the dough: Cover the bowl with plastic and chill for several hours, or overnight. The dough can be made ahead and kept refrigerated for up to 4 days.

6. Baking the cookies: When you are ready to bake, position the racks to divide the oven into thirds and preheat the oven to 350˚F. Line two large baking sheets with parchment paper.

7. Using a heaping tablespoon of dough for each cookie, drop the dough onto the lined sheets, leaving at least 2 inches of space between each mound of dough – these are spreaders. Bake the cookies for 10 to 12 minutes, rotating the pans front to back and top to bottom halfway through the baking period. The cookies will puff, then sink and crinkle and wrinkle around the edges. These cookies are better underdone than overbaked, so if you have any doubts, pull them out of the oven earlier rather than later. These shouldn’t appear dry and they won’t be crisp. Use a wide metal spatula to transfer the cookies to cooling racks to cool to room temperature. Repeat with the remaining dough.

8. Storing: The cookies can be wrapped in plastic and kept at room temperature for 2 days or frozen for up to a month. Thaw, still wrapped, at room temperature.

Crumb Cake redux

Classic Crumb Cake - February 2, 2009

This is the second coffeecake type cake I've made in the past week, partly because I need to use up some milk before it expires and partly because I bring these to our weekly staff meetings and they're held at 9 am on Tuesdays so I was trying to stay with "breakfast"-type baked goods. I got this recipe from The Weekend Baker by Abigail Johnson Dodge. I haven't made many recipes from her cookbook but the recipes in general have turned out pretty well. This was no exception. This is super easy to make and tastes great. When I was making the topping, at first I thought there'd be too much but it worked pretty well for the amount of cake batter there was. Another coffeecake or crumb cake that doesn't have nuts so it works well for anyone with nut allergies (which I don't have).

For the topping
16 tablespoons unsalted butter, cut into 6 pieces
½ cup granulated sugar
¾ cup firmly packed light brown sugar
1½ teaspoons ground cinnamon
¼ teaspoon ground nutmeg
Pinch of table salt
2⅔ cups all-purpose flour

For the cake

3 cups all-purpose flour

1¼ cups granulated sugar

1½ teaspoons baking powder

1½ teaspoons table salt

2 large eggs

1 cup whole milk

12 tablespoon unsalted butter, melted and cooled slightly.

2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract

To make the topping:

1. In a large saucepan, melt the butter over medium heat. Slide the pan from the heat and add the granulated sugar, brown sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg, and salt. Stir with a rubber spatula, pressing when necessary, until there are no lumps of sugar. Add the flour and mix until well blended and pasty. Set aside.

To make the cake

2. Position an oven rack on the middle rung. Heat the oven to 350 F. Lightly grease the bottom and sides of a 9 x 13-inch baking pan or dish.

3. In a large bowl, combine the flour, granulated sugar, baking powder, and salt. Whisk until well blended. In a medium bowl, combine the eggs, milk, melted butter and vanilla. Whisk until well blended.

4. Pour the wet ingredients over the dry ingredients and gently stir with a rubber spatula just until blended. Scrape the batter into the prepared pan and spread evenly. Break up the topping mixture with your fingers into medium-sized pieces and sprinkle evenly over the cake batter to form a generous layer.

5. Bake until the cake springs back when lightly pressed in the center and a toothpick or cake tester inserted in the center comes out clean, about 40 minutes. Transfer the pan to a rack to cool. Serve warm or at room temperature. Before serving, sift some confectioners’ sugar over the top, if desired.

A cake should be cakey

Master Recipe for All-Purpose Yellow Cake - January 31, 2009

This recipe is from the Dessert Bible by Christopher Kimball of Cook's Illustrated fame. Now, normally, I like anything from Cook's Illustrated and I like reading about their trials and tribulations testing out recipes. The Dessert Bible is similar to Baking Illustrated, also by Christopher Kimball. I'm sorry to say the recipes I've tried from the Dessert Bible so far have been hit or miss. This one is in the miss category. I tried the orange cake variation of this recipe and it just didn't taste that good. It wasn't very orangey at all and while I could blame the oranges I used for that problem, the cake itself didn't have a very good texture. It wasn't as dense as a pound cake but it wasn't as cakey as a cake cake. At best, it was just "okay".

Chocolate Chip Cookies

The Ultimate Soft and Chewy Chocolate Chunk Cookies - January 30, 2009

Let's start off by saying I LOVE chocolate chip cookies. Not just any chocolate chip cookies though, not even just any homemade ones (although they're almost always better than the store-bought kind). But nothing beats a warm chocolate chip cookie 10 minutes out of the oven. Waiting 10 minutes was something one of my chef instructors from the Culinary Institute of America (CIA) advised. If you eat them right out of the oven, they're too hot to enjoy and you can't really taste them until they cool down a bit. Plus they're just soft. But if you wait 10 minutes, the edges crisp up while the middle is still soft and the whole cookie is still warm while the chocolate chips are still melt-y. You get the best of all possible worlds.

I may not have ONE favorite dessert but if I had a top 10 list, warm chocolate chip cookies 10 minutes out of the oven would be on it. I've been on an eternal quest for THE perfect chocolate chip cookie. I've tried dozens of recipes, if not a hundred or more. I hit upon a terrific one from allrecipes.com and it's the one I like to make best. But that doesn't stop me from trying out new recipes for chocolate chip cookies. You never know what gems you might discover. One of the things I look for in a successful recipe is where the cookies don't spread much - they have to remain thick with crisp edges and chewy middles. Otherwise, it's not a cookie so much as a little flat pancake with knobby bumps of chips. Plus I like to use Guittard milk chocolate chips since they're big and the spread-too-much cookies look funny with big chips.

On the subject of chocolate chips, I prefer milk chocolate chips. My nieces and their dad like semisweet but my sweet tooth wins out - it's milk chocolate all the way. Guittard makes the best since they're bigger than Nestle's chips.

Yesterday, I tried a new chocolate chip cookie recipe from In the Sweet Kitchen by Regan Daley - I've had her cookbook for years (literally) but have only made a couple recipes from it. Why? Because I have too many dessert cookbooks and haven't gotten to making a lot from most of them. Hence why I've banned myself from buying new cookbooks in 2009. Anyway, the recipe had all the usual ingredients in varying proportions from all the other recipes I've tried but in my eternal optimism, I thought I'd give this one a shot. Plus I was seeing a friend for dinner that night and it's unthinkable for me to meet friends without giving some kind of baked goodie bag. The cookies were fabulous. Usually when I try out a new recipe, I eat one piece as a taste test. If I really like something, I talk myself into a second (or third) piece. With these cookies I had two. I could've eaten a third but I'd only baked 6 and had to leave some for my friend. But I do have the rest of the cookie dough in the freezer waiting to be baked off. I have a work lunch next week where I could bring the cookies. And eat another one for myself, of course, once that next batch has been 10 minutes out of the oven.

1 cup unsalted butter, at room temperature

1 cup tightly packed light brown sugar

½ cup granulated sugar

2 large eggs

1½ teaspoons pure vanilla extract

3 cups plus 2 tablespoons all-purpose flour

1 teaspoon baking soda

½ teaspoon salt

1. Preheat the oven to 350˚F. Line two heavy, not non-stick, baking sheets with parchment paper, or lightly butter them, and set them aside. In the bowl of an electric or stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, or a large bowl if mixing by hand, cream the butter and both sugars until light and fluffy. Add the eggs, one at a time, beating well and scraping down the sides of the bowl after each addition. Beat in the vanilla.

2. Sift the flour, baking soda and salt together into a small bowl. Add the dry ingredients to the butter-sugar mixture, mixing until just combined. Fold in the chocolate chunks.

3. Using your hands, shape knobs of dough about the size of a large walnut into balls and place them 2 inches apart on the baking sheets. Stagger the tows of cookies to ensure even baking. Bake 12 to 15 minutes for smaller cookies, 14 to 17 minutes for larger cookies, or until the tops are light golden brown. Cool the cookies on the sheets for 5 minutes, then transfer to wire racks to cool completely. They can be stored airtight at room temperature for up to 1 week.

My Baking Blog - the beginning

I can't even remember when I started baking or how or why. I think I must have been anywhere from 10 to 12 years old. I do know I've always had a sweet tooth and perhaps I started baking to feed it. I just know I love to bake and do it often as a means of relaxation, or because I'm asked to bring something somewhere for someone (or I simply want to without being asked) or just because. I love trying out new recipes and often bring the results (failures and successes alike) to work.

This blog is going to be about my baking odyssey - as I try out new recipes or old favorites, I'll post pictures, references to where I got the recipe, my observations and whatever else moves me. I started out using the Note feature on facebook but what I'm really trying to do sounds more appropriate for a blog so I'll try it this way.

Here are my initial notes from my Facebook account:

Cinnamon Coffee Cake - January 26, 2009

Tonight I baked a cinnamon coffee cake - super easy to make. The recipe was from Perfect Cakes by Nick Malgieri. I met him when he did a cooking demonstration at Sur La Table and he autographed the book for me. Interestingly, this recipe doesn't use brown sugar or nuts in the topping but rather flour, granulated sugar, melted butter and cinnamon. The topping didn't get brown either since I took it out when the cake was done - didn't want to overbake the cake. It came out pretty good - typical coffee cake although I wonder if it would be better with some toasted pecans or with brown sugar instead of white sugar for more flavor. Plus I ate it somewhat warm - have to try it again when it's at room temp tomorrow. All in the name of research, of course. The rest is going to be served at my boss' staff meeting tomorrow morning.